They rode east and soon picked up the wagon trail into Austin, but they had not followed it far when Augustus suddenly swung his horse to the north.

"That ain't the way to Austin," Call said.

"I just remembered something," Augustus said.

He loped off without another word. Call turned the Hell Bitch and followed. He thought perhaps Gus was thirsty-they weren't far from a little creek that fed into the Guadalupe.

Sure enough, it was the little spring-fed creek that Augustus had been looking for. It ran through a small grove of live oaks, spread along the slope of a good-sized hill. Gus and old Malaria stopped on the hill, looking down at the creek and a little pool it formed below the trees. Gus was just sitting and looking, which was odd-but then Gus was odd. Call rode up, wondering what had drawn Gus's attention to the spot, and was shocked to see that Gus had tears in his eyes. They wet his cheeks and glistened on the ends of his mustache.

Call didn't know what to say because he had no idea what was wrong. Gus sometimes laughed until he cried, but he seldom just cried. Moreover, it was a fine day. It was puzzling, but he decided not to ask.

Gus sat for five minutes, not saying a word. Call got down and relieved himself to pass the time. He heard Gus sigh and looked up to see him wiping his eyes with a bandana.

"What has come over you?" Call asked finally.

Augustus took off his hat for a moment to let his head cool. "Woodrow, I doubt you'd understand," he said, looking at the grove and the pool.

"Well if I don't, I don't," Call said. "I sure don't so far."

"I call this Clara's orchard," Augustus said. "Me and her discovered it one day while on a buggy ride. We come out here on picnics many a time."

"Oh," Call said. "I might have known it would have something to do with her. I doubt there's another human being over whom you'd shed a tear.

Augustus wiped his eyes with his fingers. "Well, Clara was lovely," he said. "I expect it was the major mistake of my life, letting her slip by. Only you don't understand that, because you don't appreciate women."

"If she didn't want to marry you I don't guess there was much you could have done about it," Call said, feeling awkward. The subject of marriage was not one he was comfortable with.

"It weren't that simple," Augustus said, looking at the creek and the little grove of trees and remembering all the happiness he had had there. He turned old Malaria and they rode on toward Austin, though the memory of Clara was as fresh in his mind as if it were her, not Woodrow Call, who rode beside him. She had had her vanities, mainly clothes. He used to tease her by saying he had never seen her in the same dress twice, but Clara just laughed. When his second wife died and he was free to propose, he did one day, on a picnic to the place they called her orchard, and she refused instantly, without losing a trace of her merriment.

"Why not?" he asked.

"I'm used to my own ways," she said. "You might try to make me do something I wouldn't want to do."

"Don't I indulge your every whim?" he asked.

"Yes, but that's because you haven't got me," Clara said. "I bet you'd change fast if I ever let you get the upper hand."

But she had never let him get the upper hand, though it seemed to him she had surrendered it without a fight to a dumb horse trader from Kentucky.

Call was a little embarrassed for Augustus.

"When was you the happiest, Call?" Augustus asked.

"Happiest about what?" Call asked.

"Just about being a live human being, free on the earth," Augustus said.

"Well, it's hard to single out any one particular time," Call said.

"It ain't for me," Augustus said. "I was happiest right back there by that little creek. I fell short of the mark and lost the woman, but the times were sweet."

It seemed an odd choice to Call. After all, Gus had been married twice.

"What about your wives?" he asked.

"Well, it's peculiar," Augustus said. "I never was drawn to fat women, and yet I married two of them. People do odd things, all except you. I don't think you ever wanted to be happy anyway. It don't suit you, so you managed to avoid it."

"That's silly," Call said.

"It ain't, either," Augustus said. "I don't guess I've watched you punish yourself for thirty years to be totally wrong about you. I just don't know what you done to deserve the punishment."

"You've got a strange way of thinking," Call said.

They had hardly ridden three miles from the grove when they spotted a little camp at the foot of a limestone bluff. It was near a pool and a few trees.

"I bet that's Jake," Call said.

"No, it's just Lorie," Augustus said. "She's resting by a tree. I bet J ake's gone to town and left her."

Call looked again, but the camp was half a mile away and all he could see was the horses and the pack mule. Throughout his years as a Ranger, Augustus had always been renowned for his remarkable eyesight. Time and again, on the high plains and in the Pecos country, it had been proven that he could see farther than other people. In the shimmering mirages the men were always mistaking sage bushes for Indians. Call himself could shade his eyes and squint and still not be certain, but Augustus would merely glance at the supposed Indian for a moment, laugh and go back to card playing or whiskey drinking or whatever he might be doing.

"Yep, that's a big tribe of sage bushes," he would say.

Pea, particularly, stood in awe of Augustus's vision, his own being notably weak. Sometimes on a hunt Augustus would try in vain to show Pea Eye an antelope or a deer.

"I might could see it if we could get closer," Pea would say.

"Pea, I don't know what keeps you from riding off a cliff," Augustus responded. "If we get closer the animal will just get farther."

"Let's hire Lorie to cook," Augustus said.

"Let's don't," Call said. "Bring her into that camp and there'd be fights ever day, even if she was a decent woman."

"I don't know why you're so down on whores, Woodrow," Augustus said. "You had yours, as I remember."

"Yes, that was my mistake," Call said, annoyed that Gus would bring it up.

"It ain't a mistake to behave like a human being once in a while," Augustus said. "Poor Maggie got her heart broke, but she gave you a fine son before she quit."

"You don't know that and I don't want to talk about it," Call said. "He could be yours, or Jake's, or some damn gambler's."

"Yes, but he ain't, he's yours," Augustus said. "Anybody with a good eye can see it. Besides, Maggie told me. She and I were good friends."

"I don't know about friends," Call said. "I'm sure you were a good customer."

"The two can overlap," Augustus pointed out, well aware that his friend was not happy to have such a subject broached. Call had been secretive about it when it was happening and had been even more secretive about it since.

When they rode into the little camp, Lorena was sitting under the tree, quietly watching them. She had evidently just bathed in the pool, for her long blond hair was wet. Once in a while she squeezed water off a strand with her fingers. She had a bruise below one eye.

"'I god, Lorie, it looks like an easy life," Augustus said. "You got your own swimming hole. Where's Jake?"

"He went to town," Lorena said. "He's done been gone two days."

"Must be in a good game," Augustus said. "Jake will play for a week if he's ahead."

Call thought it was unconscionable to leave any woman alone that long in such rough country.

"When do you expect him back?" he asked.

"He said he wasn't coming back," Lorena said. "He left mad. He's been mad the whole way up here. He said I could have the horse and the mule and go where I pleased."

"I doubt he meant it," Augustus said. "What do you think?"