Streets Of Laredo

When the man in the lead was about four hundred yards away, Joey looked through the spyglass and shot. He aimed for the neck, but the man was running downhill and his aim was a little high. The bullet blew the man's face off. Joey rode over later to inspect the body, and most of the man's face was gone.

The sixth man ran for his life. He sped along the river so fast that it annoyed Joey.

Joey loped away, on the black gelding, letting the man see him, letting him think that he had abandoned the hunt. The man slowed to a trot, and then to a walk. Joey loped down the river, until he was well in front of the man. He was satisfied with his rifle; now he wanted to try his new pistols, and at close range.

The man from the train finally stumbled out of a gully, not thirty yards from where Joey sat on the black horse. The man was terrified. He began to plead, and name the saints.

Hearing the saints named only angered Joey.

A priest in the village had the habit of twisting his ear cruelly, while talking to him about the saints. Joey began to shoot at the weeping, pleading man, but, to his annoyance, shooting a pistol proved far more difficult than shooting his fine rifle. He emptied the two pistols, twelve shots, and did no more than nick the man's arm. Joey threw the pistols away, disgusted. They were poor weapons. He was not ready to admit that his aim was bad.

Joey rode to a little rise, overlooking the river. When the man was about seventy yards away, Joey took out the great rifle and shot the man twice, aiming for his knees. He did not mean to cut the man's arms and legs off, as he had Benito's, but he did mean to cripple him. The man's knees were shattered, and he writhed on the ground, screaming. When he passed out, Joey rode close to look at him. His legs were leaking a pool of blood. Probably the man would bleed to death, as Benito had. Benito had made his mother whore like a beast, on all fours. Joey had seen them in the bed, many times, in the early morning. Benito would be behind his mother, prodding her as bulls prodded, or dogs. That was why Joey followed him, roped him, and cut off his hands and feet with the machete, so that he would not prod his mother on all fours again.

The railroad man was not so guilty, but he looked a little like Benito, which was his misfortune.

His mother didn't even know that Joey had seen her, in her shame, or that he had followed Benito and killed him.

Later, in a cooler mood, Joey went back and got his pistols. He shot the bleeding railroad man at close range, ten yards away. Then he rode back to the train. He had never been on a train, and was curious about it. The men he had killed must have some possessions. There might be things he would want, among their baggage.

What he found far exceeded his expectations.

Three of the men had Winchesters, fairly new.

Winchesters he could sell.

Besides the rifles he found two watches, a nice knife, a razor with ivory sides, a little shaving brush, and some soap that smelled like the soap a woman might use. The soap surprised Joey. The men were just men, not clean, not neat. He wondered which one had used the fancy soap.

He also found three hundred Yankee dollars, in gold. Finding the money stunned him.

Three hundred dollars was more than all the people in the village of Ojinaga had, put together. It was more money than he had ever expected to see. And yet this was just a poor train, carrying a few hundred sheep.

If such a train yielded several guns, the knife, the razor, the watches, the nice-smelling soap, and the three hundred dollars, what would he find if he robbed a train with many people on it? What if he robbed a train with rich gringos on it? What would they have?

Joey had only killed the men to try out his new rifle. He had not been particularly interested in robbing the train. But now that he had robbed it, he began to think it might be interesting to rob a better train, a train with wealthy people on it, people who would own interesting things.

Once Joey had combed through the men's effects again--he had missed two coins and a nice pocketknife--he prepared to ride away, into Texas. When they discovered the bodies they would expect him to go into Mexico, but they did not think very well, the Texans. He thought he might go to San Antonio and buy things with his new money.

As he prepared to ride away, he paused for a moment to consider the sheep. There were several hundred of them stuffed into the hot boxcars. The day was very hot, and the sheep had no water, no food. If he didn't let them out, or if someone didn't find the train, all the sheep would be dead.

Joey thought about letting the sheep out; he could use them for target practice. He could let them graze a few hundred yards away and pick them off with his great gun, pretending they were gringos. But his ammunition was limited. He did not have cartridges to waste on sheep. His brother, Rafael, lived with sheep and goats. He would have brought them into the house, if his mother had permitted it. Rafael, with his curly, dirty hair, looked like a sheep. He sang like a sheep, too. His little songs were like bleats. Teresa defended Rafael fiercely. Once, when Joey was teasing him, she had managed to grab a knife and stick him in the shoulder, through his shirt.

Because Teresa was blind, he had underestimated her.

When he laughed at Rafael, Teresa grabbed the knife and struck at the sound. Joey knocked her down and kicked her, but the damage was done.

She had made a hole in his shirt. It was a new shirt, too, one that he had bargained for in Presidio. It was a shock, to discover that a blind girl could be so quick.

Remembering Rafael and Teresa and his ruined shirt hardened Joey's mind toward the sheep.

He did not let them out. He merely whistled at them a few times, as he loped beside the cars that held them prisoner.

Seven hundred and twelve sheep died in the boxcars. The cars were covered with buzzards when the railroad men found the train. The sky was so black with buzzards that they could be seen for fifty miles. The men from the railroad had to wrap wet blankets around their heads in order to be able to run in and disconnect the cars that held the hundreds of dead and melting sheep. The buzzards were so thick around the sides of the cars that the men had to beat them away with clubs. The couplings of the cars were fouled so badly that some men fainted and some ran away. They could not breathe long enough to work the couplings loose. Finally, they had to be content with taking the engine, and even that was covered with buzzards.

"You know how flies will swarm on meat," Goodnight told Call. Goodnight had been in south Texas at the time and took an interest in the incident.

"Yes, they swarm," Call said.

"I'm told the buzzards swarmed on that train like big flies," Goodnight said. "The Garza boy wasn't known at the time, but it sounds like him, to me. Not too many people would ride off and leave seven hundred sheep to die."

"Seven hundred and twelve," Call said.

"Well, I wasn't there to count, so I don't know why they think they know that," Goodnight said. He was often annoyed by Woodrow Call's pedantry, when it came to matters of that sort.

"I expect the railroad knew beforehand--that's probably how they got the figure," Call said.

"Then I doubt it was accurate," Goodnight said. "I never met a railroad man who could count animals on the hoof, particularly sheep." "Sheep all look alike," Call said.

"That ain't my point," Goodnight said.

"An animal's an animal. The problem is, most people can't count accurately. I never met a railroad man who could count the legs of a three-legged cat." The more Goodnight thought about human incapacity, of which he had witnessed a great deal, the more he warmed to his subject.

"I can't say that it's just railroad men," he said. "People can't count animals. I am one of the few that can." "What's the most you ever counted in one count?" Call asked. The man's irascibility had always put him off slightly, though he knew that he himself had a reputation for being a fair rival to Goodnight, in that area.

"Eleven thousand eight hundred and fourteen cattle," Goodnight said, without hesitation.

"That was four herds. I counted them into a holding pasture in Pueblo, Colorado, the last time I made the trip. It should have been eleven thousand eight hundred and forty-eight. We lost thirty-four head, or rather, Bill Starr did.

I entrusted him with the second herd, which was a mistake. I like Bill, but he was deficient in a sense, and he still is." "Those sheep would have been hell to count, once they burst," Call said.

Goodnight had driven a wagon into Clarendon, to bring back some groceries and a few posthole diggers, and Call, riding a horse that in Goodnight's opinion, was beneath his standards, fell in with him on the return trip.

Joey Garza had just robbed his third train, killing five people, all of them white. But Goodnight was not thinking of the young killer on the border. He was still thinking about human incapacity.

"Do you think a man can acquire sense, or would he have to be born with it?" he asked Call.

"Sense?" Call asked. "Cow sense, or weather sense, or what kind?" "I thought I was asking the questions," Goodnight said. "You're known to be direct--just be direct.

Are you born with sense or do you acquire it, a little at a time?" "I didn't know much when I was twenty," Call replied. "I believe I make better decisions now." "I thought your best decision was to take that herd to Montana," Goodnight said. "It was bold, because the Indians weren't whipped. They got your partner and they might have got you. But it was a good decision, anyway. Montana was there waiting.

It needed someone to come and put a herd in it." Call said nothing. The man was tactless, to bring up Montana. Goodnight and virtually every adult in the West, if they were interested in the cattle trade, knew what a failure his Montana venture had been.

"It might have been smart if I had known how to run a ranch," Call said, finally. "I didn't. Gus was able. He could run pretty much anything. But he died before we got started. The whole venture was a total failure." "I don't see it that way," Goodnight said.

"Well, it wasn't your ranch," Call pointed out.

"No, it wasn't my ranch, but I hate to see you thinking like a banker," Goodnight said.

"From a banker's point of view, all my ventures have been failures, including this one I'm venturing now, this Palo Duro ranch. The lawyers will take it away from me, before I'm dead. Lawyers and bankers are like shit beetles. They'll finally carry off everything I've built up, like they carried off your ranch up above the Yellowstone.

"I would have liked to see the Yellowstone-- I've heard it's mighty fine country, up there," he added. "If I could get around like I used to, I'd ride up to the Yellowstone, just to be able to say I'd seen it." "You ought to go--it is fine country," Call said.

Goodnight rode in silence for several miles. He had to pop his little team of mules hard with the reins to get them to pull the wagon up the bank once they forded Cow Creek.

"I'm no student of the ledger sheets," he said, a little angrily, once they left Cow Creek behind.

Call found Goodnight's way of talking hard to follow. They hadn't been talking of banks or ledger sheets. What did the man mean?

"Bankers live by ledger sheets," Goodnight informed him. "They decide you're a failure if your balance hits zero, or if you can't pay your note. You're a damn fool for thinking like a banker." "I don't think like a banker," Call assured him. "I don't even have a bank account." "It was a bold thing, driving that herd to the Yellowstone," Goodnight said. "You went right through the Sioux and the Cheyenne. It was a bold thing.

You ought not to let the bankers tell you you're a failure because you went broke. I've been broke nine times in my life, and I may be broke again, before I'm through. But I've never been lost, day or night, rain or shine, and I ain't a failure." "I wonder if Roy Bean knows anything about the Garza boy?" Call asked.

"He might," Goodnight said. "He's got a good eye for thieves, that's because he's tight.

Roy Bean would hang a man over a fart, if he didn't like the smell." Call found the conversation tiring. He had only fallen in with Goodnight to be sociable; after all, he was the man's guest. He trotted ahead for a bit, thinking about the seven hundred and twelve dead sheep. He had seen the bones of the Comanche horse herd, the one Colonel MacKenzie had destroyed. But those were just bones, cleaned by the winds and the sun. Seven hundred dead sheep crammed into boxcars was a different story.

"If I was the railroad I expect I'd just burn those boxcars," he said, when he dropped back even with Goodnight.

"Would you accompany me, if I decide to make that trip to the Yellowstone?" Goodnight asked, as they rode up to his barn.

"No, you'll have to find other company, if you go," Call said. "I'd rather be shut of Montana. You can't miss the river, though." "I told you I've never been lost, day or night," Goodnight said. "I can generally locate a river." "I expect so, I don't know why I said it," Call replied. The man was a famous plainsman. Of course he could find the Yellowstone River.

"I am not good at conversation, goodbye," he said, but Goodnight was already unloading the posthole diggers, and didn't answer.

Brookshire knew the minute he walked into the telegraph office in Laredo that there was trouble-- big trouble. No fewer than seven telegrams awaited him, all from Colonel Terry. Two telegrams from Colonel Terry was so unusual that it usually meant war had been declared.

Brookshire had never expected to be unlucky enough to receive seven at one time. And yet it had occurred, in the hot town of Laredo.

"Ain't you gonna open them?" the old telegraph clerk said. His name was Johnny Whitman and he had been a telegraph operator on the border for twenty-nine years.

Never before had he received seven telegrams for one person, only to have that person refuse to open them and share the excitement. Perhaps there was a war. Perhaps troops were on their way from San Antonio with orders to kill all the Mexicans. If that was so, and Johnny Whitman hoped it was, there would be rapid business for a few months.

Brookshire knew the man wanted him to open the telegrams and share the news with him, but he didn't care. Seven telegrams from Colonel Terry could only mean one thing. The Garza boy had struck again, before Captain Call could do his job.

If that was the case, then at least one of the telegrams might be informing him that he was fired.

In that event, he wouldn't have to worry about Colonel Terry's fiery temper anymore, but he would certainly have to worry about Katie's.

She did not like change, Katie. He had a job and she expected him to keep it. News that he was fired would undoubtedly cause her temper to flare up.

It had been nippy in Amarillo. Winter was supposed to be nippy, and Brookshire hadn't minded. Then in San Antonio, which was still in the same state, it had been hot, mighty hot.

He didn't suppose it could get any hotter than it had been in San Antonio, but after a few hours in Laredo, he was forced to admit an error. Laredo, which was in the same state, was hotter still.

Their arrival in Laredo had been unpleasant on other grounds, too. Bolivar had begun to cry and wail. When they crossed the river into Nuevo Laredo, Bolivar knew that the Captain was about to leave him.

"No, capit@an, no!" he pleaded. "I want to go. I can ride and shoot." "Yes, and you have shot," Call reminded him.

"You shot our best mule, and for no reason." Bolivar had a vague memory of shooting a mule. He had shot it in the stomach with a big gun. Now, though, he couldn't remember why.

Perhaps the mule had tried to bite him; mules were known to bite.

"I thought I was shooting the devil," Bolivar said, in hopes of convincing the Captain that shooting the mule had been an act prompted by forces stronger than himself.

"No, you thought it was an Indian," Call said. "You have to stay here, Bol--you might get hurt if I take you. I'll be back for you when I head home." Soon he was handing money to a small, tired-looking Mexican woman who was not unlike the woman he had given money to in San Antonio. Brookshire decided the old man must have been a superlative cook, for the Captain to keep supporting him all these years.

Bolivar didn't appreciate the fact that the Captain had another decent family to place him with, though. He wanted to ride the river with the Captain, to ride and shoot, kill or be killed. At the thought that he would have to stay with the woman and the children again, he began to weep, and he was still weeping when the Captain and Brookshire rode off.

"Be quiet, you're old, you need to rest," Juanita said. She was not happy to see the old man. He caused many problems. But she needed the money. He was not a bad old man; just noisy, and sometimes a little violent to himself.

Brookshire stumbled out of the telegraph office, pale with shock, and took the seven telegrams to Captain Call, who was talking with the local sheriff, a young man named Jekyll, who sported a walrus mustache. Call was trying to find out the local gossip about the Garza boy.

To the surprise of both Call and the sheriff, Brookshire simply thrust the seven telegrams into Call's hands.

"Would you read them, please? I'm too worried," he said.

Call led Brookshire a little distance down the road, to a shade tree, before opening the first of the telegrams. He knew Sheriff Jekyll was dead curious about the information they contained, but he preferred to take the cautious, rather than the polite, approach. The less information got spread around, the better.

"Well, it's bad," Call said, when he had read all seven telegrams. "He's done it again, and somebody else has started doing it too." He gave Brookshire the telegrams, and Brookshire read them quickly. Three more trains had been struck.

"Three! Three, my God!" Brookshire exclaimed. Even one more train robbery would have been a calamity, but three amounted almost to a world catastrophe. News that an earthquake had leveled New York City could not have been more unwelcome.

"I don't see anything about a second robber --where's that?" Brookshire asked.

"The telegrams don't say it--it's the distances that say it," Call said. "According to this, a train was robbed in Van Horn one afternoon and another in Deming, New Mexico, the next morning. Nobody's swift enough to cover that distance in twelve hours." Call methodically arranged the telegrams in order and read Brookshire the totals: two crew and three passengers killed near Van Horn, little money taken; two crew and two passengers killed near Falfurrias, little money taken; and three crew and four passengers killed near Deming, another military payroll lost.

"O Lord, spare us," Brookshire said.

"That's another payroll lost--the army will be mad, for sure." "It's the passengers the Lord should have spared," Call said. "That's sixteen lives lost, in a little over a week, Mr. Brookshire. I fought Indians for fifteen years on the frontier and I lost six men. This is not a robber we're after, it's a killer--or two killers, it looks like now." "If there's two robbers, or two killers, who's the other one?" Brookshire asked.

"I don't know," Call said.

"Well, one of them's a robber, too," Brookshire said. "He's taken three payrolls and lots of trinkets." "Yes, he takes the money," Call said.

"Or they take the money, because it's there. But the killings worry me more. How many were killed before I took this job?" Brookshire tried to think. Three robberies had occurred before he left New York; another occurred while he was in Chicago. The one with the sheep wasn't on Colonel Terry's railroad, so Brookshire didn't count it, though he supposed he ought to count the dead men. It seemed to him that there had been three or four deaths each time, but he wasn't sure. Six had died on the sheep train, and now there were another sixteen dead. The count was in the thirties somewhere, so there was no denying it was a startling death toll. His regiment had only lost forty men, during the entire Civil War. Of course, his regiment had not been in the thickest of the action; still, the War had been carnage from start to finish and it was a shock to realize that one Mexican boy, in the course of a few months, had taken more lives than his regiment had lost in the War.

"I doubt Wesley Hardin has killed that many people yet," Call said. "And Wesley Hardin is a bad one." Near the livery stable, where Call had encountered Sheriff Jekyll, a large log had been rolled into the shade, to make a sitting place. Two old men with only a few teeth between them were sitting on it, whittling with small pocketknives. Call went over and sat on the log too. He was annoyed with himself for not having taken the casualty figures more seriously, sooner. The numbers had been available, but numbers were usually exaggerated. He had fought several fierce battles, with both Indians and Mexicans, in which no one was killed on either side. Usually there were wounds, but fighting men were not easily killed. In the War, of course, the great engagements had left hundreds or even thousands dead, but frontier fighting was of a different order.

In the worst Indian fight he had engaged in, he had only been able to say positively that two Indians were killed--he buried the two himself.

Call rarely saw a newspaper and had not followed the Garza boy's murdering that closely.

He had assumed that the figures were exaggerated.

Let one or two people get killed in a feud or a ruckus, and as the story went up and down the trail, the figure would swell until it became twenty or thirty. Before the Garza boy showed up, the most notorious outlaw in the West was Billy the Kid, who was said to have killed a man for every year of his life, when he was nineteen. But Dish Boggett, the gifted Hat Creek cowboy who was now selling hardware in Lincoln County, New Mexico, where the troubles occurred, assured Call that the boy had only killed four or five men. Goodnight, who had been in Lincoln County while the range war was going on, agreed with that figure.

If the information in the telegrams was true, Joey Garza had quickly eclipsed Billy the Kid as a killer.

In his conversation with Sheriff Jekyll, Call had asked if anyone knew how the Garza boy got the trains to stop. One man working without a gang, would have to be inventive to stop a train.

"He piles rocks on the tracks," Sheriff Jekyll said. "He ain't lazy. He works in the night, piling up rocks, till he gets a kind of wall." "But a locomotive going full speed could bust through a pile of rocks, surely," Call said.

"Maybe, but the train might derail, and then you'd be in a pickle," the sheriff replied.

"If Joey Garza's after you, you're in a pickle anyway," a lanky deputy named Ted Plunkert observed.

"If it was me, and I was driving the dern train and I seen a pile of rocks and thought Joey Garza had piled it up, I'd pour on the steam," the deputy added.

