did. Brookshire wondered if the Captain had miscalculated. If so, Call exhibited little concern.
Then, to Brookshire's astonishment, Call flattened the sheriff with a rifle. He whacked him right in the neck with a hard swing. He hadn't been carrying a rifle, though there were several in a gun rack along the wall. Somehow the Captain, who usually moved slowly and stiffly, had walked right in front of the sheriff, ignored his cocked pistol, pulled loose a rifle, and hit the sheriff with it.
The minute he struck the blow, the Captain seemed to change. He didn't stop with one blow, although Doniphan was knocked flat, and his pistol went skittering across the floor of the jail. Call continued to hit the sheriff with the rifle. Once, when the sheriff turned to try and escape, the Captain knocked him in the ear with his boot, so hard that Brookshire would not have been surprised if Doniphan's head had flown off.
'Stop, Captain, he's subdued,' Pea Eye said, though he knew the Captain wouldn't stop. He rarely went off into such a storm of violence, but when he did, it was almost impossible to stop him. Once, in Ogallala years before, the Captain had launched himself at a sergeant who was quirting Newt. Before that storm ended, the Captain had almost killed the man by pounding his head against an anvil. Gus McCrae had stopped it by roping the Captain and pulling him off the bloody sergeant with his horse.
There was no Gus, no rope, and no horse, but Pea Eye knew the Captain had to be stopped somehow, or else Sheriff Doniphan would be dead. Once the storm of rage took him, the Captain could no more stop hitting and kicking than a blizzard could stop blowing. Pea Eye saw the Captain lift the bloody rifle for what might be a fatal blow, and flung himself at Call--there was no waiting, and no choice.
'Help me, you've all got to help me!' Pea Eye yelled. He partially deflected the rifle with his arm as the blow fell that might have killed Sheriff Doniphan.
The one-eared deputy, Tom Johnson, tried to grab one of the Captain's arms, but was immediately knocked back. Pea Eye concentrated on the rifle, trying to keep the Captain from splitting Doniphan's skull with it. He managed to hang on to one arm, but he knew it wouldn't be for long.
'Somebody's got to rope him, it's the only way,' Pea said, looking desperately at the Yankee.
'Here, ride your horse up, give me your rope!' Brookshire yelled out the door to Deputy Plunkert, who, though taken by surprise, immediately spurred his horse up the few steps to the porch of the jail. He handed Brookshire his rope.
'I'll get it on him, then you pull,' Brookshire said. He was trembling from the shock, but he managed to make a loop in the end of the rope. He got close enough to the Captain to get the loop over one of his feet as Call was trying to step free of the fallen sheriff so he could kick him again.
'Pull!' Brookshire yelled. He had never seen such a killing frenzy take any man.
Merely witnessing the destruction of the sheriff made Brookshire's breath come short, and his heart pound uncomfortably. But he knew he had to get the rope on some part of Call, or the sheriff of Presidio would be dead.
Deputy Plunkert dallied the rope around his saddle horn and backed his horse along the narrow porch until it grew tight. He soon discovered, to his amazement, that Captain Call was on the other end. He held a bloody rifle in one hand, and for a moment, looked as if he wanted to club Brookshire with it. But he didn't. He shook Pea Eye off and then shook the rope off his foot. He broke the bloody rifle over the hitch rail and threw the two parts of it into the street.
Call went back inside, dragged the bloody, unconscious sheriff into the cell where Famous Shoes had been, and locked it. He took the big ring of keys outside and threw them into the cistern at the end of the porch. When he passed Pea Eye, Brookshire, and the one-eared deputy, each drew back a little, as they might if a bear had just approached them.
'When he comes round, tell him the next time he points a damn pistol at me, he'd better shoot,' Call told the one-eared deputy. 'I won't tolerate rude threats of that sort.' 'Yes, sir,' Tom Johnson said.
Privately, he was not sure Sheriff Doniphan would come around. Men had died from much less punishment than the Captain had just dished out. The sheriff's mouth was leaking blood, and not slowly, either. One whole side of his face seemed to be caved in, and his long mustache was just a line of blood.
Call knew that his violent fighting temper had gotten the best of him again, but he did not pretend to regret his attack on the sheriff, who had pulled a gun and threatened to shoot two valuable men, and in defiance of the governor's orders, too. He would have liked to do worse than he had done, but he'd gotten enough of a grip on himself to refrain from dragging the man out of his cell and finishing him.
What he did do was pick up the telegram the frightened deputy had dropped. He put the telegram on the sheriff's desk.
'Remind him that I was following the governor's instructions,' Call said. 'Read him the telegram.' 'Yes, sir,' Tom Johnson said again.
'I'll remind him. I expect he'll listen, this time.' 'Yes, if his ears ain't burst,' Pea Eye said. 'The Captain caught one of his ears a pretty good lick.' 'We're provisioned, let's go,' Call said. He felt that he had returned to normal, but the men were looking at him oddly--all the men but Famous Shoes, who had found a half-eaten plate of beans and was eating them.
Pea Eye saw the Captain looking at Famous Shoes in a testy way, and thought he had better explain.
'He wasn't allowed no food for two days, that's why he's into them beans,' he said.
Famous Shoes could not understand why the foolish white men had kept the Captain from killing the hard sheriff. It was very foolish, in his view. The sheriff had been about to shoot them all, and he might try it again, if he lived. Famous Shoes was not sure the sheriff would live, though.
The Captain had dealt him some hard licks, mostly to the head. The way the Captain's anger came reminded Famous Shoes of old Kicking Bird, a Comanche chief given to terrible furies. When Kicking Bird went into a rage, he was apt to injure anyone near him, including members of his own tribe. He was a great fighting man, but he fought so hard that he lost track of who it was he was fighting and merely killed everyone near him. Once, he had grievously wounded his own brother, while in such a rage.
'We need you to help us track this Garza boy. Are you available?' Call asked. He noticed there was quite a bit of blood on the floor of the jail. The one-eared deputy would have to get out his mop, once they left.
'Yes,' Famous Shoes said. 'You don't have to pay me, either. Pea Eye's woman is going to teach me to read. That and something to eat will be wages enough, this time.' 'Hired, I guess, if Pea Eye's wife agrees,' Call said.
