Текст книги "Dead Man's Walk"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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“I expect he is—of course he’ll go,” Gus said, though someone had told him that Bigfoot Wallace was off bear hunting.

“I don’t think you know anything,” Call informed him. “You just heard some talk and now you want to go fight. Santa Fe could be two thousand miles away, for all you know. I ain’t even got a horse that could travel that far.”

“Oh, they’ll furnish the mounts,” Gus said. “They say there’s silver and gold piled everywhere in Santa Fe. I expect we can pick up enough just walking around to buy ourselves fifty horses.”

“You’d believe anything,” Call said. “What about Buffalo Hump? If Santa Fe’s in his direction, he’ll find us and kill us all.”

“I don’t expect he’d care if we took Santa Fe,” Gus said, though he knew it was a weak comment. The thought of Buffalo Hump cast a chill on his enthusiasm. Capturing Santa Fe and picking up gold and silver off the ground were fine prospects, but if it involved crossing the Comancheria, as probably it did, then the whole matter had a side to it that was a good deal less pleasant. Since returning with the troop, he and Call had not been more than a few miles out of town—once or twice they had gone a little distance into the hills to hunt pigs or turkeys, but they did not camp out. The week scarcely passed without the Indians picking off some traveler, often almost in the outskirts of town. When they went out to hunt, they went in a group and took care to be heavily armed. Gus wore two pistols now, unless he was just engaged in light work such as painting saloons. He had not forgotten what happened west of the Pecos —time and time again, in his dreams, he had seen Buffalo Hump. He remembered that Zeke Moody had dropped his pistol and been scalped alive, as a result. He carried two so that if he got nervous and dropped one, he would still have a spare.

One of his friend Woodrow’s most annoying traits was that he kept producing information you didn’t want.

“I’ve heard that some of the army’s coming on this expedition,” he said. “I doubt the Indians would want to interfere with us if we’ve got the army along.”

“Buffalo Hump has an army, too,” Call reminded his excitable friend. “If he can find ten warriors to ride with him, then he’s got an army.

“Besides, he lives there,” he added. “He’s got his whole people. I expect he’ll interfere with us plenty, if we try to cross his country.”

“Damn it, ain’t you coming?” Gus asked, exasperated by his friend’s contrariness. “Wouldn’t you rather be riding out on an expedition than staying around here shoeing mules?”

“I might go if we have enough of a troop,” Call said. “I’d like to know more about this man you named—what was he called?”

“Caleb Cobb—he’s the man who captured Santa Anna,” Gus said. He didn’t know that Caleb Cobb had done anything of the sort, but he wanted to pile on as many heroics as he could. Maybe it would get Woodrow Call in the mood to travel.

“They say there’s enough gold lying around in Santa Fe to fill two churches,” Gus said, piling it on a little more.

“Why would the Mexicans just give us two churches full of gold? It don’t sound like any Mexicans I’ve met,” Call said.

Though not unwilling to consider an adventure—shoeing mules was a long way from being his favorite occupation; it was mainly something he did to help old Jesus, who had been kind to him when he first came to San Antonio—the one Gus McCrae was describing seemed pretty unlikely. He would be trying to reach a town he had never heard of, led by a man he had never heard of, either. Who would command the Rangers, if the Rangers went as a troop, he didn’t know, but it wouldn’t be Major Randall Chevallie, because Major Chevallie had died of a fever not three weeks after returning from the failed expedition to El Paso. They had got into some wet weather on their return—also, they had traveled hard. Major Chevallie took to his bed for a day or two, got worse, died, and was buried before anyone had time to think much about it.

“You’re too damn contrary,” Gus said. “I’ve never known a person more apt to take the opposite view than you—you’re too damn gripy.”

“I expect I’ve spent too much time with mules,” Call said. “When would we be to leave, if we go?”

“What’s wrong with now?” Gus asked. “The expedition’s leaving any day—I sure don’t want to get left. We’d be rich for life if we could pick up a little of that gold and silver.”

