"You hurt?" Call asked the boy.

"No, sir," Newt said. "He just quirted me a little. I wasn't gonna let him have Dish's horse."

"Well, you can let her go now," Dish said. "He's gone. I'm much obliged to you for what you did, Newt."

Newt had gripped the bit so tightly that it was painful to let go. It had cut deep creases in his palms, and he seemed to have squeezed the blood out of his fingers. But he turned the mare loose. Dish took the reins and patted her on the neck.

Augustus walked over and stooped down by Pete Spettle, who was blowing frothy blood out of his broken nose.

"I better take you to the doctor," Augustus said.

"Don't want no doc," Pete said.

"'I god, this is a hardheaded lot," Augustus said, walking over to Ben Rainey. He took the candy sack and helped himself to a piece. "Hardly a one of you will take good advice."

Call mounted the Hell Bitch, slowly re-coiling his rope. Several townspeople had witnessed the fight. Most were still standing there, watching the man on the gray mare.

When he had his rope fixed again, Call rode over to Augustus. "Will you bring the grub?" he asked.

"Yep," Augustus said. "I'll bring it."

Call saw that everyone was looking at him, the hands and cowboys and townspeople alike. The anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling tired. He didn't remember the fight, particularly, but people were looking at him as if they were stunned. He felt he should make some explanation, though it seemed to him a simple situation.

"I hate a man that talks rude," he said. "I won't tolerate it."

With that he turned and rode out of town. The people watching kept quiet. Rough as the place was, accustomed as they all were to sudden death, they felt they had seen something extraordinary, something they would rather not have seen.

"My lord, Gus," Dish said, as he watched the Captain leave. Like the others, he was awed by the fury he had seen erupt in the Captain. He had seen men fight many times, but not like that. Though he himself hated Dixon, it was still disturbing to see him destroyed-not even with a gun, either.

"Have you ever seen him like that before?" he asked Augustus.

"Once," Augustus said. "He killed a Mexican bandit that way once before I could stop it. The Mexican had cut up three white people, but that wasn't what prompted it. The man scorned Call."

He took another piece of candy. "It don't do to scorn W. F. Call," he said.

"Was it me?" Newt asked, feeling that maybe he should have managed things better. "Was it just that he was quirting me?"

"That was part of it," Augustus said. "Call don't know himself what the rest of it was."

"Why, he'd have killed that man, if you hadn't roped him," Dish said. "He would have killed anybody. Anybody!"

Augustus, eating his candy, did not dispute it.

IT WAS BECAUSE of the fight that the boys ended up amid the whores. Dish saddled and left, and Augustus finished loading the wagon and started out of town. When he turned the wagon around, Newt and the Raineys were talking to Pea Eye, who had been up the street getting barbered and had missed the fight. Pea Eye had so much toilet water on that Augustus could smell him from ten feet away. He and the boys were standing around the bloody anvil and the boys were explaining the matter to him. Pea didn't seem particularly surprised.

"Well, he's a fighter, the Captain," he said mildly. "He'll box 'em if they get him riled."

"Box?" Ben Rainey said. "He didn't box. He run over the man with a horse and then near kicked his head off when he had him laying on the ground."

"Oh, that's boxing, to the Captain," Pea Eye said.

Augustus stopped the wagon. "You boys aim to linger around here?" he asked.

The boys looked at one another. The fight had startled them so that they had more or less forgotten their plans-not that they had many.

"Well, it's our only chance to see the town," Newt said, thinking Augustus was going to tell them to go back to the wagon.

That was not Augustus's intention. He had four ten-dollar gold pieces in his pocket, which he had intended to slip the boys on the sly. With Call gone, that was unnecessary. He flipped one to Newt, then handed them to each of the other boys.

"This is a bonus," Augustus said. "It's hard to enjoy a metropolis like this if you've got nothing but your hands in your pockets."

"Hell, if you're giving away money, give me some, Gus," Pea Eye said.

"No, you'd just spend it on barbers," Augustus said. "These boys will put it to better use. They deserve a frolic before we set out to the far north."

He popped the team with the reins and rode out of town, thinking how young the boys were. Age had never mattered to him much. He felt that, if anything, he himself had gained in ability as the years went by. Yet he became a little wistful, thinking of the boys. However he might best them, he could never stand again where they stood, ready to go into a whorehouse for the first time. The world of women was about to open to them. Of course, if a whorehouse in Ogallala was the door they had to go through, some would be scared back to the safety of the wagon and the cowboys. But some wouldn't.

The boys stood around the blacksmith's shop, talking about the money Augustus had given them. In a flash, all the calculating they had done for the last few weeks was rendered unnecessary. They had means right in their hands. It was a dizzying feeling, and a little frightening.

"Ten dollars is enough for a whore, ain't it?" Ben Rainey asked Pea Eye.

"Ain't priced none lately," Pea Eye said. It irked him that he had gone to the barbershop at the wrong time and missed the fight.

"Why not, Pea?" Newt asked. He was curious. All the other hands had rushed in, to the whores. Even Dish had done it, and Dish was said to be in love with Lorena. Yet Pea was unaffected by the clamor-even around the campfire he kept quiet when the talk was of women. Pea was one of Newt's oldest friends, and it was important to know what Pea felt on the subject.

But Pea was not forthcoming. "Oh, I mostly just stay with the wagon," he said, which was no answer at all. Indeed, while they were standing around getting used to having money to spend. Pea got his horse and rode off. Except for Lippy and the Irishman, they were the only members of the Hat Creek outfit left in town.

Still, none of the boys felt bold enough just to go up the back stairs, as Dish had instructed them. It was decided to find Lippy, who was known to be a frequenter of whores.

They found him standing outside a saloon looking very disappointed. "There's only one pia-ner in this town, and it's broke," he said. "A mule skinner busted it. I rode all this way in and ain't got to hear a note."

"What do you do about whores?" Jimmy Rainey asked. He felt he couldn't bear much more frustration.

"Why, that's a dumb question," Lippy said. "You do like the bull does with the heifer, only frontways, if you want to."

Instead of clarifying matters, that only made them more obscure, at least to Newt. His sense of the mechanics of whoring was vague at best. Now Lippy was suggesting that there was more than one method, which was not helpful to someone who had yet to practice any method.

"Yeah, but do you just ask?" he inquired. "We don't know how much it costs."

"Oh, that varies from gal to gal, or madam to madam," Lippy said. "Gus gave Lorena fifty dollars once, but that price is way out of line."

Then he realized he had just revealed something he was not supposed to tell, and to boys too. Boys were not reliable when it came to keeping secrets.

"I oughtn't to tolt that," he said. "Gus threatened to shoot another hole in my stomach if I did."

"We won't tell," Newt assured him.