Streets of Laredo: A Novel (51 page)

Fortunately, there was enough scrubby brush that he soon had adequate wood. He made two fires and put the freezing children between them. The crusted blood on the boy's face was icy. He had been plucky when first rescued, but had gone into a kind of shock and couldn't speak. The little girl was so cold she was past whimpering.

Call built up the fires and kept them flaming as the children slept. He himself hunkered near the flames only a few minutes at a time. It was so cold that he doubted any killer would be vigorous enough to take advantage of them. But he couldn't be sure, and he didn't want to get too warm himself. When he hunkered by the fire, fatigue began to suck at him, a deep fatigue. He was accustomed to sleeping in snatches; squatting, leaning against a horse; he had even slept riding, if the country was flat and the horse reliable. In the Indian-fighting days, he had tried to acquire the abilities and the endurance of his foes. He wanted to be able to do anything a Comanche could do, or an Apache.

Gus had scoffed at the notion. He said no white man could live as an Indian could, or travel as fast, or subsist on as little.

Probably Gus had been right about that. And if he hadn't been as able as the best of the Indians when he was young, there was little hope that he could compete with one now. Joey Garza was Mexican, not Indian, but many Mexicans were part Indian, and there was a rumor that the Garza boy had lived with the mountain Apaches for several years. The cold might not affect him; once, it would not have affected Call, either.

With things so uncertain, it wouldn't do to give way to fatigue, or to nap too long by the campfire. He might wake up to discover that his throat had just been cut.

In the morning, the frost was so heavy that Call had to scrape ice off the saddles. The children were so cold they couldn't eat. He decided that he had better tie them to the horse. Though there was a band of red on the eastern horizon, the sun was soon blanketed by heavy clouds, and the cold remained intense.

The wounded horse was stiff--it could barely move, and not rapidly. Fortunately, when they had been riding an hour, Call saw a few plumes of smoke to the northwest, clear in the freezing air. The smoke was coming from the chimneys of Fort Stockton.

A little later, he saw more smoke, on the eastern horizon. This smoke moved westward, and it came from a train. Call couldn't see the train, but he knew the railroad was there, for nothing else would be moving under a plume of smoke.

The wounded horse slowed to a walk, and then to a slower walk. A little before midday, the horse stopped. It could go no farther. By then, the town was no more than five miles away. Call left the horse; perhaps it would walk on in, under its own power, once it had rested for a day. He put the children on his horse, only to have his horse come up lame a mile or two farther on. A needlelike sliver of ice had cut its hoof.

But the town was not far. The little girl had recovered a little, and now and then asked for her mother.

Bobby Fant, his face a horror of frozen cuts, had not spoken all day. Call took his time, walking the lame horse slowly. He didn't want to have to carry the children, or abandon his guns and equipment.

When they were only two miles from the town, they came upon two sheepmen, butchering sheep to sell in Fort Stockton.

"Dern, where'd you folks spring from?" the older sheepman said, when he saw Call leading the lame horse with two children on it.

"From far enough away that we'd appreciate a ride to somewhere these young ones can warm themselves," Call said.

"We'd more than appreciate it," he added.

"We'd pay a good fare if you'd take us in your wagon the rest of the way to town." "Mister, you don't have to pay us nothing--we was about to haul these carcasses in anyway," the younger sheepman said. They were shaggy men, in great buffalo coats, and they had three huge dogs with them. It had been the barking of the dogs that led Call to the wagon. There were no grazing sheep visible, though, just six bloody carcasses piled up in the wagon.

Call chose to walk behind the wagon, leading his lame horse. The young sheepman said there was a rooming house on the main street in town.

"It ain't fancy, but it's got beds," he said. "Who done that to that boy's face?" Bobby Fant's face had gotten worse during the night. It was swollen, and some of the cuts still leaked blood, most of which froze on his cheeks.