Sheriff Jekyll looked startled and embarrassed by his deputy's remark. It had never occurred to him that Ted Plunkert would venture an opinion of any kind, in the presence of the great Captain Call. Ted Plunkert had not made a comment of such length and complexity since Jekyll had hired him. What could have prompted him to wag his tongue for five minutes when he, the sheriff, was discussing serious matters with Captain Woodrow Call?

"Ted, you were not consulted," Sheriff Jekyll said bluntly.

"I'll consult him--he's making better sense than you are," Call said, no less bluntly. He didn't like Jekyll's manner, which was fawning yet superior. Many young lawmen took a similar tone with him, nowadays.

Sheriff Jekyll blushed scarlet. Call thought the man might have a seizure, he was so embarrassed.

"Well, the engineer can plow on, if he wants to risk it," the sheriff said.

"It's run or fight, if you're dealing with Joey," Deputy Plunkert said. "I doubt I'd be ashamed to run, if he had the drop on me." "Are you employed steady, or would you consider accompanying me?" Call asked. He liked the deputy's dry manner and matter-of-fact outlook.

"It's steady, but it's warm," the deputy said.

"I wouldn't mind going to higher country, where there might be a breeze once a month or so." "Now, Plunkert, who asked you into this conversation?" Sheriff Jekyll said. He considered it damn unneighborly of the Captain to try and hire his deputy. He didn't much care for Ted Plunkert, but if he left, there would be no one but himself to sweep out the jail.

Call sat on the log, by the toothless old men, and considered the situation.

Survivors of the robberies claimed there was no gang. A single blond Mexican boy, well mounted, showed up and took their finer possessions.

Though some of the passengers were armed, something in the boy's manner kept them from using their arms in their own defense. The lost payrolls had come to almost a million dollars in cash. Dozens of watches and rings and jewels had been taken, and the people killed had not been offering any resistance. The boy stopped trains carrying a score or more passengers, robbed them, killed a few, and left, only to strike again, far away, when it suited him.

In Call's experience, it was unusual for criminals to have such confidence. One reason they ran in packs was because confidence was one quality they seemed to lack. It was also unusual for criminals to have much ability. When they succeeded, it was usually because they had circumstance on their side. It might be that the Garza boy was an exception--a criminal with real ability.

Brookshire was so upset that he could not keep still. He saw Captain Call sitting on the log with the two old men. Obviously, the Captain was thinking matters over. Brookshire tried to allow him his privacy, but it was hard.

Another telegram could arrive from Colonel Terry at any moment, informing them that they were both fired. The Colonel had never been loath to change help.

Brookshire found himself edging a little closer to the log where the Captain sat. If only they could get started, he might feel a little better.

"Ain't we gonna start soon?" he asked.

"Joey Garza could be getting farther and farther away." "That's just a guess, though," Call said.

"He might be headed back down the river toward us, for all we know." "What are we going to do?" Brookshire asked. "The Colonel won't sit still for much more of this." "Nobody's asking him to sit still," Call said. "He can catch the next train and come out here and catch the boy himself, if he's impatient." "Oh, but he won't want to," Brookshire assured him. "The Colonel don't like to leave New York--he's too attached to Miss Cora, for one thing." "Do you still want to go with me?" Call asked. He had taken a liking to Brookshire.

The man was incompetent, and he usually despised incompetence, but for some reason, Brookshire's incompetence made him likable. There was something brave in it. For a man who could neither ride nor shoot, to be willing to travel over some of the roughest stretches of the West in pursuit of a young killer who had already accounted for nearly forty lives, took guts.

"I have to go with you," Brookshire said.

"I've been ordered." "Suppose you didn't have to go, though," Call said. "Suppose you could choose." "But Captain, I can't choose," Brookshire reminded him. "I work for Colonel Terry. I can't choose. I don't think I've ever chosen. I wouldn't know how." Captain Call just looked at him.

Brookshire was so taken aback, by the question and the look, that he didn't know what to say. Why ask him what he would do if he could choose? He had never chosen. He had taken the only job he had been offered, married the only woman who would agree to marriage. He was just a husband and a salaried man. Choice didn't play any part in his life. His choices were made for him, by people who were smarter than he was: Colonel Terry and Katie, to name two. Captain Call was also smarter than he was, Brookshire felt sure. Why had he asked such a question?

Call was wondering if the man would survive.

There was no answer to the question, of course, but it was a matter he always pondered, when he led men into danger. It was also a question he could as well ask of himself. If the years had taught him anything, it was that survival was a matter that could not be predicted with any accuracy. Time and again, on the frontier, men who were well experienced and well equipped rode off one day and got killed.

Gus McCrae, his old partner, was as competent as any man he had ever known, and yet, Gus had ridden off on a kind of frolic, in Montana, and ended up dead. None of the Hat Creek cowboys had been as competent as Gus, or Deets--the black man who had served him so well for so long--yet, Gus and Deets were dead, and some of the least competent--Soupy, for example, or Jasper Fant--were still alive and flourishing. There was no degree of competence that would assure anyone of survival, and no scale that would tell a commander which man would live and which man would die. If you added it all up reasonably, then Brookshire would be the first to fall, if there was a fight; and most people would expect that he himself would be the last. But it might not happen that way. Joey Garza was said to have a fine rifle, with a telescope sight. Several cowboys had turned up dead, on the Pecos ranches, shot while riding alone, far from their headquarters. It might be that Joey Garza was killing people who never saw him, never suspected that he was anywhere near. Instinct, however well honed, could not necessarily warn one that a young killer, hidden behind a rock four hundred yards away, with the sun at his back, was looking through a telescope sight, about to squeeze the trigger.

If Joey Garza happened to see him and Brookshire riding along, which would he shoot first, the Ranger or the dude?

"You can come with me," Call said. "But it's up to you to keep up. I might not be able to stop and help you. You've got to try and keep up." "Captain, I'll keep up--I'm a grown man," Brookshire said, a little insulted.

Call stood up and handed Brookshire the telegrams.

"We need one more man," he said. "I think I'll hire that lanky deputy." "Oh, the tall fellow?" Brookshire asked, surprised.

"Yes," Call said. "You did say I could hire a man to make up for Pea Eye, didn't you?" "Why, yes, provided he's not too expensive," Brookshire said. "How do you know he'll go? He has a job right here in town." "The man looked restless," Call replied.

"I expect he'll come."

Doobie Plunkert cried so hard she ran completely out of breath. She stood in her own kitchen, gasping like a fish, her mouth open, trying to suck in air but mainly pouring out tears. Ted stood behind her, timidly patting her on the back, as if she were a baby who needed to burp.

The timid way Ted patted her was beginning to make Doobie angry. When Ted walked in and announced that he was going to El Paso, or possibly farther, to help some old lawman she had never heard of catch a bandit Ted had no business chasing, Doobie had been stricken to the heart. How could he, when she was already four months pregnant with their baby, a little boy, she hoped!

She planned to name him Edward, after his father, but they would just call him Eddie, and he would be the light of their life.

Doobie had never, in her short married life of almost eight months, supposed that Ted Plunkert would leave her for any reason whatsoever; not leave her overnight, that is. So far, she and Ted had slept together every single night of their marriage. Of course, Doobie understood that accidents might happen; the milk cow might get loose, or one of the horses run away.

In that event, Ted would have to go looking for them, and might not get back just when she wanted to go to bed.

He might even be gone as late as midnight, as he was on the nights when he was required to watch the jail until all the saloons closed and all the drunks and bullies were rounded up.

Not having Ted beside her until around midnight was just one of those things you had to put up with if you married a lawman. Doobie was sixteen years old and married to a deputy sheriff; she expected to do her duty, even when she was lonely and could think of nothing but how happy it would make her if Ted would only get home, take his boots off, take his socks off, take his pants off and his shirt off, and get into bed and hug her tight.

The truth was, Doobie needed a lot of tight hugging. She had grown up poor; her mother had died when she was four, and the aunt and uncle who raised her were too poor and too busy to pay much attention to her. When Ted Plunkert began to pay attention to her, it was like a miracle sent from heaven--like the coming true of the best dream she had ever dreamed. He was just the sweetest man, willing to hold her tight all night long, except maybe for a few nights in July and August, when it was really too hot to hold anyone tight for very long.

Now Ted was leaving, after only eight months with her. It was the end of all her dreams, and she told Ted so, just before she burst into tears and cried so hard she lost her breath.

"Stop, honey. Stop, honey," Ted kept saying as he patted her timidly in various places. "We're just going after Joey Garza, that's all. Soon as the Captain catches up with him I'm coming right back here, to my darling." But neither Ted's words nor his pats had any power to soothe Doobie. Ted was going away. He was going to leave her alone all night; maybe weeks and weeks of nights. It was the end of her happiness, the only true happiness she had ever known, and it was all happening because the old lawman had butted in where he wasn't wanted and persuaded Ted to go with him.

The thing that hurt the most, after the fact that Ted wouldn't be there to hug her tight for many, many nights, was that Ted hadn't even asked if he could go. One of the nicest things about Ted was that in all matters involving their domestic life, he let her be boss. Even before they married, he let her boss, and in fact, even offered formally to let her boss.

"I'm too busy, I've got my deputying," he said. "You look after the rest of it." Ted had kept his word, too. If Doobie wanted to go to church on Sunday, they went; if she didn't, they didn't. If it was a fine day and she felt like wading in the river, Ted went with her, took off his boots, rolled up his pants legs, and waded in the river with her.

Doobie loved it, that she got to be the boss.

During her hard life with her aunt and uncle, she had been more like a slave than a boss. In her marriage, though, Doobie tried very hard to make good decisions about what to cook, or when to clean, or how to doctor Ted when he got an ailment, usually the grippe.

She tried hard, and she had convinced herself that she was doing a good job and that Ted was happy; because she was convinced that she was doing a good job, it hit her all the harder when Ted walked in and announced that he was leaving in an hour. He said it matter-of-factly, as if he were telling her it might rain.

Doobie couldn't grasp it, at first. She thought she must have misheard, or misunderstood, or that she must still be asleep, having the worst dream of her life, instead of the best.

When Doobie had to admit that it was true, that it wasn't a dream or a misunderstanding, she started crying and cried until she ran out of breath. It was a worse shock than her mother's death. When her mother died, she had been young, and her mother had always been sick. There had been so little happiness that it wasn't very different when her mother went. The big difference was that her Aunt Gladys slapped her frequently. Her mother had never slapped her in her entire life.

But it was certain, Doobie knew immediately, that it was going to be a very different life, now that Ted wasn't going to be there to hold her tight, every night.

"Stop patting me on the back!" Doobie said, vehemently, when she started breathing again and could speak. At that point, she still had a little bit of hope that Ted would change his mind. They had a happy marriage, all eight months of it, and Ted probably had no idea that his going away would upset her so. After all, he had no reason to go away and no place to go away to, not until the old lawman showed up.

Doobie had long realized that Ted's way of thinking was different from her own. What she needed to do was let him know how strongly she felt, and make it clear how much she needed him to stay with her. She had been told, by her one good friend, Susanna Slack, that men were a little dumb, in some ways.

Susanna maintained that they didn't understand the first thing about how women felt; mainly, Susanna believed, men didn't even care to try to understand the first thing about how women felt. That had never sounded exactly right to Doobie. Maybe Ted didn't really understand how she felt, but he was willing to let her be the boss of their family life, and that amounted to pretty much the same thing.

Now, though, in her shock and misery, Doobie was forced to consider that Susanna had been right, after all. Ted Plunkert didn't know a thing about how she felt.

"I guess I better go round up some bedding," Ted said, as her tears were subsiding.

"The Captain's in a hurry to get going." "The Captain, who's he?" Doobie said, furious. "He's just some old man I never heard of. I don't see why you think you have to go with him." "Why, it's Captain Call," Ted Plunkert said, shocked. He knew his wife hadn't had the advantage of much schooling--he himself hadn't had much, either--but he had not supposed her ignorance to be so profound that she would never have heard of Captain Call.

"I never heard of Captain Call, I tell you!" Doobie yelled. "I never heard of him! He don't live here, why would I have heard of him?" "Why, it's Captain Call," Ted Plunkert repeated. "Everybody's heard of him. He's the most famous Texas Ranger of all time," Ted said, still shocked. He was a little embarrassed for Doobie. It was almost as bad as if she had told him she had never heard of air, or the moon, or something. He had lived along the border all his life, and along the border, the Captain was about as well known as air, or the moon.

"Well, I ain't heard of him, why do you have to go?" Doobie asked. She was ready to plead and beg, if she had to.

"Doobie, there's no why to it," Ted explained, patiently. "The Captain asked me to ride with him. That's it." "If he asked you, you could have said no," Doobie pointed out, in what she thought was a reasonable, even a calm voice. "He ain't the president. He can't just order you to run off and leave your wife." "Doobie, I swear, he's Captain Call," Ted said again. "You don't just go around saying no to him." Doobie was silent. She didn't want to be angry, but she felt herself getting angry--very angry.

"Besides," Ted added, "it's a big honor to be asked to ride with him. I expect it's about the biggest honor I've ever had in my life, or ever will have." "What if you ain't back when the baby is born?" Doobie asked. "What if you don't never come back? What if you never even see our little Eddie? If you go off and get killed, little Eddie might never even get to have a daddy." "I guess I better round up that bedding," Ted said, trying to be patient. In fact, he was becoming a little exasperated. His private belief was that Doobie had temporarily lost her mind.

Instead of feeling honored that Captain Woodrow Call, the most famous Texas Ranger of all time, had singled him out from all the men in Laredo and asked him to go up the river with him, all Doobie could do was cry and complain. After all, the great man could have asked Bob Jekyll to go with him. Bob was the sheriff, and had a better claim to such an honor. But Captain Call had walked around Bob Jekyll and had chosen him. It ought to have been the proudest moment of their marriage, and yet, all Doobie could do was bawl like a heifer.

Of course, he loved Doobie. No man could ask for a better little wife. Her biscuits were first-rate, and she could even repair boots, if the holes in the boots weren't too big.

Ted sincerely hoped she would soon get over being out of her mind. She had no business suggesting that he might have turned down Captain Call's offer. Of course he couldn't refuse Woodrow Call, just because Doobie chose to bawl like a heifer for an hour. It was very inconsiderate of her, Ted thought. After all, he did have to gather up his bedding, and could have used some help. He didn't get any help, though. Almost an hour had passed, and he had to rush. One consequence of the rushing was that he forgot his slicker, an oversight that was to cause him much misery, on the trail.

Doobie Plunkert stood at the back door of their little house and watched hopelessly as Ted and the old Captain and the fat little Yankee rode away. She felt her heart breaking; she didn't think she would be able to endure the ache.

If Ted had just once turned in the saddle and waved at her, it would have made the ache a little easier to bear. Even when he was just walking down the street to do his deputying, Ted would sometimes turn and wave at her. The fact was, she loved him so much that she could miss him acutely, even when he was just down the street. Often, she had an urge to run visit him at the jail, just to see if he still looked the same, or if his smile was as sweet. But Doobie could never indulge herself when she had this longing. Sheriff Jekyll had made it plain, the one time she stuck her nose in the door, that it was the last time he expected to see her at the jail. He lectured Ted so severely about his wife's behavior that Ted told her that evening never to go near the jail again.

"There's rules," he told her that night.

He was gentle about it, but Doobie's feelings were still a little hurt. All she had wanted to do was peek at her husband, to be sure he looked the same.

Now, watching him ride north along the river with two strangers, one of whom, in her view, was no more than an old killer, Doobie cried again. She cried until she was cried out. She felt sure that little Eddie was crying too, inside her. There were rules, just as Ted had warned her, and the main one seemed to be that men could leave when they chose to. They could close doors to jails and other places, when they wanted to, and not wave when they left their wives to go off on manhunts.

They could do any and all of those things, and worse, for all she knew.

All the same, though she didn't like the rules, Doobie really wanted Ted to come back. That night, without him to hold her tight, she had many dreams, and tossed and turned, but the best dream she had was that the bandit they were after, Joey Garza, came riding into Laredo to surrender, so that Ted and the Ranger and the Yankee didn't have to go at all.

Doobie's dream was so vivid that she could even smell her husband, Ted Plunkert. He smelled of saddle soap. Only that morning he had taken it into his head to saddle-soap his old saddle. It gave off a good smell, saddle soap. Smelling it in her dream made Doobie remember what a good man Ted was, and how kind he had always been to her.

The best part of the dream, though, was that Ted not only smelled of saddle soap; Ted was there.

He snuck into the bedroom, as he always did when he came in late; he took off his boots, took off his pants, took off his shirt, and climbed into bed to hold her tight, as she always hoped he would, not just for one night but throughout her whole life. Doobie tried to stay in her dream, to hide in it, but she grew more and more restless; she began to have moments of wakefulness, began to suspect that her dream was just a dream.

She tried to fight off waking up, to burrow deeper into the dream, but it didn't work.

Despite herself, she woke, opened her eyes, and knew the worst, immediately. Ted Plunkert wasn't there.

He wasn't there, just wasn't there. One day, when she had no reason to expect trouble, or even to be the tiniest bit worried, her life with Ted Plunkert had ended.

"No it ain't, honey. He's just gone on a job," her friend Susanna, told her a little later that morning. Doobie had been so upset that she had run down the street, barefoot and sobbing, and flung herself into Susanna's arms.

"He'll never come back. He'll never come back, I know it," Doobie kept saying, between fits of racking sobs.

"He'll come back," Susanna said.

"He'll come back, Doobie." In fact, she wasn't so sure. She couldn't really say it with much conviction, because only the year before, her husband, John Slack, by consent one of the best cowboys to be found anywhere near the Rio Grande, had ridden out one morning to brand a few calves--work he had done hundreds of times in the twelve years of their marriage--and had never come back, not alive, that is. A calf he had just roped turned directly under his horse while the horse was in a dead run. The horse's front legs buckled, and he fell in such a way that it drove John Slack's head straight into the ground, breaking his neck. He died instantly, and since then, Susanna had been a widow.

At least you've got his child, Susanna thought wi/lly, as she held her sobbing friend. She and John had hoped for a child, hoped year after year; but no child came, and now she had nothing of John Slack except a few notes he had written her while they were courting, and of course, her memories, memories of being married to the best cowboy in the Rio Grande Valley. They had once hoped to have a ranch, as well as a child, but now John was dead, and Susanna had neither. She had been forced to move to town and take a job clerking in the general store, to support herself.

Doobie would not be comforted. Remembering her own loss made Susanna a poor comforter, anyway. Soon, she was crying, too.

"He won't come back, he'll never come back," Doobie said, again and again. She had never been so convinced of anything as she was that her husband, Ted Plunkert, was gone for good. Little Eddie would never know his father. She would never again have a husband, to hold her tight in the night.

"I was going to give him a new saddle," Doobie said, hopelessly, to Susanna.

Indeed, she had been skimping and saving for just that purpose. She had paid down the immense sum of eight dollars to old Jesus, the local saddlemaker. She had discussed Ted's new saddle with Jesus in great detail. Doobie had even begun to take in sewing, to pay for the saddle. Old Jesus had promised it to her by the spring.

Doobie's dream was that someday Sheriff Jekyll would move away and Ted would be sheriff of Laredo. She thought Ted would be a wonderful sheriff; maybe little Eddie could be his deputy, when he grew up. She wanted Ted to have a saddle worthy of the sheriff of Laredo.

Now that little dream was lost, too. Jesus had already started on the saddle. Maybe the best thing she could do would be to let him finish it. It could be little Eddie's saddle, one day.

