One of Brookshire's boots was rubbing his heel so badly that he wasn't capable of giving much thought to anything else. He was wondering whether he'd have a heel left, when they got to camp that night. Also, he was suffering from a touch of his blowing-away feeling again. He had supposed that he had that feeling well under control, for it hadn't afflicted him since they reached the brushy country around San Antonio. But they were not in San Antonio now. They were not in the brushy country, either. To his eye, Mexico looked even emptier than Texas, emptier, and more forbidding.
The night before, he had slipped over to Nuevo Laredo and purchased a few minutes with a Mexican girl, and the experience had been a disappointment. The girl had been inexpensive, but she had also been skinny and had a sad look in her eye during their brief commerce. The poverty in Nuevo Laredo had been a surprise to him too. He had read about Juarez, and Emperor Maximilian, and had expected at least a little splendor. Even in Canada, a country he disliked, there would occasionally be some splendor, at least in Montreal. But there seemed to be none, in Mexico. There were just sad women and children, and old men who gave him unfrly looks.
'You're buying their daughters, or it might be their wives,' Call had said, when Brookshire mentioned the unfrly looks.
Now the Captain was soliciting his opinion about Deputy Plunkert, and the fact was, Brookshire really didn't have one. The man had been a hasty choice, in his view, but that didn't necessarily mean he had been a bad one.
'It's your expedition, or your Colonel's,' Call reminded him. 'Do you think we ought to keep this man, or send him back?' 'Captain, I can't go home!' Ted Plunkert said. He was nearing panic. It was as if his deepest thoughts were suddenly being held open to public discussion, a fact that appalled him.
Once the Captain had fixed him with the hard look, Ted Plunkert remembered who he was: a deputy sheriff, well respected in Laredo, Texas. Now that he remembered himself, he had begun to feel irritated at Doobie, his wife. It seemed to him that it was mainly her fault, that he had wavered that morning. She had cried so, at the thought of his going, that it weakened him and made him less resolute than he normally was. If Doobie had any serious consideration for him, she should comport herself a little better when he had serious business to attend to. And there couldn't be business more serious than attending to whatever Captain Call might require of him.
Doobie had nearly caused him to make a mistake of the sort that could ruin him forever as a lawman, and he meant to speak to her sharply about it, when he got home. He himself might consider that Captain Call looked old and stiff, but that wasn't the general opinion, along the border.
Most people, of course, never saw the real Captain Call, the very one he was riding with into Mexico.
Most people only knew the man by reputation, as the Ranger who had protected the border south of Laredo for so long.
Captain Call had protected the border from bad Mexicans, bad Indians, and bad white men, too. Life was changing, along the border.
It was becoming more or less settled. For many years, though, the thought of Captain Call had enabled many people to sleep better at night. They would not soon forget him, and most of them would never know that he was a man who had trouble lifting his leg high enough to catch his stirrup.
Now that he had strongly reiterated his desire to go, Ted Plunkert couldn't imagine how he could ever have contemplated quitting, although, in fact, he had contemplated exactly that very thing, not ten minutes earlier. He had never quit anything in his life, unless you counted cotton farming, and that was not a job he had chosen. He just happened to be born on a cotton farm.
'I came to ride the river with you, Captain,' he said. 'It's something I had always hoped to do.
I sure ain't going home now.' Call turned back in his saddle, and let the matter go. Many men wavered, as they were riding into danger. They thought about their own deaths too much, or imagined injuries and pain that might never come.
That was what excessive thinking could do, even to men who were moderately brave. Often, the same men, once in a conflict, settled down and fought well. Pea Eye himself had always been a reliable, if not a brilliant, fighting man. Yet he was the most nervous man in the company until hostilities commenced. He was almost too delicate for the rangering life. Call had concluded as much on more than one occasion, but had never quite gotten around to letting the man go. On the trail of Indians or bandits, Pea was prone to headaches, heartburn, upset stomachs, and runny bowels, all of it from nerves, Call was convinced.
Call felt a brief anger, because Pea hadn't come with him. But he knew that his anger was wrong, to a degree, and that he needed to let it go.
Pea Eye had long since done his share, more than his share, of dangerous traveling with Call. If he now preferred his wife and children and dirt farming, that was his right.
That night, they camped on the monte, ten miles south of the river. Call had made a snap shot at a small javelina and hit it, so they had young pig to eat. After eating, he sat a little apart, thinking about the task ahead. He had not yet made up his mind where to take up the hunt-- take it up seriously, that is. He thought he should probably cut up the Rio Grande, past the great bend, and start hunting there. The boy had bought his fancy rifle in Mexico City, and he had stopped a train in Coahuila, and another in Van Horn, Texas. That showed a remarkable propensity for travel, in a boy so young. It also showed that Joey Garza could cover country. The boy was said to be from a village north of Boquillas, a poor village, it was said. Not many Mexican boys from poor villages would travel to Mexico City to secure a German rifle. It took some thinking about.
'Do you ever get upset before a fight, Captain?' Deputy Plunkert asked. He addressed himself to the Captain, although the man sat apart, because he did not feel comfortable talking to a Yankee. So far, he had addressed only a few words to Brookshire, mainly yes and no, when the man asked him a question.
'No, I can't say that I fret much,' Call said.
'Now, that's brave,' Brookshire said.
'When I was in the War, I was scared all the time.
I was only in the hospital corps, too, I wasn't shooting at anybody. But I kept having them bad dreams.' 'What'd you dream?' the deputy asked. He himself was often afflicted with bad dreams.
'Mainly of having one of them big shells come in low and knock my head off,' Brookshire said. 'That very thing happened to a man I know. He was from Hoboken and his name was Johnny Lowe.' 'Bad luck, I suppose,' Call said.
