Comanche Moon (43 page)

"Oh, Denton Fogg, that gloomy fool," Captain King said. "He'll starve out in another year or two and have to take those spavined women back east." "You won't sell us any cattle, then, Captain?" Call asked.

Captain King, whose mind seemed to be elsewhere, swung his severe gaze back to Call.

"You're a persistent man, I see, Captain," he said. "Do you like Inish Scull?" "What, sir?" Call asked, surprised by the question.

"It's a simple question, Captain," Richard King said. "Do you like Inish Scull?" Call resented the question so much that it was all he could do to keep from simply riding off with the black carpenters. He didn't like Inish Scull, as it happened: the man had been rude to him too often. But that was his business, not Captain King's.

"The Governor gave us orders," he said.

"I mean to carry them out, if I can. I'd appreciate your help, but if I can't get it I've still got my orders to carry out." "I should have asked McCrae," Captain King said. "I expect I would have got an answer from McCrae. You do like McCrae, don't you, Captain? Will you admit that much?" "I had better take these men and head back to Lonesome Dove, Captain," Call said. "I don't want to get caught in this brush after dark." "I'm glad you didn't take me up on that job offer, Captain Call," Richard King said. "I fear we'd quarrel." "We would if you asked about things that are none of your business," Call said.

Captain King's look grew dark.

"Everything that happens in Texas is my business, Captain Call," he said.

"Everything! I trust you'll remember that." Without another ^w or look he turned his horse and left, disappearing into the brush at the point where the bull and the old vaquero had been.

Call found himself no wiser in the matter of the ransom than he had been when he left Austin.

They had no cattle, and could find no one who would let them have any. Yet another mission was tending toward failure.

Besides that, he was in the midst of the south Texas brush country, with four elderly black men who did not seem happy to have been left with him. He suddenly realized that he had failed to ask Captain King whether the men were slave or free.

If they were free he had no right to insist that they go back to Lonesome Dove with him. He decided just to ask them if they would come.

"I'm ready to go, men--are you coming with me?" he asked.

All the men nodded--they clearly didn't want to be caught in the brush after dark either.

"Missus Th@er@ese gonna whip us, though," the oldest of the men said.

"Oh, does she whip you, then?" Call asked. To his surprise the four men all smiled broadly.

"She get after us with the buggy whip," one said.

"Mister Xavier too, though," another commented.

"She get after Mister Xavier worse." "Her husband, you mean," Call asked.

The old black man nodded; the others looked suddenly fearful, as if they might have said too much.

Call didn't question them further--it would only embarrass them. As he rode back down the narrow trail he recalled that Madame Scull was said to go after the Captain with a bullwhip, when in a temper. Now here was another wife who whipped her husband--it struck him as strange. Though he and Maggie were not married, he could not imagine her behaving so.

"Well, at least it's just a buggy whip," he said.

None of the black men said anything.

"Get up, Monsieur. Make the liquors. The customer is here!" Th@er@ese Wanz said, flinging each ^w at her husband as if it were a small stone. Xavier Wanz, her husband, seemed to be thinking thoughts of his own; he continued to sit at the table with the white tablecloth, staring at his glass.

Th@er@ese, in only a few moments in her tent, had managed to sweep her abundant brown hair up on her head in an appealing mound; the gown she wore did not quite conceal her plump shoulders. Augustus McCrae, who had not expected to see a woman, much less an attractive woman, for several years, if ever, found that the sight of Th@er@ese brought an immediate improvement in his mood.

She stood in the middle of the barroom floor, hands on her hips, looking at the rangers cheerfully.

"See, already the customers," she said to Xavier. "Vite! Vite! Make the liquors." Xavier Wanz compressed his lips, and then, as if propelled by a spasm of fury, jumped from his chair and strode over to the tent, beside which a sizable mound of goods was covered by a large wagon sheet.

Xavier dove under the sheet like a rat seeking cover; for a moment, only his rump was visible, but, in the space of a minute, he emerged with two bottles of whiskey and several glasses. He hurried to the bar, set the bottles and glasses on it, and paused to straighten his cuffso.

