He would go to the stronghold of the Black Vaquero and offer him the great horse, in exchange for women. If he took the horse in and lived he would have the power of a great chief. Buffalo Hump and Slow Tree would have to include him in their councils. There would be great singing, because of what he had done.
But Three Birds had come with him and he could not insult him because he was a little prone to wandering in the dream time. Going to the stronghold of Ahumado would be a great test. He could not tell his friend not to come.
'I thought you might want to go home and see your family,' Kicking Wolf said. 'But if you don't then we had better eat this little antelope and ride through the night.' 'I don't need to see anyone at home,' Three Birds said simply. 'I want to go with you. If we ride all night Scull will not catch up.' 'That's right,' Kicking Wolf said, as he cracked off a couple of the little antelope's ribs. 'Big Horse Scull will not catch up.'
Augustus felt stunned--fora moment he was unable to speak. Once, while he was reluctantly trying his hand at blacksmithing, a horse that he was shoeing caught him with a powerful kick that struck him full in the diaphragm. For ten minutes he could only gasp for breath; he could not have spoken a ^w had his life depended on it.
That was how he felt now, standing in the sunny Austin street with Clara Forsythe, the girl he had raced in to kiss only an hour before, holding his hand. The ^ws Clara had just spoken were the ^ws he had long feared to hear, and their effect on him was as paralyzing as the kick of the horse.
'I know it's hard news,' Clara said. 'But I've made up my mind and it's not fair to hold it back.' After leaving Governor Pease, Augustus had gone straight to a barber, meaning to get shaved and barbered properly before hurrying back to Clara to collect more kisses. She had consented to one more, but then had led him out the back door of the store, so that neither her father nor a casual customer would interrupt them while she was telling Gus the truth she owed him, which was that she had decided to marry Robert f. Allen, the horse trader from Nebraska.
Augustus went white with the news; he was still white. Clara stood close to him and held his hand, letting him take his time, while he absorbed the blow. She knew it was a terrible blow, too. Augustus had courted her ardently from the day he met her, when she had been barely sixteen. She knew that, though much given to whoring, he loved only her and would marry her in an instant if she would consent. Several times she had been tempted to give in, allow him what he wanted, and attempt to make a marriage with him.
Yet some cool part of her, some tendency to think and consider when she was most tempted just to stop thinking and open her arms, had kept her from saying yes.
What stopped her was the feeling that had come over her when he rushed off to see Governor Pease: one kiss and then you're gone. Augustus was a Texas Ranger: at the end of the kissing or what followed it, there'd be an hour when he would be gone; she would have to carry, for days or weeks, a heavy sense of his absence; she would have to cope with all the sad feelings that assailed her when Gus was away. Clara was active: she wanted to live the full life of her emotions every day--she didn't like the feeling that full life would have to wait for the day Augustus returned, if he did return.
Almost every time the ranger troop left Austin there would be a man among them who did not come back. It was a fact Clara couldn't forget; no woman could. And she had seen the anguish and the struggle that was the lot of frontier widows.
'If this is a joke it's a poor one,' Augustus said, when he could find breath for speech.
But Clara was looking at him calmly, her honest eyes fixed on his. Of course she loved to tease him, and he would have liked to persuade himself that she was teasing him this time. But her eyes danced when she teased him, and her eyes were not dancing--not now.
'It ain't a joke, Gus,' she said. 'It's a fact. We're going to be married on Sunday.' 'But ... you kissed me,' Augustus said.
'When I came running in you called me your ranger, just like you always do.' 'Why, you are my ranger ... you always will be,' Clara said. 'Of course I kissed you .
I'll always kiss you, when you come to see me. I suppose I have the right to kiss my friends, and I'll never be so married that I won't be a friend.' 'But I'm a captain now,' Gus said. 'A captain in the Texas Rangers. Couldn't you have at least waited till I got home with the news?' 'Nope,' Clara said firmly. 'I've spent enough of my life waiting for you to get home from some jaunt. I don't like waiting much. I don't like going weeks not even knowing if you're alive. I don't like wondering if you've found another woman, in some town I've never been to.' At the memory of all her anxious waiting, a tear started in her eye.
'I wasn't meant for waiting and wondering, Gus,' she said. 'It was making me an old woman before my time. Bob Allen's no cavalier. He'll never have your dash--I know that.
But I'll always know where he is--I won't have to be wondering.' 'Hell, I'll quit the rangers if a stay-at-home is what you're looking for,' Gus said, very annoyed. 'I'll quit 'em today!' He knew, even as he said the ^ws, that it was a thing he had often offered to do, over the years, when Clara taxed him with his absences. But he never quite got around to quitting. Now he would, though, captain or no captain. What was being a captain, compared to being married to Clara?
To his dismay, Clara shook her head.
'No,' she said. 'It's too late, Gus.
I gave Bob Allen my promise. Besides, being a captain in the rangers is what you've always wanted. You've talked of it many times.' 'Well, I was a fool,' Gus said. 'Being a captain just means making a lot of decisions I ain't smart enough to make. Woodrow, he's always studying--let him make 'em!
'I'm quitting, I mean it!' he said, feeling desperate. He felt he had just as soon die, if he couldn't change Clara's decision.
'Hush that--it's nonsense,' Clara said.
'I'm promised now--d you think I'm so light a girl that I'd break my promise just because you quit a job?' Augustus felt a terrible flash of anger.
'No, if you promised, I expect you'll go through with it even if it ruins both our lives and his too!' he said.
'You shut up, Gusffwas Clara said, with a flash to match his. 'I've been telling you what I needed for ten years--if you'd wanted me enough to quit the rangers you would have quit long ago. But you didn't--y just kept riding off time after time with Woodrow Call. You could have had me, but you chose him!' 'Why, that's foolish--he's just my pard,' Gus said.
