He had no tobacco, so he could not perform the smoke ritual except with a small campfire. He tried to blow and push the smoke in each of the four cardinal directions, then down to the earth and up to the stars. He sat back and waited.

He was still waiting at daybreak. He awoke with a start, aware that the eastern sky was turning pink. No voice had spoken to him, no vision had appeared. He tried to remember if he had dreamed. Sometimes visions were elusive and came disguised as dreams. He remembered only loose and random fragments, none that made any sense.

He trudged back to camp, where the smell of coffee told him the Mexicans were making breakfast. Martinez gave him a questioning glance. “Any message from the Comanche spirits?”

Andy did not want to talk about it.

Martinez said, “You are probably too much white. It is better you look for your white-man spirits in church.”

“I’ve tried. Maybe they don’t like the Comanche in me any more than the Comanche spirits like me bein’ white.”

Martinez lifted a crucifix from beneath his shirt and fingered it. “No people of your own and no God. You wander like a soul lost in darkness. You are to be pitied, Badger Boy.”

The use of his Comanche name, though in English translation, startled him a little. For a long time he had heard no name except Andy other than in his brief meeting with Horse Runner’s party on his way to the Mona-hans’.

The oxen complained but stepped into their proper places as Martinez cracked his whip. They slung their heads in brief protest, then submitted to the yoke. Andy wondered if their necks might be perpetually sore from the burden. They had long since developed heavy muscles and a thick hide to compensate. The wooden cart wheels groaned under the weight of their load. They needed grease, but the cart men seemed oblivious of the racket.

If any Indians were about, Andy thought, they would hear the carts before they saw them.

Toward the middle of the afternoon two horsemen showed themselves where the prairie rose up gently into a halfhearted semblance of a hill. Their silhouettes indicated they were Comanche. Andy felt a quickening of pulse, an uncertain mixture of anticipation and anxiety. Martinez made a show of leaving his rifle atop one of the carts. He rode slowly out in the Indians’ direction, holding one hand high to indicate he meant no harm. When he reached the halfway point the Comanches wheeled their ponies about and disappeared.

Andy felt disappointed, but Martinez seemed unconcerned on his return. “They will be ready when they are ready.”