“Yes, you will,” Lippy said. He was depressed anyway, because of the piano situation. He loved music and had felt sure he would get to play a little, or at least listen to some, in Ogallala. Yet the best he had done so far was a bartender with a harmonica, and he couldn’t play that very well. Now he had really messed up and told Gus’s secret.
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“Yep,” Augustus said. “I’ll bring it.” Call saw that everyone was looking at him, the hands and cowboys and townspeople alike. The anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling tired. He didn’t remember the fight, particularly, but people were looking at him as if they were stunned. He felt he should make some explanation, though it seemed to him a simple situation.
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“There ain’t but one other madam, and she’s just as bad,” Nellie said. “You sure you won’t come next door? I got to find a customer.” “I guess you better bribe that gambler, if that’s the situation,” Augustus said. “Give him five and Rosie five and keep the rest for yourself.” He handed her twenty dollars.
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“I hope those worthless girls have been cooking,” she said. “I’ve built an appetite.” “Do you know anything about the Indian situation?” July asked.
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“He’s there,” Call said. “It’s a bad situation, but he put himself in it.” They waited until late afternoon, when the sun was angling down toward the horizon. Then, walking a wide circle to the east, they struck the creek a mile below where the men were camped and walked quietly up the creek bed. The banks were high and made a perfect shelter. They saw three horses watering at the creek, and Call feared the animals wouldgive them away, but the horses were not alarmed.
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“I wouldn’t relish hanging him,” Call said. “But there he is.” He walked back and explained the situation to Pea Eye and Newt. There was nothing they need do except bring the horses fast when they heard shooting.
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“It didn’t take no spying, she took it right in the saloon,” Lippy said. “It was watch or go blind.” He was aware, as all the hands were, that Dish was mighty in love, but Dish was not the first cowboy to fall in love with a whore, and Lippy didn’t feel he had to make too many concessions to the situation.
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Jake watched the herds too, for he still had hope of escaping from the situation he was in. Rude as Call and Gus had treated him, they were still his compañeros. If he spotted the Hat Creek outfit he had it in mind to sneak off and rejoin them. Even though he had made another mistake, the boys wouldn’t know about it and the news might never reach Montana. He would even cowboy, if he had to—it beat taking his chances with the Suggses.
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This time he was up against twenty or thirty nesters. They were grouped in front of the store as if puzzled by the situation. Jake put his gun back in its holster and looked at the girl once more.
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Moreover, the silent black man, Frog, had a very fast horse. Escaping them would need some care. He knew they didn’ttrust him. Their eyes were cold when they looked his way. He resolved to be very careful and make no move that might antagonize them until the situation was in his favor, which it wouldn’t be until they got into the Kansas towns. With a crowd around, he might slip away.
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They made a wet camp and Po Campo poured hot coffee down them by the gallon, but it still promised to be a miserable night. Po and Deets, the acknowledged experts on weather, discussed the situation and admitted they didn’t know when it might stop raining.
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Now, out of the blue, a Texas Ranger had showed up—one of the very ones who had partnered with Jake Spoon. He was afoot and a long way from help, and they couldn’t just ride off and leave him. Besides, there were hostile Indians around, which made the whole situation more worrisome.
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Unless there were more Indians, Augustus didn’t consider that he was in a particularly serious situation. It was hot and the blowflies were already buzzing over the horse blood, but those were trivial discomforts. He had filled his canteen that morning, and the Canadian was no more than ten miles to the north. More than likely the Indians would decide they had missed their big chance and go away. They might try to get him at night, but he didn’t plan to be there. Come dark he would head for the river.
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The remaining Indians were discouraged. Five Indians were dead, and the battle not five minutes old. Augustus replaced his cartridges and killed a sixth as the Indians were retreating. He might have got one or two more, but decided against risking long shots when his situation was so chancy. There might be more Indians available nearby, though he considered it unlikely. Probably they had charged with all they had—in which case he had killed half of them.With no shooting to do for a little while, Augustus took stock of the situation and decided the worst part of it was that he had no one to talk to. He had been within a minute or two of death, which could not be said to be boring, exactly—but even desperate battle was lacking in something if there was no one to discuss it with. What had made battle interesting over the years was not his opponents but his’ colleagues. It was fascinating, at least to him, to see how the men he had fought with most often reacted to the stimulus of attack.
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Roscoe had to admire Janey’s spunk. The situation looked hopeless, but she kept struggling, twisting around and scratching at the man when she could. Finally the big man stepped in and planted a muddy boot on one of her arms, enabling his companion to tie her wrists. The little man cuffed her again for good measure, and sat back to get his breath.
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Occasionally Gus would try to get him to claim the boy, but Call wouldn’t. He knew that he probably should, not out of certainty so much as decency, but he couldn’t. It meant an admission he couldn’t make—an admission that he had failed someone. It had never happened in battle, such failure. Yet it had happened in a little room over a saloon, because of a small woman who couldn’t keep her hair fixed. It was strange to him that such a failure could seem so terrible, and yet it did. It was such a torment when he thought of it that he eventually tried to avoid all situations in which women were mentioned—only that way could he keep the matter out of mind for a stretch of time.
