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Chapter 90

Chapter 90

Summary

Twelve horses are stolen in the night by Indians on foot. Call, Augustus and Deets track them for days into bleak salt country and find a starving band of some twenty people — mostly women, children and old men — eating one of the horses raw. Call fires into the air to save a sorrel they are about to kill, and the tribe scatters, leaving behind a blind toddler who trips into the horse's guts. Deets picks the child up, holds him out smiling — and a boy of about fifteen charges with an old lance and drives it through him. Call and Augustus shoot the boy too late. Deets hands Call the baby, kneels, and dies regretting that the boy could not understand he meant no harm. They carry him two days back to the herd and bury him above the Powder. Call spends a whole day carving a board: Josh Deets. Served with me 30 years... Cherful in all weathers, never sherked a task. Splendid behaviour.

Analysis

Deets dies holding out a baby, killed by a starving boy who cannot read the gesture — the novel's thesis on the frontier compressed into ten seconds. Call's grave board is the only sustained act of language he manages in the entire book, and he spends a full day on it.

Plates

Call, who has slept a distance out of camp and hardly slept at all, sits on his bedroll at first light on the Salt.
00 Call, who has slept a distance out of camp and hardly slept at all, sits on his bedroll at first light on the Salt.
Call trots back into camp to find men standing at the cook fire holding rifles; Dish Boggett tells him twelve horses are gone and Deets stands hangdog, having heard nothing.
01 Call trots back into camp to find men standing at the cook fire holding rifles; Dish Boggett tells him twelve horses are gone and Deets stands hangdog, having heard nothing.
Call, Augustus and Deets ride out after the horsethieves, leaving a camp full of scared men; Newt watches them go with Lippy's talk of scalping still in his ears.
02 Call, Augustus and Deets ride out after the horsethieves, leaving a camp full of scared men; Newt watches them go with Lippy's talk of scalping still in his ears.
In the afternoon of the third day, in salt-streaked country so poor a chigger would starve in it, Call and Augustus watch Deets come riding back through the heat waves that make him look larger than he is.
03 In the afternoon of the third day, in salt-streaked country so poor a chigger would starve in it, Call and Augustus watch Deets come riding back through the heat waves that make him look larger than he is.
The three men look down into the draw and find some twenty people of a starving band — mostly women, children and old men — gathered close around a horse that has died, butchering it where it lies.
04 The three men look down into the draw and find some twenty people of a starving band — mostly women, children and old men — gathered close around a horse that has died, butchering it where it lies.
Call fires into the air to save the sorrel; the whole band scatters toward the tepees, and one small child, too young to follow and unable to see, is left standing alone at the dead horse's head.
05 Call fires into the air to save the sorrel; the whole band scatters toward the tepees, and one small child, too young to follow and unable to see, is left standing alone at the dead horse's head.
Deets picks the child up, holds him out toward the band and smiles — and a young brave, having thrown down the rifle for an old lance, comes at him at a run.
06 Deets picks the child up, holds him out toward the band and smiles — and a young brave, having thrown down the rifle for an old lance, comes at him at a run.
With a foot of lance inside him, Deets hands the baby up to Call — "I don't want to sit him back in all that blood" — then drops to his knees while Augustus steadies the shaft so it won't quiver.
07 With a foot of lance inside him, Deets hands the baby up to Call — "I don't want to sit him back in all that blood" — then drops to his knees while Augustus steadies the shaft so it won't quiver.
Dawn at the herd two days later — Deets laid out on a wagon sheet while Po Campo strains at the lance and Dish turns away sick, Pea Eye kneeling dazed, Newt sitting up in his blankets crying with nobody noticing.
08 Dawn at the herd two days later — Deets laid out on a wagon sheet while Po Campo strains at the lance and Dish turns away sick, Pea Eye kneeling dazed, Newt sitting up in his blankets crying with nobody noticing.
Late afternoon at the grave above the Powder — Call has hammered the carved board into the hard ground and walked off, and Augustus ties his faded green-ribboned medal over the top of it while the hands come down one at a time to look.
09 Late afternoon at the grave above the Powder — Call has hammered the carved board into the hard ground and walked off, and Augustus ties his faded green-ribboned medal over the top of it while the hands come down one at a time to look.