Whiskey runners, he realized.

The Comancheros had used liquor mainly as a come-along to help them dispose of their trade goods. With these men, liquor was the trade goods.

Jake plied him with questions about himself and Billy. He seemed particularly interested when Andy told him about the offer James and Evan had made to the Comanchero about ransoming the boy with horses. The man’s eagerness made Andy uneasy. He wished he had not talked so much.

His stomach full, Billy’s exhaustion caught up with him. He fell asleep and slumped over onto the ground. From one of the packs Jake brought a blanket and spread it. “The boy’s wore out. I expect you are, too. You’d best get yourself some sleep.”

Andy was tired, but he was suspicious, too. He lay beside Billy on the blanket but tried to fight off weariness. He could hear several traders huddling with Jake near the fire, talking in low tones. He heard just enough to sharpen his suspicions, then to stir fear.

Jake suggested that they should take the boys home and demand that the Monahan family give them as many horses as had been proposed to the Comanchero. The smuggler in gray argued if they took the boys back to the band from whom they had escaped, the Indians should be grateful enough to take the whole cargo of whiskey off their hands at an even higher price in horses.

Jake seemed not to have thought of that. “Adcock, you got a good head on your shoulders.”

Andy felt chilled at the thought of going back to Fights with Bears. He doubted that Steals the Ponies, tied down by Comanche tradition, could do much to help him or Billy.

The traders made considerable use of their own merchandise in premature celebration of the profit they were to realize. One finished off a bottle and tossed it into the fire. Almost immediately the bottle exploded with a flash of bright flame.

“You damned fool,” Adcock yelled, “you could’ve put somebody’s eye out.”

The answer was a rough curse. The two men fell into a violent quarrel until Jake put a stop to it. “No more throwin’ bottles into the fire, and no more of this damned fightin’. Else I’ll knock somebody in the head.”

The two fell back, mumbling dire but empty threats until they descended into a blind stupor.

The other traders were not so besotted that they forgot their plan. They made their beds in a protective rough circle around Andy and Billy. Andy was sure this was not to guard them from outside danger but to prevent them from escaping. Any desire for sleep fell away as he contemplated the dark prospect of falling into the hostile hands of Fights with Bears.

He had purposely avoided encountering Indians, but a false sense of security had brought him willingly into the camp of white men treacherous enough to sell out him and Billy for a price. He dwelt bitterly on the irony of his bad judgment.