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“This the way it’s been ever since?” Hook asked. “They raid—you go try to even the score. They raid again—you ride out again to kill more of ’em.”

Lockhart only nodded.

“They strike when and where they choose—especially that bunch of Kwahadis with the half-breed,” Coffee said, scratching at his red whiskers.

“In their hearts still burns a rage against white folk for what those red fornicators suffered at the Council House all these decades gone,” Johns added, his steely eyes aglow in the dying flames.

“Things got no better during the war, Jonah,” Lockhart said. “Especially afterward, when we all figured that since we were part of the Union, that the goddamned federal government would now take care of the Injun problem for us.”

“Instead, the carpetbaggers come in to run our government for us,” Coffee snarled.

“A carpetbagger governor named Davis sat on his thumbs while the Injuns just got all the bolder too,” June Callicott added.

“That scalawag disbanded the Rangers for nine ever-loving years!” Johns bellowed.

“Not until seventy-one did the army finally get the idea that there was a serious problem down here,” Lockhart continued. “Back in Washington someone finally got some ears and started to believe that the Comanche were actually raiding. That spring the Sixth Cavalry was moved to Kansas, and Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry was assigned to Texas—anticipating a bloody spring.”

“Gotta give ’em credit,” Coffee said. “Mackenzie kept his boys in the saddle for the better part of seventy-one and seventy-two, chasing them red bastards.”

Lockhart scratched his crop of three-day whiskers, saying, “An uneasy peace came of things last year, so that scalawag Governor Davis cut back the money, meaning Ranger companies dropped from a thousand to just over three hundred men. And now this year Davis has gone and pardoned a couple of Kiowa chiefs who have the blood of white folks on their hands—why, the whole southern plains has took fire all over again.”

“Less’n three hundred Rangers—with all this ground to cover?” Hook looked at Lockhart, wagging his head.

“That’s why we had us another revolution here in Texas this past spring, Jonah,” Lockhart said, a wry smile below that bushy black mustache. “Bunch of Rangers went in and threw that copper-backed Davis right out of office—put in a good man, Richard Coke.”

“First Democrat since the war,” Johns declared.

“If there’s only about three hundred of us—what’s the army doing now?” Jonah asked.

Pettis shrugged, his jaw muscles working like the current of a river, and said, “Mackenzie’s down on the border, told to chase the Kickapoos back into Mexico.”

“And all the while—up here the devil goes on the prowl!” added Deacon Johns.

Lockhart gazed steadily at Hook. “Isn’t that the reason you joined us, Jonah? Instead of signing up with the army?”

“The army chases Injuns a lot. They don’t always find what they go after,” Jonah admitted. “I’ve seen enough of that with my own eyes to know it’s the truth.”

“The Gospel, that is!” Johns exclaimed.

“So you took the oath because you know the Rangers find what they go after,” Coffee said.

Jonah gazed around the group sitting with their feet to the last glowing of the low flames. Most of the rest from the other fires had come over to join the circle. “I fought in the war. Fought Injuns in Dakota Territory too. I know good men when I see ’em. I took you fellas to be good men what didn’t give up.”

“That’s why I decided to sign you on, Jonah Hook,” Lockhart replied. “From what I’ve come to know of you—you’re a good man who doesn’t give up.”

“Besides,” crowed Deacon Johns, “you’re a good southern boy!”

Lockhart nodded, waiting while some of the rest quietly hooted their approval. “There’s a lot to be said for all that Texas gave to the Confederacy during the war, Jonah. Why, when hostilities broke out back east, even General Con Terry, an old Ranger himself from the days of the revolution, organized his own damned regiment of former Rangers and frontiersmen.”

“They was called Terry’s Texas Rangers,” Coffee said with admiration.

“From Bull Run clear down to Appomattox—Rangers fought agin the Yankees,” Johns added, just as proud.

“By Appomattox, Terry’s regiment had lost nigh onto eight of every ten who had mustered into the general’s bunch,” Wig Danville said.

“God bless their souls,” Johns said, removing his hat to place it over his heart as he gazed up into the night sky.

“God bless the Texas Rangers,” Niles Coffee repeated.

Lockhart knelt by the dim glow of the embers and consulted his big turnip watch, its gold turned as red as a Spanish doubloon. Standing, he slipped it back into a vest pocket. “Time for second watch to relieve our pickets.”

Hook watched a handful of men off into the darkness without a grumble, only the faint crunch of their boots fading on the flaky ground.

“You always prefer last watch, Jonah?”

He turned back to Lockhart. “Don’t mind rising early—not at all.”

“How about when there’s snow on the ground?”

Hook smiled. “Just gets me an early start on the day.”