"Messieurs," he said, bowing slightly, "the pleasures are mine." "If the bar's open I expect a few of those pleasures might be ours, too," Gus said.

Pea Eye declined the liquor and Deets wasn't offered any, but in a few minutes the other rangers, including young Jake Spoon, were all seated around the table where Xavier had sat.

At Th@er@ese's strident urging Xavier had applied himself again to the mound under the wagon seat and come out with several chairs.

"These glasses are clean," Gus said, in astonishment. "You could spend a week in the saloons of Austin and never encounter a clean glass." As soon as each glass was emptied, a process that didn't take long, Xavier appeared with a bottle, poured, and bowed.

"Monsieur," he said, invariably.

Ikey Ripple, who had passed easily and quickly into a state of profound inebriation, found himself a little put off by the bowing.

"Why's he bowing to us?" Ikey asked.

"To be polite--why shouldn't he bow?" Augustus asked.

"That's right, a bartender ought to bow," Lee Hitch said--alth, so far as he could remember, none of the bartenders of his acquaintance had ever bothered to bow to him before.

"I say it's a goddamn trick," Ikey declared. "I think he means to get us drunk and steal all our money." "Ikey, if you've got cash money on you, you don't need to wait for a Frenchman to steal it," Gus said. "Loan it to me and I'll invest it for you." "Invest it in whores--t's all you know about, Gus," Ikey said.

"Well, that way you wouldn't have to be anxious about it," Gus told him.

Th@er@ese Wanz, a smile on her lips, seemed to be studying the rangers closely. Pea Eye had elected to help Deets with the horses, but Jake Spoon had boldly taken his place at the table and was drinking whiskey as if he had a right to, a fact that annoyed Gus McCrae a good deal. Even more annoying was the fact that the Frenchwoman was looking at Jake with interest.

"Jake, you ought to be helping with the horses," Gus said, in an irritable tone.

Jake knew well that when Gus was out of temper it was better to walk small. He saw the Frenchwoman watching him, but didn't connect it with Gus's angry tone. After all, the woman's husband was standing right behind her.

Th@er@ese decided right away that she liked Monsieur McCrae, but she saw nothing wrong with flirting a little with the curly-headed boy.

Opportunities to flirt were limited in Lonesome Dove.

Opportunities to make money were no less rare, and Th@er@ese liked money. Captain and Th@er@ese liked money. Captain King assured her there would soon be a brisk trade in the town--he seemed to think that merchants would rush to Lonesome Dove in order to take advantage of the fine river crossing, but, so far, very few merchants had appeared, a fact which frustrated Th@er@ese's commercial instincts severely.

Now, at the sight of the tired, dusty, unshaven men, Th@er@ese began to think in terms of money.

She quickly decided that the first task would be to barber them--they could all use shaves and two or three of them needed haircuts as well.

"Xavier! The woods, monsieur!" she said crisply, with a glance at her husband. "I want to shave these men and give them the hair-offs." Xavier Wanz, severely depressed as he was by the many differences between Texas and France, walked over to a campfire that smouldered in front of the tent. He would have preferred, himself, to sit at the table all day, enjoying the seemliness of his clean tablecloth, and perhaps drinking just enough liquor to blind himself to the ugliness of the mesquite trees that surrounded the clearing where, if Captain King was to be believed, a town would one day exist.

Th@er@ese, of course, had her own ideas; every day Lonesome Dove presented some new challenge to her energies, and her energies were not small. Every day, in this new land, Th@er@ese arose, impatient; every day Xavier was the man who bore the brunt of her impatience. Yesterday, Th@er@ese's impatience had overflowed and scared away the carpenters; today, at least, there were these men to occupy her, these rangers. If she wanted to barber them it was fine with him.

With his foot he nudged a few more sticks of firewood into the fire, before returning to his bar.

"Hair-offs--hair-offs!" Th@er@ese said, coming to the table. "You first, monsieur," she said, tapping Augustus on the shoulder.

