Текст книги "Streets Of Laredo"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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"I just like to keep track of your husbands.

It's my pastime," Billy said. "Why did Se@nor Sanchez leave, if I ain't prying?" "You're prying," Maria said.

"My feet hurt, tell me anyway," Billy said.

Maria smiled. Billy couldn't see the smile, but he could tell that her tone was a little less severe. He wished he could see her face. All he could see was a sort of outline.

"He left me because he didn't like me," Maria said.

"Why, he married you–why didn't he like you?" Billy asked.

"He liked the way I look," Maria said.

"He mistook that for me." "I sympathize with him, I've often made the same mistake," Billy said. "I'm sure I'd make it again, if I could see better." "I think Joey went to Crow Town," Maria said. She didn't want to talk about her husbands, or her dealings with men.

"Crow Town, good Lord," Billy said.

"Joey is young," Maria said. "He likes such places." "I'm old, I don't," Billy said.

"I'd almost rather crawl off and die than go to Crow Town." "Who said you had to go?" Maria asked.

"Woodrow Call has hung enough Mexicans," Billy said. "I better go and warn Joey. Swift as he is, he might get away. If my going to Crow Town will help, then I'll go to Crow Town." "You don't listen," Maria said. "You don't let me talk, and when I do you don't listen.

I'll go to Crow Town myself." "You'll go?" Billy said. "How long do you think you'll last, in that stink hole?" "Long enough to warn my son," Maria said.

"No, I'll go. Joey relies on me to keep him informed about lawmen and such," Billy said.

"You lost your horse," Maria reminded him.

"Well, it ain't the only horse," Billy said. "I can get another horse.

"I doubt even Woodrow Call would go to Crow Town," he added. "Everybody that lives there hates him. He'd have to kill the whole town." "You've forgotten how he is," Maria said.

"If he's hired to go there, he'll go. If they sent him to kill Joey he'll go wherever Joey is." "Well, I mean to get there first, even if I have to walk," Billy said. "The man turned me out. I can't forget it." Thinking about Crow Town gave him such a terrible thirst that he limped off to the cantina and bought two bottles of tequila. There was an outhouse behind the cantina that afforded him a little shade, and he sat down in the shade and drank one bottle rapidly. Midway through the second bottle, as he was about to pass out, a vaquero came riding up, leading Billy's lost horse.

"I found your horse, old man," Pedro, the vaquero, said.

Billy found that the mere thought of his horse, not to mention the sight of him, to the extent he could see him, made him furious. The willful beast had caused him not only discomfort but embarrassment.

For a man of his prestige to have to walk into a one-saloon town such as Ojinaga was little short of disgraceful.

Without hesitation, but not without difficulty, he managed to extract his pistol from its holster. His hand didn't seem to want to go where his brain told it to. His hand often rebelled in such fashion when he was drunk. But he eventually got the pistol more or less firmly in his grasp, and without worrying too much about aiming, he emptied it in the direction of Pedro and the horse. Of course, he had no wish to injure Pedro, who was a decent vaquero. He only meant to shoot the horse, in the head, if possible. But the only casualty of the fusillade was a little white goat who happened to be standing idly by, just in the wrong spot.

"Gracias," Pedro said, tipping his hat to the old man who leaned against the outhouse wall.

"That's one less goat to get in my way." Pedro was a little disgusted. The old man had once been a renowned scout. He had been good enough to track Indians, it was said. He had once been a notable shot, too. Now he couldn't hit his own horse, at a distance of twenty yards. In Pedro's view, it would be better for such men to die and not go around shooting other people's goats.

Later, Billy found a bush that offered better shade than the light outhouse. He finished the second bottle of tequila and took a little nap. When he awoke, with an empty bottle and an empty gun beside him, Maria was kneeling by his legs. She seemed to be looping a rope around his legs. Her spotted mare was standing with her.

He could just make out the spots. Then he was being dragged, slowly. If the dragging had been rapid, it would have upset his stomach. When the dragging stopped, he was behind Maria's house, near the pump. Before Billy could give the matter more thought, he found himself under a waterfall. Cold water was splashing in his face. He felt he could drown, if he wasn't lucky, from the flood of water. But when it stopped splashing, he was not drowned. He tried to raise up and bumped his head hard on Maria's pump. She had been pumping water in his face.

"I have to go find Joey," Maria said.

