For a woman to throw cornmeal on a Texas Ranger was a serious thing. They might hang Maggie, for such an offense. At the very least, the man would beat her.

"That was a bad thing you did," Graciela said.

She was in the habit of speaking quite frankly to Maggie, who didn't seem to mind.

"Not very bad," Maggie said. "I could have hit him with the frying pan. All I did was throw a little cornmeal on him." "Now he will beat you," Graciela said. "How will you work in the store if he beats you badly?

"I need to get my wages--I have my grandbabies to feed," she added.

"He won't beat me, Graciela," Maggie said. "He has never hit me and he never will. I doubt we'll see any more of him around here." "But you got his shirt dirty," Graciela said. "He will beat you. The last time my husband beat me I could not move for two days. He beat me with an axe handle. I could not have worked in a store, after such a beating." "This cornmeal is getting hot," Maggie said. "Would you put some in a sock and give it to Newt for his earache?" "I do not think his ear is sick," Graciela said.

"I don't either, but give him the sock anyway," Maggie said. "It won't hurt to humour him." Graciela did as she was told, but she was both annoyed and uneasy. The boy wasn't sick; he had no fever. Why waste good cornmeal, when it was attention he wanted, anyway? She could not always be fixing poultices for a boy who wasn't sick. She was still uneasy about the beating, too. In her opinion Maggie still had a lot to learn about the ways of men. Because Maggie wanted Captain Call, and loved him, she was trying to pretend that he was better than other men--t he was above beating a woman. Graciela had had to marry three times before she could get a husband who knew how to stay alive. All her husbands had beaten her, and all the husbands of her sisters and her friends beat their women. It was a thing men did, if they were provoked a little, or even if they were not provoked at all. The slightest drunkenness could cause a man to beat a woman-- so could the slightest rebuke. Graciela had only married poor men--men who had to struggle and who had many worries--but two of her sisters had married men of wealth, men who did little all day except gamble and drink. The wealthy men had beaten her sisters just as often as the poor men had beaten her.

Graciela was a little shocked by Maggie's innocence about men and women--it was not wise to take lightly or discount the violence that was in men.

But, before she could discuss the matter further, Newt woke up.

"I don't need that hot sock, my ear don't hurt now," he said, just as Graciela finished getting the poultice ready. Such a boy deserved a good thump on the head, but before Graciela could administer the thump, Newt smiled at her so sweetly that she thought better of it and gave him one of her good tortillas instead.

"I have never been no place this naked, Pea," Jake Spoon confided, staring with some trepidation into the bleak dusk. They had made a poor camp, waterless, shelterless, and dusty, out on the plain somewhere, a plain so vast that the sun, when it set, seemed to be one hundred miles away.

Captain Call had gone ahead, with six rangers, including Charlie Goodnight. The force at the waterless camp consisted of Deets, Pea, Jake, Captain McCrae, Major Featherstonhaugh, a fat lieutenant named Dikuss, and six soldiers. The purpose of the little scouting expedition was to seek out the Comanches in their winter strongholds and determine how many were left. The army wanted to know how many bands were still active and how many warriors they could put into the field.

Jake Spoon had never been able to stifle his tendency to complaint, unless Captain Call was in hearing; Jake said as little as possible around Captain Call. It was obvious to all the rangers that Captain Call didn't like Jake and preferred to avoid his company.

Pea Eye considered it a puzzling thing. He didn't know why the Captain had such a dislike for Jake, but, at the moment, with no water and just a little food, he had more pressing things to worry about.

Pea had developed the habit of counting his cartridges every night--he wanted to know exactly how many bullets he could expend in the event of an Indian fight. Every ranger was supposed to travel with one hundred rounds, but Pea Eye had only been given eighty-six rounds, the result of some confusion in the armory the day the bullets had been handed out. It worried Pea considerably that he had started on the trip fourteen bullets shy of a full requisition.

Fourteen bullets could make all the difference in the world in the event that all his companions were killed, while he survived. If he had to walk all the way back to Austin living on what game he could shoot he would have to be careful.

His marksmanship was not exceptional; it sometimes took him four or five bullets to bring down a deer, and his record with antelope was even worse. Also, he could shoot at Indians fourteen more times, if he had those bullets. The lack preyed on his mind; his count, every night, was to assure himself that no bullets had slipped away in the course of a day's travel.

With his bullets to count, and the light poor on the gloomy plain, Pea Eye could not waste time worrying about why Captain Call found it hard to tolerate Jake Spoon. Captain McCrae, who knew practically everything, may have known the reason, but if so he wasn't saying.

At the moment Captain McCrae was discussing with Major Featherstonhaugh the difficulty of counting Comanehes with any accuracy.

"Several men I know have got haircuts they didn't want while counting Comanches," he informed the Major, a skinny man with a sour disposition.

"Of course there's no risk to Dikuss here," Augustus added. "He's a bald man--he's got no hair to take. They'd have to find something else to cut off, if they took Dikuss." Augustus liked the fat lieutenant and teased him when possible. He was less fond of the dour Featherstonhaugh, though he was not especially more dour than the few army men who found themselves stuck in dusty outposts in the remote Southwest while the great war raged to the east. Featherstonhaugh and his men were missing out on the glory, and they knew it; andfor what? To attempt to subdue a few half-starved Comanches, scattered across the Texas plains?

"It seems a poor exercise, don't it, Major?" Augustus said. "You could be back home fighting with Grant or Lee, according to your beliefs. I expect it would be better employment than counting these poor Comanches." Major Featherstonhaugh received that comment soberly, without change of expression. He did not welcome jocularity while in the field, but Captain McCrae, a skilled and respected ranger, seemed unable to avoid the jocular comment.

"I am from Vermont, Captain," Major Featherstonhaugh informed him. "I would not be fighting with General Lee, though I admire him. He once fought in these parts himself, I believe, in the war with Mexico." "Well, I didn't notice," Augustus said. "I was in love while that scrap was going on. I was younger then, about Lieutenant Dikuss's age. Are you in love, Lieutenant?" Lieutenant Dikuss was mortified by the question, as he was by almost every question Captain McCrae asked him. In fact he was in love with his Milly, a strong buxom girl of nineteen whose father owned a prosperous dairy in Wisconsin. Jack Dikuss nursed the deepest and tenderest feelings for his Milly, feelings so strong that tears came into his eyes if he even allowed himself to think of her. He had not been meaning to think of her--indeed, had been cleaning his revolver--when Captain McCrae's unexpected and unwanted questions brought her suddenly and vividly to mind.