The rangers followed at a respectable distance. It was plain to Rusty that the Indians were bitterly opposed to the move, forced upon them so suddenly that they had not had time to gather most of their livestock. He could imagine what would happen to the animals. As soon as the troops were out of sight, opportunists would drive off all the horses and cattle they could find. Even if the government permitted a delegation of Indians to come back for a roundup, they would find that most of their property was gone.

Finally watching the long, sad column cross the river into the territory, Tom Blessing said, “We’ll all breathe easier with them gone.”

Preacher Webb replied, “No matter how we may want to justify it, this is a damned poor reward for the help they gave us against the Comanches.”

Rusty had never heard the minister use the word damned, at least not in that manner. It showed the depth of his feelings.

Blessing said, “You’ve got too busy a conscience, Preacher. There’s times a man has to lock it away and do what needs to be done. The white man and the Indian are too different to live side by side. We tried it, and it didn’t work. Somebody has to give way. There’s a lot more of us than there is of them.”

Rusty listened in a quandary, swinging at first to Blessing’s view, then back to Preacher Webb’s, and finally hanging uncertainly somewhere in the middle. Daddy Mike had talked a great deal about the recent campaign against the Comanches who shunned the reservation. He claimed that had it not been for help from the reserve Indians, the expedition would have had no chance. Still, correctly or not, most people believed the reserve Indians were responsible for much of the raiding.

It was hard to know what was right. Watching the last of the Indians trail off into the distance, he was glad the decision had not been his to make.

North of the Red River, a satisfied Buffalo Caller sat on his horse at the edge of a stand of timber and watched the straggling column making its way toward a new homeland the federal government had staked out. This was what he had hoped for, why he had made false trails into the reserve. He felt no pity for the distress he saw among the evacuees. They had aided the teibos against the Comanches. They deserved whatever misfortune the dark spirits might visit upon them.

Now perhaps they would understand what the Comanches had known all along, that the whites were a treacherous and grasping lot, stealing everything they saw. Given their way, they would drive the Indian to the edge of the Mother Earth and push him over into the great emptiness.

Up to now the reserve tribes had regarded the Comanches as their enemy. Perhaps this would show them who their true enemy was.

CHAPTER

SIX

COLORADO RIVER, EARLY 1861

Rusty watched with misgivings as Mike Shannon threw his saddle up over his horse’s back and buckled the girth. “Don’t you think I ought to go with you?”