"Look after my children. Don't let anything happen to them." "Well, I won't," Billy said. "Are you armed?" "No, I don't like guns," Maria said.

"You ought to take my pistol. You'd be safer," he told her.

"I don't want your gun, Billy," Maria said. "If I have a gun some man might take it away from me and beat me with it. I want you to stay here and see that Rafael and Teresa come to no harm." But Billy persisted; finally, Maria took the gun. As she rode away on her spotted mare, Billy realized that she had called him by his name. That was a change. It had been several years since Maria had called him by his name.

When Bolivar saw the Captain, he began to cry.

"Capit@an, capit@an," he said, sobbing. Call had grown used to it, since Bol cried every time he showed up. But Brookshire, meeting the old man for the first time, was embarrassed.

The place where the old man boarded was only a hovel made of mud, or of a mudlike substance, at least.

Soon Josefeta, the mother of the family that cared for Bolivar, was crying too.

"God sent you just in time, Captain," she said, in a shaking voice. "We can't have Bolivar with us, no more. Roberto has no patience with him.

He hits him." "Well, he oughtn't to hit him," Call said.

"What's Bol done, to bring it on?" "Last week he set himself on fire," Josefeta said. "Sometimes he cuts himself. In the night he cries out and wakes the children." Call sighed. Bol's hair was snow white.

He was still crying and shaking.

"He needs a haircut," Call said. The old man's hair was nearly to his shoulders, making him look shakier than he was.

"Last time we cut it he grabbed the scissors and tried to stab Ramon," Josefeta said. "Then he cut himself. I think he wants to end his life. It's a mortal sin." Call had a good deal of respect for Josefeta. She had nine or ten children and a husband who was apparently none too nice. The money he paid her for keeping Bol was probably about all that kept the family going. He knew that dealing with the old man must be a trial, but he had not supposed it to be such a severe trial that they were considering putting the old man out.

Brookshire was appalled. The old man was sure to be an impediment to their travels, although the Captain had made it clear that they were only taking him as far as Laredo. Still, in Brookshire's reckoning, every minute counted. That was Colonel Terry's philosophy, too; of that there could be no doubt. The Colonel expected them to catch Joey Garza before he robbed any more trains, particularly any more trains that might happen to be carrying a military payroll. The military did not take kindly to having its money snatched. Hints had been received; the military let it be known that they might have to find other modes of conveyance if the young Mexican struck one more time.

One of Josefeta's little boys came around the house, leading Bolivar's mule. The boy had saddled it for him. It was with some difficulty that they managed to hoist Bolivar onto the mule's skinny back. The experience darkened Brookshire's mood even more. The old fellow could not even mount his own mule unassisted. But Captain Call seemed undisturbed. He was patient with Bolivar, and he gave the woman a nice sum of money for the trouble she'd had.

"I'm sorry for the trouble, Josefeta," Call said. "He's just old, and wandering in his mind. Maybe a little travel will improve his spirits." As they got ready to depart, children began to gather around the old man and his mule. They seemed to be about half and half, boys and girls, and all were weeping.

"We don't want him to go, we love him," Josefeta said. "Only Roberto has no more patience. I'm afraid something bad will happen." Brookshire had been worried all morning, but, as they made their way at a slow pace toward the outskirts of town, he found that the heat was so great it overwhelmed even his capacity for worry.

It was winter on the plains, but summer still in San Antonio. At night Brookshire lay in his little hotel room, as hot as if he slept in a box with a stove under it. His underclothes were soaked, his bedclothes soaked. He sweated so much that he awoke in a puddle. The hotel room had windows, but no breeze blew through them. All that came through them was mosquitoes, wasps, and other flying bugs. Each morning he woke up feeling more fatigued than he felt when he went to bed.

If the Captain was bothered by the heat, it didn't show. If he was bothered by anything, it didn't show. He had taken Brookshire with him to visit the sheriff of San Antonio. Call wanted to see if the man might have a reliable deputy he could spare.

"Mr. Brookshire represents the railroad," Call said. He thought that was enough information to give out.

Being introduced as if he were Colonel Terry, or somebody important, perked Brookshire up briefly. It made him feel like a banker–he had often regretted that he hadn't become a banker. It was a breeze to his vanity, going around with the famous Ranger.

But long before evening came, Brookshire had sweated out his vanity. The one cheering thing he could think of was that his wife, Katie, wasn't along.

