Streets Of Laredo

Doobie's hand got shaky. She began to spill the poison when she tried to scoop it into her cup. Some of it spilled into the river. It was yellow, and it flowed away with the brown water.

Doobie had not been paying attention to anything but drinking the poison, but as the clawing got sharper, and it felt as if her insides were being ripped by claws and squeezed together at the same time, she happened to see a dead rat lying at the edge of the water, only a few yards away. Its mouth was open, and she could see its ugly teeth.

It lay with most of its body in the water, and its brown fur was wet. Maybe the rat had died from eating some of the very poison she was drinking down.

In just a few minutes, Doobie hoped, she would be as dead as the rat. She might roll into the river, just as it had. She might be wet too, when people found her. But she didn't want that, she didn't want to be found all wet and messy.

She began to crawl farther from the water. The bright sun began to affect her. She wanted to hide her eyes from the sun. She began to curl up, in order to hide her eyes. But when she curled up, the pain in her gut became unbearable. She tried to straighten up again, but the pain in her belly was now just as bad, no matter how she lay or sat, no matter whether she was curled or straight.

For a second, Doobie wanted to give up.

She wanted to run to a doctor and have him give her something to stop the pain. But she couldn't run, or even stand. She began to roll around and had soon rolled back down to the river's edge. One of her feet knocked over the can of rat poison, but not much spilled because there wasn't much poison left in the can. Doobie had eaten or drunk most of what had been in it. She didn't feel good at all anymore; she didn't feel anything but a clawing, needling pain. She tried to cry out, but the poison gummed in her mouth so that she could only make a weak sound, a sound no one passing would even hear.

Doobie continued to make a weak sound, no louder than a rat's squeak, until her voice stopped and she made no sound at all.

On the coldest night, the night of the great ice storm, Maria thought she and all the women might freeze. The fires she made sputtered and blew out. The two old Mexican women were almost dead anyway. Maria had to go back and find them.

One of them had fallen three miles behind the group. Maria hunted wood and kept the fires going, but ice had covered everything, and her hands and feet got very cold.

"Don't make me go no farther. I'd rather give up and die," Cherie said. Her real name wasn't Cherie, but she was so cold, and had stopped using her real name so long ago, that it didn't matter what it had been. Patrick, the saloonkeeper, had brought her to Crow Town, only to abandon her for another woman. She had been there five years, and she'd had to struggle so hard that she lost her memory of other places.

The women were convinced that they would all die. They didn't believe they would live to reach the railroad, and several of them had ceased to care.

Gabriela and Marieta were numb, their feet so cold they couldn't feel them. Beulah kept trying to stop. Maria had to push her and prod her to keep her going.

They had not even crossed the Pecos yet; Maria kept angling away from it, hoping for a warmer day before she had to try to bring the women across.

She had fixed her mind on saving the women, though she didn't know any of them. Getting them safely to the railroad had become important to her. She had taken them out of the town, even though she hadn't wanted to at first. But she had accepted their need to go, and now she felt she must supply the will to keep them traveling, despite the bitter cold. She herself had often had to search for will, in hard times. When the men from Texas pretended to hang her, she had tried to make her will stop, so she could die. She had wanted to elude them, that way. Again, when they were degrading her, she would have liked for her will to stop. She would have rather not been alive anymore. And, as she had lost hope with her husbands, each in turn--except for Benito, she had never lost hope with Benito-- she had sometimes wished in the night that she could just stop breathing, and not be there in the morning and have to get out of the bed in hopelessness to deal with the man who was making her hopeless, week after week and year after year.

It was in those times that Billy Williams had proven himself a true friend. He would cajole her over to the cantina, make her drink until she felt like dancing, or dance until she felt like drinking. Somehow, Billy could make her laugh.

That was a rare thing too, for a man to be able to make her laugh. With women, Maria laughed; with her children, she laughed; but rarely did she laugh with a man. She only laughed with Billy Williams.

The lack of laughter in her life was a thing Maria held against men. She felt she had the temperament to be a happy woman, if she was not interfered with, too much. She knew that it was her fault that she let men interfere with her; yet if she didn't, there was nothing, or at least there was not enough. She wanted a man to lay with, except if she wanted a man once, she would want him many times. She liked to take pleasure from men, and liked to give it, but when she gave men that pleasure, they came to need it and then to resent her because they needed her. When that happened, the interfering began. Maria didn't know why men resented the very women who gave them the most pleasure, and gave it generously. It was foolish, very foolish, of men to resent the good that came from women. Still, they did.

Thinking of Billy Williams, and all the times he had made her laugh, kept Maria's mind off the icy ground and the sheaths of ice on the mesquite limbs she broke off to keep the fire going. She made three fires, and kept them all going herself. The women were too tired and numb to move. She put the women in a little triangle, between the fires.

But it was bitter cold, and even three fires were not enough. It was too cold, and the women were too tired and broken. Maria knew she had to do something else, or the women would give up and begin to die.

She thought about the things she talked about with the women of her village, when they were washing clothes together or cooking for a little fiesta. Those were times when she and the women were apt to get bawdy and talk about the embarrassments or the rewards of love. None of the women huddled between the fires looked as if they had known love recently. Men might have used them, especially the young ones, but that was different. The women might not be able to remember a time when love had been an exciting thing, but Maria decided she wanted to make them try. It was a long time until dawn, and they had nothing but three small, sputtering fires to get them through the night. There had to be something more. Maybe she could get the women to tell stories about their lives.

Maybe the memory of times when life had been exciting would make them want to live through the freezing night.

"Tell me about your first man," Maria said.

She addressed the question to Beulah.

"What?" Beulah said. She thought she must have heard Maria wrong.

"I want to know about your first man," Maria said.

Then she looked at Cherie.

"I want to know about yours, too," she said.

"My first man was a vaquero. He came riding into town, and when he got off his horse and walked to the cantina, his spurs jingled. From the time I heard his spurs, I knew I wanted to be his woman." "Oh, Lord," Cherie said.

Maria waited. Marieta and Gabriela paid no attention; they had not even heard Maria's words. But the oldest woman in the group, a thin, old woman named Maggie, showed a spark of interest. Maggie had been one that Maria had to go back for several times. Once, Maria had found her kneeling by a little bush. She was crouched behind the bush as if she expected it to keep the cold wind from biting her.

Yet Maggie had recovered a little. She looked at Maria with curiosity.

"Did you get the vaquero?" Maggie asked.

"Yes, he was my first husband," Maria said.

"We had good times--but then, he got mean. I still remember the sound of his spurs, the first time I saw him. When I think of him now, it's the spurs I remember." "I was married to a circus man, first," Maggie said. "Mostly, he was a juggler. He could keep seven barbells up in the air at the same time, when he was sober." "Where did you live?" Maria asked.

"Boston, for a little while," Maggie said.

"Then he took me to New Orleans. He was going to marry me, but he never did. Them mosquitoes in New Orleans was bad. I'd get so I wanted to drown myself, rather than be bit by them mosquitoes." "They're bad in Houston, too," Beulah said. "It's swampy down there in Houston." "Jimmy drunk too much to be a juggler," Maggie said. "He'd drink all night and then the next day, he'd miss two or three of them barbells." Maggie chuckled, at the memory.

"Them barbells are heavy," she said. "I couldn't even juggle two. If one was to crack me in the head, I wouldn't be able to walk straight for a week." "You can't go off with men and expect them to marry you," Beulah said. "That's the mistake I kept making. Now, here I am, an old maid." Several of the women looked at her when she said it. Beulah realized that her last remark must have sounded a little odd. She smiled at herself.

"Well, I mean, I never married," she explained.

Maggie, now that she had begun to talk, wasn't interested in listening to anyone else.

"Jimmy cracked himself in the head so many times that he got where he couldn't walk the tightrope," she said. "He wasn't no tightrope walker anyway, but he wanted to be the star of the show. I told him to stay off the dern tightrope, but he didn't listen to me. I started up with a trick rider about that time. Jimmy found himself a high yellow woman, but she had a temper, and Jimmy didn't want nothing to do with women who had tempers." "Didn't you have a temper?" Maria asked.

"No, I was just a girl then," Maggie said.

"I was all in love, and I wanted to do whatever Jimmy wanted me to. I didn't put up no fight, but that high yellow woman did." All the women, even Marieta and Gabriela, were listening to Maggie. Maria had not expected it to be Maggie who talked; she thought Maggie was too far gone. But that proved to be a misjudgment. Maggie had some spirit left. She knew everybody was listening to her, and she liked the attention.

"What was the trick rider like?" Maria asked.

"He was just a trick rider," Maggie said.

"He could stand on his head on a horse, with the horse running full speed, but he wasn't no good with women. I got tired of the circus life and ran off with a smuggler. He was my first husband, and he took me to sea. We'd be rollin' around in one of them narrow bunks and sometimes we'd roll one way and the ship would roll another, and we'd go sailin' right out of that bunk." She cackled at her own memory. "That was forty years ago, that I married Eddie," Maggie said. "I'm surprised I can still remember him. He got caught smuggling niggers, and they hung him." "Was it a crime to smuggle niggers?" Cherie asked. "I thought back then you could buy them and sell them any time you wanted to." "You could, but Eddie wasn't buying them," Maggie said. "He was smuggling stolen niggers.

I can still remember them nigger women, howlin' down in the bottom of that ship. Eddie and the boys would lash 'em good, trying to get them to shut up when they was coming into port. But they would keep on howlin'.

That was how Eddie got caught. I told him he ought to just smuggle buck niggers. The bucks didn't howl as much. But Eddie never listened to me, and he got his neck stretched, as a result." "Men don't listen," Beulah agreed. "I could have made Red Foot rich, if he'd listened to me when we were in the saloon business, in Dodge. I told him it was time to go to Deadwood. They say nearly everyone who opened a saloon in Deadwood in those days got rich.

There's just more loose money where there's miners.

"But we come to Crow Town instead," she added.

"Red heard it was booming, but there sure wasn't no boom when we got there." Maggie was so eager to talk by this time that she could hardly check herself and wait for Beulah to shut up.

"The circus was in St. Louis when Eddie got hung," Maggie said. "I went up to Vicksburg on one boat, and then I rode on another boat that had a train on it." "A train?" Cherie asked. "Why would a train be on a boat?" She decided the old woman was telling lies and nothing but lies. She had thought as much back in Crow Town, too.

Old Maggie did nothing but lie. Cherie didn't resent it, particularly. Maybe the old crone actually believed everything she said.

Anyway, listening to her brag about all the men she'd had was something to do while they were sitting and freezing.

"It wasn't the whole train, it was just the locomotive," Maggie said. "They were taking it upriver somewhere. I couldn't sleep because I got to worrying that the locomotive would bust loose and sink the boat. We got to St. Louis, though, and the first person I saw when I got off the boat was Jimmy. He had almost cut his nose off. It was sewed on, but it didn't look right, and it never did look right after that." "Was it a woman that cut his nose off?" Maria asked. She had heard that among the Apaches, such things occurred.

"No, it was the tightrope," Maggie said.

"Jimmy kept trying to walk it, but he was wobbly from hitting himself in the head too many times with them barbells. He fell off the tightrope, and it hit him right under the nose and nearly cut his nose off." "What's a circus?" Marieta asked. She didn't understand the talk of barbells and jugglers.

"Did you ever get up to Deadwood?" Beulah asked. "I still have a hankering to go." "No, I worked on a riverboat," Maggie said. "I went up and down the river I don't know how many times, until I got tired of hearing the water slosh. Then, I married another fool who got hung, and then I married Ross. I was soon wishing they'd hang Ross. He beat me so bad, I couldn't turn over in my own bed.

Ross had fists like bricks." "How did you get rid of him?" Sally asked.

Sally was about Beulah's age. She had two big moles just above her upper lip.

"Ross stepped on a nail and got blood poisoning and died," Maggie said. "It saved me. He would have broken every bone in my body if he hadn't stepped on that nail." Maggie smiled, and cackled again. She looked like a wicked old woman, but she was still alive, and she liked to talk.

"I didn't go to Ross's funeral. I didn't figure I owed Ross nothing," she said. "But a few days later, I went to the funeral of one of my girlfriends. Three days later, the preacher that preached it came up and asked me to marry him. That's how pretty I was, when I still had my looks. I never knew preachers liked women that much, until the Reverend Jonah got ahold of me." "They do--one got after me, too," Beulah said.

As Maggie and Beulah talked on, a tiredness began to come to Maria. She had kept the women going for three days, leading them, encouraging them, going back for them. She had gathered most of the frozen wood they burned, and she had made the fires. She heard Maggie talking about her preacher, and Beulah about hers, but Maria began to lose the names that went with the stories. The sound of the women's voices lulled her. It was better to hear women talk, even if she was too tired to listen, than to have only the silence and the cold.

Maria would have liked to be fresh, to tell some of her own stories too, but it would have to be another time, when they all reached the railroad and were safe.

Maria's eyes grew so heavy she could not watch the fire. She slumped over, and her serape slipped off her shoulders.

Sally, who was the closest, got up and wrapped the serape back around Maria, pulling it tight so it would not slip off again. She fed the fire a few sticks, from a pile Maria had gathered. Maria had come back for Sally when Sally was freezing, and Sally didn't want her to sleep cold.

"She's tuckered out," Maggie said. Then she went on to tell the women about some of the peculiarities of the Reverend Jonah, the preacher who had loved her in St. Louis, long ago when she still had her looks.

When Lorena got off the train in Laredo, the first thing she saw was a funeral procession, and the first person she spoke to was Tinkersley. As she stepped out of the little railroad station and stopped to watch the funeral procession--it seemed as if everyone in town was following the wagon that had the coffin in it--a tired-looking older man in a slick, brown coat looked at her, and stopped and looked again.

"Why, Lorie," he said. "Could it really be you?" Lorena supposed the mayor must have died. She had never seen such a lengthy funeral procession, in a town the size of Laredo. Even in Ogallala they would have had a hard time getting so many people to march behind a coffin. She looked again at the man who had called her by her name. He had few teeth, and bags hung halfway down his cheeks. He wore a sporty hat, but it was not new. A rat or something had chewed a piece out of the brim.

"Lorie, it's me, Tinkersley," the man said. "It's you, ain't it? Tell me it's you." "I'm Lorena, I'm married now," Lorena said. Tinkersley ran whores and gambled. No doubt he was still running whores and gambling, though not so prosperously as he had been when she knew him. Tinkersley had brought her to south Texas, when she was a young whore. In a San Antonio hotel room, during a fight, he had bitten her on the upper lip, leaving a faint scar that she still had.

Now here he was in Laredo, watching a lengthy funeral procession. She saw a familiar light come into his eyes, from looking at her. She wanted to immediately put it out.

"I've come here to look for my husband. He's with Captain Call, or at least, I hope he is," she said. "Who died?" "Her name was Doobie Plunkert. She was well liked in the town," Tinkersley said. "I liked her myself, although we only met once.

That's why I lent my whores, for the singing.

"I run the whores in this town," he went on.

"They wanted a big singing for Doobie, so I lent them six girls. I just kept back two, to take care of the customers until the funeral is over." Lorena saw the whores, in a group, well behind the coffin hearse, with some more churchly-looking women marching just ahead of them, right behind the wagon.

"I'm surprised they'd let whores sing at a proper funeral," Lorena said. "Was the woman a whore?" "No, she was the wife of a deputy sheriff.

He's gone with old Call, too, like your husband," Tinkersley said. "Sheriff Jekyll raped Doobie, and she took poison and died.

It's a pity. The man could have bought a whore, and spared poor Mrs. Plunkert." The young woman must have felt hopeless, Lorena thought. She hadn't wanted her husband to find out what happened. Lorena set down her valise, leaving it on the railroad station platform, and began to walk along with the funeral.

Tinkersley, after a moment's hesitation, fell in with her.

Lorena didn't try to stop him. What Tinkersley did didn't matter. She supposed it was even rather nice of him, to let his whores sing at the funeral. He probably charged the church a fee, or tried to, but at least he let them sing.

"What kind of poison?" Lorena asked.

"Well, rat poison. She drank most of it in water," Tinkersley said. "They found her by the river. She wasn't quite dead at the time. It was the doctor who noticed that her drawers were torn, and that somebody had hit her a lick or two. They found a little ribbon from her dress in a cell in the jail, and that's what nailed the sheriff." Lorena regretted that the train had come in when it did. She would rather not have known about the death of Mrs. Plunkert. They had never met, of course, but Lorena had been alone, in south Texas, in rooms that were no more than jails, with men who were no different from the sheriff, and who were certainly no better. She had no way out then, and only one way to survive; many times, it had seemed to her a close bargain. In even worse times, when she was taken by Blue Duck and given to the men of Ermoke's band, and then threatened with burning by Mox Mox, she had been reduced to one wish: that there was some way to be dead, and be dead quickly. Although the circumstances of Mrs.

Plunkert's travail might seem lighter, Lorena knew they had not seemed at all light to the young woman who had so promptly taken her own life. Mrs. Plunkert must have felt that her happiness and her husband's happiness were forfeit anyway. She had become hopeless. Lorena knew enough about hopelessness. She did not want to be reminded of it, not even a hopelessness experienced by a young woman she had never met.

What the death of Mrs. Plunkert meant was that hopelessness was always there. There was never a way or a time one could be safe from it. If Pea Eye died, or one of her children, she knew she would have to feel it again.

"Lorie, you don't know her, you ain't expected to attend the funeral," Tinkersley said.

"I want to attend the funeral, but I'd rather you didn't accompany me," Lorena said.

"But you didn't know the woman," Tinkersley said. He felt a sudden deep need to stay with Lorena. Seeing her had reminded him of the regret he had nursed for years, when he'd left her and lost her. He had even journeyed to the little town of Lonesome Dove, where he heard she worked, hoping to get her back. But he came too late. She had left with the cow herd and the cowboys, for Montana.

Now, through a miracle, she had stepped off the train in Laredo, right in front of him. He didn't want to leave her. When she told him she didn't want him to accompany her to the funeral, he fell back a few steps, but he didn't let Lorena out of his sight.

The cemetery was just a plain piece of ground, dusty, without a bush or a tree to lessen its plainness. Most of the grave markers were wooden, and many of them had tilted over, or fallen flat altogether. One of the whores, the smallest, a slip of a girl with curly brown hair, had a beautiful soprano voice.

When she sang "Amazing Grace," her voice rose over all the other singers, the other five whores and the few churchwomen. Her voice was clear as the air. They sang "Rock of Ages," and then "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." Three hymns at a funeral was unusual, Lorena thought. Yet, despite the cutting wind, the mourners seemed reluctant to leave. When the women finished the last song, they looked around, wondering if they should sing more. It was odd, Lorena thought, that no one was hurrying away.

The young whore with the beautiful voice finally spoke to one of the churchwomen, and the women began to sing "There's a Home Beyond the River." The young soprano poured her heart into the song.

No doubt she had an inkling of how Mrs.

Plunkert had felt. That, at least, was Lorena's view. The girl's voice was so strong and pure that it silenced the other singers. One by one, the other whores and the churchwomen fell silent, and the beautiful voice of the whore with the curly hair soared on, in lonely lament for the lost life of a woman the young whore had not known, and perhaps had not even met.

When the song ended, the mourners turned away from the grave, and an old Mexican man with a shovel began to push in dirt around the coffin.

"At least she had a right pretty funeral," Tinkersley said. He fell in with Lorena as she was hurrying back to the station, anxious to secure her valise. Tinkersley was seeking to make small talk, or any talk, that would persuade her to allow him to stay with her for a while.

