The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  “Don’t,” he said. “That horse piss was clean, compared to this water. Let’s go.”

  That night, they had no appetite—even a bite was more than any of them could choke down. Gus pulled out some rancid horse meat, looked at it, and threw it away, an action Bigfoot was quick to criticize.

  “Go pick it up,” he said. “It might rain tonight—I’ve been smelling moisture and my smeller don’t often fail me. If we could get a little liquid in us, that horse meat might taste mighty good.”

  About midnight they heard thunder, and began to see flashes of lightning, far to the west. Gus was immediately joyful—he saw the drought had broken. Call was more careful. It wasn’t raining, and the thunder was miles away. It might rain somewhere on the plain—but would it rain where they were? And would any water pool up, so they could drink it?

  “Boys, we’re saved,” Bigfoot said, watching the distant lightning.

  “I may be saved, but I’m still thirsty,” Gus said. “I can’t drink rain that’s raining miles away.”

  “It’s coming our direction, boys,” Bigfoot said—he was wildly excited. Privately, he had given the three of them up for lost, though he hadn’t said as much to the young Rangers.

  “If the rain don’t come to us, I’ll go to the rain,” Call said.

  Soon they could smell the rain. It began to cool the hot air. They were so thirsty it was all they could do to keep from racing to meet the storm, although they had nothing to race on except one tired horse and their feet.

  Bigfoot had been right: the rain came. The only thing they had to catch it in was their hats—the hats weren’t fully watertight, but they caught enough rainwater to allow the starving men to quench their thirst.

  “Just wet your lips, don’t gulp it—you’ll get sick if you do,” Bigfoot said.

  The lightning began to come closer. Soon it was striking within a hundred yards of where they were huddled; then fifty yards. Call had never been much afraid of lightning, but as bolt after bolt split the sky he began to wonder if he was too exposed.

  “Let’s get under the saddle,” Gus said. Lightning spooked him. He had heard that a lightning bolt had split a man in two and cooked both parts before the body even fell to the ground. He did not want to get split in two, or cooked either. But he was not sure how to avoid it, out on the bare plain. He sat very still, hoping the lightning would move on and not scorch anybody.

  Then a bolt seemed to hit almost right on Bigfoot. He wasn’t hit, but he screamed anyway—screamed, and clasped his hands over his eyes.

  “Oh, Lord,” he yelled, into the darkness. “I looked at it from too close. It burnt my eyes, and now I’m blind.

  “Oh Lord, blind, my eyes are scorched,” Bigfoot screamed. Call and Gus waited for another lightning bolt to show them Bigfoot. When it came, they just glimpsed it—he was wandering on the prairie, holding both hands over his eyes. Again, as darkness came back, he screamed like an animal.

  “Keep your eyes shut—don’t look at the lightning,” Call said. “Bigfoot’s blind—that’s trouble enough.”

  “Maybe he won’t be blind too long,” Gus said. With their scout blinded, what chance did they have of finding their way to someplace in New Mexico where there were people? He thoroughly regretted his impulsive decision to leave with the expedition. Why hadn’t he just stayed with Clara Forsythe and worked in the general store?

  Bigfoot screamed again—he was getting farther and farther away. Dark as it was, once the storm passed, they would have no way to follow him, except by his screams. Call thought of yelling at him, to tell him to sit down and wait for them, but if the man’s eyes were scorched, he wouldn’t listen.

  “At least it’s washing this dern blood off me,” Gus said. Having to wear clothes encrusted with buffalo blood had been a heavy ordeal.

  For a few minutes, the lightning seemed to grow even more intense. Call and Gus sat still, with their eyes tight shut, waiting for the storm to diminish. Some flashes were so strong and so close that the brightness shone through their clamped eyelids, like a lantern through a thin cloth.

  Even after the storm moved east and the lightning and thunder diminished, Call and Gus didn’t move for awhile. The sound had been as heavy as the lightning had been bright. Call felt stunned—he knew he ought to be looking for Bigfoot, but he wasn’t quick to move.

  “I wonder where the horse went?” Gus asked. “He was right here when all this started, but now I don’t see him.”

