“I have to go with you,” Brookshire said. “I’ve been ordered.”
“Suppose you didn’t have to go, though,” Call said. “Suppose you could choose.”
“But Captain, I can’t choose,” Brookshire reminded him. “I work for Colonel Terry. I can’t choose. I don’t think I’ve ever chosen. I wouldn’t know how.”
Captain Call just looked at him. Brookshire was so taken aback, by the question and the look, that he didn’t know what to say. Why ask him what he would do if he could choose? He had never chosen. He had taken the only job he had been offered, married the only woman who would agree to marriage. He was just a husband and a salaried man. Choice didn’t play any part in his life. His choices were made for him, by people who were smarter than he was: Colonel Terry and Katie, to name two. Captain Call was also smarter than he was, Brookshire felt sure. Why had he asked such a question?
Call was wondering if the man would survive. There was no answer to the question, of course, but it was a matter he always pondered, when he led men into danger. It was also a question he could as well ask of himself. If the years had taught him anything, it was that survival was a matter that could not be predicted with any accuracy. Time and again, on the frontier, men who were well experienced and well equipped rode off one day and got killed. Gus McCrae, his old partner, was as competent as any man he had ever known, and yet, Gus had ridden off on a kind of frolic, in Montana, and ended up dead. None of the Hat Creek cowboys had been as competent as Gus, or Deets—the black man who had served him so well for so long—yet, Gus and Deets were dead, and some of the least competent—Soupy, for example, or Jasper Fant—were still alive and flourishing. There was no degree of competence that would assure anyone of survival, and no scale that would tell a commander which man would live and which man would die. If you added it all up reasonably, then Brookshire would be the first to fall, if there was a fight; and most people would expect that he himself would be the last. But it might not happen that way. Joey Garza was said to have a fine rifle, with a telescope sight. Several cowboys had turned up dead, on the Pecos ranches, shot while riding alone, far from their headquarters. It might be that Joey Garza was killing people who never saw him, never suspected that he was anywhere near. Instinct, however well honed, could not necessarily warn one that a young killer, hidden behind a rock four hundred yards away, with the sun at his back, was looking through a telescope sight, about to squeeze the trigger. If Joey Garza happened to see him and Brookshire riding along, which would he shoot first, the Ranger or the dude?
“You can come with me,” Call said. “But it’s up to you to keep up. I might not be able to stop and help you. You’ve got to try and keep up.”
“Captain, I’ll keep up—I’m a grown man,” Brookshire said, a little insulted.
Call stood up and handed Brookshire the telegrams.
“We need one more man,” he said. “I think I’ll hire that lanky deputy.”
“Oh, the tall fellow?” Brookshire asked, surprised.
“Yes,” Call said. “You did say I could hire a man to make up for Pea Eye, didn’t you?”
“Why, yes, provided he’s not too expensive,” Brookshire said. “How do you know he’ll go? He has a job right here in town.”
“The man looked restless,” Call replied. “I expect he’ll come.”
11.
DOOBIE PLUNKERT CRIED so hard she ran completely out of breath. She stood in her own kitchen, gasping like a fish, her mouth open, trying to suck in air but mainly pouring out tears. Ted stood behind her, timidly patting her on the back, as if she were a baby who needed to burp.
The timid way Ted patted her was beginning to make Doobie angry. When Ted walked in and announced that he was going to El Paso, or possibly farther, to help some old lawman she had never heard of catch a bandit Ted had no business chasing, Doobie had been stricken to the heart. How could he, when she was already four months pregnant with their baby, a little boy, she hoped! She planned to name him Edward, after his father, but they would just call him Eddie, and he would be the light of their life.
Doobie had never, in her short married life of almost eight months, supposed that Ted Plunkert would leave her for any reason whatsoever; not leave her overnight, that is. So far, she and Ted had slept together every single night of their marriage. Of course, Doobie understood that accidents might happen; the milk cow might get loose, or one of the horses run away. In that event, Ted would have to go looking for them, and might not get back just when she wanted to go to bed. He might even be gone as late as midnight, as he was on the nights when he was required to watch the jail until all the saloons closed and all the drunks and bullies were rounded up.
