“Ahumado did catch Kicking Wolf,” Red Hand said. “He tied him to a horse and the horse almost dragged him to death. But Big Horse Scull cut him loose.”
“What did Ahumado do with Three Birds?” Worm asked.
“There are some stories about Three Birds but I don’t know if they are true,” Red Hand said. “An Apache said that Three Birds flew off the Yellow Cliff. He did not want to go in the cage where they put Scull.”
“I don’t think Three Birds could fly,” Buffalo Hump said. “I will ask Kicking Wolf about it myself. He may know more than that Apache.”
“He may, but since the horse pulled him he sees two deer where there is one,” Red Hand told him.
On the ride home Buffalo Hump asked Worm about the things Red Hand had said, but Worm was not very informative. He was annoyed that Kicking Wolf had taken the Buffalo Horse to Mexico, to be eaten by a village.
“We could have cooked it in a pit ourselves,” Worm said. “We could have eaten it as quickly as that village.”
Later, in camp, Buffalo Hump mentioned Worm’s complaint to Kicking Wolf. The latter was having his hair greased by one of his wives, at the time.
“Worm thinks you should have let us eat the Buffalo Horse,” Buffalo Hump said.
“If Worm had stolen it he could have eaten it, but I stole it and I wanted to take it to Mexico,” Kicking Wolf said. “Anyway, Apaches are liars. The Buffalo Horse may still be alive.”
Buffalo Hump saw that Kicking Wolf was in a quarrelsome mood. He had been about to tease Kicking Wolf a little—after all, the man had missed the great raid—but he decided to let it be, mainly because he was anxious to see Lark and his other wives. Fat Knee had ridden ahead to let them know he was coming, so they would probably have cooked him something good. He wanted to eat. Kicking Wolf he could tease anytime.
“How about Three Birds?” he asked, before going on to his tent. “Do you think he is still alive too?”
At that Kicking Wolf merely shook his head. He didn’t think Three Birds was alive, and it was a sorrow to him.
“I didn’t want him to go to Mexico,” he told Buffalo Hump. “I was going to take the horse myself. I wanted Three Birds to go home, but he came to Mexico anyway. He wanted to be brave.”
Though Buffalo Hump had always considered Three Birds a fool, there was no doubt that what he had done had been very brave.
“He got his wish,” Buffalo Hump said. “He was brave. When your eyes are better we will sing for him, some time.”
36.
WHEN THE WILD BLACK COW came popping out of a thicket of mesquite and chaparral, she was on them and had gored Deets’s horse badly in the flank before the rangers even knew what kind of beast they were dealing with. The horse squealed and fell over, throwing Deets almost under the cow, whose horn tips were red with the horse’s blood. The cow lowered her head when Call and Gus shot her, firing almost at the same time. The bullets knocked the cow to her knees but didn’t kill her. Even on her knees she tried to go for Deets—it took a bullet to the head to kill her.
Deets was shaking, as much from surprise as from fright. His horse gushed blood from its torn flank.
“My horse dying,” Deets said, stunned.
“Well, where’d she come from?” Pea Eye asked. All he could remember was that a black streak with short shiny horns came popping out of the brush—he had had no time to make precise observations.
“She came out of that!” Augustus said, pointing to what seemed to be an impenetrable thorny brush. The mesquite and chaparral grew out above a solid floor of green prickly pear.
“Maybe she had hydrophobie,” Stove Jones volunteered. “I’ve lived with cows and such all my life, but I’ve never seen a cow charge a bunch of men like that.”
“Just be glad it wasn’t one of them tough little black bulls,” Lee Hitch said. “One of them little black bulls would have done for about half of us.
“You can’t kill a bull with no pistol bullet,” he added. “Not even with ten pistol bullets.”
A mile or two farther—Deets was now riding double with Jake Spoon, who had the stoutest horse—they came upon three of the small black bulls Lee Hitch had described. Everyone in the troop drew their rifles, expecting to have to defend themselves, but the bulls were content to paw the earth and snort.
Then, just as they were about to stop for coffee and a bit of bacon, a second cow came shooting out of the brush behind them. This time the rangers were primed, but even so it took three rifle shots to bring the cow down.
