Comanche Moon

Buffalo Hump had meant to take Blue Duck and a few warriors on to the Great Water, but after listening to Blue Duck brag he decided to leave the boy--let him fight his way back to the plains. He did not want such a braggart with him. Many of the warriors were still crazy for blood; they did not want to stop killing just to see water.

The morning after the chase with the bluecoat soldiers Buffalo Hump decided to leave the war party and go, alone with Worm, to the Great Water. The raid had been a fine triumph-- all the Texans knew again that the Comanche power was still great. The Texans were scattered and frightened.

They had their dead to bury, their wounded to heal. The bluecoat soldiers would come, in time, to the llano but it would not be soon.

Buffalo Hump spoke to some of the chiefs who had joined the raid with their warriors. He advised them to break into parties of forty or fifty and filter back up to the plains along the old trails. The whites, if they pursued at all --which he doubted--wd wear themselves out trying to decide which party to chase.

When Blue Duck saw his father preparing to leave, with only old Worm for a companion, he loped over and watched his father filling his quiver with arrows; Buffalo Hump had worked on the arrows most of the night, making sure that the arrowheads were tightly set.

"I will come with you," Blue Duck said. "You might need me." "No, you go with the horses," Buffalo Hump instructed. "Keep them together and travel fast.

Take them to the canyon and don't lose any.

I will come in a few days, with Worm." Blue Duck was annoyed. He was a warrior now--he had killed a bluecoat--and yet his father treated him like a horse herder.

"What if the Texans trap you?" he asked.

"You will not get much help from that old man." "I will not need much help," Buffalo Hump said. It wearied him to have to be always arguing with his son. The boy never accepted any command simply, as an obedient son should. He always had ^ws of his own to say about every request. Because Blue Duck was so rude, Buffalo Hump had to keep reminding himself that he was also brave--he was one of the bravest young men in the tribe.

He too had been brave and daring, when he was young, yet he had not been disrespectful. His own father was named Two Arrows--he had once killed the largest grizzly bear anyone had ever seen with only two arrows. Buffalo Hump would never have dared question anything Two Arrows told him to do. He seldom spoke to his father, unless Two Arrows asked him something. He would not have dared be rude, as Blue Duck was rude.

Blue Duck did not like being sent home with the horses. He sulked and pouted, and insulted two young warriors, hoping to provoke a fight.

Buffalo Hump saw it all, but he ignored it. He gathered his things, motioned to Worm, and left the camp. It was a relief to go. He had taken pride in being able, once more, to gather so many warriors that the whites could not stand before them; but now he felt the need to be alone, to move quietly across the land and just take care of himself, without having to mediate disputes and make decisions for so many warriors.

Worm was old; he was a man of silence. He could speak prophecy and make spells, but mostly he was quiet and alert, a pleasure to travel with. For two days they travelled through the thick brush country, a country where there were many armadillos. Worm was particularly fond of armadillo meat--al, the little scaly animals seemed to amuse him. Sometimes he would catch an armadillo that was half in its hold and would have to tickle its testicles to make it come out. When he cooked an armadillo he carefully preserved the scaly case that had been the beast's defense; soon he had several armadillo shells dangling from his pack.

"Why do you like that meat so much?" Buffalo Hump asked him one night--they were only one camp from the Great Water. He himself had killed a javelina that afternoon and was eating it. In his view pig was tastier by far than armadillo.

Worm rarely answered a direct question directly.

"The armadillo people are from a time before the Comanche," Worm said. "They were here when we were not. They are so old that they have learned to grow shells, and yet they are not slow, like turtles." Worm paused. He was studying the paw of one of the armadillos he had killed.

"If we could learn to grow shells we would be safe in battle," he said. "If I eat enough of these armadillos maybe I will grow a shell." "You have eaten several and I don't see any shell on you," Buffalo Hump commented.

Worm was silent. He preferred to think his own thoughts about the armadillo people.

The next day they came to a country where the trees were low and inward bent, from the constant push of the sea wind. The air was so salty Buffalo Hump could lick salt off his lips. The land became swampy, with tall reeds higher than a horse growing in dense thickets; there were inlets of water here and there, with cranes and great storks standing in there. As they grew nearer the sea both the land and the air were alive with birds: geese and ducks in great numbers floated on the inlets or waddled through the grass. There were white gulls that rose and dipped. But the most interesting to Buffalo Hump were the great cranes--they came from far in the north and did not stop in the Comanche country. Once, in Nebraska on the Platte River, he had seen a few of the great cranes, but in the swamps and inlets near the Great Water there were thousands of them.

Worm seemed in awe of the birds. His old eyes widened when the storks flapped into the air, or when the herons sailed down to the water on their wide wings. He turned his head from side to side and listened when the sea gulls spoke; it was as if he were trying to learn their language. Worm had only half an upper lip--the other half had been cut off years before, in battle. When he was excited, he licked his half lip; it was a thing he did, too, when his interest in a woman was high. The women of the tribe joked about it. They could always tell when old Worm needed a woman because he licked his lip. All his wives had died of one illness or another. There was a story about him from the old days that the old women told the young women, to inform them about the vengefulness of men.

Worm had once had a wife who would not open her legs when he wanted her; to teach her obedience Worm had made a great black cactus grow out of her womb, a cactus with thorns so sharp that the woman could never close her legs again, but had to walk with them widespread even when she was only doing chores.

Buffalo Hump had heard the story from Hair On The Lip and did not believe it.

"I have been with this tribe since I was born," he said. "I have never seen a woman waddling around with a cactus sticking out of her." "Oh no, a bear took that woman--y were just a child then," Hair On The Lip assured him.

Buffalo Hump still did not believe her, but he did like most of the stories Hair On The Lip told. Many of her stories were about things that happened to humans while they were coupling-- such stories seldom failed to amuse him.

After wading through several inlets, frightening many birds off the water, Buffalo Hump and Worm at last came to the long strip of sand that bordered the Great Water. They rode along the edge of the Great Water for many miles. Buffalo Hump liked to ride on the wet sand, so close to the sea that the waves foamed over the hooves of his horse, as the waves died.

Worm, though, would not come near the Great Water. He kept his horse far back at the edge of the sand, where sand gave way to grass. He tried repeatedly to point out to Buffalo Hump that the Great Water was unsafe to approach, but Buffalo Hump ignored him. He rode where he wanted to ride.

"There are great fish in the water, and snakes as long as the tallest pine tree," Worm insisted.

"One of those snakes might wrap its tongue around you and pull you under." Buffalo Hump paid no attention to Worm and his talk. Despite Worm's protest he camped that night on the sandy beach. The air at night was warm and salty. He built a small fire of driftwood and sang as the fire died.

Worm finally came and sat with him; they shared a little of the javelina meat. Worm still worried that the water might somehow engulf them.

"That water is never still," he told Buffalo Hump suspiciously. "It is always moving." Buffalo Hump shrugged. He liked it that the water moved, that the waves came in and went out.

He liked the sound it made, a sound that came from depths he could not see.

"I like the land--it doesn't move," Worm said. "This water sighs like a woman who is sad." There was some truth in that comment, Buffalo Hump thought. The ocean did sigh like a woman, as she sighed in sorrow, or at the slowing of her passion.

"There are great fish in that water with mouths so wide they can swallow buffalo," Worm worried. Buffalo Hump sang over Worm's droning, his complaints. He sang much of the night, in the warm salt air.

In the gray mist before the dawn Buffalo Hump got on his horse and sat waiting for the sun. On impulse he forced the horse into the water and made him swim until the small waves broke over them. Then he swam back to land. Worm was beside himself when he saw Buffalo Hump in the water. He was worried about the snake as long as a pine tree, but Buffalo Hump had no such worry. He merely wanted to watch the sun rise out of the water. All his life he had watched the sun rise upward out of the prairie; now he wanted to see it come out of the water. When it came, at first it was only a faint glow in the grayness of water and sky.

"We had better move back there in those trees," Worm said, when Buffalo Hump came out.

"Why?" Buffalo Hump asked.

"They say the sun rides all night on the back of a great fish," Worm said. "When it is time for morning the great fish brings it back so it can shine on the people of the land and make them warm." In the mist it was hard to see the sun clearly.

Buffalo Hump wondered if there was a great fish so large that it could carry the sun. He watched the surface of the water and saw no great fish, though that didn't mean that the story was untrue. The sun was now well up. Maybe the great fish that carried it had gone back to its home in the deep water.

Maybe the fish slept all day, while the people of the land enjoyed the sun. He didn't know.

What Buffalo Hump did know was that the ocean was a great mystery. In his country the stars and the moon were the great mysteries; he had been studying them all his life, and yet he knew nothing of the stars and the moon. The ocean was such a mystery, too. He could live his life on the sand, as the Indians of the seaside did, and yet never know the secrets of the ocean--why its waves moved in and out, why it sighed like a woman. Perhaps the ocean was even more powerful than the moon and stars. After all, it had called him to it, across hundreds of miles of land. Although the fighting had been good, he had finally grown restive with it; he did not want to delay any longer his trip to the Great Water.

When the sun was high Buffalo Hump rode back to Worm, who was crouched nervously over the little campfire. Often Worm could be irritating, a cranky man with half an upper lip and many fears and complaints. But Worm, for all his complaining, was a powerful prophet, and sometimes his clearest prophecies were called forth by his fears.

Buffalo Hump wanted a prophecy--all through the fighting he had wanted one, for his feelings were not good. Although he had felt again the excitement of war and the thrill of running down and killing his enemies, there had been a sadness in him through it all. At night as the young men sang and bragged of their killing, he had felt apart and could not make the sadness leave. In his life he had had many victories; the young men bragging and singing were as he had been in his youth, brave and unthinking. They expected that they would live their life as warriors and have many victories over the whites and the Mexicans. In their dreams and in their songs they saw themselves as Comanche warriors always, men of the bow andofthe horse.

Buffalo Hump knew, though, that for most of them, it would not be that way. A warrior skilled with the lance and the bow might, if he were bold, prevail over a man with a gun; but a thousand men with guns, whether they were skilled or not, would win in a battle against even the bravest warriors with bows. His son, Blue Duck, though foolish and rude, would have to fight with the gun if he were to live.

Buffalo Hump knew that the bluecoat soldiers would come in thousands someday. Their defeat would sting; they would try to reverse the Comanche victory. They would not come this year, but they would come; there were as many of them as there had once been buffalo. It was a bitter truth, but a truth.

The young warriors who were even then stringing white scalps on their lances would either die in battle or end their days as old Slow Tree had predicted, growing corn on little patches of land the white men let them keep.

Buffalo Hump wanted to see the ocean because the ocean would always be as it was. Few things could stay forever in the way they were when the spirits made them.

Even the great plains of grass, the home of the People, would not be always as it had been. The whites would bring their plows and scar the earth; they would put their cattle on it and the cattle would bring the ugly mesquite trees. The grass that had been high forever would be trampled and torn. The llano would not be always as it had been. The ocean and the stars were eternal, things whose power and mystery were greater than the powers of men.

Long before, when Buffalo Hump was a boy, his own grandmother had predicted the end of the Comanche people.

She thought it would come through sickness and plague; and, indeed, sickness and plague had carried off almost half the p. Now, looking at the Great Water, Buffalo Hump wanted to know if Worm had a prophecy that would tell him how the next years would be.

He got off his horse and sat for a few minutes with the old man, Worm. It was Worm who had said that the pox and the shitting sickness were caused by gold. He had a vision in which he saw a river of gold flowing out of a mountain to the west.

The whites ran through their country like ants, seeking the gold, and left their sicknesses behind them.

"I will take you away from this water you dislike so much if you will tell me a prophecy," Buffalo Hump said. "I won't let a great fish get you, either, or a snake as long as a pine tree." "I have the vision now," Worm said. "Last night I could not sleep because I heard too many horses squealing in my head." "I heard no horses squeal," Buffalo Hump said. Then he realized he had made a foolish comment. Worm was not talking about their horses, but about the horses in his vision.

"It was not these horses with us," Worm said.

"It was the horses we have taken in the raid, and the others, the horses at home." "Why did they squeal--was there a cougar near?" Buffalo Hump asked.

"They were squealing because they were dying," Worm said. "The white men were killing them all, and the sky was black but it was not a storm. The sky was black because all the buzzards in the world had come to eat our horses. There were so many buzzards flying over that I could not see the sun. All I could see were black wings." "Is that the whole prophecy?" Buffalo Hump asked.

Worm merely nodded. He seemed tired and sad.

"That is a terrible prophecy--we need our horses," Buffalo Hump said. "Eat a little of this meat. Then we will go." "We will have to slip along at night," Worm said. "All the whites will be looking for us now." "Eat your meat," Buffalo Hump said.

"Don't worry about the whites. I am going to take you up the Rio Grande. Once we are far enough up it we can go home along the old war trail we used to ride, when we went into Mexico and caught all those Mexicans. I don't think we will see many whites out that way--if we do see whites I will kill them." Worm was relieved. They had travelled far on the great raid, all the way from the llano to the sea. He did not care for the sea, he was tired, and he had no more armadillo meat to eat. But Buffalo Hump gave him a little of his pig meat and he ate it.

When Worm had eaten, Buffalo Hump mounted and led him inland, back through the twisted trees, toward Mexico.

"It's such a far way back, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I swear I wish we hadn't gone so far from town." He said it at night, as they were burying two men whose scalped and cut-open bodies they found just at dusk, at the foot of a small hill. The two men had been travelling in a little wagon, with nothing much in it except axes. The Indians hadn't destroyed the wagon, but they had used the axes to hack the two men open.

"It's far yet, and we can't make no time for burying folks," Long Bill observed. The three older rangers watched as Pea Eye, Deets, and Jake Spoon dug the grave.

The day before, they had found a family slaughtered by a poor little tent. Evidently they had intended to start a farm. There were two women among the six dead. Seeing the women, whom they wrapped in blankets and buried properly, put Gus in mind of Clara, Long Bill in mind of his Pearl, and Call in mind of Maggie. It would be many days before they knew whether their womenfolk had suffered the fate of the two young women just buried, and the anxiety was tiring them all. For three days they had pushed the horses to their limits, and yet they were still ten days from home.

At night none of the older men could sleep.

Images rose up in their minds, images that kept them tense. Call usually went off with his rifle and sat in the darkness. Long Bill and Gus stayed by the fire, talking about anything they could think to talk about. Pea Eye, Jake, and Deets, with no one at home to worry about, said little. Jake had thrown up at the sight of the mutilated bodies.

"I never seen how a person looks inside themselves before," he said to Pea Eye, who didn't reply.

Pea Eye was afraid to talk about the deaths for fear that he would cry and embarrass himself before the older men. The sight of dead people made so much sadness come in him that he feared he couldn't contain it. In death people looked so small--the dead adults looked like sad children, and the dead children looked like dolls. The fury that found them was so great that it reduced them as they died.

"Why will people come out here, Captain?" Jake asked, as they were burying the two men who were travelling in the small wagon. "This ain't farm country ... what could you grow, out here?" Call had often wondered the same thing himself.

Over and over, rangering, he and Augustus had come upon little families, far out beyond the settlements, attempting to farm country that had never felt the plow. Often such pioneers didn't even have a plow. They might have a churn, a spindle, a spade, and a few axes, an almanac, and a primer for the children. Mainly what they had, as far as Call could tell, was their energies and their hopes. At least they had what most of them had never had before: land they could call their own.

"You can't stop people from coming out here," Call said.

"It's open country now." Later, Call and Augustus walked off from the group a little distance to discuss the problem of Long Bill, who was so distraught at the thought that his Pearl might have been killed or kidnapped that he seemed to be losing his mind.

"Bill's always been steady," Call said.

"I wouldn't have expected him to get this bad." "He's bad, Woodrow," Gus said. "I guess he's as crazy about Pearl as I am about Clara." The fact was, Call himself had had a number of disquieting thoughts about Maggie since hearing about the raid. Maggie had tried three times to talk about the baby she was carrying, a baby she claimed was his, but in his haste to round up his troop and get them started he had put her off, a rudeness he regretted. Now Maggie might be dead, and the child too, if there really was a child.

"I mean to leave Texas forever, if Clara's dead," Augustus told him. "I wouldn't want to live here without my Clara. The memories would be too hard." Call refrained from commenting that the woman Gus was talking about wasn't his anymore.

If Clara had left Austin before the big raid it was because she had married Bob Allen.

"Let's get off the damn Brazos tomorrow," Gus suggested.

"Why?" Call asked. "There's always abundant water in the Brazos." "I know it--t's why," Augustus said. "Where there's water, there's farmers--or people who were trying to be farmers. It means more people to bury. Me, I'd like to get on home." "It's wrong to leave Christian folk unburied," Call told him.

"It ain't if we don't even see 'em," Gus said. "If we get away from all this watered country we won't happen on so many." It was a still, windless night, and very dark. The three young grave diggers had to bring burning sticks from the campfire, in order to determine if they had the grave deep enough. The spades they were digging with had belonged to the two men who were murdered.

"We could start a hardware store with all the spades and axes scattered around out here," Gus remarked.

Long Bill had not come out with them to the grave site. They could see his tall form, pacing back and forth in front of the campfire, making wavy shadows.

"Oh Saint Peterffwas they heard him exclaim. "Oh, Saint Paulffwas "I wish Billy would hear of some new saints to pray to," Gus said. "I'm tired of hearing him pray to Peter and Paul." "He can't read--I guess he's forgot the other saints," Call said. The grave diggers had paused for a moment--they were all exhausted, from hard travel and from fear.

Call felt sorry for Long Bill Coleman. Seldom had he seen a man so broken by grief, though Pearl, the woman he grieved for, might well be alive and well.

Pearl, though large, did not seem to him exceptional in any way. She had none of Clara's wit or spirit, nor Maggie's beauty of face.

"Pearl must be a mighty good cook, for him to take on about her so before he even knows if she's dead." "No, she ain't," Augustus said. "I've et Pearl's cooking and it was only fair. I expect it's the poking." "The what?" Call asked, surprised.

"The poking, Woodrow," Gus said. "Pearl was large and large women are usually a pleasure to poke." "Well, you would think that," Call said.

In the aftermath of the great raid, much to her distress, Maggie's business increased. No one knew exactly where the Comanches were, but rumours of widespread carnage swept the town.

Some said that Buffalo Hump had killed three hundred people in San Antonio, and one hundred more in Houston. Then a counterrumour reversed those numbers; others thought he had burnt Victoria, while someone had heard that he was already in Mexico. There was a general fear that he might come back through Austin and finish what he had begun. Men went about heavily armed, draped with all the weapons they could carry. At nights the streets were empty, though the saloons still did a good business. Men were so scared that they drank, and, having drunk, discovered that they were still too nervous to sleep.

So they came to Maggie--a stream of men, knocking on her door at all hours of the day or night. She couldn't protest, but she was not welcoming, either. She had been sickly of a morning lately, and was often nauseous or queasy during the day. Her belly had begun to swell visibly, yet none of the men seemed to notice.

They were so scared that only what she sold them could bring them a little peace. Maggie understood it. She was scared herself. Some nights she even went down and hid in the crawl space under the smokehouse. It brought her a little relief, both from fear and from the men.

