as much sand as possible out of their clothes; but more sand filtered in, out of their hair and off their collars. Gus brushed the branch of a mesquite tree and a shower of sand rained down on him.
Only the old Indian woman and the boy with no tongue made no attempt to rid themselves of sand. The fire had finally been smothered, but the old woman and the boy still sat by it, sand banked against their backs. To Call they hardly seemed human. They were like part of the ground.
Gus, in high spirits, decided to be a bronc rider after all. He took it into his head to ride the Mexican mare.
I expect that storms got her cowed, he said, to Call.
Gus, she aint cowed, Call replied. He had the mare by the ears again, and detected no change in her attitude.
Sure enough, the mare threw Gus on the second jump. Several of the naked Rangers laughed, and went on shaking out their clothes.
IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON, still carrying more sand in his clothes than he would have liked, Major Chevallie attempted to question the old woman and the boy. He gave them coffee and fed them a little hardtack first, hoping it would make them talkativebut the feast, such as it was, failed in its purpose, mainly because no one in the troop spoke any Comanche,
The Major had supposed Bigfoot Wallace to be adept in the tongue, but Bigfoot firmly denied any knowledge of it.
Why no, Major, Bigfoot said. Ive made it a practice to stay as far from the Comanche as I can get, Bigfoot said. What few I ever met face-on I shot. Some others have shot at me, but we never stopped to palaver.
The old woman wore a single bear tooth on a rawhide cord around her neck. The tooth was the size of a small pocketknife. Several of the men looked at it with envy; most of them would have been happy to own a bear tooth that large.
She must have been a chiefs woman, Long Bill speculated.
Otherwise why would a squaw get to keep a fine grizzly tooth like that?
Matilda Roberts knew five or six words of Comanche and tried them all on the old woman, without result. The old woman sat where she had settled when she walked into the camp, backed by a hummock of sand. Her rheumy eyes were focused on the campfire, or on what had been the campfire.
The tongueless boy, still hungry, dug most of the sandy turtle meat out of the ashes of the campfire and ate it. No one contested him, although Matilda dusted the sand off a piece or two and gnawed at the meat herself. The boy perked up considerably, once he had eaten the better part of Matildas snapping turtle. He did his best to talk, but all that came out were moans and gurgles. Several of the men tried to talk to him in sign, but got nowhere.
Goddamn Shadrach, where did he go? the Major asked. Weve got a Comanche captive here, and the only man we have who speaks Comanche leaves.
As the day wore on, Gus and Call took turns getting pitched off the mare. Call once managed to stay on her five hops, which was the best either of them achieved. The Rangers soon lost interest in watching the boys get pitched around. A few got up a card game. Several others took a little target practice, using cactus apples as targets. Bigfoot Wallace pared his toenails, several of which had turned coal black as the result of his having worn footgear too small for his feetit was that or go barefooted, and in the thorny country they were in, bare feet would have been a handicap.
Toward sundown Call and Gus were assigned first watch. They took their position behind a good clump of chaparral, a quarter of a mile north of the camp. Major Chevallie had been making another attempt to converse with the old Comanche woman, as they were leaving camp. He tried sign, but the old woman looked at him, absent, indifferent.
Shadrach just rode off and he aint rode back, Call said. I feel better when Shadrachs around.
Id feel better if there were more whores, Gus commented. In the afternoon he had made another approach to Matilda Roberts, only to be rebuffed.
I should have stayed on the riverboats, he added. I never lacked for whores, on the riverboats.
Call was watching the north. He wondered if it was really true that Shadrach and Bigfoot could smell Indians. Of course if you got close to an Indian, or to anybody, you could smell them. There were times on sweaty days when he could easily smell Gus, or any other Ranger who happened to be close by. Black Sam, the cook, had a fairly strong smell, and so did Ezekielthe latter had not bothered to wash the whole time Call had known him.
But dirt and sweat werent what Bigfoot and Shadrach had been talking about, when they said they smelled Indians. The old woman and the boy had been nearly a mile away, when they claimed to smell them. Surely not even the best
scout could smell a person that far away.
There could have been more Indians out there, when Shad said he smelled them, Call speculated. There could be a passel out there, just waiting.
Gus McCrae took guard duty a good deal more lightly than his companion, Woodrow Call. He looked at his time on guard as a welcome escape from the chores that cropped up around camp gathering firewood, for example, or chopping it, or saddle-soaping the Majors saddle. Since he and Woodrow were the youngest Rangers in the troop, they were naturally expected to do most of the chores. Several times they had even been required to shoe horses, although Black Sam, the cook, was also a more than adequate blacksmith.