When Famous Shoes went to the campfire and announced that Kicking Wolf had been there, all the Texans put down their coffee cups and ran over to look at the tracks, bringing their rifles with them, as if they feared attack. They all looked around anxiously, but, of course, the llano was empty in all directions. Captain Call was vexed, but he had been vexed the whole way back because of the trouble with his boot heels. His boots were now so nearly useless that when they were in grassy country he often walked barefoot. On the worst of the walk the rangers had had to drink their own piss, a thing that bothered Captain Call less than the fact that Blue Duck's first shot had ruined his only boots.
Fortunately they were only two days from the Brazos now and would not have to drink their own piss again. Far to the south, thunderclouds rumbled--the rain might soon fill the many little declivities that dotted the llano, turning them into temporary water holes.
'Well, I swear,' Pea Eye said, looking at the tracks. 'A man was here but he didn't take the mule.' The sight of the footprints made him nervous, though. A Comanche had come close enough to kill, and no one had heard him. It was a scary thing, just as scary as it had been the first time he journeyed onto the plain.
'Didn't take it and I'm glad,' Deets said, for he was very fond of his brown mule, the only animal, after all, to survive their trip --the other horses had either starved or been shot.
Augustus took his hat off and scratched his head, amused by what he saw--even though it was a dark joke. After the walk they had had, any joke seemed better than none, to him.
'Why, he turned up his nose at our mule, old Kicking Wolf,' he said.
Call didn't find it amusing. He would have liked to chase the man--it seemed that half his life had been spent chasing Kicking Wolf--but he had only a tired mule to chase him on. The rain clouds hovering to the south had been dancing away from them for a week; the Brazos River, still a full two days to the south, might have to be their salvation, as it had been for many travellers.
Once again he had to carry with him, on a long trip home, a sense of incompletion. They had travelled a long way, hung ten bandits, but missed their leader, Blue Duck, murderer of his own father, and many others besides.
Augustus, though, would not be denied his amusement.
'How's this for a scandal, Woodrow?' he said.
'We didn't get our man, and now we've sunk so low that a Comanche won't even steal our mule. I guess that means the fun's over.' 'It may be over but it wasn't fun,' Call said, looking at the long dry distance that still waited to be crossed.
The End
