“Not enough buffalo,” Augustus said. “It wasn’t two years ago that they had that big fight here, and now look at it. It looks like it’s been empty fifty years.” The only signs of life were the rattlesnakes, of which there were plenty, and mice, which explained the snakes. A few owls competed with the snakes for the mice.
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July began to gather rocks to pile on the graves. There were plenty along the canyon, though some had to be pried out of the dirt. While he was carrying one, he saw two riders far across the plain, black dots in the bright sunlight. His horse whinnied, eager for company.
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There was plenty of ground to lose, too. He had hoped for a creek or a bank or a gully—something he could get down into and make his stand—but he was on the flat prairie as far as the eye could see. He contemplated turning and trying to charge through them; if he killed three or four they might get discouraged. But if there was even one man among them with any sense they’d just shoot the horse, and there he’d be.
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Augustus caught his horse and rode east. On his way he saw Aus Frank again, working under the moonlight. He had plenty to work with, for the plain around was littered with buffalo bones. It looked as if a whole herd had been wiped out, for a road of bones stretched far across the plain.
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He decided to head first for the big crossing on the Canadian. If there was no sign of Blue Duck there he could always follow the river over to the Walls. He crossed the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red River—plenty of prairie dogs were in evidence, too—and rode west to the edge of the Palo Duro. Several times he saw small herds of buffalo, and twice rode through valleys of bleached bones, places where hunters had slaughtered several hundred animals at a time. By good luck he found a spring and spent the night by it, resting his horse for the final push.
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But Augustus wasn’t in south Texas anymore, and as he rode through the empty country he had plenty of time to consider that maybe the talk hadn’t been all that accurate—talk often wasn’t. The bands were doomed, but they might last another year or two, whereas he was advancing into their country in the here and now. He wasn’t afraid for himself, but he was afraid for Lorena. Blue Duck might be dealing with some renegade chief with a taste for white women. Lorena would put a nice cap on a career largely devoted to stealing children.
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It was spring—what few buffalo were left would be moving north, and what buffalo hunters were left would be gathered at the old fort, getting ready for a last hide harvest. Buffalo hunters were not known to be too particular about their company; though Blue Duck and his men had picked off plenty of them over the years, the new crop would probably overlook that fact if he turned up with a prize like Lorena.
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“There’s got to be water out there,” Call said. “They cross it, and they can’t drink dirt.” “Yes, but they know where it is and we don’t,” Augustus pointed out. “They can kill their horses getting to it—they got more horses. But if we kill ours it’s a dern long walk back to San Antonio.” That afternoon he crossed the Clear Fork of the Brazos and passed a half-built cabin, abandoned and empty. It was a vivid enough reminder of the power of the Comanches—their massacres caused plenty of settlers to retreat while they still had legs to retreat on. Call and he had watched through the Fifties as the line of the frontier advanced only to collapse soon after. The men and women who came up the Trinity and the Brazos were no strangers to hardship—but hardship was one thing, terror another. The land was spacious and theirs for the taking, but land couldn’t cancel out fear—a fact that Call never understood. It annoyed him that the whites gave up and retreated.
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Big Zwey finally arrived leading two scrawny mules and carrying a harness he had traded for. The harness was in bad repair but there was plenty of rawhide around, and they soon had it tied together fairly well. Luke was quite dexterous with his thumb and little finger. He did better than Zwey, whose hands were too big for harness making.
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“He’s to the south,” July said. “He’s coming with a trail herd. I want to find Ellie. Once that’s done we’ll look for Jake.” He fished some money out of his pocket and paid for the beers. “Maybe you ought to take the young ones and go back to Arkansas,” he said. “I’m going after Ellie.” “I’ll come with you,” Roscoe said. Now that he had found July, he had no intention of losing him again. He had had plenty of trouble coming, and yet worse might occur if he tried to go back on his own.
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They rode all night, and when the plains got gray they were no more than five miles from Fort Worth. He glanced back at the prisoners and was startled to see the girl, riding behind Roscoe. She looked very young. Her bare legs were as thin as a bird’s. Roscoe was slumped over the horn, asleep, and the girl held the reins. She was also watching the two prisoners, both of whom were plenty wide-awake. July got down and checked Hutto’s knots, which indeed were slipping.
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“I can’t wait all day just for the chance to shoot two worn-out old Rangers.” he said. “There are plenty that need killing besides you two.” “I guess Charlie Goodnight must have run you off,” Augustus said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be off down here in respectable country riding some dead Mexican’s saddle.” The man smiled a hard smile. “If you ever bring that goddamned old tongue of yours north of the Canadian I’ll cut it out and feed it to my wolf pups,” he said. “That and your nuts too.” Without another look he rode past them and on out of the camp.
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“I’ve seen many a hanging,” Jake said. “We hung plenty of Mexicans when we were Rangers. Call never wasted no time when it came to hangings.” “He wouldn’t, I guess,” Lorena said.
