Famous Shoes considered the matter in silence for a moment. He could not do anything about the fact that Captain McCrae’s wife had died—if Captain McCrae had a wife to mourn he had probably gone away so he could mourn her without anyone interfering with him too much. Also, he himself now had an interesting problem to study, the problem of the black ferret; he was comfortably settled in with his wives and children and did not particularly want to go anywhere. But Captain Call had helped him with the army, when the Colonel who wanted all scouts to ride horses had decided to put him in jail because he refused to ride. Famous Shoes had carefully explained to the Colonel, and to his captains and lieutenants, his views on horses; there were several reasons why it was not wise for Kickapoos to ride horses; besides those reasons there was a simple reason that should have been apparent to the Colonel and his men, which was that it was impossible to track expertly from the back of a horse, a tracker needed his eyes close to the ground if he were to see the fine details that would tell him what he needed to know. The qualities of dust and dirt were important to a tracker; no one could know what the dust revealed without kneeling often to feel it and study it.
The white colonel had not been interested in any of that—he had promptly put Famous Shoes in jail for disobedience. Fortunately Captain Call heard about the matter quickly and soon got him out. He and Captain McCrae had complained to the white colonel, too—Captain McCrae had even yelled at the Colonel; he let him know that Famous Shoes was needed by the Texas Rangers and was not to be interfered with.
In view of the help he had received, Famous Shoes thought he ought to lay aside the problem of the black ferret for a bit and go locate Captain McCrae. He had known Captain McCrae for a number of years and knew that he did not behave like most white men. Captain McCrae’s behavior reminded him of some friends he had who were Choctaw. Captain Call was very much a white man; he lived by rules. But Captain McCrae had little patience with rules; he lived by what was inside him, by the urgings of his heart and his spirit—and now, grieved by the death of his wife, Captain McCrae’s spirit urged him to get on his black mare and go west. Already, that morning, Famous Shoes had the feeling that something unusual was happening with Captain McCrae. He was not going away to do some chore that he would be paid for. He was going away for a different reason. Famous Shoes got up and led the two rangers over to the stream, to show them the tracks where the black mare had crossed.
“I will go find him—I think it will take me many days,” Famous Shoes said.
Captain Call looked displeased, but he didn’t disagree with the statement. He himself probably felt that something unusual was happening with his friend.
“Why would it take so many days if he just left?” Pea Eye asked. Tracking was a mystery to him. He liked to watch Famous Shoes as he did it, but he didn’t understand the process involved. The track he saw by the stream just told him that a horse had passed. Which horse, and where it was going, and how heavy a rider it was carrying were all obvious to Famous Shoes but not obvious to Pea Eye. Even more puzzling was Famous Shoes’ ability to predict things about the traveler, his mood or circumstance, that he himself could not have guessed even if he were with the traveler and looking him right in the eye. Captain McCrae himself had been doubtful of the scout’s ability to figure out such things, and said so often.
“He’s just guessing,” Augustus said. “When he’s right it’s luck and when he’s wrong nobody knows about it because whoever he’s guessing about gets away.”
“I don’t think he’s guessing,” Call had protested. “He’s got nothing to do but track, and think about tracking—and he ain’t young. He’s learned it. He gathers information that we can’t see, and puts it together.”
Pea Eye thought Captain Call probably had the better of the argument. The tracker’s very next comment was a case in point.
“He’s looking for peace and cannot find it here along the Guadalupe,” Famous Shoes said. “I think he will have to go a long way to find it. He may have to go to the Rio Pecos.”
“The Pecos!” Call exclaimed. “The Governor will fire him if he goes that far.”
“I don’t think the Captain will care,” Famous Shoes said.
“No, you’re right,” Call said, once he had considered. He thought the matter over for a minute, looking west into the hills.
“I’m going to send Corporal Parker with you,” he told Famous Shoes. There were no graded ranks in the rangers, but he and Gus had taken to calling Pea Eye “Corporal” because they liked him. He was not a confident young man—it flattered him a little to be thought of as a corporal.
