"Tough luck!" Kirby was sincerely sympathetic. "Funny about you Kaintuck boys ... mostly you want a high-steppin' pacer with a chief's feathers sproutin' outta his head. They has to have oats an' corn an' be treated like they was glass. I'd'ruther have me a range hoss. You can ride one of 'em from Hell to breakfast—an' maybe a mile or two beyond—an' he never knows the difference. Work him hard all day, an' maybe the next mornin' when you're set to fork leather again, he shows you a bellyfull of bedsprings an' you're unloaded for fair. A hoss like that has him wind an' power to burn—"
"You raised horses before the war?"
Kirby swallowed what must have been the last soggy crumb of hardtack. "Well, we had a mind to try that. M'pa, he started him a spread down Pecos way. He had him a good stud-quarter hoss—one of Steel Dust's git. Won two or three races, that stud did. Called him Kiowa. Pa made a deal with a Mex mustanger; he got some prime stuff he caught in the Panhandle. One mare, I 'member—she was a natcherel pacer. Yeah, you might say as how we was gittin' a start at a first-rate string. Me an' m' brothers, we was breakin' some right pretty colts..."
His voice trailed into silence. Drew reined in the black again and asked another question:
"What happened ... the war?"
"What happened? Well, you might say as how Comanches happened. Me, I was trailin' 'long with this Mex mustanger to learn some of his tricks. When I came back, theah jus' warn't nothin'—nothin' a man wants to remember after. Someday I'm gonna hunt me Comanches. Gonna learn me some tricks in this heah war I can use in that business!" There was no change in his expression. If anything, his drawl was a little softer and lazier, but the deadly promise in it reached Drew as clearly as if the other had burst out with the Rebel Yell.
"This is it!" Captain Campbell rode back along their line. It was a larger company; they had gathered in more fugitives this morning and had no stragglers. All they lacked was adequate arms to present a rather formidable source of trouble behind the Union lines. "We're goin' into the McKeever place. You men—remember, you're prisoners!"
Very reluctantly those in that unhappy role unbuckled gun belts, passing their side arms over to their "captors." There was a graveled drive branching out of the pike to their right with a grove of trees arching over it, so they rode into a restful green twilight out of the punishing sun.
Fields rippled lushly beyond that border of trees. There was a cleanness, a contentment, a satisfaction about this place which was no part of them or any men who passed so, armed, restless, tearing apart just such peace as enfolded them here. They rode out of urgency when the gravel of that well-raked drive shifted under the hoofs of their mounts.
"I'm sayin' one thing loud an' clear," Kirby announced to those in his immediate vicinity as they neared a big brick house. "I may be playin' prisoner to you boys, but I ain't settlin' for no prisoner's rations. We all eat full plates in heah, let that be understood from the start."