“I hope we can whip the Mexicans, if we get there,” Call said.

“Why wouldn’t we, you fool?” Gus asked.

“We didn’t whip ‘em at the Alamo,” Call reminded him. “We might get out there on the plains somewhere and starve—that’s another thing to think about. We could barely find grub for twelve men when we were out on the Pecos. How will we feed an army?

“There ain’t much water out that way, neither,” Call added, before Gus could break in with a few more lies about the gold to be picked up in Santa Fe.

“Why, we’ll be going across the plains—it’s plenty wet up that way,” Gus said.

“You could shoe one of these mules if you don’t have anything else to do,” Call suggested. “Once we get these mules shoed I might be more interested in capturing Santa Fe.”

Gus at once rejected the suggestion that he help shoe the mules. He saw that Call was weakening in his opposition to the trip, and his own spirits began to rise at the thought of the great adventure that lay ahead of them.

“I say leave the mules—I want to get started for Austin,” Gus said. “Redmond Dale can find someone else to paint his saloon. Of course we might have time for a visit to the whorehouse, if you ever get tired of working.”

“I can’t afford the whorehouse—I’m saving up for a better gun,” Call said. “If we’re going out there into the Indian country, I need to have a better gun.”

He had visited the whorehouse, though, with Gus, several times —he didn’t scorn it as a pastime. Matilda Roberts was employed there while waiting for passage to the west. She had taken a liking to young Call. Gus too had his likeable side, but he was overpersistent, and also a blabber. There were times when Matilda could put up with persistence easier than she could with blab.

Young Call, though, seldom said two words. He just handed over the coins. Matilda saw something sad in the boy’s eyes—it touched her. She saw after a few visits that her great bulk frightened him, and put him with a young Mexican girl named Rosa, who soon came to like him.

Call often though of Rosa—she taught him many Spanish words: how to count, words for food. She was a slim girl who seldom smiled, though once in awhile she smiled at him. Call thought of her most afternoons when he was working in the hot lots behind the blacksmith’s shop. He also thought of her at night when he was sleeping on his blanket, near the stable. He would have liked to see Rosa oftener-Gus had not been wrong to recommend whores, but Gus was reckless with his money and Call wasn’t. Gus would borrow, or cheat at cards, or make promises he couldn’t keep, just to have money for whores.

Call, though, could not bring himself to be so spendthrift. He knew that he wanted to be a Ranger once the troop went out again, which meant that sooner or later he would be fighting Indians. This time, when the fight came, he wanted to be as well equipped as his resources would permit. Neither of the cheap guns he owned was reliable. If he ever had to face the Comanche with the great hump again, he wanted a weapon that wouldn’t fail him. Much as he was apt to think of Rosa, he knew that if he wanted to survive as a professional Ranger, he had to put guns first.

Once he felt assured that his friend was going to come with him on the new expedition, Gus relaxed, located a spot of shade under a wagon, stretched out full length, put his hat over his face, and took a long serene nap while Call labored on with the mules. The last little mule was a biter—Call cuffed him several times, but the mule bared his teeth and demonstrated that he had every intention of using them on Call’s flesh if he could. Call was finally forced to rope the mule’s jaws shut before he could finish his work. Gus had a snore like a rasp-Call could hear the snore plainly when he wasn’t hammering in a horseshoe nail.

Just as the last shoe was nailed in place, there was a clatter in the street. Call looked up to see Long Bill Coleman, Rip Green, gimpyJohnny Carthage, and Matilda Roberts come loping up. Matilda was mounted on Tom, her large grey gelding.

“Saddle up, Woodrow—it’s Santa Fe or bust,” Long Bill sang out. He was wearing a fur cap he had found in a closet in the whorehouse.

“Dern, Bill, I thought you’d left town,” Call said. “Ain’t it a little warm for that hat?”

