"You weren't told to come," Call repeated. He was trying to be calm, though he felt his anger rising.

"There's Indians around buffalo," Kirker said. "They crawl in with them and shoot from under their bellies. I got business to tend to-I don't care if that murdering humpback is coming to eat. Get out of my way."

"Tell him, Captain," Call said, turning to Falconer, but Falconer ignored the request.

"Last time you rode with us you scalped some Mexicans," Gus remarked.

Kirker brought the rifle up and looked at them coolly, his thin lip twisted in a kind of sneer.

"I despise young fools," he said. "If you don't like my trade have at me and do it now. I might get a scalp before sundown if I'm active."

Kirker spoke with the same insolence with which he had confronted Bigfoot and Shadrach, back on the Rio Grande.

Gus found the man's insolence intolerable. To Call's surprise, he yanked one of the big pistols out of his belt and whacked Kirker right across the forehead with it. The lick made a dull sound-a mule kicking a post made such a sound. Kirker was knocked backward, off his horse. He lay still for a moment, curled on the ground, but his eyes were open.

Call leapt down and took Kirker's pistol, as the man struggled to his feet. Kirker reached for his big knife, but before he could pull it Call clubbed his arm with his musket-then he clubbed him twice more.

"Whoa, Woodrow," Gus said, alarmed by the look in Call's eye and the savage force of his clubbing. He himself had been angry enough to knock Kirker off his horse with a pistol, but the one hard lick satisfied him. The man's forehead was split open-he was streaming blood. It was enough, at least, to teach him respect. But Woodrow Call had no interest in respect. He was swinging to kill.

"He's a friend of the Colonel's-we don't need to kill him," Gus said, leaping down, as did black Sam, who had come along to select the cuts. Call swung a third time, at the man's Adam's apple-only the fact that Sam grabbed at the barrel and partially broke the force of the swing saved Kirker-even so the man went down again, rolling and clawing at his throat, trying to get air through his windpipe. Gus and Sam together managed to hold Call and keep him from smashing the man's head with the musket.

Falconer, who didn't like the scalp hunter either, turned for a moment, to look at the fallen man.

"Disarm him," he said. "He's got guns in his boots. If we leave him anything to shoot he'll try to kill us all, once he gets his wind."

Call was remembering the filthy, fly-bitten scalps, hanging from the man's saddle; he also remembered Bigfoot's contention that some of them were the scalps of Mexican children.

"Don't be beating nobody to death-not here," Sam said. "Colonel Cobb, he'll hang you. He hangs folks all the time."

With difficulty, Call made himself mount and ride on to the herd. When they left, Kirker was on his knees, spitting blood.

"You yanked that pistol quick," Falconer said, to Gus. "I think I'll make you my corporal. You could make a fine pistolero."

"Thank you, the fellow was rude," Gus said. "Do you think the Colonel will let me be a corporal?"

Though he didn't much like Falconer, the man's words filled him with relief. He felt he had caught up with Call again, in terms of rank. He also felt that he was staunch again, and could fight when a fight was required. The weak feeling that had troubled him since his first glimpse of Buffalo Hump wasn't there anymore-or at least, not there steadily. He might die, but at least he could fight first, and not simply pass his days shaking at the expectation of slaughter.

They rode on to the herd, quickly shot two fat calves, and took their livers and sweetmeats, as instructed. Sam was deft at the cutting. He had brought a sack to put the meat on, and knotted it deftly once he was finished.

"I'll kill some big meat tomorrow," Falconer said, as they rode back toward camp. "Once we get across the river the Colonel won't mind."

"These buffalo be gone tomorrow," Sam said.

"Gone-what do you mean-there's thousands of them," Falconer said, in surprise.

"They be gone tomorrow," Sam said-he did not elaborate.

When they passed the spot where the fight with Kirker had occurred there was no trace of the man, though the grass was spotted with blood from his broken forehead.

"I hope I broke his damn arm, at least," Call said.

Nobody else said anything for a bit. They rode up to the troop in silence, Sam carefully holding his sack of meat.

"Sam knows where to cut into a buffalo calf," Gus remarked. "You might give us lessons, next time we have an opportunity. I could slide around on one for an.hour and not know when I had come to the liver."

"Just watch me, next time," Sam said. "Buffalo liver tastes mighty good."

GENERAL PHIL LLOYD, IN his youth one of the heroes of the Battle of New Orleans, was so impressed by the news that Buffalo Hump was coming to supper that he made his manservant, Peedee, scratch around amid his gear until he found a clean coat. It was wrinkled, true, but it wasn't spotted and stained with tobacco juice, or beef juice, or any of the other substances General Lloyd was apt to dribble on himself in the course of a day's libations.

