'If the moon had been shining, he might have seen where he was going, but it was dark.' 'How about Ted?' Pea Eye asked.
'He is dead,' Famous Shoes said. 'I buried him. I only had my knife to dig with, or I would have been back sooner.' 'Good Lord, he fell that far?' Pea Eye said. 'It must have been a high bluff.' 'No, the fall only broke his hip,' Famous Shoes said. 'Some vaqueros came along and shot him and took his clothes. I found this belt, though. I think they dropped it.' Though the fire was blazing, Brookshire felt cold. A man who had been with them for weeks, who had been sitting around this very campfire on the night before, was now dead. He had run off in grief over the cruel death of his wife and now was dead himself, of a circumstance almost as cruel.
'He had a broken hip, and yet they shot him?' Brookshire said. 'Who would shoot a man with a broken hip?' 'I think they were just vaqueros,' Famous Shoes said, again. 'They were probably poor.
Their horses weren't shod. There were four of them, I didn't recognize their tracks. I think they were just vaqueros from the south. They probably wanted his guns and his saddle. I don't know if he was willing to give them up. He shot one time with his rifle--here is the empty cartridge. They killed him and took his clothes. Then they went south.' 'All his clothes?' Brookshire asked.
Both Famous Shoes and Pea Eye looked at him as if he had asked a very foolish question.
'We ought to get a ways along tonight,' Pea Eye said. 'Those vaqueros might decide they want some more horses and guns. They might come back.' Famous Shoes was annoyed by his friend's ignorance. Hadn't he just said that the vaqueros had gone south? He had tracked them for two miles to make sure.
'We can camp anywhere,' he said. 'Those vaqueros are gone.' Brookshire didn't mention the deputy's clothes again, but he had his own view--and his view was that he preferred to imagine the deputy's dead body fully clothed. The man had come on a trip for nothing, lost his wife in cruel circumstances, and then had been murdered himself in circumstances just as cruel. Deputy Plunkert had been a skinny fellow, and it was cold. Of course a dead man would not feel the cold, but Brookshire still didn't like to think of that skinny white body laying naked in the cold night. In his mind, he dressed Deputy Plunkert in the clothes he had been wearing when he rode sobbing out of the camp. Pea Eye and Famous Shoes were men of the West, and no doubt they were used to such harsh sights.
But Brookshire, an accountant from Brooklyn, was not.
Joey was surprised and a little disappointed at how easily Captain Call had let himself be shot. He was still testing the range of the German rifle, and he had thought the Captain might be a man he should try to kill from the limits of the rifle's range.
He had followed Call from the day he left old Bean's. Within an hour of hanging the judge, Joey was on Call's trail and never lost it. He didn't come too close to the man, though. He held about ten miles back; even so, it was soon apparent that Call knew he was being followed. From tracks, Joey saw that he doubled back several times, both day and night, hoping to surprise him or at least pick up his tracks. If Call had doubled back a few miles farther, he would have picked up Joey's tracks, of course--no one could travel and leave no tracks at all.
The Captain only doubled back some five or six miles. He was after Mox Mox and his seven men, and evidently felt that he had no more time to spare for the one man who was following him, if it was one man.
Joey thought it impressive that the old man sensed he was being followed. Call had tried four times to pick up signs of his pursuer. It showed that he wasn't a fool. Joey was hanging far back on the day Call attacked Mox Mox.
Joey heard the shooting, but from very far away and faint; it could have been hunters shooting.
But he followed, and then inspected the little battle site. It was evident that Captain Call was not an especially good shot. On the other hand, he had attacked eight men and killed six of them. Also, he had wounded at least one of the men who had escaped. He was not a particularly good shot, but he was willing to fight and he fought successfully.
When he left the scene of the fight, Joey decided to follow Mox Mox rather than Call.
It was evident that Call was going to Fort Stockton. His trail could be picked up a little later.
But Joey only had to track Mox Mox about three hours before he came upon his corpse, laying in a gully not far from a dead horse.
Probably old Call didn't even know he had killed the manburner, but he had killed him. Mox Mox would not be burning Rafael and Teresa. Joey would have to find another way to dispose of his brother and sister. If he couldn't find a rich man who would buy them for slaves--a rich man might consider them too damaged to make good slaves--he could take them to the mountains near his cave and leave them for the bears or the big gray lobo wolves. Or he could simply push them off a cliff. He meant to kill them, one way or another. Then his mother would know what he thought of her whoring. She would have to give him all her attention. She would wash his clothes and make them soft, and cook him tasty meals when he was in Ojinaga.
First, though, Captain Call had to be killed. He was old, but he could fight. He was to be respected, as John Wesley Hardin was to be respected. The Captain and the gunman were both men who didn't hesitate to kill. Before Joey hung old Bean, he had run into a vaquero from Chihuahua who told him that Call had beaten the hard sheriff, Doniphan, almost to death with a rifle. All the vaqueros on both sides of the river had lived in fear of the hard sheriff. He had been severe with everyone he ever caught.
Yet Call had easily beaten Doniphan.
Call was a man to be approached with attention and skill.
Joey lingered outside Fort Stockton for three days, waiting for the Captain to leave. He was afraid Call might take the train and escape. He didn't know whether he should risk robbing a train with Captain Call on it. He would not be able to keep the man in sight, but to lose sight of him would mean taking a large risk. With most lawmen, Joey thought, he could rob the train anyway and depend upon his own quickness. But with Captain Call, quickness might not be the most important thing.
Then Captain Call had left town with the woman. It surprised Joey greatly that old Call would need a woman. When people talked about Captain Call, women were never mentioned. Joey had supposed Call was a man like himself, one who didn't need women and who didn't like whores.
That the woman was a whore like his mother, Joey had no doubt. He would have liked it better if Captain Call had continued to travel alone.
Then he would have felt that he was stalking an equal. But no man who went with whores could be his equal.
