'Women and children with them?' Call asked.
'Oh yes, a passel,' Needle said.
'They seldom drag their womenfolk into battle,' Call said. 'Probably Crow. I'm told the Crow are peaceful.'
'Did you find Gus?' Dish asked. 'Pea can't talk about nothing else.'
'I found him. He's dead,' Call said.
The men were turning their horses to go back to the herd. They stopped as if frozen.
'Gus is dead?' Needle Nelson asked.
Call nodded. He knew he would have to tell the story, but didn't want to have to tell it a dozen times. He trotted on over to the wagon, which Lippy was driving. Pea Eye sat in the back end, resting. He was still barefoot, though Call saw at once that his feet were better. When he saw Call riding in alone he looked worried.
'Did they carry him off, Captain?' he asked.
'No, he made it to Miles City,' Call said. 'But he had blood Poisoning in both legs from those arrows, and he died day before yesterday.'
'Well, I swear,' Pea Eye said, 'I wished he hadn't.
'I got away and Gus died,' he added sadly. 'Wouldn't you figure it'd be the other way around?'
'I would if I had to make odds,' Jasper Fant said. He was close by and had loped over in time to hear.
Newt heard the facts from Dish, who soon rode around the herd, telling the boys. Many of them loped into the wagon to get more details, but Newt didn't. He felt like he had the morning he saw Deets dead-like turning away. If he never went to the wagon, he would never have to hear any more. He cried all afternoon, riding as far back on the drags as he could get. For once he was grateful for the dust the herd raised.
It seemed to him it would have been better if the Indians had ridden in and killed them all-having it happen one at a time was too much to bear, and it was happening to the best people too. The ones who teased him and made sport of him, like Bert and Soupy, were happy as pigs. Even Pea Eye had nearly died, and except for the Captain and himself, Pea was the last one left of the old Hat Creek outfit.
All the men were annoyed with Captain Call because he told of Gus's dying brusquely, got himself a little food and rode away to be alone, as he always did in the evening. His account was pregnant with mysteries, and the men spent all night discussing them. Why had Gus refused to have the other leg amputated, in the face of plain warnings?
'I knew a spry little fellow from Virginia who could go nearly as fast on crutches as I can on my own legs,' Lippy reported. 'He had two crutches, and once he got his rhythm he could skip along.'
'Gus could have made a cart and got him a billygoat to pull it,' Bert Borum suggested.
'Or a donkey,' Needle said.
'Or his dern pigs, if they're so smart,' Soupy said. Both pigs were under the wagon. Pea Eye, who slept in the wagon, had to listen to their grunts and snores all night.
Only the Irishman seemed sympathetic to Gus's stance. 'Why, it would only have left half of him,' he said. 'Who wants to be half of himself?'
'No, half would be about the hips,' Jasper calculated. 'Half would be your nuts and all. Just your legs ain't half.'
Dish Bogget took no part in the conversation. He felt sad about Gus. He remembered that Gus had once lent him money to visit Lorena, and this memory lent another tone to his sadness. He had supposed Gus would go back and visit Lorena, but now, clearly, he couldn't. She was there in Nebraska, waiting for Gus, who would never come.
Into his sadness came a hope that when the drive was over he could draw his wages and go back and win Lorena, after all. He could still remember her face as she sat in front of the little tent on the Kansas plains. How he had envied Gus, for Lorena would smile at Gus, but she had never smiled at him. Now Gus was dead, and Dish determined to mention to the Captain that he wanted to draw his wages and leave as soon as the drive was finished.
Lippy broke down and cried a time or two, thinking of Gus. To him, the mysterious part was why Gus wanted to be taken to Texas.
'All that way to Texas,' Lippy kept saying. 'He must have been drunk.'
'I never seen Gus too drunk to know what he meant,' Pea Eye said. He, too, was very sad. It seemed to him it would have been better if he could have persuaded Gus to come with him.
'All that way to Texas,' Lippy kept saying. 'I wager the Captain won't do it.'
'I'll take that wager,' Dish said. 'He and Gus rangered together.'
'And me too,' Pea Eye said sadly. 'I rangered with them.'
'Gus won't be much but a skeleton, if the Captain does do it,' Jasper said. 'I wouldn't do it. I'd get to thinking of ghosts and ride off in a hole.'
At the mention of ghosts, Dish got up and left the campfire. He couldn't abide the thought of any more ghosts. If Deets and Gus were both roaming around, one might approach him, and he didn't like the thought. The very notion made him white, and he pitched his bedroll as close to the wagon as he could get.
The other men continued to talk of Augustus's strange request.
'Why Texas beats me,' Soupy said. 'I always heard he was from Tennessee.'
'I wonder what he'd have to say about being dead?' Needle said. 'Gus always had something to say about everything.'
Po Campo began to jingle his tambourine lightly, and the Irishman whistled sadly.
'He never collected all that money he won from us at cards,' Bert remembered. 'That's the bright side of the matter.'
'Oh, dern,' Pea Eye said, feeling so sorrowful that he wanted to die himself.
No one had to ask him what he was derning about.
98.
OLD HUGH AULD soon replaced Augustus as the main talker in the Hat Creek outfit. He caught up with the herd, with his wagonload of coats and supplies, near the Missouri, which they crossed near Fort Benton. The soldiers at the tiny outpost were as surprised to see the cowboys as if they were men from another planet. The commander, a lanky major named Court, could scarcely believe his eyes when he looked up and saw the herd spread out over the plain. When told that most of the cattle had been gathered below the Mexican border he was astonished, but not too astonished to buy two hundred head. Buffalo were scarce, and the fort not well provisioned.
Call was short with Major Court. He had been short with everyone since Gus's death. Everyone wondered when he would stop going north, but no one dared ask. There had been several light snows, and when they crossed the Missouri, it was so cold that the men built a huge fire on the north bank to warm up. Jasper Fant came near to realizing his lifelong fear of drownding when his horse spooked at a beaver and shook him off into the icy water. Fortunately Ben Rainey caught him and pulled him ashore. Jasper was blue with cold; even though they covered him with blankets and got him to the fire, it was a while before he could be convinced that he was alive.
'Why, you could have waded out,' Old Hugh said, astonished that a man would be frightened over such a little thing as a soaking. 'If you think this water's cold now, try setting a few beaver traps around February,' he added, thinking it would help the man put things in perspective.
Jasper couldn't speak for an hour. Most of the men had long since grown bored with his drownding fears, and they left him to dry out his clothes as best he could. That night, when he was warm enough to be bitter, Jasper vowed to spend the rest of his life north of the Missouri rather than cross such a stream again. Also, he had developed an immediate resentment against beavers and angered Old Hugh several times on the trip north by firing at them recklessly with his pistol if he saw some in a pond.
'Them's
'Well, I hate the little toothy sons of bitches,' Jasper said. 'The pelts be damned.'
Call kept riding northwest until even Old Hugh began to be worried. The great line of the Rockies was clear to