Maggie longed for Woodrow to show up, with the boys. Once Woodrow was there, the men would leave her be. Although they were only two men, they were respected; the townspeople took much comfort from their presence, just as she did.

Every morning at first light Maggie looked out her window, toward the corrals where the rangers kept their horses. She was hoping to see Woodrow's buckskin, Johnny. If she could just spot Johnny she would know that he was back.

But, morning after morning, there was no sign of the rangers. Maggie found Call's absence almost too much to bear, at such a time, with the baby in her. Just as she was hoping to give up whoring forever, all the men wanted her to do was whore, and she was afraid to refuse. The dark thought struck her that Woodrow might be dead. He had left with only five men, and the Comanches numbered more than five hundred, some said. The rangers might all be dead, and likely were.

Even to think it made Maggie feel hopeless.

If Woodrow was dead she would have no father for her baby. Then the whoring wouldn't stop: the men at the door, the men on top of her, the men who counted out money and waited for her to lay back and pull up her skirt. She would go on laying there, lifting her skirt to men who were none too clean, who stank and vomited, who had violence in their eyes, until she got sick, or was too old to be worth the money they counted out.

She thought she could have borne all the worry and all the doubt a little better if Woodrow had just had time to talk to her about the baby, to give her some hope that he would marry her, or at least help her with the child. He hadn't seemed to be angry about it; just a few ^ws would have been enough. But he had been in a hurry, usually was. Maggie could not find it in her to tax Woodrow too hard for his failure to speak; she rarely taxed Woodrow too hard about any of the things that bothered her. He was a captain now and had many responsibilities. Her hope was that he would come round to liking the idea of a child, or at least to not minding it much. When Woodrow Call did get angry with her a coldness showed in him that made her question whether happiness would ever be hers. He could be so cold, when angered, that Maggie wondered how she had ever come to care for him anyway. He had only been a customer, after all, a young man with quick needs, like many another. The older whores had all warned her not to get attached to customers.

One named Florie, who had taught her something of the business, had been emphatic on that score.

"I've known whores to marry, but it's a seldom thing," Florie said. "It's one of those things that if you look for them you won't find them." "Well, I ain't looking," Maggie declared --she had been much younger then. It wasn't entirely true: she had already met Woodrow Call and already knew she liked him.

"I looked once, but not no more," Florie said. "I just take their money and give 'em a few jerks. It don't take much longer than it takes to wring out a mop, not if you set your hips right." The next year Florie stumbled coming down her own steps and broke her neck. She had a big basket of laundry in her arms--it was the laundry that caused her to misstep. She was lying dead at the bottom of the steps with her eyes wide open when they found her. A goat had wandered over and was eating her laundry basket, which was made of coarse straw.

Maggie, despite Florie's advice, had gone on and got attached to Woodrow Call, so attached that she would sometimes put her hand on her belly and imagine that there was a little boy inside, who would look just like him.

One morning when she had gone out early to draw a bucket of water, she was surprised to see the sheriff limping up her stairs. The sheriff was named Gawsworth Gibbons; he was a large man and, in the main, kindly. Several times he had taken Maggie's side in disputes with drunken customers, a rare thing for a sheriff to do.

Despite Gaw Gibbons's kindly attitude, Maggie was always a little disturbed to see a sheriff coming up her stairs--it could mean she was going to be asked to move, or some such thing.

The sheriff had a bad limp, the result of a wound sustained in the Mexican War. It took him some time to mount the stairs--all Maggie could do was stand and wait, wondering what she could have done to prompt a visit from the sheriff.

"Why, what is it, Gaw?" she asked. She had known Gawsworth Gibbons long before he became a sheriff; before the Mexican War he had made his living shoeing horses.

"Has somebody complained?" she asked.

Gawsworth Gibbons smiled his large, kindly smile and followed Maggie into her room before answering.

"No complaints, Mag," he told her.

"All that's wrong is just what's apt to be wrong with any feller." To her shock, Maggie saw that he had money in his hand--he was coming to her as a customer, something that had never happened in the years she had known him.

It took her a moment to adjust to the notion.

The sheriff, out of consideration, turned his back as he lowered his pants. Even from the back, though, Maggie saw that the skin on his legs was twisted in a strange way. The skin had black specks in it, as if Gaw Gibbons had been peppered.

Then she recalled that what she had heard about his war wound was that he had been severely burned--a keg of gunpowder had blown up while he stood near it, blowing gunpowder and bits of the barrel into his legs.

"My wife, she's about give up on me, Mag," the sheriff said. "I expect she just can't tolerate these burned legs no more." "Oh, Gaw," Maggie said.

The fact that he spoke so sorrowfully when he mentioned his wife made the business at hand a little less hard.

Inish Scull quickly discovered that Ahumado didn't want him to starve too soon or too easily. Every second day one of the dark men whose duty it was to watch the cages lowered him a small jug of water. Though dizzied at first by the height and the space and the constant swaying of the cage--the lightest wind seemed to move it--Inish Scull gradually persuaded himself that the old man wanted him to live. Why else the water? Perhaps upon consideration the notion of a large ransom became more appealing; though, in view of Ahumado's searing contempt, to think thus was probably to think too optimistically.

Far from wanting him to live, Ahumado may only have wanted him to starve more slowly--thus the fresh, cool water. The first jug tasted as good as a meal.

In thinking about his situation--hung off a cliff, a two-hundred-foot drop below him, and an infinite space before him--Scull soon concluded that, whatever the Black Vaquero might want, he wanted to live. He was in good health, had sustained no wounds, was of sound mind.

Thinking about the matter soberly, he realized that he had often felt more hopeless in his wife's arms than he did in Ahumado's cage. He was of the mental temperament to relish extreme situations --in fact, had spent much of his career seeking them out. Now he had found himself in as extreme a situation as any man could well want. Few of his Harvard brethren had sought the extreme quite so successfully; it would make a good story to tell in the Yard, next time he was there.

Of course, in order to have the pleasure of telling, he first had to meet the challenge of surviving. In practical terms that meant securing the food most likely to be available, which meant birds. The only possible alternative was worms. His experience as a naturalist taught him that earthworms were to be found almost everywhere--he might be able to scratch a few out of Ahumado's cliff, but probably too few.

Of birds there was no scarcity. The cage attracted them, not merely eagles and vultures but others. On the first morning he caught a pigeon and two mourning doves. The pants he wore, once Tudwal's, were ragged things.

Scull unravelled one leg a bit and hung the three birds with threads from the pants leg; in the Scull family game was always hung before it was consumed, the customary period of hanging being three days. There was no reason to abandon the family's standards, that he saw.

Far below, he could see the people of the village; few of them looked up. They had, no doubt, seen many people hang and die in the cages.

Every day Ahumado sat on his blanket, and he did look up, not with his naked eye, though.

Scull saw the glint of sun on glass and realized Ahumado was watching him through binoculars, no doubt taken from some murdered officer or traveller. This knowledge perked him up.

Contempt or no contempt, at least he had caught the old man's interest. Scull had a spectator now; he meant to give the man on the ground a good show.

When Scull searched the pockets of Tudwal's filthy garments he found a small tool that he had missed when searching the clothes for bullets. The tool was a file of the sort used to improve the sights on a rifle or cut the head off a nail. It wasn't much, but it was something. Although the cage he swung in had a solid bottom, there were cracks in it. Scull took great care not to drop his file--z long as he had it there were ways he could employ his mind.

He could keep a calendar by scratching lines on the rock of the cliff, and he immediately began to do so.

Scull knew a bit of geology. He had heard Mr. Lyell lecture on his first visit to America and had even sat with the great man at a luncheon in Washington. It occurred to him there might be fossils or other geological vestiges in the stony cliff behind him--vestiges he could investigate. To make sure that he didn't drop the file he unthreaded another cord from his pants leg and used it to secure the little tool, tying one end of the thread to the file and the other end to a bar of the cage.

Fortunately he was small enough to get his legs through the bars of the cage--wiggling them vigorously was the best he could do by way of exercise. It amused him to consider what Ahumado must think, watching him wiggle his legs. He had caught a curious prisoner this time, one a little more resourceful than the miscreant peasants he had been wont to cage.

If his diet was limited, Scull told himself, at least his view was magnificent. In the morning he could see the mist lift off the distant peak as the red sun rose. The nights, though chilly, produced a fine starlight. Scull had not made much progress in astronomy, but he did know his constellations, and they were there to be viewed, in sharp and peaceful clarity, every night.

The fourth day was cloudy--it sprinkled in the morning, which was welcome; it allowed Scull to wash himself. But a mist ensued so thick that he could not see the ground, a fact which dampened his spirits considerably. He liked to look down, observe the life of the camp, and watch Ahumado watch him. It was a competition they were in, the Bostonian and the Mayan, as he saw it. He needed to observe his opponent every day. Now and then, through the mist, he would see one of the great vultures sail by. One vulture flew so close that he saw the bird turn its head and look at him--the bird's old eye reminded him in that instance of Ahumado's. The resemblance was so sharp that it spooked Scull, for a moment. It was as if the old Mayan had turned himself into a bird and flown by to taunt him.

Scull felt sour all day, sour and discouraged. For all his skill at catching birds, his calendar keeping, his feet wiggling, he was still hung in a cage off a cliff, with no way down. The contest wasn't for a day or a week; it was for as long as he could convince himself it was worth it to hang in a cage and eat raw birds, at the whim of an old man who sat on a blanket, far below.

The next day, though, was one of brilliant sunlight and Scull's spirits improved. He spent much of the morning in close inspection of the cliff above him. They had lowered him some seventy feet, he judged, and the rope that held the cage seemed sound. But the ascent, if he decided to try one, was sheer. He could saw the bindings of the cage with his precious file and break out; but if he chose the climb he knew he had better do it quickly, while he still had his strength. In a week or two poor diet and cramped quarters would weaken him to such an extent that he could never make the climb, or escape the dark men and their machetes if he did.

For most of the day Scull weighed his chances.

He studied the cliff face; he looked down at Ahumado. In the afternoon he saw some young women filing out of camp with laundry on their heads, making for a little stream not far from camp. Some vaqueros were there, watering their horses. The young women took the laundry far upstream from the men and the horses. Now and then Scull would hear a rill of laughter as the young women pounded the clothes on the wet rocks. The vaqueros mounted and rode away. As soon as they were gone the women began to sing as they worked. Scull could only faintly catch the melody, but the sight of the young women cheered him, nonetheless. It was a fine joke, that his adventuring had finally got him hung off a cliff in Mexico, but it didn't stop the laughter of women, or their flirtations with men.

As the day waned Scull fingered his file, wondering how long it would take him to file through the bindings of the cage, if he chose to try the climb. While he was looking up and down, considering, he saw a brilliant flash of color coming toward the cage; the brilliancy turned out to be the red-and-green plumage of a large parrot, which flew past his cage and turned its head, for a moment, to look at him. Again, Scull was startled--the parrot's eye reminded him of Ahumado's. The impression was so strong that he dropped his file, but fortunately the string he had attached it to saved it.

Later, when the sun was down and the canyon lit by strong starlight, Scull decided he must be having altitude visions. He knew from his experiences in the Alps that high air could make a man giddy, and prone to false conclusions. The parrot and the vulture were just birds. No dove and no pigeon had lighted on his cage that day--Scull put it down to his jumpiness, his indecision, his nerves. He knew he had better get his thoughts under control and regain some calm or the fowl of the air would avoid him and he would starve.

The next morning he fixed his mind on a task, which was to remember his Homer. He took his file and began to scratch a Greek ^w on the surface of the rock behind him. By noon he had completed a hexameter. All day he worked on, scratching Greek into the rock. The giddiness left his head, and the nervousness his limbs.

"Hard and clear," he told himself. "Hard and clear." The rock was not easy to work. Scull had to press the file hard to give the Greek letters the graceful shape they deserved. His fingers cramped, from gripping the file so hard; now and then he had to stop and flex them.

Below, old Ahumado was watching him through the binoculars. In the stream the girls were spreading wet clothes again. Scull's nerves no longer put off the birds. In the afternoon he caught two pigeons and a dove.

"That takes care of the larder," he told himself, but he did not pause long enough to hang the birds or pluck them.

By evening the great ^ws were there, each letter as distinct as Scull could make it, ^ws hard and clear, to remind him that brave men had battled before:

OI DE MEGA FRONEONTES EPI PTOLEMOIO GEFURAS EIATO PANNUANDIOI, PURA DE SFISI KAIETO POLLA.

WS Do OT EN OURANWI ASTRA FAEINWHN AMFI SELWHNWHN FAINET ARIPREPEA, OTE That EPLETO NWHNEMOS AITHWHR EK That EFANEN PASAI SKOPIAI KAI PRWONES AKROI KAI NAPAI OURANOTHEN Do AR UPERRAGWH ASPETOS AITHWHR, PANTA DE EIDETAI ASTRA, GEGWHTHE DE TE FRENA POIMWHN TOSSA MESWHGU NEWN WHDE XANTHOIO ROAWN TRWWN KAIONTWN PURA FAINETO ILIOTHI PRO.

ANDILI AR EN PEDIWI PURA KAIETO, PAR DE EKASTWI EIATO PENTWHKONTA SELAI PUROS AITHOMENOIO.

IPPOI DE KRI LEUKON EREPTOMENOI KAI OLURAS, ESTAOTES PAR OANDESFIN, EUTHRONON WHW MIMNON.

It was Homer enough for one day, Scull felt.

He had put the ^ws of a Greek on the face of a cliff in Mexico. It was a victory, of sorts, over the high air and the old dark man.

The ^ws had calmed him--the fowl of the air had come back to perch on his cage. Another night or two, maybe he would file through the rawhide bindings and climb the rope. This night, though, he curled up against the chill and slept, while, far below, the Mexican campfires glittered, bright as the campfires of old Troy.

Eastward, as the rangers hurried home along the valley of the Brazos, they came upon scene after scene of devastation. Six times they stopped to bury families, some of them so decomposed as to be hardly worth burying. They saw not a single Comanche, though several times a day they crossed the tracks of the retreating war parties. Most of the raiders were driving horses before them--sometimes sizable herds of horses.

"They must have stolen half the horses in south Texas," Augustus said.

"Kilt half the people, too," Long Bill said, in a low tone. Convinced by all the corpses that his wife could not possibly have survived, Long Bill had sunk into a state of dull resignation. He scarcely ate and seldom spoke.

Call grew more and more vexed as the Indian sign multiplied.

"Our main job is to fight Indians and here we rode off and missed the biggest Indian fight in history." "We didn't ride off. We was sent off, Woodrow--sent by the Governor," Augustus reminded him.

"He might have tried to recall us, but if he did, the Commanches probably got the messengers," Call said, grimly.

As they rode into Austin they passed near the cemetery--they could see from the number of crosses that there were many fresh graves. Tears began to stream down Long Bill's face, at the thought of having his conviction about Pearl confirmed. In all there were nearly thirty fresh graves--Long Bill stumbled from cross to cross, but none had "Pearl Coleman" written on them.

"It may mean they took her," Long Bill said, still anxious.

Augustus found two crosses with the name "Forsythe" on them--the sight made him tremble; tears came and he sank to his knees.

"Oh God, I knowed it," he said. "I went away and she's dead." It was Call, looking more closely, who saw that it was her parents, not Clara, who lay buried in the cemetery.

"No, Gus, she ain't dead--it's her father and mother," Call said.

"Well, I swear ... I wonder if she knows," Augustus said, bending closer so he could see the two names more clearly. Though he knew it was a terrible blow to Clara--both her parents dead and her a new bride--he felt a relief so powerful that for a time it made him weak. He stayed on his knees in the cemetery, fingering a clod or two of the fresh dirt, while the others tried to make out who was buried in all the fresh graves.

"They got the blacksmith," Call said.

"Here's the preacher and his wife--got them both." He walked on, stopping over every grave.

"Oh Lord, boys," Call said. "Here's Neely and Finch and Teddy--I guess Ikey must be alive." "My God, Neely," Gus said, coming over to look.

As they rode on into town, past a grove of live oak or two, they saw house after house that showed evidence of burning; and yet most of the houses still stood. Only the church and one saloon seemed to have burned to the ground.

"They didn't kill Governor Pease--there he stands," Augustus said, as they turned into the main street. "I expect he'll be glad to see us back." "We didn't do what we was sent to do--he may fire us," Call said.

"I doubt that," Gus said. "He won't have nobody who can fight at all, if he fires us." The Governor stood in shirtsleeves and black suspenders on the steps of what had been the Forsythe store. He was loading a shotgun when they rode up, and he looked grim.

"Hello, Governor," Call said. "Are the Indians still around?" "No, but the coons are," the Governor said.

"The coyotes got most of my hens, after the raid. The coons don't bother the hens but they're ruining me in the egg department." He sighed, and cast a quick glance at the little troop.

"Lose any men?" he asked.

"No sir, but we didn't find the Captain," Call said. "When we heard about the raid we thought we better just get home." The Governor's buggy stood in the street, but Bingham, who usually drove him, wasn't in it.

"I just came down to get some shotgun shells," the Governor said. "I need to do something about those coons." Governor Pease was usually clean shaven, but now had a white stubble on his cheeks; he looked tired.

"Where's Bingham, Governor?" Augustus asked.

"Dead ... they killed most of our niggers," Governor Pease said. "They stole that yellow girl who worked for Inez Scull--she was down by the springhouse and they took her." Just then Long Bill gave a yell. They all turned and saw why. Pearl, the wife he had given up for dead, was in plain view far up the street, hanging out washing.

"It's my Pearl, she ain't dead!" Long Bill said. The cares of the last weeks fell away from him in an instant--he wheeled his horse and was off in a run.

"That's one happy ending, I guess," Augustus said.

The Governor did not smile. "She's alive but she was outraged," he said, before going to his buggy. He drove off holding his shotgun, his eggs on his mind.

Call saw that the house where Maggie lived was partially burned but still standing, which was a relief. He thought he glimpsed someone at her window but could not be quite positive. Maggie was ever discreet. She would never lean out her window and look down at him--she didn't feel it was right.

He quickly crossed the street and saw her coming down the steps behind the house. She looked so glad to see him that he had to dismount and hug her; when he did she cried so hard that she wet the front of his shirt, just as she had when he was leaving.

"Now hush, I'm back," he said.

He had never before touched her outside her room. After a moment he got nervous, and Maggie did too.

"They didn't get you ... that's good ... and they didn't get Pearl, either ... Bill's been about worried to death," he said.

Maggie's face clouded, for a moment. "They shot four arrows into her, and that ain't all," she said. "But they didn't touch me--I hid where you told me, Woodrow." "I'm glad you hid," Call said. Maggie didn't say more. She still had tears in her eyes.

Call went back to the rangers, who were still in the street, where he had left them. Gus had dismounted and was sitting on the steps in front of the Forsythe store, a dejected look on his face.

"We ought to get the boys settled and see to the horses," Call said. Jake Spoon and Pea Eye Parker both looked as if they might go to sleep in their saddles. Even Deets, who seldom flagged, looked very weary.

"You do it, Woodrow," Gus said. He stood up and handed his bridle reins to Deets as he went by him. Call turned and followed Gus a step or two, curious as to what was the matter.

"I guess you're going drinking," he said.

