Chapter One The Returning Cavalryman

The war had ended three years ago, but the smell of smoke seemed to remain in the seams of the cloth and in the back of his eyes. A Colt revolver hung at his hip. The holster was old and polished, the leather darkened by years of fingers. It was not an ornament, and it was not a keepsake for a discharged soldier to trade for whiskey. That pistol had spoken at Shiloh, along the Mississippi, and once on a snow-black night when it had saved Jack's life. Now it had come home with him. Home lay ahead. Or what had been home. Jack drew the reins when the sun slipped under the horizon and the last red light touched the signboard of Walker Ranch. The board still stood, but the name had been cut apart by knives. WALKER had become a ragged scar.