"All right, I'll volunteer--d I get a shave too?" Gus said.

Th@er@ese didn't answer--she had already marched off to her tent. When she emerged, carrying a razor, a razor strop, and several other tools of the barbering trade, she pulled another chair from under the wagon sheet and insisted that Gus sit on it.

The rangers, most of them now drunk, watched with interest as Th@er@ese vigorously stropped her razor.

"I'm shaggier than Gus, she ought to have barbered me first," Stove Jones complained.

"What you complaining about? I'll be lucky to even get a shave," Lee Hitch said, well aware that his bald head offered little incentive to a barber.

Jake Spoon gulped down what was left of the whiskey and went off to sit with Pea Eye and Deets. It .was vexing that Gus McCrae seemed to get the first attentions, if a woman was around. Now the woman was wrapping Gus in a sheet and cooing over him as if he were something special. The sight put Jake in such a hot mood that he picked up three clods and threw them at the blue sow, who had consumed the bull snake and had flopped down under a small bush to rest. The clods missed but Xavier Wanz noticed and immediately walked over to Jake.

"Monsieur!" he said sternly. "Do not disturb the pig." "That's right, it ain't your pig, don't be chunking it," Gus said, from his barber chair. "That pig's the pride of the community--it needs its rest." His pride stung, Jake walked straight past Pea Eye and on toward the river. He had merely thrown three clods at a sow. What right had Gus to speak to him in such a tone? He felt like quitting the rangers on the spot. He could hammer and saw; maybe the French couple would hire him to carpenter. With Gus gone the Frenchwoman might even come to like his curly hair, as Madame Scull once had.

Perhaps she would take him up and teach him the language; he imagined how chagrined Gus McCrae would be if, the next time the rangers stopped in Lonesome Dove, he and Madame Wanz were chattering in French.

"Where do you suppose he's going?" Pea Eye asked, when Jake walked past.

"Could be going to take a wash," Deets said.

"Now you've run Jake off, picking on him," Lee Hitch remarked.

"The pup, he's welcome to drown himself for all I care," Gus said, well aware that he was the envy of the troop, by virtue of having been chosen to receive the first haircut.

Th@er@ese Wanz, though flirtatious in her approach to barbering, was all seriousness when she got down to the business itself. She decided to start with the shave and promptly lathered Gus's face liberally with a nice-smelling soap.

"Boy, this beats that old lye soap," Gus said, but Th@er@ese rapped his head sharply with her knuckles, indicating that the time for talk was over.

Th@er@ese then shaved him carefully and expertly, not omitting to do some careful work under his nose. Then she wrapped his face in a hot towel and began the haircut, moving his head this way and that, touching him, making him sit up straighter, or insisting that he turn one way or another. With the hot towel steaming on his face and Th@er@ese's deft hands working it with scissors and comb, Gus drifted into a kind of half sleep, in which he allowed himself to imagine that it was Clara doing the barbering. On occasion, dissatisfied with the work of the local barbers, Clara had barbered him, sitting him down on the steps behind the store and scissoring away until she had him looking the way she wanted him to look, a process that took much squinting and inspecting.

Th@er@ese Wanz, more expert than Clara, was also more decisive. When she took the hot towel off his face she produced some small tweezers and began to yank the hairs out of his nose. Gus had never had his nose hairs interfered with before. He was relaxed, half asleep, and a little drunk--the first extraction took him so completely by surprise that he yelped.

His companions had been watching the barbering operation closely, all of them filled with envy. When Th@er@ese yanked out the first nose hair Gus's reaction struck them as the funniest thing they had ever seen. They howled with laughter. Lee Hitch was so amused that a chair could not hold him--he lay on his back on the floor of the saloon, laughing violently. Stove Jones laughed nearly as loud. Far down the street, Jake Spoon heard the laughter and turned, wondering what could be so funny.

Pea Eye and Deets, who had been trimming a gelding's hoof, had not been paying too much attention to the barbering. When they saw the Frenchwoman pulling hairs out of Gus's nose they began to laugh too.