"I hate that old man Call," Doobie said. She felt weak from crying so much and so hard, but not too weak to hate what she hated. She had only seen the old man from a distance; the Yankee, too; but she hated them both. They had ridden in and taken her Ted. She hoped they were both killed, and that the buzzards ate their guts.

"Who does he think he is anyway, just to come here and take people, like that?" she asked Susanna.

Susanna was ten years older than Doobie.

She had heard many stories about Captain Call, for the cowboys were always talking about him. But it had mainly just been men talking. She had not paid much attention. Doobie coming in so upset had upset her, too, and now it was almost time for her to go to work.

"I think he was an Indian fighter," Susanna said.

"I wish the Indians had killed him, then," Doobie said bitterly.

"Don't think about it," Susanna advised.

She soon had to leave for her job in the store.

Doobie walked back home barefoot, not caring how she looked, not caring about anything. She wished an Indian would ride into town and kill her. It would be easier than suffering. But then, she remembered that she had to stay alive so that little Eddie could be born. It seemed hard, but she would have to do it. She would have to do it without Ted, too. Yesterday, he had been there; today he was gone, and he would not be back. Ted was not very tough. Doobie knew that. He would not be very hard to kill. Somebody would kill him--this Joey Garza, or someone else. She knew it in her bones.

Doobie walked on home and hid in her bed all day, wondering who would be the one to bring her the news, and how long it would be before it came.

As a girl of ten, Maria had been given a crippled pony--not a true pony, but a small, spotted horse that had injured itself badly on some barbed wire strung by the men who owned the big ranch across the river. The men had been careless with their wire, and the little horse had become entangled in a coil and had cut one foot so badly that everyone thought it would lose its hoof. The villagers in Ojinaga were hoping that old Ramon, who owned the horse, would kill it and make horsemeat jerky.

That was what the people of Ojinaga wanted, but that was not what Ramon wanted. Ramon, though already an old man, wanted Maria, who was only ten.

Ramon had a wife named Carmila, a quarrelsome woman liked by no one, but liked least by Ramon, who'd endured her angry eyes and acid tongue for thirty years. Now Carmila was sick; it was thought she had a tumor in her womb.

As the tumor grew, Carmila became even more angry and spiteful, and refused to be with Ramon. She told him she thought he had put the tumor in her womb out of spite because she would bear him no more children. She had already borne him thirteen.

Denied relations with his wife, Ramon's thoughts turned more and more to Maria, whose breasts were already budding. One day, noticing that Maria came every day to pet the crippled horse, the horse he had been thinking of making into jerky, Ramon impulsively gave it to Maria. He was not just being generous; he was preparing the way for a serious courtship. As soon as Carmila died, he meant to go to Tomas, Maria's father, and ask for her hand.

That plan failed, because Tomas and his oldest son and son-in-law got caught in Texas with twenty stolen horses. A Ranger troop led by Captain Call and Captain McCrae caught the men, and they were hung within an hour of their capture. Ramon considered, and decided not to take back the horse, which could walk fairly well, and even trot, although it had only three good legs.

When the news came that her father and brother were dead, Maria took her horse, whom she called Three Legs, and walked far down the river, farther than she had ever gone before. She never rode Three Legs, but she loved him more than anything else in her life. Every day, she made a poultice for his wounded hoof, hoping it would heal.

But a tendon had been severed when Three Legs got caught in the wire; with the tendon cut, the leg could not heal.

During her time on the river, mourning for her father, Maria ate mesquite beans, and nibbled carefully at prickly pear apples. Once or twice she was able to scoop a little fish out of the water. The fish she ate raw. Once she caught a small turtle, meaning to eat it, but instead, she kept it for a few days and let it go.

During the day, she walked with Three Legs, as he foraged. During the worst of the heat, she found shade. Often she looked across the river, at the hated place called Texas, where men killed other men over a few horses. She wanted to kill all the men who had hung her father and brother. She did not suppose it would ever be in her power to kill them, but she vowed to do it if she could.

At night, she looked at the bright stars, sleeping little, listening to the river. She did not understand rivers. Where did so much water come from?

She wondered if the river began in the sky, where the rain lived. On some days she didn't eat at all, though always, she drank the cold water of the river.

Ramon was furious with Maria, for going away with the horse he had given her. He wanted to find her and beat her, but in the end, he was too lazy to go look for her. It didn't bother Ramon that Tomas and his boy had been hung. They were sloppy thieves, and it was no surprise to him that the Rangers had caught them and hung them. They had known the danger before they crossed the border.

Horse thieves had to hang. That was the law on either side of the river.

It angered Ramon that a girl of ten would take it upon herself to leave, without asking anyone, andwitha horse he had given her. Carmila, his wife, was dying--she might go any day now. Her stomach was blue and swollen. She could not keep food down. All Ramon could think about, during Maria's absence, were her little budding breasts. He wanted to touch fresh young breasts, not the tired sacks that Carmila had.

Finally, Maria walked back to the village.

The mesquite beans were gone, and she was hungry.

Two days after Maria's return, Ramon caught her in the cornfield. She was feeding Three Legs corn from her hand. Maria greeted Ramon with a friendly smile, but one look at his face told her that Ramon was not in a friendly mood. She knew little about men and women. She was shocked when Ramon simply shoved her down in the cornfield and began to pull at her clothes.

She screamed, and Ramon hit her; she screamed again and he hit her again. Maria thought he had gone berserk when he tried to pry her legs apart. No one in the village came. Maria was weak from her fast, and Ramon was strong. Also, Maria was so shocked at the change in Ramon, who had been her neighbor all her life, that she did not know what to do. She thought his wife's illness must have driven him insane. He was acting like a crazy man. His face was twisted, he bared his teeth, and he was ready to hit her again if she tried to scream.

Maria gave up. Her life had become nothing but pain. She was surprised by Ramon's pleasure, which soon dripped out of her, along with her own blood. While he still held her down, Ramon told Maria that he wanted her to live with him now. Carmila would soon be dead. As soon as she died, he would marry Maria. Even as he crushed her into the dirt, Ramon was eager to let Maria know that his intentions were good.

Maria was almost more shocked by what Ramon told her than by what he had done to her. She did not want to marry Ramon, or anyone. What had happened in the cornfield frightened her and hurt her, but it also taught her something. It taught her what men really wanted of women.

What they really wanted was what Ramon had just taken from her.

Carmila died the next day. Two days after her funeral, Maria's mother, Silvana, told Maria that Ramon had asked to marry her.

Silvana thought Maria should do it. Ramon had money--not much, but more than they had. Maria had two younger brothers and a little sister. They were mouths that Silvana had to struggle hard to feed. She did not think much of Ramon, but he was no worse than most men. If Maria married him he might be kind to her family, to Silvana and the little ones.

Again, Maria was shocked. She knew that her mother was tired. Silvana had worked hard all her life, she had lost a husband and a grown son.

She had given up. Maria knew what it was to give up, for she had given up in the cornfield, given up because she was afraid a crazy old man might kill her.

Still, Maria had no intention of marrying Ramon, or anyone.

"He is a bad man," Maria told her mother. "He did a bad thing to me." She had not meant to tell about the bad thing, but she could not hold back.

Silvana was saddened by this news. It confirmed a fear that she had had for two years: Ramon was not to be trusted around Maria. Silvana cried, but not for long. It was only one more sorrow, heaped on many others, so many that Silvana could not cry long for any of them.

"He is not as bad as some men," Silvana pointed out.

"He is a bad man, he bit me!" Maria said. She showed her mother a mark on her shoulder, a mark Ramon had put there with his teeth.

"He is not even as bad as your father," Silvana said. "Your father did worse things.

Marry Ramon, Maria. It will help us eat." But Maria wouldn't, not even if they all starved.

Silvana had to tell Ramon that Maria had refused. She was a stubborn girl, stubborn enough to deny her mother's wish.

Ramon did not take this news well. He cursed Silvana, and he told her he did not think she had asked Maria. He was only seventy-two, and he had given the girl a horse; crippled, it was true, but still a horse. How many men in Ojinaga were wealthy enough to give a ten-year-old girl a horse?

After that, Ramon watched Maria constantly.

He became obsessed with her. Sometimes he even crawled up to her window at night, hoping to see her undress. He watched the cornfield, meaning to catch her again and repeat what he had done. Soon, he was convinced, Maria would accept him. She was not experienced. If she would consent, or if he could catch her, she would realize that he was a good man. Soon she would welcome his attentions, he was convinced of it.

But while Ramon was watching Maria, Maria also watched him. She would not be caught again, as she had been caught when she thought Ramon was her friend.

Now she knew what he was, and he was not her friend. Perhaps no men would be her friends, not if they went crazy, as Ramon had, every time they wanted to go between her legs. Not if all they wanted was to make her serve their pleasure. She was determined that Ramon, for one, would never have that pleasure with her again. Her dead brother had left an old machete behind when he went to Texas on the raid that led to his death. The machete was dull, but Maria carefully sharpened it on the grindstone until its blade was as keen as a razor. She began to wear the machete in its scabbard over her shoulder. Whenever she led Three Legs into the cornfield in search of fodder, she carried the machete in one hand.

One day, when Silvana had gone to the river to wash clothes, Ramon snuck into her house, hoping to take Maria by surprise. Instead, he found her just inside the door, in the dim kitchen, her machete gripped in both hands.

Ramon cursed her bitterly, then. But he didn't challenge her knife. He was too slow, and his eyesight was not good. Maria might cut him badly before he subdued her; he might bleed to death, or get an infection in the cut.

Many men he knew had died from infections in the cuts they received in fighting. Ramon did not plan to lose his life because a ten-year-old girl cut him with a machete.

That afternoon, when Silvana was back, Ramon came over and offered to buy Maria. He could not get the girl off his mind. He felt that the rest of his life would be a sour thing if he could not have Maria. He wanted her so badly that he offered Silvana two hundred pesos for her.

Two hundred pesos was an unheard-of price for a girl so young and inexperienced.

To Ramon's surprise and chagrin, Silvana countered by offering herself, in Maria's stead.

"She doesn't want you," Silvana said.

"She won't marry you. Take me. I am your neighbor and I need a husband." Ramon was outraged. He wanted the girl, not the mother.

"You are too old," he said. "Almost as old as Carmila. Sell me the girl." "She won't go with you. She'll cut you when you're asleep," Silvana said. "Tomas's mother was part Apache. Maria is like her. They are not afraid to cut men." "I didn't know Tomas's mother," Ramon said, a little daunted. He did not like Apaches.

But he still wanted Maria, and he said so.

"No, she won't marry you," Silvana repeated. "Take me. I am not so old." Silvana had not expected to offer herself to a man who wanted her daughter, but then, she had not expected many things that had happened in her life.

This was just one more surprise, and it would help her feed her children.

Ramon spat, and turned away in disgust.

He did not want any more old women.

The next morning, a gunshot woke Maria.

Fear went through her heart. She ran outside with the machete, but she was too late. Ramon had shot Three Legs. He didn't make him into jerky, though. He just led him out beyond the cornfield and shot him.

Maria cried until she couldn't cry anymore. When her mother came to comfort her, she stopped crying and became like a stone. It was another lesson about men: they wanted only one thing, and they were vengeful if they didn't get it, or enough of it. Later, she was to learn that if someone else got what they wanted, they were even more vengeful.

A few weeks later, Ramon changed his mind and took Silvana. He had begun to be a little bit afraid of the girl; after all, she was part Apache. She might cut him in his sleep.

Whenever he looked at her, he saw hatred in her eyes, black hatred. He began to avoid her, especially to avoid her hating eyes. Her hatred was too black. She might be a witch.

He began to be fearful that Maria would sneak in and cut him in his own house. She was only a filthy Indian. He had been a fool to want her.

Silvana was not so old, after all. She did not smell bad, as Carmila had. She was a decent Mexican woman, and she had something of the beauty her daughter had. Ramon didn't want to marry her, but he took her into his house. Her brats had to stay in her house, though. He gave her a little money for their food, but he didn't want them underfoot.

Silvana's younger children, the two boys and the little girl, stayed with Maria in Silvana's house.

Maria became their mother. They saw little of Silvana, once she became Ramon's woman, although his house was only a few steps away.

Maria forgave her mother. She knew that Silvana was only tired. She had accepted Ramon because her spirit was weary and dying. Only a woman whose spirit was dying would submit to a man like Ramon.

When Ramon killed Three Legs, Maria felt that her spirit might die, too. She had loved her horse more than anything. But her spirit didn't die. Her hatred kept it alive, hatred of Ramon, and for a time, hatred of all men. They were creatures of violence, brutes.

Maria planned to live alone. She would raise her brothers and sister, but she did not plan to live with a man, as other women did. The only way a man would have her was if he was quicker and stronger and took her, as Ramon had.

Silvana gave Ramon two more children. Much of the time, they lived with Maria and the other little ones.

Maria felt sorry for her mother, because her spirit was so damaged. She helped her mother as much as she could.

But she never turned her back on Ramon.

All she gave him was the hatred in her eyes.

In time, Ramon came to fear Maria as he feared his own death.

In the matter of men, though, Maria was wrong.

She never expected to be with one willingly. But the years passed, and then Carlos Garza rode into town. He was then a vaquero who worked in the south. She saw him looking at her, and when he spoke to her in his soft voice, she felt a change inside her. A few days later, she went with Carlos willingly and even eagerly.

Only later was Maria to learn that Carlos's soft voice belied his jealous nature. Soon after she went with him the first time, Carlos gave her a horse, a little white gelding who was too slow for cattle work. Maria named her little horse Chapo, because he was so short.

The day after Carlos gave Maria the horse, the two of them rode together, far down the river, past the place where Maria had gone to mourn her father. They entered a canyon whose great cliffs rose over the never. Carlos Garza looked especially beautiful to her that day. She was eager for him, more eager than she had ever been before.

In the time of their ride, Joey was conceived.

After Carlos gave her Chapo, Maria was never without a horse. Maria traded work for corn, in order to feed her boy and her horse.

Joey was six when Juan Castro sold him to the Apaches. He was gone two years. Maria had begun to give up before her son came back, and once he did return, she found she had to give up again, though in a different way. Juan Castro had traded away a good boy, a child she loved, but the boy who came back was not even a child she knew. No one knew Joey Garza. He was the most beautiful boy in the village; the girls looked at him, and hoped.

But they hoped in vain. It was to be that anyone who invested hope in Joey Garza hoped in vain. From the time he was ten, he often left the village, to be gone for a month or more. Maria wondered if he went back to the Apaches, if the Indian ways were stronger than her ways. Once she asked him if he went to the Apaches. Joey merely looked at her, smiling.

"Why do you care?" he asked.

"You're my son," she said. "Can't I be curious? I wonder about you." "I don't go to the Apaches," Joey said.

"If I ever go to the Apaches again, it will be to kill the ones who beat me." Later, by accident, Maria found out the truth.

Joey went down the river, as far down as Laredo, and he went to steal. He was a thief, and a gifted one. Olin Roy told her about Joey's thieving. Olin said that Joey had found a cave, somewhere in the mountains north of Boquillas.

Olin had glimpsed Joey once, at dusk, on the Mexican side of the river. Joey had been carrying a fine saddle, with silver trappings; the silver shone in the late light. Olin knew the saddle was stolen, because only two nights earlier he had stayed at the home of the hidalgo Joey stole it from. The old man thought an Indian had taken it, because there were no horse tracks leading to or from his ranch. There were no tracks at all.

It was a long way from the hidalgo's ranch to the mountains near Boquillas. And yet Joey was there, by the river, carrying the saddle. It was a thing an Apache could do. Apaches had little use for horses. They walked, and they left no tracks.

Olin Roy camped near the river that night, meaning to see if he could find Joey the next day. But Olin didn't find him. There were many caves in the high, limy cliffs, and the mountains rolled back for many miles into Texas, where the river made its great bend. Cougars lived in the caves, cougars and even a few grizzly bears.

Olin told Billy Williams what he had seen, and Billy told many others. Soon a legend was born, the legend of Joey Garza's cave. It was said that Joey was filling a cave with things he had stolen: rifles, fine spurs, fancy bridles, ivory combs and jewels, stolen from the bedrooms of rich ranchers on both sides of the river. The river was no boundary to Joey. He crossed it as he would cross any stream.

Olin told Maria what he had seen. He loved Maria, and knew that she worried about her son. He also knew that things had not been good between mother and son since Joey returned from the Apaches.

"When he left here he was on a horse, a sorrel he got from Ramon's son," Maria said, in response to Olin's news. "When he came back, he was walking. He leaves on horseback--he returns on foot. Or he leaves on foot and returns with a horse.

He's a boy I don't understand." "Maybe Joey eats the horses. Apaches do, you know," Olin said, when he was discussing the matter with Billy Williams. "It's a long way from Ojinaga to Laredo, but Joey steals from Laredo like it was a candy store." "If he steals horses, then it's better that he eats them," Billy said. He had always liked Joey. He thought he was a good boy, but strange. Being strange was not something he could hold against anyone; after all, he himself was strange.

"Life makes everybody strange, if you keep living long enough," Billy told Maria, once.

Maria disagreed. "I am not strange," she said. "I could be a happy woman, if I had a little help." "Well, I'll help you," Billy said "You name it, I'll do it." "If you really wanted to help me, I wouldn't have to name it," Maria said. "You'd be doing it right now." She smiled when she said it, though.

Billy Williams felt disquieted. They had just eaten a good meal, cabrito and frijoles. What could it be that Maria wanted help with? He considered asking, but in the end, he didn't. He got drunk instead.

Maria had almost no money. She worked as a midwife for food, for herself and Rafael and Teresa. Her two brothers had run away to Texas, and her little sister had died one winter; she got a sickness in her chest and died within a week. Maria had to work hard to see that there was enough food for Rafael and Teresa. When Joey returned from his journeys, he always had money.

He wore it in a belt that went across his shoulders, like the belt of the machete she had once carried to defend herself against Ramon.

It angered Maria that her son would not share his money, not even the few pesos it would have taken, every week, to keep his family in food. Besides her midwifing, Maria did washing and cleaning, so as to be able to give corn and frijoles to her children.

Joey liked for his mother to wash his clothes, because she did it well. When she did them, they were clean and soft. Joey took the soft, clean clothes as his due. He never offered to pay for the food he ate, and he took no notice of his brother and sister at all, unless he was in the mood to torment one of them.

One day when Maria was tired and angry--an old man she cooked for had tried to poke his bony hand between her legs, and when she shoved him away, he spat at her--she challenged Joey about the cave.

"I hear you have a cave full of treasures near Boquillas," she said. "Is that true?" Joey looked at her insolently, as he always did when questioned. Who was this woman to ask questions of him? She was a woman who had whored with four men. Perhaps there had been even more.

"Where do you go, when you go?" Maria asked, when Joey said nothing. She felt like slapping him, maybe punching him with her fist. Rafael and Teresa, her damaged children, loved her. Even Rafael would come to her bed and try to speak to her, to express his little hopes. If he had a new chick, he would bring it to his mother and offer it to her as a present, cupping it tenderly in his large hands. Teresa would come to her bed to cuddle with her every morning. If Maria was sad, if tears leaked from her eyes, Teresa would whisper to her and wipe the tears away.

"Don't worry, Mama," Teresa said.

