[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote by Elmer Kelton

place." He slammed the flat of his hand against the log wall. "They're burnin' him out."
    "Good thing we brought him home with us."
    Shanty heard the voices and ventured from his sleeping place in the shed. Andy had taken to sleeping there, too. Shanty looked at the glow, then hurried barefoot to Rusty's side. "Lordy, Mr. Rusty, they're burnin' down my place."
    "I'm afraid that's what it looks like."
    Andy came up, shoving his shirttail into his trousers. He wore buckskin moccasins. "If we hurry, maybe we can put the fire out."
    Rusty shook his head. "By the time we got there, the cabin'd be burned to the ground. And whoever's done it, they might be waitin' to ambush Shanty or anybody else who rides in there."
    Andy argued, "We can't just stand here and do nothin'."
    Rusty stared at the glow, deploring his helplessness. "Best we wait 'til daylight so we can see what we're gettin' into."
    Andy seemed more agitated even than Shanty. "One thing we can do. The people that done this, they've got houses, too."
    Rusty knew what Andy was driving at. "A house for a house?"
    "Seems fair to me."
    "The law doesn't work that way."
    "Don't look to me like the law works at all."
    Shanty's shoulders slumped. Always thin and spare, he seemed to shrink even smaller. "I ain't never done nothin' against nobody."
    Rusty said, "You're a free man. Nobody owns you, and some folks can't accept that."
    "I ain't free if people won't let me alone. I wish Mr. Isaac was still livin'. They wouldn't burn the place if it was still Mr. Isaac's."
    Rusty started to say Isaac York was white. But he knew Shanty was well aware of the reason for the hostility.
    Shanty said, "They wouldn't do nothin' like this if you was to say you own me."
    "The war settled that question. Nobody owns anybody anymore. That's the law."
    "I wisht there hadn't been no war. I wisht things could go back to what they used to be. Them wasn't really bad times."
    "You didn't have freedom then."
    "Don't seem like I got much freedom now."
     
    * * *
     
    Rusty bade Andy and Shanty to stay back while he and Tanner circled around the blackened ruins of the cabin and made certain no one had set up an ambush. Tanner said, "Looks safe to me. They done their dirty work, then cleared out."
    The chimney stood like a tall tombstone above the charred remnants. By contrast, the shed was only moderately damaged. Though it had been set afire, the flames had flickered out. Chickens pecked in the dirt, oblivious of the carnage about them. The shed had been their roosting place.
    Len pointed. "Yonder lays Shanty's plow mule."
    He gave vent to his anger as he rode up to the dead animal. It had been shot and left to die slowly, for the ground was torn up where it had lain and kicked in agony while its blood drained away. "Any man who would do this ought to be gut shot and left to fight off the buzzards."
    Rusty nodded solemnly. "They didn't find Shanty. They had to take it out on somethin'."
    He shivered, picturing Shanty lying here instead of the mule. On reflection, he figured they would more likely have shot Shanty at the cabin and burned him with it.
    He signaled for Shanty and Andy to come in. Shanty stopped to study the cabin ruins, then came out and looked down at the dead mule. "Poor ol' Solomon. He wasn't black like me, he was brown."
    Rusty said, "But he belonged to you."
    "I ought to've been here. They wouldn't have done this to him."
    "They'd have done it to you ."
    Andy clenched his fists, his face reddened. "Ought to be somethin' we can do about this."
    Shanty said, "The Lord keeps a tally. Come Judgment Day, He'll call on transgressors to settle their due."
    Tanner added, "He'll send them to hell."
    Andy demanded, "Why wait on the Lord? Why don't we give Him some help and do it ourselves?"
    Despite lectures on the subject from Preacher Webb, Andy had never quite grasped the white man's concept of a fiery hell. The vision of eternal damnation was not part of Comanche tradition. The Comanche