The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  July didn’t know what to say. Clara seemed delighted with her conclusion, but he didn’t feel anything at all. It was just a puzzle.

  “I guess I’m awful,” Clara said. “Any kind of company affects me this way. I shouldn’t be bothering you when you’re so tired. The girls are drawing water. You have a bath. You can sleep in their room—it’s a good bed.”

  Later, when he had bathed and fallen into a sleep so deep that he didn’t even turn over for several hours, Clara brought the baby in and peeked at July. He hadn’t shaved, but at least he had washed. Cleaned of dirt he looked very young, only a few years older than her oldest boy would have been had he lived.

  Then she went to look at Bob for a moment—an ugly ooze had been seeping onto his pillow. The stitches in his head had been removed but underneath the wound seemed hot. It might be a new infection. Clara cleaned it as best she could, and took the baby out on her little porch.

  “Well, Martin, your pa showed up,” she said, grinning at the baby. “It’s a good thing we got a house right on the road. I wonder what your pa will think of us when he gets his wits together.”

  The baby waved a hand in the warm air. Down at the lots, the girls were watching Cholo work with a two-year-old filly.

  Clara looked at the baby and offered it her finger. “We don’t much care what your pa thinks of us, do we, Martin?” she said. “We already know what we think of him.”

  78.

  LORENA WAS SITTING in her tent when Gus returned. She had been sitting there hoping he wasn’t dead. It was an unreasoning fear she had, that Gus might die. He had only been gone three days, but it seemed longer to her. The cowboys didn’t bother her, but she was uneasy anyway. Dish Boggett set up her tent at night and stayed close by, but it meant nothing to her. Gus was the only man she wanted to look after her.

  Then, before it was quite dark, she heard horses and looked out to see Gus riding toward her. She was so glad she wanted to run out to him, but Dish Boggett was nearby, trimming his horse’s feet, so she kept still.

  “She’s just fine, Gus,” Dish said, when Gus dismounted. “I looked after her as best I could.”

  “I’m much obliged,” Augustus said.

  “She won’t hardly even look at me,” Dish said. He said it mildly, but he didn’t feel it mildly. Lorena’s indifference pained him more than anything he had ever experienced.

  “Did you catch the horsethieves?” he asked.

  “We did, but not before they murdered Wilbarger and four other people,” Augustus said.

  “Hang ’em?”

  “Yes, hung them all, including Jake Spoon.”

  “Well, I’ll swear,” Dish said, shocked. “I didn’t like the man but I never figured him for a killer.”

  “He wasn’t a killer,” Augustus said. “Jake liked a joke and didn’t like to work. I’ve got exactly the same failings. It’s lucky I ain’t been hung.”

  He pulled the saddle off his tired horse. The horse lay down and had a good roll, scratching its sweaty back.

  “Howdy do, miss,” Augustus said, opening the tent. “Give me a hug.”

  Lorena did. It made her blush that he just asked, like that.

  “If hugs are to be had for the asking, what about kisses?” Augustus asked.

  Lorena turned her face up—the feel of his whiskers made her want to cry, and she held him as tight as she could.

  “I wish we’d brought a bathtub on this trip,” Augustus said, grinning. “I’m so dirty it’s like kissing a groundhog.”

  Later, he went to the chuck wagon and brought back some supper. They ate outside the tent. In the distance the Irishman was singing. Gus told her about Jake, but Lorena felt little. Jake hadn’t come to find her. For days she had hoped he would, but when he didn’t, and her hope died, the memory of Jake died with it. When she listened to Gus talk about him it was as if he were talking about a man she hadn’t known. She had a stronger memory of Xavier Wanz. Sometimes she dreamed of Xavier, standing with his dishrag in the Dry Bean. She remembered how he had cried the morning she left, how he’d offered to take her to Galveston.

  But she didn’t remember Jake particularly. He had faded into all the other men who had come and gone. He had got a thorn in his hand, she remembered that, but she didn’t remember much else. She didn’t much care that he was dead—he wasn’t a good man, like Gus.