Augustus McCrae, who had been in a pleasurably relaxed state, found that he had suddenly become an object of wild amusement to the men. Th@er@ese, though, brooked no resistance; she finished his nose to her satisfaction and began to yank hairs out of his ears, oblivious to the laughter from the saloon.

She proceeded briskly with her tweezers, seizing a hair and extracting it with the same motion.

Xavier Wanz, standing stiffly behind a bar, thought the men he was serving must be crazy. He had never heard such desperate laughter, and at what? Because his wife was giving their captain the hair-offs? Not knowing quite what to do, he contented himself with folding and refolding his little white towel several times.

The hairs out, Th@er@ese began to rub Gus with an unguent whose smell she liked. The young monsieur had nice hair; she felt she might enjoy entertaining him in her tent for a bit, if only Xavier could be distracted, which didn't seem likely.

Meanwhile, there was business. Once she had combed Gus's hair the way she considered that it ought to be combed, she took the sheet off him and announced that he could stand up.

"One dollars, monsieur," she said. "Now you look like a fine cavalier." Augustus was somewhat startled by the price; he had not expected to pay more than fifty cents for his barbering, in such a place. Many a whore would cost little more than the haircut. But Th@er@ese smiled at him and whisked him off with her little brush. He liked her plump shoulders--why be tight?

"A bargain at the price, ma'am," he said, and paid her the dollar.

When Call came back to Lonesome Dove with the four carpenters he was surprised to find that the whole troop had been barbered and shaved. Pea Eye was just rising from the chair when he rode up.

Only Deets, watching silently from a seat on a stump, had not been worked on. All the men were preening as if they had just come out of church.

Th@er@ese Wanz, the woman who had clipped the considerable pile of hair that was around the barber chair, was bent over a large washtub, wringing out a towel.

"Ma'am, you need to strop your razor--here's one more," Gus said. "I'll take your horse, Woodrow--y've got a treat in store." Madame Wanz was evidently a woman of cheerful temperament. She sat Call down and poured out a torrent of French.

"Do you know what she's saying?" he asked Augustus.

"Just keep still and do your duty, Woodrow," Gus said.

Madame Wanz made a little bow when she sat Call in the barber's chair. He felt a touch of embarrassment; he had heard of women barbers but had never been worked on by one before. All of the men were in high good humour. They looked more presentable than they had looked in months.

"I expect you better shear me," Call said. "It'll probably be a good spell before I see a barber again." Call had relaxed and slipped into a half doze by the time Th@er@ese Wanz got around to the extraction of his nose hairs. He jumped so violently at the first jerk of the tweezers that he turned the barber chair over--all the men, who had been watching for just such a reaction, exploded with laughter. Augustus laughed so hard he had to hold his side. Even Call had to smile. It must have been funny, seeing him tip over a barber's chair.

"I wish we had old Buffalo Hump here," he said. "I expect he'd think this was a pretty fancy torture." Th@er@ese, undeterred, sat him down again and applied the tweezers until his nose was plucked clean of hairs.

Later, when they were all cleaned up enough to look almost as respectable as Xavier Wanz's tablecloth, Th@er@ese proved that she was as skilled a cook as she was a barber. A sizable flock of half-wild chickens chirped amid the crumbling adobe huts. Th@er@ese snatched four of them, collected a great number of eggs, and made them all a feast which included potatoes.

The men ate so much they could scarcely stumble off the floor of the saloon-to-be, where the feast had been served on a folding table Xavier had produced from under the wagon sheet.

"If people knew they could get fed like this, Lonesome Dove would be a town in no time," Gus said.

"I wouldn't mind moving here myself. It would save the expense of all that high-priced Austin liquor." "Yes, but what would you do for cash?" Call asked. "It's fine eating, but there'd be no one to pay you a wage." Th@er@ese had put two candles on the folding table. Other than their flickering light, the only illumination came from the high moon.