  “Of course you don’t see him; it’s dark,” Call reminded him. “I expect we can locate him in the morning. We’ll need him for Bigfoot, if he’s still blind.”

  Call yelled three or four times, hoping to get a sense of Bigfoot’s position, but the scout didn’t answer.

  “You try, you’ve got a louder voice,” Call said. Gus’s ability to make himself heard over any din was well known among the Rangers.

  But Gus’s loudest yell brought the same result: silence.

  “Can you die from getting your eyes scorched?” Gus asked.

  The same thought had occurred to Call. The lightning storm had been beyond anything in his experience. The shocks of thunder and lightning had seemed to shake the earth. Once or twice, he thought his heart might stop, just from the shock of the storm. What if it had happened to Bigfoot? He might be lying dead, somewhere on the plain.

  “I hope he ain’t dead,” Gus said. “If he’s dead, we’re in a pickle.”

  “He could have just kept walking,” Call said. “We know the settlements are north and west. If we keep going, we’re bound to find the Mexicans sometime.”

  “They’ll probably just shoot us,” Gus said.

  “Why would they, if it’s just the two of us?” Call asked. “We ain’t an army. We’re nearly out of bullets anyway.”

  “They shot a bunch of Texans during the war,” Gus recalled. “Just lined them up and shot them. I heard they made them dig their own graves.

  “I wish we could just go back to Austin,” he added. “Why can’t we? The Colonel don’t even know where we are. He’s probably given up and gone back himself, by now.”

  “We’ve only got one horse and a few bullets,” Call reminded him. “We’d never make it back across this plain.”

  Gus realized that what Call said was true. He wished Bigfoot was there—not much fazed Bigfoot. He missed the big scout.

  “Maybe Bigfoot ain’t dead,” he said.

  “I hope he ain’t,” Call said.

  22.

  BIGFOOT WASN’T DEAD. As the storm was playing out, he lay down and pressed his face into the grass, to protect his eyes. The grass was wet—its coolness on his eyelids was some relief. While cooling his eyelids, he went to sleep. In the night he rolled over—the first sunlight on his eyelids brought a searing pain.

  Gus and Call were sleeping when they heard loud moans. Bigfoot had wandered about a half a mile from them before lying down.

  When they approached him he had his head down, his eyes pressed against his arms.

  “It’s like snow blindness, only worse,” he told them. “I been snow blind—it’ll go away, in time. Maybe this will, too.”

  “I expect it will,” Call said. Bigfoot was so sensitive to light that he had to keep his eyes completely covered.

  “You need to make me blinders,” Bigfoot said. “Blinders—and the thicker the better. Then put me on the horse.”

  Until that moment Call and Gus had both forgotten the horse, which was nowhere in sight.

  “I don’t see that horse,” Gus said. “We might have lost him.”

  “One of you go find him,” Bigfoot said. “Otherwise you’ll have to lead me.”

  “You go find him,” Call said, to Gus. “I’ll stay with Bigfoot.”

  “What if I find the horse and can’t find you two?” Gus asked. The plain was featureless. He knew it to be full of dips and rolls, but once he got a certain distance away, one dip and roll was much like another. He might not be able to find his way ba
ck to Call and Bigfoot.

  “I’ll go, then,” Call said. “You stay.”

  “He won’t be far,” Bigfoot said. “He was too tired to run far.”

  That assessment proved correct. Call found the horse only about a mile away, grazing. Call had been painstakingly trying to keep his directions—he didn’t want to lose his companions—and was relieved when he saw the horse so close.

  By the time he got back, Gus had made Bigfoot a blindfold out of an old shirt. It took some adjusting—the slightest ray of light on his eyelids made Bigfoot moan. They ate the last of their horse meat, and drank often during the day’s march from the puddles here and there on the prairie. Toward the end of the day, Call shot a goose, floating alone in one such small puddle.

  “A goose that’s by itself is probably sick,” Bigfoot said, but they ate the goose anyway. They came to a creek with a few bushes and some small trees around it and were able to make a fire. The smell of the cooking goose made them all so hungry they could not sit still—they wanted to rip the goose off its spit before it was ready, and yet they also had a great desire to eat cooked food. Bigfoot, who couldn’t see but could certainly smell, asked Gus and Call several times if the bird was almost ready. It was still half raw when they ate it, and yet, to all of them, it tasted better than any bird they had ever eaten. Bigfoot even cracked the bones, to get at the marrow.

