To be in Austin was to be under orders: the Governor was always summoning them or sending them off, consulting with them or pestering them about details of finance that Augustus had not the slightest interest in.
As a rule he did not, like his friend Call, enjoy solitude. Woodrow was virtually incapable of spending a whole evening in the company of his fellow men--or women either, if Maggie's account was to be trusted. At some point in the evening Woodrow Call would always quietly disappear.
He would slip off in the night, ostensibly to stand guard, when there was not a savage within one hundred miles. Prolonged stretches of company seemed to oppress him.
With Augustus it was the opposite. When night fell, if he was in town, he wanted company, the livelier the better; he sought it and he found it, whether it involved a card game, a few talky whores, a singsong, or just a session of bragging and tale telling with whatever gamblers and adventurers happened to be around. He had never particularly liked to sleep, and rarely did for more than three or four hours a night. Even that necessity he begrudged. Why just lay there, when you could be living?
A little rest at night was needful, but the less the better.
Now, though, his lovely Nellie's death had arrested, for the moment, his taste for company; it seemed to him that he had been under orders for his entire life, and he was tired of it. Once it had been captains who ordered him around; now it was governors, or legislators or commissions.
The war in the East was barely started and already the Governor was pressing him and Call to pledge themselves to stay in Texas.
Augustus didn't want it; he had been ordered around enough. The war could wait, the Governor could wait, Woodrow could wait, and the whores and the boys in the saloons could wait. He was going away because he felt like it, and he would come back when he felt like it, if he felt like it, and not because of some governor's summons.
He rode all the first day in brilliant weather, not thinking of Nellie or the war or Call or anything much. His black mare, Sassy, was a fine mount, with a long easy trot that carried them west mile after mile through the limestone hills. He had not rushed off improvidently this time, either; he had four bottles of whiskey in one saddlebag, some bullets and a good slab of bacon in another.
He was not much of a hunter, and he knew it.
Stalking game was often boresome work. He would cheerfully shoot any tasty animal that presented itself within rifle range, but he seldom pursued his quarry far.
Despite the Comanches, the country west of Austin was rapidly settling up. Those settlers who had survived the great raid of 1856 had by now rebuilt and remarried; cabins were scattered along the valleys, or anywhere there was sufficient water. Several times Gus had heard a large animal in the underbrush and pulled his rifle, expecting to flush a bear or a deer, only to scare out a milk cow or a couple of heifers or even a few goats.
A little before dusk he smelled wood smoke and saw a faint column rising from a copse of cedar to the southwest. He knew there must be a settler's cabin there, but, on this occasion, decided to ride on. The grub at these rude little homesteads was apt to be uncertain; frequently the families lived on nothing but corn cakes. He didn't feel inclined to sit for an hour, making conversation with people he didn't know, only to eat corn cakes or mush. A good many of the new settlers were Germans, who spoke only the most rudimentary English; also many of them were, to Augustus's way of thinking, excessively pious. Some kept no liquor in their houses at all, and, on several occasions when he had been invited in for a meal, the grace was said at such length that he had all but lost his appetite before anyone was allowed to eat.
This night, he decided not to gamble on the cabin. A dog began to bark but Augustus left it to its barking and slipped on by. He rode only another few miles before making camp. It was rocky country, the footing in some places so uncertain that he felt he risked laming the black mare if he travelled further.
In any case, he was not going anywhere in particular and was on no schedule except his own.
The cedarwood and low mesquite burned nicely; he soon had a fragrant fire going. It was not cold; he only fed the fire a stick now and then because he liked to have a fire to look at.
Over the last years he had looked into many campfires and only seen one face: Clara's.
His fat wife, Geneva, and his skinny wife, Nellie, were dead; the memory of their forms and faces didn't disturb him. That night when he looked into the fire he saw no one. Women had been constantly in his thoughts since his youth, but that night he was free of even the thought of them. He thought he might just keep on riding west, into the desert, where there were neither governors nor women.
His absence would vex Woodrow Call, of course, but he didn't see that he needed to live like a bound servant, just to spare Woodrow Call a little vexation. The bright stars above him seemed to act like a drug. He dreamed of floating on air like a gliding bird, gliding into a slumber so deep that, when he woke, the stars had faded into the light of a new day. At the edge of sleep he heard a clicking sound, the sort a tin cup might make, or a coffeepot; the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a pair of legs standing by his campfire, which blazed beneath the coffeepot.
'The coffee's hot, I suggest you rouse yourself up, Captain,' a voice said. Recognizing that his visitor was none other than Charlie Goodnight, Augustus immediately did as the man suggested.
'Howdy--I'm glad it was you and not Buffalo Hump, Charlie,' Gus said. 'I may have taken ill. Otherwise I fail to understand why I would sleep this late.' 'You don't look ill to me, just idle,' Goodnight observed. He was a stout man, a little past Gus's age, fully as forceful in speech as he was in body. He had been at times a superlative scout and ranger, but lately his interest had shifted to ranching; he now only rode with the rangers when the need was urgent. He was known for being as tireless as he was gruff.
Conversations with Charlie Goodnight were apt to be short ones, and not infrequently left those he was conversing with slightly bruised in their feelings.
'Heard about the war?' Augustus asked.
'Heard,' Goodnight said. 'I'd appreciate a bite of bacon if you have any.
I left in a hurry and took no provisions.' 'It's in my saddlebag, with the frying pan,' Gus said. 'You'll pardon me if I don't offer to cook it. I prefer to contemplate the scriptures in the morning, at least until the sun's up.' Goodnight got the bacon and the pan. He didn't comment on the war, or the scriptures.
Gus saw that a fine sorrel gelding was nibbling mesquite leaves, alongside his mare. Not only had he not heard the man approach, he had not heard the horse, either. It was fine to be relaxed, as he had been last night,