He himself was drenched in sweat from shoeing the four mules.

“That cap’s to fool the grizzlies, if we meet any,” Long Bill said. “I’m scared of grizzlies, and other kinds of bears as well. I figure if I wear this fur bonnet they’ll think I’m one of the family and let me alone.”

“That cap belonged to Joe Slaw; they hung the son of a bitch,” Matilda said. “I guess he considered himself a mountain man.”

Gus McCrae, hearing voices, suddenly rose up, forgetting that he was under a wagon. He whonked his head so loudly that everyone in the group laughed.

“Shut up, I think my skull’s broke open,” Gus said, annoyed at the levity—he had only made a simple mistake. His head had taken a solid crack, though. He wobbled over to the water tank and stuck his head under—the cool water felt good.

While the group was watching Gus dip his head in the water, Blackie Slidell came racing up—he had been with a whore when the others left the saloon. The reason for his rush was that he feared being left, which would mean having to cross the prairies in the direction of Austin all by himself.

“So, are you with us, Woodrow?” Rip Green asked. Although Call was a younger man than himself, Rip considered him dependable and was anxious to have him with the group.

“I thought you was already gone, Bill,” Call said.

“Why no, we’ve been collecting Rangers, but we can’t find Bigfoot, and Shadrach prefers to travel alone, mostly,” Bill said. “He’s already gone up to Austin. I guess we’ll have to leave Bigfoot. I expect he’ll catch up.”

With so many of his companions mounted and ready, Call hesitated no longer. His complaints and criticism had mainly been designed to annoy Gus, anyway. The urge to be adventuring was too strong to be resisted.

“So, who’s leading the Rangers?” he asked when he untied the jaw rope and released the biting mule.“Why, we’ll lead ourselves, unless somebody shows up who wants to captain,” Long Bill said.

“Whoa—I ain’t rangering for Bob Bascom,” Gus said. “I don’t like his surly tongue—I expect I’ll have to whip him before the trip is over.”

Long Bill looked skeptical at this prediction.

“Take a good club when you go to whip him,” he said. “Bob’s stout.”

“Take two clubs,” Blackie said. “Bob’s a scrapper.”

“I didn’t expect you’d want to go fight Mexicans, Matty,” Call said, surprised to see Matilda with the Rangers.

“I’m needing to get west before I get old,” Matilda said. “I’ve heard there’s roads to the west from up around Santa Fe.”

Call’s possessions were few, though he did now have a coat to go with his two shirts. Gus McCrae, because of his urgent expenditures, had only the clothes on his back and his two pistols. When old Jesus saw that Call was leaving, he sighed. The thought of having to shoe all the horses and mules by himself made him feel a weariness. He had done hard work all his life and was ready to stop, but he couldn’t stop. All his children had left home except one little girl, and his little girl could not shoe mules. Yet he could not blame Call for going—he himself had roved, when he was young. He had left Saltillo and come to the land of the Texans, but now he was weary and his only helper was leaving. There was something about the boy that he liked, too—and he didn’t like many of the Texas boys.

“Adios,” he said, as Call was tying his blanket and his extra shirt onto his saddle.

“Adios, Jesus,” Call said—he liked the old man. They had not exchanged a cross word in all the time Call had worked for him.

“Let’s ride, boys,” Long Bill said. “Austin’s a far piece up the road.”

“We’ll ride, but I ain’t a boy,” Matilda said, as they rode out of San Antonio. Gus McCrae had a headache, from rising up too quickly after his nap.

“Boys, IT’S CLOUDING UP,” Long Bill said late in their first day out of San Antonio. “I expect we’re in for a drenching.”

“I’d rather ride all night than sleep wet,” Rip Green observed.

“Not me,” Gus said. “If I have to be wet I’d just as soon be snoozing.”

“There’s plenty of farms up this way,” Matilda said. “German families, mostly. If we could find a farm they might let us sleep on the floor. Or if they have some kind of shed for the stock, maybe we could crawl under it.”