  “It’s mountain man’s butter,” he said. “Once you get a taste for it you don’t see why people bother to churn. It’s better just to crack a bone.”

  “Yeah, but you might not have a bone,” Gus said. “The bone might still be in the animal.”

  Bigfoot kept his eyes tightly bandaged, but he no longer moaned so much.

  “What will you do if you’re blind from now on, Big?” Gus asked. Call felt curious about the same thing, but did not feel it was appropriate to ask. Bigfoot Wallace had roamed the wilderness all his life; his survival had often depended on keenness of eye. A blind man would not last long, in the wilderness. Bigfoot could scout no more—he would have to leave off scouting the troops. It would be a sad change, if it happened.

  “Oh, I expect I’ll get over being scorched,” Bigfoot said.

  Gus said no more, but the question still hung in the air.

  Bigfoot reflected for several minutes, before commenting further.

  “If I’m blind, it will be goodbye to the prairies,” he said. “I expect I’d have to move to town and run a whorehouse.”

  “Why a whorehouse?” Gus asked.

  “Well, I couldn’t see the merchandise, but I could feel it,” Bigfoot said. “Feel it and smell it and poke it.”

  “I been in whorehouses when I was too drunk to see much, anyway,” he added. “You don’t have to look to enjoy whores.”

  “Speaking of whores, I wonder what they’re like in Santa Fe?” Gus asked. Eating the goose had raised his spirits considerably. He felt sure that the worst was over. He had even argued to Call that the reason the goose had been so easy to shoot was that it was a tame goose that had run off from a nearby farm.

  “No, it was a sick goose,” Call insisted. “There wouldn’t be a farm around here. It’s too dry.”

  Despite his friend’s skepticism, Gus had begun to look forward to the delights of Santa Fe, one of which would undoubtedly be whores.

  “You can’t afford no whore, even if we get there alive,” Bigfoot reminded him.

  “I guess I could get a job, until the Colonel shows up,” Gus said. “Then we can rob the Mexicans and have plenty of money.”

  “I don’t know if the Colonel will make it,” Bigfoot said. “I expect he’ll starve, or else turn back.”

  That night, their horse was stolen. They were such a pitiful trio that no one had thought to stand guard. Eating the goose had put them all in a relaxed mood. The horse, in any case, was a poor one. It had never recovered fully from the wild chase after the buffalo. Its wind was broken; it plodded slowly along, carrying Bigfoot. Still, it had been their only mount—their only resource in more ways than one. They all knew that they might need to eat it, if they didn’t make the settlements soon now. The goose had been a stroke of luck—there might not be another.

  Call had hobbled the horse, to make sure it didn’t graze so far that he would have to risk getting lost by going to look for it in the morning. They called the horse Moonlight, because of his light coat. Before Call slept he heard Moonlight grazing, not far away. It was a reassuring sound; but then he slept. When he woke, the hobbles had been cut and there was no sign of Moonlight. The three of them were alone on the prairie.

  “We’ll track ’em, they probably ain’t far,” Bigfoot said, before he remembered that he was blind. His eyes were paining him less, but he still didn’t dare remove his blinders.

  “If he was close enough to steal Moonlight, he could have killed me,” Call said. The stealth Indians possessed continued to surprise him. He was a light sleeper; the least thing woke him. But the horsethief had repeatedly come within a few steps of him, yet he had had no inkling that anyone was near.

  “Dern, it’s a pity you boys don’t know how to track,” Bigfoot said. “I expect it was Kicking Wolf. That old hump man wouldn’t follow us this far, not for one horse. Kicking Wolf is more persistent.”

  “Too damn persistent,” Gus said. He was affronted. Time and again, the red man had bested them.

  “All they’ve done is beat us,” he added. “It’s time we beat them at something.”

  “Well, we can beat them at starving to death,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t know much else we can beat them at.”

  “Why didn’t they kill us?” Call asked.

