Since the raid beef had become scarce and pricey. There were plenty of cattle but few hunters bold enough to go into the brush country to slaughter them, for fear of encountering Comanches.

Fortunately, Woodrow liked goat, which was available and cheap. Sometimes Gus McCrae would come up and eat with him--he was always tipsy, it seemed.

"I fear my partner will end up a drunkard," Woodrow said, one night after Gus had left.

They stood by the window and watched him make straight for a saloon.

"That's because of Clara," Maggie said. "He had his heart set on her." "Yes, but she's gone," Call said. "He needs to let it go and find himself another girl." "He can't," Maggie said. "Some folks can't just bend their feelings that way." "Well, he ought to try," Woodrow said.

"There's plenty of girls that would make him a decent wife if he'd just give them a chance." Then he picked up his rifle and left to walk the river, as he did most every night. He scarcely lingered with Maggie ten minutes now, after taking his meal; when he returned it would be nearly dawn. He would merely sleep an hour or two with her, before going down to the rangers.

Each night's departure left Maggie feeling empty and sad. She wanted to say to him what he had just said about the girls Gus might marry: I could make you a decent wife, if you'd just give me the chance. Already, she tried to treat Woodrow as she would treat a beloved husband, yet all it seemed to get her was the hastiest attentions. The thing that seemed to please him most was that she kept his clothes clean and nicely pressed. As the weather grew warmer, Maggie sometimes felt faint, ironing in the heat, and yet she kept on because Woodrow liked to dress neatly and his pleasure in wearing well-placed clothes was a kind of bond they had, a stronger one than their pleasure even. Anyway the pleasure had become hasty and more and more intermittent. Woodrow seemed to feel that much indulgence in the carnal appetites would be medically inadvisable; or perhaps he was merely put off by her swelling body. He withdrew and walked the river; Maggie felt sad, but continued to do her best.

The baby that was so visibly there inside her she had given up mentioning at all. That she was pregnant was a fact of their existence, yet a fact they both ignored. Maggie longed for a good chance to talk to Woodrow about the baby; but he was careful in his speech and never gave her one.

Best wait, she thought--best wait until it's here. Her hope was that once the child was born Woodrow would see it and take to it. In her daydreams she imagined him pleased by the little child, so pleased that he would want everybody to know he was its father. And yet, at night, alone, with Woodrow gone, she couldn't keep herself from wondering if it would really be that way. One day she would be hopeful, the next day despairing. She could well understand why Gus McCrae had turned to drink, from missing Clara Forsythe, now Clara Allen. Maggie missed her too. Although circumstance had not permitted much conversation to pass between them, Maggie felt that Clara liked her.

Sometimes, sweeping the boardwalk in front of the store, Clara would look up at Maggie's window and smile and wave. When some small need took Maggie into the store, Clara was invariably friendly and welcoming. Knowing that Maggie had a yearning for fine goods, gloves or shoes often well beyond her purse, Clara would sometimes mark a little off an item, so that Maggie could have at least a few things that pleased her.

Having Clara there broke the loneliness; now there was no one with such a fine spirit who might break it. Maggie had once talked to Pearl Coleman now and then, but since the raid Pearl herself had become too despondent to chatter in the light way she once had. Maggie saw her almost every day, in the market, but Pearl barely responded to her hello. From being an aggressive customer, willing to haggle tirelessly and loudly over the price of a pepper or a squash, Pearl had become indifferent, merely raking a few foodstuffso into her basket and paying the price without dispute.

Seeing Pearl Coleman, a woman who had always been cheerful and well able to take care of herself, so despondent made Maggie reflect on how precarious life was, in such a place. Thirty people had lost their lives, and several women had had their marriages destroyed by the rapes they endured; most of the children had stopped going to school for fear that the Indians would come back and take them, and the men were nervous about venturing much beyond the outskirts of Austin.

Maggie herself felt like going to a safer place-- San Antonio, perhaps, or one of the towns on the coast. But she knew that if she moved she would lose all hope of marriage to Woodrow Call. The rangers were quartered in Austin and he had been promoted to captain. He would not be likely to leave.

One good thing about the promotion was that Woodrow had started giving her six dollars a month toward her housekeeping expenses.

"Woodrow, what's this for?" Maggie asked, very startled, the first time he gave her the money.

"Take it--it will be easier for you to make ends meet," Call said. The fact was, he lived frugally and seldom spent all his salary; a factor in his modest prosperity was that Maggie fed him several meals a week and looked after his laundry. Nobody gave her the food she served him, and she could scarcely do much whoring with her belly so swollen. He felt that he was an expense Maggie could ill afford. Mainly he would just put the money on the table, or by the cupboard; often he would leave it at night, before he left to walk the river.

When Maggie saw the six dollars on her table something stirred in her, something mixed. She realized it was as close as Woodrow could come to admitting that he lived with her. On the other hand, she had always cared for herself. She might long for a man who might marry her and want to support her --and yet she could not convince herself that Woodrow really did want to support her. He just felt he ought to; it was his conscience, not his heart, which moved him to put the six dollars on her table every month.

Sometimes Maggie left the money on the table a day or two before she picked it up. The sight of it made her feel both better and worse; it made her feel that she was being kept by a man who, though he might care for her, had no true desire to keep her, much less marry her and claim their child.

Still, Woodrow Call, with his nightly absences and the six dollars a month which he punctually left, was still the best that life offered, or was likely to offer, in the place where Maggie was. Sometimes she felt so defeated that she wondered if she ought to give up on the idea of respectability alt. She might as well just whore and whore and whore, until she got too old. Even if she only saw a few customers, now and then, she could still make a lot more than six dollars a month.

They had travelled up the Rio Grande almost to the crossings on the great war trail when they saw the Old One. Worm at once became upset and began to shake and to speak incoherently, although the Old One was merely squatting by a little fire, carefully removing the quills from a large porcupine he had shot.