Rusty was relieved to see a large contingent of U.S. Army troops on hand to accompany the march out of Texas. Without their protection, he suspected, many of the Indians would not live to see the Red River.

Major Robert Neighbors, the Indian agent, accompanied the final group of refugees that started the long northward trek. Rusty heard him mutter something about Philistines and the exodus from Egypt.

Rusty saw grown men weeping. He saw an Indian woman throw her arms around a tree and refuse to move until two soldiers forcibly pulled her away. He saw a travois with a woman lying on it, her shoulder heavily bandaged. He could not be sure, but he thought she was probably the one York had shot. If so, she had survived the wound. He hoped she would survive the long trip, the travois bumping along on rough ground and jarring her mercilessly.

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.