As the sun was dipping, Call noticed that the whole southwestern quadrant of the sky had turned coal black. In the distance there was a rumbling of thunder. At the horizon the blackness was cut through with streaks of golden light from the setting sun, but the light at the bottom only made the blackness of the upper sky seem blacker. A wind rose—it whirled Call’s straw hat off his head and sailed it a good thirty feet, which annoyed him. He hated above all to lose control of his headgear.Long Bill cackled at the sight.

“You ought to have a good fur cap, like I do,” he said.

They crested a ridge and spotted just what Matilda had been hoping for—a little farm. There was only one building in the little clearing, but it was a sizable log building.

“It’ll hold us all, snug, if the family is friendly,” Blackie Slidell observed.

“I hope they’re cooking pork, if they’re cooking,” Gus said. “I’d enjoy a good supper of pork.”

Call retrieved his hat, but the wind had risen so that he saw no point in sticking it back on his head. All the men were holding their hats on by this time. They were a mile or two from the little cabin, and the darkness in the sky was swelling, pushing toward them. It abruptly extinguished the sunset, but the force of the sun left an eerie light over the long prairie ahead.

The rumblings of the thunder were deeper. Call had seen many storms, and paid them little mind, but this one caught his attention. It had been a sultry day—the wind coming out of the cloud wasn’t cool. It was a sultry wind, and it blew fitfully, at first. Some gusts were so strong they caused his horse to break stride—of course, his horse was just a skinny nag that had been underfed for the last few weeks. It wouldn’t take much of a wind to blow him off course.

“Why, look at that,” Gus said. “That dern cloud is behaving like a snake.”

Call looked, and saw that it was true. A portion of the cloud had formed itself into a column, or funnel, and was twisting through the lower sky in a snakelike motion.

“You damn young fools, that’s a cyclone,” Matilda said. “We better race for that cabin.”

The snake cloud was dipping closer and ever closer to the ground, sucking up dust and weeds as it twisted. A hawk that had been skimming the ground looking for mice or quail rose, and sped away; Call saw two deer bolt from a little thicket and flash their white tails as they raced off, away from the twisting cloud. The cloud was roaring so loudly by then that the horses began to rear and pitch. They wanted to run away, like the deer.

“We won’t make that cabin, we need to lay flat,” Long Bill advised. “That’s what you do when a cyclone hits. We best find a ditch or a gully or something, or we’re done for.““There’s a buffalo wallow,” Blackie said. “That’s all I see.”

“It ain’t deep,” Gus said. He had been feeling good, enjoying the thought of adventure, and now a dangerous cloud had come out of nowhere and spoiled his feeling. They were scarcely a mile from the cabin, but the spinning, roaring, sucking cloud was coming too fast. All day Gus had tensed himself and strained his eyes, looking for Indians. He didn’t want to see the humpbacked Comanche charge out of a thicket with his lance raised. If Buffalo Hump showed up, or any hostile red man, he was prepared to run and shoot. The last thing he had expected was deadly weather, but now deadly weather was two hundred yards away. A bobcat burst from a thicket and began to run in the same direction as the deer.

The Rangers reached the little wallow and jumped off their mounts.

“What about the horses?” Call yelled, as the roar increased.

“The devil with the horses—get flat!” Long Bill advised. “Get flat and don’t look up.”

Call did as he was told. He released his rearing mount and flattened himself under the edge of the shallow wallow. The other Rangers did the same.

Gus was fearful of Matilda’s chances—she was so big she couldn’t really hide in anything as shallow as a buffalo wallow. But there was no time to dig—she would just have to hope for the best.

Then the roaring became so loud that none of them could think. Call’s loose shirt billowed up—he thought the wind inside it was going to lift him off the ground. There was a kind of seething noise, like a snake’s hiss, only louder—it was the sound of the sand being sucked up from the shallow wallow. It was pitch black by then—as black as a moonless midnight.