  “I doubt there was more than one of them—I expect it was just Kicking Wolf,” Bigfoot said. “Stealing horses is quiet work, but killing men ain’t. He might have woke one of us up and one of us might have got him.”

  “It’s a long way to come for one damn horse,” Gus commented. He still stung, from the embarrassment of being so easily robbed.

  “Kicking Wolf is horse crazy, like you’re whore crazy. You’d go anywhere for a whore, and he’d go anywhere for a horse.”

  “I don’t know if I’d go halfway across a damn desert, for a whore,” Gus said. “I sure wouldn’t for a worn-out horse like Moonlight. Kicking Wolf is crazier than me.”

  Bigfoot looked amused. “There’s no law saying an Indian can’t be crazier than a white man,” he said.

  All that day, and for the next two, Call and Gus took turns leading Bigfoot. It was tiring work. Bigfoot had a long stride, longer even than Gus’s—the two of them had almost to trot, to keep ahead of him. Then, too, the prairie was full of cracks and little gullies. They had to be alert to keep him on level ground—it annoyed him to stumble. It stormed again the second night, though with less lightning. Water puddled here and there; they were not thirsty, but once they finished the last few bites of horse meat, they had no food. Call was afraid to roam too far to hunt, for fear of losing Gus and Bigfoot. In any case they saw no game, except a solitary antelope. The antelope was in sight for several hours—Gus thought it was only about three miles away, but Call thought it might be farther. In the thin air, distances were hard to judge.

  Bigfoot considered it peculiar that the antelope stayed in sight so long. Not to be able to use his own eyes was frustrating.

  “If I could just have one look, I could give an opinion,” he said. “It might not even be an antelope—remember them mountain goats that turned into Comanches?”

  Reminded, Gus and Call gave the distant animal their best scrutiny. Gus was of the opinion that the animal might be a Comanche, but Call was convinced it was just a plain antelope.

  “Go stalk it, then,” Bigfoot said. “We’ll sit down and wait. A little antelope rump would be mighty tasty.”

  “Let Gus stalk it,” Call said. “He’s got better eyes. I’ll wait with you.”

  Gus didn’t relish the assignment. If the antelope turned out to be a Comanche, he would be
in trouble. He was hungry, though, and so were the others.

  “Don’t shoot until you’ve got a close shot,” Bigfoot said. “If you can’t hit the heart, shoot for the shoulder. That’ll slow him down enough that we can catch him.”

  Gus stalked the antelope for three hours. The last three hundred yards, he edged on his belly. The antelope lifted its head from time to time, but mostly kept grazing. Gus got closer and closer—he remembered that he had missed the first antelope, at almost point-blank range. He wanted to get very close—it would do his pride good to bring home some meat, and his belly would appreciate it, too.

  He got to within two hundred yards, but decided to edge a little closer. He thought he might hit it at one hundred and fifty yards. He kept his head down, so as not to show the animal his face. Bigfoot had informed him that prairie animals were particularly alarmed by white faces. Indians could get close enough to kill them because their faces weren’t white. He kept his hat low, and his face low, too. When he judged he was within about the right distance, he risked a peek and to his dismay saw no antelope. He looked—then stood up and looked—but the antelope was gone. Gus ran toward where it had been standing, thinking the animal would have lain down—then he glimpsed it running, far to the north, farther than it had been when they first noticed it. Following it would be pointless; for a moment, stumbling around after the antelope, he felt a panic take him. He could not be sure which direction he had come from. He might not even be able to find Bigfoot and Call. Then he remembered a rock that stuck up a little from the ground. He had passed it in his crawl. He walked in a half circle until he saw the rock and was soon back on the right course.

  Even so, he was disgusted when he got back to his companions.

  “I wasted all that time,” he said. “He took off and ran. Let’s just hurry up and get to New Mexico.”

  “Oh, we’re in New Mexico,” Bigfoot said. “We just ain’t in the right part of it, yet. My eyes are improving, at least. Pretty soon I won’t have to be led.”

  Bigfoot’s eyes did improve, even as their bellies grew emptier. On the third day after the storm, he was able to take his blinders off in the late afternoon. Soon afterward, he found a small patch of wild onions and dug out enough for them to have a few each to nibble. It wasn’t much, but it was something.