The bird was the owl of his dreams, the white owl of death. In flight the owl passed between him and the thin moon and flew away. Though it had annoyed him to see the owl walking around near his circle of rocks, once the owl was gone he relaxed and began to sing his memory songs again. The owl had merely come to tell him to get ready to let his spirit slip away from his body, as the little moths slipped away from caterpillars. Buffalo Hump .was ready. He was hungry and would not wait too long to slip away.
'Famous Shoes don't like these snow owls-- that's four we've seen now,' Augustus said.
'He thinks it means the world's coming to an end.' 'They're just birds,' Call said, impatiently. They were in the driest country he had been in since he had been marched as a prisoner across the Jornada del Muerto many years before, a trip that Augustus also had made and survived. This time they were in pursuit of a dangerous man, and had their horses to think of.
Finding water for them and their horses was what Famous Shoes ought to be thinking about--water, not the fact that a few snow owls from the north had decided to linger in Texas.
'He ought to be worried about this dry country,' Call said. 'Not those birds.' Augustus, as usual, found himself having to explain the obvious to Woodrow Call, the obvious being that a white owl meant one thing to a white man and another thing to a Kickapoo tracker.
'He might be right, though, Woodrow,' Augustus said. 'Maybe the owls mean there ain't no water out here anywhere. If we die of thirst, then the world will have come to an end, don't you see?' He knew Woodrow Call was a single-minded man who couldn't think about but one problem at a time; but a glance at Pea Eye and Deets, not to mention the agitated Famous Shoes, convinced him that something had to be done to improve company morale, else they would die of worrying before they died of thirst.
Famous Shoes was indeed very upset about the white owls, because they should not be where they were. The white owls were there to bring death. Famous Shoes knew that, and did not care what the whites thought about it. He was very thirsty; so were the other men and so were the horses. That morning, though, he had seen a plover flying north, which meant that there was water somewhere near. Plovers were not birds that flew far. Also, Blue Duck and his two men were still ahead of them, their tracks as plain as rocks.
For Famous Shoes, the important thing was that Blue Duck was ahead of them. Where Blue Duck could go, he could go.
Twice Famous Shoes had thought he saw Blue Duck, far ahead, but Captain McCrae, who still had his keen eyesight, insisted that he was wrong--it was only an antelope they saw.
Call and Augustus too could plainly see the tracks bearing to the northwest. The tracks didn't deviate, either, as they would have if Blue Duck and his two companions had been casting about for water. Blue Duck either knew where he was going, or thought he did--he was gambling his life and the lives of the two men with him that water would be where he thought it was.
'Wherever he's going, he's been there before,' Call said, when they stopped for the night.
'Yes, he has been there before, and so has the other one,' Famous Shoes said.
'Other one--I thought you said there were two men riding with Blue Duck,' Call said.
Augustus protested, confused by the statement.
'There are two men riding with Blue Duck, but there is another one, an old one,' Famous Shoes said. 'He is the one they are looking for.' 'Oh Lord, that's four against us now,' Pea Eye said. Although they were five themselves, he feared the Comanche tendency to multiply unexpectedly.
If there were four against them today, there might be twenty tomorrow.
'The old one is too old to be dangerous,' Famous Shoes said. 'He is riding a horse whose feet are split and whose teeth are gone. I think Blue Duck will catch him tomorrow.' 'I wish you'd told us about this other one sooner,' Call said--like Gus he was confused by the news.
Famous Shoes knew that Captain Call was as smart as any ranger, yet at times he could be stupid as a possum. The tracks of the old man and the old horse were plain to see, right by the other tracks. All of the rangers had missed what was there to see.
'Why would an old man on a poor mount be in a place like this?' Augustus asked.
'That's question number one, and question number two is, why would Blue Duck be following him? I doubt he's rich enough to rob.' Famous Shoes had been too preoccupied with the question of the white owls to give much thought to the questions Captain McCrae raised. The white owls had distracted him so much that he had almost forgotten about Blue Duck. But, once he stopped thinking about the owls, it was not hard to know the answers to Captain McCrae's questions.
'The old one is looking for a good place to die,' Famous Shoes said.
'Lord, if that's all he wants, he can stop looking,' Augustus said. 'He's found his place to die.' 'Blue Duck is following him because he wants to kill him,' Famous Shoes said. 'He doesn't want to let him die of thirst. He wants to kill him. The old man is Buffalo Hump. He twists his foot when he steps, because of the hump. I should have remembered this, but I was thinking about the owls.' The name gave all the rangers a start. No one had mentioned Buffalo Hump to them in several years--not since the beginning of the war.
'Buffalo Hump? We thought he was dead,' Call replied, startled.
'Blue Duck is his son, I recall,' Augustus said. 'He ran to his father's camp that day he killed Jimmy Watson.' 'It was cold that day,' Pea Eye said. He didn't remember the Indians very well, but he did remember the cold. He had supposed he would freeze that night, for want of an adequate coat.
The whites began to speculate about why Blue Duck would want to kill Buffalo Hump, but Famous Shoes didn't listen. The young man wanted to kill the old man for all the reasons that normally drove men to kill one another. In the clear night he had just heard the song of the plover, which meant that water was near.
All night Famous Shoes sat listening.
He heard the plover cry several more times, and rjcd. Men lied often, but the plover only lied when it had eggs to protect; if the plover's nest was near, then water, too, was near. In the morning they could drink.
Blue Duck let Ermoke and Monkey John ride his spare horses because of the two Comanches who watched them for a day. Ermoke was the first to see them; it was shortly before his horse gave out. He pulled his rifle and pointed to the west, but Blue Duck, at first, could see nothing that he could clearly identify. Monkey John, so
