Streets Of Laredo

With Famous Shoes along, some of that anxiety would be removed. Famous Shoes could find anybody, anywhere in the West, and could find them more quickly than anyone else. Even the Captain, who thought Famous Shoes too expensive, was quick to admit that the old Indian was without equal, when it came to tracking.

"I think it's eyesight," the Captain said.

"He can see better than us." That remark had been made on a nervous occasion, when everyone in the Ranger troop thought they saw Indians kneeling in the prairie grass far ahead. Everyone, including the Captain and Gus McCrae, had peered hard across the prairie and concluded that there were Indians ahead, preparing an ambush. Famous Shoes took only one quick look and shook his head. "Not Indians," he said. "Sagebrush." And so it had proved to be, when they reached the point where they thought the ambush had been planted.

"Come with me to the border," Pea Eye said.

"If the Captain won't pay you enough, maybe I can trade you reading lessons or something, when we get back." He said it, hoping that Lorena wouldn't mind too much, when he actually showed up with the old man.

"Good," Famous Shoes said. "If your woman will teach me to read, I won't take wages from the Captain." It was such a relief to know that the matter of the expense had been settled, or settled, at least, until Lorena had her say in the matter, that Pea Eye finished the tasty jackrabbit and was saddled and ready to go within ten minutes. It was a bright day, and the gray plain south of him for once didn't seem so bleak.

Famous Shoes, as usual, walked far ahead.

"I didn't like the War," Brookshire said.

"I never understood why it was happening. Nobody ever explained it to me. They just stuck me in uniform and sent me off. My mother cried, and my sister cried, and my father told them to dry up, I was just doing my duty." They were camped far out on the monte, in Mexico. Call had decided to swing west, toward Chihuahua City. They had run into a small troop of Federales, who told them Joey Garza had been seen in Chihuahua City. Call didn't necessarily believe it, but he swung west anyway, to put some distance between his party and the river. Too many people traveled the river country, or lived in it. Even in the long, hundred-mile stretches where there were no villages, there were still people--Indians, travelers, prospectors. In his lifetime on the border, Call reckoned that he had run into at least fifty people, lost souls mostly, who were looking for Coronado's treasure. Call didn't know much about Coronado, just that he had been the first white man to travel through the region. He had made the trip a long time ago, and Call had never been certain that he knew exactly where Coronado had gone. Some reports put his route as far west as the Gila, but others thought he had just gone straight up the Rio Grande. A few even argued that he had started at Vera Cruz and come out at Galveston.

Whichever route the man had actually taken, Call doubted that he had come up with much in the way of treasure. He might have collected a little silver, if he got into the Navajo country, but Call himself, in nearly forty years on the border, had encountered mostly poor people who had no treasure.

Avoiding the river made sense to him. Also, he had never traveled very deeply into Mexico, and he wanted to see it. Brookshire worried, and the more he worried, the less Call hurried.

He kept an eye out for tracks. Deputy Plunkert tried to help, but it soon became evident that he was no tracker. About all he had ever tracked, before the expedition, was lost milk cows. More and more, the deputy missed the comforts of home; in particular, he missed Doobie's biscuits, which she made every morning and had ready for him, hot and buttery, when he got up.

"How come you to miss the War, Captain?" Brookshire asked. The likelihood of combat, sometime in the near future, had stirred old memories. He remembered the screams of the men whose limbs had to be amputated, quickly, on the battlefield. He remembered the sound the saw made, as the surgeons cut through bone, and the dull groaning of the men in the hospital tents as they awoke every morning, to face another day without an arm or a leg, or both legs, or an eye, or whatever part was missing. Those memories had ceased to trouble him, during the quiet years in Brooklyn.

"Somebody had to stay around and keep the Comanches in check," Call said. "Otherwise, I guess they would have driven the settlers back to the sea. They drove them back nearly a hundred miles as it was, with us after them all the time. There was trouble from the south, too." "Still is. We should just take Mexico and be done with it," Deputy Plunkert said. "If we owned it, we could make the people abide by the law." Call ignored the remark. He thought it ignorant.

"I wish I could have fought in the War," Deputy Plunkert said. "I would have been happy to kill a few Yankees." "That's not polite, there's a Yankee right here at this campfire," Call said. "Mr.

Brookshire fought for his side. You can't blame him for that." "Why, no, I meant other Yankees," the deputy said. It embarrassed him that the Captain had dressed him down in front of a fat little Yankee such as Brookshire. The man had lost a little bit of his girth, once the diet had dropped to frijoles and not much else. But he hadn't lost any of his Yankeeness, not in Plunkert's view.

"That damn Abe Lincoln oughtn't to have freed the slaves, neither," the deputy said. He was feeling aggrieved because no one was taking his side, not even the Captain, the man he had left home to assist.

"What was your opinion on that question?" Brookshire wondered, looking at Call.

"Oh, I grew up poor," Call said.

"We would never have had the money for a slave." There had been a time when Gus McCrae had wanted to abandon the Rangers and rush back east to fight Yankees, for he had gotten it in his head that Southern freedoms were being trampled, and that the two of them ought to go fight; this, despite the fact that they had more fighting than they could handle, right where they were.

Call himself had never caught the fervor of that War. The best man he had working with him at the time was black--Deets, later killed by a Shoshone boy, in Wyoming. He had known people who had owned slaves and mistreated them, and he would certainly have fought to keep Deets from being owned by any of the bad slaveholders; but he could not have fought with the North, against his region, and was content to stay where he was, doing what he was doing. No one in his right mind would have wanted fiercer fighting than the Comanche were capable of. Gus McCrae's problem was that he liked bugles and parades. He had even tried to persuade Call to hire a bugler for the Ranger troop.

"A bugler?" Call said. "Half these men don't have decent saddles, and we're lucky if we have forty rounds of ammunition apiece. Why waste money on a bugler?" "It might impress the Comanche. They've got some sense of show," Gus retorted. "That's your problem, Woodrow, or one of them. You've got no sense of show. Ain't you ever heard of esprit de corps?" "No, what is it, and how much does it cost?" Call asked.

"I give up! You don't buy esprit de corps, you instill it, and a good bugler would be a start," Augustus said.

The argument had taken place north of the Canadian River, when they were chasing a party of Comanche raiders who were, to put it plainly, smarter and faster than they were. The Rangers' horses were winded, and the men so hungry that they were wading around in the icy Canadian, in February, hoping to catch small fish, or frozen frogs, or anything that might have a shred or two of meat on it. Two days before, they had eaten an owl. The men had been cutting small strips of leather off their saddles and chewing on them, just to have something in their mouths. Gus was standing in zero weather, with a norther blowing so hard they could barely keep a campfire lit, talking about buglers.

They didn't catch the raiders, who were carrying two white children with them, and they never hired a bugler, although Gus McCrae was still talking about it, nearly ten years later, when the Civil War finally ended and the Indian wars were beginning to wind down.

As for the great and terrible Civil War, Call's main sense of it was derived from seeing people who came back from it. Several Rangers who had served under him left to go fight Yankees. But those who returned were blank and mostly useless.

One boy named Reuben, who had lost an eye and an arm at Vicksburg, did more than anyone to make that conflict vivid to Call.

"Captain, you don't know," Reuben said, looking at Call sadly with his one eye. "When we get into it with the Comanches, maybe it's ten or fifteen of us, and fifteen or twenty of them, all of us shooting at one another. But in the big fight I was in, it's thousands and thousands on both sides, and cannons and smoke and horses running around half kilt. I seen one horse come by with just a leg in a stirrup, no rider--it's terrible. I got one eye left, and one arm, and I'm one of the lucky ones. All but three of the men I started soldiering with are dead." Brookshire had been worrying a good deal about the train robbery in New Mexico. Who could the second robber be? He had no answer, and neither did Captain Call.

"The other robber could be anybody," Call told him. "This is a free country. Anybody can rob a train if they can make it stop.

Trains travel through some lonesome country. If I was a mind to be a criminal, I can't think of an easier way to start than robbing trains." "I've always tried to be honest," Deputy Plunkert said. "I stole some pecans once and cracked them with my teeth, but I was just a boy then." There was something about being so far into Mexico that made the deputy feel hopeless. He had never been very good at finding his way in new country, which was one reason he had made his life in Laredo.

The town was well supplied, and there was no need to go anywhere. Now that he was married to Doobie, there was no need even to cross the river for girls.

But he had been swept away by his desire to be a Ranger, something he had always dreamed of being, and now he was deep in the middle of a country he didn't like, with two men who weren't nearly as easy to get along with as Doobie. And one of them was a Yankee, to boot. Sometimes, riding through the empty country, where in a whole day they might not even see a bird or a rabbit and had nothing to eat but a little jerky and frijoles, and had even been instructed to parcel out the water in their canteens, the deputy wondered if he would ever get back to Doobie, or his friend Jack Deen, who liked to hunt wild pigs. Something had carried him away; something he hadn't expected.

He hadn't even known Captain Call was in Laredo, or that he was hunting Joey Garza. It was like a wind had swept through Laredo one afternoon, carrying him away with it. Would there be another wind, to carry him back home? In his sad moments, Ted Plunkert didn't think there would be a homing wind. He felt that he had made one simple, wrong move, but one that could never be corrected.

He resolved to be very careful, to give himself the best possible chance. But he didn't know, and he didn't feel hopeful.

They rode into Chihuahua City on a freezing, windy day, when the streets were nothing but swirling dust. The old women in the marketplace, where they stopped to secure provisions, were wrapped in long, black shawls, and the shawls were spotted with dust. One old woman had killed three lizards and was offering their meat for sale. It revolted Ted Plunkert, that a people would be so degraded as to eat lizards, and he said as much to the Captain.

"I've eaten lizard," Call said. "I've eaten bobcat and I've eaten skunk." The deputy had lived in settlements all his life, and had no notion of what sorts of things men would eat when they were hungry, really hungry.

Brookshire rode over to the telegraph office. Call found a barber, and he and the deputy both had a shave. Call enjoyed his, but Deputy Plunkert was nervous. Allowing a Mexican such a good opportunity to cut his throat was not easy for the deputy. But the Mexican shaved him clean and didn't offer him any trouble. Of course, Chihuahua City was a long way from Laredo. Around Laredo, any Mexican barber would have been glad to cut his throat.

That was another strange thing about travel. You went among people who had never heard of you. Ted Plunkert had lived in Laredo all his life, and everybody in Laredo knew him on sight, even the Mexicans. He had been living there when Doobie was born, and kept on living there until she grew up and got old enough that he could marry her. Being in a place where people didn't know him was unusual, but so far, no injuries had resulted.

When Brookshire came back from the telegraph office, he had six telegrams, and he looked sick.

"Your color ain't good," Call observed.

"I guess if I was your doctor, the first thing I'd advise you would be to stay away from telegraph offices. Every time you go into a telegraph office, you come out looking sick." "Yes, and there's a reason," Brookshire said. "There's a bunch of news, and not a word of it good." "What's the worst?" Call asked.

"The worst is that my wife died," Brookshire said. "Katie died. ... I never expected it." Before he could get a grip on his feelings, he found himself crying, even dripping tears on the telegrams. He hurriedly thrust them at the nearest man, who happened to be Deputy Plunkert. Katie was dead; pneumonia had carried her away. She was already buried, too. He would never see her, nor speak to her, again.

"I swear," Call said. "That is bad news. I'm sorry to hear it. I wish now I'd sent you back from Amarillo. You might have been a help." "It's too late. ... Katie's gone," Brookshire mumbled. It was the most shocking thing that had happened to him in his life. He and Katie had discussed his death several times, for he was fourteen years older, and it would only be natural that he die first. That was what they had expected, what they had discussed. He had supposed she would go right on being alive, doing her sewing, putting up with the cat, and making meals for him when he got home. On Sundays, they often ate out.

That was how Brookshire had supposed it would be. Someday, he would pass away. If Katie missed him for a while, that was natural, but in all likelihood, her distress wouldn't last long.

She would soon take his death in stride and be able to continue with her life in fairly good order.

Certainly, she would be a help with her sister's children, for they themselves had none. Often, her sister's children had stayed with them, and on three visits out of four, there would be emergencies or crises.

Katie was never more useful than at such times.

She knew how to judge the seriousness of fevers, and never gave a child the wrong medicine.

Brookshire was not nearly so useful in crises involving children. Katie was never more irritated with him than when he gave a child the wrong medicine or misjudged the dosage. She felt strongly that he ought to learn to dose children correctly, even though they didn't have any children of their own.

Now all that had been turned upside down.

Katie had died, not he, and he had no choice but to receive the news in a gritty, cold, Mexican town, where he had been sent by Colonel Terry, to do a job he was in no way fit for.

"You're my overseer, Brookshire," the Colonel told him, the day he left. "See that the Captain doesn't waste time and doesn't waste money. I want the Garza boy stopped, but I don't want unnecessary expense. You're a competent accountant, and I'm depending on you.

Keep your ledgers neat." The Colonel, who had lost an arm in the War, did not shake hands with him when he left.

The Colonel rarely shook hands with his employees. He had the notion that people caught diseases by shaking hands. He avoided it, unless he was with the President, or the governor, or the mayor of New York, or some such higher-up.

Now Brookshire had gone too far from home, and he had tried to do his exact duty, only to have Katie catch something and be the one to die. She would never again complain of his erratic dosing, when her sister's children were ill. It was a hard thing to accept, real hard. Brookshire struggled to regain control of himself, but he couldn't. He wept and wept.

Deputy Plunkert quickly handed the telegrams to Captain Call. He was surprised to see that a Yankee would cry so, over a wife. He had heard that all Yankees were cold with their women, but this one, Mr. Brookshire, had tears running all down his face. The old Mexican women in the market, wrapped in their shawls against the sand and the wind, were watching the man silently, as if they, too, were surprised by his tears.

"If you like, we'll stop for a day. It's hard to travel when you're grieved. I've done it," Call said.

"No, read the telegrams," Brookshire said. With Katie dead, the only thing he had to cling to was duty. He had to keep thinking of duty, or he would be lost.

Call took the telegrams from Deputy Plunkert and read them. In the last years, he had improved his reading considerably. Charlie Goodnight had books in his house, fifteen or twenty, maybe. Call had been inside the Goodnights' house just once, to visit them.

He had not paid much attention to the books, but Goodnight had one that had just come in the mail a few days before. It was called A Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony--on its cover, it had a picture of a man sitting on a pony that was clearly not Spanish. The book was by Charlie Siringo, a kind of ne'er-do-well who had cowboyed a little and rangered a little, while gambling and drinking steadily, at least in the years when Call had been aware of him.

It was a surprise that such a man had written a book, but there it was.

"I want you to read it and tell me if you think there's anything true in it," Goodnight said.

"I think it's all yarns, myself." Call read the book and agreed with Goodnight. It was all yarns, but what else would anyone expect from a braggart like Siringo?

Reading Siringo's lies had improved his reading, though. He had even thought of stopping by Goodnight's house to borrow another book, in order to keep in practice. He had heard that General Crook, whom he had once met, had written a book. General Crook would be far less likely than Charlie Siringo to fill a book with lies.

Call took his time, and read the telegrams carefully. Then he reread them, in order to give Brookshire time to recover a bit from the terrible news he had just received. Four of the telegrams were from Colonel Terry. The first was merely an inquiry:

Where are you? Stop. Report at once.

The second was in a similar vein:

Important that you report at once.

The third telegram was the one Call studied the longest. A train had been stopped in Mesilla, near Silver City, New Mexico. It had been carrying only three passengers, but all three had been killed and their bodies burned. A witness, a Zu@ni man, had been killed and scalped, but not burned. It was not the work of Joey Garza. A local tracker said seven men were involved.

The fourth telegram from the Colonel offered reinforcements. Call, if he accepted the job, could hire as many men as he needed, catch the Garza boy, and then go to New Mexico to deal with the new threat.

The fifth telegram was from Goodnight, a surprise to Call: first, that Goodnight would take the trouble; and second, that he could guess where Call was going accurately enough to have a telegram waiting for him. Of course, Charles Goodnight was no fool. He had not lasted as long as he had by being ignorant. His telegram was as terse as its author:

Mox Mox is alive. Stop. He's your manburner. Stop. Your deputy is on his way. Stop. Famous Shoes tracking for him.

Stop. Mox Mox burned four of my cowboys.

Stop. You may not recall. Stop. Available if needed. Stop. Goodnight.

The final telegram was the one with the sad news about Brookshire's wife. Call folded them all and put them in his shirt pocket. The one about Mox Mox he meant to study later. Mox Mox was a renegade from the country north of Santa Fe. News that he was alive, and evidently had a gang, was startling. The man had supposedly been killed some ten years earlier in Utah, by a Ute Indian. Call remembered that rumor, and he also remembered the four Goodnight cowboys Mox Mox had killed and burned, in the days when Mox Mox had been a junior member of Blue Duck's gang of roving killers. Goodnight had pursued the man then, pursued him all through New Mexico and into Arizona and Utah, but had met with one of his rare defeats. Mox Mox had vanished into the canyons. It was not long afterward that news came of his death at the hands of the Ute. Not a word had been heard of him since. Now he was alive and in New Mexico, and he had a gang and was picking off trains. It did complicate the search.

Balancing the complication, though, was the news about Pea Eye, news that Call found very gratifying. The man was loyal, after all. And, if he had old Famous Shoes with him, Call would not have to go looking for his deputy. The two of them would just show up one day.

Brookshire, though still wobbly from his tragic news, was watching Call closely. Katie was dead, and he had only his job to think about now.

He wanted to get on with it. He wanted to know what Call's opinion was about the other telegrams.

"Are we going after the new robber, Captain?" he asked.

"He's not a robber--he's a killer," Call said. "He kills men and then burns them.

Sometimes he don't bother to kill them before he burns them." "He burns people?" Deputy Plunkert said, shocked. "Burns them when they're alive?" He had heard of Indians torturing and burning people, in the old days, but this wasn't the old days, this was his own time.

"Yes, he burns them to death, in some cases," Call said. "I don't know much about the man. I had about quit rangering before he showed up. He killed some of Goodnight's men, but that was in Colorado. I've never been there.

"His name is Mox Mox," he added.

"What kind of a name is that?" Brookshire asked.

"Just a name," Call said. "Your Colonel wants us to lope up and catch him, after we subdue the Garza boy.

"There's some good news, too," he added.

"Pea Eye is coming, so we'll have reinforcements.

He's bringing a tracker with him--or rather, the tracker is bringing Pea. I know the old man, he's a Kickapoo. There's nobody better, but he's not cheap. I don't know if your Colonel will want to finance him or not." "Why, how much does a tracker cost?" Brookshire asked. He was weak in the legs, had a headache, and felt as if he would just like to be alone in a nice hotel room for a while, in a hotel where they could bring him brandy and where he could sleep on sheets and not have the wind and sand blowing in his hair all night, nor hear the coyotes howl. He had a sudden urge, now that they were in a city of sorts, to be inside, away from the wind and sand and sky, away from Call and the hostile deputy who never spoke to him unless he had to.

Still, he was a salaried man. Even though Katie, who had been a good wife, was dead, he was not his own master. Colonel Terry wanted action and he wanted reports. "Remember, Brookshire, I'm a man who likes to keep his finger on the pulse," the Colonel had said, as he was leaving. "Keep those telegrams coming." "I don't know how much Famous Shoes thinks he's worth, nowadays," Call said. "If he could write, he'd have his bill ready the minute he arrives. He'll be the first to tell you he don't work for free." "I'd just like a general figure," Brookshire said, wondering why the old women with the dirty shawls were watching him so intently. More and more, he wished for a hotel room, but from the look in the Captain's eyes, he knew it was not likely to be. The Captain had the look of a man who was in no mood to linger.

