Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry

is a genius, anyway?" Augustus asked, addressing the question to the company at large.
    "I guess the Captain's a genius, you ought to ask him," Call said.
    The Captain, at the moment, was walking around with Famous Shoes, attempting to discover how the theft had been accomplished.
    "A genius is somebody with six toes or more on one foot," Long Bill declared. "That's what I was told at home." Neely Dickens, a small, reedy man prone to quick darting motions that reminded Gus of minnows, took a different view.
    "Geniuses don't have no warts," he claimed.
    "In that case I'm a genius because I am rarely troubled with warts," Augustus said.
    "I've heard that geniuses are desperate smart," Teddy Beatty said. "I met one once up in St. Louis and he could spell ^ws backwards and even say numbers backwards too." "Now, what would be the point of spelling backwards?" Augustus asked. "If you spell backwards you wouldn't have much of a ^w. I expect you was drunk when you met that fellow." Finch Seeger, the largest and slowest man in the company when it came to movement, was also the slowest when it came to thinking. Often Finch would devote a whole day to one thought--the thought that he wanted to go to a whorehouse, for example. He did not take much interest in the question of geniuses, but he had no trouble keeping an interest in food. Deets had informed the company that there was only a little bacon left, and yet they were a long way from home. The prospect of baconless travel bored into Finch's mind like a screwworm, so painfully that he was moved to make a comment.
    "Pig," he said, to everyone's surprise.
    "I wish we had us a good fat pig." "Now Finch, keep quiet," Augustus said, though the comment was the only ^w Finch Seeger had uttered in several days.
    "No one was discussing swine," Gus added.
    "No one was discussing anything," Call remarked. "Finch has as much right to talk as you have." Finch ignored the controversy his remark had ignited. He looked across the empty prairie and his mind made a picture of a fat pig. The pig was nosing around behind a chaparral bush, trying to root out a mouse, or perhaps a snake. He meant to be watchful during the day, so that if they came upon the pig he saw in his mind they could kill it promptly and replenish their bacon supply.
    "Well, that's one less horse," Long Bill commented. "I guess one of us will have to ride a pack mule, unless the Captain intends to walk." "I doubt he intends to walk, we're a far piece out," Call said, only to be confounded a few minutes later by the Captain's announcement that he intended to do just that.
    "Kicking Wolf stole Hector while Hector was pissing--it was the only time he could have approached him," Scull announced to the men.
    "Famous Shoes figured it out. Took him while he was pissing. Famous Shoes thinks he might have whispered a spell into his ear, but I doubt that." While the rangers watched he began to rake around in his saddlebags, from which he extracted his big plug of tobacco, a small book, and a box of matches wrapped in oilskin. He had a great gray coat rolled up behind his saddle, but, after a moment's thought, he left it rolled up.
    "Too heavy," he said. "I'll be needing to travel light. I'll just dig a hole at night, bury a few coals in it, and sleep on them if it gets nippy." Scull stuffed a coat pocket full of bullets, pulled his rifle out of its scabbard, and scanned the plain with a cheerful, excited look on his face, actions which puzzled Call and Gus in the extreme. Captain Scull seemed to be making preparations to strike out on foot, although they were far out on the llano and in the winter too. The Comanches knew where they were, Buffalo Hump and Slow Tree as well. What would induce the Captain to be making preparations for foot travel?
    And what was the troop to do, while he walked?
    But Scull had a cheerful grin on his bearded face.
    "Opportunity, men--it knocks but once," he said. "I think it was Papa Franklin who said that--it's in