Andy grabbed Billy, who seemed too groggy to grasp what was happening. For the moment the traders were too involved in trying to escape the fires to pay any attention. He ran for the picket line. There the horses and mules reared and kicked, panicked by the noise and the flashes of fire.

Andy plopped Billy up on top of his horse and freed the reins from the picket rope. He untied his own reins and swung up onto Long Red. He wished he could cut the picket line and free the rest of the horses to run away, but Jake had confiscated his knife as well as his rifle. He had neither the time nor the inclination to try to retrieve them.

“Let’s see how fast these horses can run,” he said.

Billy was still bewildered. He had no inkling of the danger they had been in. But he followed Andy’s lead.

“What started all the fire back there?” he wanted to know.

Andy said, “Maybe lightnin’.”

“Shouldn’t we ought to stay and help put it out?”

“They got all the help they need.” Andy looked at the sky to be sure he was traveling in the right direction. He made a little correction and said, “You’re doin’ just fine, Billy. First thing you know, you’ll be home.”

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

For two days Captain Burmeister’s rangers had followed the whiskey runners. Rusty and Len Tanner rode in front as trackers, though any man in the group could have read the trail as easily. The contrabanders seemed to have had no concern about being followed. They had no reason to suspect that a sharp-eyed settler had tipped the rangers about their passage.

The farmer had lost family members to raiding Indians. He had told Burmeister, “If there hadn’t been half a dozen of them I’d’ve lit into them runners myself. They don’t give a damn about the trouble they cause. They’ll get some Indians drunk and cheat them. That’ll make the Indians mad, and they’ll come raidin’ honest folks.”

Burmeister had promised, “We will stop them if we catch them before they pass out of Texas.”

“How will you know where the border line is at?”

Burmeister’s gray mustache had wiggled. “We won’t.”

The settler had ridden along the first day but felt he had to drop out and return to protect his family. “If you catch them,” he said, “bring them back to my farm. We’ll throw the biggest barbecue you ever seen. And if you’re lookin’ for a place to hang them runners, I’ve got a grove of live-oak trees that ain’t bein’ used for nothin’ but shade.”

Burmeister had promised to remember the offer.

Tanner was a little bothered. “The thought of hangin’ always kind of chokes me up,” he told Rusty. “The captain wouldn’t really do that, would he?”

Rusty shook his head. “I don’t think the law calls for hangin’ whiskey smugglers. They’ll just get room and board awhile at the state penitentiary.”

“Not too much room, I hope, and not much board.”