"The other two weren't lucky," Bigfoot said. "I don't know for sure that one of them is dead-but there's no sign of him, so I suspect it."

"If poor horseflesh is the reason you lost a third of your troop, go complain to the quartermaster," the Colonel said. "I ain't the wrangler. I will admit there's a lot of puny horses in this part of Texas."

"Thank you for the promotion," Call said, though he didn't know what it meant, to be a corporal. Probably there were increased duties-he meant to ask Brognoli, when he saw him next. But curiosity got the better of him, and he asked Bigfoot first.

"It just means you make a dollar more a month," Bigfoot said. "Life's just as dangerous, whether you're a corporal or a private."

"With a whole extra dollar you can buy more liquor and more whores," Bigfoot added. "At least you can if you don't let Gus McCrae cheat you out of your money."

The company, in all its muddle and variety, was unlimbering itself for the day's advance. Wagons and oxcarts were snaking through the rocky hills and bumping through the little scrubby valleys. Several of the more indolent merchants were already showing the effects of prairie travel-the dentist who had decided to emigrate to Santa Fe in hopes of doing a lucrative business with the Mexican grandees had tripped over his own baggage and fallen headfirst into a prickly-pear patch. A sandy-haired fellow with a pair of blacksmith's pinchers was pulling prickly-pear thorns out of the dentist's face and neck when Call strode by. The dentist groaned, but the groans, on the whole, were milder than the howls of his patients.

When Call located Gus McCrae and Johnny Carthage he was happy to see that Gus was his feisty self again, his ankle much improved. He was just hobbling back from visiting a young whore named Ginny-Caleb Cobb had permitted a few inexpensive women to travel with the company as far as the Brazos, after which, they had been informed, they would have to return to Austin, the expectation being that enough of the merchants would have given up by that point that the whores would have ample transport. Whether the Great Western would be an exception to this rule was a subject of much debate among the men, many of whom were reluctant to commit themselves to long-distance journeying without the availability of at least one accomplished whore.

"I wouldn't call Matilda accomplished," Johnny Carthage argued. "Half the time she ain't even friendly. A woman that catches snapping turtles for breakfast is a woman to avoid, if you ask me."

He was uncomfortably aware that he had only been partially successful at avoiding Matilda himself-in general, though, he preferred younger and smaller women, Mexican if possible.

Gus had picked up a spade somewhere and was using it intermittently as a crutch. His injured ankle would bear his weight for short distances, but occasionally, he was forced to give it a rest.

Gus had taken to wearing both his pistols in his belt, as if he expected attack at any moment.

"Howdy, did you get wet?" he asked, very glad to see Woodrow Call. Although Woodrow was contrary, he was the best friend Gus had. The thought that he might be killed, and not reappear at all, had given Gus two uneasy nights. Buffalo Hump had risen in his dreams, holding bloody scalps.

"I came near to drowning in the Brazos River, but I didn't lose my gun," Call said. He was especially proud of the fact that he hadn't lost his gun, though no one else seemed to consider it much of an accomplishment.

"The river was up," he added. "Most of the Comanches got away."

"Did you see that big one?" Gus asked.

"I seen his hump," Call said. "He floated down behind a log and put an arrow in a man standing right by me-split his backbone."

The sun had broken through the last of the clouds-bright sunlight gleamed on the wet grass in the valleys and on the hills.

"I wish I could have gone-we would have killed several if we'd worked together," Gus said.

Long Bill Coleman walked up about that time, in a joshing mood.

"Have you saluted him yet?" he asked Gus, to Call's deep embarrassment.

"Why would I salute him, he's my pard," Gus said.

"He may be your pard but he's a corporal now-he killed a red boy and the Colonel promoted him," Long Bill said.

Gus could not have been more taken aback if Call had come back scalpless. The very thing that Clara teased him about had actually happened. Woodrow was Corporal Call now. No doubt Clara would hurry to court him, once they all got back.

"So that's the news, is it?" Gus said, feeling slightly weak all of a sudden. He had not forgotten Clara and her kiss. Young Ginny had been pleasant, but Clara's kiss was of another realm.

"Yes, he done it just now," Call admitted, well aware that his friend would be at least a little discommoded by the news.

"You kilt one-what was it like?" Gus asked, trying to act normal and not reveal his acute discomfort at the fact of his friend's sudden success.

"He was almost on me-I shot just in time," Call said. "As soon as your ankle heals proper I expect we'll have another engagement. Once you kill a Comanche the Colonel will promote you, too, and we can be corporals together."

He wanted to do what he could to lighten the blow to his friend.

"If I don't, then one will kill me and that will be the end of things," Gus said, still feeling weak. "I just hope I don't get scalped while I'm alive, like Ezekiel done."

