Well, he wouldn’t stay gone, they could count on that. He’d be back to reclaim what belonged to him. Michael’s first experience in Texas had been disastrous, but he had come back. For James to do less would be to fail his older brother.

He avoided well-traveled trails and roads, crossing the Brazos and skirting north of where he knew San Felipe to be. But as he sensed that he was nearing the edge of the Austin colony, the sharp pangs of regret deepened. He wished to delay that final separation as long as he dared. Because of last spring’s trip down from Nacogdoches, he knew that when he left the Austin colony he was likely to travel for days without seeing so much as a farmhouse. The food Petra had hastily sacked for him was gone.

He saw a farmer and several young boys gathering corn in a field neatly fenced with rails. The long, rambling log house, the pens, and the sheds reflected relative prosperity. This was probably one of Stephen F. Austin’s original Three Hundred, here long enough now to have set his roots deeply in the rich soil of this new land. James felt reasonably confident that he had temporarily outdistanced pursuit or any word of his fugitive status. He argued with himself only a little before he turned Walker’s head away from the woods and over toward the field. The wound had not bled since he had been at the Blackwood place, and he had rinsed all the blood from the shirt. The bullet hole remained. He reasoned that these people probably would not notice it. Clothes worn and torn, even ragged, were common in this fledgling colony. Reality and practicality took precedence over form and fashion.

He raised his hand in greeting as the middle-aged farmer trudged down a row of head-high corn to the rail fence. The boys had stopped working, staring at James in curiosity. “How do?” the farmer said. “Light and rest a spell.” He had rusty-colored hair and a round, happy-looking face, red both from his nature and from exposure to the Texas sun.

“I’m obliged,” James responded. He motioned toward a cloth-wrapped water jug hanging from the fence. “Mind if I have a swig of that? Been a long ways since the last creek.”

“Help yourself and welcome,” the farmer said jovially. “You headin’ for Nacogdoches?”

“That direction, anyway.” James intended to swing south of Nacogdoches and hit the Sabine River in some isolated area where he was unlikely to encounter soldiers. Sergeant Díaz there was almost sure to remember him, as much trouble as they had given one another last spring.

The farmer told his sons to resume work, then turned back critically to James. “You don’t look well fixed for a ride that long. I see blankets, but I see nothin’ in the way of vittles.”

“Got my rifle. Figured I’d find enough game along the way. Had squirrel last evenin’.”

The farmer glanced up toward the sun. “Gettin’ toward noonday. My wife and the girls’ll be a-ringin’ the bell for dinner pretty soon. It’s plain, but there’s always aplenty if you’d care to stop with us a spell.”