"Get away from me, Tinkersley," Lorena said. "You done nothing but hurt me, when we was together. I don't want you to be walking with me.

I'm here to find my husband." "But, I bought you pretty dresses," Tinkersley protested. "I took you to the fanciest shop in San Antonio." "So you could sell me for a higher price," Lorena reminded him. "Get away from me. I don't like remembering none of that." "Lorie, I was just hoping we could visit," Tinkersley said. "I know I done you badly.

I came back to find you, but you were gone north with Gus McCrae." Lorena didn't speak to Tinkersley again.

She just ignored him. He walked with her, pleading, until they were nearly back to the station, but Lorena didn't say another word. She scarcely noticed him, in his slick coat, nor did she listen to his excuses or his pleas.

She felt a great longing to be with her husband.

Most men would make excuses all day and all night for their failings, but Pea never did. When Pea did something that hurt her feelings, he accepted his error and suffered for it until she had to take him in hand and try to coax him and tease him back into a good humor. She had to convince him, each time, that what he had done was only a small error, not the unforgivable act he believed it to be. Marriage was often vexing, that was all.

Now, with the funeral over, she wanted to gather such information about where Captain Call might be as she could. She wanted to catch up with Pea and bring him home, before one of the bad men in the world did something to hurt him.

It was not until that night, in her small, chill room in the drafty hotel, that Lorena's thoughts returned to the dead woman and the funeral.

She remembered the young whore who could sing soprano, and a deep sadness came with the memory.

In a building not far away, the young whore with the beautiful voice was back being a whore. The churchwomen who had spoken to her at the funeral wouldn't allow themselves to speak to her in their day-to-day lives. She was just one of Tinkersley's whores, as Lorena herself had been, once.

The only thing that was true in the four hymns the girl had sung was the music itself, Lorena thought.

Neither the whore nor the dead woman over whose grave she'd sung had received any grace at all, to draw upon; nor did they have any rock to stand on; nor any circle to shelter or protect them.

As to the home beyond the river, Lorena didn't know. She just wanted to find her husband and bring her children back from Nebraska. She wanted the six humans she was responsible for to be back again in their home, where she could watch over them.

At the telegraph office in the late afternoon, she had been given one good piece of information by the elderly fellow who worked the telegraph.

Several telegrams had poured in for Captain Call, instructing him to hurry to San Angelo. Joey Garza had struck there, only the week before.

The next morning, at breakfast--she was the only woman in the small hotel dining room-- Lorena happened to overhear a conversation that sent her heart leaping. Two Texas Rangers were at a table talking, and she heard the name Call mentioned.

The Rangers had looked at her hard when they walked in and saw her alone in the dining room, but Lorena had not sent her children away and traveled so far to be balked by hard looks from lawmen.

She got up and went over to their table.

"Excuse me, I heard you mention Captain Call," she said. "My husband is his deputy.

I'd be grateful if you'd give me any news of the group." The men looked surprised. The larger one rattled his spoon in his coffee cup; he was uncomfortable talking to women in public places.

"Don't know much, ma'am," he said, finally.

"Call nearly killed a sheriff in Presidio. They don't know yet whether the man will live. Call was getting his deputy out of jail and just went wild. He got his deputy and an old Indian he uses to track down bandits." "That's my husband. He oughtn't to have been in jail, he's never broken the law," Lorena said.

"Well, you don't have to break much law out in Joe Doniphan's part of the country," the large Ranger said. "He'd arrest you for spittin', if he didn't like your looks." "I guess Captain Call didn't like his looks," the other Ranger said.

"Thank you, I appreciate the news," Lorena said, politely.

She went back to her table in a happier frame of mind. Pea was alive, and with the Captain. She didn't like the Captain, but he was able enough. He would protect Pea until she found him.

When the two Rangers left the room, they didn't look at Lorena so hard. They even stopped for a moment, and tipped their hats.

The evening of the second day, as the party traveled east from Presidio, Call, Brookshire, the two deputies, and Famous Shoes climbed out of the Maravilla Canyon just at dusk and made a camp. The winter sun was filling the canyon behind them with red light.

"That old man who kills bears is coming with his dogs," Famous Shoes remarked. "I saw his track on the Salt Fork of the Brazos, but then, he was going north. I did not expect him to be coming this way." "If it's Ben Lily, he don't ask nobody's opinion when he changes directions," Pea Eye said. Twice the old bear hunter had turned up at their farmhouse on the Red River, on his way to kill cougars in the Palo Duro Canyon. He had killed the last bears in the Palo Duro years before, but there were many cougars, and from time to time, Ben Lily rested from his lifelong bear hunt and killed cougars for a while instead.

"I'll feed him, but I won't feed his dogs," Call said. "It don't take that many dogs to run lions, and I doubt there's any bears left in Texas for him to run. He's killed them all." A few minutes later, they heard the baying of six or seven dogs. In the still, silent night it was hard to tell how far away Ben Lily and his dog pack might be.

"He is like me, no horse," Famous Shoes said. "I doubt he can finish off the lions, in the time he has left. He is an old man." "Who's this?" Brookshire asked. He had never heard of the person they were talking about, though that fact was not particularly odd. Six months ago, he had scarcely even heard of Texas, and could not have named one living Texan. Now he knew several Texans in person, and several more by reputation.

"He's a hunter, he don't do nothing else," Pea Eye said. "I don't guess he ever has done nothing else." "They say he hunted all the bears out of Louisiana and Arkansas before he come here," Deputy Plunkert said. Since leaving Presidio, the deputy had been in a lighter mood. They were on their way to San Angelo, which was not that long a distance from Laredo. If they were successful and captured the Garza boy promptly, he might be on his way home within two weeks. Just being north of the border made him feel a lot better about life. Once he got home, he meant to plan his life so that he never had to enter Mexico again. If necessary, he and Doobie would move north, to San Antonio, or even Austin, to avoid the possibility that anything would require him to cross the border again.

As the winter night deepened and the half-moon rose, they heard the baying of Ben Lily's dogs, coming closer.

"If the man travels so much, maybe he'll know something," Brookshire suggested. "He's coming from the east, and the last robbery was east, unless there's been one we don't know about." "No, he won't know anything, he only pays attention to bears and lions," Call said.

"Humans don't interest him. If he was on the track of a bear or cougar and a train was being robbed right in front of him, I doubt he'd even stop to look." Many times, over the years, Call had encountered the hunter, but on no occasion had he gotten any cooperation from him. Ben Lily expected to get information, not give it. He had no use for civilizations, nor for society, nor individuals, and was even impatient with his dogs.

All he liked to do was kill bears. He only hunted lions to pass the time, or to earn a little money now and then, from ranchers who wanted lions or wolves cleaned off their ranches.

Toward midnight, the horses and mules began to snort and whinny. They pulled at their picket ropes. Call got up and went to quiet the animals, and when he had them calm, he walked east about a mile, meaning to intercept the dogs.

Ben Lily usually traveled with a pack of eight or ten, and eight or ten dogs running into camp might spook the horses so badly that one or two might injure themselves. Call had only a sidearm with him. He did not expect trouble.

Ben Lily's dogs were usually shy of humans, since they rarely saw any, other than the old hunter himself.

Call's hands were aching. He wished he had a little whiskey, although he had never been a drinker, really. Augustus, his old partner, had been the drinker. But in the last few winters, particularly if he happened to be at home in his shack on the Goodnight ranch, Call had taken to using a glass or two of whiskey in order to help him sleep. A doctor in Amarillo had assured him that a glass or two would be medicinal. Even with the whiskey, he frequently awoke as early as two a.m., and had little to do but pace around the cabin until dawn came.

The next whiskey to be had was at Judge Roy Bean's saloon, three days away.

Call had not yet decided whether to pay the judge a visit. He wasn't quite as uncooperative as Ben Lily--nobody was as uncooperative as Ben Lily--but he ran him a close race. Roy Bean was cranky, and in his conversation, he never strayed far from the subject of money. On the other hand, little that occurred on the border escaped his attention. A visit to Roy Bean would take them out of their way. The train had been robbed near San Angelo. But of course, the Garza boy had time to be back in Mexico, or perhaps back in Crow Town, depending on which way he had felt inclined to go. The next train stopped by the boy might be leaving Saltillo, or Tucumcari, or almost anywhere.

While Call was thinking of Roy Bean and his harsh tongue, the dogs began to bay again. This time, they sounded farther away than they had the last time they howled. Perhaps they were running ahead of the old hunter, on the spoor of a lion, and maybe the lion had doubled back.

Just as Call was settling down to enjoy his solitude--he still liked to separate himself from the camp for an hour or two, at night--Famous Shoes came walking through the moonlight. Call felt a little irritated. He needed his solitary hours. They helped him clear his head, and think through the next few days of whatever campaign he was waging. Why wouldn't the old Indian stay put? Call slept little, but Famous Shoes, who was older, slept even less.

"Now those dogs are going east," Famous Shoes said. "I think they must be chasing a mule deer." "No, they would have run it down by now if it was a mule deer," Call said. "That many dogs will run a mule deer to death pretty quick." Famous Shoes ignored the correction, which he thought invalid. It could well be a large, well-fed mule deer who was not ready to die just because Ben Lily had come along with his dogs. The mule deer might have had a long start, too. But Famous Shoes saw no point in arguing with the Captain. Call did not accept argument, from his men or from anyone.

"They could be after those two wolves whose tracks I saw this morning," he replied. "The dogs might be running those wolves." Famous Shoes had just stopped speaking when they heard the sound of gunshots, coming from the direction where they had last heard the dogs. There were many gunshots. In the Indian days, Call had been competent at counting gunshots, for it was a way of estimating the enemy's strength. But he was out of practice. He would have guessed that about forty shots were fired. In a lull, they heard the yelping of one of the dogs. It had been wounded in the gunfight, probably.

There were four or five more gunshots, scattered, and then silence.

"Somebody shot those dogs, that's what I think," Famous Shoes said. He was a little agitated. The flurry of shots had been an unwelcome surprise. It took several men to shoot that many dogs so rapidly. But what kind of men would shoot dogs in the middle of the night?

"Listen a minute," Call said. "They could have been shooting at whatever the dogs were chasing. If that's it, they weren't Ben Lily's dogs. Ben Lily travels alone and shoots a rifle.

What we heard were mainly pistol shots." They listened for fifteen minutes.

There were no more gunshots, and no dogs howled.

"They probably shot the dogs. I'd like to know why," Call said. "Let's go to camp." When Call got back to camp, all three men were sound asleep. Probably that was because the weather had warmed up. For the first time, they weren't so freezing cold.

Call expected no better of Brookshire or Deputy Plunkert, but he was irritated with Pea Eye. It was a small lapse, but a lapse nonetheless. As long as he and Pea Eye had been camping together, they had consulted about night duties--who would sleep first, who would sleep second. Never before, no matter how tired he might be, had Pea Eye just gone to sleep without discussing these arrangements. Of course, Call had lapsed himself, by leaving the camp without assigning a watch. But he had done that often, through the years, and when he did it, Pea Eye always stayed awake until he returned.

It wasn't like Pea Eye, going to sleep in dangerous country. It made Call wonder if urging Pea Eye to leave his family and join him had really been wise. He had done it from habit. Pea Eye was the last of his men, and one of the few people Call trusted. It had seemed natural to call on him, and it had disturbed him when Pea Eye refused to come.

Now he found that having him along disturbed him almost as much. Pea Eye wasn't behaving like himself. It might be because he was no longer the Ranger that Call had known and counted on for so long. He was a farmer and a husband, with the habits of a farmer and a husband, rather than the habits of a fighting man. Probably Pea Eye had been right, in deciding to stay with his family. Loyalty had made him change his mind, but foolishly, and too late. If he wasn't going to be able to be the competent Ranger he had been, then staying home was the better choice.

Pea Eye woke up the minute Captain Call reentered the camp, and immediately realized that he had been derelict.

"Oh, dern, I dropped off," he said. "I intended to stand watch." "Well, Famous Shoes was up, and so was I," Call said. "Somebody just shot Ben Lily's dog pack, if them dogs we've been hearing really belonged to Ben Lily. If they weren't, I'd like to know who would be running in these parts, with eight or ten dogs." Pea Eye felt such embarrassment at having gone to sleep that he scarcely attended to what the Captain was saying. He had no intention of going to sleep, when the Captain left the camp. The Captain always left the camp, for an hour or two in the evening. When he returned, the two of them would work out watch duties, for what remained of the night. Pea Eye usually stood the first watch.

But this evening, he had simply gone to sleep.

The Captain didn't mention it. He had even been polite enough to change the subject, but Pea Eye knew he would remember it. The very fact that he hadn't been reprimanded made Pea Eye feel at a loss. In fact, he had been feeling at a loss from the moment the Captain led them out of Presidio. Pea Eye should have been feeling fine. With Famous Shoes' help, he had been able to connect with the Captain with only a minimum of travel. The Garza boy was probably east of them now. The whole job might be over soon, and he could go right home, back to Lorie and the children.

But Pea Eye didn't feel fine. He felt awkward; maybe he had irritated the Captain too much, by refusing to go with him initially. Maybe the Captain, as he got older, was becoming even harder to please. At no time had he been easy to please.

But whatever it was, there was a difference in the way he and the Captain were, and it made Pea Eye all the more homesick. He felt he had been foolish, after all, to leave home. The Captain had promptly recruited another deputy, and he had the Yankee, Brookshire, as well. The Yankee seemed to be fairly competent. He had made the campfires, both nights, and had done it well. The other deputy was no good at packing horses or mules, but was handy enough at unpacking them. There was not much for Pea Eye to do. Standing watch was one area where his experience would have been useful, but he had gone right off to sleep and hadn't even heard the shots that killed Ben Lily's dogs, if they were Ben Lily's dogs.

All this made Pea Eye feel gloomy.

He felt that he had stopped knowing how to be useful. He often felt that way at home, too. Lorie was as good at what she did as the Captain was at what he did. Pea Eye wasn't as good as either one of them, at anything. It made him wonder why the Captain had wanted him along in the first place.

Call was sufficiently alarmed by the sound of so much gunfire that he woke Brookshire and Deputy Plunkert. He also put out the fire.

In the brilliant darkness, on the long plain, even a speck of fire as small as theirs could be spotted by an experienced eye from many miles away; as many miles, at least, as an experienced ear could hear a dog bark.

Call could sometimes distinguish calibers of weapons, if the firing was slow, but the men who shot the dogs hadn't been firing slow. The forty shots had been fired in a minute or two. Call thought he heard six or seven guns, but that was a guess. There could have been ten or more, or there could have been only three or four.

Famous Shoes had not returned to camp. The man seldom waited for instructions, and he was apt to rove all night, when he was on a scout.

"Where's our Indian?" Brookshire asked.

He had taken a liking to the old man, although he wasn't exactly businesslike. When he noticed that Brookshire had a book or two in his baggage, Famous Shoes had started pestering him to teach him to read. The old man seemed to think it was something he could start doing immediately, if only he were given the right clues. Famous Shoes had even insisted that Brookshire dismount, so he could show the Yankee a number of animal tracks and identify them. He seemed to think that Brookshire ought to be able to instruct him in reading just as quickly. When Brookshire attempted to explain that the two things weren't the same, Famous Shoes became irritated. Then Brookshire made the mistake of mentioning sentences. Famous Shoes immediately started asking him to explain what sentences were. Brookshire felt sure that he knew what a sentence was, but he found it damnably difficult to explain the sentence to the old Indian.

He liked the old man, though. It astonished him that a man Famous Shoes' age could travel faster on foot than the rest of them traveled horseback. He stayed ahead of them all day, moving at his strange little trot.

The four of them watched the rest of the night, but there was no more shooting. About dawn, Call thought he heard something, a kind of cry or keening. But he couldn't figure out what might be making it.

"Could it be an eagle?" he asked Pea Eye. "They say eagles scream, but I've never heard one." Pea Eye heard the sound only faintly.

He had no idea what it was.

Before it was fully light, Call had them headed toward the east.

"What about Famous Shoes?" Brookshire asked. "Shouldn't we wait for him?" "He's a tracker, we don't have to wait for him," Call said. "He'll find us." Famous Shoes did find them, about an hour later. He was down in a little ravine, and he had Ben Lily with him. The old hunter was shaggy, filthy, and mad.

"It was the manburner," Famous Shoes said, as he trotted up out of the ravine. "He has seven men with him." "He burnt my best dog," Ben Lily said. "Kilt all nine of them, and burnt one alive." "That's what we heard, I guess," Call said. "That's the sound a dog makes when it's being burned alive." "He wanted to burn me," Ben Lily said.

"I hid in a snake den. His men shot my dogs. They roped old Flop and burnt him." "Not to eat, though," Famous Shoes said. "You can see--the dog is a little ways ahead." Ben Lily sat on a rock, unkempt and bewildered. Call offered to let him ride one of the pack horses, if he wanted to come with them, but the old man didn't even answer. He sat on the rock, shaking his head and mumbling.

"I think he's gone loco," Famous Shoes said quietly, to Call.

"He's always been loco," Call said. "Now he's old, and he's lost his dogs. If I were him I'd quit, but I ain't him." Call went over to the old hunter, who seemed stunned by the calamity that had befallen him in the night. He held an old Winchester; apart from two cartridge belts, he seemed to have no equipment. Ben Lily was reputed to be an exceptional shot, exceptional enough to have killed more than two thousand bears and an unreckoned number of mountain lions. Call remembered him as having keen, mean eyes. This morning, his eyes seemed vague.

"He burnt old Flop," Ben Lily said.

"Old Flop was my best dog." "You're lucky he didn't burn you, Mr.

Lily," Call said. "You'd better follow along with us for a day or two, until we know where he is and where he's going. Next time, you might not make it to the snake den." The old man shook his head. He wore a ragged cap, which looked as if it had been made from a wolf skin. He kept putting it on, and then taking it back off.

"I'm going to Santa Fe," he said. "I got to get some new dogs." "You won't need them, if Mox Mox catches you," Call said. "You better come with us until we stop him." "I got to get some dogs," Ben Lily repeated. "I can't run no bears or tree no lions without some dogs." "I can't take you against your will, Mr. Lily, but you'd be wiser to come with us," Call said. "This man's not your ordinary killer. He's the manburner." Ben Lily paid no attention; he was looking to the southwest, toward the distant mountains. His eyes seemed blurred and tired, but Call supposed they might clear quickly enough if he had a lion, or better yet, a bear in his sights.

"Them mountains are full of lions, but there ain't no bear," he said. "I be going on to Wyoming, I guess. There's bear up there in Wyoming." He stood up and looked around, as if surprised to see that he was among people and not dogs.

"That killer kilt my dogs," he repeated.

"I best go to Santa Fe." His eyes turned to the northwest; he stared at the distances.

"You could go with us to Roy Bean's," Call suggested. "He usually has a few dogs." "No, I don't like Bean," Ben Lily said. "His dogs are just hounds. One mean lion could run them all off. I won't hunt with dogs that run from lions." "Be careful, then," Call said, but the old man either didn't hear him, or didn't care to respond. He put his Winchester on his shoulder and climbed out of the ravine, heading north.

Though he seemed stiff in his movements, he kept moving north and was soon out of sight.

Brookshire couldn't get used to the way people behaved in the West. The old man had no blanket, or kit of any kind. No doubt he had matches somewhere about his person, but otherwise he was setting out to walk hundreds of miles, in the wintertime, with nothing but a gun and two cartridge belts, and in country where there were at least two deadly killers on the loose.

