Comanche Moon (16 page)

"I need to pick the men and get them together. How can I make decisions with Captain McCrae if he's disappeared?" Jake Spoon wandered into the saloon about then and heard the discussion.

"Maybe he got kidnapped," he said, mainly in jest.

"He just went to take tea with Madame Scull, I can't imagine what's detaining him." "Oh," Jake said. He got a kind of funny look on his face.

"What's wrong, Jake? You look like you et a bug," Pea Eye said.

Jake was thinking that he knew exactly what Captain McCrae was doing, if he was with Madame Scull. He remembered his own hot actions with her, in the closet, all too well-- the memories of their active lust were a torment to him at night.

"I ain't et no bug--I ain't that green," Jake replied. "I just swallowed wrong." "But you ain't eating nothing," Pea Eye persisted. "What did you swallow, anyway?" "Because I had air in my mouth, you fool," Jake said, irritated by Pea Eye's questioning.

"Captain, if you're going off again, can I go?" Jake asked, boldly. "There ain't much to do in town, with the boys gone." The question took Call unprepared. In fact, the new assignment took him unprepared. The Governor, mainly to placate Madame Scull, had given them a task that seemed more ridiculous the longer he thought about it.

There were thousands of miles to search, and the man they were looking for had the tracker with him. Captain Scull's departure had been wild folly to begin with, and now he and Augustus were being asked to compound the folly.

"I'll discuss it with Captain McCrae, Jake," Call said.

"I'm anxious to go if there's a place," Jake said. He thought it unjust that Pea Eye had got to go on the last expedition, while he had had to stay and run errands for Stove Jones and Lee Hitch, two rangers who had both suffered broken limbs from trying to ride half-broken horses. Though unable to travel, the two men were easily able to come up with twenty or thirty errands a day that they demanded Jake run. Mainly, they themselves stayed in their bunks and drank whiskey.

On occasion they even tried to get him to fetch them whores.

Now there was another expedition forming, and Jake was determined to go; life in Austin had become so boresome that he'd even put his scalp at risk rather than stay. If the captains wouldn't take him, he meant to quit the rangers and try to get on as a cowboy on one of the big ranches down south of San Antonio.

Call grew more and more vexed. He was also a little drunk, thanks to Gus's lagging, and needed to get on with their decision making. He got up and left the barroom, meaning to walk up to Long Bill Coleman's house--or rather, Pearl's. Long Bill never had a cent to his name, but Pearl had been left a good frame house by her father, a merchant who had been ambushed and killed by the Comanches while on a routine trip to San Antonio. Call was on his way to see whether Long Bill had the appetite for more travel when he happened to spot Augustus, coming down the street in the deep dusk. Augustus usually strolled along at a brisk pace, but now he was walking slowly, as if exhausted. Call wondered if his friend had fallen ill suddenly--in the Governor's office he had been somber, but not sick.

"Where have you been? We need to be choosing our men and getting them ready," Call said, three hours of frustration bursting out of him.

"You choose, Woodrow, all I want is a bottle and a pallet," Augustus said.

"A pallet? Are you sick?" Call asked.

"It's not even good dark." "Yes, sick of Austin," Gus said. "I wish we were leaving right this minute." Call was puzzled by the change in his old friend.

All energy and spirit seemed to have drained out of him-- and Gus McCrae was a man who could always be counted on for energy and spirit.

"You didn't say where you'd been," Call said.

Augustus turned and pointed up the hill, toward the Scull castle, its turrets just visible in the darkening sky.

"Up there--t's where I've been," Augustus said.

"Gus, it's been three hours--y must have drunk a fine lot of tea," Call remarked.

"Nope, we never got around to the tea," Augustus said. "Not the tea and not the biscuits, either. And while we're on the subject I don't think we ought to bring the Captain back." "Why not?" Call asked. "That's the only reason we're going, to bring him back. Of course, we've got to find him first." "You don't know Madame Scull, Woodrow," Gus said. "I'd say running off might be the Captain's only chance." "I don't know what you're talking about," Call said. "I've no doubt they squabble, but they've been married nearly twenty-five years --the Captain told me that himself." "He's a better man than me, then," Augustus said. "I wouldn't last no twenty-five years. Twenty-five days would put me under." Then, without more comment, he walked off toward the bunkhouse, leaving Woodrow Call more puzzled than he had been before.