Katie disapproved of sweat. She considered it uncivilized. In her view, nice people didn't get drunk, spit in public, break wind, or sweat. On occasion, in the summertime, when the Brooklyn heat was at its most intense, Katie even denied him her favors in order to maintain her standards in regard to sweat.

Walking around San Antonio in the heat, or lying in his little box of a room at night, Brookshire had at least one thing to be grateful for: he and Katie weren't leading their conjugal life in south Texas. Feeling as she did about sweat, life would be bleak if they lived in San Antonio, where even the briefest embrace would be bound to give rise to a good deal of sweat.

A sheriff in the town, a young man much in awe of the Captain, had no deputies to spare, so the Captain spent the rest of the day looking at horses and pack mules, or choosing the equipment they would need on a journey up the river.

It was at this point that Brookshire gave the Captain a bad start. When Colonel Terry instructed his people to send the Captain a telegram, he meant, of course, to make it clear that Brookshire was to accompany him from beginning to end; that is, until Joey Garza was dead, or caught. The Colonel didn't spend money recklessly. Brookshire was a trained accountant. For more than twenty years, he had kept up with the Colonel's bills. The only bills he wasn't allowed to see were those that pertained to the Colonel's mistress, a mystery woman named Miss Cora. No one in the office had ever seen Miss Cora, though it was known that the Colonel kept her in an apartment on Fifth Avenue. Once in a while a bill for flowers or jewelry would get misdirected and arrive in the office, a circumstance that invariably threw the Colonel into a temper.

"Why, that idiot, that's for Cora," he would say, snatching the bill and stuffing it into his pocket. The Colonel's wife, another mystery figure, was known in the office as Miss Eleanora. She was thought to be prim, and her primness, in the minds of the office workers, explained Miss Cora and the apartment on Fifth Avenue, and the jewelry, and the flowers.

Now and then, seeing one of the misdirected bills–they were always from establishments of high repute–Brookshire would dream a little.

He would imagine that he was as rich as the Colonel and able to keep a nice girlie, one whose standards in the matter of sweat were not as high as Katie's. He thought of this girlie as his Miss Belle, for he liked the name Belle. Of course, it was just a little dream. Brookshire knew that he would never be as rich as the Colonel, and even if he did acquire a little more money he might never find a girl named Belle who would care to live in an apartment on Fifth Avenue and receive flowers and jewelry, from him. It was just his little dream.

The point, though, that startled Captain Call was that Colonel Terry expected Brookshire and his ledger books to accompany Call on his chase. The Captain had been promised his expenses, as well as a substantial bonus, in the event of rapid success. An expedition, even a small one, was bound to incur expenses, so naturally, Brookshire was expected to keep a full accounting. Mostly, when trouble had arisen in the past, it had involved dirty work on the part of Colonel Terry's rivals in Chicago or Cleveland or Buffalo–someplace civilized.

In those cases, Brookshire's job was to rein in the Pinkertons. As a rule, Pinkertons were inclined to be casual about money, and the Colonel wasn't.

Employing Captain Call to catch Joey Garza was not as simple as hiring the Pinkertons to beat up a switch buster. There was only one point of similarity, which was that in both cases, the Colonel's money was being spent. And when the Colonel's money was being spent, he expected a full accounting.

"Why? Doesn't the man trust me?" Call asked, when Brookshire revealed that he was expected to accompany him.

"The Colonel don't trust God," Brookshire said. The comment just slipped out.

Colonel Terry's unwillingness to trust was not lost on any of his employees. He was constantly popping into the office to inspect their work.

When Brookshire turned in his ledgers at the end of each week, the Colonel sat right down, took out his big magnifying glass, and went over the pages line by line.

Call was inspecting a stout gray gelding that he thought might do, when Brookshire revealed that he was expected to come along. Call had just lifted the horse's foreleg, in order to inspect the hoof. He was going into rocky country and the animals would need good feet. The notion that Brookshire, a man who couldn't keep his hat on his head, was planning to go with him into Mexico had never occurred to Call. Bol, shaky as he was, would be less of an impediment. At least Bol was used to hard living, and he was Mexican.

Brookshire seemed to be a decent man, but decency was one thing, experience entirely another.

Call had no idea whether the man could even ride.

"But Mr. Brookshire," he said. "You're not equipped, and this isn't your line of work. I know you're a family man, and there is some danger involved. To be blunt, I'd rather not take you." "I'd rather not go, neither, but what choice do I have?" Brookshire asked. "I'm a salaried man. I work for Colonel Terry. He expects me to keep the daily accounts–besides that, he expects reports." "Reports?" Call asked.

