Pea Eye considered it a puzzling thing. He didn't know why the Captain had such a dislike for Jake, but, at the moment, with no water and just a little food, he had more pressing things to worry about.

Pea had developed the habit of counting his cartridges every night--he wanted to know exactly how many bullets he could expend in the event of an Indian fight. Every ranger was supposed to travel with one hundred rounds, but Pea Eye had only been given eighty-six rounds, the result of some confusion in the armory the day the bullets had been handed out. It worried Pea considerably that he had started on the trip fourteen bullets shy of a full requisition.

Fourteen bullets could make all the difference in the world in the event that all his companions were killed, while he survived. If he had to walk all the way back to Austin living on what game he could shoot he would have to be careful.

His marksmanship was not exceptional; it sometimes took him four or five bullets to bring down a deer, and his record with antelope was even worse. Also, he could shoot at Indians fourteen more times, if he had those bullets. The lack preyed on his mind; his count, every night, was to assure himself that no bullets had slipped away in the course of a day's travel.

With his bullets to count, and the light poor on the gloomy plain, Pea Eye could not waste time worrying about why Captain Call found it hard to tolerate Jake Spoon. Captain McCrae, who knew practically everything, may have known the reason, but if so he wasn't saying.

At the moment Captain McCrae was discussing with Major Featherstonhaugh the difficulty of counting Comanehes with any accuracy.

'Several men I know have got haircuts they didn't want while counting Comanches,' he informed the Major, a skinny man with a sour disposition.

'Of course there's no risk to Dikuss here,' Augustus added. 'He's a bald man--he's got no hair to take. They'd have to find something else to cut off, if they took Dikuss.' Augustus liked the fat lieutenant and teased him when possible. He was less fond of the dour Featherstonhaugh, though he was not especially more dour than the few army men who found themselves stuck in dusty outposts in the remote Southwest while the great war raged to the east. Featherstonhaugh and his men were missing out on the glory, and they knew it; andfor what? To attempt to subdue a few half-starved Comanches, scattered across the Texas plains?

'It seems a poor exercise, don't it, Major?' Augustus said. 'You could be back home fighting with Grant or Lee, according to your beliefs. I expect it would be better employment than counting these poor Comanches.' Major Featherstonhaugh received that comment soberly, without change of expression. He did not welcome jocularity while in the field, but Captain McCrae, a skilled and respected ranger, seemed unable to avoid the jocular comment.

'I am from Vermont, Captain,' Major Featherstonhaugh informed him. 'I would not be fighting with General Lee, though I admire him. He once fought in these parts himself, I believe, in the war with Mexico.' 'Well, I didn't notice,' Augustus said. 'I was in love while that scrap was going on. I was younger then, about Lieutenant Dikuss's age. Are you in love, Lieutenant?' Lieutenant Dikuss was mortified by the question, as he was by almost every question Captain McCrae asked him. In fact he was in love with his Milly, a strong buxom girl of nineteen whose father owned a prosperous dairy in Wisconsin. Jack Dikuss nursed the deepest and tenderest feelings for his Milly, feelings so strong that tears came into his eyes if he even allowed himself to think of her. He had not been meaning to think of her--indeed, had been cleaning his revolver--when Captain McCrae's unexpected and unwanted questions brought her suddenly and vividly to mind.

Lieutenant Dikuss was only just able to choke back tears; in the process of choking them back his neck swelled and his large face turned beet red, a fact fortunately lost on the rangers and soldiers, who were tending to their mounts, their saddles, or their guns, while Deets made a small campfire and got the coffee going.

Lieutenant Dikuss made no reply at all to Captain McCrae's question, being well aware that if he attempted to speak he would burst into tears and lose what little authority he had over the rough soldiers under his command, whorers all of them, with scant respect for tender sentiments of the sort he harbored for his Milly.

Augustus noticed the young man's discomfort and did not press his enquiry. He wished he had a book, some whiskey, or anything to distract him from the fact that he was camped in a cold, dusty place with a bunch of military men, while on an errand that he considered foolish. Lately he had begun to delve into the Bible a little, mainly because Austin was so thick with preachers--there were at least seven of them, by his count--t he couldn't walk down the street without bumping into one or two of them. One, an aggressive Baptist, had the temerity to tax him one day about his whoring; in response Augustus had bought a small Bible and began to leaf through it in idle moments, looking for notable instances of whoring or, at least, of carnal appetite among the more distinguished patriarchs of old. He soon found what he was looking for, too, and meant to use his findings to confound the preachers, if they dared challenge him again.

The print in his Bible was small, however, and the circumstance of a dim evening on the plains, with only a flicker of campfire, did not encourage biblical studies just then. He wished he had something to do besides tease nice boys such as Lieutenant Dikuss, but offhand he couldn't think what it might be. It was a pity, in his view, that Charlie Goodnight had insisted on going with Call on the advance scout; he could always raise a debate with Charlie Goodnight, a man disposed to think that he knew everything. Of course, one of the things Charlie Goodnight did know was where the principal bands of Comanches hunted; Goodnight was now in the cattle business and needed to keep track of the Comanches in order to keep them from running off his saddle horses.

It was obvious to Augustus that little in the way of conversation was likely to be coming from Major Featherstonhaugh, the Vermonter who would not be fighting with General Lee. Major Featherstonhaugh had been in Texas only a few months; this expedition was his first into the Texas wilds and, so far, he had yet to lay eyes on a wild Comanche. It annoyed Augustus extremely that the military kept its personnel rolling over and over, like clothes wringers--each commander who came out of the East seemed to be less experienced and less knowledgeable about the geography and the terrain than the one before him. He and Call were constantly vexed by the ignorance of the military, though there had been one intelligent captain, named Marcy, who had conducted an excellent survey of the Red River country; Captain Marcy knew the country and the ways of the native tribes as well as anyone, but at the present time he was elsewhere and they were stuck with Major Featherstonhaugh, a man so ill informed that he seemed surprised when told there might be problems finding water on their trip across the llano.

'But gentlemen, I was assured there was an abundance of fine springs in Texas,' the Major stated, when Call brought up the matter of water, the day before they departed.

'Oh, there's plenty of healthy springs in Texas,' Augustus assured him. 'I could find you a hundred easily, if we was in the right part of the state.' 'Isn't it Texas we're going to be journeying in?' the Major asked.

'Yes, but it's a big place, Major,' Call said. 'We're going to be crossing the Staked Plain. There may be springs there, but if there are, nobody but the Comanche know where to find them.' That comment was greeted by an expression of polite disbelief on the face of Major Featherstonhaugh, whose only response was to instruct his men

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