"I am here. Rafael is here. We will take care of you." It made Maria angry that her children who had no gifts--one who could not see, the other who could not reason--would help her with their love; while Joey, the brilliant one, the one whose mind was quick as a young deer, whose eyes were blue, whose teeth were so white that girls and even grown women melted at his smile--Joey gave nothing, not even little scraps of information. Maria did not really much want his money; what she wanted was his help.

"Someone saw you near Boquillas," Maria said. "Near the cave where you keep the treasures." "I don't have a cave," Joey said. "I go to Piedras Negras, not Boquillas. There is nothing in Boquillas." Maria thought of following Joey to his cave.

She didn't believe him when he said he didn't have one. She didn't want his money for herself, she wanted it for her children. She had heard that in the City of Mexico, there were doctors who could cure many ills. It was said that there were doctors who could make blind people see. She wanted to take Teresa to such a doctor. It saddened her that her little girl had never seen the beauty of the world.

Also, she had heard that there were doctors who could help people whose minds were incomplete, or whose thoughts could not stay in order. She wanted to take Rafael to such a doctor, so that someday he could think like other people.

Maria wanted to take her children and go and seek the great doctors, in the City of Mexico, but she had no money. Joey had money.

Maria wished he could be generous and give her what she needed, but she knew he never would. Joey was not generous, and not interested in her life or the lives of his brother and sister. He was only interested in himself.

"You help no one," she said to Joey one day, bitter.

"I help myself," Joey said.

"Are you the only one in the world?" Maria asked. "What is wrong with you?" Joey didn't answer. He left, as he always did if she asked questions.

The day Maria rode off to Crow Town to warn Joey that Captain Call, the famous manhunter, had been sent to kill him, Billy Williams sobered up and made food for Maria's children.

As he cooked and set the plates, Billy felt sad. He should have gone with Maria, although he was nearly as blind as Teresa. He would have gone if Maria had asked him, should have gone, even though she hadn't asked. He was too old for places such as Crow Town. Going there might mean his death, but it also might mean Maria's death. He would worry now until the moment he saw her again.

He wondered if Maria had refused him because he was a Texan. After all, her husbands had been Mexican. He didn't know if that had been her reason. Probably he had made some mistake and Maria had turned away from him instead of toward him. He ate his frijoles in sadness; he was old; it was too late. The large boy crooned, the little blind girl chattered. Billy thought it would be enough if Maria could just escape harm, if she could return from Crow Town to her children. His job was to stay sober and take care of her children.

Later, though, when Maria's children were asleep on their little pallets, the power of the lost, never captured love became too much for Billy.

He couldn't bear it, not sober. And he began to get drunk again.

"Now you wish you'd gone, don't you?" Lorena said.

Pea was standing just outside their back door, looking across the plains. It was past time to get the team hitched, to begin the day's work, but he was just standing there, looking across the plains. A norther had blown in around morning, and it was going to be a cold ride to school. But that wasn't what worried Lorena. For nearly a month after sending Call off without him, Pea Eye had worked with a will. But then, his will began to falter. Usually, he was out of bed and at work in the kitchen, getting a fire started or the boys up or making a beginning at breakfast, before she finished feeding Laurie and hauled herself from under the covers. Ten minutes more in bed, to gather her energies for the day, was something Lorena had come to count on, but she was able to count on it only because Pea was so good about getting up and getting started with the early chores.

He still got up and made a start on things, but with only half a will. He made mistakes, put one boy into another boy's clothes, burned the porridge; he seemed to be distracted, or in a daze, or something. Instead of saving her time, he cost her time, all of it spent correcting his mistakes.

The same distractedness stayed with him throughout the day. Clarie complained that he gave hay to the horses, but forgot the milk cow. He went off to work, as he always did, but instead of working from dawn until dark as he had to if the farm was to flourish, he would come home in the middle of the afternoon. Often, she would find him in the barn, when she returned from school. He would have taken a harness to the work bench, meaning to repair it, but then he didn't repair it. He would just hold it, and go into his daze.

Lorena let him be for three weeks. She had days when she didn't concentrate so well, either.

Sometimes, she forgot things too, or did them badly, or just felt lazy. She didn't fret that much about human inconsistence, for she was human, and inconsistent herself.

But after a time, Pea's distractedness began to irritate her. They all had their work; she wanted him to do his, as she did hers. Hard work was the basis of their life. In the past, when Pea had gone off with Call, she and Clarie had worked harder than ever, so they would still have a life and a farm when Pea got back. They did well, too.

They couldn't do all the field work, but otherwise, they kept things going so well that sometimes, it took a week or two to adjust to having Pea back.

None of the stock died, the barn didn't burn down, and the essential things got done.

Picking up the slack when Pea Eye was gone was one thing; having to pick it up when he was there was vexing. Even more vexing was the cause of his distraction: he wished he had gone with Captain Call.

Lorena stepped outside, in the cutting wind, and repeated herself.

"Now you wish you'd gone, don't you?" she said again.

"I wish the Captain hadn't gone," Pea Eye said. "I wish he'd quit." "Quit and do what?" Lorena asked. "He doesn't know how to do anything but kill." "That ain't fair, Lorie," Pea Eye said. If there was one thing he hated to do, it was argue with Lorena, his wife, about Captain Call, his old commander. Yet that was exactly what he was doing, and in a cold wind, too.

"It is true," Lorena said. "Maybe in the days of the Indian troubles there was a need for a man like him." "You know there was. Look what Blue Duck did, and he was just one man," Pea Eye said.

"I don't need to remember what Blue Duck did," Lorena said. "I taught myself to forget it. Clara taught me about forgetting things like that." "Why, he never bothered Clara," Pea Eye said. He, too, tried not to think about the terrible time when Blue Duck, one of the worst outlaws ever to terrorize the plains, had kidnapped Lorena. Gus McCrae had rescued her and she had survived; she had recovered, and become his wife. What had happened with Blue Duck was the kind of thing that happened to people all over the frontier, in those days. He himself had fought over twenty engagements with Indians, and the first one had frightened him the most. It was known to locals as the Battle of the Stone Houses. The Indians fired the grass and stole the Rangers' horses, putting them afoot in territory where it was easily possible to starve. They hadn't starved, but Pea Eye had been a little deaf in his left ear ever since, the result of a terrified Ranger firing his rifle into the smoke, when the smoke was so thick he was unaware that Pea Eye was kneeling only a yard away.

Those had been hard times. Without the Captain's and Gus's leadership, Pea Eye doubted that he would have been alive to try dirt farming on the plains.

Clara Allen, though, lived in Nebraska. So far as he knew, she had never been taken by anyone as bad as Blue Duck.

"Clara has things to forget, too," Lorena insisted. "There's other kinds of bad things besides what happened to me. All three of her boys died. We got three boys. How would we be if all three of them died?" "Oh, Lord, don't even mention it," Pea Eye said. "Let's get back in the house." He felt chastened. Of course, losing children was worse than being half deafened in a fight; the thought of his children dying was not something he even wanted to let his mind approach. Lorie, as usual, was right. Life was hard for women, too, even though they didn't often have to go into battle.

"Clara has more to forget than I do," Lorena said, saddened by her own statement and by the memory of Clara's kindness--and Clara's sadness, which, now that Clara was older and had seen her girls marry, only seemed to sit on her the more heavily, judging from the letters she wrote Lorena. At least Clara loved horses, and had her herd to work with.

"If I was to lose three children, I'd give up," she told her husband. "If I even lost one child, I might give up. But Clara lost all her boys, and she didn't give up. And everything she did for me she did after her grief." "I wasn't saying anything bad about Clara," Pea Eye said. "I guess if it hadn't been for her, we might not have come together, and I wouldn't have none of this. I'm obliged to Clara, and I always will be. I didn't have nothing but the clothes on my back, and she helped me. I ain't the kind of man who forgets the folks that helped him.

"It's just that Captain Call is one of the folks who helped me," he said. "Now he came asking for my help, and I didn't go. I can't not feel that's wrong, even though I know I'd feel wronger if I went." "Not wronger--more wrong," Lorena corrected.

All of a sudden, without her wanting it or even expecting it, tears flooded her eyes, tears of anger and hurt. It would never be finished, the trouble over Call, not while the Captain was alive, it wouldn't.

"Go!" she said, vehemently. "Go! I want you to. I'll never really have you while he's alive, and neither will the children. Go! And if you get killed, good riddance!" Pea Eye looked at her, stunned.

"I don't want to go," he said. "I told you why and I told the Captain why. Since we been married, I ain't really wanted to go." "Haven't really wanted to go!" she corrected him, again. "Haven't!" Pea Eye just looked at her, bewildered.

He saw her tears and her anger, but didn't really understand that she was trying to correct his grammar.

"I didn't go," he pointed out. "I didn't go. I didn't want to, neither. It's just that I feel bad for the Captain. I can't help it." Lorena turned away. It was a subject she was sick of. She didn't speak another word to Pea, before leaving for school. But the sad look in his eyes, when she and the children left, made her feel sorry all day, and as soon as she got home she went down to the barn, where she found him trying to straighten a horseshoe. He was not that good with tools, Pea wasn't. Clarie could often fix things that left Pea Eye at a loss.

But seeing him holding the shoe in his hand--it seemed to Lorena that he was just making it more bent-- touched her. He was not mechanical, or even very competent physically. It was a wonder he had survived, in a place where physical competence was so important. Yet his very lack of skill in areas where most frontiersmen excelled, moved her. It always had. Pea Eye was a man she could do things for, and he would let her do things for him.

He accepted her instruction gratefully, whereas most men she had tried to instruct, in even small, unimportant matters, had usually bristled and become angry; in some cases, even violently angry. But Pea Eye had no violence in him, and he surrendered meekly and tried to pay attention when she or Clarie was trying to show him how to do some simple task.

"I didn't mean that about good riddance if you didn't come back," she said. "I'm sorry I said it. I was just mad." When Lorena apologized to him, which she did almost every time she got mad at him, and she got mad at him fairly often, Pea Eye felt even more unhappy. Lorena oughtn't to be having to apologize. In his eyes, Lorie was never wrong. If they disagreed, he was the one who was wrong. In the matter of the Captain, he had to feel doubly wrong: in relation to Lorena and his family, if he went; in relation to the Captain, if he didn't.

But this time, it seemed, he felt even worse.

The Captain had looked old, when they met by the train. In fact, the Captain was old. He oughtn't to be chasing bandits, at his age. Of course, ordinary bandits, of which there were a great many still running loose in the West, would give the Captain no trouble, even at his age.

It was just that the Garza boy didn't sound like an ordinary bandit. Pea Eye had run into Charles Goodnight while at the blacksmith's in Quitaque, and Goodnight had been startled to see him.

"Thought you went with Call to run down the Garza boy," he said, looking gruff.

"No, my family's got too big," Pea Eye said. Charles Goodnight was a stern fellow, even when he wasn't being gruff. Being even slightly in his disfavor was not comfortable.

"I've got a new little one, and my wife has to teach school," Pea said, though he felt explanation was hopeless. All the good reasons he could muster for not going with the Captain weren't likely to be good reasons to Mr. Goodnight.

He would doubtless view them as the Captain had-- excuses, made by a man who had no stomach for conflict, anymore.

"I don't care to know the details," Goodnight said, looking critically at the hoof of a horse that had just been shod.

"Well, the Captain went away, with the man from the railroad," Pea explained. "That's a young boy he's after. I doubt he'll give the Captain much trouble, the young ones never do." "You're scarce on your facts," Goodnight said, lifting the hoof so high that the horse almost fell over. Goodnight was a big man. Though old, he could still lift most of a horse, if it was necessary.

"What facts?" Pea Eye asked. "We don't hear that much news, out at the farm." "They estimate Joey Garza has killed over thirty men, and that's just the ones who've been found," Goodnight said. "There may be more who haven't been found and never will be found. He shoots a German rifle with a telescope sight. They say he can kill at five hundred yards, which is farther than most people can see. Half the line riders west of the Pecos may be dead, for all we know. Who's going to find a line rider, if he's shot fifty miles from the bunkhouse? Who would even miss one? Line riders don't come back half the time, anyway." Pea had seen rifles with telescope sights. They had been available for many years.

But they were too slow for most of the rangering action, and so he had never fired one. The notion that a man could be killed at five hundred yards, other than by a freak shot such as the famous one Billy Dixon had made during the Adobe Walls fight, was difficult to grasp. Most of the killing he had seen had taken place at distances under thirty yards, and in many cases, under twenty yards. Five hundred yards was about the distance from Lorie's schoolhouse to the Red River. He himself could see a bull, or a buffalo, at that distance, but that didn't mean he could hit it if he shot at it.

"Good Lord, I hadn't heard any of that," he told Goodnight.

"You ought to have gone with your Captain," Goodnight said bluntly. "This is a time when he might need an experienced man." "Well, I swear," Pea Eye said. He felt bad in his stomach, suddenly. Mr.

Goodnight was probably right. He should have gone.

"I guess the Captain will manage," he said, guiltily.

"In my opinion, Woodrow Call is a fool, to be pursuing young killers at his age," Goodnight said. "I'm his age, and I ain't pursuing young killers." Pea Eye was silent. His sense of guilt was swelling within him. He had become sick at his stomach, just from the weight of the old man's displeasure.

"Is he that dangerous, this boy?" Pea asked.

"The whole Comanche nation would take a year to kill thirty men, and that would be in a good year, too," Goodnight replied, looking at Pea Eye solemnly.

Then, as if suddenly weary of his thoughts, or perhaps even of thinking, Goodnight set the gelding's foot down, and mounted him.

"There's always a time when you don't win," he said. "With me, it's lawyers. I've never won against any lawyer, not even the dumb ones. But lawyers just rob you legally. They don't shoot German rifles with telescope sights." Pea Eye had met only two lawyers.

One of them lived in Quanah and had drawn up the deed when he and Lorena bought the farm.

"There's always a trip you don't come back from," Goodnight said. He turned his horse, as if to leave, and then turned back again, stood up in his stirrups, reached in his pocket and found several coins, which he handed to the blacksmith.

"Were you just going to let me ride off without paying you?" he asked the young blacksmith.

"Yes, sir," the blacksmith, Jim Peeples, replied. It would never have occurred to him to ask Charles Goodnight for money.

"Well, that would have been a damn nuisance," Goodnight said. "Then I'd have had to ride the whole way back to pay you. If you want to thrive in business, you better learn to speak up." "Yes, sir," Jim Peeples said, terrified. He had never supposed Charles Goodnight would speak to him at all, much less lecture him. It was a little like being lectured by God, or at least, by the prophet Moses.

Jim Peeples was a Baptist. He read the Bible every night, and much of Sunday, too. He didn't really think he had a clear picture of how God looked, but he did think he could imagine the prophet Moses fairly accurately. In Jim Peeples's opinion, Moses had looked a lot like Charles Goodnight.

Goodnight looked down at Pea Eye. The man had made a remarkable walk, nearly a hundred miles, naked, through the Cheyenne country to find Call and bring him to where his wounded partner, Augustus McCrae, lay dying. It was a great thing, in Goodnight's view, that walk. Not too many men, in his experience, had achieved a great thing, even one. Very few ever achieved more than one, he knew. He had led men himself, many men. Men as faithful as Pea Eye had been to Call had served with him until they fell, and the best of them had fallen. Goodnight was a married man himself, but had no children. He had always wondered what it meant, to have offspring. How would it affect his leadership, his ability to go and keep going, his attitude toward the dangers of the trail? It hadn't happened, but he didn't suppose it would have simplified matters if he had. In a time of danger, he had sometimes thought of his wife, but he always thought of his men. He did not worry too much about his wife. He had never supposed himself to be a very good husband; he had always been too busy. His wife was an able woman, and would probably be happier with someone more settled, if something happened to him. But he had never had to worry about children, and the man who stood before him did have to worry about children.

"I suppose your wife don't like it," he said.

"Don't like what?" Pea Eye asked. He was a little surprised to find himself in such a lengthy discussion with Charles Goodnight, a man known all over the West for his dislike of long conversations.

"You and Call," Goodnight said. "Divided loyalties don't appeal to women, not that I've noticed." "I ain't divided, I'm loyal to them both," Pea Eye replied.

"That would be fine if Call was bunking with you," Goodnight said. "The fact is, he bunks with me, when he bunks, which ain't much. He sure don't bunk with you, though. Now, he's in Mexico, chasing a boy with a German rifle and a dern good eye, if he can shoot people at five hundred yards." Pea Eye didn't know what to say.

Captain Call had been in danger much of his life, but Pea Eye, in the years he had been with him, had never really considered that the Captain might be killed. That was Goodnight's point, though--the Captain might be killed.

"You think Joey Garza could kill the Captain?" he asked.

"Yes, I do," Goodnight said, and turned and rode away.

Pea walked back to the house with Lorena, after her apology. They had a good supper. The children were peaceful, for once. Lorena read the boys stories until they fell asleep. Little Laurie liked to listen to the stories, too; at least, she liked to listen to her mother's voice while her mother was reading. Her little eyes were so bright. She waved her hands but she was very quiet while Lorena read.

It was a fine evening, but in the middle of the night, Pea Eye woke with a start. He was shivering, as if with a chill. It seemed to him that death was in bed with them. When he had been trapped with Gus under the cutback in Montana, his death almost a certainty, he hadn't given it much thought.

He had too much to do, keeping alive, to worry about dying. Then, on the last day of the long, cold, hungry walk out, he had begun to feel that perhaps he was dead; in the dark of the last morning, he had felt that Deets, his friend the black cowboy, was walking beside him, guiding him. Deets was dead; if he was with Deets, he must be dead too.

But he hadn't been. Within a few hours, Pea Eye found the herd, and Deets, if he was there, went back to the place of ghosts.

Now, though, with Lorena beside him and their five children in the house near him, Pea Eye faced death as a thought and as a fact, in a way he never had.

Far south, below the border, Captain Call might be facing it, even at that moment. Little Laurie might be taken, the next time she had the croup. Lorie might be taken, the next time she bore a child. What would it mean, if any one of them died?

Lorena knew Pea Eye was awake. She had awakened while he slept, for he was restless in his sleep and had scraped one of her legs with a toenail. He was lazy about cutting his toenails and rarely cut them until she had complained two or three times.

But it wasn't the scrape from the toenail that bothered her. A bad dream had come, from the past, from the time when she had been with bad men. She always tried to pull herself out of such dreams as quickly as possible. Better to face those memories awake, with thoughts of her husband and children to support her, than to let the dream carry her far down, into the depths of pain and fear.

"Lorie, I'm scared," Pea Eye said.

"I'm so scared, I've got a chill." Lorena put her arms around him. Indeed, he was clammy, as if sweating out a fever. His skin was cold.

"Maybe you're getting what Georgie has," Lorena said. Georgie had been running a high fever for several days.

"I'll get you warm," she said, pulling her body close to his.

"I ain't cold outside--it's inside," Pea said, though he was glad Lorie was lying close to him. It had seemed a miracle, the first time she had drawn him into her body. It still seemed a miracle that he, who had never been able to rise higher than the rank of corporal, could be wanted by a woman as fine as Lorie, and have the warmth and the pleasure of her body, in the bed at night, through his life. She was generous with him. He knew from the complaints of other men, that all women weren't so generous. He put his arms around her and held her, grateful and warmer, but still frightened.

