Lonesome Dove - Streets Of Laredo Part 42

"Your men took four. I sell a lot of whiskey out my back door." "It's convenient, I guess," Mox Mox said. He handed over the money. He wanted to stay friendly with the Irishman. In his experience, it was bad policy to offend saloonkeepers.

The real reason Mox Mox led his horse behind the saloon was because he needed a place to mount that wouldn't require him to jump for his stirrup in front of the men. He found just the thing, too, a little lump of sand about two feet high. Usually he managed to mount from the uphill side, so he wouldn't have to jump for the stirrup. That was the awkward thing about being short, he could never forget it. If he was mounting out on the flats, where there was no uphill side, he had to jump for the stirrup, whether he liked it or not.

When he rode back around the saloon, all the men were mounted except Hergardt, who had just crawled out the door. He sat in the snow, crooning a German song he sometimes sang when he was unhappy. Some blood ran out of his ear, on the side where Hardin had hit him.

"Get up, Gardt. We're off to catch that Mexican boy," Mox Mox said.

Hergardt stumbled up, but fell flat down again before he could reach his horse. Manuel and Oteros managed to hoist him to his feet, but Pedro Jones and Jimmy c.u.msa had to help, in order to get him flopped over his horse. Hergardt caught his reins, but dropped them. Pedro Jones had to lead Hergardt's horse.

The mesquite limbs from what had once been old Naiche's hut were still smoldering as Mox Mox and the seven men rode out of Crow Town. The crows were cawing, and the bitter wind still blew.

Brookshire had attended Princeton College for a year. He hadn't the head for it, and knew he hadn't the head for it, but his mother had ambitions for her children: she was determined that he become a college man. She made him a suit, so that he would not look so much like a plain Hoboken boy, and she sc.r.a.ped and scrimped to save the money to send him.

They were not rich, but his father had a decent job on the railroad. He was foreman of the railroad yard in Queens; it had not been Colonel Terry's yard, not then.

Brookshire had only stayed a few months at Princeton College. Even his mother was forced to accept the sad fact that he didn't have the head for it. In later years, it was only in her bitterest moments, after she discovered that his father, like the Colonel, had a Miss Cora tucked away in Queens, that she railed about her son's failure at Princeton.

As he rode up the Rio Concho, with Captain Call and Deputy Plunkert, Brookshire had occasion to remember Princeton College, and to reflect on it. The wind grew colder, and what might have been only a soft snow in the East became a sharp sleet that bit at his face like bees.

In Princeton College, they had talked a good deal about civilization. Those who attended Princeton College were, of course, among the civilized. The New Jersey countryside had been civilized too, though Brookshire hadn't thought much about the civilized New Jersey landscape, or civilization in general, until he found himself freezing on the Rio Concho with Captain Call.

Up to that time, civilization had just been a fancy word that preachers and professors and politicians bruited about.

It wasn't just a word to Brookshire anymore. It was something he had left, and it involved comfortable beds and gas heaters and snug brick buildings, to keep out the wind. It involved meat that had been sliced by a well-trained butcher, and purchased at a butcher shop and cooked by Katie, his wife, now sadly gone, leaving him with no one to cook his chops for him.

Nothing that the professors at Princeton College would have been prepared to call civilization existed on the Rio Concho. Indeed, on the cold stretch where they were, nothing human existed, except themselves. At least the old women in Chihuahua City, staring out of their dusty shawls, had been human. Here, there was only the earth, the sky, and the wind. When night came, it took them an hour to gather enough scanty brushwood to make a decent fire.

The night the ice storm hit, it was so cold that even Captain Call didn't pretend to sleep. They all huddled by the fire, trying to keep it alive. At times, the wind surged so that it seemed the fire might blow away.

Brookshire had never expected to be this cold, and yet, he reflected, only a month before he had been sweltering in Laredo.

"A few weeks ago, I was the hottest I've ever been," he told the Captain.

"Now, I'm the coldest. It ain't ever moderate down here, is it?" Deputy Plunkert had given up talking.

Every time he opened his mouth, the air came in, so cold that it made his teeth hurt down to the roots.

"No, it's not moderate, much," Call said.

His knee pained him. The morning before, he had let a mule kick him. Usually he was quick enough to sidestep such kicks, but he hadn't sidestepped this one.

More worrisome to him was the fact that the joints of his fingers had begun to swell, when it got cold.

For most of his life, he had paid no attention to weather; weather was just there. He never let it interfere with his work or his movements. In time, the weather would always change, but the work couldn't wait. Now, it seemed, weather was interfering plenty. When the cold struck, his wrist joints became swollen, and the joints of his fingers, even more so. It had happened to a lesser degree the winter before, and a doctor in Amarillo had told him he had arthritis. The only remedy the doctor suggested was that he wear a copper bracelet, advice Call ignored. Now he wished he had tried it. His finger joints were so swollen on the cold mornings that he had an awkward time b.u.t.toning his pants, or pulling his saddle straps tight. Knotting the packs onto the mules had ceased to be a simple task, with his joints so swollen. He tried letting Deputy Plunkert pack the mules, but Deputy Plunkert could not tie a knot that would hold.

Just the day before, they had spotted a mule deer --a big doe. They needed meat, too. Call yanked his rifle out of its scabbard and tried to get off a shot, only to find that the knuckle of his trigger finger had swollen so badly he had to force it through the trigger guard. When he finally got his finger on the trigger, the doe was two hundred yards away, and Call missed.

Sitting by the gusting fire with Brookshire and the deputy, Call rubbed the knuckle. It had not become any less swollen. They still needed meat, too. They were living on jerky, and a few tortillas that were stiff as leather. He looked at the knuckle and was shocked by its size. He thought he might possibly have a thorn in it; mesquite thorns could cause swelling in a joint. But he looked closely and could find no sign of a thorn.

