far. He couldn't imagine what such a place would look like. Jake had said it had buffalo and mountains, two things he had never seen, and snow, the hardest thing of all to imagine. He had seen ridges and hills, and so had a notion about mountains, and he had seen pictures of buffalo in the papers that the stage drivers sometimes left Mr. Gus.
Snow, however, was an entirely mysterious thing. Once or twice in his lifetime there had been freezes in Lonesome Dove-he had seen thin ice on the water bucket that sat on the porch. But ice wasn't snow, which was supposed to stack up on the ground so high that people had to wade through it. He had seen pictures of people sledding over it, but still couldn't imagine what it would actually feel like to be in snow.
'I guess we'll just go for home,' Call said. 'If we wake 'em up we wake 'em up.'
He looked at the boy. 'You take the left point,' he said. 'Pea will be on the right, and I'll be behind. If trouble comes, it'll come from behind, and I'll notice it first. If they get after us hot and heavy we can always drop off thirty or forty horses and hope that satisfies them.'
They circled the herd and quietly started it moving to the northwest, waving a rope now and then to get the horses in motion but saying as little as possible. Newt could not help feeling a little odd about it all, since he had somehow had it in his mind that they were coming to Mexico to buy horses, not steal them. It was puzzling that such a muddy little river like the Rio Grande should make such a difference in terms of what was lawful and what not. On the Texas side, horse stealing was a hanging crime, and many of those hung for it were Mexican cowboys who came across the river to do pretty much what they themselves were doing. The Captain was known for his sternness where horsethieves were concerned, and yet, here they were, running off a whole herd. Evidently if you crossed the river to do it, it stopped being a crime and became a game.
Newt didn't really feel that what they were doing was wrong-if it had been wrong, the Captain wouldn't have done it. But the thought hit him that under Mexican law what they were doing might be a hanging offense. It put a different slant on the game. In imagining what it would be like to go to Mexico, he had always supposed the main danger would come in the form of bullets, but he was no longer so sure. On the ride down he hadn't been worried, because he had a whole company around him.
But once they started back, instead of having a whole company around him, he seemed to have no one. Pea was far across the valley, and the Captain was half a mile to the rear. If a bunch of hostile
If caught, he knew he could expect no mercy. The only thing in his favor was that there didn't seem to be any trees around to hang him from. Mr. Gus had once told a story about a horsethief who had to be hung from the rafter of a barn because there were no trees, but so far as Newt could tell there were no barns in Mexico either. The only thing he knew clearly was that he was scared. He rode for several miles, feeling very apprehensive. The thought of hanging-a new thought-wouldn't leave his mind. It became so powerful at one point that he Squeezed his throat with one hand, to get a little notion of how it felt not to breathe. It didn't feel so bad when it was just his hand, but he knew a rope would feel a lot worse.
But the miles passed and no
Newt wasn't tired, and as he became less scared he began to imagine how gratifying it would be to ride into Lonesome Dove with such a large herd of horses. Everyone who saw them ride in would realize that he was now a man-even Lorena might see it if she happened to look out her window at the right time. He and the Captain and Pea were doing an exceptional thing. Deets would be proud of him, and even Bolivar would take notice.
All went peaceful and steady, and the thin moon hung brightly in the west. It seemed to Newt that it must be one of the longest nights of the year. He kept looking to the east, hoping to see a little redness on the horizon, but the horizon was still black.
He was thinking about the morning, and how nice it would be to cross the river and bring the horses through the town, when the peaceful night suddenly went off like a bomb. They were on the long chaparral plain not far south of the river and were easing the horses around a particularly dense thicket of chaparral, prickly pear and low mesquite when it happened. Newt had dropped off the point a little distance, to allow the horses room to skirt the thicket, when he heard shots from behind him. Before he had time to look around, or even touch his own gun, the horse herd exploded into a dead run and began to spread out. He saw what looked like half the herd charging right at him from the rear; some of the horses nearest him veered and went crashing into the chaparral. Then he heard Pea's gun sound from the other side of the thicket, and at that point lost all capacity for sorting out what was happening. When the race started, most of the herd was behind him, and the horses ahead of him were at least going in the same direction he was. But in a few seconds, once the whole mass of animals was moving at a dead run over the uncertain terrain, he suddenly noticed a stream of animals coming directly toward him from the right. The new bunch had simply cut around the chaparral thicket from the north and collided with the first herd. Before Newt even had time to consider what was happening, he was engulfed in a mass of animals, a few of which went down when the two herds ran together. Then, over the confused neighing of what seemed like hundreds of horses he began to hear yells and curses-Mexican curses. To his shock he saw a rider engulfed in the mass like himself, and the rider was not the Captain or Pea Eye. He realized then that two horse herds had run together, theirs headed for Texas, the other coming from Texas, both trying to skirt the same thicket, though from opposite directions.
The realization was unhelpful, though, because the horses behind him had caught up with him and all were struggling for running room. For a second he thought of trying to force his way to the outside, but then he saw two riders already there, struggling to turn the herd. They were not succeeding, but they were not his riders, either, and it struck him that being in the middle of the herd offered a certain safety, at least.
It quickly became clear that their herd was much the larger, and was forcing the new herd to curve into its flow. Soon all the horses were running northwest, Newt still in the middle of the bunch. Once a big wild-eyed gelding nearly knocked Mouse down; then Newt heard shots to his left and ducked, thinking the shots were meant for him. Just as he ducked Mouse leaped a sizable chaparral bush. With his eyes toward the gunfire Newt was unprepared for the leap, and lost a stirrup and one rein but held onto the saddle horn and kept his seat. From then on he concentrated on riding, though he still occasionally heard shots. He kept low over his horse, an unnecessary precaution, for the running herd threw up so much dust that he could not have seen ten feet in front of him even if it had been daylight. He was grateful for the dust-it was choking him, but it was also keeping him from getting shot, a more important consideration.
After a few miles the horses were no longer bunched so tightly. It occurred to Newt that he ought to angle out of the herd and not just let himself be carried along like a cow chip on a river, but he didn't know what such a move might mean. Would he be required to shoot at the
While he was running along, trying not to fall off and hoping he and the horses wouldn't suddenly go over a cutbank or pile into a deep gully of some kind, he heard a sound that was deeply reassuring: the sound of the Captain's rifle, the big Henry. Newt heard it shoot twice. It had to be the Captain because he was the only man on the border who carried a Henry. Everyone else had already switched to the lighter Winchesters.
The shots meant the Captain was all right. They came from ahead, which was odd, since the Captain had been behind, but then the
Newt looked back over his shoulder and saw red in the east. It was just a line of red, like somebody had drawn it with a crayon, over the thick black line of the land, but it meant that the night was ending. He didn't know where they were, but they still had a lot of horses. The horses were well spread by then, and he eased out of the herd. Despite the red in the east, the land seemed darker than it had all night; he could see nothing and just exerted himself to keep up, hoping they were going in the right direction. It felt a little odd to be alive and unharmed after such a deep scare, and Newt kept looking east, wishing the light would hurry so he could see around him and know whether it was safe to relax. For all he knew, Mexicans with Winchesters could be a hundred yards behind him.
He wished the Captain would shoot again; he had never been in a situation in which he felt so uncertain about