Lorena liked it that she could comfort Pea Eye so easily, just by taking him into her arms. She hoped she wasn't with child. It was too soon, for she was still tired from Laurie. But if she was, she did not plan to stop wanting her husband because of the inconveniences of pregnancy.

Lorena knew that Clara Allen must be very wise to have advised her to marry Pea Eye. She had never expected to marry any man, or even to share a bed with one and want him. Too much of her life had been spent at the mercy of men she didn't want, even of men she despised; or in having to refuse the love of decent men--Dish Boggett was the main one, although there had been others in Ogallala--whose feelings she couldn't return.

Why she had been able to return Pea Eye's love, she really didn't know. In a way, she thought Gus might have wished it. He and Pea had been friends. But perhaps that was silly. Gus had been as jealous as anyone, in his way. Still, Gus had loved Clara, and herself as well, and Pea had been his corporal, and Clara her own best friend.

Something had caused her to want Pea. Perhaps it was only his simple, honest need. And she still wanted him, which was more of a blessing than many people had in life.

More than Clara had herself; she'd had no men since her husband's death, years before.

That made it all the harder to turn loose, though, to allow him to do his duty by old Captain Call. She might have to turn loose yet, probably would have to, but she still wanted to fight it, woman against man. That was what it was, too: woman against man. Her body, her spirit, her affection and passion, the children she and Pea shared, the life they shared on the farm that had cost them all her money and years of their energy. It was that against the old man with the gun, and the way of life that ought to have ended. Probably there was more to it--it involved the loyalty of fighting men to one another and to their leader, but Lorena gave that no respect, not where Pea Eye was concerned. He was a gentle man. He should never have been a Ranger, should never have had to deal out violence. There were many men who dealt out violence naturally. Old Call should never have had the use of one like Pea, a man who was comfortable with gentleness, who would spend hours taking prickly pear stickers out of the boys' hands, working at each one gently until he got it out.

Pea had never been meant for military life.

He had turned out of it eagerly, happily, into a life with her. He loved best the days in the summer, when she didn't have school to teach, when they could work together at some of the lighter tasks around the farm. He had driven a wagon all the way to Amarillo to get lilac bushes for her to plant, and had helped her cover the little plants against the biting northers and the freezes of February and March.

She ought to win, Lorena knew. She held him in her arms, put her legs over his. She wanted him to know that there was more life with her; more children, if he wanted them; and more of her love.

But Pea Eye was staring past her, even as he held her tight.

"It's like I dread something," he said. "I dread something, Lorie." He whispered it. Pea was always nervous about waking the children. His voice, when he whispered, was exactly like Georgie's voice, when Georgie whispered his little secrets into his mother's ear.

Lorena felt some dread herself. She was only one woman, and she could only do so much. She knew she came first in Pea Eye's affections.

It wasn't that he loved the Captain and not her.

She had thought much about this subject--it had dominated their marriage, in a way--and the fact she couldn't change was that the Captain had been there longer, in Pea Eye's life. He was there first, and not by a week or two, either, but by almost three decades. That was the fact she couldn't eliminate. She could change her husband's habits, and she had, but she couldn't change his history, and it was in his history that the problem lay.

"I ought to go find him," Pea Eye whispered.

"He's an old man. I ain't." "You aren't," Lorena corrected. But then, what was the point of correcting his grammar if he was going to Call? Good grammar wouldn't save him, and saving him was what mattered most, now.

The dread that Pea Eye felt crossed into Lorena. They were both gripped by it, husband and wife. Lorena had watched him go away several times, always with irritation, but never with such trepidation. She hated to see him leave, but always before, she had assumed he would return. She didn't know why this trip should be so different, and neither did Pea Eye. Yet they lay together, equally troubled, equally frightened.

"At least I get paid in cash," Pea Eye said.

"I don't care if you get paid in cash," Lorena said. "Cash can't hug me. It can't make me a baby. It can't be a father to Augie and Georgie and Ben and the girls." "Well, it won't have to," Pea said.

"I'll come back." "I don't believe you, this time," Lorena said. "If you go you won't come back. We'll never lie in the bed like this, again. I'll get old and I won't have you, and neither will the children." Pea Eye said nothing. He had begun to have wild thoughts, one being that the Captain was already dead. That would mean that he didn't have to go. But of course, if the Captain had been killed, he would have heard about it, and he hadn't.

Lorena didn't say a thing, either; her thoughts were disordered, too. If Pea got killed, she would probably have to turn Dish Boggett down again. He kept a store in New Mexico and was still single, unless he had recently married. If Pea got killed, Dish would soon hear of it and ride over to court her. He wasn't a bad man; in fact, he was a good man. But she didn't want him, never had, and all the tea in China wouldn't change that.

I wish this would stop, she thought. I wish it would stop. It's going to drive me crazy, if it don't stop.

In the morning, they were both as drained as if they had done three days' work. Clarie had to deal with everything, including the chores and the younger children, too.

"What's wrong, Mama?" she asked, disturbed. "What's wrong, Pa?" Neither parent would say. When Clarie went out to milk, Lorena made one last try.

"What makes you think you can find him?" she asked. "He's been gone nearly a month. He could be in the middle of Mexico by now. He could be as far away as the Pacific Ocean." "I expect I can find the Captain," Pea Eye said. "People notice, when he's around. Roy Bean or somebody will know where he is." "Go on, then, today," Lorena said. "Go now.

I can't stand another night like last night. Go right now, before I leave for school." Pea Eye got his slicker and his rifle and walked down to get his horse.

"You're going to ride?" Lorena asked, when he came back. "You could take the train. He took the train." "No, I'll ride. I might not find a trustworthy horse down on the border," Pea said. Patches, his big bay with white spots, was a trustworthy horse.

Pea Eye kissed each of his children goodbye.

All of them cried, Clarie the most. She was a big, strong girl. The boys cried themselves out, and Laurie cried because everybody else was crying.

Lorena went in and got ready for school. She dressed slowly, very slowly. Slowly, very slowly, she put her lesson books in order.

Usually, she just threw them in her bag and sorted them out once she got to school. But this morning, she put them in order, carefully and slowly, as if her sanity or even her life depended upon keeping her schoolbooks in the correct order.

It was all she could do, once she got outside, even to raise her eyes to her husband.

But she did, just briefly. His eyes, though troubled, were the same honest eyes that had won through her reluctance, long ago, in Wyoming. She kissed him briefly, gave him a long, tight hug, and then, moving stiffly, like a woman whose back has been injured, helped her children into the buggy and drove away to school. The children all looked back at their father, but Lorena didn't.

She kept her eyes fixed on the plains ahead.

Pea Eye put a little salt and pepper in a sack, stuck a small skillet in his saddlebags, and stood at his back door a minute, wondering when he would see them all again, his loved ones, already almost out of sight to the north.

Then he mounted Patches, made sure his rifle and scabbard were tight, and turned himself south, toward Mexico, to go to the assistance of Captain Woodrow Call.

On his way into Mexico, Call stopped to say goodbye to Bolivar. The old man had been with him a long time. Seeing him brought back memories, good and bad, of the Ranger troop and the Hat Creek outfit: memories of Gus and Deets, Pea Eye and Newt, Call's son. Only after the boy's death, in Montana, had Call been able to admit that Newt had been his son. Now, with the boy several years dead, it made Call sad to think of him. He had fathered a son, but had not been a father to him, although Newt had lived with the Hat Creek outfit most of his short life. He had lived with the outfit, but as an employee, not a son. Now it was too late to change any of that. The memory of it was a sore that throbbed every time his mind touched it. Bolivar, who had not many more years to live, was so woven into Call's memories of earlier days that Call had begun to hate leaving him behind, although Bolivar was an old, frail man who could not travel hard and perhaps ought not to travel at all.

But leaving him behind had become, to Call, like leaving his own life behind.

"Capit@an, the bell! I can still ring the bell!" Bolivar said. He had a desperate look in his eye and a quaver in his voice. He saw that the capit@an was about to leave without him.

The two gringos with him were mounted, and there was a pack mule, well laden. It meant the capit@an was going, perhaps never to come back.

The bell he referred to was the dinner bell, near the livery stable in Lonesome Dove, a business that Call and his partner, Gus McCrae, had once owned. Bolivar had summoned them all to his never very appetizing meals by whacking the dinner bell with a broken crowbar. As he grew older and less in control of his mind, he sometimes rang the bell whether he had made a meal or not. He often rang it when there was no one in hearing to come and eat the meal he had made. Beating the bell with the broken crowbar took his mind off the disappointments of life. The bell rang so loudly that it almost deafened him, but he continued to beat it fiercely, nonetheless. His life had contained many disappointments, and he needed something to make him forget them, even if he was deafened in the process.

Call, and Bolivar, too, regretted that the Hat Creek outfit was gone. What they had in common now was their regret. But the outfit was gone. Some of its members were dead, and those still living were scattered up the rivers and across the plains. Newt and Deets and Gus were no longer alive, and Call had the feeling that Bolivar might not be alive, either, when he returned to Laredo.

"That old man needs a haircut," Deputy Plunkert said, as they were leaving Nuevo Laredo.

The old man's white hair hung almost to his shoulders.

"He tried to stab the barber with the scissors, the last time anyone tried to cut his hair," Call explained.

"I'd rather see him with hair down to his ankles than to trust him with anything he might hurt somebody with," Brookshire said. He remembered, with rue, that Bolivar had grabbed a shotgun out of his hand and killed the best mule with it. He was glad Bolivar was being left behind; he had been a little worried that Call might relent and let him come with them, something that would not have pleased Colonel Terry.

The fact that Captain Call immediately left Texas and crossed into Mexico startled Deputy Plunkert a bit. His personal preference would have been that they continue to travel on the Texas side of the river. He himself was not comfortable being south of the border, particularly if he was in the vicinity of Laredo itself. As a deputy, with his own badge, Ted Plunkert had participated in the hanging of several Mexicans.

He had to shoot two Mexicans personally, and had to whack various Mexicans around a good bit.

After all, it was his job, and the community expected it of him. He knew that, as a result of his very diligence, he had made himself not merely unpopular but hated, south of the border. Deputy Plunkert knew, too, that Mexican families were often vengeful, going to much trouble to avenge friends who had been wounded or killed. The deputy was prepared to make it clear to anyone who asked that he would be more comfortable on the Texas side of the river.

"There's a fair road up to Del Rio," he said, only to be immediately slapped down by the Captain.

"We're not going to Del Rio," Call said, bluntly. "I prefer to avoid settlements, when I can. There's too much gossip, in settlements. We don't want the Garza boy to know we're coming, if we can help it." Deputy Plunkert didn't answer, but he found the Captain's position discouraging. Before going five miles from his home, he had begun to entertain some powerful second thoughts.

He had never supposed that the Captain would just jump right into Mexico. Of course, he knew they might have to cross into it sometime, but he had assumed that they would be several hundred miles up the river before that happened. His own bad reputation was mainly local. Five or six hundred miles upriver, they would be less likely to run into Mexicans who might be carrying a grudge.

Now, though, they were right in the thick of the Mexicans who carried the hottest grudges.

It was going to affect his peace of mind.

Also, he'd had a few hours in which to get a better look at his traveling companions. In Laredo, he had been so in awe of Captain Call that he had scarcely been able to look at him at all. In fact, except for a glance at the beginning, he hadn't looked at him. The man's aura was such that merely hearing his name blinded most people, as it had blinded him.

Now, though, riding across the empty, dusty country, the hero's aura had dimmed somewhat. The deputy saw that he was traveling with an old, stiff man, a man who had a hard time lifting his leg high enough to catch his stirrup. Captain Call had a gray, weary look about him, the look of a man who wasn't young, and wasn't healthy.

The Yankee traveling with them was just a raw dude, of course. He looked silly in his new boots and hat and pants, loaded down with guns.

The fact that Captain Call would set out to catch a killer with such a man in tow made Deputy Plunkert wonder about the old man's judgment.

The deputy had a sudden, powerful urge to change his mind. He wanted to declare a mistake, go home, snuggle up to his wife, Doobie, and kiss her until she wiggled with desire. Now he had set out on a long journey, with an uncertain outcome. When would he get to enjoy Doobie's wiggling again? Why had he thought he wanted to leave? It had all been because the old Captain enjoyed such a blinding reputation. Doubting him was like doubting the sun.

Now that they were riding together, Call didn't seem infallible, or even very active. He just rode along, saying as little as possible. The deputy began to toy with various acceptable ways of saying that he had changed his mind. But none of the lines of talk he toyed with sounded as if they would be acceptable, either to Call or to the general community. And there was no denying, the general community posed a problem. Backing out of a chance to ride with Woodrow Call could ruin a man's reputation forever, with lawmen and citizens alike, along the border. But his reputation might survive. He just had to come up with some honorable reason for needing to go home. A lame horse would do it, but to his irritation, the horse he was riding showed no trace of lameness.

As Deputy Plunkert was happily contemplating returning to his eager wife, Captain Call suddenly turned in his saddle and looked hard at him.

"Do you want to quit, Deputy?" he asked.

It seemed to him that the deputy had developed a faltering manner, and developed it quickly. If the man was going to quit, he wanted him to quit now.

It wasn't admirable, but it wasn't a crime, either. Like Pea Eye, the deputy had a wife.

They were going in pursuit of a youth who might kill them all. The man had not hesitated in making his decision. Now, he probably had second thoughts.

"Quit?" Deputy Plunkert said, stunned.

The old man had suddenly read his thoughts.

"Yes, that's what I asked," Call said.

"Do you want to go back to your wife?" "Doobie? Why, she'll get along fine without me, I expect," the deputy replied.

"Then you don't want to quit? You're sure?" Call asked.

"Why, Captain, no. I signed on and I'm staying on," Ted Plunkert said. It amazed him that he couldn't seem to help lying.

What he heard himself say to the Captain was exactly the opposite of what he had just been feeling, the opposite of what he had planned to say. But he couldn't help himself. Saying the truth wasn't possible, not when Captain Call was looking at you, hard.

"What do you think, Brookshire?" Call asked. Though skeptical of Brookshire at first, he had come to respect the man's judgment in some areas. He might be a fool about hats, but he wasn't such a fool about people.

One of Brookshire's boots was rubbing his heel so badly that he wasn't capable of giving much thought to anything else. He was wondering whether he'd have a heel left, when they got to camp that night. Also, he was suffering from a touch of his blowing-away feeling again. He had supposed that he had that feeling well under control, for it hadn't afflicted him since they reached the brushy country around San Antonio. But they were not in San Antonio now. They were not in the brushy country, either. To his eye, Mexico looked even emptier than Texas, emptier, and more forbidding.

The night before, he had slipped over to Nuevo Laredo and purchased a few minutes with a Mexican girl, and the experience had been a disappointment. The girl had been inexpensive, but she had also been skinny and had a sad look in her eye during their brief commerce. The poverty in Nuevo Laredo had been a surprise to him too. He had read about Juarez, and Emperor Maximilian, and had expected at least a little splendor. Even in Canada, a country he disliked, there would occasionally be some splendor, at least in Montreal. But there seemed to be none, in Mexico. There were just sad women and children, and old men who gave him unfrly looks.

"You're buying their daughters, or it might be their wives," Call had said, when Brookshire mentioned the unfrly looks.

Now the Captain was soliciting his opinion about Deputy Plunkert, and the fact was, Brookshire really didn't have one. The man had been a hasty choice, in his view, but that didn't necessarily mean he had been a bad one.

"It's your expedition, or your Colonel's," Call reminded him. "Do you think we ought to keep this man, or send him back?" "Captain, I can't go home!" Ted Plunkert said. He was nearing panic. It was as if his deepest thoughts were suddenly being held open to public discussion, a fact that appalled him.

Once the Captain had fixed him with the hard look, Ted Plunkert remembered who he was: a deputy sheriff, well respected in Laredo, Texas. Now that he remembered himself, he had begun to feel irritated at Doobie, his wife. It seemed to him that it was mainly her fault, that he had wavered that morning. She had cried so, at the thought of his going, that it weakened him and made him less resolute than he normally was. If Doobie had any serious consideration for him, she should comport herself a little better when he had serious business to attend to. And there couldn't be business more serious than attending to whatever Captain Call might require of him.

Doobie had nearly caused him to make a mistake of the sort that could ruin him forever as a lawman, and he meant to speak to her sharply about it, when he got home. He himself might consider that Captain Call looked old and stiff, but that wasn't the general opinion, along the border.

Most people, of course, never saw the real Captain Call, the very one he was riding with into Mexico.

Most people only knew the man by reputation, as the Ranger who had protected the border south of Laredo for so long.

Captain Call had protected the border from bad Mexicans, bad Indians, and bad white men, too. Life was changing, along the border.

It was becoming more or less settled. For many years, though, the thought of Captain Call had enabled many people to sleep better at night. They would not soon forget him, and most of them would never know that he was a man who had trouble lifting his leg high enough to catch his stirrup.

Now that he had strongly reiterated his desire to go, Ted Plunkert couldn't imagine how he could ever have contemplated quitting, although, in fact, he had contemplated exactly that very thing, not ten minutes earlier. He had never quit anything in his life, unless you counted cotton farming, and that was not a job he had chosen. He just happened to be born on a cotton farm.

"I came to ride the river with you, Captain," he said. "It's something I had always hoped to do.

I sure ain't going home now." Call turned back in his saddle, and let the matter go. Many men wavered, as they were riding into danger. They thought about their own deaths too much, or imagined injuries and pain that might never come.

That was what excessive thinking could do, even to men who were moderately brave. Often, the same men, once in a conflict, settled down and fought well. Pea Eye himself had always been a reliable, if not a brilliant, fighting man. Yet he was the most nervous man in the company until hostilities commenced. He was almost too delicate for the rangering life. Call had concluded as much on more than one occasion, but had never quite gotten around to letting the man go. On the trail of Indians or bandits, Pea was prone to headaches, heartburn, upset stomachs, and runny bowels, all of it from nerves, Call was convinced.

Call felt a brief anger, because Pea hadn't come with him. But he knew that his anger was wrong, to a degree, and that he needed to let it go.

Pea Eye had long since done his share, more than his share, of dangerous traveling with Call. If he now preferred his wife and children and dirt farming, that was his right.

That night, they camped on the monte, ten miles south of the river. Call had made a snap shot at a small javelina and hit it, so they had young pig to eat. After eating, he sat a little apart, thinking about the task ahead. He had not yet made up his mind where to take up the hunt-- take it up seriously, that is. He thought he should probably cut up the Rio Grande, past the great bend, and start hunting there. The boy had bought his fancy rifle in Mexico City, and he had stopped a train in Coahuila, and another in Van Horn, Texas. That showed a remarkable propensity for travel, in a boy so young. It also showed that Joey Garza could cover country. The boy was said to be from a village north of Boquillas, a poor village, it was said. Not many Mexican boys from poor villages would travel to Mexico City to secure a German rifle. It took some thinking about.

"Do you ever get upset before a fight, Captain?" Deputy Plunkert asked. He addressed himself to the Captain, although the man sat apart, because he did not feel comfortable talking to a Yankee. So far, he had addressed only a few words to Brookshire, mainly yes and no, when the man asked him a question.

"No, I can't say that I fret much," Call said.

"Now, that's brave," Brookshire said.

"When I was in the War, I was scared all the time.

I was only in the hospital corps, too, I wasn't shooting at anybody. But I kept having them bad dreams." "What'd you dream?" the deputy asked. He himself was often afflicted with bad dreams.

