Comanche Moon

He looked into the pit but did not at first see the small, almost naked man sitting with his head bent down in the shadows near one wall of the pit.

Augustus saw some dead snakes, a broken cage, and a mound of dirt with the dirt not piled thickly enough to shut out the stench of death. He was about to turn away, disappointed, when the man sitting against the wall suddenly rolled two white lidless eyes up at him from beneath a long dirty mat of hair.

"Oh Lord! Woodrow .

Woodrowffwas Gus yelled.

Call, almost at the entrance to the first cave, turned at once and came running back.

"We found him, Woodrow! It's the Captainffwas Augustus said.

Inish Scull was still in his half sleep, listening listlessly to the dream voices, when he felt a shadow slant across the pit. With his eyes exposed he registered shadows even when he was looking down or trying to shield his eyes. If a vulture or an eagle soared above the camp he saw its shadow.

But the shadow that slanted across the pit was not a shadow made by a bird's wings. Scull saw a man looking at him from the edge of the pit; the man looked like the ranger Augustus McCrae. At the sight, panic stormed Scull's nerves again.

He vowed to be calm, but he couldn't. He leapt to his feet and sprang at the wall, hopping from one side of the pit to the other. When a man appeared who looked like the ranger Woodrow Call, Scull sprang all the harder. He spewed out ^ws in Greek and English, jumping frenziedly about the pit and at the walls. Again and again he jumped, ignoring the rangers' ^ws of calm. He jumped like a flea, like one of the thousands who had tormented him. He had become a flea, his duty to jump and jump, hopping up at the wall, hopping across the pit. Even when ranger Call slid down a rope into the pit and attempted to quiet him, to let him know that he was saved, Inish Scull, the Boston flea, continued to jump and jump.

Buffalo Hump let the summer pass, resting with his wives, climbing to the spire of rock to pray and meditate. At night around the fire the warriors made songs about the great raid. Hair On The Lip died suddenly; something went wrong inside her. ^w came that Blue Duck was the leader of a gang of renegades, white and half-breed, who killed and robbed along the Sabine River. In July Buffalo Hump went on an antelope hunt far north, near where he had taken the great buffalo whose skull he had used for his shield. He had heard that the antelope were thick in the north, and it was true.

In one day he killed seven antelope with the bow. Worm made a prophecy about the feat.

There was no fighting with the whites. The story came from an Apache that Gun In The Water and his friend McCrae had rescued Big Horse from the camp of Ahumado. The Apache said that Big Horse Scull was insane; he jumped around like a flea. The Apache mentioned that Ahumado had cut off Scull's eyelids, which was what had made him insane.

"No eyelids, what a clever torture," Buffalo Hump said to Slow Tree--it was Slow Tree who had brought him this gossip. When asked about Ahumado, though, Slow Tree grew vague. There were many stories, much speculation, but it had all come from Apaches and Apaches were all liars, Slow Tree reminded him.

"Tell me the stories anyway," Buffalo Hump said.

"No one has seen Ahumado all summer," Slow Tree said. "He left his camp at night, through a hole in the mountain. They think he went back to the place he came from, in the south.

Most people think he died." "What else?" Buffalo Hump asked.

"Two white men were found stuck on the sharpened trees," Slow Tree said. "No one does that but Ahumado." "Anyone can do it if they want to," Buffalo Hump said. "All they have to do is sharpen a tree and catch a white man, or any man. An Apache could do it. You could do it, if you wanted to. It doesn't mean that Ahumado is alive." "They say a jaguar lives in his camp now," Slow Tree said. "The Texans took away Big Horse Scull and the jaguar came. Some people think he ate Ahumado." "Ho!" Buffalo Hump said. "I have never seen a jaguar. Have you?" Slow Tree was reluctant to answer. He had never seen a jaguar, either, but he was reluctant to admit this to Buffalo Hump. He liked people to think that he was the wisest and most experienced chief, a man who had tasted every plant and killed every animal. He did not like to confess that he had never seen a jaguar.

"They are very shy," Slow Tree pointed out.

"They can make themselves invisible, so you cannot see them. They have much power, jaguars." "I know they have much power but I don't think they can make themselves invisible--they are just good at hiding," Buffalo Hump said. "I think I will go south and see this jaguar. Would you like to come with me?" Slow Tree was surprised by Buffalo Hump's invitation. Buffalo Hump had never offered to hunt with him before. Now he was offering to ride with him all the way to Mexico, to see a jaguar. Slow Tree decided on the spot that it was a plot to kill him. Probably Buffalo Hump knew that Slow Tree would kill him, if he ever got a chance to drive a lance through his big hump. But Buffalo Hump was wary: he never slept in Slow Tree's presence, and rarely turned his back to him, even for a moment. Slow Tree knew that Buffalo Hump didn't really like him or respect him; even now Buffalo Hump looked at him with hooded eyes, smiling a little. Buffalo Hump was mocking him, only doing it politely, with just enough regard for ceremony and custom that Slow Tree could not challenge the mockery without appearing to be more touchy than a great chief should be.

Slow Tree knew that he did not want to go to Mexico with Buffalo Hump--t would be a fatal mistake. He regretted even telling Buffalo Hump the story about the jaguar--once again his own tongue had got him into difficulties.

Thinking quickly, Slow Tree produced several reasons why it would be imprudent for him to leave on a long trip just then. The buffalo would have to be hunted soon, and they were scarce. Also, one of his wives was dying and he did not want to leave her.

Buffalo Hump himself had just lost Hair On The Lip--he knew how important it was to stay with a valued wife while she was dying.

Buffalo Hump pretended to be surprised when Slow Tree began to pile up reasons for not going to Mexico with him.

"I thought you wanted to see a jaguar," he said, and quickly changed the subject. Of course he hadn't wanted Slow Tree to go in the first place, but it was nice to embarrass him and make him think up lies.

Later, when Slow Tree left the camp, Buffalo Hump sought out Kicking Wolf--the great horse thief had become discouraged since losing his friend Three Birds. Kicking Wolf hardly left the camp all summer, only going out now and then to hunt. He had not stolen a horse since the theft of the Buffalo Horse; though his vision had improved he still complained, now and then, that he saw two where there was one.

Buffalo Hump had often found Kicking Wolf irritating, but there was no denying that he was a good horse thief. In the fall it might be wise to raid again, to put more fear in the Texans, but Buffalo Hump suddenly felt like travelling. He wanted to go somewhere, and a chance to see a jaguar was not to be missed. Even if the jaguar was no longer there it would be good to go to Mexico--if Ahumado was gone there might be some villages worth raiding near the Sierra Perdida.

He found Kicking Wolf not far from his tent, sitting alone, watching some young horses frolic.

Two of his wives, both large, stout women not noted for their patience, were drying deer meat.

Kicking Wolf was braiding a rawhide rope.

The rawhide came from three cows Kicking Wolf had found on the llano, thin cows he had killed and skinned. He was good at braiding rawhide into ropes and hobbles.

"I have heard of a jaguar--I think we should go try and kill it," Buffalo Hump said. "If we killed such a beast it might clear up your sight." Kicking Wolf had been prepared to be annoyed with Buffalo Hump; the comment took him by surprise. He looked at Buffalo Hump gratefully; they had been good friends when they were boys, but, as they grew older, rivalry made them touchy with one another.

"My sight is still uncertain," Kicking Wolf acknowledged. "If we were able to kill a jaguar it might clear up." "Then go with me," Buffalo Hump said. "I want to leave right now, before the women try to stop us." Kicking Wolf smiled. "Where is this jaguar?" he asked.

"In Mexico," Buffalo Hump said. "It lives near where you took the Buffalo Horse." "Slow Tree told me the same thing," Kicking Wolf said. "He is a liar, you know.

He makes up stories and claims he heard them from Apaches, but he never kills these Apaches, which is what he should be doing." "I know all that," Buffalo Hump assured him. "Let's go anyway. If we don't find the jaguar we can steal some horses on the way back." Kicking Wolf immediately got up and coiled up his rawhide. He seemed eager to leave off braiding the rope.

"If the jaguar lives in Ahumado's old camp, as Slow Tree claims, where is Ahumado?" he asked.

"They say he is gone," Buffalo Hump said.

"Do you believe it?" Kicking Wolf asked.

"I don't know," Buffalo Hump said.

"He may be gone or he may be waiting for us." "I will go with you," Kicking Wolf said. "I want to see the jaguar and I want to know what happened to Three Birds." "How will you know that--he went with you in the winter," Buffalo Hump pointed out. "If he is dead there won't be much left of him by now." "I intend to look, anyway," Kicking Wolf said.

Heavy Leg knew Buffalo Hump much better than did his young wife, Lark. Heavy Leg could tell by the way her husband moved, and by the way he looked at the horses, when he was wanting to leave. By the time he came back with Kicking Wolf she had already filled a pouch with dried deer meat, for him to take on his journey.

She was not allowed to touch his bow or his lance, but she got his paints ready, in case he had to paint himself and go into battle.

Buffalo Hump was a little surprised when he saw what Heavy Leg had done. Though Heavy Leg had been his wife for a long time, it still startled him that she could anticipate his intentions so accurately. His young wife, Lark, by contrast, had no idea that he was in a mood to leave. She was putting grease on her black hair and had not even noticed what Heavy Leg was doing.

Buffalo Hump was almost ready to mount before Lark awoke to the fact that he was leaving. Though he depended on Heavy Leg and respected her for providing him what he would need on his journey, he sometimes wished she were a little dumber, like Lark.

He was not sure he trusted a wife who could read his thoughts so clearly.

Kicking Wolf's wives were indignant that he was leaving them on such short notice, but Kicking Wolf ignored them. It had been a long time since he had travelled with Buffalo Hump--it pleased him that Buffalo Hump had asked him to come on the journey to Mexico.

By sunset the two warriors had left the camp. Eager for travel, singing a little, they climbed out of the canyon and rode all night.

For two days, as they approached the canyon of the Yellow Cliffso, Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf saw no game, though there had been an abundance of antelope and deer as they travelled south. Soon after crossing the Rio Grande they discovered a small herd of wild horses, a discovery that excited them both. They were small horses, mustangs--z soon as they saw the Comanches, they fled.

Kicking Wolf wanted to chase them awhile; at the sight of the quick, hardy wild horses, animals able to live where there was little water and almost no grass, his appetite for catching horses revived a little.

But Buffalo Hump was intent on one purpose, which was to go to the canyon of the Yellow Cliffso and see the jaguar.

"We know where those horses are now," he told Kicking Wolf. "We can come back and track them anytime. If we chase them they might move into Apache country." "The Apaches don't like horses," Kicking Wolf said.

"Not to ride, but they like to eat them," Buffalo Hump said. "I would like to have a few of them. The jaguar must have eaten all the deer and antelope but he has not been able to catch those horses." Kicking Wolf was growing very excited. His passion for horses was very great, and these horses did not even have to be stolen, they only had to be caught. Buffalo Hump wouldn't listen to him, though, so he reluctantly had to leave the mustangs, for the moment.

All he talked about for a whole day was the wild horses they had found near the Rio Grande.

The next day Kicking Wolf led Buffalo Hump to the place where he and Three Birds had been ambushed.

"Ahumado was behind us," Kicking Wolf said.

"He walks as quietly as I do when I go into a herd of horses." "I don't think he is here," Buffalo Hump said, "but if he is I don't want him behind me." He started to reveal the prophecy of the hump, but caught himself. Kicking Wolf was a gossip-- if he knew of the prophecy the whole camp would soon know.

"Let's go high on the rocks," he said.

"If he is here I would rather be above him than below him." They picked their way up to the high plateau that led to the Yellow Cliffs. To their surprise there was a declivity on the plateau, a great crater whose sides were steep. Near the center of the crater was a pit, with some charred and broken horse bones in the bottom of it, laying in the deep ashes.

Kicking Wolf knew at once whose bones he was looking at.

"This is the place where they ate the Buffalo Horse," he said. "Why did they eat him?" "Why does anyone eat any horse?" Buffalo Hump said. "They were hungry." Kicking Wolf stayed a long time by the pit, looking at the bones of the Buffalo Horse. That Ahumado would kill and eat such a beast, rather than keeping him as a prize, astonished him. He jumped down into the pit and came back with one of the great rib bones.

Buffalo Hump spent some time riding around the rim of the crater, trying to understand how it had come to be. The rocks in it were black, the walls steep. He knew that the great hole with the black rocks in it was a place of power, a place where people came to pray and perform their spirit ceremonies.

Some of the old ones thought that such holes were the footprints of the first spirit people to visit the world. His own view was that it might be the hole where the People first came out of the earth; only, in time, it had silted over, so that the People could not go back into the darkness they had left.

Buffalo Hump put a few of the black rocks in his pouch, to show to Worm and a few of the old men when he got home. It occurred to him that the reason Ahumado had so much power was because he had put his camp near the place of the black rocks. He was said to be black himself, like the rocks.

The crater was such a powerful place that Buffalo Hump was reluctant to leave it; but they had come to look for the jaguar that had been eating all the game.

In the afternoon they rode across the plateau to the Yellow Cliffs. They found the place where the posts were, and the cages, all but one of which had human remains in them. From the cliffso they could see far south, down the range of peaks. Several eagles soared along the cliff edge. Buffalo Hump wanted badly to shoot an eagle. He waited until dusk with his arrows ready, but none of the eagles flew close enough for him to risk an arrow.

"In the morning I will hide myself better," he said. The eagles were the large eagles of the south; he thought if he was patient he might kill one.

They camped on the plateau. In the morning the sun and moon were in the sky together, one to the east and the other to the west.

Both men knew that it was time to be careful, when the two powers, sun and moon, were in the sky together.

At such times unexpected things could happen. Below them the cliff was pocked with caves. Buffalo Hump wondered if the jaguar lived in one of them. It soon became clear that no people were in the old camp. Three jackrabbits were nibbling at the bushes near the edge of the clearing, a thing that would not happen if the people were still nearby.

As he stood on the cliff looking down, Kicking Wolf suddenly had a memory of his friend Three Birds--a memory so strong that he began to tremble.

"What's wrong--why are you shaking like that?" Buffalo Hump asked.

"I was thinking of Three Birds," Kicking Wolf said.

Although Buffalo Hump waited, Kicking Wolf did not say more, but he continued to tremble for some time.

Though Buffalo Hump hid himself well near the edge of the cliff, he soon realized that the eagles were not going to come anywhere near him, certainly not close enough that he could kill one with an arrow. One eagle did dip close enough to tempt him, but it was merely a trick on the eagle's part. He tilted and let the arrow pass under his wing --x fell all the way to the bottom of the cliff, so far that Buffalo Hump lost sight of it.

"Let's go down," he said to Kicking Wolf.

"I want to find my arrow." Once they rode into the camp at the base of the Yellow Cliffso they saw that no people had been there for some time.

"The jaguar was here," Buffalo Hump said.

"The Apache who spoke with Slow Tree did not lie." Near one of the little caves they found some scat, and, everywhere, there were tracks. But the scat was old and none of the tracks were fresh. The jaguar had slept in a little cave near where the people had been.

He had left some of his hairs on the rock.

Carefully the two men collected as many hairs as they could--the hair of a jaguar would be very useful to Worm or the other medicine men.

While Buffalo Hump finished collecting the hairs, and some of the scat to be used in medicine, Kicking Wolf walked a good distance along the base of the cliff, looking for any trace of his friend. They had looked in the smelly pit and determined that the hastily buried bodies in it were Mexican. There was nothing of Three Birds in the pit, and it was not he rotting from the post in the center of what had been the camp. Yet Kicking Wolf felt that Three Birds would not have come to him so powerfully in memory if his remains, or at least some part of them, were not near the cliff somewhere.

"Be careful," Buffalo Hump told him.

"The jaguar might be clever. He might be hiding." Kicking Wolf did not answer. He wanted to be away from Buffalo Hump for a while.

Buffalo Hump was so strong in himself that when you were with him it was hard to think about other people, even such an old friend as Three Birds.

Kicking Wolf thought that if he just got away from Buffalo Hump for a while he might receive another strong memory and be able to locate some trace of his friend; his thinking was correct. Near the base of the cliff, below where the cages hung, Kicking Wolf found the bones of the Comanche Three Birds. The bones were scattered and most of them broken, with only a little skin clinging to them here and there, but when Kicking Wolf found the skull he knew that he had located his friend. Three Birds had a knot, a little ridge of bone, located just below his left temple. As a boy he had been hit in the head with a war club while playing at war with the other boys: the blow left the little ridge or knot of bone behind his temple.

Kicking Wolf looked up at the cliff, so high that it was hard to see the top--there two eagles were soaring. He wondered if Ahumado had had Three Birds thrown from the cliff, or if he had fallen out of one of the cages. It might be that he had jumped, in hopes of becoming a bird as he was falling to his death.

Kicking Wolf knew that he would never know the answer to that question, but at least he had found what he had journeyed to Mexico to find.

He went back to his horse and got a deerskin he had brought just for that purpose; then he wrapped the bones of Three Birds carefully in the deerskin and tied them securely with a rawhide thong. Buffalo Hump came to him as he was working. When Kicking Wolf showed him the skull and the hand he merely said, "Ho!" and helped Kicking Wolf search the site so they would not miss any bones. It was Buffalo Hump who found one of Three Birds' feet.

The next day the two of them left the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs. Kicking Wolf carried the bones of Three Birds tied safely in the deerskin. He meant to take them to Three Birds' brother.

"We must come back soon and catch those wild horses," he said to Buffalo Hump, as they were crossing the river, back into Texas.

"I have never known a man who wanted horses so much," Buffalo Hump said. Book III

Augustus McCrae was sitting at the bedside of his second wife, Nellie, when Woodrow Call tapped lightly on the door.

Bright sunlight poured through the window, but, to Gus's eye, the sunlight only pointed up the shabbiness of the two poor rooms where Nellie was having to die. There was no carpet on the floor, and the curtains were dusty; the windows faced on Austin's busiest street--horses and wagons were always throwing up dust.

"Come in," Augustus said. Call opened the door and stepped inside. The sick woman was pale as a bedsheet, as she had been for several weeks. He thought it could not be long before Nellie McCrae breathed her last.

Augustus, weary and confused, held one of the dying woman's hands.

"Well, what's the news, Woodrow?" he asked.

"War--civil war," Call said. "War between the North and the South. The Governor just found out." Augustus didn't answer. Nellie was in a war, too, at the moment, and was losing it. Thought of a larger war, one that could split the nation, seemed remote when set beside Nellie's ragged breathing.

"The Governor would like to see us, when you can spare a moment," Call said.

Augustus looked up at his friend. "I can't spare one right now, Woodrow--I'm helping Nellie die. I don't expect it will be much longer." "No--it's not likely to," Call agreed.

A bottle of whiskey and a glass with a swallow or two left in it sat on a little table by the bed, along with two vials of medicine and a wet rag that, now and then, Augustus used to wipe his wife's face.

"Captain Scull predicted this war years ago," Call said. "Do you remember that?" "Old Blinders--I expect he's already enlisted on the Yankee side," Gus said.

Once they had returned Captain Scull from captivity, his mind recovered, though not immediately.

For months he was still subject to bursts of hopping, which could seize him in the street or anywhere. He soon invented a kind of goggle, containing a thin sheet of darkened glass, to protect his lidless eyes from the sunlight. The goggles gained him the nickname "Blinders" Scull--he and Madame Scull were soon as intemperately married as ever, yelling curses at one another as they raced through town in an elegant buggy the Captain had ordered.