"By God, you're a genius, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I ain't even close to a saloon, but you figured it out." Call knew it was Clara, or the fact that she was absent, that caused Gus to look so low. It was usually Clara at the bottom of Gus's dark moods.

"She's alive, at least," he said. "You ought to be glad she's alive." "Oh, I am glad she's alive," Gus said. "I'm mighty glad. But the point is, she ain't here. Your girl is here, Billy's wife is alive, but my girl's married and gone to Nebraska." Call didn't argue--there would be no point. He turned back to the rangers, and Augustus McCrae went on across the street.

Ahumado had never had a captive who behaved like the small americano, Captain Scull. Most captives despaired once they realized they were in a place they could never get out of, except by death. In his experience, Americans made poor captives. He had had old Goyeto try to skin several Americans--traders, miners, travellers who happened to travel the wrong road--but they all died before Goyeto had got very far with the skinning.

Even if he only skinned an arm or a leg the Americans usually died. They were weak captives, the whites. Once he had had a small Tarahumara Indian from the north who had stood at the skinning post without making a sound while Goyeto took his whole skin off--t Tarahumara had been an exceptional man.

Ahumado decided to shelter him and feed him well--he thought it was possible that the man might grow a new skin; but the man took no food and didn't profit much from the shade he was given.

He died after three days, without having grown any new skin.

Once or twice Ahumado had tried sticking Americans on the sharpened trees, but there again they had turned out to be disappointing captives, dying after much screaming before the sharpened tree had penetrated very far into their bowels. The Comanches and Apaches he captured on the whole did much better, although it was not unknown for one of them to disgrace himself. Once, though, he put an Apache who had stolen a woman on the sharpened tree and the Apache lived for two days even after the sharp point of the tree had come out behind his shoulder blade. No Comanche and so far no whites had done so well.

It was clear, though, that the white man Scull, the ranger, was an americano of a different order. Scull had mettle, so much mettle that Ahumado was surprised; and surprise was a thing he rarely experienced.

As for men in the cage, the best survivor had been an old Yaqui man who had been both exceptionally tough and exceptionally lucky. It had rained often while the old man was in the cage, so the man had moisture. Also, since he was a Yaqui of the hot desert, he wasn't used to eating much. In his days in the cage he cleverly peeled all the bark off the bars of his cage and ate it--the old Yaqui seemed to like the taste of dry bark better than the taste of raw bird meat. Later the blind woman Hema, the curandera, told Ahumado that the bark kept the old man from feeling hunger.

Even this Yaqui, skilled at going without food, was not as adept at living in the cage as the white man Scull. No one before Scull had ever put his legs through the cage and wiggled them.

Ahumado spent a good deal of time watching Scull through some binoculars he had taken off a dead federale. Once he even let old Goyeto look through the binoculars and Goyeto was so astonished at what he saw that he did not want to give the binoculars back to Ahumado.

He called them the Two Eyes That Made Things Large--theirthe ability to make things large left Goyeto speechless, and he was a man who usually chattered a lot. Even when Goyeto was skinning a person and the person was screaming, Goyeto would often be running on, talking about things of little interest or importance. Goyeto had always lived in the mountains, close to the Yellow Canyon. Though he was an old man he had only seen Jaguar once. Sometimes it amused Ahumado to startle Goyeto with trinkets he had stolen from the whites. Some whites carried watches that made sounds, and these sounds never failed to impress Goyeto, who thought they were magical.

Goyeto did not understand mechanical things; even guns were too complicated for him. He understood only knives--with knives he was better than anyone Ahumado had ever known.

Once Ahumado had even had Goyeto skin a great rattlesnake alive--a snake that was more than eight feet long. The reason for skinning the snake alive was that it had bitten Ahumado's favorite mare, a fleet gray filly that could outrun the Comanche horses. The snake had bitten the filly right in the nose; when the nose swelled up her air could not get through. She struggled so hard to breathe that her heart gave way.

Ahumado saw the old snake lying insolently only a few yards from where he had killed the mare. Because the old snake was insolent Ahumado caught him with a crooked stick and nailed him to the ground. Then he instructed Goyeto to skin him, and Goyeto did, turning the snake carefully until it was naked of skin.

Then, once it was skinned, Ahumado threw it into a pit of hot coals and cooked it. He did not want to turn it loose because snakes were better than humans at growing new skins. If he let the snake go it might grow a new skin and kill another filly. Some of the pistoleros were made nervous by this treatment of the snake. Many of them feared the vengeance of the snake people, and, indeed, the very next day, a pistolero was bitten when he rolled on a rattlesnake in his sleep.

But Ahumado was indifferent to such worries.

Any man should be able to watch out for snakes. He had the skin of the big snake made into a fine quirt.

After Scull had been in the cage three days Ahumado noticed that he had acquired a small tool of some kind. By watching closely with the glasses he saw that it was a small file that Tudwal had once used to sharpen things. It did not surprise Ahumado that Scull had managed to kill Tudwal, who was not a smart man; but he was curious as to what Scull meant to do with the file now that he had it. Of course he could use the file to saw through the bindings of the cage, but where would that leave him? He would either fall to his death or have to climb the rope to the top of the cliff.

Ahumado suspected that climbing was what Scull had in mind--he immediately sent ^w to the dark men to watch the rope carefully, day and night. If Scull did make it to the top of the cliff the dark men were instructed to chop off his feet with their machetes. A lack of feet would quickly put an end to his travels.

Ahumado noticed, though, that Scull did not seem to be interested in filing through the bindings, at least not in daylight. One day Scull spent the whole day scratching at the rock face with his file. It was the most puzzling thing he had done since his capture--Ahumado watched closely but could not make out the purpose of the scratching.

Scull was so absorbed by his scratching that he did not even try to catch several fat pigeons that lit on the cage while he was working. Most men, once in the cage, made desperate efforts to catch any bird that came near, fearing that they would starve if they didn't. But Scull seemed confident that he could catch birds when he needed them. Hunger didn't seem to worry him.

It occurred to Ahumado one day that Scull might be a witch. He had had that suspicion from the beginning, but the suspicion increased when Parrot appeared one day from the south and soared close to Scull's cage. Ahumado was not one who thought much about witches. He didn't believe there were very many witches--most vision people, in his view, were just charlatans, full of foolish talk.

That did not mean, though, that there were no witches at all. Ahumado believed there were only a few witches, but those few possessed powers that enabled them to do very unusual things. It was possible that the small ranger, Scull, was just such a rare thing: a witch.

Fortunately the old blind curandera, Hema, knew something about witches. Hema was a woman of the desert who knew more than anyone else about plants that could heal. Ahumado went to her and asked her what she thought Scull might be doing, scratching on the rock with Tudwal's file. Hema of course could not see Scull but she had an acquaintance with witches. Her own sister had been a famous witch who had been taken by the Apache Gomez many years before.

Hema was not a witch herself, but she was skilled with herbs and plants. She could help barren women, and old men who could no longer couple pleasantly with their wives. One woman, barren for years, had come to Hema and borne four babies, one of which was carried off by a she-wolf. She was able to brew concoctions that made the organs of aging men stiffenough again when they went to their wives.

Sometimes Ahumado talked to Hema when he needed to know about things which were beyond sight. Scull, of course, was not really beyond sight; Ahumado could see him clearly, through the binoculars he had secured by killing the federale. But the fact that Scull was scratching on the rock with a file was worrisome. Why did he scratch on the mountain?

Ahumado knew that whites could find things in the earth that others couldn't see. Sometimes they would dig into a mountain at a certain place and come out with gold. Some Indians believed that whites could make the earth shake; they might even be able to make whole mountains fall. In the war with the americanos Ahumado himself had seen the little cannons of the whites knock down a great church and several smaller buildings. When the cannonballs hit the earth they tore it up terribly. Ahumado was a child of the earth; he didn't like the way the guns of the whites could scar it and disturb it.

Now the fact that Captain Scull chose to scratch on the mountain annoyed Ahumado. The more he watched it and wondered about it, the more it annoyed him. What if the white man knew how to open a hole or tunnel into the mountain? Then he could simply file through the bindings on the cage and escape. He knew that the whites opened great holes in the mountains when they mined; then they walked into the earth, through the holes. A white man such as Scull might even be able to make the whole cliff fall all at once, like the church that had been knocked down during the war.

Ahumado soon developed such a strong curiosity about what Scull was doing on the cliff that he considered having himself lowered down beside him in one of the other cages, in order to watch Scull closely. He himself had no fear of heights and would not have minded being in a cage. But he soon rejected the notion of having himself lowered in a cage because of the dark men. Though they were obedient if he ordered them to chop off someone's feet, the truth was that they hated him. Once they got him in a cage they might simply cut the rope and let him fall; or they might just leave him in the cage to starve and go home to their villages in the south. Though very curious about what Scull was up to, Ahumado was not so foolish as to put himself at the mercy of the dark men.

One day he went to the hut where blind Hema sat, and told her his fears about the white man Scull opening a hole in the mountain. He wanted her to go up to the top and be lowered to the place where Scull was, in hopes that she could determine what he was doing. Though blind, Hema had hearing so sharp that she could tell what sort of bird was flying just by listening to its wing beats.

Ahumado wanted her to listen to the rock and see if the rock was all right. If she thought the earth might be about to move he would have to shift his campsite. Ahumado had become convinced that Scull was not a normal man. He did not put men in cages so that they could enjoy themselves, and yet Scull seemed to be enjoying himself. While Scull scratched on the rock he sang and whistled so loudly that everyone looked up at him. That in itself was highly unusual. Most of the men put in the cages quickly lost their spirit; they did not sing and whistle. They might yell down pleas, and beg for a day or two, but after that they usually sat quietly and waited for their deaths.

Blind Hema listened closely to what Ahumado said. Then she got up and moved slowly to the base of the cliff. She moved along the cliff for an hour or more, putting her ear close to the rock and listening. The longer she moved along, listening to the cliff, the more agitated she became. When she came back to where Ahumado waited, she was trembling--in a moment her teeth began to chatter and froth came out of her mouth.

Ahumado had known the old blind woman for many years and had never seen her so upset that froth came out of her mouth.

"He is calling the Serpent," old Hema said. "That is what he is doing when he scratches on the rock. He is sending signals to the great snake that lives in the earth.

He wants the Serpent to shake the mountain down on us." Then the old blind woman stumbled around the camp until she found someone who would give her tequila. Soon she became drunk--v drunk, so drunk, finally, that she fell on her face in the dust. She could not stand up, for drunkenness, but had to crawl around the camp on all fours. Seeing her on her hands and knees, some of the pistoleros began to tease her. They pulled up her skirts and pretended that they wanted to couple with her in the manner of dogs--of course it was only a joke. Hema was an old woman, too old for a man to be interested in.

Ahumado paid no attention to the teasing, and not much attention to what old Hema said about the Serpent. There were many people who believed that there was a great serpent in the center of the earth whose coilings and uncoilings caused the earth to move. These were not beliefs Ahumado shared. He had seen many large snakes in his youth, in the jungles of the south, but no snakes large enough to move the earth, and he did not believe that there was a serpent god who lived within the earth. Even if there was such a serpent in the earth there would be no reason for it to respond to the scratchings of a small americano.

The gods Ahumado believed in were Jaguar and Parrot; the thing that worried him most about Scull was that Parrot had flown by his cage and looked at him. None of the spirits were as intelligent as Parrot, in his view. In his youth in the jungles he had often seen parrots who could speak the ^ws of men. Though men could imitate the calls of many birds, no man could speak to a bird unless the bird was Parrot. Parrot was to be feared for his brain, Jaguar for his power.

Jaguar was not interested in the human beings; he might eat one but he would not talk to one. In his youth Ahumado had been like Parrot; he talked to many men--now that he was old he had become like Jaguar. Rather than talk to men he merely had Goyeto skin them, or else thrust them onto the sharpened trees.

In the morning old Hema stumbled back to her hut. She had forgotten her ^ws about the Serpent.

She had forgotten that her teeth chattered and that froth came out of her mouth. Still, Ahumado kept a close watch on Scull, up in his cage. Scull was still scratching on the rock with the little file that had been Tudwal's, but Ahumado no longer cared about that very much. He only wanted to know if Parrot would come again.

When Kicking Wolf was halfway home he began to encounter signs of the great raid. He crossed the tracks of many bands of warriors, all of them going north. The bands travelled in a leisurely way--they drove many horses ahead of them and they were not being pursued. At first he thought that only a few bands had been raiding, but then, as he saw more and more tracks, all flowing north, he began to realize that a great raid had been launched against the whites. Twice he came upon the bodies of white children who had died in travel.

Several times he saw pieces of garments that had been torn off captive women, either by thorny brush or by warriors who had outraged the women and left their clothes.

By good luck he even came upon three stray horses and was able to catch one of them. The sorrel horse of Three Birds had travelled a long way in rocky country. Its hooves were in poor condition. Kicking Wolf had been about to abandon him and go home on foot; it was a boon to find the three horses.

The night after he caught the fresh horses Kicking Wolf heard the faint sound of singing from a camp that was not too distant. Even though at first he could scarcely hear the singing he recognized the voice of one of the singers, a brave named Red Hand, from his own band. He had often raided with Red Hand and did not think he could mistake his voice, which was deep, like the bellow of a bull buffalo. Red Hand was the fattest man in the tribe, and the biggest eater. When there was meat Red Hand ate until he fell back in sleep; when he woke up he ate some more. He was something of a braggart, who, when he was not eating, sang of his own exploits. Though fat, Red Hand was quick, and deadly with the bow. He had three wives who complained that he didn't lie with them enough. When Red Hand was at home he devoted himself to eating, and to the making of arrows.

Kicking Wolf was tired, but he was also hungry. Ahumado had left him no weapons and he had had a hard time getting anything to eat on his trip north. He survived on roots and wild onions and several fish he speared with a crude spear when he was crossing the Rio Grande. He had been so hungry that he had been almost ready to kill Three Birds' horse and eat him.

Though he had been about to sleep he decided it was better to go on to the camp where Red Hand was singing. There would probably be food in the camp, unless Red Hand had eaten it all.

The camp was farther away than he thought, but Red Hand and a few others were still singing when Kicking Wolf appeared on his new horse. There were almost twenty warriors in the party; they had two captive girls. The warriors were so confident that they hadn't even posted guards. When Kicking Wolf appeared they all stopped singing and stared at him, as if he were someone they didn't know. Red Hand had been eating venison but he stopped when he saw Kicking Wolf.

"If you are a ghost please go somewhere else," Red Hand said politely.

Several of the warriors looked at Kicking Wolf as if they thought he might have come from the spirit world, the place of ghosts.

"I am not a ghost," Kicking Wolf assured them. "I hope you don't mind if I eat some of this deer meat. I have been on a long trip and I am very hungry." He could tell that some of the warriors still thought he might be a ghost, but after they watched him eat for a while they got over their suspicions.

Then they all wanted to brag about the great raid they had been on. Several warriors talked so fast that Kicking Wolf had to delay his eating in order to listen politely. They were men of his own band, and yet he felt like a guest. The warriors had been off fighting together, whereas he had been on a quest of a different kind. His own vision was still damaged; he still saw two where there was one. The men talked to him about all the whites they had killed and all the captives they had taken.

"I don't see so many captives," Kicking Wolf said. "There are only two girls and one of them looks as if she might die tonight." Then he looked at Red Hand.

"I found you because you were singing so loudly," he said. "If the bluecoat soldiers were after you they could find you too. You didn't even put out a guard. The bluecoats could sneak up and shoot you all down with rifles. Buffalo Hump would not be so careless if he were here." "Oh, he went to the Great Water, with Worm," Red Hand said. "We don't have to worry about the bluecoat soldiers. They tried to fight us and we chased them away." Red Hand had an arrogant side that was apt to come out when he was questioned or criticized. Once Buffalo Hump had hit him in the head with a club when he was talking arrogantly. The blow would have killed most warriors but it only made a lump on Red Hand's head.

"I am only telling you what any warrior should know," Kicking Wolf said. "You ought to post a guard. Though I have travelled a long way and am tired I will be your guard tonight if no one else wants to." Before anyone could speak or offer to stand guard Red Hand started talking about the rapes he committed while on the raid. While Kicking Wolf was listening he happened to glance across the fire and when he did he got a shock: he thought he saw Three Birds sitting there--the sight was so startling that Kicking Wolf began to shake. He thought perhaps the men had been right at first to consider him a ghost. Perhaps he .was a ghost. He was becoming more and more disturbed when the warrior who seemed to be Three Birds stood up and went to make sure that the captive girls were tied well. At that point Kicking Wolf saw that the warrior was not Three Birds, but his brother, Little Wind. The two brothers looked so much alike that it was confusing. But the warrior seeing to the girls' bonds was Little Wind. He had been away on a hunt when the Buffalo Horse was stolen--he might not even know that his brother, Three Birds, had helped Kicking Wolf take him.

"Your brother, Three Birds, did a brave thing," he told Little Wind, when the man came back and sat down.

Little Wind received this news modestly, without comment. Like Three Birds he seldom spoke, preferring to keep his sentiments to himself.

"He helped me steal the Buffalo Horse from Big Horse Scull," Kicking Wolf informed him.

"Yes, everybody knows that," Red Hand said rudely. "The two of you went away with the Buffalo Horse and missed the great raid.

"None of us had time to go look for you," Red Hand added, in such a rude tone that Kicking Wolf would have hit him with a war club if one had been handy.

"You be quiet! I have to tell Little Wind that his brother is dead," he said, a statement that caused Red Hand to shut up immediately. The death of a warrior was serious business.

"I hope he died bravely," Little Wind said. "Can you tell me about it?" "I did not see him die," Kicking Wolf said. "He may even be alive but I don't think so. He went with me to Mexico, to the Yellow Cliffso where the Black Vaquero has his camp." The warriors who had been moving around, doing small chores, stopped at this moment. The camp became silent. There were no more rude comments from Red Hand. All the warriors knew that to go willingly to the country of Ahumado required great courage. It was a foolish act, of course, for any warrior who wanted to continue with his life; but it was the valor of the act, not its wisdom, that stilled the warriors now. They stood or sat where they were, quiet, in awe. For two warriors to go alone into Mexico and put themselves at the mercy of the Black Vaquero was a thing of such manliness that the warriors wanted to be quiet for a time and think about it.

Kicking Wolf waited a bit, in silence, for the news of what he was saying to be absorbed.

"I stole the Buffalo Horse and took him to Mexico," he said. "I took him to Ahumado--I wanted to do it." He saw that the warriors understood him. Many warriors would leave the band for a few weeks, to go on a quest, or see someplace they wanted to see. Such journeys became a part of the strength of a warrior.

"Ahumado caught us," he said. "He tied me to a horse and made the horse run away.

He wanted to kill me but Big Horse Scull found me while I was in the blackness and cut me loose." "Ah's!" came then from several warriors-- exclamations and looks of puzzlement. Why would Big Horse Scull do such a thing?

"I did not see him," Kicking Wolf said.

"I only saw his track. But now I see two things where there is one." Little Wind waited patiently for Kicking Wolf to tell him more about his brother.

"Three Birds decided to go with me to the Yellow Canyon," Kicking Wolf said.