"Yes, I'm expected to report," Brookshire said. It was clear from the Captain's stern look that he was not pleased with what he was hearing.

"If you capture the young Mexican, or kill him, the Colonel's going to want to know right away," Brookshire added. "He's a stickler for promptness." "I expect he's a stickler for results, too," Call said. "What if I don't catch the young bandit promptly enough? What if he manages to rob the army a few more times?" Brookshire felt uncomfortable with the question. He had not been the only one in the office to voice doubts about the Captain's age. Of course, everyone admired Call's reputation. He had undoubtedly been the best there was, once; in his prime, Joey Garza probably wouldn't have lasted a week, with the Captain in pursuit.

But now the man was old, and looked it. If Colonel Terry could see him, he would probably have taken back his offer, or at least reduced the stipend.

"I hope I'm not getting deaf," Call said. "I didn't hear you answer. What happens if I ain't quick enough?" "He'll fire you in a minute," Brookshire said.

"I'm glad you admit it," Call said.

"I'll get Joey Garza for you, but I can't say when I'll get him, and God couldn't either.

Mexico is a big place–so is West Texas. We might not be handy to a telegraph office the day the Colonel decides to fire me." "Captain, just catch the bandit," Brookshire said. "Don't worry about Colonel Terry, too much. Worrying about the Colonel is my job." "Couldn't you get another job?" Call asked. "I don't think you enjoy this one too much. This Colonel of yours sounds like he's rough on the help." Brookshire didn't deny it, but refrained from confirming it. He had learned to be cautious in remarking about the Colonel. Remarks uttered hundreds of miles from the office nonetheless had a way of reaching the man's ear.

"I like a loyal man," Call said, seeing that Brookshire had nothing to say. "I think you are a loyal man. But being loyal don't mean you're suited for this work. It's unreasonable of your boss to expect you to do work you're not trained for." "He is unreasonable, though," Brookshire said, before he could check his tongue. "He expects me to go, and I better go. I admit I ain't qualified. I'm about as unqualified a man as you could find anywhere. But here I am.

I'm expected to go." "Send the Colonel a telegram," Call suggested. "Tell him you've caught the Texas itch. Tell him the doctor says you're not to ride for six weeks." "What's the Texas itch?" Brookshire asked, wondering if he would catch it. "How do you get it?" "You just get it," Call said, amused. The man was so green it was almost painful to see. Call couldn't help thinking what a time his old friend Gus McCrae would have had with Mr. Brookshire.

Gus would have joshed him within an inch of his life.

No doubt he could have thought up diseases far more frightening than the Texas itch.

"Well, I don't want it," Brookshire said.

"I don't want to take you off and get you killed, either," Call said. "Can you shoot?" "I can point a rifle, fairly well," Brookshire said. "I learned that much in the War, but then they made me a medical orderly. I haven't pointed a rifle since." "How long since you've ridden a horse?" Call asked.

"My experience with horses is mostly limited to horse cabs," Brookshire admitted. "I may not have personally ridden a horse myself in a fair number of years.

"I did sit on a camel once," he remembered. "It was at the Hippodrome. It was the Colonel's birthday." "What's the Hippodrome?" Call asked.

"It's a show place," Brookshire said.

"Buffalo Bill has performed there–I've seen him three times. I even saw old Sitting Bull. The Colonel has met Buffalo Bill, and Sitting Bull too, I expect." Call said nothing.

"Have you met Mr. Cody?" Brookshire inquired, feeling a little uneasy. Stern as the Captain could be when he spoke, he was even more stern when he kept silent.

"I've not had the pleasure," Call said, dryly. He considered Cody a show-off and braggart. No doubt he had killed a number of buffalo, but any man with a gun and a reasonably good aim could have killed a number of buffalo back when there were millions of them. Once, while in El Paso, Call had seen a picture of some of the Indians who worked in Cody's show. The Indians were Sioux, and they were playing baseball. Call supposed, when he reflected on it, there was no reason why Sioux Indians shouldn't play baseball. What else did they have to do? There was no reason why they shouldn't be paid money to race around a ring and pretend to rob stagecoaches, either. Cody was clearly a man of some enterprise; he figured out that people who had never seen a free Indian, much less fought one, would pay money to watch such things.