"Now there's two bandits and two killers," Brookshire said. "Which one do we start with?" "Joey Garza," Call said. "That's who I was hired to catch. The manburner is another story. There's supposed to be law in New Mexico now. Let them stop him." "What if they can't? Do we have to do it?" Deputy Plunkert asked. Here was another bad picture about to get stuck. The thought of burning men had got stuck in his mind; he wanted to dislodge it, but he could not. He had once helped remove the bodies of two old women who had burned to death when their house caught on fire. He could still remember how the burnt flesh smelled, and how the ashes stuck to their faces. That had been his most horrible duty since becoming a lawman. The thought that there was a killer named Mox Mox, who burned people routinely, was very disturbing. More and more, it seemed to Deputy Plunkert that he had been swept out of his life by an evil wind. The wind was blowing him farther and farther away from home. He looked at Captain Call, and he looked at Brookshire. He felt almost like a boy, in relation to the two men.

He was young, and they were not. They were even older than Sheriff Jekyll, who had been his boss. Being in a city where there were only Mexicans was disquieting too, even though these were Mexicans who knew nothing about him. He was in the path of an evil wind, and he felt that he would never get home.

"I want to buy some binoculars, if we can find any," Call said. "Then we can provision ourselves and leave." "Where will we go next?" Brookshire asked.

"I'd like to send Colonel Terry a telegram." "Presidio," Call said. "I think the Garza boy comes from around there. Famous Shoes might show up there, too. Then, we'd have Pea Eye." "How would he know to show up there?" Brookshire asked. "We didn't even know we were going there ourselves, until just now." Call smiled. "That's the tracker's skill," he said. "It ain't all just looking at the ground and studying tracks. Famous Shoes will think about it and watch the birds and talk to the antelope and figure it out. Pea's no tracker. I expect it would take him six months to locate us, on his own." In a hardware store, he purchased some field glasses. They were not the highest quality, but they would have to do. He was about to leave the store, but turned back and bought two extra rifles. He rarely burdened himself with extra equipment; a blanket and a Winchester and one canteen had seen him through many engagements. This time, though, he felt it might be wise to carry a couple of extra guns. Goodnight's telegram had made him think twice about what lay ahead. Mox Mox was a complication. Call did not intend to go after him, but it might not be a matter of going after him. Mox Mox might come to Texas, for all anyone knew.

Also, Pea Eye had never owned a reliable gun, and Famous Shoes rarely went armed. He moved too fast to be carrying weapons. The extra Winchesters would come in handy.

As they left the store, Call handed the receipts to Brookshire, who carefully folded them and put them in his shirt pocket. The day had turned cold, and the sky was the color of steel.

It was nearing evening; Brookshire still entertained the hope that they would spend at least one night in a hotel of some sort. But the Captain had not mentioned a hotel. He was securing the provisions, tying them onto the pack animals.

Ted Plunkert, for once, shared an opinion with the Yankee, who had mentioned to him, hesitantly, that it would be very nice to spend one night in a bed, inside a building.

"Yes, I don't much care what it's like, as long as it's inside," the deputy said.

But when Call was satisfied that the packs were secure, he mounted his horse and looked at the two men, both standing by their mounts.

"I guess we ain't staying the night. Is that right, Captain?" Brookshire asked.

"Why, no. Your boss wants results, ain't that correct?" Call said.

"That's correct," Brookshire replied.

"There's a full moon tonight, and we should take advantage of it," Call said. "The horses are rested. We should be able to make it to the Rio Concho." "How far is that, Captain?" Brookshire asked.

"I suppose about fifty miles," Call said. "If we don't strike it tonight, we'll strike it tomorrow." Neither Brookshire nor Deputy Plunkert looked happy. Of course, Brookshire had lost his wife; he could not be expected to recover from such a blow immediately. But there was a full moon, and Call didn't want to waste it.

"Mr. Brookshire, I think it's better that we go on," Call said. "I'm sorry about your wife, but lagging won't bring her back. We'd better go get your boss some results." "Well, that's good," Brookshire said.

"That's exactly what the Colonel wants." "I'm confident the Garza boy's not west of us, and I don't think he's south, either," Call said. "I think he's east and north. This is where the hunt starts. We haven't been in any danger, so far, but that might change in a day or two. I want you both to keep alert.

He's got that German rifle, don't forget it. We'll be going through country where there's not much cover. You both need to keep alert." "Do you think Joey Garza knows we're coming, Captain?" Brookshire asked.

"I expect so," Call said. "If he doesn't know it now, he'll know it by the time we cross the river." "Who'll tell him?" the deputy asked.

"Why, I don't know," Call said. "He's an intelligent young bandit. I expect he'll know we're coming." "What do you think? Will he try to pick us off?" Deputy Plunkert asked. He noticed that the Captain was frowning at him. Brookshire, the Yankee, had already mounted; he looked miserable, but at least he was already on his horse.

Ted Plunkert hastily mounted too.

"I don't know what he'll try. Let's go to Texas," the Captain said, turning his horse.

By the time the full moon appeared, they were well out of Chihuahua City. The moon shone on a landscape that seemed to be emptier than any of the barren country Brookshire had ridden through since coming to Texas. There was nothing to be seen at all, just the moon and the land. The wind soared; sometimes spumes of dust rose so high that the moon shone bleakly through them. At other times the dust cleared, and the moon shone bright--so bright that Brookshire could read his watch by its light. At midnight, they struck the Rio Concho, but the Captain neither slowed down nor looked back. He kept on riding toward Texas.

The blowing-away feeling came back to Brookshire, but it came to him laced with fatigue and sadness over the loss of his wife, Katie, a nice person. He felt heartsick at the knowledge that he would never see Katie again. His heartsickness went so deep that the blowing-away feeling didn't frighten him. It would be fine now, if he blew away. He would not have to face the Colonel and explain the exorbitant expenses that might accrue.

In Brooklyn, in his work as a salaried man, Brookshire had never paid much attention to the moon. Once in a while, on picnics, he might admire it as it shone over the East River, or the Hudson, if they went that far to picnic. But it hadn't mattered to him whether the moon was full, or just a sliver, or not there at all.

Once they were on the black desert in Mexico, Brookshire saw that the Captain had been right. The full moon, in the deep Mexican sky, was so bright that traveling was as easy as it would have been in daylight. Brookshire was still a salaried man, but he was also a manhunter now, a manhunter hunting a very dangerous man.

He was heading into Texas with Captain Woodrow Call, and he would probably do well to start paying more attention to the moon.

Part II The Manburner

Lorena was reading a letter from Clara when Clarie came in to tell her that Mr. Goodnight was at the door.

In the letter, Clara was urging her to make a beginning in Latin, advice that caused Lorena to feel doubtful. She thought she could do quite well with English grammar now, but she didn't know if she was up to Latin, or if she ever would be. The baby had been sick most of the time since Pea Eye left, and she had been sleeping tired and waking tired, worrying about the baby and worrying about Pea.

"Mr. Goodnight?" Lorena said. Though he had given the money to build the school she taught in, Lorena had only met Mr. Goodnight once or twice, and he had never visited her home.

"Why would he come here? Are you sure it's him?" she asked. She felt unprepared, and not merely for the study of Latin, either. At that moment, she just felt low, and her feet and hands were cold.

Usually, letters from Clara cheered Lorena, but this one made her feel more aware of her shortcomings.

She knew herself to be a competent country schoolteacher, but somehow, the Latin language felt as if it should belong to a better order of person than herself, a farmer's wife with five children, no money, and no refinements. If Latin was anything, it was a refinement.

"Learning may be the best thing we have. It may be all that we can truly keep, Lorie," Clara wrote in the letter, along with news about her girls and her horses.

Lorena read that sentence several times. In fact, she read it again, even after Clarie delivered her information. She felt her daughter's impatience, but she was reluctant to lay aside her letter, to go and attend to Charles Goodnight, the great pioneer.

"Ma, he's waiting--he already took his hat off!" Clarie said, annoyed at her mother's behavior. Mr. Goodnight was on the back steps, hat in hand. Why was she sitting there like that, reading a letter she had already read five or six times? Laurie had just taken the breast, and her mother had scarcely bothered to cover herself, even though the baby was now asleep. What was wrong with her?

"Ma!" Clarie said, deeply embarrassed.

"Oh hush, don't scold me, I've been scolded enough in my life already," Lorena said.

She buttoned her dress and put the letter under a book--Aurora Leigh it was; she had ordered it from Kansas City--and went to the kitchen door. The old, heavy man with the gray hair and the gray beard stood there, patiently. A big gray horse waited behind him.

"I was busy. I'm sorry you had to wait," Lorena apologized, opening the door for him.

She had heard that Goodnight was severe with women, but she had seen no sign of it in his behavior toward her. Despite her past, he had approved of her as a schoolteacher. Not everyone wealthy enough to simply write a check and have a schoolhouse built would have been so tolerant.

"I hesitate to bother you, ma'am," Goodnight said.

"Come in, I can offer you buttermilk," Lorena said, holding the door open.

Goodnight immediately came in and took a chair in the kitchen.

"I know you've got your duties, I'll be brief, though I would like the buttermilk," he said. "If I had been born in different circumstances, I could have made a life of drinking buttermilk." Lorena poured him a large glass. He drank half of it and set the glass down.

Clarie peeked in at the door. She couldn't resist. Everyone talked about Mr. Goodnight, but she had only seen him once before, at a picnic, and he hadn't stayed around long enough for her to get a really good look at him.

"That's a fine-looking young lady there--I understand she helps out with the teaching," Goodnight said.

"Yes, she's a great help," Lorena said.

Clarie blushed, so unexpected was her mother's compliment; she had made it to the great man, too!

"I'm shaky at some of the arithmetic," Lorena admitted. "Clarie grasps fractions better than I do." Goodnight drank the other half of the buttermilk and set the empty glass back on the table.

"I expect I could chase a fraction from dawn to sunset and never come near enough to grasp it," he said.

Then he looked firmly at Clarie. The three boys, hearing an unfamiliar voice in the kitchen, were huddled behind her, peeking along with their big sister.

"I'll have to ask you young'uns to excuse us older folks," he said. "I've got a private matter to talk over with your mother." "Oh," Clarie said. She immediately retreated, taking the boys with her. Georgie she had to forcibly drag by the collar. He had developed the ill-mannered habit of staring at guests.

Lorena felt a sudden alarm. Had something happened to Pea?

"No, your husband's fine, as far as I know," Goodnight said, seeing the alarm in the woman's eyes. He felt sympathy for her, and much admiration. It was well known that she had not missed a day of school since taking her job. She arrived every day, in her buggy, in the coldest weather and in the muddiest weather, too. He himself had always been more vexed by mud than by cold, and so was Mary, his wife. Skirts and high-button shoes were a great nuisance when it was muddy, Mary claimed, and he didn't doubt it a bit.

This young woman had strength, and she didn't neglect her duties; that he admired. He felt uneasy, though, at the nature of the inquiry he had come to make. The uneasiness had kept him at home for two weeks or more, since he had first been told that Mox Mox, the manburner, had appeared again. This woman had a difficult past; he knew that, but he didn't care. Life was an uneven business. He knew himself to be of a judgmental nature--too judgmental, his wife assured him. But with the schoolmarm, he had no urge to pass judgment.

She was not the only woman in the Panhandle to have had an uneven life, and her performance with her pupils had been splendid, in his opinion. Her past was between her and her husband. Goodnight was not a preacher, and he had no mission to save the world, either.

"You're sure he's not dead?" Lorena asked. She couldn't help it. She'd had several bad dreams, since Pea Eye left, and in all of them he was either dead or about to be.

"If he is, I haven't heard it," Goodnight said.

"Then what is it, Mr. Goodnight?" Lorena asked. "What is it?" "It's Mox Mox," Goodnight replied.

Lorena knew then why it had taken an old man, known all over the West for his abruptness, so long to come to the point. Her first urge was to run and lock her children in the bedroom, where they couldn't possibly even hear the name Goodnight had just spoken.

At the same time, she felt too weak to stand up. A rush of fear broke in her such as she had not felt for many years.

Goodnight saw it--the woman had come into the kitchen a little flustered, some color in her cheeks. But the color left her, as soon as he spoke Mox Mox's name. It was as if the blood had suddenly been milked from her, with one squeeze.

"But he's dead, ain't he?" Lorena asked.

It was the first time she had slipped and said "ain't" in many months.

"I thought so myself, but now I ain't so sure," Goodnight said. "I've never seen the man myself, and I believe you have seen him. That's why I've bothered you and took the risk of upsetting you." He paused, watching the young woman bring herself under control. It was not a simple struggle, or a brief one. She stared at him, wordless. She was plainly scared, too scared to hide it. Finally, to be doing something, he got up and helped himself to another glass of buttermilk.

Seeing Mr. Goodnight pouring himself the buttermilk brought Lorena back to herself, and just in time. For a second, she had felt a scream starting in her head, or had heard, inside herself, the piercing echo of many screams from the past. She felt cold and clammy, so heavy with fear that, for a second, she didn't know if she could move. During the hours when she had been a captive of Mox Mox and his boss, Blue Duck, she hadn't been able to move, and the terror that she felt during those hours was a thing that would never leave her. The name alone had brought it all back. Mr. Goodnight must have known it might, or he would not have hesitated.

But the man was in her kitchen, he was her guest, and there was such a thing as manners. Even though her deepest urge was to gather her children and run--run to Nebraska, or farther--she knew that she had to control herself and try to help Charles Goodnight, for the very sake of her children.

"I'm sorry, I'm bad scared, it caused me to forget my manners," she said. She gripped the edge of the table and squeezed it with the fingers of both hands. She needed something that would steady her, something to grip. But the spasm of fear was stronger than her grip. Despite herself, she kept trembling.

"It don't take much muscle to pour buttermilk," Goodnight said. "I regret having to put you through this." "Why are you? Mox Mox is dead," Lorena said. "Pea Eye heard it years ago. He was killed in Utah, or somewhere.

"He's dead. ... ain't he?" she asked.

"He's dead. Everybody said it." "I chased him to Utah myself," Goodnight said. "He burnt four of my cowboys, in Colorado, on the Purgatory River.

Three of them were boys of sixteen, and the fourth was my foreman. He'd been with me twenty years.

I chased Mox Mox, but I lost him. It's a failure I've regretted ever since. Two or three years later, I heard he was dead, killed by a Ute Indian." "Yes, it was a Ute that killed him," Lorena said. "That's what Pea Eye told me." Goodnight watched her shaking. He wished he could comfort her, but he had never been much of a hand at comforting women. It wasn't one of his skills.

He drank the second glass of buttermilk, looked at the pitcher, and decided not to have a third.

"I think Mox Mox is alive," he said.

"Somebody's been burning people in New Mexico." "Burning what kinds of people?" Lorena asked, still gripping the table. It was all she could do to keep from jumping up and gathering her children and running before Mox Mox could come and get them all.

"Whatever kind he catches," Goodnight said. "He stopped a train and took three people off and burned them. That was three weeks ago.

"There ain't that many manburners," Goodnight added, after a pause. "The Suggs brothers burned two farmers, but Captain Call caught the Suggs brothers and hung them. That was years ago." He paused again. "Mox Mox is the only killer I've heard of who makes a habit of burning people," he said, finally.

Lorena was silent. But in her head, she heard the screams.

"If I've got the history right, when Blue Duck took you from the Hat Creek outfit, Mox Mox was still running with him," Goodnight said. He spoke with caution. He had known several women who had been captives, several women and a few children. Some of them babbled about it; others never spoke of it; but all were damaged.

Though used to plain speech, he knew that there were times when it wasn't the best way to talk. This woman, who worked so hard for the ignorant, raw children of the settlers, in a schoolhouse he had built, had been a captive, not of the Comanche, but of Blue Duck, one of the cruelest renegades ever to appear in the Panhandle country.

And Mox Mox, at various times, had run with Blue Duck. He himself had never seen either man. This woman had seen one of them for sure; perhaps she had seen both. He wanted to know what she knew, or as much of it as she could bear to tell him.

Rarely, in his long life, had Goodnight felt so awkward about asking for the information he needed. Lorena was not one to babble. What she felt, she mainly kept inside. Her fingers were white from gripping the edge of the table, and her arms shook a little; but she was not behaving wildly, she was not screaming or crying, and she was also not talking.

"Mox Mox is a white man and he's short," Lorena said. "One of his eyes ain't right, it points to the side. But the other eye looks at you, and one's enough." Goodnight waited, standing by the stove.

Lorena took a deep breath. She felt as if she might strangle, if she didn't get more air into her lungs. She remembered that was how she had been then, too, the day Blue Duck led her horse across the Red River and handed her over to Ermoke and Monkey John and all the rest.

But not Mox Mox. He hadn't been there then.

He had arrived later; how many days later, Lorena wasn't sure. She wasn't counting days, then. She hadn't expected to live, and didn't want to, or didn't think she wanted to.

Then Mox Mox arrived. He had three Mexicans with him, and a stolen white boy. The little boy was about six. He whimpered all night.

When Gus McCrae rescued her, she hadn't been able to speak, and she had never since spoken of that time to anyone--not much, anyway.

Particularly, she had never spoken about the little boy.

"Mox Mox wanted to burn me," Lorena said. "I'll tell you, Mr. Goodnight.

I'll tell it today. But don't ever ask me about it again. Is that a bargain?" Goodnight nodded.

"He's small," Lorena said. "He wasn't big, like Blue Duck, and he's got that eye that looks off. He wanted to burn me.

He piled brush all around me and he poured whiskey on me. He said that would make me burn longer. He said it would make it hurt worse.

He rubbed grease in my eyes. He said that would be the worst, when my eyes fried. He poured whiskey on me and he rubbed that grease in my eyes." "But he didn't burn you," Goodnight said.

"I'm surprised. It's our good luck and yours." "Blue Duck wouldn't let him burn me," Lorena said. "Blue Duck wanted me for bait. He let him pile up the brush, and he let him squirt and rub grease in my eyes, but he wouldn't let him burn me. He wanted to use me to catch Gus McCrae. He wanted to catch Gus real bad, but then Gus killed half his renegades, and Blue Duck left." "What about Mox Mox?" Goodnight asked.

"I guess he didn't stay for the fight with Captain McCrae, did he? He left, like his jefe." "Yes ... he left with his Mexicans," Lorena said.

She stopped.

"I've never told nobody this. ... I don't know if I can, Mr. Goodnight," Lorena said.

"Don't try," Goodnight said. "You don't need to. I'll tell this part, ma'am.

He didn't burn you, but he burned the boy, didn't he?" "How'd you know?" Lorena asked, looking at him in surprise.

"Because I found what was left of that boy, and buried him," Goodnight said. "Six months later, that devil burned my cowboys." "I'm glad somebody else knows," Lorena said.

"Well, I know," Goodnight said. "I found the remains. The boy's parents showed up at my headquarters about a year later. They were still looking for their child." Lorena began to tremble so hard that Charles Goodnight stepped over and put a hand on her shoulder. He had steadied horses that way; perhaps it would have the same effect with this woman.

"You didn't tell them, did you?" Lorena said. "You didn't tell them what happened, did you?" "I told them their son drowned in the South Canadian River," Goodnight said. "I usually try to stick to the truth, but these poor folks had been hunting that boy for a year. I thought the full truth was more than they needed to hear.

Anyway, the child was dead. They wanted to go to the grave, and I took them. I'm thankful they didn't try to dig up the child." "You did right," Lorena said. "You shouldn't have told them no more than you did." They were silent. Lorena was still trembling, but not so badly.

