"They could be after those two wolves whose tracks I saw this morning," he replied. "The dogs might be running those wolves." Famous Shoes had just stopped speaking when they heard the sound of gunshots, coming from the direction where they had last heard the dogs. There were many gunshots. In the Indian days, Call had been competent at counting gunshots, for it was a way of estimating the enemy's strength. But he was out of practice. He would have guessed that about forty shots were fired. In a lull, they heard the yelping of one of the dogs. It had been wounded in the gunfight, probably.

There were four or five more gunshots, scattered, and then silence.

"Somebody shot those dogs, that's what I think," Famous Shoes said. He was a little agitated. The flurry of shots had been an unwelcome surprise. It took several men to shoot that many dogs so rapidly. But what kind of men would shoot dogs in the middle of the night?

"Listen a minute," Call said. "They could have been shooting at whatever the dogs were chasing. If that's it, they weren't Ben Lily's dogs. Ben Lily travels alone and shoots a rifle.

What we heard were mainly pistol shots." They listened for fifteen minutes.

There were no more gunshots, and no dogs howled.

"They probably shot the dogs. I'd like to know why," Call said. "Let's go to camp." When Call got back to camp, all three men were sound asleep. Probably that was because the weather had warmed up. For the first time, they weren't so freezing cold.

Call expected no better of Brookshire or Deputy Plunkert, but he was irritated with Pea Eye. It was a small lapse, but a lapse nonetheless. As long as he and Pea Eye had been camping together, they had consulted about night duties--who would sleep first, who would sleep second. Never before, no matter how tired he might be, had Pea Eye just gone to sleep without discussing these arrangements. Of course, Call had lapsed himself, by leaving the camp without assigning a watch. But he had done that often, through the years, and when he did it, Pea Eye always stayed awake until he returned.

It wasn't like Pea Eye, going to sleep in dangerous country. It made Call wonder if urging Pea Eye to leave his family and join him had really been wise. He had done it from habit. Pea Eye was the last of his men, and one of the few people Call trusted. It had seemed natural to call on him, and it had disturbed him when Pea Eye refused to come.

Now he found that having him along disturbed him almost as much. Pea Eye wasn't behaving like himself. It might be because he was no longer the Ranger that Call had known and counted on for so long. He was a farmer and a husband, with the habits of a farmer and a husband, rather than the habits of a fighting man. Probably Pea Eye had been right, in deciding to stay with his family. Loyalty had made him change his mind, but foolishly, and too late. If he wasn't going to be able to be the competent Ranger he had been, then staying home was the better choice.

Pea Eye woke up the minute Captain Call reentered the camp, and immediately realized that he had been derelict.

"Oh, dern, I dropped off," he said. "I intended to stand watch." "Well, Famous Shoes was up, and so was I," Call said. "Somebody just shot Ben Lily's dog pack, if them dogs we've been hearing really belonged to Ben Lily. If they weren't, I'd like to know who would be running in these parts, with eight or ten dogs." Pea Eye felt such embarrassment at having gone to sleep that he scarcely attended to what the Captain was saying. He had no intention of going to sleep, when the Captain left the camp. The Captain always left the camp, for an hour or two in the evening. When he returned, the two of them would work out watch duties, for what remained of the night. Pea Eye usually stood the first watch.

But this evening, he had simply gone to sleep.

The Captain didn't mention it. He had even been polite enough to change the subject, but Pea Eye knew he would remember it. The very fact that he hadn't been reprimanded made Pea Eye feel at a loss. In fact, he had been feeling at a loss from the moment the Captain led them out of Presidio. Pea Eye should have been feeling fine. With Famous Shoes' help, he had been able to connect with the Captain with only a minimum of travel. The Garza boy was probably east of them now. The whole job might be over soon, and he could go right home, back to Lorie and the children.

But Pea Eye didn't feel fine. He felt awkward; maybe he had irritated the Captain too much, by refusing to go with him initially. Maybe the Captain, as he got older, was becoming even harder to please. At no time had he been easy to please.

But whatever it was, there was a difference in the way he and the Captain were, and it made Pea Eye all the more homesick. He felt he had been foolish, after all, to leave home. The Captain had promptly recruited another deputy, and he had the Yankee, Brookshire, as well. The Yankee seemed to be fairly competent. He had made the campfires, both nights, and had done it well. The other deputy was no good at packing horses or mules, but was handy enough at unpacking them. There was not much for Pea Eye to do. Standing watch was one area where his experience would have been useful, but he had gone right off to sleep and hadn't even heard the shots that killed Ben Lily's dogs, if they were Ben Lily's dogs.

All this made Pea Eye feel gloomy.

He felt that he had stopped knowing how to be useful. He often felt that way at home, too. Lorie was as good at what she did as the Captain was at what he did. Pea Eye wasn't as good as either one of them, at anything. It made him wonder why the Captain had wanted him along in the first place.

Call was sufficiently alarmed by the sound of so much gunfire that he woke Brookshire and Deputy Plunkert. He also put out the fire.

In the brilliant darkness, on the long plain, even a speck of fire as small as theirs could be spotted by an experienced eye from many miles away; as many miles, at least, as an experienced ear could hear a dog bark.

Call could sometimes distinguish calibers of weapons, if the firing was slow, but the men who shot the dogs hadn't been firing slow. The forty shots had been fired in a minute or two. Call thought he heard six or seven guns, but that was a guess. There could have been ten or more, or there could have been only three or four.

Famous Shoes had not returned to camp. The man seldom waited for instructions, and he was apt to rove all night, when he was on a scout.

"Where's our Indian?" Brookshire asked.

He had taken a liking to the old man, although he wasn't exactly businesslike. When he noticed that Brookshire had a book or two in his baggage, Famous Shoes had started pestering him to teach him to read. The old man seemed to think it was something he could start doing immediately, if only he were given the right clues. Famous Shoes had even insisted that Brookshire dismount, so he could show the Yankee a number of animal tracks and identify them. He seemed to think that Brookshire ought to be able to instruct him in reading just as quickly. When Brookshire attempted to explain that the two things weren't the same, Famous Shoes became irritated. Then Brookshire made the mistake of mentioning sentences. Famous Shoes immediately started asking him to explain what sentences were. Brookshire felt sure that he knew what a sentence was, but he found it damnably difficult to explain the sentence to the old Indian.