"He just hunts?" Brookshire asked.

"Yes, all his life," Call said. "I never heard of him doing anything else." "If he was born today, he'd have to do something else," Deputy Plunkert said. "There wouldn't be enough varmints to satisfy him. I've never even seen a wild bear. The circus come once and it had a little bear, but it was tame." "You're right," Call said. "Mr. Lily's worked himself out of a job, where bears are concerned, unless he heads for Alaska." Call felt some sadness as he watched Ben Lily disappear into the sage and the distance, his rifle on his shoulder. It was unlikely that he would ever see the old man again. Call had never liked him, really. The two of them had probably not exchanged a hundred words in all their various brief meetings over the years. Ben Lily would talk of nothing except what he was hunting at the time, and Call hunted only for practical purposes and had nothing to say about it.

But Ben Lily was one of the old ones of the West. Ben Lily and Goodnight and Roy Bean and a few others. None of them were particularly likable, although Charles Goodnight had become friendlier than Call had ever expected him to be. But all of them, and those like them who had fallen--Gus McCrae and old Kit Carson, the Bent brothers, Shanghai Pierce and Captain Marcy--had been part of the adventure. Gus McCrae had declared the adventure over before the Hat Creek outfit had ever crossed the Yellowstone. A few days after he said it, he had gone off adventuring and been killed. Gus had been both right and wrong. The exploring part of the adventure had ended, but not the settling part, and settling, in the time of the Comanche and the Cheyenne and the Apache, had plenty of adventure in it.

Now, the settling had happened. Ben Lily and Goodnight and Roy Bean and, he supposed, himself--for he, too, had become one of the old ones of the West--were just echoes of what had been. When Lily fell, and Goodnight, and Bean and himself, there wouldn't even be echoes, just memories.

Call mounted up, feeling that he had begun to miss Ben Lily, a man he had never liked.

Yet, a time or two in his life, he had even missed enemies: Kicking Bird, the Comanche chief, was one. Missing Gus McCrae, a lifelong friend, was one thing; missing Ben Lily was something else again. It made Call feel that he had outlived his time, something he had never expected to do. Now he had begun to listen for echoes, an unhealthy form of distraction when there were still men in the country who burned people and dogs.

It was an unhappy thought, but soon it might be that the bad men, the Wes Hardins and the Mox Moxes, would be all that was left of the West as it had been. The bad men, in the end, were the ones who wouldn't settle.

A few miles farther on, Famous Shoes showed them the burned dog. It was large--part mastiff, Call reckoned. Its four feet had been tied together, and its mouth wired shut. The fire hadn't been hot enough to consume the animal, but it had been thoroughly seared. Even its teeth were black.

Brookshire looked at the dog, got off his horse, and threw up. Deputy Plunkert took one quick look and rode on by. He stopped fifty yards farther on, but kept his back to the group. Pea Eye looked, and felt more than ever at a loss. He had seen far worse sights than a burned dog, in his days with the Rangers, and he knew men did bad things to other men. That was an old lesson, learned and learned well in the Indian wars.

Pea Eye realized that he was just tired of it, tired of such sights and such memories. He had been feeling tired since he'd had to help pull Captain Call off Sheriff Doniphan.

Pea Eye didn't want to see the Captain beat a person to within an inch of his life, even if the person deserved it, as the sheriff had. He didn't want to see burnt dogs or burnt people, or people with bad gunshot wounds in the belly, or any of that. What he wanted to see was Lorena, his wife, nursing their baby at the breakfast table. He wanted to see his three little boys, and his big girl, Clarie; his big girl, that all the boys were already wanting to court. He wanted to hold his wife in his arms, not bury corpses of people killed by outlaws. It was time for all that to be over. It should have already been over, at least where he was concerned. He had never had the appetite for it, and now he really didn't have the time for it, either. He had different work to do.

Famous Shoes studied the tracks for a while, and Call dismounted and took a look too. The tracks went east--eight men and two extra horses.

"They don't hurry," Famous Shoes remarked.

"No, I guess they wouldn't," Call said.

"If they hurried, they might miss something Mox Mox wants to burn." He felt uncertain as to how to proceed. The killers were within twenty-five miles of them, probably, and there were eight of them. If Mox Mox would take the time to stop and burn Ben Lily's dog, then killing was probably their main object, though no doubt they would rob, too, when the opportunity arose.

Call's instinct was to go after Mox Mox at once. It wasn't the job he had been hired to do, but Mox Mox was between him and the job he had been hired to do. Besides, the eight killers were a danger to anyone they encountered, wherever they were.

If they had the leisure to burn a dog, they were not expecting either resistance or pursuit.

Call was traveling with a largely untried troop, though. Pea Eye would probably fight well enough, when the time came--he always had--but the others might just get in the way. Brookshire had indulged in a good deal of target practice on the trip. He was a fair shot at stationary targets, but of course he had never shot at a living target, much less one that could shoot back at him. Deputy Plunkert was also a question mark.

By his own admission, he had scarcely left Laredo in his whole life. What he would do in a running fight was anybody's guess; get himself killed, probably.

"The manburner has a big man with him," Famous Shoes said. He had found a track that was as deep as any track he had ever seen.

"His horse is tired, from carrying him." "That's good. Big men make easy targets," Call said. "Once we shoot the big one, we'll only have seven to worry about.

We won't be so badly outnumbered." Brookshire felt that the clock of his life had run backward, to the time of the War. The sight of the burned dog did it. In the War, the sight of dead horses, some of them scorched, some with their stomachs burst open or their innards spilled, upset him more than seeing the bodies of men. He didn't know why they upset him more; they just did.

In the time he had traveled with the Captain, Brookshire had thought often about their quarry, Joey Garza. Joey had killed, and in fact, he killed often, but he killed with a bullet. It scared him to think of Joey crouched behind a rock somewhere, looking at him through a telescope sight, ready to end his life with a bullet. Still, it was a bullet; Katie dying of her sickness probably suffered more than he would suffer if Joey Garza did kill him.

But the man who had burned the dog, this Mox Mox, was different. Joey was a killer; Mox Mox must be a maniac. Brookshire had observed Captain Call over a fair stretch of time, and had much confidence in his abilities. The man was a little stiff in the morning, but he kept going. He had no tendency to recklessness, that Brookshire could detect. He consulted Brookshire fully when there were decisions to be made. Brookshire had confidence in the Captain's ability to locate and subdue Joey Garza. He thought Call could do it, and do it handily.

But Mox Mox was a maniac, and he had seven men with him. He wasn't interested in killing with bullets, either. What he was doing went beyond stopped trains, passengers who lost their valuables, and Colonel Terry's profits. The thought of Joey Garza left Brookshire scared, but the thought of Mox Mox left him terrified.

Call knew he had a ticklish decision to make. He could keep the men with him, try to catch up with Mox Mox, and hit him in force, such as the force was. Or, he could go alone, and hope to ambush Mox Mox and the men himself. The fact that he would be one against eight didn't disturb him much. Very few men could fight effectively, and of the eight there might be only one who was formidable. Blue Duck had been formidable, but from what Call could remember of the Goodnight trouble, Mox Mox had merely been mean. No one seemed to think much of his abilities as a killer. He had led Goodnight a merry chase, and had eluded him, but in that instance, he had a week's start. The main problem in attacking Mox Mox and his men alone was to determine which one had the ability. That was the man to kill first.

His only source of information, at the moment, was Famous Shoes. The old tracker had walked off to the east and was squatting on his heels, smoking. Call loped out to where he rested. It was time to decide.

"He's got a giant with him, you said," Call remarked. "Who else has he got?" "Three Mexicans who spur their horses too much," Famous Shoes said. "Their horses jump when they spur them. The manburner himself is small. He makes little tracks when he is burning something." "That's three Mexicans, the giant, and the manburner," Call said. "That's five. What about the other three?" "There's a Cherokee," Famous Shoes said.

"He has the best horse, and his horse is not tired." "What makes you think he's Cherokee?" Call asked.

"Because I know him," Famous Shoes said. "I tracked him once before. He stole a woman that Quanah Parker wanted to marry. His name is Jimmy Cumsa. He is very quick. I tracked him two years ago, and he is still riding the same horse. He takes good care of his horse. I think he is a better killer than the manburner." "If you tracked him, why didn't Quanah get him?" Call asked.

"I don't know," Famous Shoes said. "I tracked him to Taos Pueblo. But Quanah had to go somewhere on a train, for many days. I think he went to see the President. When he came back, he was too busy to go get Jimmy Cumsa." "That leaves two," Call said.

"I don't know where the last two come from," Famous Shoes admitted. "One rides a pacing horse--he is not a good rider and his horse is not strong. The other man is small. He rides a little ways apart. Maybe the manburner doesn't like him too much." The other men came and joined them. Brookshire looked sick. Deputy Plunkert looked scared. Pea Eye was calm enough, but it was clear to Call that the man's heart wasn't in what he was doing.

Call decided not to leave the men. When the time came to strike Mox Mox, he would leave them, but he wanted them to be in a more protected place before he left. If he sent them alone to Roy Bean's, with Famous Shoes to guide them, they might make it and they might not. Even if they traveled by night, they would be vulnerable. Ben Lily had been traveling by night, and he had still lost his dogs, and nearly his life.

"We'll go to Bean's," Call said.

"We'll find out what he knows. Then I may separate from you for a few days and see what I can do about these killers." They started at once, but all morning, Call felt torn. He felt he should break off and go, while he was so close to the killers, but he feared for the men. They were all grown men, and he should let them fend for themselves; he'd often had to leave men in dangerous situations. This time, though, he didn't feel he should leave them. He didn't want to come back and find them burnt, like Ben Lily's dog.

Brookshire was relieved, when the Captain said he would stay with them. Looking around him, he could see nothing but an endless distance. It seemed that the West just kept opening around him, into greater and ever greater distances. When he thought the horizons could get no farther away, he awoke to horizons that were yet farther. Brookshire had a compass, but he didn't use it. Captain Call was his compass. Without him, Brookshire doubted that he could find the will to keep himself going across the empty country, toward the dim horizon. He would simply stop, at some point. He would just stop and sit down and wait to be dead.

Also, he had seen the burnt dog. If the Captain left them, it wouldn't be simply a matter of keeping going, of pursuing the long horizons until they yielded up a town, a place where there might be a hotel and a train. It was no longer just the emptiness, and the blowing-away feeling, that Brookshire had to fear--not anymore.

The manburner was there. Probably he was within the vast rim of horizon that encircled them at that very moment. Brookshire felt deeply grateful to the Captain, for staying with them. He had come to feel that he might not mind dying so much, if dying just meant a bullet.

But Brookshire had seen Ben Lily's dog. He did not want to die as the dog had died. He did not want to be burnt.

"That Indian owes me a nickel--if he's on your payroll, fork it over," Roy Bean said, before Call and his party had even dismounted. He was sitting in the weak winter sunlight, outside his saloon, wrapped in a buffalo robe. He had a cocked pistol in one hand, and a rifle across his lap; the rifle barrel stuck out from under the robe.

A shotgun was propped against the wall of the saloon, within easy reach. "What sort of drink would only cost a nickel?" Call inquired.

"He don't owe me for a drink, he owes me for some lotion," the judge said. "He come up lame one time, and I let him rub some lotion on his foot and forgot to charge him for it. It was a fine lotion. It cures all ills except a weak pecker." Call gave Roy Bean the nickel.

Until he was paid his full bill, whatever it might be, there would be little chance that he would dispense much information.

"I stepped on a little cactus with thorns like the snake's tooth," Famous Shoes said. "He gave me some of his lotion, and I am still walking.

I will pay the nickel, although I don't have it with me right now." "Brookshire's boss will pay the nickel," Call said, not surprised that the first thing they received at the Jersey Lily Saloon was a bill of several years' standing.

"Put it in your ledger, Brookshire," Call said. "I'm sure your Colonel will be glad to contribute a nickel to the man who kept our tracker healthy." Brookshire had lost interest in the ledger, and had not kept it current, although they had made substantial purchases in Presidio. He had, on one or two occasions, even torn pages out of it and used them to help get the campfires started. Somewhere along the Rio Concho, he had stopped feeling that he lived in a world where ledgers mattered. Colonel Terry still belonged to that world, and would always belong to it. The Colonel, like the old judge, would be quick to demand his nickel, even his penny.

But Brookshire had passed beyond the world of ledgers, into a world of space and wind, of icy nights and brilliant stars, of men who killed with bullets and men who burned dogs. In order to keep his accounts at night, Brookshire would usually have had to thaw out the ink, and then thaw out his fingers sufficiently to be able to write. It was hard to see the lines on a ledger by the light of a small campfire, and it was hard to be correct in one's penmanship when one's fingers were frozen.

The Colonel was a stickler for good penmanship, too. He didn't like to squint or puzzle over entries when he was examining a ledger, and he had said so many times.

Now, looking back into Mexico from the front of Judge Bean's saloon, the Colonel's strictures no longer seemed to matter.

Brookshire had other disciplines to concern himself with, such as making campfires that would last the night without wasting wood. Captain Call was as strict about campfires as the Colonel was about penmanship.

"Are you expecting a war party?" Call asked the judge. "You seem to be thoroughly armed." "I expect perdition, always have," the judge replied. "I keep this building at my back, and several guns handy, in case perdition arrives in a form that's susceptible to bullets. I expect it will come in the disease form, though. I'm susceptible to diseases, and you can't shoot a goddamn disease." "If this is still a saloon, we'd like whiskey," Call said. "We've had a cool ride." They had scarcely left the canyon before another norther had sung in behind them. The cold cut them badly, although they rode with their backs to the wind.

The judge reluctantly took them inside the saloon. Once settled warmly into his buffalo robe, he hated to be disturbed. Most conversations, even in the coldest weather, were conducted outside, with him speaking from inside his robe.

The saloon had only one table, and it was so tilted on its crooked legs that a drink placed on the uphill side would quickly slide to the downhill side and off onto the floor, unless the drinker kept a grip on his glass.

Call bought whiskey for everyone; only Pea Eye refrained. Lorena was very severe with him, in the matter of drink. In his lonely cowboy days in Montana, he had taken to drinking for an hour or two every evening. Once married, he continued the practice for a while, from nervousness, but Lorena soon put her foot down. Since the day she had put her foot down, Pea Eye had very few drinks, norther or no norther. He did take a beer, though. Fortunately, Judge Bean had a few. Famous Shoes requested tequila--the judge also had plenty of that substance--and drank almost a pint, as if he were drinking water.

Deputy Plunkert fell asleep just as the judge was refilling his whiskey glass. It promptly slid toward the edge of the table, but the judge himself caught it at the last minute.

"I'll pour this back in the bottle until your man wakes up," Roy Bean said.

The judge had quick, crafty eyes. Rumor had always placed him on the wrong side of the law.

Call had not been the only one surprised when Roy Bean assumed his judgeship. To be fair, though, no one seemed to quite know what laws the new judge had broken. Some thought he smuggled gold for powerful Mexicans; others thought he stole gold from the same Mexicans.

Call thought the gold rumors were probably exaggerations. For one thing, Roy Bean lived a long way from anyplace where gold could be used or deposited, and gold was heavy. To Call, Roy Bean had more the manner of a skillful gambler.

Becoming a judge, in a region where few people had much fondness for the law, was in itself a gamble.

"I hope you catch the Garza boy next week," Roy Bean said. "This week wouldn't be too soon, neither." "I'll catch him, but I doubt it will be this week," Call said. "The last train he robbed was near San Angelo, and I imagine he kept traveling. We'll have to see if Famous Shoes can pick up his track." "There are very few competent marksmen in this part of the country," Roy Bean said. "This boy is a competent marksman and he's affecting my profits.

"The truth is, my profits are way down," he added, glumly.

"Oh, how's that?" Call asked.

"The Garza boy shoots people who might come here and drink," the judge replied. "There's other problems, too. I used to be able to sit outside and concentrate on business matters, without having to worry that somebody a mile away on a hill might plug me while I'm concentrating." "There's no hill within a mile of you, and half a mile would be a more likely distance for a rifle shot, anyway," Call said. "No rifle I've ever seen will shoot accurately much farther than half a mile." "Yes, but you ain't a competent marksman yourself, and you don't know everything!" Roy Bean said sharply. "Charlie Goodnight has always thought he knew everything, and so did your damn partner, and so do you." "Well, I've known a few fine shots," Call replied, mildly. "I've never known you to worry about killers, before. There are safer places to live than along this border if you're the sort to let killers disturb your naps." "I have weathered a number of killers, but I resent Mexican boys with rifles that can shoot that far," Roy Bean said. "If you catch him for me, I'll hang him in a wink." "That boy ain't the only reason you ought to start napping indoors, with your door locked," Call said. "Have you heard of Mox Mox?" "Yes, Wes Hardin said he was around," Roy Bean said. "Who's he singed now?" "Ben Lily's best dog," Call replied.

"Not Flop," Roy Bean said, visibly startled. "Why would the sonofabitch burn a dog?" "Why would he burn a person?" Call asked. "Because he likes to, that's why." "Did he get Ben?" the judge asked.

"No, but they killed every dog he had," Call said. "I'm thinking of going after him first, before he causes any more harm." "Go get him," Roy Bean said. "Leave these men here. They look like they need to thaw out. I'll cut the whiskey to half price while they're visiting with me." Guarding you, you mean, Call thought, but he didn't say it.

"Mox Mox has seven men with him," Call remarked.

"Hardin says the Cherokee boy is the only one with any fight," Roy Bean said. "Take a slow aim and eliminate him first. That would be my advice." "Quick Jimmy," Famous Shoes said.

"Yes, Hardin said he had a rapid way about him," Roy Bean said.

"I didn't know you were friends with John Wesley Hardin," Call said.

"I ain't--nobody is," Roy Bean replied. "He come down here to see if I had a whore. Joey Garza's ma went to Crow Town and walked off with all the women. Hardin got restless for a whore and came to see me." "When?" Call asked.

"Last week," Bean said. "He says Crow Town's emptied out, since the women left." "Joey Garza's mother went to Crow Town and took the women?" Call said. "Took them and went where with them? She wasn't home when we came through Ojinaga. Billy Williams was looking after her other children. She has a pretty little girl, but the child is blind." "I ain't met the woman, but I expect she's a beauty," Roy Bean said. "Billy's been in love with her most of his life, but she won't bend. Olin Roy's partial to her, too, but she won't have Olin, neither." "I would have thought Huerta or somebody would have finished Olin by now," Call said. "Dabbling in Mexican finance is chancy work." Call remembered the little blind girl with the quick expresion, standing with Billy Williams. He rarely noticed children, but he not only remembered the blind girl, he could picture her vividly in his mind. He wondered about the mother. Few women would be bold enough to go to Crow Town. This woman had not only gone, she had led the women of the community away. She had produced the blind girl, the idiot boy, and Joey, and if Bean was to be believed, had captured and held the affections of Billy Williams and Olin Roy, two men who had not been noted for the constancy of their attachments. Olin was a smuggler who spoke good Spanish, and Billy Williams was more or less a roving drunk.

Still, some women seemed to be able to get holds on the most unlikely men. Pea Eye, for example, had never seemed to be the marrying kind. He had never sought out women, that Call could remember, when they were in towns. But here was Pea Eye, married, and happily so, it seemed.

