Rafael, and he to her. Every morning he would milk his goats and bring the milk in a little pot for Lorena. Often she noticed Rafael peeking into Maria's old room, looking for his mother; she would see him searching for her outside, amid the goats and chickens and the few sheep; sometimes he would search by the river, where Maria had gone to wash their clothes.
It made Lorena sad, to see the boy looking so forlornly for his mother. He was a large boy, but sweet; his main problem was that he could not attend to himself very well. He was always spilling things on his clothes, or sitting down in puddles, or forgetting to button his buttons in the mornings.
'My mother isn't by the river,' Teresa told Lorena. 'She is among the dead. Rafael doesn't understand where the dead live.' 'I don't understand that too well, myself,' Lorena said. 'I know they're somewhere you can't see them.' Later, she felt bad about the remark. She had made it to a little girl who had never seen her mother.
'I dream of my mother,' Teresa said. 'I dream she is with me and my rooster.'
Billy Williams drove them to Fort Stockton, when Call was finally strong enough to make the trip. Billy knew a bartender in Presidio who owned a wagon he didn't need. He persuaded the bartender to lend it for the journey, promising to bring it back loaded with cases of whiskey.
'You ought to come with us to the Panhandle,' Pea Eye told him. He and Billy had become fast friends, during the period of Call's convalescence.
'Come to the Panhandle. I'll make a farmer out of you,' Pea Eye said.
'Nope, I imagine I'd miss Old Mex,' Billy replied.
Gordo, the butcher, was annoyed when the wagon pulled away. Lorena had allowed Rafael to bring two goats. Teresa had her rooster, and three hens. Gordo didn't care how many goats and chickens the gringos took away; he was annoyed because they took the little blind girl. She was almost as pretty as her mother had been, and soon she would be old enough to marry. Of course, she was blind; she might be a poor housekeeper, and she might not cook well. But he could cook for himself, and cooking and housekeeping were not the only things to consider. The butcher thought he might have liked to marry the girl, if the gringos hadn't taken her away.
Call hardly spoke during the wagon ride to Fort Stockton. He held on to the side of the wagon with his one hand. The bullet in his chest still pained him, and it pained him even more when he was jostled, as he was when they crossed the many gullies along the way.
Now and then they met travelers, cowboys mostly. Call dreaded such meetings; he dreaded being seen at all. Fortunately, though, the travelers weren't much interested in him. They were far more interested in Pea Eye. His victory over Joey Garza was the biggest thing to happen on the border since the Mexican War, and none of the cowboys were old enough to remember the Mexican War.
Pea Eye felt embarrassed by all the attention he was getting. What made his embarrassment even worse was that he was getting that attention right in front of the Captain. Pea Eye had always been just a corporal--it was the Captain who had killed Mox Mox and six of his men. He didn't feel right being a hero, not with the Captain sitting right there in the same wagon.
The Captain didn't seem to mind, though. He didn't even appear to be listening most of the time. But Pea Eye was still embarrassed.
'Mox Mox was worse than Joey,' Pea Eye told Lorena.
'Yes, he was worse,' Lorena agreed.
She started to tell her husband that she had been Mox Mox's captive, but she caught herself.
That had happened before Pea Eye was her husband.
He didn't need to know about it.
They rolled into Fort Stockton beside the railroad. When they came to the dusty, one-room station, they saw a private car sitting by itself on the track.
'I wonder what swell came in that?' Lorena said.
They soon found out. The stationmaster emerged from the little building with a short, white-haired man with a curling mustache and a quick, restless walk. The two came right out to meet the wagon, though by the time they got there, the white-haired man was twenty yards in front of the stationmaster.
'I'm Colonel Terry, I've come to look for Brookshire--why ain't he with you?' the white-haired man said to Pea Eye.
'He started with you, I know that much, because I ordered him to,' Colonel Terry said, before Pea Eye could think of a nice way to inform him that Mr. Brookshire was dead.
'It was a foolish order,' Call said. The Colonel's manner irritated him. Lately, Call had used his voice so seldom that what he said came out raspy.
'What's that? Who are you, sir?' the Colonel asked.
'I'm Woodrow Call,' the Captain replied. 'Your man's dead. Mrs. Parker brought the body out, at considerable risk to herself.
Mr. Brookshire's at an undertaker's, in Presidio.' 'Well, his sister's been raising hell, trying to get us to find him--so much hell that I came here myself,' the Colonel said. 'Did the man do his duty?' 'I reckon he did,' Pea Eye said.
'I wouldn't be here driving this wagon, if he hadn't bought that big shotgun.' 'If he did his duty, then his sister will get the pension,' the Colonel told them.
'It was a foolish order,' Call repeated.
'Brookshire was no fighting man, and he should not have been sent to chase bandits.' He looked at the Colonel and noticed a detail that had escaped him at first: the Colonel's empty right sleeve was pinned neatly to his coat.
'Now hold on, Call--I sent Brookshire to keep the accounts,' Colonel Terry said. 'You were the man sent to catch the bandit, and from the looks of you, you made a botch of it.' Pea Eye nearly dropped the reins. Never in his life had he heard anyone speak so bluntly to the Captain.