Gus was wishing he’d never come to Texas—what was it but one danger after another? He had been thinking about the cabin ahead, and the pork chop he hoped to eat, and now he had his face in the dirt, being pulled at by a cloud that was like a giant snake. In Tennessee clouds didn’t behave like that. Besides, their horses were lost, though they had scarcely traveled half a day. Both his pistols were on his saddle, too—if he survived the storm and Buffalo Hump showed up, he would be helpless.

The sound of the cyclone was so loud, and the dust swirling up beneath them so thick, that some of the Rangers felt they werebeing deafened and suffocated at the same time. Blackie Slidell, who was limber, managed to bend his neck and get his nose inside his shirt, so he could breathe a little better.

But the whirling and roaring slowly diminished—when the Rangers felt it safe to lift their heads, they saw sunlight beneath the black edge of cloud, far to the west. The eerie light still hung over the prairie, a light that seemed hellish to Rip Green.

“I expect this is the kind of light you get once you’re dead,” he commented.

Matilda sat up, relieved. She had heard that cyclones took people up in the air and blew them as much as forty miles away. People who survived such removals were never again right in the head, so she had heard. Of course, being heavy, she herself was less likely than some to blow away, but then wagons sometimes blew away, and she was no heavier than a wagon.

“Are we all alive?” she asked. The grey light was so strange it made them all look different—most of them had been so scared while they were pressing themselves into the wallow that their voices sounded strange when they tried to talk.

“We’re alive but we’re afoot,” Call said. Though unnerved, he hadn’t really had time to be very frightened—the cyclone was a thing beyond him or any man. An Indian he could fight, but who could fight a roaring snake of air? His hat was gone—all the hats were gone, except Long Bill Coleman’s fur cap, which he had stuffed beneath him as he clutched the sand.

“We ought to have tied them horses, somehow,” Call added. “I expect they’ve run halfway back to San Antonio by now.”

“I’d rather lose my horse than blow away,” Gus said. “Them was just thirty-dollar horses anyway.”

“I could spare the nag, but they took everything we own with them,” Blackie said. “We’ll have to hobble into Austin and hope they allow us credit.”

“You boys are green—them horses ain’t run far,” Long Bill said. “They’ll show up in the morning, or else we’ll track ‘em.”

Now that he had survived the cyclone, Gus began to feel lively. The storm had scared his headache away, but not his appetite.

“Im still in the mood for a pork chop,” he said. “Let’s go on to that cabin. They might just be sitting down to supper.”

Having no other prospect to hand, the Rangers adopted the suggestion, only to find that the cyclone had obliterated the cabin where they had hoped to bunk. When they got to the ridge where it had been, there were only a few logs in place, and six unhappy people were stumbling around weeping and looking dazed—four children and a man and a woman. The man and the woman had lanterns and were shining them in the rubble, hoping to locate a few possessions to pile up. The four children had been scared into silence. One little girl was chewing on the hem of her dress.

Her father, a stout young man with a full beard, was inquiring about his roof in the bewildered tone that a man might use to complain about a mislaid hammer.

“Where’s my roof, dammit?” the young man said. “It was here and now it’s gone. I worked a week on my roof—now I guess it’s blown plumb over into the woods.”

“Well, we lost our horses,” Gus said—a little callously, Call felt. The stout man with the beard had a family to house. Losing a thirty-dollar horse with a cheap saddle and blanket on it was not a loss on the same scale as the man’s roof.

The area where the cabin had been was a wild litter. It was almost dark, but the Rangers could see that clothes and utensils and tools and animals were as jumbled as if they had all been hastily shoveled out of a wagon. A black rooster stood on one of the fallen logs, complaining loudly. Two shoats were grunting and rooting amid the mess, and several hens squawked.

No one paid much attention when Matilda and the six Rangers came walking up in the last of the light. The only person who seemed reasonably calm was the young woman of the house, and she was quietly picking up utensils and clothes and putting them in neat piles.

