could hit it if he shot at it.
'Good Lord, I hadn't heard any of that,' he told Goodnight.
'You ought to have gone with your Captain,' Goodnight said bluntly. 'This is a time when he might need an experienced man.' 'Well, I swear,' Pea Eye said. He felt bad in his stomach, suddenly. Mr.
Goodnight was probably right. He should have gone.
'I guess the Captain will manage,' he said, guiltily.
'In my opinion, Woodrow Call is a fool, to be pursuing young killers at his age,' Goodnight said. 'I'm his age, and I ain't pursuing young killers.' Pea Eye was silent. His sense of guilt was swelling within him. He had become sick at his stomach, just from the weight of the old man's displeasure.
'Is he that dangerous, this boy?' Pea asked.
'The whole Comanche nation would take a year to kill thirty men, and that would be in a good year, too,' Goodnight replied, looking at Pea Eye solemnly.
Then, as if suddenly weary of his thoughts, or perhaps even of thinking, Goodnight set the gelding's foot down, and mounted him.
'There's always a time when you don't win,' he said. 'With me, it's lawyers. I've never won against any lawyer, not even the dumb ones. But lawyers just rob you legally. They don't shoot German rifles with telescope sights.' Pea Eye had met only two lawyers.
One of them lived in Quanah and had drawn up the deed when he and Lorena bought the farm.
'There's always a trip you don't come back from,' Goodnight said. He turned his horse, as if to leave, and then turned back again, stood up in his stirrups, reached in his pocket and found several coins, which he handed to the blacksmith.
'Were you just going to let me ride off without paying you?' he asked the young blacksmith.
'Yes, sir,' the blacksmith, Jim Peeples, replied. It would never have occurred to him to ask Charles Goodnight for money.
'Well, that would have been a damn nuisance,' Goodnight said. 'Then I'd have had to ride the whole way back to pay you. If you want to thrive in business, you better learn to speak up.' 'Yes, sir,' Jim Peeples said, terrified. He had never supposed Charles Goodnight would speak to him at all, much less lecture him. It was a little like being lectured by God, or at least, by the prophet Moses.
Jim Peeples was a Baptist. He read the Bible every night, and much of Sunday, too. He didn't really think he had a clear picture of how God looked, but he did think he could imagine the prophet Moses fairly accurately. In Jim Peeples's opinion, Moses had looked a lot like Charles Goodnight.
Goodnight looked down at Pea Eye. The man had made a remarkable walk, nearly a hundred miles, naked, through the Cheyenne country to find Call and bring him to where his wounded partner, Augustus McCrae, lay dying. It was a great thing, in Goodnight's view, that walk. Not too many men, in his experience, had achieved a great thing, even one. Very few ever achieved more than one, he knew. He had led men himself, many men. Men as faithful as Pea Eye had been to Call had served with him until they fell, and the best of them had fallen. Goodnight was a married man himself, but had no children. He had always wondered what it meant, to have offspring. How would it affect his leadership, his ability to go and keep going, his attitude toward the dangers of the trail? It hadn't happened, but he didn't suppose it would have simplified matters if he had. In a time of danger, he had sometimes thought of his wife, but he always thought of his men. He did not worry too much about his wife. He had never supposed himself to be a very good husband; he had always been too busy. His wife was an able woman, and would probably be happier with someone more settled, if something happened to him. But he had never had to worry about children, and the man who stood before him did have to worry about children.
'I suppose your wife don't like it,' he said.
'Don't like what?' Pea Eye asked. He was a little surprised to find himself in such a lengthy discussion with Charles Goodnight, a man known all over the West for his dislike of long conversations.
'You and Call,' Goodnight said. 'Divided loyalties don't appeal to women, not that I've noticed.' 'I ain't divided, I'm loyal to them both,' Pea Eye replied.
'That would be fine if Call was bunking with you,' Goodnight said. 'The fact is, he bunks with me, when he bunks, which ain't much. He sure don't bunk with you, though. Now, he's in Mexico, chasing a boy with a German rifle and a dern good eye, if he can shoot people at five hundred yards.' Pea Eye didn't know what to say.
Captain Call had been in danger much of his life, but Pea Eye, in the years he had been with him, had never really considered that the Captain might be killed. That was Goodnight's point, though--the Captain might be killed.
'You think Joey Garza could kill the Captain?' he asked.
'Yes, I do,' Goodnight said, and turned and rode away.
Pea walked back to the house with Lorena, after her apology. They had a good supper. The children were peaceful, for once. Lorena read the boys stories until they fell asleep. Little Laurie liked to listen to the stories, too; at least, she liked to listen to her mother's voice while her mother was reading. Her little eyes were so bright. She waved her hands but she was very quiet while Lorena read.
It was a fine evening, but in the middle of the night, Pea Eye woke with a start. He was shivering, as if with a chill. It seemed to him that death was in bed with them. When he had been trapped with Gus under the cutback in Montana, his death almost a certainty, he hadn't given it much thought.
He had too much to do, keeping alive, to worry about dying. Then, on the last day of the long, cold, hungry walk out, he had begun to feel that perhaps he was dead; in the dark of the last morning, he had felt that Deets, his friend the black cowboy, was walking beside him, guiding him. Deets was dead; if he was with Deets, he must be dead too.
But he hadn't been. Within a few hours, Pea Eye found the herd, and Deets, if he was there, went back to the place of ghosts.
Now, though, with Lorena beside him and their five children in the house near him, Pea Eye faced death as a thought and as a fact, in a way he never had.