"Captain King expects there'll be businesses here someday, because of the fine river crossing," Gus said. "If there's businesses here, I guess we could have one too." "Speak for yourself," Call said. "I'm a Texas Ranger and I aim to stay one." "Now that's a damn boresome point of view," Gus said. "Just because we started out being rangers don't mean we have to stay rangers all our lives. The army will whip out the Indians in a few more years and there won't be much to do, anyway." "Maybe, but there's plenty to do right now," Call said.

"Mr. Xavier, now he's a curious fellow," Gus said. "He's been standing behind that bar all day and he's still standing behind it." Call looked. Sure enough, Xavier still held his position behind the long bar, although all the rangers had either fallen asleep or left the floor of the saloon.

"Between the barbering and the liquor they made a pretty penny on us today," Call said. "I expect they'll soon prosper." The two of them strolled away from the unbuilt saloon and the camp where their comrades slept, and meandered toward the river. They heard the water before they saw it, and, when they did see it, it was only the flicker of moonlight here and there on the surface.

"Lonesome Dove will need a whore or two, otherwise it won't grow," Augustus allowed.

"Prosperous businessmen won't long tolerate the absence of whores." "You can't tolerate it, you mean," Call said.

"That's one reason you'll never be a prosperous businessman." "Well, I just wasn't meant to work at one trade all my life," Augustus said. "I'm too fond of variety." "If you like variety I don't see how you can beat rangering," Call said. "A month ago we were freezing on the plains, trying not to get scalped, and now we're off to Mexico, where we'll be hot and probably get shot." "Is the Captain sending the cattle?" Gus asked. "If he is, I hope they don't come for a day or two. A little more of that woman's cooking might improve my cowboying." "He's not sending the cattle--no interest," Call said.

"No interest?" Gus said, astonished. "No cattle? What are we going to do, Woodrow?" They both stood looking across the river, at Mexico, the dark country.

"Maybe the Captain's already escaped," Gus said. "He's sly, the Captain. He could be halfway home by now." "He might be halfway dead, too," Call pointed out.

"If we can't raise the cattle, what do we do?" Augustus asked. "Go after him anyway, or give up again?" "You're a captain, same as I am," Call said. "What do you want to do? The two of us might go in alone and sneak him out." "Why, yes, and pigs might cuss," Gus said. "What'll happen is we'll get caught too--andthe state of Texas won't bother sending no expedition after us." Still, once he thought about it, something about the adventure of trying to rescue Captain Scull appealed to him, and the thought of a herd of cattle did not.

"It's getting to be the fly season, Woodrow," Gus said.

Call waited. Augustus didn't elaborate.

"What's your point?" Call asked, finally.

"We can't stop the seasons from turning." "No, but we could avoid cattle during the fly season," Gus said. "A thousand cattle would attract at least a million flies, which is more flies than I care to swat." "We don't have them anyway," Call said.

"And if Captain King won't give them to us, nobody will. Anyway, he's right. We could no more drive a thousand cattle across Mexico than we could a thousand jackrabbits." "That's right, we ain't vaqueros," Gus said.

The two of them fell silent, looking across to Mexico. Though they quarrelled frequently, they were often tugged by the same impulses, and so it was at that moment by the slow river. The longer they looked across it, the more strongly they felt the urge to attempt their mission alone--without cattle and without the other men.

"We could just do it, Woodrow--the two of us," Augustus said. "We'd have a better chance than if we take the cattle or the troop." Call agreed.

"I'm game if you are," he said. "I think it's about time we made something of ourselves, anyway." "I'd just like to travel with less company, myself," Gus said. "I don't know about making something of ourselves." "Buffalo Hump's held the plains ever since we've been rangers," Call pointed out.

"We've never whipped him. And Ahumado's held the border--we've never whipped him either.

We can't protect the plains or the border either --t's poor work in my book." "Woodrow, you're the worst I've ever known for criticizing yourself," Gus said. "We've never rangered with more than a dozen men at a time.