"I don't understand the business about the women," Call said. "She just rode into town and rode out with them?" "Nope," Bean said. "She rode in on a spotted pony, but Joey stole it and left her afoot. She and the women walked out." "I met her on the road when she was almost there," Famous Shoes remarked. "She got very cold in the sleet storm, crossing the Pecos.

I built her a fire, but she was angry with me and wouldn't let me stay." "Did she know you were working for me?" Call asked.

"Yes, and she don't want you to kill Joey," Famous Shoes said. "She don't want me to track him for you." "I didn't know you knew her," Call said.

"Her name is Maria," Famous Shoes said.

"She saved my life the first time the hard sheriff wanted to hang me.

"She was too angry when I met her this time," he repeated. "I built the fire and left her." "He's an ungrateful son, if he stole her horse and left her afoot in a place like Crow Town," Call said. "Not many women would ride into Crow Town." "Or cross the dern Pecos, either," Pea Eye said. "Not when it's icy. I'd call that brave." "Well, the boy is her son," Call said.

"Even if he stole her horse, you can't expect her to want him dead." "I don't know the woman--she can like it or lump it," Roy Bean said. "Her son's a thieving, murdering lawbreaker. You better go catch him, and plow Mox Mox under, too, if you have the time." "This is your jurisdiction, Judge," Call reminded him. "I was just hired to catch Joey Garza. What I'd like to know is where his mother took the women." "Wesley said she took 'em to the railroad," Roy Bean said. "He was upset.

He said he would have shot her on sight if he'd known she was going to take away the whores." "Where is Hardin, while we're talking about killers?" Call asked.

"No idea--he left," Roy Bean said.

"I ain't his butler." The judge had produced one bottle of brandy and asked an inordinate price for it, but Brookshire bought it anyway. He drank it until the edges of the little room became blurred, which didn't take long. Now the Captain was talking about yet another killer, a famous one this time. Even in Brooklyn there were people who had heard of John Wesley Hardin.

Brookshire kept drinking the brandy. He drank until he could hardly see the Captain, who was sitting not two feet from him. Deputy Plunkert was snoring; the warmth of the room had put him right to sleep. It seemed to Brookshire that they were traveling in circles. Every curve took them farther from civilization and produced another killer. The whole thing had started with a train robbery; now it involved three men who, among them, had killed the equivalent of a company of soldiers. Killers were multiplying, whereas Captain Call wasn't. There was still only one of him.

"They say the Garza boy has a cave full of valuables, down in Mexico," Roy Bean said. "They say he takes everything he steals and hides it there." "I expect that's a rumor," Call said.

"It's nice to think about, though," Bean said.

"If I could find myself a cave full of treasure, I could retire from the bench and move to England, and if I was in England, I could watch Miss Lily Langtry perform on the stage every night of the week." Call paid no more attention to Judge Bean.

The only interesting information he possessed came from John Wesley Hardin, and it concerned Joey Garza's mother. If there was a way to find Joey, it probably involved the mother, not the cave.

Sooner or later, Joey might come home. The fact that he had stolen his mother's horse might not mean much. Mothers had been known to overlook worse behavior than that. Joey might decide to bring the pony back someday. He knew he was being chased, and might want his mother to hide him.

Soon all the company was asleep, except for Pea Eye. Famous Shoes had drunk a second pint of tequila. He curled up under the table and slept soundly.

Brookshire was out, his head fallen into his arms.

Deputy Plunkert was snoring soundly, his head tipped so far to one side that his hat had fallen off. Pea, who'd had only one beer, seemed a little glum, but he was not drunk.

The smelly old judge had taken his buffalo robe and gone back outside.

Call motioned to Pea Eye, and the two of them went out into the cold air.

"I'm going to split off," Call said. "I hate to do it, but we've got two different threats to deal with, and I don't think they'll line themselves up like dominoes and wait for us to knock them over." He'd had a feeling that the Captain might be about to leave. It always made Pea anxious when the Captain left to perform some task alone. When the Captain wasn't around, things were apt to go wrong.

Several horses might turn up lame at the same time, or a man might develop pleurisy, or the hunters might be unable to bring in any game.

"I guess it will upset Brookshire," Pea Eye said. It was easy to see that Brookshire set great store by the Captain's judgment.

"Yes, I expect so," Call said. "But he's a grown man, and he knows how to make a fire.

"You'll have to watch that you don't fall asleep on guard duty," he added, mildly. "The others haven't had your experience. You don't want to let anybody slip up on you." "Not with the manburner on the loose," Pea Eye said. "Where do you want us to go?" "Go back to where we were, only circle down into Mexico," Call said. "You'll be safer, at least from Mox Mox. That village just across from Presidio is where Joey Garza's mother lives. I think that's where we'll catch him." "What if he gets there before you do?" Pea Eye asked.

"Wait," Call said. "Circle south of the village and camp on the Rio Concho about half a day away. I'll find you." "That don't sound too hard," Pea Eye said.

But the melancholy wouldn't leave him; it only got stronger. The Captain was going one way, and sending him another. It was a sign of trust, that the Captain would leave him in charge of the men. There was nothing exceptional about splitting up a company, either. That had happened many times, in the old days.

"This is not the end of the world," Lorena often told him, when she was trying to boost his spirits after some quarrel or mistake. "It's not the end of the world, Pea. Just pick up and keep going." Pea Eye felt that Lorena didn't understand how much their fights or his mistakes saddened him.

She would get busy with the children, or start studying her schoolwork, and the quarrel would go out of her mind.

She would become cheerful again so quickly that it would make Pea Eye feel a little lonely. Hurts didn't go out of his mind that quickly, particularly if he was the cause of them. They seemed to settle in his throat, like gravel in a chicken's craw. Often, his feelings of absence or confusion would linger so long in his breast, while Lorena and the children went on with their lives, moving around him as if he wasn't there, that Pea Eye had a hard time feeling he was in their lives at all. He would begin to feel he was just some stranger who happened to be staying where his family lived.

Often, too, it would not be until the next day, when some child jumped in his lap or came to him with a problem, that he would recover a sense of being connected to them.

As the Captain went about preparing to leave--they had bought a couple of extra rifles in Presidio, and the Captain took one of them and a good supply of ammunition--Pea Eye felt the same sadness tightening his throat that he felt at home when Lorena tried to assure him that his world wasn't coming to an end.

Lorena could say that to him all she liked, but her saying it didn't take away Pea Eye's feelings that the world might be coming to an end anyway.

As he grew older, he felt more keenly how hard it was to know anyone. Lorena and the Captain, in turn, let him stay with them and share their lives. But Lorena and the Captain were complete, in a way that he wasn't, and being complete, they didn't realize how partial he felt. He was not as good as they were, not as smart and not as strong.

They might know him, but he felt he would never be much good at knowing them. Often, in bed at night, listening to Lorena breathe and feeling her body warming his, tears would come to his eyes, from the sense that he didn't know his Lorena. He didn't, and he never would. He felt grateful, though, that she was letting him stay with her, and glad that they had the children and the farm.

But it didn't mean that the world wasn't coming to an end, or that it wouldn't.

Pea Eye didn't attempt to tell the Captain how he felt, though. The Captain was preparing to leave, and he didn't linger when he had someplace to go.

"I'll meet you on the other side of the river," Call said. "If I don't have too much aggravation with Mox Mox, I wouldn't think I'd be gone much more than a week." "Don't neglect any killers," Roy Bean admonished. He was swaddled in his buffalo robe, the cocked pistol still in his hand.

"You oughtn't to leave that pistol cocked," Pea Eye said, as they watched the Captain lope away to the east. "You might have a bad dream and jerk and shoot your knee off." "It might rain whores out of the sky, too, but I doubt it," Roy Bean said.

Joey Garza watched Captain Call's departure through a telescope he had taken off the train from San Angelo. The telescope had belonged to an old man with stringy gray hair, who protested so much when Joey took it that Joey shot him. He had not intended to kill anybody when he stopped the train; he'd only wanted to add to his treasures. If the old man had surrendered the telescope peacefully, Joey wouldn't have killed him. The old man claimed to be a teacher. He said he taught about the stars, and needed the telescope in order to study the stars.

He was bound for Fort Davis, where the stars were easier to see, or so he said. He offered to give Joey all his money if Joey would leave him the telescope.

"You see, I can't get another, not in these parts," the man said. "I had to send to England for this one." Joey thought he was just a disagreeable old man, so he shot him and took the telescope and the money, too. Apart from two or three good watches, the telescope was the only thing on that particular train that Joey felt was worth stealing. He hoped that by going east, closer to the cities of the Texans, he would find better things on the trains he robbed. But if San Angelo was any example, this theory was no good. The train mainly held cowboys, who were being sent to some large ranch. None of the cowboys had anything of value. Sometimes Joey took fine spurs, but the spurs these cowboys wore were of no interest.

Even their saddles were poor. So he took the telescope, and the little stand that it rested on, killed the old man, and left.

That night, he used the telescope to look at the stars. He had to admit that the old man had been telling the truth. The telescope brought the stars much closer. When Joey pointed it at the moon, the results were even better. He could see what seemed to be mountains on the moon. The surface of the moon looked a little like the country where the Apaches had taken him. It was pretty bare.

The best use of the telescope, though, was to look at men. He concealed his mother's spotted pony in a gully, before pointing the telescope at Roy Bean's door. By adjusting it a little, he could see with great clarity. He saw the famous Captain Call come out with his tall friend, and get ready to leave. He saw the Captain take an extra rifle, and even saw that Judge Roy Bean kept his pistol cocked.

It annoyed Joey, that the Captain left his men behind. There were four of them; three were still inside.

If they stayed, he would have to kill them before he could hang the judge, but he didn't want to kill them while the famous bounty hunter, Captain Call, was close enough to hear the shots.

It meant waiting, which Joey hated. He wanted to hang the judge, and then follow Captain Call and shoot him. Once Call was dead, he intended to go to Ojinaga and steal his brother and sister. It bothered him that his mother gave them so much attention. He meant to steal them and give them to the manburner, if he could find him.

If the manburner wanted to burn them, that was fine with Joey. They were damaged anyway, too damaged to deserve all the attention his mother gave them. They were merely the products of her whoring.

Stealing them would show her what he felt about her low behavior. If the manburner had no interest in burning them, Joey meant to take them deep into Mexico and give them away, to someone who wanted two slaves. He would take them so far away that his mother would never find them, and if he could find no one who wanted them for slaves, he might take them to his cave and throw them off the cliff behind it.

To his relief, the men Captain Call left at the saloon didn't stay long. The tall man went back inside and got them. There were two more white men, and old Famous Shoes.

The two white men looked drunk. One of them was so drunk that he had difficulty mounting. But eventually, they got started. Famous Shoes led them across the river and took them north.

Probably the Captain had sent them to catch him, when he came home. If that was the plan, it was silly. He might not go home, and even if he did, white men who were so drunk they couldn't mount their horses were not going to catch him. He could ride in and steal his brother and sister while they were in the cantina, getting drunk again. They would never see him, or even know he had been there.

Of course, Famous Shoes might find his tracks and track him. Joey decided he had better kill Famous Shoes, at some point; the old man was the last tracker in Mexico capable of tracking him to his cave. It would be best to kill him soon, before some gringo hired him to find the cave. Joey knew that the cave was becoming a legend among the gringos. Soon men would begin to hunt for it. But the cave was deep in the mountains, up a canyon where horses couldn't go.

With Famous Shoes dead, the treasure in his cave would be safe for years.

When Captain Call and the men had been gone a few hours, Joey got out his rifle and looked through the telescope at Judge Roy Bean. The old man had gone inside and got himself a bottle of whiskey. He sat with his back to the building, holding his pistol in his lap. The whiskey bottle, he set on a little rock beside his chair. There was a shotgun propped against the wall and a rifle under the buffalo robe. The old man had brought some kind of newspaper out of the saloon and was reading it in the fading sunlight. It was a large newspaper; when the judge held it up to read, all Joey could see was his legs.

Joey leveled the rifle and shot Judge Roy Bean right through the newspaper, low down, a belly shot. Roy Bean leapt up and began to fire his rifle wildly, as much at the sky as at anything in particular. Joey shot him in the shoulder, so he would not be able to shoot the rifle well, and then he shot him in the leg, causing him to crumple. The old man tried to crawl over to the shotgun propped against the wall, but as he reached for it, Joey shot him in the arm. Joey was surprised that the old man struggled so, after being shot in the belly. He was plainly a tough old man, but that would only make matters worse for him. Joey got on his mother's spotted pony and rode up to the saloon. He could see the rifle and the shotgun, but he couldn't see the pistol. Joey thought the pistol was probably under the newspaper the judge had been reading when he shot him in the belly. The wind was blowing the newspaper away. Several pages were stuck on prickly pear piles, between the saloon and the river.

Roy Bean managed to prop up against the wall of the saloon. He had his pistol, but when he pointed it at Joey and tried to shoot, the pistol didn't fire. The old man was breathing heavily --he tried again to shoot the pistol, but again, the pistol didn't fire. The trigger wouldn't pull. Joey had his own pistol out and was ready to shoot, but he didn't want to kill Roy Bean with a gun if he could avoid it. He had other plans.

Roy Bean grew so irritated with his pistol that he started hitting it against the wall. The joke was on him, he knew. He had kept the pistol on cock for so long that it had rusted tight. It seemed to him that it had been on cock for ten years or more--foolish behavior. Now, the young Mexican had him. He was belly-shot, had a broken shoulder, a ruined leg, and a smashed arm.

He couldn't move well enough to get inside his saloon, where he had a good stabbing knife. The young Mexican rode right up to him, and made a loop in a rawhide rope.

"You arrogant pup, do you plan to hang me?

Go away," Roy Bean said. "I'm the one that hangs people around here. I'm the law west of the Pecos, or ain't you heard, you damn cub?" The next moment, he was choking so badly he couldn't talk. Before he even realized the boy was moving, Joey Garza had slipped off his horse, flipped the rawhide noose around his neck, and jerked it so tight it almost crushed his Adam's apple. Roy Bean felt a burning anger at Woodrow Call, who could have stayed put with his men for a day or two, and given Joey Garza time to pass on by. The boy had outsmarted Captain Call, and now look!

But the pain in his throat grew so severe that it cut off his anger along with his breath. Joey got back on his spotted pony, and Roy Bean found himself being pulled up toward the roof of his own saloon. The boy had flipped the rawhide rope over the chimney and was backing his horse away, pulling the judge slowly upward. When his feet left the ground, he twisted slightly, trying to get a hand under the rawhide rope. But the rawhide was unforgiving; he felt scalding bile flood his throat.

Roy Bean struggled and twisted. He felt that if he could just get one breath, he might yet struggle out of the noose and live. But Joey Garza slowly backed his horse, pulling Roy Bean higher, pulling the noose tighter. The rawhide was like steel. Roy Bean twisted again.

He thought he might crawl up on the roof and get free, but he only had one hand. His lungs burned badly; the air seemed like black water.

Call's man had been right about the pistol--he shouldn't have kept it on cock all those years. The Mexican boy backed the horse another step, pulling him so high that his head mashed against a roof beam that protruded from his wall. Black water flooded the world, where the air should have been.

When the old man's kicking and twisting began to slow, Joey got down and carefully gathered up the pages of his newspaper. The wind had scattered them badly, but Joey took his time and got them all. There was a bullet hole through the paper, and the prickly pear had torn it a little, but it was all there. Joey folded it carefully and put it in his saddlebags. There was a picture in it of a lady who wore many jewels. Maybe someday he would stop a train with a lady on it who had jewels he could take to his cave.

Then he went inside the saloon and looked around, hoping old Bean owned something worth stealing.

The old man was still kicking and twisting--once or twice, Joey heard him thump against the wall.

There was not much in the saloon, though. The only thing he found that he considered worth taking was a silver picture frame.

The frame sat on a whiskey box by the old man's bed. The woman whose photograph was in the picture frame seemed to Joey to be the same woman whose photograph was in the newspaper, the one whose jewels he wanted to study. But the light in the little room was dim; he wasn't sure. He took the picture with him.

There was nothing in the saloon except cases of whiskey. A knife hung on a peg inside the door, but it was an old knife. Its blade had been sharpened so many times that it was as thin as the moon, when the moon was only a sliver.

Joey took the knife and used it to cut open Roy Bean's clothes. The old man was dead.

He hung just beside his own doorway. Joey wanted to see where his first bullet had gone in.

It had struck just below the navel. The old man had been tough as a javelina, Joey decided.

Not many men would struggle that hard, after being shot below the navel.

Before leaving to take up the trail of Captain Call, Joey stood up in the saddle and crawled onto the low roof, in order to snub the rawhide rope more securely to the chimney. He wanted to make sure that Judge Roy Bean would be hanging by his own door when the next traveler showed up at the Jersey Lily Saloon, hoping for a drink.

Charles Goodnight sat until past midnight, studying the fire in his kitchen fireplace. Winter was always severe on the plains, but this winter was unusually severe. It drizzled and then froze; drizzled and then froze; by Christmastime, there had been three big snows, which was rare. The cowboys rode long days, trying to keep the cattle from drifting too far from his range. Goodnight himself was in the saddle fifteen hours a day, most days.

His wife, Mary, was gone visiting a sister; otherwise, he would have been chided for working too hard. With Mary gone, the kitchen was about as much of the house as he needed to use. There was a cookstove as well as the fireplace, but he rarely cooked, himself. Now and then, he singed a beefsteak, and ate it with strong coffee. Muley, his ranch cook, had a kitchen in the big bunkhouse, where the cowhands ate. Muley, like many ranch cooks, was intolerant of suggestion or restriction. Every once in a while, when Goodnight took a meal with his cowboys, he was in the habit of speaking his mind. But if Goodnight made a habit of eating with his ranch hands too often and putting in his two cents about the food, a habit that visibly annoyed Muley, the result would be that Goodnight would rise up someday and fire Muley for insubordination. It would be a severe aggravation if he had to fire him.

Adequate ranch cooks were at a premium in the Panhandle. He would have to go to Amarillo, if not farther, to find a replacement.

The fire in the little kitchen fireplace gutted and blew, as the wind sang over the chimney.

Northers had been almost constant for the past month.

Day after day, the plains would be coated with a thin sheet of ice, as a result of the freezing drizzle.

Goodnight rarely slept more than three hours a night. The bulk of the night he spent in the kitchen, drinking strong coffee, figuring a little, and thinking. When Mary was home, she slept her eight hours, like a log. If she woke at all, it was usually to complain that he was burning too much kerosene in the lamp.

"I can't figure in the dark," he told her often, pointing to his account books.

"Nor in broad daylight, either," Mary said.

"Figuring ain't your strong point, Charlie.

If all you're going to do is think, then turn off that lamp and sit in the dark and think. You don't need light to think by, do you?" Often, he obeyed rather than quarrel; it was dangerous to quarrel with Mary, when she was sleepy. If the quarrel got too vigorous, she might wake up, in which case she would press the quarrel all through the next day. She was capable of pressing one for a week or more, if she was aggravated enough. Such quarrels were a great waste of energy, and a good reason for spending as much of life as possible on horseback. Once a quarrel broke out, it was like a prairie fire-- neither reason nor patience could extinguish it.

Mainly, it had to be left to burn itself out. Many times he had thought such a quarrel burned out, only to have it flare up again as a result of some chance remark, and consume another hundred acres of his time.

