aped during the horse fight, but four rode in the present
party. He could not think straight; it was all he could do to will himself
to hold on and ride.

Drew was thirsty, so thirsty his tongue was a cottony mass in his mouth.
The day was light and sunny now, and they were single-filing through a
region of bright, colored rock wind-worn into pinnacles, spires, and
mesas. There was no water, no green of living things--just rock and sun and
the terrible need for a drink.

Maybe he moaned; Drew could not be sure. He saw the man riding ahead turn
in the saddle. Blue eyes, the man had, with no honest life in them. Once
before the Kentuckian had seen eyes such as those. It had been in a
cabin--a cabin back in Tennessee in the dead of winter. A young bushwhacker
wearing Union blue, with a murderer's eyes in his boyish face, had watched
Drew with the same incurious glance which held nothing of humankind.
Shannon; the bushwhacker--two of the same killer breed. But to recognize
that no longer mattered. Nothing mattered save water....

His mount stopped. Drew looked dully at the ground. Then his attention
shifted to the man standing beside his horse.

"Down with you, fella."

Gray jacket, torn and threadbare--yet gray. Drew frowned.

"Sergeant Rennie, Buford's Scouts...." He tried to identify himself to
this strange Confederate, but the words that got out were a thick mumble.
Then, somehow he was on the ground and the man was holding a canteen to
his mouth, dribbling blessed liquid over that choking cotton. Drew drank.

"Sergeant Rennie ... must report ... General Buford...." He was able to
talk better now.

"Wot's that he's sayin'?"

"Somethin' 'bout some General Buford. Don't know who _he_ is."

"Buford? Buford rode with Forrest." Those words were spoken by a different
voice, sharper, better educated.

Drew opened his eyes, and for the first time actually saw the men he had
been traveling with. The officer, who was maybe in his mid-thirties, had a
beard trimmed to a point and eyes half sunk in his head. And Shannon--he
had a half-grin on his lips as he stared down, enjoying what he saw when
he surveyed Drew. The one Kitchell called Sergeant Wayne was a big fellow,
even though he was thinned down. He had a square sort of face--jaw too
heavy for the rest of it. Then, Drew's eyes came to the last man and
stopped.

To the first three there was a uniformity; the remnants of military
training still clung to them. But th