The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  “Parrot told me what you did with my woman,” Ahumado said. “He told me in a dream. I have watched you skin people for many years. I am your pupil in this matter. Now we will see if I have learned well.”

  Goyeto didn’t plead. He was so frightened that all words left his mind and became screams. Ahumado began at his armpits and began to work downward. Old Goyeto had a big stomach—Ahumado thought such a stomach would be easy to skin, but it wasn’t. Goyeto screamed so loudly that people became confused and began to flee the camp. It was not merely the loudness of the screams that confused them, either. Ahumado was skinning the skinner—no one knew what it meant. It might mean that he was tired of them, that he meant to skin them all. If they ran he might merely shoot them, which would be better than being skinned.

  Goyeto’s voice wore out long before Ahumado worked downward to the part that had been active in committing the sin, years before on the horse blanket. Goyeto’s mind broke; he spewed liquids out of his mouth that mixed with his blood. Ahumado tried to skin one of his ears but Goyeto didn’t feel it. He died in the afternoon, well before the sun touched the rim of the Yellow Cliff. Disappointed, Ahumado stuck all of Goyeto’s skinning knives in him, and walked away.

  There were only a few people left in the camp by then; a few old women, too crippled to run, and one or two of the older vaqueros; all of them hated Goyeto and wanted to see how long he would last. Like Ahumado, they were disappointed.

  The other person left was the white man, Scull. He had not watched the skinning. It was a bright day. He had to crouch with his arms over his head to keep the brightness from burning his brain. Scull knew what happened, though. Ahumado had seen him glance once or twice at the skinning post. Scull noticed that people were leaving the camp. It was only when dusk fell and deep shadows filled the canyon that Scull could look. Ahumado had returned to his blanket—a few old women sat by the fires.

  In the night, when the camp slept, Ahumado went to the cage where Scull was kept. Scull flashed his white eyes at him but didn’t speak. Neither did Ahumado. Goyeto, dead, hung from the skinning post. Even some of the old women had begun to hobble away. Ahumado pulled the cage, with Scull in it, toward the pit of snakes and scorpions and, without delay, pushed it over the edge. He heard it splinter when it hit the floor of the pit. There was no sound from Scull, but Ahumado heard the buzz of several rattlesnakes as he walked away.

  Ahumado took his rifle and his blanket and moved quickly until he found the hole that led through the belly of the mountain.

  By morning, when old Xitla woke and began to stir the campfire, the vultures had begun to curl down into the camp, to feast on Goyeto; but Ahumado, the Black Vaquero, was gone.

  45.

  AS SCULL LISTENED to old Goyeto’s screams he wondered what had occurred. The skinner was being skinned, that much he could see, although he only glanced up once or twice. He could not risk more; not with the sun so bright. But Ahumado was doing the skinning and, to judge from the intensity of Goyeto’s screams, doing it badly on purpose. Where the skinner, Goyeto, had only taken skin, Ahumado pulled away strips of flesh, and did it so cavalierly that Goyeto soon wore out his voice and his heart. He died well before sunset, only partially skinned.

  Once the shadows came Scull could risk more looks—he saw that almost all the people in the camp were leaving, unnerved by the unexpected execution of Goyeto.

  Then, once it was dark, Ahumado suddenly appeared and began to push the cage toward the pit. He didn’t speak; Scull didn’t either. The two had contested in silence so far; let it stay silent, Scull thought, though he was disturbed by what was occurring. He had seen men hurled into the pit and had heard their dying screams. He didn’t know how deep the pit was—perhaps he would be killed or crippled by the drop. He knew there were snakes in the pit because he could hear them buzzing; but he didn’t know how many snakes, or what else might be there. Once Ahumado appeared there was no time to reflect or plan. Ahumado didn’t even glance at him, or speak words of hatred and triumph. He just pushed the cage a few feet and, without ceremony, shoved it over the edge of the pit.

  The darkness Scull fell into was soon matched by the darkness in his head. He heard snakes buzzing and then he heard nothing. The cage turned in the air—he landed upside down and struck his head sharply on one of the wooden bars.

