weigh the pros of a given matter against the cons. Usually he would keep on weighing the pros and cons for several weeks, or even months, until one day Lorena would have had enough of his procrastination. She would whirl and make the decision herself, annoyed that she hadn't gone on and made it weeks before.
She was at such a point with the Captain. He was only just barely alive. His leg was ruined. Either she had to carry him on and hope she found a doctor before he died, or she had to cut.
Without speaking to Call again, she made her decision--she'd cut. She grasped his thigh with her left hand to hold it steady, and she cut.
Call moaned; he was too weak to manage a scream. He was in a hazy, hot state. He moaned twice, and then boiling red water seemed to settle over him.
Lorena was glad he was unconscious. She didn't want him looking at her with his feverish eyes while she labored to remove his leg. It was labor, too; the hardest, apart from childbirth, that she had ever done. In no time it seemed she had blood to her elbows. The knife became slippery, so slippery that Lorena had to wipe off the handle several times. The flesh cut, but the bone was unyielding. She sawed and sawed, but it seemed that she was only scraping the bone. The Captain was bleeding heavily again, and it seemed to Lorena that he must be almost drained. He might be bleeding to death even, as she cut.
Lorena became desperate. She began to saw with both hands, bearing down on the knife as hard as she could. Blood ran so thick that she couldn't see the groove where she had the knife. Her arms were weary up to the shoulders from pressing and sawing.
Once when she paused just a moment, the Captain rolled over. She had to turn him back and then wash the blood out and find the cut in the bone. She began to hate the blood: it was everywhere--on her, on her dress, on the Captain's shirt. It made the knife so slippery she couldn't hold it in the groove. She wanted to take a rock and smash the leg off somehow. Her shoulders ached, and a pain shot down her back from the effort of bearing down on the knife. She remembered Clara, and how she had worked when they were pulling a foal out of a young mare. Clara's arms would be red to the shoulder from reaching into the mare to turn the foal. She would go home bloody from her shoulders down, but she never quit and she rarely lost a foal. Lorena knew she couldn't quit, either. She had started and she had to finish. She sawed on and on, though she had little hope that she would succeed or that the Captain would live.
Then Lorena realized she was sawing dirt. It was dirt as soaked with blood as she and the Captain were, but it was dirt. The leg was off. Lorena was so exhausted that she couldn't move. She knew she would have to tear up a dress to make a bandage, for it was all she had. But she was too weak to move.
She didn't know what to do with the severed leg. She had cut it off, but she didn't want to touch it or even look at it. She didn't want to bury it or be near it. What she had done had been too hard. It had brought her so close to death that the thought of death was comforting. She had known that feeling before--life could be so harsh that the thought of death seemed to offer the only comfort. It wasn't good to be so close to death, because death might suck you in. She got to her feet finally, and walked away a few steps to be farther from the Captain.
She felt she wanted to be away from him and away from what she had done.
She walked some distance from the fire and sat down on a large rock. She was covered with the Captain's blood. She didn't know if he was even alive, and she would soon have to go find out. But for a moment she needed to stay apart, for if she didn't she might lose her mind. She had come so close to death that she had forgotten everything else, forgotten that she was a married woman with children to raise. She had to stay apart to remember who she was and what her life was.
She had to remember her children and her husband. She had to pull back from the place of blood and killing.
Lorena sat for nearly an hour, feeling empty. She knew the Captain might be dying-- bleeding to death as she sat--but she could not do a thing about it. She had done what the man had asked.
Most of her life she had struggled to do what some man asked, but she was through with that. She could do no more. Only Pea Eye, her husband, didn't ask her for things she had to strain to do. Pea Eye never asked for anything. Sometimes it irritated her that he asked for so little.
But when she calmed down some, what she felt was a great longing to see Pea, her husband. She needed to see him. Once she found him, then she could rest.
When Lorena stood up again, she found that she had hardly any strength in her legs. It was hard even to walk back to the campfire, but she did.
Captain Call was still alive and still unconscious. She didn't want to touch the severed leg. She pushed it away with a stick, tore up her spare dress, and bandaged Call's wound as best she could. Then she saddled the horses and packed the few things there were to pack. She went to the little creek and filled all the canteens, moving very slowly. She seemed to have no strength.
Getting the Captain on the horse was going to be hard. She began to wish he would just die, so she wouldn't have to bother. Lifting him was very hard, but the Captain roused a little once he was in the saddle.
He steadied himself, though he didn't speak and didn't seem to know where he was. Lorena was not sure he even realized she had cut off his leg.
The leg lay by the smoldering campfire where Lorena had pushed it. Captain Call's boot was still on it. Lorena started to mention the boot, but what good was a boot if you didn't have the leg?
She felt wrong; probably she should bury the leg. But she was too tired, too tired to bury it, or even to mention it. She barely had the strength to tie the duffle to her saddle. Pulling herself into the saddle was hard. When she reached over to take Blackie's reins, she felt a great urge just to put her head down on the horse's neck and go to sleep.
'We go south,' Call barely whispered. He saw that Lorena was exhausted. He felt a throbbing pain, but it was less sharp than it had been.
'Captain, I left your leg,' Lorena said, as they were starting.
Captain Call didn't hear, and didn't answer.
The morning after Deputy Plunkert ran away in his grief Famous Shoes, who had been squatting by the fire napping a little, heard the approach of a stumbling horse. Olin Roy had risen early and departed. Olin had never been one to stay in camp very long.
Brookshire was already awake. Even though he was very tired, the cold was so intense that he generally