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“This is a worrisome situation,” Augustus said. “I probably ought to track that man or send Deets to do it. Deets is a better tracker than me. Jake ain’t back and I ain’t got your faith in him. I best send one of the hands to guard you until we know where that bandit’s headed.” “Don’t send Dish,” Lorena said. “I don’t want Dish coming around.” Augustus chuckled. “You gals are sure hard on the boys that love you,” he said. “Dish Boggett’s got a truer heart than Jake Spoon, although neither one of them has much sense.” “Send me the black man,” she said. “I don’t want none of them others.” “I might,” Augustus said. “Or I might come back myself. How would that suit you?” Lorena didn’t answer. She felt the anger coming back. Because of some woman named Clara she wasn’t getting to San Francisco, when otherwise Gus would have taken her. She sat silently on the rock.
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“I’m Blue Duck,” he said. “I’ve heard of you, McCrae. But I didn’t know you was so old.” “Oh, I wasn’t till lately,” Augustus said. It seemed to Lorena that he too had a touch of insolence in his manner. Though Gus was sitting in his underwear, apparently relaxed, Lorena didn’t think there was anything relaxed about the situation.
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The old man soon got done with the girl, but she whimpered for a long time—an unconscious whimpering, such as a dog makes when it is having a bad dream. It disturbed Roscoe’s mind. She seemed too young a girl to have gotten herself into such a rough situation, though he knew that in the hungry years after the war many poor people with large families had given children to practically anyone who would take them, once they got of an age to do useful work.
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“What’s that?” Roscoe said, thinking that if he spoke up the old man might let be. But it didn’t work. The scuffling continued and the girl kept whimpering. Then it seemed they fell against the cabin, not a foot from Roscoe’s head. “If you don’t lay still I’ll whup you tomorrow till you’ll wisht you had,” the old man said. He sounded out of breath. Roscoe tried to think of what July would do in such a situation. July had always cautioned him about interfering in family disputes—the most dangerous form of law work, July claimed. July had once tried to stop a woman who was going after her husband with a pitchfork and had been wounded in the leg as a result.
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“Well, what’s the Indian situation in Texas then?” Roscoe asked. The soldiers seemed completely uninformed on the subject. They were from Missouri. All they knew about Indians was that they liked to do bad things to white captives. One mentioned that a soldier he knew had been shot with an arrow at such close range that the arrow went in one ear and the point came out the other side of the soldier’s head.
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“Well, it’s hard to calculate the odds in this kind of a situation,” Augustus said. “We may not have another bad injury the whole way. On the other hand, half of us may get wiped out. If we have much bad luck I doubt I’ll make it myself.” “Why?” Newt asked, startled to hear him say such a thing.
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“Roscoe, you’ve went to waste long enough,” she said. “Let’s give it a tryout.” “Well, I wouldn’t know how to try,” Roscoe said. “I’ve been a bachelor all my life.” Louisa straightened up. “Men are about as worthless a race of people as I’ve ever encountered,” she said. “Look at the situation a minute. You’re running off to catch a sheriff you probably can’t find, who’s in the most dangerous state in the union, and if you do find him he’ll just go off and try to find a wife that don’t want to live with him anyway. You’ll probably get scalped before it’s all over, or hung, or a Mexican will get you with a pigsticker. And it’ll all be to try and mend something that won’t mend anyway. Now I own a section of land here and I’m a healthy woman. I’m willing to take you, although you’ve got no experience either at farming or matrimony. You’d be useful to me, whereas you won’t be a bit of use to that sheriff or that town you work for either. I’ll teach you how to handle an ax and a mule team, and guarantee you all the corn bread you can eat. We might even have some peas to go with it later in the year. I can cook peas. Plus I’ve got one of the few feather mattresses in this part of the country, so it’d be easy sleeping. And now you’re scared to try. If that ain’t cowardice, I don’t know what is.” Roscoe had never expected to hear such a speech, and he had no idea how to reply to it. Louisa’s approach to marriage didn’t seem to resemble any that he had observed, though it was true he had not spent much time studying the approaches to matrimony. Still, he had only ridden into Louisa’s field an hour before sundown, and it was not yet much more than an hour after dark. Her proposal seemed hasty to him by any standards.
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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 doubt she’ll miss you, Jake,” Augustus said. “You got your charms but then I got my charms too. I’ll come and make camp with her if you decide you’ve had enough of her sass. I ain’t violent like you, neither.” “I didn’t hurt her,” Jake said. He felt a little guilty about the slap—it had upset him to ride in and see her sitting there with Gus, and then she bucked him. Gus always managed to aggravate whatever situation he was in with a woman.
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