Not having Ted beside her until around midnight was just one of those things you had to put up with if you married a lawman. Doobie was sixteen years old and married to a deputy sheriff; she expected to do her duty, even when she was lonely and could think of nothing but how happy it would make her if Ted would only get home, take his boots off, take his socks off, take his pants off and his shirt off, and get into bed and hug her tight.
The truth was, Doobie needed a lot of tight hugging. She had grown up poor; her mother had died when she was four, and the aunt and uncle who raised her were too poor and too busy to pay much attention to her. When Ted Plunkert began to pay attention to her, it was like a miracle sent from heaven—like the coming true of the best dream she had ever dreamed. He was just the sweetest man, willing to hold her tight all night long, except maybe for a few nights in July and August, when it was really too hot to hold anyone tight for very long.
Now Ted was leaving, after only eight months with her. It was the end of all her dreams, and she told Ted so, just before she burst into tears and cried so hard she lost her breath.
“Stop, honey. Stop, honey,” Ted kept saying as he patted her timidly in various places. “We’re just going after Joey Garza, that’s all. Soon as the Captain catches up with him I’m coming right back here, to my darling.”
But neither Ted’s words nor his pats had any power to soothe Doobie. Ted was going away. He was going to leave her alone all night; maybe weeks and weeks of nights. It was the end of her happiness, the only true happiness she had ever known, and it was all happening because the old lawman had butted in where he wasn’t wanted and persuaded Ted to go with him.
The thing that hurt the most, after the fact that Ted wouldn’t be there to hug her tight for many, many nights, was that Ted hadn’t even asked if he could go. One of the nicest things about Ted was that in all matters involving their domestic life, he let her be boss. Even before they married, he let her boss, and in fact, even offered formally to let her boss.
“I’m too busy, I’ve got my deputying,” he said. “You look after the rest of it.”
Ted had kept his word, too. If Doobie wanted to go to church on Sunday, they went; if she didn’t, they didn’t. If it was a fine day and she felt like wading in the river, Ted went with her, took off his boots, rolled up his pants legs, and waded in the river with her.
Doobie loved it, that she got to be the boss. During her hard life with her aunt and uncle, she had been more like a slave than a boss. In her marriage, though, Doobie tried very hard to make good decisions about what to cook, or when to clean, or how to doctor Ted when he got an ailment, usually the grippe.
She tried hard, and she had convinced herself that she was doing a good job and that Ted was happy; because she was convinced that she was doing a good job, it hit her all the harder when Ted walked in and announced that he was leaving in an hour. He said it matter-of-factly, as if he were telling her it might rain.
Doobie couldn’t grasp it, at first. She thought she must have misheard, or misunderstood, or that she must still be asleep, having the worst dream of her life, instead of the best.
When Doobie had to admit that it was true, that it wasn’t a dream or a misunderstanding, she started crying and cried until she ran out of breath. It was a worse shock th
an her mother’s death. When her mother died, she had been young, and her mother had always been sick. There had been so little happiness that it wasn’t very different when her mother went. The big difference was that her Aunt Gladys slapped her frequently. Her mother had never slapped her in her entire life.
But it was certain, Doobie knew immediately, that it was going to be a very different life, now that Ted wasn’t going to be there to hold her tight, every night.
“Stop patting me on the back!” Doobie said, vehemently, when she started breathing again and could speak. At that point, she still had a little bit of hope that Ted would change his mind. They had a happy marriage, all eight months of it, and Ted probably had no idea that his going away would upset her so. After all, he had no reason to go away and no place to go away to, not until the old lawman showed up.