When Call came in with his saddlebags over his shoulder, Maggie's spirits sank. She was too disappointed to speak. Woodrow only brought his saddlebag into her rooms when he was leaving early --he was meticulous about checking his gear and would spend an hour or more at his task whenever he had to leave.

"You've only been here a day," she said sadly. "We haven't even talked about the baby." "Well, you ain't having it tomorrow, and this may be a short trip," he said, not unkindly. "I expect we can discuss it when I come back." What if you don't come back? she thought, but she didn't say it. If she spoke it would only anger him and she would risk losing the little sweet time they might have. Austin was full of widows whose husbands had ridden off one morning, like Pearl Coleman's father, and never come back.

What Maggie felt was the fear any woman felt when her man had to venture beyond the settled frontier, and even the settled frontier was far from being really safe. Every year, still, settlers were killed and women and children stolen from their cabins, almost within sight of Austin. There was not much safety in town, but there was no safety where Woodrow had to go.

Worry about him sank deep in Maggie's gut, where it mixed with another grave worry: the question of what she would do if Woodrow refused to marry her, or accept her child as his. A woman with a child born out of wedlock had no hope of rising, not in Austin. If she wanted to raise the child properly she would have to move to another town and try to pass herself off as a widow. It would be hard, so hard that Maggie feared to think about it.

Unless Woodrow helped her she would be as good as lost, and the child as well.

But Maggie swallowed her questions and her doubts, as she had many times before. After all, Woodrow was there; he had come to her on his return and now again, on the eve of his departure.

He was there, not somewhere else; she did her best to push aside her worries and make the best of their time. The depth of her love for Woodrow Call gave him a power over her that was too great --and he didn't even know he had it.

"All right, I'll make you a meal--there's still two beefsteaks, if you want Gus to come," she said. It made Maggie happy if Woodrow brought Augustus home to eat with them: it was as if he were bringing his best friend home to eat his wife's cooking. She wasn't really his wife yet, but they were jolly on those occasions. Sometimes she and Gus could even tempt Woodrow into playing cards, or joining them in a singsong. He was a poor cardplayer and not much of a singer, but such times were still jolly.

"Gus went off to Madame Scull's and stayed three hours--t's why I'm late," Call said. "He just went to drink tea with her--I don't know why it took three hours.

Now he's too tired to eat. I don't think I've ever seen Gus too tired to eat before." Maggie smiled--everyone knew that Madame Scull took young men as lovers, the younger the better. She had taken Jake Spoon for a while; everyone knew that too. Lately Jake had come mooning around, wanting to make up to Maggie for his bad behaviour. He had offered to carry her groceries twice, and had generally tried to make himself useful; but Maggie remained cool. She knew his kind all too well.

Jake would be nice until he had what he wanted, and then, if she denied him a favor, he would pull her hair or slap her again. There was no changing men--not much, anyway; mainly men stayed the way they were, no matter what women did. Woodrow Call was not all she wanted him to be, but he had never raised a hand to her and would not think of pulling her hair. Jake could offer to carry her groceries if he wanted but she would not forget what he did.

Call noticed her smile, when he mentioned Gus's fatigue.

"What's that grin for? What do you know?" he asked.

"It's just a smile, Woodrow--I'm happy because you're here," Maggie said.

"No, it was something else--something about Gus," he said. "If you've a notion of why he stayed at Madame Scull's so long I'd like to know it." Maggie knew she was treading on dangerous ground. Woodrow had strict notions of what was right and what was wrong. But she was a little riled, too: riled because he was going away so soon, riled because he wouldn't talk about the baby, riled because she had to keep swallowing down the way she felt and the things she needed to say. If he wouldn't think about her baby, at least she could get his goat a little about their friend.

"I know why he's tired, that's all," she said, pounding the beefsteak.

"Why, then, tell me," Call asked.

"Because Madame Scull took his pants down --if you'd gone she would have tried to take yours down too," Maggie said.

Call flinched as if he had been slapped, or jabbed with a pin.

