“I bow to reality. But I warn you once more: This reserve is protected ground. Trespass again and you will face the full might of the United States Army.”

Blessing looked up the stream in the direction the trail had led. “Damned little might you’ve ever shown against hostile Indians.”

The officer promised, “We’ll search the reserve for the boy and for your stock. But I believe they are beyond the reserve now, bound for Comanche country.”

Blessing’s voice was bitter. “Believe what you want to, but you’d better find that boy. Otherwise we’ll be back, and you and your army can go to hell!”

Rusty expected the soldiers to accompany the Texans across the reserve boundary, but they did not. The officer said, “I’ll get reinforcements and some Indian trackers. We’ll follow up on the trails.” He led his troopers away.

York watched them. His voice was sour. “Ain’t nothin’ll come of it. Them soldiers couldn’t find an elephant in a hog pen.”

Rusty had a gut feeling that the captive boy would never be found. “What’ll they do to him?”

Mike Shannon stared to the north, where the Indians had probably gone. “They’ll make a Comanche out of him or they’ll kill him.”

“That’s what they’d’ve done to me, isn’t it? But you and Preacher Webb got in their way.”

Mike’s face showed despair. “I’m afraid there ain’t nobody goin’ to get in their way this time.”

The volunteers had ridden north like a military unit, heads high, driven by a stern determination. Retreating southward now, they straggled without order, shoulders hunched in an attitude of failure. The mood was contagious. Rusty felt an emptiness that went beyond hunger. He had eaten nothing since yesterday noon.

“We didn’t accomplish a thing,” he lamented to Mike.

Mike only grunted. “It ends up this way more often than not. Many a time I’ve ridden a hundred miles after Indians and never seen a feather. But we’ve got to try or we’d just as well pack up our wagon and go back to wherever we came from.”

Preacher Webb added, “There’s no shame in losin’, provided you made an honest effort. There’s shame only when you give up before you start.”

Rusty heard Isaac York raise his voice. “Yonder’s a pair of tepees.”

They stood three hundred yards away, within easy water-carrying distance of the stream.

Blessing said, “Probably just a family or two out huntin’ for meat. The ones we’re after wouldn’t camp where they’re so easy found.”

“They’re Indians, ain’t they?” York put spurs to his horse and set him into a run. Behind him the black man Shanty tried vainly to catch up. He had no spurs. He did not even have shoes.

Blessing called in vain for York to stop.

Mike said, “We’d better go after him. Ain’t no tellin’ what he’s crazy enough to do.” He put his black horse Alamo into a lope. Rusty and Blessing and the others followed.

Rusty saw two women scraping flesh from the hide of a deer. Three children played nearby until they heard the horses and saw the oncoming riders. They fled into scrub timber alongside the stream. The two women screamed. An elderly man stooped to come out through the open flap of a tepee. He motioned for the women to run, then pushed himself as erect as his age would allow and waited for the horsemen.