"Why, you won't get killed," Call said, alarmed at his friend's sudden despondency. Gus possessed plenty of fight, but somehow that willful girl in the general store had deprived him of it. All he could think about was that girl-it was not good. You couldn't be thinking about girls in general stores, when you were out in Indian country and needed to be alert.

With Call's help, Gus at least managed to get saddled and mounted on the shorter of the two horses that had been assigned him. The two young Rangers rode side by side all day, at a lazy pace, while the wagons and oxcarts toiled up the low hills and across the valleys. Call told the story of the chase, and the fight by the river, but he couldn't tell that his friend was particularly interested.

He held his tongue, though. At least Gus was in the saddle. Once they got across the Brazos, farther from the girl, he might eventually forget her and enjoy the rangering more.

In the afternoon of the third day they glimpsed a fold of the Brazos, curving between two hills, to the west. The falling sun brightened the brown water. To the east they couldn't see the river at all, but gradually the Rangers at the head of the expedition, who included Gus and Call, heard a sound they couldn't identify. It wasakin to the sound a cow might make, splashing through a river, only multiplied thousands of times, as if someone were churning the river with a giant churn.

Captain Falconer was at the very front of the troop, on his pacing black. When he heard the sound like water churning, he drew rein. Just as he did the Colonel's big Irish dog shot past him, braying. His ears were laid back-in a second he was out of sight in the scrubby valley, but not out of earshot.

"It's buf," Shadrach said, pulling his rifle from its long sheath.

Just then, two riders came racing from the east. One of the rider's horses almost jumped the Irish dog, which was racing in sight again. Then it raced away, braying loudly.

"Bes-Das has seen 'em," Shadrach said.

Bes-Das was a Pawnee scout-he ranged so far ahead that many of the Rangers had scarcely seen him. The other rider was Alchise, a Mexican who was thought to be half Apache. Both were highly excited by what they had seen behind the eastern hills. Colonel Cobb came galloping up to meet the two scouts; soon the three wheeled their horses and went flying after the dog. The horses threw up their heads and snorted. The excitement that had taken the troop when they thought they were racing to kill mountain goats seized them again-soon forty riders were flying after the Colonel, the Irish dog, and the two scouts.

As the horses fled down the hill, Gus clung tightly to his saddle horn. He could put a little weight on his wounded ankle, but not enough to secure a stirrup when racing downhill over such rocky terrain at such a pace. He knew that if he fell and injured himself further he would be sent home to Austin-all hope of securing promotion and matching his friend Call would be lost.

The sight they saw when they topped the next hill and drew rein with the troop was one neither Call nor Gus would ever forget. Neither of them, until that moment, had ever seen a buffalo, though on the march to the Pecos they had seen the bones of several, and the skulls of one or two. There below them, where the Brazos cut a wide valley, was a column of buffalo that seemed to Gus and Call to be at least a mile wide. To the south, approaching the river, there seemed to be an endless herd of buffalo moving through the hills and valleys. Thousands had already crossed the river and were plodding on to the north, through a little pass in the hills. So thick were the buffalo bunched, as they crossed the river, that it would have been possible to use them as a bridge.

"Look at them!" Gus said. "Look at them buffalo! How many are there, do you reckon?"

"I could never reckon no number that high," Call admitted. "It's more than I could count if I counted for a year."

"This is the southern herd," Captain Falconer commented- even he was too awed by the sight of the thousands of buffalo, browner than the brown water, to condescend to the young Rangers. "I expect it's at least a million. They say it takes two days to ride past the herd, even if you trot."

Bes-Das came trotting back to where Captain Falconer sat. He said something Call couldn't hear, and pointed, not at the buffalo, but at a ridge across the valley some two miles away.

"It's him!" Gus said with a gasp, grabbing his pistol. "It's Buffalo Hump. He's got three scalps on his lance."

Call looked and saw a party of Indians on the far ridge, eight in all. He could see Buffalo Hump's spotted pony and tell that the man was large, but he could not see scalps on his lance. He felt a little envious of his friend's eyesight, which was clearly keener than his.

"Are those the bucks that whipped you?" Caleb Cobb asked, loping up to Bigfoot.

Bes-Das, a short man with greasy hair and broken teeth, began to talk to the Colonel in Pawnee. Cobb listened and shook his head.

"No, we'd have to ford this damn buffalo herd to go after them," he said. "I doubt many of these boys could resist shooting buffalo instead of Comanches. By the time we got to the Indians we'd be out of ammunition and we'd probably get slaughtered. Anyway, I doubt they'd sit there and wait for us to arrive, slow as we are."

"Can't we shoot some buffalo, Colonel?" Falconer asked. "We'd have meat for awhile."