"Gus could have made a cart and got him a billygoat to pull it," Bert Borum suggested.

"Or a donkey," Needle said.

"Or his dern pigs, if they're so smart," Soupy said. Both pigs were under the wagon. Pea Eye, who slept in the wagon, had to listen to their grunts and snores all night.

Only the Irishman seemed sympathetic to Gus's stance. "Why, it would only have left half of him," he said. "Who wants to be half of himself?"

"No, half would be about the hips," Jasper calculated. "Half would be your nuts and all. Just your legs ain't half."

Dish Bogget took no part in the conversation. He felt sad about Gus. He remembered that Gus had once lent him money to visit Lorena, and this memory lent another tone to his sadness. He had supposed Gus would go back and visit Lorena, but now, clearly, he couldn't. She was there in Nebraska, waiting for Gus, who would never come.

Into his sadness came a hope that when the drive was over he could draw his wages and go back and win Lorena, after all. He could still remember her face as she sat in front of the little tent on the Kansas plains. How he had envied Gus, for Lorena would smile at Gus, but she had never smiled at him. Now Gus was dead, and Dish determined to mention to the Captain that he wanted to draw his wages and leave as soon as the drive was finished.

Lippy broke down and cried a time or two, thinking of Gus. To him, the mysterious part was why Gus wanted to be taken to Texas.

"All that way to Texas," Lippy kept saying. "He must have been drunk."

"I never seen Gus too drunk to know what he meant," Pea Eye said. He, too, was very sad. It seemed to him it would have been better if he could have persuaded Gus to come with him.

"All that way to Texas," Lippy kept saying. "I wager the Captain won't do it.'

"I'll take that wager," Dish said. "He and Gus rangered together."

"And me too," Pea Eye said sadly. "I rangered with them."

"Gus won't be much but a skeleton, if the Captain does do it," Jasper said. "I wouldn't do it. I'd get to thinking of ghosts and ride off in a hole."

At the mention of ghosts, Dish got up and left the campfire. He couldn't abide the thought of any more ghosts. If Deets and Gus were both roaming around, one might approach him, and he didn't like the thought. The very notion made him white, and he pitched his bedroll as close to the wagon as he could get.

The other men continued to talk of Augustus's strange request.

"Why Texas beats me," Soupy said. "I always heard he was from Tennessee."

"I wonder what he'd have to say about being dead?" Needle said. "Gus always had something to say about everything."

Po Campo began to jingle his tambourine lightly, and the Irishman whistled sadly.

"He never collected all that money he won from us at cards," Bert remembered. "That's the bright side of the matter."

"Oh, dern," Pea Eye said, feeling so sorrowful that he wanted to die himself.

No one had to ask him what he was derning about.

98.

OLD HUGH AULD soon replaced Augustus as the main talker in the Hat Creek outfit. He caught up with the herd, with his wagonload of coats and supplies, near the Missouri, which they crossed near Fort Benton. The soldiers at the tiny outpost were as surprised to see the cowboys as if they were men from another planet. The commander, a lanky major named Court, could scarcely believe his eyes when he looked up and saw the herd spread out over the plain. When told that most of the cattle had been gathered below the Mexican border he was astonished, but not too astonished to buy two hundred head. Buffalo were scarce, and the fort not well provisioned.

Call was short with Major Court. He had been short with everyone since Gus's death. Everyone wondered when he would stop going north, but no one dared ask. There had been several light snows, and when they crossed the Missouri, it was so cold that the men built a huge fire on the north bank to warm up. Jasper Fant came near to realizing his lifelong fear of drownding when his horse spooked at a beaver and shook him off into the icy water. Fortunately Ben Rainey caught him and pulled him ashore. Jasper was blue with cold; even though they covered him with blankets and got him to the fire, it was a while before he could be convinced that he was alive.

"Why, you could have waded out," Old Hugh said, astonished that a man would be frightened over such a little thing as a soaking. "If you think this water's cold now, try setting a few beaver traps around February," he added, thinking it would help the man put things in perspective.

Jasper couldn't speak for an hour. Most of the men had long since grown bored with his drownding fears, and they left him to dry out his clothes as best he could. That night, when he was warm enough to be bitter, Jasper vowed to spend the rest of his life north of the Missouri rather than cross such a stream again. Also, he had developed an immediate resentment against beavers and angered Old Hugh several times on the trip north by firing at them recklessly with his pistol if he saw some in a pond.

"Them's beaver," Old Hugh kept saying. "You trap beaver, you don't shoot 'em." A bullet will ruin the pelt and the pelt's the whole point."

"Well, I hate the little toothy sons of bitches," Jasper said. "The pelts be damned."

Call kept riding northwest until even Old Hugh began to be worried. The great line of the Rockies was clear to the west. Though Old Hugh was the scout, it was Call who rode on ahead. Once in a while Old Hugh might point out a landmark, but he was shy about offering advice. Call made it clear that he didn't want advice.

Though accustomed to his silences, none of the men could remember him being that silent. For days he didn't utter a word-he merely came in and got his food and left again. Several of the men became convinced that he didn't mean to stop-that he would lead them north into the snows and they would all freeze.

The day after they crossed the Marais, Old Dog disappeared. From being a lead steer, he had drifted back to the drags and usually trailed a mile or two behind the herd. Always he was there in the morning, but one morning he wasn't. Newt and the Raineys, still in charge of the drags, went back to look for him and saw two grizzlies making a meal of the old steer. At the sight of the bears their horses bolted and raced back to the herd. Their fear instantly communicated itself to all the animals and the herd and remuda stampeded. Several cowboys got thrown, including Newt, but no one was hurt, though it took an afternoon to gather the scattered herd.

A few days later they finally came to the Milk River. It was a crisp fall day, and most of the men were wearing their new coats. The slopes of the mountains to the west were covered with snow.

"That's the last one," Old Hugh said. "You go much north of that river and you're in Canada."

Call left the herd to graze and rode east alone for a day. The country was beautiful, with plenty of grass and timber enough in the creek bottoms for building a house and corrals. He came across scattered buffalo, including one large herd. He saw plentiful Indian sign, but no Indians. It was cold but brilliantly sunny. He felt that the whole top of the Montana territory was empty except for the buffalo, the Indians and the Hat Creek outfit. He knew it was time to stop and get a house of some kind built before a blizzard caught them. He knew one could come any time. He himself paid no attention to weather, and didn't care, but there were the men to think of. It was too late for most of them to go back to Texas that fall. Like it or not, they were going to be wintering in Montana.

That night, camping alone, he dreamed of Gus. Frequently he woke up to hear Gus's voice, so real he looked around expecting to see him. Sometimes he would scarcely fall asleep before he dreamed of Gus, and it was even beginning to happen in the daytime if he rode along not paying much attention to his surroundings. Gus dead invaded his thoughts as readily as he had when he was alive. Usually he came to josh and tease, much as he had in life. "Just because you've got to the top of the country, you don't have to stop," he said, in one dream. "Turn east and keep going until you hit Chicago."