though he knew that he himself had a reputation for being a fair rival to Goodnight, in that area.
'Eleven thousand eight hundred and fourteen cattle,' Goodnight said, without hesitation.
'That was four herds. I counted them into a holding pasture in Pueblo, Colorado, the last time I made the trip. It should have been eleven thousand eight hundred and forty-eight. We lost thirty-four head, or rather, Bill Starr did.
I entrusted him with the second herd, which was a mistake. I like Bill, but he was deficient in a sense, and he still is.' 'Those sheep would have been hell to count, once they burst,' Call said.
Goodnight had driven a wagon into Clarendon, to bring back some groceries and a few posthole diggers, and Call, riding a horse that in Goodnight's opinion, was beneath his standards, fell in with him on the return trip.
Joey Garza had just robbed his third train, killing five people, all of them white. But Goodnight was not thinking of the young killer on the border. He was still thinking about human incapacity.
'Do you think a man can acquire sense, or would he have to be born with it?' he asked Call.
'Sense?' Call asked. 'Cow sense, or weather sense, or what kind?' 'I thought I was asking the questions,' Goodnight said. 'You're known to be direct--just be direct.
Are you born with sense or do you acquire it, a little at a time?' 'I didn't know much when I was twenty,' Call replied. 'I believe I make better decisions now.' 'I thought your best decision was to take that herd to Montana,' Goodnight said. 'It was bold, because the Indians weren't whipped. They got your partner and they might have got you. But it was a good decision, anyway. Montana was there waiting.
It needed someone to come and put a herd in it.' Call said nothing. The man was tactless, to bring up Montana. Goodnight and virtually every adult in the West, if they were interested in the cattle trade, knew what a failure his Montana venture had been.
'It might have been smart if I had known how to run a ranch,' Call said, finally. 'I didn't. Gus was able. He could run pretty much anything. But he died before we got started. The whole venture was a total failure.' 'I don't see it that way,' Goodnight said.
'Well, it wasn't your ranch,' Call pointed out.
'No, it wasn't my ranch, but I hate to see you thinking like a banker,' Goodnight said.
'From a banker's point of view, all my ventures have been failures, including this one I'm venturing now, this Palo Duro ranch. The lawyers will take it away from me, before I'm dead. Lawyers and bankers are like shit beetles. They'll finally carry off everything I've built up, like they carried off your ranch up above the Yellowstone.
'I would have liked to see the Yellowstone-- I've heard it's mighty fine country, up there,' he added. 'If I could get around like I used to, I'd ride up to the Yellowstone, just to be able to say I'd seen it.' 'You ought to go--it is fine country,' Call said.
Goodnight rode in silence for several miles. He had to pop his little team of mules hard with the reins to get them to pull the wagon up the bank once they forded Cow Creek.
'I'm no student of the ledger sheets,' he said, a little angrily, once they left Cow Creek behind.
Call found Goodnight's way of talking hard to follow. They hadn't been talking of banks or ledger sheets. What did the man mean?
'Bankers live by ledger sheets,' Goodnight informed him. 'They decide you're a failure if your balance hits zero, or if you can't pay your note. You're a damn fool for thinking like a banker.' 'I don't think like a banker,' Call assured him. 'I don't even have a bank account.' 'It was a bold thing, driving that herd to the Yellowstone,' Goodnight said. 'You went right through the Sioux and the Cheyenne. It was a bold thing.
You ought not to let the bankers tell you you're a failure because you went broke. I've been broke nine times in my life, and I may be broke again, before I'm through. But I've never been lost, day or night, rain or shine, and I ain't a failure.' 'I wonder if Roy Bean knows anything about the Garza boy?' Call asked.
'He might,' Goodnight said. 'He's got a good eye for thieves, that's because he's tight.
Roy Bean would hang a man over a fart, if he didn't like the smell.' Call found the conversation tiring. He had only fallen in with Goodnight to be sociable; after all, he was the man's guest. He trotted ahead for a bit, thinking about the seven hundred and twelve dead sheep. He had seen the bones of the Comanche horse herd, the one Colonel MacKenzie had destroyed. But those were just bones, cleaned by the winds and the sun. Seven hundred dead sheep crammed into boxcars was a different story.
'If I was the railroad I expect I'd just burn those boxcars,' he said, when he dropped back even with Goodnight.
'Would you accompany me, if I decide to make that trip to the Yellowstone?' Goodnight asked, as they rode up to his barn.
'No, you'll have to find other company, if you go,' Call said. 'I'd rather be shut of Montana. You can't miss the river, though.' 'I told you I've never been lost, day or night,' Goodnight said. 'I can generally locate a river.' 'I expect so, I don't know why I said it,' Call replied. The man was a famous plainsman. Of course he could find the Yellowstone River.
'I am not good at conversation, goodbye,' he said, but Goodnight was already unloading the posthole diggers, and didn't answer.
Brookshire knew the minute he walked into the telegraph office in Laredo that there was trouble-- big trouble. No fewer than seven telegrams awaited him, all from Colonel Terry. Two telegrams from Colonel Terry was so unusual that it usually meant war had been declared.
Brookshire had never expected to be unlucky enough to receive seven at one time. And yet it had occurred, in the hot town of Laredo.
'Ain't you gonna open them?' the old telegraph clerk said. His name was Johnny Whitman and he had been a telegraph operator on the border for twenty-nine years.
Never before had he received seven telegrams for one person, only to have that person refuse to open them and share the excitement. Perhaps there was a war. Perhaps troops were on their way from San Antonio with orders to kill all the Mexicans. If that was so, and Johnny Whitman hoped it was, there would be rapid business for