"Even though I told him I would seek Ahumado, he decided to come. When we found Ahumado he was behind us. He tied me to a horse and made the horse run. That is the last time I saw Three Birds. Ahumado kept him." The warriors continued to be silent. All of them had heard what Ahumado did to Comanches when he caught them. They knew about the cages, the pit, and the sharpened trees. Little Wind felt proud of his brother, for doing such a brave thing.

In his life with the tribe Three Birds had never been considered especially brave. He did not lead the hunt when buffalo were running in a great stampede. He had never gone off alone to kill a bear or a cougar, though such a thing was common enough.

Several of the warriors at the campfire had done such acts of bravery. Three Birds was seldom in the front of a charge, when there was an attack. His main skill as a warrior had been his ability to move quietly--t was why Kicking Wolf had chosen him to help steal the Buffalo Horse.

Since his wives and children had all died of the sickness Three Birds had been sad--Little Wind knew. He still had his quietness of movement, but he did not join in things. Little Wind thought his brother's sadness might explain why he had decided to do such a brave thing.

When Kicking Wolf finished talking he stood up to go sit on guard, as he had offered to do when he arrived and found that the camp was unguarded. But, when he stood up, Red Hand quickly gestured for him to sit again. Red Hand had always liked Kicking Wolf and was ashamed that he had been rude to him, earlier. Kicking Wolf had done a great thing, a thing that would be sung about for many years. He should not have to listen to rudeness. It was just that his sudden appearance had startled everyone a lot. Some had taken him for a ghost. Red Hand had sought to challenge the ghost with his rudeness. But, now that he had heard Kicking Wolf's story, he was eager to make amends.

"I see that you are hungry," Red Hand said.

"You should eat some of this deer meat. I will stand guard tonight." Kicking Wolf politely accepted Red Hand's offer. He stayed where he was, but did not eat much of the deer meat. Now that he was back with the warriors of his own band, a great tiredness came over him. He lay down in the warm ashes of the fire and was soon asleep.

Pearl Coleman pushed down her sadness every morning and tried to make her husband a sizable and tasty breakfast. She sat Long Bill down to a good plate of biscuits and four tasty pork chops. Then she told him, as she had every morning since his return, that she wanted him to quit the rangers and quit them now.

"I can't stand you going off in the wilds no more, Bill," she said, beginning to weep at the memory of her recent ordeal. "I can't stand it. I get so scared my toes cramp up when I get in bed. I can't get to sleep with my toes cramping up like that." Though he appreciated the biscuits and the pork chops, Long Bill let his wife's remarks pass without comment--he also let her tears flow without trying to staunch them. Tears and entreaties for him to quit the rangers had become as predictable a part of the morning as the sunrise itself.

"There's worse things than cramped toes, Pearl," he answered, a biscuit in one hand and an unhappy look on his face.

He said no more than that, but Pearl Coleman felt exasperation growing. For the first time in her marriage she felt herself in opposition to her husband, and not casual opposition either. About the need for him to quit the rangers immediately she was right and he was wrong, and if she couldn't get Bill to accept her view then she didn't know what to think about their future as husband and wife.

"I'd be the one to know what's bad better than you," she told him. "I was here. I had four arrows shot into me, and I lost our baby from being so scared. I got so scared our baby died inside me." Long Bill's own view was that the raping Pearl had endured had probably killed the baby, but he didn't say so; he ate another biscuit and held his peace. The overwhelming relief he felt when he saw that Pearl was alive had subsided, drained away by the new problem of adjusting to what had happened to her.

One thing Long Bill had to face immediately was that Pearl had been raped by several Comanches. On his anguished long, nervous ride home he had half expected to have to cope with the knowledge of rape; but once he got home and discovered that Pearl actually had been raped he was so shocked that, so far, he had not even attempted the conjugal act that in normal circumstances he looked forward to so much.

Not only that, Pearl didn't want him to attempt it.

"They done it and you wasn't here to help me," she told him, weeping, the first night he was back. "I can't be a wife to you no more, Bill." All that night, and every night since, Pearl lay beside her husband, her legs squeezed together, so desperately unhappy that she wished one of the Comanche arrows had killed her.

Long Bill, beside her, was no less unhappy. He and the rangers had buried thirteen people on the ride back to Austin. Now, lying beside his unhappy wife, he thought of all the battles he had been in and reflected that a single well-placed bullet could have spared him such a painful dilemna.

"How many done you?" he asked Pearl, finally.

"Seven," Pearl admitted. "It was over quick." Long Bill said no more, then or ever, but if seven Comanches had violated his wife then it didn't seem to him that it could have been over very quick.

Since his return, day by day, life had gotten harder. Pearl cooked him lavish, delicious meals, but, in bed, lay beside him with her legs squeezed shut, and he himself had no desire to persuade her to open them.

Through the long, anxious nights on the trail he had wanted nothing more than to be home and in bed with his wife. Now, though, he left the house the minute supper was over, to sit late in the saloon every night, drinking with Augustus McCrae. Gus drank to ease his broken heart, Long Bill to blur his own vivid and uneasy thoughts. Sometimes they were even joined by Woodrow Call, who had his own worries but wouldn't voice them--the most he would do was take a whiskey or two. By this time everybody in Austin knew that Maggie Tilton was pregnant, and many people assumed the baby was Woodrow Call's, a fact not of much importance to anyone except the young couple themselves.

Austin had the great raid to recover from. Most of the townspeople had homes or businesses to repair; they also had griefs to grieve. The fact that a young Texan Ranger had got a whore pregnant was in the normal order of things, and no one thought the worse of Woodrow or of Maggie, because of it. Few had the leisure to give the matter more than an occasional thought.

Night after night the three of them, Long Bill, Gus, and Call, sat at a table in the back of the saloon, all three troubled in mind because of difficulties with women. Augustus had lost the love of his life, Long Bill's wife had been shamed by the red Comanches, and Woodrow's girl was carrying a child she insisted was his, a child he could not find it in him to want, or even to acknowledge.

"How would a whore know if a child is one man's or another's?" he asked one night. Long Bill was no.ing, so the question was mainly directed at Gus, but Long Bill snapped to an attention and answered.

"Oh, women know," he said. "They got ways." To Call's annoyance, Augustus casually agreed, though he was so drunk at the time that he could scarcely lift his glass.

"If she says it's yours, it's yours," Gus said. "Now don't you be fidgeting about it." Call had asked Gus because Gus had made a study of women, more or less, while he himself had devoted more attention to the practicalities of ranger life on the frontier. Since Maggie had immediately claimed the baby was his, and had remained firm in her opinion, he thought there might be some medical or scientific basis for her conviction, and if there was he was prepared to do his duty. But he wanted to know the science of it, not merely be told that women knew about such things.

"Maggie's honest, that's the point, Woodrow," Gus reminded him. Though drunk, he meant to see that Woodrow Call did not evade the responsibilities of fatherhood.

"I know she's honest," Call replied. "That don't mean she's right about everything. Honest people make mistakes too.

"I'm honest, and I've made plenty," he added.

"I even make mistakes," Long Bill admitted, ruefully. "And I'm as honest as the day is long." "Pshaw, you ain't!" Gus said. "I expect you told Pearl you was standing guard at night, so you lied within the hour. Ain't that true?" "It's not so much a lie as that Pearl don't need to know everything," Long Bill replied. It was true that he lied to Pearl about his evenings in the saloon, but he didn't think Pearl minded. In fact she might even prefer to have him out of the house until it was time for them to sleep. Otherwise, they would have nothing to do but sit in their chairs or lay in their bed and brood about the fact that they were no longer husband and wife as they had been.

"The point is, Maggie ain't a mistake," Gus told Call. "She's a blessing and you're dumb not to see it." "I am right fond of Maggie," Call said.

"But that don't mean the child is mine. I'd just like to know if there's a way she can be sure about the father." Gus, in a poor mood anyway, was annoyed by the very tone of Woodrow Call's voice.

"If I say it's yours and Bill says it's yours and Maggie says it's yours, then that ought to be enough for you," he said hotly. "Do you need the dern Governor to say it's yours?" "No," Call said, making an earnest effort to stay calm about the matter. "I just want to know for sure. I expect any man would want to know for sure. But you can't tell me for sure and Bill can't either. I don't know what the Governor has to do with it." Silence followed. Augustus saw no point in pursuing the matter further. He had been in many arguments with Woodrow Call but had never, so far as he could recall, succeeded in changing his mind. Long Bill must have felt the same. He stared at his whiskey glass and said nothing.

Call got up and left. He had taken to walking by the river for an hour or more at night, but, on this occasion, had left his rifle in the bunkhouse and strolled back to get it. Since the raid no one ventured out of town, day or night, without a rifle.

"Woodrow's hard to convince, ain't he?" Long Bill said, once Call left.

Augustus didn't reply. Instead he reached in his pocket and took out a letter he had received the day before, from Clara. He had already memorized the letter but could not resist looking at it again:

Dear Gus, I write in haste from St. Louis--tm a boat will take us up the Missouri River. I trust that you are safe. If you are in Austin when you get this letter you will have heard that Ma and Pa were killed in the big raid.

I only got the news two days ago. Of course it's hard, knowing that I will never see Ma and Pa again.

As you are my oldest and best friend I would like you to do this for me: go and see that they are well buried in the cemetery, there by Grandma Forsythe. I would appreciate it if you would hire someone to care for their graves. It is not likely, now that I am a married woman, that I will return that way for many years, but it would be a comfort for me to know that their graves are being cared for. Perhaps a few flowers, bluebonnets maybe, could be planted above them in the spring. My Ma was always taken with bluebonnets.

I hope you will do this for me, Gus, and not be bitter about Bob. Once we are settled in Nebraska I'll send money for the caretaker.

It's hard to write you, Gus--we've always just talked, haven't we? But I mean to practice until I get the hang of it. And you need to write me too, so that I'll know you're safe and well.

Your friend, Clara

She don't know, Augustus thought, as he carefully folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. Merely seeing her writing caused such yearning to swell up in him that he didn't think he could stand it. Despite himself tears welled in his eyes.

"I reckon we can tell about that baby of Maggie's once it's born," Long Bill said. He spoke mainly to cover his friend's embarrassment--merely getting a letter from Clara had brought tears to his eyes.

Gus, though, didn't seem to be listening.

He put the letter back in his pocket, scattered some money on the table, and left.

Long Bill sat alone for a while, drinking, though he knew it was about time he went home to Pearl. No doubt she'd be in bed with her Bible, trying to pray away troubles that just weren't willing to leave. Gus's girl had married someone else, as women would. Maggie Tilton had become pregnant, as women would. But his wife had been shamed by seven Comanche warriors, causing her to lose a baby that had been legally and pleasurably conceived.

Now he wasn't sure that there would be any more such pleasure for himself and Pearl. Her ample flesh, which had once drawn him to her night after night, now repelled him. He didn't mind that Pearl kept her legs squeezed together. Every night now he scooted farther and farther from her, in the bed. Even her sweat smelled different to him now.

He didn't know what to do, but one thing he did not intend to do was resign from the rangers, which was the very thing Pearl wanted most. That very morning, before starting in about it, Pearl had run out in the yard and grabbed up a fat hen that he wasn't even too sure was their hen; she had wrung its neck before he could even raise the question of whose hen it might be, and then started talking about the rangers.

"Pearl, I wish you'd stop talking about me quitting the rangers," he told her bluntly.

He didn't think he could survive his sorrows without the companionship of the boys in the troop; besides that, he had to make a living and had few marketable skills. How did the woman expect him to feed her if he quit the job he was best at? They'd have to poach some neighbor's chicken every day if he did that.

"But Bill, I need you to quit, I can't help it!" Pearl said.

"Don't be complaining at me today, Pearl," he said. "I've got to help Pea Eye shoe the horses, and that's tiring work." He had just come down the stairs in time to see the chicken die.

Pearl was already gutting it--she flung a handful of guts toward the woodpile where several hungry cats soon descended on them.

Pearl knew Long Bill was tired of her trying to get him to quit the rangers, but she couldn't stop herself. Sometimes at the thought of him going away again she felt such distress that she felt her head might burst, or her heart. She and Long Bill had been so happy before the raid; they hardly ever fussed, except over the crease in his pants, which she could never seem to iron well enough to suit him. They had been happy people, but a single hour of horror and torment had changed that.

Pearl didn't know how to get their happiness back but she knew it would never be possible unless Bill moved her to a place where she felt there were no Indians to threaten her. If he wouldn't move to a safer town, then the least he could do was stay home and protect her. The thought of Bill leaving made her so scared that, twice recently, just walking down the street, she had grown so nervous that she wet herself, to her great shame. She had no confidence now, and knew she had none. The Comanches had come once and done as they pleased with her. There was no reason to think they wouldn't come again.

Long Bill paid for his whiskey and walked home under a thin March moon. There had been a spurt of snow the day before, and a little of it lingered in the shaded places near the buildings. It crunched under his feet as he approached the house where he and Pearl lived.

It was late, past midnight. Long Bill had hoped to find his wife asleep, but when he tiptoed in he saw that the lamp by the bed was still lit. There lay Pearl, propped up on a pillow with the lamp lit and a Bible in her lap.

"Pearl, if you've been praying, that's enough of it, let's blow out the lamp and get to sleep," he said.

Pearl didn't want to. For hours, while Bill drank in the saloon to avoid coming home to her--Pearl knew that was what he was doing and knew that the rapes were what had driven him out--she had been praying to the Lord to show her a way to get their happiness back; finally, only a few minutes before Bill stepped in the door, a vision had come to her of what that way was --a vision so bright that it could only have come from the Lord.

"Billy, it's come to me!" she said, jumping out of bed in her excitement.

"Well, what has, Pearl?" Long Bill asked, a little taken aback by his wife's sudden fervor. He had been hoping to slip into bed and sleep off the liquor he had just drunk, but that clearly was not going to be easy.

"I know what you can do once you quit the rangers," Pearl said. "It came to me while I was praying. It's a vision from the Lordffwas "Pearl, I've learnt rangering and I don't know how to do anything else," Long Bill said. "What's your notion? Tell me and let's get to bed." Pearl was a little hurt by her husband's tone, which was brusque. Also, he was swaying on his feet, indicating a level of drunkenness that she could not approve. But she hadn't lost hope for her God-sent vision--not quite.

"Billy, you could preach to the multitudes!" she said. "Our preacher got killed in the raid and his wife too. There's a church open right here in town. I know you'd make a fine preacher, once you got the hang of it." Long Bill was so stunned by Pearl's statement that he dropped, a little too hard, into their one chair, causing a loose rung to pop out, as it often did. In his annoyance he threw the rung out the open window.

"We need a better chair than this," he said.

"I'm tired of that damn rung popping out ever time I sit down." "I know Bill, but the Forsythes are dead and the store ain't open," Pearl said, horribly disappointed in Bill's response to her suggestion. She had convinced herself that he would be delighted to become a preacher, but he clearly wasn't delighted at all. He just looked annoyed, which is how he had looked most of the time since his return.

"Didn't you hear me?" she asked.

"Handsome as you are, I know you'd make a fine preacher. The town needs one, too. One of the deacons has been holding church, but he can't talk plain and he's boresome to have to listen to." Long Bill felt a good deal of exasperation.

In the first place, Pearl had no business being up so late; now she had caused him to break their chair, and all because of a notion so foolish that if he had been in a better mood he would have laughed.

"Pearl, I can't read," he pointed out.

"I've heard some of the Bible read out, but that was a long time ago. The only verse I can recall is that one about the green pastures, and even that one's a little cloudy in my mind." Long Bill paused, noticing that his wife was on the verge of tears; Pearl did not cry thimblefuls, either. Once she got started crying it was wise to have a bucket handy, or at least a good-sized rag.

"I do not know how you got such a notion, honey," he said, in the gentlest tone he could manage. "If I was to put myself up to be a preacher, I expect the boys would laugh me out of town." Pearl Coleman wasn't ready to give up her God-sent vision, though. Faith was supposed to move mountains--it was just a question of convincing Bill that faith and his handsome looks was all he would need to start out on a preaching career.

"I can read, Billy," she said. "I can read just fine. I could read you the text in the morning before church and then you could preach on it." Long Bill just shook his head. He felt a weariness so deep he thought he might go to sleep right in the chair.

"Would you help me off with my boots, Pearl?" he asked, stretching out a leg. "I'm tired to the bone." Pearl helped her husband off with his boots.

Later, in bed, as silently as possible, she had her cry. Then she got up, went out into the street, and managed to locate the chair rung Long Bill had flung out the window. There was no telling how long it would be before the store opened again, and, meanwhile, they had to have their chair.

Old Ben Mickelson had been so badly frightened during the great Comanche raid that, as soon as it was clear that he had survived it, he attempted to give notice and leave.

"Leave and go where?" Inez Scull asked him, a moment or two before she took the long black bullwhip to him.

In the Scull mansion, of course, there was little room to employ a bullwhip properly, and old Ben, when it became a question of his hide, proved surprisingly nimble, darting through the halls and managing to keep the heavy furniture between himself and his enraged mistress. The best Inez managed was to strike the old butler a few times across the shoulders with the coiled whip before driving him outside, where she cornered him on the high porch.

"Leave and go where, you scabby old fool?" Inez said, waving the whip back and forth.

"Why, back to Brooklyn, madame," Ben Mickelson said; he was calculating the risk of jumping off the porch--it wasn't that high but neither was it that low, and he had no desire to break an ankle or any other limb.

"There's no red Indians in Brooklyn," he added. "A man needn't fear mutiliation, not in honest Brooklyn." "You'll get worse than mutiliation if you think you can give notice on me," Inez hissed at him. "Where do you suppose I can get another butler, in these wilds? If you leave, who do you suppose will serve the brandy and the port?" She swung the whip, but clumsily--mostly she employed the bullwhip more as a club than a whip, in her fights with Inish. Old Ben Mickelson deflected the blow and leapt off the porch. He failed to make a clean landing, though; one ankle twisted beneath him so painfully that when Inez Scull followed him and attempted to apply a sound lashing Ben Mickelson was forced to crawl away.

That was the sight that greeted Augustus McCrae as he came trotting up from the town.

Old Ben Mickelson was crawling down the long slope toward the springhouse, while Inez Scull followed, attempting to whack him with the bullwhip. Nothing that happened at the Scull mansion surprised Augustus very much; the one thing that was obvious in the present encounter was that Madame Scull could have done the old butler more damage if she'd used a quirt and not a bullwhip. He arrived just in time to hear her deliver a final comment.

"If you attempt to leave me again, Ben, I'll put it out that you stole my emeralds," she said. "You won't have to worry about red Indians if I do that, because the sheriff will haul you off and hang you." "All right! Let me be! I'll stay and serve your damned port," old Ben said, standing up but favoring his ankle.

Inez promptly whacked him again.

"Damned port, indeed," she said. "Don't you presume to swear at your mistress!" Augustus watched with amusement. Lately he and Ben Mickleson had become allies in crime. Before going upstairs to engage in what Inez Scull described as a good trot, he and old Ben would often sneak in and raid the cabinet where Captain Scull kept his fine whiskeys and brandies. At first he had underestimated the potency of the brandy to such an extent that he represented himself poorly, once he got to the boudoir, a fact which never failed to draw a stinging reproach from Madame Scull.

"It looks as if you've crippled Ben," he said to the lady, watching the old butler limp away.

"The scabby old beast attempted to quit, just because a few Comanches chased through town," she said.