Doobie had long realized that Ted’s way of thinking was different from her own. What she needed to do was let him know how strongly she felt, and make it clear how much she needed him to stay with her. She had been told, by her one good friend, Susanna Slack, that men were a little dumb, in some ways. Susanna maintained that they didn’t understand the first thing about how women felt; mainly, Susanna believed, men didn’t even care to try to understand the first thing about how women felt. That had never sounded exactly right to Doobie. Maybe Ted didn’t really understand how she felt, but he was willing to let her be the boss of their family life, and that amounted to pretty much the same thing.
Now, though, in her shock and misery, Doobie was forced to consider that Susanna had been right, after all. Ted Plunkert didn’t know a thing about how she felt.
“I guess I better go round up some bedding,” Ted said, as her tears were subsiding. “The Captain’s in a hurry to get going.”
“The Captain, who’s he?” Doobie said, furious. “He’s just some old man I never heard of. I don’t see why you think you have to go with him.”
“Why, it’s Captain Call,” Ted Plunkert said, shocked. He knew his wife hadn’t had the advantage of much schooling—he himself hadn’t had much, either—but he had not supposed her ignorance to be so profound that she would never have heard of Captain Call.
“I never heard of Captain Call, I tell you!” Doobie yelled. “I never heard of him! He don’t live here, why would I have heard of him?”
“Why, it’s Captain Call,” Ted Plunkert repeated. “Everybody’s heard of him. He’s the most famous Texas Ranger of all time,” Ted said, still shocked. He was a little embarrassed for Doobie. It was almost as bad as if she had told him she had never heard of air, or the moon, or something. He had lived along the border all his life, and along the border, the Captain was about as well known as air, or the moon.
“Well, I ain’t heard of him, why do you have to go?” Doobie asked. She was ready to plead and beg, if she had to.
“Doobie, there’s no why to it,” Ted explained, patiently. “The Captain asked me to ride with him. That’s it.”
“If he asked you, you could have said no,” Doobie pointed out, in what she thought was a reasonable, even a calm voice. “He ain’t the president. He can’t just order you to run off and leave your wife.”
“Doobie, I swear, he’s Captain Call,” Ted said again. “You don’t just go around saying no to him.”
Doobie was silent. She didn’t want to be angry, but she felt herself getting angry—very angry.
“Besides,” Ted added, “it’s a big honor to be asked to ride with him. I expect it’s about the biggest honor I’ve ever had in my life, or ever will have.”
“What if you ain’t back when the baby is born?” Doobie asked. “What if you don’t never come back? What if you never even see our little Eddie? If you go off and get killed, little Eddie might never even get to have a daddy.”
“I guess I better round up that bedding,” Ted said, trying to be patient. In fact, he was becoming a little exasperated. His private belief was that Doobie had temporarily lost her mind. Instead of feeling honored that Captain Woodrow Call, the most famous Texas Ranger of all time, had singled him out from all the men in Laredo and asked him to go up the river with him, all Doobie could do was cry and complain. After all, the great man could have asked Bob Jekyll to go with him. Bob was the sheriff, and had a better claim to such an honor. But Captain Call had walked around Bob Jekyll and had chosen him. It ought to have been the proudest moment of their marriage, and yet, all Doobie could do was bawl like a heifer.
Of course, he loved Doobie. No man could ask for a better little wife. Her biscuits were first-rate, and she could even repair boots, if the holes in the boots weren’t too big. Ted sincerely hoped she would soon get over being out of her mind. She had no business suggesting that he might have turned down Captain Call’s offer. Of course he couldn’t refuse Woodrow Call, just because Doobie chose to bawl like a heifer for an hour. It was very inconsiderate of her, Ted thought. After all, he did have to gather up his bedding, and could have used some help. He didn’t get any help, though. Almost an hour had passed, and he had to rush. One consequence of the rushing was that he forgot his slicker, an oversight that was to cause him much misery, on the trail.
