was cursed. He had lost his wife while on the trip, and now the same thing had happened to the young deputy, who should never have been hired in the first place. All Deputy Plunkert had done was ride pointlessly around Texas and Mexico, while his young wife was despairing and dying.
The search for Joey Garza was being pressed at a high price, and they hadn't come anywhere near the bandit yet. Now they were in Mexico, and Captain Call was in Texas. All that was being accomplished was that the wives were dying. He knew Pea Eye had a wife, too--when would the messenger appear to tell him that .his wife was dead? Pea Eye's wife was a schoolteacher, he recalled. What if the manburner eluded Captain Call, as Joey Garza had, and burned up Pea Eye's wife along with some of the schoolchildren?
Brookshire remembered all his happy years with Katie, and began to sob. Ordinarily, he didn't cry in front of people, but this time, as when he first received the news about Katie, he couldn't help it. Sobs shook his shoulders. It embarrassed Pea Eye and Olin, but Brookshire didn't care. He couldn't stop.
He was freezing, his wife was dead, and now the deputy's wife was dead. He was in a cold place, in a strange, forbidding country, hunting a bandit. How could it all have happened? He was an accountant in Brooklyn. Somehow a chain of events had got started, and now the events were less and less sensible, less and less like events that should be occurring in his life. For a week or two, he had enjoyed the adventure; he had even flourished. He mastered new skills, such as building fires. But the pleasure had all ended once he got the telegram informing him of Katie's death. Now it was all cold, fatigue, and pain. Where would it lead?
Brookshire remembered his first impression of Captain Call. He had felt that the man was too old for the mission he was charged with. He had looked too old that first morning in Amarillo.
Brookshire had quickly gained confidence in the Captain, but now it was beginning to seem that his confidence had been misplaced, and that his first impression had been accurate. The Captain had pursued no clear plan. He had let himself be distracted by another killer. They had ridden through Mexico and then through Texas, without coming even within a hundred miles of Joey Garza, as far as he knew. It didn't add up, and Colonel Terry would be quick to point out how erratically things had been managed.
But there was more at work than just cold and inconvenience and tactical mistakes. At home, behind them, the wives were dying.
'How far is it back?' he asked. He felt that he was in the grip of a sickness of some kind. He was in a place where nothing was rational and civilized, as it had been in Princeton College, or as it was in Brooklyn. He was in a place where people killed regularly, where killing was a day-to-day part of life. Of course, there were killings in Brooklyn, but very few. In Texas and Mexico, killing seemed to be almost constant. Brookshire had the feeling that he might go crazy if he didn't get back to a place and a form of life that were more familiar.
'Back where?' Pea Eye asked. He saw that the man was upset. Deputy Plunkert's departure had startled them all. It was terribly bad luck that Deputy Plunkert had to receive such news when he was hundreds of miles from home.
The fact that it was rat poison that had killed his wife, not to mention what had happened with the sheriff, were facts that Pea knew must be hard to bear. If anything like that happened to Lorena, he himself would start racing off in the night, ready to shoot the first man he saw.
But he was not in a position to take Mr.
Brookshire back to anywhere. They had to go on to Presidio, where the Captain expected them to be. That was a clear order.
'I expect we'll get to Presidio in about three days, if we don't have trouble,' he said.
Brookshire didn't answer. He scooted closer to the fire and sat with his hands held over the flames. He was shivering and crying.
Famous Shoes didn't enter into the white men's talk. He was beginning to tire of white men, something that had happened often in his life. They pursued their business in strange ways, and got upset about things he didn't grasp. He had begun to doubt that he would stay with Pea Eye long enough to find his wife. He would like to learn about the tracks in books, but he was old, and the white men's habits were boring. Now one of the men had run off into the night, like a crazy thing. There were only two white men left; if he tracked Joey Garza for these two men, Joey would immediately kill them both. Famous Shoes thought he might tell his friend Pea Eye that his wife could teach him about the little tracks in the spring, when he went traveling on the Rio Rojo.
Famous Shoes didn't think Joey was in Mexico, and he was getting bored. He thought he might leave in a day or two and go back to the Madre. Eagles were more interesting than white men. It would be more interesting to go home and watch the eagles for a while.
Goodnight was coming across the sand through the sandhills when he saw a solitary rider coming from the south.
Crow Town was fifteen miles to the west; he could see a speckling of crows in the sky when he looked toward the winter sunset.
Coming across this particular stretch of country awakened quite a few memories. Until he noticed the rider Goodnight had been lost in revery, for he was crossing his own trail, the trail he and his old partner, Oliver Loving, had laid out many years before. In fact, he was on the exact spot where they had rested the cattle on the second afternoon of their ninety-mile waterless drive. A horse had died inexplicably, while they were resting. He had cut into the horse in an effort to determine what had killed it, but his work was to no avail. The horse had just died.
Goodnight had not expected to be crossing the trail so many years after Oliver Loving's death, and at dusk on a cold winter night to boot.
But so it was.
If the rider he glimpsed was headed for Crow Town, he was likely to be the sort of man it would behoove a person to avoid. On the other hand, once you started avoiding people, you were apt to lose a lot of time. Even in the remote stretches along the Pecos River, a surprising number of people were apt to turn up.
Decisions as to whether or not to go around a particular traveler needed to be made almost constantly.
Going around people had never been Goodnight's practice, and he decided he was too old to change. It was nearly dark, and the weather bleak; he was almost upon the man before he could make out much about him. When the rider was only thirty yards away, Goodnight saw that it was John Wesley Hardin. A second later, Hardin hailed him.
'Why, Charlie, dammit, you're out late,' Hardin said.