"A man named Mox Mox done it," Call said. "I shot him, but I don't think I killed him." "Somebody ought to kill the sonofabitch, then," the older man said. "I've seen rough stuff out here on the baldies, but I've never seen nothing like that--not done to a child." Call carried Bobby Fant into the little frame rooming house. The young sheepman got off the wagon for a minute and carried the girl, who was whimpering for her mother.

A woman stood just inside the door, looking out at them through the pane of glass. Call could just see her; she was blond. The young sheepherder brought the little girl in first. By the time Call eased through the door with Bobby Fant, the woman had already taken the little girl in her arms and was whispering to her.

Call couldn't hear what the woman was whispering. The fact that the blond woman had appeared so suddenly behind the pane of glass startled him a little. The woman looked familiar. He thought for a moment she might be the children's mother, Jasper Fant's wife, though he hadn't even known Jasper Fant had a wife until yesterday, and how the woman could have anticipated them and got to Fort Stockton was a mystery.

When the woman saw Bobby Fant's face, she drew in her breath.

"Mox Mox done that, didn't he, Captain?" she asked, touching the boy's cuts gently with her fingers. "Did you kill him, Captain?" "Well, I hit him," Call said. "I doubt it was mortal, but it might slow him enough that I can catch him." "Bring the boy to my room," the woman said.

"I just got off the train and was about to have a bath.

I've got hot water waiting. I'll put them both in the bathtub. It'll warm them quicker. Then I can wash those cuts." The woman started up the stairs with the little girl.

Call thanked the young sheepman and began to climb the stairs, carrying Bobby Fant. The moment he stepped into the warm rooming house, he had begun to feel tired, so tired that it was a strain even to carry the child up one flight of stairs. He was wondering, in his fatigue, how the woman had known who he was--and how she knew about Mox Mox.

It was not until the blond woman paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at him, the little girl in her arms, that Call realized who she was: she was not the children's mother, she was Pea Eye's wife.

"My Lord, you'll have to excuse me," he said, embarrassed. "I didn't recognize you." Call could not quite remember when he had last seen Lorena; in Nebraska, it seemed to him.

She had been a young woman then. Of course, many years had passed, and she would have to be older. But the fact that she was so much older that he hadn't recognized her, left him feeling at a loss.

"You don't need to be embarrassed," Lorena said. "You kept Mox Mox from burning these children, and you brought them out. That's enough." He carried the boy into her room where, indeed, a bath was steaming.

"Put him on the bed," Lorena said. "Just put him on the bed. I'll take care of these youngsters. You better go get a little rest yourself." "Yes, I'm weary," Call said.

In fact, he felt so weary that he could hardly carry the child across the small room.

"I'm mighty surprised to see you," he added. He felt that he ought to say more, but he didn't know quite what.

"I came looking for my husband," Lorena said. "I was hoping you'd have him with you." "I don't, but I know where he is," Captain Call said. "He ain't far." The woman's face brightened, when he said it.

He went downstairs and got a room key, though later, he was unable to remember getting a key or even going to the room.

When he woke up, fully clothed on a bed, many hours later, it was worry about his horse that caused him to wake. He had forgotten the horse completely, once he entered the rooming house, and had just left it standing in the street. He looked out the window, but could see nothing. It was pitch-dark.

He wondered if anyone had done anything about his horse.

Lorena didn't leave the children all day, except to walk down the street and find a doctor who could treat Bobby's face.

Fortunately, there was no damage to either eye. The boy could see fine, but some of the cuts on his cheeks were so deep that the doctor told her he would probably always bear the scars.

Lorena was not sleeping much, and did not expect to sleep much until she knew that Mox Mox was dead. The sight of Bobby Fant's face was enough to keep her awake. It reminded her too vividly of the little boy who had not been lucky enough to be rescued, the boy Mox Mox had burned in her place. That boy's death cries still echoed in her mind, and she remembered the deep, grinding fear she had felt as she waited for it to happen to her. The fear had been so nearly unbearable that it made the other things the men did to her seem a small business. She had trained herself over the years not to remember that fear. If she dwelt on it, even for an hour, it paralyzed her and made it difficult for her to do her schoolwork, or be a wife, or even do her motherly chores.

