Andrew said, “I don’t see where we have any choice except to fight. That or run.” He took a sweeping look at the land around him. “I’ve put too much into this place now, me and Petra together. I don’t figure to run.”

The memory of Velasco had faded but little in three years, and Bexar was so fresh that James thought at times he could still feel the sharp bite of gunpowder in his nose. He awakened sometimes in the middle of the night, thinking he felt the ground shaking to the roar of cannons and heard the staccato crackle of rifle fire. Any illusions he might have harbored about the glory of battle had been shattered in Velasco and San Antonio.

“But the women and the young’uns—Petra and Marie, Hope and Annie—”

“We’ll have to send them off to safe ground, over into Louisiana. That’s why Baptiste left his wagons and teams behind, so they’ll have a way if it comes to that. But maybe it won’t. Maybe Fairweather’s wrong.”

The look in Andrew’s face told James that he did not really believe it, and even Frank looked deadly serious. It was a bad sign when Frank could not find something to make a joke about.

James said, “I think we’d best oil up our rifles.”

SOMETHING WAS wrong with Annie, though James could not determine just what it might be. Since his return from Bexar she had not once berated him for his shortcomings, not once placed any imperious demand upon him. She had been kinder than he had ever known her, and quieter.

It was obvious she was ill.

He came upon her unexpectedly one chilly day when he returned earlier than usual from a trip into the woods in search of fresh meat. He had shot a young whitetail buck that had had the poor judgment to abandon a hiding place in the underbrush and bound away in fright. He hung it for the moment in the dog-run and stepped into the kitchen to warm his hands at the fire before going back out to skin it. He found Annie sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a drawing she had made of Sly Shipman while he had been here the last time. She had not once mentioned Shipman’s name since the day James had come home from the Bexar fight and had asked the man’s whereabouts. He had thought perhaps she had recovered from her infatuation.

She made a quick move to put the picture away but realized James had already seen it.

James said, “Was I you, I’d stick that in the fire and forget about him. He ain’t the kind that’ll tie himself down.”

Defensively she declared, “I wasn’t really thinkin’ about him. I was just lookin’ at this, thinkin’ what a poor artist I am.”

“You’re a poor liar but a good artist. That picture’s a fair likeness. Only trouble is, you ought to’ve done it from his back side, because that’s what you see most, with him ridin’ away.”