Shipman grinned. “Because folks say I’m pretty good at what I do.”

“And what do you do?”

“I’m a merchant, you might say. I take American goods over into Texas and I trade for Texas goods to take back and sell in Louisiana.”

James said grittily, “What you’re sayin’ is that you’re a smuggler.”

“I never did like that word myself. Truth is, I do the folks a service. There’s people on one side of the river got goods that people on the other side would like to buy or swap for. But there’s overfed lawyers a thousand miles away sayin’ they mustn’t do it. Now, show me in the Bible where it says I can’t go around a mudhole when I find one in the road. I simplify people’s lives, is all.”

James saw irony in the man’s nickname. “Folks call you Sly, but you wasn’t sly enough not to get caught.”

“This time. But it’s been close to two years since the last time they caught me. I been over here twenty, thirty times since and never let them even see my tracks. I wouldn’t've got caught this time if a jealous competitor hadn’t turned me in.”

Annie pressed, “How did it happen?”

“I taken several mule loads of goods to some of my Cherokee Indian friends up above Nacogdoches. There’s a trader over yonder who’d rob the Indians if it wasn’t for me. He fetched Díaz and the soldiers. They confiscated my mules and throwed me in the Nacogdoches jail-house.”

James thought Annie seemed unnecessarily sympathetic. She said, “Mighty expensive for you, wasn’t it?”

Shipman shrugged. “Not bad. The Cherokees stole the mules back from the soldiers. They’ll keep them for me. I’ve always tried to make friends wherever I go. It’s the Christian thing to do. And anyhow, it’s good for business.”

James grunted. “You ain’t made a friend of Sergeant Díaz.”

“Díaz is a good man, after his own lights. You can bribe most of these soldiers and they’ll let you go. But Díaz is an honest man. Got a ramrod for a spine so that there ain’t no bendin’ him. And he ain’t got much use for Americans.”

Frank asked, “If he hates us so much, how come he talks pretty good American?”

“He lived in Louisiana a while. Way I heard it, his family had to run from the Spaniards because of their politics, and American renegades made life mighty hard for them on the other side of the river. Soured him against us all.”

James frowned. “It ain’t fair to judge everybody by a few.”

Shipman smiled. “We all do it, don’t we? I’ll bet you’ve already laid a mark against all Mexicans because of Díaz.”

James started to say this was different, but he reconsidered. He had always been made uncomfortable by people who forced him to back off and take a look at himself. They made him see things he would as soon have overlooked.

Annie said, “We were fixin’ to have our supper, Mr. Shipman. We’d be tickled to share with you. Invite Sergeant Díaz, too. Maybe he’d feel a little better towards us.”