  What scared her was all the death. Now that she had found Gus, it was very frightening to her to think that he might die. She didn’t want to be without him. Yet that very night she dreamed that he had died and she couldn’t find the body. When she came out of the dream and heard him breathing, she clung so tightly to him that he woke up. It was very hot and her clinging made them sweaty.

  “What scared you?” Augustus asked.

  “I dreamed you died,” Lorena said. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  Augustus sat up. “Don’t fret,” he said. “I need to go water the grass, anyway.”

  He went out, made water, and stood in the moonlight awhile, cooling off. There was no breeze in the tent, so Lorena came out too.

  “It’s a good thing this grass don’t depend on me,” Augustus said. “There’s a lot more of it than I can get watered.”

  They were on a plain of grass so huge that it was hard to imagine there was a world beyond it. The herd, and themselves, were like a dot, surrounded by endless grass. Lorena had come to like the space—it was a relief after her years of being crowded in a little saloon.

  Gus was staring at the moon and scratching himself. “I keep thinking we’ll see the mountains,” he said. “I grew up in mountains, you know. Tennessee. I hear them Rockies are a lot higher than the Smokies. They say they have snow on top of them the year round, which you won’t find in Tennessee.”

  He sat down in the grass. “Let’s sit out,” he said. “We can nap in the morning. It will scandalize Call.”

  “Why does he go off at night?” Lorena asked.

  “He goes off to be by himself,” Augustus said. “Woodrow ain’t a sociable man.”

  Lorena remembered her other worry, the woman in Nebraska. “When will we get there, Gus?” she asked. “Nebraska, I mean.”

  “I ain’t sure,” he said. “Nebraska’s north of the Republican River, which we ain’t come to yet. It might take us three weeks yet.”

  Lorena felt a dread she couldn’t get rid of. She might lose him to the woman. The strange trembling started—it was beyond her control. Gus put his arms around her to make it stop.

  “Well, it’s natural to worry,” he said. “This is a chancy life. What’s the main thing that worries you?”

  “I’m feared you’ll die,” Lorena said.

  Augustus chuckled. “Dern right, I’ll die,” he said. “What else worries you?”

  “I’m feared you’ll marry that woman,” she said.

  “I doubt it,” Augustus said. “That woman had two or three chances to marry me already, and she didn’t take them. She’s an independent type, like you used to be.”

  That was so, Lorena reflected. She had been quite independent, but now all she could think of was keeping Gus. She wasn’t ashamed, though. He was worth keeping.

  “It’s funny humans take to the daylight so,” he said. “Lots of animals would rather work at night.”

  Lorena wanted him to want her. She knew he did want her, but he had done nothing. She didn’t care about it, but if she could be sure that he still wanted her, then the dread of losing him might go away.

  “Let’s go in,” she whispered, hoping he’d know what she meant. He immediately turned to her with a grin.

  “My, my,” he said. “Times do change. I remember when I had to cheat at cards to get a poke. We don’t have to go in that old hot tent. I’ll drag the bedding out here.”

  Lorena didn’t care that the cowboys might see, or who might see. Gus had become her only concern. The rest of the world could watch out. But Gus merely hugged her and gave her a kiss. Then he held her tight all night, an
d when the sun woke her, the herd was already gone.

  “Did anybody see us?” she asked.

  “If they did they’re lucky,” Augustus said. “They won’t get too many chances to see such beauties as us.”

  He laughed and got up to make the coffee.

  79.

  NEWT COULDN’T GET JAKE out of his mind—how he had smiled at the end and given him his horse. He rode the horse every third day and liked his gait so much that he soon became his favorite horse. Jake hadn’t told him what the horse’s name was, which worried Newt. A horse needed a name.

  Jake’s hanging had happened so quickly that it was hard to remember—it was like a terrible dream, of the kind you can only remember parts of. He remembered the shock it had been to see Jake with his hands tied, sitting on his horse with a noose around his neck. He remembered how tired Jake looked, too tired even to care that he was going to be hung. Also, nobody talked much. There should have been some discussion, it seemed to Newt. Jake might have had a good excuse for being there, but nobody even asked him for it.

