James puzzled, “It’s all just noise to me. How do you know what you’re sayin’?”

Mordecai shrugged. “Everything’s got a name. To me, everything’s got three names. I’ll bet I could learn you Spanish in just a little while.”

James shook his head. “I don’t know what use it’d be. Just about everybody I’ve seen in Texas talks English like I do.”

“But we belong to Mexico.”

“No sir, I don’t belong to nobody. The Lord put me on this earth a free American.”

“You stopped bein’ an American when you come into Texas and taken up Mexican land. Least, that’s what the law says.”

“I’ll always be an American. They can come and throw me in jail if they can catch me, but it won’t change what I am.”

Mordecai showed a flicker of concern. “They might decide to come and try if they hear you talkin’. Folks say there’s some Mexican soldiers moved in over at San Felipe. Never been any there before except just passin’ through.”

“I’ve got no quarrel with them. All they’ve got to do is let me alone.”

“But they get ants in their britches when they hear people talk like you do.”

“I come from Tennessee, and in Tennessee a man can say anything he wants to if he’s stout enough to back it up.”

“You’re not in Tennessee anymore.”

James frowned. “I’ll bet your daddy ain’t afeared of no Mexican soldiers.”

Mordecai took his time in framing a careful answer. “He ain’t afeared of anybody. But soldiers always make him nervous. Mama says it’s because they remind him of when the Spanish soldiers went and killed my grand-daddy. Says soldiers are trained how to kill people.” He added defensively, “That ain’t bein’ scared, that’s just bein’ watchful.”

James nodded. “A wise man is always watchful. Still, I’ll bet your daddy never ran from anybody lookin’ for a fight.”

“He stays out of their way when he can. But I don’t know as he ever turned and run from them.”

“Well, I ain’t goin’ to either. I’ll say what I please, wherever I please. Anybody doesn’t like me the way I am, he can go around. Us Lewises don’t back off for anybody.” He thought he saw a positive response in the boy’s eyes.

Mordecai asked, “You ever been in jail?”

“Just once, in Nacogdoches. Why?”

“Uncle Andrew says we’ll probably have to go and get you out of jail one of these days.”

THEY WERE in the midst of cutting corn that fall when the soldiers first came by. The Lewis men and the three boys were working in Andrew’s field. He had planted earliest, so his corn was the first ready for harvest. They lopped the heads from the stalks and dropped the ears into long cotton bags dragged behind them. It was young Mordecai who first spotted the riders and came running to tell his father. James counted six soldiers, mounted on small, ribby horses that didn’t look as if they had ever seen any corn, and not a lot of anything else. The unexpected appearance of the uniformed men caught Michael in midstride and seemed to stagger him a bit. James saw something in his older brother’s eyes, a darkness he dimly remembered from a time back in Tennessee when the Blackwood family had put Michael under a threat of death that was a hazard to all the Lewises.