AN HOUR AFTER HE arrived in the big camp, to his surprise and embarrassment, Woodrow Call was made a corporal in the Texas Rangers. The Ranger troop rode in, five men short, and Bigfoot made a hasty report to Colonel Cobb, who sat outside his tent, smoking a big cigar and scratching the head of a large Irish dog who accompanied him everywhere. The dog was old. His long tongue lolled out, and he panted loudly.

“Yep, this youngster killed his first Comanche,” Bigfoot said. “The Comanche was floating down the Brazos holding on to a dead mule. Young Call shot him point-blank.”

Caleb Cobb let his sleepy eyes shift to Call for a moment; then he looked back at the Irish dog.

“That’s alert behaviour, Mr. Call,” he said. “I’ll make you a corporal on the spot—we ain’t got many corporals in this troop, and I expect we’ll need a few.”

“I say it’s hasty, it could have been luck,” Captain Falconer said, annoyed. He thought young Call far too green for such distinction.

The Captain was wearing a black coat, and his mood seemed as dark as his garment. He was sharpening a knife on a large whetstone.

Caleb Cobb smiled.

“Now, Billy,” he said, “let me decide on the promotions. If a Comanche was to swim up on you, in the middle of a big river, underneath a dead mule, you might be scalped before you noticed the mule.”

“I have always been wary of dead animals when I cross rivers,” Captain Falconer said, stiffly. It was clear that he did not appreciate the Colonel’s remark.

“Would you go grind that knife out of my hearing?” Caleb asked. “It’s hard to think with you grinding that knife, and I need to think.”

Without a word, Falconer got up and walked away from the tent.

“Billy’s too well educated,” Caleb Cobb remarked. “He thinks he knows something. How many Comanches did the rest of you kill?”

“None,” Bigfoot admitted. “We might have winged one or two, but I doubt it. They was in good cover.”

The Colonel did not change expression, but the tone of his voice got lower.

“You lost five men and this cub’s the only one of you who was able to kill an Indian?” he asked.

“The weather was goddamn dim,” Bigfoot reminded him.

“It was just as dim for Buffalo Hump and his warriors,” Caleb said. “I won’t be sending out any more punishment squads, if this is the best we can do. I can’t afford to lose five men to get one Indian. From now on we’ll let them come to us. Maybe if we bunch up and look like an army we can get across the plains and still have a few men left to fight the Mexicans with, if we have to fight them.”

“Colonel, we didn’t have good horses,” Bigfoot said. “A few of us did, but the rest were poorly mounted. It cost three men their lives.”

“What happened to the other two—I thought you lost five,” Caleb asked. The big Irish dog had yellow eyes—Call had heard it said that the dog could run down deer, hamstring them, and rip out their throats. Certainly the dog was big enough—he was waist high to Bigfoot, and Bigfoot was not short.

“The other two weren’t lucky,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t know for sure that one of them is dead—but there’s no sign of him, so I suspect it.”

“If poor horseflesh is the reason you lost a third of your troop, go complain to the quartermaster,” the Colonel said. “I ain’t the wrangler. I will admit there’s a lot of puny horses in this part of Texas.”

“Thank you for the promotion,” Call said, though he didn’t know what it meant, to be a corporal. Probably there were increased duties—he meant to ask Brognoli, when he saw him next. But curiosity got the better of him, and he asked Bigfoot first.

“It just means you make a dollar more a month,” Bigfoot said. “Life’s just as dangerous, whether you’re a corporal or a private.”

“With a whole extra dollar you can buy more liquor and more whores,” Bigfoot added. “At least you can if you don’t let Gus McCrae cheat you out of your money.”

The company, in all its muddle and variety, was unlimbering itself for the day’s advance. Wagons and oxcarts were snaking through the rocky hills and bumping through the little scrubby valleys. Several of the more indolent merchants were already showing the effects of prairie travel—the dentist who had decided to emigrate to Santa Fe in hopes of doing a lucrative business with the Mexican grandees had tripped over his own baggage and fallen headfirst into a prickly-pear patch. A sandy-haired fellow with a pair of blacksmith’s pinchers was pulling prickly-pear thorns out of the dentist’s face and neck when Call strode by. The dentist groaned, but the groans, on the whole, were milder than the howls of his patients.

When Call located Gus McCrae and Johnny Carthage he was happy to see that Gus was his feisty self again, his ankle much improved. He was just hobbling back from visiting a young whore named Ginny—Caleb Cobb had permitted a few inexpensive women to travel with the company as far as the Brazos, after which, they had been informed, they would have to return to Austin, the expectation being that enough of the merchants would have given up by that point that the whores would have ample transport. Whether the Great Western would be an exception to this rule was a subject of much debate among the men, many of whom were reluctant to commit themselves to long-distance journeying without the availability of at least one accomplished whore.

“I wouldn’t call Matilda accomplished,” Johnny Carthage argued. “Half the time she ain’t even friendly. A woman that catches snapping turtles for breakfast is a woman to avoid, if you ask me.”

He was uncomfortably aware that he had only been partially successful at avoiding Matilda himself—in general, though, he preferred younger and smaller women, Mexican if possible.

Gus had picked up a spade somewhere and was using it intermittently as a crutch. His injured ankle would bear his weight for short distances, but occasionally, he was forced to give it a rest.

Gus had taken to wearing both his pistols in his belt, as if he expected attack at any moment.

“Howdy, did you get wet?” he asked, very glad to see Woodrow Call. Although Woodrow was contrary, he was the best friend Gus had. The thought that he might be killed, and not reappear at all, had given Gus two uneasy nights. Buffalo Hump had risen in his dreams, holding bloody scalps.

“I came near to drowning in the Brazos River, but I didn’t lose my gun,” Call said. He was especially proud of the fact that he hadn’t lost his gun, though no one else seemed to consider it much of an accomplishment.

“The river was up,” he added. “Most of the Comanches got away.”

“Did you see that big one?” Gus asked.

“I seen his hump,” Call said. “He floated down behind a log and put an arrow in a man standing right by me—split his backbone.”

The sun had broken through the last of the clouds—bright sunlight gleamed on the wet grass in the valleys and on the hills.

“I wish I could have gone—we would have killed several if we’d worked together,” Gus said.

Long Bill Coleman walked up about that time, in a joshing mood.

“Have you saluted him yet?” he asked Gus, to Call’s deep embarrassment.

“Why would I salute him, he’s my pard,” Gus said.

“He may be your pard but he’s a corporal now—he killed a red boy and the Colonel promoted him,” Long Bill said.

Gus could not have been more taken aback if Call had come back scalpless. The very thing that Clara teased him about had actually happened. Woodrow was Corporal Call now. No doubt Clara would hurry to court him, once they all got back.

“So that’s the news, is it?” Gus said, feeling slightly weak all of a sudden. He had not forgotten Clara and her kiss. Young Ginny had been pleasant, but Clara’s kiss was of another realm.

“Yes, he done it just now,” Call admitted, well aware that his friend would be at least a little discommoded by the news.