'If folks could drink sweat you wouldn't need no well,' Dish said. It seemed to Augustus that his tone was a shade unfriendly.
'Look at it this way, Dish,' Augustus said. 'You're storing up manna in heaven, working like this.'
'Heaven be damned,' Dish said.
Augustus smiled. 'Why, the Bible just asks for the sweat of your brow,' he said, 'You're even sweating from the belt buckle, Dish. That ought to put you in good with the Seraphim.'
The reference was lost on Dish, who bitterly regretted his foolishness in allowing himself to be drawn into such undignified work. Augustus stood there grinning at him as if the sight of a man sweating was the most amusing thing in the world.
'I ought to kick you down this hole,' Dish said. 'If you hadn't loaned me that money I'd be halfway to the Matagorda by now.'
Augustus walked over to the fence to watch Call work the mare. He was about to throw the saddle on her. He had her snubbed close, but she still had her eye turned so she could watch him in case he got careless.
'You ought to blindfold her,' Augustus said. 'I thought you knowed that much.'
'I don't want her blindfolded,' Call said.
'If she was blindfolded she might bite the post next time instead of you,' Augustus said.
Call got her to accept the blanket and picked up his saddle. Snubbed as she was, she couldn't bite him, but her hind legs weren't snubbed. He kept close to her shoulder as he prepared to ease on the saddle. The mare let go with her near hind foot. It didn't get him but it got the saddle and nearly knocked it out of his hand. He kept close to her shoulder and got the saddle in position again.
'Remember that horse that bit off all that old boy's toes-all the ones on the left foot, I mean?' Augustus said. 'That old boy's name was Harwell. He went to the war and got killed at Vicksburg. He never was much of a hand after he lost his toes. Of course, the horse that bit 'em off had a head the size of a punkin. I don't suppose a little mare like that could take off five toes in one bite.'
Call eased the saddle on her, and the minute the stirrups slapped against her belly the mare went as high as she could get, and the saddle flew off and landed twenty feet away. Augustus got a big laugh out of it. Call went to the barn and returned with a short rawhide rope.
'If you want help just ask me,' Augustus said.
'I don't,' Call said. 'Not from you.'
'Call, you ain't never learned,' Augustus said. 'There's plenty of gentle horses in this world. Why would a man with your responsibilities want to waste time with a filly that's got to be hobbled and blindfolded before you can even keep a saddle on her?'
Call ignored him. In a moment the mare tentatively lifted the near hind foot with the thought of kicking whatever might be in range. When she did he caught the foot with the rawhide rope and took a hitch around the snubbing post. It left the mare standing on three legs, so she could not kick again without throwing herself. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, trembling a little with indignation, but she accepted the saddle.
'Why don't you trade her to Jake?' Augustus said. 'If they don't hang him, maybe he could teach her to pace.'
Call left the mare saddled, snubbed, and on three legs, and came to the fence to have a smoke and let the mare have a moment to consider the situation.
'Where's Jake?' he asked.
'Catching a nap,' Augustus said. 'I reckon the anxiety wore him out.'
'He ain't changed a bit,' Call said. 'Not a dern bit.'
Augustus laughed. 'You're one to talk,' he said. 'When's the last time you changed? It must have been before we met, and that was thirty years ago.'
'Look at her watch us,' Call said. The mare
'I wouldn't take it as no compliment,' Augustus said. 'She ain't watching you because she loves you.'
'Say what you will,' Call said, 'I never seen a more intelligent filly.'
Augustus laughed again. 'Oh, that's what you look for, is it? Intelligence,' he said. 'You and me's got opposite ideas about things. It's intelligent creatures you got to watch out for. I don't care if they're horses or women or Indians or what. I learned long ago there's much to be said for dumbness. A dumb horse may step in a hole once in a while, but at least you can turn your back on one without losing a patch of hide.'
'I'd rather my horses didn't step in no holes,' Call said. 'You reckon somebody's really on Jake's trail?'
'Hard to judge,' Augustus said. 'Jake was always nervous. He's seen more Indians that turned out to be sage bushes than any man I know.
'A dead dentist ain't a sage bush,' Call said.
'No-in that case it's the sheriff that's the unknown factor,' Gus said. 'Maybe he didn't like his brother. Maybe some outlaw will shoot him before he can come after Jake. Maybe he'll get lost and end up in Washington, D.C. Or maybe he'll show up tomorrow and whip us all. I wouldn't lay money.'
They fell silent for a moment, the only sound the grinding of the windlass as Dish drew up another bucket of dirt.
'Why not go north?' Call said, taking Augustus by surprise.
'Why, I don't know,' Augustus said. 'I've never given the matter no thought, and so far as I know you haven't either. I do think we're a shade old to do much Indian fighting.'
'There won't be much,' Call said. 'You heard Jake. It's the same up there as it is down here. The Indians will soon be whipped. And Jake does know good country when he sees it. It sounds like a cattleman's paradise.'
'No, it sounds like a goddamn wilderness,' Augustus said. 'Why, there ain't even a house to go to. I've slept on the ground enough for one life. Now I'm in the mood for a little civilization. I don't have to have oprys and streetcars, but I do enjoy a decent bed and a roof to keep out the weather.'
'He said there were fortunes to be made,' Call said. 'It stands to reason he's right. Somebody's gonna settle it up and get that land. Suppose we got there first. We could buy you forty beds.'
The surprising thing to Augustus was not just what Call was suggesting but how he sounded. For years Call had looked at life as if it were essentially over. Call had never been a man who could think of much reason for acting happy, but then he had always been one who knew his purpose. His purpose was to get done what needed to be done, and what needed to be done was simple, if not easy. The settlers of Texas needed protection, from Indians on the north and bandits on the south. As a Ranger, Call had had a job that fit him, and he had gone about the work with a vigor that would have passed for happiness in another man.
But the job wore out. In the south it became mainly a matter of protecting the cattle herds of rich men like Captain King or Shanghai Pierce, both of whom had more cattle than any one man needed. In the north, the Army had finally taken the fight against the Comanches away from the Rangers, and had nearly finished it. He and Call, who had no military rank or standing, weren't welcomed by the Army; with forts all across the northwestern frontier the free-roving Rangers found that they were always interfering with the Army, or else being interfered with. When the Civil War came, the Governor himself called them in and asked them not to go-with so many men gone they needed at least one reliable troop of Rangers to keep the peace on the border.
It was that assignment that brought them to Lonesome Dove. After the war, the cattle market came into existence and all the big landowners in south Texas began to make up herds and trail them north, to the Kansas railheads. Once cattle became the game and the brush country filled up with cowboys and cattle traders, he and Call finally stopped rangering. It was no trouble for them to cross the river and bring back a few hundred head at a time to sell to the traders who were too lazy to go into Mexico themselves. They prospered in a small way; there was enough money in their account in San Antonio that they could have considered themselves rich, had that notion interested them. But it didn't; Augustus knew that nothing about the life they were living interested Call, particularly. They had enough money that they could have bought land, but they hadn't, although plenty of land could still be had wonderfully cheap.
It was that they had roved too long, Augustus concluded, when his mind turned to such matters. They were people of the horse, not of the town; in that they were more like the Comanches than Call would ever have admitted. They had been in Lonesome Dove nearly ten years, and yet what little property they had acquired was so worthless that neither of them would have felt bad about just saddling up and riding off from it.
Indeed, it seemed to Augustus that that was what both of them had always expected would happen. They