"I might be getting dressed up for nothing," he informed Caleb Cobb. "There's a hundred men, at least, right here in this camp, who would like to shoot that rascal's lights out. Why would he come?"

"Oh, he'll come, Phil," Caleb Cobb said. "He wants to show off his wives."

Looking around the camp, Call decided that he agreed with the General. Most of the Rangers, and not a few of the merchants and common travelers, had lost friends or family members to the Comanches; some of the lost ones had died by Buffalo Hump's own hand. There were mutterings and curses as the time for his arrival approached. Several of the more radical characters were for hanging Caleb Cobb-he ought never to have issued the invitation, many Rangers felt. Sam had to hurry his cooking, but when the smell of the sizzling liver wafted through the camp it added to the general discontent. Why should a killer get to dine on such delicacies, while most of them were making do with tough beef?

"He'll come," Gus said. "It would take more than this crowd to scare him away."

Like Call, he had begun to doubt the competence of the military leadership. General Lloyd, who had been drunk the whole trip and unconscious for most of it, had his servant pin more than a dozen medals on the front of his blue coat.

"He must have won them medals for drinking, he don't do nothing else," Gus observed.

While the liver was sizzling and the sweetbreads simmering in a small pot with some onions and a little wild barley Sam had managed to locate, Caleb Cobb, noting the mood of surliness among the men, told Falconer to round up the malcontents and assemble them. Falconer liked nothing better than ordering men to do things they didn't want to do-he had a little black quirt that he popped against his leg; he circled the camp, popping the quirt against his leg and forcing the men to stroll over to Caleb Cobb's tent.

Cobb was large; he enjoyed imposing himself. When the men were assembled he stretched himself and pointed toward the hill to the east. Four horses were moving across the ridge-Buffalo Hump was coming with his wives.

"Here he comes, right on time," Caleb said. "I'll make a short speech. He's a murdering devil but I invited him to supper and I won't have no guest of mine interfered with."

"Does that mean we ain't to spit while he's in camp?" Shadrach asked. He had no great respect for Caleb Cobb, who, in his view, was just a pirate who had decided to come ashore. Cobb had caught several Mexican ships, so it was said, and had made off with the gold and silver, and the women. That was the rumour in the Galveston waters, anyway. Shadrach suspected that the main reason for the Texas-Santa Fe expedition was that Cobb wanted to get the gold and silver at its source. None of that gave Cobb license to instruct him in behaviour, and Shadrach wanted him to know it."You can spit, but not in his direction/' Caleb said. He was well aware that the mountain man didn't like him.

"Why are you having him, Colonel, if he's such a killer?" the dentist, Elihu Carson, asked. He had heard that the Comanches sometimes removed the jawbones of their captives with the teeth intact; as a professional he would have liked to question Buffalo Hump about the technique involved, but he knew that at such an important parley he was unlikely to get the chance.

"Curiosity," Caleb replied. "I've never met him, and I'd like to. If you want to know the mettle of your opponent, it don't hurt to look him in the eye. Besides, he knows the country-he might loan us a scout."

"He won't loan you no scout, he'll kill the ones we got," Bigfoot said.

"Mr. Wallace, it won't hurt to try," Caleb said. "I brought you all here to make a simple point: Buffalo Hump's my guest at dinner. I will promptly hang any ill-tempered son of a bitch who interferes with him."

The men stared back at him, unawed and unpersuaded.

"If we kill him, the Comanche and the Kiowa will rise up and wipe out every damn farm between the Brazos and the Nueces," Caleb said. "We have to cross his country to reach Santa Fe, and we don't know much about it. If it turns out that we have to fight him, we'll fight him, but right now I'd like to see some manners in this camp."

The men were silent, watching the horses approach. They gave ground a few steps, so that the Comanches could ride up to Caleb's tent, but their mood was dark. While not eager to be hanged, they all knew that hanging was gentle compared to what would happen to them if Buffalo Hump caught them. Those who had lost sons in the Comanche wars, or had daughters stolen, thought that a hanging would be a cheap price to pay for the opportunity to put a bullet in the big war chief. Yet they held back-bound, if uneasily, by the rules their commander had laid down.

Buffalo Hump still had the three scalps tied to his lance when he rode into camp. He had on leggins but no shirt-he had coated his face and body with red clay and had painted yellow lines across his cheeks and forehead. The three women riding behind him were all young and plump. If frightened at riding into the white man's camp,they didn't show it. They rode a short distance behind Buffalo Hump, and kept their eyes on the ground.

Call thought it remarkably bold of the war chief to ride into such a camp alone. Gus agreed. He tried to imagine himself riding into a Comanche camp with no one beside him but a whore or two, but remembering the tortures Bigfoot had described, he thought he would decline the invitation, if one ever came.

"He ain't afraid of us-and every man in camp wants to kill him," Call said. "He don't think much of Rangers, I guess."