ignal flag.

It was almost evening, and Drew did not expect any night travel. Morning
would be the best time. He divided the night into watches, however, and
insisted they keep watch faithfully.

"Kinda cold," Boyd said, pulling his blanket about his shoulders.

"No fire here." Drew handed over his companion's share of rations, some
cold corn bread and bacon carefully portioned out of their midday
cooking.

"'Member how Mam Gusta used to make us those dough geese? Coffee-berry
eyes.... I could do with some coffee berries now, but not to make eyes
for geese!"

Dough geese with coffee-berry eyes! The big summer kitchen at Oak Hill
and the small, energetic, and very dark skinned woman who ruled it with
a cooking spoon of wood for her scepter and abject obedience from all
who came into her sphere of influence and control. Dough geese with
coffee-berry eyes; Drew hadn't thought of those for years and years.

"I could do with some of Mam Gusta's peach pie." He was betrayed by
memory into that wistfulness.

"Peach pie all hot in a bowl with cream to top it," Boyd added
reverently. "And turkey with the fixin's--or maybe young pork! Seems to
me you think an awful lot about eatin' when you're in the army. I can
remember the kitchen at home almost better than I can my own room...."

"Anse, he was talkin' last night about some Mexican eatin' he did down
'long the border. Made it sound mighty interestin'. Drew, after this war
is over and we've licked the Yankees good and proper, why don't we go
down that way and see Texas? I'd like to get me one of those wild horses
like those Anse's father was catchin'."

"We still have a war on our hands here," Drew reminded him. But the
thought of Texas could not easily be dug out of mind, not when a man had
carried it with him for most of his life. Texas, where he had almost
been born, Hunt Rennie's Texas. What was it like? A big wild land, an
outlaws' land. Didn't they say a man had "gone to Texas" when the
sheriff closed books on a fugitive? Yes, Drew had to admit he wanted to
see Texas.

"Drew, you have any kinfolk in Texas?"

"Not that I know about." Not for the first time he wondered about that.
There had been no use asking any questions of his grandfather or of
Uncle Murray. And Aunt Marianna had always dismissed his inquiries with
the plea that she herself had only been a child at the time Hunt Rennie
came to Red Springs and knew very little about him. Odd that Cousin
Merry