“The Apaches may be right,” Famous Shoes said. “When you see the Old One your last day may be close.”
“If mine’s close I’d like to have a good feed first,” Scull commented. “But I won’t, not unless the hunting improves.”
“We don’t have to eat the owl—I hear ducks,” Famous Shoes said.
Scull heard them too and looked around in time to see a large flock of teal curve over the river and come back to settle on the water.
“When it’s dark I will go down and catch some,” Famous Shoes said.
“Help yourself, but I plan to scorch this owl anyway,” Scull said. “I won’t have provender going to waste.”
30.
WHEN THREE BIRDS caught up with Kicking Wolf he was walking out of a gully dragging a small antelope he had just killed. The antelope was only a fawn but Three Birds was excited anyway. They had had little meat since stealing the Buffalo Horse. The sight of the dead fawn made Three Birds so hungry he forgot his news.
“Let’s cook it now,” he said. “Why didn’t you shoot its mother?”
“Why didn’t you kill her?” Kicking Wolf asked. “Where have you been?”
“I had to go a long way to find Scull,” Three Birds said. “He is following us but he is walking.”
At first Kicking Wolf did not believe it. Three Birds often lived in his own dream time for days at a stretch. Often he would ride around so long, dreaming, that he would forget what errand he had been sent on. When someone reminded him that he had been supposed to secure a particular piece of information he would often just make up whatever came into his head, which is what he was probably doing when he claimed that Scull was following them on foot. Kicking Wolf had expected pursuit and kept up a fast pace to elude it. How could Scull expect to catch him if he was on foot? He sent Three Birds back to investigate, thinking that perhaps Buffalo Hump or some other warriors had fallen on Scull and killed him.
Now, though, Three Birds had come back with a far-fetched tale that no sensible person could believe. Three Birds was just trying to explain why he had been gone four days. Now all he could think about was eating the little antelope.
“I don’t believe you—Scull had several horses,” Kicking Wolf said. “Why would he follow us on foot?”
Three Birds was offended. He had ridden for days, with little food, into the country of the enemy, to find out what Kicking Wolf wanted to know. He had found it out, and now Kicking Wolf didn’t believe him.
“He is following us on foot and the Kickapoo is with him,” he said. “Scull is four days behind but he walks fast and does not sleep much. If we wait we can kill him, and the Kickapoo too.”
Kicking Wolf gave the matter a little more thought, as he skinned the young antelope. Three Birds usually abandoned his lies if questioned closely, but he was not abandoning this lie, which might mean that it wasn’t a lie. Big Horse Scull was known to do strange things. Often he would skin little birds that were much too small to eat; then he would throw the birds away and pack their skins with salt. When he traveled he would sometimes pick up beetles and other bugs and put them in small jars. Once he even sacked up some bats that flew out of a cave—what such activities added up to was some kind of witchery, that was plain. That he had chosen to follow them on foot was just more evidence that he was some kind of a witch man. Lots of Indians were out on the plains hunting—if they had seen Scull they would have killed him, yet he was still alive, which suggested more witchery.
“Famous Shoes would like to sleep but Scull wakes him up and makes him walk,” Three Birds said. “When there is no moon they burn sticks to help them find the tracks.”
Kicking Wolf decided Three Birds was being truthful. He gave him the best parts of the fawn, for traveling fast to bring him the information.
“We will soon be in the Sierra,” Kicking Wolf said. “Ahumado will find us. I don’t know what he will do. I think he will like the Buffalo Horse, but I don’t know. Maybe he won’t like it that we have come.”
Three Birds was eating so fast that he could not figure out what Kicking Wolf was getting at. Of course no one knew what Ahumado would like, or what he would do. He was the Black Vaquero. He had killed so many people that everyone had lost count. Sometimes he killed whole villages, throwing all the people in a well and letting them drown—or he might make the villagers dig a pit and then bury them alive. He had an old man who was skilled at flaying; sometimes he would have the old man take all the skin off a man or a woman who had done something he disliked. He stuck people on sharpened trees and let the tree poke up through them. It was pointless to talk about what such a man might like or not like.
