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“The tragedy of man is not death or epidemic or lust or rage or fitful jealousy,” he said loudly—his voice tended to rise while declaiming unpleasant facts. “No sir, the tragedy of man is boredom, sir—boredom!” the Captain said. “A man can only do a given thing so many times with freshness and spirit—then, no matter what it is, it becomes like an office task.
The two of them fell silent, looking across to Mexico. Though they quarreled frequently, they were often tugged by the same impulses, and so it was at that moment by the slow river. The longer they looked across it, the more strongly they felt the urge to attempt their mission alone—without cattle and without the other men. “We could just do it, Woodrow—the two of us,” Augustus said. “We’d have a better chance than if we take the cattle or the troop.” Call agreed. “I’m game if you are,” he said. “I think it’s about time we made something of ourselves, anyway.”
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.
Remembering his great feat made Kicking Wolf want to sing—the urge to sing rose in him and mixed in his breast with the sadness that came in him because he realized that the time of good fighting was over. There would be a little more killing, probably; Quanah and the Antelopes might make a little more war, but only a little more. 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.
