Streets Of Laredo

Goodnight," Lorena said to him. "I'll be opening it again soon." "Well, I've got to git," Goodnight said. He had not gotten around to firing Muley, the cook; it was a matter that preyed on his mind, as he and the cowboy loped away.

At first, they put Captain Call in a little granary in the barn. There was no other place for him. The granary was fairly clean; there had never been any grain in it, because they had never been able to afford any, and had so far failed to raise enough to store. The house itself was so crowded that Clara had to sleep in a hallway during her visit.

"This hall is fine," Clara said. "I won't have these boys evicted from their bedroom for an old lady." "I bet they didn't sleep in a hall at your house," Lorena said.

"My house is bigger," Clara admitted.

Everyone was surprised at how quickly Teresa learned her way around the farm. She went to the barn every morning to take Call coffee and bacon, and she learned all the farm animals by sound. She rarely stumbled. Ben fought with her--he wasn't prepared for another girl to be living with them. It hadn't been in his plans. Teresa more than held her own in the fights, though. She was quicker in the head than Ben, and she confounded him with her retorts.

"The doctor in San Antonio said she'd never see," Lorena told Clara.

"He's just one doctor," Clara said.

Call didn't mind bunking in the granary.

Excepting Teresa, who came to him often to bring him food or tell him her stories, he didn't want to see people or be around them. He had a kerosene lamp, but rarely lit it. There was hay in the barn; he didn't want to take a chance at falling asleep, knocking the lamp over, and burning the barn down.

Three old cowboys, one of them a former Ranger, stopped by to see him in the first week.

They wanted to congratulate him on having rid the country of Mox Mox; mainly, though, they just wanted to see him, to talk about old times.

Call was uncomfortable with the men, and he let them do the talking. He felt like an impostor. He was no longer the man who had lived the old times; he was no longer even the man who had killed Mox Mox. That man was not the cripple who lived in a granary, in a barn on the Quitaque. That man lived back somewhere in memory, across a canyon, across the Pecos; that man had been blown away, as Brookshire feared he would be, on the plains of time.

The cowboys felt awkward. The Captain clearly did not want to see them. They regretted coming, and they left, disquieted by what had happened to a man they had once regarded as invincible.

His branding done, Goodnight came. He took a look at Call and the granary, and left. Three days later, two wagons full of lumber arrived, accompanied by six cowboys.

Between sunup and sundown of the next day, they built Call a shack. They had brought with them the few possessions he had left in the little line cabin on the Palo Duro. It was just a shack, but it was better than an oat bin. Pea Eye helped with the work, although he was a poor carpenter.

He soon hit himself with the hammer, raising a blood blister that was so large and painful, Lorena had to eventually cut off the nail.

She was grateful to Goodnight for the shack, for she had felt bad about putting the Captain in the barn. But she worried about the debt.

"I'll pay you back, Mr. Goodnight," she told him. "I expect it'll be a while, though. But we're good for it, eventually. I just don't know when." "I'd take up a collection for Call, but I suppose it would embarrass him," Goodnight said. "He's ruined now, but there are plenty of people in this part of the country who would have been shot or scalped or robbed, if not for him. Or their folks would have been, if not them." Lorena's mind was on the debt. In the back of her mind was the knowledge, which she had not yet shared with Pea, that she was pregnant.

"We intend to pay you back, Mr.

Goodnight," she said again, firmly.

"If Mrs. Allen needs a ride to the depot, and if you'll get word to me, I'll send a cowboy with a buggy," Goodnight said.

Sometimes, if Teresa urged him, Call would hobble to the house for his meals. He and Clara rarely spoke. When the meal was finished, it was Teresa who got Call his crutches and helped him from his chair.

If Teresa was out of the room for five minutes, Call grew visibly anxious. He would look around for her.

"Where's Tessie?" he would ask, if Teresa was absent too long. "Ain't Tessie here?" Teresa always walked with him, holding him lightly by the arm as he went back to his shack.

"He's formed an attachment," Clara said, watching. "It's an attachment to a female, too." "Yes," Lorena said. "He wouldn't last long without Tessie." Clara sighed. She knew she ought to be going home soon. It was time to geld the foals, and put the mares with stud. Yet she hated to leave Lorena's loud, lively household. Sleeping in a hall was better than sleeping in an empty house. Laurie would toddle out in the morning, and cuddle with her. Sometimes little August would come, asking for a story. If August came, Georgie soon followed. She would lay in a heap of children, sometimes for an hour. In Nebraska, August and Georgie had slept in her bed; the little girl usually slept with Clarie.

In the hallway, holding the bright little boy and the babbling girl, Clara daydreamed about changing her life. She realized she had lost touch, just from not touching. Her daughters had produced no grandchildren for her to hold or carry to bed. It didn't seem to her that her own life had ever been entirely normal, but at least during her years of child raising, she had had people with her, in her house and in her bed--people to touch.

Now that was lost. Lorena's children were the first humans she had held in her arms in years. It was not good, for from being lonely too long she had become resigned.

"No beaux?" Lorena asked one morning, when they were sitting in the kitchen, talking. The children had all run outside with Rafael to look for his goats. One of them had strayed, during the night.

Lorena's children had become protective of Rafael, all of them. She didn't harbor much hope for that particular goat, though. The coyotes were too numerous and too hungry.

"No beaux," Clara admitted. "I expect it's just as well. I'm too set in my ways now. I doubt there's a man alive who could put up with me. .

"Even if there is such a man alive, he probably doesn't live in Nebraska," Clara added, a little later.

Lorena thought her old friend looked sad.