But Mary wasn't there to complain about his extravagant waste of kerosene, this time. No one was there. In rummaging through his desk that afternoon, looking for a hardware bill that he had evidently mislaid, he came across an old brand book, dating from the days long before, when he and his partner, Oliver Loving, had first ranched in Colorado.

Perusing it now in the kitchen, with the fire guttering and the wind singing, was a chastening experience, testament to the uncertainties of the cattle business and of human existence as well. Not only was his old partner, Oliver Loving, dead, but so were a large majority of the cattlemen and trail bosses whose brands were recorded in his book. Those who weren't dead had mostly gone bust in the cattle business. They were farming now, or selling hardware in the small towns scattered about what had once been the great open range. Many of them had been good and able men; competent, resourceful, and good companions on the trail. But they hadn't lasted. Some got busted up by half-broken horses. Some drowned in foolish, impatient attempts to cross unfordable rivers. Others had taken sick and quickly and quietly expired.

Perhaps they worked in the rain and sleet too long; the next day, they had a sniffle, the sniffle became pneumonia, and they died.

The book contained over four hundred brands.

As he turned through its pages, Goodnight kept a little tally of those brands that were still active, used by the same cattlemen who had used them during the trail-driving days. He found only eight brands whose owners were still alive and in the cattle business. Those were the toughest of the tough, or the luckiest of the lucky.

Goodnight knew himself to be among the luckiest of the lucky; he had fought Indians for over twenty years and never received a scratch.

Bullets had killed men fighting at his very elbow, but no bullet had ever struck him. He had taken herds across almost one hundred waterless miles, and not starved. He had raced to turn stampedes, in pitch darkness, over broken country on unreliable horses, and had not once fallen or been thrown. He had been in barrooms and other crowded situations with outlaws who would shoot you if they didn't like the way you removed your hat; yet, he had removed his hat pretty much as he pleased and had never been shot.

He knew he was fortunate, not merely because none of his own blood had ever been spilled in battle, but because he himself had spilled only a minimum, considering the circumstances under which he had to operate. He had killed three Comanches and one Kiowa, and hung three determined horse thieves, a modest tally by the standards that had prevailed on the frontier in his youth.

A man like Woodrow Call, a lawman most of his life, had far more on his conscience, when it came to taking life, than he himself had.

It was Call, mainly, that Goodnight had on his mind, as he sat in the kitchen by the little fireplace. That night, after consuming his lightly singed beefsteak, he had taken his rifle from behind the door and cleaned it. He did the same with a .44 Colt he had carried daily until a year or two before, when the spread of the settlements had made such a frontier artifact unnecessary, unless one was on a trip. Goodnight knew that it had mainly been the fact that he was there, on his ranch with his wife and cowhands, that had encouraged the first trickle of settlements into the Panhandle.

Thereafter the trickle had increased; soon the trickle grew until there were towns and villages and sufficient law that sidearms gradually ceased to be a part of everyday dress.

All his cowboys still wore pistols, of course; they claimed they kept them to use on snakes, but in fact, few of them could shoot well enough with a pistol to hit a rattlesnake in under ten shots at point-blank range.

The cowboys wore the guns from wi/lness, Goodnight supposed. They wanted to feel that they were living in a West that was still wild. It was harmless nostalgia, for the most part; as long as they didn't injure themselves or the livestock, he put no strictures on their use of firearms.

But the Panhandle was no longer the wild West --not by a long shot. The cowboys could play and posture all they wanted to, adjusting their holsters and practicing fast draws. The fact was, they were herdsmen, not gunfighters, and it would be colossal bad luck if their herding ever brought them inffcontact with a real killer, of the sort that had once been common in the West. If any of his cowboys were that unlucky, they would certainly be killed. Roping and branding and riding pitching horses was no preparation for dealing with deadly men.

Goodnight had cleaned the rifle and oiled up the pistol restlessly, with a troubled mind. He could not get Lorena, the young schoolteacher, out of his thoughts. She had left to find her husband; and her husband, at Goodnight's own insistent urgings, had left first, to go to the assistance of Captain Call. Goodnight had a nagging feeling about the whole business--it nagged him so severely that he had scarcely slept, for three nights. If Mary had been home, she would have been having conniptions, at the thought of all the kerosene he was burning in the kitchen lamp.

The fact was, there still were deadly men in the West, and there was a vast space in which they could operate. The country between the Pecos and the Gila was still mostly no-man's-land. Its emptiness made it a magnet for killers, and at least two of some determination were operating there right now. Mox Mox was probably only a paltry bandit, with a few horse thieves for companions, but he was the man who had piled brush on four cowboys and burned them to death near Pueblo, Colorado.

And he had been ready to do the same to Lorena.

The Garza boy didn't seem to be as morbid, or afflicted with the need to burn, but he, too, was a deadly killer who executed his victims at random, and without remorse.

Goodnight felt oppressed by his own thoughts. He had made a serious mistake, when he hectored Pea Eye at the blacksmith's in Quitaque. He had been too blunt, and had acted as if things had to be as they had been in the past. Lorena did not stay a whore; no more did her husband have to stay a Texas Ranger.

Except for the meeting at the blacksmith's, these two people, both a credit to their little community, would be at home with their children, the husband farming, the wife teaching school. And, what was most important, they would both be safe.

Now, they were far from safe. They were in the great emptiness of the Pecos country, where Mox Mox and the Garza boy were, too.

Perhaps Woodrow Call would eliminate the outlaws. He had eliminated a good number, some of them formidable, in his day. But he couldn't be everywhere, and he couldn't work miracles. He was one man, trying to find two killers in a big country.

Goodnight had supposed that he was past having to take up the gun. He hadn't had a serious encounter with an outlaw in twenty years. He had thought that sort of conflict behind him; certainly, Mary thought it behind him. If she had been home, he would not have been able to clean the rifle without a debate, probably vigorous. Mary believed in professionals: cattlemen ought to raise cattle; bankers ought to handle money; lawmen ought to deal with outlaws; and wives ought to run their households without interference from the men.

But Mary wasn't home, and anyhow, although he had often let Mary slow him, she had never stopped him, not when he felt he had a task that he should do.

"No, and God and his lightning bolts don't stop you either, Charlie," Mary had observed once, when he was about to leave for Colorado, in uncertain weather.

The weather was uncertain again, but Goodnight had never let weather interfere with him. No one who worked on the plains could afford to bend to weather, if they hoped to accomplish anything.

At four a.m., Goodnight strapped on his pistol, put his rifle back in its saddle scabbard, and went to the lots to catch his horse.

It was sleeting again. Dawn was nearly three hours away, but he was restless. He had decided to go, and was soon saddled and ready.

There was a light on in the bunkhouse kitchen.

Muley, for all his flaws, at least wasn't lazy. He was in the kitchen, arms white with flour, making biscuits for the cowboys, all of whom were still asleep except his yawning foreman, Willie Bascom, who was sitting up in his bunk trying to pull on his stiff boots.

"Breakfast ain't ready, I just got up," Muley said, the minute Goodnight stepped in the door.

"Fry some bacon. I have to leave, and I hate to travel on an empty stomach," Goodnight said. "I hope that won't interrupt your schedule too much." "I usually fry the bacon last, but I guess you're the boss," Muley said.

"I was the last time I wrote you a paycheck," Goodnight said.

Goodnight poured his own coffee, since Muley hadn't offered to. The bacon was soon crackling and spitting grease. Willie Bascom came over and accepted a cup of coffee. He had his boots on, but did not look happy to be up.

"I didn't think we was branding till tomorrow," he said. "I guess I lost shut of a day." "No, you're branding tomorrow," Goodnight said.

"I hate to desert, but it's just the branding. You can handle it yourself." "Don't see why not," Willie Bascom said.

"What's taking you off in a sleet storm?" Muley asked. Another habit he shared with many ranch cooks was inquisitiveness. It was not so much that he didn't mind his own business; he just didn't recognize that there was any business that wasn't his.

"I'm going on a wolf hunt," Goodnight said. He finished his bacon and his coffee.

Cowboys were just beginning to crawl out of their bunks.

"These biscuits will be ready in another few minutes," Muley said. "You might as well wait and eat a few--you can't see to shoot a wolf when it's this dark, anyway." "No, I'll have to do without the biscuits," Goodnight said. Despite the weather, he was impatient to leave. He had saddled his best horse, a big roan named Lacey. The horse's coat steamed as the snow melted on it.

"He had his pistol on," Muley remarked, once Goodnight left. "That's the last time I'll offer him biscuits, if he's always going to be in such a hurry." "It's been five years since I've seen him wear his pistol," Willie Bascom said.

By the time the cowboys finished their breakfast, Goodnight was many miles to the south. The sleet had gotten heavier, but he didn't notice.

He had too much on his mind.

By the time Maria reached Ojinaga, her feet were badly cut from the icy, stony ground. Since leaving the railroad, Maria had walked without shoes. The train took the seven women east; the conductor was reluctant, but not so reluctant that he would leave seven women to die in the cold.

By then, Maria's shoes were gone. The wet snow and icy weather cracked them. She cut up the bag she had carried the jerky in and wrapped her feet in the sacking, but the sacking was thin and wore out within a few miles.

From then on, Maria was barefoot. She went slowly, avoiding cactus, trying not to cut herself on rocks or ice. Her food gave out when she was three days from the river. Since leaving the railroad, she had not seen a single human being.

The conductor had offered to take her to Fort Worth. What did one more woman matter? He told her she was a fool, to try to walk to Mexico in such weather. Mox Mox had taken two children from a ranch near Comstock. He could be anywhere. Any day, he might appear with his men and catch her. Speculation was that he had already burned the children, a boy of nine and a girl of six. If he caught Maria, she could expect a hard death.

The conductor grew irritated with the woman when he saw that she wasn't going to take his advice.

Maria merely looked at him, without expression, when he offered to take her on the train. He didn't like sullen women. Who was she, that she could turn down free passage to Fort Worth?

"My children don't live in Fort Worth--I would just have to come back," Maria said. She wanted to be polite. After all, the man had accepted the seven women.

"You've got no shoes," the conductor pointed out. Despite rough travel, the Mexican woman was good-looking. Once she was on the warm train and had some food in her, she might become friendlier. Perhaps she could be persuaded to show her gratitude for what he was doing for her friends.

"You've got no shoes," the conductor said, again. He felt like dragging her onto the train.

It would be a kindness, in the end. It might save her life.

"No, but I have feet," Maria said. She saw how he was looking at her--men were always men.

She had intended to ask for a little food, but when she saw the conductor's look, she turned and walked away from the train. Men were always men--she would have to find food elsewhere.

But she found no food. Only the sight of the mountains gave her the strength to keep walking.

Her children were west of the mountains. Crossing the Maravilla Canyon was very hard, though. She had to crawl up the far side.

The day before Maria got home, she saw three cowboys in the distance. She hid in the sagebrush until they were out of sight. They belonged to the big ranch. Perhaps they would remember her; if so, it might be hard. She was too tired and too weak to be worried with cowboys. If they were too hard on her, she might forget her children and die. She still wanted to take her children to the doctors, so that Rafael's mind and Teresa's eyes might be fixed.

It seemed a big thing to hope for, though. She was tired and hungry, alone, and with no money.

Even if she got home, she would have no money.

But it was only her hope for her children, however farfetched that hope might seem, that kept her will strong and gave her strength to keep putting her torn, swollen feet on the hard ground.

Rafael and Teresa had no one but her to think ahead for them, to consider how their lives might be if she could take them to the great doctors who knew how to cure eyes and fix minds.

Finally, Maria saw the curve of the river.

She crossed well below Presidio. She did not want the hard sheriff to find her, just as she was almost home.

Teresa heard her mother's footsteps and went running to her, though the chickens squawked loudly at such an interruption. Rafael stumbled after his sister, carrying a young goat he had taken as a pet.

While Maria was still holding her children in the road, Billy came out and told her that Captain Call had destroyed the hard sheriff, beating him with a rifle.

"That's right," Billy Williams said.

"Joe Doniphan's done for. He's had to quit. You can walk right through the middle of Presidio and not a soul will bother you." "Did you see Call?" Maria asked.

"I reckon I did," Billy said.

"Call and a Yankee and a deputy from Laredo came riding up the Concho and stopped right at this house." Maria saw that her children were healthy. Teresa's hair had not been brushed well, and Rafael's shirt was not as clean as she would make it when she washed his clothes. But they were healthy. Billy had done a good job. Maria smiled at him, to show that she was not without gratitude. Since leaving the railroad, she had been thinking bad thoughts about men. She had left her children with this man, and he had cared for them well, although she had never been with him in the bed. Whatever his disappointments, he had been decent, and he had cared for her children. It was a thing she would not forget. She meant to try and help Billy a little, once she was rested. He was an old man, he drank too much, he didn't keep himself clean, and he was not very well.

Now, though, she felt frightened for Joey.

Captain Call had found her village, and even her house.

"Did Famous Shoes bring him here?" she asked. The old tracker was not to be trusted. He liked money too much.

"Nope, never got this far," Billy said.

"Famous Shoes and another deputy were in Joe Doniphan's jail when Call showed up. Joe wouldn't let 'em out. He pulled a gun on Call, and that's when Call started whipping him with the rifle barrel." "Did you tell Call anything about Joey?" Maria asked, suspiciously. When it came to Joey, she trusted no one.

"No, why would I?" Billy asked. "Do you take me for a lawman?" "I'm sorry," Maria said. "Let's go in the house. I need to heat some water, and I need to eat." Billy and Teresa made her soup.

She took a little, but she felt feverish and did not take much. The next day, Billy killed a baby goat--not Rafael's pet--and fed her some of the tender meat. Maria's fever got worse, though. For more than a week, she tossed with it, too weak to get out of her bed. Billy and Teresa cared for her, giving her a little soup, and bathing her face with cool rags.

Maria's mind flew around, while the fever burned or chilled her. She saw Joey hanging from the rock where Benito had died. In a dream, Benito came to her as a baby and tried to suck her breast. She dreamed about Captain Call beating the hard sheriff with a rifle--only the hard sheriff changed into Joey. It was Joey who the Captain beat.

When the fever broke and Maria could look clearly at the world again, Billy Williams was asleep on the dirt floor by her bed. He had a bottle of whiskey beside him, but had drunk only a little. The bottle had fallen over, and whiskey was seeping out. Billy slept with his mouth open. To Maria, he seemed older than he had seemed when she took the fever. He looked gray, as if he had no blood.

It was a chilly morning. When Maria got up, she covered Billy Williams with the serape she had been using for herself.

"Mother, a man came and looked at me," Teresa said. She was glad that her mother was out of bed.

"What kind of man?" Maria asked.

"A gringo--he is the one who is hunting Joey," Teresa said. "I could feel him looking at me." Again, Maria felt frightened. Call had destroyed the hard sheriff. He was hunting her son. What business did he have, coming to her house and looking at her daughter?

"Go in the house, if he comes back," Maria said. "Don't let him look at you. He is a bad man. He wants to kill Joey. Don't ever let him look at you." "He said I was pretty," Teresa said.

"He didn't do anything bad." "He was right--you are pretty," Maria said.

She hugged her daughter. They sat in a chair by the table. Rafael came in with his pet goat and sang the goat a little song. Maria held her daughter in her arms for a long time.

Someday, Teresa would be a woman, but Maria didn't want that time to be soon. She held her daughter tightly. Rafael sat down by Maria's chair, holding his goat in his lap.

Maria stroked his hair. Then she held Teresa tightly. Teresa liked it, when her mother held her close, in her warm arms.

Maria wished that this could be their life forever, just herself and her children sitting in her warm kitchen together.

If such a time could be the whole of life, then life could be happiness. If Teresa could remain a child in her arms, then Teresa would never know the deep sorrows of womanhood, sorrows as deep as the cold water in the village well. She sniffed her daughter's neck. Teresa still smelled like a child. She did not smell like a woman, yet. Rafael had stopped changing.

Unless she could find a doctor to fix his mind, Rafael would always be a boy. He would not know many of the sorrows of men.

But Teresa was growing; only her eyes were arrested. Teresa had heard Captain Call's compliment, and remembered it. She would not always fit in Maria's arms, and she would not always smell like a little girl. Maria meant to hold her as long as she could. Joey might be evil; he might be lost. Rafael might always be young in his mind. But Teresa was whole; she lacked only sight.

Someday, she would escape from her mother's arms and walk out in her beauty into the world of sorrows.

Maria didn't want it to be soon.

Call had a sense that someone was behind him, but if so, it was someone smart. After two days, the sense was so strong that Call doubled back twice. If it was the Garza boy, Call might surprise him. Even if he didn't surprise him, he could probably strike his track and determine whether the boy was alone.

In the course of four days' travel, he doubled back three more times, but he didn't surprise Joey Garza, and he struck no track.

Yet, the sense that someone was behind him wouldn't leave him. It became a conviction, though none of his maneuvers produced the slightest evidence of a pursuer. Anyone following him would have had to be on horseback, and horses left tracks. But there were no tracks. If it was the Garza boy, then he was a formidable plainsman.

In the cold night, Call rode a circle, hoping to glimpse a campfire, but there was no campfire, either.

It was vexing, because it made him distrust his own instincts. Maybe he had slipped a notch, as a tracker; or maybe he had just begun to imagine things. Never before had he followed his instincts and come up totally empty.

All he could do was travel cautiously. At night, he made no fires; he slept little, and kept his horse saddled and the bridle reins in his hand when he lay down. During the day, he kept as much space around him as possible. He tried to stay a mile or more from any cover that might shelter a killer with a fine rifle and a telescope sight. He whirled his horse often, hoping to catch a flash of reflection on a spur or a bridle bit, but he saw no reflections.

He was alone; yet, he knew he wasn't.

Then it occurred to him that perhaps the boy wasn't on horseback. Perhaps he was a runner, like Famous Shoes, or some of the celebrated Apaches. If so, he was bold indeed. Few men of experience would voluntarily put themselves afoot in such country, in the wintertime. Few would be able to do without fire to rest by, in the freezing night.

Call's own hands ached terribly, in the mornings. Three days passed without his even unsaddling his horse. He was afraid he might not be able to pull the saddle straps tight again, with his sore hands. When the horse grazed, he walked with him. One night, he napped on his feet, leaning against the horse for warmth. He took the trigger guards off both rifles; his knuckles were too swollen to fit through them.

On the fifth day, he crossed the trail of Mox Mox and his men. They were traveling toward Fort Stockton. The trail was fresh--the gang had just passed. In fact, to the northwest, Call did see a flash, as the sun struck some piece of equipment.

Call checked the loads in both rifles and took his extra Colt out of the saddlebags. It was midafternoon. He turned northwest, on the easily followed track of the killers. He put his horse into a lope, debating with himself about the timing of his ambush.

He could try to overtake them that day; his mount was fresh enough. If he could kill Mox Mox and the Cherokee, the others might run. But he needed good light to shoot by, and he also needed to be close. He was not shooting a German rifle with a telescope sight. He was confident of his marksmanship, but only if the range and the light were favorable. If he attacked at night, as Gus had once attacked Blue Duck's camp, it would all be guesswork, and anyhow, he had never been as reckless on the attack as Gus McCrae.

Within an hour, it became apparent that catching up with the gang would be no trouble. They were idling along. Call soon had to drop back and veer west of them to lessen the danger of being observed.

He decided then to try to close the gap and hit them as they made camp. They didn't know he was following them, and might not immediately set a guard.

The outlaws were even lazier than Call judged them to be, at first. It was only a little past midafternoon when they made camp. Call walked his horse for the last three miles, as he approached. He was one against eight, and he wanted to be as meticulous as possible in what he had to do.