  When he came to, it was night—in the moonlight he could see the opening of the pit above him. Scull didn’t move. He heard no buzzing, but didn’t consider it prudent to move. If there was a snake close by he didn’t want to disturb it. In the morning he could assess matters more intelligently. There was dried blood on his cheek; he assumed he had cut his head when the cage hit bottom. But he was alive.

  At the moment his worst affliction was the stench. The rich Mexicans who had died in the pit were still there, of course, and they were fragrant. But he was alive, Bible and sword; under the circumstances, phenomenal luck. It could easily have been himself, and not Goyeto, at the skinning post.

  The pistoleros, the vaqueros, the young men of the camp, and the young women seemed to have gone. Always at night there would be singing around the campfires; there would be laughter, quarrels, the sounds of flirtation, drunkenness, strife. Sometimes guns were fired; sometimes women shrieked.

  But now the camp above him was silent, a fact which bothered Scull considerably. To be alive, after such a drop, was exhilarating; but after relief and euphoria came terrible thoughts. What if they had all left? The old man might just have pushed him into the cage and left him to starve. The walls of the pit looked sheer. What if he couldn’t scale them? What would he survive on? What if no rains came and he had no water?

  From exhilaration he slid toward hopelessness; he had to will himself to stop, to collect his thoughts. Intelligence, intelligence, he told himself. Think! The fact that he was in a hard situation didn’t mean the final doom was come. At least in the pit he could shade himself, and the rangers might be well on their way with the cattle. With Ahumado gone all they would have to do was ride in and hoist him out of the pit.

  Slowly, Scull’s panic subsided. He reminded himself that in the pit there was shade; the torture of sunlight would be avoided.

  Finally a gray light began to filter into the air above the pit. The stars faded. Scull looked first for the snakes and saw none. Perhaps they were hiding in crevices. The dead men were far gone in rot. Fortunately his cage had splintered and he soon freed himself of it. The stench all but overcame him; he thought his best bet to contain it would be to scoop dirt over the bodies. If he could cover them over with dirt it would cut at least some of the smell. He pulled loose a couple of bars, from his cage, to use as digging instruments. He could dig at the side of the pit until he had enough dirt to cover the bodies. Though not particularly fastidious, he felt that a day or two of the stench might unhinge his mind.

  He was just about to begin digging at the wall of the pit when he heard the buzzing again and realized he had been wrong about the snakes. The light was gray and so was the dust in the pit—in the gray dust the snakes were almost invisible. One large rattler had been resting not a yard from where he stood. The snake started to crawl away, only rattling a little, not coiling, but Scull leapt at it and crushed its head with his stick. He knew he had to be careful. His eyes were apt to water when he focused too long on one thing. He couldn’t see well enough to spot the snakes. He edged around the perimeter of the pit and killed three more snakes before he was done. Then he began to dig at the walls. By noon, when he had to quit and hide his eyes, the dead Mexicans lay buried under sizable mounds of earth. Before burying the men Scull held his nose with one hand and forced himself to investigate their pockets. He was hoping Ahumado had overlooked a pocketknife, or another file, but in that he was disappointed. All he got off the corpses was their belts.

  From time to time he dug, heaping more dirt on the corpses, but his time in the cage had weakened him; he could not dig long at a stretch, and no matter how careful he was, dirt
got into his lidless eyes. The dust and dirt felt as painful as if it were gravel. Finally he took off his shirt, tied it over his eyes, and dug at the walls blindly.

  By the afternoon, exhausted, he huddled in the shade. One of his ankles was inflamed. He had seen several scorpions and wondered if he had been bitten by one during the night, when he was unconscious. He saw no sign of a bite, but the ankle was very sore, which chastened him. The pit seemed to be only fifteen feet deep, only some three times his size. Perhaps he could dig a few handholds and pull himself out. But his throbbing ankle, coupled with his exhaustion and the beginnings of a fever, brought home to him again the desperate character of the situation. No sound at all came from what had been, only the day before, a bustling camp. There might be no one left to bring him water or food. The rangers might not have been able to get the cattle; no help might be coming. The pit he was in, though not really deep, was just deep enough to constitute the perfect trap for a man in his condition. Even if he could dig the handholds, he might not have the strength to climb out; his ankle would scarcely bear his weight. He could eat the snakes he had killed, but, after that, he would have nothing. Every day he would get a little weaker, and have less and less hope of effecting his own escape. Barring a miracle, Ahumado had beaten him after all. The old man had even robbed him of time. As soon as Ahumado noticed that Scull was keeping a little calendar of twigs, he moved the cage and scattered the twigs. It was a thing to brood about. Ahumado had known that time meant something special to his prisoner. Now and then he would approach the cage and say, “Do you know what day it is, Captain?”

