Comanche Moon

Augustus's head was still swimming. The horizon still rocked, but talking to Woodrow helped a little. Woodrow Call was too hardheaded to grow confused about up and down; he was never likely to get sky and land mixed up.

"He's not going to catch Kicking Wolf," Gus said. "I expect the reason he's rarely run off from is because he's careful who he chases.

If you ask me, he usually just chases the ones he knows he can catch." Call had been thinking the same thing, though he had no intention of saying it in front of the men.

He didn't like to be doubting his captain, but it did seem to him that Captain Scull had met his match in the game of chase and pursuit. Kicking Wolf had had nearly a day's start, and the shifting weather made tracking difficult. Inish Scull didn't like to turn his troop, any more than he liked to turn his own head when spitting tobacco juice. He seemed to think he could keep an enemy ahead of him by sheer force of will, until he wore him down. But Kicking Wolf had lured the Captain onto the llano, which was his place. He wasn't subject to anybody's will--not even Buffalo Hump's, if reports were true.

Then Augustus spotted something moving in the sky, the first sign he had seen that there was life anywhere around.

"Look, Woodrow--I think that's a goose," Gus said, pointing at the dark in the gray sky. "If it comes in range I mean to try and shoot it. A fat goose would make a fine breakfast." "Geese fly in flocks," Call reminded him. "Why would one goose be flying around out here?" "Well, maybe it got lost," Gus suggested.

"No, birds don't get lost," Call said.

"A bird dumb enough to fly over this place could well get lost," Gus said. "This place is so empty an elephant could get lost in it." The bird, when it came in sight, proved to be a great blue heron. It flew right over the troop; several of the men looked up at it and felt some relief. All of them were oppressed by the gray emptiness they were travelling in. The sight of a living thing, even a bird, stirred their hopes a little.

"I see something else," Gus said, pointing to the west. He saw a moving spot, very faint, but moving in their direction, he felt sure.

Call looked and could see nothing, which vexed him. Time and again he had to accept the fact that Augustus McCrae had him beaten, when it came to vision. Gus's sight just reached out farther than Call's--t was the plain fact.

"I expect it's Famous Shoes," Gus said. "It's about time that rascal got back." "He ain't a rascal, he's our scout," Call said. "What's rascally about him?" "Well, he's independent," Augustus commented. "What's the use of a scout who goes off and don't bring back a report but every two or three days? And besides that, he beat me at cards." "An Indian who can beat a white man at cards is a rascal for sure," Long Bill volunteered.

"I expect it just took him this long to find Kicking Wolf's track," Call said.

A few minutes later they sighted the Canadian River, a narrow watercourse cutting through a shallow valley. There was not a tree along it.

"Now, that's a disappointment," Augustus said.

"Here we are at the river, and there's not any dern wood. We'll have to burn our stirrups if we want to make a fire." Then Call saw Famous Shoes--Inish Scull had stopped to receive his report. What amazed Call was that Famous Shoes had arrived so swiftly. Only moments before, it seemed, the scout had been so far away that Call hadn't even been able to see him; but now he was there.

"I'm about to quit rangering, if it means coming to a place where I can't tell up from down," Augustus said, a

Call had heard that threat from Augustus before-- had heard it, in fact, whenever Gus was vexed--and he didn't take it seriously.

"You don't know how to do anything besides ride horses and shoot guns," Call told him.

"If you was to quit rangering you'd starve." "No, the fact is I know how to gather up women," Augustus said. "I'll find me a rich fat woman and I'll marry her and live in ease for the rest of my days." "Now you're talking bosh," Call said. "If you're so good at marrying, why ain't you married Clara?" "It's far too cold to be talking about such as that," Augustus said, vexed that his friend would bring up Clara Forsythe, a woman far too independent for her own good, or anybody else's good either--his in particular. He had proposed to Clara the day he met her, in her father's store in Austin, years before, but she had hesitated then and was still hesitating, despite the fact that he had courted her fast and furiously, all that time. Clara would admit that she loved him--she was not the standoffish sort--but she would not agree to marry him, a fact that pained him deeply; despite all he had done, and all he could do, Clara still considered herself free to entertain other suitors. What if she married one? What could he do then but be brokenhearted all his life?

It was not a circumstance he wanted to be reminded of, on a morning so cold that he couldn't tell up from down--and he particularly resented being reminded of it by Woodrow Call, a man inept with women to such a degree that he had entangled himself with a whore. Maggie Tilton, the whore in question, was plenty pretty enough to marry, though so far, Woodrow had shown no sign of a willingness to marry her.

"You're no man to talk, shut up before I give you a licking," Gus said. It was an intolerable impertinence on the part of Woodrow Call to even mention Clara's name, especially at a time when they were having to struggle hard just to avoid freezing.

Call ignored the threat. Any mention of Clara Forsythe would provoke Augustus into a display of fisticuffso; it always had. Call himself avoided Clara when possible. He only went into the Forsythe store when he needed to buy cartridges or some other necessity. Though certainly pretty well beyond the norm, Clara Forsythe was so forward in speech that a man of good sense would plan his day with a view to avoiding her.

Even when she was only selling Call a box of cartridges or a tool of some sort, Clara would always find a way to direct a few ^ws to him, though--in his view--no ^ws were called for, other than a thank you. Instead of just handing him his change and wrapping up his purchase, Clara would always come out with some statement, seemingly mild, that would nonetheless manage to leave him with the impression that there was something not quite right about his behaviour. He could never figure out quite what he did to a

Maggie Tilton, the whore he liked to see, never gave him the sense that there was anything wrong with his behaviour--if anything, Maggie swung too far in the other direction. She could see no wrong in him at all, which made him feel almost as uncomfortable as Clara's needlegrass criticisms. Maybe the fact that one was a whore and the other respectable had something to do with it--in any case Augustus McCrae was the last person whose opinion he felt he needed to listen to. Gus's mood bobbed up and down like a cork, depending on whether Clara had been sweet to him or sour, soft or sharp, friendly or aloof. In Call's view no man, and particularly not a Texas Ranger, ought to allow himself to be blown back and forth by a woman's opinion. It wasn't right, and that was that.