'If you was to go off to that war I expect the Indians would slip in and get all the stock,' Ikey said.
Ikey looked around and saw only the morning mist. The mention of Indians to the west was unwelcome. Those same Indians could be hidden by the mist--they might be lurking anywhere in which case he was more than glad to have Captain Call with him.
'I've been skeert of Indians all my life,' Ikey said, feeling the sudden need to unburden himself in the matter. 'I expect I've woke up a thousand times, expecting to see an Indian standing over me ready to yank off my scalp. But here I am eighty and they ain't got me yet, so I expect it was wasted worry.' 'I imagine you'll be safe, if you just stay in town,' Call told him. 'You need to be careful, though, if you're off fishing.' 'Oh, I don't fish no more--give it up,' Ikey said.
'Why, Ikey?' Call asked. 'Fishing is a harmless pursuit.' 'It's because of the bones,' Ikey said.
'Remember Jacob Low? He was that tailor who choked on a fish bone. Got it stuck in his gullet and was dead before anybody knew what to do.
Here I've survived the Comanches near eighty years--I'm damned if I want to take the risk of choking on a bone from one of them bony little perch.' 'I don't recall that you've been married, since I've known you,' Call said.
But he left the remark hanging--j a remark, not quite a question. He felt absurd suddenly.
Maggie Tilton had wanted, for years, to marry him, but he had declined, preferring bachelorhood--why was he talking about marriage to an eighty-year-old bachelor who had little to do but gossip? Though fond of Maggie, he had never wanted to marry and didn't know why he was so disturbed to discover that she was keeping closer company with Jake than he had supposed.
'Illinois,' Ikey Ripple said. 'I sparked a girl once--it was in Illinois.' Though Captain Call didn't question him further, Ikey thought back, across sixty years, to the girl he had sparked in Illinois, whose name was Sally. They had danced once in a hoedown; she had blue eyes. But Sally had fallen out of a boat on a foggy morning, while crossing the Mississippi River on a trip to Still.
Louis with her father. Her body, so far as he could recall, had never been found. Had her name been Sally? Or had it been Mary? Had her eyes been blue? Or had they been brown? He had danced with her once at a hoedown. Was it her father she had been with on the boat trip? Or was it her mother?
Captain Call, who had seemed interested, for a moment, in Ikey's past with women, walked off to seek breakfast, leaving Ikey to sit alone, on his nail keg. As the morning sun burned away the mist in the streets of Austin, the mist in Ikey's memory deepened, as he tried to think about that girl--was it Mary or Sally, were her eyes blue or brown, was it her mother or her father she was in the boat with?--he had danced with at a hoedown long ago.
By the tenth day of travel Pea Eye had given himself up for lost. There was so little vegetation that he had let his horse go at night, in hopes that he would find enough grazing to survive. Often, when he awoke in the gray dawn, neither the horse nor Famous Shoes would be anywhere in sight.
All he would see, as the sun rose, was an empty, arid plain, almost desert. There was seldom a cloud, just a great ring of horizon, with nothing moving within it. The freezing plains to the north had been just as empty, but he had only ventured onto the llano with a troop of men; now, for most of the day, he was alone. He had long since stopped believing that they would find Gus McCrae--why would Gus leave the cozy saloons of Austin to come to such a place?
After the first week, Pea Eye's days were spent struggling against his own sense of desperation.
Sometimes he would not see Famous Shoes until the evening. He rode west, west, west, feeling hopeless. It was true that Famous Shoes always returned, as promised, when the evening star shone; but, every day, Pea Eye became more anxious that the man would abandon him. When Famous Shoes did appear, Pea Eye's relief was intense but short lived; soon it would be morning again, and Famous Shoes nowhere to be seen.
Sometimes it took Pea Eye an hour just to locate his horse--the animal would be nibbling leaves or small plants in some little dip or gully. Then, all day, he would plod to the west, seeing no one. All day he longed for company, any company.
On the tenth evening, when Famous Shoes rejoined him, Pea Eye could not hold back his doubts.
'Gus ain't out here, is he?' he asked.
'How would he get this far? Why would he want to cross so much of this poor country?' Famous Shoes knew the young ranger was scared.
Nothing was easier to detect in a man than fear.
It showed even in the way he fumbled with his cup while drinking coffee; and it was normal that he would be afraid. He didn't know where he was, and it must puzzle him that Captain McCrae would choose to go so far into the desert. The young ranger was not old enough to understand the things men might do when they were uncertain and unhappy.
'He is ahead of us, just one day,' Famous Shoes said. 'I have not lost his track, and I won't lose it.' 'By why would he come so far?' Pea Eye asked. 'There's nothing here.' Famous Shoes had been wondering about the same thing. The journeys that people took had always interested him; his own life was a constant journeying, though not quite so constant as it had been before he had his wives and children. Usually he only agreed to scout for the Texans if they were going in a direction he wanted to go himself, in order to see a particular hill or stream, to visit a relative or friend, or just to search for a bird or animal he wanted to observe.
Also, he often went back to places he had been at earlier times in his life, just to see if the places would seem the same. In most cases, because he himself had changed, the places did not seem exactly as he remembered them, but there were exceptions. The simplest places, where there was only rock and sky, or water and rock, changed the least. When he felt disturbances in his life, as all men would, Famous Shoes tried to go back to one of the simple places, the places of rock and sky, to steady himself and grow calm again.
Though he had not talked with Captain McCrae about his journey, Famous Shoes had the feeling that such a thing might be happening within him because of the loss of his wife. Captain McCrae might be going back to someplace that he had been before, hoping he would find that it was the same and that it was simple. Every day Famous Shoes followed his track and noted that the Captain was not wandering aimlessly, like a man too distracted to notice where he was going. Captain McCrae knew where he was going--t much Famous Shoes did not doubt.
