'Ask him, Newt,' Dish said again, with such intensity that Newt knew he had to do it. He knew it meant Dish trusted him a lot to ask such a thing of him.
The Captain was talking in sign to ten or twelve young Indians. Then the Indians went over to the herd and cut out three beeves. Newt rode over, feeling foolish. He didn't want to ask the Captain, but on the other hand he couldn't ignore Dish's request.
'Do you think I ought to go check on Mr. Gus?' Newt asked. 'The boys think they might be in trouble.' Call noticed how nervous the boy seemed and sensed that somebody had put him up to asking the question.
'No, we better all drive,' he said. 'Gus had a tent. I imagine he's happy as a badger. They're probably just sitting there playing cards.'
It was what he had expected, but Newt still felt chastened as he turned back to the drags. He felt he would never learn to say the right thing to the Captain.
68.
ALMOST AT ONCE, before the group even got out of Texas, Jake had cause to regret that he had ever agreed to ride with the Suggs brothers. The first night he camped with them, not thirty miles north of Dallas, he heard talk that frightened him. The boys were discussing two outlaws who were in jail in Fort Worth, waiting to hang, and Dan Suggs claimed it was July Johnson who had brought them in. The robbers had put out the story that July was traveling with a young girl who could throw rocks better than most men could shoot.
'I'd like to see her throw rocks better than Frog can shoot,' Roy Suggs said. 'I guess Frog could cool her off.'
Frog Lip didn't say much. He was a black man, but Jake didn't notice anyone giving him many orders. Little Eddie Suggs cooked the supper, such as it was, while Frog Lip sat idle, not even chopping wood for the fire. The horse he rode was the best in the group, a white gelding. It was unusual to see a bandit who used a white horse, for it made him stand out in a group. Frog Lip evidently didn't care.
'We oughta go get them boys out of jail,' Roy Suggs said. 'They might make good regulators.'
'If a girl and one sheriff can take 'em, I wouldn't want 'em,' Dan Suggs said. 'Besides, I had some trouble with Jim once, myself. I'd go watch him hang, if I had time, damn him.'
Their talk, it seemed, was mostly of killing. Even little Eddie, the youngest, claimed to have killed three men, two nesters and a Mexican. The rest of the outfit didn't mention numbers, but Jake had no doubt that he was riding with accomplished killers. Dan Suggs seemed to hate everybody he knew-he spoke in the vilest language of everyone, but his particular hatred was cowboys. He had trailed a herd once and not done well with it, and it had left him resentful of those with better luck.
'I'd like to steal a whole goddamn herd and sell it,' Dan said.
'There ain't but five of us,' Eddie pointed out. 'It takes more than five to drive cattle.'
Dan Suggs had a mean glint in his eye. He had made the remark idly, but once he thought about it, it seemed to make a great deal of sense. 'We could hire a little more help,' he said.
'I remember that time we tried to drive cattle,' Roy said. 'The Indians run off half of them, and we all nearly drowned in them rivers. Why try it agin?'
'You ain't heard the plan, so shut up,' Dan said, with a touch of anger. 'What we done wrong the first time was doing it honest. I'm through with honest. It's every man for himself in this country, and that's the way I like it. There ain't much law and mostly it can be outrun.'
'Whose herd would you steal?' Jake asked.
'Oh, the closest one to Dodge,' Dan said. 'Find some herd that's just about there and steal it, maybe a day or two shy of the towns. Then we could just drive it in and sell it and be gone. We'd get all the money and none of the work.'
'What about the boys who drove it all that way?' Jake asked. 'They might not want to give up their profits that easy.'
'We'd plant 'em,' Dan said. 'Shoot them and sell their cattle, and be long gone before anyone ever missed them.'
'What if one run off and didn't get planted?' Roy said. 'It don't take but one to tell the story, and then we'd have a posse to fight.'
'Frog's got a fast horse,' Dan said. 'He could run down any man who escaped.'
'I'd rather rob banks, myself,' little Eddie said. 'Then you got the money right in your hands. You don't have to sell no cows.'
'Well, you're lazy, Ed,' Dan said, looking at his brother as if he were mad enough to shoot him. In fact, the Suggs brothers seemed to live on the edge of fratnicidal warfare.
'What do you boys know of this Blue Duck?' Jake asked, mainly to change the subject.
'We know to let him be,' Dan said. 'Frog don't care for him.'
'Why not?'
'Stole my horse,' Frog Lip said. He didn't elaborate. They were passing a whiskey bottle around and he took his turn as if he were a white man. Whiskey had no effect on any of them except little Eddie, who turned red-eyed and wobbly after five or six turns.
Jake drank liberally, for he felt uncomfortable. He had not meant to slip into such rough company and was worried, for now that he had slipped in, he could see that it wasn't going to be any too easy to slip back out. After all, he had heard them discuss killing a whole crew of cowboys, calculating the killings as casually as they might pick ticks off a dog. He had been in much questionable company in his life, but the Suggs brothers weren't questionable. They were just hard. Moreover, the silent black man, Frog, had a very fast horse. Escaping them would need some care. He knew they didn't trust him. Their eyes were cold when they looked his way. He resolved to be very careful and make no move that might antagonize them until the situation was in his favor, which it wouldn't be until they got into the Kansas towns. With a crowd around, he might slip away.
Besides that, killing could always work two ways. Gus was fond of saying that even the meanest bad man could always run into someone meaner and quicker. Dan Suggs could easily meet a violent end, in which case the others might not care who stayed or went.
The next day they rode on to Doan's Store, on the banks of the Red River, and stopped to buy whiskey and consider their route. A trail herd was crossing the river a mile or more to the west.
'There's one we could steal, right there,' little Eddie said.
'That one's barely in the Territory,' Dan said. 'We'd have to follow it for a month, and I ain't in the mood.'
'I say we head for Arkansas first,' Roy said. 'We could rob a bank or two.'
Jake was not listening to the palaver very closely. A party of nesters-f our wagons of them-had stopped at the store, buying supplies. They were farmers, and they had left Missouri and were planning to try out Texas. Most of the menfolk were inside the store buying supplies, though some were repairing wagon wheels or shoeing horses. Most of the womenfolk were starved-looking creatures in bonnets, but one of them was neither starved nor in a bonnet. She was a girl of about seventeen with long black hair. She sat on the seat of one of the wagons, barefoot, waiting for her folks to finish shopping.
To Jake she looked like a beauty. It occurred to him that beauties were his real calling, if he had one, and he wondered what could have possessed him to start out with a rough bunch like the Suggses, when there were beauties right there in Texas that he hadn't even met, including the one on the wagon seat. He watched her for a while and, since her folks hadn't reappeared, decided he might just stroll over and have a word with her. Already he felt a yearning for woman's talk, and he had only been gone from Dallas a little more than a day.
He had been lounging in the shade of the store, but he stood up and carefully dusted his pants.
'Are you fixing to go to church, or what?' Dan Suggs asked.
'No, but I fancy a word or two with that black-haired gal sitting there on the wagon,' Jake said. 'I've never talked to a woman from Missouri. I figure I might like it.'
'Why wouldn't they talk like any other gals?' Roy wondered.
'I heard you was a ladies' man,' Dan said, as if it were a condemnation of some sort.
'You met me in a whorehouse, why would you doubt it?' Jake said, tired of the little man's biting tone. 'If I like
