Gus stepped around the corner too.

"Oh my God ..." he said. "Oh, Billy ..." "After all we went through," Call said. The shock was too much. He could not finish his thought.

The townspeople, seeing that there was no battle, rose up behind, wagons and barrels. They edged out of stores, women and men.

The barbers came out in their aprons; their customers, some half shaven, followed them. The butcher came, cleaver in hand, carrying half a lamb. The two laundresses, their work wasted, had not moved--the clean clothes were still strewn in the dirt.

Above them, Maggie Tilton, clearly pregnant and too shocked to trust herself to walk down her own steps, stood sobbing.

Augustus holstered his gun and came a few steps closer to the swaying body. Long Bill's toes were only an inch off the ground; his face was purple-black.

"Billy could have done this easier if he'd just taken a gun," he said, in a weak voice.

"Remember how Bigfoot Wallace showed us where to put the gun barrel, back there years ago?" "A gun's noisy," Call said. "I expect he done it this way so as not to wake up Pearl." "Well, she's awake now," Gus said.

The silent crowd stood watching as the two of them went to the tree and cut their old friend down.

Together Call and Augustus cut Long Bill down, pulled the noose from his neck, and then, feeling weak, left him to the womenfolk. One of the laundresses covered him with a sheet that had spilled out when her basket overturned. Maggie came down the steps and went to Pearl, but Pearl was beyond comforting. She sobbed deep guttural sobs, as hoarse as a cow's bellow. Maggie got her to sit down on an overturned milk bucket. The two laundresses helped Maggie as best they could.

"I don't want him going to heaven with his face so black," Pearl said suddenly. "They'll take him for a nigger." Maggie didn't answer. The undertaker had been killed in the raid--funerals since then had been hasty and plain.

Call and Gus caught their horses and rode on to the Governor's. Though the distance was not great, both felt too weak to walk that far.

"What are we going to say to the Governor, now that this has happened?" Augustus asked.

"He's the Governor, I guess he can do the talking." Call said, as they rode up the street.

When informed of the tragedy, Governor Pease shook his head and stared out the window for several minutes. A military man was with him when the two captains came in, a Major Nettleson of the U.S. Cavalry.

"That's three suicides since the raid," Governor Pease said. "Raids on that scale have a very poor effect on the nerves of the populace. Happens even in the army, don't it, Major?" "Why, yes, we sometimes have a suicide or two, after a violent scrap," the Major said.

He looked at the rangers impatiently, either because they were late or because they were interrupting his own interview with the Governor.

"Bill Coleman had been with us through it all, Governor," Call said. "We never expected to lose him that way." Governor Pease turned from the window and sighed. Call noticed that the Governor's old brown coat was stained; since the raid he had often been seen in an untidy state. He had grown careless with his tobacco juice, too.

Judging from the carpet, he missed his spittoon about as often as he hit it.

"It's one more murder we can charge to Buffalo Hump," the Governor said. "A people can only tolerate so much scalping and raping. They get nervous and start losing sleep. The lack of sound sleep soon breaks them down. The next thing you know they start killing themselves rather than worry about when the Comanches will show up again." Just then Inez Scull came striding into the room. Major Nettleson, who had been sitting, hefted himself up--he was a beefy man.

Madame Scull merely glanced at him, but her glance caused the Major to flush. Augustus, who was merely waiting dully for the interview to be over, noted the flush.

"Why, there you are, Johnny Nettleson," Inez said. "Why'd you leave so early? I rather prefer for my house guests to stay around for breakfast, though I suppose that's asking too much of a military man." "It's my fault, Inez," the Governor said quickly. "I wanted a ^w with the Major--since he's leaving, I thought we'd best meet early." "No, Johnny ain't leaving, not today," Madame Scull said. "I've planned a picnic and I won't allow anything to spoil it.

It's rare that I get a major to picnic with." Then she looked at Governor Pease defiantly. The Governor, surprised, stared back at her, while Major Nettleson, far too embarrassed to speak, stared solemnly at his own two feet.

Augustus suspected that it was stout Major Nettleson that Madame Scull was trotting with now; the picnic she was anxious not to have spoiled might not be of the conventional kind. But this suspicion only registered with him dully. His mind was on the night before, most of which, as usual, he had spent drinking with Long Bill Coleman. It was a close night, and the saloon an immoderately smelly place. During the raid a bartender had been stabbed and scalped in a rear corner of the barroom; the bartender had been murdered, and so had the janitor, which meant that the bloody corner had been only perfunctorily cleaned. On close nights the smells made pleasant drinking difficult, so difficult that Gus had left a little early, feeling that he needed a breath of river air.

"Come along, Billy, it's late," he said to Long Bill.

"Nope, I prefer to drink indoors, Gus," Long Bill replied. "I'm less tempted to seek whores when I drink inside." Augustus took the comment for a joke and went on out into the clean air, to nestle comfortably by the riverbank all night. But now the remark about whores, the last ^ws he would ever hear from Long Bill Coleman, came back to mind. Had Bill, so deeply attached to Pearl, really been seeking whores; or was it, as he had supposed, a joke?

He didn't know, but he did know that he hated being in the Governor's office, listening to Inez Scull banter with her new conquest, Major Nettleson. Long Bill's death was as much a shock as Clara's marriage. It left him indifferent to everything. Why was he there? What did he care about rangering now? He'd never stroll the streets of Austin again, either with the woman or the friend; at the thought, such a hopeless sadness took him that he turned and walked out the door, passing directly in front of the Governor, the Major, and Madame Scull as he went.

"I'll say, now where's McCrae going?" the Governor said in surprise. "The two of you have just got here. I haven't even had a moment to bring up the business at hand." "I expect he's sad about our pard--he'd ridden with the man for many years," Call said.