"I won't have desertion--y should bear that in mind yourself, Captain McCrae." Her face was fiery red and she flung him a look of contempt.

"I detest contrary servants," she said.

"Ben Mickelson has too much damned gall to think he could just walk in and quit." Augustus got off his horse, a nervous filly. He thought it best to walk along with Madame Scull until she calmed down.

Sometimes a jumpy horse would start bucking even if it only heard a voice it didn't like.

Woodrow Call had some skill with bucking horses, but he himself had none. Three jumps and he usually went flying; better to dismount and walk when Inez Scull was waving her bullwhip around.

"Your husband's in Mexico--t's the news," he told her. "Or at least that's the rumour." "Not interested in rumours and not especially interested in where Inish is," Inez said.

"Anyway, I doubt he's that close. Inish usually goes farther afield when he strays--I expected him to be in Egypt, at least. Who says he's in Mexico?" "It's a thirdhand rumour," Augustus said.

"A miner heard it from a Mexican, and the Governor heard it from the miner." "Does the news disturb you, Gussie?" she asked, smiling at him suddenly and taking his arm as they walked. Then she lifted his hand and gave his finger a hard bite; she set her teeth into it and looked at him as she bit.

"I suppose we'll have to leave off trotting if Inish shows up," she said. "He's a very jealous man. I have no doubt he'd find a reason to hang you if he knew we'd been doing all this fine trotting." "Well, but who would tell him?" Augustus asked. He had never known quite such a devilish woman. Clara Forsythe could be extremely vexing, but her contrariness was done mostly in play, whereas Inez Scull's devilment had anger in it, and defiance, and even lust; it wasn't a thing done in play, as Clara's was. Inez had just bitten his finger so hard there was blood on her front teeth. He wiped his finger on his pants leg and walked on with her toward the big house.

"I might tell him myself if you displease me," Inez said. "I do rather like to be the center of attention when I choose a man, and I can't say you're lavish with your attention. My Jakie was much more attentive, while he lasted." "Jake Spoon, that pup!" Gus said.

"Why, he is barely dry behind the ears." "I wasn't interested in his ears, Captain," Mrs. Scull said. "I've a notion that you're not sorry that Inish is returning." "Ma'am, I didn't say he was returning," Gus said. "I just said he's in Mexico--y didn't let me finish my report." "Why wouldn't he return, if he's in Mexico?" Inez asked. "I hardly think those brown whores would interest him for long." "We heard he was a captive," Gus told her. "We think the Black Vaquero caught him." "Oh well, no one keeps Inish a captive long, he's too troublesome," Inez said. "You don't really like me, do you, Gussie?" "Ma'am, I'm walking along with you--ain't that a sign that I like you?" Augustus asked. He wanted to curse her, though, for being so bold as to ask such a question. The fact was, he didn't like her; it was just that he had an emptiness in him, an emptiness that hadn't been there until Clara left. It was the emptiness that brought him up the hill to Madame Scull. Being with her invariably left a bad taste in his mouth, yet he kept coming.

"You coward, why can't you say it? You despise me!" Inez said, with bitter scorn. "You'd be happy to see Inish back. Then you could just drink whiskey all day and moon about that Forsythe girl.

I'm jealous of that girl, I can tell you that.

I've more to offer than any girl who works in a store, and yet you've had her on your mind the whole time I've known you." Gus didn't answer. He wondered how women so easily found out what men were feeling.

He had never so much as mentioned Clara's name to Inez Scull--how did she know it was Clara on his mind? Women could smell feelings as a dog could smell a fox. He had just told Madame Scull that her husband was a prisoner of the cruelest man in Mexico, and yet she hadn't turned a hair. She was far more disturbed by the fact that he loved Clara Forsythe and not her.

Even in their passion, though he seemed to be there, he wasn't, and Mrs. Scull knew it.

"Well, I better just go," he said. "I mainly came up to give you the news." "Liar," Inez said, slapping him. "You're a liar and a coward--if I hadn't dropped my bullwhip I'd cut you to ribbons. You didn't come up to tell me about Inish. You came here because I know more about certain things than any whore you can afford on your puny little salary." She was red in the face again--Gus's nervous young horse was backing away.

"You and your village maiden, I despise you both!" Inez said. "You and your calf love. You come to me, though, with your mangy grin--and Inish will come for the same reason, when he's through wandering." "What's the reason?" Augustus asked, annoyed by the woman's violent tone--a tone that even scared his horse.

"Lust, sir ... free lu/!" Inez said.

"Do you hear me? Lu/!" She yelled the last so loudly that anyone within half a mile could have heard her. It made him nervous. Lust was one thing--telling the whole town about it was something else. He decided he could leave, but when he stepped toward his horse Madame Scull struck at him with the coiled bullwhip.

"There, go along, you coward," she said. "In your whole life you'll never find a woman who will make herself so free--and yet you're too callow to appreciate it." With that she turned and stalked off toward her mansion, while Gus stroked and soothed his agitated mount. He thought of following Madame Scull into the house, but, in the end, mounted and rode back down the hill toward town.

The first person he saw when he reached the lots was young Jake Spoon, idle as usual, though there was plenty of work available. Deets, Pea Eye, and Long Bill Coleman were struggling to subdue a stout young gelding, so they could shoe him. Jake, though, sat on an empty nail keg playing a game of solitaire, using an overturned wheelbarrow for a table. It evidently didn't bother Jake to play while others worked, a fact that annoyed Gus so that he walked over and kicked the nail keg out from under--it sent him sprawling. Then, not satisfied, he bent over, grabbed Jake by his curly hair, and knocked his head against the ground a time or two.

Jake saw from Gus's face that he was very angry--he had no idea why Gus had chosen to take it out on him, but he knew better than to resist. Gus McCrae was fully capable of doing worse.

"There, you better play possum or I'll have your damn gizzard," Gus said.

The three men struggling with the mustang noticed the little altercation. They stopped what they were doing, to watch, but there was nothing more to see. A little wind swirled through the lots, blowing several of Jake Spoon's cards off the wheelbarrow. Gus left Jake on his back in the dust and walked over to the horseshoeing crew.

"Jake's a lazy one, ain't he?" Long Bill said. "The whores like him, though. They fancy that curly hair." "Jakie," Mrs. Scull called him, Gus remembered. Probably she too had fancied his curly hair. The thought brought the bad taste back to his mouth.

Jake Spoon picked himself up, but cautiously. He left the windblown cards to lie in the dust. Gus McCrae looked as if he were in the mood to give someone a thorough licking. The men resumed working with the horse, but they kept one eye on Gus, who stood with his back to them. It was clear that it wouldn't take much to set him off.

But when Gus turned it was to motion for Deets to come with him.

"You, there," he said to Jake, "leave them cards alone and help the boys shoe that horse." Long Bill started to protest the order.

Deets was handy with a hasp and a horseshoe nail, and there was nothing in the way of labor that Jake was handy with. But he saw that Gus was upset, and held his tongue.

Augustus walked Deets out of town to where the cemetery lay, in a curve of a stream. They could hear the water rushing before they reached the stream.

Once amid the live oaks that bordered the river Gus felt a little relief from his sour mood, a mood mostly caused by Inez Scull. He didn't like the woman, but she exuded a strong nectar, too strong to easily ignore.

Deets followed Gus quietly, glad to be relieved of the horseshoeing. When they came to the cemetery he took off his hat, an old felt Captain Call had given him only the day before.

It had belonged to one of the rangers killed in the raid. Deets was mighty proud of his hat, but he took it off quickly when they came to the graveyard. It wouldn't do to be disrespectful of the dead.

Augustus walked him carefully through the fresh graves until he came to those of Clara's mother and father. He knew Deets couldn't read the names on the wooden crosses, so he wanted him to take care to note exactly where the two graves were.

"These are the Forsythes," he told Deets.

"They were parents of a good friend of mine. I aim to put up good stone headstones when I get time-- she'd want me to, I expect." The thought of Clara entrusting him with the care of her parents' graves left him briefly overcome.

He knelt down and didn't try to speak.

"Deets, can you garden?" he asked, when the mood passed and he had better control of his voice.

"I can garden," Deets assured him.

"Kept a big one, back home. Lord, we grew the string beans." Augustus realized he knew almost nothing about the young black man. Deets had just shown up one day, as people did--black people, particularly. Their owners died and they were set to wandering.

"Where was back home, Deets?" Gus asked.

"Louisee, I believe," Deets said, after a moment. "It was in Louisee, somewhere on the river." "Oh, Louisiana, I guess you mean," Gus said. "I want you to tend these graves like you would a garden. Only you don't need to grow no string beans, just flowers. My friend's mother was partial to bluebonnets, particularly. I'd like you to get some flowers growing on these graves, come spring." It was clear to Deets that Mr. Gus had a powerful affection for the friend he mentioned. When he mentioned her his voice shook. As for flowers, that was easy.

"The flowers be coming soon," he said. "I'll get some of the bluebonnets and put them on these graves." "I'll see you get a wage for it--a fair wage," Augustus said. "I want you to keep tending these two graves as long you're in these parts. Just these two, now. You don't have time to be flowering up other people's graves." "No sir," Deets said. "I see which two.

I'll make 'em pretty." "You tend them, come what may," Gus said.

"That's how my friend wants it." He paused--he seemed to have difficulty with his voice. Deets waited.

"You'll need to be keeping them pretty, year after year," Gus said, with a glance at the young black man who knelt, hat in hand, a few feet away.

"You'll need to do it whatever happens to me," Gus said, looking down at the clods of brown earth on the fresh grave.

These last ^ws startled Deets. It was clear that Mr. Gus was mighty concerned about the upkeep of the two graves. Deets could not but feel proud that he had been selected, from all the company, to be the one to see that the burial places were well maintained.

But now Mr. Gus was concerning him a little.

What did he mean, whatever happened to him? It sounded as if he might be intending to leave, which was startling and upsetting. Of all the rangers only Pea Eye, a young man like himself, had been as kind to him as Mr. Gus.

"I expect you be seeing for yourself what a good job I do, Captain," Deets said. He tried to pick his ^ws carefully, for the matter clearly meant a lot to Mr. Gus.

"But if I ain't here to see it for myself, you tend these graves anyway," Gus said, with force in his voice suddenly. "You make 'em pretty anyway, Deets, even if I'm dead and in a grave myself." It had suddenly come to Augustus that he might die without ever seeing Clara again--or, even worse, Clara herself might die before they could ever have another moment together with one another. It was a terrible thought to think, and yet men and women died every day on the frontier; and Nebraska, where Clara had gone, was no less a frontier than Texas. Thirty people, all of them alive when he and Call left Austin, lay buried under the freshly turned earth just before him.

"I ain't guaranteed tomorrow--y ain't either," he told Deets. "If I should fall I wouldn't want my friend to have to be ... worrying about these graves not being tended." Deets had never heard Mr. Gus speak so.

He realized he had been given a solemn responsibility.

"I'll be seeing to the graves, Captain," he said.

Mr. Gus nodded. He was looking away; it was as if he were thinking of a far place, a place well distant from the little graveyard outside of Austin. He nodded, but he didn't speak.

Deets thought it might be best just to leave him alone, to do his looking away. He walked out of the graveyard, put his hat back on, and began to inspect some of the first spring flowers, to see if any of them might do for prettying up the two graves.

Maggie now seldom went out. The baby was growing inside her, its kicks stronger every day.

Even with her coat on it was obvious to everyone who saw her that she was with child.

Fortunately her room was light, with a good south breeze blowing through it most of the time. Woodrow had started taking most of his meals with her, which meant that she did have to go out and shop a little in the market.

Since the raid beef had become scarce and pricey. There were plenty of cattle but few hunters bold enough to go into the brush country to slaughter them, for fear of encountering Comanches.

Fortunately, Woodrow liked goat, which was available and cheap. Sometimes Gus McCrae would come up and eat with him--he was always tipsy, it seemed.

"I fear my partner will end up a drunkard," Woodrow said, one night after Gus had left.

They stood by the window and watched him make straight for a saloon.

"That's because of Clara," Maggie said. "He had his heart set on her." "Yes, but she's gone," Call said. "He needs to let it go and find himself another girl." "He can't," Maggie said. "Some folks can't just bend their feelings that way." "Well, he ought to try," Woodrow said.

"There's plenty of girls that would make him a decent wife if he'd just give them a chance." Then he picked up his rifle and left to walk the river, as he did most every night. He scarcely lingered with Maggie ten minutes now, after taking his meal; when he returned it would be nearly dawn. He would merely sleep an hour or two with her, before going down to the rangers.

Each night's departure left Maggie feeling empty and sad. She wanted to say to him what he had just said about the girls Gus might marry: I could make you a decent wife, if you'd just give me the chance. Already, she tried to treat Woodrow as she would treat a beloved husband, yet all it seemed to get her was the hastiest attentions. The thing that seemed to please him most was that she kept his clothes clean and nicely pressed. As the weather grew warmer, Maggie sometimes felt faint, ironing in the heat, and yet she kept on because Woodrow liked to dress neatly and his pleasure in wearing well-placed clothes was a kind of bond they had, a stronger one than their pleasure even. Anyway the pleasure had become hasty and more and more intermittent. Woodrow seemed to feel that much indulgence in the carnal appetites would be medically inadvisable; or perhaps he was merely put off by her swelling body. He withdrew and walked the river; Maggie felt sad, but continued to do her best.

The baby that was so visibly there inside her she had given up mentioning at all. That she was pregnant was a fact of their existence, yet a fact they both ignored. Maggie longed for a good chance to talk to Woodrow about the baby; but he was careful in his speech and never gave her one.

Best wait, she thought--best wait until it's here. Her hope was that once the child was born Woodrow would see it and take to it. In her daydreams she imagined him pleased by the little child, so pleased that he would want everybody to know he was its father. And yet, at night, alone, with Woodrow gone, she couldn't keep herself from wondering if it would really be that way. One day she would be hopeful, the next day despairing. She could well understand why Gus McCrae had turned to drink, from missing Clara Forsythe, now Clara Allen. Maggie missed her too. Although circumstance had not permitted much conversation to pass between them, Maggie felt that Clara liked her.

Sometimes, sweeping the boardwalk in front of the store, Clara would look up at Maggie's window and smile and wave. When some small need took Maggie into the store, Clara was invariably friendly and welcoming. Knowing that Maggie had a yearning for fine goods, gloves or shoes often well beyond her purse, Clara would sometimes mark a little off an item, so that Maggie could have at least a few things that pleased her.

Having Clara there broke the loneliness; now there was no one with such a fine spirit who might break it. Maggie had once talked to Pearl Coleman now and then, but since the raid Pearl herself had become too despondent to chatter in the light way she once had. Maggie saw her almost every day, in the market, but Pearl barely responded to her hello. From being an aggressive customer, willing to haggle tirelessly and loudly over the price of a pepper or a squash, Pearl had become indifferent, merely raking a few foodstuffso into her basket and paying the price without dispute.

Seeing Pearl Coleman, a woman who had always been cheerful and well able to take care of herself, so despondent made Maggie reflect on how precarious life was, in such a place. Thirty people had lost their lives, and several women had had their marriages destroyed by the rapes they endured; most of the children had stopped going to school for fear that the Indians would come back and take them, and the men were nervous about venturing much beyond the outskirts of Austin.

Maggie herself felt like going to a safer place-- San Antonio, perhaps, or one of the towns on the coast. But she knew that if she moved she would lose all hope of marriage to Woodrow Call. The rangers were quartered in Austin and he had been promoted to captain. He would not be likely to leave.

One good thing about the promotion was that Woodrow had started giving her six dollars a month toward her housekeeping expenses.

"Woodrow, what's this for?" Maggie asked, very startled, the first time he gave her the money.

"Take it--it will be easier for you to make ends meet," Call said. The fact was, he lived frugally and seldom spent all his salary; a factor in his modest prosperity was that Maggie fed him several meals a week and looked after his laundry. Nobody gave her the food she served him, and she could scarcely do much whoring with her belly so swollen. He felt that he was an expense Maggie could ill afford. Mainly he would just put the money on the table, or by the cupboard; often he would leave it at night, before he left to walk the river.

When Maggie saw the six dollars on her table something stirred in her, something mixed. She realized it was as close as Woodrow could come to admitting that he lived with her. On the other hand, she had always cared for herself. She might long for a man who might marry her and want to support her --and yet she could not convince herself that Woodrow really did want to support her. He just felt he ought to; it was his conscience, not his heart, which moved him to put the six dollars on her table every month.

Sometimes Maggie left the money on the table a day or two before she picked it up. The sight of it made her feel both better and worse; it made her feel that she was being kept by a man who, though he might care for her, had no true desire to keep her, much less marry her and claim their child.

Still, Woodrow Call, with his nightly absences and the six dollars a month which he punctually left, was still the best that life offered, or was likely to offer, in the place where Maggie was. Sometimes she felt so defeated that she wondered if she ought to give up on the idea of respectability alt. She might as well just whore and whore and whore, until she got too old. Even if she only saw a few customers, now and then, she could still make a lot more than six dollars a month.

They had travelled up the Rio Grande almost to the crossings on the great war trail when they saw the Old One. Worm at once became upset and began to shake and to speak incoherently, although the Old One was merely squatting by a little fire, carefully removing the quills from a large porcupine he had shot.

The Old One, whose long white hair touched the ground when he squatted, was devoting careful attention to the dead porcupine. He did not want to break any of the porcupine quills--one by one he took them out and laid them on a little strip of buckskin he had unfurled and placed on a rock by his campfire. The big wolf that travelled with the Old One gave one howl when he smelled Buffalo Hump and Worm, and loped away into the bed of the river.

Buffalo Hump stopped, respectfully, a good distance away. The Old One turned his head briefly and looked at them; then he went back to the careful extraction of the porcupine quills.

"We must not stay here," Worm said, in a shaky voice. "The wolf can hide in a dream.

In the dream it will be a bird, or a woman you want to couple with. But when you do, the wolf will come out of the dream and open your throat." "Be quiet," Buffalo Hump said. "I am not afraid of any wolf. If we are respectful, the Old One might give us some of those nice quills." "No, we cannot take the quills," Worm protested. "The Old One might witch them.

They might turn into scorpions while you carry them. Nothing about the Old One is as it seems." Buffalo Hump was beginning to wish he had sent Worm home after the great raid. Worm had become too nervous to make good company. Everything he had seen on their ride up the river seemed malign to him. At the mouth of the river, where the water was salt, they had caught a young alligator that had got into the wrong waters somehow. Worm made a big fuss over the alligator. Later they came upon a dead eagle and Worm made a big fuss about that too. Now they had stumbled on the Old One and Worm was terrified. Once Worm had been a competent medicine man but now everything seemed to scare him or upset him.

"The Old One is just an old man," Buffalo Hump said. "I have seen him several times and he has never witched me. He probably found that wolf when it was a pup and raised it as we would a dog.

"The Old One is not a fighting man now," he added, but Worm was still not reassured.

"He is too old," Worm contended. "He belongs to death and he brings death with him. His breath is the breath of death." Buffalo Hump decided just to ignore Worm. If Worm didn't want to visit with the Old One, then Worm could take himself home.

"The Old One isn't dead," he pointed out.

