The owl that flew in his face went up high and glided over the rangers--it was snow white.

Of course Famous Shoes knew that little brown owls sometimes went into prairie dog holes to catch snakes, or to eat the young prairie dogs--but this was not such an owl. This owl had been snow white, though it was not winter and there was no reason for a white owl to be rising out of a hole on a ridge. Captain Call and Captain McCrae looked up at it, and then it flew so far that Famous Shoes lost it in the white sunlight.

Of course the owl meant death--thus it had always been. But it was not an ordinary owl, so the death it presaged would not be that of an ordinary man. Though Famous Shoes had been very frightened when the owl flew at him, he soon decided that the owl did not want his death. He was only an ordinary man who liked to lie with his wives when he was home and who liked to travel the country when he had got enough, for a time, of lying with his wives. He was a good tracker, too, but not good enough that his death would need to be announced by the appearance of a great white owl.

It was another death, the death of a great man, that the white owl must have come to announce. Famous Shoes thought that one of the captains, who were great men of the Texans, might be about to die. It could mean that Blue Duck's apparent foolishness in journeying into the llano was in fact just a ruse.

Maybe somewhere ahead he was plotting an ambush.

Maybe he was hiding in a hole somewhere, as the owl had been, waiting to shoot one of the captains.

"Did you see the owl?" Famous Shoes asked, when he reached the captains.

"We seen it, it was right pretty," Captain McCrae said cheerfully. "You don't see too many of them big snow owls low down this way now." Augustus was happy that the troop had been pared down to the men who were necessary, even though it meant that he would have fewer victims in the event of an evening card game.

Famous Shoes realized then, when he heard Captain McCrae's casual and cheerful tone, that it was as he had always believed, which was that it was no use talking to white men about serious things. The owl of death, the most imposing and important bird he had ever seen, had flown right over the two captains' heads, and they merely thought it was a pretty bird. If he tried to persuade them that the bird had come out of the earth, where the death spirits lived, they would just think he was talking nonsense.

Captain Call was no more bothered by the owl than Captain McCrae, a fact which made Famous Shoes decide not to speak. He turned and led them west again, but this time he proceeded very carefully, expecting that Blue Duck might be laying his ambush somewhere not far ahead, in a hole that one would not notice until it was too late.

As her strength began its final ebbing, the thing that tormented Maggie most was the fear in her son's eyes. Newt knew she was dying--everybody knew it. He struggled mightily to relieve her of the household chores. He was an able boy, too: he could cook a little, and clean--if there was a chore to be done that was within his capacity, Maggie seldom had to ask him to do it. He just did it, and did it competently; in that way and many others he reminded her of his father.

Yet it was in thinking of Newt that Maggie found her best peace. She thought she had done a fair job with him. If the rangers or the Stewarts would just take him for a year or two he would be old enough to earn his keep. Maggie hoped it would be the rangers.

"A boy ought to be with his father," she told her friend Pearl Coleman one afternoon. Maggie had managed to get down the steps, meaning to rake a little in her garden, but just getting down the steps exhausted her strength; she was able to do little more than sit amid her bean plants. Newt was particularly fond of green beans and snap peas.

Though Pearl Coleman had suitors aplenty, she had never remarried. Her suitors were mainly men new to the area; most of them didn't know about her rape by the Comanches, didn't know why Long Bill had hung himself. Though Pearl was lonely, she was afraid to remarry. Once the old news came to light her new husband might turn her out, or else do as Long Bill had done.

Because she was lonely and knew that she was never likely to have a child of her own, Pearl offered to take young Newt when Maggie passed.

"He ought to be with his father even if his father won't claim him," Maggie went on.

Pearl had little patience with Woodrow Call, but she didn't want to tire her friend with argument.

There would not be many more chances for Maggie Tilton to sit in her garden in the spring sunlight; best not to spoil it.

"Mag, it don't have to be one way or the other," Pearl said. "Newt can stay with me when the menfolks are gone, and bunk with the boys when they're home." "Well, if you wouldn't mind," Maggie said.

It was just a short walk from Pearl's house to the ranger barracks, such as they were. Pearl was such a good cook; it would be a shame for Newt to miss out on her tasty meals.

"I think the Stewarts will be wanting him to work in the store a little, when there's unpacking to do," Maggie said.

Pearl did not particularly like the Stewarts-- in her view they were too quick to insist on payment of her bills--but she did not demur. If Newt could earn a quarter now and then, so much the better.

"Everybody in this town likes your boy," Pearl assured her. "He'll be well cared for--y can rest your mind about that." Maggie knew Pearl was right. There were many kindly folks in Austin who took an interest in Newt--p she had met at church, or served in the store. Hard as times had been, since the war, and poor as most people were, she didn't doubt that people would see that her child was fed and clothed. Knowing that, though, didn't put her mind at rest--how could a mother not worry about her child? She would have liked to have one more good talk with Augustus, about Newt's future; she would have liked, even, to sit at her window and watch Newt practice roping with Deets and Pea Eye--it reassured her to see him with the men who would be his companions once she was gone; it was unfortunate that they had had to leave on patrol just as she felt herself slipping into a deeper weakness.

Newt, in the lots with his rope, would look up every few minutes, to see if he could catch a glimpse of his mother's pale face in her window.

He knew his mother was dying; he spent hour after hour with his rope, throwing loops at chickens, or the milk-pen calf, or stumps, or posts, to distract himself a little from this frightening knowledge. He was so proficient with the lariat now that the milk-pen calf and even some of the chickens had taken to stopping submissively when he approached with the rope in his hands.

Sometimes, restless in his apprehension, Newt would walk out of town to the little graveyard. He had been to several funerals now, mostly funerals of people his mother knew from church--and he knew that soon there would have to be a funeral for his mother too. At the graveyard he would sometimes talk to his mother, aimless talk about the rangers, about some superstition Deets had told him, or some belief--sch as Deets's belief that Indians lived on the moon, having jumped their horses there at some time long ago when the moon had been only a few feet from the earth. Sometimes Newt would sit and watch the moon rise with Deets, hoping for a glimpse of the Indians; but he could never see them.