It was worrisome. Neither Brookshire nor the deputy was a particularly good shot. He himself was not an exceptional shot, but had usually been able to bring down meat when it was vital. It occurred to him that he might have to take the trigger guard off his rifle. At least he might have to if the intense cold didn't break. He could not remember having been so uncomfortable in cold weather, though he had spent a winter in Montana on the Milk River, where temperatures of forty below zero were not uncommon.

"Well, none of us are as young as we used to be," Brookshire remarked.

Call had never thought much about age. Charlie Goodnight liked to talk about it, but Call found the talk tedious. He was as old as he was, like everyone else; as long as he could still go when he needed to go, age didn't matter much.

He was still able, within reason, to do what he had a mind to do. But he'd had a mind to kill the large doe, and he hadn't. Of course, he wasn't an exceptional shot. He had missed mule deer before, but the fact that he had missed this one just when he had, was troubling. They were just coming into the home country of the young bandit, a boy with a keen eye and a German rifle with a telescope sight.

Getting a knuckle stuck in a trigger guard would not be wise, in a contest with Joey Garza.

"How cold do you have to be to freeze?" Deputy Plunkert asked. Though he hated to open his mouth and let the cold attack the roots of his teeth, he had begun to worry constantly about freezing and wanted to ask. Coming with the Captain was the worst mistake of his life. If he were to freeze to death on the Rio Concho, it would serve him right. But he still didn't want it to happen.

"We won't freeze," Call said. "We can squeeze in with the mules if it gets much worse." Deputy Plunkert had a private agony that he had not shared with his traveling companions. The day before, when they faced the freezing wind, he had put on all the clothes he had brought with him.

He was wearing two pairs of pants, and several shirts. With so much clothing on, and his hands half-frozen anyway, it had proven difficult to get himself fully unb.u.t.toned when a call of nature came in the night. He thought he was free, but when the p.i.s.s started to flow it turned out that he wasn't--a good measure of p.i.s.s went between one pair of pants and the other. The cold deepened and the p.i.s.s froze, making a shield of ice along one thigh. The weak fire barely warmed his hands.

It made no impression on the shield of ice.

Shortly after that calamity, the Yankee, Brookshire, came to his aid by loaning him an extra pair of gloves he had brought along.

Brookshire noticed that the deputy kept dropping his reins, because his hands were so cold he couldn't hold them. He offered the gloves, and the deputy gratefully took them. He knew he would be more grateful too for his wife Doobie's warm body, the next time he got to lie beside it.

"Are you sorry you came with me, Mr.

Brookshire?" Call asked. He knew the Deputy was sorry he had come; his every motion and statement made that clear. But Brookshire was a more complex fellow. He had adapted to hardship far more easily than Call had expected him to. Once out of the heat of Laredo, he had not uttered a word of complaint, and he tried to handle his share of the ch.o.r.es efficiently. Call had come to admire him. It could not be easy to go from the comfortable life of the city to what they were experiencing on the Rio Concho.

Yet it was the deputy--the native--who was feeling worse.

"No, I ain't sorry," Brookshire said.

"Katie's gone now. I'd just as soon be here." He could not think of his wife without tearing up, though he quickly wiped away the tears when they came.

"This way, I feel about as bad outside as I do inside," he said. "It's nice to be shut of the Colonel for a while, too. I imagine he's pretty jumpy by now, wondering what became of us. I hope he ain't fired the whole office." The thought came to Brookshire that if he ever did make it back to Brooklyn, he might take the train down to Princeton College, just to walk among the buildings for an afternoon. He supposed other Princeton men had gone to the West, and come back, though he didn't know any.

He couldn't claim to be a Princeton man anyway; he hadn't had the head for it, and had to quit and take a job in an office. Still, he had a sense that he would like to see the place once more, to look at the gray buildings and the great trees. If he did go, it would be because he had managed to survive a place where no one gave a thought to civilization. Survival was all they had time for, and numbers of them failed even at that.

It would be good to see Princeton again, after the Rio Concho. If he was fortunate enough to find another wife, and marry and have a boy, he thought he might want to send him to Princeton College. If he could marry a smart wife, perhaps he would have a boy with the head for Princeton College. Brookshire began to ruminate about his boy, and what his name might be. He thought he might want to name him Woodrow, after the Captain; that, of course, was a matter that would have to be discussed with his new wife.

The next morning, they came to the Rio Grande. Near its banks was a little village. Call had a distant memory of the place. He and Gus McCrae had once hung some horse thieves not far from it, on the Texas side. The village was called Ojinaga, as he remembered. He and Gus had brought the bodies home. Other Ranger captains considered that foolish, for they thought it invited ambush or revenge. But he and Gus had sometimes done it anyway, on the occasions when the village was close. The men hung were, in most cases, the only ones capable of ambush, and having the bodies made it easier on the womenfolk.

Call had never expected to return to Ojinaga. He remembered the bitterness in the eyes of some of the village women. But that was a common thing, along the border. He saw the bitterness whether he was returning bodies or not.

Now life had brought him back to Ojinaga.

As they rode to the well, in the center of the little plaza, he was surprised to see old Billy Williams standing outside a small adobe house. Billy seemed to be sniffing the air--it was a scout's habit--but what was more surprising was that he held the hands of two children. One was a large boy, and the other a girl of ten or twelve who seemed to be blind. Billy himself didn't appear to be very keen of sight, either. The large boy had a look that suggested he might not be fully right in the head.

Call turned his horse and rode over to the three people. He had never been a great admirer of Billy Williams, but after three hard nights along the cold river, it was comforting to come across an old acquaintance.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Billy," Call said. "That is you, isn't it?" "Woodrow, where have you been?" Billy asked.