Lonesome Dove - Streets Of Laredo Part 84

"Call Lorena Lorena," she said, loudly.

"You don't have to call her Mrs. Parker now.

"The man's trying, but he just rubs me the wrong way," Clara said, when she marched into the kitchen. Lorena was was.h.i.+ng a cut on Georgie's hand. She wasn't paying much attention.

Later, though, she remembered the remark. She wondered what Clara had meant by it, and why she looked so angry when she came in.

The bounty on Joey Garza was never collected. Colonel Terry sent a detective to look into the circ.u.mstances of his death, and the detective's research revealed that the fatal shot, the one that finished Joey Garza, had been fired by a Mexican butcher in Ojinaga, Mexico. Besides that, the butcher then claimed that Joey Garza's own mother had stabbed the young bandit, and that Joey had turned the knife on her and killed her, depriving the village of its best midwife.

Citing the careless loss of the ledger books, which made it impossible to compute the costs of the expedition accurately, the railroad halved Brooks.h.i.+re's pension. What was left was sent to his widowed sister in Avon, Connecticut.

The same sister received a long letter from a Mrs.

P. E. Parker, of Quitaque, Texas.

Mrs. Parker a.s.sured the grieving sister that the last words Mr. Parker had heard Brooks.h.i.+re say were to remember his sister and send her his love.

Call discovered that he had a gift for sharpening tools. Even with one hand, it was a skill he more than mastered. One day, watching Pea Eye futilely trying to cut a piece of rawhide with a dull knife, Call reached out and took it from Pea. He had a whetstone, and he soon had a good edge on the blade.

From then on, Pea Eye and Lorena brought whatever needed sharpening to the Captain. He sharpened scissors and shovel blades. He sharpened axes and rasps, and scythes and awls, and planing blades. He even improved the slicing edge on the plows.

In time, the neighbors heard of Call's skill and began to ride over with bushel baskets full of knives and hatchets, for him to work on.

Lorena insisted that he order a wooden leg.

They wrote off for catalogues. Finally, Call ordered one--to sharpen some of the larger tools properly, he needed to be able to stand.

When the leg came, Call found that he had to whittle it a bit to secure a smooth fit.

He was shy about it, at first. No one but Teresa could be with him, when he put on his leg or took it off. She learned to tuck his pants leg expertly. She laughed at him if he stumbled, but Call did not mind. The truth was, the leg made a big difference. Now he could stand up and work all day.

Clara Allen promptly sent him some literature on schools for the blind. The best one seemed to be in Cincinnati. Call hadn't mentioned school to Teresa yet; the thought of sending her away was too sharp a pain. But he did discuss the matter with Lorena. Privately, Lorena was torn. She had had another boy, Tommy, and was pregnant yet again. The house was overfull. She and Pea Eye had paid Mr.

Goodnight back for the train fare. She was still running the school by herself, except for Clarie's help with the math. Clarie was engaged to Roy Benson, and would be leaving soon. The farm was doing a little better, but they still had almost no cash money.

Lorena's concern when the school came up wasn't for Teresa, who had not only Maria's look but Maria's strength. Lorena wanted Tessie to have an education, and she wanted her to have a chance to support herself.

But Captain Call had no one but the girl. He scarcely knew Lorena's children; he scarcely knew her, or Pea Eye, even.

He worked all day at his sharpening, but except for Teresa, he had no one. Even looking at the Captain, unless he was with Teresa, was painful.

Often when he was looking at Teresa, Call had tears in his eyes. But otherwise, there was nothing in his eyes--he was an absence.

Lorena feared he would die, if Teresa left.

"Let's wait one more year, Captain," Lorena told him. "Let's wait one more year." "I expect that's best," Call said.

Charles Goodnight and a young cowboy named J.

D. Brown were out looking for a stray bull one day. They finally found the bull on the Quitaque, dead; it had managed to strangle itself with a coil of barbed wire.

Now and again, if he was in the vicinity, Goodnight stopped by to pay his respects to Call and the Parkers.

They found Call standing in his workroom in the barn, sharpening a sickle that a farmer from Silverton had nicked badly while cutting hay. The blind girl was rounding up her chickens.

There must have been fifty chickens, at least, and there were also more goats than Goodnight was accustomed to seeing anywhere. They visited a minute, or tried to. Call scarcely looked up from his work. He had several hatchets and an axe in a bucket beside him that he needed to sharpen, once he finished with the sickle.

Pea Eye was out plowing, but Goodnight and J. D. Brown took a gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk with Lorena before they left. Lorena was heavy with child; she paid Goodnight twenty dollars against her debt on the shack he had built for Call.

On the ride back across the gray plains, the young cowboy--he was just twenty--looked rather despondent. Goodnight ignored his despondence for a while, then got tired of it.

What did a healthy sprout of twenty have to be despondent about?

"What's made you look so peaked, J.d.?" Goodnight inquired.

"Why, it's Captain Call, I guess," the young cowboy said. He was glad to talk about it, to get his dark feelings out.

"What about Captain Call?" Goodnight asked.

"Why, wasn't he a great Ranger?" the boy asked. "I've always heard he was the greatest Ranger of all." "Yes, he had exceptional determination," Goodnight told him.

"Well, but now look ... what's he doing?

Sharpening sickles in a dern barn!" J.d.

exclaimed.

Goodnight was silent for a bit. He wished his young cowboys would keep their minds on the stock, and not be worrying so about things they couldn't change.

"Woodrow Call had his time," he said, finally. "It was a long time, too. Life's but a knife edge, anyway. Sooner or later people slip and get cut." "Well, you ain't slipped," J. D.

Brown said.

"How would you know, son?" Goodnight said.

In the fall of the following year, Clara Allen was pawed to death by a piebald stallion named Marbles. Everyone was scared of the stallion except Clara; Marbles, a beautiful animal, was her special pride.

On the morning of the attack three cowboys, including Chollo, her old vaquero, the most experienced man on the ranch, had urged her not to go into the pen with the stud.

"He's mad today ... wait," Chollo told her.

"He's my horse--he won't hurt me," Clara said, shutting the gate behind her. The stallion attacked her at once. Four men leapt into the corral but could not drive him off.

They didn't want to shoot the stallion, for Clara would never forgive them for it, if she lived.

Finally, they shot the horse anyway, but Clara Allen was dead before they could carry her out of the pen.

"It's risky, raising studs," Call said.