He could not expect to thunder in and kill eight men, or even cripple them sufficiently to remove them as a threat. Above all, he had to try to kill the fighter, Jimmy Cumsa, first.

As Call cautiously moved, foot by foot, to within two hundred yards of the camp, he heard a child scream. It was a rude surprise--Mox Mox must have taken a child from some farm or ranch, in his marauding. The outlaws had not even made a campfire yet; surely they couldn't be burning the child.

But the child continued to scream, as Call crept closer. The child's screams rang in Call's ears, echoing other screams, heard years before.

On one of his first forays against hostile Indians, when he was a young Ranger, the troop had surprised a little cluster of Comanche, on the Washita. They recovered two young white captives, both girls. Just before the Rangers raced down on the camp, one of the little girls screamed. An old Comanche woman was beating her with a stick. Call shot the old woman, the only female he ever killed in his years of battle. The little girls had lost their minds, from the cold and the beatings. The one the old woman was beating recovered and married; the other one was never right.

When Call got close enough to look over a low ridge, down into the camp where the child was screaming, he saw that Mox Mox had two children, a boy and a girl. They were bound together by a short length of chain. Mox Mox was quirting the boy savagely, whipping him in the face. The little girl seemed too terrified to even whimper, but the boy screamed every time the quirt struck him.

Call looked first for Jimmy Cumsa, but saw at once that he had no clean shot at him--the Cherokee was among the horses, preparing to hobble them for the night. The three Mexicans, the giant, and a small man were standing idle, easy targets. But the giant was standing between Call and Mox Mox, watching him quirt the child. The eighth man Call couldn't immediately see, which worried him.

Call had never seen a man beat a child so savagely. What the old Comanche woman on the Washita had done to the young girl was merely rough, compared to the whipping he was witnessing. Call felt he had to act quickly; otherwise, Mox Mox might whip the boy's eyes out, or even kill him with the quirt. There was no time to plan; he had to shoot, if he wanted to save the child's eyesight and possibly his life. He could not shoot the Cherokee first, or the manburner, either. He had to act, if he hoped to save the little boy's vision.

Call shot the giant man first, hoping he would fall clear and give him a clean shot at Mox Mox. But the giant staggered, leaving Mox Mox mostly hidden. Calf went ahead, risked one shot and hit him, but Mox Mox did not fall.

Even before he could lever a third shot, he heard horses racing away and knew that Jimmy Cumsa was escaping. The Cherokee had taken two horses and was hanging between them; Call couldn't see him at all.

He shot again at Mox Mox and hit him in the shoulder; then Mox Mox, too, was among the horses. The three Mexicans and the small man were running for their rifles, which had been propped against their saddles. They were slow, perhaps drunk.

Call shot all four of them and put them down, not for good, probably, but down.

Mox Mox couldn't ride as well as Jimmy Cumsa. Even without a broken shoulder, he could not have handled animals well enough to hang between two horses, but he managed to do the next best thing, which was to spook all the horses and raise a dust.

Call snapped a shot at one of the horses Jimmy Cumsa was escaping with; the horse went down, but the Cherokee didn't go down with it. He switched to the other horse and struggled into the saddle. Call shot again, but by then the range was long and the bullet kicked up dust.

One of the fallen Mexicans was trying to run to his horse, but his horse was carrying Mox Mox away. Call shot the Mexican again and then threw one more shot at Mox Mox. He could scarcely see him, for the dust, but he thought he hit him in the leg. The big man was stirring, so Call shot him again. What nagged him was the eighth man--where could he be? Almost as the question registered in his mind, he saw a man trying to pull up his pants, a good distance beyond the camp. He had been shitting and was trying to get his pants up so he could run away, when Call saw him. He was a long way from camp, but Call took a slow aim and brought him down.

Mox Mox and Jimmy Cumsa were far out of range, but still going. Maybe they would keep running, but there was also a chance they would return and make a fight of it. It would depend on how badly Mox Mox was wounded, and whether he was disposed to fight. Jimmy Cumsa had run from Quanah Parker; probably he would run again, but that was not a certainty.

Call reloaded, took both rifles, stuck one in his belt, andwitha pistol in one hand and a rifle in the other, leading his horse--he had to hold the bridle reins in his teeth--came down into the camp. Of the six men down, only the last one, the one who had been shitting, was dead; when, a little later, Call walked out and turned him over, he found a boy in his late teens, with black teeth. The other men he had to dispatch with his pistol, which he did quickly. He was not in a position to take prisoners, much less to nurse wounded outlaws who would only recover to be hung, if they recovered at all.

Call had no difficulty freeing the children. The short chain that held them was only fastened with wire. The little boy was still moaning; his face ran blood. Call washed the blood away with water from one of the dead men's canteens. One of the boy's eyes had swollen shut, probably from being hit with the tip of the quirt. The eye itself did not appear to be hurt, and the other eye was not damaged. The cuts on the boy's face were deep, but he was young, and he would recover.

The little girl grabbed Call's leg and clung to it so tightly he had to pull her arms loose in order to lift her up.

"Want Ma. ..." she said. "Want Ma.

..." The little boy had stopped moaning. He seemed numb. He looked at Call with his one open eye gratefully, though.

"He said he'd whip my eyes out," the boy said. "He said he'd burn Marcie." "He's gone--he won't put your eyes out and he won't burn your sister. Can you stand up?" The boy stood up. He was shaky, from the shock of the violence, and probably from lack of proper food. But he could walk.

The horse Call shot was on its feet again; it stood pawing the ground, about a hundred yards away. It was saddled. If it was not too badly injured, it might do for the children. Call was keenly conscious that he needed to move, and move at once. The ridge that had provided his cover before the fight would provide the same cover for the Garza boy, who, if he was following, would undoubtedly have heard the shooting. All Joey Garza would have to do would be to crawl up behind the ridge and shoot; he wouldn't need his telescope sight. Call and the children were within easy range.

"Stay a minute, I need to catch this horse so we can go," Call told the children. He left them standing together. The little girl tried to run after him, but the boy grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

Call caught the wounded horse easily and was relieved to see that its wound wasn't crippling.

The wound was in the neck. It was bleeding profusely, but he could stop the bleeding, and the horse could carry the two children. Fort Stockton was not more than forty miles away.

"Mister, have you got a biscuit?" the boy asked, when Call returned, leading the horse.

"Me and Marcie ain't had no food. That squint-eye wouldn't give us none." Call rummaged quickly in the dead men's kit and found some jerky and a few stiff tortillas. He gave them to the children.

"This is all I can do for now," Call said.

"We have to leave here. Can you ride a horse?" "I guess I can," the boy said, with some pride. "Pa got me Brownie when I was three, and I'm nine now." His wounds were still running blood. The whole front of his shirt was stained with it. But that could be attended to later, when they were safe.

"We have to move," Call said. "We ain't safe here. The man who quirted you might come back." "Why didn't you kill him, mister?" the boy asked.

"I tried--I hit him," Call said.

"I wish you'd kilt him," the boy said. "He said he'd burn Marcie." Call gathered up serapes from the dead men.

He wrapped the children well, against the cold, and put them on the wounded horse. Probably neither of the children had been warm in days. The little girl shivered so badly that Call thought he might have to tie her to the horse, but he didn't. It wouldn't do to have her tied to a horse if there was another fight.

He took several blankets and what food he could find. At the last minute, he discovered a piece of antelope haunch, wrapped in some sacking. That was lucky. He cut off two pieces and gave them to the children, to gnaw as they rode.

He decided to lead the wounded horse. With Mox Mox and Jimmy Cumsa somewhere ahead of him, perhaps waiting in ambush, and with Joey Garza behind him, if it was Joey Garza behind him, he needed as much control over the animals as he could get.

"What's your name?" Call asked the boy, before he mounted.

"Bob," the boy said. "Bobby Fant." "Why, son ... is Jasper your pa?" Call asked. "Jasper Fant?" "That's our pa. How'd you know his name, mister?" the boy asked. His wounds had stopped bleeding and had crusted over. Call had packed some sand in the wound in the horse's neck, and it was no longer bleeding so badly.

"Your pa worked for me once," Call said.

"We went to Montana together. I didn't even know he had married. Last I heard of him, he was in Nebraska." "Nope, we live out by Comstock now," the boy said.

"Say, are you Captain Call?" he asked, his eyes widening. He even got the swollen eye open, in his amazement.

"Yes, I'm Captain Call," Call replied.

"Pa always talks about you," the boy said. "He said if anyone ever took us, he'd get you to find us, even if it was Indians that got us." "Well, it's your good luck that I did find you," Call said. "You hold on to your sister and don't let her fall off.

"We may have to ride all night, Bob," he said. "There's a town we can get to tomorrow if we don't stop. Once we get there, you'll both be safe and I can send you home to your ma and pa." "Want Ma. ..." the little girl said again.

"Want Ma. ..." "You'll have her," Call said. Despite being wrapped in two serapes, the little girl was still shivering, chilled through by the long cold, Call supposed.

"Don't let her fall," he said again, to the boy.

"Oh, I don't guess Marcie will fall off. She's got her own pony, back home," the boy said.

Call took the lead rope and headed immediately into the widest space he could find, well away from the ridges. He was glad that Fort Stockton was no farther than it was. It was bitter weather, and the children had gone through a brutal experience. They might sicken yet, and probably would. He wanted to get them to a place where there were warm houses and a proper doctor. They seemed to him to be remarkably plucky children. That was even more remarkable in view of the fact that their father was Jasper Fant, a man who complained constantly about his ills, real or imagined. He had been a Hat Creek cowboy and had made the drive to Montana. His main terror was of drowning, but it took only a sniffle to bring out Jasper's complaints.

Night fell, and Captain Call kept riding. He stopped now and then to check on the wound in the horse's neck. The little girl had gone to sleep, propped against her brother's chest.

Bobby, the boy, was wide awake.

"We're gonna keep going," Call told him. "Gnaw on that meat and give your sister some if she wakes up." "My hands are freezing off," the boy said.

"I wish it wasn't so cold." "Keep your hands under the blanket," Call said. "I can't stop and make a fire. Mox Mox might find us." "That squint--I wish you'd kilt him," Bobby said.

"Well, I didn't, but I might yet," Call said.

Call rode on, trying to knot an old bandanna around his neck to protect it from the cutting wind. The little gun battle had been badly handled, he knew. Bobby Fant was right to reproach him for not killing Mox Mox. The boy's screams had caused him to rush what he ought not to have rushed. It would have been wiser to let the boy endure the whipping for another few seconds.

The large man might have moved out of the way and given him a clear shot at Mox Mox. He might even have had a clear shot at Jimmy Cumsa, if he had waited a minute more to start firing.

As it was, he had rushed, and the result of his rushing was that he had killed the six incompetents and let the two really dangerous men escape. It was foolish behavior. He had rescued the children, but he hadn't removed the threat. He should have kept his mind on the prime object, which was to kill Mox Mox. Jimmy Cumsa might be deadly, but he hadn't been leading the pack, and he didn't quirt children for his amusement.

Another truth, just as discouraging, was that he had not shot well. Only the boy who had been caught with his pants down had been killed cleanly, with one shot, and that was probably luck.

All the others had required two or more bullets. It was poor shooting, and yet he'd had all the advantages: not a shot had been fired at him, he had been shooting from less than fifty yards' distance, and he had taken the men completely by surprise.

Call blamed his swollen knuckles. Also, he wasn't as sure of his eyesight as he had been. If the men had been better fighters, he would have been in trouble. If Mox Mox and Jimmy Cumsa had taken cover instead of running, the outcome of the struggle might have been different.

Call often picked over battles, in his mind. There were few fixed rules. Once men started shooting at one another with deadly intent, strategies and plans were usually forgotten. Men acted and reacted according to their instincts. Experience didn't always tell; veterans of many battles made wild, inexplicable mistakes. Even men who remained perfectly calm in battle did things that they could not make sense of later, if they survived to rehash the battle.

But, right or wrong, it was done. At least he had Jasper Fant's children, and they would survive, if he could get them to a warm place soon enough.

As Call rode on, the cold grew more intense. His mind returned again and again to the shooting. It troubled him that he had shot so poorly. Augustus McCrae, given similar advantages would probably have killed all the men with a pistol.

Before the night ended, the children got so cold that Call had to stop and risk a fire. He could barely gather sticks with his stiff fingers. The children's feet were so cold that Call knew he was risking frostbite if he didn't do something.

Fortunately, there was enough scrubby brush that he soon had adequate wood. He made two fires and put the freezing children between them. The crusted blood on the boy's face was icy. He had been plucky when first rescued, but had gone into a kind of shock and couldn't speak. The little girl was so cold she was past whimpering.

Call built up the fires and kept them flaming as the children slept. He himself hunkered near the flames only a few minutes at a time. It was so cold that he doubted any killer would be vigorous enough to take advantage of them. But he couldn't be sure, and he didn't want to get too warm himself. When he hunkered by the fire, fatigue began to suck at him, a deep fatigue. He was accustomed to sleeping in snatches; squatting, leaning against a horse; he had even slept riding, if the country was flat and the horse reliable. In the Indian-fighting days, he had tried to acquire the abilities and the endurance of his foes. He wanted to be able to do anything a Comanche could do, or an Apache.

Gus had scoffed at the notion. He said no white man could live as an Indian could, or travel as fast, or subsist on as little.

Probably Gus had been right about that. And if he hadn't been as able as the best of the Indians when he was young, there was little hope that he could compete with one now. Joey Garza was Mexican, not Indian, but many Mexicans were part Indian, and there was a rumor that the Garza boy had lived with the mountain Apaches for several years. The cold might not affect him; once, it would not have affected Call, either.

With things so uncertain, it wouldn't do to give way to fatigue, or to nap too long by the campfire. He might wake up to discover that his throat had just been cut.

In the morning, the frost was so heavy that Call had to scrape ice off the saddles. The children were so cold they couldn't eat. He decided that he had better tie them to the horse. Though there was a band of red on the eastern horizon, the sun was soon blanketed by heavy clouds, and the cold remained intense.

The wounded horse was stiff--it could barely move, and not rapidly. Fortunately, when they had been riding an hour, Call saw a few plumes of smoke to the northwest, clear in the freezing air. The smoke was coming from the chimneys of Fort Stockton.

A little later, he saw more smoke, on the eastern horizon. This smoke moved westward, and it came from a train. Call couldn't see the train, but he knew the railroad was there, for nothing else would be moving under a plume of smoke.

The wounded horse slowed to a walk, and then to a slower walk. A little before midday, the horse stopped. It could go no farther. By then, the town was no more than five miles away. Call left the horse; perhaps it would walk on in, under its own power, once it had rested for a day. He put the children on his horse, only to have his horse come up lame a mile or two farther on. A needlelike sliver of ice had cut its hoof.

But the town was not far. The little girl had recovered a little, and now and then asked for her mother.

Bobby Fant, his face a horror of frozen cuts, had not spoken all day. Call took his time, walking the lame horse slowly. He didn't want to have to carry the children, or abandon his guns and equipment.

When they were only two miles from the town, they came upon two sheepmen, butchering sheep to sell in Fort Stockton.

"Dern, where'd you folks spring from?" the older sheepman said, when he saw Call leading the lame horse with two children on it.

"From far enough away that we'd appreciate a ride to somewhere these young ones can warm themselves," Call said.

"We'd more than appreciate it," he added.

"We'd pay a good fare if you'd take us in your wagon the rest of the way to town." "Mister, you don't have to pay us nothing--we was about to haul these carcasses in anyway," the younger sheepman said. They were shaggy men, in great buffalo coats, and they had three huge dogs with them. It had been the barking of the dogs that led Call to the wagon. There were no grazing sheep visible, though, just six bloody carcasses piled up in the wagon.

Call chose to walk behind the wagon, leading his lame horse. The young sheepman said there was a rooming house on the main street in town.

"It ain't fancy, but it's got beds," he said. "Who done that to that boy's face?" Bobby Fant's face had gotten worse during the night. It was swollen, and some of the cuts still leaked blood, most of which froze on his cheeks.

"A man named Mox Mox done it," Call said. "I shot him, but I don't think I killed him." "Somebody ought to kill the sonofabitch, then," the older man said. "I've seen rough stuff out here on the baldies, but I've never seen nothing like that--not done to a child." Call carried Bobby Fant into the little frame rooming house. The young sheepman got off the wagon for a minute and carried the girl, who was whimpering for her mother.

A woman stood just inside the door, looking out at them through the pane of glass. Call could just see her; she was blond. The young sheepherder brought the little girl in first. By the time Call eased through the door with Bobby Fant, the woman had already taken the little girl in her arms and was whispering to her.

Call couldn't hear what the woman was whispering. The fact that the blond woman had appeared so suddenly behind the pane of glass startled him a little. The woman looked familiar. He thought for a moment she might be the children's mother, Jasper Fant's wife, though he hadn't even known Jasper Fant had a wife until yesterday, and how the woman could have anticipated them and got to Fort Stockton was a mystery.

When the woman saw Bobby Fant's face, she drew in her breath.

"Mox Mox done that, didn't he, Captain?" she asked, touching the boy's cuts gently with her fingers. "Did you kill him, Captain?" "Well, I hit him," Call said. "I doubt it was mortal, but it might slow him enough that I can catch him." "Bring the boy to my room," the woman said.

"I just got off the train and was about to have a bath.

I've got hot water waiting. I'll put them both in the bathtub. It'll warm them quicker. Then I can wash those cuts." The woman started up the stairs with the little girl.

Call thanked the young sheepman and began to climb the stairs, carrying Bobby Fant. The moment he stepped into the warm rooming house, he had begun to feel tired, so tired that it was a strain even to carry the child up one flight of stairs. He was wondering, in his fatigue, how the woman had known who he was--and how she knew about Mox Mox.

It was not until the blond woman paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at him, the little girl in her arms, that Call realized who she was: she was not the children's mother, she was Pea Eye's wife.

"My Lord, you'll have to excuse me," he said, embarrassed. "I didn't recognize you." Call could not quite remember when he had last seen Lorena; in Nebraska, it seemed to him.

She had been a young woman then. Of course, many years had passed, and she would have to be older. But the fact that she was so much older that he hadn't recognized her, left him feeling at a loss.

"You don't need to be embarrassed," Lorena said. "You kept Mox Mox from burning these children, and you brought them out. That's enough." He carried the boy into her room where, indeed, a bath was steaming.

"Put him on the bed," Lorena said. "Just put him on the bed. I'll take care of these youngsters. You better go get a little rest yourself." "Yes, I'm weary," Call said.

In fact, he felt so weary that he could hardly carry the child across the small room.

"I'm mighty surprised to see you," he added. He felt that he ought to say more, but he didn't know quite what.

"I came looking for my husband," Lorena said. "I was hoping you'd have him with you." "I don't, but I know where he is," Captain Call said. "He ain't far." The woman's face brightened, when he said it.

He went downstairs and got a room key, though later, he was unable to remember getting a key or even going to the room.

When he woke up, fully clothed on a bed, many hours later, it was worry about his horse that caused him to wake. He had forgotten the horse completely, once he entered the rooming house, and had just left it standing in the street. He looked out the window, but could see nothing. It was pitch-dark.

He wondered if anyone had done anything about his horse.

Lorena didn't leave the children all day, except to walk down the street and find a doctor who could treat Bobby's face.

