Streets Of Laredo

Catching bandits was tricky work. There was no telling how long it might take. Little Laurie was tiny. She had come nearly a month early and was going to have to struggle through a bitter Panhandle winter. Pea Eye loved little Laurie with all his heart. He thought she looked just like her mother, and could not get enough of looking at her.

He had bought a rabbit fur robe from an old deaf Kiowa man who lived on the Quitaque.

The robe made a nice warm lining for the cartridge-box crib. Lorena kept assuring him that it was a snug enough crib now that it was lined with rabbit fur, but still Pea Eye worried. The cold was bitter. Winter never failed to carry off several little ones from neighboring farms and ranches.

Pea Eye had many dreams in which little Laurie died. It tormented him to think she might not be there to look at when he returned.

For days he had been choking his fear down--no need to burden Lorie with his worries--but suddenly, kneeling on the kitchen floor and trying unsuccessfully to wipe up the spilled coffee, fear and sadness came rushing up from inside him, too swiftly and too powerfully for him to control.

"I don't want to go, this time!" he said.

"What if Laurie dies while I'm gone?" He thought Lorena would be mighty surprised to hear him say that he didn't want to go with the Captain. Never before had he even suggested that he might not accompany Captain Call if the Captain needed him.

Lorena didn't seem surprised, though.

Perhaps she was too busy with Laurie. Because Laurie was so tiny, she was a fitful nurser, giving up sometimes before she had taken enough milk to satisfy her. Lorie had just given her the breast again, hoping she would take enough nourishment to keep her asleep for a while.

"What if we all died, while you was gone?" Lorena asked, calmly. She didn't want any agitated talk while the baby was at the breast. But her husband had to be very upset to say such a thing, and she didn't want to ignore his distress, either.

"Well, I'd never get over it, if any of you died," Pea Eye said.

"You would--people get over anything--I've got over worse than dying myself, and you know it," Lorena said. "But that's in the past. You don't need to worry so much. I'm not going to die, and I won't let this baby die, either. I won't let any of our children die." Pea Eye stood up, but despite Lorie's calm words, he felt trembly.

He felt he could trust Lorie--if she said she'd keep their family alive, he knew she would do her best. But people did their best and died anyway. Sometimes their children outlived them. That was the natural order; but sometimes, they didn't. He knew Lorie meant well when she told him not to worry, but he also knew that he would worry anyway.

The Captain would be unlikely to sympathize, because he didn't understand it. Captain Call had always been a single man. He had no one to miss, much less anyone to worry about.

"I never finished cleaning those guns," Pea Eye said distractedly, looking down at his wife. August, the youngest boy, not yet two, came wandering into the kitchen just then. He was rubbing his eyes with his fists.

"Hongry," he said, only half awake.

He began to crawl into his mother's lap.

"You cleaned them enough to smell like gun grease all night," Lorena said. August had a ru

"This is a dishrag," he said, still distracted.

"It was--now it's a snot rag," Lorena said. August arched his back and tried to duck away--he hated having his nose wiped. But his mother was too skilled for him. She pi

"You should take care of your weapons, if you're going after a killer," she said. "I don't want you neglecting important things, even if I complain about you being smelly." "I don't want to go," Pea Eye said.

"I just don't want to go, this time." There was a silence, broken only by August's whimpering, and the soft sucking sound the baby made as she drew on the nipple. Pea Eye had just said the words Lorena had long hoped to hear, but the fact was, she hadn't gotten her sleep out--she was drowsy and would have liked to go back to bed.

It was a hopeless wish. August was up, and Ben and Georgie would be crawling out of bed any time.

Whether she liked it or not, the day had begun.

She had long resented Pea Eye's blind loyalty to the Captain but knew there was nothing she could do about it. Mainly, she just tried to shut her mind to it.

Clara had told her that was how it would be, but Clara had advised her to marry Pea Eye anyway.

"He's simple--sometimes that's good," Clara said. "He's gentle, too, but he's not weak.

His horses respect him. I tend to trust a horse's respect.

"He doesn't talk much, though," she added.

"I don't care whether he talks or not," Lorena said. "I wouldn't marry a man just for conversation. I'd rather read, now that I know how, than listen to any man talk." "You're going to have to propose to Pea Eye, you know," Clara said. "He has no inkling that you want him. I doubt it's ever crossed his mind, that he could aspire to a beauty like you." Pea Eye had been working for Clara about a year, at that time. July Johnson, the former sheriff from Arkansas who had loved Clara deeply but failed to win her, drowned trying to ford the Republican River with a herd of seventy young horses. July had no judgment about horses, or water, or women, as it turned out. His son, Martin, was going to know more, but that was because Martin had her to teach him, Clara reflected.

After Newt's death and the breakup of the Hat Creek outfit, Pea Eye had drifted south, meaning to descend the ladder of rivers until he got home to Texas. But, as luck would have it--the best piece of luck in his whole life, in his view--he showed up in Ogallala at a time when Clara was shorthanded, and she hired him on the spot.

Out her window, as she was advising Lorena to marry him, Clara could see Pea Eye in the lots, trying to halter-break a young sorrel colt. Of course, Pea Eye was older; too old, in a way, for Lorena. But people couldn't have everything. Clara herself would have liked a husband.

She considered herself to be reasonably good-looking, she attempted to be considerate, and thought she was tolerably easy to get along with. But she had no husband, and no prospects. Decent men were scarce, and she knew that Pea Eye was a decent man. Lorena had little to gain by waiting for someone better to come along, and Clara told her so.