"Mainly of having one of them big shells come in low and knock my head off," Brookshire said. "That very thing happened to a man I know. He was from Hoboken and his name was Johnny Lowe." "Bad luck, I suppose," Call said.

"Yes, I'd say it was bad luck," Brookshire said. "The man gave me his biscuit, the morning it happened. He said he was too nervous to eat. He was afraid his stomach would gripe him, if he ate the biscuit.

Johnny drove the wagon we hauled the wounded in. Off he went, while I stayed by the mess and ate his biscuit. While I was sipping coffee, General Grant rode by. That was the one time I saw General Grant. Then, me and Jackie O'Connor went down the road in a buggy, squinching down as best we could. The shells were just whistling around us like ducks. Most of them hit in the trees. They broke off a world of limbs. We weren't five minutes down the road, when we saw a bunch of the boys standing around the wagon Johnny had been driving. We thought maybe they were looking at a dead Reb, but no, it was Johnny, and his head was gone. There was just a red bone, sticking out between his shoulders." "Oh, Lord," Ted Plunkert said. "That's awful. It was just a bone?" "Yes, a red bone," Brookshire said. "I suppose it was the end of his spine." "Oh, Lord," Ted said, again. "His neck bone?" The detail he didn't like was that the bone was red. Of course, all the bones were inside you, where the blood was, but he still felt himself getting queasy at the thought of red bones.

Call listened with some amusement--not that the incident hadn't been terrible. Being decapitated was a grisly fate, whether you were a Yankee or not. But then, amusing things happened in battle, as they did in the rest of life. Some of the funniest things he had ever witnessed had occurred during battles. He had always found it more satisfying to laugh on a battlefield than anywhere else, for if you lived to laugh on a battlefield, you could feel you had earned the laugh. But if you just laughed in a saloon, or at a social, the laugh didn't reach deep.

In this case, what mainly amused Call was the contemplation of how amused his old partner, Augustus McCrae, would be if he could see the crew he was riding out with on his manhunt.

Augustus had a well-developed sense of humor, too well developed, Call had often felt. Yet he missed Augustus's laughter as much as he missed anything else in his life.

Gus enjoyed the predicaments of his fellowmen, and would have laughed long and hard at the spectacle of Call, Brookshire, and lanky Ted Plunkert.

"Joey Garza shoots a rifle, not a cannon," he observed. "If he takes your head off, he'll have to do it with a knife or a saw." Deputy Plunkert ignored the part about the knife and the saw. Captain Call was only joking, probably. So far as he knew, the Garza boy had not cut any heads off, but there were plenty of other, less dramatic injuries to worry about.

"They say that rifle of his will hit you between the eyes even if you're a mile away," the deputy said. Several people he had talked with claimed that Joey Garza made kills at a distance of one mile.

"Half a mile, about," Call said. "I doubt the part about hitting between the eyes. If he's sensible, he'll shoot for the trunk. It's a bigger target." "Well, half a mile, then. How do you expect to beat him?" Ted asked.

"I expect to outlast him," Call said.

"He's young, and he's likely impatient.

There's three of us, and he's alone. He might get impatient, and make a big mistake." "The truth is, he's killed several passengers at a distance of about five feet, with his pistol," Brookshire reminded them. "Oh, I've no doubt he can shoot the German rifle. But he's done damage with some short shots, too." "Why, he robs trains and makes people get off and hand over their watches and tiepins," Ted Plunkert said. "Some of the passengers are armed men. Why don't one of them try to shoot him?

Then, the rest of them could jump him." "I've wondered about that myself," Brookshire said. "You'd think somebody would try him, but they don't. They just stand there like sheep and let themselves be robbed." "That's the effect of reputation," Call said.

"Once you get one as big as this boy's, people think you're better than you are. They think you can't be beat, when the fact is, anybody can be beat, or make mistakes. I never met an outlaw who didn't make mistakes. I guess Blue Duck didn't make many, but he was exceptional." "Joey Garza hasn't made any mistakes, not one," Brookshire said.

"Why, I'd say he has," Call said.

"He broke the law--your Colonel's law, particularly. That was his mistake, and now he's got us hunting him." "I guess I was talking tactics," Brookshire said. "He just seems to know when to show up, and when not to. If there's a company of soldiers on the train, he don't show up." "That's just common sense," Call said. "I wouldn't show up, either, if I saw there was a company of soldiers on the train. That don't make the boy General Lee." Deputy Plunkert was still thinking about the red bone, sticking out of the dead soldier's neck.

Once he got such a troubling picture in his mind, he sometimes had a hard time making the picture go away. It was as if it got stuck, somewhere in his thinking machine. It might be a good picture that got stuck; several having to do with Doobie's young body got stuck just before they married.

But it was the bad pictures that seemed to get stuck the hardest, and stay stuck the longest. Being sucked down into quicksand was one bad picture Ted Plunkert had trouble with. There were patches of quicksand in the Rio Grande, and the deputy had a deadly fear of them. Not being able to breathe because quicksand was filling up your mouth and your nose was a bad picture, but not as bad as the picture of a red bone sticking out of a man's neck. He wished Brookshire had never told the story. It was just like a Yankee to talk about things civilized people would have the good sense to leave undiscussed.

"How did General Grant look?" Call asked. He had always had a curiosity about the great soldiers: Grant and Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Sherman.

"Well, he looked drunk and he was drunk," Brookshire said. "He won that War, and was drunk the whole time." Call said nothing, but again, he remembered his old partner, Gus McCrae. Gus, too, could fight drunk. Sometimes he had fought better drunk than he had fought sober.

"I'd feel better if somebody could steal that rifle from that boy," Deputy Plunkert said.

"A mile's a long way to be killed from." "Half a mile," Call corrected, again.

Brookshire was wondering if Katie's legs would be any fatter when he got home.

"I'd still like to know who the second robber is," he said. "The one that struck that train out in New Mexico." "I'd like to know that too," Call said.

In Crow Town, Joey lived with three whores. He didn't use them for his pleasure-- he never used women for his pleasure. The white whore was named Beulah. She had come south from Dodge City with a gambler named Red Foot. The nickname resulted from the fact that another gambler had become enraged and tried to stab Red Foot in the heart. But, being drunk as well as enraged, he took a wild swing, toppled out of his chair, and finally managed to stab Red Foot in his foot.

Red Foot was very drunk too, and didn't notice at first that he had been stabbed completely through his foot. He only noticed the injury when someone pointed out to him that his right boot was full of blood. He looked down, saw that indeed the boot was full of blood, and fainted.

A few days later, he and Beulah left Dodge City and moved to Crow Town. The place was said to be booming; it was going to be the next Dodge. Red Foot and Beulah planned to open a whorehouse and get rich. But when they arrived, they saw at once that Crow Town was not booming. The rumors they had heard were lies. The population was low, and the few people who lived there were clearly too poor to support a whorehouse, or any other business, except a saloon.

Unable to face any more travel, Beulah and Red Foot stayed. Red Foot drank too much, and he had a tendency to pass out at inopportune moments. He had even passed out when playing cards, and cards were his profession.

Joey Garza was a different story.

Beulah, twenty-eight years old and well traveled in more ways than one, had never seen a male as beautiful as Joey. His walk, his teeth, his hands, were beautiful. Red Foot was aging, and unreliable. Beulah hoped that Joey would take an interest in her, and he did. He asked her to come and live in his house, or a house he had taken as his. In Crow Town, houses often came to belong to the best shot. Joey didn't have to shoot anyone to acquire his house, though. A killer named Pecos Freddy passed through Crow Town the week before Joey arrived, and he ended up killing three Mexicans--the father, mother, and brother of the two young whores who ended up living with Joey and Beulah. The young whores, Marieta and Gabriela, were so saddened by the deaths that they didn't care, at first, whether they lived or died. They knew they would die soon, if they continued to live in Crow Town, but they had no money, no means of travel, and no hope.

When Joey appeared, they simply gave him the house, a two-room hut with low ceilings, and hoped that he would let them stay. He did, and he soon let Beulah stay, too, but he didn't share his bed, or even his room, with any of them.

The three women slept on the floor in the larger room. Even that was better than sleeping with Red Foot, Beulah decided; another of Red Foot's unreliabilities was that he frequently wet the bed. He said it was because a horse had kicked him once, in a bad place.

Beulah didn't know about that, but she did know that she was tired of waking up in a bed full of piss. The floor in Joey's house might host an occasional scorpion or centipede, but at least it was dry.

Joey let the women stay because he needed someone to cook and wash clothes. Beulah cooked, and Marieta and Gabriela kept his clothes clean.

Joey Garza was by far the cleanest person in Crow Town. He insisted that his clothes be washed frequently, a difficult demand in a town where there was little water. Every three days, Marieta and Gabriela tied sacks of clothes and bedding onto a small donkey someone had lost. Then they trudged eleven miles through the sandhills, to the Pecos, where they washed the clothes, hung them on chaparral bushes to dry, and took them back to Joey. Often, they had to return to Crow Town by starlight.

Marieta and Gabriela were chubby girls, and they didn't expect much. Both had been whores since they were ten. Walking to the Pecos and washing Joey's clothes was an easier life than either had hoped for. It didn't bother them that Joey didn't want them. He was a g@uero, and g@ueros were often strange.

Beulah, though, was bothered by Joey's indifference. In her experience, if men didn't want you, they left you. Joey was the only person in Crow Town who had money. If he left, what would she do? Red Foot hated her now. He was a jealous man, and he would undoubtedly try to have his revenge the minute Joey Garza left. In his bitterness, he had already told her he would tie her to a tree and leave her tied until the crows pecked out her eyes. Beulah didn't really believe that crows pecked out people's eyes, but she didn't take Red Foot's threats lightly, either. He was perfectly capable of doing something horrible to her, and he probably would, if he got the chance.

It occurred to Beulah one day that Joey's tastes might be complex. She had known men whose tastes were complex; the most common complex taste, in her view, was for extra women in the bed.

Maybe that was what Joey would like--all three of them in bed at once.

If there was even a chance that it might work, Beulah wanted to try. She talked it over with Marieta and Gabriela, both of whom were skeptical.

"Three women at the same time?" Marieta said. "He don't even want one woman." "No, but he might like three," Beulah insisted.

Gabriela, the youngest, didn't like the idea at all. Whoring was bad enough. What Beulah suggested only sounded worse. Gabriela had become a whore when she was ten, but she didn't look at men. Once, her own uncle had forced her to look at him. He twisted her arm and beat her until she looked at him, but usually, she just looked away and pretended she wasn't there.

Sometimes, while she was looking away, the men stole back the money they gave her. Gabriela never got to keep much of the money, anyway. Her father had taken it, while he was alive, and now Marieta took it.

"If he don't want us, he won't feed us," Beulah said. In her experience, that was how men were.

Later, the two girls talked it over. They didn't want to disappoint Beulah, who had been good to them, in their time of grief. The girls didn't like Crow Town. The wind blew very cold in winter. It was always dusty, and the men were rough. But in Mexico, they had nothing. Neither of them wanted to go back to Mexico.

"If he don't want us, he won't feed us," Marieta said, echoing Beulah. She was willing to defer to Beulah's judgment. Beulah was older, and knew more about men.

The next night, at Beulah's suggestion, they all got undressed except for nightgowns.

The girls' gowns were only of thin cotton, but Beulah's was silk. She had bought it long ago, in Kansas City. When they went in to Joey, he was cleaning his fine rifle with a rag.

The look in his eyes, when he saw them come in, was not friendly. He didn't speak.

"You could have us all three," Beulah said, timidly. From the look he gave them, she knew that her idea had not been a good one. She had mentioned it to Red Foot, to see what he thought, and Red Foot certainly liked it.

"I'd take three whores over one whore anytime," Red Foot said. "I'm a man that likes whores." That was true. The whores in Dodge City had profited greatly from Red Foot's interest.

Joey was different, though. He was a colder article, Beulah thought.

"I don't want three fat women," he said, to Beulah. "You cook. Marieta washes clothes. Gabriela don't have to do nothing." "Well, why don't she?" Beulah asked, stung. She had already begun to be a little jealous of Gabriela, and now she felt even more jealous.

"Because she's pretty," Joey said, closing the conversation.

"He's in love with you," Marieta said to her sister, later. "He's rich, too. He has a cave full of money." Joey did like to look at the young whore Gabriela. He liked it that she was so modest.

That was the way women should be. But, other than admiring her looks and her modesty, he had no need for her.

During the day, Joey often sat for a while in the town's small, dirty saloon. At first, the gamblers who passed through always pestered him. They had heard of his robberies and knew, or thought they knew, of his wealth. They wanted him to go robbing with them, so they could have wealth, too. Joey was successful, far more successful than any of them.

He was feared, and they, too, would have liked to be feared. They tried to be friendly with him, to suggest robberies in which he could share. Each of them knew of a bank that would be easy to rob, or a stage office, or something.

Joey ignored all their offers. He didn't trust any of the men. Also, he didn't need them.

There was a boy in Crow Town who was slightly lame, but active. His name was Pablo, and he was twelve. Twice Joey took Pablo with him, so he would have someone to hold his horse during the robberies. He didn't like to tie his horse, and he didn't trust it to stand, either. If he had to leave in a hurry, having to untie a horse or look for one that had walked off would not be good.

Pablo was his solution to the problem of the horse.

Pablo liked Joey. Being chosen to go with him was the happiest thing that had happened to Pablo in his life. He did a good job, too, always leading Joey's horse to the handiest place for him to mount. Pablo thought Joey was the greatest man alive. He would have been proud to give his life for him.

Except for the services of Pablo and the three whores, Joey wanted nothing from the people of Crow Town. They were a rough lot, and also dumb. In his view, only smart people had a chance in life, and only smart people deserved a chance. Most of the men who stopped in Crow Town stayed drunk the whole time they were there. The cawing of the crows drove them to it. Joey didn't mind the cawing, for he liked the crows. They were smarter than most people, in his view. Newcomers, maddened by the sound of cawing or the smell of crowshit or the wheeling of the thousands of birds, sometimes went berserk and tried to shoot the crows. They emptied pistols at them, or rifles. They missed, of course. Even when they tried shotguns, they missed. Not once did Joey see a crow fall. They were so smart that they didn't even lose a feather when the crazy men shot at them.

When Joey was in the saloon he sat alone, at a small table near the door. He wanted to be able to leave quickly if some of the stupid white men began to stab one another, or fire guns.

Joey drank coffee, when he sat in the saloon. Occasionally, he would put a spoonful of whiskey in the coffee, on days when the dust made him cough. He had taken a fine fur coat from off the gentleman who had the private car, and when the wind blew cold, or the dust was blowing, he pulled the fur collar of his coat high around him and was warm. Men envied him the coat. If he had not been watchful, one would have killed him for it. But he was watchful, and he liked it that he was envied.

Besides the coat, he also had a good blanket that had belonged to a cowboy he shot at a great distance. It was the longest shot he had made, since coming back from the City of Mexico with his gun. When Joey rode over to rob the corpse, he measured the distance; it was nearly six hundred yards. It gave him a good feeling, to be able to strike a gringo dead at such a distance. Finding that the cowboy had a fine blanket made him feel even better. The man was not young. He lay with his mouth open, when Joey reached him. Joey noticed that his teeth were false, so he took the false teeth, along with the blanket.

The cowboy had been about to ride into Presidio, when Joey killed him, and the shot was made at the last light of the day. No one in Presidio had noticed that the man was coming, and no one saw him fall. Joey waited until it was dark to measure the distance and rob the man. The bullet had taken off much of the cowboy's skull.

The man wore a large pistol, which Joey used to smash the skull open a little more. Then he took a cup from the dead man's saddlebags and filled it with his brains. When it was darker still, he walked into town, holding the cup full of brains. He went to the jail and carefully set the cup inside the door. The deputy who had only one ear was there, but he had his boots off and was sleeping soundly. Joey planned to cut the man's throat, if he woke up, but he didn't wake up, and on impulse, Joey stole his boots.

He left the dead cowboy's false teeth in the cup of brains. Then he rode off happily.

What he had done was not as bad as some things he had seen the Apaches do to dead white men. His only nagging worry was that he had seen a cat in the jail. The cat had opened its eyes and looked at him when he set the cup inside. It occurred to him that the cat might eat the brains and spoil the surprise he had planned for the hard sheriff and the one-eared deputy.

Later, in Crow Town, Joey learned that the cat had not eaten the brains. The one-eared deputy woke up, looked in the cup, and puked on the floor of the jail. Later, in the street, the deputy puked some more. The deputy thought at first that it might be the work of Apaches, but there were no Apaches anymore. The Federales had killed all the Apaches in Mexico, and those in the United States had been removed to Indian territory. Many people on the border had even forgotten Apaches, and what they did to people. When Joey left the dead cowboy's brains in the jail in Presidio, people began to talk about him as if he were the devil, not just a g@uero, a Mexican boy who was almost white. Only some of the older men and women remembered the Apaches, and how they cut.

One day, when Joey had been in Crow Town three weeks, Beulah came in with an antelope haunch she had bought from the old hunter Ben Lily. The old man walked the West endlessly, killing bears and cougars. He had started his lifelong hunt in Louisiana, and was now in west Texas, killing bears and cougars as he went. He ate what he could, and sold the remainder in order to buy cartridges with which to kill more lions and bears. His aim was to kill all the lions and bears between the Gulf Coast and Canada. By his reckoning, he was not yet half done. Thousands of lions and bears still lived, in the great West, and Ben Lily meant to kill them all. Antelope didn't interest him, but antelope made good eating, and could also be sold profitably in rough villages such as Crow Town.

Beulah looked scared, when she came in with the haunch. Her hands were shaking as she got ready to fry it.

"Why are you scared?" Joey asked.

"I saw old Ben," Beulah said.

"He only hunts, he won't bother you," Joey said. He was hungry, and he wanted Beulah to settle down and cook his meat.

"It ain't Ben," Beulah said. "Wesley Hardin's here. He showed up yesterday and killed that nigger that worked for the blacksmith.

Wesley put a gun to my head, once. I was in Fort Worth then." "Why?" Joey asked. "So he wouldn't have to pay you?" "He didn't do nothing to pay me for," Beulah said. "He just likes to see people look scared. It don't matter to him if it's a man or a woman. He just likes to see people look scared." Later, Joey went to the saloon, carrying his rifle. He never left his rifle. In Crow Town, all the people were thieves, and he did not intend to risk his fine gun.

A skinny man was sitting at the table next to his. It was the only other table in the saloon.

The man wore a dirty black coat and had ugly skin, blotched and red, and it peeled in places from the sun and the wind. The man had thin, brown hair. Joey could see scabs on his scalp and on his hands as well. The man's foot twitched as he sat at the table, drinking whiskey. He didn't have a fine rifle, either, just a plain revolver, stuck in his belt.

Nonetheless, the killer John Wesley Hardin was the first gringo Joey had met in a long time whom he didn't take lightly. The man didn't even look at him, when he came in with his rifle. Wesley Hardin was not impressed, or even interested, which was unusual. Few people in Crow Town, or even travelers passing through, missed any chance to steal a look at Joey Garza.

But Wesley Hardin, the killer, didn't look. He was chewing tobacco and spitting the juice on the floor, although the saloon was provided with two brass spittoons.

