“I couldn’t tell you about that. I just fetched her home. And now I’ll be biddin’ you-all a good day. I’ll be missin’ my supper.” His gaze went back to Annie. He touched fingers to the floppy brim of an old hat that once had been white. “Like I said, ma’am, welcome to Texas. Mighty welcome.” He turned his horse and started toward the river.

James was the first to speak. “He sure looks like all them other Blackwoods to me. But if he stole the cow, how come him to bring her back?”

Andrew said, “It wouldn’t've been Isaac stole her. It was Finis and Luke, if anybody. Notice his knuckles? They was bruised and beat up some. I’d bet you he had to fight Luke to get the cow and fetch her home.”

James demanded, “Why would he do that, one Blackwood fight another to return somethin’ to a Lewis? Don’t sound like the Blackwoods we know back home.”

Andrew said, “Isaac’s no saint, but he’s better than the others. If he could get away from his brothers he could probably make himself into a middlin’ decent man.”

Annie remembered the way the man’s eyes had softened when he looked at her. Maybe Isaac Blackwood was already a middlin’ decent man and nobody had noticed it. She said, “He’s missin’ his supper for fetchin’ the cow home. Couldn’t you-all have invited him to stay and eat with us?”

Michael looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

IT WAS full dark by the time Isaac Blackwood reached the homestead he shared with his brothers and Finis’s fat wife Nelly. The oldest boy was out in the yard chucking rocks at a stray cat. “I wouldn’t be doin’ that, young’un,” Isaac scolded him gently. “Them cats keep the mice and rats away.”

The boy was about four. It always bothered Isaac, trying to figure out who he looked most like. He was accepted as Finis’s, because Finis and Nelly had married shortly before the boy’s arrival. But Nelly had never been known for being very bright or very selective. The boy could as easily have been Luke’s, or even Isaac’s own. Times, when Isaac looked into the boy’s brown eyes, he thought he saw a reflection of himself looking back. That thought brought him a mixture of pleasure and sadness. The last thing he would want would be a son of his following after Finis. The young’un wouldn’t have a chance for any kind of upbringing. Jerked up, would be all, not raised up.

But there was damned little he could do about it, since Finis considered the boy his own and would like as not kill anybody who suggested otherwise—or at least sic Luke on to do the killing for him. Being shy of one arm made Finis depend on Luke for most of the dirty work. Luke had been born some shy on brains. Their mother had always said it was because their father had been dead drunk when Luke was conceived, but Isaac had never thought that explanation held much water. Old Cyrus Blackwood had been dead drunk a lot.