Then, overnight, they were gone, moved to Switzerland, where a renowned doctor attempted to make Scull usable eyelids, using the skin of a brown frog; rumour had it that the experiment failed, forcing the Captain to get by with his goggles from then on.

"Yes, I expect he's signed up," Call said. It was not likely that Inish Scull would sit out a war, eyelids or not.

Call put his hand on Gus's shoulder for a moment and prepared to leave, but Gus looked up and stopped him.

"Sit with me for a minute, Woodrow," he said, feeling sad. It was not much more than a year ago that his first wife, Geneva, had been carried off by a fever.

"You've no luck with wives, Gus," Call said. He sat back down and listened as the sick woman drew her shallow breaths.

"I don't, for a fact," Augustus said.

"Geneva barely lasted four months and it's not yet been a year since Nellie and I wed." He was quiet for a bit, looking out the window.

"I guess it's a good thing Clara turned me down," he said. "If we'd married, I fear she would have died off years ago." Call was surprised that Gus would bring up Clara, with Nellie dying scarcely a yard away. But the sick woman didn't react--she seemed to hear little of what was said.

Neither of the two women Gus had married had been able to survive a year. Call knew it had discouraged his friend profoundly. Unable to secure a healthy wife, he had already gone back to the whores.

"I wish Nell could go on and go," Gus said.

"She ain't going to get well." "I would prefer to be shot, myself, if I get that sick," Call said. "Once there's no avoiding death I see no point in lingering." Augustus smiled at the comment, and poured himself a little more whiskey.

"We're all just lingering, Woodrow," he said.

"None of us can avoid dying--though old Scull did the best job of it of any man I know, while that old bandit had him." "Do you have an opinion about the war?" Call asked. "One I could take to Governor Clark?" The hubbub in the streets had already grown louder. Soon the citizens of Austin, some of whom sided with the Yankees and more of whom sided with the South, might decide to begin a war at the local level, in which case there would soon be more people dying than Gus McCrae's wife.

"No opinion--andthe Governor has no right to press me, at a time like this," Augustus said.

"He just wants to know if we'll stay," Call told him. In the last few years he and Augustus had been the twin mainstays of frontier defense. Naturally a governor wouldn't want to lose his two most experienced captains, not at a time when most of the fighting men in the state would be going off to fight in the great civil war.

"I don't know yet--y vote for me, Woodrow," Augustus said. "Once Nellie dies I'm going to want to go drinking. When Nellie's buried and I'm fully sober again, I'll get around to thinking about this war." Call smiled at the comment.

"I've known you a good many years and I've rarely seen you fully sober," he remarked.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this war is fought and finished before that happens.

"The whole nation might kill itself before you're fully sober," he added.

He smiled when he said it, and Gus returned a weary glance.

"You go on and manage the Governor, Woodrow," he said. "I've got to manage Nellie." Hearing gunfire in the street, Call hurried out, to discover that it was only a few rowdies shooting off their guns. They wanted to celebrate the fact that, at long last, war had come.

Call made slow progress up the street.

Every man he saw wanted his opinion about the war; but the sight of Gus and his Nellie, in the poor cheap bedroom, left him feeling melancholy--it was hard to deal with the war question because he couldn't get his mind off Gus and Nellie. He had not known Nellie well--Gus had married her on only a week's acquaintance, but she seemed to be a decent young woman who had done her best to settle Augustus down and make him comfortable with the little they had. The only thing he knew about Nellie McCrae was that she was from Georgia; the only fondness he had ever heard her express was for mint tea. Now Lee Hitch and Stove Jones came crowding up with war questions, when all Call could think about was the sadness Gus must feel at having married twice, only to lose both wives.

"When are you leaving to fight the Yankees, Captain?" Stove Jones asked--it was only at that moment, when he saw Lee Hitch draw back in shock, that Stove realized he and Lee might favor different sides. It dawned on him too late that Lee Hitch hailed from Pennsylvania, a Yankee state, as well as he could remember.

Call didn't have to answer. Lee and Stove were looking at one another in astonishment. The two old friends agreed about almost everything; it had not occurred to either of them that they might be divided on the issue of the war that had just begun.

"Why, are you a Reb, Stove?" Lee asked, in puzzlement.

"I'm a Carolina boy," Stove reminded him; but his appetite for discussion of the coming conflict had suddenly diminished.

"We've still got the Comanches to fight, here in Texas," Call reminded them. "I suppose they're Yankees enough for me." "But everybody's going to war, Captain--t's the talk, up and down the street," Stove Jones said. "There'll be some grand battles before this is settled." "Some grand battles and some grand dying," Augustus said. He had come quietly up to where Call and the two men were talking. His arrival, so soon, took Call by surprise, though Augustus did not seem quite as sad as he had been in the rooming house.

"Nell's gone," Gus added, before Call could ask. "She opened her eyes and died. I never had a chance to ask her if she needed anything. Why will people die on days this pretty?" Sunlight poured down on them; the sky was cloudless and the air soft. No one had an answer to Gus's question. Darkness and death seemed far away; but war had been declared between South and North, and Nellie McCrae lay dead not two blocks away.

"What are you, Gus, Yank or Reb?" Lee Hitch asked, putting the question cautiously, as if afraid of the answer he might receive.

"I'm a Texas Ranger with a good wife to bury, Lee," Gus said. "Will you go find Deets and Pea for me? I'd like to get them started on the grave." "We'll find them--we'll help too, Gus," Lee assured him.

Call and Augustus walked briskly to the lots and caught their horses. It was a short walk to the Governor's office, but if they walked everybody they met would try to sound them out about the war, an intrusion they wanted to avoid.

"Remember what Scull said, when he first told us war was coming?" Call asked.

""Brother against brother and father against son,"' that's what I remember," Augustus replied.

"He was accurate too," Call said. "It's happened right here in the troop, and the news not an hour old." Augustus looked puzzled.

"You mean there's Yankees in the company?" he asked.

"Lee Hitch," Call said. "And Stove is a Reb." "My Lord, that's right," Augustus said.

"Lee's from the North." Governor Clark stood by a window, looking out at the sunlit hills, when the two rangers were admitted to his office. He was a spare, solemn executive; no one could remember having heard him joke. He was patient, though, and dutiful to a fault. No piece of daily business was left unfinished; Gus and Call themselves had seen lamplight in the Governor's office well past midnight, as the Governor attended, paper by paper, to the tasks he had set himself for the day.

In the streets, men, most of them Rebels, were rejoicing. All of them assumed that the imperious Yankees would soon be whipped. Governor Clark was not rejoicing.

"Captain McCrae, how's your wife?" the Governor asked.

"She just died, Governor," Gus said.

"I would have excused you from this meeting, had I known that," Governor Clark said.

"There would be no reason to, Governor," Gus said. "There's nothing I can do for Nellie now except get a deep grave dug." "If I had money to invest, which I don't, I'd invest it in mortuaries," the Governor said. "Ten thousand grave diggers won't be enough to bury the dead from this war, once it starts. There's a world of money to be made in the mortuary trade just now, and I expect the Yankees will make the most of it, damn them." "I guess that means you're a Reb, Governor," Gus said.

"Up to today I've just been an American citizen, which is what I'd prefer to stay," Governor Clark said. "Now I doubt I'll have the luxury. Do you know your history, gentlemen?" There was a long silence. Call and Augustus both felt uneasy.

"We're not studied men, Governor," Call admitted, eventually.

"I'm so ignorant myself I hate to talk much," Augustus said. The remark annoyed Call--in private Augustus bragged about his extensive schooling, even claiming a sound knowledge of the Latin language. When Captain Scull was around, Augustus moderated his bragging, it being clear that Captain Scull .was extensively schooled.

Augustus was not confident enough, though, to attempt a display of learning with Governor Clark looking at him severely.

"Civil wars are the bloodiest, that's my point, gentlemen," the Governor said. "There was Cromwell. There were the French. People were torn apart in the streets of Paris." "Torn to bits, sir?" Gus asked.

"Torn to bits and fed to dogs," the Governor said. "It was as bad or worse as what our friends the Comanches do." "Surely this will just be armies fighting, won't it?" Call asked. Though he had read most of his Napoleon book, there was nothing in it about people being torn to bits in the streets.

"I hope so, Captain," the Governor said.

"But it's war--in war you can't expect tea parties." "Who do you think will win, Governor?" Call asked. He had lived his whole life in Texas. The work of rangering had taken him to New Mexico and old Mexico and, a time or two, into Indian Territory; but of the rest of America he knew nothing. He did know that almost all their goods and equipment came from the North.

He assumed it was a rich place, but he had no sense of it, nor, for that matter, much sense of the South. He had known or encountered men from most of the states--f Georgia and Alabama, from Tennessee and Kentucky and Missouri, from Pennsylvania and Virginia and Massachusetts--but he didn't know those places. He knew that the East had factories; but the nearest thing to a factory that he himself had ever seen was a lumber mill. He knew that the Southern boys, the Rebs, without exception assumed they could whip the Yankees-- rout them, in fact. But Captain Scull, whose opinion he respected, scorned the South and its soldiers. "Fops," he had called them.

Call was not sure what a fop was, but Captain Scull had uttered the ^w with a sort of casual contempt, a scorn Call still remembered. Captain Scull seemed to feel himself equal to any number of Southern fops.

"Nobody will win, but I expect the North will prevail," the Governor said. "But they won't win tomorrow, or next year either, and probably not the year after. Meanwhile we've still got settlers to defend and a border swarming with thieves." The Governor stopped talking and looked at the two men solemnly.

"There won't be many men staying here, not if they're able-bodied, and not if the war lasts as long as I think it will," he said. "They'll be off looking for glory. Some of them will find it and most of the rest of them will die in the mud." "But the South will win, won't it, Governor?" Augustus asked. "I would hate to think the damn Yankees could whip us." "They might, sir--they might," the Governor said.

"Half the people in Texas come from the Northern part of the country," Call observed. "Look at Lee Hitch. There's hundreds like him. Who do you think they'll fight for?" "There will be confusion such as none of us expected to have to live through," the Governor said.

"That could have been prevented, but it wasn't, so now we'll have to suffer it." He paused and gave them another solemn inspection.

"I want you to stay with the rangers, gentlemen," he said. "Texas has never needed you more. The people respect you and depend on you, and we're still a frontier state." Augustus let bitterness fill him, for a moment; bitterness and grief. He remembered the cheap dusty room Nellie had just died in.

"If we're so respected, then the state ought to pay us better," he said. "We've been rangers a long time now and we're paid scarcely better than we were when we started out. My wife just died in a room scarcely fit for dogs." You could have afforded better if you'd been careful with your money, Call thought, but he didn't say it; in fact Augustus's criticism was true.

Their salaries were only a little larger than they had been when they were raw beginners.

"I wouldn't go to no war looking for glory," Gus said. "But I might go if the pay was good." "I take your point," the Governor said.

"It's a scandal that you've been paid so poorly.

I'll see that it's raised as soon as the legislature sits--if we still have a legislature when the smoke clears." There was a long pause--in the distance there was the sound of gunshots. The rowdies were still celebrating.

"Will you stay, gentlemen?" the Governor asked. "The Comanches will soon find out about this war, and the Mexicans too. If they think the Texas Rangers have disbanded, they'll be at us from both directions, thick as fleas on a dog." Call realized that he and Augustus had not had a moment to discuss the future, or their prospects as soldiers, or anything. They had scarcely had a minute alone, since Nellie McCrae got sick.

"I can't speak for Captain McCrae but I have no wish to desert my duties," Call said.

"I have no quarrel with the Yankees, that I know of, and no desire to fight them." "Thank you, that's a big relief," the Governor said. "I recognize it's a poor time to ask, but what about you, Captain McCrae?" Augustus didn't answer--he felt resentful. From the moment, years before on the llano, when Inish Scull abruptly made him a captain, it seemed that, every minute, people had pressed him for decisions on a host of matters large and small. It might be trivial--someone might want to know which pack mules to pack--or it might be serious, like the question the Governor had just asked him. He was from Tennessee. If Tennessee were to join the war, he might want to fight with the Tennesseeans; not having heard from home much in recent years, he was not entirely sure which side Tennessee would line up with. Now the Governor was wanting him to stay in Texas, but he wasn't ready to agree. He had lost two wives in Texas--not to mention Clara, who, in a way, made three. Why would he want to stay in a place where his luck with wives was so poor? His luck with cards hadn't been a great deal better, he reflected.

"I assure you there'll be an improvement in the matter of salaries," the Governor said.

"I'll raise you even if I have to pay you out of my own pocket until this crisis passes." "Let it pass--there'll just be another one right behind it," Augustus said, irritably. "It's just been one crisis after another, the whole time I've been rangering." Then he stood up--fed up. He felt he had to get outside or else choke.

"I've got to get my wife decently buried, Governor," he said. "She won't keep, not with the weather this warm. I expect I'll stay with Woodrow and go on rangering, but I ain't sure. I just ain't sure, not right this minute. I agree with Woodrow--allyankees are still Americans, and I'm used to fighting Comanche Indians or else Mexicans." He paused a moment, remembering his family.

"I've got two brothers, back in Tennessee," he added. "If my brothers was to fight with the Yankees, I wouldn't want to be shooting at them, I know that much." Governor Clark sighed.

"Go home, Captain," he said. "Bury your wife. Then let me know what you decide." "All right, Governor," Augustus said.

"I wish there was a good sheriff here. He ought to arrest those fools who are shooting off their guns in the street."

Inish Scull--Hoppity Scull, as he was known in Boston, because he was still occasionally seized by involuntary fits of hopping; they might occur at a wedding or a dinner party or even while he was rowing, in which case he hopped into the chilly Charles--was walking across Harvard Yard, a copy of Newton's Opticks in his hand, when a student ran up to him with the news that war had been declared.

"Why the Southern rascals!" Scull exclaimed, after hearing of the provocation that had occurred.

His mind, though, was still on optics, where it had been much of the time since Ahumado had removed his eyelids. He had just spent three years making a close study of the eye, sight, light, and everything having to do with vision--Harvard had even been prompted to ask him to teach a course on optics, which is what he had been doing just before news of the Southern insurrection reached him. He was wearing his goggles, of course; even in the thinner light of Boston a chance ray of sunlight could cause him intense pain; the headaches, when they came, still blinded him for days. He was convinced, though, from his study of the musculature of the eye, that his experiment with the Swiss surgeon and the frog membrane need not have failed. He had been planning to go back to Switzerland, armed with new knowledge and also better membranes, to try again.

But the news that the spindly student had brought him, once it soaked in, drove optics, in all their rich complexity, out of Inish Scull's mind. The excitement in Cambridge was general; even the streets of Boston, usually silent as a cemetery, rang with talk. Scull rarely walked home, but today he did, growing more excited with every step. He still had his commission in the army of the United States; the thought of battle made a sojourn in Switzerland seem pallid. He longed to lead men again, to see the breaths of cavalry horses condense in white clouds on cold mornings, to ride and curse and shoot under the old flag, Bible and sword.

When he flung open the door of the great house on Beacon Hill, the house where he had been born and been raised, the sight that greeted him was one to arouse ardor, but not of a military kind.

Inez Scull, entirely bored with Boston, was striding up and down the long, gloomy entrance hall, naked from the waist down, slashing at the Scull family portraits with a quirt.

Lately she had begun to exhibit herself freely, mostly to shock the servants, good proper Boston servants all, very unused to having their mistress exhibit her parts in the drawing room or wherever she happened to be, and at all hours of the day, as well.

Hearing the door open, Entwistle, the butler, appeared--old Ben Mickelson had been sent to the house in Maine, to dodder and tipple through the summer. Without giving Madame Scull so much as a glance, Entwistle took the master's coat.

"So there, Inez, I hope you're satisfied," Inish said.

"I'm very far from satisfied, the stable boy was hasty," Inez said, turning her red face toward him as she continued to quirt the portraits.

"Entwistle, would you find a towel for Madame?" Scull said. "I fear she's dripping. She'll soil the Aubusson if she's not careful." "You Bostonians are so beggarly," Inez said. "It's just a rug." "Sack the stable boy, if you don't mind, Entwistle," Scull added. "He's managed to anger me while not quite pleasing Madame." Then he looked at his wife.

"I wasn't talking about the success--or lack of it--of your amours, Inez, when I said I hoped you were satisfied," he informed her. "The fact is, your imbecile cousins have gotten us into a war." "The darlings, I'm so glad," Inez replied. "What did they do?" "They fired on us," Scull said. "The impertinent fools--they'll soon wish they hadn't." At that point Entwistle returned with a towel, which he handed to Madame Scull, who immediately flung it back in his face. Entwistle, unsurprised, picked up the towel and draped it over the banister near where Madame Scull stood.

"Find that stable boy?" Scull asked.

"No, he didn't, and he won't," Inez said, before Entwistle could answer.

"Why's that, my dear?" Scull asked, noting that a whitish substance was still dripping copiously down his wife's leg. Happily, though, her quirtings had done little damage to the Scull portraits, which hung in imposing ranks along the hallway.

"Because I've stowed him in a closet, where I mean to keep him until he proves his mettle," Inez said.

"I should shoot you on the spot, you Oglethorpe slut," Scull said. "No Boston jury would convict me." "What, because I had a tumble with the stable boy, you think that's grounds for murder?" Inez asked, coming at him with menace in her eyes.

"No, of course not," he said. "I'd do it because you embarrassed Entwistle. You don't embarrass butlers, not here in our Boston." "My cousins will soon put you to rout, you damn Yankee hounds," Inez said, starting up the stairs.

"Hickling Prescott suspects you of Oglethorpe blood--did you hear me, you dank slut?" Inish yelled after her.

Inez Scull did not reply.

Before he could say more he was taken with a fit of hopping. He was almost to the kitchen before Entwistle and the parlor maids could get him stopped.

Maggie considered it a happy turnabout that she now had a position in the store that had once been the Forsythes'. She did the very jobs that Clara had once done: unpacking, arranging goods on the shelves, helping customers, writing up bills, wrapping the purchases that required wrapping.

She thought often of Clara, and felt lucky to have, at last, a respectable job. Clara, she thought, would have understood and approved. The store's new owner, Mr. Sam Stewart, was from Ohio, and a newcomer to Austin. He knew little of Maggie's past, and what he knew he ignored.

Fetching and competent clerks were not plentiful in Austin--Mrs. Sam Stewart was glad to accept the fiction that Maggie was a widow, and Newt the son of a Mr. Dobbs, killed by Indians while on a trip. Sam Stewart had a few irregularities in his past himself and was not disposed either to look too closely or to judge too harshly when Maggie applied for the job, though he did once mention to his formidable wife, Amanda Stewart, that Maggie's boy, Newt, then four, bore a strong resemblance to Captain Call.

"I'd mind your own business, if I were you, Sam," Amanda informed him. "I'm sure Maggie's done the best she could. I'll nail your skin to the back door if you let Maggie go." "Who said anything about letting her go, Manda?" Sam asked. "I have no intention of letting her go." "Scoundrels like you often get churchly once they're safe from the hang rope," Amanda informed him. She said no more, but Sam Stewart went around for days wondering what skeleton his wife thought she had uncovered now.