In midafternoon it happened a third time. A red cow came charging directly at them, breathing froth and bellowing. All the rangers shot this time and the cow went down.
Call, though profoundly startled by the violent behavior of the wild south Texas cows, held his counsel, meaning to talk the development over with Augustus privately, when they camped.
Gus McCrae couldn’t wait for a private parley. They were scarcely south of San Antonio and had just been attacked three times, with the loss of one horse. They had seen no ranches or ranchmen who might advise them on the bovine behavior they were encountering. The rangers were jumpier now than they would have been if they had been crossing the comanchería—in the space of an afternoon they had come to fear cattle more than they feared Indians. And it was the cattle of the country, hundreds of them, that they were supposed to round up and deliver to Mexico.
“This is pointless traveling,” Gus said. “How are we going to deliver a thousand cattle to that old bandit if we have to shoot ever damn cow we see?”
Call accepted the point. It was obvious they had been presented with a difficult mission.
“There must be tamer cattle down here somewhere,” he said. “There’s ranches down this way—big ranches. They ship cattle to New Orleans regular, I hear. The boats come to Matagorda Bay. They don’t shoot ever cow. There’s got to be cowboys down here who know how to handle this stock.”
The rangers listened in silence, but his words made little impression compared to their fresh memories of the mad, frothing cows.
“Livestock ain’t supposed to be this hostile,” Stove Jones commented.
“We’re Indian fighters, Woodrow,” Augustus pointed out. “Indian fighters and bandit chasers. We ain’t vaqueros. If I tried to go into one of them thickets after a cow I’d be lucky not to get scratched to death. We’d just as well try to deliver a thousand deer. At least deer don’t come charging at you.
“That damn governor’s betrayed us again,” he added in disgust.
Call couldn’t really disagree. Governor Pease had given them a flowery letter to show to the ranchers in south Texas. The letter bound the state of Texas to compensate the ranchers for cattle sufficient to make a herd of one thousand head. There was no mention, however, of a price per head. When Call pointed this out to Governor Pease, the Governor had merely shrugged.
“Our south Texans are patriotic men,” he said. “They’ll be glad to let you take a few head of stock if it will get our hero back.
“Speak to Captain King,” he added—two harried clerks were following him around at the time, hoping to get his attention. “Captain Richard King. He’ll help you. I expect that goddamn old black bandit has stolen at least that many cattle from him already.”
“Where do we find Captain King?” Augustus asked. “I’ve never met the man.”
“Why, just ask, Captain McCrae—just ask,” Governor Pease said. “Captain King is well known along the coast.”
The Governor’s office was bustling that day—besides the clerks and an army man or two, there were three benches packed with legislators, all of them evidently hoping for an audience with the Governor. As a lot they looked dusty and drunken.
“Look at them ramshackly senators,” Augustus said, as they left the office. “Maybe we ought to change jobs, Woodrow. We could make laws instead of enforcing them.”
“I can barely read,” Call reminded him. “I’d be a poor hand at making laws.”
“Why, you wouldn’t need to read,” Gus said. “We could hire a clerk to do the scribbling. All it takes to make laws is good sense. I could probably make better laws than that whole bunch sitting in there half drunk.”
“Maybe,” Call said. “Maybe not.”
Governor Pease handed them the letter and sent them away. As they left, several of the legislators were attempting to crowd in his door.
Now, faced with the fact that they were barely out of sight of the Alamo and had already had to shoot three cows, Call remembered the Governor’s advice.
“I expect we better try and find Captain King,” Call said. “Maybe he’ll want to lend the state of Texas some vaqueros for a week or two.”
“I don’t know, Woodrow,” Gus said. “When I’m given a job that’s downright impossible, my practice is to find a whorehouse and stay in it until my funds run out.”
“We don’t need to find a whorehouse, we need to find a ranch house,” Call said. “This is Captain Scull we’re trying to rescue. Captain Scull led us for quite a few years and got us out of plenty of hard spots. Now he’s in a hard spot and we’ve got to do the best we can to bring him back.”
“Well, the fool would walk off to Mexico,” Augustus said. He reloaded his rifle and kept a wary eye on the thickets, as they passed them.
