Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

"Well, we could rent sheep and goats and laying hens," Augustus said, without hesitation.

"Laying hens? Why would anybody pay to rent a hen?" Call asked.

"It could be that a salesman had just come to town for a few days," Gus said. "He might want a nice raw egg with his coffee andof course he'd prefer it to be fresh. We could rent him a hen for a day or two so he'd have his egg." The answer had a certain logic to it--sch a thing could happen, though Call knew it never would.

That was the devilish thing about arguing with Augustus: he could always come up with answers that made sense about schemes that would never happen.

"How much would I have to pay if I was to rent a hen from you for a day or two, Gus?" Pea Eye asked.

"If it was one of those nice speckled hens I expect I'd require a quarter a day," Augustus said. "If it was just one of those plain brown hens I might let you rent her for fifteen cents." "All right, but why would anyone want to rent a sheep or a goat?" Dan Connor asked. He was a small, feisty ranger who had joined the troop after Jake left.

"Well, our same salesman might want a sheep around because the odor of sheep repels mosquitoes," Augustus said. "He might want to hitch a sheep at the foot of his bed so the skeeters wouldn't bite him too hard." That answer, which Augustus delivered with a straight face, stopped conversation for a while, as the various rangers tried to remember if they had slept free of mosquitoes while there was a sheep around. Of course, there .were no sheep in Austin, and very few anywhere in Texas, so the theory was hard to test.

"What would a goat do, then?" Pea Eye inquired.

"Goats eat up the trash," Deets ventured, unexpectedly. Though he always listened intently to the general conversation, he rarely contributed a remark, especially not if one of the captains was around. Alone with Pea Eye, though, Deets had plenty to say.

"That's it, Deets--t's it," Augustus declared. "Your salesman might have some old ledgers or a few bills of lading he wants to dispose of. We'd rent him a goat for thirty cents a day and the problem would be solved." "How about pigs, then, Captain?" Dan Connor asked. "A pig has got as good an appetite as a goat. How much would a pig rent for?" At that Augustus looked stern.

"Oh, we wouldn't be renting no pigs, couldn't afford to, Dan," he said. "It might lead to lawsuits." "Why would renting a pig lead to lawsuits?" Call asked. He had had enough of the conversation and was about to take a walk, but he thought he would hear how Augustus justified his remark about pigs and lawsuits.

"Now the difficulty with a pig is that it's smarter than most human beings and it has a large appetite," Gus said. "A pig might even eat a customer, if the customer was drunk and not alert. Or it might at least eat one of his legs, if it was in the mood to snack. Or it could eat his coat off, or swallow the nice belt buckle his wife had given him for his birthday, which would get him in trouble at home and cause a passel of bad feelings. Even if it didn't mean a lawsuit it might cause him to tell all his friends not to rent from us, which could mean a sag in the profits." At that point Call walked off, as Gus was regaling his audience with his wildest scheme yet, which was to locate a zebra somewhere and teach it to pull a wagon, after which they could rent the zebra and the wagon together at a steep price for all manner of festivities.

"It might work for weddings," Augustus allowed. "We could teach it to pull the buggy that the bride and groom ride in." "As I recall, you walked to your weddings," Call said. "I doubt anyone in this part of the country could afford to rent a zebra, even if we had one, which we don't." The one point the two of them agreed on was that their future, once they left the rangers, would not be spent in Austin. They had been there too long, seen too much of politics, and had arrested, for one crime or another, a relative of virtually every person in town; they had also hung, for murder or horse thievery, quite a few men who had been popular in the saloons. They had been the local law too long--it was time to move.

Call walked on to the lots, to begin to get the horses ready for their attempt to catch Blue Duck. The boy Newt was there, as he usually was, practicing his roping on the chickens.

Call wondered sometimes about Maggie--since Jake Spoon's departure she had not been seen in the company of a man. Augustus, who gossiped about everyone, had no gossip to dispense about Maggie Tilton. Call remembered the night he had walked all the way down the San Antonio road to the split tree, but he could not bring to mind exactly what his upset had been about. Something had gone wrong between himself and Maggie --he had not been up her steps since she threw the cornmeal at him.

Sometimes he missed Maggie, and would have liked to sit with her for an hour, and enjoy one of her tasty beefsteaks. Still, he knew he was better off than Augustus, who still pined so severely for Clara Allen that the mere sight of her handwriting on an envelope would send him into the saloons for a long bout of drinking. Often Gus would keep one of Clara's letters for a week before he could even work up to opening it. He never said much about the letters, though he did once remark that Clara had lost a boy--a year or two later he remarked that she had lost another boy.

Augustus, when he chose to employ it, had a great gift for politics. He could persuade better than any governor or senator Call had ever met. Gus could easily have been elected a senator, and gone to Washington; he could have been elected governor. And yet, because he had lost the love of the one woman he really wanted, Clara Allen, Augustus had stayed a ranger. Once or twice Gus did consider running for office, but then another letter from Clara would come and he'd drink and put off reading it for a week. It seemed, to Woodrow Call, a strange way to live a life.

Last Horse was sitting idly by the fire, sharpening one of his knives on a whetstone, when it gradually dawned on him what the women were saying.

The women were always talking some ribaldry or other. Last Horse didn't understand why they talked about coupling so much since most of them, including his two wives, were rarely eager to couple with him--but such was the talk of women, year in and year out. He had only been half listening until one of them mentioned Buffalo Hump.

Even though Buffalo Hump was old now some of the women still speculated about coupling with him; but that was not what they were talking about this morning. It was only when he realized that the women were claiming that the old chief had left the camp that Last Horse suddenly realized that something important had happened.

What they said was true: Buffalo Hump's lodge appeared to be empty; there was no sign that he had used it for two or three days. Last Horse started to go inside the lodge and see if Buffalo Hump had left anything behind, but when he got to the entrance he stopped. Buffalo Hump was unpredictable; he might be in his lodge, waiting quietly for some fool to slip in and try to rob him. He might be waiting with his big knife.

Even if he wasn't waiting, even if he was truly gone, entering his lodge was not a step to be taken lightly. After all, he might only have gone on a hunt; he might return and make an issue of the fact that his lodge had been entered without his permission. Last Horse hesitated-- he had been afraid of Buffalo Hump all his life. Even if he knew that Buffalo Hump were dead he would have felt the need for caution. Such a chief would have a powerful spirit, one that might come back and work evil on interferers. Alive or dead, Buffalo Hump was a power Last Horse did not want to confront. He immediately got his rifle and set off for the northeast, to look for Blue Duck.

Last Horse had grown up with Blue Duck. Last year, while on a hunt, he had run into Blue Duck and some of his men; he feared trouble, but instead Blue Duck was friendly and even gave him some of his whiskey, a liquid he liked very much, although the sickness that came the next day was not pleasant.