"Now, that's wrong!" he said loudly, but without much confidence in his own conclusion. "How could you know that?" "Because that's what she does with any man who goes home with her, when the Captain's away," Maggie said. "It's the talk of all the barrooms and not just the barrooms--she don't care who knows." "Well, she ought to care," Call said. "I expect the Captain would take the hide off her if he knew she was stirring up talk like that." "Woodrow, it's not just talk," Maggie said.

"I seen her kissing a boy myself, over behind some horses. One of the horses moved and I saw it." "What boy?" Call said. "Maybe they were cousins." "No, it was Jurgen, that German boy the Captain hung for stealing horses," Maggie insisted. "He couldn't even speak English." "They could still have been cousins," Call said--but then he gave up arguing. No wonder Gus had come down the hill looking as he sometimes looked when he had spent a day in a whorehouse.

"If it's true I just hope the Captain don't find out," Call said.

"Don't you think he knows?" Maggie asked.

Sometimes Woodrow seemed so young to her, not young outside but young inside, that it made her fearful for him; it made her even more determined to marry him and take care of him. If she didn't, some woman like Mrs. Scull would figure out how young he was and do him bad harm.

"How could he know if she only does it when he's gone?" Call asked.

"You don't have to be with somebody every minute to know things about them," Maggie told him. "I'm not with you every minute, but I know you're a good man. If you was a bad man I wouldn't have to be with you every minute to know that, either." Her voice quavered a little, when she said she knew he was a good man. It made Call feel a touch of guilt. He was always leaving Maggie just when she had her hopes up that he'd stay. Of course he left because it was his duty, but he recognized that that didn't really make things any easier for Maggie.

"Now you're risking your life because she wants somebody to go look for her husband, and she ain't even true to him," Maggie said bitterly.

When she thought of Madame Scull's dreadful behaviour--kissing and fondling young men right in the street--she got incensed. No decent whore would behave as badly as Madame Scull, and yet she enjoyed high position and went to all the fanciest balls. More than that, she could send men into danger at her whim as she was doing with Woodrow and the boys.

"I guess if it's true and Clara finds out about it, it'll be the end of her and Gus," Call said. "I expect she'll take an axe handle to him and run him out of town." Maggie was silent. She knew something else that Woodrow didn't know--she had happened to be in the Forsythe store one day when Clara was trying on some of her wedding clothes, just the gloves and the shoes. But Clara had made no attempt to conceal the fact that she was marrying the tall man from Nebraska. The wedding was going to be in the church at the end of the street. Now that Augustus was back, surely Clara had told him; but evidently he hadn't got around to informing Woodrow. Perhaps Gus wasn't able. Perhaps talking about it made him too sad.

Maggie knew it wasn't her business to tell Woodrow this, and yet concealing things from him made her deeply uncomfortable. She knew he trusted her to tell him everything that might be important to the rangers, and the fact that Gus had lost Clara seemed pretty important to her.

"Woodrow, Gus ain't none of Clara's business anymore," she said nervously.

"Why isn't he?" Call asked, surprised. "He's been her business as long as I've knowed him, and that's years." "She's marrying that horse trader," Maggie said. "The wedding's on Sunday." Woodrow Call was stunned. The news about Madame Scull's faithless behaviour was shocking and repulsive, but the news about Clara Forsythe hit him so hard that he almost lost his appetite for the juicy beefsteak Maggie had cooked him. He knew now why Augustus wanted to leave town so quickly: he wanted to be out of town when the wedding took place.

"I never expected her to marry anybody but Gus," he said. "This is a bad surprise.

I doubt Gus expected her to marry anybody but him, either. I think he hoped his promotion would win her over." To Maggie, his stunned comment was just more evidence that Woodrow was young inside. He wouldn't realize that Clara Forsythe wouldn't care a fig for Gus's promotion; nor did he realize that it didn't take a woman ten years to say yes to a man she meant to marry. She herself would have said yes to Woodrow in a matter of days, had he asked her. The fact that Clara had kept Gus waiting so long just meant that she didn't trust him.

To Maggie it seemed that simple, and she knew that Clara was right. Gus McCrae could be plenty of fun, but trusting him would be the wrong thing to do.