'He walked fast, that man. He did not stop until we were in the land of the Black Vaquero.' 'I wonder what became of the old Black Vaquero?' Augustus said. 'There's been no news of him in years.' 'He went back to where Jaguar lives,' Famous Shoes said.
Augustus saw that Woodrow Call was still not settled in in his mind about Blue Duck. He had never known a man so unwilling to leave a pursuit once he had begun one. It would not be unlike him to go after Blue Duck on foot, even with one boot heel shot off.
'He ain't gone forever, Woodrow,' Augustus pointed out. 'He'll just go back to the Red River and start raiding again. We can go get him in the fall.' 'If they let us,' Call said. 'They may disband us before the fall.' 'All the better if they do,' Gus said. 'Then we can just go get him for the fun of it--t way we won't have to keep track of the damn expenses.' Famous Shoes was annoyed by the rangers' habit of debating meaningless things while the sun moved and time was lost. Whether they were to be rangers in the fall did not interest him. There was the llano to cross, and talking would not propel them across it.
'We had better go drink some of that water back at the spring,' he said.
His ^ws reminded the rangers of what they faced. They had barely survived the trek out, when they had horses. Now they would have to cover the same distance walking--or, at best, riding double a few hours a day.
'That's right,' Augustus said. 'It's apt to be a long dry walk.' 'I aim to drink all I can hold,' Pea Eye said, turning toward the dry lake. 'All I can hold and then some. I sure hate to be dry in my mouth.'
In the night Newt knew that his mother must have died because he couldn't hear her breathing anymore. The room felt different--it had become a room in which he was alone. But he didn't know what he was supposed to do, so he lay on his pallet doing nothing until the gray light came into the windows by the street. Then he carefully got up, dressed, and put a few things of his into a shoe box--his top, his ball, his book full of pictures of animals, and a deck of cards the rangers had let him keep. Then he put on his hat--Captain Gus had given it to him--looked just once at his mother, dead in her bed, and hurried down the stairs and over to Mrs. Coleman, who began to sob the minute she saw him--Mrs.
Coleman continued to cry all day. Newt was sad about the fact that Deets and Pea Eye and the other rangers were gone; he knew they would have wanted to say goodbye to his mother, but now they would have no chance. The grave was dug; that same afternoon they put his mother in it--there was a little singing and then they covered her up.
Mrs. Coleman gave him supper. There was a lot of food, but he wasn't very hungry. Mrs. Coleman had mainly got control of herself by then, though tears still dripped out of her eyes from time to time.
'Newt, I know you'll be wanting to stay with the rangers when they all get back,' she told him after supper. 'But would you like to just stay here for a night or two? There's nobody much in the bunkhouse.' Newt shook his head. Though he didn't want to hurt Mrs. Coleman's feelings--he knew she had been his mother's best friend--he didn't want to stay with her, either.
'I better just bunk with the boys,' he said, although he knew that the only ranger in the bunkhouse at the time was Ikey Ripple, who was far too old to be called a boy. But he wanted badly to stay in the bunkhouse, and Mrs.
Coleman didn't argue with him. It was dark by the time the meal was finished, so she went with him the few blocks to where the rangers stayed. Ikey was already asleep, and was snoring loudly.
'I hope you can sleep with that snoring, Newt,' Mrs. Coleman said--then, suddenly, she hugged him tight for a moment and left the bunkhouse.
Newt put his shoe box under the bunk where he usually slept when he stayed with the rangers. Then he took his rope and went outside. He could hear Mrs. Coleman sobbing as she walked home, a thing which made him feel a little bad.
Mrs. Coleman had no one to live with--he supposed she was lonely. Probably he should have stayed with her a night or two. He climbed up on the fence, holding his rope, and watched the moon for a while. He could hear Ikey snoring, all the way out in the lots. In the morning he planned to go down to the graveyard and tell his mother the news, even though there wasn't much--j that he had decided to move into the bunkhouse right away, so he would be there to help water the horses and do the chores. That way he would be ready to help the boys, when they came home.
When Kicking Wolf heard that four rangers were walking across the llano with only one horse and a mule, he didn't know what to make of the news.
A lot of strange news had come lately, some of it distressing and some of it merely puzzling. He had not left the camp in two weeks because one of his legs had a bad cramp in it. Of course now and then a man's leg would cramp, but never in his life had he experienced so debilitating a cramp as the one which afflicted his right leg. Sometimes even when he was moving his bowels a cramp would seize him, playing havoc with even that simple operation.
Kicking Wolf thought it was his old wife, Broken Foot, who was sending the cramp into his leg. The fact was, Broken Foot had been angry with him for several months--he didn't know why. When he asked her she smiled and denied that she was angry, but Kicking Wolf didn't believe her denials. Even though he was aging, Kicking Wolf was still a good hunter; he owned more horses than anyone in the tribe and supplied Broken Foot with everything she needed. Their lodge was the warmest in the camp. Kicking Wolf knew, though, that having many reasons to be content didn't necessarily mean that a person .was content, particularly not if the person in question was a woman. Broken Foot, despite her denials, was angry with him--ei she had put a bad herb in his food, causing his leg to cramp, or else she had conspired with a medicine man and had had the medicine man work a bad spell.
Broken Foot was not much younger than he was, and had grown very fat in her old age. Kicking Wolf gave up trying to get her to stop being angry with him and concentrated on avoiding her. But it was hard to avoid a woman as large as Broken Foot in a tent at night, which was why, as the weather grew warmer, Kicking Wolf started spending more and more nights outside, by himself. It didn't stop the cramps but at least he didn't have Broken Foot there gloating while he tried to get the painful cramps to leave his leg.
It was during the period when Kicking Wolf was sleeping outside that the strange news began to arrive, most of it brought by Dancing Rabbit, a young warrior who had wanderlust badly and just plain lust as well. Dancing Rabbit was constantly visiting the various bands of Comanches, hoping to find a woman who would marry him, but he was poor and also rather ugly. So far no woman had agreed to be his wife.
It was Dancing Rabbit who dashed up to Kicking Wolf one morning while Kicking Wolf was sitting by a pile of white cattle bones, rubbing his leg to lessen the cramp. Dancing Rabbit was very upset with the news he had, which was that Blue Duck had followed Buffalo Hump to his death place and killed him with his own lance.
'Ah!' Kicking Wolf said. He had hoped that Buffalo Hump had been able to make a peaceful death. Certainly
