insisted. He pointed upward. 'It's higher.' Call declined to look up. Whenever Gus McCrae was bored and restless he always tried to start some nonsensical argument, on topics Call had little patience with.
'The sky's the same height no matter what country you're in,' Call told him. 'We're way out here in the country--y can just see the stars better.' 'How would you know? You've never been to no country but Texas,' Gus commented. 'If we was in a country that had high mountains, the sky would have to be higher, otherwise the mountains would poke into it.' Call didn't answer--he wanted, if possible, to let the topic die.
'If a mountain was to poke a hole in the sky, I don't know what would happen,' Gus said.
He felt aggrieved. They had left in such a hurry that he had neglected to procure any whiskey, an oversight he regretted.
'Maybe the sky would look lower if I had some whiskey to drink,' he said. 'But you were in such a hurry to leave that I forgot to pack any.' Call was beginning to be exasperated. They were in deserted country and could get some rest, which would be the wise thing.
'You should clean your guns and stop worrying about the sky being too high,' he said.
'I wish you talked more, Woodrow,' Augustus said. 'I get gloomy if I have to sit around with you all night. You don't talk enough to keep my mind off them gloomy topics.' 'What topics?' Call asked. 'We're healthy and we've got no reason to be gloomy, that I can see.' 'You can't see much anyway,' Gus said.
'Your eyesight's so poor you can't even tell that the sky's higher in Mexico.' 'The fact is, I was thinking about Billy,' Augustus said. 'We've never gone on a rangering trip without Billy before.' 'No, and it don't feel right, does it?' Call agreed.
'Now if he were here I'd have someone to help me complain, and you'd be a lot more comfortable,' Augustus said.
They were silent for a while; both stared into the campfire.
'I feel he's around somewhere,' Augustus said. 'I feel Billy's haunting us. They say people who hang themselves don't ever rest. They don't die with their feet on the ground so their spirits float forever.' 'Now, that's silly,' Call said, although he had heard the same speculation about hanged men.
'I can't stop thinking about him, Woodrow,' Gus said. 'I figure it was just a mistake Billy made, hanging himself. If he'd thought it over a few more minutes he might have stayed alive and gone on rangering with us.' 'He's gone, though, Gus--he's gone,' Call reminded him, without reproach. He realized he had many of the feelings Augustus was trying to express. All through the bush country he had been nagged by a sense that something was missing, the troop incomplete. He knew it was Long Bill Coleman he missed, and Augustus missed him too. It was, in a way, as if Long Bill were following them at an uncomfortable distance; as if he were out somewhere, in the thin scrub, hoping to be taken back into life.
'I hate a thing like death,' Augustus said.
'Well, everybody hates it, I expect,' Call said.
'One reason I hate it is because it don't leave you no time to finish conversations,' Gus said.
'Oh,' Call said. 'Was you having a conversation with Billy that night before ... it happened?' Augustus remembered well what he and Billy Coleman had been talking about the night before the suicide. Bill had heard from somebody that Matilda Jane Roberts, their old travelling companion, had opened a bordello in Denver. Matty, as they called her, had ever been a generous whore. Once, on the Rio Grande, bathing not far from camp, she had plucked a big snapping turtle out of the water and walked into camp carrying it by its tail. He and Long Bill always talked about the snapping turtle when Matilda's name came up.
'We was talking about Matty, I believe she's in Denver now,' Gus said.
'I guess she never made it to California, then,' Call said. 'She was planning to go to California, when we knew her.' 'People don't always do what they intend, Woodrow,' Gus said. 'Billy Coleman had it in mind to turn carpenter, only he couldn't drive a nail.' 'He was only a fair shot,' Call remembered. 'I guess it's a wonder he survived as a ranger as long as he did.' 'You survive, and you're just a fair shot yourself,' Augustus pointed out.
'He married,' Call said. He remembered how anguished Long Bill had been after he learned that Pearl had been outraged by the Comanches. That discovery changed him more than all their scrapes and adventures on the prairies.
'He's out there now, Woodrow--I feel him,' Gus said. 'He's wanting to come back in the worst way.' 'He's in your memory, that's where he is,' Call said. 'He's in mine too.' He did not believe Long Bill's ghost was out in the sage and the thin chaparral; it was in their memories that Long Bill was a haunt.
'Rangers oughtn't to marry,' he said. 'They have to leave their womenfolk for too long a spell.
Things like that raid can happen.' Augustus didn't answer for a while.
'Things like that happen, married or not,' he said finally. 'You could be a barber and still get killed.' 'I just said what I believe,' Call said.
'Rangering means ranging, like Captain Scull said. It ain't a settled life. I expect Bill would be alive, if he hadn't married.' 'I guess it's bad news for Maggie, if you feel that way, Woodrow,' Gus said.
'She's needing to retire.' 'She can retire, if she wants to,' Call said.
'Yes, retire and starve,' Gus said.
'What would a retired whore do, in Austin, to earn a living? The only thing retired whores can do is what Matty just did, open a whorehouse, and I doubt Maggie's got the capital. I imagine she could borrow it if you went on her note.' Call said nothing. He was being as polite as he could. They would need to be at their best, if they were to rescue Captain Scull.
They ought not to be quarrelling over things they couldn't change. He believed what he had just said: rangers ought not to marry. The business about going on Maggie's note was frivolous--Maggie Tilton had no desire to open a whorehouse.
'I doubt Captain Scull is even alive,' Gus said. 'That old bandit probably killed him long ago.' 'Maybe, but we still have to look,' Call said.
'Yes, but what's our chances?' Gus asked.
