By the time Call got his shirt on and came to the table, Augustus was reaching for a second helping. Pea and Newt were casting nervous glances at the pot, hoping for seconds themselves but too polite to grab before everyone had been served. Augustus's appetite was a kind of natural calamity. Call had watched it with amazement for thirty years and yet it still surprised him to see how much Augustus ate. He didn't work unless he had to, and yet he could sit down night after night and out-eat three men who had put in a day's labor.
In their rangering days, when things were a little slow the boys would sit around and swap stories about Augustus's eating. Not only did he eat a lot, he ate it fast. The cook that wanted to hold him at the grub for more than ten minutes had better have a side of beef handy.
Call pulled out a chair and sat down. As Augustus was ladling himself a big scoop of beans, Call stuck his plate under the ladle. Newt thought it such a slick move that he laughed out loud.
'Many thanks,' Call said. 'If you ever get tired of loafing I guess you could get a job waiting tables.'
'Why, I had a job waiting tables once,' Augustus said, pretending he had meant to serve Call the beans. 'On a riverboat. I wasn't no older than Newt when I had that job. The cook even wore a white hat.'
'What for?' Pea Eye asked.
'Because it's what real cooks are supposed to wear,' Augustus said, looking at Bolivar, who was stirring a little coffee into his brown sugar. 'Not so much a hat as a kind of big white cap-it looked like it could have been made out of a bedsheet.'
'I'd be damned if I'd wear one,' Call said.
'Nobody would be loony enough to hire you to cook, Woodrow,' Augustus said. 'The cap is supposed to keep the cook's old greasy hairs from falling into the food. I wouldn't be surprised if some of Bol's hairs have found their way into this sow bosom.'
Newt looked at Bolivar, sitting over by the stove in his dirty serape. Bolivar's hair looked like it had had a can of secondhand lard poured over it. Once every few months Bol would change clothes and go visit his wife, but his efforts at improving his appearance never went much higher than his mustache, which he occasionally tried to wax with grease of some kind.
'How come you to quit the riverboat?' Pea Eye asked.
'I was too young and pretty,' Augustus said. 'The whores wouldn't let me alone.'
Call was sorry it had come up. He didn't like talk about whores-not anytime, but particularly not in front of the boy. Augustus had little shame, if any. It had long been a sore spot between them.
'I wish they'd drownt you then,' Call said, annoyed. Conversation at the table seldom led to any good.
Newt kept his eyes on his plate, as he usually did when the Captain grew annoyed.
'Drown me?' Augustus said. 'Why, if anybody had tried it, those girls would have clawed them to shreds.' He knew Call was mad, but wasn't much inclined to humor him. It was his dinner table as much as Call's, and if Call didn't like the conversation he could go to bed.
Call knew there was no point in arguing. That was what Augustus wanted: argument. He didn't really care what the question was, and it made no great difference to him which side he was on. He just plain loved to argue, whereas Call hated to. Long experience had taught him that there was no winning arguments with Augustus, even in cases where there was a simple right and wrong at issue. Even in the old days, when they were in the thick of it, with Indians and hardcases to worry about, Augustus would seize any chance for a dispute. Practically the closest call they ever had, when the two of them and six Rangers got surprised by the Comanches up the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red and were all digging holes in the bank that could have turned out to be their graves if they hadn't been lucky and got a cloudy night and sneaked away, Augustus had kept up a running argument with a Ranger they called Ugly Bobby. The argument was entirely about coon dogs, and Augustus had kept it up all night, though most of the Rangers were so scared they couldn't pass water.
Of course the boy lapped up Augustus's stories about riverboats and whores. The boy hadn't been anywhere, so it was all romance to him.
'Listening to you brag about women don't improve the taste of my food,' he said, finally.
'Call, if you want better food you have to start by shooting Bolivar,' Augustus said, reminded of his own grievance against the cook.
'Bol, I want you to quit whackin' that bell with that crowbar,' he said. 'You can do it at noon if you want to but let off doin' it at night. A man with any sense can tell when it's sundown. You've spoilt many a pretty evening for me, whackin' that bell.'
Bolivar stirred his sugary coffee and held his peace. He whacked the dinner bell because he liked the sound, not because he wanted anybody to come and eat. The men could eat when they liked-he would whack the bell when
'Gen-eral Lee freed the slaves,' he remarked in a surly tone.
Newt laughed. Bol never had been able to get the war straight, but he had been genuinely sorry when it ended. In fact, if it had kept going he would probably have stayed a bandit-it was a safe and profitable profession with most of the Texans gone. But the ones who came back from the war were mostly bandits themselves, and they had better guns. The profession immediately became overcrowded. Bolivar knew it was time to quit, but once in a while he got the urge for a little shooting.
'It wasn't General Lee, it was Abe Lincoln who freed the slaves,' Augustus pointed out.
Bolivar shrugged. 'No difference,' he said.
'A big difference,' Call said. 'One was a Yankee and one wasn't.'
Pea Eye got interested for a minute. The beans and sowbelly had revived him. He had been very interested in the notion of emancipation and had studied over it a lot while he went about his work. It was obviously just pure luck that he himself hadn't been born a slave, but if he had been unlucky Lincoln would have freed him. It gave him a certain admiration for the man.
'He just freed Americans,' he pointed out to Bolivar.
Augustus snorted. 'You're in over your head, Pea,' he said. 'Who Abe Lincoln freed was a bunch of Africans, no more American than Call here.'
Call pushed back his chair. He was not about to sit around arguing slavery after a long day, or after a short one either.
'I'm as American as the next,' he said, taking his hat and picking up a rifle.
'You was born in Scotland,' Augustus reminded him. 'I know they brought you over when you was still draggin' on the tit, but that don't make you no less a Scot.'
Call didn't reply. Newt looked up and saw him standing at the door, his hat on and his Henry in the crook of his arm. A couple of big moths flew past his head, drawn to the light of the kerosene lamp on the table. With nothing more said, the Captain went out the door.
2.
CALL WALKED THE RIVER for an hour, though he knew there was no real need. It was just an old habit he had, left over from wilder times: checking, looking for sign of one kind or another, honing his instincts, as much as anything. In his years as a Ranger captain it had been his habit to get off by himself for a time, every night, out of camp and away from whatever talking and bickering were going on. He had discovered early on that his instincts needed privacy in which to operate. Sitting around a fire being sociable, yawning and yarning, might be fine in safe country, but it could cost you an edge in country that wasn't so safe. He liked to get off by himself, a mile or so from camp, and listen to the country, not the men.
Of course, real scouting skills were superfluous in a place as tame as Lonesome Dove, but Call still liked to get out at night, sniff the breeze and let the country talk. The country talked quiet; one human voice could drown it out, particularly if it was a voice as loud as Augustus McCrae's. Augustus was notorious all over Texas for the strength of his voice. On a still night he could be heard at least a mile, even if he was more or less whispering. Call did his best to get out of range of Augustus's voice so that he could relax and pay attention to other sounds. If nothing else, he might get a clue as to what weather was coming-not that there was much mystery about the weather around Lonesome Dove. If a man looked straight up at the stars he was apt to get dizzy, the night was so clear.