It was while clerking in the store that Maggie made friends with Nellie McCrae. Nellie often came in to purchase little things for Gus, but rarely spent a penny on herself, though she was a fetching young woman whose beauty would have shone more brightly if she had allowed herself a ribbon, now and then, or a new frock.

That Nellie was not strong had always been clear --once or twice she had become faint, while doing her modest shopping; Maggie had had to insist that she rest a bit on the sofa at the back of the store before going home.

Then Nellie commenced dying, and was seen in the store no more. Maggie sorrowed for her and sat up all night rocking Newt, who had a cough, when news of the death came.

She was dressing to go to the funeral when Graciela, the Mexican woman who watched Newt while Maggie worked, came hobbling in in terror--Graciela was convinced she had been bitten by a snake.

"Was it a rattler?" Maggie asked, not without skepticism--the day seldom passed without nature striking some near-fatal blow at Graciela.

Graciela was far too upset to give an accurate description of the snake; though Maggie could find no fang marks on her leg, or anywhere else, Graciela was convinced she was dying. She began to pray to the saints, and to the Virgin.

"You might have stepped on a snake but I don't think it bit you," Maggie said, but Graciela was sobbing so loudly she couldn't hear.

It was vexing. Maggie thought the best thing to do was take Newt to the funeral with her. He was a lively boy and might escape Graciela and be off--if there .was a rattlesnake around, Newt might be the one to find it.

While Maggie was buttoning Newt into the nice brown coat he wore to church, Graciela, in her despair, turned over a pot of beans--a small river of bean juice was soon flowing across the kitchen floor.

"If you don't die, clean up the beans," Maggie said, as she hurried Newt out the door.

Then she regretted her sharpness: Graciela was a poor woman who had lost five of her twelve children; she had suffered so many pains in life that she had become a little deranged.

Maggie could already hear the strains of the new church organ--it had just arrived from Philadelphia the week before. Amanda Stewart, who had some training in music, had been enlisted to play it.

"Will we see Captain Woodrow?" Newt asked, as his mother hurried him along.

"Yes, and Jake too, I expect," Maggie said. "Maybe Captain Woodrow would walk with us to the graveyard." Newt didn't say anything--his mother was always hoping that Captain Woodrow would do things with them that the Captain seldom wanted to do.

Jake Spoon, though, was always jolly; he came to their house often and played with him, or, sometimes, even took him fishing. Jake had even given him an old lariat rope, Newt's proudest possession. Jake said every ranger needed to know how to rope, so Newt practiced often with his rope, throwing loops at a stump in the backyard, or, if his mother wasn't looking, at the chickens. He thought roping birds would be safe, though he was careful not to go near old Dan, the quarrelsome tom turkey that belonged to Mrs. Stewart.

"Old Dan will peck you, Newt," Mrs.

Stewart warned, and Newt didn't doubt. Old Dan had pecked Graciela, causing her to weep for several days.

Though Newt, like his mother, hoped that Captain Woodrow would come and do things with them, the occasions when he did come frightened little Newt a little.

Captain Woodrow didn't play with him, as Jake did, and had never taken him fishing, though, on rare occasions, he might give Newt a penny, so that he could buy sassafras candy at the store where his mother worked. Jake Spoon's visits usually ended with Newt laughing himself into a fit--Jake would tickle him until he went into a fit--but nothing like that happened when Captain Woodrow came. When the Captain came he and Newt's mother talked, but in such low voices that Newt could never hear what they were saying. Newt tried to be on his best behaviour during Captain Woodrow's visits, not only in the hope of getting a penny, but because it was clear that Captain Woodrow expected good behaviour.

Newt was always a little glad, when Captain Woodrow got up to go, but he was always a little sorry, too. He wanted Captain Woodrow to stay with them--his mother was never more pleased than when Captain Woodrow came--but he himself never quite knew what to do when the Captain was there. He had a whistle which he liked to blow loudly, and a top he liked to spin, and a stick horse he could ride expertly, even though the stick horse bucked and pitched like a real bronc, but when the Captain came he didn't blow his whistle, spin his top, or ride his stick horse. Newt just sat and tried to be well behaved. Almost always, after Captain Woodrow came, his mother cried and was in a bad temper for a while; Newt had learned to be cautious in his playing, at such times.

Maggie and Newt hurried across the street and crept into the back of the church just as the brief service began.

"Ma, I can't see," Newt whispered. He didn't like being in church, which required him to be still, even more still than he was used to keeping during Captain Woodrow's visits. At the moment all he could see was a forest of backs and legs.

"Shush, you be quiet now," Maggie said, but she did hoist Newt up so he could see Amanda Stewart play the new organ. All the rangers were there but Deets, one of Newt's favorites.

Deets was skillful at devising little toys out of pieces of wood or sacking and whatever he could find. So far he had made Newt a turkey, a bobcat, and a bear. Of course, Deets was black; Newt was not sure whether he was exactly a ranger--in any case he could not spot him in the church.

Then his mother whispered to him and pointed out a thin man standing with the rangers.

"That's the Governor," she said. "It's nice that he came." Newt took no special interest in the Governor, but he was careful to squeeze his eyes shut during the prayer. Graciela had made it clear to him that he would go to hell and burn forever if he opened his eyes during a prayer.

When the praying was finished the rangers went past them out of the church, carrying a wooden box, which they set in the back of a wagon. Jake Spoon was helping carry the box; when he went past Newt he winked at him. Newt knew that winking at such a time must be bad, because his mother colored and looked annoyed.

Maggie .was annoyed. Jake ought to have better manners than to wink while carrying a coffin.

Newt adored Jake; it was not setting the boy a good example to wink at such a solemn time.

What made it worse was that Gus McCrae looked so low and sad.

Sometimes Maggie wondered why she had fixed her heart on Call, and not on Gus--she and Gus were more adaptable people than Woodrow ever had been or ever would be. She thought she could have stayed alive and done nicely by Augustus, had she felt for him what a wife should feel for a husband; and yet, through the years, it was Woodrow she loved and Jake she tolerated. Even then, walking up the street behind the wagon, Maggie felt her spirits droop a little because Woodrow, mindful of the solemnity of the occasion, had walked past them without a nod or a glance.

The hope Maggie held, above all, was that her son would be able to live a respectable life.

She herself might manage to die respectable, but she had not lived respectable, not for much of her life; she placed a high value on it and wanted it for her son. He might never manage to be a hero, as his father was; he might never even be called to do battle--Maggie hoped he wouldn't. But it wasn't necessary to fight Indians or arrest bandits to be respectable.

Respectability was a matter of training and guidance--learning not to wink in funerals, for example, or keeping one's eyes closed during prayer.

There was no managing Jake Spoon, though; there never had been. Maggie knew it, and it was bittersweet knowledge, because, for all his faults, Jake did his best to help her, and had for the whole time she had had Newt. It was Jake who carried her groceries home, if he noticed that she was heavily laden; Jake that tacked up a little shelf in her kitchen, to hold the crockery--Jake Spoon did the chores that Woodrow Call would rarely unbend to do, even if he had the time. Maggie knew her own weaknesses: she could not do entirely without a man, could not be alone always, could not survive and raise her son well without more help than Woodrow Call gave her.

Call and Gus were not heroes to the people for nothing; they were constantly on patrol along the line of the frontier. Skirmishes with the Comanches were frequent, and the border was very unsettled. Call and Gus were always gone but Jake Spoon was usually left at home--he had had the prudence to take a course in penmanship and wrote the neatest hand in the company. There was a man in the legislature, a senator named Sumerskin, who considered the rangers profligate in the matter of expenses. He hectored Call and Gus to produce accountings down to the last horseshoe nail, a vexation that both captains found hard to tolerate. Though Jake Spoon could shoot and might occasionally produce a dashing bit of derring-d during a fracas, he was also lazy, careless of his tack, and prone to exhausting the troop by leading singsongs all night. His main use when they were after bandits was that he could tie the most elegant hang knots in the troop.

Bandits hung with one of Jake's nooses rarely danced or kicked more than a few seconds.

Call, though, could barely tolerate Jake's laziness--Augustus, though an inspired fighter, provided more than enough laziness for any one troop, Call considered, so, usually, Jake got left at home to keep the company records in his elegant hand. He would wad up page after page of ledger paper until he had his columns exact and the loops and curves of his letters precisely as he wanted them to be.

Where Woodrow Call was concerned, Maggie's hopes shrank, year by year, to one need: the need to have Call give Newt his name. She no longer supposed, even in her most hopeful moments, that Woodrow would marry her. It wasn't that he scorned her because of her past, either; the bitter truth Maggie slowly came to accept was that Woodrow Call liked being alone; he liked his solitude as much as Gus and Jake liked female company.

"Woodrow just ain't the marrying kind, Mag," Augustus said to her, on more than one occasion, and he was right.

Still, every time Maggie saw Woodrow her heart fluttered, although she knew that a fluttering heart could not change such things. She ceased mentioning marriage to him; even, in time, ceased to think about it. It had been the central hope of her life, but it wasn't to be. What she didn't cease to think about was Newt. Newt was the spitting image of his father: the two of them walked alike, talked alike, had the same smile and the same forehead, yet Call would not give Newt his name.

The resemblances Maggie catalogued-- resemblances that were obvious to everyone in Austin-- didn't convince him; or, if they did convince him, he hid the realization from himself. Often Maggie could not contain her bitterness at his refusal; she quarrelled with him about it, sometimes loudly. Once on a hot still day they quarrelled so loudly that their argument woke Pea Eye, who had been dozing below them, in the shade of the building.

Maggie knew Pea Eye overheard them; she happened to look out the window and saw his startled face turned up in surprise.

That Newt would someday bear his father's name was the one hope Maggie would not relinquish, though she came to realize that no effort of hers would make it happen. Her hope, she felt, lay with Newt himself--z the boy grew, his own sweetness might have an effect on Woodrow that she herself had not been able to have. All the rangers liked Newt; they kept him with them whenever they could. They sat him on their horses, whittled him toy guns, let him pet the crippled possum that Lee Hitch found in the hay one morning and adopted. As Newt grew they taught him little skills, and Newt was a quick pupil. All of them, Maggie was convinced, knew he was Call's.

Now, in the strong sunlight, the crowd followed the wagon with the coffin in toward the green cemetery by the river. Maggie heard, all about her, murmurs about the war. She scarcely knew herself what it meant; she longed for a moment with Woodrow, so he could explain it. But he had not, as she hoped, dropped back to walk with her. Instead, it was Jake Spoon who dropped back, when they were almost to the graveyard. Jake had a habit of touching her in public that Maggie despised; she worked in a store now, she had a respectable job, but even if she hadn't she would not have wanted Jake to touch her in public. Even in private her acceptance of him had some reluctance in it. When he attempted to touch her arm Maggie drew away.

"You oughtn't to be winking at Newt--not at a funeral," she reproached him.

Jake, though, could not be managed. He turned to Newt and winked again.

"Why, the preaching was over," he said. "There's no harm in a wink. Nobody noticed, anyway. All they can think about is the war. It's a wonder anybody even came to see Nellie buried.

"Gus does have poor luck with wives," he added. "If I was a woman I'd think twice before hitching up with him--it'd be a death sentence." "I wish you'd be nice," Maggie whispered.

"I just wish you'd be nice. You can be nice, Jake, when you try." Maggie knew that Jake Spoon wasn't really bad; but neither was he really good, either. Though he was capable of sweetness, at times, she often felt that she would be better off having no man than a man like Jake; but, if she sent him away, Newt would be the lonelier for it. She never completely turned Jake out, though she was often tempted to. It vexed her that she was spending so much of her energy on a large child, when there was a better man, one she had long loved, not one hundred yards away--yet, there it was.

"I see Deets," Newt whispered, as the procession reached the little graveyard. Sure enough, Deets and two other Negroes, men who had worked for Nellie McCrae or her family, stood deferentially, waiting, near a grove of trees.

Newt was wondering if Graciela had died of the snakebite, in which case they might have to bury her, too, when they got back home. He did like Graciela; she gave him honey cakes and taught him how to tie little threads on grasshoppers' legs and make them pull sticks along, like tiny wagons. But if Graciela had died and they had to go through the singing and praying again, it would be a long time before he got to play.

Besides, the brown coat his mother was so proud of scratched his neck. There was more singing, and the grown-ups all gathered around a hole in the ground. Newt seemed sleepy--the brown coat made him hot. He held his mother's hand, put his head against her leg, and shut his eyes. The next thing he knew, Deets, who carried him home, was setting him down in his own kitchen.

Graciela, who was still alive, helped him take off the scratchy coat.

Once he had become a rich man, Blue Duck began to think of killing his father. Getting rich had been easy--the whites were on the roads in great numbers, and they were careless travellers.

They travelled as if there were no Comanches left --most of these whites did not even post guards at night. Blue Duck supposed they must be coming from lands where the Indians were tame, or where they had all been killed. Otherwise the whites would long since have been robbed and killed. They drank at night until they passed out, or else lay with their women carelessly. They were easy to kill and rob, and even the poorest of them had at least a few things of value: guns, watches, a little money; some of the women had jewels hidden away.

Often there would be a horse or two Blue Duck could add to the herd he was building at his camp near the Cimarron River.

Few of his father's band hunted that far east; Comanches didn't bother him, nor did the Indians to the east, the Cherokees or Choctaws or other tribes that the whites had driven into the Indian Territory. Those Indians were not raiders anyway: they tried to build towns and farms. They hunted a little, but they had few horses and did not go after the buffalo. A few renegades from those tribes tried to join up with Blue Duck, but the only one he allowed into his band was a Choctaw named Broken Nose, who was an exceptional shot with the rifle. Blue Duck wanted only Indians who were skilled horsemen, like his own people, the Comanches. Sometimes he liked to strike deep into the forested country, where the whites had many little settlements; for such work he needed men who could ride. He wanted to raid as the Comanches raided, only in the eastern places, where the whites were numerous and careless.

Blue Duck had five women, two who were Kiowa and three white women he had stolen. There were many other stolen women that he let his men play withfora while, and then killed. He wanted the whites to know that once he had one of their women, the woman was lost. Ermoke, the first man to join up with him once he had left his father's band, was very lustful, so lustful that he had to be restrained. Blue Duck wanted wealth but Ermoke only wanted women--he would raid any party if he saw a woman that he wanted.

Soon there were fifteen men in the camp on the Cimarron; they had many guns, a good herd of horses, and many women. Sometimes Blue Duck would get tired of all the drinking and quarrelling that went on in the camp. Once or twice he had risen up in fury and killed one or two of his own men, just to quiet the camp. He had learned from his father that the way to deal death was to do it quickly, when people were least expecting death to be dealt. Blue Duck kept an axe near the place where he spread his robes. Sometimes he would spring up and kill two or three renegades with his axe, before they could react and flee.

At other times he would simply ride away from the camp for a few days, to rest his mind, and when he left he always rode west, toward the Comanche lands. It rankled him that he had been made an outcast. He would have liked to ride again with the Comanche, to live again in the Comanche way. He missed the great hunts; he missed the raids.

The renegades he commanded seldom took a buffalo, or any game larger than a deer.

Once or twice Blue Duck rode north alone and took a buffalo or two--he did it for the meat, but also because it reminded him of a time he had gone hunting with Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf and the other Comanche hunters. The knowledge that he had been driven out, that he could never go back, filled him sometimes with anger and other times with sadness. He did not understand it. He had done no worse than many young warriors; he had only been trying to prove his bravery, which it was right to do.

Blue Duck decided that the real reason for his exile was that the old men feared his strength. They knew he would be a chief someday, and they feared for themselves, just as the renegades on the Cimarron were afraid for themselves.

He decided too--one night when the sleet was blowing and he was eating buffalo liver, far north of the Canadian River--t his father also feared his strength. Buffalo Hump was older; soon his strength would begin to fade. But he had been war chief of his band for a long time; he would not want to surrender his power, to a son or anyone.

His power would have to be taken, and Blue Duck wanted to be the one to take it.

In the cold morning he skinned the buffalo he had killed and took the hide back to the camp on the Cimarron, for the women to work. Only the two Kiowa women knew how to work with skins; the stolen white women had no such skills. The women were inept and so were many of the men. They were adequate when raiding white farmers, travellers with families, and the like, but in battle none of them were equal to the Comanches. They had no skill with any weapon except the rifle, and most of them were cowards, as well. A few Comanche warriors could make short work of them, a thing Blue Duck knew well.

He meant to kill his father, but it was not a thing he would attempt hastily. His father was too alert, and too dangerous. He might have to wait until his father weakened; perhaps an illness would strike Buffalo Hump, or a white soldier kill him; or perhaps he would just grow careless when on a hunt and die of an accident.

As the years passed Blue Duck's fame spread, thanks to his random and merciless killings. He was a wanted man in the eastern country, the country of trees. In Arkansas and in east Texas or Louisiana his name was feared by people who had never heard of Buffalo Hump; people who had no reason to fear a Comanche attack feared Blue Duck. He became expert at working the line between the wild country and the settled.

He knew where there were effective lawmen and where there were not. Many of his renegades were shot, and not a few captured, tried, and hung, but Blue Duck shifted away. He robbed at night, then went north into Kansas; few white lawmen had ever seen him, but all knew of him.

His restlessness did not leave him, or his frustration. He was a Comanche who was not allowed to live as a Comanche, and the injustice rankled.

Many times he went back to the Comanche country, sometimes camping in it for days, alone. He was careful, though, to stay well away from his father's people.

He didn't fear Slow Tree, but he knew that if he gave Buffalo Hump enough provocation Buffalo Hump would come after him and hunt him to death, if he could.

Blue Duck, cool in the attack, but impatient in most other aspects of life, knew that he needed to be patient in the matter of his father. He was the younger man; he had only to wait until time weakened his father, or removed him. Now and then his hot blood urged him not to wait, to challenge his father and kill him. But in cooler moments he knew that was folly. Even if he killed Buffalo Hump there were other warriors who would hunt him down and kill him.

In the east, among the forests, the name of Blue Duck was most feared. Even on the mch-travelled army roads few travellers felt safe. The gun merchants in Arkansas and Mississippi sold many guns to travellers who hoped to protect themselves from Blue Duck, Ermoke, and their men.

Many of those travellers died, new guns or no; Blue Duck's wealth grew; but, despite it, he still went back, every few months, to ride the comancher@ia, the long plains of grass.

The morning after Nellie's funeral, Augustus McCrae disappeared. He had been seen the night before, drinking in his usual saloon, but when morning came he was nowhere to be found. His favorite horse, a black mare, was not in the stables, and there was no sign that he had been back to the room where he had lived with Nellie.

Call was surprised, and a little disturbed. When Geneva, his first wife, died, Gus had sought company wherever he could find it. He stayed in the saloons or the whorehouses for over two weeks, and was hardly fit for rangering duties once he did resume them. On a trip to Laredo, where banditry had been especially rife, he had been thrown from his horse three times, due to inebriation. The fact that he had chosen a half-broken, untrustworthy horse for the ride to Laredo was evidence that his mind was not on his work. Augustus had always been careful to choose gentle, well-broken mounts.

Call was annoyed by his friend's sudden disappearance. Even allowing for grief, and Gus had seemed sadly grieved, it was unprofessional behaviour in view of the unsettled state of things. Call supposed, himself, that the war fever would soon abate at least a little. Texas wasn't in the war yet, and when the eager volunteers discovered how far they would have to travel to get into a battle, many of them, he suspected, would develop second thoughts. Many would elect to stay at home and see if the war spread in their direction. It wasn't like the Mexican conflict, where men could ride south for a day or two and join in battle.