When she looked out the door of the rooming house and saw Captain Call coming, she had been shocked at how decrepit he looked.

Pea Eye had mentioned, casually, that the Captain wasn't quite as spry as he had been, but the comment hadn't prepared her for how the man actually looked.

Lorena had not seen Call since the morning, long before, when he had left Clara Allen's house with Gus McCrae's body. The man had not been young when he rode off that morning, but neither had he been the old man who walked stiffly into the rooming house in Fort Stockton. Of course, her daughter Clarie was fifteen years old, and Call's departure from Clara's on his trip back to Texas with Gus's body had occurred two years before she married Pea. She had not seen Captain Call in nearly twenty years.

She should have been prepared for him to be old.

She just hadn't supposed he would look so stiff and worn out. Of course, he had traveled a long distance with two children, in the bitter cold.

He had probably been traveling since the day Pea Eye had refused to go with him. Younger men than Captain Call would have been tired.

The day after he arrived with the children, Call was too tired even to go downstairs. He knocked timidly on Lorena's door and asked if she could request the lady who owned the rooming house to bring him some food. He also asked if Lorena would inquire about his horse. Had it been stabled and fed?

Lorena got him food, and was able to assure him that the local sheriff had taken charge of his mount. The lameness wasn't serious, and the horse would be ready to travel in a few days. Call seemed reassured. He considered it a serious lapse, that he had forgotten to stable his own horse.

"It was so warm, I guess I fainted," he said. "I don't recall going to bed. I don't usually forget to stable my horse." "You saved two children," Lorena pointed out, again. "There's people here who aren't busy that can take care of your horse." "Well, it's my horse," Call said. "I have always looked after my own mounts." "My seven-year-old can unsaddle a horse and feed it as well as you can, Captain," Lorena said. "But my seven-year-old couldn't save two children from Mox Mox." Call took the point--he didn't mention the horse again, for fear of irritating Lorena.

But he didn't forget the lapse, either. It took him a day and a half to feel refreshed enough to walk down to the livery stable and inspect the horse himself. He felt he ought to get moving, for none of the work he had set out to do had been accomplished. Mox Mox wasn't dead, or if he was, no one had found him. And he was no closer to catching Joey Garza than he had been when he left Amarillo. Brookshire would be having fits about the delay, and his boss, Colonel Terry, was probably having worse fits.

On the third day, Jasper Fant arrived with his wife, to take his stolen children home.

To Call's surprise, Jasper had grown bald; he had also grown a belly. His wife was a small woman, of the wiry type. Her name was May.

Both parents gasped when they saw their son's face. The wiry little mother held her children and sobbed.

Jasper turned a violent red.

"Why, the damned killer, why did he do it, Captain?" Jasper asked.

Lorena stood with Call, watching. The little girl clung to her mother's neck so tightly that the woman couldn't speak. Jasper and May had been on a train for two days. They had left as soon as the telegram came, telling them that their children were alive.

A few hours later, the little family got on the train to go home. May tried to thank Call, but broke into such sobs of gratitude that she couldn't get the words out. Jasper grasped his hand and held it until Call was afraid they'd miss their train, although they were standing two steps from it.

"I hope you kill that squint, mister," Bobby Fant said, as his father was helping him onto the train.

"Many thanks, Captain," Jasper said.

"We won't none of us ever forget what you've done. Me and May, we won't forget it. If you're ever down in Comstock I hope you'll stop and make a meal with us." "I will," Call said, glad that the train was leaving. He couldn't get over how bald Jasper was. Earlier, in the trail-driving days, the man had been somewhat vain about his hair.