Joey had barely sat down, when John Wesley Hardin looked up, but not at him. He looked up at the local blacksmith, whose name was Lordy Bailey. Lordy walked in the door, a large hammer in one hand, and went straight to Wesley Hardin's table. The blacksmith was a large man with a heavy black beard that was so long, he had to tuck it into his overalls while working his forge. He was not afraid of anyone, including Wesley Hardin. When he walked up to the table where the famous killer sat, Lordy was frowning, though John Wesley Hardin looked at him pleasantly.

"It's costing me fifty cents to get a grave dug for that nigger boy," Lordy said. "You shot him. I think you ought to pay the fifty cents." "Why bury a nigger?" Wesley Hardin said.

His voice had a tone in it that Joey hadn't heard before. It was a crazy tone. Wesley Hardin's eyes were cool, but he was scratching his scabby wrist with his other hand. Joey thought the blacksmith was very foolish, for speaking to the killer so brusquely. He would probably be murdered for his rudeness, and it would serve him right. His prices were high, and his work was not particularly skillful.

"We all need to be buried," Lordy said.

"Do you think my nigger ought to just lay there and stink up the town?" "Drag him off a ways," Wesley Hardin suggested. "That big pig might come along and eat him for you. It would save you the fifty cents." "I paid fifty dollars for that nigger," Lordy said. He began to flip the big hammer up in the air, and caught it when it came down, without even looking at it. He made the big hammer seem light as a twig.

"I figure that's fifty dollars and fifty cents you owe me," he added. "Fifty dollars for the nigger, and fifty cents for burying him.

Give it over." "You're a fool if you paid cash for a nigger, in these days and times," Wesley Hardin said. "You don't have to buy niggers, anymore. It's not even legal. Abe Lincoln freed them. All you have to do now is take a nigger, if you see one you want." "I paid for this one and you owe me," Lordy insisted. "Give over the money." "You're an ignorant sonofabitch, and you don't know the law," Wesley Hardin said. He began to get worked up. His twitching foot twitched faster.

"Here you buy a nigger you didn't have to buy, and because I killed him, you come in here disturbing my morning," he went on. "I could kill you seven times before you could drop that goddamn hammer on your toe. Don't be playing with that hammer in here. The ceilings are too low. Go outside if you want to play with your hammer." He took the plain revolver out of his belt and pointed it at the blacksmith, but the blacksmith was too angry to back down.

"You owe me, give over the money," he repeated, for the third time.

"You sonofabitch, I heard you," Wesley Hardin said. "If you want to live, get gone.

If you'd rather die, flip that hammer again." "I don't think you're the killer you claim to be, Hardin," Lordy said. He was wondering if he was quick enough to smash the man's head in with the hammer before he could pull the trigger.

"I don't claim nothing," Wesley Hardin said. "I don't claim one goddamn thing.

Last time I was in jail, they kept me in nine years and whipped me a hundred and sixty different times. I stood it, and here I am. They whipped me because I wouldn't submit, and I won't submit. I hated the goddamn jailers, and I could kill you and nine like you and never even belch. I've left about forty widows so far, I guess, and I've killed a few bachelors, too. You're welcome to try me any time you want to try me." Lordy decided that, after all, the risks were unwarranted.

"I'd like to smash in your goddamn skull, but I'll leave the pleasure of killing you to Captain Call," Lordy said. "I don't know if he'll choose to bother about a scabby old turd like you." "Woodrow Call?" Wesley Hardin asked.

"Why would he want to kill me? He arrested me once, but it was just because of a little feud I got into in Lampasas. Call ain't the sheriff of Crow Town. He don't even live here." "No, but he's coming," Lordy said.

The news seemed to excite Wesley Hardin, the killer. His tone got crazier.

"Coming to Crow Town, Captain Call?" he said. "Why, that's bold, for an old shit his age." "He's coming, but he ain't after you," Lordy said.

"You ain't important enough, anymore. You're just an old killer waiting to die." "Why's he coming, then? Does he expect to clean out the town?" Wesley Hardin asked.

"He's coming for the g@uero," Lordy said.

"He's coming for Joey, here." Joey didn't smile, or even indicate that he had heard the conversation. But he felt pleased.

Billy Williams had told him many tales of Call's exploits. He had no fear of the man, though. No old gringo, however famous, was likely to interfere with his plans, not for long, anyway. But it interested and pleased him, that he had robbed enough and killed enough so that the Americans were sending their best bounty hunter after him. That was satisfying. It meant he had scared the Americans, and hurt them by taking their money.

John Wesley Hardin had noticed Joey come in. He was certainly a pretty boy, too pretty to last, Hardin thought. His clothes were too clean. In such a place, it was irritating to see a boy with clothes that clean. The rifle he kept with him was certainly exceptional, though. John Wesley had never killed with a rifle. He usually killed at close range, with his revolver, firing two or three shots right into the midsections of his enemies. He liked the way the heavy bullets kicked the life out of them. He liked their looks of shock, when they fell down and saw the blood spreading underneath them. He also liked to be looking at them when they died. That way, they would know that John Wesley Hardin had killed them personally. He had never killed a man from ambush, or from any great distance at all.

The notion that Woodrow Call would come all the way to Crow Town for this boy, this g@uero, was interesting, though. The boy must have vexed the rich men a good deal, for them to call out the old Ranger.

He looked at the boy and met a pair of cold, blue eyes.

Lordy Bailey, the blacksmith, was still standing there, with his hammer. Joey thought the man was a complete fool. He should go, while he was alive.

"You still owe me," Lordy said. "There's no reason I should give you a nigger to kill." "I hate idiots like you," John Wesley Hardin said. He cocked his revolver and shot the blacksmith right in the gut. Then he shot him again, at about the point where his beard tucked into his overalls. He cocked the gun a third time, and shot the man in the gut again.

Lordy staggered backward, but didn't fall.

He felt surprised. Hardin had seemed to be calming down. Lordy had not really expected him to shoot. Now he had been shot three times. He felt puzzled; he had meant to leave, but had waited a little too long. He didn't feel anything, just puzzled.

Joey Garza didn't move. It did not surprise him that the scabby old man had shot the blacksmith. He himself would have done it much sooner. But he knew better than to call attention to himself while the scabby killer had a gun in his hand.

"Wait--don't die," Wesley Hardin said, to Lordy Bailey. "You forgot to tell me how you knew Call was coming." He was mildly annoyed with himself for having shot the man fatally before securing that piece of information.

Most men, once shot a time or two, were so shocked to find themselves dying that they lost their power of speech.

"Famous Shoes told me," Lordy said. For a moment, the fact that he could still talk reassured him. Perhaps he hadn't been shot, after all. It was such a comforting thought that he believed it, for a second. He dropped his hammer, and reached down to pick it up. But his hand wouldn't grip. He could see the hammer, but he couldn't grasp it. At that point he sat down, being as careful as possible.

All he wanted to do was pick up his hammer and leave.

"Don't sit there and die, you damn bastard," Wesley Hardin said. "Go outside and die.

Nobody wants you dying in here." "Oh," Lordy said, disturbed to have been caught in a breach of etiquette. He started to sit up, but instead, slowly toppled over and lay on his side, on the dusty floor.

"I thought I told you not to die in here, you ugly sonofabitch!" Wesley Hardin said. His temper was rising. The blacksmith had done nothing but vex and disobey him.

"If you weren't already nearly kilt, I'd take a bed slat to you--it might teach you some manners," he added.

Lordy Bailey realized he had made a serious error, bringing the black man to a town Wesley Hardin frequented. He was well known to dislike black men.

"Ought not to have ..." he said, but then his tongue stopped working, and he felt a great loosening inside himself. He rolled on his back and stared upward until the light became dark.

Patrick O'Brien, the bartender, walked over and looked at Lordy.

"He's dead, and we're without a blacksmith," Patrick said.

"Good, I disliked the bastard," Wesley Hardin said. "He thought I ought to pay for his nigger, the damned idiot!

"Drag him out, boy," he said, addressing the order to Joey. "He'll soon stink up the place if we leave him long." Joey met the scabby man's look, but didn't speak.

"Goddammit, is everybody stubborn in this town?" Wesley Hardin asked, his face splotchy with anger.

Patrick O'Brien felt a little worried.

Many of his customers had killed a man or two, but not since he'd opened the bar had he had two men in it who were as dangerous as Wesley Hardin and Joey Garza. Between them, they had killed a fair number of men. It was early in the day, but already a man lay dead on the barroom floor.

It occurred to the saloonkeeper that Wesley Hardin, a selfish fellow who didn't take much interest in other people, might not realize how dangerous Joey Garza was.

"This is Joey Garza," he said. "He's the one they sent Call after." Joey looked Hardin straight in the eye.

He wanted to study the man, and would rather not have to kill him. But that was up to Hardin. He would kill him, if it became necessary, with his bowie knife. He had watched Hardin shoot the blacksmith. Hardin had managed it, but he was quite slow, Joey thought. An Apache would have killed the man with a knife, in half the time or less, and Joey modeled himself on the Apache when it came to killing. Joey knew he could slip behind Hardin and cut his throat with one move and one stroke.

But he didn't want to kill the man, and he also knew it would not be wise to underrate him, just because he was a scabby old gringo. Wesley Hardin had killed many, many men; the fact that he had been a little slow with the blacksmith didn't mean he would be slow if his own life was really at stake. The blacksmith had posed no threat. But Hardin was a killer, like himself. He should not be underestimated.

Wesley Hardin got up, picked up the blacksmith's legs, and slowly dragged him outside. The crows set up a cawing the minute the door opened. The blacksmith was a heavy man. Hardin had to stick his revolver back in his belt and use both hands, in order to drag him out.

"O'Brien, get your donkey and drag that heavy bastard off," he said, when he came back. He was winded from his effort, and his face had gone pale.

"Wes, you need to hold your temper," Patrick O'Brien said. "That was the only blacksmith within a hundred miles." Wesley Hardin didn't take kindly to censure. He frowned at the Irishman.

"I might shoot every man, woman, and child in this stinkin', nigger-bird town, and then you wouldn't need a goddamn blacksmith. How's that?" he asked.

Wesley Hardin turned to Joey with an angry look.

"You could help me wipe this nigger-bird shithole off the face of the earth, if you're such a killer," he said to Joey. "You kill the men, and I'll take care of the women and the brats." "Wes, there's only two children in town, and they're mine," Patrick O'Brien said. He had meanwhile taken the precaution of arming himself with a shotgun. When Wes Hardin was in one of his irritable moods, it was wisest to be armed.

"I wasn't speaking to you, you damn pig!" Wesley Hardin said, giving the man a violent stare. "I was speaking to the notorious young killer, here." For all Hardin's jumpy manner, his eyes, when he looked at Joey, were clear. He might twitch, but he wasn't really agitated, not in the part of himself that sized up men and situations.

The boy, the g@uero, gave back an empty gaze. Joey let his eyes meet Hardin's, but in Joey's eyes there was nothing.

Only distance, a distance deep as the sky.

"Why would they send Woodrow Call after a pup like you?" Hardin asked. But he let no insult into his voice.

"Because I steal money from Americans," Joey said.

"You're right--it's the money, not the killing," Wesley Hardin said. "They don't care who gets killed, out here in the baldies. It don't cost the damn pigs a cent for us to kill one another out here. Why would they care? Out here west of the Pecos, it's fine to kill, but you better not steal from no trains coming from the east, where the damn Yankees keep their money.

"How much did you get?" he inquired, in a calmer tone. "I heard it was a million, and I heard it was the army's money." Joey looked at the man coolly, with his distant eyes. Did the old killer really expect him to tell how much money he had stolen?

In fact, he had buried the payrolls only a few miles from where he stole them. He didn't know how much he had taken, he just knew that the money was too bulky to carry very far. He was not such a fool as to bury it all in one place, either. He hid it in snake dens; the Apaches had taught him how to find them. They often ate snakes, when they could get nothing better.

He didn't have the time to carry so much money to his cave, nor did he want to. The money was not very interesting to him. His cave was for beautiful things. Everything he stole, he wrapped well.

He had taken two hundred gunnysacks from a hardware store in Piedras Negras, to the puzzlement of the man who owned the store. The man could not understand why anyone would take gunnysacks, when there were guns and axes to steal.

Joey took the sacks because he needed them to wrap his treasures. That was also why he had taken the fancy sheets from the rich man who had the fur coat. He didn't want to sleep on the sheets; he wanted them for wrapping, so that his many silver objects would not grow dingy in the cave.

At another hardware store in San Angelo, he found some excellent wooden barrels, and he hired an old man named Jose Ramos to help him take the barrels on donkeys into the mountains. He left them in one cave, an empty one, to fool old Ramos, and later came back and carried them, one by one, to his own cave, which was three days away.

Then he packed his well-wrapped treasures in the excellent barrels, where they would be safe from rats and varmints. He already had more than one hundred watches, and nearly as many rings. One of his regrets was that there were so few women on the trains, because women had nicer things than men. They had beautiful combs of ivory, and necklaces and bracelets, even jewels to hang in their ears.

Joey kept all the women's things together. When he went to his cave, he would spend whole days unwrapping his treasures, one by one, holding them and letting the light play on them. They were far more interesting than the money.

Knowing that he had the treasures and that he could go there and enjoy them, was a deep satisfaction to Joey. Lately, he had begun to steal things with little value--ladies' hairbrushes, or letter openers--simply because he liked to touch the ivory or shell that they were made from.

The quality of his treasures was not something he intended to talk about to a killer such as Wesley Hardin, though. He decided he didn't like the nosy old gringo, who asked the kind of questions his mother asked. The killer was a man to be watched, that was all.

"I guess you're feeling closemouthed today, are you, boy?" Wesley Hardin asked. Of course, he had not expected the g@uero to tell him how much money he had taken from the trains.

"You'd do better to talk to yourself, Wes," Patrick O'Brien said. "My ears get tired, just from listening to you cuss, when you're in a temper." "Be glad you can hear me--it means I ain't shot you yet, Pat," Hardin said. "I can cuss old Lordy now, as much as I want to, but he won't hear a whisper." Joey picked up his rifle and started to leave.

He would rather look at the pretty young whore, Gabriela, than at the scabby old killer with the splotchy face.

"Hold on, I'll offer you a little free advice," Wesley Hardin said. "They say you have a tendency to steal, which is a more dangerous habit in these parts than the habit of killing.

One thing you ought to be careful of, when you're out stealing, is to stay clear of Roy Bean. He can't abide a thief. If he catches you with money on you, he'll hang you promptly and keep the money. He's hung five men that I know about, for no better reason than that they had money in their pockets, and he wanted it." "He won't hang me, but I might hang him," Joey replied. He said it merely to meet the challenge in the old killer's voice.

But once he began to consider it, the idea grew on him. Roy Bean was known to be a hanging judge. Roy Bean cared little for justice, or so Joey had been told by Billy Williams.

Joey cared little for justice, himself. He couldn't blame the judge for that, and he didn't care that the judge wasn't fair.

"I think I will hang him," he repeated.

"It might be pleasant." John Wesley Hardin was startled, and he wasn't a man who startled easily. This pup of a boy had just had an idea that he should have had himself: hang Roy Bean. That old fart had it coming to him, had for years.

"Why, that's original," Wesley Hardin said. "I expect that would make the newspapers.

Old Call might get fired, for letting it happen." "Do you know Famous Shoes?" Joey asked.

The old man was a tracker, a Kickapoo.

No one knew where he lived; somewhere in the Sierra Madre, it was thought. Billy Williams had known Famous Shoes for many years and thought him the best tracker who ever lived.

He even knew how to track birds, as they flew. Even the Apaches respected Famous Shoes, and the Apaches yielded up little respect when it came to tracking. They considered themselves the best, but admitted that if anyone was better than they were, it was Famous Shoes. Some Apaches thought that the reason Famous Shoes was such a brilliant tracker was that he was part eagle.

Someone had seen him bringing the eggs of an eagle down to his camp, where he ate them. It was because of the eagle's eggs, some thought, that Famous Shoes could see so well. No one in the West could see farther, or more clearly, than the old Kickapoo. In earlier days, he had been employed up and down the border by whites, Mexicans, and Indians alike, to help recover children who had been stolen, or sold into slavery. Famous Shoes never failed to find the children, even when he was put on the trail months late. He could not always recover the children, for his skill was only in tracking. But he always found the children. A man who could track the flight of birds and even follow eagles to their roosts, in order to take their eggs, would have no difficulty in tracking a raiding party that had come to take slaves.

"I have seen Famous Shoes a few times," Wesley Hardin said. "If I see him again, I'll kill him, and if I'd known he was around I'd have been out hunting for him yesterday." "Why?" Joey asked. "He's an old man. You wouldn't need to fear him." "He's an old man, but his eyesight ain't failed him," Hardin said. "Suppose I kill the wrong fellow, someone who ain't just scum, and the law comes after me again? If they hired old Famous Shoes, they'd find me, too, and if there's more of a damn posse than I could shoot, I'd be back in prison again. And next time, they'll beat me to death." He suddenly turned his back to Joey and pulled off his coat and shirt. His back was crisscrossed with scars, every inch of it.

"The time I went for the warden and tried to knock the sonofabitch's head in, they gave me five hundred lashes. I wasn't awake for but about two hundred of them, though." "They will not do that to me," Joey said.

Wesley Hardin stuffed his shirttail back in his pants. He turned to Joey and smiled.

"If they get you in jail, then they can do anything they want," he said. "If they want to beat you with a damn whip, they will." "They won't get me in jail," Joey said.

The sight of the man's scarred back had impressed him.

"Then you better kill Famous Shoes, and kill him next," Wesley Hardin said. "That's my recommendation." "Why him? I don't even know him," Joey replied.

"He's a hired hand. He tracks for anybody that'll pay him," Wesley Hardin said. "Woodrow Call might pay him to find you.

If he's set to find you, he'll find you.

Famous Shoes don't miss." Joey Garza smiled. "I don't miss, either," he said. Then he took his fine rifle and left.

When Famous Shoes decided to take a walk, it was usually a long one. He didn't like to walk where there were Federales, because the Federales killed Indians. The presence of Federales distracted him, and took away some of the pleasure of his long walk. To avoid them, he walked north through the Madre until he was out of Mexico, before turning east. He had decided to go to the Rio Rojo and live on it a few weeks, as his people had once done. He was an old man, and one day soon, he would have to give up his spirit. He thought it would be fitting to go to the Rio Rojo, where his people had once lived. It was his view that the Kickapoo people would be living along the Brazos and the Rio Rojo still, if the Comanche and the Kiowa had not been so hard to get along with.

But the Comanche and the Kiowa did not like the Kickapoo people, or any other people, and it was not easy to live with the Comanche or the Kiowa if they disliked you. They killed so many Kickapoo that the old men decided the tribe had better move, or soon there would be no tribe.

Now the Comanche were gone, and the Kiowa, too.

Famous Shoes could go visit the land of his fathers without unpleasantness. He walked east, toward the pass of the north. In a few days, he would be on the great plain. He wanted to visit the several forks of the Brazos--the Salt, the Clear, the Double Mountain fork and the Prairie Dog fork-- to see if the river had moved far from where it had been when he was a boy. He had known the Brazos when he was young. He liked to watch it wander, and make itself new channels.

While Famous Shoes was walking east near Agua Prieta, he crossed a track that frightened him so much that he wanted to crouch down. It was a track he had not seen in many years: the track of Mox Mox, the manburner. The Apaches called him The Snake-You-Do-Not-See, for his habit of catching people unawares, and burning them.