“If he doesn’t like us he might stick us on a tree,” Kicking Wolf said.
Three Birds grew more puzzled. Why was Kicking Wolf telling him all these things that he already knew? Ahumado only did bad things. Sometimes he hung people in cages and let them starve—or he might throw them into a pit full of scorpions and snakes. But all this was common knowledge among the Comanches, many of whom had died at the hands of the Black Vaquero. Did Kicking Wolf think such talk would scare him? Was he trying to suggest that he run away, like a coward?
“I don’t know why you are taking the Buffalo Horse to this man, but if that is what you want to do, then I am going too,” Three Birds said.
“It is your choice,” Kicking Wolf said. He was a little ashamed of himself, for trying to scare Three Birds away. Three Birds was a brave warrior, even though he didn’t fight very well and was often wandering in the dream time when he should be paying more attention to things.
When he stole the Buffalo Horse he thought he would take him to Ahumado alone. There would be much power flow from such an act. He would take a great horse from the most powerful Texan and sell him to the terrible bandit of the south. No one else had done such a thing. It was a thing that would be sung forever. Even if Ahumado killed him his feat would live in the songs.
He had not meant to share it with anybody. He had thought when they reached the river he would send Three Birds back and go into the Sierra Perdida alone, riding the Buffalo Horse. He would go to the stronghold of the Black Vaquero and offer him the great horse, in exchange for women. If he took the horse in and lived he would have the power of a great chief. Buffalo Hump and Slow Tree would have to include him in their councils. There would be great singing, because of what he had done.
But Three Birds had come with him and he could not insult him because he was a little prone to wandering in the dream time. Going to the stronghold of Ahumado would be a great test. He could not tell his friend not to come.
“I thought you might want to go home and see your family,” Kicking Wolf said. “But if you don’t then we had better eat this little antelope and ride through the night.”
“I don’t need to see anyone at home,” Three Birds said simply. “I want to go with you. If we ride all night Scull will not catch up.”
“That’s right,” Kicking Wolf said, as he cracked off a couple of the little antelope’s ribs. “Big Horse Scull will not catch up.”
31.
AUGUSTUS FELT STUNNED—for a moment he was unable to speak. Once, while he was reluctantly trying his hand at blacksmithing, a horse that he was shoeing caught him with a powerful kick that struck him full in the diaphragm. For ten minutes he could only gasp for breath; he could not have spoken a word had his life depended on it.
That was how he felt now, standing in the sunny Austin street with Clara Forsythe, the girl he had raced in to kiss only an hour before, holding his hand. The words Clara had just spoken were the words he had long feared to hear, and their effect on him was as paralyzing as the kick of the horse.
“I know it’s hard news,” Clara said. “But I’ve made up my mind and it’s not fair to hold it back.”
After leaving Governor Pease, Augustus had gone straight to a barber, meaning to get shaved and barbered properly before hurrying back to Clara to collect more kisses. She had consented to one
more, but then had led him out the back door of the store, so that neither her father nor a casual customer would interrupt them while she was telling Gus the truth she owed him, which was that she had decided to marry Robert F. Allen, the horse trader from Nebraska.
Augustus went white with the news; he was still white. Clara stood close to him and held his hand, letting him take his time, while he absorbed the blow. She knew it was a terrible blow, too. Augustus had courted her ardently from the day he met her, when she had been barely sixteen. She knew that, though much given to whoring, he loved only her and would marry her in an instant if she would consent. Several times she had been tempted to give in, allow him what he wanted, and attempt to make a marriage with him. Yet some cool part of her, some tendency to think and consider when she was most tempted just to stop thinking and open her arms, had kept her from saying yes. What stopped her was the feeling that had come over her when he rushed off to see Governor Pease: one kiss and then you’re gone. Augustus was a Texas Ranger: at the end of the kissing or what followed it, there’d be an hour when he would be gone; she would have to carry, for days or weeks, a heavy sense of his absence; she would have to cope with all the sad feelings that assailed her when Gus was away. Clara was active: she wanted to live the full life of her emotions every day—she didn’t like the feeling that full life would have to wait for the day Augustus returned, if he did return.