“We can leave now,” Famous Shoes said. “Maybe we can spot another of those black ferrets while we are tracking Captain McCrae.”
Pea Eye was startled but pleased—traveling with Famous Shoes would be instructive. The man was already trotting west; he did not seem to think it necessary to go back and speak to his wives.
“Stay with him, Corporal,” Call said.
“I’ll stay with him, Captain,” Pea Eye said.
He had no more than said it when he looked around and noticed that Famous Shoes, the man he had just promised to stay with, had disappeared. The hilly country was patched with clumps of cedar, juniper, live oak, chaparral, and various other bushes. Pea Eye felt something like panic. He had not taken even one step westward and had already lost the man he was traveling with—and Captain Call was right there to see it.
Call noticed Pea Eye’s confusion, and remembered how annoyed he had been at first, and how confused, when Famous Shoes would just disappear, often for days.
“There he is,” Call said, pointing at Famous Shoes, who was crossing a little hillock some two hundred yards to the west.
“I expected he just squatted behind a bush to look at a track,” he added.
“Maybe it was a ferret track,” Pea Eye said, much relieved. “He’s got a powerful interest in ferrets.
“What is a ferret, Captain?” he asked—he wasn’t quite sure and did not want to appear ignorant, as he traveled with Famous Shoes.
“Well, it’s a varmint of the weasel family, I believe,” Call said. “You best catch up with Famous Shoes and ask him. He might lecture you on ferrets all the way to the Pecos, if you have to go that far.
“I don’t know why Gus would want to go all the way to the Pecos,” he said, but Pea Eye had his eye fixed on Famous Shoes, clearly worried that he might disappear again.
“I’m going, Captain, before I lose him,” Pea Eye said.
He put his horse in a lope and was soon beside the tracker, who neither stopped nor looked around.
Watching them go, Call felt both relief and envy: relief that Famous Shoes had accepted the job; envy because he wished he could be as young and unburdened with duties as Pea Eye Parker. It would be nice to be able to forget the Governor, and Barkeley, and the ledger keepers and just to ride west into the wild country. Perhaps, he thought, as he turned back, that was what Augustus wanted: just to be free for a few days, just to saddle his horse and ride.
7.
WITHIN AN HOUR of leaving Captain Call, Pea Eye began to wish fervently that they would soon find Augustus McCrae, mainly because he had no confidence that he could stay with Famous Shoes. It wasn’t that Famous Shoes traveled particularly fast—though it was certainly true he didn’t travel slow. The problem was that he traveled irregularly, zigging and zagging, slipping into a copse of trees, loping off at right angles to the track, sometimes even doubling back if he spotted an animal or a bird he wanted to investigate. No matter how hard Pea Eye concentrated on staying with him, Famous Shoes continually disappeared. Every time it happened Pea Eye had to wonder if he would ever see the man again.
Famous Shoes was amused at the young ranger’s frantic efforts to keep him in sight, a thing, of course, which was quite unnecessary. The young man looked worried and nervous all day and was so tired when they made camp that he was barely capable of making a decent fire. Famous Shoes liked t
he young man and thought it might help a little if he instructed Corporal Parker in the ways of scouting.
“You do not have to follow me or stay close to me,” he told Pea Eye. “I do not follow a straight trail.”
“Nope, you don’t,” Pea Eye agreed. He had been almost asleep, from fatigue, but the strong coffee Famous Shoes brewed woke him up a little.
“I have many things to watch,” Famous Shoes told him. “I do not think we will catch up with Captain McCrae for a few days. I think he is going far.”
“Can you tell how far he’s going just from the tracks?” Pea Eye asked.
“No—it is just something I am thinking,” Famous Shoes admitted. “He has lost his wife. Right now he does not know where to be. I think he is going far, to look around.”