  Not only had no one talked at the hanging, no one had talked since, either. Captain Call kept well to himself, riding far from the herd all day and sleeping apart at night. Mr. Gus stayed back with Lorena, only showing up at mealtimes. Deets was very quiet when he was around, and he wasn’t around much—he spent his days scouting far ahead of the herd, which was traveling easily. The Texas bull had assumed the lead position, passing Old Dog almost every day and only giving up the lead to go snort around the tails of whatever cows interested him. He had lost none of his belligerence. Dish, who rode the point, had come to hate him even more than Needle Nelson did.

  “I don’t know why we don’t cut him,” Dish said. “It’s only a matter of time before he kills one of us.”

  “If he kills me he’ll die with me,” Needle said grimly.

  Of course, all the hands were curious about Jake. They asked endless questions. The fact that the farmers had been burned puzzled them. “Do you think they was trying to make people think Indians did it?” Jasper asked.

  “No, Dan Suggs just did it because he felt like it,” Pea Eye said. “What’s more, he hung ’em after they were already dead. Shot ’em, hung ’em and then burned ’em.”

  “He must have been a hard case, that Dan,” Jasper said. “I seen him once. He had them little squint eyes.”

  “I’m glad he never squinted them at me, if that’s the way he behaves to white men,” Needle said. “What was Jake doing with an outfit like that?”

  “If you ask my opinion, that whore that Gus has got was Jake’s downfall,” Bert Borum volunteered.

  “You can keep your damn opinion to yourself, if that’s what you think,” Dish said. He was as touchy as ever where Lorena was concerned.

  “Just because you’re in love with a whore don’t mean I can’t express my opinion,” Bert countered.

  “You can express it and I can knock your dern teeth down your throat for you,” Dish said. “Lorie didn’t make Jake Spoon into no criminal.”

  Bert had always considered that Dish had been awarded the top-hand position unfairly, and he was not about to put up with such insolence from him. He took his gun belt off, and Dish did the same. They squared off, but didn’t immediately proceed to fisticuffs. Each walked cautiously around the other, watching for an opening—their cautiousness provoked much jocularity in the onlookers.

  “Look at them priss around,” Needle Nelson said. “I used to have a rooster I’d match against either one of them.”

  “It’ll be winter before they hit the first lick at this rate,” Jasper said.

  Dish finally leaped at Bert, but instead of boxing, the two men grappled and were soon rolling on the ground, neither gaining much of an advantage. Call had seen the men square off, and he loped over. When he got there they were rolling on the ground, both red in the face but doing one another no harm. He rode the Hell Bitch right up to them, and when they saw him they both stopped. He had it in his mind to dress them down, but the fact that the other hands were laughing at their ineffectual combat was probably all that was needed. Anyway, the men were natural rivals in ability and could be expected to puff up at some point. He turned and rode back out of camp without saying a word to them.

  When he saw him go, Newt’s heart sank. The Captain said less and less to him, or to anyone. Newt felt more and more of a need for somebody to talk about Jake. He had been the Captain’s friend, and Mr. Gus’s. It didn’t seem right that he could be killed and buried, and no more said.

  It was Deets, finally, who understood and helped. Deets was good at mending things, and one night as he was mending Newt’s bridle Newt said what was on his mind. “I wish we could at least have taken him to jail,” Newt said.

  “They’d hang him too,” Deets said. “I ’spect he’d rather us did it.”

  “I wish we hadn’t even come,” Newt said. “It’s just too many people dying. I didn’t think we’d ever kill Jake. It wasn’t like an accident.

  “If he didn’t kill anybody, then it wasn’t fair,” he added.

  “Well, there was the horses, too,” Deets said.

  “He only liked pacers,” Newt said. “He wouldn’t be bothered to steal horses as long as he had one to ride. Just being along didn’t make him a horsethief.”

  “It do to the Captain,” Deets said. “It do to Mr. Gus.”

  “They didn’t even talk to him,” Newt said bitterly. “They just hung him. They didn’t even act like they were sorry.”

