As froze as it gets in Texas. Hard cold.

Forever the horizon of mesa and plain.

This place has slipped from the Eye of God, Maddo whispered to himself, his hand is absent.

Old Philpot woke him from his chilled reverie.

"Them Comanches is over there."

Just below the summit of the frozen white rise, upwind, three figures in great buffalo robes had gathered. A few yards away a smaller, blanketed figure, a boy, held five ponies. The buffalo men were standing in a semi-circle facing east, the norther crossing them in silhouette and rushing square into the eyes of these other buffalo men, the pair of them prone in their snowdrift, boots to the south, Sharps muzzles to the north.

"Ain't they seen us, Phil?"

"They ain't lookin' fer us, I reckon," said Old Philpot, "They got somewhere's to go."

The two white Ranger scouts and their Tongawa sign reader had been tracking this party north on hard packed snow for two days. Their horses and the Tongawa were tucked in a naked wood downwind of the last frosty hump a few hundred yards yonder. If they got themselves killed here and now, the Tongawa had the best chance of getting back to Captain Ford on the icy Brazos to bring his boys up.

The sky was showing heavy and wet, and you could see the long dark strands of snow tickling the distant mesa walls, drifting this way.

Old Philpot brought up his Sharps and Maddo followed suit.

The wind carried the chant the buffalo men offered the cold white sun.

"We don't know their intentions, Phil."

"Aye, we do," Old Philpot rested his front sight on the farthest buffalo man. "Killin' 'n stealin'."

The crack of the first Sharps split the norther and halted it. The farthest buffalo man dropped over the rise. The shot of the second Sharps followed the smoking seam of the first into the next buffalo man. The third buffalo man started toward the horses. Old Philpot rapidly brought up the Tongawa sign reader's Sharps and blew his head away.

Now the norther, stained by smoke, began again.

Old Philpot stood up and drew his Walker. The first horse he shot fell on the blanketed boy, who let go of three of the horses. He put a ball into the other held horse's rump and the horse bucked once and just stopped, but the other three ran like the devil was on their heels, which he was. Old Philpot walked toward the boy and the horses.

"Wait up, Phil!"

Maddo got there first. The boy was face down in the snow, knocked cold. The first horse had shouldered into the boy, then rolled off him. Old Philpot finished the first horse. Maddo turned the boy over. The second horse loitered nearby but Old Philpot did not shoot him for some reason. The second horse had a fold of beaded and fringed buckskin tied in its mane.

The Tongawa came up from the naked wood with their horses. He yipped a little victory ditty and set about scalping the two buffalo men who still had heads.

At first the boy was not breathing right so Maddo lifted him by the waist and set him him down a few times until the boy gasped and gulped and got a few icy snorts in and out. The boy had a pretty good bump on his temple that Maddo massaged with some snow. The boy opened his eyes and jumped, but Maddo straddled him, pinned.

"You tell Cap'n Ford yer a doc?"

Maddo stared at the frozen sun, "I am no doctor."

"That boy almost looks white," said Old Philpot, "might be a captive."

The boy was about ten years old. His long brown hair was braided and wrapped like most Comanches, but his eyes and skin were truly not as dark. The blanket he wore was folded into layers so it would not drag on the ground.

An odd round talisman was strung around the boy's neck. Maddo touched it with his thumb and forefinger. It was something organic, dried, naturally marked with wide striations about a dark nucleus, about the size of a small lemon. It was cactus. Maddo grasped it to pull it from the boy's neck. The boy grabbed his hand, fingernails digging for tendons.

"Nea wokwe!" the boy growled.

The boy was so firm in his assertion that Maddo let go and rose, letting the boy up. The boy looked to the standing horse.

"Tejeiania narso," the boy motioned to the buckskin and took a step toward the horse, "eyaquetoihne!"

The buckskin was decorated by a circle of white beads inside a circle of blue beads. In the center was a red beaded horseshoe, open toward the fringed trailing edge.

Maddo reached for the fold of buckskin and the boy bounded onto the horse, jabbed the mount with his heels and letting loose a fine whoop wheeled toward the storm and skedaddled.

Maddo was left with the length of buckskin and a face full of snow. The Tongawa looked up from his last bit of scalping as Old Philpot laughed out loud, slapping his own butt to mimic the boy hightailing into the shadowy winter mesas.

Maddo opened the fold in the buckskin. It held five cactus talismans like the boy's. Before the others saw its contents, Maddo refolded the buckskin and placed it deep within his saddlebag to await a time of greater leisure, and warmth.