Andrew turned, his eyes grave. “You don’t understand this country. Mexico has given us a lot, but it could take it all back. There’s people down there more than ready to try. They don’t like us and never did. Zaragosa said that’s why these convict soldiers were bein’ sent, to see if we could be provoked into doin’ somethin’ that would give them the excuse.”

“It’ll take more than the likes of what I just saw.”

“They’ve got more; don’t let anybody tell you different.” Andrew turned his attention back toward the river. The soldiers had watered their horses and were turning east in the direction of San Felipe. Andrew looked relieved. “Do me a favor, James. All Michael needs to know is that they asked for directions. If he thought there was more to it—well, you don’t know Michael like I do.”

“I know him. He’d fight.”

“There are times when the hardest fight a man has to face is with himself. Michael’s been down that road too many times. One of these days he’s liable to fight that fight and lose. Let’s go head some more corn.”

FROM THE first, James had harbored reservations about his brothers’ wives. To his Tennessee ear they both talked a little oddly, especially Petra, and they were darker complexioned than the women he had known back home. Times, he wondered why his brothers couldn’t have gone back to Tennessee and found brides a little more like themselves. He guessed that when a man was in a foreign country, he accepted what that country offered.

However, he had no complaint about the women’s performance in the kitchen. When all the Lewis men worked together, the Lewis women did likewise. Put Annie, Hope, Marie, and Petra all in the same kitchen and the only thing totally predictable was that something good to eat would come out of it, whether it was Mexican, French, or American.

Both of his brothers’ wives were small women, shorter by half a head than Annie, and the constant work of a frontier existence had not let them put on any more weight than their small frames demanded. James thought he could almost reach around Marie’s waist with his two hands, though he would not be so bold as to do it. Times he caught a sadness in her eyes, and he wondered if she might be thinking about the baby buried up the hill from her cabin. But other times she laughed, and her laugh was as clean and light as the tinkle of a silver bell.

Petra was a quiet sort, but James seldom saw her looking sad. Whenever Andrew was around, her gaze would follow him, her dark eyes soft and loving. Andrew looked the same whenever he was around Petra. There was a contentment about that pair, one James wondered if he would ever find for himself. He often had a feeling that Michael had never quite found it. Michael could be darkly moody, though he always seemed to brighten when Marie put her hand on his arm or around his shoulder.