"I wasn't a mother then," Lorena said.

"I'm a mother now. Mox Mox did the same things to that child that he said he would do to me. He whipped him and he poured whiskey on him, and he rubbed grease in his eyes. Then he piled brush on him and burned him." She had said it, said it for the first time. She looked up at Goodnight, the old man of the plains.

"Were the Indians that bad, with people they caught?" she asked.

"They were," Goodnight said. "Those were bloody times, the Indian times. But you said Mox Mox was white." "He was white--a mean, little white man," Lorena said. "He whipped that boy till there wasn't an inch of skin on his body. Then he burned him." "It ain't often you find two bad ones of the caliber of him and Blue Duck, running together," Goodnight said. "But you said Mox Mox had his own gang?" "Three Mexicans," Lorena said. "They left with Mox Mox, when Blue Duck wouldn't let him burn me." Goodnight was about to speak when Lorena's voice quickened.

"I still hear that boy screaming, Mr.

Goodnight," she said. "I'll always hear that child screaming. I'm a mother now. He was about the age of Georgie ... about ... the age of Georgie." Then a convulsion of sobbing seized her, and she got up and stumbled out of the room, her arms clutched about her chest, as if her very organs might spill out if she didn't clutch herself tightly enough.

Goodnight looked at the buttermilk again, and again decided against another glass. Though he was old, and should have been used to all suffering, to any misery that life could place in his path, he had never accustomed himself to the deep sobbing of women, to the grief that seized them when their children died, or their men. He had no children. His cowboys were his children, but he had not given birth to his cowboys; it must surely make a difference. He went out the back door, into the stiff wind, and stood by his horse, waiting until the young woman had recovered sufficiently to fend for herself and her children.

A little boy came out and walked up to him.

"My more-more-mama is crying," he said, looking at Goodnight. The boy didn't seem to be particularly upset. He was just reporting.

"Well, I expect she needs to. .

Let her bawl," Goodnight said.

"My but-but-baby sister cries all the that-that-time, but I don't cry," the little boy, Georgie, stammered.

Two more boys came out, one older, one younger.

They stood together. All were barefoot, though it was cold outside. Then the large girl came too, carrying the baby. She looked scared.

"Mama's screaming in there," the girl said.

"Why is she screaming like that? She's never screamed before." Indeed, when the wind lay for a few seconds, Goodnight could hear Lorena screaming. They were wild screams. He supposed captive women must scream like that, during the worst of it. But he had never been a captive, nor a woman, and he could only suppose.

"I brought some bad news; I'm afraid it's greatly upset her," Goodnight said.

"She'll probably be better, presently." Unless she isn't, he thought. People had lost their minds over less than the schoolmarm had endured.

"I hope she stops," one of the older boys said.

"It wasn't about Pa, was it?" Clarie asked.

"No. I have no reason to think your father has had any difficulty," Goodnight told the girl. He was not used to talking to young people, and found it a strain. But in the calm intervals, between the surges of wind, he could still hear Lorena, as could the children, and she was still screaming. Then the wind would return and whisk her screams away.

"Do you ever can-can-cry, mister?" the bold Georgie asked.

"Seldom, son, very seldom," Goodnight replied.

"Is it but-but-because you have a but-but-beard?" Georgie asked. He liked the old man, though he certainly didn't have much to say.

"Yes, I expect that's the reason," Goodnight said.

There was an interval. The wind lay, briefly. They heard no screams.

"She's stopped. Do you think I should go see about her, Mr. Goodnight?" Clarie asked.

"No, let's just wait," Goodnight said.

"I expect she'll come and get us when she wants us." They were all silent for a minute, as the wind blew.

"It's chilly weather to go barefoot in," Goodnight said. "Don't none of you have shoes?" "We got a pair apiece," the older of the boys replied. "Ma don't like us to put 'em on until we get to school, though.

She thinks it's wasting shoes." "Go-go-got any horses that's for knowledge-knowledge-kids to ride?" Georgie asked. "I but-but-been wantin' a horse." "Georgie, it's Mr. Goodnight," Clarie said, mortified. Georgie had practically come right out and asked him for a horse, with their mother screaming in the house.

"That's fine, miss," Goodnight said. "A cowboy needs a horse." "Well, do-do-do you have one, more-more-mister?" Georgie asked.

Clarie resolved to box him soundly, when she got the opportunity. She had an urge to go in the house and see about her mother, but she hesitated to leave Georgie alone with Mr. Goodnight.

There was no telling what he might ask for next.

"Why, I'll have to inspect my herd," Goodnight said, amused. "I wouldn't want to give a cowboy like you just any horse." "More-more-make it brown, if you've go-go-got a brown one," Georgie said. "But-but-brown's my from-from-favorite can-can-color!" His stutter became worse when he got excited.

"Would you come back in, please? All of you?" Lorena asked, from the doorway. "I'm so sorry I drove you out in the wind." "It ain't the first breeze I've felt," Goodnight remarked. Evidence of her sobbing was in Lorena's face, but she had put a comb in her hair and seemed composed, more composed than she had been even when he arrived.

"You children go into the bedroom. You, too, Clarie," she said. "I have to talk to Mr.

Goodnight a minute more. Then, we'll try to get back to normal." "Ma, Georgie's been asking Mr.

Goodnight for a horse," Clarie blurted out.

She didn't want to go in the bedroom. She wanted to report on Georgie's misbehavior first.

"Where he's going, there are plenty of horses," Lorena said. "Don't question me now.

Go in the bedroom." The children went, obediently.

"I'm sending them off to Nebraska," Lorena said, the minute she knew the bedroom door was closed. "I have a friend there. She'll take them till this is over.

"I thought it was over, or I wouldn't have been living nowhere near here," she added. "He told me if I ever had children, he'd come and burn them, like he burned that little boy. It was the last thing he said to me, before he and his Mexicans left." "I should have stopped that man a long time ago," Goodnight said.

"You didn't, though," Lorena said. "He burned your cowboys, despite you. I won't take a chance with my children." "Don't blame you," Goodnight said.

"You've got a fine brood. I like that talkative little boy, he takes up for himself." "He's going to Nebraska, and so are the rest of them," Lorena said. "As soon as I can get them packed and on a train, they're going. Mox Mox is a bad man, Mr. Goodnight.

He's not getting a chance to torment any of mine." "I thought all the mean wolves was about killed out, in this country," Goodnight said. "I thought that man was dead, or I would have stayed after him. Of course, maybe he is dead. Maybe this manburner is somebody else." "I can't take that chance, not with my children," Lorena said. "Now my husband's gone too, and it's my fault. He ain't a killer, and he has no business hunting killers with Captain Call, not anymore." Goodnight felt a little uncomfortable. After all, he had urged the man to go, though it was none of his business. Once again he wondered when he would ever learn not to meddle in other people's business.

The woman was right. Pea Eye was not a killer, and had no business having to deal with a Joey Garza, or a Mox Mox.

"There's something else," Lorena said. "I think we ought to close the school, until this ends.

If Mox Mox showed up, he might burn all the children. He's capable of it--he might pen us in and burn us all. I won't risk it for my children or for anybody's." "What if I set a guard?" Goodnight asked.

"No," Lorena said. "If I had known he was alive, I'd never have started the school. When he's dead, and I know it, there'll be time for studying and teaching. But not until I know he's dead." "I better go myself and stop him, then," Goodnight said. "That way, when it's done, I'll know it's done, and so will you." "Let Captain Call do it," Lorena said.

"I'm sure that sounds bold. I have no right to give you orders. I've no right even to make suggestions. But you came here and asked what I knew, and I told you. I have seen that man, and you haven't. If I were you, I'd let Captain Call do it." "It was my men he burned," Goodnight said.

"It's my responsibility, not Call's." Lorena didn't respond. She felt she had overstepped as it was, by saying what she had said. She thought she was right, and had said what she felt.

Besides, part of her mind had already begun to occupy itself with the logistics of flight: getting the children's things together, finding neighbors who might take their animals, or hiring a helper to live in the house and look after things. There was no time even to write Clara. Lorena knew she would not draw an easy breath until the children were gone and safe.

Clara would be surprised, when five children got off the train expecting to live with her. But Lorena knew Clara would take them. Since her daughters' marriages, Clara had been too much alone, anyway. At least it seemed so, from her letters. Having children in the house again might not be the worst thing for her.

"I expect you think I'm too old to subdue the man," Goodnight said. He was annoyed, and surprised at his annoyance. But the definite way the young woman had come down for Call and not for him, stirred something in Goodnight; the competitor, perhaps, or just the male. In his long years as a pioneer, he had always led, no matter how long, how difficult or how ugly the task. He had always led. He had been the man to do the job, whatever that job was. He was vain enough to think he was still the man who could do the job, whatever it happened to be, although his own vanity annoyed him, too.

"No, you're not a killer," Lorena said.

"I know you may have killed to survive, but you're not a killer. Mox Mox is a killer, and so is Captain Call. Send a killer after a killer. That's why I said it. I wasn't thinking about your age.

"Besides, people here need you," she added. "This whole part of the country needs you. You're the man who built the school, and I know you've built others, too. You brought the doctor here.

You paid for the courthouse. You're needed. Nobody needs Captain Call." "Well, the rich men need him," Goodnight said.

"Yes, because he's a killer," Lorena said.

"That's why they need him. He's as hard as Blue Duck, and he's as hard as Mox Mox." "He's got that other boy to catch first," Goodnight reminded her.

"Mr. Goodnight, I've got to start packing," Lorena said, standing up. "I've got to go to the school and dismiss my pupils. They'll want to know why, and I'm going to tell them. Then I've got to hunt up somebody to do the chores here, for a while. Then I've got to pack. I want to start for Amarillo tonight. I want my children out of here, now." "You'll be in a regular lather, before you get all that done," Goodnight said. "I expect I could stop the train for you, at Quanah, and I'll send a wagon and a cowboy or two to help you get to the train." "Much obliged," Lorena said. "And could you lend me a weapon? All my husband left me with was a shotgun. Of course, he didn't know about Mox Mox. I've never even said that name to him." "I can lend you several guns, but I doubt you'll need them, once you're on the train for Nebraska," Goodnight said.

"My children are going to Nebraska, I'm not," Lorena replied.

"Not going?" Goodnight said. "Why not, ma'am? You're the one he nearly burned. I doubt that he's in six hundred miles of here, but six hundred miles can be crossed. If anyone has a right to be scared, it's you. Why not leave with your children?" "Because I have to find my husband and bring him home," Lorena said. "I should have set my heels and kept him, but I didn't. It's my place to go bring him back." "Now, that's rash," Goodnight said. "If you'd like me to lend you something, why not accept the loan of a man who knows the country and can go get your husband and bring him home?" "None of your cowboys married him," Lorena said. "I married him. He's a good man, and I need him. Besides, he won't mind anybody but me, unless it's the Captain. I'm going to go find him, and he's going to mind me, particularly now." Charles Goodnight, rarely quelled, felt quelled this time. He knew determination when he saw it. He ceased to argue, but he did promise to send two cowboys with a wagon, to get her to the train at Quanah. As he was preparing to leave, he told Lorena he wanted to provide each of her boys with a horse, when they returned.

"I do like the way that talkative little boy takes up for himself," he repeated.

"Don't forget to send me the gun," Lorena said. "I don't want to be going south without a gun."

Riding to Crow Town across the empty land, Maria began to wish she would never have to arrive. The happiest moments of her life had often been spent alone, with her horse. From the time of Three Legs, she had always loved going away alone, with her horse.

To avoid Presidio and Doniphan, the hard sheriff, she rode up the river for two days before crossing into Texas. She saw mule deer and antelope, many antelope, but no people. It was cold, and the north wind sang in her face. At night, she persuaded her spotted horse--she called him Grasshopper, because he had a way of suddenly springing sideways--to lie down, so she could sleep close to him and share his warmth.

Twice she saw trains moving across the long plain. The trains did not seem to be moving very fast; no wonder Joey could rob them. The locomotives pulled only two or three cars. They were just little trains, moving slowly across the endless line of the horizon. Maria had ridden a train only once, to go to her mother when her mother was dying. It had rattled so badly that she had been unable to think.

Grasshopper did not like the new country, and he shied at many things. Once, a tumbleweed surprised him, and he bucked a few times.

Maria was amused, that he was so skittish; she didn't think he could throw her. She enjoyed it, when Grasshopper was naughty. He was irritated with her for bringing him so far from the cornfield. But he obediently lay down at night, so Maria would be warm.

As she rode east, through the sage and the thin chaparral, Maria wondered about herself. Why was she traveling so far, for a boy who didn't care about anyone but himself? She should just let Joey go. There was a hopelessness in what she was doing, and Maria felt it strongly. She should stay at home and help Rafael and Teresa, for they were loving children.

With them, even though they were damaged, she could be happy as a mother, and they could be happy too.

But Joey was different. He would not yield her even a moment of affection. She wondered if he blamed her for Juan Castro, and for the fact that he had been sold to the Apaches.

It seemed to Maria, remembering before that time, that Joey had been a good boy. He played with other children, and she could tease him and hug him.

But when Joey came back, there was no touching him, and he never smiled, unless he was looking at himself in the mirror. Maria wondered if it was wrong to blame the change in Joey on the Apaches. Perhaps the coldness had been in him earlier. Perhaps it came from her grandfather, a cold old man who did not speak a word to his wife, Maria's grandmother, for seven years, because he blamed her for the death of their first son. What was in Joey could have come from that old man.

Maria rode on toward Crow Town, across the great, empty Texas plain. When she came to the Pecos, with its steep banks, she followed it north for two days, before she could find the courage to cross it. Since the time when the lawmen tied her to the mule and almost drowned her in the Rio Grande, she had had a fear of water that she could not control.

But she knew that Crow Town was east of the Pecos; she would have to cross it somewhere. As she rode along, fearing the river, Maria felt her motherhood to be a cold chain linking her to Joey, who wanted nothing from her and had no love for her or interest in her. If she drowned crossing the Pecos, Joey might not ever know, and might not care if he did know. Why did she think she had to risk the water, in order to warn him that the famous lawman was coming after him? Was it only because she had given birth to him? Did that mean she could never be quit of the pain of such a son? Would her obligation always be so hard and so unredeemed?

Grasshopper did not like the Pecos, either. Every time she found a cut in the brushy banks and tried to force him down it, he balked, sulked, whirled, tried to resist. Because Maria was so frightened herself, she let the spotted horse defeat her, several times. They went on up the plain, following the west bank of the river.

The cold was deepening, ever deepening. The clouds were gray, like the sage grass. Maria awoke so stiff with cold that she could hardly mount.

In the mornings, the chaparral thorns were white with frost, and the water in the Pecos was black from cold.

One morning, Maria decided to cross. She felt that if she didn't cross that day, she would give up and stop trying to be a good mother to Joey and go home. It might be for the sake of her father's memory, and her brother's, that she was coming to warn Joey. He might not care himself; he might think he was a match for Captain Call. He might even feel complimented that such a famous man had been summoned to kill him.

Maria broke a limb off a dead mesquite tree to use as a whip. Rarely had she needed to strike her horse, but this morning, when he refused to take the water, she beat him with all her strength until, finally, unable to turn in a narrow cutbank, he made a convulsive plunge into the dark water. It was so cold that Maria feared she might pass out. Her fingers became too numb to hold the bridle. She hung on to Grasshopper's neck with both arms as he struggled out of the water and up the thin cut in the east bank.

On the whole journey, she had not allowed herself a fire. She did not feel it was wise to build a fire in the Texans' country. A fire might bring her someone she didn't want. It might bring her cowboys, or killers, or lawmen.

But this morning she built a fire, in order not to freeze. Sleet began to blow, and her clothes were wet. She was so numb in her hands and feet that she thought she might die if she didn't get warm. The air felt cold inside her when she breathed. She broke off small limbs of mesquite and made herself a little fire, while Grasshopper grazed on the cold tufts of grass.

Suddenly, Grasshopper threw up his head and neighed. Maria was too cold to stop him. She knew there were wild horses in Texas. Perhaps he had only neighed at one of them. She had the revolver Billy had given her in her saddlebags. She got it out, but her fingers were stiff from the cold water. She might not be able to shoot well, if she had to shoot.

Then, to her relief, the old Kickapoo Famous Shoes appeared out of the sleet. He moved, as always, at his own gait, a walk that was almost a trot.

Famous Shoes saw at once that Maria was almost frozen. He thought he had better make coffee. Fortunately, Maria had coffee and an old, bent pot with her. She was trembling from cold. She had made a fire so small that it warmed only part of her.

When Maria saw Famous Shoes making coffee, she felt relieved. The old man was peculiar; he appeared and disappeared at whim.

But he was competent. He had offered to take her deep into the Madre once and hide her from the lawmen, when they were being rough with her. Maria had refused his offer. She would not be driven from her children by any lawmen. If she ever had to go to the Madre, she would take Rafael and Teresa with her.

Then Grasshopper neighed again, looking to the north, where the sleet came from.

Famous Shoes saw Maria's concern, and understood it. There were many bad men in Texas.

He gave her a cup of boiling coffee. Just holding the hot cup would make her hands feel better, and the coffee would warm her insides.

"I am traveling with Pea Eye," Famous Shoes said. "His woman is going to teach me to read. His horse is a little slow. I was looking for a place to cross the river when I found you." "Who is this man? I don't know him," Maria said.

"He is a friend of the Captain--you remember?" Famous Shoes said.

"The Captain who hung my father?" Maria asked.

"That one," Famous Shoes said. "Now he is looking for Joey. Did you know that?" "Why would I be here, freezing, where the Texans could get me, if I didn't know that," Maria said. "I am on my way to warn Joey.

Now you bring me one of the men who is going to kill him. Why didn't you let me freeze?" "Pea Eye doesn't know you," Famous Shoes assured her. "Joey is in Crow Town, anyway. We didn't go there because if we had, one of the bad men might have killed us." The coffee made Maria feel a lot warmer.

The tin cup was so hot she had to hold it with a part of her skirt or her hands would have burned. When she realized what Famous Shoes was telling her, she grew angry.

"Why are you bringing men to kill my son?" she asked. "I thought you were my friend." "I have been to the Rio Rojo," Famous Shoes said. "I was looking for my grandfather, but his spirit had wandered off. I don't know where it lives. I was coming to Ojinaga to see you. I thought you might have some corn. Then I met Pea Eye, who is my old friend. He doesn't know where he is going. I don't want him to get sick, so I am helping him." "I don't care if he gets sick. I don't want him to kill my son," Maria said.

"How far away is he?" "He is a few miles north," Famous Shoes said. "He wanted to sit by the fire and drink more coffee. I came on to the river to find a crossing." "Here's the crossing--you found it," Maria said.

"Go on across it and go away, and take this killer with you. Don't be bringing killers to murder my son." Famous Shoes felt irritated. He had built up Maria's fire, and made her coffee. Now she was demanding that he leave. While she was talking, telling him to leave, he remembered something that had almost gone out of his mind while he was traveling. Seeing the track of Mox Mox, The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See, had made his mind too busy to work properly.

As he was nearing the Pass of the North, Famous Shoes had gone to see old Goat Woman. She was a woman who had the power to see ahead to the future. Maria knew her. When her mother had been dying in Agua Prieta, she had gone to see old Goat Woman, to find out how long her mother might live. Goat Woman went to the river and caught frogs and read their guts.