  Scull refused to answer—but Ahumado knew that Scull’s hold on time had been broken.

  “I know what day it is,” he would say quietly, before returning to his blanket.

  That night, as Scull’s fever rose, he dreamed of a flood. He dreamed that water filled the pit to its brim, cool water that allowed him to float free. “Forty days and forty nights,” he mumbled, but he awoke to dry sunlight and pain in his eyes. The dirt he had got in them the day before left them swollen.

  “Noah,” Scull said, aloud. “I need what Noah had. I need a flood to raise me up.”

  His own words sounded crazy to him. As his mind swirled, touching the edges of madness, he suddenly thought of Dolly, his Dolly—Inez to the world but always Dolly to him. Even at that moment, as he lay starving in a scorpion pit in Mexico, she probably was in a bed or a closet, stoking her own fires with some stout illiterate lad.

  “The black bitch!” he said.

  Then, anger pulsing through him, he yelled the words as loudly as he could: “The black bitch! The bitch!” The sound echoed off the cliffs, where a few buzzards still circled.

  Then, dizzy from his own spurt of anger, Scull sat back against the wall of the pit, exhausted. In his mind he saw exactly how the handholds should be dug, in an ascending circle around the pit. He stood five foot two; he only needed to raise himself a bit over ten feet to escape—nothing to what Hannibal had faced with his elephants at the base of the Alps. Yet it was those ten feet that would defeat him. His eye saw the way clearly, but his body, for the first time in his life, would not respond.

  Scull dozed; the heat of the day began to fill the pit. Soon it felt hot as a stovepipe to him. His fever rose; he felt chill even as he sweated. Once he thought he heard movement above him. He thought it might be a coyote or some other varmint, inspecting the camp, hoping to find a scrap to eat. He yelled a time or two, though, on the off chance that it might be a human visitor.

  His yells produced no answer. Scull stood up, to test his ankle, but immediately sat back down. His ankle would bear no weight. Then he began to get the feeling that he was not alone: someone was above him, waiting where he couldn’t see them. But the person, if it was a person, waited quietly, making no sound. Through the afternoon he turned his sore eyes upward a few times, but saw no one.

  Then, as dusk was approaching, he saw what he had sensed. A face, as old and brown as the earth, was visible above him. Then he remembered the old woman. He had seen her often during his days of captivity in the cage, but had paid her little mind. Most of the day the old woman sat under a small tree, silent. When she rose to do some chores she walked slowly, bent almost double, supporting herself with a heavy stick. He rarely saw anyone speak to her. No doubt the people of the camp had left her to die—crippled as she was, she would have been an impediment to travel.

  “Agua!” he said, looking up at her. The sight of a human face made him realize how thirsty he was. “Agua! Agua!”

  The old face disappeared. Scull felt a flutter of hope. At least one human knew where he was, and that he was alive. There was no reason for the old woman to help him—she was probably dying herself. But she was there, and people were unpredictable. She might help him.

  Above him old Xitla crept about the camp. She was glad the people had left—the camp was hers now. She had spent the day looking for things people had dropped as they were leaving. People were so careless. They left things that they considered had no use, but old Xitla knew that everything had a use, if one were wise enough to know the uses of things. In a few hours of looking she had already found a bullet, several nails, an old shirt, and a rawhide string. These things were treasures to Xitla. With each find she hobbled eagerly back to her tree and put her treasure on her blanket.