Fortunately, there was no damage to either eye. The boy could see fine, but some of the cuts on his cheeks were so deep that the doctor told her he would probably always bear the scars.

Lorena was not sleeping much, and did not expect to sleep much until she knew that Mox Mox was dead. The sight of Bobby Fant's face was enough to keep her awake. It reminded her too vividly of the little boy who had not been lucky enough to be rescued, the boy Mox Mox had burned in her place. That boy's death cries still echoed in her mind, and she remembered the deep, grinding fear she had felt as she waited for it to happen to her. The fear had been so nearly unbearable that it made the other things the men did to her seem a small business. She had trained herself over the years not to remember that fear. If she dwelt on it, even for an hour, it paralyzed her and made it difficult for her to do her schoolwork, or be a wife, or even do her motherly chores.

When she looked out the door of the rooming house and saw Captain Call coming, she had been shocked at how decrepit he looked.

Pea Eye had mentioned, casually, that the Captain wasn't quite as spry as he had been, but the comment hadn't prepared her for how the man actually looked.

Lorena had not seen Call since the morning, long before, when he had left Clara Allen's house with Gus McCrae's body. The man had not been young when he rode off that morning, but neither had he been the old man who walked stiffly into the rooming house in Fort Stockton. Of course, her daughter Clarie was fifteen years old, and Call's departure from Clara's on his trip back to Texas with Gus's body had occurred two years before she married Pea. She had not seen Captain Call in nearly twenty years.

She should have been prepared for him to be old.

She just hadn't supposed he would look so stiff and worn out. Of course, he had traveled a long distance with two children, in the bitter cold.

He had probably been traveling since the day Pea Eye had refused to go with him. Younger men than Captain Call would have been tired.

The day after he arrived with the children, Call was too tired even to go downstairs. He knocked timidly on Lorena's door and asked if she could request the lady who owned the rooming house to bring him some food. He also asked if Lorena would inquire about his horse. Had it been stabled and fed?

Lorena got him food, and was able to assure him that the local sheriff had taken charge of his mount. The lameness wasn't serious, and the horse would be ready to travel in a few days. Call seemed reassured. He considered it a serious lapse, that he had forgotten to stable his own horse.

"It was so warm, I guess I fainted," he said. "I don't recall going to bed. I don't usually forget to stable my horse." "You saved two children," Lorena pointed out, again. "There's people here who aren't busy that can take care of your horse." "Well, it's my horse," Call said. "I have always looked after my own mounts." "My seven-year-old can unsaddle a horse and feed it as well as you can, Captain," Lorena said. "But my seven-year-old couldn't save two children from Mox Mox." Call took the point--he didn't mention the horse again, for fear of irritating Lorena.

But he didn't forget the lapse, either. It took him a day and a half to feel refreshed enough to walk down to the livery stable and inspect the horse himself. He felt he ought to get moving, for none of the work he had set out to do had been accomplished. Mox Mox wasn't dead, or if he was, no one had found him. And he was no closer to catching Joey Garza than he had been when he left Amarillo. Brookshire would be having fits about the delay, and his boss, Colonel Terry, was probably having worse fits.

On the third day, Jasper Fant arrived with his wife, to take his stolen children home.

To Call's surprise, Jasper had grown bald; he had also grown a belly. His wife was a small woman, of the wiry type. Her name was May.

Both parents gasped when they saw their son's face. The wiry little mother held her children and sobbed.

Jasper turned a violent red.

"Why, the damned killer, why did he do it, Captain?" Jasper asked.

Lorena stood with Call, watching. The little girl clung to her mother's neck so tightly that the woman couldn't speak. Jasper and May had been on a train for two days. They had left as soon as the telegram came, telling them that their children were alive.

A few hours later, the little family got on the train to go home. May tried to thank Call, but broke into such sobs of gratitude that she couldn't get the words out. Jasper grasped his hand and held it until Call was afraid they'd miss their train, although they were standing two steps from it.

"I hope you kill that squint, mister," Bobby Fant said, as his father was helping him onto the train.

"Many thanks, Captain," Jasper said.

"We won't none of us ever forget what you've done. Me and May, we won't forget it. If you're ever down in Comstock I hope you'll stop and make a meal with us." "I will," Call said, glad that the train was leaving. He couldn't get over how bald Jasper was. Earlier, in the trail-driving days, the man had been somewhat vain about his hair.

"They're lucky," Lorena said, as she and the Captain were walking back to the hotel. "When Blue Duck had me, Mox Mox wanted to burn me. Blue Duck wouldn't let him--he wanted me for bait. But Mox Mox caught a boy somewhere, and he burned him in my place." "Why, I never knew that," Call said.

"Gus never told me--I'm surprised he kept it from me." "I didn't tell Gus," Lorena said.

"I didn't tell my husband, either. I told Mr. Goodnight, just before I left to come on this trip. He was the first person to hear about it, and you're the second." "You told Charlie Goodnight?" Call said, amazed. "Did he come around and ask?" "That's right," Lorena said. "He came around and asked. When can we go to my husband?" "He's in Presidio, or he's near there," Call said. "There's no train, and not much of a road. We'll have to go horseback." Call fell silent. He knew that Lorena had every right to go to her husband. Traveling the distance she had traveled already, and riding a train when two notorious train robbers were on the loose and every train liable to being stopped, showed unusual courage. Call was happy to relent and let Lorena take Pea home. The man's heart wasn't in law work anymore, if it was law work they were doing. It was better that he quit lawing for good, and take care of his wife and children, and his farm.

"Captain, I hope you don't doubt that I can ride," Lorena said, seeing the man hesitate. "I rode all the way to Nebraska, with that cow herd you and Gus drove.

And I lived with Clara Allen for three years, on her horse ranch. I can ride and I'll keep up. The cold don't discourage me. I want to go to my husband. If you're going to Presidio, I want to go with you." "Oh, it ain't the riding or the cold," Call said. "I'm told you drive a buggy every day to teach school--Charlie Goodnight told me that. He admires you. Riding to Presidio won't be much colder than driving your buggy to school, in the Panhandle." "What is it, then?" Lorena asked. "I can leave now. I'm packed. What is it?" As she asked the question, the sheriff of Fort Stockton, the fellow who had stabled Call's horse, saw them and practically ran toward them.

"Captain, did you get the news?" he asked.

"Why, no, I guess not," Call said.

"What news?" "Joey Garza killed Judge Roy Bean," the skinny sheriff said. "He gut-shot him and then strung him up to his own chimney.

Hung him. That's the news." "When?" Call asked.

"Maybe a week ago, about," the sheriff said.

"Nobody knows exactly, because nobody was there when it happened." "I was there about then, but I left," Call said. "Pea Eye and Brookshire and Deputy Plunkert were there, too, but they left night after I did." "A sheepherder found him," the sheriff said.

"Came by to get a bottle of whiskey and there the man hung, right by the door of his own saloon." "That boy must have been watching," Call said.

"He must be clever at hiding. I looked, and I didn't see him." "The sheepherders are all scared now," the sheriff said. "They're bringing their sheep closer to the towns." "I don't know what good that will do them," Call said. "They could run their sheep right here in the main street, and he'd still kill them, if he's that good at hiding." "Are you sure my husband left?" Lorena asked. The fear that had been with her for weeks rose up in her throat again.

"Well, he was saddled and ready when I rode off," Call said. "Brookshire was drunk and Deputy Plunkert and Famous Shoes were napping. But I imagine they left--your sheepherder didn't find but one body, did he?" "Nope, just one," the sheriff said. "Just old Bean. He was a tough old rooster, but I guess he's cawed his last caw." "I want to go, Captain," Lorena said.

"I don't want my husband shot, somewhere out in the wastes. There might not even be a sheepherder to find him." "I sent them into Mexico, so they'd be safe," Call explained. "I think the Garza boy came this way. I think he followed me, but I could never catch him at it.

He's a damn clever boy, to ambush Bean like that." "That's the end of Judge Roy Bean, I guess," the sheriff said. He felt slightly at a loss. He was hoping the great Ranger would want to talk it over, or perhaps ask his opinion about the best way to catch Joey Garza. He and his deputy, Jerry Brown, had figured out just how to do it.

But the old Ranger and the blond woman scarcely blinked at his news.

"I'm much obliged to you for looking after my horse," Call said. Then the two of them turned and walked back down the street. To the skinny sheriff, old Call seemed stiff, and far too slow to catch a swift young bandit such as Joey Garza. That was a job, in the sheriff's view, for much younger men, men about the age of himself and his deputy, Jerry Brown.

Call didn't speak as they were walking back to the rooming house. The fear was in Lorena's throat, not merely for Pea Eye's life, but fear that the Captain wasn't going to take her with him.

"Captain, I can ride," Lorena repeated.

"I can ride day and night, if I have to. I did it when we trailed those cattle, and I can do it now." "Ma'am, that was not my objection," Call said. "I'd like you to come." Call meant it, too. Lorena had come a long way, at some risk. She deserved to get to see her husband, and as soon as possible. The bond of a husband and a wife was one he had never had, and didn't understand, but he could tell, both from Lorena's behavior and from Pea Eye's, that it was a strong bond. He had come to admire Lorena, for the quick way she took charge of Jasper's children. She had given them excellent care.

Also, he wouldn't mind the company, in this instance.

Traveling alone had always suited him. It was only this winter that it had come to suit him less.

He was rather sorry that he had left Mr.

Brookshire behind. He had come to like Mr.

Brookshire.

"What is your objection then, if you have one?" Lorena asked.

"I don't know that I can protect you--that's it," Call said. "I let the Garza boy slip right by me and kill Roy Bean. Then, I let Mox Mox get away. That's two poor performances in a row. I just don't know that I can protect you." To his surprise, Lorena took his arm as they walked down the street.

"Did you hear me?" Call asked, fearing that he had not stressed the risk quite enough.

"I heard you, Captain," Lorena said. "I need to go find my husband. He's the one you ought to be protecting. Help me pick out a good horse, and let's go." Lorena's look was determined, and her step determined too. What she said startled Call, but by the time she walked him past the saloon and the hardware store, he had come to see that she was right.

Lorena had been taken by Blue Duck and held two weeks; but she had survived and recovered.

More than that, she had educated herself, and was rearing a family.

But Pea Eye had depended on him and Gus until the time when he came to depend on Lorena herself. Pea was able enough when he was given clear orders, but only when he was given clear orders.

No doubt Lorena was well aware of that characteristic, too. Pea Eye was not accustomed to acting alone. It was doubtful that he could have found his way to Presidio so promptly if he had been without the help of Famous Shoes.

Call picked out a strong mare for Lorena, and bought her an adequate saddle. An hour later, the two of them rode out of Fort Stockton, the strong wind at their backs.

The skinny sheriff and his deputy, Jerry Brown, stood in the empty, windy street, and watched them leave. The skinny sheriff was a little disappointed. The old Ranger had not been friendly at all.

"Now where are they going?" Deputy Brown asked.

"Why, I don't know, Jerry--they're headed south," the sheriff said. "I didn't ask them their route, and they didn't mention much." "We don't get women that pretty in this town, not often," Jerry Brown said. "I ain't seen one that pretty since I come out here, and I been out here six years. I wish she'd stayed a little longer." "Why?" the sheriff asked, surprised that his deputy was being so forward. "You don't even know the woman." "No, but I might have met her in a store or somewhere," Jerry Brown said. "I might have got to say hello to her, at least.

"I'm a bachelor," he added, though the sheriff knew that.

But soon, the Ranger and the pretty woman were swallowed up by the great blue distance to the south, and Deputy Jerry Brown, who was a bachelor, went back into the jail and spent the windy morning playing solitaire.

Part III Maria's Children

"Don't go off and leave me here, you goddamn Cherokee rascal!" Mox Mox said.

He wanted to kill Jimmy Cumsa and wanted to kill him badly; but he had no weapon and was sorely wounded, to boot. In the scramble to get away from Call, his pistol had fallen out of its holster. He had been flopped over his horse, and somehow, the gun got jerked loose.

Mox Mox bled and bled, and coughed and coughed as they ran. He was shot in the lung, which he knew was bad. Every cough caused a pain like needles sticking in him. Then Jimmy Cumsa rode up beside him and took his rifle. The scabbard had Mox Mox's blood all over it, but Jimmy took the rifle and scabbard anyway. Mox Mox had no pistol and was too weak to stop Jimmy.

Mox Mox rode on, as far as he could. He only had the one horse, but when the herd spooked, Jimmy had managed to keep three horses ahead of him. He had four mounts; he could run a long way.

"Let me switch, Jim--I need a fresher horse," Mox Mox said, as his horse began to tire, but Jimmy Cumsa didn't answer, or offer him a fresh horse, either.

Finally, his mount faltered, trying to climb out of a gully. They had ridden some twenty miles.

The horse stumbled back to the bottom of the gully and stood there, shaking. It was dusk; Mox Mox could barely see Jimmy Cumsa, who was in the process of shifting his saddle to one of the extra horses, the big sorrel that had belonged to Oteros.

Mox Mox slid carefully to the ground. He coughed, and the needles stuck him. He was trying to get matches out of his saddlebags, when Jimmy Cumsa came over and started to help him. Mox Mox took a step or two back, then staggered and sat down.

"Build a fire, Jimmy--it's chill," he said, but again, Jimmy didn't answer, and he wasn't helping, either. He simply transferred Mox Mox's saddlebags with the matches in them and a little food and ammunition to another horse.

"Build a fire," Mox Mox said, again.

"We'll freeze if you don't build a fire." "Nope, no more fires for you, Mox," Jimmy Cumsa said.

"Why not? What's wrong with you?" Mox Mox asked.

"Not near as much as is wrong with you," Jimmy Cumsa said. "I ain't shot in the lung, and I ain't dying. You're both, Mox. Building you a fire would be a waste of matches, and I ain't got the time to waste on a man that's dying anyway." "I ain't dying, I'm just shot," Mox Mox said. "I'll live if I can get warm." "Hellfire will warm you, Mox," Jimmy Cumsa said, mounting Oteros's big horse.

"You'll cook plenty warm down in hell, like all those people that you put the brush on and burned." Mox Mox realized then that Jimmy Cumsa meant it. He was not going to help him. He was going to leave him there to die, with a bleeding lung and no matches, in weather that was bitter.

"I should have killed you long ago, you Cherokee dog," Mox Mox said. "I should have shot you in your goddamn sleep." "You wouldn't have got me, even in my sleep," Jimmy Cumsa said. "I could be sound asleep, or drunk, and still be quicker than you. That's why I'm called Quick Jimmy." "You damn snake, get off and make me a fire," Mox Mox said.

"I ain't the snake," Jimmy Cumsa said.

"You're the one they call The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See. Only old Call seen you. He didn't get much of a shot, but he still killed you." "I ain't dead, I'm just shot, goddamn you!" Mox Mox said, again. "Make me a damn fire or leave me the matches, if you're in such a goddamn hurry. I'll make my own fire." "I am in a hurry," Jimmy said. "I want to be a long way from here when the sun comes up, Mox. That old man might still be coming. He killed seven of the eight of us, unless Black Tooth got away, which I doubt." "He ain't coming, he's got those children," Mox Mox said.

"Well, I don't believe I'll take the chance," Jimmy Cumsa said. "If he does come, he'll find you frozen, or else bled out.

I never thought a man that old could beat you, Mox, but I guess I was wrong." Mox Mox knew that his only chance was to rush Jimmy Cumsa, grab his gun or grab the reins of one of the other horses--grab anything that might help him survive. There must be brush in the gully that he could find and make enough of a fire to keep himself alive, even if he had to crawl.

He staggered up and tried to make a run at the horses. If he could just get one fresh horse, he might make it. But the needles in his lungs were sharper than ever, and he couldn't control his legs. He ran a few steps, but fell before he got near a horse. When he finally did get to a horse, it was the one Jimmy Cumsa had just run for twenty miles. It was as useless as his own.

Mox Mox had a small knife in his belt, the one he used to cut meat. It was his only weapon. He managed to get it out; with luck, he might stick Jimmy and cut him badly enough that he would fall off his mount. But when he lunged with his knife at where he thought the Cherokee was, Jimmy Cumsa wasn't there. He had taken the reins of the extra horses and ridden out of the gully. Mox Mox wanted to slash him to death for his treachery, but there was no one to slash. He could hear the clatter of the horses as Jimmy Cumsa loped away. But in a moment the sound grew faint, and in a few more minutes there was no sound at all, except his own breathing. In the sudden stillness, the sound of his own breathing shocked him.

His breath bubbled, as a cow or a sheep or a buffalo bubbled with its last breath.

Mox Mox felt a bitter rage.

An old man had come out of nowhere and shot him and all his men, except Jimmy Cumsa, and now Jimmy had deserted him, left him to bleed to death or freeze in a gully. How dare the old fool! If he'd only had a moment to turn and fight, he could have rallied the men and caught Woodrow Call and burned him. He could have shot him or stabbed him or quirted him to death.

Old Call had just been lucky to get in such a shot. It was Jimmy Cumsa's fault for messing with the horses when he should have been standing guard. None of the men, in fact, had been alert.

It served them right that they were all dead--all except Jimmy, the one who had ridden off and left him to die.

Mox Mox crawled to where his horse stood, caught the stirrup in his hand, and pulled himself to his feet. His only chance was to mount and make the horse keep going. Maybe there was a house somewhere that he could get to, someplace where there were matches, so he could build a fire. A fire would save him. He had built wonderful fires over the years, fires hot enough to warm him on the coldest nights, hot enough to burn anyone he had on hand to burn. If he could just get to a place where he could make a fire, a wonderful warm fire, the bubbling in his breath might stop and he would get better and live.

He pulled himself up slowly and managed with great difficulty to get himself into the saddle. But when he tried to spur his horse out of the gully, the horse refused to move. He jerked when he was spurred, but only took a step or two, and then stood there quivering again.

Mox Mox wouldn't stand for it; even his horse wouldn't obey him. He still had the small knife in his hand. In his rage, he began to stab the horse as hard as he could. He stabbed him in the neck and slashed at his shoulders. Then he stabbed him in the flank--he would make the animal go where he wanted it to go! He slashed at the horse's flank until the animal finally bolted and tried to flounder up the sides of the gully. But the sides of the gully were too steep.

In the dark the horse lost its footing and fell, rolling over Mox Mox as it slid back to the bottom of the gully. Mox Mox slid after it, and as he did, the horse kicked at him, catching him hard in the leg. When Mox Mox tried to stand, he heard his leg crack. He tried to stand up, but the leg wouldn't support him.

In his bitterness and rage at Call's good luck and his own defeat, Mox Mox hadn't fully felt the cold. But with his leg cracked and his breath bubbling, he could scarcely move.

Soon, the savage wind began to bite. Mox Mox began to think of cutting himself in order to feel the warmth of his own blood. But when he put the knife down for a moment and tried to ease himself into a more comfortable sitting position, the knife slid down the slope, out of his reach. He eased down a little ways himself, but he couldn't find the knife.

The blood seeping out of his chest began to freeze on his shirt. When he put his hand on his side, his blood was cold. He wanted a fire, but there was no fire and no way to make one. The coyotes began to yip in the cold distance. Mox Mox listened. He thought he heard horses coming from far away. He listened as hard as he could. Maybe Quick Jimmy had been teasing him; he was known to be a teaser. Maybe Jimmy would come back and build him a good crackling fire. Even if the horseman was old Call come to get him, the man might at least build him a fire and keep him alive through the night.