Famous Shoes found it strange, that the guts of frogs could show the future, but he knew it was true. Old Goat Woman had been right too many times. She lived with her goats in a little dwelling of sticks, not far from the river. Famous Shoes always went to see her when he traveled through the Pass of the North. It was good to stay in contact with people who could see ahead. When she had a great need to see far ahead, not just a day or a week or a month but years, Goat Woman didn't rely on frogs. She killed one of her own goats, and read its guts.

What she had told him on this visit was that Maria's son would kill Maria unless someone killed him soon. Goat Woman had seen this in the guts of a frog and had become so worried that she killed one of her own goats, to check the information. But the guts of the frog and the guts of the goat agreed: Maria's son would kill her.

Goat Woman liked Maria. She had known and liked Maria's mother, too. She did not like the news the guts gave her. Famous Shoes didn't like it, either. He wasn't even sure he believed it, although he knew Goat Woman had strong powers.

"You might be wrong," he suggested. "We are all wrong, sometimes. Maybe the guts are trying to fool you." "Maybe," Goat Woman said.

"Do they ever try to fool you?" Famous Shoes asked.

"No," Goat Woman replied. "But sometimes, I get confused and don't see what is plain." "Can anything change the future?" Famous Shoes asked. He rarely got a chance to talk to Goat Woman, who knew about many things he would like to understand.

"Yes, the stars," Goat Woman said. "The stars can change the future. But I don't think they'll change it for Maria." Now he was actually with Maria, who was wet and cold beside the Pecos. He knew what old Goat Woman knew, and Maria didn't, although it concerned Maria's own death. She didn't want him to take the killers to her son, but if he didn't do it and do it quickly, her son might kill her.

It was a dilemma that made his mind tired.

Usually the sleet freshened him, but this morning he did not seem very fresh. He didn't know what to do.

Maria was warming up, and as she grew warmer, she also grew more and more angry. She had been grateful to the old man for saving her from freezing.

But when she discovered that he was leading Captain Call's deputy, she stopped being grateful.

She wanted the old man to take the deputy far away.

"I want you to go," Maria said. "This deputy might show up any time. If he sees me here alone, he will figure it out and tell the Captain." "The Captain will figure it out anyway," Famous Shoes said. "I can't fool him.

He's the Captain. All he does is kill men." "Maybe, but you don't need to help him," Maria said. "Let him catch Joey himself, if he can." "All right, I will leave," Famous Shoes said, very annoyed.

"Thank you for your help with the coffee. Now go away," Maria said. "I don't want this man to see me. I have to help my son." "If you are in Juarez, you should see Goat Woman," Famous Shoes said. He was outraged. He had kept the woman from freezing, and now she was sending him away, all because of a boy who would kill her someday. She didn't seem to understand that he was old and had to make a living.

Also, he wanted badly to learn about the tracks in books. Pea Eye's woman might teach him, if he stayed with Pea Eye and brought him home.

But he couldn't say much to Maria, without revealing what he had heard from old Goat Woman.

"Next time you cross this river, you need to build a bigger fire," he said.

Then he remembered the tracks, near Agua Prieta.

"The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See is alive," he said. "You need to be careful. Don't let him get you and burn you." "The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See?" Maria asked. She remembered hearing that there was such a man, and that he was evil, but she didn't know much about him.

Famous Shoes turned back up the river to find Pea Eye. It was a nuisance. He had been happy to see Maria, when he found her soaking wet and freezing, but she had been disagreeable and had made him feel confused. If he took Captain Call to Joey Garza, it might save her life. But if he took the Captain to Joey, Maria would hate him, although Joey was a bad son and meant his mother no good.

It was a confusion that he didn't know whether to mention to Pea Eye. He would have to think about it when he found him.

Maria stayed by the fire until she was dry.

She thought at one point that she saw a rider to the north; perhaps it was the man Famous Shoes was with, Pea Eye. She didn't know what to do. She thought she might try to slip away quickly, on Grasshopper. But then she lost sight of the man--if it had been a man. She wasn't quite sure she had seen him. Perhaps it had only been an antelope. The air was still full of sleet, and it was hard to see clearly, very far.

No rider appeared, so Maria wrapped up in her poncho and made her way into the sandhills, toward Crow Town. The sleet rattled on the chaparral bushes, but soon, over the rattling, she heard the sound of crows, and began to see them, sitting on the cold bushes or in the little skinny black mesquite trees. The crows cawed at her as she rode. Grasshopper didn't like it.

He would have liked to go away from the crows, but Maria wouldn't let him. Soon there were crows all around them, in the trees and in the air. As she got closer to the settlement, the wheeling, gliding crows seemed thicker than the sleet.

The settlement, when she came to it, was just a few bumps on the plain. There were several low houses, none of them much higher than the hills of sand. Smoke rose into the air, mixing with the sleet, rising high with the crows.

Joey's house was easy to find, because his black horse grazed behind it, hobbled to a long rope.

There was not much to graze on, just a few little sage bushes and a tuft or two of grass. The horse lifted its head when it saw Grasshopper. The two horses had met the last time Joey was in Ojinaga. The black horse neighed, and when he did, a chubby young Mexican woman came out the door. When she saw Maria, she quickly retreated. A second later, a white woman came out. The woman was shivering; she wore only a thin housecoat. But she waited politely for Maria to speak.

"Is my son here?" Maria asked. She did not dismount.

"Joey Garza," she said, in case the woman was stupid and could not think who her son might be.

"Joey, yes," Beulah said. "He's here, but he ain't awake." "Wake him and tell him his mother is here," Maria said. "I have some news he needs to know." "You can come in. I ain't going to wake him," Beulah said. "He don't like it when people wake him up." Maria got off Grasshopper and pushed into the little house. The white woman had a smell. It must not be easy to wash, in such a place, where there was much sand and little water, Maria thought.

She did not look like a bad woman, the white woman; she was not young, and she was frightened.

Inside, two fat Mexican girls sat on a pallet, trying to huddle under one blanket.

There was another room. The low door to it was shut, but Maria pushed it open. Joey, her boy, was asleep, under many blankets. The room was dim. She could just see Joey's face, a young face, so young that for a moment she saw him merely as her son, the child she had borne, the child she loved.

He was still only a young boy. Perhaps it was not too late to save him, to help him become decent.

"Joey, wake up, you need to leave," she said, touching his shoulder.

Joey did wake up, and the moment he looked at her, the hope that had been rising in Maria sank again and vanished. There was only bottomless cold in Joey's eyes.

"This is my room. I don't like women in here," Joey said. "Get out." Maria felt anger surge up. She wanted to deliver the slap that would make him good, or at least make him realize he was in danger. She had ridden five days and crossed the freezing river for him, and all he had for her was a look that was as cold as the black waters of the Pecos. It was not a thing she could take patiently--not from her own child.

"Goddamn you, leave!" Maria yelled, slapping him. "Get up and leave. They've sent the great killer for you. Call. Go down into the Madre and go quick, or you'll be dead!" "You leave," Joey said. "Don't come where you're not invited, and don't hit me again. You're a stupid woman. You've ridden all this way to tell me what I already knew. I know about Captain Call." "You don't know about him," Maria said. "You just know the name. He took my father. He took my brother. Now he will take my son, and it's because my son is stupid, so stupid he thinks he can't die." "No old gringo will kill me, and no old gringo will make me run to the Madre, either," Joey replied.

"Then you're dead, if you think that way," Maria told him. "I will go home and tell your brother and sister that you died. They love you, even though you don't care about them." "You'll tell them a lie, then," Joey said.

"I won't die. Call will die, if he comes here. He'll die before he even knows that his death is coming." Maria turned away. She went back to the room where the three women waited, uneasily.

She saw that they were all frightened, the two fat girls and the tired, smelly woman.

"Is there any man here he listens to?" she asked. "Is there anyone who can make him listen?" "John Wesley Hardin, if it's anybody," Beulah said. "John Wesley's killed all those people. I think Joey likes him.

But John Wesley's crazy." "I don't care. Where is he?" Maria asked.

"He never sleeps, I guess he's in the saloon," Beulah said. She felt afraid of the Mexican woman. Her eyes were angry.

When she came in from the storm, her dress and her hair had been covered with sleet, but she hadn't seemed to care. She had walked in and awakened Joey, which nobody did. Maybe the woman was his mother, maybe she wasn't, but in the eyes of the three women, she was scary. Gabriela was so scared, she wanted to hide under her blanket; Marieta was too cold to care. She shivered and sniffled. Not many women came to Crow Town. A woman who appeared out of an ice storm might be a witch woman.

Maria left the house. Her head was hurting.

She felt she might be feverish, from almost freezing in the black water. In her fever, she could not control her thoughts. She didn't know where Captain Call was, but in her mind he was close, so close that he might come and kill Joey that very day if she didn't do something quickly.

She saw smoke coming from the roof of another low, lumpy building. Maybe that was the cantina. A row of crows sat on the roof of the building. The row went all the way around the low roof. Now and again, a crow would fly up, wheel, come back to the building and take its place in the row. When the crows flapped their wings, a little rain of sleet fell from their feathers.

Maria heard a snort and looked around to see a large pig following her. The pig was the color of sand. She had the pistol that Billy Williams had insisted she take. She took the pistol and pointed it at the pig. The pig was not just large, it was giant. Maria's hands felt a little warmer. She was in a better state to shoot than she had been back when Famous Shoes showed up. The pig snorted again, but it didn't charge her. She had seen pigs charge people in Ojinaga, when the pigs were angry for some reason. She didn't know whether the great sandy pig was angry, or when it might charge her.

The pig stopped and looked at her, but again, it didn't charge. Maria turned and trudged on toward the cantina. It was hard to walk. The sand seemed to fill the street. There were no horses outside the cantina, though Maria saw a glow under the uneven wooden door. Perhaps the wild man was there, in the cantina, the man Joey might listen to.

When she was almost to the cantina, she heard the great pig snort again, and when she turned, it was trotting toward her. Without thinking, she pointed the pistol at the pig and shot. She wanted to scare it away, and she knew sometimes loud noises frightened pigs. When the church bell rang in Ojinaga, the pigs and goats became nervous for a bit. She did not expect to hit the pig, with the sleet blowing. She had not shot a pistol since Benito's time. He had enjoyed shooting and would let her shoot with him, although he was stingy about bullets and did not want to let a woman use too many of them.

To Maria's surprise, the big pig slid forward on its snout, almost at her feet. Then it rolled over, a great hill of hair, and some blood ran out its nose. She waited for the pig to get up. One of its legs was twitching; then it stopped. The giant pig was dead.

The door to the cantina opened, and two men stepped out. One was skinny and had scabs on his face. The other was an older man and he limped.

Both looked taken aback. The great pig lay dead, and a woman with sleet in her hair stood over it with a pistol in her hand.

The scabby man was not pleased. The older man just looked surprised.

"You killed our pig--what kind of wild slut are you?" the scabby man asked.

"I'm Joey's mother," Maria said. "If you're his friend, I would ask you to tell him to leave and go to the Madre. Captain Call is coming. I don't know where he is, but I think he's close." "How close?" Wesley Hardin asked.

"I don't know. His deputy is over by the river," Maria answered. "Famous Shoes is taking him to meet Call." "That old Indian ought to be shot," Wesley Hardin said.

"She kilt the devil pig," Red Foot said. "I can't believe it. Hundreds of people have shot at that pig. Now this woman just walks into town and shoots the sonofabitch dead." "I guess the killer instinct runs in the family," Wesley Hardin said. "It's too damn breezy to stand out here worrying about a dead pig." He looked hard at Maria. She thought he looked crazy. He reminded her of old Ramon, when he was in one of his fits.

"Come on inside, but I'll take the gun," Wesley Hardin said, reaching for Maria's pistol.

She drew back. "Why do you want my gun?" she asked.

"I don't like to be inside small buildings with women who shoot pistols, that's why," Wesley Hardin said. "You just killed the local pig. You might do the same to me, if I get unruly." "Not if you'll help my son," Maria said.

The man was still reaching for her gun, and she still drew back.

"No, thanks, I live for myself," John Wesley replied.

"Captain Call will kill him," Maria said.

"For all you know, he might kill you, too." "No, they ain't paying him for me, they're just paying him for your boy," Wesley Hardin said.

"Call's economical. He don't kill just anybody that needs killing. He just kills when he's paid." Then he grew enraged; his splotchy face turned red and white.

"It's too damn cold to be standing in the wind.

Give me the gun and come in, if you want to discuss your son." "If I come in, it will be with my gun," Maria said.

The scabby man seemed to lose interest in taking her pistol from her. He looked again at the dead pig.

"I wish there was some way we could charge people that want to come and look at this pig you killed," he said, shivering. He kicked the pig a time or two; his boots had holes in them. Maria could see his toe through one of the holes.

"These Texans are superstitious," he said.

"They think this pig was the devil. I could have killed it years ago, and I would have, too, if it had ever bothered me. I figured it was more interesting to let it live, so people would have something to be scared of." Maria followed him into the low building. No more was said about taking her pistol. There seemed to be a thin trail of blood leading into the cantina, yet the dead pig lay outside, in the sand.

The cantina smelled of tobacco, spit, and whiskey. The limping man had his boot off. The trail of blood had come from his foot. The man did not look well. He was shaking, and his sock was soaked with blood.

"What's wrong with his foot?" Maria asked.

"I stomped it. The sonofabitch is a card cheat," Wesley Hardin replied. "What's the news, other than that Woodrow Call is on his way to Crow Town?" "The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See is alive," Maria said. "Famous Shoes saw his track." "Oh, Mox Mox?" Hardin said. "He won't bother me. I'm meaner than he is.

It's bad news for anyone else who crosses his path, though. He's meaner than most folks." Maria saw him looking at her as a man looks, although she was dirty from her ride. She was glad she had kept her gun.

"There's a bed in that corner," Wesley Hardin said, pointing. "Come crawl in it with me." Maria thought she should have known that was what he wanted when he invited her into the cantina.

Killers she had known had not wanted women much.

Their interest was in other things, as Joey's was.

She said nothing, but she was glad she had her gun.

"You're a fine one," Hardin said. "You come in here and kill our best pig, and you ask me to help your killer son, but you won't crawl in bed with me, even though I asked you polite. Have you got some old punch you bed down with, down in Mexico?" Maria remembered that Billy Williams had warned her about Crow Town. It had been foolish for her to bother the killer at all. She didn't know why she had thought he might help.

"A dollar and a quarter, then?" Wesley Hardin asked. "Red can pay you. He owes me money. If he wants to throw in seventy-five cents for himself, he can have the second turn and you'll be two dollars richer before you even eat breakfast." Maria turned and walked out the door. The killer gave her a hot look, but he didn't follow. He was shuffling cards.

She walked past the dead pig, and went to Joey's house. When she pushed inside, her feet and hands were cold, although it had only been a short walk. The woman who smelled was crying, and so were the two girls. The door to Joey's room was open. He was gone, and so was his rifle.

Maria ran out of the house, hoping he was still in sight; maybe he would at least let her ride with him for a while, out of the bad town.

But Joey wasn't in sight, and neither was Grasshopper. Joey was gone, and he had stolen her horse. Maria felt that she must be the most foolish mother in the world, to ride so far in the winter, into the place of the Texans, for such a boy. Now she was afoot, and tired, in a town where the men were hard. Call was coming, and The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See was somewhere around.

Maria began to weep, at her own folly.

She knew her son. She should never have given him a chance to steal her horse. Now she was really in trouble. She remembered the killer's hot look.

She would have to cross the cold river again, to get back home, and this time she would have no horse to warm her at night.

"Did he say anything when he left?" she asked the white woman, once both of them had stopped crying.

"Maybe he just went to hunt antelope," she added.

"He didn't say nothing. He don't usually say nothing, in the morning," Beulah said. "I didn't want to make him mad, so I didn't ask. He gets real mad if you ask." "Yes, he thinks somebody crowned him king," Maria said. "Do you have any food I could take?" The white woman looked hopeless.

"We don't have no food," she said.

Her face was streaked with tears. She, too, had made a mistake in coming to Crow Town, Maria thought. Probably this white woman had made many mistakes. Now she wasn't young, she smelled bad, and she was in a bad place with no food.

It would not be easy for her, or for the fat girls, either.

"I'm going to Mexico. Do you want to go home with me?" Maria asked the two girls.

If the three of them traveled together, it might be warmer. Then she remembered the pig she had killed--there was her food.

The girls were very young. They looked scared.

"We don't have nobody, in Mexico," Gabriela said. Her sister seemed numb. She wouldn't speak. "We don't have nobody here, either. We don't have nobody." "Do you know anybody with a horse we could borrow?" Maria asked. "I killed the pig, but he is too big, I can't drag him. I can butcher him, but I can't drag him. I need a horse, for a little while." At home, she had always done the butchering, whether of pigs or of goats. None of her husbands were good at it. Benito wouldn't even try to butcher. He hated blood, and butchering would have made him sick. Then, in the end, he was butchered himself, and hung like a carcass, his own blood draining.

"I'll get Red's horse," Beulah said.

"He don't feed it much. I don't know if it can drag a pig." Then Beulah realized what Maria had said.

She had killed the pig! She had killed the pig, the devil pig.

"She killed the pig!" Beulah told the girls. "She killed the pig!" The girls looked stunned. They had both feared the pig, particularly when they had to go into the bushes. The pig watched them; it liked their droppings. Marieta couldn't grasp it. She thought the woman must be a witch, to be able to kill the great pig.

Maria went with Beulah to get the horse.

She hitched it to a rope tied to the pig's feet and, urging the skinny horse, dragged the pig slowly to Joey's house. The horse was afraid of the dead pig, and kept shying and flaring its nostrils. It would have liked to run, but hitched to the pig, there was no way for it to run.

There was no tree to hoist the pig, but Maria didn't care. She wanted the blood; it would be easier to get if she hoisted the pig, but she couldn't. She found a knife in the house. She sharpened it on a rock as best she could, and let the pig's blood drain into a rusty bucket. It was not easy to handle so much blood. Maria finally found three buckets and filled them all with the pig's blood. She took the liver and the sweetbreads and then began to cut the meat into strips. The blood was still warm, and soon she was covered with it. The white woman and the two girls got excited at the thought of so much meat. Some of the other women in the village heard that the pig was dead, and came to watch the butchering. Two of them were old Mexican women whose men had worked for the railroad until they died. They lived in Crow Town because they were too old and too weak to go anywhere. But they knew about making jerky, and they had better knives than the one Maria had found.

She told them they could have meat, for there was far too much to carry on her journey.

The wind got colder, but the women were excited at the thought of the meat. Also, their great enemy, the pig, was dead, and they would eat him. They were all covered with blood. At one point, John Wesley Hardin came to the place where the butchering was taking place, and stood looking at the excited, bloody women for a few minutes. He said nothing; he just looked. The women's arms were black with blood, as they cut deeper and deeper into the carcass of the great pig. The women were so hungry that they sliced bits of liver and sweetbreads and ate them raw. Maria didn't care. She wanted only to get her jerky and start back for Ojinaga. She missed her children, Rafael and Teresa. She knew she would not be able to smoke the jerky very well. It would be half raw, but it would keep her from starving as she walked home.

By the end of the morning, every woman in Crow Town was behind Joey's house, helping Maria finish butchering the giant pig. All of them carried off meat, and then came back and helped Maria smoke hers over a little fire. They were beaten women, none of them young; only Gabriela and Marieta were young. Most of the women were old, within sight of their deaths. They had been thrown aside by their men, or their men had died, leaving them in this bad place, too spiritless to move on.

All of them, even the oldest, had sold themselves, or tried, to the men who passed through Crow Town.