Still, it was a war, and the Governor's concern about the local defenses was justified. Governor Clark had an assistant, a man named Barkeley, a small man who fancied that he was a large cog in the machinery of state government.

Augustus McCrae had promised the Governor an answer regarding his intentions, and Mr. Barkeley wanted it.

"Where's McCrae? The governor's in a hurry and so am I," Barkeley wanted to know, presenting himself at the ranger stables with an air of impatience.

"He's not here," Call said.

"Where is he, then? This is damned inconvenient," Barkeley snapped.

"I don't know where he is," Call admitted. "He just buried his wife. He may have wanted to take a ride and mourn a little." "We're all apt to have to bury wives," Barkeley replied. "McCrae has no business doing it on state time. Can't you send someone to find him?" "No, but you're welcome to go look yourself," Call said, piqued by the man's tone.

"Go look, what do you mean, sir?" Barkeley said. "Look where?" "He was here yesterday, I expect that means he's still somewhere in the state," Call informed the man, before turning on his heel.

By midafn, with Augustus still gone, Call became genuinely worried. He had never married and could not claim to know the emotions that might torment a man at the loss of a wife; but he knew they must be powerful. In the back of his mind was the sad fate of Long Bill Coleman, whose wife had not even been dead. Long Bill had seemed to be a troubled but stable man, only the day before he killed himself--and Augustus, if anything, was a good deal more flighty than Long Bill. The thought kept entering Call's mind that Augustus might have done something foolish, in his grief.

The Kickapoo tracker, Famous Shoes, the man so trusted by Captain Scull, lived with his wives and children not far north of Austin. Though Famous Shoes preferred the country along the Little Wichita, the Comanches had been violent lately in that region, killing several Kickapoo families. Famous Shoes had brought his family south, for safety. The army, hearing of his skill, tried to hire him to track for them on several expeditions, but their present leader, Colonel d. d.

McQuorquodale, insisted that all scouts be mounted, a form of travel that Famous Shoes rejected. Colonel McQuorquodale refused to believe that a man on foot could keep up with a column of mounted cavalry, despite numerous testimonials to Famous Shoes' speed and ability, one of them by Call himself.

"He not only keeps up, he gets three or four days ahead, if you don't keep him in sight," Call assured the Colonel. "He's the best I've ever seen at finding water holes, Colonel." "You'll need the water holes, too," Augustus said. He had a contempt for soldiers, but had been eavesdropping on the conversation while whittling on a stick.

"I have every confidence in my ability to find water, sir," Colonel McQuorquodale said. "I run the scouts, and they'll travel the way I tell them to, if they expect to work for Dan McQuorquodale." On the Colonel's next expedition west, sixteen cavalry horses starved to death and several men came close to it, saved only by a heavy spring rain. Despite this evidence of the variability of water sources on the western plains, Colonel McQuorquodale refused to relax his requirements, and Famous Shoes continued to refuse to ride horses, the result being that he was in his camp, surrounded by his wives and children, when Call and Pea Eye sought him out.

Call wanted to know if Famous Shoes was available to conduct a quick search for Augustus.

When they arrived Famous Shoes was holding the paw of a small animal of some sort, studying it with deep curiosity. His wives were smiling as if they shared some joke, but Famous Shoes was only interested in the paw.

"We've lost Captain McCrae," Call said, dismounting. "Are you busy, or could you find the time to go look for him?" "Right now I am wondering about this paw," Famous Shoes said. "It is the paw of a ferret my wives killed, but they cooked it when I was away. I did not get to look at the ferret." "Why would you need to look at it, if it was tasty?" Pea Eye asked. Over the years he had grown fond of Famous Shoes--he liked it that the Kickapoo was curious about things that other men didn't even notice.

"This ferret did not belong here," Famous Shoes informed him. "Once I went to the north and I saw many weasels like this near the Platte River. This ferret was black, but all the ferrets around here are brown. This is the kind of ferret that ought to be up by the Platte River." Famous Shoes' penchant for diverting himself for days in order to investigate things that didn't particularly require investigation was one of the things that tried Call's patience with him.

"Maybe it was just born off-color," Pea Eye suggested. "Sometimes you'll see a litter of white pigs with one black pig in it." "This paw is from a ferret, it is not a pig," Famous Shoes said, unpersuaded by Pea Eye's suggestion. He saw, though, that Captain Call was impatient--Captain Call was always impatient--s he put the ferret's paw in his pouch for future study.

"Captain McCrae went by this morning early," Famous Shoes said. "It was foggy here.

I did not see him but I heard him say something to his mare. He is on that black mare he likes, and he is going west. I saw his track while I was looking for some more of these ferrets." "His wife died, I expect he's just grieving," Call said. "I'd be obliged if you'd track him and see if you can get him to come back." Famous Shoes considered the matter in silence for a moment. He could not do anything about the fact that Captain McCrae's wife had died--if Captain McCrae had a wife to mourn he had probably gone away so he could mourn her without anyone interfering with him too much. Also, he himself now had an interesting problem to study, the problem of the black ferret; he was comfortably settled in with his wives and children and did not particularly want to go anywhere. But Captain Call had helped him with the army, when the Colonel who wanted all scouts to ride horses had decided to put him in jail because he refused to ride. Famous Shoes had carefully explained to the Colonel, and to his captains and lieutenants, his views on horses; there were several reasons why it was not wise for Kickapoos to ride horses; besides those reasons there was a simple reason that should have been apparent to the Colonel and his men, which was that it was impossible to track expertly from the back of a horse, a tracker needed his eyes close to the ground if he were to see the fine details that would tell him what he needed to know. The qualities of dust and dirt were important to a tracker; no one could know what the dust revealed without kneeling often to feel it and study it.

The white colonel had not been interested in any of that--he had promptly put Famous Shoes in jail for disobedience. Fortunately Captain Call heard about the matter quickly and soon got him out. He and Captain McCrae had complained to the white colonel, too-- Captain McCrae had even yelled at the Colonel; he let him know that Famous Shoes was needed by the Texas Rangers and was not to be interfered with.

In view of the help he had received, Famous Shoes thought he ought to lay aside the problem of the black ferret for a bit and go locate Captain McCrae. He had known Captain McCrae for a number of years and knew that he did not behave like most white men. Captain McCrae's behaviour reminded him of some friends he had who were Choctaw. Captain Call was very much a white man; he lived by rules. But Captain McCrae had little patience with rules; he lived by what was inside him, by the urgings of his heart and his spirit--and now, grieved by the death of his wife, Captain McCrae's spirit urged him to get on his black mare and go west. Already, that morning, Famous Shoes had the feeling that something unusual was happening with Captain McCrae.

He was not going away to do some chore that he would be paid for. He was going away for a different reason.

Famous Shoes got up and led the two rangers over to the stream, to show them the tracks where the black mare had crossed.

"I will go find him--I think it will take me many days," Famous Shoes said.

Captain Call looked displeased, but he didn't disagree with the statement. He himself probably felt that something unusual was happening with his friend.

"Why would it take so many days if he just left?" Pea Eye asked. Tracking was a mystery to him. He liked to watch Famous Shoes as he did it, but he didn't understand the process involved. The track he saw by the stream just told him that a horse had passed. Which horse, and where it was going, and how heavy a rider it was carrying were all obvious to Famous Shoes but not obvious to Pea Eye. Even more puzzling was Famous Shoes' ability to predict things about the traveller, his mood or circumstance, that he himself could not have guessed even if he were with the traveller and looking him right in the eye.

Captain McCrae himself had been doubtful of the scout's ability to figure out such things, and said so often.

"He's just guessing," Augustus said. "When he's right it's luck and when he's wrong nobody knows about it because whoever he's guessing about gets away." "I don't think he's guessing," Call had protested. "He's got nothing to do but track, and think about tracking--and he ain't young. He's learned it. He gathers information that we can't see, and puts it together." Pea Eye thought Captain Call probably had the better of the argument. The tracker's very next comment was a case in point.

"He's looking for peace and cannot find it here along the Guadalupe," Famous Shoes said.

"I think he will have to go a long way to find it.

He may have to go to the Rio Pecos." "The Pecosffwas Call exclaimed. "The Governor will fire him if he goes that far." "I don't think the Captain will care," Famous Shoes said.

"No, you're right," Call said, once he had considered. He thought the matter over for a minute, looking west into the hills.

"I'm going to send Corporal Parker with you," he told Famous Shoes. There were no graded ranks in the rangers, but he and Gus had taken to calling Pea Eye "Corporal" because they liked him. He was not a confident young man--it flattered him a little to be thought of as a corporal.

"We can leave now," Famous Shoes said.

"Maybe we can spot another of those black ferrets while we are tracking Captain McCrae." Pea Eye was startled but pleased--travelling with Famous Shoes would be instructive. The man was already trotting west; he did not seem to think it necessary to go back and speak to his wives.

"Stay with him, Corporal," Call said.

"I'll stay with him, Captain," Pea Eye said.

He had no more than said it when he looked around and noticed that Famous Shoes, the man he had just promised to stay with, had disappeared. The hilly country was patched with clumps of cedar, juniper, live oak, chaparral, and various other bushes.

Pea Eye felt something like panic. He had not taken even one step westward and had already lost the man he was travelling with--and Captain Call was right there to see it.

Call noticed Pea Eye's confusion, and remembered how annoyed he had been at first, and how confused, when Famous Shoes would just disappear, often for days.

"There he is," Call said, pointing at Famous Shoes, who was crossing a little hillock some two hundred yards to the west.

"I expected he just squatted behind a bush to look at a track," he added.

"Maybe it was a ferret track," Pea Eye said, much relieved. "He's got a powerful interest in ferrets.

"What is a ferret, Captain?" he asked --he wasn't quite sure and did not want to appear ignorant, as he travelled with Famous Shoes.

"Well, it's a varmint of the weasel family, I believe," Call said. "You best catch up with Famous Shoes and ask him. He might lecture you on ferrets all the way to the Pecos, if you have to go that far." "I don't know why Gus would want to go all the way to the Pecos," he said, but Pea Eye had his eye fixed on Famous Shoes, clearly worried that he might disappear again.

"I'm going, Captain, before I lose him," Pea Eye said.

He put his horse in a lope and was soon beside the tracker, who neither stopped nor looked around.

Watching them go, Call felt both relief and envy: relief that Famous Shoes had accepted the job; envy because he wished he could be as young and unburdened with duties as Pea Eye Parker.

It would be nice to be able to forget the Governor, and Barkeley, and the ledger keepers and just to ride west into the wild country. Perhaps, he thought, as he turned back, that was what Augustus wanted: just to be free for a few days, just to saddle his horse and ride.

Within an hour of leaving Captain Call, Pea Eye began to wish fervently that they would soon find Augustus McCrae, mainly because he had no confidence that he could stay with Famous Shoes. It wasn't that Famous Shoes travelled particularly fast--though it was certainly true he didn't travel slow. The problem was that he travelled irregularly, zigging and zagging, slipping into a copse of trees, loping off at right angles to the track, sometimes even doubling back if he spotted an animal or a bird he wanted to investigate. No matter how hard Pea Eye concentrated on staying with him, Famous Shoes continually disappeared. Every time it happened Pea Eye had to wonder if he would ever see the man again.

Famous Shoes was amused at the young ranger's frantic efforts to keep him in sight, a thing, of course, which was quite unnec. The young man looked worried and nervous all day and was so tired when they made camp that he was barely capable of making a decent fire. Famous Shoes liked the young man and thought it might help a little if he instructed Corporal Parker in the ways of scouting.

"You do not have to follow me or stay close to me," he told Pea Eye. "I do not follow a straight trail." "Nope, you don't," Pea Eye agreed.

He had been almost asleep, from fatigue, but the strong coffee Famous Shoes brewed woke him up a little.

"I have many things to watch," Famous Shoes told him. "I do not think we will catch up with Captain McCrae for a few days. I think he is going far." "Can you tell how far he's going just from the tracks?" Pea Eye asked.

"No--it is just something I am thinking," Famous Shoes admitted. "He has lost his wife. Right now he does not know where to be. I think he is going far, to look around." In the night Pea Eye found that he could not sleep. It occurred to him that he had never been alone with an Indian before. Of course, it was only Famous Shoes, who was friendly. But what if he wasn't really friendly? What if Famous Shoes suddenly got an urge to take a scalp? Of course, Pea Eye knew it was unlikely--Captain Call wouldn't send him off with an Indian who wanted to take his scalp.

He knew it was foolish to be thinking that way.

Famous Shoes had scouted for many years and had never scalped anybody. But Pea Eye's mind wouldn't behave. The part of it that was sensible knew that Famous Shoes meant him no harm; but another part of his mind kept bringing up pictures of Indians with scalping knives. He was annoyed with his mind--it would be a lot easier to do his task well if his mind would just behave and not keep making him scared.

Late in the night, while the young ranger dozed, Famous Shoes heard some geese flying overhead, and he began to sing a long song about birds. Of course he sang the song in his own Kickapoo tongue, which the young white man could not understand. Famous Shoes knew that the ^ws of the song would be mysterious to the young man, who had awakened to listen, but he sang anyway. That things were mysterious did not make them less valuable. The mystery of the northward-flying geese had always haunted him; he thought the geese might be flying to the edge of the world, so he made a song about them, for no mystery was stronger to Famous Shoes than the mystery of birds. All the animals that he knew left tracks, but the geese, when they spread their wings to fly northward, left no tracks. Famous Shoes thought that the geese must know where the gods lived, and because of their knowledge had been exempted by the gods from having to make tracks.

The gods would not want to be visited by just anyone who found a track, but their messengers, the great birds, were allowed to visit them. It was a wonderful thing, a thing Famous Shoes never tired of thinking about.

When Famous Shoes finished his song he noticed that the young white man was asleep.

During the day he had not trusted enough, and had worn himself out with pointless scurryings. Perhaps even then the song he had just sung was working in the young man's dreams; perhaps as he grew older he would learn to trust mysteries and not fear them. Many white men could not trust things unless they could be explained; and yet the most beautiful things, such as the trackless flight of birds, could never be explained.

The next morning, when the first gray light came, Pea Eye awoke to find that he had not been scalped or hurt. He felt so tired and so grateful that he didn't move at once.

Famous Shoes squatted by the campfire, bringing the coffee to a boil. Pea Eye wanted to be helpful, but he felt as if his joints had turned to glue. He sat up, but felt incapable of further movement.

Famous Shoes drank coffee as if he were drinking water, although, to Pea Eye's taste, the coffee was scalding.

"I am leaving now," Famous Shoes said.

"You do not have to go where I go. Just travel to the west." "What? I won't see you at all?" Pea Eye asked. Never since joining the rangers had he spent a whole day alone, in wild country.

Even if he hadn't been feeling that his joints had melted, the prospect would have alarmed him.

If he met a party of Comanches, he would be lost.

"You haven't seen no Indian sign, have you?" he asked.

Famous Shoes was not in the mood for conversation just then. There was a ridge to the north that had some curious black rocks scattered around it; he wanted to examine those black rocks. The sky to the east was white now--it was time to start.

"No, there are no Indians here, but there is an old bear who has a den in that little mountain," he said, pointing toward a small hill just to the west. "You should be careful of that bear--he might try to eat your horse." "The rascal, I'll shoot him if he tries it," Pea Eye said, but with his joints so gluey he didn't feel confident that he could kill a bear.

Determined to make a show of competence, he stood up.

"I will find you when the evening star shines," Famous Shoes said. "Bring the coffeepot." Then he slipped into the grayness. Pea Eye sipped his coffee, which was still barely cool enough to drink; but he kept his hand on his rifle while he sipped, in case the surly old bear was closer than Famous Shoes thought.

When Augustus left Austin he had no aim, other than to ride around for a while, alone.

To be in Austin was to be under orders: the Governor was always summoning them or sending them off, consulting with them or pestering them about details of finance that Augustus had not the slightest interest in.

As a rule he did not, like his friend Call, enjoy solitude. Woodrow was virtually incapable of spending a whole evening in the company of his fellow men--or women either, if Maggie's account was to be trusted. At some point in the evening Woodrow Call would always quietly disappear.

He would slip off in the night, ostensibly to stand guard, when there was not a savage within one hundred miles. Prolonged stretches of company seemed to oppress him.

With Augustus it was the opposite. When night fell, if he was in town, he wanted company, the livelier the better; he sought it and he found it, whether it involved a card game, a few talky whores, a singsong, or just a session of bragging and tale telling with whatever gamblers and adventurers happened to be around. He had never particularly liked to sleep, and rarely did for more than three or four hours a night. Even that necessity he begrudged. Why just lay there, when you could be living?

A little rest at night was needful, but the less the better.

Now, though, his lovely Nellie's death had arrested, for the moment, his taste for company; it seemed to him that he had been under orders for his entire life, and he was tired of it. Once it had been captains who ordered him around; now it was governors, or legislators or commissions.

The war in the East was barely started and already the Governor was pressing him and Call to pledge themselves to stay in Texas.

Augustus didn't want it; he had been ordered around enough. The war could wait, the Governor could wait, Woodrow could wait, and the whores and the boys in the saloons could wait. He was going away because he felt like it, and he would come back when he felt like it, if he felt like it, and not because of some governor's summons.

He rode all the first day in brilliant weather, not thinking of Nellie or the war or Call or anything much. His black mare, Sassy, was a fine mount, with a long easy trot that carried them west mile after mile through the limestone hills. He had not rushed off improvidently this time, either; he had four bottles of whiskey in one saddlebag, some bullets and a good slab of bacon in another.

He was not much of a hunter, and he knew it.

Stalking game was often boresome work. He would cheerfully shoot any tasty animal that presented itself within rifle range, but he seldom pursued his quarry far.

Despite the Comanches, the country west of Austin was rapidly settling up. Those settlers who had survived the great raid of 1856 had by now rebuilt and remarried; cabins were scattered along the valleys, or anywhere there was sufficient water. Several times Gus had heard a large animal in the underbrush and pulled his rifle, expecting to flush a bear or a deer, only to scare out a milk cow or a couple of heifers or even a few goats.

A little before dusk he smelled wood smoke and saw a faint column rising from a copse of cedar to the southwest. He knew there must be a settler's cabin there, but, on this occasion, decided to ride on. The grub at these rude little homesteads was apt to be uncertain; frequently the families lived on nothing but corn cakes. He didn't feel inclined to sit for an hour, making conversation with people he didn't know, only to eat corn cakes or mush. A good many of the new settlers were Germans, who spoke only the most rudimentary English; also many of them were, to Augustus's way of thinking, excessively pious. Some kept no liquor in their houses at all, and, on several occasions when he had been invited in for a meal, the grace was said at such length that he had all but lost his appetite before anyone was allowed to eat.

This night, he decided not to gamble on the cabin. A dog began to bark but Augustus left it to its barking and slipped on by. He rode only another few miles before making camp. It was rocky country, the footing in some places so uncertain that he felt he risked laming the black mare if he travelled further.

In any case, he was not going anywhere in particular and was on no schedule except his own.

The cedarwood and low mesquite burned nicely; he soon had a fragrant fire going. It was not cold; he only fed the fire a stick now and then because he liked to have a fire to look at.

