'I doubt they're five miles ahead.' Augustus, whose keen vision was his pride, looked far north and saw the raiding party--they were so far away that they were dots--too far away for him to make a count.
'I expect it was a hundred Indians at least, from all these tracks,' Neely Dickens said, unnerved by the thought that there might be a massive army of Indians nearby.
'I can see them, you fool--there's not more than twenty,' Augustus said. 'And some of them are probably captives.' 'I ain't a fool and don't you be cussing me just because you got made a captain,' Neely replied. His pride was easily wounded; when insulted he was apt to respond with a flurry of fisticuffso.
To Augustus's annoyance Neely looked as if he might be about to flare into the fistfight mode, even though they were in a chancy situation, with major decisions to be made.
'Well, you gave a high count, I'm sorry I bruised your feelings,' Gus said. He realized that he had to watch his comments, now that he had risen in rank. In the old days a man who didn't appreciate his remarks could take a swing at him--several had--but now that he was a captain, a man who tried to give him a licking might have to be court-martialed, or even hung.
Though Neely's fistfights were ridiculous-- Neely was small and had never whipped anybody --Augustus thought it behooved him to be tolerant in the present situation; there were larger issues to be decided than whether Neely Dickens was a fool.
Call was glad Gus had made amends to Neely--it wouldn't do to have a big silly dispute, with Indians in sight.
'What do we do, Woodrow?' Long Bill asked. 'Do we chase the rascals or do we let 'em go?' The minute he spoke Long Bill wondered if he had done wrong to call Woodrow by his first name. He had known Call for years and always called him merely by his name, but now Woodrow was a captain and Gus too. Was he expected to address both of them as 'Captain'his He felt so uncertain that merely speaking to either one of them made him nervous.
'I doubt this boy was the only captive,' Call said. 'It's a large party. They might have his sisters and brothers, if he had any, or even his mother.' 'They probably stole a few horses, too,' Augustus said. 'I say we go after them.' Call saw that Deets already had the dead boy's grave half dug. Deets had been given a sidearm, but no rifle, when they left Austin. An old pistol with a chipped sight was all he had to defend himself with--it was something Call meant to remedy, once they got home.
'Should we take all the boys, or just the best fighters?' he asked Augustus. That was the most worrisome question, in his view.
'I guess take 'em all,' Gus said.
He was well aware that the men's fighting abilities varied greatly; still, it was a large party of Indians: the rangers ought to attack with a respectable force.
Call wasn't so sure. Half the men, at least, would just be in the way, in a running battle.
But the complexities of being a captain had begun to present themselves to him forcefully. If they just took the good fighters, who would take care of those who were left? As a group the less able men would be lucky to stay alive, even without Indians.
They'd get lost, or hunt badly; they might starve. But if he took them and they got killed or captured, their lives would be on his conscience, and Augustus's.
Another practical side of captaining was just beginning to worry him, and that was horses. It had been poor grazing lately, and they had had many hard days. None of the horses were in good flesh.
The skinniest had suffered as much as the men from the cold, sleety weather. Famous Shoes could have looked at the tracks and told them exactly what kind of condition the Indian horses were in, but he couldn't do that. However well or poorly the men fought, it would be the quality of their horseflesh that determined the outcome, if there was a long chase. It might be that their horses weren't a match for the Indian horses, in which case a chase would prove futile.
'What if we can't catch them? Our horses might be too poorly,' Call asked.
'I don't know--but we've got to try,' Augustus said. 'That's a dead boy we're burying. We can't just go home and tell them we found a dead boy and didn't try to punish the killers, especially since they're in sight.' 'In your sight--I can't see them,' Call said, but of course he agreed with the point. The boy was dead. It was the second time in his career that he had stumbled on a dead body, on the prairie--the first, long ago, had been a prospector of some kind. The chance of his finding the two bodies, on the wide plain, struck him-- if his route had varied by even fifty yards he might never have seen either body.
The boy, particularly, would have been hard to see, curled up like a young goat in some low grass. Yet Call had found him. It was curious--but there it was.
Neely Dickens, besides being quick to flare up, was also prone to attacks of severe pessimism if an undertaking of a dangerous nature was anticipated. When it became clear that they would all be required to go in pursuit of the raiding party, Neely immediately fell prey to dark forebodings.
'North--I thought we was through going north,' he said. 'I despise having to travel back toward the dern north, where it's so windy.' 'Then why'd you get in the rangers, anyway?' Teddy Beatty asked. 'Rangers just go whichever direction they need to. You're in the wrong profession if you're picky about directions.' 'Couldn't get no other job,' Neely admitted. 'If I'd known I was going to have to go north I'd have tried to make it to Galveston instead.' Augustus found the remark puzzling. Why would a fear of the north convince anybody that they ought to go to Galveston?
'Why Galveston, then, Neely?' he asked. The boy's grave had been hastily covered and the troop was ready to move in the direction Neely despised.
'Ships,' Neely said. 'If I was in Galveston I might could hide in a ship.' 'That don't make no sense,' Long Bill observed. 'Ships go north too.' Neely Dickens was sorry he had ever brought the matter up. All the rangers were looking at him as if he were daft, which he wasn't. All his life he had heard stories about Comanche tortures. Several of the older rangers had described the practices to him. Comanches slit people open and poured hot coals into them while they were still alive.
'I won't have no Comanche cutting a hole in my belly and pouring in hot coals,' he said, by way of explanation of his dislike of the northerly direction.
'Shut up that talk--let's go,' Call said.
