He saw in a minute that the men wore no uniforms. Uneasily, he turned back toward the wagons. He found an open spot and motioned for Annie to halt there and for Frank to bring his wagon up close to Annie’s.

“We got company comin’,” he said, “and there ain’t no tellin’ if they’re friendly. Annie, you and Hope better get down and stay behind the wagons—you boys, too.” He gave cousin Frank a questioning glance. “Got your rifle loaded?”

“It’s always loaded,” Frank replied. There was no hint of a smile in his eyes. He fetched Hope’s from beneath the wagon seat and loaded it as well. Annie did not have to be told. She poured fresh powder into her rifle’s pan. She asked, “What could anybody want with us?”

James replied grimly, “They might want what we’ve got with us—the wagons and what-all’s in them.”

It was in the back of his mind that they might even want the two women. He had heard of such things. Out of earshot of Annie and Hope, Shipman had told James and Frank that just such an atrocity had befallen Sergeant Díaz’s sister, one reason the soldier resented Americans so bitterly.

Frank said, “I count six—no, seven. If they really want these wagons, won’t be much me and you can do except try to keep the women and young’uns from gettin’ hurt.”

Defiantly, James replied, “We can fight them.”

Frank shook his head, his normal good humor replaced by a grimness that made him look a little like James’s memory of his older brother Michael. Frank said, “We got one shot apiece. Two, if you figure the women’s rifles. If me and you get ourselves killed, what happens to Hope and Annie and the boys?”

“We can’t just let them people take us over.”

“We can let them have the wagons, if it comes to that.”

“We brought these wagons all the way from Tennessee. I ain’t givin’ them up without a fight.”

“You’re just shy of twenty-one, James. You got a long life ahead of you if you don’t throw it away. You can earn back everything that’s in those wagons. You can’t earn your life back.”

James did not feel like arguing. But he was convinced that his brother Michael would not back away in a situation like this, and James had no intention of doing so, either.

James put his and Annie’s wagon between him and the approaching horsemen, letting the long barrel of his rifle extend up and over the wagon wheel where the riders could see it.

The men reined up. There were seven, just as Frank had counted. They were a rough-looking set, all bearded except for a youngster on one end who had not started to grow whiskers yet. Something about him reminded James of the Blackwood family back home, about as shiftless a lot, all in all, as one was likely to encounter anywhere besides a county jailyard.

James’s and Frank’s rifles seemed to have gotten the riders’ full attention. They held back fifty to seventy-five feet. All of them seemed to look to a tall, gaunt man with a gray-salted black beard that reached a long way down the front of a dirty cotton shirt. The man raised one hand, then touched his heels gently to the ribs of a black horse and rode forward alone, toward the wagons. “Howdy, folks,” he said affably. “Ain’t no need you-all bein’ so free with them weapons. We’re just travelin’ people, like you-all. We mean you no violence.”