that there was little likelihood that Clara would actually marry anyone but himself; at other times, though, the demon of doubt seized him and he was not so sure.
Pea Eye found Mr. McCrae puzzling-- Mr. Call he was more comfortable with, because Mr.
Call only spoke to him of practical matters. Mr. McCrae sounded convincing, when he talked, but a good deal of what he said was meant in jest, like the business about his tongue snapping off.
The hardest part of Pea Eye's job, as the company farrier, was to see that the Captain's big horse, Hector, did not get anything wrong with his feet. Pea Eye had never seen an elephant, but he doubted that even an elephant had feet as heavy and hard to work with as Hector.
The Captain had to have special horseshoes forged, to fit the big horse's feet. When Pea Eye did manage to lift one of Hector's hooves the big horse would immediately let his weight sag onto Pea Eye--he could just support the weight, but it left him no strength with which to clean out the hoof. Several times Deets, seeing his plight, had come over and helped him support the big horse long enough that his feet could be properly cleaned.
'Much obliged,' Pea Eye always said, when Deets helped him.
'Welcome, sir,' Deets would reply.
It unnerved Pea Eye to be addressed as 'sir,' though he knew that was how black people normally addressed white people. He didn't know if it would be correct just to ask Deets to call him by his name; he intended to discuss the point with Mr. Call when the time was right.
Then, to his dismay, though they travelled south through a day of sunlight, the cold struck again.
On the third day of their ride south the sky turned slate black and an icy wind was soon slicing at their backs and making their hands sting.
That night Hector leaned particularly heavily on Pea Eye, and Deets was too busy preparing a meal to help him. Pressing up against the big horse caused Pea Eye to break a sweat; when he finished the sweat froze on his shirt before he could even walk back to the fire. The sun had just gone down; Pea Eye did not know how he was going to make it through the long winter night. He had only a thin coat and one blanket; few of the men had more.
Deets didn't have a coat at all, just an old quilt he kept wrapped around himself as he worked.
It was Deets who showed Pea a way to survive, as the cold deepened. Deets took a little spade and dug out one side of a small hummock of dirt; he dug it so that it formed a sort of bank. Then he made a small fire up against the bank of dirt. He brought a few coals over in a small pan, and, from the coals, made a fire near enough to the bank that the bank caught the heat and reflected it back.
'Here, sit close,' Deets said, to Pea Eye. 'It ain't much, but it will warm us.' He was right. Pea Eye could never get close enough to the big campfire to derive more than a few moments of warmth from it. But the little fire reflected off the bank of dirt, warmed his hands and his feet. His back still froze and his ears pained him badly, but he knew he would survive.
Even with the good fire it was difficult to sleep, though; he would nod for a few minutes and then an icy curl of wind would slip under his collar and chill his very backbone.
Once, in a few minutes of sleep, Pea Eye had a terrible dream. He saw himself freeze as he was walking; he stopped and became immobile on the white plain, like a tree of ice. Pea Eye tried to call out to the rangers, but his voice could not penetrate the sheath of ice.
The rangers rode on and he was alone.
When he woke from the dream there was a red line on the eastern horizon; the sun glowed for a moment and then passed above the slatelike clouds, which reddened for a little while but did not allow the sunlight through.
'Much obliged for keeping this fire going,' Pea Eye said--all night Deets had fed the fire little sticks.
'You welcome, sir,' Deets said.
Pea Eye, cold but glad to be alive, could not contain himself about the 'sir' any longer.
'You don't need to be sirring me, Deets,' he said. 'I ain't a sir, and I doubt I ever will be one.' Deets was startled by the remark. He had never heard such an opinion from a white man, never once in his life. In Texas a black man who didn't call a white man 'sir' could get in trouble quick.
Of course Pea Eye wasn't really a grown man yet--he was just a tall boy.
Deets supposed his youth might account for the remark.
'What'll I say?' he asked, with a puzzled look. 'I got to call you something.' 'Why, just 'Pea Eye'' will do,' Pea Eye said. 'I'm just plain 'Pea Eye'' so far.' Deets didn't think it would do, not in the hearing of the other rangers at least. He turned away and went to gather a few more sticks--the fire was burning well but he needed a little time in which to think about what Mr. Pea had just said.
Then, while he was pulling up a half-buried twist of sagebrush, it occurred to him that his mind had found a solution. He thought of the tall white boy as 'Mr. Pea'--he would call him 'Mr.
Pea.' When he came back with the wood the young ranger was still holding his hands to the little fire.
'I guess I just call you 'Mr. Peaea'' if it suits you,' Deets said.
'Why, yes--t'll do fine,' Pea Eye said. 'I guess I'm a mister--I guess everybody's a mister.' No, I ain't, black people ain't, Deets thought--but he didn't say it.
Famous Shoes was eating a good fat mallard duck when the Comanche boys found him. He had noticed some ducks on the south Canadian and had crept down to the water and made a clever snare, during the night. His trip to the Washita had been a disappointment. He did not find his grandmother, who had gone to live on the sweet-grass hills near the Arkansas River, but he did find his Aunt Neeta, a quarrelsome old woman who was living with some mixed-blood trapping people in a filthy little camp. The trapping people mostly trapped skunks and muskrats--there were hides everywhere, some of them pretty smelly. The minute he arrived his aunt began to upbraid him about a knife she had lent him years before which he had broken accidentally.