“Dern the luck—it’s a pain to lose that roof,” the stout man said. He didn’t address the remark either to his wife or to the Rangers— he seemed to be talking to himself.

“That’s enough cussing, Roy,” the young woman said. “We got visitors, and the children don’t need to hear you cussing just because the cabin got blown away. We can build another cabin.”

“I can, you mean, Melly,” the man said. “You ain’t strong enough to hoist no logs.”

“I said we got visitors, Roy—why don’t you be polite and ask them to sit, at least?” the young woman said, with a flash of temper.“You have to take weather as it comes,” she added. “Cussing don’t change it.”

“Here, maybe we can help you pick up,” Gus offered. He liked the looks of the young woman, Melly. Even in the dim light he could tell she was pretty. The husband seemed a rude sort—Gus felt it was a pity he hadn’t been blown away. A young woman that pretty might entice him to give up rangering, if she took a notion.

“Well, men, I hope you ain’t thieves, because our worldly possessions are spread out here for the picking of any damn thieves who happen to walk up,” Roy said. He was still agitated by the loss of his roof.

The Rangers did what they could by lantern light to help the little family reassemble its scattered possessions. There were no pork chops, but the young woman did have some bacon and a little cornmeal. Long Bill Coleman was a master fire builder; he soon had a good blaze going in the ruins of the little chimney. They all ate bacon and corn cakes and talked about how curious it was to see an ordinary thundercloud turn into a cyclone.

“It sucked the dern bark off that tree over there,” Roy said, pointing in the darkness to a tree nobody could see. “What kind of wind would suck the bark off an elm tree?”

“We’re all alive, though, thank the Lord,” Melly observed gratefully. She was sitting by Matilda Roberts. Though too polite to inquire, she was wondering what kind of woman would be traipsing across the prairies with six Texas Rangers. Of course on the frontier, things were less regular than they had been in eastern Missouri, where she was from.

Matilda, for her part, indulged in a little daydream in which she was married to a farmer with a beard, and had four tykes, some chickens, and a couple of shoats. In those circumstances she would have no need to accept whatever smelly ruffian came along with a dollar or two and a stiffness in his pants.

The little children, none of them yet five according to their mother, were curled up like little possums, asleep on a quilt that had escaped wetting. Long Bill Coleman brought out his harmonica —he never trusted it to his saddlebags but kept it about his person, and played a tune called “Barbara Allen.” Call liked to listen to Long Bill play the harmonica. The old tune, clear and plaintive, made a sadness come in him. He didn’t know why the music made him sad—or even what the sadness was for. After all, as the young woman said, they were all still alive, and not much worse off than they had been before the cyclone struck. The loss of the horses was a nuisance, of course, but it wasn’t because of the horses that he felt sad. He felt sad for all of them: the Rangers, Matilda, the little family that had lost its roof. They were small, and the world was large and violent. They were alive and, for the moment, well enough fed; but the very next day another storm might come, or an Indian party, and then they wouldn’t be.

“Well, I can’t dance to that old song,” Gus informed Long Bill. “I prefer tunes that I can dance to.”

“Why then, here’s ‘Buffalo Gals,’ ” Long Bill said—he was soon playing a livelier melody. Gus got up and jigged around, hoping to impress Melly with his dancing. Rip Green joined him for a bit, but the others refused to dance.

“I’ll be damned if I’ll dance on the night my roof blew off,” Roy said.

A little later Roy took his lantern and rummaged around until he found his whiskey jug, which he passed around freely. Long Bill Coleman soon put away his harmonica in order to drink, which annoyed Gus a little, because he wasn’t through dancing. He was even more convinced that he would make a good husband for Melly —certainly a better husband than the surly Roy.

