But what if Joey was mortally wounded? If he brought his wounds to her, she would try to heal them, even though the lawman who had been hired to kill him, and the woman whose husband had wounded him, were both in her house. Joey was still her child.
In the morning, watching Lorena ride off with Billy Williams ahead of her, Maria wondered what the two travelers would find.
Famous Shoes said Joey had shot the deputy three times. Lorena might ride up the harsh river, only to find that the husband she had come so far to save was already dead. At times, Maria wondered if life would be so full of sadness had she been born in some other place.
Too much of the sadness of the world seemed to pass through Ojinaga, which, after all, was only a very small village. In cities there must be more sadness, because there were so many more people. She wondered how the people in cities could bear the weight of all the pain around them.
'I want to give him some frijoles. He needs to eat,' Teresa said.
'Who?' Maria asked. 'Your goat?' 'No!' Teresa replied, annoyed. 'I don't feed my goat frijoles. I mean the old man. I want to feed him.' 'He's very sick, I don't think he will eat,' Maria said. Call had awakened only once since the operation. He was very weak and had shown no interest in food.
But Maria was surprised, a little later, to see her blind daughter sitting by Captain Call's bed, feeding him tiny bites of frijoles with a spoon.
'I wish your husband had kilt Joey on the spot,' Billy Williams said, as he guided Lorena up the Rio Concho. He had led a safe life for the past few years, and he had forgotten the feel of danger. But he felt it that morning, as they rode through the gray country leading two extra horses: one for Pea Eye, and one for Mr. Brookshire's corpse.
Call had awakened as they were getting ready to leave. Lorena told him that he had killed Mox Mox, but the Captain didn't seem to be able to take in the information.
'Who was it?' he asked; most of the names in his head were vague. He knew he ought to be clearer, but he could not make his head sort out the names. His brain was a jumble of memories, and he could not sort them out, although once in a while one name would come clear.
Brookshire was one name that came clear. When Lorena told him that Brookshire was dead, Call felt such sadness that tears rolled out of his eyes. In his years as a Ranger, he had rarely cried at death, though he saw much of it.
But he could not stop himself from weeping about Mr. Brookshire, and he whispered a request about the body. He wanted it brought back so Brookshire could be buried decently.
Brookshire had died for the railroad, and the railroad ought to pay to bring him home to Brooklyn, the place he ought not to have left.
'It was my mistakes that led to it,' Call whispered, weakly. 'I let him come, but I didn't protect him, and Pea Eye couldn't, I guess.' That Pea Eye and not himself had been the one to wound Joey Garza was another thing that churned in his brain and would not settle itself clearly. Pea Eye had always been a corporal; now he was a hero, though he might not be alive to know it. He himself had failed, but Pea Eye had succeeded, or nearly; he had paid a price, but he had succeeded. It was strange knowledge. At moments he was proud of Pea, for he had gone a long way toward finishing the job that Call had started. Pea hadn't wanted to undertake it, and had been sent into danger with inadequate instructions and very little support; yet he had prevailed. Call tried to imagine the fight, but his brain wasn't working well enough. Three or four times as Lorena and Billy Williams were getting ready to leave, Call forgot about Pea Eye entirely and asked them where they were going. Then he remembered Brookshire, and he cried again. Lorena knelt by the bed where Call lay and tried patiently to explain about Mox Mox, but the Captain couldn't grasp it. She mentioned Charles Goodnight, and Call remembered him, but he could not get his mind around Mox Mox.
'The Indian said Joey was badly wounded.
Maybe he died,' Lorena said to Billy Williams.
'No, Joey ain't dead, or I wouldn't be this jumpy,' Billy Williams said. 'I don't get jumpy for nothing. Joey's here somewhere, and he's got his rifle. We better use what cover we can find.' Lorena wasn't frightened. She wanted only to find her husband. No killer was going to stop her now. Pea Eye wasn't far away. By the next day, she would have him back in Ojinaga, safe.
Famous Shoes had assured her several times that Pea Eye's wounds weren't mortal. Still, she wanted to hurry. She didn't want to arrive and find that the wounds had been more serious than the old Indian thought. She wanted to hurry, and she grew impatient with Billy Williams, who zigzagged from ridge to ridge and bush to bush.
Billy spent too much time looking around, when what they needed to do was hurry.
Billy knew Lorena was impatient, and he couldn't blame her. But Maria had put her in his care, and when Maria entrusted him with something or someone, he tried to do his best to carry the task through responsibly. Maria was not a woman who trusted lightly; Billy knew she had not had reason to trust, in view of the course her life had taken. Whenever she did repose trust in him, whether it involved watching her children or looking out for livestock on days when she was washing, he tried to do his best. He meant to bring Lorena back alive, and her husband, too. That meant watching as best he could for Joey Garza.
Worse than his apprehensions for Lorena and himself was the fear that Joey would slip around them and strike at Maria in their absence. He would probably strike at her by taking one of her children, as he had threatened to do; one of the children, or both of them. He might even attack his mother. Joey had always been devilish, but he had not always been what he had now become.
'I don't know why Joey went so bad,' Billy said to Lorena, as they rode. 'I guess he just went bad, and then got worse.' When Billy Williams talked to her about Joey Garza, Lorena's only thoughts were of Maria, the mother, and how terrible the knowledge must be that her child had turned out a killer. Lorena could muster no interest in the young outlaw. He had almost killed the Captain and had wounded her husband. The world was full of mean people; trying to explain why they were mean was a waste of time. Better to accept it and guard against it. In her years as a whore, it had been brought home to her over and over again, in varied and painful ways, just how mean some men were. Some were only mean enough to hit, but plenty were mean enough to do worse things. It was not a long road from a beating to a killing, in her view. She had known several men who had taken that road. The sooner all of them were dead, the better place the world would be. But it wasn't her husband's job to bring them to justice, not anymore.
Pea Eye was crouched in the creek when he heard the horses coming. He was nervous; it might be the