Over the last years he had looked into many campfires and only seen one face: Clara's.

His fat wife, Geneva, and his skinny wife, Nellie, were dead; the memory of their forms and faces didn't disturb him. That night when he looked into the fire he saw no one. Women had been constantly in his thoughts since his youth, but that night he was free of even the thought of them. He thought he might just keep on riding west, into the desert, where there were neither governors nor women.

His absence would vex Woodrow Call, of course, but he didn't see that he needed to live like a bound servant, just to spare Woodrow Call a little vexation. The bright stars above him seemed to act like a drug. He dreamed of floating on air like a gliding bird, gliding into a slumber so deep that, when he woke, the stars had faded into the light of a new day. At the edge of sleep he heard a clicking sound, the sort a tin cup might make, or a coffeepot; the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a pair of legs standing by his campfire, which blazed beneath the coffeepot.

"The coffee's hot, I suggest you rouse yourself up, Captain," a voice said. Recognizing that his visitor was none other than Charlie Goodnight, Augustus immediately did as the man suggested.

"Howdy--I'm glad it was you and not Buffalo Hump, Charlie," Gus said. "I may have taken ill. Otherwise I fail to understand why I would sleep this late." "You don't look ill to me, just idle," Goodnight observed. He was a stout man, a little past Gus's age, fully as forceful in speech as he was in body. He had been at times a superlative scout and ranger, but lately his interest had shifted to ranching; he now only rode with the rangers when the need was urgent. He was known for being as tireless as he was gruff.

Conversations with Charlie Goodnight were apt to be short ones, and not infrequently left those he was conversing with slightly bruised in their feelings.

"Heard about the war?" Augustus asked.

"Heard," Goodnight said. "I'd appreciate a bite of bacon if you have any.

I left in a hurry and took no provisions." "It's in my saddlebag, with the frying pan," Gus said. "You'll pardon me if I don't offer to cook it. I prefer to contemplate the scriptures in the morning, at least until the sun's up." Goodnight got the bacon and the pan. He didn't comment on the war, or the scriptures.

Gus saw that a fine sorrel gelding was nibbling mesquite leaves, alongside his mare. Not only had he not heard the man approach, he had not heard the horse, either. It was fine to be relaxed, as he had been last night, but in wild country there was such a thing as being too relaxed.

Goodnight's silence irked him a little: what good was a guest who consumed bacon but didn't contribute conversation?

"Do you fear God, Charlie?" Augustus asked, thinking he might pursue the religious theme for a moment.

"Nope, too busy," Goodnight said.

"Are you a God-fearing man? I would not have supposed it." "I expect I ought to be," Gus said. "He keeps taking my wives, I suppose he could take me at any time." "He might as well, if you're going to sleep till sunup," Goodnight said. He had already cooked and eaten fully half of Gus's bacon. He stood up and returned the rest to the saddlebag.

"Are you going somewhere?" Goodnight asked.

"Why yes, west," Augustus said. "How about yourself?" "Colorado," Goodnight replied.

"There's a lively market for Texas beef in Denver, and an abundance of beef on the hoof down here in Texas." Augustus considered the two remarks, but in his groggy state failed to see how they connected.

"Have you got a herd of cattle with you, Charlie?" he asked. "If so, I guess I'm blind as well as deaf." "Not presently," Goodnight said.

"But I could soon acquire one if I could find a good route to Denver." "Charlie, I don't think this is the way to Colorado," Augustus said. "Not unless your cattle can drink air. There's no water between here and Colorado, that I know of." "There's the Pecos River--t's a wet river," Goodnight said. "If I could just get a herd as far as the Pecos, I expect the moisture would increase, from there to Denver." Mention of Denver reminded Gus of Matilda Roberts, one of his oldest and best friends. In the old days everyone had known Matty, even Goodnight, though as one of the soberer citizens of the frontier he had no reputation as a whorer.

"You remember Matty Roberts, don't you, Charlie?" Gus inquired.

"Yes, she's a fine woman," Goodnight said. "She's in the love business but love ain't been kind to her. I've not visited her establishment in Denver but they say it's lavish." "What do you mean, love ain't been kind?" Gus asked. He realized that he had no recent information about his old friend.

"Matilda's dying, that's what I mean," Goodnight said. He had unsaddled his horse, so the sorrel could have a good roll in the dust; but the sorrel had had his roll and in a few minutes Goodnight was ready to depart.

"What--Matty's dying--what of?" Augustus asked, shocked. Now another woman of his close acquaintance was about to be carried off.

The news struck him almost as hard as if he had been told that Clara was dying. Even Woodrow Call would admit a fondness for Matty Roberts; he would be shocked when he heard the news.

"I don't know what of," Goodnight informed him. "I suppose she's just dying of living--t's the one infection that strikes us all down, sooner or later." He mounted and started to leave, but turned back and looked down at Augustus, who still sat idly at the campfire.

"Are you poorly today?" Goodnight asked.

"No, I'm well--why would you ask, Charlie?" Gus said.

"You don't seem to be in an active frame of mind today, that's why," Goodnight said. "You ain't ready to die, are you?" "Why, no," Augustus said, startled by the question.

"I'm just a little sleepy. I was sitting up with Nellie quite a few nights before she passed away." Goodnight did not seem to be satisfied by that answer. The sorrel was nervous, ready to leave, but Goodnight held him back, which was unusual.

When Charlie Goodnight was ready to go he usually left without ceremony, seldom giving whomever he was talking to even the leisure to finish a sentence. He had never been one to linger--yet, now, he was lingering, looking at Augustus hard.

"If you were under my orders I'd order you home," he said bluntly. "A man who can't get himself in an active frame of mind by this hour has no business travelling in this direction." "Well, I ain't under your orders and I never will be," Augustus retorted, a little annoyed by the man's tone. "I ain't a child and nobody appointed you to watch over me." Goodnight smiled--al a rare thing.

"I was concerned that you might have lost your snap, but I guess you ain't," he said, turning his horse again.

"Wait, Charlie ... if you're bound for Denver I've got something for you to take to Matty," Gus said. The news that she was dying struck him hard--he was beginning to remember all the fine times he had had with the woman. He went to his saddlebag and pulled out the sock where he kept his loose money. The sock contained about sixty dollars, which he promptly handed to Goodnight. As he did his face reddened, and he choked up. Why were all the good women dying?

"I was always behind a few pokes with Matilda," he said. "I expect I owe her at least this much. I'd be obliged if you'd take it to her, Charlie." Goodnight looked at the money for a moment and then put it in his pocket.

"How long have you owed this debt?" he asked.

"About fifteen years," Augustus said.

"If you were going toward the Pecos I'd accompany you until your mind gets a little more active," Goodnight offered.

"I ain't, though," Gus said. He did not want company, particularly not company as prickly as Charles Goodnight.

"I'm bound for the good old Rio Grande," he said, although he wasn't.

"All right, goodbye," Goodnight said. "If I plan to find a way to get my cattle to Colorado, I better start looking." "Charlie, if you do see Matty, tell her she's got a friend in Texas," Augustus said-- he was still choked up.

"Done, if I get there in time," Goodnight said.

When five days passed with no ^w from Augustus McCrae or the two men who had been sent to find him, Governor Clark waxed so indignant that he was hot to the touch. Call, impatient himself, thought the Governor's indignation unwarranted. The rangers had no urgent mission at the moment, in light of which Augustus's absence did not seem exceptional. Governor Clark himself was a hunter, often gone from Austin for a week at a time killing deer, antelope, or wild pig. Call began to find the Governor's complaints irksome, and said so to Maggie one evening over a beefsteak which she had been kind enough to cook him. The boy, Newt, had scampered downstairs on his arrival and was blowing his whistle at some chickens who belonged to the lady next door.

"I expect Gus is just grieving," Maggie said. "If I ever had a husband and he died, I'd want to go off someplace to do my grieving.

It wouldn't be fair to Newt to do too much moping at home." "Being a ranger's getting to be like being a policeman," Call said. "Nowadays they want you on call all the time." He noticed that Maggie's arms were freckled to the elbows. Probably she had spent a little too much time in the sun, working the little garden plot she had planted with Jake Spoon's help. In the warm months Maggie was never without vegetables.

It was a fine thing, in Call's view, that Maggie had gained respectable employment at last. He had been in the store one day while Maggie was writing up an inventory and was surprised to see that her penmanship was excellent.

"Why, you write a hand as fine as Jake's," he said. "They'll be asking you to teach school next. I doubt there's a teacher in town who writes that pretty." "Oh, it just takes practice," Maggie said. "Jake lent me his penmanship book and showed me how to do some of the curls." As Call was finishing his beefsteak he noticed Jake's penmanship book on a table by Maggie's bed; then he noticed a bandanna that he thought was Jake's hanging over the bedpost at the foot of Maggie's bed.

He had known, of course, that Jake and Maggie had a friendship; the two of them were often seen working in the garden. Jake's skills as a gardener were such that a number of local women pestered him for his secrets or showed up to watch when he was working in the garden. Jake basked in the attention of all the local ladies--Call had no doubt that many of them would have envied Maggie her penmanship lessons.

"Why, Jake's left his bandanna on the bedpost," Call said, as Maggie was taking his plate to the wash bucket.

"Yes, he left it," Maggie said. At that point young Newt burst in, crying and holding up an injured hand; in his pursuit of the chickens he had wandered too close to old Dan, the turkey, and had been soundly pecked.

"That ain't the first time Dan's pecked you--why won't you avoid that turkey?" Maggie said.

"Go down to the mud puddle and daub a little mud on that peck--it'll soothe it." When Newt went down Maggie excused herself for a moment and went with him--she wanted to run the old turkey off before it did damage to her garden.

While Maggie was gone Call looked around the room. A pair of Jake's spurs were on the floor by the little sofa and his shaving brush and razor were by the wash basin.

Call knew it was none of his business where Jake kept his razor, or his spurs, or his bandanna, and yet the sight of so many of Jake's things in Maggie's room disturbed him in a way he had not expected. When she came back he thanked her for the beefsteak, gave Newt a penny for some sassafras candy--newt was a well-bbhaved little boy who deserved an occasional treat--and left.

Call got his rifle and started to take a short walk down by the river. He had been twice to the Governor that day and had spent the afternoon going over the company accounts with Jake, a task that always tired him. He didn't intend to walk long.

As he came out of the bunkhouse he saw Jake Spoon leave a saloon across the street and angle off toward Maggie's rooms.

Ordinarily he would have thought nothing of it, but that night he did think of it. He didn't wait to see if Jake went up the stairs to the room he himself had just left; he felt that would be unseemly. Instead, he walked out of town, disquieted without quite knowing why. He realized he had no right to boss Maggie Tilton at all. She had her employment and could do as she pleased.

The thought that disturbed him--right or no right--was that Jake and Maggie were now living together. That notion startled him greatly. Maggie was a respectable woman now, with a child who was well liked. She needed to be thinking of her work and her child and not risk her respectability for any reason --certainly not for the irresponsible Jake Spoon.

Call walked out of Austin on the wagon road that led to San Antonio. He wished Gus were back, not because the Governor wanted him back but so he could ask his opinion about the matter of Maggie and Jake. Of course, he knew nothing definite--all he knew was that what he was feeling left him too agitated for sleep.

In what seemed like a matter of minutes Call was surprised to see, at a curve in the wagon road, a big live oak tree that had been split by lightning some years before. The reason for his surprise was that the live oak was ten miles from town. In his confusion he had walked much farther than he had meant to--usually he only strolled two or three miles and went to bed. But he had walked ten miles without noticing, and would have to walk another ten to get back to the bunkhouse.

The walk back went slower--it was almost dawn when he got back to the bunkhouse. Across the way, Maggie's window was dark. Was Jake sleeping there? And what if he was? He had long since put the whole question of Maggie and men out of his mind. Now, suddenly, it was very much in his mind, and yet he had no one to discuss the matter withand was far from knowing even what he felt himself.

Old Ikey Ripple, retired now except for ceremonial appearances, was sitting on a nail keg rubbing his white hair when Call walked up, in the first light.

"Hello, you're up early," Call said, to the old man. Ikey, of course, was always up early.

"Yep, I don't like to miss none of the day," Ikey said.

Ikey was a snuff dipper; he had already worked his lip over a good wad of snuff.

"Where have you been, Captain?" he asked.

"It's too early for patrol." "Just looking around," Call said. "Someone saw three Indians west of town yesterday. I don't want them slipping in and running off any stock." "Will you be going off to the war, Captain?" Ikey asked.

Call shook his head, which seemed to reassure the old man.

"If you was to go off to that war I expect the Indians would slip in and get all the stock," Ikey said.

Ikey looked around and saw only the morning mist. The mention of Indians to the west was unwelcome. Those same Indians could be hidden by the mist--they might be lurking anywhere in which case he was more than glad to have Captain Call with him.

"I've been skeert of Indians all my life," Ikey said, feeling the sudden need to unburden himself in the matter. "I expect I've woke up a thousand times, expecting to see an Indian standing over me ready to yank off my scalp. But here I am eighty and they ain't got me yet, so I expect it was wasted worry." "I imagine you'll be safe, if you just stay in town," Call told him. "You need to be careful, though, if you're off fishing." "Oh, I don't fish no more--give it up," Ikey said.

"Why, Ikey?" Call asked. "Fishing is a harmless pursuit." "It's because of the bones," Ikey said.

"Remember Jacob Low? He was that tailor who choked on a fish bone. Got it stuck in his gullet and was dead before anybody knew what to do.

Here I've survived the Comanches near eighty years--I'm damned if I want to take the risk of choking on a bone from one of them bony little perch." "I don't recall that you've been married, since I've known you," Call said.

But he left the remark hanging--j a remark, not quite a question. He felt absurd suddenly.

Maggie Tilton had wanted, for years, to marry him, but he had declined, preferring bachelorhood--why was he talking about marriage to an eighty-year-old bachelor who had little to do but gossip? Though fond of Maggie, he had never wanted to marry and didn't know why he was so disturbed to discover that she was keeping closer company with Jake than he had supposed.

"Illinois," Ikey Ripple said. "I sparked a girl once--it was in Illinois." Though Captain Call didn't question him further, Ikey thought back, across sixty years, to the girl he had sparked in Illinois, whose name was Sally. They had danced once in a hoedown; she had blue eyes. But Sally had fallen out of a boat on a foggy morning, while crossing the Mississippi River on a trip to Still.

Louis with her father. Her body, so far as he could recall, had never been found. Had her name been Sally? Or had it been Mary? Had her eyes been blue? Or had they been brown? He had danced with her once at a hoedown. Was it her father she had been with on the boat trip? Or was it her mother?

Captain Call, who had seemed interested, for a moment, in Ikey's past with women, walked off to seek breakfast, leaving Ikey to sit alone, on his nail keg. As the morning sun burned away the mist in the streets of Austin, the mist in Ikey's memory deepened, as he tried to think about that girl--was it Mary or Sally, were her eyes blue or brown, was it her mother or her father she was in the boat with?--he had danced with at a hoedown long ago.

By the tenth day of travel Pea Eye had given himself up for lost. There was so little vegetation that he had let his horse go at night, in hopes that he would find enough grazing to survive. Often, when he awoke in the gray dawn, neither the horse nor Famous Shoes would be anywhere in sight.

All he would see, as the sun rose, was an empty, arid plain, almost desert. There was seldom a cloud, just a great ring of horizon, with nothing moving within it. The freezing plains to the north had been just as empty, but he had only ventured onto the llano with a troop of men; now, for most of the day, he was alone. He had long since stopped believing that they would find Gus McCrae--why would Gus leave the cozy saloons of Austin to come to such a place?

After the first week, Pea Eye's days were spent struggling against his own sense of desperation.

Sometimes he would not see Famous Shoes until the evening. He rode west, west, west, feeling hopeless. It was true that Famous Shoes always returned, as promised, when the evening star shone; but, every day, Pea Eye became more anxious that the man would abandon him. When Famous Shoes did appear, Pea Eye's relief was intense but short lived; soon it would be morning again, and Famous Shoes nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes it took Pea Eye an hour just to locate his horse--the animal would be nibbling leaves or small plants in some little dip or gully. Then, all day, he would plod to the west, seeing no one. All day he longed for company, any company.

On the tenth evening, when Famous Shoes rejoined him, Pea Eye could not hold back his doubts.

"Gus ain't out here, is he?" he asked.

"How would he get this far? Why would he want to cross so much of this poor country?" Famous Shoes knew the young ranger was scared.

Nothing was easier to detect in a man than fear.

It showed even in the way he fumbled with his cup while drinking coffee; and it was normal that he would be afraid. He didn't know where he was, and it must puzzle him that Captain McCrae would choose to go so far into the desert. The young ranger was not old enough to understand the things men might do when they were uncertain and unhappy.

"He is ahead of us, just one day," Famous Shoes said. "I have not lost his track, and I won't lose it." "By why would he come so far?" Pea Eye asked. "There's nothing here." Famous Shoes had been wondering about the same thing. The journeys that people took had always interested him; his own life was a constant journeying, though not quite so constant as it had been before he had his wives and children. Usually he only agreed to scout for the Texans if they were going in a direction he wanted to go himself, in order to see a particular hill or stream, to visit a relative or friend, or just to search for a bird or animal he wanted to observe.

Also, he often went back to places he had been at earlier times in his life, just to see if the places would seem the same. In most cases, because he himself had changed, the places did not seem exactly as he remembered them, but there were exceptions. The simplest places, where there was only rock and sky, or water and rock, changed the least. When he felt disturbances in his life, as all men would, Famous Shoes tried to go back to one of the simple places, the places of rock and sky, to steady himself and grow calm again.

Though he had not talked with Captain McCrae about his journey, Famous Shoes had the feeling that such a thing might be happening within him because of the loss of his wife. Captain McCrae might be going back to someplace that he had been before, hoping he would find that it was the same and that it was simple. Every day Famous Shoes followed his track and noted that the Captain was not wandering aimlessly, like a man too distracted to notice where he was going. Captain McCrae knew where he was going--t much Famous Shoes did not doubt.

"I think he is going back to a place he has been before," Famous Shoes said, in answer to Pea Eye's question. "He is pointed toward the Rio Grande now. If he stops when he comes to the river we will find him tomorrow." Famous Shoes suspected that the young ranger did not believe what he had just said--he was not old enough to understand the need to go back to a place where things were simple. He had no happiness in his face, the young ranger; perhaps he had never had a place where things were simple, a place he could think about when he needed to remember happiness.

Perhaps the young ranger had been unlucky--he might have no good place or good time to remember.

Famous Shoes himself had begun to feel the need to live in a simpler place. The plains were filled with white travellers now, all heading west. The Comanches were more irritable than ever, because their best hunting grounds were always being disturbed. The buffalo had moved north, where there were fewer people.

The old life of the plains, the life he had known as a boy, was not there to be lived anymore. The great spaces were still there, of course, but they were not empty spaces, as they had once been; the plains did not encourage his dreams, as they once had.

Lately he had been thinking of moving his family even farther south, to a simpler, emptier place, such as could be found along the Rio Grande, in the place of the canyons. There was not much to eat along the river there; his wives would have to keep busy gathering food, and they would also have to learn to eat things that people of the desert ate: rats, mesquite beans, corn, roots of various kinds. But his wives were young and energetic--he was sure they could find enough food if he beat them a little, just enough to convince them that the lazy years were over --p who lived in the desert had to work. The food was not going to come to them.

