“Not to kill,” Augustus said. “But I’ll promise to disable you if you don’t let me be about this leg.” “I never took you for a suicide, Gus,” Call said. “Men have gotten by without legs. Lots of ’em lost legs in the war. You don’t like to do nothing but sit on the porch and drink whiskey anyway. It don’t take legs to do that.” “No, I also like to walk around to the springhouse once in a while, to see if my jug’s cooled proper,” Augustus said. “Or I might want to kick a pig if one aggravates me.” Call saw that it was pointless unless he wanted to risk a fight. Gus had not uncocked the pistol either. Call looked at the doctor to see what he thought.
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“I did plead with him, Captain,” Dr. Mobley said. “I told him it should come off. I regret now that I didn’t take it when we took the other.” “You should have,” Call said bluntly. “I would have known to do that, and I ain’t a medical man.” “Don’t berate the man, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “If I had waked up with no legs, I would have shot the first man I saw, and Dr. Joseph C. Mobley was the first man I saw.” “Leaving you a gun was another mistake,” Call said. “But I guess he didn’t know you as well as I do.” He looked at the leg again, and at the doctor. “We could try it now,” he said. “He’s always been strong. He might still live.” Augustus immediately cocked the pistol. “You don’t boss me, Woodrow,” he said. “I’m the one man you don’t boss. You also don’t boss most of the women, but that don’t concern us now.” “I wouldn’t think you’d shoot me for trying to save your life,” Call said quietly. Augustus looked sweaty and unsteady, but the range was short.
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A little later his fever rose. He felt hungry, though, and banged on the floor with his pistol until a timid-looking little bartender with a walrus mustache as good as Dish Boggett’s opened the door.
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“This is Jim,” Dr. Mobley said nervously. “He’s offered to sit with you while I go make my rounds.” Augustus cocked his pistol and leveled it at the young man. “Get out, Jim,” he said. “I don’t need company.” Jim left immediately—so immediately that he forgot to stoop and bumped his head on the door frame. Dr. Mobley looked even more nervous. He moved the bureau a little nearer the bed and sat both bottles within Augustus’s reach.
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“That girl plays beautifully,” the doctor said. “They say she studied music in Philadelphia when she was younger.” “How old is she now?” Augustus asked. “Maybe I’ll send her a bouquet.” The doctor smiled. “It’s plain you’re a man of spirit,” he said. “That’s good. I’m afraid you’ve a few fractuosities yet to endure.” “A few what?” Augustus asked. “You better introduce yourself before you start talking Latin.” “Dr. Mobley,” the man said. “Joseph C. Mobley, to be precise. The C stands for Cincinnatus.” “More Latin, I guess,” Augustus said. “Explain that first bunch of Latin you talked.” “I mean we’ve got to take off that other leg,” Dr. Mobley said. “I should have done it while you were out, but frankly, getting the left leg off exhausted me.” “It’s a good thing,” Augustus said. “If you’d hacked off my right leg, you’d be the one who was out. I need that right leg.” His gun belt was hanging over a chair nearby, and he reached out and took his pistol from the holster.
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When he got to town it was nearly dark. He stopped in front of what appeared to be a saloon but found he could not dismount. Then he remembered that he was tied on. He couldn’t untie the knots in the rawhide, but managed to draw his pistol and fire in the air. The first shot seemed to go unnoticed, but when he fired twice more several men came to thedoor of the saloon and looked at him.
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When he got his eyes open the sun was white, not red, and directly above him. He heard a spitting sound, such as ahuman would make, and his hand went to the pistol at his belt, thinking the Indians had come. But when he turned his head, it was a white man he saw: a very old, small white man in patched buckskins. The old man had a tobacco-stained beard and a bowie knife in his hand. A spotted horse grazed nearby. The old man was just squatting there, watching.
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As soon as the sun was well up he eased out of the cave and stood up. The bad leg throbbed. Even to touch his toes to the ground hurt. The waters were rapidly receding. Fifty yards to the east, a game trail led up the creek bank. Augustus decided to use the carbine he had taken off the Indian boy as a crutch. He cut the stirrups off the saddle and lashed one over each end of the rifle, then padded one end of his rude crutch with a piece of saddle leather. He stuffed one pistol under his belt, holstered the other, took his rifle and a pocketful of jerky, and hobbled across along the bank to the animal trail.
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Jasper Fant, so cheerful only an hour before, sank the fastest. “Good lord,” he said. “Here we are in Montana and there’s Indians and bears and it’s winter coming on and the Captain and Gus both off somewhere. I’ll be surprised if we don’t get massacred.” For once Soupy Jones didn’t have a word to say.AUGUSTUS KEPT HIS PISTOL COCKED ALL NIGHT, once Pea Eye left. He watched the surface of the river closely, for the trick he hoped might work for Pea could also work for the Indians. They might put a log in the water and float down on him, using the log for cover. He tried to look and listen closely, a task not helped by the fact that he was shaking and feverish.