Now they were excited, and not just by the meat. The pig had frightened them all. He had made their dreams bad, made them scared when they had to squat in the bushes. They had seen the pig eating dead men, on Hog Hill. They knew that when they died, the pig would eat them, too.

Nobody would care enough about them to bury them deep enough, and the pig could even root up corpses that were buried deep.

But now the tables had been turned, and it was all thanks to Maria. She had arrived out of the storm and had killed their enemy, the great pig. They had wet their arms with his blood, eaten raw bites of his liver, and waded in his guts, which spilled from his belly and spread over the ground when Maria opened it. An old Comanche woman whose husband had been shot by Blue Duck many years before knew how to strip the guts. She sliced the long, white pig gut into foot-long sections, stripping what was in them into a bucket.

"Don't eat that, there could be people in it, parts of people," Beulah said. She had never liked the old Comanche woman, whose name was Naiche.

Old Naiche was a tiny, wizened woman.

She stood up to her shins in the pig guts, merrily pulling up stretches of gut, cutting off sections, and stripping the sections into her bucket.

Beulah knew the pig must have parts of people in its intestines. It sickened her that old Naiche would fill a bucket with the contents of the guts.

As the women worked, the men of the town came, in ones and twos, to watch the spectacle. None of them said anything. They stood in the wind, watching the bloody women cut meat.

Though she continued to work, Maria kept one eye on the men. They were all watching her, and their eyes were hostile. She knew she would have to leave Crow Town that night, as soon as she had enough jerky to see her home. She was a new woman; the men who watched her cut the pig were tired of the women they had, if they had any at all. Their women were worn out. Except for the two Mexican girls, they were all women whose hearts had died within them.

They were broken and they didn't care what men did to them anymore. Men had used them until they had used them up. The women were excited that the pig was dead, but their excitement would be brief.

In the next day, or two days, or a week, they would just be broken women again.

Maria knew the men would be after her soon. They would be angry because she had stirred up their women.

Most men didn't like women to be stirred up, about a dead pig or about anything. Life was much easier when women were broken, when they didn't dare express a feeling, whether happy or sad. It was not something to question; it was just how men were.

By the middle of the gray, cold afternoon, the work was finished. There was nothing left of the great feral pig except its hide, its hooves and its bones.

Old Naiche had even taken its eyes. She dropped them into a bucket with the strippings from the guts and hobbled off to her small hovel with them.

Then she came back and got an armful of the sections of gut she had cut. The plentitude of guts made old Naiche happy. It reminded her of the buffalo times, long before, when she had often waded in piles of guts.

In the late afternoon, as the winter sun was setting, the sleet turned to snow. Maria felt a bitterness growing in her toward Joey, her son.

He had sneered at the trouble she had gone to warning him, and then he had stolen her horse. She had not expected thanks when she journeyed to Crow Town. Joey did not thank people, for nothing they did made him grateful. But she had not supposed he would steal her horse, and leave her on foot in such a place in the winter, among Texans. It was a cruel thing. It made her wonder if her son wished her dead. It was a long way back to Ojinaga, and there were many perils. With Grasshopper, she stood a better chance. Without a horse, it would be very difficult.

She might freeze, or she might be taken by men who would be rough with her.

There were horses in Crow Town; Maria had seen five or six. Some of the men who came to watch the butchering were mounted. But Maria had no money, and could not buy a horse. If she stole one and they caught her, she would be hung. That was for sure, they would hang her when they caught her.

If there were no trees, they would stretch her between two horses until her neck broke or she strangled. She had seen the Federales hang men that way. They had stretched Benito's brother, Raul, between two horses. They had pulled so hard that they almost pulled Raul's head off. A Mexican hanging, the Texans called it, although they used it too, if they were too far from a tree.

Maria decided to walk. That way, she could at least hide in the sage. She searched Joey's room, to see if she could find anything useful.

She thought he might have left some money, but there was no money. Gabriela and Marieta tried to stop her from searching, for they were scared of Joey.

"He don't like nobody to be in his room," Marieta said. "He'll beat you, when he comes back." "I can beat, too," Maria said.

All she could find to take was one blanket and a good knife. She wrapped all the meat she could carry in a sack. While she was packing, the women of Crow Town began to crowd into the house.

All were wearing what coats they had. All carried parcels of meat. Only old Naiche didn't come. Beulah had put on her coat too. Marieta and Gabriela had not dressed warmly. They looked scared.

Beulah spoke for the women.

"We want to go when you go," she said. "We don't want to stay here. We're all going to die, if we stay here." "You might die harder, if you go with me," Maria warned. She did not want to lead the women across the bad land, between Crow Town and Mexico.

The meat would not last. She had only three bullets left for her pistol. The women did not look strong. They would freeze or starve, or drown or give up. Her statement had been the truth: dying in Crow Town would not be good, but dying in the borderlands in winter might be worse. At least in Crow Town, there would be shelter.

Then she remembered the railroad. It was only two days' walk south, or a little more. The women might make it to the railroad. Then maybe a train would stop for them. She had seen two trains. She didn't know what made trains stop, but she thought that maybe a train would stop for the women, if they waved at the men who drove the train.

It was a hope, at least. Maria could understand that the women did not want to die in Crow Town. It was not a good place. The crows flew through the snow, or walked in it. Three sat on the bare ribs of the great pig. As the cold deepened, the cawing of the crows seemed to grow louder. Maria felt feverish. She would have liked to rest in Joey's bed for a day or a night, but she was afraid. If the men caught her, they would not care that she was feverish. They might tie her and keep her until she became like the other women in the town. Her heart might die within her, as their hearts had.

Maria couldn't risk that. Her children needed her.

Even now, she worried that Billy Williams wouldn't take care of them well enough. Rafael might be growing thin, for sometimes he forgot to eat.

Teresa was careless sometimes, and burned herself on the stove. What if she had burned herself badly?

Who would hold her in the night and help her with the pain?

"I will take you to the railroad, if you will try to keep up," Maria said. "That's the best I can do. I have to leave you at the railroad and go home to my children." When the time came to leave, Marieta and Gabriela wept. They had no warm clothes; they didn't want to go.

"My feet freeze, even when I'm in the house," Marieta said. "I don't want to walk in the snow." "I want to wait for Joey," Gabriela said. "He don't have no one else to help him." "Joey thinks she's pretty," Marieta said. She was bitter that her sister had been favored. She didn't like Joey anymore. But her feet got very cold, just sitting in the house.

Someone had told her that if your feet froze, they had to be cut off. She was afraid that if she went with the woman, her feet would freeze. The person who told her what happened to frozen feet was Red Foot, who sometimes visited her.

He would only pay her a dime, but it was a dime at least. Red Foot liked to be behind her; she could hear him panting in her ear, like a dog.

He said frozen feet had to be sawed off with a saw.

"Me and Gabriela, we better stay," Marieta said.

"Don't be weak," Maria said. The two girls were just girls, not too much older than her own girl. She didn't want to leave them to the rough men. If she had to take the women, she would take the girls, too.

"These men will use you till you're sick," Maria said. "I will wrap your feet so they won't freeze." While the girls sat, looking scared, she cut up sacks and wrapped their feet in many layers. She found an old pair of chaps that had worn thin and used the leather to make tight wrappings around the sacks. She didn't think the girls would freeze, for the worst cold didn't come with snow.

When Maria was ready, all the women looked scared. It was dark and the snow was still blowing. Some of the women wanted to wait until morning, but Maria wouldn't hear of it.

"Do you want a parade?" she asked, angrily. She had enough responsibilities, without these women balking.

"You know what we are to these men," she said.

"Look between your legs--that's what we are. That's why they even let us be alive. Do you think they will let us all walk off, and not do something about it?" Then she thought of old Naiche. She was Indian, Comanche. Probably, the women had not asked her to go. When Maria inquired, several of the women claimed not to know where old Naiche lived.

Finally, Beulah told her.

Maria went through the snow to the little hovel of dirt and branches where Naiche lived. The shelter was made of thin mesquite branches, bent together at the top. There were many spaces between the mesquite limbs, but old Naiche had covered them with some of the rotten buffalo hides. It was a flimsy dwelling, so low that Maria had to go almost to her hands and knees to get through the opening. The wind sang through the small, smoky room, but Naiche didn't seem to mind. She sat with her bucketful of strippings and her armful of guts.

Now and then, she would dip into the bucket and nibble from the squeezings of the dead pig.

"I don't see well, no more," Naiche said, when Maria stooped low and came in. "Too much smoke." "We're leaving. You should come with us," Maria said. "I will take you to the railroad. It's not a long walk. This is not a good place for a woman." Old Naiche shook her head.

"The train don't have no place to take me to," she said. "All my people are dead." "They are not all dead," Maria replied.

"Billy Williams says there are many of your people, in the Territory. The train could take you to them, if you will get up and come with me." "No, there are only whites in the world now," old Naiche said. "I have all this food. You got it for me. I want to stay here and eat this food." "Bring it, I'll help you carry it," Maria said. She knew it was no use, trying to save a woman as old as Naiche, but she wanted to try.

The women of Crow Town were too sad. Even with her eyes half gone from smoke, the old Comanche woman had more life left in her than any of them. She didn't seem discouraged, to be living in a small hovel made of mesquite sticks, with rotten buffalo hides to cover it and protect her from the cold breath of the norther.

"Come, try," Maria said. "I don't know what will become of you if I leave you here with these men." "I don't worry about these men," Naiche said. "Look. I'll show you what I have." She bent, and began to dig with her hands by the little fire.

"This fire don't go out," she said, as she was digging. "I only let it go out in the summer, when it is hot. When the norther comes, I let the fire burn so my scorpions won't freeze." Naiche uncovered a pit, so near the fire that the glow of the coals lit it. Maria looked in and saw that the pit was full of scorpions. She didn't like scorpions; she didn't count, but there were many scorpions in Naiche's little pit, and also a few of the long centipedes with the red legs.

Old Naiche had made a roof over the pit, with little sticks and a badger skin to cover it and keep the scorpions in.

"When they sting me, it don't hurt," Naiche said. "If men are bad, I will go around and put scorpions in their clothes. I did it to old Tommy, because he stole my tobacco. When he was drunk, I put three scorpions in his pants, and they stung him where he is a man." Old Naiche grinned. She had few teeth.

Maria, too, was amused, at the old woman's vengeance and her cleverness in keeping a pit of scorpions near her fire. Billy had once told her that the Apaches sometimes kept scorpions because they needed their poison.

"Are you Apache?" Maria asked, thinking she had made a mistake about Naiche's tribe.

"No, but I was given to an Apache," Naiche said. "I lived in the Bosque Redondo, but I didn't like it. I ran away." "Run away again," Maria said. "I will take you to my home. I have two children who are damaged.

My girl is blind and my boy cannot think too well. Come to my home, and I will take care of you. We'll leave the others at the railroad, but you can come to Mexico with me." But again, Naiche shook her head.

"My time is coming," she said. "It will come when I finish this food you gave me. I do not want to go away and miss it. When you miss your time, then you cannot rest.

"Besides, I like the crows," Naiche added. "I have one that comes to my house and tells me secrets. That is why I know I have to stay here and wait for my time. She is up there now, my crow." Maria had no more time. She saw that she could not persuade the old woman, and she needed to be far from town with the other women when morning came.

Maybe if it was still snowing, the men would be too lazy to follow the women. That was her hope, and her only hope. The women she was taking away were ugly, dirty, and weary, but they still had the places between their legs. The men wouldn't like losing those places. Maybe they would pursue them, and maybe they wouldn't. But Maria had to go, and go at once.

"I will give you this advice," she said to Naiche. "Do not put your scorpions on the killer with scabs in his hair. He don't care about women. He will sting you worse than you sting him." Old Naiche didn't answer. She looked into the smoke, the smoke that had ruined her eyes.

Again she dipped her hand into the bucket of strippings from the pig's guts.

Maria crept out. The snow had stopped, which made her fearful. She had to hurry, and she had to get the women moving. Several crows sat on top of old Naiche's hut. Maria wondered which one was the crow that had told the old woman secrets. She wondered, but she did not have time to find out. The snow had stopped. She had to get the women and the two scared girls, and go.

When Mox Mox and his seven men rode into Crow Town, he made the men ride their horses back and forth over old Naiche's little brush shelter, trampling her to death.

At first, the horses shied, and didn't want to crash through the shelter. Mox Mox pointed to a sandhill, about one hundred yards away.

"Go to the top of it and blindfold them shittin' horses," he instructed. "Head them for this brush and keep on spurring." Old Naiche heard. While the men were blindfolding the horses, she tried to crawl out, but Mox Mox was waiting for her with his leaded quirt.

He quirted her in the face until she gave up. She crawled back into her hut and waited for the hooves to bring her darkness. Soon she heard the horses coming hard. The crows began to caw.

Naiche tried to be ready, but she had begun to feel regret for not going with Maria. It was a sharp regret, so sharp it made it hard for her to be ready.

But the horses were coming hard, whether or not she was ready. Naiche clawed open her little pit and dug quickly with one hand into her scorpions and centipedes. She raked a handful of them up and shoved them under her blanket. Perhaps one of them would bite The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See. The horses were closer. Naiche still had scorpions in her hand when they crashed through the branches of mesquite.

The hooves did not immediately bring her death, though they broke both her hips and crushed one hand.

"She's still stirring--ride again," Mox Mox said. The seven men wheeled their horses and rode again, and again. Because they couldn't see, the horses were frightened. Soon the men stopped racing. They merely spurred their mounts, causing them to jump into the broken branches. The rotten buffalo robes were soon kicked away, the mesquite branches broken.

"I guess that will teach her," Hergardt said.

He was German, the largest of the seven men. He was also, by common consent, the dumbest. Hergardt was so dumb he often put his boots on the wrong feet. He was strong and would pull his boots on without looking, as easily as most people pull on socks. Later, he would wonder why his feet hurt.

Hergardt rode a big bay horse. The other men dismounted and began to pile the broken mesquite limbs into a pyre, but Hergardt kept riding his horse back and forth over the body of old Naiche.

"What will it teach her?" Mox Mox asked him, looking at the body of the dead woman. A hoof had broken her neck. "I could cook you for a week and it wouldn't make you smart," Mox Mox said. "Being burnt just teaches you that you're burnt." Mox Mox had found Hergardt in San Francisco, when he returned from his years on the sea. He had gone to sea to escape Goodnight, who had pursued him all the way to the Great Salt Lake. Mox Mox knew he could not go back to the Southwest for a while.

Goodnight had been too persistent. Mox Mox put out the story of his death at the hands of the Ute, and went to sea for seven years.

Hergardt was making his living as a wrestler when Mox Mox docked in San Francisco. He wrestled all comers for a dollar a bout. Mox Mox began to promote him and soon had the price up to ten dollars a bout, although Hergardt was far from invincible. Many smaller, quicker men beat him.

"You deserve to be burnt, but it wouldn't teach you nothing," Mox Mox observed. "Stop riding over her. She's dead. It's time to light the fire, Jimmy." Jimmy Cumsa lit the branches. He was a Cherokee boy from Missouri, very quick in his movements; almost too quick, in Mox Mox's view. Mox Mox liked to have a sense of how his men worked together, if there was a fight. Six of them he could keep up with, but Jimmy Cumsa--Quick Jimmy, they called him--was so swift that Mox Mox could seldom anticipate him. He would see Jimmy in front of him one minute, and the next minute, Jimmy would be behind him.

"Watching you burn people would teach me something, Mox," Jimmy said. "It would teach me not to stay around you too long." "You been around me for a year. What keeps you, if you don't like my ways?" Mox Mox asked.

Jimmy Cumsa didn't answer. He was watching the hut burn. The old woman's thin garments began to burn too.

He knew it irritated Mox Mox, when he didn't answer a question, but Jimmy Cumsa didn't care. He did not belong to Mox Mox, and didn't have to answer questions. Jimmy was careful of Mox Mox, but he was not afraid of him. He had confidence in his own speed, as a rider, as a runner, and as a pistol shot. He was not an especially good pistol shot, but he was so fast it fooled people, scaring many of them into firing wildly, or doing something else dumb, that would cause them to lose the fight.

Mox Mox killed short people because they reminded him of himself--that was Jimmy Cumsa's theory.

He killed tall people because he envied them. He could be a killer, but he could never be tall. He could never be blond, because he had red hair; and he could never look you straight in the eye, because one of his eyes was pointed wrong. It looked out of his head at an angle. Mox Mox hated being short, regretted that smallpox had scarred his face, and was sorry that he was not blond, but the thing he hated most about himself was his crooked-looking eye. His greatest, most elaborate cruelties were reserved for people with well-set, bright blue eyes.

When Mox Mox caught such a person, male or female, he tended to do the worst things to the eyes. If the person with the perfect blue eyes was tall and blond, then so much the worse for him or her.

Jimmy Cumsa wondered if fire was so hot that even dead people could feel it burning them. He had seen corpses twitch, while Mox Mox was burning them. It seemed to Jimmy that might mean even the dead had some feelings, enough feelings that they could respond to the heat of a fire.

Mox Mox had probably killed the old Comanche woman because she was short. She was about the same height as Mox Mox himself. Burning flesh smelled sweet--that was a fact soon learned, if you rode with Mox Mox. It didn't matter why he had killed the old woman; she was definitely dead. The flimsy branches of her little hovel didn't make much of a funeral flame. She wasn't going to be burned very completely, Jimmy knew that.

Mox Mox didn't seem to be paying much attention to this fire, or to the old woman's burning. Most likely, that was because she was dead, and couldn't scream and plead. When people screamed and pleaded, Mox Mox got icy cool. He was like the sleet at such times. Never once had he spared a person he wanted to burn, not since Jimmy had ridden with him. It didn't matter how loudly they pleaded, or how much money they offered him.

Peon got off his horse and began to piss into the flames. Peon was another runt, a little taller than Mox Mox, but not much. He had grown up in a swamp in Mississippi, and he slunk along, looking furtive and dirty, like some old swamp dog.

The two Mexicans were anxious to get the burning over with, so they could go to the cantina and drink. Oteros kept looking at the horizon, as if he expected to see a posse coming for him, with their hang ropes out.

Oteros was not afraid of Mox Mox, either.

He was with him because he admired his business sense.

He had met Mox Mox in jail, in San Luis Obispo. Mox Mox was about to be hung, for killing a boy. Oteros had very long arms and managed to reach out of his cell with one of his long arms and catch the jailer as the man was walking past with a plate of beans for an old bank robber who was being kept in the jail. Oteros held firmly to the jailer's collar until he could get his pistol and beat his head in. Mox Mox got the jailer's keys, and the two of them left.

Oteros had been with Mox Mox ever since.

"I don't like these crows," Oteros said.

"Why did we come here? There are too many laws in Texas." "He means lawmen," Peon said. He understood Oteros and liked him, although Oteros was the most violent of the seven men and as likely to kill friend as foe when his temper was up, as it often was.

"He thinks there are too many lawmen in Texas," he repeated, in case Mox Mox missed his point.

"There may be too many lawmen in Texas, but there's still too many Apaches in New Mexico," Mox Mox said. "I'd rather fight any lawman in the world than some old Apache with one eye and a weak bow. I'd kill the lawman, but the one-eyed Apache would probably kill me." "You, but not me," Oteros said. "I have killed many Indians and I will kill more if I see any." "Go kill Goodnight, if you want to kill a tough old wolf," Mox Mox said.

"The sonofabitch chased me a thousand miles, and he'd do it again if he knew I was alive." "Well, he'll find out, if we come over here and start cooking people," Jimmy Cumsa said.