One of the reasons he had agreed to track Captain McCrae was because once the job was finished he could go on and investigate the river country a little--he wanted a place where he would not be bothered by irritable Comanches or the continual movement of the whites. He was hoping to find a place with a high mountain nearby. He thought it might be good to sit high up once in a while.

If he was high enough there would be nothing to see but the sky and, now and then, a few of the great eagles.

He thought living in a place where there were eagles to watch might encourage some pretty good dreams.

Augustus had always enjoyed calendars and almanacs--he rarely journeyed out of Austin without an almanac in his saddlebag. If he did any reading at night around the campfire it was usually just a page or two of the current almanac. Often he would discover that, on the very day he was living, the signs of the zodiac were in disorder, causing dire things to be predicted.

If the predictions were especially dire-- hurricanes, earthquakes, floods--Gus would amuse himself by reading aloud about the catastrophes that were due to start happening at any moment. If he saw a heavy cloud building up he would inform the men that it was probably the harbinger of a forty-day flood that would probably drown them all. Many of the rangers were unable to sleep, after one of Gus's readings; those who knew a few letters would borrow the almanac and peer at the prophetic passages, only to discover that Augustus had not misread. The terrible predictions were there, and, inasmuch as they were printed, must be true.

When nothing happened, no flood, no earthquake, no sulphurous fire, Augustus suavely explained that they had been spared due to a sudden shifting in the stars.

"Now you see the planet Jupiter, right up there," he would say, pointing straight up into the million-starred Milky Way; he knew that most of the men would not want to admit that they had no idea which star Jupiter might be.

"Well, Jupiter went into eclipse--I believe it was a double eclipse--y won't see that again in your lifetime, and it's all that saved us," he would conclude. "Otherwise you'd see a wall of water eighty feet high coming right at us," he would remark, to his awed listeners, some of whom thought that the mere fact that he was a captain meant that he understood such things.

Pea Eye had that belief, for a while, and worried much about the floods and earthquakes, but Call, who put little stock in almanacs, reproached Gus for scaring the men so.

"Why do you want to tell them such bosh?" Call would ask. "Now they'll lose such little sleep as we can allow them." "Tactics, Woodrow--tactics," Gus would reply. "You need to finish that book on Napoleon so you'll understand how to use tactics, when you're leading an army." "We ain't an army, we're just ten rangers," Call would point out heatedly, to no avail.

Since Augustus was travelling alone this time, he didn't try to frighten himself with dire predictions, but he did keep a close calendar as he travelled west. He wanted to know how many days from home he had come, in case he developed a strong nostalgia for the saloons and whorehouses of Austin and needed to hurry home.

On the twelfth day, with a few mountain crags visible to the north, Augustus picked his way along the banks of the Rio Grande, to the campsite where, long before, as a fledgling ranger, travelling far from the settlement for the first time, he and Call, Long Bill, and a number of rangers now dead had camped and waited out a terrible dust storm. A fat major named Chevallie had been leading them; Bigfoot Wallace and old Shadrach, the mountain man, had been their scouts.

In the morning before the storm struck, Matty Roberts, naked as the air, had picked the big snapping turtle out of the river, carried it into camp, and threw it at Long Bill Coleman and One-eyed Johnny Carthage, both of whom owed her money at the time.

Augustus recognized the little scatter of rocks by the water's edge where Matty had found the turtle; he recognized the crags to the north and even remembered the small mesquite tree--st small--where he and Call had snubbed a mustang mare they were trying to saddle.

No trace of the rangers' presence remained, of course, but Augustus was, nevertheless, glad that he had come. Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the first time around. He knew such a thing was impossible, but it was still pleasant to dream about it, to conjure, in fantasy, a different and more successful life, and that is what he did, sitting on a large rock by the river and watching the brown water as it rippled over the rocks where Matty had caught the turtle.

While he sat Gus noticed a number of snapping turtles, no smaller than the one Matty had captured; at least things were stable with the turtles.

While the river flowed through the wide, empty landscape a parade of dead rangers streamed through the river of his memory--Black Sam, Major Chevallie, One-eyed Johnny, Bigfoot Wallace, Shadrach, the Button brothers, and several more. And now, by Goodnight's account, Matty Roberts herself was dying, which of course was not wholly surprising: whores as active as Matty had been were seldom known to live to a ripe old age. For a moment he regretted not going with Goodnight, over the dry plains to Denver. He would have liked to see Matty again, to lift a glass with her and hear her thoughts on the great game of life, now that she was about to lose it.

She had always hoped to make it to California someday, and yet was dying in Denver, with California no closer than it had been when she was a girl.

"If I could, Matty, I'd buy you a ticket on the next stage," Augustus said, aloud, overcome by the same regretful emotion he had felt when he pressed the sixty dollars into Charles Goodnight's hand.

Later in the day Gus walked away from the camp, attempting to locate the rocky hillock where he had first come face-to-face with Buffalo Hump. It had been stormy; the two of them had seen one another in a lightning flash. Gus had run as he had never run in his life, before or since, and had only escaped because of the darkness.

Because it had been so dark, he could not determine which of the rocky rises he was looking for, though no moment of his life was so clearly imprinted on his memory as the one when he had seen, in a moment of white light, Buffalo Hump sitting on his blanket. He could even remember that the blanket had been frayed a little, and that the Comanche had a rawhide string in his hand.

When he tired of his search he caught the black mare and rode on west a few miles, to the high crag of rock where the Comanches had lured them into ambush. A few warriors had draped themselves in white mountain-goat skins, and the rangers had taken the bait. Gus himself had only survived the ambush because he stumbled in his climb and rolled down the hill, losing his rifle in the process.

Augustus tied his horse and climbed up to the boulder-strewn ridge where the Comanches had hidden. In walking around, he picked up two arrowheads; they seemed older than the arrowheads the Comanches had used that day, one of which had to be extracted from Johnny Carthage's leg, but he could not be sure, so he put the arrowheads in his pocket, meaning to show them to someone more expert than himself. It might be that the Comanches had been fighting off that crag for centuries.

As Augustus was walking back down the hill to his horse, his eye caught a movement far to the east, from the direction of the old camp on the river. He stepped behind the same rock that had shielded him long ago and saw that two men approached, one on horseback and one on foot. He didn't at first recognize the horse and rider, but he did recognize the quick lope of the man on foot--Famous Shoes' lope. His first feeling was annoyance: Woodrow Call had had him tracked at a time when all he wanted was a few days to himself.

A moment later Augustus saw that the rider was young Pea Eye Parker, a choice which amused him, since he knew that Pea Eye hated expeditions, particularly lone expeditions across long stretches of Indian country. On such trips Pea Eye scarcely slept or rested, from nervousness. Now Call had sent the boy hundreds of miles from home, with no companion except a Kickapoo tracker who was known to wander away on his own errands for days at a stretch.

Augustus waited by his horse while the horseman and the walker came toward him from the river. While he was waiting he dug the two small arrowheads out of his pocket and studied them a little more, but without reaching a conclusion as to their age.

"You have gone far--I don't know why," Famous Shoes said, when he came to where Augustus waited.

"Why, I was just looking for arrowheads," Augustus said lightly. "What do you make of these?" Famous Shoes accepted the two arrowheads carefully and looked at them for a long time without speaking. Pea Eye came up and dismounted. He looked, to Gus's eye, more gaunt than ever.

"Hello, Pea--h you slept well on your travels?" he asked.

Pea Eye was so glad to see Captain McCrae that he didn't hear the question. He shook Gus's hand long and firmly. It was clear from his tense face that travel had been a strain.

"I'm glad you ain't dead, Captain," Pea Eye said. "I'm real glad you ain't dead." Augustus was a little startled by the force of the young man's emotion. The trip must have been even more of a trial to him than he had imagined.

"No, I ain't dead," Augustus told him. "I just rode off to think for a few days, and one of the things I wanted to think about was the fact that I ain't dead." "Why would you need to think about that, Captain?" Pea asked.

"Well, because people die," Augustus said.

"Two of my wives are dead. Long Bill Coleman is dead. Quite a few of the men I've rangered with are dead--three of them died right on this hill we're standing on. Jimmy Watson is dead--y knew Jimmy yourself, and you knew Long Bill. A bunch of farmers and their families got massacred that day we found you sitting by the corncrib." Pea Eye mainly remembered the corn.

"I was mighty hungry that day," Pea Eye said. "That hard corn tasted good to me." Now that Captain McCrae had reminded him, Pea Eye did remember that there had been three dead bodies in the cabin where he found the scattered corn. He remember that the bodies had arrows in them; but what he remembered better was walking through the woods for three days, lost, so hungry he had tried to eat the bark off trees.

Finding the corn seemed like such a miracle that he did not really think about the bodies in the cabin.

"I guess people have been dying all over," he said, not sure how to respond to the Captain's comments.

Augustus saw that Pea Eye was exhausted, not so much from the long ride as from nervous strain.

He turned back to Famous Shoes, who was still looking intently at the two arrowheads.

"I was in a fight with Buffalo Hump and some of his warriors here, years ago," Gus said.

"Do you think they dropped these arrowheads then, or are they older?" Famous Shoes handed the two arrowheads back to Augustus.

"These were not made by the Comanche, they were made by the Old P," he said.

Famous Shoes started up the hill Augustus had just come down.

"I want to find some of these arrowheads too," he said. "The Old People made them." "You're welcome to look," Gus said. "I mean to keep these myself. If they're so old they might bring me luck." "You already have luck," Famous Shoes told him--but he did not pause to explain. He was too eager to look for the arrowheads that had been made by the Old p.

"I guess you're here to bring me home, is that right, Pea?" Augustus asked.

"The Governor wants to see you--Captain Call told me that much," Pea Eye said.

Though Augustus knew he ought to go light on the young man, something about Pea Eye's solemn manner made teasing him hard to resist.

"If I'm under arrest you best get out your handcuffso," he said, sticking out his hands in surrender.

Pea Eye was startled, as he often was by Captain McCrae's behaviour.

"I ain't got no handcuffso, Captain," he said.

"Well, you might have to tie me, then," Gus said. "I'm still a wild boy. I might escape before you get me back to Austin." Pea Eye wondered if the Captain had gone a little daft. He was holding out his hands, as if he expected to be tied.

"Captain, I wouldn't arrest you," he said.

"I just came to tell you Captain Call asked if you'd come back. The Governor asked too, I believe." "Yes, and what will you tell them if I decide to slip off?" Gus asked.

Pea Eye felt that he was being given a kind of examination, just when he least expected one.

"I'd just tell them you didn't want to come," he said. "If you don't want to come back, you don't have to, that's how I see it." "I'm glad you feel that way, Pea," Augustus said, letting his hand drop, finally.

"I fear I'd be uncomfortable travelling with a man who had a commission to arrest me." "I was not given no papers," Pea Eye said --he thought a commission must involve a document of some kind.

Augustus looked past the crag of rock toward El Paso del Norte, the Pass of the North.

"I guess I've travelled long enough in a westerly direction," he said. "I believe I'll go back with you, Pea--x'll help your career." "My what?" Pea Eye asked.

"Your job, Pea--j your job," Augustus said, annoyed that he was unable to employ his full vocabulary with the young man. "You might make sergeant yet, just for bringing me home."

Famous Shoes was so excited by the old things he was finding on the hill of arrowheads that he did not want to leave. All afternoon he stayed on the hill, searching the ground carefully for things the Old People might have left. He looked at the base of rocks and into holes and cracks in the land. He saw the two rangers leave and ride back toward the camp by the river, but he did not have time to join them. After only a little searching he found six more arrowheads, a fragment of a pot, and a little tool of bone that would have been used to scrape hides. With every discovery his excitement grew. At first he spread the arrowheads on a flat rock, but then he decided it would be wiser not to leave them exposed. The spirits of the Old People might be nearby; they might not like it that he was finding the things they had lost or left behind. If he left the arrowheads exposed, the old spirits might turn themselves into rats or chipmunks and try to carry the arrowheads back to the spirit place. The objects he was finding might be the oldest things in the world. If he took them to the elders of the tribe they could learn many things from them.

It would not do to leave them at risk, particularly not after he found the bear tooth. Famous Shoes saw something white near the base of the crag and discovered, once he dug it out with his knife, that it was the tooth of a great bear. It was far larger than the tooth of any bear he had ever seen, and its edge had been scraped to make it sharp. It could be used as a small knife, or as an awl, to punch holes in the skins of buffalo or deer.

Famous Shoes knew he had made a tremendous discovery. He was glad, now, that he had been sent after Captain McCrae; because of it he had found the place where the Old People had once lived. He wrapped his finds carefully in a piece of deerskin and put them in his pouch. He meant to go at once to find the Kickapoo elders, some of whom lived along the Trinity River. While the elders studied what he had found, which included a small round stone used to grind corn, he meant to come back to the hill of arrowheads and look some more. There were several more such hills nearby where he might look. If he were lucky he might even find the hole in the earth where the People had first come out into the light. Famous Shoes thought it possible that he had been acting on wrong information in regard to the hole of emergence.

It might not be near the caprock at all. It might be somewhere around the very hill he was standing on, where the Old People had dropped so many of their arrowheads.

The possibility that the hole might be nearby was not something he meant to tell the rangers. When darkness fell he left the hill and went toward their campfire, which he could see winking in the darkness, back by the river. He thought it would be courteous to tell Captain McCrae that he had to leave at once, on an errand of great importance. Captain McCrae was not lost, and would not need him to guide them home.

When Famous Shoes reached the camp he saw that the young ranger who had travelled with him was already asleep. In fact he was snoring and his snores could be heard some distance from the camp. The snores reminded Famous Shoes of the sounds an angry badger would make.

"Snores awful, don't he?" Augustus said, when Famous Shoes appeared. He had been enjoying a little whiskey--he had used his supply only sparingly, so as not to run out before he got back to a place where he could count on finding a settler with a jug.

"He did not snore like that while he was with me," Famous Shoes said. "He did not snore at all while we were looking for you." "I doubt he slept, while he was with you," Augustus said. "It's hard to snore much if you're wide awake. I expect he was afraid you would scalp him if he went to sleep while he was with you." Famous Shoes did not reply. He knew that Captain McCrae often joked, but the discoveries he had just made were serious; he did not have the leisure to listen to jokes or to talk that made no sense.

"Did you find any more of them old arrowheads?" Gus asked.

"I have to go visit some people now," Famous Shoes said. He did not want to discuss his findings with Captain McCrae. Even though Captain McCrae had shown him the old arrowheads, Famous Shoes still thought it was unwise to discuss the Old People and their tools with him. He himself did not know what was sacred and what wasn't, with such old things--t was for the elders to interpret.

"Well, you ain't chained, go if you like," Augustus said. "I'll tell Woodrow Call you done your job proper, so he won't cut your pay." Famous Shoes did not answer. He was wondering if all the hills beyond the Pecos had old things on them. It would take a long time to search so many hills. He knew he had better get busy. It had been windy lately--the wind had blown the soil away, making it easier to see the arrowheads and pieces of pots. He wanted to hurry to the Trinity and then come back.

Some white man looking for gold might dig in one of the hills and disturb the arrowheads and other tools.

Augustus saw that Famous Shoes was anxious to leave but he didn't want him to go before he could attempt to interest him in the great issue of mortality, the problem he had been pondering in the last two weeks, as he rode west. His efforts to interest Pea Eye in the matter of mortality had met with complete failure. Pea Eye was mindful that he might die sooner rather than later, from doing the dangerous work of rangering, but he didn't have much to say on the subject. When Augustus tried to get his opinion on factors that prevailed in life or death situations such as Indian fights, he found that Pea Eye had no opinion. Some men died and some men lived, Pea Eye knew that, but the why of it was well beyond his reasoning powers; even beyond his interest. When questioned on the subject, Pea Eye just went to sleep.

"Before you go loping off, tell me why you think I'm lucky," Augustus asked. "Is it just because I found them arrowheads?" "No, that was not luck, you have good eyes," Famous Shoes said. "No arrow has ever found you--no bullet either--though you have been in many battles. No bear has eaten you and no snake has bitten you." "Buffalo Hump's lance bit me, though," Augustus said, pointing. "It bit me right out there on those flats." "It only bit your hip a little," Famous Shoes reminded him--he had heard the story often.

"I admit that I was lucky it was so dark," Gus said. "If it had been daylight I expect he would have got me." In Famous Shoes' opinion that was true.

If the encounter with Buffalo Hump had occurred in daylight Captain McCrae would probably be dead.

"If I have all this luck, why do my wives keep dying?" Augustus asked.

It seemed to Famous Shoes that Captain McCrae was wanting to know the answer to questions that had no answer. Though it was sometimes possible to say why a particular woman died, it was not possible to say why one man's wives died while another man's lived. Such things were mysteries--no man could understand them, any more than a man could understand the rain and the wind. In some springs there were rain clouds, in other springs none. In some years frost came early, in other years it came late. Some women bore children easily, others died in the effort. Why one man fell in battle while the man fighting right beside him lived was a thing that could not be known. Some medicine man might know about the arrowheads he had found, and about the scraper, or the pots, but no medicine man or wise man knew why one man died and another lived. Wise men themselves often died before fools, and cowards before men who were brave. Famous Shoes knew that Captain McCrae enjoyed discussing such matters, but he himself could not spare the time for extended conversation, not when he had such a great distance to travel, on such an urgent errand.

"It was good that you showed me those arrowheads that were not from the Comanche," Famous Shoes said. "That was a good place to look for old arrowheads. I found some for myself." "I've heard they sell arrowheads, back east," Augustus told him. "The Indians back east have forgotten how to make them--I guess they've got too used to guns. Back in Carolina and Georgia and them places, the only way folks can get arrowheads is to buy them in a store." Famous Shoes was feeling very impatient.

Captain McCrae was one of the most talkative people he had ever known. Sometimes, when there was leisure for lengthy conversation, he was an interesting man to listen to. He was curious about things that most white men paid no attention to. But everyone was curious about death--Famous Shoes didn't feel he could spend any more time discussing it with Captain McCrae, and he had no interest in discussing tribes of Indians who were so degenerate that they no longer knew how to make arrowheads.

"I will see you again when I have time," he said.

"Damnit, I wish you wasn't always in such a hurry," Augustus said, but his ^ws simply floated away. Famous Shoes was already walking toward the Trinity River.

Augustus could not restrain his amusement that Woodrow Call, stiff and nervous, confided his suspicion that Maggie Tilton had an involvement with Jake Spoon that went beyond the friendly.

"Didn't you ever notice Jake carrying her groceries, or helping her with her garden?" Augustus asked.

"I noticed," Call said. "But a man ought to help a woman carry groceries, or help her with a garden if he knows anything about gardens.

I'm ignorant in that field myself." "Not as ignorant as you are in the woman field," Augustus said. "If Maggie was the sun you'd have to carry around a sundial to let you know if it's a cloudy day." "You can hold off on the fancy talk, Gus," Call said, annoyed. It had taken him a week to work up to confiding in Augustus and he did not appreciate the flippant way his confidence was being treated.

"I think he bunks there," he added, so there would be no doubt as to the nature of his suspicions.

Augustus realized that his friend was considerably upset. With effort he held in his amusement and even passed up a chance to make another flowery comparison in regard to Woodrow's ignorance about women--an ignorance he believed to be profound.