"He belongs to the river, and he has killed a fine porcupine. It is hard to find a porcupine on the llano now. I want some of those quills for my wives--they always like porcupine quills." He rode slowly on down to where the Old One was working--Worm hung back, but he did not leave for home. Buffalo Hump knew all the stories about Ephaniah, the Old One, the man who walked with a wolf. It was said that he had come to the West with the first whites, the ones who took the beaver. One story was that he had bathed in a stream where the river was born, in a place no one else had ever found, and that the water in that place had made him unable to die. It was said that he would only die when the world died. That was why he called himself the Lord of the Last Day. Because the sacred waters of the spring of life had bathed him he had been able to escape the dangers that had long ago finished all the other white men who took the beaver. Once, it was said, the fastest warriors the Blackfeet could muster got after the Old One for taking their beaver; they ran him hard for a hundred miles. Though the warriors were young and fleet, Ephaniah was faster. He ran on and on and could not be overtaken. It was said, too, that he had made a pact with the beaver people, so that they would let him hide in their houses when he was in danger.

Worm believed that the Old One could breathe in water, like a fish. He bathed in the icy water of the high streams and did not seem to be affected.

Some thought his power was in his hair, and that if he could be scalped he would die like other men. But no one yet had been able to take his hair, though he had more hair than any woman. Others thought that he could speak the language of animals and birds and even fish. Some had seen him put his head under water; they believed that he could call the fish and make them come to him when he was hungry.

He was often seen eating fish when others could find no fish.

It was certain that the Old One knew the languages of many tribes; it might be that he knew the language of fish and birds as well, or the language of wolves. Buffalo Hump neither believed the stories nor disbelieved them.

He was not a man who felt that he always knew the truth of things. He liked to watch and listen. A man such as the Old One must know things that other people had forgotten. It might be that the Old One had stumbled on the spring of life and could not die, but was that good? In life was much pain; what man would want to bear it forever? Besides, any man who was curious would want at last to enter the mystery, to walk the plains of the spirit land. Buffalo Hump was in no hurry to have his own life end, and yet the knowledge that it would end someday and that he would go to where the spirits were brought a kind of peace, after struggles and warfare and wounds and the quarrels of women.

And yet, what he had noticed the few times he had come across the Old One was that he seemed to be a cheerful man, and practical. His first request was always for tobacco, and so it was now.

"Those are fine quills you are taking from that porcupine," Buffalo Hump said, once he had dismounted at the Old One's camp.

"Leave off the talk, I'm counting and don't want to lose my count," Ephaniah said, which amused Buffalo Hump no end. Worm was a long distance back, quivering and trying to make a protective spell of some kind, while the Old One with the long white hair was merely counting the quills of his porcupine.

Buffalo Hump accepted his rebuke and sat quietly by the campfire as the old man plucked out each quill carefully and laid it on the buckskin. He worked with ease and skill; not once, while Buffalo Hump watched, did he break a single quill. Now and then Buffalo Hump turned and gestured for Worm to come to the camp, but Worm was too fearful. Soon the dusk hid him. When darkness filled the sky, with only the small speckle of firelight to interrupt it, the old man put the porcupine aside. He had not been able to finish his work before dark and evidently did not want to jeopardize it by working when the light was poor.

"That's a thousand and one, so far," Ephaniah said. "I'm stopping till daylight. Got any tobaccy?" Buffalo Hump had none but Worm had plenty. He had filled several pouches with it during the great raid; once back with the tribe he meant to trade it for a young woman who belonged to old Spotted Bull, a warrior with a great taste for tobacco who was much too decrepit to need the young woman.

"Worm will give you some when he comes to the camp," Buffalo Hump said. "Right now he is scared you will witch him so he is staying back." The Old One, Ephaniah, seemed to be amused by this comment. He cupped his hands around his mouth and produced the howl of a wolf. It was such a good howl that Buffalo Hump himself was startled for a moment--then, from the darkness, there came an answering howl, from the wolf that had trotted away when the two Comanches appeared.

It was only a few minutes later that Worm came into the camp. He did not enjoy being alone by the river with wolves howling all around. He did not want to fall asleep in a place where a wolf might come out of his dream and rip his throat.

Once he discovered that the Old One wanted some of his tobacco, Worm forgot about being witched; since the Old One was their host he had to give him some tobacco, or else be thought a bad guest, but he only offered him the smallest of the many plugs of tobacco he had looted from the Texans. The Old One accepted the plug without comment, but Buffalo Hump frowned.

"If you would be a little more generous the Old One might give us some of these nice porcupine quills," he said. "My wives would be pleased if they had such nice quills." "You know Spotted Bull," Worm said.

"He won't give me that woman unless he gets a lot of tobacco." "You have enough tobacco to buy five or six women," Buffalo Hump told him. "If you can't talk Spotted Bull out of that woman, buy someone else. What you are doing is impolite. If you can't be a better guest than this, you deserve to have the dream wolf come and eat you." Worm did not enjoy being spoken to so sternly.

Buffalo Hump was a man whose moods were uncertain, and they were still a long way from home.

Worm was torn; he very much wanted the young wife of Spotted Bull, yet he did not want to make an enemy of Buffalo Hump, not while they had such a way to travel. In the end he gave the Old One three more plugs of tobacco.

The old man took them without comment.

In the morning, though, in the clear sunlight, he continued to remove quills from the hide of the porcupine.

Buffalo Hump sat in silence, watching. The great wolf who travelled with the Old One stood on a little bluff to the east. Worm would have liked to ask the Old One a few questions; he wanted particularly to know if the Old One could speak to fish. But Buffalo Hump discouraged him. He did not want the old man to be bothered while he was extracting the porcupine quills.

When the last quill had been coaxed from the porcupine's hide and laid on the little piece of buckskin, the Old One quickly separated about a quarter of the quills and offered them to Buffalo Hump, who nodded in thanks. The Old One then carefully folded the rest of the quills into the buckskin, put them in a little pouch he carried, and then went down to the cold river to wash his face.

While the two Comanches watched he put his head under the water. When he stood up he shook water off his long hair, as a dog might.

"I think he was just talking to the fish people," Worm said.

"What did he say to them?" Buffalo Hump asked. "He is an old white man. I think he just likes to wash himself." Worm was stumped by the question. He had no idea what the Old One might have said to the fish. But he was convinced there was witching involved--witching of some kind. He was also wishing he had not given away so much tobacco. It would tell against him when he began his trade with Spotted Bull.

The second time the young Comanches caught him, Famous Shoes thought it was probably going to be his time to die. He had found his grandmother at a poor little camp near the Arkansas but did not have a very good visit. His grandmother had immediately set in complaining about his grandfather and had kept up her complaining for two days. Every time Famous Shoes tried to get her to consider more important things, such as how the Kickapoo people had come to be, his grandmother grew irritated and brushed aside his question. Everybody knew of course that the Kickapoo people had come out of a hole in the earth at the time when there were only buffalo in the world. The Kickapoo had been chosen by the buffalo to be the first human beings; Father Buffalo himself had pawed open the hole and allowed the Kickapoo to come up from their deep caves.

Everybody knew about the hole and Father Buffalo and that the Kickapoo had become human beings at a time before rain clouds, when all creatures received their moisture from the dew; they knew that rain had only begun to fall out of the sky once the Kickapoo people had made a prayer that caused the sky to let down its waters.

But what no one knew, or, at least, what his grandmother could not be bothered to tell him, was where the hole was that the Kickapoo had come out of.

The reason Famous Shoes wanted to find the hole so much was because he was convinced there were still underground people who lived somewhere in the earth. At night, when he slept with his ears close to the ground, the underground people spoke to him in dreams.

Over the years he had come to want badly to go visit the underground people and learn the important things they knew. After all, they were the oldest people.

His interest in tracks had only made him more interested in the underground people. Over the years he had become convinced that the underground people were watching the tracks that were made on the earth; sometimes, out of mischief, they altered the tracks of animals and made the tracks vanish. Quite a few animals that he tracked had simply ceased to make visible tracks; they vanished. These odd vanishings had happened so often that it occurred to him that perhaps the underground people had a way of opening the earth, so that animals being pursued could come down with them for a time, and rest.

Famous Shoes had no proof that the underground people could open the earth and take animals into it. He didn't know. He just knew that tracks sometimes stopped--it was one of the mysteries of his work. He thought that if he could find the hole the Kickapoo people had come out of he might be able to go down into the earth for a few days and see if there was someone there who could explain these matters to him.

When, on the third day, his grandmother finally grew tired of complaining about his grandfather's habit of wandering off and leaving her just when she needed him most, she listened to him explain his theory of the underground people and told him it was nonsense.

"There are no underground people," she informed him brusquely. "All the Kickapoo people came out of the hole except one old woman who was our mother, and she died and let her spirit go into the rocks.

She is Old Rock Woman. Those dream people you hear when you sleep on the ground are witch people, and the reason you think those animals vanish is because you have been witched. The witch people take away the power of your eyes. The tracks are still there but you can't see them." Then she cut up a polecat she had caught and started making polecat stew. While the stew was cooking his grandmother made clear to him that she thought it was time he was on his way.

"You can't eat polecat stew," she informed him. "The skunk people are your enemies. If you eat polecat stew you will shit too much and your eyes will grow even weaker." Famous Shoes took the hint and left. He didn't believe his eyes were weak--it was just that his grandmother was stingy with her polecat stew.

It was while he was headed for a place on the caprock where there were many snake dens that the young Comanches caught him. Famous Shoes knew there were Comanches about because he saw the tracks of their horses, but he wanted to go to the snake-den place anyway and look for the hole that led into the earth. He didn't believe his grandmother's story about Old Rock Woman--it was just a way of getting rid of him. He thought his own theory made better sense and he wanted to spend a few days in the place of snake dens, looking for the hole that the Kickapoo people had come out of.

Of course he knew of Buffalo Hump's great raid long before Blue Duck and the other Comanche boys caught him. Six buffalo hunters were the first to tell him about it. They were well armed, but they were hurrying to get north of the Comanche country, out of fear. The Comanches were strong in their pride again--they were apt to kill any whites they encountered.

When Blue Duck and his haughty young friends spotted Famous Shoes they were on their way to try and trade a captive to old Slow Tree. The captive was a white boy who looked as if he had only a few more days of life in him. The young braves ran over and immediately pointed guns at Famous Shoes. They thought he would be better trading material than a white boy who was sick and near death.

"Slow Tree wanted to torture you before, so I will give you to him," Blue Duck told Famous Shoes. Blue Duck was arrogant and boastful; even as his friends were tying Famous Shoes' wrists Blue Duck was trying to impress him with stories of his rapings on the raid. He poked Famous Shoes three or four times with his lance, not deep, but deep enough to draw blood. Famous Shoes didn't bother pointing out to the young man that his father, Buffalo Hump, had told him in front of many warriors that Famous Shoes was to be left alone. Such a reminder might only inflame Blue Duck-- he was of an age to be defiant of his father.

"You should just leave this white boy and let him die," he told Blue Duck, but no one paid any attention. Once they had Famous Shoes securely tied they fell to quarreling about what to do with him--several of the braves wanted to torture him right there. One, a stout boy named Fat Knee, the grandson of old Spotted Bull, thought the best course would be to bury Famous Shoes in the ground, with only his head sticking out, and then ride off and leave him. Fat Knee was afraid of what Buffalo Hump might do when he found out they had delivered the man to Slow Tree--af all, Buffalo Hump had explicitly said he was to be let alone. Fat Knee had seen Buffalo Hump kill men over small disputes--he did not want to be killed over Famous Shoes. His argument was that if they just buried him and rode off, some animal would kill him; Buffalo Hump might never know about it.

"If we bury him good and poke out his eyes he won't last long," Fat Knee said.

Blue Duck was contemptuous of the suggestion-- he was determined to have his way about the disposal of the prisoner.

"We are going to the camp of Slow Tree," he insisted pompously.

So Famous Shoes was put on a horse behind Fat Knee, and the braves hurried on to the camp of the old chief, a camp that lay below the caprock thirty or more miles to the south. Famous Shoes would have preferred to walk; he had never liked the pace of horses very much.

It seemed to him that a man who bounced around on the back of horses risked injury to his testicles--indeed, he had known men whose testicles were injured when their horses suddenly jumped a stream or did something else injurious to the testicles.

But he was a prisoner of several hotheaded Comanche boys. Under the circumstances it would have been foolish to complain. Such boys were apt to change their minds at the slightest provocation.

If he argued with them they might do what Fat Knee suggested, in which case he would be blind and unable to follow tracks that interested him. It was better to keep quiet and hope that Fat Knee didn't jump his sorrel horse over too many creeks.

It was on the days when Ahumado paid him no attention, never once raising his binoculars to the Yellow Cliffso, that Scull came closest to despair. As long as Ahumado watched, Scull could feel that he was in a fair contest of wills. When Ahumado watched, Scull immediately responded. Though he had given up scratching Greek hexameters, or anything else, on the rock wall, he grabbed his file and pretended to be scratching something. If that didn't hold the old man's interest then Scull tried singing. He roared out the "Battle Hymn" at the top of his lungs--then, hoping to puzzle Ahumado, he warbled a few snatches of Italian opera, an aria or two that he knew imperfectly but that might fool the old dark man who sat on the blanket far below him. It was all a bluff, but it was his only chance. He had to keep Ahumado interested in order to stay interested himself; otherwise he was just a man hanging in a cage, eating raw birds and waiting to die. One book might have saved him; a tablet to write on might have saved him. He tried recalling his Shakespeare, his Pope, his Milton, his Virgil, his Burns--he even tried composing couplets in his head; he had always been partial to the well-rhymed couplet. But his memory, stretch as it might, would only get him through two or three hours of the day. His memory wasn't weak, he could snatch back much of the poetry that he had read, and not just poetry either. Lines came to him from Clarendon's History, from Gibbon, even from the Bible. His memory was vigorous and Scull enjoyed exercising it; but he wasn't at war with it and war was what he needed: someone or something to fight. For days he studied the cliff above and below him, thinking he might fight it. But the thought of the dark men, waiting with their machetes, made him hesitate about the climb.

Most of all, what he needed was Ahumado's attention. The Black Vaquero was a man worth fighting--Scull warbled and howled, sometimes yelling out curses, anything to let Ahumado know that he was still an opponent, a challenger, a captain.

Ahumado heard him, too--often he would train the binoculars on the cage. Sometimes he would study Scull for many minutes--but Ahumado was sly. Often he would do his studying while Scull was napping, or distracted by the effort to catch some bird that was nervous and would not quite settle on the cage. Ahumado wanted to watch but not be watched in turn; it was another way of being behind, in a position to surprise his opponent. He was subtle with his attention; perhaps he knew that Scull drew his energy from it.

What Scull wanted was some way to trigger Ahumado's anger, as he had triggered it when he suggested a ransom. Ahumado's hatred would give him something to challenge and resist: not just the endless swinging over an abyss. Confinement induced torpor, and from torpor he could easily slip to passivity, resignation, death. He needed a fight to keep his blood up. He had been three weeks in the cage, long enough to grow sick of the sight and taste of raw fowl--yet long enough, too, that news of his plight might have reached Texas--sch news would travel quickly, across even the most seemingly deserted country. A peon would mention something to a traveller and that single comment would radiate outward, like sunlight.

Soldiers in the northern forts would soon hear of things happening below the border--of course the information might be distorted, but that was to be expected. Even well-informed journalists, writing for respectable papers, were not free of the risk of distortion.

Even now, for all Scull knew, the Governor of Texas might have got wind of his peril; with luck a rescue party might already be on the way.

While rescue was still a possibility, it was all the more imperative that he keep his blood up, which he could do best by reminding the old man on the blanket that he, Inish Scull, was still alive and kicking, still a fighter to be reckoned with.

Hardest were the days when Ahumado failed to lift the binoculars, when he seemed indifferent to the white man hanging in the cage. On those days, the days when Ahumado did not look, the birds seemed to know that Scull was losing. The great vultures roosted in a line on the cliff above him, waiting. Pigeons and doves, the staple of Scull's diet, rested in numbers on the cage itself; he could, with a little stealth, have caught a week's supply, and yet he didn't.

On such days it was often only the evening light that brought Scull out of despair. The space before him would grow golden at sunset, leaving the distant mountains in haze until the glow faded and they became blue and then indigo. Staring into the distance, Scull would slowly relax and forget, for a time, the struggle he had to wage.

It was on such an evening that he began to file away the bindings on the side of the cage that faced outward, away from the cliff. If the vast echoing space was to be his balm and his ally, he didn't want bars interfering with his relation to it. The bars were ugly anyway, and stained with bird droppings.

He didn't want them between himself and the light of morning or evening.

Once, long before, as a youth, walking in Cambridge, he had seen a man of the East, a Buddhist monk who sat cross-legged in bright orange robes by the Charles River; the man was merely sitting, with his robe covering his legs and his hands folded in his lap, watching the morning sunlight scatter gold over the gray water.

The memory came back to Scull as he cut through the bindings at the front of his cage. The Buddhist had been an old man, with a shaven head and a long drooping wisp of beard; he had attentive eyes and he seemed to be thoughtfully studying the air as it brightened amid the buildings of Cambridge.

Scull, high on his cliff, thought he might emulate the old Buddhist man he had seen only that once, on a Cambridge morning, by the Charles River. When it came to air, he had, before him, a grander prospect for study than the old man had by the Charles. Before him, indeed, was a very lexicon of air, a dictionary or cyclopedia that would be hard to exhaust. He could study the gray air of morning, the white air of the bright noon, the golden air of evening. He wanted no bars to interfere with his contemplation, his study of the airy element--and to that end he sawed and sawed, with his little file, well into the deep Mexican night.

Ahumado had just walked out of the cave when Scull gave a great yell. At first Ahumado didn't look up. He knew well that the white man, Scull, craved his attention-- the stronger prisoners always craved his attention, or, at least, the attention of the people in the camp.

They didn't want to be forgotten by the people who were alive--they wanted to remind everyone that they were still of the living.

But then one of the vaqueros shouted and Ahumado looked up in time to see Scull heave the front of the cage as far as he could pitch it. The people sitting with coffee or tobacco jumped up when they saw what was happening--they got out of the way of the piece of cage that was falling. The only thing that didn't get out of the way was a red hen; the falling piece of cage hit the hen and caused her to flop around for a minute or two--then she died.

Ahumado picked up the binoculars and looked up at the man in the cage--fora moment he was annoyed because he supposed Scull had decided to commit suicide, as the sly Comanche had. With the front of the cage gone Scull could jump to his death at any time, which was a thing not to be tolerated.

Ahumado did not put prisoners in the cage in order to provide them with a choice in the matter of their own deaths.

Yet, when Ahumado looked, he saw that Scull did not seem to be getting ready to jump. He was sitting comfortably in the cage, singing one of the songs he was always singing. This penchant for song was another annoying thing about the man. It made the villagers restive. Many of them considered Scull to be a powerful witch. There were a few, probably, who thought that Scull might prove to be more powerful than Ahumado. Why was he singing? Why wouldn't he just die? The most logical answer was that Scull was a witch.

Ahumado had carefully considered that possibility when Scull began scratching on the rock, and he was still a little uneasy about it. The notion that Scull might make the mountain fall had come to him in a dream, and dreams of that sort were not to be lightly disregarded. Although time passed and the mountain didn't fall, Ahumado did not forget his dream and continued to be suspicious of Scull.

