"Sometimes it seems to me," Amos said, "them Comanches fly with their elbows, carrying the pony along between their knees. You can nurse a horse along till he falls and dies, and you walk on carrying your saddle. Then a Comanche comes along, and gets that horse up, and rides it twenty miles more. Then eats it."

He remembered something about that homemade table. Underneath it, an inch or so below the top, a random structural member made a little hidden shelf. Once when he and Laurie had been five or six, the Mathisons had come over for a taffy pull. He showed Laurie the secret shelf under the table, and they stored away some little square-cut pieces of taffy there. Afterward, one piece of taffy seemed to be stuck down; he wore out his fingers for months trying to break it loose. Years later he found out that the stubbornly stuck taffy was really the ironhead of a lag screw that you couldn't see where it was, but only feel with your fingers.

A more immediate frustration was that he could not seem to catch up with Amos in learning Comanche. He believed this to be of the utmost importance. Sign language was adequate, of course, for talking with Indians, but they wanted to understand the remarks not meant for their ears. Maybe Mart was trying too hard. Few Comanche syllables had anything like the sound of anything in English. But Amos substituted any crude approximate, whereas Mart was trying to get it right and could not.

Then Mart accidentally bought a squaw.

He had set out to buy a fox cape she was wearing, but ran into difficulty. His stubbornness took hold, and he dickered with her whole family for hours. At one point, Amos came and stood watching him curiously, until the stare got on Mart's nerves. "What the devil you gawkin' at? Y'see somepin' green?"

"Kind of branching out, ain't you?"

"Caught holt of a good hun o' fur--that's all!"

Amos Shrugged. "Guess that's one thing to call it."

"Guess you heard about the reward I put up," Amos said.

"I don't wan the money, Amos," Lije said.

"Just been doing this out of the goodness of your heart, huh?"

"No ... I'll tell you what I want. I want a job. Not a good job, nor one with too much riding. Bull cook, or like that, without no pay neither, to speak of. Just a bunk, and a little grub, and a chai' by a stove. A place. But one where I don't never get throwed out. Time comes for me to haul off and die up, I want to be let die in that bunk. Not be throwed out for lack of the space I take up, or because a man on the die don't do much work."

There you had it--the end a prairie man could look forward to. Reaching out to accomplish some one great impossible things at the last--as your only hope of securing just a place to lie down and die.

The deep thrumming of numberless hoofs upon the prairie turf came to them plainly from a quarter mile away. Mart sliced off a pack strap, and twisted it into a tourniquet. Amos cuffed him heavily alongside the head, pleading desperately. "For God's sake, Mart, will you ride? Go on! Go on!"

The Comanches weren't yelling yet, perhaps wouldn't until they struck. Of all the Wild Tribes, the Comanches were the last to start whooping, the first to come to close grips. Mart took precious seconds more to make an excuse for a bandage. "Get up here!" he grunted, stubborn to the bitter last; and he lifted Amos.

One of the mules was down, back broken by a bullet never meant for it. It made continual groaning, whistling noises as it clawed out with its fore hoofs, trying to drag up its dead hindquarters. The other mules had stampeded, but the horses still stood, snorting and sidestepping, tied to the ground by their long reins. Mart got Amos across his shoulders, and heaved him bodily into the saddle. "Get your foot in the stirrup! Gimme that!" He took Amos' rifle, and slung it into the brush. "See can you tie yourself on with the saddle strings as we ride!"

He grabbed his own pony, and made a flying mount as both animals bolted. Sweat ran down Amos' face; the bullet shock was wearing off, but he rode straight up, his wounded leg dangling free. Mart leaned low on the neck, and his spurs raked deep. Both horses stretched their bellies low to the ground, and dug out for their lives, as the first bullets from the pursuit buzzed over. The slow dusk was closing now. If they could have had another half hour, night would have covered them before they were overtaken.