"No thanks--taking you men would be like dragging several anchors," he said bluntly. "Call and McCrae were unwise to bring you--they should have left you to the tea parlors." He spoke with such uncommon force that none of the men knew quite what to say.

"It was the Governor sent us on this errand," Lee Hitch said finally.

"He just wanted to get rid of you so he could claim he'd tried," Captain King said, with the same bluntness. "Ed Pease knows that few Texas cattlemen are such rank fools as to deliver free cattle to an old bandit like Ahumado. He takes what livestock he wants anyway." "It was to ransom Captain Scull," Stove Jones reminded him.

Captain King stood up, wiped his mouth, scattered some coins on the table, and went to his horse. Only when he was mounted did he bother to reply.

"Inish Scull is mainly interested in making mischief," he said. "He got himself into this scrape, and he ought to get himself out, but if he can't, I imagine Call and McCrae will bring him back." "Well, they left us," Lee Hitch said.

"Yes, got tired of dragging anchors, I suppose," the Captain said.

He motioned to his men, who looked dismayed.

They had cut up the javelina and prepared it for the fire, but so far the meat was scarcely singed.

"You will have to finish cooking that pig in Mexico," he informed them. "I cannot be sitting around here while you cook a damn pig. I need to get those horses back and hang me a few thieves." With that he turned and headed for the river. The vaqueros hastily pulled the slabs of uncooked javelina off the fire and stuffed them in their saddlebags. A couple of the slabs were so hot that smoke was seeping out of their saddlebags as they rode away.

Th@er@ese and Xavier Wanz began to cut up the pig guts, stripping them of their contents as they worked. Xavier had taken off his black coat, but he still wore his neat bowtie.

Lee Hitch and Stove Jones were both annoyed by Captain King. In their view he had been rude to the point of disrespect.

"Why does he think we sit around in tea parlors?" Stove asked.

"The fool, I don't know--why didn't you ask him yourself?" Lee said.

"Lord, Mexico's a big country," Augustus said. It was a warm night; they had only a small campfire, just adequate to the cooking they needed to do. Just after crossing the river, Call had shot a small deer--meat for a day or two at least. They were camped on a dry plain, and had not seen a human being since coming into Mexico.

"The sky's higher in Mexico," Gus observed; he felt generally uneasy.

"It ain't higher, Gus," Call said.

"We've just travelled sixty miles. Why would the sky be higher, just because we're in Mexico?" "Look at it," Gus insisted. He pointed upward. "It's higher." Call declined to look up. Whenever Gus McCrae was bored and restless he always tried to start some nonsensical argument, on topics Call had little patience with.

"The sky's the same height no matter what country you're in," Call told him. "We're way out here in the country--y can just see the stars better." "How would you know? You've never been to no country but Texas," Gus commented. "If we was in a country that had high mountains, the sky would have to be higher, otherwise the mountains would poke into it." Call didn't answer--he wanted, if possible, to let the topic die.

"If a mountain was to poke a hole in the sky, I don't know what would happen," Gus said.

He felt aggrieved. They had left in such a hurry that he had neglected to procure any whiskey, an oversight he regretted.

"Maybe the sky would look lower if I had some whiskey to drink," he said. "But you were in such a hurry to leave that I forgot to pack any." Call was beginning to be exasperated. They were in deserted country and could get some rest, which would be the wise thing.

"You should clean your guns and stop worrying about the sky being too high," he said.

"I wish you talked more, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I get gloomy if I have to sit around with you all night. You don't talk enough to keep my mind off them gloomy topics." "What topics?" Call asked. "We're healthy and we've got no reason to be gloomy, that I can see." "You can't see much anyway," Gus said.

"Your eyesight's so poor you can't even tell that the sky's higher in Mexico." "The fact is, I was thinking about Billy," Augustus said. "We've never gone on a rangering trip without Billy before." "No, and it don't feel right, does it?" Call agreed.

"Now if he were here I'd have someone to help me complain, and you'd be a lot more comfortable," Augustus said.

They were silent for a while; both stared into the campfire.

"I feel he's around somewhere," Augustus said. "I feel Billy's haunting us. They say people who hang themselves don't ever rest. They don't die with their feet on the ground so their spirits float forever." "Now, that's silly," Call said, although he had heard the same speculation about hanged men.

"I can't stop thinking about him, Woodrow," Gus said. "I figure it was just a mistake Billy made, hanging himself. If he'd thought it over a few more minutes he might have stayed alive and gone on rangering with us." "He's gone, though, Gus--he's gone," Call reminded him, without reproach. He realized he had many of the feelings Augustus was trying to express. All through the bush country he had been nagged by a sense that something was missing, the troop incomplete. He knew it was Long Bill Coleman he missed, and Augustus missed him too. It was, in a way, as if Long Bill were following them at an uncomfortable distance; as if he were out somewhere, in the thin scrub, hoping to be taken back into life.

"I hate a thing like death," Augustus said.

"Well, everybody hates it, I expect," Call said.

"One reason I hate it is because it don't leave you no time to finish conversations," Gus said.

"Oh," Call said. "Was you having a conversation with Billy that night before ... it happened?" Augustus remembered well what he and Billy Coleman had been talking about the night before the suicide. Bill had heard from somebody that Matilda Jane Roberts, their old travelling companion, had opened a bordello in Denver. Matty, as they called her, had ever been a generous whore. Once, on the Rio Grande, bathing not far from camp, she had plucked a big snapping turtle out of the water and walked into camp carrying it by its tail. He and Long Bill always talked about the snapping turtle when Matilda's name came up.