He had better start moving soon or she would come striding down to the field to be sure he was not sick or hurt. He waved to let her know he was all right. He did not like the idea of her leaving the two young ones at the cabin alone for even that long. Texas was benevolent in many ways, but it harbored special hazards for children: rattlesnakes, coral snakes, scorpions, and centipedes. There were bears and mountain lions as well, but they seldom ventured too close anymore. The ever-growing numbers of new immigrants into Stephen F. Austin’s American colony had pushed those sorts of predators back farther and farther to the west. The ax and the plow were doing to them what the rifle alone probably never could.

“Come on, Blue,” he said. “We’ve lazed long enough.”

He had no more than raised up the heavy-handled plow than the dog barked, and he eased it down again. Two riders approached from the direction of his older brother Michael’s farm. Andrew smiled at the sight of eight-year-old Mordecai Lewis, carrying a rifle across his saddle longer than the boy was tall. Little Mordecai was making a start toward becoming the spitting image of his lanky father, who sat on the other horse.

Andrew called, “Where you-all goin’ with all that artillery? You already got your corn plantin’ done?”

He knew they could not have, for it had rained on Michael’s place as much as on Andrew’s.

The gaunt Michael pointed his chin westward, toward the heavy forests that lay along the river and beyond, where no one had yet settled. That land was being saved for other Lewis kin. “We’re gettin’ almighty tired of eatin’ hog. We’re fixin’ to see if we can scare up some venison.”

Mordecai put in eagerly, “Or maybe even bear.”

It was like Michael to leave the planting unfinished and go traipsing off into the woods, forgetting everything but the hunt. Andrew was glad Michael was taking little Mordecai, for the boy would give him reason to come home in a timely manner. Alone, Michael sometimes would stay out for days, even weeks, roaming, searching for God knew what, listening to calling voices that Andrew had never heard. Chances were that little Mordecai would turn out just like him. He ought to be in school, but no schooling was to be had out here so far from San Felipe except that which his mother gave him from her small collection of books and his father gave him in the field and the woods.

Somehow the work seemed to get done in spite of Michael’s restlessness. Nobody had ever gone hungry in Michael Lewis’s cabin. But Michael would never be as much a farmer as Andrew, and Andrew would never be the natural woodsman that Michael was.

The black dog sniffed around the horses’ heels until Michael’s horse lifted a foot to kick at it. The dog retreated hastily to the rail fence and barked from a safe distance.