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Everyone had been dreading the next river, which was the San Antonio. There was much controversy about how far north moccasins could live—were they in the Cimarron, the Arkansas, the Platte? No one knew for sure, but everyone knew there were plenty in the San Antonio river.
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“My name’s Sedgwick,” he said. “I’m traveling through this country looking for bugs.” “I bet you found plenty,” July said.
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Hours passed and he still couldn’t get to sleep, though he was plenty tired. It was clear that if the sleeping didn’t improve he was going to be dead on his feet long before he got back to Fort Smith. His eyelids would fall, but then he’d hear something and jerk awake, a process that went on until he was too tired to care whether he died or not. He had been propped up against the wall of the cabin, but he slowly slid down and finally slept, flat on his back.
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“Ed’s a snake,” Louisa said. “Big rattler. I named him after my uncle, because they’re both lazy. I let Ed stay around because he holds down the rodents. He don’t bother me and I don’t bother him. But he hangs out around to the back, so watch out where you throw down your blanket.” Roscoe did watch. He stepped so gingerly, getting his bedding arranged, that it took him nearly twenty minutes to settle down. Then he couldn’t get the thought of the big snake off his mind. He had never heard of anyone naming a snake before, but then nothing she did accorded with any procedure he was familiar with. The fact that she had mentioned the snake meant that he had little chance of getting to sleep. He had heard that snakes had a habit of crawling in with people, and he definitely didn’t want to be crawled in with. He wrapped his blanket around him tightly to prevent Ed from slipping in, but it was a hot sultry night and he was soon sweating so profusely that he couldn’t sleep anyway. There were plenty of grass and weeds around, and every time anything moved in the grass he imagined it to be the big rattler. The snake might get along with Louisa, but that didn’t mean he would accept strangers.
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“No, I just keep ’em to control the bugs,” Louisa said. “I ate enough chicken in Alabama to last me a lifetime.” Roscoe felt plenty nervous. The question of sleeping arrangements could not be postponed much longer. He had looked forward briefly to sleeping in the cabin, where he would feel secure from snakes and wild pigs, but that hope was dashed.
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“No,” Roscoe admitted. “I generally eat at the saloon or else go home with July.” “I can’t neither,” Louisa said. “Never interested me. What I like is farming. I’d farm day and night if it didn’t take so much coal oil.” That seemed curious. Roscoe had never heard of a woman farmer, though plenty of black women picked cotton during the season. They came to a good-sized clearing without a stump in it. There was a large cabin and a rail corral. Louisa unharnessed the mules and put them in the pen.
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“Well, I know my letters,” Dish said. “I can read some words. Of course there’s plenty I ain’t had no practice with.” A few hundred yards away they could see Call and Deets riding along the riverbank, studying the situation.
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“I wonder if something got her?” he asked, thinking out loud. There were still plenty of bears in the woods, and some said there were panthers, though he himself had never seen one.
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Elmira smiled to herself, remembering some of the funny things Dee did. They had known one another for nearly fifteen years, since she had found herself stranded, as a girl, way up in Kansas. It hadn’t been all Dee, of course; there had been plenty of others. Some had lasted only a few minutes, some a week or two or a month, but somehow she and Dee always found themselves back together. It irritated her that he had been content just to pull his mustache and head for the north without her. He seemed to think it would be easy for her to be respectable. Of course, it was her fault for picking July. She hadn’t expected his politeness to irritate her so much.
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“You take that medicine,” she said to July, as soon as he had finished. “If you don’t, I guess you’ll be yellow the rest of your life.” “He ain’t as yellow as he was,” Joe said, feeling that it was incumbent on him to take up for July a little bit, since July would never take up for himself. He had no real fear of his mother—she whipped him plenty, but her anger never lasted long, and if she was really mad he could always outrun her.“He’s too yellow for me,” Elmira said. “If I’d wanted a yellow husband I’d have married a Chinaman.” “What’s a Chinaman?” Joe asked.
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He had arrested plenty of people who misbehaved, yet he could not bring himself to say a word to his wife about her own unusual behavior.
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“No, I ain’t got around to that task,” Augustus said. “Maybe I will if you tell me what difference it makes.” “It would be useful to know how many we’re starting out with,” Call said, “If we get there with ninety percent we’ll be lucky.” “Yes, lucky if we get there with ninety percent of ourselves,” Augustus said. “It’s your show, Call. Myself, I’m just along to see the country.” Dish Boggett had been dozing under the wagon. He sat up so abruptly that he bumped his head on the bottom of the wagon. He had had a terrible dream in which he had fallen off a cliff. The dream had started nice, with him riding along on the point of a herd of cattle. The cattle had become buffalo and the buffalo had started running. Soon they began to pour over a cutbank of some kind. Dish saw it in plenty of time to stop his horse, but his horse wouldn’t stop, and before he knew it he went off the bank, too. The ground was so far below, he could barely see it. He fell and fell, and to make matters worse his horse turned over in the air, so that Dish was upside down and on the bottom. Just as he was about to be mashed, he woke up, lathered in sweat.
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