Holding her hands, he stepped back to look at her. “Josie, you know I get strong feelin’s when I’m with you. For a long time I wasn’t sure if they were really for you or if they were for somebody else.”

“You mean Geneva?”

He did not answer. He did not have to.

She said, “She’s got a life of her own, a husband and two little ones. She’s out of your reach. But I’m not. I’m here. All you have to do is ask me.”

“I know. But I don’t have a right to ask you so long as I’ve got nothin’ to offer.”

“I don’t need anything. I’d live in a tent. I’d live in a dugout if it was with you. It wouldn’t bother me.”

“It would bother me. I couldn’t do it.”

She looked up at him, eyes glistening. “Then go. Do what you have to. I’ll be here whenever you come back.”

Something was different about Andy. Rusty puzzled over it a minute, then realized what it was.

“What did you do to your hair?” he asked.

Andy said, “Alice cut it for me. It looked ragged with the braids hacked off.”

“You don’t look much like a Comanche anymore.”

Soberly Andy said, “My brother saw a vision. It told him the old ways are almost gone. He said I have to walk the white man’s road whether I want to or not.”

“Think you can?”

“He didn’t say I’d like it. He said I don’t have a choice.”

Rusty made a sweeping motion with his arm. “You like this place and the Monahans, don’t you?”

“They’re good people. But I don’t want to stay here while you and Len go back home.”

“There’s no tellin’ what we may run into.”

“But it’s home—at least the nearest thing to home that I have.”

“I may end up in jail.”

“Me and Tanner will bust you out.”

Rusty smiled. “Aidin’ and abettin’ a fugitive is what caused all this trouble in the first place.”

“So I ought to be gettin’ pretty good at it.”

Rusty ached to see the farm where he had spent the larger part of his life, but he knew he must defer that visit until he learned how things stood with him and reconstruction law. His first destination, then, was the Tom Blessing farm.

He and Andy and Tanner tried to be vigilant, but their vigilance was compromised by the excitement of nearing home. Consequently they almost ran into an armed band of riders. Just in time they dropped into a dry creek bed and dismounted to avoid being seen.

“Soldiers?” Rusty asked.

Andy’s eyesight was the keenest. He said, “No, they ain’t wearin’ uniforms.”

Tanner said, “State police. They got the look of high authority and meanness. Maybe they’re huntin’ for you, Rusty.”

“I wouldn’t think so. The Oldhams don’t know but what I’m still at the Monahans’. But that bunch is sure on the hunt for somebody.”