Doobie Plunkert stood at the back door of their little house and watched hopelessly as Ted and the old Captain and the fat little Yankee rode away. She felt her heart breaking; she didn’t think she would be able to endure the ache. If Ted had just once turned in the saddle and waved at her, it would have made the ache a little easier to bear. Even when he was just walking down the street to do his deputying, Ted would sometimes turn and wave at her. The fact was, she loved him so much that she could miss him acutely, even when he was just down the street. Often, she had an urge to run visit him at the jail, just to see if he still looked the same, or if his smile was as sweet. But Doobie could never indulge herself when she had this longing. Sheriff Jekyll had made it plain, the one time she stuck her nose in the door, that it was the last time he expected to see her at the jail. He lectured Ted so severely about his wife’s behavior that Ted told her that evening never to go near the jail again.
“There’s rules,” he told her that night. He was gentle about it, but Doobie’s feelings were still a little hurt. All she had wanted to do was peek at her husband, to be sure he looked the same.
Now, watching him ride north along the river with two strangers, one of whom, in her view, was no more than an old killer, Doobie cried again. She cried until she was cried out. She felt sure that little Eddie was crying too, inside her. There were rules, just as Ted had warned her, and the main one seemed to be that men could leave when they chose to. They could close doors to jails and other places, when they wanted to, and not wave when they left their wives to go off on manhunts. They could do any and all of those things, and worse, for all she knew.
All the same, though she didn’t like the rules, Doobie really wanted Ted to come back. That night, without him to hold her tight, she had many dreams, and tossed and turned, but the best dream she had was that the bandit they were after, Joey Garza, came riding into Laredo to surrender, so that Ted and the Ranger and the Yankee didn’t have to go at all.
Doobie’s dream was so vivid that she could even smell her husband, Ted Plunkert. He smelled of saddle soap. Only that morning he had taken it into his head to saddle-soap his old saddle. It gave off a good smell, saddle soap. Smelling it in her dream made Doobie remember what a good man Ted was, and how kind he had always been to her.
The best part of the dream, though, was that Ted not only smelled of saddle soap; Ted was there. He snuck into the bedroom, as he always did when he came in late; he took off his boots, took off his pants, took off his shirt, and climbed into bed to hold her tight, as she always hoped he would, not just for one night but throughout her whole life. Doobie tried to stay in her dream, to hide in it, but she grew more and more restless; she began to have moments of wakefulness, began to suspect that her dream was just a dream. She tried to fight off waking up, to burrow deeper into the dream, but
it didn’t work. Despite herself, she woke, opened her eyes, and knew the worst, immediately. Ted Plunkert wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there, just wasn’t there. One day, when she had no reason to expect trouble, or even to be the tiniest bit worried, her life with Ted Plunkert had ended.
“No it ain’t, honey. He’s just gone on a job,” her friend Susanna, told her a little later that morning. Doobie had been so upset that she had run down the street, barefoot and sobbing, and flung herself into Susanna’s arms.
“He’ll never come back. He’ll never come back, I know it,” Doobie kept saying, between fits of racking sobs.
“He’ll come back,” Susanna said. “He’ll come back, Doobie.”
In fact, she wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t really say it with much conviction, because only the year before, her husband, John Slack, by consent one of the best cowboys to be found anywhere near the Rio Grande, had ridden out one morning to brand a few calves—work he had done hundreds of times in the twelve years of their marriage—and had never come back, not alive, that is. A calf he had just roped turned directly under his horse while the horse was in a dead run. The horse’s front legs buckled, and he fell in such a way that it drove John Slack’s head straight into the ground, breaking his neck. He died instantly, and since then, Susanna had been a widow.
At least you’ve got his child, Susanna thought wistfully, as she held her sobbing friend. She and John had hoped for a child, hoped year after year; but no child came, and now she had nothing of John Slack except a few notes he had written her while they were courting, and of course, her memories, memories of being married to the best cowboy in the Rio Grande Valley. They had once hoped to have a ranch, as well as a child, but now John was dead, and Susanna had neither. She had been forced to move to town and take a job clerking in the general store, to support herself.
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