"We won't be cooking too many until Goodnight is dead," Mox Mox said. "I do want to kill that Mexican boy who robbed those trains with the payrolls on them. We've robbed three trains and ain't took a payroll yet.

That boy's beating us to the money. If we could take a payroll, we could hire enough men to clean out a state." "A state?" Jimmy asked. "You want to kill all the people in a whole state? I never knew you had that kind of ambition, Mox." "Which one would you take, if you was to take a state?" Peon asked.

Mox Mox had given no detailed thought to the conquest of a state. He'd merely been reflecting on the army he could raise if he had a million dollars to spend. It was rumored in Juarez that the Garza boy had taken a million dollars in payroll money off the trains he had robbed.

"I might take Wyoming," Mox Mox said.

"I could take it and be governor of it. Then, I'd hang all the dirty sonsabitches I didn't like." "There wouldn't be a soul left in the state, if you hung all the people you didn't like," Jimmy Cumsa said. "I don't notice that you like too many people, Mox." "I don't, for a fact, and you're getting to be a prime candidate for hanging yourself," Mox Mox said. Sometimes Quick Jimmy let a little too much contempt leak into his voice, when he spoke to his boss. Jimmy didn't like very many people himself, but he paired up with Pedro Jones when they hit a town and decided to seek women.

Pedro Jones had a Yankee father and a mother who came from far down in the Indian country below the City of Mexico, by the ocean. Pedro carried a seashell with him, in his saddlebags. At night, by the fire, he would often sit holding the shell to his ear. He liked to listen to the sea, for he had grown up by it. Listening to its faint echo in the shell reminded him of a time when life had not been so harsh.

Pedro had become a criminal by accident, at a time when he lived in Vera Cruz.

He was very tight with his money and had begun to strangle the whores he went to see, in order to save what they cost. It seemed to him a reasonable practice. There were many, many whores in Vera Cruz, and he had only strangled a few and beat in the heads of one or two more. He had only killed the last few because of drink, but the authorities had not accepted his excuses. A whore who was in love with him helped him break out of jail and he went west, across Mexico and then north into Arizona Territory, where Mox Mox found him. Pedro had killed an old woman who wanted to charge him too much for his supper. Old as she was, the authorities still took offense, so that Pedro was forced to flee along the Gila.

Manuel had been in jail with Pedro, and fled with him when he escaped. Manuel was a simple horse thief who was too lazy to run as far as it was necessary to run when he stole horses from the gringos. He stayed with Mox Mox and his gang because he didn't like traveling alone. He thought Mox Mox's habit of burning people was repugnant, and he always rode off a mile or two and tried to take a nap, while the people screamed out their pain. But he stayed with the gang because it eliminated the problem of being lazy and getting caught. He could make fires and he could cook; those were his main jobs with Mox Mox. He was rarely asked to take much part in the killing, and had been very reluctant to ride his horse over the hut of the old Comanche woman, although he had not known the woman personally. It seemed to him dangerous to race seven horses at the same time, and make them smash a hut, even a small one. Running horses often fell anyway. His own brother had his skull broken because a running horse had fallen in a rocky place with him on its back.

"They say Joey Garza can shoot you from a mile," Jimmy Cumsa said. "They say he don't miss." "I don't miss, either," Mox Mox said.

"You miss because you don't aim--you just shoot. If I hadn't adopted you, I imagine you'd have been plugged by now. Let's go find somebody who knows where this wild boy's at. I want to kill him before he takes any more payrolls away from us.

Then, we'll go get Goodnight." At the saloon, Oteros and Manuel stayed outside. Pedro Jones went in, but came right back out. He disliked low rooms.

Peon went in, hoping Mox Mox would buy him whiskey, but Mox Mox didn't mention buying whiskey for anyone. Hergardt and Jimmy Cumsa also went inside. Hergardt's head came within an inch of the ceiling, when he straightened up.

A white man with a splotchy face, a cripple, and an Irishman were in the saloon.

Mox Mox recognized John Wesley Hardin at once, from photographs he had seen in newspapers. Seeing him in person was a surprise. Mox Mox hadn't supposed he could walk into a saloon in the sandhills and come upon a famous man.

"Ain't you Hardin?" he asked, feeling that he was addressing a peer.

"Mind your own business, you cross-eyed runt," Hardin said. He had stepped outside and surveyed the gang briefly. Red Foot had limped in and informed him that they were trampling old Naiche to death.

"Well, there goes the last woman," he observed, to Patrick O'Brien. "This place has got the curse of doom upon it. If I was you and had a business in a place like this, I'd move it." "Wes, I just got a load of whiskey in last week," Patrick pointed out. "It's the wrong time to move." Mox Mox was so startled by John Wesley Hardin's insulting reply that he didn't do a thing. He took the other table, and told the Irishman to bring him whiskey. There were only two chairs at his dirty little table, and Jimmy Cumsa took the second chair. Jimmy was amused by the killer's reply to Mox Mox. Such talk was music to his ears. He had described Mox Mox exactly: a cross-eyed runt.

Hergardt was left standing. He didn't seem to mind or to notice, but John Wesley Hardin noticed.

"You're too big to be inside--go outside and wait," he said, to Hergardt. "Or else sit down. You're blocking the light. I can scarcely see my cards." "There ain't no chair for me," Hergardt informed him.

"Then sit on the floor, you damn German," Wesley Hardin said. "If you don't get out of my light, you'll soon be enjoying a few holes in your liver." He pulled his revolver out of his belt, and laid it on the table.

Despite the insult that had been offered him, Mox Mox found that he admired Hardin's temerity. Hardin was the most famous killer in the Southwest, after all. Finding a man who would say exactly what he pleased was a novelty, and of course, Hardin's reputation was far greater than his own. Hardin had the habit of killing, and he had gone to prison for it and survived, untamed.

Mox Mox decided to overlook the insult. He wanted to get to know Wesley Hardin, but more than that, he wanted Hardin to accept him as a peer.

Being called a cross-eyed runt was nothing new anyway. In his years at sea, when he was often the smallest man on the ship, he had been called worse things.

The epithet was inaccurate, of course. His eyes didn't cross. One was pointed at an angle to the other. People who called him cross-eyed were not very observant.

"Now, be friendly, Hardin," he said. "I've got seven men here, and we're after the Garza boy." "As to that, seven is not enough," Hardin said.

"Well, counting me, it's eight," Mox Mox said.

"No, you have to subtract the Mexicans, because they undoubtedly can't shoot," Wesley Hardin informed him. "Then, you subtract this giant, who's blocking my light, and the reason you can subtract him is because I'm about to kill him if he don't sit down. I won't stand for dim light. I killed a blacksmith on that very spot a few days ago, and he wasn't near as tall as this lunkhead, and didn't block near as much light." "Sit down, Gardt, don't you hear Mr.

Hardin?" Mox Mox said.

"Going outside would be even better," Wesley Hardin said. "That way, I wouldn't have to look at three hundred pounds of stupidity while I'm trying to concentrate on my cards." "I'll play you cards, if you're shorthanded for a game," Jimmy Cumsa said. The man John Wesley had a droll habit of speech. If he had been offering employment, Jimmy would have accepted it on the spot.

There was little conversation to be had out of the present gang, although Pedro Jones became garrulous at certain times.

"I guess you would, you goddamn Cherokee," Hardin said. "Or are you Choctaw?" Jimmy Cumsa just looked at him. The man had a surprisingly rough tongue. He didn't seem to realize that he was badly outnumbered, or else he just didn't care.

"Is the Garza boy here?" Mox Mox asked. With a man as unpredictable as John Wesley, it seemed best to come to the point. He might fly off the handle and kill Hergardt, and Gardt was useful when there were heavy things to lift.

"The boy ain't, and what's more, his mother ain't, either," Hardin said. "She came here and killed the big pig that was eating the corpses, and then walked out of here with all the cunt, except that old thing you just killed with your damn nags." "Why, that old Comanche woman was too old to pester," Mox Mox said.

"Old or not, and Comanche or not, she was the last woman left in Crow Town, and your action was unwelcome," Wesley Hardin said. "We don't like strangers who trample our women." "You're a sonofabitch," Mox Mox said-- respectful as he was of Hardin, he was beginning to be riled by his tone.

"You must have run wild so long, you don't realize you can be killed," Hardin said. "I've done been hung twice, to the point where I passed out, only they cut me down too soon.

I could be killed by a knife if it was stuck in my liver or my jugular. I could be shot by a bullet, and if it was thirty-caliber or heavier, it would probably do the job and I'd be dead. I could be bit by a snake that was filled with poison spit, or I could ride under a lightning bolt or fall down drunk and split my head on a rock." He paused, but only to peer hard at a card that had come out of the deck he had just been shuffling.

"That ace don't belong in this deck, it's got six or seven already," he said, laying the card aside.

"What I doubt is that I'll be killed by a damned squint like you, or a Choctaw boy, or this damn ignorant anvil of a German you brought in," Hardin said.

"Maybe you ought to leave the anvil here," he added, considering Hergardt for a moment.

"We need a blacksmith, and he's got the heft for it.

"I won't kill him till he thinks it over," he added, in a charitable tone.

"Then you'll never kill him, because he'll never think it over," Jimmy Cumsa said. "Gardt can't think, and he couldn't shoe a horse if he had a week." "He can't even shoe himself," Mox Mox said.

"Well, if he's useless, move him out of the light, then," Hardin said.

"Move, Gardt," Mox Mox said. "Go outside and dig a hole or something." "Ain't you the man Charlie Goodnight chased to Utah?" Wesley Hardin asked, looking at Mox Mox. "Old Charlie's still kicking. I expect when he hears you're in Texas, he'll come and chase you back to Utah again." "No, we're going to get him," Mox Mox said. "I intend to kill the Garza boy first, because he's costing me money." "Get Woodrow Call, while you're getting," Wesley Hardin said. "They sent him after Joey Garza." "Who did?" Mox Mox asked, surprised.

"The railroad, of course," Hardin replied. "I expect him to show up, any day.

Call won't bother me because there's no money in it, but he'll probably catch you and hang you properly." "Who's he talking about?" Jimmy Cumsa asked.

"An old Ranger," Mox Mox said. "He don't worry me. He never caught Duck, and he'll never catch me." Wesley Hardin suddenly sprang up from the table and hit Hergardt in the temple with his pistol as hard as he could. He hit him accurately.

Hergardt fell right behind Jimmy Cumsa's chair. Hardin glared at Mox Mox. Jimmy Cumsa almost pulled his gun, but decided at the last second that it might not be a wise move.

"That was like whacking an ox, I hope my weapon's intact," Hardin said. He was calm again. He looked his pistol over, and then cocked it and put it back on the table, in front of him.

"Call never caught Duck, but he caught me a couple of times, back in my feuding days," Wesley Hardin said. "I was pretty disagreeable, in my feuding days. Then Call went off and hung the Suggs brothers, up in Kansas. The Suggs were as mean as you, if not meaner." "You don't have no idea how mean I am, you scabby sonofabitch," Mox Mox said. He was tired of insults. Besides, Jimmy Cumsa was hearing it all. He had to speak up, or let Jimmy think he was afraid of Hardin.

"Oh, you cook some chicken you drag off a train now and then," Hardin said. "I expect most of them are just fat Yankees. You could fry a hundred of them and it wouldn't impress me." He seemed amused by Mox Mox's anger.

"What would impress you?" Jimmy asked.

He could tell Mox Mox wasn't going to stand for much more. He wanted to ask a few questions before the killing started, if it did.

"Well, you've got three problems," Hardin said. "Joey Garza, Charlie Goodnight, and Woodrow Call. Take 'em in any order you like. When you've killed any one of the three, come back, and I'll buy you and all your damn Mexicans a drink." "You don't think we can manage it, do you?" Jimmy asked.

"No, I don't," Hardin said. "You're just a bunch of chicken fryers." "We've been in the papers," Jimmy said.

"The papers say we're the worst gang ever to hit the West." He was becoming annoyed himself at John Wesley Hardin's evident lack of respect.

"I guess you want me to bow to you, because you got your name in some damn newspaper," Hardin said.

"I wouldn't give a nickel's worth of dogshit for the whole bunch of you, and I don't care what it says in the papers. If you want to sit here and drink, do it quietly. Maybe I won't have to whack you like I whacked that lunkhead." "No, if we ain't wanted, we'll depart," Mox Mox said, standing up. "When I come back, I'll bring you three heads, and then I'll expect an apology for your rude behavior, Mr. Hardin." Hardin was studying his cards. He didn't look up.

Mox Mox waited, but Wesley Hardin seemed to have forgotten their existence.

"Why don't we go back in and kill him?" Jimmy Cumsa asked, when they were outside. The horses had all been dumping; several piles of horseshit steamed in the dirty snow. Pedro, Peon, Manuel, and Oteros all looked drunk. They had gone to the back of the saloon and helped themselves to some liquor in Patrick O'Brien's storeroom. Each of them had drunk a bottle.

"The way to think about Hardin is that he's crazy," Mox Mox said. "Having him alive is like having another weapon. He might kill anybody, at any time. If Call wandered in here, Hardin might kill him for us. Or, he might kill Goodnight." "I thought you wanted to kill Goodnight yourself," Jimmy said.

"I'd like to, but if Wesley Hardin happens to kill him first, I wouldn't shit my pants." "I thought you wanted to do it yourself," Jimmy repeated.

Mox Mox took his horse and walked off.

He led his horse behind the saloon and helped himself to two bottles of Patrick O'Brien's whiskey. Patrick came out while he was doing it, and held out his hand.

"That's six bottles you owe me for," he said.

"Your men took four. I sell a lot of whiskey out my back door." "It's convenient, I guess," Mox Mox said. He handed over the money. He wanted to stay friendly with the Irishman. In his experience, it was bad policy to offend saloonkeepers.

The real reason Mox Mox led his horse behind the saloon was because he needed a place to mount that wouldn't require him to jump for his stirrup in front of the men. He found just the thing, too, a little lump of sand about two feet high. Usually he managed to mount from the uphill side, so he wouldn't have to jump for the stirrup. That was the awkward thing about being short, he could never forget it. If he was mounting out on the flats, where there was no uphill side, he had to jump for the stirrup, whether he liked it or not.

When he rode back around the saloon, all the men were mounted except Hergardt, who had just crawled out the door. He sat in the snow, crooning a German song he sometimes sang when he was unhappy. Some blood ran out of his ear, on the side where Hardin had hit him.

"Get up, Gardt. We're off to catch that Mexican boy," Mox Mox said.

Hergardt stumbled up, but fell flat down again before he could reach his horse. Manuel and Oteros managed to hoist him to his feet, but Pedro Jones and Jimmy Cumsa had to help, in order to get him flopped over his horse. Hergardt caught his reins, but dropped them. Pedro Jones had to lead Hergardt's horse.

The mesquite limbs from what had once been old Naiche's hut were still smoldering as Mox Mox and the seven men rode out of Crow Town. The crows were cawing, and the bitter wind still blew.

Brookshire had attended Princeton College for a year. He hadn't the head for it, and knew he hadn't the head for it, but his mother had ambitions for her children: she was determined that he become a college man. She made him a suit, so that he would not look so much like a plain Hoboken boy, and she scraped and scrimped to save the money to send him.

They were not rich, but his father had a decent job on the railroad. He was foreman of the railroad yard in Queens; it had not been Colonel Terry's yard, not then.

Brookshire had only stayed a few months at Princeton College. Even his mother was forced to accept the sad fact that he didn't have the head for it. In later years, it was only in her bitterest moments, after she discovered that his father, like the Colonel, had a Miss Cora tucked away in Queens, that she railed about her son's failure at Princeton.

As he rode up the Rio Concho, with Captain Call and Deputy Plunkert, Brookshire had occasion to remember Princeton College, and to reflect on it. The wind grew colder, and what might have been only a soft snow in the East became a sharp sleet that bit at his face like bees.

In Princeton College, they had talked a good deal about civilization. Those who attended Princeton College were, of course, among the civilized. The New Jersey countryside had been civilized too, though Brookshire hadn't thought much about the civilized New Jersey landscape, or civilization in general, until he found himself freezing on the Rio Concho with Captain Call.

Up to that time, civilization had just been a fancy word that preachers and professors and politicians bruited about.

It wasn't just a word to Brookshire anymore. It was something he had left, and it involved comfortable beds and gas heaters and snug brick buildings, to keep out the wind. It involved meat that had been sliced by a well-trained butcher, and purchased at a butcher shop and cooked by Katie, his wife, now sadly gone, leaving him with no one to cook his chops for him.

Nothing that the professors at Princeton College would have been prepared to call civilization existed on the Rio Concho. Indeed, on the cold stretch where they were, nothing human existed, except themselves. At least the old women in Chihuahua City, staring out of their dusty shawls, had been human. Here, there was only the earth, the sky, and the wind. When night came, it took them an hour to gather enough scanty brushwood to make a decent fire.

The night the ice storm hit, it was so cold that even Captain Call didn't pretend to sleep. They all huddled by the fire, trying to keep it alive. At times, the wind surged so that it seemed the fire might blow away.

Brookshire had never expected to be this cold, and yet, he reflected, only a month before he had been sweltering in Laredo.

"A few weeks ago, I was the hottest I've ever been," he told the Captain.

"Now, I'm the coldest. It ain't ever moderate down here, is it?" Deputy Plunkert had given up talking.

Every time he opened his mouth, the air came in, so cold that it made his teeth hurt down to the roots.

"No, it's not moderate, much," Call said.

His knee pained him. The morning before, he had let a mule kick him. Usually he was quick enough to sidestep such kicks, but he hadn't sidestepped this one.

More worrisome to him was the fact that the joints of his fingers had begun to swell, when it got cold.

For most of his life, he had paid no attention to weather; weather was just there. He never let it interfere with his work or his movements. In time, the weather would always change, but the work couldn't wait. Now, it seemed, weather was interfering plenty. When the cold struck, his wrist joints became swollen, and the joints of his fingers, even more so. It had happened to a lesser degree the winter before, and a doctor in Amarillo had told him he had arthritis. The only remedy the doctor suggested was that he wear a copper bracelet, advice Call ignored. Now he wished he had tried it. His finger joints were so swollen on the cold mornings that he had an awkward time buttoning his pants, or pulling his saddle straps tight. Knotting the packs onto the mules had ceased to be a simple task, with his joints so swollen. He tried letting Deputy Plunkert pack the mules, but Deputy Plunkert could not tie a knot that would hold.

Just the day before, they had spotted a mule deer --a big doe. They needed meat, too. Call yanked his rifle out of its scabbard and tried to get off a shot, only to find that the knuckle of his trigger finger had swollen so badly he had to force it through the trigger guard. When he finally got his finger on the trigger, the doe was two hundred yards away, and Call missed.

Sitting by the gusting fire with Brookshire and the deputy, Call rubbed the knuckle. It had not become any less swollen. They still needed meat, too. They were living on jerky, and a few tortillas that were stiff as leather. He looked at the knuckle and was shocked by its size. He thought he might possibly have a thorn in it; mesquite thorns could cause swelling in a joint. But he looked closely and could find no sign of a thorn.

It was worrisome. Neither Brookshire nor the deputy was a particularly good shot. He himself was not an exceptional shot, but had usually been able to bring down meat when it was vital. It occurred to him that he might have to take the trigger guard off his rifle. At least he might have to if the intense cold didn't break. He could not remember having been so uncomfortable in cold weather, though he had spent a winter in Montana on the Milk River, where temperatures of forty below zero were not uncommon.

"Well, none of us are as young as we used to be," Brookshire remarked.

Call had never thought much about age. Charlie Goodnight liked to talk about it, but Call found the talk tedious. He was as old as he was, like everyone else; as long as he could still go when he needed to go, age didn't matter much.