When dawn came, Roy found most of his roof at the edge of a little live-oak thicket, over a hundred yards from where the cabin stood. Long Bill was right about the horses—they were all found within half a mile of the buffalo wallow. There was no more bacon, but Melly made them a breakfast of corn cakes and chickory coffee.

Roy, realizing that he had an excellent labor force at hand, tried to persuade the Rangers to stay and help him rebuild his cabin. Gus McCrae wouldn’t have minded. Melly had a peaches-and-cream complexion. She looked even prettier in the morning than she had in the dim dusk. But the other Rangers pleaded urgent business in Austin—they were soon mounted and ready to go.

“We’re off to take Santa Fe,” Blackie Slidell informed the homesteaders. “Caleb Cobb’s our leader.”

“Santa Fe?” Roy asked. “You mean Santa Fe, out in New Mexico?”

“That’s the town—what of it?” Rip Green said, noticing that Roy wore a somewhat skeptical expression.

“Why, it’s over a thousand miles from here,” Roy said. “You could get there quicker if you started from St. Louis. There’s a good trail from St. Louis. My pa was a trader on the Santa Fe trail, until he got murdered by a damn quick Mexican.”

“Why’d he get murdered?” Johnny Carthage asked.

“No reason, much—the quick Mexican got the drop on him and shot him dead,” Roy said. “I went to Santa Fe three times when I was growing up.”

“Oh now, tell us about it,” Gus said. “I hear there’s gold and silver laying around for the taking.”

“You heard an idiot, then,” Roy said. “There’s no gold, and you have to bargain hard for what silver you get. My pa did better with furs. The mountain men show up pretty regular with furs, or they used to. I got married to Melly and quit the trading life.”

“Furs?” Gus said. “You mean like Long Bill’s cap?”

“Oh, that’s just a rabbit skin—I wouldn’t call that a fur,” Roy said. “I mean beaver, mainly. There’s no beaver down here—you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Anyway, once we get there, we mean to annex New Mexico, I believe,” Blackie Slidell said. “I expect the populace will be mighty glad to see us.”

“The hell they will; they hate Texans—don’t any of you boys have any experience at all?” Roy asked.

“Well, we ain’t been to Santa Fe, if that’s what you mean,” Long Bill admitted. “I guess Caleb Cobb wouldn’t be leading an expedition all the way to Santa Fe unless he had his facts down.”

Roy looked at his wife in amusement. The little girl who had been frightened by the cyclone was still chewing on the hem of her dress. Two of the little boys were throwing rocks at one of the shoats, and the black rooster was still complaining.

“These men have been deceived,” Roy said to Melly. “They think the Mexicans are just going to walk up and start piling gold and silver in their wagons, once they get to Santa Fe—if they get to Santa Fe. Caleb Cobb is a reckless rum-running scoundrel. What he’ll do is get you all killed or captured, I expect.

“Of course, I doubt he can even find Santa Fe—maybe all that will happen is that you’ll get lost,” Roy went on. “Look for the Arkansas River, if you get lost up on the prairies. Once you find the Arkansas, you’ll be all right.“The Rangers rode off, leaving the little family to sort through their soaked possessions. The troop’s mood was somewhat dampened by Roy’s pessimism.

“I expect it was a lie,” Gus said. “The man’s a farmer. He probably never set foot in Santa Fe.”

“He sounded like he knew what he was talking about to me,” Call said.

“No, you can’t trust people from Missouri,” Rip Green said.

“Why can’t you? I’m from Missouri,” Johnny Carthage said. “Missouri’s as honest as the next place.”

“Why would the man lie?” Call asked. “He’s never seen us before.”

Matilda Roberts let out a hoot. “Gus wouldn’t think that’s a reason not to lie,” she said. “Gus lies all the time to people he’s never seen before—gals, mostly.”

The remark caused Gus to blush—he had been thinking the same thing himself, though of course he would never have said it. One of the main troubles with women was that they were always saying things that ought not to be said. Of course he lied freely to impress the girls, but what business was that of Matilda’s?