Streets Of Laredo

"Why, you hellion ..." he barked. "You cut my hand!" "You see that one-legged man in the next car?" Lorena asked him. "You see Captain Call?

I cut his leg off myself, with a bowie knife.

I'll be glad to do the same for your one hand if you ever try to be familiar with me again, Colonel." The Colonel looked scared. Men usually did, if you hurt them a little.

"I've got to see the governor of Coahuila tomorrow," the Colonel said, in a shocked voice. "What am I going to do about this hand? Can't you bandage me, ma'am? I'm pouring blood all over the floor." "You're lucky it wasn't your throat," Lorena said. "One of these days, if I'm not left alone, I'm going to cut a man's throat, I expect." Colonel Terry felt a little faint. Cora might fuss, but she never cut him. When Lorena went past him he drew back, which was wise. If he had touched her again, Lorena felt she might have cut him worse--far worse than she had done already.

Charles Goodnight wired the money, and Clara Allen telegraphed that she was bringing the children home herself as soon as she could get a train.

Lorena felt relieved. She hoped Clara would stay for a while. Clara was the one person she could let herself rest with.

When Lorena came back with the tickets, Pea Eye was startled. The Colonel had assured him that everything would be arranged; he himself would be taking them home to the Panhandle.

Captain Call hadn't spoken, since coming back from Nuevo Laredo. He seemed to have taken the news of Bolivar's death very hard. Pea Eye was surprised at just how had the Captain took the news. When Bolivar had worked for them the Captain had usually been mad at him, the way Pea Eye remembered it. Bolivar was given to clanging the di

"The Colonel's due back tomorrow," Pea Eye reminded Lorena. "He's going to be right surprised when he finds out we left ahead of him." "We're going today--don't lose the tickets," Lorena said, handing them to him.

Colonel Terry turned red with anger when he returned from Coahuila and discovered that Lorena and her party had left ahead of him. What was a little cut on the hand? It was only a start-- women's anger sometimes led to better things.

"Who let them go? Was it you, goddamn you?" the Colonel said, glaring at the elderly stationmaster.

"Why, Colonel ... they had tickets," the stationmaster told him. "People with tickets can get on the train ... it's just a matter of having tickets." "Damn the tickets, and goddamn you, you're fired, get off my railroad!" Colonel Terry ordered.

In San Antonio, Lorena stopped for a day to take Teresa to an eye doctor. The stationmaster in Laredo had noticed that the little girl was blind, and told Lorena the name of a doctor in San Antonio who could help people with poor vision. His wife's sister was shortsighted, and had gone to him and got some fine spectacles. Before that, she had been prone to mixing up the sugar and the salt. Her husband, his brother-in-law, had been about to leave her for it.

The eye doctor was a very old man. His name was Lee.

"No kin to the General," he told Lorena.

He boiled his instruments for a long time, before examining Teresa.

"People think I'm kin to the General, but I'm no kin to the General," he said again, while waiting for the instruments to cool.

Teresa held her rooster--the old doctor had allowed it.

"Why, sure, what's the harm in a rooster, unless he pecks," he said.

When he was through, Dr. Lee took Lorena aside and told her that Teresa was incurably blind. Lorena went back to the train with a heavy heart. But Teresa had her rooster, and she seemed happy.

North of Fort Worth, there was a delay. An old man had been crossing the tracks with a wagonful of pigs. The old man was deaf, and he didn't hear the train coming. The wreck killed the old man, and scattered pigs everywhere. One of the wagon wheels jammed under the locomotive, along with a dead sow; it took a long time to clear it. In the railroad station in San Antonio, Lorena had used a little of Mr. Goodnight's money to buy a book by Mr. Hardy. She read it while the train was stopped.

"It's about a girl called Tess," she told Pea Eye, when he inquired.

"I hope she wasn't blind, like our Tessie," Pea Eye replied.

Call looked out the window at the grasslands, as the plains opened around them. Teresa whispered to him, trying to get him to talk; but he could not bring himself to speak, at least not often. There must have been a lot of rain that winter, for the cover was abundant. It would be a good year for the cattle herds.

The Captain could not imagine what he was going to do, in the years ahead. He would have to live, but without himself. He felt he had left himself far away, back down the weeks, in the spot west of Fort Stockton where he had been wounded. He had saddled up, as he would have on any morning. He had ridden off to check two horses, as he would have on any morning, as he had ridden on thousands of mornings throughout his life. He had been himself, a little stiff maybe, his finger joints swollen; but himself. He scarcely heard the gunshots, or felt the first bullet. That bullet and the others hadn't killed him, but they had removed him. Now there was a crack, a kind of canyon, between the Woodrow Call sitting with Teresa on the train and the Woodrow Call who had made the campfire that morning and saddled his horse. The crack was permanent, the canyon deep. He could not get across it, back to himself. His last moments as himself had been spent casually--making a campfire, drinking coffee, saddling a horse.

Then the wounds split him off from that self, that Call--he could remember the person he had been, but he could not become that person again. He could never be that Call again. Even if he had kept his arm and his leg, he knew it would be much the same. Of course, having the arm and the leg would have been a great convenience, for he could earn a living if he had them. He could be far less of a burden. But even if he had kept the arm and leg, he could not have returned to being the Call who had made the campfire and saddled the horse. The first bullet had removed him from that person. That person--that Call--was back down the weeks, on the other side of the canyon of time. There was no rejoining him, and there never would be.

The train reached the little station at Quanah after midnight. Teresa slept. Rafael had been moaning; he was having bad dreams. Call could manage his crutches a little, but he was very stiff from the long ride on the hard bench. Pea Eye had to help him up.