'The Red River it is.'
Famous Shoes was surprised to see that Big Horse Scull could walk so well. Usually he could easily walk off and leave any white man, but he did not walk off and leave Scull.
When they camped the first night the man did not seem tired, nor did he insist on the large wasteful fires that the whites usually made when the nights were cold. Their fire was only a few sticks, with just enough flame to singe the prairie chicken Scull had hit with a rock. The clouds blew away and the stars above them were very clear, as they divided the skinny bird, which was old and tough.
Famous Shoes had begun to realize that Scull was a very unusual man. They had walked all day at a fast clip, yet Scull did not seem tired and did not appear to want sleep.
Famous Shoes yawned and grew sleepy but Scull merely kept chewing his tobacco and spitting out the juice. Famous Shoes thought Scull might be some form of witch or possessed person. He was not a comfortable man to be with. There was something in him like the lightning, a small lightning but still apt to flash at any moment. Famous Shoes did not enjoy being with a man who flashed like lightning, causing unquiet feelings, but there was not much he could do about it.
'Do you know this Ahumado?' Scull asked.
'No,' Famous Shoes said, very startled by the question. They were pursuing Kicking Wolf, not Ahumado.
'No one knows Ahumado,' he added. 'I only know where he lives.' 'Somebody must know him,' Scull said. He had begun to think of walking to Mexico, to kill Ahumado, the man who had shot him and also Hector. The thought of a lone strike had only occurred to him that day. Once he had wanted to take cannons to Mexico, to blast Ahumado out of the Yellow Cliffs. But now that he was alone on the prairie, with only the tracker for company, Inish Scull felt that it was time for a turning.
Commanding men was a tiresome chore, one he had done long enough. He might do it again, once the great civil conflict came, but now he had the desire to cast off all that had gone before and go into Mexico alone. The remote parts of the world haunted him: Africa, the Arctic, the great peaks of Asia.
He didn't want merely to go back to Austin, to Inez, to the rangers. He wanted an adventure, and one he could pursue alone.
'A military unit is a fine thing when it works,' he said. 'But it usually don't work. A solitary feat of arms is better, if the foe is worthy. This Kicking Wolf ain't much of a foe, though I grant that he's a brilliant thief. But I doubt that he's much of a killer--the two skills don't go together.' Famous Shoes didn't know what to make of that comment. There were plenty of dead Texans and Mexicans and Indians who were dead because of Kicking Wolf-- theirthe families considered him killer enough. If Scull wanted to fight someone who killed better than Kicking Wolf, he should not have passed up Buffalo Hump, a man who could kill plenty well.
He didn't comment. It was night, a good time for napping. If they wanted to catch Kicking Wolf and get the Buffalo Horse back, they would need to be up walking plenty early.
'This fellow Ahumado's been a notable bandit for a long time,' Scull said. 'Somebody must have some information about him.' Famous Shoes kept quiet. Ahumado was a bad, cruel man; even to talk of him was bad luck. Ahumado worked very bad tortures on the people he caught. In Famous Shoes' view it was unwise even to think of a man that bad. The old people of Mexico thought Ahumado could pick up thoughts out of the air. If Scull kept talking about him, or even thinking about him, Ahumado might pick the thoughts out of the air and come north looking for them.
Scull fell silent for a while. Famous Shoes was hoping he would nod, and sleep. It was better to sleep a little and then apply themselves to the pursuit of Kicking Wolf than to be talking around a campfire about Ahumado. The smoke of the fire might drift south into Mexico, carrying their thoughts with it. Perhaps Ahumado was so wise that he could find out what people were saying about him just from little whiffso of drifting smoke. It was a new thought--Famous Shoes didn't know if it was true. But it might be true, which was a good reason to stop talking about Ahumado.
'He might be a man to match me,' Scull said. 'Very damn few can match me. I have to seek them out, otherwise the salt might lose its savor.' 'We have to track Kicking Wolf first, and that will take a lot of time,' Famous Shoes said.
Scull had taken his little book out of his pocket, but he didn't look into it. He merely held it in his hand, as he stared into the fire.
On the plain to the south, two wolves began to howl. One howled and then another answered, which was very disturbing to Famous Shoes. Many coyotes often spoke to one another, but it was rare for two wolves to howl. Famous Shoes didn't know what it meant, but he didn't like it. The two wolves should not be speaking to one another, not so early in the night. When he got home he meant to ask the old ones what it meant when two wolves howled early. He would have to seek the old ones--they would surely know.
When Call found the dead boy, and the tracks of twenty horses going north, he knew there would not be a simple trek back to Austin. The Indians were not far--piles of horse turds were still warm, and the blood from the boy's crushed skull had only just coagulated. Call was less than a mile ahead of the troop, scouting. The boy was no more than six years old, skinny and pale, and the raiders who killed him had only just passed.
Probably he had been too sickly to travel; they had hit him in the head with a rifle butt and left him, dead or dying.
Call pulled his rifle out of its scabbard and got down to examine the tracks. It was annoying that Scull had taken Famous Shoes--the Kickapoo could have read the tracks easily, told them what band the raiders belonged to, and, probably, how many captives they were carrying into captivity. Call was not so skilled, nor was anyone else in the troop.
He knelt by the dead boy and felt again the weariness that the sight of such quick, casual death raised in him. The boy was barefoot, and so skinny that it seemed he had never had a filling meal in his life; probably he hadn't. The likelihood was that he had been snatched off some poor farm off one of the several branches of the Brazos, the river that tempted settlement most, due to the fertility of its long, lightly wooded valleys.
When the troop came in sight and saw that Call was dismounted, the rangers spurred up and sped to him, only to stop and stare in silence at the dead boy, the thin line of blood from his broken skull streaking the gray grass.
'Lord, he was just a young 'un,' Long Bill said.
'I just missed the raiding party,' Call said.
