their heads down, fearing that the rifleman would soon find the range.
Call glanced at his leg and saw no blood, but he assumed he was probably crippled anyway. The leg was numb from the hip down--his horse, by then, had stopped kicking but lay with its eyes open, panting.
'He's shooting a buffalo gun,' Augustus said. 'If I'd known he had one I'd have been more careful.' 'We ought to have been more careful anyway,' Call said. 'Anyone can get their hands on a buffalo gun.' Augustus had not yet looked at his friend's wound. In their time as partners it was the first time he could remember seeing Woodrow Call knocked off his feet; the sight made a bad impression on him. If Woodrow was still down it probably meant the wound was mortal. Everyone who worked with Call knew that he had to be killed to be stopped. The thought that Woodrow might die sobered Augustus so much that he put off examining the wound.
'Where'd he hit you, Captain?' Pea Eye asked finally. He too was afraid that the captain was mortally hit, else he would be up fighting.
'In the leg,' Call said. He too assumed that his wound was serious, perhaps fatal. He didn't try to rise because he knew his leg wouldn't hold him. Standing up would have been unwise in any case. The man with the buffalo gun had them well marked. He was not a very highly skilled marksman or he would have killed all four of the horses and probably at least two of the men; but he was good enough, and he might improve, once he found the range. Call noticed that his horse had only been hit in the hip, but the minute after he noticed it the horse died.
'Those buffalo guns are powerful,' Call said. 'That one killed my horse, and the shot wasn't even well placed.' 'Don't be getting pessimistic now--s far he ain't killed you,' Augustus said. 'You're going to have to let us drag you farther away, Woodrow, so we can look at your wound.' 'Keep as low as you can,' Call said. 'I expect it's Blue Duck shooting.' 'Yes, that's why we are alive,' Famous Shoes said. 'Ermoke is a better shot. If he had let Ermoke shoot he would have killed us all.' 'I don't know Mr. Ermoke,' Augustus said, 'but if he's their marksman I'm glad he took the day off. He might have put a bullet in me, and I'm intolerant of bullets.' 'Pull me back,' Call said. 'We better look at this wound.' Augustus and Pea Eye, keeping low, grabbed Call under the armpits and dragged him away, expecting at any moment to hear the boom of the great gun. But no shots came. Deets, looking scared, was waiting with the horse, well out of range of even a buffalo gun.
'You examine him, Deets--y're the best doc we got,' Augustus said.
Call noticed that Augustus, always a cool man under fire, looked a little pale.
'What's the matter, are you hit too?' he asked.
'No, but I'm vomity,' Augustus said.
'It's seeing these horses die. I've never been able to tolerate seeing horses die.' Call felt the same way. For some reason injuries to horses affected him worse than injuries to men. Eating one of his own horses, if it was a case of necessity, didn't trouble him so long as he didn't have to see the animals suffer and die. It was a curious thing.
Augustus crawled off a little distance, to empty his stomach; while he was gone Call surrendered himself to Deets and waited for the black man to tell him he was dying--or, at the very least, crippled or lamed. He felt no pain, just a numbness, which he knew was common enough when a wound was fresh. The pain would come later, and in abundance, usually.
When Deets began to examine the Captain he had the darkest apprehensions. He expected to see a gaping wound, a splintered bone, or both; but he saw immediately, there was no blood on the captain's leg, or on his body anywhere. The horse that had just died bled profusely, but Captain Call wasn't bleeding at all, not that he could see.
'What's the matter?' Call asked, seeing Deets's look of puzzlement.
'You ain't got no blood on you,' Deets said. 'No blood, Captain.' 'I must have, somewhere,' Call said. 'I can't feel my leg.' But when he looked again himself he saw that Deets was right. There was no blood on him anywhere. Pea Eye came over to help with the examination, and Augustus, once finished with his vomiting, came too. Deets, Call, and Pea Eye were all dead serious; they were puzzled and almost offended by their inability to spot the blood that would surely issue from such a large wound.
Call took his pants down, fearing that the wound must be higher on his body than he had supposed, but Augustus, after a careful look, smiled and pointed at Call's boot.
'Keep your pants on, Woodrow,' he said.
'You ain't shot in the leg, you're just shot in the boot heel.' Call looked again at his foot and saw that Augustus was right--the boot heel was entirely missing. He had not been hit at all, and yet the shock of the big bullet hitting his boot heel had thrown him in the air and left his leg as numb as if all its nerves had been removed.
'Well, I swear,' he said. 'See if you can find the boot heel, Deets. I'd like to tack it back on if I can. Otherwise I've got a long way to hobble.' A diligent search failed to turn up even a trace of the boot heel.
'It's a waste of time looking,' Augustus said. 'That was a fifty-caliber bullet that hit that boot heel. You won't find it because it's been blown to smithereens.' Call found it hard to adjust to the fact that he was unhurt. His mind had accepted the thought that he was wounded easier than it would accept the fact that he wasn't. Once the notion that he was crippled or dying left his mind it was succeeded by vexation at the thought that the man they had chased so far was undoubtedly getting away. For a moment he was tempted to take one of the surviving horses and go after him, but Augustus would not hear of that plan.
'We're in a bad enough fix as it is, Woodrow,' he said. 'It's a long way back to where we need to be, and most of it is dry travelling. We've only got one horse and one mule for four men--we'll have to walk a good part of the way and save the horses for when we have to have them. We may have to eat both animals before we get home. We need to think about saving ourselves now. Blue Duck can wait.
'Besides that, there's Quanah and his warriors out there somewhere,' he added, pointing to the west, into the empty llano. 'I don't know what their mood is and you don't neither. We may have to fight our way back, for all you know.' Call knew he was right. They were a small force, stranded in a desert. They would be easy prey for any strong band of fighters, whether native or outlaw. They would have to stay together to have any chance. But the fact was, he still wanted to go after Blue Duck--he had a hard time mastering himself, and Augustus knew it.
'He's a damn killer--I hate to let him go,' Call said.
'You're as bad as Inish Scull,' Augustus commented. 'He was so determined to catch Kicking Wolf that he walked off on foot.' 'Yes, I was with him,' Famous Shoes said.