Nobody could whip Buffalo Hump or Ahumado with a dozen men." Call knew that was true, but it didn't change his feeling. The Texas Rangers were supposed to protect settlers on the frontier, but they hadn't. The recent massacres were evidence enough that they weren't succeeding on their job.

"You ought to give up and open a store, if you feel that low about it," Augustus suggested.

"There's a need for a store, now that the Forsythes are dead. You could marry Mag while you're at it and be comfortable." "I don't want to run a store or marry either," Call said. "I'd just like to feel that I'm worth the money I'm paid." "No, what you want is to take a big scalp," Gus said. "Buffalo Hump's or Ahumado's. That's what you want. Me, I'd take the scalp too, but I don't figure it would change much." "If you kill the jefe it might change something," Call argued.

"No, because somebody else just as mean will soon come along," Gus said.

"Well, we rarely agree," Call said.

"No, but let's go to Mexico anyway," Augustus said. "I'm restless. Let's just saddle up and go tonight. There's a fine moon.

Without the boys to slow us down we could make forty miles by morning." Call felt tempted. He and Augustus at least knew one another's competencies. They would probably fare better alone.

"What's your hurry?" he asked Gus.

"Why tonight?" "If I stay around I expect that Frenchwoman might fall in love with me," Gus said. "Her husband might fight me--it'd be a pity to get blood on that nice tablecloth." "Do you suppose the boys can find their way back to Austin, if we leave?" Call asked.

"Ikey Ripple claims to have never been lost," Augustus reminded him. "I expect it's a boast, but I think we should put him to the test. If the other boys don't want to try it with Ikey, they can stay and help build the saloon. The town would grow quicker if they had a saloon that didn't expose you to the weather--if the saloon had a roof and there was a whore or two and a livery stable, Lonesome Dove might be a place somebody might want to live." "The boys will be right surprised, when they wake up and find us gone," Call said.

"A little startlement would be better than being caught by Ahumado," Gus pointed out. "From what I've heard, he ain't gentle." The white moon soared over Mexico. The longer the two men looked, the stronger beckoning they felt from the unknown land.

"If we had cattle I'd try it the way we were supposed to," Call said. "But the fact is we don't." When they got back to the saloon the two candles had been blown out and the Wanzes had retired to their tent.

"I doubt that tent really belonged to Napoleon," Call said. "He was the emperor. Why would he give it up?" "He might have just liked Th@er@ese, if he'd met her," Augustus said. "I like her myself, even if she did pull hairs out of my nose." Deets was the only man awake when the two of them were saddling their horses and selecting a few provisions. At first he supposed the two captains were just going off on a scout; when Call came over and informed him that they were going to try and rescue Captain Scull themselves, Deets's eyes grew wide. He knew it was not his place to question the action of his two captains, but he could not entirely suppress his apprehension.

"We way down here in the brush," he said.

It wasn't that Deets felt exactly lost --x was just that he didn't feel exactly safe.

The big Indian with the hump might come--or, if not him, someone just as bad.

Call felt a little guilty as he gathered up his gear. He was usually the one impatient to leave, but this time it was Augustus who was in a sweat to get started. Call felt he ought to wake up one or two of the men and let them know what was happening, but Augustus argued against it.

"These men have been drinking ever since we got here," he pointed out. "They're drunk and they're asleep--let's just go. They ain't new calves, they're grown men. I doubt we'll be gone more than a few days. If they don't want to head back to Austin, they can stay here and wait for us." Several loud snores could be heard, as they talked.

Call felt that they ought to leave instructions, but again Gus protested.

"You don't always have to be telling people every single thing to do, Woodrow," he complained. "They need to work up some independence anyway. If we wake 'em up they might quarrel and start punching one another." "All right," Call said. It didn't feel quite right, but there was logic in what Gus said.

Pea Eye woke up, as the two captains talked. He saw them mount and ride out of camp; in a minute or two he heard their horses take the river. But it was not an unusual thing. Captain Call particularly often rode off at night, to scout a little. Pea Eye supposed it was no more than that, and went back to sleep.