'Willy was alone when he was bitten,' the Captain said. 'His stopwatch was in his hand when they found him. Seventeen minutes and thirty-four seconds, he lived. Now that's bravery, I'd say.' 'I'd say so too, Captain,' Call said, thinking about it.
'Do you believe that tale about the beetles and the stopwatch?' Augustus asked. Call sat with his back to a large rock, looking off the edge of the canyon; the wind had died, the sleet had stopped blowing, but it was still bitter cold. In the clear night they could see Comanche campfires, far below them and halfway across the Palo Duro Canyon.
'There's forty campfires down there,' Call commented. 'There's enough Indians in this canyon to wipe us out six times.' 'Well, but maybe they ain't interested--the Captain wasn't,' Gus replied. 'Why don't you just answer the question I asked you?' 'I'm on guard duty, that's why,' Call said. 'We need to be listening, not talking.' Augustus found the remark insulting, but he tried not to get riled. Woodrow was so practical minded that he was often rude without intending rudeness.
'I'm your oldest friend, I guess I can at least ask you a question,' Augustus said. 'If I can't, then I've a notion just to roll you off this bluff.' 'Well, I do believe the Captain's story --why wouldn't I?' Call said.
'Myself, I think it was just a tale,' Gus said. 'He wasn't in the mood for an Indian fight, so he told us a tale. You're so gullible you'd believe anything, Woodrow.
I've never met anybody who behaves like the people the Captain talks about.' 'You don't know educated people, that's why,' Call said. 'Besides, his cousin was in Brazil.
You've never been to Brazil--y don't know how people behave down there.' 'No, and if they've got snakes that can kill you in seventeen minutes, I ain't never going, either,' Augustus said.
Call watched the wink of campfires in the darkness far below.
'Oh Lord, I hope the Captain don't drag us off to Mexico,' Gus said. 'I'd like to see my Clara before the month's out.' Call was silent--if he didn't respond, maybe the subject of Clara Forsythe would die away. Usually it didn't die quickly, though.
For ten years, at guard posts all over the Texas frontier, he had listened to Augustus talk about Clara Forsythe. It wasn't even that the subject was boresome, particularly--it was just that it was pointless. Clara had set her mind against marrying Gus, and that was that.
'Buffalo Hump's down there,' he remarked, hoping Gus would accept a change of subject.
Under the circumstances it would be a prudent change. Buffalo Hump might be older now, but he was still the most feared war chief on the southern plains. If he woke up in the mood to do battle, Gus would have more to worry about than Clara's refusal.
'I miss Clara,' Augustus said, ignoring his friend's feint. 'It helps to talk about her, Woodrow. Don't be so stingy with me.' Of course, Augustus knew that Woodrow Call hated talking about romance, or marriage, or anything having to do with women. He wouldn't even discuss poking, one of Augustus's favorite topics of discussion, as well as being a highly favored activity. Many a night he had sat with Woodrow Call on guard duty and engaged in the same tussle, when it came to conversation. Call always wanted to talk about guns, or saddles, or military matters, and Gus himself would try to steer the conversation onto love or marriage or women or whores--something more interesting than the same old boots-and-saddles stuff.
'I expect you're a lucky man, Woodrow,' he said. 'You'll probably be married long before I am.' 'That wouldn't be hard,' Call admitted, 'You'll never be married, unless you give up on Clara. She don't mean to marry you and that's that.' 'Hush that talk,' Gus said. 'If you knew anything about women you'd know that women change their minds every day. The only reason you don't want to hear no talk of marriage is because you know you ought to marry Maggie, but you don't want to. You'd have made a good Indian, Woodrow. You've got no use for the settled life.' Call didn't argue; what Augustus said was true, in the main. Maggie Tilton was a kind woman who would undoubtedly make some man a good wife--but he would not be that man. The truth was he'd rather be right where he was, sitting on a canyon's rim, looking down on the campfires of the last wild, dangerous Indians in Texas, eating horsemeat stew and breasting weather that would freeze you one night and burn your skin off the next day, than to live in a town, be married, and buy vittles out of a store. Maggie was pretty and sweet; she might yet find a man who would protect her. He himself had no time to protect anybody, except himself and his comrades. That was the way it was, and that was the way it would stay, at least until the Indians camped below them had been whipped and scattered, so that they could no longer raid, burn farms, take white children captive, and scare back settlement on the southern edge of the plains.
Augustus was bored, and when he was bored he liked to devil his friend as much as possible. It annoyed Call that he wouldn't just shut up. It was a fine, still night. Now and then he could hear the Comanches' horses nickering, from the floor of the canyon.
'I know one thing,' he said. 'If I was a Comanche I would have had your scalp long before this.
You're so dern careless it's lucky you've even survived.' 'Now that's brash talk,' Augustus said.
'You could spend a lifetime trying to take my scalp, and not disturb a hair.' 'That's bragging,' Call replied. 'You've always had a troop of rangers with you--t's why you have your hair.' 'If I'm going to take risks I prefer to take them with women,' Gus said. 'Any fool can wander off and get scalped.' 'Go back to camp--it ain't your turn to stand guard anyway,' Call told him. 'I'd rather listen to owl hoots than to listen to you yap.' Augustus was mildly insulted, but he made no move to leave.
'I wonder what Jimmy Watson and the Captain had to say to one another about wives,' he said. 'I would have liked to listen in on a few of those conversations.' 'Why, it would be none of your business,' Call told him.
'That wife of the Captain's is fancy,' Augustus said. 'A woman who can spend twenty-five dollars every day of the week is too dern expensive for me.' 'He's rich and so is she--I don't suppose it matters,' Call said.
Augustus gave up on getting his friend to talk about women--he scooted a little closer to the edge of the deep canyon.
'Look down there, Woodrow,' he said.
'That's probably all that's left of the fighting Comanche.' 'No it ain't,' Call said. 'There's several bands off to the west--they call them the Antelopes. However many there are, it's enough to scare most of the white people out of the country north of the Brazos. They just picked off one of us, this very day.' 'Woodrow, you're the most arguesome person I've ever met,' Augustus said. 'Here I've been trying to talk sense to you all night and you ain't agreed with a single thing I've said. Why am I even talking to you?' 'I don't know, but if you'll stop we can stand guard in peace,' Call said.
