'Look after my children. Don't let anything happen to them.' 'Well, I won't,' Billy said. 'Are you armed?' 'No, I don't like guns,' Maria said.
'You ought to take my pistol. You'd be safer,' he told her.
'I don't want your gun, Billy,' Maria said. 'If I have a gun some man might take it away from me and beat me with it. I want you to stay here and see that Rafael and Teresa come to no harm.' But Billy persisted; finally, Maria took the gun. As she rode away on her spotted mare, Billy realized that she had called him by his name. That was a change. It had been several years since Maria had called him by his name.
When Bolivar saw the Captain, he began to cry.
'Capit@an, capit@an,' he said, sobbing. Call had grown used to it, since Bol cried every time he showed up. But Brookshire, meeting the old man for the first time, was embarrassed.
The place where the old man boarded was only a hovel made of mud, or of a mudlike substance, at least.
Soon Josefeta, the mother of the family that cared for Bolivar, was crying too.
'God sent you just in time, Captain,' she said, in a shaking voice. 'We can't have Bolivar with us, no more. Roberto has no patience with him.
He hits him.' 'Well, he oughtn't to hit him,' Call said.
'What's Bol done, to bring it on?' 'Last week he set himself on fire,' Josefeta said. 'Sometimes he cuts himself. In the night he cries out and wakes the children.' Call sighed. Bol's hair was snow white.
He was still crying and shaking.
'He needs a haircut,' Call said. The old man's hair was nearly to his shoulders, making him look shakier than he was.
'Last time we cut it he grabbed the scissors and tried to stab Ramon,' Josefeta said. 'Then he cut himself. I think he wants to end his life. It's a mortal sin.' Call had a good deal of respect for Josefeta. She had nine or ten children and a husband who was apparently none too nice. The money he paid her for keeping Bol was probably about all that kept the family going. He knew that dealing with the old man must be a trial, but he had not supposed it to be such a severe trial that they were considering putting the old man out.
Brookshire was appalled. The old man was sure to be an impediment to their travels, although the Captain had made it clear that they were only taking him as far as Laredo. Still, in Brookshire's reckoning, every minute counted. That was Colonel Terry's philosophy, too; of that there could be no doubt. The Colonel expected them to catch Joey Garza before he robbed any more trains, particularly any more trains that might happen to be carrying a military payroll. The military did not take kindly to having its money snatched. Hints had been received; the military let it be known that they might have to find other modes of conveyance if the young Mexican struck one more time.
One of Josefeta's little boys came around the house, leading Bolivar's mule. The boy had saddled it for him. It was with some difficulty that they managed to hoist Bolivar onto the mule's skinny back. The experience darkened Brookshire's mood even more. The old fellow could not even mount his own mule unassisted. But Captain Call seemed undisturbed. He was patient with Bolivar, and he gave the woman a nice sum of money for the trouble she'd had.
'I'm sorry for the trouble, Josefeta,' Call said. 'He's just old, and wandering in his mind. Maybe a little travel will improve his spirits.' As they got ready to depart, children began to gather around the old man and his mule. They seemed to be about half and half, boys and girls, and all were weeping.
'We don't want him to go, we love him,' Josefeta said. 'Only Roberto has no more patience. I'm afraid something bad will happen.' Brookshire had been worried all morning, but, as they made their way at a slow pace toward the outskirts of town, he found that the heat was so great it overwhelmed even his capacity for worry.
It was winter on the plains, but summer still in San Antonio. At night Brookshire lay in his little hotel room, as hot as if he slept in a box with a stove under it. His underclothes were soaked, his bedclothes soaked. He sweated so much that he awoke in a puddle. The hotel room had windows, but no breeze blew through them. All that came through them was mosquitoes, wasps, and other flying bugs. Each morning he woke up feeling more fatigued than he felt when he went to bed.
If the Captain was bothered by the heat, it didn't show. If he was bothered by anything, it didn't show. He had taken Brookshire with him to visit the sheriff of San Antonio. Call wanted to see if the man might have a reliable deputy he could spare.
'Mr. Brookshire represents the railroad,' Call said. He thought that was enough information to give out.
Being introduced as if he were Colonel Terry, or somebody important, perked Brookshire up briefly. It made him feel like a banker--he had often regretted that he hadn't become a banker. It was a breeze to his vanity, going around with the famous Ranger.
But long before evening came, Brookshire had sweated out his vanity. The one cheering thing he could think of was that his wife, Katie, wasn't along.
Katie disapproved of sweat. She considered it uncivilized. In her view, nice people didn't get drunk, spit in public, break wind, or sweat. On occasion, in the summertime, when the Brooklyn heat was at its most intense, Katie even denied him her favors in order to maintain her standards in regard to sweat.
Walking around San Antonio in the heat, or lying in his little box of a room at night, Brookshire had at least one thing to be grateful for: he and Katie weren't leading their conjugal life in south Texas. Feeling as she did about sweat, life would be bleak if they lived in San Antonio, where even the briefest embrace would be bound to give rise to a good deal of sweat.
A sheriff in the town, a young man much in awe of the Captain, had no deputies to spare, so the Captain spent the rest of the day looking at horses and pack mules, or choosing the equipment they would need on a journey up the river.
It was at this point that Brookshire gave the Captain a bad start. When Colonel Terry instructed his people to send the Captain a telegram, he meant, of course, to make it clear that Brookshire was to accompany him from beginning to end; that is, until Joey Garza was dead, or caught. The Colonel didn't spend money recklessly. Brookshire was a trained accountant. For more than twenty years, he had kept up with the Colonel's bills. The only bills he wasn't allowed to see were those that pertained to the Colonel's mistress, a mystery woman named Miss