  In her years in Ahumado’s camp Xitla had been careful never to tell him her name. She knew he would kill her immediately if he knew that her name was Xitla and that she was the daughter of Tilan, a great curandera who had known him in his youth in the south. Her mother had insisted that she take the name “Xitla” because it would protect her from Ahumado. When he was a baby, her mother told her, the elders had put a poisoned leaf under Ahumado’s tongue and sent him out in the world to do evil. Though Ahumado did not know it, he and Xitla had been born on the same minute of the same day, and their mothers were sisters—thus their destinies were forever linked together. They would die on the same moment of the same day too—in killing Xitla, Ahumado would have killed himself. But Ti-lan, her mother, when she sent Xitla away, warned her that she was never to tell Ahumado her real name, or the circumstances of her birth. If Ahumado knew he would try to challenge his destiny by putting Xitla to death in some cruel fashion. He bore the legacy of the poisoned leaf and would do much evil as a result.

  A few years back Xitla thought Ahumado had found her out. He seldom rode a horse, yet one day for no reason Ahumado mounted a strong horse and rode the horse right over her, injuring her back, so that she could never again stand straight. He had never explained his actions. He had merely ridden over her and left her in the dust. Then he dismounted and was never seen on a horse again. He had forbidden the people to help her, too. Xitla had crawled away on her hands and knees and found roots and leaves that helped her pain to be less.

  Around the camp, Xitla was known as Manuela. Because it was understood that Ahumado disapproved of her, she had few friends. Sometimes drunken vaqueros, men so debased that they would use any woman, or even a mare or a cow, came and pawed at her in the night. She had been small and dark but very beautiful; the vaqueros saw something of her beauty and still pawed at her, even though she had passed her time as a woman.

  One or two of the other old grandmothers in the village spoke to her; they were too old to care about Ahumado or his wrath. Xitla’s one companion was a small white cat. The little cat grew and became her hunter. It brought her the fattest rats and even, now and then, a baby rabbit, a delicacy Xitla cooked in her pot, seasoned with good spices. Her cat was Xitla’s companion. It slept next to her head at night, and its thoughts went into her brain. The cat wanted her to leave the camp and go to a nearby village. But Xitla was afraid to go. She moved so slowly that it would take her many days to reach the village—once Ahumado knew that she was gone he might send his pistoleros to catch her and put her on one of the sharpened trees—that was the penalty for those who left without permission.

&n
bsp; A few weeks later her cat left the camp to hunt and never came back. A woman told her, much later, that Ahumado had caught it and given it to a great rattler he kept in a cave—Xitla never knew whether the story was true. Even though she was old many women in the camp were jealous of her, because of her great beauty. Sometimes in the night Xitla felt her cat trying to send its thoughts into her brain, but its thoughts were not clear. Another woman told her that the story about the great rattler was nonsense; there had been an old cougar living near the camp; the cougar had probably eaten her cat.

  This old woman, Cincha, had merely wanted gossip, Xitla thought. Like everyone else in the camp, Cincha was curious about Xitla and Ahumado. They wanted to know why the Black Vaquero hated Xitla so much; and why, if he hated her, didn’t he just kill her. None of them knew about the sisters, or the poisoned leaf, nor did they know the real reason for Ahumado’s hatred, which was simple. Once in his youth Ahumado had tried to come to her in the way of a man and she had stuck him in his member with a green thorn. She had been using the thorn to sew and had merely stuck Ahumado with it because she did not want to be with him in that way.

  The green thorn had poison in it and the poison went into Ahumado’s member. He had several wives, but none of them were happy—there were stories and stories, but Xitla didn’t know if they were true. She just knew that Ahumado hated her so badly that he had run over her with a horse.

  Now, to her surprise, Ahumado had been the one to leave the camp. He told no one that he was leaving. There was much speculation but no one really knew why Ahumado did the things he did. Within a day, all the other people in the camp left too. No one offered to take Xitla. They had simply left her on her blanket. The women were particularly anxious to leave her—they did not like it that Xitla had such beauty of face still.

  Xitla had been asleep, dreaming of Parrot, when Ahumado pushed the white man into the pit. When she awoke she heard the white man speaking to himself and knew that he was still alive. The white man had survived as Ahumado’s captive for many weeks—he had a strong spirit in him; he might yet find a way to escape the pit. She could not resist peeking at him, in the pit, and it was then that he asked her for water.