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“Just tell me what these here provisions gonna cost—and I’ll pay you in coin.”

The trader leaned back a bit in admiration, the furrows between his eyes softening. “Not in army scrip, eh?”

“No paper money: so take your cut off what you usually charge for scrip. I got a few pieces of gold.”

With a smack of his lips, the sutler put his pencil to work on his pad. Jonah wanted to pay and be gone, getting farther north where someone might be more willing to answer questions about what lay out there in the immense beyond, where a man would likely find the wandering warrior bands, which creeks and streams and rivers they haunted. Hereabouts the soldiers spent a lot of tongue wagging telling him much of nothing useful. Seemed the army was every bit as intent on keeping white folks out of the Llano Estacado as were those Comanche horsemen.

What with them pushing north just like the tribes that were following the buffalo herds into the summer winds, to be gone from the forts and still have all those rifles strapped behind them on the pack animals, it was a wise thing, having those weapons that might well come in handy one day, Hook figured. Might well make the difference between him wearing his hair or losing it if things came down to making a fight with a band of these elusive Comanche. Might and firepower it was, the language of these southern plains: a matter of simply having more lead and powder and repeating weapons than a man’s unseen enemy.

When it came down to a real fight of it, Jonah figured to be ready.

By midsummer they had left Fort Concho behind, having crossed and recrossed the southern half of west Texas. By then Hook had finally come of the conclusion that it would take a stroke of real luck for him to run across the path of that particular band holding his two boys prisoner. Perhaps, he decided, it would take more than any pure gut-strung, man-made luck from here on out.

Bound to take something more on the order of a godsent miracle.

The long green pods suspended in the trees were ripe. Whenever the village camped in these river valleys and deep canyons, the women picked them, loading blankets and shawls with the beans that would be pounded and mixed with water to make a delicious paste. Something cooked on hot stones beside the fires, to be served with the meat the men brought into camp.

Tall One was clearly a man now: in his sixteenth summer already, lean and gangly, made all of sinew and bone and wrapped with skin cured to a rich brown hue. He liked the way some of the girls looked at him behind their black eyelashes. But he would wait. Enough time for marrying, he thought.

Antelope, now he was another matter altogether. Tall One’s younger brother had eyes for the girls and talked incessantly about girls, about marrying, about starting a family and raising his children in the way of the Kwahadi.

Perhaps to marry and have children would be Antelope’s way of proving himself to the band, in that way to show that he had truly become one of them, had married one of their daughters and begun fathering Kwahadi children. More important, he was fathering Kwahadi warriors to keep up the struggle against the white man. Yes, perhaps Antelope wanted to begin having sons of his own to prove to the rest that he was no longer white.

Or perhaps it was nothing more than Antelope liked girls.

Tall One himself would grow hard at times thinking about girls, looking at their bodies when he came upon some of them bathing in a river pool. This past spring Antelope had coupled with an older girl who desired him as a partner. Tall One had laughed at that, until the girl also presented herself to Antelope’s big brother.

He had been more than a little afraid of the girl, of her father, of this coupling and what it meant to father a child. Frightened, Tall One had run away from her and ever since had never failed to believe Antelope’s stories about the girls in camp. Only fourteen summers and Antelope was already possessed with the prowess of a man. It was whispered among the boys that many girls boasted that Antelope was an admirable lover.

Still, Tall One was the fighter. He had already killed two men. Funny to think about it, but Antelope was the one who sang his praises even more than Tall One sang of his own exploits in battle against the Tonkawa and the Caddo, against the white man and his pony soldiers. His young brother bragged on him more than he would have ever boasted on himself. Riding into battle was something Antelope had not yet done, though he had accompanied many a raiding party. Instead of scalps, Antelope had returned with ponies and some of the white man’s cattle to his credit.

“I want a scalp,” Antelope said many times.

“Here, take mine.” Tall One tried joking his brother, gathering his hair in one hand and pulling it upward, straight over the crown of his head. He drew the index finger on the other hand around the scalp lock as if slashing it off with a knife.