Kneeling over the unconscious brave, McCulloch studied the kid. No moccasins, no shield. Just that knife and a heavy woolen breechcloth covering the rest of his nakedness. His hair hung loose and long, but not in braids wrapped in otter skins or tied with ribbons, and there was no headband, not even a single feather of honor. McCulloch lifted the broken arm gently and laid it across the boy’s dehydrated stomach. Now that his own heart wasn’t racing and his only instincts were about staying alive, he thought the boy looked like he was half-starved. McCulloch untied his bandana and wrapped it over the boy’s deeply scratched forearm. He tightened it just enough to stop the bleeding for the time being. Cleaning it would have to wait. Most likely, his best bet would be to walk till he fetched his horse, then return and care for the kid.
Or he could just let the boy die. Hell, the kid was a Comanche. If the tables had been turned, McCulloch had a pretty good idea that he’d already be dead and scalped. He looked at the knife. That was no Indian knife, nothing a brave or boy would have traded with some Comanchero. The blade was, to McCulloch’s horror, fairly rusted over. Quickly, the old Ranger turned his attention to his own wound, but saw that the blood had already congealed and wasn’t deep at all. He had just been cut slightly. But that rusty blade made him stand up long enough to pull the flask out of his hip pocket, and poor rye whiskey over the wound, just enough to cleanse it some. He knelt beside the unconscious Indian and did the same over his scratches. The kid jerked, moaned, screamed, and spoke in short bursts of the Comanche tongue, before shuddering and sinking into an even deeper sleep.
McCulloch looked at the knife again, understanding at last that the boy had likely found the blade, somehow managed to break it apart, and fashion it into a knife, using the antler from a dead deer. The starving teenager had been alone, trying to survive.
“Vision quest,” McCulloch said aloud, looking at the kid.
It certainly made sense. A Comanche boy, maybe thirteen to sixteen years old, before he could become a warrior, would have to leave his village on his own in search of his vision, to learn what was his power, and earn the name he would carry into manhood. McCulloch was no expert on Comanches, but he had been in Texas long enough to know a lot about them. It paid to know your enemy, and the Comanches hated all Texans. But he did know that when a Comanche boy went off on his vision quest, he wore only his breechcloth, and carried his pipe and a buffalo robe. The robe and the pipe, he figured, had to be around somewhere.
“If you live,” McCulloch said, “I think I’d name you Bear Killer.” To his surprise, he realized he was smiling down at the kid.
All right, he told himself. Get on your feet and start walking. Let’s get that horse and get back here and figure out what to do with this buck before you go traipsing through these mountains looking for a herd of wild mustangs.
A horse whinnied, and McCulloch looked up to see his black coming toward him. He let his right hand fall onto the butt of the Colt.
It was his horse, all right. He knew that whinny, and he knew the color and the saddle, but the horse carried a stranger. Three other men rode with him, two on paints, one on a dapple gray. One had an eagle feather flapping from his black hat. Another wore a Mexican sugarloaf sombrero with bandoliers crisscrossing his chest and a Spencer repeater braced against his thigh. The third was dressed in buckskins. The fellow riding McCulloch’s horse carried a Winchester across his pommel, had red hair down to his shoulders, and scalp locks secured to his vest like medals.
They reined in about twenty-five feet from McCulloch, keeping about ten yards between them. Spread out.
Smart, McCulloch figured.
The Indian boy’s eyes shot open, and he seemed alert, like he knew there were four strangers with them.
“Be quiet,” McCulloch whispered in Spanish, hoping the boy understood that. “Don’t move.” He would have said, “Play dead,” but he couldn’t figure that out in Spanish.
He waved with his left hand and painted on a welcoming smile that wouldn’t fool an imbecile. “Thanks for bringing back my horse.” His head tilted to the man on his far left, the one on his horse.
“Your horse?” asked the man in buckskins, mounted on the dapple. He laughed. “Bert found this horse lopin’ across the valley like it didn’t belong to nobody. And seein’ his come up lame and we had to shoot ’em, he figured it was a gift from God.”
“You shot a lame horse?” McCulloch figured this man to be the group’s leader.
“Well, not really. That’s just a figure of speech. Amigo yonder slit his throat. Didn’t want to risk firin’ a shot. But had we knowed there was a horse lover around us, we woulda brung him directly to you.”
Amigo, McCulloch guessed, would be the Mexican with the Spencer, riding one of the paints.
Bert said, “You got any proof that this horse is yourn?”
McCulloch said, “You’ll find my brand on his left hip. You’ll find my name and my brand burned on the underside of that saddle. You’ll find a book with my name in it in the saddlebags.”
“You got a book with your own name in it?” The leader laughed again. “That makes you famous.”
McCulloch chuckled and nodded. “Hell, boys, I bet that book’s got your names in it, too. It’s the List of Fugitives from Justice. They hand those out every year to Texas Rangers.”
The smiles vanished. The faces tensed. Two hands inched slightly closer to holstered revolvers, but not close enough to make McCulloch lose his cool and make the first move. The one holding the Winchester wet his lips. The man with the Spencer straightened in his saddle.
“You a Ranger?” asked the man on the dapple gray.
“Open that saddlebag,” McCulloch said calmly, “And you might find a cinco pesos star.” That was the Mexican coin most Rangers used to carve out their badges. Some were quite crude, but they all meant one thing. Frontier Battalion.
His Mama would have been pleased. He had not told a lie. He said they might find a badge in there. Hell, they might not. To put it bluntly, they wouldn’t. And that List of Fugitives from Justice was two years old. McCulloch brought it along to rip out pages when he couldn’t find anything dry enough for kindling to light his evening or morning campfire.
“Well,” the leader said, “I guess that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that that horse is yourn, all right. But this is a hell of a place to be left afoot. Since we was kind enough to bring you your hoss back, how ’bout you offer us a reward?”
“Now, wait a minute, Linton,” Bert said.
Without taking his eyes off McCulloch, Linton said to Bert, “Shut up. You was the fool who didn’t realize your hoss had tossed a shoe.” He smiled, even took his right hand away from his holstered revolver and waved. “Trade. The Texas way.”
“What do you have in mind?” McCulloch asked.
The man’s head tilted directly at McCulloch. “That red devil you got there. Looks half dead already.”
McCulloch answered with a lethal stare.
“Mister,” Linton said dryly, “I got three men with me. And I ain’t no slouch with a handgun.”
“You got three scalp hunters with you,” McCulloch said, spitting out the words like a disgusting curse.
“It’s a livin’. We been trailin’ him for nigh on four days.”
McCulloch laughed. “If it takes you four days to find a puny little boy on a vision quest, I’m surprised you even caught my horse.”
The Indian boy’s eyes widened and focused on something behind McCulloch.
He saw relaxation settle over the four strangers and knew he had been stupid. There were five men—not four—and