me. All three of her boys died. We got three boys. How would we be if all three of them died?' 'Oh, Lord, don't even mention it,' Pea Eye said. 'Let's get back in the house.' He felt chastened. Of course, losing children was worse than being half deafened in a fight; the thought of his children dying was not something he even wanted to let his mind approach. Lorie, as usual, was right. Life was hard for women, too, even though they didn't often have to go into battle.
'Clara has more to forget than I do,' Lorena said, saddened by her own statement and by the memory of Clara's kindness--and Clara's sadness, which, now that Clara was older and had seen her girls marry, only seemed to sit on her the more heavily, judging from the letters she wrote Lorena. At least Clara loved horses, and had her herd to work with.
'If I was to lose three children, I'd give up,' she told her husband. 'If I even lost one child, I might give up. But Clara lost all her boys, and she didn't give up. And everything she did for me she did after her grief.' 'I wasn't saying anything bad about Clara,' Pea Eye said. 'I guess if it hadn't been for her, we might not have come together, and I wouldn't have none of this. I'm obliged to Clara, and I always will be. I didn't have nothing but the clothes on my back, and she helped me. I ain't the kind of man who forgets the folks that helped him.
'It's just that Captain Call is one of the folks who helped me,' he said. 'Now he came asking for my help, and I didn't go. I can't not feel that's wrong, even though I know I'd feel wronger if I went.' 'Not wronger--more wrong,' Lorena corrected.
All of a sudden, without her wanting it or even expecting it, tears flooded her eyes, tears of anger and hurt. It would never be finished, the trouble over Call, not while the Captain was alive, it wouldn't.
'Go!' she said, vehemently. 'Go! I want you to. I'll never really have you while he's alive, and neither will the children. Go! And if you get killed, good riddance!' Pea Eye looked at her, stunned.
'I don't want to go,' he said. 'I told you why and I told the Captain why. Since we been married, I ain't really wanted to go.' 'Haven't really wanted to go!' she corrected him, again. 'Haven't!' Pea Eye just looked at her, bewildered.
He saw her tears and her anger, but didn't really understand that she was trying to correct his grammar.
'I didn't go,' he pointed out. 'I didn't go. I didn't want to, neither. It's just that I feel bad for the Captain. I can't help it.' Lorena turned away. It was a subject she was sick of. She didn't speak another word to Pea, before leaving for school. But the sad look in his eyes, when she and the children left, made her feel sorry all day, and as soon as she got home she went down to the barn, where she found him trying to straighten a horseshoe. He was not that good with tools, Pea wasn't. Clarie could often fix things that left Pea Eye at a loss.
But seeing him holding the shoe in his hand--it seemed to Lorena that he was just making it more bent-- touched her. He was not mechanical, or even very competent physically. It was a wonder he had survived, in a place where physical competence was so important. Yet his very lack of skill in areas where most frontiersmen excelled, moved her. It always had. Pea Eye was a man she could do things for, and he would let her do things for him.
He accepted her instruction gratefully, whereas most men she had tried to instruct, in even small, unimportant matters, had usually bristled and become angry; in some cases, even violently angry. But Pea Eye had no violence in him, and he surrendered meekly and tried to pay attention when she or Clarie was trying to show him how to do some simple task.
'I didn't mean that about good riddance if you didn't come back,' she said. 'I'm sorry I said it. I was just mad.' When Lorena apologized to him, which she did almost every time she got mad at him, and she got mad at him fairly often, Pea Eye felt even more unhappy. Lorena oughtn't to be having to apologize. In his eyes, Lorie was never wrong. If they disagreed, he was the one who was wrong. In the matter of the Captain, he had to feel doubly wrong: in relation to Lorena and his family, if he went; in relation to the Captain, if he didn't.
But this time, it seemed, he felt even worse.
The Captain had looked old, when they met by the train. In fact, the Captain was old. He oughtn't to be chasing bandits, at his age. Of course, ordinary bandits, of which there were a great many still running loose in the West, would give the Captain no trouble, even at his age.
It was just that the Garza boy didn't sound like an ordinary bandit. Pea Eye had run into Charles Goodnight while at the blacksmith's in Quitaque, and Goodnight had been startled to see him.
'Thought you went with Call to run down the Garza boy,' he said, looking gruff.
'No, my family's got too big,' Pea Eye said. Charles Goodnight was a stern fellow, even when he wasn't being gruff. Being even slightly in his disfavor was not comfortable.
'I've got a new little one, and my wife has to teach school,' Pea said, though he felt explanation was hopeless. All the good reasons he could muster for not going with the Captain weren't likely to be good reasons to Mr. Goodnight.
He would doubtless view them as the Captain had-- excuses, made by a man who had no stomach for conflict, anymore.
'I don't care to know the details,' Goodnight said, looking critically at the hoof of a horse that had just been shod.
'Well, the Captain went away, with the man from the railroad,' Pea explained. 'That's a young boy he's after. I doubt he'll give the Captain much trouble, the young ones never do.' 'You're scarce on your facts,' Goodnight said, lifting the hoof so high that the horse almost fell over. Goodnight was a big man. Though old, he could still lift most of a horse, if it was necessary.
'What facts?' Pea Eye asked. 'We don't hear that much news, out at the farm.' 'They estimate Joey Garza has killed over thirty men, and that's just the ones who've been found,' Goodnight said. 'There may be more who haven't been found and never will be found. He shoots a German rifle with a telescope sight. They say he can kill at five hundred yards, which is farther than most people can see. Half the line riders west of the Pecos may be dead, for all we know. Who's going to find a line rider, if he's shot fifty miles from the bunkhouse? Who would even miss one? Line riders don't come back half the time, anyway.' Pea had seen rifles with telescope sights. They had been available for many years.
But they were too slow for most of the rangering action, and so he had never fired one. The notion that a man could be killed at five hundred yards, other than by a freak shot such as the famous one Billy Dixon had made during the Adobe Walls fight, was difficult to grasp. Most of the killing he had seen had taken place at distances under thirty yards, and in many cases, under twenty yards. Five hundred yards was about the distance from Lorie's schoolhouse to the Red River. He himself could see a bull, or a buffalo, at that distance, but that didn't mean he
