Excitement in Tanner’s voice brought Rusty to his feet and out into the open space between the two sections of his cabin. Against the night sky, just at the horizon line, he saw a red glow.

Tanner said, “I don’t think that is any eclipse.”

Rusty muttered an oath. “It’s the right direction to be Shanty’s place.” He slammed the flat of his hand against the log wall. “They’re burnin’ him out.”

“Good thing we brought him home with us.”

Shanty heard the voices and ventured from his sleeping place in the shed. Andy had taken to sleeping there, too. Shanty looked at the glow, then hurried barefoot to Rusty’s side. “Lordy, Mr. Rusty, they’re burnin’ down my place.”

“I’m afraid that’s what it looks like.”

Andy came up, shoving his shirttail into his trousers. He wore buckskin moccasins. “If we hurry, maybe we can put the fire out.”

Rusty shook his head. “By the time we got there, the cabin’d be burned to the ground. And whoever’s done it, they might be waitin’ to ambush Shanty or anybody else who rides in there.”

Andy argued, “We can’t just stand here and do nothin’.”

Rusty stared at the glow, deploring his helplessness. “Best we wait ‘til daylight so we can see what we’re gettin’ into.”

Andy seemed more agitated even than Shanty. “One thing we can do. The people that done this, they’ve got houses, too.”

Rusty knew what Andy was driving at. “A house for a house?”

“Seems fair to me.”

“The law doesn’t work that way.”

“Don’t look to me like the law works at all.”

Shanty’s shoulders slumped. Always thin and spare, he seemed to shrink even smaller. “I ain’t never done nothin’ against nobody.”

Rusty said, “You’re a free man. Nobody owns you, and some folks can’t accept that.”

“I ain’t free if people won’t let me alone. I wish Mr. Isaac was still livin’. They wouldn’t burn the place if it was still Mr. Isaac’s.”

Rusty started to say Isaac York was white. But he knew Shanty was well aware of the reason for the hostility.

Shanty said, “They wouldn’t do nothin’ like this if you was to say you own me.”

“The war settled that question. Nobody owns anybody anymore. That’s the law.”

“I wisht there hadn’t been no war. I wisht things could go back to what they used to be. Them wasn’t really bad times.”

“You didn’t have freedom then.”

“Don’t seem like I got much freedom now.”

Rusty bade Andy and Shanty to stay back while he and Tanner circled around the blackened ruins of the cabin and made certain no one had set up an ambush. Tanner said, “Looks safe to me. They done their dirty work, then cleared out.”