'He was, but Maria took the whores and left,' Olin said. 'That's when Hardin left.
He likes places where there's whores.' After that, conversation lagged.
Brookshire couldn't think of a thing to say. He was wondering if the fire would last the night.
Olin thought the group was rather odd. In his years of travel, mostly in Mexico, he had grown used to having odd groups turn up--Englishmen or Germans, prospectors, gunrunners, schemers of various kinds.
But this group was Woodrow Call's posse, it seemed; they were the men who were after Joey Garza.
They seemed like harmless fellows, and it was difficult to believe that any of them were gifted manhunters. The Yankee mostly shivered.
Pea Eye was an old Ranger who should have retired from the business long ago. The other man Olin didn't know; he had introduced himself briefly, but had mumbled his name so low that Olin didn't catch it. Even with old Famous Shoes to track for them, there was little likelihood they would ever get within fifty miles of Joey Garza, and if they did, it would only be worse for them.
Joey had a cold nature. There was no accounting for it, either. His mother was generous and warm. But wherever he got it, Joey had a cold nature.
If the men did happen to stumble on him, Joey would make quick work of them.
'What's the news from down the river, then?' Deputy Plunkert asked. It seemed to him that he had been gone from his home for years. He suddenly had a hunger to hear the news from Laredo.
The large man had been down the river as far as Piedras Negras, and perhaps he had heard something from Laredo. A bank robbery or a lynching might have occurred since he left, or a store might have burned down, or one or two of the older, more famous ranchers might have died.
'I didn't stay in Negras long enough to gossip,' Olin said. 'Having Hardin in town makes me uneasy. He don't look like much, but he's a wild one.' 'Any news from Laredo?' Deputy Plunkert said. 'That's where I hail from.' 'Yes, they put that damn Sheriff Jekyll in his own jail,' Olin said. 'I hope they hang the rascal. There's no excuse for forcing a woman.' 'Bob Jekyll's in our jail?' Ted Plunkert said, very startled. 'I'd say that's news.' The first part of Olin's comment had startled him so much that he hadn't quite taken in the second part. The thought of Bob Jekyll locked in their jail was so astonishing that he hadn't yet started thinking about the nature of his crime.
'I guess some little gal came in asking about her husband, and the damned scoundrel forced her,' Olin said. He had seen an Apache girl forced once, during the Indian times, and the sight had sickened him. Over the years whenever he thought of it, it sickened him. He knew that Maria had suffered something like that about the time that Joey started killing. From time to time, he considered going to Texas and taking vengeance on her attackers.
The men who used the Apache girl had shot her when they were through. Maria hadn't been shot, at least. But the thought of her suffering troubled him whenever he remembered it. Maria was the only woman he had tender feelings for. She should be exempt from such abuse, and if he did encounter the cowboys who attacked her, he planned to take their lives.
Suddenly Deputy Plunkert got a bad feeling.
'A woman asking about her husband ...' he repeated. Who but Doobie, of all the young women in Laredo, would go to Bob Jekyll to ask about her husband?
'Do you recall her name?' he asked; of course, there were other young women in Laredo. Other husbands might have strayed. In fact, husbands strayed fairly often. Most of them just got drunk and fell in a ditch to sleep it off.
Maybe it was another woman with a stray husband, who Bob Jekyll had forced.
'Why, no,' Olin said. 'I don't recall hearing her name. The poor thing took rat poison and died. They're trying the sheriff for murder, but I doubt he'll hang, myself.' 'Oh, Lord!' Ted Plunkert said. Something gripped him more powerful than the cold: the fear that it had been Doobie. He had been Bob Jekyll's deputy until he'd quit and gone off with Captain Call. Who but the deputy's wife would be going to the jail to inquire?
'She died?' he asked, in a weaker tone.
To everyone's amazement, Deputy Plunkert suddenly sprang up and went stumbling over to the horses. He looked like a crazy man.
'It was my wife. ... I fear it was her ...' he said, and then he mounted and went racing off in the darkness, to the south.
'Now, that's bad luck,' Brookshire said.
'I believe I saw his wife as we were leaving Laredo. She was a pert young thing.' 'Ted oughtn't to run his horse at night, not in this rough country,' Pea Eye said. 'There's bluffs down the river that a horse could go right off.' 'I always despised that sheriff,' Olin said.
They heard the clatter of the deputy's horse, receding to the south. Olin felt embarrassed.
Inadvertently, he had informed a man that his wife was dead. He more and more regretted letting Famous Shoes talk him into joining the camp. Now he had been the bearer of tragic news. If he had just gone on and made his own camp, the poor deputy would still be in ignorance of the fact that he no longer had a wife. Boy, he wished he had made his own camp, and built his own fire! He did not like to cause trouble, and yet he just did.
'Why, that's the devil,' Brookshire said.
They could scarcely hear the deputy's horse.
What did the man think he was going to do, run the horse all the way to Laredo? It was hundreds of miles to Laredo. And what could he do when he got there? The poor young woman was no doubt long since buried.
Then Brookshire remembered that Katie, his own wife, was dead. Of course, her death had been normal; she had taken sick and died. There had been no abuse, and no rat poison. But still, his own wife was gone, and like Deputy Plunkert he would be returning to nothing, if he returned. The cold wind was blowing. It was always blowing.
Brookshire began to get a worse feeling even than the blowing-away feeling. It struck him that the expedition