He knew there were times when Call could be safely teased and times when he couldn't; in his judgment much more teasing in the present situation might result in fisticuffso. Woodrow appeared to be drawn about as tightly as it was safe to draw him.

"Woodrow, you're correct--Jake's been bunking with Maggie for a while," Augustus said, keeping his tone mild.

It was the news Call had feared; yet Augustus delivered it as matter-of-factly as if he were merely announcing that he needed a new pair of boots. They were standing by the corrals in bright sunlight, watching Pea Eye try to rope a young gelding, a strawberry roan. The boy Newt watched from a perch atop the fence.

Pea Eye caught the gelding on the third throw and dug in his heels as the young horse began to fight the rope.

"Pea's getting trained up to a point where he can almost rope," Gus said. "I can remember when it took him thirty throws to catch his horse." Call was silent. He wasn't interested in how many throws it took Pea Eye to catch a horse, nor was he interested in the six young horses the rangers had just purchased from a horse trader near Waco, though he had approved the purchase himself and signed the check.

Normally the arrival of six new horses, acquired at no small cost, would have occupied him immediately--but what occupied him then was Augustus's acknowledgment that Jake was living with Maggie Tilton and her son, Newt--or, if not fully living with her, at least bunking with her to the extent that suited his pleasure and hers.

Augustus saw that his friend was stumped, if not stunned, by the discovery of a situation that had been no secret to most of the rangers for well over a year. It was a peculiar oversight on Woodrow's part, not to notice such things, but then Woodrow Call always had been able to overlook almost everything in life not connected with the work of being a Texas Ranger.

"If you knew about this why didn't you tell me?" Call asked.

Augustus found himself finally having the conversation he had been dreading for a year. He had long known that Woodrow was more attached to Maggie Tilton than he allowed himself to admit. He wouldn't marry her or claim as a son the nice little boy sitting on the fence of the corral; but neither of those evasions meant that Woodrow Call wasn't mighty fond of Maggie Tilton--even though he knew that Call had stopped visiting her as a lover about the time Newt was born. Call had known Maggie longer than he himself had known Clara Allen. It was a long stretch of time, during which Woodrow had displayed no interest, serious or trivial, in any other woman.

Augustus knew, too, that the fact that Woodrow was awkward about his feelings didn't mean that his feelings were light--Maggie Tilton, he felt sure, knew this as well as anyone.

Evidence that Woodrow Call harbored no light feeling for Maggie was right before him: Call looked blank and sad, not unlike the way survivors looked after an Indian raid or a shoot-out of some kind.

"I suppose I am a fool," Call said.

"I would never have expected her to accept Jake Spoon." "Why?" Gus asked. "Jake ain't a bad fellow, which ain't to say that he's George Washington, or a fine hero like me." "He's lazy and will shirk what he can shirk," Call replied. "I will admit that he writes a nice hand." "Well, that's it, Woodrow--t's accurate," Augustus said. "Jake's just a middling fellow. He ain't really a coward, though he don't seek fights. He's lazy and he'll whore, and I expect he cheats a little at cards when he thinks he can get away with it.

But he helps ladies with their groceries and is handy at gardening and will even paint a lady's house for her if the lady is pretty enough." "Maggie's pretty enough," Call replied.

"She is, yes," Augustus said. "I will have to say I ain't noticed Jake doing too many favors for the ugly gals." "Damn it, he's taken advantage of her!" Call said. He could think of no other explanation for the situation.

"No, I don't think he has," Gus said.

"I think Jake's been about as good to Maggie as he's able to be." "Why would you say that?" Call asked--of course it was like Augustus to take the most irritating position possible.

"I say it because it's true," Gus said.

"He's been a damn sight more helpful to her than you've ever been." There was a silence between the two men. Neither looked at one another for a bit--both pretended they were watching Pea Eye, who had managed to get the gelding snubbed to the heavy post in the center of the corral.

Call started to make a hot reply, but choked it off. He knew he wasn't really much help to Maggie--z his duties as a ranger captain had increased, he had less and less time to devote to the common chores that Maggie, like everyone else, might need help with. He didn't carry her groceries or help her with her gardening; the fact was, rangering or no rangering, he had never felt comfortable doing things with Maggie in public. If they met in the street he spoke and tipped his hat, but he rarely strolled with her or walked her home. It was not his way. If Jake or Gus or any decent fellow wanted to do otherwise, that was fine with him.

But what Jake was doing now--or seemed to be doing--went well beyond giving Maggie a hand with her groceries or her garden. It bothered him, but he was getting no sympathy from Augustus; what he was getting, instead, was criticism.

"I have no doubt you think I'm in the wrong," Call said. "You always do, unless it's just rangering that's involved." "You're always fussing at me about my whoring and drinking," Augustus reminded him. "I suppose I have a right to fuss at you when the matter is crystal clear." "It may be crystal clear to you, but it's damn murky to me," Call said.

Augustus shrugged. He nodded toward Newt, who still sat on the fence, absorbed by the struggle between Pea Eye and the gelding. The boy loved horses. The rangers took him riding, when they could, and there was talk about finding him a pony or at least a small gentle horse.

"That boy sitting there is yours as sure as sunlight, but you won't claim him or give him your name and you've been small help with his raising," Augustus pointed out. "Pea Eye's more of a pa to him than you've been, and so am I and so is Jake. Maggie would like to be married to you, but she ain't. The only thing I don't understand about it is why she tolerates you at all. A man who won't claim his child wouldn't be sitting in my parlor much, if I was a gal." Call turned and walked off. He didn't need any more conversation about the boy; in particular he was sick of hearing how much the boy resembled him. The business about the resemblances annoyed him intensely: the boy just looked like a boy.

Discussing such matters with Augustus was clearly a waste of time. Augustus had held to his own view for years, and was not likely to change it.

He heard the whirl of a grindstone behind the little shed where the rangers did most of their harness repair and handiwork. Deets was there, sharpening an axe and a couple of spades. The cockleburs were bad in the river bottom where the horses watered --Deets sharpened the spades so he could spade them down and spare the rangers the tedious labor of pulling cockleburs out of their horses' tails, an annoyance that put them all out of temper.

"Deets, would you go get Newt and walk him to his mother?" Call asked. "It's a hot day, and he won't stay in the shade. He'll get too hot if he just sits there in the sun." "That boy need a hat," Deets observed.

The grindstone was the kind that operated with a pedal, but the pedal had a tendency to stick. He had a cramp in his calf from working the old sticking pedal most of the day; but he had an impressive pile of well-sharpened tools to show for his effort: four axes, seven hatchets, an adze, five spades, and a double-bladed pickaxe. Walking a little with Newt would be a nice relief. Captain Call had promised to get him a better grindstone at some point, but so far the money for it hadn't been made available. Captain Augstus said it was the legislature's fault.

"That legislature, it's slow," Augustus often said.

Deets thought probably the reason the legislature was so slow to provide a grindstone was because so many of the senators were drunk most of the time. Deets had had one or two senators pointed out to him and later had seen the very same man sprawled out full length in the street, heavily drunk. One senator had even lost a hand while sleeping in the middle of the street on a foggy morning. A wagon came along the street and a rear wheel passed over the senator's wrist, cutting off his hand as neatly as a butcher or a surgeon could have. Deets had been struggling to extract a long mesquite thorn from the hock of one of the pack mules at the time: he still remembered the senator's piercing scream, when he awoke to find that his hand was gone and his right wrist spurting blood into the fog. The scream had such terror in it that Deets and most of the other people who heard it assumed it could only mean an Indian attack. Men rushed for their guns and women for their hiding places. While the rushing was going on the senator fainted. While the whole town hunkered down, waiting for the scalping Comanches to pour in among them, the senator lay unconscious in the street, bleeding. When the fog lifted, with no one scalped and no Comanches to be seen, the local blacksmith found the senator, still fainted, and, by that time, bled white. The man lived, but he soon stopped being a senator. As Deets understood it, the man decided just to stay home, where he could drink with much less risk.

Now the Captain was wanting him to carry Newt home to his mother, a task he was happy to undertake. He liked Newt, and would have bought him a good little hat to shade him on sunny days, if he could have afforded it. Mainly, though, Deets was just given his room and board and a dollar a month toward expenses--in his present situation he could not afford to be buying little boys hats.

The boy still sat on the fence, watching Pea Eye trying to rope a second gelding, the first one having been firmly snubbed to the post. Call stood watching--not at the boy or the roper; just watching generally, it seemed to Deets.

"Newt wishing he could be a roper," Deets said. "A roper like Mr. Pea." Call had just watched Pea Eye miss the skinny gelding for the fourth time; he was not pleased.

"If he ever is a roper, I hope he's better at it than Pea Eye Parker," he said, before he walked away.

"Yes, he stays here, when I can keep him out of the saloons," Maggie said, when Call asked her if Jake was sleeping at her house.

She didn't say it bashfully, either. Newt had an earache; she was warming cornmeal in a sock, for him to hold against his ear. Graciela had told her she ought to drip warm honey in Newt's ear, but Maggie didn't think the earache was severe enough to risk making that big a mess. In fact, she wondered if it was an earache at all, or just a new way Newt had thought of to get himself a little more attention. Newt enjoyed his minor illnesses. Sometimes he could persuade his mother to let him sleep with her when he was a little sick, or could pretend to be. Maggie suspected that this was only a pretend earache, but she warmed the cornmeal anyway. She did not appreciate Woodrow Call's question and didn't bother to conceal how she felt. For years she had concealed most of what she felt about Woodrow, but she had given up on him and had no reason to conceal her feelings anymore.

"Well, I am surprised," Call said cautiously. He felt on unfamiliar ground with Maggie; possibly infirm ground as well.

She didn't look up when she informed him that Jake was sleeping there.

"I ain't a rock," Maggie said, in reply, and this time she did look up.

Call didn't know what she meant--he had never suggested that she was a rock.

"I guess I don't know what you're trying to say," he said cautiously. "I can see you ain't a rock." "No, I doubt you can see it," Maggie said.

"You're too strong, Woodrow. You don't understand what it's like to be weak, because you ain't weak, and you've got no sympathy for those who are." "What has that got to do with Jake bunking here?" Call asked.

Maggie turned her eyes to him; her mouth was set. She didn't want to cry--she had done more than enough crying about Woodrow Call over the years. She might do more, still, but if so, she hoped at least not to do it in front of him. It was too humiliating to always be crying about the same feeling in front of the same man.

"I need somebody here at night," Maggie said. "Not every night, but sometimes. I get scared.

Besides that, I've got a boy. He needs someone around who can be like a pa. You don't want to stay with me, and you don't want to be a pa to Newt." She paused; despite her determination to control herself, her hands were shaking as she spooned the hot cornmeal into the old sock.

It always seemed to come back to the same thing, Call thought. He wasn't willing to be her husband and he wasn't willing, either, to claim Newt as his son. He knew that might give him a limited right to criticize, and he hadn't come to criticize, merely to find out if his suspicion about Maggie and Jake was true. It seemed that it was true; he had merely been honest when he said the fact surprised him.

"If it makes you think the less of me, I can't help it," Maggie said. "Jake ain't my first choice--I reckon I don't have to tell you that. But he ain't a bad man, either. He's kind to me and he likes Newt. If I didn't have someone around who liked my son, I expect I would have given up the ghost." "I don't want you to give up the ghost," Call said at once; he was shocked by the comment.

"The rangering does keep me busy," he adding not knowing what else to say.

"You wouldn't help me if helping me was the last thing in the world you had to do," Maggie told him, unable to hold back a flash of anger. "You don't know how to help nobody, Woodrow--at least you don't know how to help nobody who's female.

"You never have helped me and you never will," she went on, looking him in the eye.

"Jake wants to help me, at least. I try to give him back what I can. It ain't much, but he's young. He may not know that." "Yes, young and careless," Call said. "It would be a pity if he compromised you." Without hesitating Maggie threw the panful of hot cornmeal at him. Most of it missed but a little of it stuck to the front of his shirt. Woodrow looked as startled as if an Indian with a tomahawk had just popped out of the cupboard; as startled, and more at a loss. An Indian he could have shot, but he couldn't shoot her and had no idea what to say or do. He was so surprised that he didn't even bother to brush the cornmeal off his shirt.

Maggie didn't say anything. She was determined that he would at least answer her act, if he wouldn't answer her need. She set the pan back on the stove.

"Well, that was wasteful," Woodrow Call said finally. He recovered sufficiently to begin to brush the cornmeal off his shirt. Maggie didn't seem to be paying much attention to him.

She dipped a cup into the cornmeal and scooped out enough to replace what had been in the pan.

Graciela had been dozing on her little stool at the back of the kitchen--she was often there, making tortillas, such good ones that Newt was seldom seen without a half-eaten tortilla in his hand or his pocket. Something had awakened Graciela, Call didn't know what, for Maggie had not raised her voice before she threw the cornmeal.

Graciela looked shocked, when she saw him with cornmeal on his shirt--she put a hand over her mouth.

"I see that I have upset you," Call added, perplexed and a good deal shocked himself. One reason he had grown fond of Maggie Tilton, and a big reason he stayed fond, was that she behaved so sensibly. In that respect he considered her far superior to Gus's old love Clara, who never behaved sensibly and was rarely inclined to restrain her emotions. Certainly Clara had been competent at arithmetic--he had never caught her in an error on a bill--but that didn't keep her from being prone to wild rages and fits of weeping. Maggie had always been far more discreet about her feelings; she had mainly managed to keep her sorrows and even her annoyances to herself.

Now, though, she had done something foolish, and, to make matters worse, had done it in front of Graciela. He knew that Mexican women were prone to gossiping--white women, of course, were hardly immune to such activity--and he was vexed to think that the story of what Maggie had just done, an act most uncharacteristic of her, would soon be talked about all over town.

But the fact was, she had; the deed was done.

Call picked up his hat and sat a coffee cup that he had been holding on the counter.

"I regret that I upset you," he said. "I suppose I had better just go." He waited a minute, to see if Maggie would apologize, or explain her action in any way; but she did neither. She just went on with her task. Except for a spot of red on each cheekbone, no one would suppose that she was feeling anything out of the ordinary. Call had rather expected that she would quickly regret her action and come over and brush the cornmeal off his shirt and trousers; but she showed no inclination to do that, either.

Newt opened his eyes and saw Captain Woodrow with what looked to be meal on his shirt --but he was so sleepy that he felt that what he was seeing must be part of a dream. He yawned and turned over, hoping that Captain Woodrow would offer him a penny for sassafras candy when his dream ended.

Call went out and started down the long flight of stairs that angled down the back of Maggie's house to the ground. When he was almost down he got an uncomfortable feeling and turned to look back; Maggie had come outside and stood above him, on the landing. Sunlight flecked the cornmeal on her hands and forearms--a visitor might have thought that her hands and forearms were flecked with gold dust.

"ally compromised me, Woodrow, not Jakeffwas Maggie said, with a sharpness that he had never heard in her voice before. "ally compromised me and I hope that you'll be thinking about what you did and about how you betrayed our little son for the rest of your life, right up till the day you die. You don't deserve Newt! You don't even deserve me!" Call said nothing. Maggie went back through the door. Later, when Call thought about that moment, he remembered that the sunlight made cornmeal look like gold dust on Maggie's hands and arms.

After Woodrow left, Maggie went in her bedroom and cried. She was tired--m than tired --of crying about Woodrow Call; but, once again, she couldn't help it. The best she could do was hide in her bedroom and cry, so Newt wouldn't see her in tears, if he woke up. He had seen her sobbing far too often as it was, and it upset him. All too often she cried after his father left, which was worrisome to her. Although Call had brought her sorrow, he .was Newt's father, even though Newt didn't know it. She didn't want Newt associating his father with her tears and her pain. No one could know what might happen in life. Someday Woodrow might unbend, recognize that he had a fine son, and claim him publicly. The two of them might yet find some happiness as father and son. She didn't want to blight that chance.

Graciela came in while Maggie was attempting to dry her tears. Graciela had been mightily shocked by what she had seen in the kitchen. She didn't know Captain Call very well, but she knew he was a Texas Ranger.

For a woman to throw cornmeal on a Texas Ranger was a serious thing. They might hang Maggie, for such an offense. At the very least, the man would beat her.

"That was a bad thing you did," Graciela said.

She was in the habit of speaking quite frankly to Maggie, who didn't seem to mind.

"Not very bad," Maggie said. "I could have hit him with the frying pan. All I did was throw a little cornmeal on him." "Now he will beat you," Graciela said. "How will you work in the store if he beats you badly?

"I need to get my wages--I have my grandbabies to feed," she added.

"He won't beat me, Graciela," Maggie said. "He has never hit me and he never will. I doubt we'll see any more of him around here." "But you got his shirt dirty," Graciela said. "He will beat you. The last time my husband beat me I could not move for two days. He beat me with an axe handle. I could not have worked in a store, after such a beating." "This cornmeal is getting hot," Maggie said. "Would you put some in a sock and give it to Newt for his earache?" "I do not think his ear is sick," Graciela said.

"I don't either, but give him the sock anyway," Maggie said. "It won't hurt to humour him." Graciela did as she was told, but she was both annoyed and uneasy. The boy wasn't sick; he had no fever. Why waste good cornmeal, when it was attention he wanted, anyway? She could not always be fixing poultices for a boy who wasn't sick. She was still uneasy about the beating, too. In her opinion Maggie still had a lot to learn about the ways of men. Because Maggie wanted Captain Call, and loved him, she was trying to pretend that he was better than other men--t he was above beating a woman. Graciela had had to marry three times before she could get a husband who knew how to stay alive. All her husbands had beaten her, and all the husbands of her sisters and her friends beat their women. It was a thing men did, if they were provoked a little, or even if they were not provoked at all. The slightest drunkenness could cause a man to beat a woman-- so could the slightest rebuke. Graciela had only married poor men--men who had to struggle and who had many worries--but two of her sisters had married men of wealth, men who did little all day except gamble and drink. The wealthy men had beaten her sisters just as often as the poor men had beaten her.

Graciela was a little shocked by Maggie's innocence about men and women--it was not wise to take lightly or discount the violence that was in men.

But, before she could discuss the matter further, Newt woke up.

"I don't need that hot sock, my ear don't hurt now," he said, just as Graciela finished getting the poultice ready. Such a boy deserved a good thump on the head, but before Graciela could administer the thump, Newt smiled at her so sweetly that she thought better of it and gave him one of her good tortillas instead.

"I have never been no place this naked, Pea," Jake Spoon confided, staring with some trepidation into the bleak dusk. They had made a poor camp, waterless, shelterless, and dusty, out on the plain somewhere, a plain so vast that the sun, when it set, seemed to be one hundred miles away.

Captain Call had gone ahead, with six rangers, including Charlie Goodnight. The force at the waterless camp consisted of Deets, Pea, Jake, Captain McCrae, Major Featherstonhaugh, a fat lieutenant named Dikuss, and six soldiers. The purpose of the little scouting expedition was to seek out the Comanches in their winter strongholds and determine how many were left. The army wanted to know how many bands were still active and how many warriors they could put into the field.

Jake Spoon had never been able to stifle his tendency to complaint, unless Captain Call was in hearing; Jake said as little as possible around Captain Call. It was obvious to all the rangers that Captain Call didn't like Jake and preferred to avoid his company.

Pea Eye considered it a puzzling thing. He didn't know why the Captain had such a dislike for Jake, but, at the moment, with no water and just a little food, he had more pressing things to worry about.