The next day they did find a ranch house, but there was no one there except three womenfolk, some babies and small children, and two old Mexican men who had been left to do the chores.
A lanky woman with a baby at her breast and two toddlers clinging to her skirts just looked unhappy when asked where the menfolk were.
“They’re off branding cattle,” she said. “I expect they’re south. They’ve been gone three weeks—I’ve been looking for them back but they ain’t here.”
“South’s a big place,” Augustus remarked.
The woman just smiled a tired smile. “It’s a brushy place too—you’ll find that out once you leave here,” she said. “I got goat and I got frijoles—you won’t get much except goat and frijoles, not in this part of the country.”
The men ate outside, at a long table shaded by a great mesquite tree whose limbs seemed to spread over an acre. The woman who greeted them was named Hannah Fogg—she had a pretty younger sister who helped with the serving. Though the younger sister was shy as a deer, Gus did get her to reveal that her name was Peggy. Gus stole several glances at her during the meal and lingered over his coffee so he could steal several more.
As the men ate, Augustus began to notice children, peering out shy as mice, one under the porch, another behind a bush, two more who had managed to climb the big tree. Two, at least, were under the wagon.
“Why, there’s a passel of children here,” he said to Peggy—it was an excuse to speak to her. “Are all these little tykes Mrs. Fogg’s?”
But Peggy ducked her head and wouldn’t say.
Hannah Fogg was not lying about the difficulties of the country south of her ranch house. For a day and a half more the rangers zigged and zagged in a southerly direction, proceeding from little clearing to little clearing. They were seldom long out of sight of cattle, but no more cows charged—these cattle fled like deer the moment they saw the riders.
In the afternoon of the second day they heard the sound of men working and came upon the rancher Denton Fogg and his branding crew, which numbered more than twenty vaqueros. The cattle were held in a large clearing. Ropers slid into the herd and soon came out, dragging the animal to be branded. Denton Fogg himself, drenched in sweat and lugubrious in appearance, applied the iron himself; he was not happy to be interrupted in his hot work by a party of Texas Rangers with a letter from the Governor asking for a donation of cattle to be driven into Mexico in return for Inish Scull.
He did read the letter, though, holding it carefully so his sweat wouldn’t drip on it.
“This is a piece of worthless foolery, sir,” he declared, handing the letter back to Call. “The Mexicans steal half our cattle anyway and Ed Pease does nothing about it. Now he wants us to give them a thousand more? No thank you, sir—not my cattle.”
Call didn’t like the man’s tone.
“He’s not asking you to give anything,” he pointed out. “The state will pay you for your cattle.”
“If the state intended to pay for the cattle it should have provided you with cash money,” the rancher said. “Have you got cash money, sir?”
Augustus didn’t care for the man’s tone either.
“We’re in a hurry to rescue our captain,” he said. “We couldn’t wait for a bunch of money to be gathered up. Don’t you even trust the state of Texas?”
“Nope, not the state and not Ed Pease, either,” Denton Fogg replied. “I wouldn’t give either one of them a cow. But I will sell cattle for cash on the barrelhead. Come back with the money and I can have a thousand head ready for delivery within the week.”
With that he walked off and picked a hot iron out of the branding fire.
“The fool, I feel like shooting him,” Augustus said.
“We can’t shoot a man just because he doesn’t want to give away his cattle,” Call said—he was not without skepticism about the state’s willingness to pay for the cattle.
“Well, he’s out here branding ever cow he can catch,” Augustus pointed out, “Who said he could take these cattle?”
“I guess that’s just how you build up a ranch,” Call said. “The cattle belong to the man who gets to them first.”
“Hell, we could be ranchers ourselves then,” Gus said. “We could hire a few ropers and buy some branding irons and get to work. Pretty soon we’d be big livestock men too.”
“Where’d we put the cattle once we branded them?” Call asked. “We don’t own any land. We don’t even own the horses we’re riding. All we own are our guns and our clothes.
“And the saddles,” he added. “We do own our saddles.”