In the night Pea Eye found that he could not sleep. It occurred to him that he had never been alone with an Indian before. Of course, it was only Famous Shoes, who was friendly. But what if he wasn’t really friendly? What if Famous Shoes suddenly got an urge to take a scalp? Of course, Pea Eye knew it was unlikely—Captain Call wouldn’t send him off with an Indian who wanted to take his scalp. He knew it was foolish to be thinking that way. Famous Shoes had scouted for many years and had never scalped anybody. But Pea Eye’s mind wouldn’t behave. The part of it that was sensible knew that Famous Shoes meant him no harm; but another part of his mind kept bringing up pictures of Indians with scalping knives. He was annoyed with his mind—it would be a lot easier to do his task well if his mind would just behave and not keep making him scared.
Late in the night, while the young ranger dozed, Famous Shoes heard some geese flying overhead, and he began to sing a long song about birds. Of course he sang the song in his own Kickapoo tongue, which the young white man could not understand. Famous Shoes knew that the words of the song would be mysterious to the young man, who had awakened to listen, but he sang anyway. That things were mysterious did not make them less valuable. The mystery of the northward-flying geese had always haunted him; he thought the geese might be flying to the edge of the world, so he made a song about them, for no mystery was stronger to Famous Shoes than the mystery of birds. All the animals that he knew left tracks, but the geese, when they spread their wings to fly northward, left no tracks. Famous Shoes thought that the geese must know where the gods lived, and because of their knowledge had been exempted by the gods from having to make tracks. The gods would not want to be visited by just anyone who found a track, but their messengers, the great birds, were allowed to visit them. It was a wonderful thing, a thing Famous Shoes never tired of thinking about.
When Famous Shoes finished his song he noticed that the young white man was asleep. During the day he had not trusted enough, and had worn himself out with pointless scurryings. Perhaps even then the song he had just sung was working in the young man’s dreams; perhaps as he grew older he would learn to trust mysteries and not fear them. Many white men could not trust things unless they could be explained; and yet the most beautiful things, such as the trackless flight of birds, could never be explained.
The next morning, when the first gray light came, Pea Eye awoke to find that he had not been scalped or hurt. He felt so tired and so grateful that he didn’t move at once. Famous Shoes squatted by the campfire, bringing the coffee to a boil. Pea Eye wanted to be helpful, but he felt as if his joints had turned to glue. He sat up, but he felt incapable of further movement.
Famous Shoes drank his coffee as if he were drinking water, although, to Pea Eye’s taste, the coffee was scalding.
“I am leaving now,” Famous Shoes said. “You do not have to go where I go. Just travel to the west.”
“What? I won’t see you at all?” Pea Eye asked. Never since joining the rangers had he spent a whole day alone, in wild country. Even if he hadn’t been feeling that his joints had melted, the prospect would have alarmed him. If he met a party of Comanches, he would be lost.
“You haven’t seen no Indian sign, have you?” he asked.
Famous Shoes was not in the mood for conversation just then. There was a ridge to the north that had some curious black rocks scattered around it; he wanted to examine those black rocks. The sky to the east was white now—it was time to start.
“No, there are no Indians here, but there is an old bear who has a den in that little mountain,” he said, pointing toward a small hill just to the west. “You should be careful of that bear—he might try to eat your horse.”
“The rascal, I’ll shoot him if he tries it,” Pea Eye said, but with his joints so gluey he didn’t feel confident that he could kill a bear.
Determined to make a show of competence, he stood up.
“I will find you when the evening star shines,” Famous Shoes said. “Bring the coffeepot.”
Then he slipped into the grayness. Pea Eye sipped his coffee, which was still barely cool enough to drink; but he kept his hand on his rifle while he sipped, in case the surly old bear was closer than Famous Shoes thought.
8.
WHEN AUGUSTUS LEFT Austin he had no aim, other than to ride around for a while, alone. To be in Austin was to be under orders: the Governor was always summoning them or sending them off, consulting with them or pestering them about details of finance that Augustus had not the slightest interest in.
As a rule he did not, like his friend Call, enjoy solitude. Woodrow was virtually incapable of spending a whole evening in the company of his fellow men—or women either, if Maggie’s account was to be trusted. At some point in the evening Woodrow Call would always quietly disappear. He would slip off in the night, ostensibly to stand guard, when there was not a savage within one hundred miles. Prolonged stretches of company seemed to oppress him.
