proven deadly for Gus. The visits made him sad, for the Indians were not belligerent and it was apparent that Gus had merely struck the wrong bunch at the wrong time, in the wrong manner. It was a depressing irony, for Gus had always been one to preach diplomacy with the red man and over the years had engaged in many councils that Call himself thought pointless. Gus had talked to many a warrior that Call would merely have shot, and yet had got killed in a place where most of the Indians were happy to talk, particularly to a man who owned an endless supply of beef.
But Call noticed on the visits that, in the main, the Indians had better horses than he did, and he had even arranged a trade with the Blackfeet: fifty beeves for ten horses. The negotiations had required Old Hugh to talk for two days and had left him hoarse.
Thus, when the Spettle boy came in to report the horses gone, Call was surprised. Where would a horsethief come from, and where would one go?
Still, a fact was a fact: the horses were gone. Call took Pea, Newt, Needle Nelson, and Old Hugh, and went in pursuit. He soon ruled out Indians, for the thieves were traveling too slow, and had even stopped to camp not thirty miles from their headquarters, which Indians with stolen horses would never have been foolish enough to do. It was soon plain that they were only chasing two men. They crossed into Canada on the second day and caught the thieves on the third, surprising them at breakfast. They were a shaky old man with a dirty gray beard and a strapping boy about Newt's age. The old man had a single-shot buffalo gun, and the boy a cap-and-ball pistol. The boy was cooking venison and the old man propped against his saddle muttering over a Bible when Call walked in with his pistol drawn. The boy, though big as an ox, began to tremble when he saw the five men with guns.
'I tolt you, Pa,' he said. 'Now we're caught.'
The old man, who had a jug beside his saddle, was clearly drunk, and seemed scarcely conscious of what was occurring.
'Why, I'm a minister of the Lord,' he said. 'Don't point your dern guns at me, we're just having breakfast. This is my boy, Tom.'
Call disarmed the two, which only took a second. The fifteen horses were grazing in plain sight not a hundred yards from the camp.
'We didn't know they were your horses,' the boy said, quivering with fright. 'We thought they were Indian horses.'
'They're all branded,' Call said. 'You could see that, unless you're blind.'
'Not blind and not sinners, either,' the old man said, getting to his feet. He was so drunk he couldn't walk straight.
'Well, you're horsethieves, and that's a sin in my book,' Call said. 'Where do you people come from?'
'From God, man,' the old fellow said.
'Where on earth, I meant,' Call said, feeling weary. He wondered what had possessed a minister and a boy to run off their horses, each plainly branded. It struck him as a stupid and pointless crime, for they were driving the horses north, where there were no towns and no ranches. It was clear the two were poor, and the old man out of his head. Call could tell the hands were glum at the prospect of hanging such a pair, and he himself didn't relish it, but they were horsethieves and he felt he had no choice. His own distaste'for the prospect caused him to make a mistake-he didn't immediately tie the old man, who seemed so weak he could hardly stand. He was not too weak, though, to snatch up a hatchet and strike a blow at Needle that would have killed him had not Needle jerked back- as it was, the blade of the hatchet tore a bad cut in his arm. Call shot the old man before he could strike again. The boy took off running across the open prairie. He was easily caught, of course, but by the time he was tied and led back the old man was dead. The boy sat down in the thin snow and wept.
'He was all right until Ma died and Sister died,' he said. 'We were in a wagon train. Then he just went daft and said we had to go off by ourselves. I didn't want to.'
'I wish he hadn't taken our horses,' Call said.
The boy was trembling and crying. 'Don't hang me, mister,' he said. 'I never stole in my life. I told him to leave them horses, but he said they were horses the Indians had already stole.'
'I'll work for you,' the boy added. 'I can blacksmith. I worked two years at a forge back in Missouri, before we left.'
Call knew there was not a decent tree in miles. It would be a hardship on them to ride along with the boy for a day in order to hang him. Besides, they needed a blacksmith. As for the boy's story, maybe it was true and maybe it wasn't. The old man had appeared to be mad, but Call had seen many thieves act that way in hopes that it would save them.
'Pa said he'd shoot me if I didn't help,' the boy said.
Call didn't believe him. He had been about to cut the boy loose, but he didn't. He put him on one of the stolen horses, and they started back.
Newt felt sick at the thought of what would happen. He didn't want to see another person hang.
'You ask him,' he said to Pea.
'Ask him what?' Pea said.
'Not to hang him,' Newt said.
'He'll hang him,' Pea said. 'He hung Jake, didn't he?'
'His pa made him do it,' Newt said.
'Maybe,' Pea said. 'And maybe he's just a dern horsethief.'
When they came to a good tree, Call rode on, all the way to the Hat Creek headquarters. Once there, he cut the boy loose.
'You can work,' he said.
For ten days the big boy was the friendliest person in the outfit. He shoed all the horses, cut wood, did every chore he was asked to do and some that he wasn't. He chattered constantly and tried his best to be friendly, and yet no one really liked him. Even Newt didn't really like him. Tom stood too close to him, when he talked, and he talked all the time. His large face was always sweaty, even on the coldest days. Even Po Campo didn't like him, and gave him food grudgingly.
Then, before dawn one morning Call caught Big Tom, as they called him, saddling a horse and preparing to ride off. He had four of the men's wallets on him, stolen so smoothly that none of the men had even missed them. He had also taken the best saddle in the outfit, which belonged to Bert Borum.
Call had been expecting the move for two or three days and had made Pea Eye help him watch. Big Tom tried to make a dash for it, and Call shot him off his horse. Cowboys ran out of their house in their long johns, at the shot. Even wounded, the boy proved full of fight-Call had to rap him with the barrel of his Henry before he could be tied. This time he was summarily hung, though he wept again and begged for mercy.
'It's wasted on horsethieves,' Call said, before kicking the boy's horse out from under him. None of the men said a word.
'Should have hung him in the first place, although he did shoe them horses,' Pea Eye commented later.
Call had begun to think of Gus, and the promise he had made. It would soon be spring, and he would have to be going if he were to keep the promise, which of course he must. Yet the ranch had barely been started, and it was hard to know who to leave in command. The question had been in his mind all winter. There seemed to be no grave danger from Indians or anything else. Who would best keep things going? Soupy was excellent when set a task, but had no initiative and was unused to planning. The men were all independent to a fault and constantly on the verge of fist fights because they fancied that someone had attempted to put himself above them in some way. Pea Eye was clearly the senior man, but Pea Eye had contentedly taken orders for thirty years; to expect him to suddenly start giving them was to expect the impossible.
Call thought often of Newt. He watched him with increasing pride all winter. The boy was the only one left in the crew whom he enjoyed being with. The boy's skill and persistence with horses pleased him. He knew it would be chancy to leave a seventeen-year-old boy in charge of a group of grown men-yet he himself had led men at that age, and that had been in rougher times. He liked the way the boy went about his work without complaint. He had filled out physically during the year and could work all day energetically and accomplish more than most of the men.
Once, watching the boy cross a corral after having worked with one of the mustangs, Pea Eye said innocently, 'Why, Captain, little Newt walks just like you.'
Call flinched, but Pea Eye didn't notice-Pea Eye was no noticer, as Augustus had often said.
