Now he had to go to Mexico and kill Call's men. They had come after him in his own country and he meant to see that such effrontery cost them their lives. After he killed them he thought he might go to Ojinaga, though he didn't intend to let anyone in the village see him when he got there.
Once he got home, it would be Rafael's and Teresa's turns to die. He thought he might steal a horse and then tie them on the horse.
He could take them to his cave for a while to tease them. The idea of throwing his brother and sister off a cliff had begun to appeal to him. He would take them to his cave and see how he felt about it then.
The day after Lorena amputated his leg, Captain Call developed a fever so high that Lorena felt sure he would die. She had nursed five children through many fevers, but in the very young, fevers came and went like clouds in the skies. As the children grew older, high fevers were more serious-- Captain Call was an old man, and he was burning up. Even Lorena couldn't remember Georgie having fevers that felt as hot to the touch as Call's, and Georgie was prone to blazing fevers.
Call soon became incoherent. He mumbled, slumped over Blackie's neck. The leg bled, but not much. Lorena had used the last of her extra clothing for bandages, and she had no more cloth to make bandages with. She had no medicines with which to treat the fever. If Call died, he died. All she could do was keep pressing on, hoping to come to the river.
Lorena knew she was going in the right direction.
She could tell that from the sun. But she was in a big country where she had never been before, and she didn't know how to aim for the town. It could not be a very large town. The country rolled so that she knew she might not be able to see Presidio, unless she spotted it from the top of a ridge. Captain Call had said it was on the Rio Grande. That was all she knew.
She stopped twice and tried to get the Captain to wake up and look around. If he could only glance around, he would probably figure out where they were and correct her if she was off course.
He had mentioned that he had been over the country many times.
But Captain Call was lost in fever, more lost even than Lorena was in the vast country. She would have to keep going as she was going and hope to know which direction to turn when she came to the river.
They endured another cold night. Lorena was too tired to gather enough wood to see them through the night; the fire died well before dawn. She piled the heavy saddle blanket and all but one of the smaller blankets on the Captain, but it was not enough to keep him from shivering and shivering. Looking at him, so old and frail and sick, caused Lorena to feel pity but also puzzlement. What kept the man alive? Why didn't he just die?
The big bullet was still in him, close to his heart. His leg was gone, and the wound had not been treated. If it got infected, he would surely die. His arm was also terrible. She wasn't going to try to cut it off; she wasn't up to another amputation. Any of the three wounds might prove mortal.
Yet the man still breathed. He burned with fever, he couldn't talk, and couldn't see, yet he breathed. Even if she wrestled him onto his horse and got him to Presidio and they found a doctor, what could the doctor do? And what would there be left for him if he did live? He couldn't hunt men anymore. He wasn't a rancher. He didn't farm. He had lived all his life by the gun, and now no one would ever want him for his fighting abilities again. Better that he died--he wouldn't have this suffering, and he wouldn't have to live as an old cripple.
Call had done what Gus McCrae wouldn't do. He had given up his leg in order to keep his life. For years, Lorena had wished Gus had chosen to live, to live anyhow, and she had been angry with him because he hadn't. But now, seeing Call, she wasn't so sure.
Riding over the barren ridges, leading the horse with the sick, feverish, diminished man on it toward a destination she didn't know if she could even locate, made Lorena feel doubtful.
Gus might have taken the sensible option, after all.
He was the smartest man she had ever known, Gus McCrae. He had a fine, soaring imagination.
Gus had not been able to put his imaginings in writing, as Mr. Dickens and Mr. Browning could, but he could speak them and he had spoken them to Lorena in the months they had been together. Gus had been himself--a full man. He'd had his flaws, and Lorena knew them. He was selfish at times past believing, as selfish as Pea Eye was unselfish. Gus knew himself.
He knew how he wanted to be, and he had chosen in the critical hour not to accept being less.
Perhaps after all, Augustus McCrae had been right. But that was something Lorena could never know, not for herself and not for Gus. If Gus had lived, he would probably have married Clara; and if he had married Clara, Lorena would have had to take her heartbreak and go away with it. She could not have lived around their happiness. She might never have taken up her studies and never have been friends with Clara's girls. She would have left with her sorrow. She would never have married Pea Eye and would not have had her children. She would have drifted off, been an unhappy woman, and gone back to whoring, probably. By now she would be dead of discouragement. She would not have killed herself, but she would have found her way out of an existence that, without Gus, Clara, Clara's girls, or Pea Eye, would have become too heavy to carry.
The next morning, she saw the ribbon of river shining far ahead. But she saw no town. She had found the Rio Grande, but where was she, north or south of the town and the Rio Concho? She didn't know. When she tried to nudge Call out of his delirium, she failed again. He couldn't see, for his eyes were hot with fever.
Lorena crossed the river. She remembered that Call had said Pea Eye was half a day to the south. He had mentioned an old scout named Billy Williams who was staying in a little village in Mexico. The old scout might tell her the way or even lead her. Call had told her about Billy Williams before she cut his leg off. He must have known that he would be useless to her, even if he lived.
Lorena crossed the river and looked both ways. There was nothing to see in either direction but the gray land. She had hoped for a spiral of smoke or an adobe hut, but there was nothing.
The choice was a coin toss: Lorena had to choose between two emptinesses. She chose to go north, for no better reason than that she was right-handed. For six hours she led the Captain's horse north, feeling more and more despairing, more and more convinced that she had made the wrong choice. She became seriously frightened. She had eaten the last of the bacon that morning, and had only enough coffee for two more camps. If she didn't find a settlement or a dwelling soon, she would wear out and give up. Her nerves had not recovered from the amputation, and she was exhausted but unable to sleep. She could not get warm, no matter how close to the fire she slept, and she had troubling dreams about her children when she did sleep. They were vague dreams, and she could not remember them clearly, but in all of them her children were under threat. Laurie was sick, or a horse was running away with Clarie, or Georgie had fallen down a well.
