It was as if the sand was pouring over his eyelids, so heavy that he could not open his eyes. He heard the horsemen, racing closer, but the sand was so heavy on his eyes that he let it bury him--he had ceased to worry about the horsemen, he only wanted to sleep.

The plan, hastily established, was for eight rangers to charge the four Comanche braves, mainly to distract them. Deets was to watch the spare horses. Call and Augustus dismounted and crawled to within one hundred yards of the camp while the Comanches argued about the woman. When the young brave raised his knife to the woman, Augustus shot him; when the boy got up, he shot him a second time. Call shot the two braves standing by the weapons; one he had to shoot three times.

By this time the racing rangers were almost in the camp, led by Teddy Beatty. Several of them shot at the large warrior who mounted and was about to escape, but it was a snap shot from Gus McCrae that killed him.

Call hurried down into the camp and made sure that all four Comanches were dead. Most of the men, Augustus included, were stunned to find that the battle was over so quickly.

"They're dead, Woodrow--they're dead," Augustus assured him.

All of them were surprised that the victory had been so easy.

"I guess we'll be promoted when we get home," Gus said, reloading his rifle.

"There ain't nothing to promote us to, we're already captains," Call reminded him. "If that ain't high enough for you, then I guess you'll just have to run for governor." "He'd never get elected, he's done too much whoring," Long Bill said.

Gus knelt by the young Indian boy, to see where he had hit him. Deets came up, leading the extra horses, and went to help the two children.

Call pulled a slicker off his saddle and gave it to the woman, who was almost naked. She took the slicker but didn't say thank you and didn't look at them. She was staring away.

Of course, he realized, she had been only a moment from death--perh she couldn't yet comprehend that she was saved. Perhaps in her blind stare she still saw the knife poised above her.

"You're saved, ma'am--we got here just in time," Call said, before backing away. He didn't think it wise to say more, or to try and rush the woman back from the place she had gone in her mind. It was a place she had had to go to survive, as much as she had survived, he felt sure. If she was let alone she might come back, although he realized there was a chance she wouldn't come back. What was sure was that the men who would have killed her were dead.

"You made a fine shot to keep that young one from killing her--he was ready," Call said to Gus.

"They're all four dead and we got the woman and the children back, and some horses besides. We've been fair captains, so far." Augustus was thinking how quick it had been--a few seconds of action and four men dead.

Deets was talking to the two children, while the other rangers milled. Neely Dickens was becoming more and more exhilarated by the knowledge that he was alive. Long Bill busied himself counting the horses they had recovered, fourteen in all.

"I guess we won't starve now, boys, even if we get plumb lost," he said. "We got horsemeat now--horsemeat on the hoof." Pea Eye had charged down on the Indians with the rest of the men, but had not fired his gun--he thought he would be unlikely to hit anybody, while running at such a speed. Pea Eye had heard so many tales about how devilishly accurate Indians were with tomahawks and clubs that he had kept as low on his horse's neck as possible, as he raced, hoping to avoid the tomahawks and maybe the arrows too. But then it turned out they were charging only four men, all of whom were dead by the time he reached the camp. Only one of the men had a tomahawk, and the rifles they were equipped with looked older and less reliable even than his own. Pea Eye went over to hold the horses, while Deets tended to the frightened children.

He felt weak, so weak that he thought he might have to sit down. Even so he did better than Neely Dickens, who passed through his phase of exhilaration, grew weak suddenly, and fainted.

Neely flopped down as if dead, but, since none of the Comanches had so much as fired a gun, no one supposed Neely to be dead. Teddy Beatty fanned him with a hat a few times and then paid him no more attention.

"He ain't hurt, the little rascal," Teddy said. "Let him nap, I say." Call noticed that the woman had a lot of blood on her legs--the travelling must have been rough.

"We need to go," he said to Augustus. "These four are dead, but there could be forty more not far away." "Or four hundred more--how would that be?" Augustus said. The fight had left him feeling a little distanced from himself, all the men seemed to feel that way, even Call. But it wasn't a condition they could afford to indulge, not with Buffalo Hump's camp just to the north.

"Do we bury them, Woodrow?" he asked, no.ing toward the dead warriors.

It was a question Call had not had to consider before.

There were four dead Comanches. Did they bury them, or leave them as they had fallen?

"I'm told the Comanches bury their own," he said, uncertain as to what was right in such a case.

"I expect they would if they were here," Gus said. "But these men are dead--they can't bury themselves, and I expect they'll be bad torn up by the time a Comanche finds them." "I'm worried about that woman," Call said.

"I think she's about lost her mind." Deets boiled a little coffee over the Comanche campfire and fed the children a little bacon; the woman would take none. The men dug a grave and put the four dead warriors in it. While they were filling it in the woman began to shriek.

"He won't want me! I can't go home!" she shrieked. Then she ran away, out onto the prairie, shrieking, as she ran.

"I was afraid of this," Call said. The children were crying, though Deets tried to shush them. The men all stood, numb and confused, listening to the woman scream. Augustus mounted his horse.

"I'll get her," he said. He touched his horse with the spur and went loping after the woman.

"I was afraid of this," Call said again, looking at the stunned men.

Maudy Clark ran away several times a day, every day, of the two weeks it took the rangers to reach Austin. Another sleet storm delayed them, and then heavy rains, which made the rivers high and treacherous. Three horses bogged in the swollen Red River and drowned.

Still, whatever the weather, Maudy Clark ran away. Once caught, she was docile--she seemed to mind Deets less than the other men, so Deets was assigned the task of seeing that she didn't escape or hurt herself. It was Deets, too, who cared for her children; she seemed not to recognize them as her children now.