With Augustus it was the opposite. When night fell, if he was in town, he wanted company, the livelier the better; he sought it and he found it, whether it involved a card game, a few talky whores, a singsong, or just a session of bragging and tale-telling with whatever gamblers and adventurers happened to be around. He had never particularly liked to sleep, and rarely did for more than three or four hours a night. Even that necessity he begrudged. Why just lay there, when you could be living? A little rest at night was needful, but the less the better.
Now, though, his lovely Nellie’s death had arrested, for the moment, his taste for company; it seemed to him that he had been under orders for his entire life, and he was tired of it. Once it had been captains who ordered him around; now it was governors, or legislators or commissioners. The war in the East was barely started and already the Governor was pressing him and Call to pledge themselves to stay in Texas.
Augustus didn’t want it; he had been ordered around enough. The war could wait, the Governor could wait, Woodrow could wait, and the whores and the boys in the saloons could wait. He was going away because he felt like it, and he would come back when he felt like it, if he felt like it, and not because of some governor’s summons.
He rode all the first day in brilliant weather, not thinking of Nellie or the war or Call or anything much. His black mare, Sassy, was a fine mount, with a long easy trot that carried them west mile after mile through the limestone hills. He had not rushed off improvidently this time, either; he had four bottles of whiskey in one saddlebag, some bullets and a good slab of bacon in another. He was not much of a hunter, and he knew it. Stalking game was often boresome work. He would cheerfully shoot any tasty animal that presented itself within rifle range, but he seldom pursued his quarry far.
Despite the Comanches, the country west of Austin was rapidly settling up. Those settlers who had survived the great raid of 1856 had by now rebuilt and remarried; cabins were scattered along the valleys, or anywhere there was sufficient water. Several times Gus had heard a large animal in the underbrush and pulled his rifle, expecting to flush a bear or a deer, only to scare out a milk cow or a couple of heifers or even a few goats.
A little before dusk he smelled wood smoke and saw a faint column rising from a copse of cedar to th
e southwest. He knew there must be a settler’s cabin there, but, on this occasion, decided to ride on. The grub at these rude little homesteads was apt to be uncertain; frequently the families lived on nothing but corn cakes. He didn’t feel inclined to sit for an hour, making conversation with people he didn’t know, only to eat corn cakes or mush. A good many of the new settlers were Germans, who spoke only the most rudimentary English; also many of them were, to Augustus’s way of thinking, excessively pious. Some kept no liquor in their houses at all, and, on several occasions when he had been invited in for a meal, the grace was said at such length that he had all but lost his appetite before anyone was allowed to eat.
This night, he decided not to gamble on the cabin. A dog began to bark but Augustus left it to its barking and slipped on by. He rode only another few miles before making camp. It was rocky country, the footing in some places so uncertain that he felt he risked laming the black mare if he traveled farther. In any case, he was not going anywhere in particular and was on no schedule except his own. The cedarwood and low mesquite burned nicely; he soon had a fragrant fire going. It was not cold; he only fed the fire a stick now and then because he liked to have a fire to look at.
Over the last years he had looked into many campfires and only seen one face: Clara’s. His fat wife, Geneva, and his skinny wife, Nellie, were dead; the memory of their forms and faces didn’t disturb him. That night when he looked into the fire he saw no one. Women had been constantly in his thoughts since his youth, but that night he was free of even the thought of them. He thought he might just keep on riding west, into the desert, where there were neither governors nor women. His absence would vex Woodrow Call, of course, but he didn’t see that he needed to live like a bound servant, just to spare Woodrow Call a little vexation. The bright stars above him seemed to act like a drug. He dreamed of floating on air like a gliding bird, gliding into a slumber so deep that, when he woke, the stars had faded into the light of a new day. At the edge of sleep he heard a clicking sound, the sort a tin cup might make, or a coffeepot; the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a pair of legs standing by his campfire, which blazed beneath the coffeepot.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 105