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“We’re all just lingering, Woodrow,” he said. “None of us can avoid dying—though
I agree with Woodrow—Yankees are still Americans, and I’m used to fighting Comanche Indians or else Mexicans.”
Where Woodrow Call was concerned, Maggie’s hopes shrank, year by year, to one need: the need to have Call give Newt his name. She no longer supposed, even in her most hopeful moments, that Woodrow would marry her.
Woodrow Call liked being alone; he liked his solitude as much as Gus and Jake liked female company.
He had known Captain McCrae for a number of years and knew that he did not behave like most white men. Captain McCrae’s behavior reminded him of some friends he had who were Choctaw. Captain Call was very much a white man; he lived by rules. But Captain McCrae had little patience with rules; he lived by what was inside him, by the urgings of his heart and his spirit—and
It would be nice to be able to forget the Governor, and Barkeley, and the ledger keepers and just to ride west into the wild country. Perhaps, he thought, as he turned back, that was what Augustus wanted: just to be free for a few days, just to saddle his horse and ride.
Usually he only agreed to scout for the Texans if they were going in a direction he wanted to go himself, in order to see a particular hill or stream, to visit a relative or friend, or just to search for a bird or animal he wanted to observe.
When he felt disturbances in his life, as all men would, Famous Shoes tried to go back to one of the simple places, the places of rock and sky, to steady himself and grow calm again.
go back to a place where things were simple.
a place he could think about when he needed to remember happiness.
The plains were filled with white travelers now, all heading west. The Comanches were more irritable than ever, because their best hunting grounds were always being disturbed. The buffalo had moved north, where there were fewer people. The old life of the plains, the life he had known as a boy, was not there to be lived anymore.
Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the first time around.
The objects he was finding might be the oldest things in the world.
he had found the place where the Old People had once lived.
no medicine man or wise man knew why one man died and another lived. Wise men themselves often died before fools, and cowards before men who were brave.
“I need somebody here at night,” Maggie said. “Not every night, but sometimes. I get scared. Besides that, I’ve got a boy. He needs someone around who can be like a pa. You don’t want to stay with me, and you don’t want to be a pa to Newt.”
He and Call had had to abandon the border to banditry; answering raids on the northwestern frontier took all their time and resources.
there was a young chief of the Antelope band—his name was Quanah.
NADUAH WAS NURSING the child when the other women began to scream.
SHE MIGHT BE the Parker girl,”
It was not their practice to kill women or the young, but the men were frightened, the dust was bad, and they knew there was a band of Comanche hunters in camp or not far away. At such times fear and blood lust easily combined—it was impossible to control nervous, frightened men in such a situation;
If the captivity had lasted more than a month or two, the person the families got back was never the person they had lost.
He was a hunter and a warrior; he wanted to hunt on the prairies and fight his enemies until he was old, or until some warrior vanquished him.
he did not want to become a mere bandit.
No one liked the bear, a coward whose spirit Blue Duck had broken long ago. When they tried to use it to make sport with captives the bear only whimpered and turned its back.
Maggie knew Augustus well enough to know that, with all his whoring and his drinking, he would see to it that Newt was well cared for. Gus wouldn’t desert him, nor would Deets or Pea—even
“The whites are not foolish,” Buffalo Hump said. “They know that it is easier to kill a buffalo than it is to kill one of us. They know that if they kill all the buffalo we will starve—then they won’t have to fight us. Those who don’t want to starve will have to go where the whites want to put them.”
Kicking Wolf grew so heavy with sadness that he could not speak. He had never thought that such abundance could pass, yet it had. He thought that it would have been better to have fallen in battle than to have lived to see such greatness pass and go. The sadness was so deep that no more words came out of his throat. He got up and walked away without another word.
For years the rangers had provided what protection the frontier families had; it was hard, now, to find themselves treated as no better than local constables.
He thought that catching or killing Blue Duck was something they ought to do—once they had done it, that would be enough.
“But there’s no room, sir—the East is mighty crowded,” Captain King explained. “Beef is what will bring Texas back from the war. Cotton won’t do it. There’s too damn much cotton in the world now. But beef? That’s different. All the starving Irish who have never tasted anything except the potato in their entire lives will pay for beef.”
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.
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.
Doesn't LD say she never mailed her letters to him, never told him about her sons' deaths???
the sadness that came in him because he realized that the time of good fighting was over.
The time of good fighting was ended; what was left for the Comanches was to smile at the white men and pretend they didn’t hate them.
