imagination. Maybe the herd had moved north faster than he calculated. Maybe Call would show up the next day and save him the painful business of dragging along with his crutch.
Yet he hated waiting almost as much as he hated the traveling. His habit had been to go and meet whatever needed to be met, not to wait idly for what might approach.
What was approaching now was death, he knew. He had faced it before and overridden its motion with his own. To sit and wait for it gave it too many advantages. He had seen many men die of wounds, and had watched the turning of their spirits from active desire to live to indifference. With a bad wound, the moment indifference took over, life began to subside. Few men rose out of it: most lost all impulse toward activity and ended by offering death at least a halfhearted welcome.
Augustus didn't intend to do that, so he struggled on. When he took his rests he took them standing up, leaning on the crutch. It took less will to get started if one was standing up.
He hobbled over the plain through the long afternoon and twilight, finally collapsing sometime in the night. His hand slipped off the crutch and he felt it falling from him. In stooping to reach for it, he fell face down, unconscious before he hit the ground. In his deams he was with Lorena, in the tent on the hot Kansas plains. He longed for her to cool him somehow, touch him with her cool hand, but though she smiled, she didn't cool him. The world had become red, as though the sun had swollen and absorbed it. He felt as if he were lying on the surface of the red sun as it looked at sunset when it sank into the plain.
When he got his eyes open the sun was white, not red, and directly above him. He heard a spitting sound, such as a human would make, and his hand went to the pistol at his belt, thinking the Indians had come. But when he turned his head, it was a white man he saw: a very old, small white man in patched buckskins. The old man had a tobacco-stained beard and a bowie knife in his hand. A spotted horse grazed nearby. The old man was just squatting there, watching. Augustus kept his hand on his gun, but didn't draw it-he didn't know if he had the strength to draw it.
'Them was Blood Indians,' the old man said. 'It beats all that they didn't get you. You got enough of them.'
'Five is all,' Augustus said, raising himself to a sitting position. He didn't like to talk lying down.
'Seven I heard,' the old man said. 'I get along with the Bloods and the Blackfeet too. Bought lots of beaver from them in the beaverin' days.'
'I'm Augustus McCrae,' Augustus said.
'Hugh Auld,' the visitor said. 'Down Miles City they call me Old Hugh, although I doubt I'm eighty yet.'
'Was you meaning to stab me with that knife?' Augustus asked. 'I'd rather not shoot you unnecessarily.'
Old Hugh grinned and spat again. 'I was about to have a go at cutting off that rotten leg of yours,' he said. 'Before you come to, I was. That leg's ruint, but I might have a hell of a time cutting through the bone without no saw. Besides, you might have woke up and give me trouble.'
''Spect I would have,' Augustus said, looking at the leg. It was no longer black-striped-just black.
'We got to take it off,' Old Hugh said. 'If that rot gets in the other leg you'll lose both of them.'
Augustus knew the old man was right in everything he said. The leg was rotting, but a bowie knife was no instrument for taking it off.
'How far is Miles City?' he asked. 'I guess they've got a sawbones there.'
'Two, last time I went to town,' Old Hugh said. 'Both drunkards.'
'You forgot to inform me of the distance,' Augustus said.
'Forty miles and a fraction,' Hugh said. 'I don't believe you could have walked it.'
Augustus used the crutch to pull himself up. 'I might fool you,' he said, though it was just pride talking. He knew quite well he couldn't have walked it. Just getting to his feet left him nauseous.
'Where'd you come from, stranger?' the old man asked. He rose to his feet but did not exactly straighten up. His back was bent. To Augustus he seemed scarcely five feet tall.
'I was setting a deadfall and let it fall on me,' Old Hugh explained cheerfully. 'Some Blood warriors found me. They thought it was funny, but my back never did straighten out.'
'We all have misfortunes,' Augustus said. 'Could I borrow your horse?'
'Take it, only don't kick him,' Old Hugh said. 'If you kick him he'll buck. I'll follow along as best I can in case you fall off.'
He led the spotted horse over and helped Augustus mount. Augustus thought he might pass out, but managed not to. He looked at Old Hugh.
'You sure you get along with these Indians?' he asked. 'I'd be embarrassed if you came to any trouble on my account.'
'I won't,' Old Hugh said. 'They're off stuffing themselves with fresh buffalo meat. I was invited to join 'em but I think I'll poke along after you, even though I don't know where you come from.'
'A little fart of a town called Lonesome Dove,' Augustus said. 'It's in south Texas, on the Rio Grande.'
'Dern,' the old man said, clearly impressed by the information. 'You're a traveling son of a bitch, ain't you?'
'Does this horse have a name?' Augustus asked. 'I might need to speak to him.'
'I been calling him Custer,' Old Hugh said. 'I done a little scouting for the General once.'
Augustus paused a minute, looking down at the old trapper. 'I got one more favor to ask you,' he said. 'Tie me on. I ain't got strength enough to mount again if I should fall.'
The old man was surprised. 'I guess you've learned some tricks, with all your traveling,' he said. He fixed a rawhide loop around Augustus's waist and made it tight to the cantle.
'Let's go, Custer,' Augustus said, giving the horse rein and remembering not to kick him.
Five hours later, as the sun was setting, he nudged the exhausted horse over a slope north of the Yellowstone and saw the little town of Miles City four or five miles to the east.
When he got to town it was nearly dark. He stopped in front of what appeared to be a saloon but found he could not dismount. Then he remembered that he was tied on. He couldn't untie the knots in the rawhide, but managed to draw his pistol and fire in the air. The first shot seemed to go unnoticed, but when he fired twice more several men came to the door of the saloon and looked at him.
'That's Old Hugh's horse,' one said in a sullen voice, as if he suspected Augustus of horse theft.
'Yes, Mr. Auld was kind enough to loan him to me,' Augustus said, staring the man down. 'I've a ruined leg and would appreciate it if someone would locate me a medical man quick.'
The men walked out and came around the horse. When they saw the leg, one whistled.
'What done that?' he asked.
'An arrow,' Augustus said.
'Who are you, sir?' the oldest of the men asked, more respectfully.
'Augustus McCrae, Captain in the Texas Rangers,' Augustus said. 'One of you gentlemen will need to help me with these knots.'
They hurried to help, but before they could get him off the horse the red water washed over his eyes again. The spotted horse named Custer didn't like so many men around him. He tried to bite one of them, then bucked twice, throwing Augustus, who had just been untied, into the street. Two of the men tried to catch the horse but he easily outran them and raced back out of town.
96.
AUGUSTUS FLOATED in the red water. Sometimes he saw faces, heard voices, saw more faces. He saw Bolivar and Lippy, his two wives, his three sisters. He saw men long dead whom he had rangered with, saw Pedro Flores and Pea Eye and a redheaded whore he had taken up with for a month in his riverboating days. He sloshed helplessly back and forth, as if something were churning the water.
When the redness receded and he opened his eyes again, he heard a piano playing in the distance. He was in bed in a small hot room. Through the open window he could see the great Montana prairie. Looking around, he noticed a small fat man dozing in a chair nearby. The man wore a black frock coat sprinkled with dandruff. A bottle of whiskey and an old bowler hat nearly as disreputable as Lippy's sat on a small bureau. The fat man was snoring
