At the mention of Buffalo Hump, Jake Spoon came awake with a start.

"Why would he show up, Lee?" Jake asked.

"There ain't a town here yet--he wouldn't get much if he shows up here." "My tooth twitched half the night, that's all I know," Lee Hitch said. "When my tooth twitches it means Indians are in the vicinity." "Goddamn them, why did they go?" Jake said, annoyed at the two captains for leaving them unprotected. Since the big raid on Austin his fear of Indians had grown until it threatened to spoil his sleep.

Pea Eye was shocked that Jake would use such language in talking about Captain Call and Captain McCrae. They were the captains--if they left, it was for a good reason.

Then, to Pea Eye's surprise, the Frenchwoman began to wave at him, beckoning him to come help her prepare the breakfast. She was breaking eggs into a pan, and swirling it around; her husband, meanwhile, took out his tablecloth, from a bag where he kept it, and spread it on the table, smoothing it carefully. The man had on a bow tie, which struck Pea Eye as unnec, seeing as there was only a rough crew to serve.

"Quick, monsieur, the woods!" Th@er@ese said, when Pea Eye bashfully approached. He saw that the cook fire was low and immediately got a few good sticks to build it up. As Th@er@ese swirled the eggs in the pan her bosom, under the loose gown, moved with the swirling motion. Pea Eye found that despite himself his eyes were drawn to her bosom. Th@er@ese didn't seem to mind.

She smiled at him and, with her free hand, motioned for him to bring more sticks.

"Hurry, I am cooking but the fire is going lows," she said.

Though it was so early that there were still wisps of ground fog in the thickets, Lee Hitch and Stove Jones presented themselves at the bar, expecting liquor. To Pea Eye's amazement Jake Spoon stepped right up beside them. Only the night before Jake had confided in him that he didn't have a cent on him--he had lost all his money in a card game with Lee, a man who rarely lost at cards.

Xavier Wanz put three glasses on the bar and filled them with whiskey; Jake drank his down as neatly as the two grown men. Both Lee and Stove put money on the bar, but Jake had none to put, a fact he revealed with a smile.

"You'll stand me a swallow, won't you, boys?" he asked. "I'm a little thin this morning, when it comes to cash." Neither Lee nor Stove responded happily to the request.

"No," Lee said bluntly.

"No one invited you to be a drunkard at our expense," Stove added.

Jake's face reddened--he did not like being denied what seemed to him a modest request.

"You're barely weaned off the teat, Jake," Lee said. "You're too young to be soaking up good liquor, anyway." Jake stomped off the floor of the saloon, only to discover another source of annoyance: the Frenchwoman had summoned Pea Eye, rather than himself, to help her with the cook fire. The woman, Th@er@ese, was certainly comely. Jake liked the way she piled her abundant hair high on her head. Jake sauntered over, his hat cocked back jauntily off his forehead.

"Pea, you ought to be helping Deets with the horses--I imagine they're restless," Jake said.

To his shock the Frenchwoman suddenly turned on him, spitting like a cat.

"You go away--ride the horses yourself, monsieur," she said emphatically. "I am cooking with Monsieur," she said emphatically.

"I am cooking with Monsieur Peas. You are in the way. Vite! Vite!

"Young goose!" she added, motioning with her free hand as if she were shooing away a gosling that had gotten underfoot.

Mortified, Jake turned and walked straight down to the river. He had not expected to be rudely dismissed, so early in the day; it was an insult of the worst kind because everybody heard it--Jake would never suppose such a blow to his pride would occur in such a lowly place.

It stung, it burned--the high-handedness of women was intolerable, he decided. Better to do as Woodrow Call had done and form an alliance with a whore--no whore would dare speak so rudely to a man.

The worst of it, though, was having Pea Eye chosen over him, to do a simple chore. Pea Eye was gawky and all thumbs; he was always dropping things, bumping his head, or losing his gun --yet the Frenchwoman had summoned Pea and not himself.

While Jake was brooding on the insult he heard a splashing and looked down the river to see a group of riders coming. At the thought that they might be Indians his heart jumped, but he soon saw that they were white men. The horses were loping through the shallows, throwing up spumes of water.

The man in the lead was Captain King, who loped right past Jake as if he wasn't there.

The men following him were Mexican; they carried rifles and they looked hard. He turned and followed the riders back toward the saloon.

When he arrived Captain King had already seated himself at the table with the tablecloth, tucked a napkin under his chin, and was heartily eating the Frenchwoman's omelette. One of the vaqueros had killed a javelina. By the time Jake got there they had the little pig skinned and gutted. One of the men started to throw the pig guts into the bushes but Th@er@ese stopped him.

"What do you do? You would waste the best part!" Th@er@ese said, scowling at the vaquero. "Xavier, come!" Jake, and a number of the other rangers too, were startled by the avid way Th@er@ese and Xavier Wanz went after the pig guts. Even the vaquero who had killed the pig was taken aback when Th@er@ese plunged her hands to the wrists in the intestines and plumped coil after coil of them on a tray her husband held. Her hands were soon bloody to the elbow, a sight that caused Lee Hitch, not normally a delicate case, to feel as if his stomach might come up.

"Oh Lord, she's got that gut blood on her," he said, losing his taste for the delicious omelette he had just been served.

Captain King, eating .his omelette with relish, observed this sudden skittishness and chuckled.

"You boys must have spent too much time in tea parlors," he said. "I've seen your Karankawa Indians, of which there ain't many, anymore, pull the guts out of a dying deer and start eating them before the deer had even stopped kicking." "This is fine luck, Captain," Th@er@ese said, bringing the heaping tray of guts over for him to inspect. "Tonight we will have the tripes." "Well, that's fine luck for these men--while they're eating tripe I'll be tramping through Mexico," he said. "Some thieving caballeros run off fifty of our cow horses, but I expect we'll soon catch up with them." "You could take us with you, Captain," Stove Jones said. "Call and McCrae, they left us. We ain't got nothing to do." Captain King wiped his mouth with his napkin and shook his head at Stove.