No Indians came in the night, and Augustus was glad of that. He began to feel feverish and was afraid of taking a chill. He had to cover himself with saddle blankets, though he kept his gun hand free and managed to stay awake most of the night-unlike Pea, who snored beside him, as deeply asleep as if he were in a feather bed.

By morning Augustus had a high fever. Though his leg worried him most, he also had pain in his side. He decided he had been wrong in his first analysis, and that he did have a bullet wound there, after all. The fever had him feeling weak.

While he was waiting, pistol cocked, to see if the Indians would try to rush them, he heard thunder. Within half an hour lightning was striking all around them, and thunder crashing.

"Oh, dern," Pea Eye said. "Now I guess we'll get lightning-struck."

"Go back to sleep, if all you can do is be pessimistic," Augustus said. "I smell rain, which is a blessing. Indians mostly don't like to fight in the wet. Only white men are dumb enough just to keep on fighting no matter what the weather is like."

"We've fought Indians in the wet," Pea Eye said.

"Yes, but it was us forced it on them," Augustus said. "They'd rather do battle on sunny days, which is only sensible."

"Here they're probably gonna kill us, and you take up for them," Pea Eye said. He had never understood Gus and never would, even if the Indians didn't kill them.

"I'm an admirer of good sense wherever I find it," Augustus said.

"I hope you find some today, then, and get us out of this," Pea said.

Then it began to rain in earnest. It rained so hard that it became impossible to see, or even talk. A muddy stream began to pour off the bank, only inches in front of them The rain struck so hard it reminded Pea of driving nails. Usually such freshets were short-lived, but this one wasn't. It seemed to rain for hours, and was still raining when dawn came, though not as hard. Alarmingly, to Pea, the creek had become a river, more than deep enough to swim a horse. It rose so that it was only two or three yards in from where they were scrunched into the cave, and it soon washed away their crude breastworks.

And it was still raining. It was cold, too, though fortunately they had a good overhang and were fairly dry. Gus had drug the bedrolls in before the rain started.

Pea was shocked to see that Gus didn't look himself. His face was drawn and his hands unsteady. He was chewing on some jerky he had pulled out of a saddlebag, but it seemed he barely had the strength to eat.

"Are you poorly?" Pea asked.

"I should have got that arrow out sooner," Augustus said. "This leg's gonna give me problems." He handed Pea some jerky and they sat in silence for a while, watching the brown flood sweep past them.

"Hell, a frog could have waded that creek yesterday," Pea said. "Now look at it. It's still raining, too. We may get drowned instead of scalped. It's a good thing Jasper ain't here," he added. "He's mighty afraid of water."

"Actually, this flood is an opportunity for you," Augustus said. "If we can last the day, you might swim past them tonight and get away."

"Well, but that wouldn't be right," Pea Eye said. "I wouldn't want just to leave you sitting here."

"I won't be sitting, I'll be floating, if this keeps up," Augustus said. "The good aspect of it is that it might cool off these Indians. They might go back to their families and let us be."

"I'd still hate to leave you, even so," Pea said.

"You can't carry me to the herd, and I doubt I can walk it," Augustus said. "I'm running such a fever I'm apt to go out of my head any time. You'll probably have to trot back and bring some of the boys, or maybe the wagon. Then I can ride back in style."

The thought struck Pea Eye for the first time that Gus might die. He had no color, and he was shaking. It had never been suggested that Gus might die. Of course, he knew any man could die. Pea himself had seen many die. Yet it was a condition he had never associated with Gus McCrae, or with the Captain either. They were not normal men, as he understood normal, and he had never reckoned with the possibility that either of them might die. Now, when he looked at Gus and saw his pallor and his shakes, the thought came into his mind and wouldn't leave. Gus might die. Pea knew at once that he had to do everything possible to prevent it. If he went back to the wagon and reported that Gus was dead, there was no telling what the Captain would say.

Yet he didn't know exactly what he could do. They had no medicine, it was raining fits, the Indians had them surrounded, and they were a hundred miles or more from the Hat Creek outfit.

"It's a soggy situation, I admit," Augustus said, as if reading Pea Eye's thoughts. "But it ain't fatal yet. I could hold out here for a few days. Call could make it back to this creek in one ride on that feisty mare of his. Best thing for you to do would be just to travel at night. If you walk around in the daytime, some of these red boys might spot you and you'd have about the chance of a rabbit. I guess you could make it to the Yellowstone in three nights, though, and they ought to be there by then."

Pea Eye dreaded the prospect. He hated night travel, and it would be worse afoot. He began to hope that maybe the rain had discouraged the Indians, but that hope only lasted an hour. Three times during the day the Indians fired on them. They shot from downriver, and Gus opened up on them at once. They were so respectful of his gun that their bullets only splattered uselessly in the mud, or else hit the water and ricocheted off with a whine. Gus looked so weak and shaky that Pea Eye wondered if he could still shoot accurately, but the question was answered later in the day when an Indian tried to shoot them from the opposite bank, using a little rain squall as cover. He got off his shot, which hit one of the saddles; then Gus shot him as he turned to crawl away. The shot caused the Indian to straighten up, and Gus shot him again. The second bullet seemed to suck the Indian backward-he toppled off the bank and rolled into the water. He was not dead; he tried to swim, so Gus shot him again. A minute or two later he floated past them face down.

"I expect he would have drowned," Pea Eye said, thinking it wasteful of Gus to shoot the man three times.

"He might have, or he might have lived to cut off your nuts," Augustus said.

There were no more attacks that day, but there was no doubt that the Indians were still there. Before sundown they raised their war cries again. This time Augustus didn't answer.

The day had never been bright, but it seemed to linger. There was a long, rainy dusk, so long that it made Pea Eye feel gloomy. It was cramped in the cave. He longed to stretch his legs, and then made the foolish mistake of saying so to Gus.

"Wait till it's full dark," Augustus said. "Then you can stretch 'em."

"What if I get lost?" Pea Eye said. "I ain't never been in this country."

"Go south," Augustus said. "That's all you have to remember. If you mess up and go north, a polar bear will eat you."

"Yes, and a grizzly bear might if I go south," Pea Eye said with some bitterness. "Either way I'd be dead."

He regretted that Gus had mentioned bears. Bears had been preying on his mind since the Texas bull had had his great fight. It struck him that things were tough up here in the north. It had taken Gus three shots to kill a small Indian. How many shots would it take to kill a grizzly bear?

"Well, you ought to start, Pea," Augustus said finally. It had been dark for over an hour, and the Indians were silent.

"That dern water looks cold," Pea Eye said. "I was never one for cold baths."

"Well, I'm sorry we didn't bring a bathtub and a cookstove," Augustus said. "If we had we could heat some water for you, but as it is you'll just have to rough it. The rain's stopped. The creek could start going down any time, and the more water in it the better for you. Get out in the middle and pretend you're a muskrat."