he regretted not going with Goodnight, over the dry plains to Denver. He would have liked to see Matty again, to lift a glass with her and hear her thoughts on the great game of life, now that she was about to lose it.
She had always hoped to make it to California someday, and yet was dying in Denver, with California no closer than it had been when she was a girl.
'If I could, Matty, I'd buy you a ticket on the next stage,' Augustus said, aloud, overcome by the same regretful emotion he had felt when he pressed the sixty dollars into Charles Goodnight's hand.
Later in the day Gus walked away from the camp, attempting to locate the rocky hillock where he had first come face-to-face with Buffalo Hump. It had been stormy; the two of them had seen one another in a lightning flash. Gus had run as he had never run in his life, before or since, and had only escaped because of the darkness.
Because it had been so dark, he could not determine which of the rocky rises he was looking for, though no moment of his life was so clearly imprinted on his memory as the one when he had seen, in a moment of white light, Buffalo Hump sitting on his blanket. He could even remember that the blanket had been frayed a little, and that the Comanche had a rawhide string in his hand.
When he tired of his search he caught the black mare and rode on west a few miles, to the high crag of rock where the Comanches had lured them into ambush. A few warriors had draped themselves in white mountain-goat skins, and the rangers had taken the bait. Gus himself had only survived the ambush because he stumbled in his climb and rolled down the hill, losing his rifle in the process.
Augustus tied his horse and climbed up to the boulder-strewn ridge where the Comanches had hidden. In walking around, he picked up two arrowheads; they seemed older than the arrowheads the Comanches had used that day, one of which had to be extracted from Johnny Carthage's leg, but he could not be sure, so he put the arrowheads in his pocket, meaning to show them to someone more expert than himself. It might be that the Comanches had been fighting off that crag for centuries.
As Augustus was walking back down the hill to his horse, his eye caught a movement far to the east, from the direction of the old camp on the river. He stepped behind the same rock that had shielded him long ago and saw that two men approached, one on horseback and one on foot. He didn't at first recognize the horse and rider, but he did recognize the quick lope of the man on foot--Famous Shoes' lope. His first feeling was annoyance: Woodrow Call had had him tracked at a time when all he wanted was a few days to himself.
A moment later Augustus saw that the rider was young Pea Eye Parker, a choice which amused him, since he knew that Pea Eye hated expeditions, particularly lone expeditions across long stretches of Indian country. On such trips Pea Eye scarcely slept or rested, from nervousness. Now Call had sent the boy hundreds of miles from home, with no companion except a Kickapoo tracker who was known to wander away on his own errands for days at a stretch.
Augustus waited by his horse while the horseman and the walker came toward him from the river. While he was waiting he dug the two small arrowheads out of his pocket and studied them a little more, but without reaching a conclusion as to their age.
'You have gone far--I don't know why,' Famous Shoes said, when he came to where Augustus waited.
'Why, I was just looking for arrowheads,' Augustus said lightly. 'What do you make of these?' Famous Shoes accepted the two arrowheads carefully and looked at them for a long time without speaking. Pea Eye came up and dismounted. He looked, to Gus's eye, more gaunt than ever.
'Hello, Pea--h you slept well on your travels?' he asked.
Pea Eye was so glad to see Captain McCrae that he didn't hear the question. He shook Gus's hand long and firmly. It was clear from his tense face that travel had been a strain.
'I'm glad you ain't dead, Captain,' Pea Eye said. 'I'm real glad you ain't dead.' Augustus was a little startled by the force of the young man's emotion. The trip must have been even more of a trial to him than he had imagined.
'No, I ain't dead,' Augustus told him. 'I just rode off to think for a few days, and one of the things I wanted to think about was the fact that I ain't dead.' 'Why would you need to think about that, Captain?' Pea asked.
'Well, because people die,' Augustus said.
'Two of my wives are dead. Long Bill Coleman is dead. Quite a few of the men I've rangered with are dead-- three of them died right on this hill we're standing on. Jimmy Watson is dead--y knew Jimmy yourself, and you knew Long Bill. A bunch of farmers and their families got massacred that day we found you sitting by the corncrib.' Pea Eye mainly remembered the corn.
'I was mighty hungry that day,' Pea Eye said. 'That hard corn tasted good to me.' Now that Captain McCrae had reminded him, Pea Eye did remember that there had been three dead bodies in the cabin where he found the scattered corn. He remember that the bodies had arrows in them; but what he remembered better was walking through the woods for three days, lost, so hungry he had tried to eat the bark off trees.
Finding the corn seemed like such a miracle that he did not really think about the bodies in the cabin.
'I guess people have been dying all over,' he said, not sure how to respond to the Captain's comments.
Augustus saw that Pea Eye was exhausted, not so much from the long ride as from nervous strain.
He turned back to Famous Shoes, who was still looking intently at the two arrowheads.
'I was in a fight with Buffalo Hump and some of his warriors here, years ago,' Gus said.
'Do you think they dropped these arrowheads then, or are they older?' Famous Shoes handed the two arrowheads back to Augustus.
'These were not made by the Comanche, they were made by the Old P,' he said.
Famous Shoes started up the hill Augustus had just come down.
'I want to find some of these arrowheads too,' he said. 'The Old People made them.' 'You're welcome to look,' Gus said. 'I mean to keep these myself. If they're so old they might bring me luck.' 'You already have luck,' Famous Shoes told him--but he did not pause to explain. He was too eager to look for the arrowheads that had been made by the Old p.
'I guess you're here to bring me home, is that right, Pea?' Augustus asked.