Particularly, he liked to burn young children, but he would burn anyone he could catch, when he wanted to burn.

Mox Mox, The Snake-You-Do-Not-See, had stopped to urinate along the trail Famous Shoes was walking. Famous Shoes thought he had better hurry on to the Rio Rojo before Mox Mox found him. He walked for two days, sleeping only a few minutes at a time.

When he came to the Rio Rojo, he walked east along its wide, sandy banks for two weeks. On the old river, he felt better.

The Snake-You-Do-Not-See had not struck him.

He wanted to make contact with the spirit of his grandfather, if possible. His grandfather had lived and died on the low, sandy banks of the Rio Rojo.

Though Famous Shoes walked for days along the river, he did not meet the spirit of his grandfather. The old man had not liked the Comanche, and Famous Shoes decided that his grandfather's spirit had become impatient for the Comanche to be taken; so impatient that his spirit left its home and went to live somewhere else. Probably, he would make contact with his grandfather as he walked south, amid the forks of the Brazos. But that might not work, either. His grandfather had been an unpredictable man, and all his wives had complained of his impatience and unpredictability. He left when he felt like leaving, and told no one where he was going or when he might return. He was apt to walk south and then change his mind and walk north. There was no confining the man. Famous Shoes, too, was in the habit of walking where he chose and when he chose.

He might get up one morning and walk for three months.

Once, when he was younger, he had decided to walk north, to the place the ducks and the geese came from and returned to every year. He knew the birds could travel much faster than he could, and that he would have to get a big jump on them if he was to visit them in their home in the north. He started early in the spring, thinking he would be in the place the birds returned to, when they returned. He had been told that they nested at the edge of the world.

An old Apache man who, like himself, took an interest in birds, told him that. The old Apache believed that the ducks and geese, and even the cranes, flew to the edge of the world each fall, to build their nests and hatch their young.

Famous Shoes wanted to see it. In his dreams, he saw a place where all the ducks and geese came to nest. It would be noisy, of course; so many birds would make a lot of racket. But it would still be worth it.

What defeated the plan was that Famous Shoes did not really enjoy cold weather. It was cold enough in the Madre, and even colder on the plains, north of the Rio Rojo. But those colds were as nothing to the cold Famous Shoes began to encounter as the fall came, in the far north. He had walked to the top of the plain, and into the wooded country. As the days shortened, he began to see strings of geese overhead, and thought that he must be getting close to the great nesting place at the edge of the world.

But then, it seemed to him, he reached the edge of the world without getting to the nesting place. He passed through the great forests, and came to a place where the trees were only as tall as he was, and Famous Shoes was not tall. Ahead, he could see horizons where there were no trees at all, and only a few plants of any kind.

There seemed to be only snow ahead of him. He survived by knocking over fat birds and slow rabbits, but the snow was becoming painful to his feet, and the diminishing vegetation worried him. With no wood to make fires, he knew he might freeze. Also, it was only fall. The real cold was ahead.

Reluctantly, Famous Shoes stopped when he reached the place of the last tree. He looked north, as far as he could see, wondering if the edge of the world was only a day or two away. A day or two he might risk, but he knew it would be foolish to go to a place without wood, when the great cold was coming. Overhead, the sky was thick with ducks and geese, going to the place Famous Shoes wanted to go. He heard them all night, calling to one another as they neared their home. He was annoyed with the geese, for he felt that they should appreciate how far he had walked, out of an interest in them, and that some great goose should come down and help him go there. The old Apache man claimed that he had once seen a white goose big enough for a man to ride. Famous Shoes didn't know if the story was true, for the old Apache man had been a little crazy, and was also fond of mescal. He might have been drunk, and the liquor might have made the goose grow into a goose that a man could ride. But if there was such a goose somewhere, it too must be on its way home.

Famous Shoes waited a whole day by the last tree, his feet aching from the snow, hoping the great goose would see him and recognize his appreciation of the greatness of birds and alight and fly him to the big nesting place. Also, while he was there, he meant to look off the edge of the world and see what he could see.

But no great goose came, and Famous Shoes was forced to turn back, before his feet were frozen.

A few days later, by great good luck, he killed a small bear. He made moccasins from the bear skin and hurried south, hoping to get to a place where there was good firewood before the blizzards came. Three days later, when he had just made it into the forests, a great blizzard did come. Famous Shoes had carried much of the meat of the little bear with him, and he ate it while the blizzard blew.

Months later, when he was still far from his home in the Madre, Famous Shoes saw the geese and the ducks overhead, flying south again. It seemed to him that their calls mocked him, as they flew above him. For a time, he became bitter, and decided he didn't like birds, after all. They didn't care that he had walked a whole year, just to see their nesting place. He resolved to take no more interest in such ungrateful, unappreciative creatures.

But once back in the Sierra Madre, watching the great eagles that lived near his home, Famous Shoes gradually lost his bitterness. In the presence of the great eagles, he became ashamed of himself. Two or three of the eagles knew him, and would let him sit near them; not too near, but near enough that he could see their eyes, as they watched the valleys far below. Their dignity made him feel that he had been silly, to expect the ducks and geese, or any birds, to take an interest in his movements. He knew himself to be a great walker--he was not Famous Shoes for nothing --but what was that to any bird? The geese and the great cranes could fly in an hour distances it would take him a day to cover. The eagles and the hawks could see much farther than he could, and even the small birds, the sparrows and the cactus wrens, could do the one thing he couldn't do: they could fly. That was their greatness, not his, and his walking must seem a poor thing, to them.

Famous Shoes was grateful to the eagles for letting him sit near them and recover himself from his long journey. He needed to recover from the vanity of thinking that he was as special as the birds. He did not deserve to see the great nesting places, nor to look off the edge of the world. He was only a man, of the earth and not of the sky, and his skills were not the skills of birds.

It was on his return from the Rio Rojo, across the Quitaque, that he came upon the track of a horse carrying his old friend Pea Eye, in the mud of a little creek. Famous Shoes had known Pea Eye for a long time, since the days when the Rangers rode the border. He could tell Pea Eye's track anywhere, because Pea Eye favored his left stirrup and the horse track went deeper on the left side, particularly on the rear hoof. It puzzled him to discover Pea Eye traveling south, for he understood that Pea Eye had a woman and several children, and a farm.

Yet, he was leaving. Famous Shoes knew that Pea Eye's woman was a teacher. He meant, someday, to have her teach him to read the strange tracks in books. Those were the only tracks he had never been able to master. For many years, he had carried a small Bible with him. It had been given to him by an old man who carried many such books in a wagon, and gave them to Indians.

The old man's name was Marshall. He had come among the Apaches when Famous Shoes was there, trying to persuade an old medicine man named Turtle to give up a little white girl he had captured in a raid. Turtle wouldn't give up the girl. His own wife was shriveled and had no interest in him, and he needed a young girl. The money Famous Shoes offered, money provided by the little girl's family, was not as important to Turtle as the little girl herself. Turtle patiently explained this to Famous Shoes, who understood it well enough. His own wife had lost interest in him, forcing him to find girls at a time when he would rather have been concentrating on other things.

But he had been younger then, and in those days, lack of a woman often caused his concentration to wander.

So he accepted Turtle's explanation, and did not try to take the girl, even though her family missed her and had paid him well to find her.

Mr. Marshall, the white man with the Bibles, did not accept Turtle's explanation as to why he needed the little girl, although it was a valid one, in Famous Shoes' opinion. Marshall tried to buy the girl from Turtle, despite the fact that Turtle had told him plainly that he would not sell her.

When Marshall saw that he would not be allowed to buy the white girl, he became angry. He began to say bad words, and make the Apaches feel bad. But a young Apache named Long Thorn lived up to his name by taking a bayonet he had picked up after a battle and sticking it all the way through Mr. Marshall, who soon died. It was agreed that Long Thorn had acted properly. The white man had become abusive, and deserved to be stuck with a bayonet. The Apaches could eat the horses that pulled the white man's wagon, but the load of books with meaningless tracks in them was a different matter. Marshall had told them that the books came from the god who made all the whites. There were many whites, and they were rich; the god must be powerful, if he had made them all. It might anger him if the book with his tracks in it was not treated properly, but the Apaches had no idea what they would have to do to treat the book properly. By accident, someone tore a few pages out of one of the books and threw them on a campfire. They burned so well that the Apaches decided to keep the books and use them to start fires. If the god who made the whites was offended, they would have to live with his wrath. But after a few days of starting fires with the pages from the Bibles, the Apaches decided that this god was too busy making whites to care what they did. After that, they relaxed and soon forgot the god altogether. They even forgot about Marshall, although they ate his horses and found them to be tasty.

Famous Shoes was given a Bible, in lieu of the little white girl. He would rather have had the girl, but he took the Bible and pored over it for years, in his spare time. He had never seen tracks as strange as the tracks in his Bible. After much study, he could see that the little tracks were individual, as were the tracks of all animals.

Even worms and snails made tracks that were unlike those of other creatures.

But in the end, Famous Shoes could make nothing of the tracks that were supposed to lead the whites to the spirit world. Famous Shoes would have liked to see a picture of the white man's god, but there were no pictures of him in the book. What this god's ways might be, Famous Shoes could not imagine. If he was wrathful, like his minister Marshall, then Famous Shoes was not interested in knowing too much about his ways.

One time, Famous Shoes showed the Bible to the old judge, Roy Bean, a white man who enjoyed hanging people. Famous Shoes had always kept to the law and had no fear of Roy Bean.

He didn't steal, and it was well known that Roy Bean was harshest on thieves and had a tendency to be tolerant of murder. Famous Shoes had rarely murdered, either, only a time or two when he was younger and had less control over his passions.

Now that he was older, he had his passions under control to such an extent that it was not really accurate to call them passions anymore. If he had a passion left, it was for the flight of the eagles. Fortunately, near his home in the Madre, there were many eagles whose pure, beautiful, soaring flight he could study at his leisure.

"Why, this is the Bible. It tells you about Jehovah and his angels," Roy Bean said, when Famous Shoes handed him the book. Roy Bean was drunk; this was often the case, and he was not really eager to enter inffconversation with a talkative Indian.

"What is an angel? I have never seen one," Famous Shoes replied.

"Nobody ain't. That is, they ain't if they're alive," Roy Bean informed him, testily.

"Where is heaven?" Famous Shoes asked.

"It's the place you go to when you die, if you've been good," Roy Bean said. "You ain't been very good, and I ain't, either, so I doubt either one of us will ever see an angel." After a little more questioning, Roy Bean let slip the exciting fact that angels were men with wings.

Famous Shoes had always suspected that there might be men with wings, somewhere. If he had been willing to risk freezing to death when he was near the edge of the world, he might have looked over the edge and seen these men with wings, flying around. Perhaps they would have helped him grow wings himself, so that he could fly off the edge of the world, as the great eagles flew off the cliffs of the Madre.

Then Roy Bean got so drunk, he couldn't talk. Before his tongue grew too thick to manage, Roy Bean became irritated with Famous Shoes for referring to the words in the Bible as tracks. It did seem to Famous Shoes that they resembled certain tracks, such as the track of the centipede, or of certain delicate birds who skimmed the water's edge for their prey.

"They're words, not tracks, you damn Indian!" Roy Bean insisted. "They're words, like I'm saying to you, now." "But words are made from breath. How can they live in such a thing as this book?" Famous Shoes asked.

He might as well have asked his question of an eagle, or of the moon, for Roy Bean had not only lost interest, he had lost consciousness as well.

Famous Shoes kept the book for several more years, but he never learned to make much of the little tracks. Finally, he left the book on the ground, and a golden eagle came and tore out many of its pages to use to line its nest. That was a good use for such a book, Famous Shoes thought.

Later, though, he learned from the great Captain Marcy, for whom he had scouted when he was younger, that Roy Bean had been right: the little tracks in the book were words. Even when he learned this, Famous Shoes didn't regret giving the book to the golden eagle. The eagle had made better use of it than he had.

Seeing Pea Eye's track made him remember that Pea Eye's woman was a teacher, who well understood the words in books. This gave Famous Shoes an idea. He might go and stay with Pea Eye for a few weeks, and ask his woman if she would teach him how words got into books, and how to know one word from another, simply by its tracks. It should not be too different from knowing each animal or lizard by its tracks. It might be that Pea Eye's woman could explain words to him, and even help him understand the ways of the god of whites. Among his people, the Kickapoo, respect for the gods caused most people to behave well, at least to behave well most of the time. But the same did not appear to be true of whites, most of whom behaved as if they knew no god and had no guidance stronger than their own passions, when it came to deciding how to behave.

When he found Pea Eye's track, in the little creek on the Quitaque, Famous Shoes saw that Pea Eye was about a day ahead of him. He knew that, as a traveler, Pea Eye was rather lazy. He was timid about snakes, and did not really like to move around in the darkness, which was necessary if a man wanted to cover much country. Also, once Pea Eye went to sleep, he didn't wake up quickly. Thus, though Pea Eye was mounted and had a day's start, Famous Shoes reckoned to catch him somewhere near the Clear Fork of the Brazos. And he did.

He walked quietly into Pea Eye's camp early one morning, when the stars were still out and the moon was about to go to sleep. Famous Shoes did not like to disturb anyone, so he sat quietly until Pea Eye began to stir. As was common with whites, Pea Eye had made a much larger campfire than was necessary. Several coals were still glowing. Famous Shoes fed twigs and small branches to the coals, until the fire itself woke up and burned again.

When Pea Eye heard the fire crackling, he managed to open his eyes. Famous Shoes sat beside the campfire, looking at him. He was a tiny old man and was wearing the same dirty bandanna around his head that he had been wearing the last time Pea had seen him, several years before.

"Would your woman help me learn to read?" Famous Shoes asked, to get the conversation started.

"Well, more than likely," Pea Eye said.

"She's been meaning to teach me, but I've got so much farming to do that I ain't learned yet. I know my letters, though." "I will go home with you, then," Famous Shoes said. "We can learn to read together." "You sure did slip in quiet, didn't you?" Pea Eye said. "I guess if this was the old days and you was a Comanche, I'd be scalped by now.

"There's coffee there, if you want to make some," Pea Eye added. Famous Shoes was not a Comanche, nor a bad Indian of any kind, and he himself was in no danger of being scalped. The thought made him feel so relaxed that he figured he might just doze for another minute or two, while Famous Shoes made coffee. He did doze, but when he finally woke up, the sun was in his face and he had the feeling he might have dozed for more than a minute or two. A jackrabbit was cooking on the fire, and he himself had certainly not provided any jackrabbit. Famous Shoes must have caught one, skinned it, and cooked it, a process that would have taken more than a minute or two, although the old man had always been efficient, when it came to camp chores.

"If you are chasing somebody, I don't think you are going to catch up with them, unless they are crippled," Famous Shoes said. "When you eat this rabbit, we should go." "Okay, you can come with me," Pea Eye said, hastily shaking his boots, in the hopes of emptying out whatever bugs or scorpions might have crawled into them during the night. It would have been safer to sleep with his boots on; but when he did that, he got cramps in his legs, often such bad cramps that he had to get up and stamp around in order to loosen the cramps.

"The thing is, we'll have to put off the reading lessons for a while. I ain't headed home," Pea Eye said. "I'm going to look for the Captain. I got a late start, and don't have no idea where he is. You'd be the perfect compa@nero because you could track him if we ever cross his tracks." "He likes to keep his money," Famous Shoes said. Captain Call had never paid his scouts very liberally. "I'm not sure he would pay me, if I help you find him. He might think I'm too old to need money." "It wouldn't be his money, though. He's working for the railroad now," Pea Eye said, uneasily. "There's a Yankee with him. I expect the Yankee would pay you." Pea Eye did remember that the Captain, though respectful of Famous Shoes' great skill in tracking, thought the man put too high a price on his services. There had been more than one dispute over money, and in the end, Famous Shoes stopped tracking for the Rangers.

Memories of this old conflict made him feel uncomfortable, and just when he had been enjoying a feeling of comfort, the first he had experienced since leaving Lorie and his children. It would be nice to travel with Famous Shoes; he didn't mind doing the cooking, and he would be a great help in locating the Captain.

Still, there had been that friction, in the past. The Captain might not be altogether pleased to have him show up with Famous Shoes.

"Where do you think the Captain is?" Famous Shoes asked.

"On the border, somewhere," Pea Eye said.

"He's supposed to catch a bandit named Joey Garza." "Oh," Famous Shoes said. "Maria's son." "Whose son?" Pea asked.

"She is a woman in Ojinaga," Famous Shoes said. "Joey is her son. I think he went bad." "I guess he did," Pea Eye said.

"Charlie Goodnight says he's killed over thirty people. If Charlie Goodnight says it, I expect it's true." "I was in Ojinaga when the Federales killed Maria's first husband," Famous Shoes said. "She is a good woman, but she does not have good luck. I'm afraid the hard sheriff will kill her someday." "What hard sheriff?" Pea Eye asked.

"Does the woman live in Texas or Mexico?" "In Mexico, but the hard sheriff doesn't care," Famous Shoes said. "He kills many people who live in Mexico. He wanted to hang me once for stealing a horse, although I don't ride horses." "Why'd he think you stole it, then?" Pea Eye asked.

"I was eating part of it when he caught me," Famous Shoes replied. "A snake bit the horse on the nose, and its nose closed up and it died." "I'd need to be half starved before I'd eat a snake-bit horse," Pea Eye said.

"I didn't eat its nose," Famous Shoes said. The whites, even nice ones like Pea Eye, had absurd prejudices. The only danger the dead horse had caused him came from Doniphan, the hard sheriff.

Doniphan had marched him back to Presidio, meaning to hang him, but a fire broke out and burned up the saloon and part of the church.

Doniphan had been afraid that the fire might burn his jail. It was a windy day, with smoke blowing everywhere. In the smoke and confusion, Famous Shoes escaped. It was Maria Garza who had given him a little jerky, so that he might hurry back to the Madre, where the hard sheriff would never come.

"Where'd you get this rabbit? I didn't see one all day yesterday, or I would have shot it," Pea Eye said. It was a tasty rabbit. He thought about the border. It was far away, and he had to pass through some bleak country, too. It would be real handy to have a traveling companion such as Famous Shoes, a man who was adept at catching game, and cooking it too.

There was another factor to be considered, too, and that had to do with his own deficiencies as a tracker and a plainsman. Charlie Goodnight told everybody he met that he had never been lost, day or night, rain or shine. But this was certainly not a claim Pea Eye could make.

He himself had been lost all too often; in particular, he had a tendency to lose his bearings on cloudy days. In truly rainy weather, he was even worse. He had even been known to confuse north and south, on rainy days. He thought he could find his way to the border simply by counting the rivers. But once he got to the border, then what? He would have no way of knowing which direction the Captain was headed, or even whether he was in Mexico or in Texas. In normal times, he could locate the Captain simply by asking the locals. The Captain was a man people noticed. But along much of the border, there were no locals. If the Captain was in Mexico, Pea Eye had his doubts about his skill in finding him. That problem had made him anxious from the moment he left home. What if he had left the farm and upset Lorena and the children and still didn't manage to locate the Captain in time to help him? What if the Garza boy outsmarted the Captain and wounded him or something, while Pea Eye was still miles away, looking in the wrong place? The Captain might even be killed, and if that occurred, Pea knew, he would never forgive himself.