Mox Mox listened hard. Once or twice, he thought he heard the horses in the cold distance.

But mainly it was just the coyotes yipping. The wind died; it was cloudless and very cold. Mox Mox reached again for the knife. Better to cut himself than to freeze to death. But he still couldn't find the knife, and when he reached for it, he began to slide and then to roll over. He rolled to the bottom of the gully. There was not even a bush to crawl behind. The two exhausted horses had walked away. It might have been his own horse whose hoofbeats he had heard. There was no warmth anywhere--only the yipping of the coyotes and the yellow of the shining stars.

Mexico was colder on the second trip than it had been on the first, Brookshire thought, and it had been sufficiently cold the first time.

Every night he felt nervous about shutting his eyes, for fear that he'd freeze in his sleep.

They made roaring fires--he soon used the last of his ledger books, even burning the covers getting the fires started--but the fires didn't warm the ground, and the ground was where he had to lay himself down to sleep.

The Captain's departure had shocked Brookshire badly, that and the fact that they had been ordered back into Mexico on the vague hope that Joey Garza would show up at his mother's house. They had already been to his mother's house, and the young bandit hadn't been home. If the plan was to lie in wait for him, then they might as well have waited for him when they were there the first time.

Now Captain Call, the one man in the whole of the West that Brookshire had confidence in, wasn't even with them. Often in his life when he had failed to restrain his taste for brandy, things had slipped off course. Now it had happened again.

Things were twisting farther and ever farther off course, it seemed to him. The old Indian seemed irritated at having to make a long detour into Mexico to get back to the village. He trotted so far ahead of them during the cold days that Brookshire more than once concluded that they had been abandoned. Colonel Terry was going to think it a very odd way of proceeding. The Colonel had only wanted one bandit apprehended, and quickly. He was going to be mighty aggravated that so much time had passed without results.

Normally Brookshire would have been in a sweat at the thought of the Colonel's aggravation. But it was impossible to sweat when it was as cold as it was, and anyway, Colonel Terry, who usually entered Brookshire's thoughts at least once every five minutes, now entered them less and less often. When he did enter them, he did so less vividly. Colonel Terry had become mainly a memory from a different life. Brookshire didn't know whether he would ever return to that life, or ever see the Colonel again.

He rode along obediently, though. He tried to keep himself in order and not let the blowing-away feeling seize him too strongly.

There was not much else he could do. They were in Mexico, and keeping up with Famous Shoes was task enough for the moment. Vegetation was sparse, and by midafternoon, Brookshire would begin to be nervous about finding enough firewood to keep a good fire going through the night. He tried to keep the location of substantial bushes and trees firmly in mind, so he could return to them and make a fire out of them if he needed to.

Deputy Plunkert had been deeply upset when Pea Eye told him they were going back into Mexico. It was the one thing he had never intended to let happen; and yet, when the moment came to resign and go home, he rode numbly back across the Rio Grande, behind Pea Eye and Brookshire and old Famous Shoes.

Deputy Plunkert looked down the river when he was in the middle of it. Laredo was down there, and Doobie was down there. If he just turned left and followed the winding stream, he could not miss getting home. The river would lead him right to it, if some Mexican didn't kill him first.

That was the catch, though. To get home by way of the river meant going straight through the vicinities where he was most unpopular. Even on the Texas side of the river, there were places where he was rather unpopular.

Tired as he was, Ted Plunkert didn't feel up to coping with his own unpopularity. It was better to remain a part of the Captain's expedition. Once the bad outlaws were finished, caught, and hung, the Captain had promised to send him home on a train. The thought of the comfort to come was enough to keep him going.

Pea Eye had no interest in Mexico, but he didn't fear it. The Captain had given him clear orders, and all he had to do was follow them.

In order to follow them, all he had to do was keep up with Famous Shoes. The old man was unusually irritable, but he hadn't deserted them yet. Even if he deserted them, Pea Eye felt confident that he had enough ability to tell east from west. He could find his way back to the river, and eventually get where he had been told to go.

The third night, as they were making their campfire behind a little spur of rock, Famous Shoes came walking in from one of his swings through the country ahead.

"Olin is coming," he said. "He was about to make camp when I found him. I told him we already had a camp, so he is coming here." Pea Eye only vaguely remembered Olin Roy. Once in a while, long before, accident had thrown him into the same vicinity as the Ranger troop. He camped with them now and then. Pea Eye could not recall Olin's occupation, if he had one. Not every traveler did have an occupation, and a good many of those who had one wouldn't reveal it.

All he remembered about the man was that he was very large.

"Has he lost any weight?" he asked Famous Shoes. "The way he was back then, a horse could hardly carry him all day." "He weighs too much for his horses," Famous Shoes said. "He is easy to track, though." When Olin Roy rode into camp he didn't look very impressive to Deputy Plunkert or to Brookshire, either.

"I thank you," he said, formally, when Brookshire offered him a cup of coffee.

After that, he merely sat by the fire in his old greasy clothes, saying little.

"The weather's cold, ain't it?" Pea Eye said, rather at a loss as to how to address the big man.

"It could be colder--I've seen it colder," Olin said. He regretted letting Famous Shoes tempt him into making camp with the travelers. They were pleasant enough and generous with their coffee, but on the whole, he felt he did better camping alone. The necessity of making conversation didn't arise, since no conversation was required when he camped by himself. Making conversation with perfect strangers was to Olin an irksome task. Pea Eye wasn't a perfect stranger, of course, but neither was he someone Olin felt he could easily talk to. The only two people in the world he could talk to easily were Maria and Billy Williams, and even when alone with Maria, he rarely said that much. He usually just sat and listened as Maria talked, or he watched her brush her little girl's hair.

At such times he wished that life was different, and that he could marry Maria and be a settled man.

It was not possible, of course--Maria had no interest--but if matters had been different, Olin felt he would have been a happier man. There was no one who touched him as deeply as Maria, though he had never been her husband or a member of her family and had not had the pleasure of watching her with her children as a steady thing.

"Been anyplace special?" Pea Eye asked. The Captain had appointed him the leader of the group, which made him more or less the host; and as host, he felt he ought to try to prompt at least a little conversation.

"Well, Piedras Negras," Olin said.

"I've heard that was a rough town," Deputy Plunkert said.

"No, it ain't," Olin replied. "Of course, Wesley Hardin's there now. Any town he unsaddles his horse in is rough. But he just came for whores. I imagine he'll move on soon." "Why, we heard he was in Crow Town," Brookshire said.

"He was, but Maria took the whores and left," Olin said. "That's when Hardin left.

He likes places where there's whores." After that, conversation lagged.

Brookshire couldn't think of a thing to say. He was wondering if the fire would last the night.

Olin thought the group was rather odd. In his years of travel, mostly in Mexico, he had grown used to having odd groups turn up--Englishmen or Germans, prospectors, gunrunners, schemers of various kinds.

But this group was Woodrow Call's posse, it seemed; they were the men who were after Joey Garza.

They seemed like harmless fellows, and it was difficult to believe that any of them were gifted manhunters. The Yankee mostly shivered.

Pea Eye was an old Ranger who should have retired from the business long ago. The other man Olin didn't know; he had introduced himself briefly, but had mumbled his name so low that Olin didn't catch it. Even with old Famous Shoes to track for them, there was little likelihood they would ever get within fifty miles of Joey Garza, and if they did, it would only be worse for them.

Joey had a cold nature. There was no accounting for it, either. His mother was generous and warm. But wherever he got it, Joey had a cold nature.

If the men did happen to stumble on him, Joey would make quick work of them.

"What's the news from down the river, then?" Deputy Plunkert asked. It seemed to him that he had been gone from his home for years. He suddenly had a hunger to hear the news from Laredo.

The large man had been down the river as far as Piedras Negras, and perhaps he had heard something from Laredo. A bank robbery or a lynching might have occurred since he left, or a store might have burned down, or one or two of the older, more famous ranchers might have died.

"I didn't stay in Negras long enough to gossip," Olin said. "Having Hardin in town makes me uneasy. He don't look like much, but he's a wild one." "Any news from Laredo?" Deputy Plunkert said. "That's where I hail from." "Yes, they put that damn Sheriff Jekyll in his own jail," Olin said. "I hope they hang the rascal. There's no excuse for forcing a woman." "Bob Jekyll's in our jail?" Ted Plunkert said, very startled. "I'd say that's news." The first part of Olin's comment had startled him so much that he hadn't quite taken in the second part. The thought of Bob Jekyll locked in their jail was so astonishing that he hadn't yet started thinking about the nature of his crime.

"I guess some little gal came in asking about her husband, and the damned scoundrel forced her," Olin said. He had seen an Apache girl forced once, during the Indian times, and the sight had sickened him. Over the years whenever he thought of it, it sickened him. He knew that Maria had suffered something like that about the time that Joey started killing. From time to time, he considered going to Texas and taking vengeance on her attackers.

The men who used the Apache girl had shot her when they were through. Maria hadn't been shot, at least. But the thought of her suffering troubled him whenever he remembered it. Maria was the only woman he had tender feelings for. She should be exempt from such abuse, and if he did encounter the cowboys who attacked her, he planned to take their lives.

Suddenly Deputy Plunkert got a bad feeling.

"A woman asking about her husband ..." he repeated. Who but Doobie, of all the young women in Laredo, would go to Bob Jekyll to ask about her husband?

"Do you recall her name?" he asked; of course, there were other young women in Laredo. Other husbands might have strayed. In fact, husbands strayed fairly often. Most of them just got drunk and fell in a ditch to sleep it off.

Maybe it was another woman with a stray husband, who Bob Jekyll had forced.

"Why, no," Olin said. "I don't recall hearing her name. The poor thing took rat poison and died. They're trying the sheriff for murder, but I doubt he'll hang, myself." "Oh, Lord!" Ted Plunkert said. Something gripped him more powerful than the cold: the fear that it had been Doobie. He had been Bob Jekyll's deputy until he'd quit and gone off with Captain Call. Who but the deputy's wife would be going to the jail to inquire?

"She died?" he asked, in a weaker tone.

To everyone's amazement, Deputy Plunkert suddenly sprang up and went stumbling over to the horses. He looked like a crazy man.

"It was my wife. ... I fear it was her ..." he said, and then he mounted and went racing off in the darkness, to the south.

"Now, that's bad luck," Brookshire said.

"I believe I saw his wife as we were leaving Laredo. She was a pert young thing." "Ted oughtn't to run his horse at night, not in this rough country," Pea Eye said. "There's bluffs down the river that a horse could go right off." "I always despised that sheriff," Olin said.

They heard the clatter of the deputy's horse, receding to the south. Olin felt embarrassed.

Inadvertently, he had informed a man that his wife was dead. He more and more regretted letting Famous Shoes talk him into joining the camp. Now he had been the bearer of tragic news. If he had just gone on and made his own camp, the poor deputy would still be in ignorance of the fact that he no longer had a wife. Boy, he wished he had made his own camp, and built his own fire! He did not like to cause trouble, and yet he just did.

"Why, that's the devil," Brookshire said.

They could scarcely hear the deputy's horse.

What did the man think he was going to do, run the horse all the way to Laredo? It was hundreds of miles to Laredo. And what could he do when he got there? The poor young woman was no doubt long since buried.

Then Brookshire remembered that Katie, his own wife, was dead. Of course, her death had been normal; she had taken sick and died. There had been no abuse, and no rat poison. But still, his own wife was gone, and like Deputy Plunkert he would be returning to nothing, if he returned. The cold wind was blowing. It was always blowing.

Brookshire began to get a worse feeling even than the blowing-away feeling. It struck him that the expedition was cursed. He had lost his wife while on the trip, and now the same thing had happened to the young deputy, who should never have been hired in the first place. All Deputy Plunkert had done was ride pointlessly around Texas and Mexico, while his young wife was despairing and dying.

The search for Joey Garza was being pressed at a high price, and they hadn't come anywhere near the bandit yet. Now they were in Mexico, and Captain Call was in Texas. All that was being accomplished was that the wives were dying. He knew Pea Eye had a wife, too--when would the messenger appear to tell him that .his wife was dead? Pea Eye's wife was a schoolteacher, he recalled. What if the manburner eluded Captain Call, as Joey Garza had, and burned up Pea Eye's wife along with some of the schoolchildren?

Brookshire remembered all his happy years with Katie, and began to sob. Ordinarily, he didn't cry in front of people, but this time, as when he first received the news about Katie, he couldn't help it. Sobs shook his shoulders. It embarrassed Pea Eye and Olin, but Brookshire didn't care. He couldn't stop.

He was freezing, his wife was dead, and now the deputy's wife was dead. He was in a cold place, in a strange, forbidding country, hunting a bandit. How could it all have happened? He was an accountant in Brooklyn. Somehow a chain of events had got started, and now the events were less and less sensible, less and less like events that should be occurring in his life. For a week or two, he had enjoyed the adventure; he had even flourished. He mastered new skills, such as building fires. But the pleasure had all ended once he got the telegram informing him of Katie's death. Now it was all cold, fatigue, and pain. Where would it lead?

Brookshire remembered his first impression of Captain Call. He had felt that the man was too old for the mission he was charged with. He had looked too old that first morning in Amarillo.

Brookshire had quickly gained confidence in the Captain, but now it was beginning to seem that his confidence had been misplaced, and that his first impression had been accurate. The Captain had pursued no clear plan. He had let himself be distracted by another killer. They had ridden through Mexico and then through Texas, without coming even within a hundred miles of Joey Garza, as far as he knew. It didn't add up, and Colonel Terry would be quick to point out how erratically things had been managed.

But there was more at work than just cold and inconvenience and tactical mistakes. At home, behind them, the wives were dying.

"How far is it back?" he asked. He felt that he was in the grip of a sickness of some kind. He was in a place where nothing was rational and civilized, as it had been in Princeton College, or as it was in Brooklyn. He was in a place where people killed regularly, where killing was a day-to-day part of life. Of course, there were killings in Brooklyn, but very few. In Texas and Mexico, killing seemed to be almost constant. Brookshire had the feeling that he might go crazy if he didn't get back to a place and a form of life that were more familiar.

"Back where?" Pea Eye asked. He saw that the man was upset. Deputy Plunkert's departure had startled them all. It was terribly bad luck that Deputy Plunkert had to receive such news when he was hundreds of miles from home.

The fact that it was rat poison that had killed his wife, not to mention what had happened with the sheriff, were facts that Pea knew must be hard to bear. If anything like that happened to Lorena, he himself would start racing off in the night, ready to shoot the first man he saw.

But he was not in a position to take Mr.

Brookshire back to anywhere. They had to go on to Presidio, where the Captain expected them to be. That was a clear order.

"I expect we'll get to Presidio in about three days, if we don't have trouble," he said.

Brookshire didn't answer. He scooted closer to the fire and sat with his hands held over the flames. He was shivering and crying.

Famous Shoes didn't enter into the white men's talk. He was beginning to tire of white men, something that had happened often in his life. They pursued their business in strange ways, and got upset about things he didn't grasp. He had begun to doubt that he would stay with Pea Eye long enough to find his wife. He would like to learn about the tracks in books, but he was old, and the white men's habits were boring. Now one of the men had run off into the night, like a crazy thing. There were only two white men left; if he tracked Joey Garza for these two men, Joey would immediately kill them both. Famous Shoes thought he might tell his friend Pea Eye that his wife could teach him about the little tracks in the spring, when he went traveling on the Rio Rojo.

Famous Shoes didn't think Joey was in Mexico, and he was getting bored. He thought he might leave in a day or two and go back to the Madre. Eagles were more interesting than white men. It would be more interesting to go home and watch the eagles for a while.

Goodnight was coming across the sand through the sandhills when he saw a solitary rider coming from the south.

Crow Town was fifteen miles to the west; he could see a speckling of crows in the sky when he looked toward the winter sunset.

Coming across this particular stretch of country awakened quite a few memories. Until he noticed the rider Goodnight had been lost in revery, for he was crossing his own trail, the trail he and his old partner, Oliver Loving, had laid out many years before. In fact, he was on the exact spot where they had rested the cattle on the second afternoon of their ninety-mile waterless drive. A horse had died inexplicably, while they were resting. He had cut into the horse in an effort to determine what had killed it, but his work was to no avail. The horse had just died.

Goodnight had not expected to be crossing the trail so many years after Oliver Loving's death, and at dusk on a cold winter night to boot.

But so it was.

If the rider he glimpsed was headed for Crow Town, he was likely to be the sort of man it would behoove a person to avoid. On the other hand, once you started avoiding people, you were apt to lose a lot of time. Even in the remote stretches along the Pecos River, a surprising number of people were apt to turn up.

Decisions as to whether or not to go around a particular traveler needed to be made almost constantly.

Going around people had never been Goodnight's practice, and he decided he was too old to change. It was nearly dark, and the weather bleak; he was almost upon the man before he could make out much about him. When the rider was only thirty yards away, Goodnight saw that it was John Wesley Hardin. A second later, Hardin hailed him.

"Why, Charlie, dammit, you're out late," Hardin said.

"Out late, and far from home," Goodnight admitted. He himself had never had any difficulty with Wesley Hardin, but Hardin was a nervous man who was known to kill from whim. It wouldn't do to get too jocular with him. If you didn't manage the jocularity to suit John Wesley, he might flare up and yank out a gun.

"Are you still in the cattle business?" Hardin asked.

"Yep," Goodnight said. "Still in it. Why?" "Thought you might want to switch to the crow business," Hardin said, in a whinny of a laugh.

"There's a lot of fine crows around here, and they're going cheap. The best crow in Crow Town wouldn't sell for more than a penny." "In fact, I'm looking for Woodrow Call," Goodnight said. "Any news of him?" "Yes, and I'm the only man that's got it," Hardin said. "I ought to charge you for it, Charlie, since I've got a monopoly, but being as it's you, it's free. Woodrow Call done for Mox Mox." "Now that's news, all right," Goodnight said. "Are you sure?" "Sure as daylight," Hardin said. "I went down to Piedras Negras to whore, because the Garza boy's mother took the women out of Crow Town.

I'm coming from Mexico, and I'm heading for Denver. I believe I can do better in Colorado than I'm doing in Texas." "Where is Mox Mox?" Goodnight asked.

"I want to see his body." "I'm surprised you'd doubt my word, Charlie," Hardin said, with a touch of irritation.

"I don't doubt it, John," Goodnight said. "But I am determined to see the man's body. He burnt four of my cowboys, on the Purgatory River, and I want to be sure it's him, so I can stop chasing him in my head." "Well, the sonofabitch froze to death in a gully about a hundred miles south of here," Hardin said. "Call killed all but one of his men about twenty miles farther on. All of them were laying there dead, except that quick Cherokee boy.

Him and Mox Mox made a run for it, but Mox Mox was shot in the lights. He played out and froze. I expect the Cherokee is still running." "Let him run," Goodnight said. "Call done a good day's work." "No, he done a sloppy day's work," John Wesley said. "He's lucky he got the six men down, shooting as bad as he was.

He knocked them over, but they were still kicking, and if any one of them'd had any fight they'd have got him. He had to finish them off with his pistol, which is a disgrace if you're in good range and have a decent rifle to shoot." "The fact that he gave Mox Mox a mortal wound makes it a good day's work, in my opinion," Goodnight said.

"Mox Mox was just a mean bandit, Charlie," Hardin said. "I wouldn't call him a man of talent. The sonofabitch should have been a cook, since he liked fires so much. I could have killed him in a blink, and all his men, too.