Almost every time the ranger troop left Austin there would be a man among them who did not come back. It was a fact Clara couldn’t forget; no woman could. And she had seen the anguish and the struggle that was the lot of frontier widows.
“If this is a joke it’s a poor one,” Augustus said, when he could find breath for speech.
But Clara was looking at him calmly, her honest eyes fixed on his. Of course she loved to tease him, and he would have liked to persuade himself that she was teasing him this time. But her eyes danced when she teased him, and her eyes were not dancing—not now.
“It ain’t a joke, Gus,” she said. “It’s a fact. We’re going to be married on Sunday.”
“But . . . you kissed me,” Augustus said. “When I came running in you called me your ranger, just like you always do.”
“Why, you are my ranger . . . you always will be,” Clara said. “Of course I kissed you . . . I’ll always kiss you, when you come to see me. I suppose I have the right to kiss my friends, and I’ll never be so married that I won’t be a friend.”
“But I’m a captain now,” Gus said. “A captain in the Texas Rangers. Couldn’t you have at least waited till I got home with the news?”
“Nope,” Clara said firmly. “I’ve spent enough of my life waiting for you to get home from some jaunt. I don’t like waiting much. I don’t like going weeks not even knowing if you’re alive. I don’t like wondering if you’ve found another woman, in some town I’ve never been to.”
At the memory of all her anxious waiting, a tear started in her eye.
“I wasn’t meant for waiting and wondering, Gus,” she said. “It was making me an old woman before my time. Bob Allen’s no cavalier. He’ll never have your dash—I know that. But I’ll always know where he is—I won’t have to be wondering.”
“Hell, I’ll quit the rangers if a stay-at-home is what you’re looking for,” Gus said, very annoyed. “I’ll quit ’em today!”
He knew, even as he said the words, that it was a thing he had often offered to do, over the years, when Clara taxed him with his absences. But he never quite got around to quitting. Now he would, though, captain or no captain. What was being a captain, compared to being married to Clara?
To his dismay, Clara shook her head.
“No,” she said. “It’s too late, Gus. I gave Bob Allen my promise. Besides, being a captain in the rangers is what you’ve always wanted. You’ve talked of it many times.”
“Well, I was a fool,” Gus said. “Being a captain just means making a lot of decisions I ain’t smart enough to make. Woodrow, he’s always studying—let him make ’em!
“I’m quitting, I mean it!” he said, feeling desperate. He felt he had just as soon die, if he couldn’t change Clara’s decision.
“Hush that—it’s nonsense,” Clara said. “I’m promised now—do you think I’m so light a girl that I’d break my promise just because you quit a job?”
Augustus felt a terrible flash of anger. “No, if you promised, I expect you’ll go through with it even if it ruins both our lives and his too!” he said.
“You shut up, Gus!” Clara said, with a flash to match his. “I’ve been telling you what I needed for ten years—if you’d wanted me enough to quit the rangers you would have quit long ago. But you didn’t—you just kept riding off time after time with Woodrow Call. You could have had me, but you chose him!”
“Why, that’s foolish—he’s just my pard,” Gus said.
“It may be foolish but it’s how I felt and how I feel,” Clara said.
She calmed herself with an effort. She had not called him into the street to fight over the disappointments of a decade—though it had not all been disappointment by any means.
Augustus didn’t know what to do. Though it appeared to be a hopeless thing, he didn’t know how to simply give up. The hope of someday marrying Clara had been the deepest hope of his life. What would his life be, with that hope lost? He could not even formulate a guess, though he knew it would be bleak and black.
“When will you be leaving?” he asked finally, in a flat voice.