Witches were often known to bide their time. An old witch from the south, who had a grudge against his father, had caused a tumour to grow in his father's stomach.

Though they caught the old witch and cut her throat, the tumour continued to grow in his father's stomach until it killed him. It was a thing Ahumado had never forgotten. He knew better than to underestimate the patience of a powerful witch.

Now Scull had cut open his cage--he could leap out if he wanted to. The old woman Hema, the one who had foamed at the mouth when she was listening to the mountain, came hobbling over, carrying the red hen that the fallen cage had killed.

"We should cut open this hen and look inside her," Hema said. "He might have put a message in her." "No," Ahumado said, "if we look inside her we will only find chicken guts." In his view vision people who tried to see the future by looking at the entrails of animals were frauds. The future might be visible in the smoke that rose from a campfire, if only one knew how to look into the smoke, but he didn't believe that the spirits who made the future would bother leaving messages in the guts of goats or hens.

He gave old Hema the hen, to get rid of her, but before she left she came out with another prophecy, one that was a little more plausible.

"A great bird is going to come and get the white man soon," old Hema said. "The great bird lives on a rock at the top of the world. The reason the white man cut away the front of his cage is because the great bird will soon be coming to fly him back to Texas." "Go away and eat your hen," Ahumado said.

She was a long-winded old woman and he did not want to waste his mornings listening to her. Still, his mind was not entirely easy where Scull was concerned. Once or twice, when he looked up and saw the white man sitting there in the open cage, he considered taking his Winchester and shooting the man right where he hung. That would end his worry about the mountain falling down. The mention of the great bird was worrisome too; there were many stories about a great bird that lived at the top of the world.

Perhaps the white man's strange singing was in the language of the birds. Perhaps he was telling the eagles that flew around the cage to go to the top of the world and bring the great bird. The language that Scull sang in was not the language of the Texans; perhaps it was the language of the birds.

To make matters even more uncertain, that very afternoon the largest vulture that anyone had ever seen came soaring over the cliff and flew down past the cage. The vulture was so large that for a moment Ahumado thought it might .be the great bird.

Though it proved to be only an exceptionally large vulture, its appearance annoyed him.

Big Horse Scull was proving to be the most troublesome prisoner he had ever captured; Scull did so many things that were witchlike that it might be better just to kill him.

That evening, by the campfire, he discussed the matter with old Goyeto, the skinner. Usually old Goyeto had only one response when asked about a prisoner; he wanted to skin the prisoner at once. This time, though, to Ahumado's surprise, Goyeto took a different tack.

"You could sell him to the Texans," Goyeto said. "They might give you many cattle--nobody around here has very many cattle." Ahumado remembered that Scull had mentioned a ransom. He had never bargained with the Texans --he had only taken from them, in the way of a bandit. But the old simple-minded skinner, Goyeto, had made a good point. Perhaps the Texans would want Big Horse Scull so badly that they would bring them a lot of cattle.

Scull had said so himself--because he had said it, Ahumado had scorned the idea. He did not like suggestions from prisoners.

Besides, he had supposed that Scull would soon lose heart, like other men in the cage. But Scull was not like other men, and he had not lost heart. He had boldly cut away the front of his cage, he scratched on the face of the mountain, he sang loudly, and he ate raw birds as if he liked them. All this was annoying behaviour, so annoying that Ahumado was still tempted just to shoot the man--then if the great bird came to free him he would only find a corpse.

There had not been much to eat lately, in the camp. The thought of cattle made Goyeto's mouth water, but, of course, he still wanted to use his sharp skinning knives on Big Horse Scull. It would be vexing to send him home without skinning even a little part of him. Goyeto knew that would vex Ahumado too.

It was then that Goyeto remembered the small federale, Major Alonso, a strong fighter they had been lucky to catch alive.

Major Alonso had killed six of their pistoleros before one of the dark men caught him with a bola. When they tied Major Alonso to the skinning post, Goyeto had had one of his most brilliant ideas. Without even telling Ahumado what he had in mind he had delicately removed the Major's eyelids.

Tied to the skinning post, with no eyelids or any means of shielding his eyes, the Major had to bear the full light of the August sun for a whole day, and by the end of it he was insane. It was as if the sun had burned away his brain. Major Alonso gibbered and made the sounds of a madman.

Ahumado was so pleased by Goyeto's inventiveness with Major Alonso that he did not bother to torture the man more. Why torture a man whose brain had been burned up? They merely took away the Major's clothes and chased him out into the desert. He stumbled around with no eyelids until he died. A vaquero found his body only a few miles from camp.

"I could take his eyelids and we could leave him in the sun until the Texans come with the cattle," Goyeto suggested, to Ahumado.

"I guess he would be crazy, like that federale." "Ah," Ahumado said.

It was rare that the Black Vaquero exclaimed. It usually meant that he was impressed. Goyeto was pleased with himself, for having had such a timely idea. That very afternoon Ahumado dispatched a caballero that he trusted, Carlos Diaz, to Texas to tell the Texans that they could have Scull if they brought a thousand cattle to a grassy place below the river, where Ahumado's vaqueros would take them.

Ahumado then wasted no time hauling Scull up the cliff. The dark men swarmed over him before he could run, although he did stab one of them fatally with the small file he had concealed--he shoved the file straight into the dark man's jugular vein, causing him to lose so much blood that he died. Scull was taken down the cliff and pinioned securely to the skinning post--Goyeto finally got to use his knives. He took away Big Horse Scull's eyelids with even more delicacy than he had managed with the federale, Major Alonso. Scull fought his bonds and cried out curses but there was so little pain involved in the operation that he didn't moan or groan. Ahumado seemed pleased by the skill with which Goyeto worked.

But then, before the sun could begin to bring its searing heat into Big Horse Scull's brain, clouds, heavy and dark, begin to roll in from the west. Thunder shook the cliffso and hard rain fell.

Before the little stream of blood from the cuts died on Scull's cheeks the rain washed the blood away. The thunder was so loud that some of the people started to run away. They were more than ever convinced that Scull might bring the mountain down on them because of what had been done to his eyes. Goyeto thought so too, for a time. He began to regret that he had even had such a crazy idea. Why had he ignored all the signs that Scull was a witch?

If the mountain fell on them he would be dead, and even if it didn't, Ahumado might kill him for exercising such bad judgment in regard to Big Horse Scull.

The mountain didn't fall, though the sun was not seen for three days, during which time nothing bad at all happened to Captain Scull's brain.

Ahumado, though, exhibited no doubt--he had another cage made for Scull and put it right in the center of the village, not far from where he sat on his blanket. He wanted all the people to see the man without eyelids. Scull did not curse anymore. The women were instructed to feed him, and he ate. He was silent, watching Ahumado out of eyes he could not close.

On the fourth day the sun came back and Scull was immediately tied to the skinning post, so he could not shield his eyes. Even so, Goyeto worried. It was only May. The sun was not strong, as it had been in August, when he had removed Major Alonso's eyelids.

"I don't know," Goyeto said. "This is not a very strong sun." Ahumado was getting tired of the old skinner and his endless anxieties. He wished Goyeto had a wife to distract him, but unfortunately Goyeto's wife had grown a tumour almost as large as the one that had killed his own father. Not many women were willing even to couple with Goyeto, because he smelled always of blood. Probably some of the women were afraid he might skin them, if he got angry.

"This is the only sun there is," Ahumado pointed out. "Do you think you can find another?" "I can't find another," Goyeto said meekly. "There is only this sun. What if it doesn't make him crazy before the Texans come with all those cattle?" "Then I may let you skin the rest of him." Ahumado said.

Then he gave Goyeto a hard look, the kind of look he gave people when he wanted them to go away and do so promptly.

Goyeto knew what that look meant. He had talked too much. Immediately he got up and went away.

When Slow Tree saw Famous Shoes bounced into camp on the back of Fat Knee's sorrel horse, he looked severely displeased, but Blue Duck, not Famous Shoes, was the object of his displeasure. Instead of yanking the Kickapoo off the horse and marching him straight to the torture post, as Blue Duck had supposed he would do, Slow Tree took a knife and cut Famous Shoes' bonds himself.

Then the old chief did worse. To Blue Duck's intense annoyance, Slow Tree apologized to Famous Shoes.

"I am sorry you were disturbed," Slow Tree said. "I hope you were not taken too far from where you wanted to be." At this point, Blue Duck, a rude and impatient boy, interrupted.

"He was only looking in snake holes," he said. "I caught him and brought him here so you could torture him. He is a Kickapoo and should be tortured to death." Slow Tree paid no attention to the rude young man.

"Were you catching snakes?" he asked Famous Shoes, in mild tones.

"Oh no," Famous Shoes said. "I was looking for the hole the People came out of. I thought some snakes might have found the hole and started living in it." "Oh, that hole is far to the north," Slow Tree said, in a pompous tone, as if he knew perfectly well which of the many holes in the earth the People had come out of.

"I thought it might be around the caprock somewhere," Famous Shoes replied, in a mild tone. He wanted to be as polite with Slow Tree as Slow Tree was being with him. As he was not of the Comanche tribe, certain courtesies had to be respected, but, once these courtesies had been observed, Slow Tree might turn back into a cruel old killer and torture him after all. The chief didn't appear to be in a torturing mood, but he was a crafty old man and his mood could always change.

Blue Duck, though, continued to behave with poor manners. He looked scornfully at Slow Tree, who was, after all, one of the most respected of the chiefs of the Comanche people. He spoke scornfully, also. So far he had not even bothered to dismount, a serious discourtesy in itself.

All the other Comanche boys had immediately dismounted.

But Blue Duck still sat on his prancing horse.

"When you saw this Kickapoo in my father's camp you wanted to torture him," Blue Duck said. "You wanted to put scorpions in his nose.

We caught him and brought him to you, though it was out of our way. We were going after antelope when we saw this man. I would not have brought him to you if I had known you would only turn him loose. I would have killed him myself." Blue Duck's tone was so rude that even his own companions looked unhappy. Fat Knee walked away--he did not want to be associated with such rude behaviour.

Slow Tree looked up at Blue Duck casually, with no expression on his face. It was as if he had just noticed the loud-spoken boy who had not had the manners to dismount. He looked Blue Duck up and down and his eyes became the color of sleet. He still had a knife in his hand, the one he had used to set Famous Shoes free.

"You are not a Comanche, you are a mexicano," Slow Tree said. "Get out of my camp." Blue Duck was shocked--it was as if the old man had slapped him. No one had ever offered him such an insult before. He wanted to kill old Slow Tree, but the chief was backed by more than thirty warriors, and his own friends had dismounted and quickly walked away from him. They were all being so polite it disgusted him; it made him think they were cowards. He was sorry he had ever ridden with them.

"Go on, leave," Slow Tree said. "If your father has any sense he will listen to the elders and make you leave his camp too. You are rude like the mexicanos--y don't belong with the Comanche." "I am a Comanche!" Blue Duck insisted, in a loud voice. "I went on the great raid! I killed many whites and raped their women. You should give me food at least." Slow Tree, not amused, stood his ground.

"You will get no food in my camp," he said.

"Then I will take my prisoner!" Blue Duck said, riding toward Famous Shoes, who stood just where he had been standing when Slow Tree released him.

"You have no prisoner," Slow Tree said.

"Your father granted this man protection. I heard him say so myself, with my two ears. You were there.

You heard the same ^ws I heard, and they were your father's ^ws. Your father said not to interfere with this man, and you should have obeyed." "You are afraid of my father," Blue Duck said. "You are old." Slow Tree didn't answer, but several of his warriors scowled. They did not like hearing their chief insulted.

Slow Tree just stood, looking.

"You have no prisoner," he repeated. "You had better be gone." Blue Duck saw that the situation was against him.

His own friends had walked away. He could not reclaim his prisoner without fighting the whole camp. Fat Knee had been right to begin with. They should have tortured the Kickapoo themselves. He himself had insisted that they take him to Slow Tree, never supposing that Slow Tree would consider that he was bound by Buffalo Hump's instructions regarding the Kickapoo tracker. He thought Slow Tree might be so happy to get the Kickapoo to torture that he would reward him with a fine horse, or, at least, a woman. Now he had lost his prisoner and had been insulted in front of the whole camp. He was angry at his father, at Slow Tree, and at Famous Shoes, all three. He had expected to gain much respect, from bringing Slow Tree such a desirable prisoner; but Slow Tree was more interested in remaining at peace with Buffalo Hump. Instead of gaining respect, and perhaps a horse and a woman, he had been humiliated by an old fat chief.

Without another ^w he turned his horse and rode out of Slow Tree's camp. He didn't look back, or wait for his companions to join him. He didn't even know if they would join him. Probably they, too, were only interested in staying in good with his father, Buffalo Hump.

When Blue Duck rode away, only Fat Knee chose to follow him. The other boys made themselves at home in Slow Tree's camp.

Famous Shoes watched the two young Comanches ride away--he did his best to maintain a calm demeanor. He figured the only reason he was alive was because Slow Tree, who still had sleet in his eyes, did not want trouble with Buffalo Hump, not when Buffalo Hump had just led the great raid that all the warriors were talking about--and all the travellers too. Famous Shoes was still a Kickapoo, in the camp of Comanches--and some of the young warriors were undoubtedly more reckless than Slow Tree. They didn't have a chief's responsibilities, and most of them probably didn't care what Buffalo Hump thought. They were free Comanches and would feel that they had every right to kill a Kickapoo if they could catch one.

"I think I will go now," Famous Shoes said.

"I want to keep looking for that hole where the People came out." Slow Tree no longer looked at him so politely. Though he felt obliged to respect Buffalo Hump's wishes in this matter, he did not look happy about it. The braves who stood behind him didn't look friendly, either.

"That hole is to the north, where the great bears live," Slow Tree said. "If you are not careful one of those bears might eat you." Famous Shoes knew that Slow Tree himself was the bear most likely to eat him--or at least to do something bad to him. It was not a place to linger, not with the old chief so moody. He got his knife and his pouch back from the Comanche boy who had taken them, and trotted out of the camp.

Call found Gus McCrae asleep by the river, under a bluff that looked familiar. Long before, when the two of them were young rangers, Augustus had stumbled off that very bluff one night and twisted his ankle badly when he hit. Then, because of Clara Forsythe, Gus had been too agitated to watch where he was going; now, an hour after sunup, he was snoring away and probably hung over because he pined for the same woman. In a boat, turning slowly in the middle of the river, an old man was fishing. An old man had been fishing the night Gus hurt his ankle--for all Call knew, it might even be the same old man, in the same boat. Years had worn off the calendar, but what had changed? The river still flowed, the old man still fished, and Augustus McCrae still pined for Clara.

"Get up, the Governor wants to see us," Call said, when he got back to where his friend was sleeping. Gus had stopped snoring; he was nestled comfortably against the riverbank with his hat over his eyes.

"It's too early to be worrying with a governor," Gus said, without removing his hat.

"It ain't early, the sun's up," Call said. "Everybody in town is up, except you.

The barber is waiting to give you a good shave." Gus sat up and reached for an empty whiskey bottle by his side. He heaved the bottle out into the river and drew his pistol.

"Here, don't shoot," Call said. "There's an old man fishing, right in front of you." "Yell at him to move, then, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I'm in the mood for target practice." He immediately fired three shots at the bottle, to no effect. The bottle floated on, and the old fisherman continued to fish, unperturbed.

"That fisherman must be deaf," Call said.

"He didn't realize he was nearly shot." Gus stood up, shot twice more, and then heaved his pistol at the bottle, scoring a solid hit. The bottle broke and sank, and the pistol sank with it.

"Now, that was foolishness," Call said.

Gus waded into the river and soon fished out his gun.

"Which barber did you hire to shave me?" he inquired.

"The small one, he's cheaper," Call said, as they walked back toward town.

"I don't like that short barber, he farts," Gus said. "The tall one's slow but he don't fart as often." They were almost to the barbershop when a shriek rent the calm of the morning. The shriek came from the direction of the Colemans' house--one shriek followed by another and another.

"That's Pearl," Gus said. "Nobody else in town can bellow that loud." The shrieks caused a panic in the streets.

Everyone assumed that the Comanches had come back.

Men in wagons hastily grabbed their weapons.

"It might not be Indians--it might just be a cougar or a bear that's strayed into town," Gus said, as he and Call, keeping to what cover there was, ran toward the Colemans' house.

"Whatever it is you best load your gun," Call said. "You shot at that bottle, remember?" Gus immediately loaded his pistol, which still dripped.

Call happened to glance around, toward the house where Maggie boarded. Maggie Tilton stood on her landing in plain view, looking at whatever caused Pearl Coleman to shriek. Maggie had her hands clasped to her mouth and stood as if stunned.

"It ain't Indians, Gus," Call said.

"There's Maggie. She ain't such a fool as to be standing in plain sight if there's Indians around." Yet the shrieks continued to rake the skies, one after another.

"Could she be snakebit?" Gus asked. "I recall she was always worried about snakes." "If she's snakebit, where's Bill?" Call said. "I know he's a sound sleeper, but he couldn't sleep through this." Two more women were in sight, two laundresses who had been making their way back from the well with loads of laundry. Like Maggie they were looking at something. Like her, they had clasped their hands over their mouths in horror. They had dropped their laundry baskets so abruptly that the baskets tipped over, spilling clean laundry into the dirt.

"It might just be a big bear," Call said.

On occasion bears still wandered into the outskirts of town.

The shrieks were coming from behind the Coleman house.

There was a big live oak tree a little ways back from the house--in happier days Gus and Long Bill had spent many careless hours in its shade, gossiping about women and cards, cards and women.

As the two men approached the corner of the Coleman house, pistols drawn, they slowed, out of caution. Pearl Coleman shrieked as loudly as ever. Gus suddenly stopped alt, filled with dread, such a dread as he had not felt in years. He didn't want to look around the corner of the Coleman house.

Woodrow Call didn't want to look, either, but of course they had to. In the streets behind them, men were crouched behind wagons, their rifles ready.

Whatever it was had to be faced.

"Somebody's dead or she wouldn't be shrieking like that," Gus said. "I fear something's happened to Bill. I fear it, Woodrow." Both of them remembered Long Bill's doleful face, as it had been for the last few weeks; no longer was he the stoical man who had once walked the Jomada del Muerto and eaten gourd soup.

Call stepped around the corner, his pistol cocked, not knowing what he expected, but he did not expect what he saw, which was Long Bill Coleman, dead at the end of a hang rope, dangling from a stout limb of the live oak tree, a kicked-over milking stool not far from his feet.

Pearl Coleman stood a few yards away, shrieking, unable to move.

The pistol in Call's hand became heavy as an anvil, suddenly. With difficulty he managed to uncock it and poke it back in its holster.

Gus stepped around the corner too.

"Oh my God ..." he said. "Oh, Billy ..." "After all we went through," Call said. The shock was too much. He could not finish his thought.

The townspeople, seeing that there was no battle, rose up behind, wagons and barrels. They edged out of stores, women and men.

The barbers came out in their aprons; their customers, some half shaven, followed them. The butcher came, cleaver in hand, carrying half a lamb. The two laundresses, their work wasted, had not moved--the clean clothes were still strewn in the dirt.