The comment depressed Augustus to an unusual degree. He liked to think of himself as prosperous, or at least prospectively prosperous—but the fact was he was just short of being a pauper. All he owned was three guns, a fairly well made saddle, and some clothes. He had no house, no land, no wife, no livestock. He had ridden all day in the blazing sun, through thorny country, threatened by dangerous bovines and possibly even wild Indians, and for what? A paltry salary that would scarcely see him through a month of whoring and imbibing.
“I say we quit the rangers,” he said abruptly. “There’s a fortune in cattle down here in this brush and we’re letting fools like that one beat us to it.”
“If you want to get rich ranching you’ll have to work as hard as that fellow Fogg—I doubt myself that you’d enjoy working that hard,” Call said.
He rode over to where Denton Fogg was working—smoke rose from a brand he had just slapped on a large yearling.
“Do you know a man named Richard King? Captain King?” Call asked.
“I know him,” Fogg said, but did not continue—he moved on to the next yearling while the iron was still hot enough to impress a brand.
“Well, would you know where we could find him?” Call asked. “The Governor thought he might advance us the cattle we need.”
At that Denton Fogg stopped dead. He looked at Call for a moment and smiled—he even slapped his leg, in amusement.
“Dick King, give up a thousand cattle?” he said. “Dick King didn’t get what he’s got by giving away cattle.”
“He wouldn’t be giving them, sir,” Call said, trying his best to curb his impatience. “The state will pay him. I’d appreciate it if you would just tell me where I can find him.”
“I don’t keep up with Dick King,” Denton Fogg said, still amused. “There’s a fellow in Lonesome Dove that knows him. You might ask him.”
Before he had quite worked through his amusement, he was off to the nearest branding fire, to select a fresh iron.
“Is Lonesome Dove a place?” Call asked. “I confess I’m not familiar with it.”
“You don’t seem to be familiar with anything, Captain,” Denton Fogg told him. “This is branding season—every cattleman who’s got any sense is off branding every animal he can get his rope on. Dick King’s branding, like the rest of us. I wish I had as many cattle as he does, but I don’t, and I never will if I have to stand here all day giving directions to Texas Rangers. Just go due south to the Rio Grande and turn left. You’ll eventually come to Lonesome Dove. There’s a man there named Wanz who might know where Dick King and his men are branding.”
“Let’s go,” Call said to the troop. “That man’s too busy branding cattle to bother with us.”
“The fool, I’d arrest him if there was a jail nearby,” Augustus said.
“No, he’s not a criminal, let’s go,” Call said. For a moment he keenly missed Long Bill Coleman. Though not a professional tracker, such as Famous Shoes, Long Bill had a good instinct for routes, and what they needed just then was to hold a true route south, to the Rio Grande.
But it was more than Bill’s usefulness that Call missed—the man had been reassuring company, and a frontiersman whose opinion was always useful to have. The thought that he would never have it again made Call low spirited, for a time. If they were lucky enough to strike another ranch house he meant to try and hire an old vaquero to guide them through the brush.
“I’ve a notion to go back and marry that fellow’s sister-in-law,” Augustus said. “Being married to her would be better than having this goddamn brush scratch your eyes out.”
“It’s odd to be traveling without Billy Coleman, ain’t it?” Call said. “It’s the first time since we took up rangering that Billy ain’t been along.”
Augustus started to agree, but before he could speak memory rose in him so powerfully that he choked on his words. There was no more Long Bill to ride with. Memories of the missions they had been on together passed through his mind in a vivid parade; but then, to his dismay, the parade was interrupted by images of Clara. One second he would be remembering the tall, lanky man, white with dust, on their march as captives across the Jornada del Muerto—but then it would be Clara smiling, waiting for him on the back porch of the Forsythe store in her pretty gingham dress; Clara laughing, teasing, kissing. She had grown a little fuller in the bosom over the years, but otherwise she had been the same girl, from the moment in the muddy street when he had kissed her for the first time until he had bidden her goodbye, in the morning mist, behind the same store, only a few weeks ago. Clara hadn’t gone where Bill was. It had already occurred to him that, life being the dangerous business that it was, she might be a widow someday; but, by then, his own life might have ended, or he might be in jail or in a war somewhere; anyway, even if Clara were once more to be free, she might turn him down again, as she just had.
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