He was still able, within reason, to do what he had a mind to do. But he'd had a mind to kill the large doe, and he hadn't. Of course, he wasn't an exceptional shot. He had missed mule deer before, but the fact that he had missed this one just when he had, was troubling. They were just coming into the home country of the young bandit, a boy with a keen eye and a German rifle with a telescope sight.

Getting a knuckle stuck in a trigger guard would not be wise, in a contest with Joey Garza.

"How cold do you have to be to freeze?" Deputy Plunkert asked. Though he hated to open his mouth and let the cold attack the roots of his teeth, he had begun to worry constantly about freezing and wanted to ask. Coming with the Captain was the worst mistake of his life. If he were to freeze to death on the Rio Concho, it would serve him right. But he still didn't want it to happen.

"We won't freeze," Call said. "We can squeeze in with the mules if it gets much worse." Deputy Plunkert had a private agony that he had not shared with his traveling companions. The day before, when they faced the freezing wind, he had put on all the clothes he had brought with him.

He was wearing two pairs of pants, and several shirts. With so much clothing on, and his hands half-frozen anyway, it had proven difficult to get himself fully unbuttoned when a call of nature came in the night. He thought he was free, but when the piss started to flow it turned out that he wasn't--a good measure of piss went between one pair of pants and the other. The cold deepened and the piss froze, making a shield of ice along one thigh. The weak fire barely warmed his hands.

It made no impression on the shield of ice.

Shortly after that calamity, the Yankee, Brookshire, came to his aid by loaning him an extra pair of gloves he had brought along.

Brookshire noticed that the deputy kept dropping his reins, because his hands were so cold he couldn't hold them. He offered the gloves, and the deputy gratefully took them. He knew he would be more grateful too for his wife Doobie's warm body, the next time he got to lie beside it.

"Are you sorry you came with me, Mr.

Brookshire?" Call asked. He knew the Deputy was sorry he had come; his every motion and statement made that clear. But Brookshire was a more complex fellow. He had adapted to hardship far more easily than Call had expected him to. Once out of the heat of Laredo, he had not uttered a word of complaint, and he tried to handle his share of the chores efficiently. Call had come to admire him. It could not be easy to go from the comfortable life of the city to what they were experiencing on the Rio Concho.

Yet it was the deputy--the native--who was feeling worse.

"No, I ain't sorry," Brookshire said.

"Katie's gone now. I'd just as soon be here." He could not think of his wife without tearing up, though he quickly wiped away the tears when they came.

"This way, I feel about as bad outside as I do inside," he said. "It's nice to be shut of the Colonel for a while, too. I imagine he's pretty jumpy by now, wondering what became of us. I hope he ain't fired the whole office." The thought came to Brookshire that if he ever did make it back to Brooklyn, he might take the train down to Princeton College, just to walk among the buildings for an afternoon. He supposed other Princeton men had gone to the West, and come back, though he didn't know any.

He couldn't claim to be a Princeton man anyway; he hadn't had the head for it, and had to quit and take a job in an office. Still, he had a sense that he would like to see the place once more, to look at the gray buildings and the great trees. If he did go, it would be because he had managed to survive a place where no one gave a thought to civilization. Survival was all they had time for, and numbers of them failed even at that.

It would be good to see Princeton again, after the Rio Concho. If he was fortunate enough to find another wife, and marry and have a boy, he thought he might want to send him to Princeton College. If he could marry a smart wife, perhaps he would have a boy with the head for Princeton College. Brookshire began to ruminate about his boy, and what his name might be. He thought he might want to name him Woodrow, after the Captain; that, of course, was a matter that would have to be discussed with his new wife.

The next morning, they came to the Rio Grande. Near its banks was a little village. Call had a distant memory of the place. He and Gus McCrae had once hung some horse thieves not far from it, on the Texas side. The village was called Ojinaga, as he remembered. He and Gus had brought the bodies home. Other Ranger captains considered that foolish, for they thought it invited ambush or revenge. But he and Gus had sometimes done it anyway, on the occasions when the village was close. The men hung were, in most cases, the only ones capable of ambush, and having the bodies made it easier on the womenfolk.

Call had never expected to return to Ojinaga. He remembered the bitterness in the eyes of some of the village women. But that was a common thing, along the border. He saw the bitterness whether he was returning bodies or not.

Now life had brought him back to Ojinaga.

As they rode to the well, in the center of the little plaza, he was surprised to see old Billy Williams standing outside a small adobe house. Billy seemed to be sniffing the air--it was a scout's habit--but what was more surprising was that he held the hands of two children. One was a large boy, and the other a girl of ten or twelve who seemed to be blind. Billy himself didn't appear to be very keen of sight, either. The large boy had a look that suggested he might not be fully right in the head.

Call turned his horse and rode over to the three people. He had never been a great admirer of Billy Williams, but after three hard nights along the cold river, it was comforting to come across an old acquaintance.

"Why, hello, Billy," Call said. "That is you, isn't it?" "Woodrow, where have you been?" Billy asked.

"We've been expecting you for a week." That was unwelcome news.

"Why would you be expecting me?" Call asked.

"Why, everybody knows you're after Joey," Billy Williams said. "It's the talk of the whole West." "I wish the whole West would shut up, then," Call said. "Do you know Joey Garza?" "I know him," Billy said. He saw no point in not admitting it.

"This is his brother and sister," he added. "This is the house he grew up in. His mother, she's gone." "Oh, are these your children?" Call asked, surprised by the news he had just been given. He had heard that Billy had a woman in Mexico.

"They ain't, no," Billy said. "I'm just watching them. Ain't that Deputy Plunkert, from down in Laredo?" "Yes, that's him," Call said.

"What are you dragging him along for, he's worthless," Billy said. "I wouldn't hire him to shovel out shit, if I had a livery stable full of it." "I needed a man," Call replied. "I was hoping he might turn out to be a fighter." "No, he's just a jailer," Billy said.

"I've been arrested in Laredo quite a few times, but always by Sheriff Jekyll. All Plunkert does is ladle out the beans they feed you, when they feed you." "This town looks familiar to me," Call said. "I think I was here before, with Gus. We hung three horse thieves and brought them home." "Yes, to this house," Billy said. "You hung Maria's father and her brother and a brother-in-law.

It's just as well Maria's gone. She ain't forgot." "In that case, I suppose she's gone to warn her son. Or have you warned him already?" "Well, I told Maria you were coming," Billy said. "She thought Joey might be in Crow Town, so she left. The weather turned cold, but she made it to Crow Town, I know that much." "Oh, did a crow tell you?" Call asked.

"No, Famous Shoes told me," Billy said. "He's waiting in Presidio, with your man." "Well, that's good news," Call said.

"Deputy Plunkert can go home now, if he wants to. I'd far rather travel with Pea." While the men were talking, Teresa listened.

Though she herself was not frightened, she could tell that the man frightened people. Billy's voice sounded different, when he was talking to this man. The man's voice wasn't loud, but it was rough. Teresa felt interested--she wished the man would stay with them a little while. She liked the way the man's voice sounded, even if it was rough. From time to time, she felt the man watching her; it was her belief that the air changed, when people watched her.

She wanted to whisper to Rafael, about the man.

She wanted to lead Rafael amid the sheep, to whisper about the strange man who had just come to Ojinaga. Teresa thought the man might be a king, from the way he made the air different when he looked at her. It was very interesting to her. She was glad her mother wasn't home, because her mother always made her go in the house when strangers came.

It pleased her that Billy knew the man.

Perhaps he would visit them again, in the next days, so he could talk to Billy.

"If you care for his brother and sister, then I guess you must be a friend of Joey Garza's," Call said. He wanted what information he could get, but he had traveled the border a long while and knew better than to try and twist loyalties.

He felt the little girl was watching him, but of course, that was wrong thinking; she was blind, she couldn't watch him. But she was an unusually pretty, appealing child. There was something in her quick expression that was unusual. He knew blind children were often very smart, and he suspected that this little girl was one of the smart ones. To be blind must be a sadness for anyone, of course. There would be little hope for the girl, in such a poor village, even though she was clearly going to be a beauty. Some man might marry her for her looks alone, Call supposed.

"I know Joey," Billy admitted. "I knew him when he was a youngster. He was likable then. I have not seen him much since he took up killing and train robbing. I doubt it's improved his disposition." "I expect not," Call said, waiting. Perhaps Billy would let slip something useful; or perhaps not.

"Joey's smart, and he's lived with the Indians," Billy said. "He outran the Apaches, and they couldn't track him, neither. You won't locate Joey easy, unless he decides to come at you and present a challenge." "Famous Shoes can track him, if the railroad can afford his fee," Call said. "I imagine the old man is still expensive." Call sat watching the sprightly girl. He wished he had a bauble to give her, a ribbon, or a locket, or some such trinket. Of course, she wouldn't be able to see it, but she could feel it.

The boy's face was puffy, and he drooled a little. He made a sound, now and then, like the sound a goat would make. It made Call wonder about the mother. What could she be, to produce a beautiful blind girl, an idiot, and a killer? He only dimly remembered the three men he and Gus had hung. The border had an abundance of horse thieves then; probably it still did. He had forgotten many of the ruffians he'd had to deal with.

It seemed an odd turn of the wheel, that he should come back after so many years to the very house where he and Gus had brought the three bodies.

It was still very cold, and Brookshire was anxious to get across the river, to see if there were telegrams from his Colonel. Call could not linger too long, just in the hope that Billy Williams would tell him something useful. It might be that old Billy didn't really know anything useful about the young killer.

He thought he might try one more question.

"I've heard there's a cave," Call said.

"It's said the Garza boy carries everything he steals, and hides it in a cave. Has anyone you know seen it?" "Nope," Billy said. He knew he had to be careful in his statements. If Maria found out he had said something that gave Joey away to his pursuer, she would drive him out of Ojinaga, or else kill him.

"I don't think there's no cave," he said, lying.

"He's taken a passel of stuff," Call said. "It's got to be somewhere." Billy didn't answer. For all he knew, Joey could have ten caves. Olin Roy had seen him carry a saddle into the mountains once, but that was as close as anyone had ever come to Joey's treasure.

"Well, I expect I'd better go locate Pea Eye," Call said. He looked again at the sprightly little girl, and turned his horse.

Later, Teresa took Rafael into the sheep herd and told him that an unusual man had come.

Rafael had been there too, of course, but often he did not know of many things that happened in his presence, until Teresa told him. She stroked her baby chicken and helped Rafael suckle one of the sheep who had just lambed and had much milk.

"I think he must have been the king," Teresa told her brother. She wasn't sure what a king did, but her mother had read her two storybooks, and one of the books had stories about a king.

"I think he must have been the king," she said again, as Rafael sucked the ewe.

Famous Shoes had not wanted to go into Presidio.

"The hard sheriff will arrest me," he told Pea Eye. "He thinks I stole a horse.

It was a long time ago, but he will remember." "We've got to have shells," Pea Eye reminded him. "If we don't get shells, we'll starve and never find the Captain." They'd had a hard trip across the Pecos country. The cold was bitter, and the antelope stayed just out of range, tempting Pea Eye to shoot time after time at animals he couldn't hit. They'd had no food at all for the last thirty miles.

"You're working for the Captain now," Pea said.

"You're like a deputy. Doniphan won't arrest no deputy of Captain Call's." But Doniphan, the hard sheriff, came with the one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, and pointed rifles at them in the hardware store.

Doniphan wore a long mustache and carried two handguns, besides the rifle. The one-eared deputy had a red face, from drink. His life had not been easy since Billy Williams shot off his ear. People mocked him, and Doniphan, his boss, had no sympathy. As everyone on the border knew, Doniphan had been born without sympathy.

"We're here waiting for Captain Call," Pea Eye said, when he saw the rifles pointed at them. "We're both deputies. We've been hired to help the Captain bring in Joey Garza." "This Indian is a horse thief," Doniphan said. "He's escaped me once, because of a fire. He won't escape me again." "He's called Famous Shoes because he walks everywhere," Pea Eye told him. "He wouldn't steal a horse because he don't use horses. The only use he'd have for one would be to eat it." "Stealing horses to eat is still stealing horses," Doniphan said. "Start walking toward the jail." "I have never stolen a horse in my life," Pea Eye said. "Why are you arresting me?" "Because you're with this horse thief," the sheriff answered. "You might be a horse thief, too." Pea Eye went along to the jail. He felt bad about Famous Shoes. He should have come into the town alone and bought the cartridges. He had ignored the old man's advice, which was foolish of him. Almost every time he ignored someone's advice, whether it was Lorena's or Mr.

Goodnight's or the Captain's or Famous Shoes', he had cause to regret it.

Doniphan put the two prisoners in separate cells.

"Once I hang this old red nigger, and I'll get to it quick, you can go," Doniphan said.

"I suspect you're a criminal, but I can't prove it." The next day, several people came to the jail and stared at Famous Shoes. Doniphan had let everyone know the man had been recaptured. He decided to keep the old man on display for a week, as a form of publicity. His boast was that no criminal escaped him. Now he had recaptured the one man who had escaped him.

He decided to hang him publicly, as an example. Normally, he would just have taken him out and yanked him up and let him choke; normally, an old Indian with a taste for horseflesh would not have merited a public hanging. But Famous Shoes' escape was the only escape there had been from Sheriff Doniphan's jail, and he wanted it to be known up and down the border that he had avenged it.

Pea Eye's repeated claim that Famous Shoes worked for Captain Call merely annoyed Doniphan. He left the old man without food for two days, to show his annoyance. When Pea Eye tried to share his frijoles with him, Doniphan moved Famous Shoes a cell away, so that Pea Eye couldn't pass him the food.

"Why are you starving him?" Pea Eye asked.

"All he done was eat a dead horse, and that was years ago." "He evaded the law--my law," Doniphan replied. "He deserves worse than starving, and he'll get worse than starving, too." Famous Shoes said nothing. Talking to the hard sheriff was a waste of breath. He began to regret having left the Madre. He knew that his time was near, but was sorry that it might be the hard sheriff who put him to death. He had hoped to die near the Rio Rojo; even though he had not made contact with the spirit of his grandfather, the spirits of many of the Kickapoo people were there, along the river. It would have been a better place to give up his spirit than the jail of the hard sheriff.

Famous Shoes was old, though. He had lived past the time of his people. He knew that few men got to choose the place of their going, or of their coming, either. Only the wisest old men and women of the tribe were able to determine when or where to accept their deaths. Only the wise could do that, but even with those few wise ones, there had to be more than wisdom.

For wisdom, in his view, had ever been a downward path: luck was better than wisdom, while one was alive. It was mainly the lucky who got to die in the right time, or the right place, or so Famous Shoes felt.

He himself had been lucky, for he had lived in the lands of the Mexicans and also the lands of the whites. Both peoples hated Indians, yet he had lived a long life. His main regret was that he had not kept his last wife. She had grown dissatisfied and left him, just as he was beginning to appreciate her attentions. He missed her sorely for many years, and still missed her, when he thought about her.

Also, he would have liked to know how to read. It seemed that his dream of having Pea Eye's wife teach him would be frustrated. The one-eared deputy, who didn't hate him as much as the hard sheriff, let him have an old piece of newspaper that had the book tracks on it.

Famous Shoes tried his best, for what he thought might be the last time, to make sense of the tracks on the paper, but it was no use. He lacked instruction, and he had to give up.

Every time Pea Eye mentioned the Captain, Sheriff Doniphan got a cold look in his eye, and the look in his eye was not very warm to begin with.

"I doubt he'll show up, and if he does, I'm apt to lock him up, too," he told Pea Eye. "He's just an old bounty hunter--he ain't the law. He's too old to catch that Mexican boy, anyway." "Well, Charlie Goodnight don't think so," Pea Eye said. He thought that name, at least, might impress Doniphan, but the truth seemed to be that nothing impressed Doniphan.

"He's another one that's too old," Doniphan said. "These old buffalo need to be put out to pasture. They won't be catching no more swift bandits, and if they come round me, I'll send 'em home." In fact, now that Joey Garza had become such a sought-after outlaw, Sheriff Doniphan had developed a plan to catch the young robber himself.

The boy's mother had been in his jail once already, although Doniphan had been gone at the time, delivering a man to the penitentiary. Now she had gone to Crow Town, to warn her son, but she would have to come back sometime, and when she came back, Doniphan meant to arrest her. What his deputies had done to her then would seem like child's play, compared to what he meant to do to her now.

Next, he would find her son and kill him. There would be no capture and no trial. There would just be a bullet, or two, or three.

Doniphan didn't suppose it would hurt his reputation to dispatch Joey Garza; in fact, it would make it. After that, every border killer from Matamoros to Juarez would know that Joe Doniphan was a sheriff to be reckoned with. The people would stop talking about old-timers like Woodrow Call and Charlie Goodnight; when it came to modern lawmen, Joe Doniphan would be the first name that came to mind when trouble on the border was being discussed. The next time they needed a federal marshal to clean out Crow Town or any other nest of ruffians, his name would likely be at the top of the list.

Sheriff Doniphan was in the midst of just such a dream of glory when Captain Call walked in, with a Yankee at his heels. The one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, saw him coming and quickly stepped in to alert the sheriff.

"I think it's old Call," he said.

"I've never seen the man, but I think it's him." Doniphan was startled. He had not expected the old man to appear. He got up and put on his hat. After all, the man had been a great Ranger once. Showing him a little respect wouldn't hurt.

Call had seen too many country sheriffs to be much interested in what he heard about Sheriff Doniphan. Presidio was a small town, in a remote spot on the border. Few criminals of the first class would have any incentive to pass through it. The man had probably harvested his reputation by arresting local thieves, or men who got drunk and shot their best friends. Local law work was mostly of that order. When told at the hardware store that Doniphan had arrested Pea Eye and Famous Shoes, Call had been irritated, but not overly so. At least Pea Eye was there, and the old tracker was still with him.

When he stepped into the jail, Doniphan held out his hand, but Call ignored it.

"Let those men out--you had no business arresting them," Call said bluntly. "They were sent to help me bring in Joey Garza, and you need not have interfered with them." Sheriff Doniphan was surprised that such an old man would take such a sharp tone with him. He didn't appreciate it, either. It was not the kind of talk he was used to hearing, in his own jail. The Yankee looked mild, but old Call didn't.

"I know who to arrest, I reckon," Doniphan said. "This Indian's going to be hung, in a few days. He's a known horse thief. I'm sure you've hung a good many like him, yourself." "Famous Shoes has never been known to ride a horse, much less steal one," Call informed him. "Anybody who knows anything about this part of the country knows that. Pea Eye has been my deputy for thirty years, and he's never been a lawbreaker." "He came into town with a criminal, and that's breaking the law, for me," Doniphan said, irritated by the old man's tone. He felt his temper rising. Who was this old fellow, to walk into his jail and start giving orders?

"Here," Call said, handing Doniphan a telegram. "This is from the governor of Texas.

I heard you were a stubborn man, so I asked Mr. Brookshire to have Colonel Terry wire the governor. I done it as soon as I heard these men were in your jail. I done it to save time.

We're provisioned, and we need to go. There's been another train robbery, near San Angelo." Doniphan took the telegram, but he felt himself growing angrier. He was too angry to read.

Old Call had gone around him, without even speaking to him.

Doniphan wadded up the telegram unread and tossed it on the floor. Tom Johnson, though well aware that his boss was temperamental, was appalled. They had never received a telegram from the governor before. They had never even dreamed of receiving one--at least, he hadn't. Now Joe Doniphan had received one and wadded it up without even reading it.