Above them, Maggie Tilton, clearly pregnant and too shocked to trust herself to walk down her own steps, stood sobbing.

Augustus holstered his gun and came a few steps closer to the swaying body. Long Bill's toes were only an inch off the ground; his face was purple-black.

"Billy could have done this easier if he'd just taken a gun," he said, in a weak voice.

"Remember how Bigfoot Wallace showed us where to put the gun barrel, back there years ago?" "A gun's noisy," Call said. "I expect he done it this way so as not to wake up Pearl." "Well, she's awake now," Gus said.

The silent crowd stood watching as the two of them went to the tree and cut their old friend down.

Together Call and Augustus cut Long Bill down, pulled the noose from his neck, and then, feeling weak, left him to the womenfolk. One of the laundresses covered him with a sheet that had spilled out when her basket overturned. Maggie came down the steps and went to Pearl, but Pearl was beyond comforting. She sobbed deep guttural sobs, as hoarse as a cow's bellow. Maggie got her to sit down on an overturned milk bucket. The two laundresses helped Maggie as best they could.

"I don't want him going to heaven with his face so black," Pearl said suddenly. "They'll take him for a nigger." Maggie didn't answer. The undertaker had been killed in the raid--funerals since then had been hasty and plain.

Call and Gus caught their horses and rode on to the Governor's. Though the distance was not great, both felt too weak to walk that far.

"What are we going to say to the Governor, now that this has happened?" Augustus asked.

"He's the Governor, I guess he can do the talking." Call said, as they rode up the street.

When informed of the tragedy, Governor Pease shook his head and stared out the window for several minutes. A military man was with him when the two captains came in, a Major Nettleson of the U.S. Cavalry.

"That's three suicides since the raid," Governor Pease said. "Raids on that scale have a very poor effect on the nerves of the populace. Happens even in the army, don't it, Major?" "Why, yes, we sometimes have a suicide or two, after a violent scrap," the Major said.

He looked at the rangers impatiently, either because they were late or because they were interrupting his own interview with the Governor.

"Bill Coleman had been with us through it all, Governor," Call said. "We never expected to lose him that way." Governor Pease turned from the window and sighed. Call noticed that the Governor's old brown coat was stained; since the raid he had often been seen in an untidy state. He had grown careless with his tobacco juice, too.

Judging from the carpet, he missed his spittoon about as often as he hit it.

"It's one more murder we can charge to Buffalo Hump," the Governor said. "A people can only tolerate so much scalping and raping. They get nervous and start losing sleep. The lack of sound sleep soon breaks them down. The next thing you know they start killing themselves rather than worry about when the Comanches will show up again." Just then Inez Scull came striding into the room. Major Nettleson, who had been sitting, hefted himself up--he was a beefy man.

Madame Scull merely glanced at him, but her glance caused the Major to flush. Augustus, who was merely waiting dully for the interview to be over, noted the flush.

"Why, there you are, Johnny Nettleson," Inez said. "Why'd you leave so early? I rather prefer for my house guests to stay around for breakfast, though I suppose that's asking too much of a military man." "It's my fault, Inez," the Governor said quickly. "I wanted a ^w with the Major--since he's leaving, I thought we'd best meet early." "No, Johnny ain't leaving, not today," Madame Scull said. "I've planned a picnic and I won't allow anything to spoil it.

It's rare that I get a major to picnic with." Then she looked at Governor Pease defiantly. The Governor, surprised, stared back at her, while Major Nettleson, far too embarrassed to speak, stared solemnly at his own two feet.

Augustus suspected that it was stout Major Nettleson that Madame Scull was trotting with now; the picnic she was anxious not to have spoiled might not be of the conventional kind. But this suspicion only registered with him dully. His mind was on the night before, most of which, as usual, he had spent drinking with Long Bill Coleman. It was a close night, and the saloon an immoderately smelly place. During the raid a bartender had been stabbed and scalped in a rear corner of the barroom; the bartender had been murdered, and so had the janitor, which meant that the bloody corner had been only perfunctorily cleaned. On close nights the smells made pleasant drinking difficult, so difficult that Gus had left a little early, feeling that he needed a breath of river air.

"Come along, Billy, it's late," he said to Long Bill.

"Nope, I prefer to drink indoors, Gus," Long Bill replied. "I'm less tempted to seek whores when I drink inside." Augustus took the comment for a joke and went on out into the clean air, to nestle comfortably by the riverbank all night. But now the remark about whores, the last ^ws he would ever hear from Long Bill Coleman, came back to mind. Had Bill, so deeply attached to Pearl, really been seeking whores; or was it, as he had supposed, a joke?

He didn't know, but he did know that he hated being in the Governor's office, listening to Inez Scull banter with her new conquest, Major Nettleson. Long Bill's death was as much a shock as Clara's marriage. It left him indifferent to everything. Why was he there? What did he care about rangering now? He'd never stroll the streets of Austin again, either with the woman or the friend; at the thought, such a hopeless sadness took him that he turned and walked out the door, passing directly in front of the Governor, the Major, and Madame Scull as he went.

"I'll say, now where's McCrae going?" the Governor said in surprise. "The two of you have just got here. I haven't even had a moment to bring up the business at hand." "I expect he's sad about our pard--he'd ridden with the man for many years," Call said.

"Well, but he was your friend too, and you ain't walked out," Governor Pease said.

"No," Call said, though he wished the Governor would get down to business. He thought he knew how Gus felt, when he walked out.

The Governor seemed momentarily thrown off by Gus's departure--he bent right over the spittoon but still managed to miss it with a stream of tobacco juice. Madame Scull had relaxed, but Major Nettleson hadn't.

"Was there something in particular, Governor?" Call asked finally. "Long Bill will be needing a funeral and a burial soon. I'd like to arrange it nice, since he was our friend." "Of course, excuse me," Governor Pease said, coming back to himself. "Arrange it nice and arrange it soon. There's work waiting, for you and McCrae and whatever troop you can round up." "What's the work?" Call asked.

"Ahumado has Captain Scull," the Governor said. "He's offered to exchange him for a thousand cattle, delivered in Mexico.

I've consulted the legislature and they think we better comply, though we know it's a gamble." "The U.S. Army cannot be involved--not involved!" Major Nettleson said, suddenly and loudly. "I've made that plain to Governor Pease and I'll make it plain to you. I'm trying to train three regiments of cavalry to move against the Comanche and finish them. I've no men to spare for Mexico and even if I did have men, I wouldn't send them below the border--now that there is a border, more or less. Not a man of mine will set foot across the Rio Grande--not a man. I must firmly decline to be involved, though of course I'd be happy to see Captain Scull again if he's alive." Both the Governor and Call were nonplussed by this stream of talk. Madame Scull, however, was merely amused.

"Oh, shut up, Johnny, and stop telling lies," she said, with a flirtatious toss of her head.

"What lies? I'm merely pointing out that the U.S. Army can't put itself out every time a bandit demands a ransom." "No, the lie was that you'd be happy to see Inish again," Madame Scull said. "You weren't happy to see him when he was your commanding officer, I seem to recall." "Not happy ... I fail to understand .

really, Madame," Major Nettleson protested, turning cherry red from embarrassment.

"Inish always thought you were a fat-gutted fool," Mrs. Scull said. "He said as much many times.

The only man in the whole army Inish thought had any sense was Bob Lee, and Bob Lee's a little too stiff necked for my taste." Then she looked at Governor Pease, who was staring at her as if she was insane.

"Close your mouth, Ed, before a bug flies down your gullet," she said. "I'm taking Johnny off to our picnic now. I've managed to find virtues in him that Inish never suspected." As Madame Scull was about to leave she paused a moment and looked at Call.

"A thousand cattle is a good deal more than Inish is worth," she said. "I wouldn't give three cats for him myself, unless the cats were mangy. If you see that yellow gal of mine while you're looking for Inish, bring her back too. I have yet to find a match for that yellow gal. She had the Cuba touch." "I doubt we'll spot her, ma'am," Call said. "The Comanches went north and we're going south." "And you think life is that simple, do you, Captain?" Inez Scull said, with more than a little mockery in her tone. "You think it's just a matter of plain north or south, do you?" Call was perplexed. He could not clear his mind of the image of Long Bill Coleman, hanging dead by his own hand from a live oak limb. More than ten years of his life had been bound up with Long Bill Coleman--now he was dead. He found it hard to attend to the mocking woman in front of him--his mind wanted to drift backward down the long river of the past, to the beginning of his rangering days. He wished Madame Scull would just go away and not be teasing him with questions.

"I hope you'll come to tea with me before you leave, Captain," Madame Scull said. "I might be able to teach you that there's more to life than north and south." With that she turned on her heels and left.

"Can't interfere with Mexico, not the U.S.

Cavalry," Major Nettleson said. Then he left, putting on his military hat as he went through the door.

Governor Pease spat once more, inaccurately, at the brass spittoon.

"If I had a wife like that I'd run farther than Mexico," the Governor said, quietly.

His own wife had only raised her voice to him once in twenty years of marriage, and that was because the baby was about to knock the soup pot off the table.

Call didn't know what to say. He thought he had best stick to simple, practical considerations and not let himself be sidetracked by what Madame Scull felt, or didn't feel, about her husband.

"You mentioned a thousand head of cattle, Governor," Call said.

"Yes, that's the demand," Governor Pease said, in a slow, weary voice. "A thousand head --we have a month to make the delivery." "What if the Captain's already dead?" Call asked.

"Why, that's the gamble," the Governor said.

"The man might take our cattle and send us Inish's head in a sack." "Or he might just take the cattle and vanish," Call said.

"Yes, he might--but I have to send you," the Governor said. "At least I have to ask you if you'll go--I'm not forgetting that I just sent you off on a wild-goose chase just when we needed you here the most. But Ahumado has Inish and he's set a price on him. Inish is still a hero. They'll impeach me if I don't try to get him back." "Where will we get the cattle?" Call asked.

"Why, the legislature will vote the money for the cattle, I'm sure," the Governor said.

Call started to ask a practical question, only to have his mind stall. He saw Long Bill's black face again and couldn't seem to think beyond it.

The Governor talked and the Governor talked, but Call was simply unable to take in what he was saying, a fact Governor Pease finally noticed.

"Wrong time--y've got your friend to bury," he said. "We can talk of these arrangements tomorrow, when your sad duty has been done." "Thanks," Call said. He turned and was about to leave, but Governor Pease caught his arm.

"Just one more thing, Captain Call," he said.

"Inez mentioned having you to tea--don't go. The state of Texas needs you more than she does, in this troubled hour." "Yes sir, I expect it does," Call said.

When Call got back to the ranger corrals he heard the sound of hammering from behind the barn.

Ikey Ripple, the oldest ranger left alive, was making Long Bill a coffin--or, at least, he was supervising. Ikey had never advanced much in the ranks of the rangers due to his taste for supervising, as opposed to actually working.

He and Long Bill had been sincere friends, though, which is why he stood beside Deets to supervise the sawing of every plank and the driving of every nail.

"Billy was particular and he'd want to be laid out proper," Ikey said, when Call joined the group, which consisted of the entire ranger troop, such as it then was.

Augustus sat on one end of the wagon that was to haul Long Bill to his grave: he was silent, somber, and drunk. Deets put the coffin together meticulously, well aware that he was being watched by the whole troop. Lee Hitch and Stove Jones had spent a night of insobriety in a Mexican cantina; they were so hung over as to be incapable of carpentry. Stove Jones was bald and Lee Hitch shaggy--they spent their evenings in the cantina because they had ceased to be able to secure adequate credit in the saloons of Austin. Call noticed that neither man was wearing a sidearm.

"Where's your guns?" he asked them.

Lee Hitch looked at his hip and saw no pistol, which seemed to surprise him as much as if his whole leg were missing.

"Well, where is it, damn it?" he asked himself.

"I don't require you to swear," Call said. "We've a mission to go on soon and you'll need you your weapons. Where's yours, Stove?" Stove Jones took refuge in deep, silent solemnity when asked questions he didn't want to answer. He stared back at Call solemnly, but Call was not to be bluffed by such tactics, forcing Stove to rack his brain for a suitable answer.

"I expect it's under my saddle," he said finally.

"They pawned their guns, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I say just let them fight the Comanches with their pocketknives. A man who would sink so low as to pawn his own pistol deserves a good scalping, anyway." "It's not the Comanches," Call told him.

"It's Ahumado. He's got Captain Scull and he's offered to ransom him for a thousand cattle." "That lets me out--I ain't got a thousand cattle," Gus said.

"The state will buy the cattle. We have to deliver them and bring back the Captain," Call told him.

"Well, that still lets me out because I ain't a cowboy," Gus said. "I have no interest in gathering cattle for some old bandit. Let him just come and steal them. He can leave off the Captain if he wants to." Call noted that the coffin was almost finished. He saw no reason to pursue an argument with Gus at such a time. In his present mood Gus would easily find a reason to disagree with anything he might say. The men were all stunned by Long Bill's suicide. The best procedure would probably be to go on and hold the funeral, if the women were up to it. With no undertaker and no preacher, funerals were rude affairs, but they were still funerals. The womenfolk could sing, and the ceremony would draw the men away from the saloons for a few minutes. Once their old compa@nero was laid to rest there would be time to consider the matter of Ahumado and the thousand cattle.

"We don't have to worry about the mission right this minute," Call said. "We've got a month to deliver the cattle. Let's go see how the womenfolk are doing, while Deets finishes the coffin." "Nearly done," Deets said, wondering if he was expected to go to the funeral-- or if he would even be allowed to. He worked carefully on the coffin; one of the laundresses had brought over an old quilt to line it with.

Deets took special care to see that the lining was laid in smoothly. He knew that the spirits of suicides were restless; they were more likely than other people to float out of their graves and become spooks, harassing those who had offended them in life. He was not aware that he had offended Long Bill--he had helped him with quite a few chores, but all that might be forgotten if he then built him an uncomfortable coffin, a coffin his spirit could not be at rest in. Mr. Bill, as Deets had always called him, had rangered far in his life; it would be too bad if his spirit had to keep rangering, for want of a comfortable resting place.

"We ought to caulk this coffin, I expect," Ikey Ripple said, rendering his first judgment on the matter. The coffin was sitting on two sawhorses. He bent over and peered underneath it, an action that aggravated his rheumatism. It was a coffin that could profit from a good caulking, in his view.

"I doubt we have anything to caulk it with," Call said.

"It won't hold out the worms or the maggots no time, if we don't give it a caulking," Ikey insisted.

"Well, the store's closed, I don't know where we could get any caulking," Call said.

With the Forsythe store still out of operation, everyone in town was constantly discovering that they needed some small necessity which there was no way to procure.

"Billy Coleman was a fine fellow," Ikey went on. "He deserves better than to be bloated up with screwworms before he's hardly in his grave. The dern state of Texas ought to have some caulking, somewhere." Mention of screwworms at a moment of such solemnity made everyone queasy, even Call, for they had all seen the dreadful putrefaction that resulted when screwworms infested a deer or a cow. The thought that such might happen to Long Bill Coleman, a comrade who had been walking among them only yesterday, made everyone unhappy.

"Shut up talking about worms and maggots, Ikey," Augustus said. "Long Bill's just as apt to be up in heaven playing a harp as he is to be having screwworms infect him." Ikey Ripple considered the remark obtuse --and, besides that, it was made in an unfriendly tone, a tone particularly unwelcome for having come from a raw youth such as Gus McCrae. Ikey had passed his seventieth year and considered anyone under fifty to be callow, at best.

"I don't know what happens in heaven but I do know what happens when you stick a coffin in the ground that ain't caulked," Ikey said. "Worms and maggots, that's what." Deets had just finished the coffin lid, which fitted snugly.

"Ikey, stop your griping," Gus said.

"Plenty of our fine rangers have been buried without no coffin at all." "Them boards are thin--I expect the worms will get in pretty soon even if you do caulk it," Stove Jones observed.

"Worms and varmints--a hungry varmint will dig up a coffin unless it's buried deep," Lee Hitch added.

"You are all too goddamn gloomy," Augustus said. "I say let's bury Billy Coleman and go get soundly drunk in his memory." He got off the wagon and began to walk toward the Coleman house.

"I expect we'll just have to do without the caulking," Call said. "Just load the coffin in the wagon and bring it to the house. I believe it would be best to get this burying done." Then he followed Gus, who was walking slowly. Ahead, a knot of women stood around the back porch of the Coleman house. Call looked for Maggie but didn't see her at first.

When he did spot her she was not with the women on the porch--they were respectable women, of course.

Maggie sat alone on the steps going up to her rooms. She had her face in her hands and her shoulders were shaking.

"Mag's upset," Gus said. "I expect one of these old church biddies ran her off from the mourning." "I expect," Call said. "Maggie's close to Pearl. She took the arrows out of her after the raid, she said. The doctor was busy with the serious wounds." When Call walked over and asked Maggie if one of the ladies had been rude to her, Maggie shook her head. She looked up at him, her face wet with tears.

"It's just so hard, Woodrow," she said.

"It's just so hard." "Well, but there's easy times, too," Call said awkwardly; he immediately felt he had said something wrong. He could never come up with the right ^ws, when Maggie cried. His remark was true enough-- there were easy times--but the day of Long Bill's death was not one of them.

Not for me, Maggie wanted to say, when he mentioned easy times. She wanted to go be with Pearl Coleman, but she couldn't, because of her position.

It was hard, not easy, but there was no point in trying to make Woodrow understand how hard it was for her.

"It's sunny, at least," Call said.

"Bill hung himself on a mighty pretty day." That didn't sound right either, although it was true: the day was brilliant.

To his dismay, Maggie began to cry all the harder. He didn't know whether it was the standoffish women, or Long Bill's death, or his ill-chosen remarks. He had thought to comfort her, but he didn't know how. He stood awkwardly by the steps, feeling that he would have been wiser just to go along with Gus and see that Bill was wrapped up proper and ready for the coffin.

"Hush, Woodrow, you don't have to talk," Maggie said, grateful that he had come to stand beside her. It was the first time he had done such a thing, when there were people watching.

Just then the rangers came around the corner with the coffin in the wagon. Old Ikey Ripple, who had once pestered Maggie endlessly, drove the wagon. The other rangers rode behind the wagon.

All of them saw Call standing by Maggie at the bottom of the steps.

"I best go--w you be coming?" Call asked.

"Yes, I'll follow along," Maggie said, surprised that he asked.

There was green spring grass in the little graveyard when they buried Long Bill Coleman. Trees were leafing out, green on the distant slopes; fine clear sunlight shone on the mourners; mockingbirds sang on after the hymn singing stopped and the mound of red dirt was shovelled back in the grave. Maggie, fearing censure, hadn't followed very close. Pearl Coleman, bereft, heaved her deep cow sobs throughout the brief service.

"I'm a poor talker, you talk over him," Call whispered to Augustus, when the time had come for someone to speak a few ^ws over the departed.

Augustus McCrae stood so long in thought that Call was afraid he wouldn't find it in him to speak. But Gus, hat in hand, finally looked up at the little crowd.

"It's too pretty a day to be dying, but Long Bill's dead and that's that," he said. "I recall that he liked that scripture about the green pastures--it's spring weather and there'll be green grass growing over him soon." He paused a minute, fumbling with his hat.