There might be no harm in it, but it didn't cause him to be eager to make the acquaintance of Bill Cody, or of Sitting Bull, either.

"Anyway, the Colonel insisted that I sit on the camel and get my picture took," Brookshire said. It had been innocent enough–just a birthday party at the Hippodrome– but Brookshire felt merely mentioning it had taken him down a notch in the Captain's estimation. He didn't suppose he had ever occupied a very high place in the Captain's estimation, but he couldn't afford to drop many more notches.

"You can't ride and you don't know whether you can shoot," the Captain said, in a tone that was not unkind. "Your hat blows off every few minutes, and the heat don't suit you. We may have to cross a desert or two, to catch Joey Garza. We may never catch up with him, and if we do he might shoot us both." "Shoot you?" Brookshire said, surprised.

"Why, I don't expect he could shoot you." "He might," Call said. "He's said to be a notable shot." "But you've got a reputation," Brookshire said. "The Colonel wouldn't have hired you, otherwise." "There's one sure thing about my reputation, Mr. Brookshire," Call said. "It won't stop a bullet. That's why I'd rather not take you with me. I don't want to take you off and get you killed." "Killed?" Brookshire said. "Why would I get killed?" It occurred to Brookshire that the heat might have affected his hearing. He had worked for the railroad for many years, but never before had the question of dying arisen. Accountants didn't get killed, not even traveling accountants such as himself. During the worst troubles in the Chicago yards, he had still rested comfortably in a hotel room at night and had even allowed himself a nip of brandy now and then.

"Killed or not, the Colonel expects me to go," Brookshire repeated, in a voice that wavered a little.

"Try him with the Texas itch, while I inspect these horses," Call said. "You'll have ample time to send your telegram." Brookshire did send a telegram. He didn't mention any disease or disability, for that might only cause the Colonel to put him out to pasture. After much thought and a few trial runs, he whittled his telegram down to a sentence and a query:

Captain Call unwilling to take me on the expedition. Stop. Advise.

Brookshire.

The reply was immediate, and also brief:

Insist that you accompany Call. Stop. No compromises entertained. Terry.

Brookshire showed the telegram to Call, just before they set off to collect Bolivar. Call looked at it and handed it back to him.

"I'll compromise, if he won't," Call said. "I'll try you as far as Laredo. You can help me watch Bol. Sometimes he wanders off, in the night. You can ride one of the spare horses." "Could I have a gun?" Brookshire asked.

"What kind of gun?" Call asked.

"A rifle, I guess," Brookshire said.

"Or a shotgun, and a few pistols. I believe I'd feel more comfortable if I was armed." "Help yourself," Call said. "There's a hardware store right across the street. I've got to see a blacksmith and buy some extra horseshoes. I'll see if I can locate you a saddle, while I'm at it. I'll be ready in thirty minutes." Call arrived back thirty minutes later, riding one horse and leading two more plus a pair of mules, to find that Brookshire had equipped himself with two large Colt revolvers, a Winchester, and an eight-gauge shotgun.

"Good Lord," Call said. "What do you expect to do with an eight-gauge shotgun?" "Well, the fellow in the hardware store recommended it," Brookshire said, defensively. He had been proud of his big shotgun, but now the Captain was looking askance at it, and his confidence began to sag.

The Captain picked up the gun and hefted it to his shoulder a time or two.

"It'll take a whole mule, just to carry the shells," he remarked, handing the shotgun back to Brookshire.

"The man said it would be useful for self-defense," Brookshire said.

"I can't dispute that," Call said. "It'll kick you into next week, but if you survive the kick, you probably won't have to worry much about the enemy." "The revolvers are the newest model," Brookshire said, unhappily. The sense that he was totally unfit for what he was about to do struck him with renewed force. But the die seemed cast. Captain Call had turned away, and he was methodically strapping baggage onto one of the pack mules.

From there they went to retrieve the old Mexican who was out of his mind. By the time the full heat of the day arrived, they had left the last mud hovel behind and were headed across a dusty, thorny plain toward the Mexican border. The horse that had been chosen for Brookshire was a thin sorrel named Dob.

"I don't understand the name," Brookshire said, wishing the beast's spine weren't so thin. He had expected his saddle to afford him more comfort than it did.

