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Lockhart nodded with a grin of his own. “That’s the sort of man we have in the Rangers.”

“I’m waiting to find some sign, a trail—track down a village … anything: that’s what I’m waiting on,” Jonah replied.

“You travel light and lean as this bunch does—you’re bound to come up with some Comanche sooner or later.”

“Can’t be soon enough for me.”

“Remember what they say about good things coming to all those who wait. Good night, Jonah.”

He watched the company commander turn and move off into the dim light toward his bedroll. “G’night, cap’n.”

The next morning after the men had wolfed down a cold breakfast and loaded the company’s two pack mules, Lockhart had Sergeant Coffee hold roll call as the Rangers stood by their mounts. June Callicott, a man as homely as blue sin and skinny as rack-bone crowbait, stood beside Jonah, waiting through inspection.

“Full moon was two nights back, men,” the captain began, striding the front of his company. “Most of you know what that means. We can figure the savages were out in force.”

“Comanche moon,” Callicott whispered from the corner of his mouth.

Ever since last spring Jonah had heard the term mentioned enough: the full of the moon when the Kiowa and Comanche and Cheyenne, too, all timed their biggest raids to take advantage of the light while they plundered and pillaged at night, able to escape before many of their thefts were discovered, before any pursuers would take up their trail.

“With that sobering thought in mind,” Lockhart went on, “we best be about covering our assigned territory—more closely now than we have for the past three weeks. I’m doubling the outriders, hoping we can cross some sign between the headwaters of McClellan Creek and the far end of the Palo Duro.”

“With the captain’s permission?” John Corn inquired.

“What is it, Corn?”

“We gonna work down to the Palo Duro on the double, sir?”

“I figured we would,” Lockhart replied.

“Thank you, Captain. Pleased of that because we all know the red bastards cross and recross this country by the same trails they use whenever they been out raiding.”

“But this time there’s something more afoot than just plain raiding, Private Corn,” Lockhart said, coming to a stop near Corn and Hook. “This time the stories say the Comanche have gone and held a sun dance. Their first ever.”

“Godless heathen fornicators!” grumbled Deacon Johns. “Praying to the sun! The wrath of God lies barely sleeping, boys—hid from the days of Abraham himself, and them red-baked sinners got the power to awake the wrath of the Almighty, they do. Hell ain’t half-full yet!”

“I say let hell open up and swallow all them red bastards!” growled Harley Pettis.

When they were done, Lockhart looked back at Private Corn. “This time the bands are gathering up. That tells me the hostiles in our assigned territory aren’t going to be content with raiding for a handful of horses here or a dozen cows there.”

“What do you figure is on the wind, Captain?” Jonah asked.

“I think what we have staring us in the eye is out-and-out war, Private Hook,” Lockhart answered. “Nothing less than a full-scale uprising.”

35

July 1874

“RIDER COMING IN, Captain!”

Up ahead of Jonah Hook one of the Rangers pointed into the distance. North and east, in the general direction Lamar Lockhart had been pushing them for the past three days. It was a land of steep-side arroyos sloping down in garlands of red and yellow rimrock, a country of hard-running creeks come spring’s runoff dance, bottomless canyons, scrub pine and cedar stands on every knobby sandstone outcrop, all scratched up like turkey tracks with shallow, shadowy gulches. Out here in all this immensity, Jonah figured the space inside a man seemed a lot less crowded.

Into the brutal light of that summer afternoon more of them were pointing now, murmuring among themselves as Lockhart threw up an arm and ordered a halt.

“Whoever he is, that man’s tacked his poor beast into a lather,” Deacon Johns said. He sat the saddle beside Jonah in their column of twos, the short gray whiskers that ran around the edges of his gaunt jaws bristled, reminding Hook of the raised hackles on an angry dog’s neck.

The outriders on the point escorted in the civilian. He looked to be a dour, flavorless man, as though the high plains sun had gone and boiled all the good juices right out of him. His eyes ran over the Rangers quickly as he raked a hand across his mouth and pulled up the leather-wrapped canteen lashed to his saddle horn when he came to a stop in front of Lockhart.

“You fellas scouting for the army?” the newcomer asked before he even brought the canteen to his dry lips.

Jonah had the man figured for a buffalo hunter, what with his saddle rig, that big-bore Sharps rifle resting across the pommel, and the blood-crusted, sweat-stained clothes the rider wore. Especially from that pale-eyed, loafer-wolf look about him as he eyed the captain.

“Texas Rangers,” Lockhart replied. “Company C. I’m Captain Lockhart. What’s your name?”