“Why, Sunday,” Clara said. “We’re going to New Orleans and take the steamer up the Mississippi and the Missouri. It’ll be chilly traveling, I expect—at least the last part of it will.”
Gus felt such a weight inside him that he didn’t know how he was even going to walk away.
“Then it’s goodbye, I guess,” he said.
“For a while, yes,” Clara said. “My hope is that you’ll visit, in about ten years.”
“Visit you once you’re married—now why would you want that?” Augustus asked, startled by the remark.
“Because I’d want you to know my children,” Clara said. “I’d want them to have your friendship.”
Augustus was silent for a bit. Clara was looking at him with something in her eyes that he couldn’t define. Though she had just broken his heart, she still seemed to want something of him—what, he was not sure.
“You’re just saying that now, Clara,” he said, though he thought his throat might close up with sadness and leave him unable to speak.
“Bob, he won’t be wanting me there, and you won’t either, once you’ve been married awhile,” he said finally.
Clara shook her head and put her arms around him.
“I can’t claim to know too much about marriage yet, but there is one thing I know for sure—I’ll never be so married that I won’t need your friendship—don’t you forget that,” she said.
Then tears started in her eyes again—she turned abruptly and walked quickly back into her store.
Augustus stayed where he was for a bit, looking at the store. Whether staying or returning, looking at that store had long filled him with hope. The sight of the Forsythe store—just a plain frame building—affected him more powerfully than any sight on earth; for the store contained Clara. There he had met her; there, for years, they had kissed, quarreled, joked, teased; often they had made plans for a future together, a future they would now never have.
When he walked into the little room in the rough bunkhouse that he shared with Woodrow Call, what he felt in his heart must have showed in his face. Woodrow was just about to go out, but the sight of Gus stopped him. He had never seen Gus with quite such a strange look on his face.
“Are you sick?” Call asked.
Gus made no reply. He sat down on his cot and took off his hat.
“I have to pay a call, but I’ll be back soon,” Call said. “The Governor wants to see us again.”
“Why? We done saw him, the fool,” Gus asked.
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“We’re captains now,” Call reminded him. “Did you think we were just going to see him that one time?”
“Yes, I had hoped I wouldn’t have to look at the jackass again,” Gus said.
“I don’t know what’s the matter,” Call said, “but I hope it wears off quick. You needn’t be sulky just because the Governor wants to see us.”
Augustus suddenly drew back his fist and punched the center of the cot he sat on, as hard as he could. The cot, a spindly-legged thing, immediately collapsed.
“Dern it, now you broke your bed,” Call said in surprise.
“Don’t matter, I won’t be sleeping in it anyway,” Augustus said. “I wish that damn governor would send us off again today, because I’m ready to go. If I ain’t rangering I mean to be out drinking all night, or else reside in a whorehouse.”
Call had no idea what had come over his friend—before he could investigate, Augustus suddenly got up and walked past him out the door.
“I’ll be down at the saloon, in case you lose my track,” he said.
“I doubt I’ll lose your track,” Call said, still puzzled. By then Augustus was in the street, and he didn’t turn.
32.
CALL, ABOUT TO LEAVE Maggie’s, was in a hurry, aware that he was almost late for his appointment with the Governor, and he still had to find Gus and drag him out of whatever saloon he was in. He didn’t at first understand what Maggie had just said to him. She had said something about a child, but his mind was on his meeting with the Governor and he hadn’t quite taken her comment in.
“What? I guess I need to clean out my ears,” he said.
Maggie didn’t want to repeat it—she didn’t want it to be true, and yet it was true.
“I said I’m going to have a baby,” she said.
Call looked at Maggie again and saw that she was about to cry. She had just made him coffee and fed him a tasty beefsteak, the best food he had had in a month. She had a plate in her hand, but the hand that held the plate was not steady. Of course, she usually got upset when he had to leave, even if was just going to the bunkhouse. Maggie wanted him to live with her, a thing he could not agree to do. The part about the baby hardly registered with him until he saw the look in her eyes. The look in her eyes was desperate.
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