He hastily picked it up and attempted to smooth it out. It was from the governor, and it ordered Sheriff Doniphan to release Call's men and give him every assistance.

Call watched the sheriff, who had grown quite red in the face. He had secured the telegram as a matter of correct procedure. He knew that local sheriffs were apt to be touchy about their authority. Call supposed, from what he had heard, that Doniphan was likely to be touchier than most. So he had asked Brookshire to wire his boss and had used the time it took exchanging telegrams, to provision well. Again he had offered to release Deputy Plunkert from his duties, and again the deputy, though half frozen and permanently melancholy, had refused to be released. Now that they were back in Texas, Ted Plunkert felt that conditions were sure to improve. He resolved to stay with Captain Call, whatever it meant.

Call had not supposed that Doniphan would be obdurate enough to defy an order from the governor of Texas, but it seemed the man was just that stubborn.

"Sheriff, it is from the governor," Tom Johnson said. "Don't you want to read it?" "No, I don't, and when I wad something up, I want it left wadded up!" the sheriff said, highly irritated with his deputy.

"Goddamn the governor, and goddamn you," the sheriff said, addressing himself to Call. "You don't come in here and order me to let criminals out of my own jail." "They aren't criminals, and you've overstepped," Call said. "Let them out." "I'll let your man go the day I hang the Indian, and I'll hang the Indian in my own good time," Sheriff Doniphan said.

Call saw a ring of jail keys hanging on a hook near the sheriff's desk. He walked over and took the ring and went to the cell where Pea Eye sat. He saw the sheriff draw his gun, but paid it no mind; he didn't expect the man to shoot. After all, he had his back to him, and there were five witnesses in the room.

The third key he tried opened the cell. Then Call found the key that freed Famous Shoes.

"They're dead men if they step out of them cells," Doniphan said. "I don't tolerate escapes." Brookshire, watching from just inside the door, felt that the Captain might have made a mistake. The sheriff didn't seem to be a relenting man. In that respect, he reminded him of Colonel Terry. The fact that the Captain was just ignoring the sheriff made Brookshire nervous. If the sheriff pulled the trigger, everything would change. Doniphan might shoot them all; he might even shoot his own deputy. He looked to be a man who acted only for himself, as Colonel Terry did. Brookshire wondered if the Captain had miscalculated. If so, Call exhibited little concern.

Then, to Brookshire's astonishment, Call flattened the sheriff with a rifle. He whacked him right in the neck with a hard swing. He hadn't been carrying a rifle, though there were several in a gun rack along the wall. Somehow the Captain, who usually moved slowly and stiffly, had walked right in front of the sheriff, ignored his cocked pistol, pulled loose a rifle, and hit the sheriff with it.

The minute he struck the blow, the Captain seemed to change. He didn't stop with one blow, although Doniphan was knocked flat, and his pistol went skittering across the floor of the jail. Call continued to hit the sheriff with the rifle. Once, when the sheriff turned to try and escape, the Captain knocked him in the ear with his boot, so hard that Brookshire would not have been surprised if Doniphan's head had flown off.

"Stop, Captain, he's subdued," Pea Eye said, though he knew the Captain wouldn't stop. He rarely went off into such a storm of violence, but when he did, it was almost impossible to stop him. Once, in Ogallala years before, the Captain had launched himself at a sergeant who was quirting Newt. Before that storm ended, the Captain had almost killed the man by pounding his head against an anvil. Gus McCrae had stopped it by roping the Captain and pulling him off the bloody sergeant with his horse.

There was no Gus, no rope, and no horse, but Pea Eye knew the Captain had to be stopped somehow, or else Sheriff Doniphan would be dead. Once the storm of rage took him, the Captain could no more stop hitting and kicking than a blizzard could stop blowing. Pea Eye saw the Captain lift the bloody rifle for what might be a fatal blow, and flung himself at Call--there was no waiting, and no choice.

"Help me, you've all got to help me!" Pea Eye yelled. He partially deflected the rifle with his arm as the blow fell that might have killed Sheriff Doniphan.

The one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, tried to grab one of the Captain's arms, but was immediately knocked back. Pea Eye concentrated on the rifle, trying to keep the Captain from splitting Doniphan's skull with it. He managed to hang on to one arm, but he knew it wouldn't be for long.

"Somebody's got to rope him, it's the only way," Pea said, looking desperately at the Yankee.

"Here, ride your horse up, give me your rope!" Brookshire yelled out the door to Deputy Plunkert, who, though taken by surprise, immediately spurred his horse up the few steps to the porch of the jail. He handed Brookshire his rope.

"I'll get it on him, then you pull," Brookshire said. He was trembling from the shock, but he managed to make a loop in the end of the rope. He got close enough to the Captain to get the loop over one of his feet as Call was trying to step free of the fallen sheriff so he could kick him again.

"Pull!" Brookshire yelled. He had never seen such a killing frenzy take any man.

Merely witnessing the destruction of the sheriff made Brookshire's breath come short, and his heart pound uncomfortably. But he knew he had to get the rope on some part of Call, or the sheriff of Presidio would be dead.

Deputy Plunkert dallied the rope around his saddle horn and backed his horse along the narrow porch until it grew tight. He soon discovered, to his amazement, that Captain Call was on the other end. He held a bloody rifle in one hand, and for a moment, looked as if he wanted to club Brookshire with it. But he didn't. He shook Pea Eye off and then shook the rope off his foot. He broke the bloody rifle over the hitch rail and threw the two parts of it into the street.

Call went back inside, dragged the bloody, unconscious sheriff into the cell where Famous Shoes had been, and locked it. He took the big ring of keys outside and threw them into the cistern at the end of the porch. When he passed Pea Eye, Brookshire, and the one-eared deputy, each drew back a little, as they might if a bear had just approached them.

"When he comes round, tell him the next time he points a damn pistol at me, he'd better shoot," Call told the one-eared deputy. "I won't tolerate rude threats of that sort." "Yes, sir," Tom Johnson said.

Privately, he was not sure Sheriff Doniphan would come around. Men had died from much less punishment than the Captain had just dished out. The sheriff's mouth was leaking blood, and not slowly, either. One whole side of his face seemed to be caved in, and his long mustache was just a line of blood.

Call knew that his violent fighting temper had gotten the best of him again, but he did not pretend to regret his attack on the sheriff, who had pulled a gun and threatened to shoot two valuable men, and in defiance of the governor's orders, too. He would have liked to do worse than he had done, but he'd gotten enough of a grip on himself to refrain from dragging the man out of his cell and finishing him.

What he did do was pick up the telegram the frightened deputy had dropped. He put the telegram on the sheriff's desk.

"Remind him that I was following the governor's instructions," Call said. "Read him the telegram." "Yes, sir," Tom Johnson said again.

"I'll remind him. I expect he'll listen, this time." "Yes, if his ears ain't burst," Pea Eye said. "The Captain caught one of his ears a pretty good lick." "We're provisioned, let's go," Call said. He felt that he had returned to normal, but the men were looking at him oddly--all the men but Famous Shoes, who had found a half-eaten plate of beans and was eating them.

Pea Eye saw the Captain looking at Famous Shoes in a testy way, and thought he had better explain.

"He wasn't allowed no food for two days, that's why he's into them beans," he said.

Famous Shoes could not understand why the foolish white men had kept the Captain from killing the hard sheriff. It was very foolish, in his view. The sheriff had been about to shoot them all, and he might try it again, if he lived. Famous Shoes was not sure the sheriff would live, though.

The Captain had dealt him some hard licks, mostly to the head. The way the Captain's anger came reminded Famous Shoes of old Kicking Bird, a Comanche chief given to terrible furies. When Kicking Bird went into a rage, he was apt to injure anyone near him, including members of his own tribe. He was a great fighting man, but he fought so hard that he lost track of who it was he was fighting and merely killed everyone near him. Once, he had grievously wounded his own brother, while in such a rage.

"We need you to help us track this Garza boy. Are you available?" Call asked. He noticed there was quite a bit of blood on the floor of the jail. The one-eared deputy would have to get out his mop, once they left.

"Yes," Famous Shoes said. "You don't have to pay me, either. Pea Eye's woman is going to teach me to read. That and something to eat will be wages enough, this time." "Hired, I guess, if Pea Eye's wife agrees," Call said. "Let's go." Deputy Plunkert, who had spurred his horse onto the porch of the jail with no difficulty in response to Brookshire's plea, had great difficulty getting the horse to go back down the steps. Pea Eye finally whacked the animal a time or two, and the horse jumped as far out into the street as it could, nearly knocking down one of the waiting pack mules when it landed.

Call was composed by this time. He wanted to get started, and not waste an afternoon. The men were all subdued, all except Famous Shoes, who was already half a mile ahead of them, proceeding at his customary rapid pace.

Brookshire felt so weak that he could barely mount. The shock of seeing Captain Call suddenly hit the sheriff with the rifle, and then continue to hit him, had been almost too much for his system. He felt very tired, and once more thought wi/lly of how nice it would be to spend the night in a decent hotel. That was not to be, though, not for a while. They had already left Presidio behind them.

The thing that troubled Brookshire most was that his memory of the incident was incomplete. He had been watching the Captain carefully, hoping Call was not misjudging the sheriff's temper; yet, somehow, his eyes had failed him. He didn't see the Captain walk from the cells, past the sheriff, to the rack of rifles. Whatever happened had happened too fast, or else his brain had cut off for a moment, or something. One minute the Captain was releasing Famous Shoes; the next, there was the sound of the rifle barrel hitting the sheriff. Brookshire considered it spooky. He couldn't explain it.

He had no doubt about one thing, though: Colonel Terry, in his wisdom, and he did seem to have wisdom, had clearly chosen the right man for the job at hand. The Garza boy would need more than a German rifle with a telescope sight when the Captain caught up with him. If the boy was smart, he would just surrender, and not let himself in for the kind of punishment that had just befallen the unfortunate Sheriff Doniphan.

It took the one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, and such townspeople as gathered to help, over three hours to fish the jail keys out of the cistern. Fortunately, the hardware store had a big magnet that was used to sort nails, and with the aid of the magnet, tied to three lariat ropes, the keys were finally brought up.

Sheriff Joe Doniphan was still unconscious when they opened the cell. He was conscious only fitfully for the next several days. His right jawbone was broken in seven places, and his palate damaged. He lost all his teeth on that side of his mouth, and eventually had to have his other teeth pulled in order to bring his bite into balance.

Also, three ribs were broken, and one leg. The leg was set improperly. The local doctor was so worried about the jaw that he made a hurried job of the leg, the result being that Sheriff Doniphan limped for the rest of his life. He resigned as sheriff a month after the beating. No one, including his wife, could stand to see his mashed-in face. He retired to his house and sat in the bedroom most of the day, with the shades pulled, whittling sticks. He didn't whittle them into any shape, he just whittled them away. The memory of his own inaction, at the fatal moment, was what haunted the ex-sheriff most. He had been holding a pistol, cocked and pointed right at the old man. He could have shot him at any moment, and justified it on the grounds that Call was helping a known criminal escape. Of course, the telegram from the governor was awkward; Deputy Johnson had preserved it, for the townspeople to see. But Doniphan could have argued that he never saw it, and had reason to suspect its authenticity.

The point was, he hadn't shot. He had let an old man whip him nearly to the point of death, with one of his own guns, in his own jail, in front of five people. He hadn't shot; he had just stood there.

It was a failure the former sheriff, Joe Doniphan, couldn't live with. The next time he lifted a gun to shoot, a little less than a year after the beating, but long after the pursuit of Joey Garza had ended, it was to put a .45 caliber bullet into his own brain. His wife, Martha, was in the kitchen, rolling biscuit dough. When she heard the gun go off in the bedroom, Martha was glad.

Doobie Plunkert had only gone by the jail to see if there was any news of Ted; after all, Sheriff Bob Jekyll was known to be lazy.

He didn't care whether Doobie had any news of Ted, or whether Ted was alive or dead, for that matter. He wouldn't walk up the street to her house to bring her news, even if he had any.

Doobie knew there probably wasn't any news, though; there hadn't been a word, since the day Ted left. It seemed to Doobie that he had now been gone most of the time since they married.

She had even begun to forget bits and pieces of her early married life, though her early married life had happened less than a year ago. It was just that the terrible loneliness she felt, now that Ted was gone, had cut her off from her own good memories.

Doobie knew that when Ted finally came home, they would be the happiest couple in the world.

And she would know what to do the next time some old sheriff rode into town and tried to take her husband away. Next time, Doobie was determined to fight, and she meant to win, too. Next time, she wasn't going to let her husband go.

But chill day after chill day passed, with no word from Ted at all, or of Ted, and Doobie had become a little desperate. Every day, she went to the little post office in the back of the hardware store, hoping there would be a letter. She knew Ted wasn't much for writing, since it was all he could do to make a sentence. But still, he might pass through a town that had a post office, and he might be tempted to write her at least a note, so she would know he was alive.

She knew Bob Jekyll didn't really want her coming around the jail, whether Ted was on duty or not, but the jail was the place news would be most likely to show up. The hunger for at least some word of her husband gnawed at Doobie so deeply that she couldn't stop showing up at the jail, just to peek in and ask Sheriff Jekyll what he had heard. Captain Call was a famous man; surely there would be some news of the Captain and his party, sometime.

In the nights, Doobie began to be prey to even more terrible fears. What if Ted was lost?

What if the whole party had starved, or been killed by Indians? She knew there were still wild Indians in Mexico--what if they had killed Ted in a place where no one would ever even find his body? What if she had the baby and it grew up and neither of them ever heard another word about Ted Plunkert in the whole of their lives?

Doobie tried to make herself stay away from the jail, but on days when she was particularly worried, or had had a particularly bad night, it was hard. Her feet just seemed to take her in the direction of the jail, the one place where there might be news.

Doobie never supposed, not for one moment, that Sheriff Jekyll might take this wrong. She felt he must know that the one and only reason she pestered him was because she loved her husband so much, and was desperate for news. Everyone in Laredo, Texas, knew how much Doobie Plunkert loved her husband. They were the happiest young couple in the community. That was common knowledge.

Doobie had seen Sheriff Jekyll looking at her that way once or twice, that way men looked at women. It was part of being a woman, she supposed. Men just would look at you, that way.

Susanna Slack, her best friend, told her it was merely the way of the world. Men looked at Susanna that way too, although she was an older woman. Doobie hoped that Sheriff Jekyll and the men of Laredo in general might be a little more respectful in their manner of looking, once it became obvious that she was enceinte; they should not be casting disrespectful looks at a woman who was soon to have a baby.

When Doobie realized that Bob Jekyll was looking at her that way more intently than usual, and was even moving toward her, she tried to dart back out the door of the jail to safety, but she was a step too slow. Bob Jekyll caught her arm and started dragging her toward a cell with a cot in it. The jail was completely empty, too; there was not a single prisoner, not a soul for Doobie to cry out to.

"You keep coming here--now, shut up!" Bob Jekyll said, as he dragged Doobie toward the cell. When Doobie opened her mouth to scream, Bob Jekyll punched her so hard it stunned her. He had been standing right by the door, looking at her with that look, when she stepped inside the jailhouse, full of hope that there might be some news of Ted.

Doobie didn't want to be punched again.

She was afraid Bob Jekyll might hit her in the stomach and injure her baby. She was inside the cell, pinned to the cot, before she started fighting again. She had never hoped to see any man on earth except her husband with his pants pulled down, but Sheriff Jekyll had his pants down, and he was pulling at her drawers. Doobie tried to claw him, but when she did, he punched her so hard again that she lost consciousness for a minute. When her head cleared a little, Sheriff Jekyll was there, doing what only her husband had the right to do.

Doobie gave up then. A sorrow came to her as deep as the bone, for everything was lost now; even her baby was lost. Sheriff Bob Jekyll had destroyed her virtue, and her future, too. It wouldn't even matter if Ted came back now, for he would never forgive her.

Perhaps he would not even believe her when she said she only went to the jail hoping for news of him.

Even if he did come back, their happiness was lost.

Doobie became so hopeless that the sheriff grew disgusted with her. As soon as he had pleased himself, he told her to get out of his jail and stay out. He went over to his desk and didn't look at Doobie again.

He hadn't torn her dress; only her drawers had been ripped. Doobie didn't know what his punches had done to her face, but at least she could walk the few blocks home dressed respectably. One or two people even spoke to her, as she hurried up the street. Doobie managed a good morning to them, though it wasn't a good morning. What it had turned out to be, in the course of a few minutes, was the last morning of her life.

Doobie loved Ted Plunkert with all her heart and would never have done anything to bring dishonor to him. The knowledge that she mustn't let dishonor stain their marriage helped her keep a firm resolve.

She wanted to die as quickly as possible, before she weakened. She thought about writing Ted a note, but dismissed that notion at once. She would never be able to explain; it would be better to let Ted think she had just gone crazy from loneliness, from missing him.

She wasn't going to burden her husband with the awful truth.

Doobie couldn't help but cry. Now she knew how swiftly all the good things of life could be lost. Her marriage was lost, and her baby; compared to those griefs, the loss of her own physical life seemed minor. She only wanted to hurry with dying. She didn't want someone to come and interrupt her before she could do what she had to do. She ran to her kitchen and quickly dug out the rat poison.

Laredo was overrun with giant brown pack rats that lived under houses and also under the giant piles of prickly pear. Sometimes the Mexicans stuffed the ratholes and set the piles of prickly pear afire. Once the fire burned down, they dug out the rats and ate them.

Doobie thought that was a horrible practice. She hated the rats, and considered that one of her own duties as a housewife was to keep their little house free of them. She spread the rat poison carefully around all the places a rat might get in. Once in a while, a rat would die under the house, and she and Ted would smell it, but mainly, the rats ran off to the river to die.

Doobie felt very calm about what she had to do, until she started trying to eat the rat poison.

She got a big spoon and tried to eat it straight down, like the oatmeal she sometimes made Ted in the mornings. But rat poison wouldn't go down like oatmeal, and it only made her gag.

When it got moist, it stuck to her teeth and to the roof of her mouth, and became very hard to swallow.

Doobie stopped being calm and became frantic.

What if she failed to die and Ted had to come home to a wife who was no longer worthy, a wife who had carelessly let her virtue be lost to the lust of Sheriff Bob Jekyll? Ted Plunkert would never get over such a thing.

Doobie knew she mustn't let him know. It would be a terrible failure if she let Ted find out the truth. She thought about hanging herself, but that was chancy, since she had never been very good at tying knots. If she tried to hang herself, somebody might find her while she was still alive.

Ted had explained to her that water helped the rat poison work. When the rats ate the poison, it made them thirsty and they ran off to the river to drink. Then the water made the poison work, and the rats died.

The minute she remembered what Ted had told her, Doobie took the big can of rat poison and a cup and went out her back door. The river was only two streets away. She walked toward it swiftly, hoping no one would see her or speak to her. She made it to the river unobserved, and began to stuff poison in her mouth and then drink water. Then, it occurred to her that she could mix the poison with water. She began to scoop water into the cup and mix it with poison. After that, the whole business went more quickly. It was working, too --Doobie began to feel a pain inside, down in her belly. It was as if something with sharp claws was pulling on her guts. She cried at the thought that her baby might be feeling the clawing too. But she kept scooping poison into the cup and filling it with water. She drank and scooped poison and drank. It was her way of doing right by Ted. The worse the clawing hurt, the more sure Doobie was that she would triumph. Ted would be sad when he found out that she was dead, but he wouldn't have to try to live down the terrible thing that had happened. He would get over her death, in time, but neither of them would ever be able to put right what had happened in the jail.