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“The creek was up when I left him,” Pea Eye said. “I had to swim down past the Indians and I lost all my gear. Gus kept my pistol.” “Where was this?” Call asked.
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“Just take your rifle,” Augustus said. “A pistol won’t do you no good if you have to stop one of them bears. Besides, I’ll need both pistols—any fighting that happens here will be close-range work.” “I can’t swim and hold a dern rifle, Gus,” Pea Eye said.
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While he was waiting, pistol cocked, to see if the Indians would try to rush them, he heard thunder. Within half an hour lightning was striking all around them, and thunder crashing.
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Finally Gus opened his eyes. His breathing was ragged but he reached over and took his pistol back as if he had just awakened from a refreshing nap. Then to Pea Eye’s amazement he crawled out of the cave, hobbled down to the water’s edge, and dug in the mud with his knife. He came back with a handful of mud the size of a cannonball.
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Then he felt deeply frightened. If the Indians came now, they were lost, he felt sure. He cocked his pistol and Gus’s, and held them both at the ready until his hands grew tired. His head was throbbing. He laid the guns down and wet Gus’s forehead from the water bag, hoping Gus would revive. If the Indians came, he would have to shoot quick, and his best shooting had always been done slowly. He liked to take a fine aim. It seemed Gus would never revive. Pea Eye thought he might be dying, although he could hear him breathing.
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But the rush never came. Whoever was above them left. The creek bank on their side was already in shadow. Augustus uncocked his pistol and stretched his leg out again. He knew better than to put off anything to do with wounds, so he grasped the arrow and began to push it on through his leg. The pain was severe and caused a cold sweat to break out but at least the arrow moved.
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“I’ve got to push this arrow on through,” Augustus said. “I may pass out, and if I do, I better do it now. When it gets dark we’ll both need to be watching.” He stopped talking and listened. He put his finger to his lips so Pea Eye would be quiet. Someone was on the bank above them—at least one Indian, maybe more. He motioned to Pea to have his pistol ready, in case the Indians tried to rush them. Augustus was hoping for a rush, confident that with the two of them shooting they could decimate the Indians to such an extent that the survivors might leave. If the Indians couldn’t be discouraged and driven off, then the situation was serious. They had no horses, the herd was more than a hundred miles away, and he was crippled. They could follow the creek down to the Yellowstone and perhaps strike Miles City, but it would be a slow trip for him to make crippled. Given his choice of gambles, he would prefer a fight. They might even be able to catch one of the Indian horses.
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Backing out of the weeds, he stepped on the pistol that had misfired, an old cap-and-ball gun. He stuck it in his belt and hurried back to Pea, who looked white. He had sense enough to realize he had just almost been shot. Augustus glanced at the other dead Indian, a fat boy of maybe seventeen. His rifle was an old Sharps carbine, which Augustus threw to Pea.
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He kept his eyes focused on the tops of the underbrush. It was perfectly windless in the creek bottom, and if the underbrush moved it would be because someone moved it. His big pistol was cocked. He didn’t move, and time stretched out. Minutes passed. Augustus carefully kept the sweat wiped out of his eyes, concentrating on keeping his focus. The silence seemed to ring, it was so absolute. There were no flies buzzing yet, no birds flying, nothing. He would have bet the Indian was not twenty yards away from him, and yet he had no inkling of precisely where he was.
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As they were working with the arrow there was a sudden terrified squeal from the horses. Augustus hobbled over, drawing his pistol, and saw that both horses were down, their throats cut, their blood very bright on the green weeds and bushes.
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“Hell, if he was in the trees, you should have gone in and tapped him with your pistol butt,” Augustus said. “That would probably have tamed him.” “Well, the horses wouldn’t go in them trees,” Soupy explained.
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There was confusion everywhere. The remuda was running south, carrying the Spettle boy along with it. Two or three of the men had been thrown and their mounts were fleeing south. The thrown cowhands, expecting to die any minute, though they had no idea what was attacking, crept around with their pistols drawn.
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“I guess these ain’t the mighty plains Indians we’ve been hearing about,” Augustus said. The whole little tribe was almost silent, each person concentrating on eating. They were all thin. Two old women were cutting meat off the haunch, meaning to dry it, and two young men, probably the ones who had stolen the horses, had caught another and were preparing to cut its throat. To prevent this, Call drew his pistol and fired into the air.
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There was nothing for it but for them to walk to camp on foot, their pistols ready—too ready, really, for Ben almost shot his brother when Jimmy finally came back to see about them.
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It was bright moonlight and they could see no Indians, but both drew their pistols anyway, just in case, and crouched down together as they listened to the depressing sound of their horses running away.
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Dixon sprang up, not hurt by the fall, but disoriented. When he turned, Call had dismounted and was running at him. He didn’t look large, and Dixon was puzzled that the man would charge him that way. He reached for his pistol, not realizing he still had the quirt looped around his wrist. The quirt interfered with his draw and Call ran right into him, just as his horse had run into Dixon’s horse. Dixon was knocked down again, and when he turned his head to look up he saw a boot coming at his eye.
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