  “They sorry,” Deets said. “Saying won’t change it. He’s gone, don’t worry about him. He’s gone to the peaceful place.”

  He put his hand for a moment on Newt’s shoulder. “You need to rest your mind,” he said. “Don’t worry about the sleepers.”

  How do you stop? Newt wondered. It wasn’t a thing he could forget. Pea Eye mentioned it as he would mention the weather, something natural that just happened and was over. Only for Newt it wasn’t over. Every day it would rise in his mind and stay there until something distracted him.

  Newt didn’t know it, but Call, too, lived almost constantly with the thought of Jake Spoon. He felt half sick from thinking about it. He couldn’t concentrate on the work at hand, and often if spoken to he wouldn’t respond. He wanted somehow to move time backwards to a point where Jake could have been saved. Many times, in his thoughts, he managed to save Jake, usually by having made him stay with the herd. As the herd approached the Republican, Call’s thoughts were back on the Brazos, where Jake had been allowed to go astray.

  At night, alone, he grew bitter at himself for indulging in such pointless thoughts. It was like the business with Maggie that Gus harped on so. His mind tried to change it, have it different, but those too were pointless thoughts. Things thought and things said didn’t make much difference and with Gus spending all his time with the woman there was very little said anyway. Sometimes Gus would come over and ride with him for a few miles, but they didn’t discuss Jake Spoon. As such things went, it had been simple. He could remember hangings that had been harder: once they had to hang a boy for something his father had made him do.

  When they sighted the Republican River, Gus was with him. From a distance it didn’t seem like much of a river. “That’s the one that got the Pumphrey boy, ain’t it?” Augustus said. “Hope it don’t get none of us, we’re a skinny outfit as it is.”

  “We wouldn’t be if you did any work,” Call said. “Are you going to leave her in Ogallala or what?”

  “Are you talking about Lorie or this mare I’m riding?” Augustus asked. “If it’s Lorie, it wouldn’t kill you to use her name.”

  “I don’t see that it matters,” Call said, though even as he said it he remembered that it had seemed to matter to Maggie—she had wanted to hear him say her name.

  “You’ve got a name,” Augustus said. “Don’t it matter to you, whether people use it?”

  “Not much,” Call said.

  “No, I guess it w
ouldn’t,” Augustus said. “You’re so sure you’re right it doesn’t matter to you whether people talk to you at all. I’m glad I’ve been wrong enough to keep in practice.”

  “Why would you want to keep in practice being wrong?” Call asked. “I’d think it would be something you’d try to avoid.”

  “You can’t avoid it, you’ve got to learn to handle it,” Augustus said. “If you only come face-to-face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it’s bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day—that way they ain’t usually much worse than a dry shave.”

  “Anyway, I hope you leave her,” Call said. “We might get in the Indians before we get to Montana.”

  “I’ll have to see,” Augustus said. “We’ve grown attached. I won’t leave her unless I’m sure she’s in good hands.”

  “Are you aiming to marry?”

  “I could do worse,” Augustus said. “I’ve done worse twice, in fact. However, matrimony’s a big step and we ain’t discussed it.”

  “Of course, you ain’t seen the other one yet,” Call said.

  “That one’s got a name too—Clara,” Augustus pointed out. “You are determined not to use names for females. I’m surprised you even named your mare.”

  “Pea Eye named her,” Call said. It was true. Pea Eye had done it the first time she bit him.

  That afternoon they swam the Republican without losing an animal. At supper afterward, Jasper Fant’s spirits were high—he had built up an unreasoning fear of the Republican River and felt that once he crossed it he could count on living practically forever. He felt so good he even danced an impromptu jig.

  “You’ve missed your calling, Jasper,” Augustus said, highly amused by this display. “You ought to try dancing in whorehouses—you might pick up a favor or two that you otherwise couldn’t afford.”

  “Reckon the Captain will let us go to town once we get to Nebraska?” Needle asked. “It seems like a long time since there’s been a town.”

  “If he don’t, I think I’ll marry a heifer,” Bert said.