"It's just a name," Call said. "Maybe he was named after a dirt dobber, but that's just a guess." Brookshire was wondering if Colonel Terry would honor the bill for Dob. The horse had cost eighty-five dollars, a vast sum in Brookshire's mind. What if Colonel Terry had only meant to allow him a sixty-dollar horse? Where would the difference come from?

Call had insisted that Brookshire dispense with the fedora and buy a proper felt hat. He had also insisted on equipping him with rough clothes, boots, even chapaderos, the leggings that were necessary in the brush country near the border.

The result, Call had to admit, made the man look ridiculous, not only in his eyes, but in the eyes of almost everyone who saw him. Somehow, his Yankeeness was more potent with the clothes–he looked like nothing so much as a New York accountant who had been forced to assume a costume that was completely out of keeping with his nature.

Brookshire himself had felt quite self-conscious in his new clothes, but once they rode out of San Antonio, he found that how he looked was the least of his worries. His new hat seemed to weigh several times as much as his beloved fedora. He had not considered the fedora beloved until he tried the new hat, which, besides being heavy, fitted him so tightly that it gave him a headache. The heat didn't help his headache, nor did the boots help his feet.

"They squeeze, don't they," Brookshire said, but Captain Call looked as if he had no idea what Brookshire could be talking about. The Captain's boots apparently didn't squeeze.

To Brookshire's surprise and dismay, sitting on Dob was somewhat like sitting on a saw. The horse was very lean, and the saddle narrow and hard. Though his head hurt and his feet hurt, and he felt that within a few miles he would probably be sawed in two, none of these discomforts was as troubling to Brookshire as the nature of the country they were traveling through. He had not supposed there could be country so bleak and inhospitable anywhere in the American nation. The ground was covered with flat cactuses; the Captain called them prickly pear. There were also thick, gray thornbushes called chaparral, interlaced amid the equally thorny mesquite.

Several times they encountered rattlesnakes, which buzzed alarmingly. Though it was only midafternoon, Brookshire was feeling tired. But looking at the ground beneath him, he had a hard time imagining where he was going to sleep.

The one thing he didn't expect he would have to fear was a chill. The sky was not like the skies of home. It was vast, and instead of being blue, it was white, not with cloud but with heat.

Captain Call was not satisfied with the behavior of one of the mules. The beast was skittish. He jumped around so much that the Captain was finally forced to get down and lash the baggage more securely.

"Do snakes crawl around at night?" Brookshire asked.

"That's when they hunt," Call said. "I'm sorry I chose this mule." The mule, as if annoyed by the comment, tried to bite Call, who whacked him on the nose with a glove.

"I expect I'd better replace him in Laredo," Call said. "I'm glad Bol's calmed down. He usually does, once we get moving." Indeed, the old Mexican seemed much calmer. Once in a while, he muttered something in Spanish, but his eyes were dreamy, and he seemed happy to be on a mule.

Brookshire found that, despite the many discomforts and the prospect of a thorny sleep, he was not entirely discontented. The clothes took some getting used to, particularly the boots. He was sweating so much that Katie would probably divorce him on sight, in her shock at discovering that he contained such reservoirs of sweat.

Still, it was an adventure, the first of his life, unless you counted the War; but he had been so young and so scared during the War that he couldn't enjoy himself.

Now, though, he was riding out of San Antonio, bound for Mexico, with the famous Captain Call. They were going in search of a dangerous Mexican bandit, Joey Garza. It might be uncomfortable, but it was exciting, too.

He owned four guns, and they were loaded. He was on his own in the West–on his own, except for Captain Call. Colonel Terry couldn't find him to yell at him. He couldn't even yell at him by telegram, not for a while. The Captain had said it would take about three days to reach Laredo. Brookshire felt that he would be an accomplished horseman by the time they got there.

Perhaps he would be an accomplished shot, too.

That night, to his surprise, he slept heavily, so heavily that if any snakes crawled over him, he didn't notice.

Breakfast was only coffee. The Captain suggested that Brookshire familiarize himself with his guns by loading them and unloading them a few times, to learn the mechanisms. While the Captain was making coffee, Brookshire did just that. The eight-gauge was the easiest. All he had to do was open the breech and stuff two of the big shells into the barrels.

"Hold it tight, if you ever shoot it," the Captain said. "I doubt either one of those mules could kick as hard as that gun." "I don't believe I'll shoot it," Brookshire said.

Indeed, he had no intention of ever shooting the big gun, not unless he was heavily besieged.