“The older the violin, the sweeter the music,” Augustus said.

“I hope this is hard enough for you, Call,” he said. “I hope it makes you happy. If it don’t, I give up. Driving all these skinny cattle all that way is a funny way to maintain an interest in life, if you ask me.” “Well, I didn’t,” Call said. “No, but then you seldom ask,” Augustus said. “You should have died in the line of duty, Woodrow. You’d

He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.

After a few minutes the empty feeling passed, but Call didn’t get to his feet. The sense that he needed to hurry, which had been with him most of his life, had disappeared for a space. “We might as well go on to Montana,” he said. “The fun’s over around here.” Augustus snorted, amused by the way his friend’s mind worked. “Call, there never was no

To Augustus’s surprise, Call sat down on the porch and took a big swallow from the jug. He felt curious—not sick but suddenly empty—it was the way a kick in the stomach could make you feel. It was an odd thing, but true, that the death of an enemy could affect you as much almost as much as the death of a friend. He had experienced it before, when

Call himself spent plenty of time on self-appraisal. He knew what he could certainly do, and what he might do if he was lucky, and what he couldn’t do barring a miracle. The problem with Gus was that he regarded himself as the miracle,

But Gus loved to live and had no intention of letting anyone do him out of any of his pleasures.

In fact, though, Gus McCrae was a cool customer, perhaps the coolest Call had ever known—and he had known many men who didn’t scare easy. His disregard of danger was so complete that Call initially thought he must want to die.

“That’s because they’re God-fearing boys,” Augustus said. “You wouldn’t catch them boys with no Jezebel.” “Is that her name?” Chick asked. “It ain’t the name I heard.”