Pea had developed the habit of counting his cartridges every night--he wanted to know exactly how many bullets he could expend in the event of an Indian fight. Every ranger was supposed to travel with one hundred rounds, but Pea Eye had only been given eighty-six rounds, the result of some confusion in the armory the day the bullets had been handed out. It worried Pea considerably that he had started on the trip fourteen bullets shy of a full requisition.

Fourteen bullets could make all the difference in the world in the event that all his companions were killed, while he survived. If he had to walk all the way back to Austin living on what game he could shoot he would have to be careful.

His marksmanship was not exceptional; it sometimes took him four or five bullets to bring down a deer, and his record with antelope was even worse. Also, he could shoot at Indians fourteen more times, if he had those bullets. The lack preyed on his mind; his count, every night, was to assure himself that no bullets had slipped away in the course of a day's travel.

With his bullets to count, and the light poor on the gloomy plain, Pea Eye could not waste time worrying about why Captain Call found it hard to tolerate Jake Spoon. Captain McCrae, who knew practically everything, may have known the reason, but if so he wasn't saying.

At the moment Captain McCrae was discussing with Major Featherstonhaugh the difficulty of counting Comanehes with any accuracy.

"Several men I know have got haircuts they didn't want while counting Comanches," he informed the Major, a skinny man with a sour disposition.

"Of course there's no risk to Dikuss here," Augustus added. "He's a bald man--he's got no hair to take. They'd have to find something else to cut off, if they took Dikuss." Augustus liked the fat lieutenant and teased him when possible. He was less fond of the dour Featherstonhaugh, though he was not especially more dour than the few army men who found themselves stuck in dusty outposts in the remote Southwest while the great war raged to the east. Featherstonhaugh and his men were missing out on the glory, and they knew it; andfor what? To attempt to subdue a few half-starved Comanches, scattered across the Texas plains?

"It seems a poor exercise, don't it, Major?" Augustus said. "You could be back home fighting with Grant or Lee, according to your beliefs. I expect it would be better employment than counting these poor Comanches." Major Featherstonhaugh received that comment soberly, without change of expression. He did not welcome jocularity while in the field, but Captain McCrae, a skilled and respected ranger, seemed unable to avoid the jocular comment.

"I am from Vermont, Captain," Major Featherstonhaugh informed him. "I would not be fighting with General Lee, though I admire him. He once fought in these parts himself, I believe, in the war with Mexico." "Well, I didn't notice," Augustus said. "I was in love while that scrap was going on. I was younger then, about Lieutenant Dikuss's age. Are you in love, Lieutenant?" Lieutenant Dikuss was mortified by the question, as he was by almost every question Captain McCrae asked him. In fact he was in love with his Milly, a strong buxom girl of nineteen whose father owned a prosperous dairy in Wisconsin. Jack Dikuss nursed the deepest and tenderest feelings for his Milly, feelings so strong that tears came into his eyes if he even allowed himself to think of her. He had not been meaning to think of her--indeed, had been cleaning his revolver--when Captain McCrae's unexpected and unwanted questions brought her suddenly and vividly to mind.

Lieutenant Dikuss was only just able to choke back tears; in the process of choking them back his neck swelled and his large face turned beet red, a fact fortunately lost on the rangers and soldiers, who were tending to their mounts, their saddles, or their guns, while Deets made a small campfire and got the coffee going.

Lieutenant Dikuss made no reply at all to Captain McCrae's question, being well aware that if he attempted to speak he would burst into tears and lose what little authority he had over the rough soldiers under his command, whorers all of them, with scant respect for tender sentiments of the sort he harbored for his Milly.

Augustus noticed the young man's discomfort and did not press his enquiry. He wished he had a book, some whiskey, or anything to distract him from the fact that he was camped in a cold, dusty place with a bunch of military men, while on an errand that he considered foolish. Lately he had begun to delve into the Bible a little, mainly because Austin was so thick with preachers--there were at least seven of them, by his count--t he couldn't walk down the street without bumping into one or two of them. One, an aggressive Baptist, had the temerity to tax him one day about his whoring; in response Augustus had bought a small Bible and began to leaf through it in idle moments, looking for notable instances of whoring or, at least, of carnal appetite among the more distinguished patriarchs of old. He soon found what he was looking for, too, and meant to use his findings to confound the preachers, if they dared challenge him again.

The print in his Bible was small, however, and the circumstance of a dim evening on the plains, with only a flicker of campfire, did not encourage biblical studies just then. He wished he had something to do besides tease nice boys such as Lieutenant Dikuss, but offhand he couldn't think what it might be. It was a pity, in his view, that Charlie Goodnight had insisted on going with Call on the advance scout; he could always raise a debate with Charlie Goodnight, a man disposed to think that he knew everything. Of course, one of the things Charlie Goodnight did know was where the principal bands of Comanches hunted; Goodnight was now in the cattle business and needed to keep track of the Comanches in order to keep them from running off his saddle horses.

It was obvious to Augustus that little in the way of conversation was likely to be coming from Major Featherstonhaugh, the Vermonter who would not be fighting with General Lee. Major Featherstonhaugh had been in Texas only a few months; this expedition was his first into the Texas wilds and, so far, he had yet to lay eyes on a wild Comanche. It annoyed Augustus extremely that the military kept its personnel rolling over and over, like clothes wringers--each commander who came out of the East seemed to be less experienced and less knowledgeable about the geography and the terrain than the one before him. He and Call were constantly vexed by the ignorance of the military, though there had been one intelligent captain, named Marcy, who had conducted an excellent survey of the Red River country; Captain Marcy knew the country and the ways of the native tribes as well as anyone, but at the present time he was elsewhere and they were stuck with Major Featherstonhaugh, a man so ill informed that he seemed surprised when told there might be problems finding water on their trip across the llano.

"But gentlemen, I was assured there was an abundance of fine springs in Texas," the Major stated, when Call brought up the matter of water, the day before they departed.

"Oh, there's plenty of healthy springs in Texas," Augustus assured him. "I could find you a hundred easily, if we was in the right part of the state." "Isn't it Texas we're going to be journeying in?" the Major asked.

"Yes, but it's a big place, Major," Call said. "We're going to be crossing the Staked Plain. There may be springs there, but if there are, nobody but the Comanche know where to find them." That comment was greeted by an expression of polite disbelief on the face of Major Featherstonhaugh, whose only response was to instruct his men to be sure to fill their canteens.

Neither Augustus nor Call chose to press the matter--they had yet to meet a military man, other than the smart Captain Marcy, who was willing to take advice from Texas Rangers, or, for that matter, from Indian scouts either.

"It's a waste of energy to argue with a man like that," Call said, as they left Fort Phantom Hill.

"Agreed," Augustus said. "Let the plains do the arguing." They were only four days out, but already the point had been made--Major Featherstonhaugh had begun to absorb some hard lessons about west Texas aridity. The Major was neat to a fault --he could not abide soiled linen, or dust on his face, and had carelessly drained his own canteen by the end of the second day, wetting his kerchief often in order to swab the dust off his face. Though Augustus didn't comment, he was amused--the Major would no sooner wash his face than a dust devil or small whirlwind would sweep over the troop and get him dusty again. Now, impatient for the coffee to boil, he seemed indisposed to conversation of any kind; Augustus suspected that an offer to play a hand of cards would not be well received.

"How far ahead do you suppose Captain Call's party is?" the Major asked the next morning, as he was sipping coffee.

"I can't really say, Major," Augustus said. "We're the slow wing of this procession." "We've come quite a distance from that fort, sir," the Major said. "Why do you think we're slow?" "Because we still stop and sleep at night," Augustus said. "Sleep does slow a troop down, unless you sleep in your saddle, and Mr.

Goodnight is the only one of us who's skilled at saddle snoozing. Call don't sleep at night, neither does Goodnight, and neither does Famous Shoes. I imagine some of the men with them are so tired they'd be willing to get scalped if only they could have a good nap afws." Major Featherstonhaugh seemed unconvinced by the remark--or, if not unconvinced, uninterested.

"It's time to give out the prunes now," he said. "We mustn't forget the prunes, Captain." Major Hiram Featherstonhaugh was a firm believer in the efficacy of prunes, as an aid to regularity for men on the march. One of the pack mules carried two large sacks of prunes; leaving nothing to chance, the Major had Deets open one of the sacks each morning, so that he himself could dispense the prunes. He personally handed each man in the company six prunes, which, after some experimentation, he had concluded was the number of prunes most likely to ensure clear movements in a troop of men on the march.

"Here now, have your prunes, gentlemen," the Major said, as he went briskly around the troop. "Clear movements now, clear movements." Augustus, the last man to receive his morning allotment, waited until the Major's back was turned and dropped his back in the sack. He did not insist that the rangers eat prunes, but he urged them not to throw them away, either.

"We might get to a place out here on the baldies where a prune would taste mighty good," he said. "Just wait till the Major ain't looking and put them back in the sack." Pea Eye particularly hated prunes; he had carelessly eaten one the first morning and had been unable to rid himself of the pruny taste all day.

"What kind of a tree would grow a prune?" he asked.

"A Vermont kind of tree, I reckon," Augustus said. "The Major says he grew up eating them." "Maybe that's why he don't never smile," Pea Eye said. "They probably shrunk up his mouth till he can't get a smile out." "Or it might be that he's got nothing to smile about, particularly," Augustus said. "Here he is in Texas, which he don't like, trying to count Indians he can't find and couldn't whip if he did find." Within an hour of breaking camp the rangers found themselves riding into a brisk north wind. The long horizons quickly blurred until there was no horizon, just blowing yellowish dust. The rangers tied their bandannas over their noses and their mouths, but the soldiers lacked bandannas and took the stinging dust full in the face. The wind that whirled across the long spaces sang in their ears, unnerving some of the soldiers, recent arrivals who had never experienced a full norther on the plains. The howling wind convinced some of the young recruits that they were surrounded by wolves or other beasts.

The rangers had told them many stories of Comanche torture, but had said nothing about winds that sounded like the howling of beasts.

"On a day like this it's good that the Major don't smile," Pea Eye said to Jake.

"If he did it would just let in the grit." In the afternoon the wind, which had been high to begin with, increased to gale force. Increasingly, it was difficult to get the horses to face it; also, the temperature was dropping. Augustus tried to persuade Major Featherstonhaugh of the wisdom of stopping until the norther blew itself out.

"It won't blow like this long, Major," he said. "We could take shelter in one of these gullies and wait it out. Out here it's risky to travel when you can't see where you're going. We might ride off a cliff." Major Featherstonhaugh was unmoved by the advice. Once started, he preferred not to stop until a day's march had been completed, however adverse the weather conditions.

"I don't need to see where I'm going, Captain," he said. "I have a compass. I consult it frequently. I can assure you that we're going north, due north." An hour later the half-blinded troop stumbled into and out of a steep gully; in the rock terrain, half peppered by blowing sand, the Major dropped his compass, but didn't immediately register the loss. When, at the half hour, he reached for it, meaning to take his bearings, as he always did twice hourly, he discovered that he no longer had his compass, a circumstance which vexed him greatly.

"I must ask you to stop the troop and wait, Captain," he said. "I must have dropped my compass when we were crossing that declivity--what do you call it?" "A gully, Major," Gus said.

"Yes, that's probably where it is," the Major said. "It's back in that gully. I'll just hurry back and find it." "Major, I doubt you'll find it," Augustus said. "The sand's blowing so thick you can barely see your horse's ears. That compass will be covered up by now, most likely." "Nonsense, I'm sure I can find it," the Major said. "I'll just retrace my steps.

You give the men a few prunes, while you're waiting. Important to avoid constipation, Captain--an army can't fight if it's constipated." "Major, I've got a compass, take it," Augustus said, horrified by what the man planned to do. He was convinced that if the Major rode off in such a storm they would probably never see him again.

"I know mine probably ain't as good as yours, but it will point you north, at least," he assured the Major, holding out his own compass.

"I don't want your compass, Captain--I want my own," Major Featherstonhaugh said firmly. "It was my father's compass--it was made in Reading, England--x's our family compass.

It's made the trip around the Cape. I'm not going to leave it in some declivity in west Texas. I'd never be able to face Pa. He expects me to have this compass when I come home, I can assure you of that, Captain McCrae.

Prunes, men, prunes." With that, the Major turned and was gone.

Augustus was nonplussed. He knew he ought to send someone with the Major, to help him find his way back, but he had no one to send except himself and he did not feel it wise to leave the troop, in such a situation. The men were huddled around him--in the blowing sand they seemed spectral, like gray ghosts. His rangers, veterans of many severe northers, were stoical, but the army boys were nervous, stunned by the abrupt departure of their commander.

"I guess I should have roped him, but it's too late now," Augustus observed. The sandstorm had promptly swallowed up the Major.

"Now he's rode off and left me in command," Lieutenant Dikuss said, appalled at being thrust into a position of responsibility under such conditions, at such a time and in such a place.

Augustus smiled. He could not help being amused by the large lieutenant from Wisconsin.

At that moment Lieutenant Dikuss was staring hopelessly at the wall of sand into which his commanding officer had just disappeared.

"It must have been a mighty good compass," Jake Spoon said. "It would have to be made of emeralds for me to go looking for it in a wind like this." "I doubt you'd know an emerald if you swallowed one, Jake," Augustus said, dismounting. "That compass was made in Reading, England, and besides, the Major's got his pa to think about." "I don't know what to do, Captain," Lieutenant Dikuss admitted, looking at his gray, cold, gritty men.

"Well, one thing we can do is let the prunes be," Augustus said. "Myself, I'd vote for a cup of coffee over a goddamned prune."

The sandstorm raged until sunset; the whirling sand seemed to magnify the sun as it sank--fora time the sand and dust even made it seem that the sun had paused in its descent. It seemed to hang just above the horizon, a great malign orb, orange at the edges but almost bluish in the center.

Some of the young army men, newcomers, like their Major, to the country of sand and wind, thought something had gone wrong with nature. One private, a thin boy from Illinois, almost frozen from a day in the biting wind, thought the bluish sun meant that the world was coming to an end. He had a memory of a church in Paducah, Illinois, where he had lived as a boy, saying that the world would end with the setting of a blue sun.

The boy's name was Briarley Crisp; he was the youngest man in the troop. His mother and all his sisters wept when he left home; they all expected Briarley to be killed. Briarley had been eager, at the time, to get gone into the army, mainly to escape the plowing, which he detested. Now, looking at the ominous blue sun, its edges tinged with the orange hues of hellfire, andwiththe sand piling up on his eyelids so heavy he could hardly focus his eyes, Briarley knew he had made a terrible, fatal mistake. He had come all the way to Texas to be a soldier, and now the world was ending.

He began to shiver so violently that his shaking caught the eye of Lieutenant Dikuss, who, though nervous himself, felt it was now his responsibility to see that morale did not falter within the troop.

"Stop that shaking, Private Crisp," he said. "If you're chilly get a soogan off the pack mule and wrap up in it." "I ain't shivering from the chill, Lieutenant," Briarley Crisp said. "I see that old blue sun there--a preacher told me once the world would end the night the sun set blue, like that one's setting." "I doubt that that preacher who upset you had spent much time along the Pecos River," Augustus said. "I've seen the sun set blue many a time in these sand showers, but the world hasn't ended. What I do doubt is that we'll see any more of Major Featherstonhaugh this evening--hm or his compass either." They didn't. To Briarley Crisp's relief the sun finally did set; the night that followed saw the temperatures drop so far that the men slept beneath white clouds of frozen breath.

Toward midnight the sandstorm finally blew out--"four the stars were visible again. Augustus debated with himself whether to take advantage of the faint starlight to conduct a quick search for Major Featherstonhaugh; but, in the end, he didn't. The morning promised to be clear--they could easily find the Major then, assuming he had survived the chilly night.

They were not long in doubt on that issue. There was still so much sand in the air that the sun rose in haze, with a fine nimbus around it. To Private Crisp's joy, the world was still there and still dry.

Augustus had just picked up his coffee cup when he saw a moving dot to the south, a dot that soon became Major Featherstonhaugh, cantering briskly toward them on his heavy white mare.

Augustus had advised against the mare, not because of her heft but because she was white. The Comanches they were supposed to be scouting particularly loved a white horse.

"If Kicking Wolf gets sight of her that's one more horse the army won't have to feed, Major," Augustus had informed him, but the Major had only returned a chilly stare.

Now, though, he was simply relieved that Major was alive--it would have been a task to locate him, if he had lost himself on the llano.

"Good morning, Major--I hope you found that compass," Augustus said when Featherstonhaugh trotted up, his uniform caked with dust.

"Of course I found it--t was why I went back," Major Featherstonhaugh said. Dusty as he was he still seemed startled by the suggestion that he might not have found the compass.

"It was made in Reading, England," he added.

"My father took it around the Cape." "I wish I had a bath to offer you, Major," Augustus said. "You look like you've been buried and dug up." "Oh, it was weathery," the Major admitted.

"I thought I might find one of those springs and have a wash, but I couldn't find one--of course I had to wait for daylight before I could locate my compass." The Major dismounted and took a little coffee, carefully inspecting his compass while he breakfasted.

"I wish it would snow," he remarked, to Lieutenant Dikuss. "I'm accustomed to snow when it's this weathery." Lieutenant Dikuss regarded it as a miracle that the Major had reappeared at all; the absence of snow, of which there was an abundance in Wisconsin, did not disturb him.

"You can melt snow, and once it's melted you can heat the water and have a wash," the Major said.

"Does it ever snow here, Captain?" "It snows, but not too many people care to wash in it, Major," Augustus said. "I doubt that washing's as popular in this country as it is in Vermont." An hour later, pressing on north with the aid of Major Featherstonhaugh's compass, Augustus spotted a rider coming toward them across the long sage flats.

"That's Charlie Goodnight--I expect he's got news," Augustus said.

Major Featherstonhaugh and Lieutenant Dikuss both looked in the direction Augustus was pointing but they could see nothing, just high clouds and wavery horizon. The Major could think of very little besides how much he desired to wash. He was sixty-one years old and never, in his more than three decades of soldiering, had he felt as thoroughly soiled as he felt at the moment.

During the weathery night the blowing sand had worked its way into his skin to a depth no dust had ever been allowed to penetrate before. Besides that, his canteen was empty; he could not even wet his kerchief and wipe the dust off his face; his lips were so cracked from the dryness that he would have been hard put to eat even if they had more palatable food; all day the men talked of game, but they saw no game. The Major had once been offered a favorable position in a dry goods firm in Baltimore, but had turned it down out of a distaste for the frivolity of town life. As he stared at the Texas plain, dirt under his collar, incapable of seeing the rider that Captain McCrae could not only see but identify, the Major could not help wondering if he had been wise to turn down that position in the dry goods firm. After all, he could have resided outside of Baltimore and ridden in a buggy--if nothing else there would have been plenty of fine, meltable snow.

"How can you tell who it is?" Lieutenant Dikuss asked. He had finally been able to detect motion in the sage flats to the north, but he could not even tell that the motion was made by a human on a horse. Yet Augustus McCrae could see the horse and even identify the rider.

"Why, I know Charlie," Augustus said.

"I know how he rides. He comes along kind of determined. He don't look fast, but the next thing you know he's there." Events soon bore out Augustus's point-- the next thing the troop knew, Goodnight was there.