Call had scarcely spoken since the death of Deets, but the beauty of the high prairies, the abundance of game, the coolness of the mornings finally raised his spirits. It was plain that Jake Spoon, who had been wrong about most things, had been right about Montana. It was a cattleman’s paradise, and they were the only cattlemen in it. The grassy plains seemed limitless, stretching north. It was strange that they had seen no Indians, though. Often he mentioned this to Augustus.
“Custer didn’t see them either,” Augustus pointed out. “Not till he was caught. Now that we’re here, do you plan to stop, or will we just keep going north till we get into the polar bears?”
“I plan to stop, but not yet,” Call said. “We ain’t crossed the Yellowstone. I like the thought of having the first ranch north of the Yellowstone.”
“But you ain’t a rancher,” Augustus said.
“I guess I am now.”
“No, you’re a fighter,” Augustus said. “We should have left these damn cows down in Texas. You used them as an excuse to come up here, when you ain’t interested in them and didn’t need an excuse anyway. I think we oughta just give them to the Indians when the Indians show up.”
“Give the Indians three thousand cattle?” Call said, amazed at the notions his friend had. “Why do that?”
“Because then we’d be shut of them,” Augustus said. “We could follow our noses, for a change, instead of following their asses. Ain’t you bored?”
“I don’t think like you do,” Call said. “They’re ours. We got ’em. I don’t plan on giving them to anybody.”
“I miss Texas and I miss whiskey,” Augustus said. “Now here we are in Montana and there’s no telling what will become of us.”
“Miles City’s up here somewhere,” Call said. “You can buy whiskey.”
“Yes, but I’ll have to drink it indoors,” Augustus complained. “It’s cool up here.”
As if to confirm his remark, the very next day an early storm blew out of the Bighorns. An icy wind came up and snow fell in the night. The men on night herd wrapped blankets around themselves to keep warm. A thin snow covered the plains in the morning, to the amazement of everyone. The Spettle boy was so astonished to wake and see it that he refused to come out of his blankets at first, afraid of what might happen. He lay wide-eyed, looking at the whiteness. Only when he saw the other hands tramping in it without ill effect did he get up.
Newt had been curious about snow all the way north, but he had lost his jacket somewhere in Kansas, and now that snow had actually fallen he felt too cold to enjoy it. All he wanted was to be warm again. He had taken his boots off when he lay down to sleep, and the snow had melted on his feet, getting his socks wet. His boots were a tight fit, and it was almost impossible to get them on over wet socks. He went over to the fire barefoot, hoping to dry his socks, but so many of the cowboys were huddled around the fire that he couldn’t get a place at first.
Pea Eye had scooped up a handful of snow and was eating it. The Rainey boys had made snowballs, but all the cowboys were stiff and cold and looked threatening, so the Raineys merely threw the snowballs at one another.
“This snow tastes like hail, except that it’s soft,” Pea Eye observed.
The sun came out just then and shone so brightly on the white plains that some of the men had to shield their eyes. Newt finally got a place by the fire, but by then the Captain was anxious to move on and he didn’t get to dry his socks. He tried to pull his boots on but had no luck until Po Campo noticed his difficulty and came over with a little flour, which he sprinkled in the boots.
“This will help,” he said, and he was right, though getting the boots on still wasn’t easy.
The sun soon melted the thin snow, and for the next week the days were hot again. Po Campo walked all day behind the wagon, followed by the pigs, who bored through the tall grass like moles—a sight that amused the cowboys, although Augustus worried that the pigs might stray off.
“We ought to let them ride in the wagon,” he suggested to Call.
“I don’t see why.”
“Well, they’ve made history,” Augustus pointed out.
“When?” Call asked. “I didn’t notice.”
“Why, they’re the first pigs to walk all the way from Texas to Montana,” Augustus said. “That’s quite a feat for a pig.”
“What will it get them?” Call inquired. “Eaten by a bear if they ain’t careful, or eaten by us if they are. They’ve had a long walk for nothing.”
“Yes, and the same’s likely true for us,” Augustus said, irritated that his friend wasn’t more appreciative of pigs.
With Deets dead, Augustus and Call alternated the scouting duties. One day Augustus asked Newt to ride along with him, much to Newt’s surprise. In the morning they saw a grizzly, but the bear was far upwind and didn’t scent them. It was a beautiful day—no clouds in the sky. Augustus rode with his big rifle propped across the saddle—he was in the highest of spirits. They rode ahead of the herd some fifteen miles or more, and yet when they stopped to look back they could still see the cattle, tiny black dots in the middle of the plain, with the southern horizon still far behind them.
“I never thought to see so far,” Newt said.
“Ain’t it something,” Augustus said with a grin. “This is rare country, this Montana. We’re a lucky bunch. There ain’t nothing better than this—though you don’t have to tell your pa I said it.”
Newt had decided it must be one of Mr. Gus’s many jokes, making out that the Captain was his pa.
“I like to keep Woodrow feeling that he’s caused a peck of trouble,” Augustus said. “I don’t want him to get sassy. But I wouldn’t have missed coming up here. I can’t think of nothing better than riding a fine horse into a new country. It’s exactly what I was meant for, and Woodrow too.”
“Do you think we’ll see Indians?” Newt asked.
“You bet,” Augustus said. “We might all get killed this afternoon, for all I know. That’s the wild for you—it’s got its dangers, which is part of the beauty. ’Course the Indians have had this land forever. To them it’s precious because it’s old. To us it’s exciting because it’s new.”
Newt noticed that Mr. Gus had a keen look in his eye. His white hair was long, almost to his shoulders. There seemed to be no one who could enjoy himself like Mr. Gus.
“Now there’s women, of course,” Augustus said. “I do cotton to them. But I ain’t found the one yet who could hold me back from a chance like this. Women are persistent creatures, and will try to nail you down. But if you just dance on off, you’ll usually find them close to the spot where you left them—most of ’em.”
“Do you really know who my pa is?” Newt asked. Mr. Gus was being so friendly, he felt he could ask.
“Oh, Woodrow Call is your pa, son,” Augustus said, as if it were a matter of casual knowledge.
For the first time Newt felt it might be true, although extremely puzzling. “Well, he never mentioned it,” he pointed out. Just being told such news didn’t settle much. In fact it just made new problems, for if the Captain was his father, then why hadn’t he mentioned it?
“It’s a subtle problem,” Augustus said.
Newt didn’t find that a helpful answer, mainly because he didn’t know what subtle meant. “Looks like he’d mention it,” he said softly. He didn’t want to criticize the Captain, especially not to Mr. Gus, the only man who did criticize the Captain.
“It wouldn’t be his way, to mention it,” Augustus said. “Woodrow don’t mention nothing he can keep from mentioning. You couldn’t call him a mentioner.”
Newt found it very puzzling. If the Captain was his father, then he must have known his mother, but he had never mentioned that either. He could remember times when he had daydreamed that the Captain was his father and would take him on long trips.
Now, in a way, the daydream had come true. The Captain had taken him on a long trip. But instead of feeling proud and happy, he felt let down and
confused. If it was true, why had everybody been such a long time mentioning it? Deets had never mentioned it. Pea Eye had never mentioned it. Worst of all, his mother had never mentioned it. He had been young when she died, but not too young to remember something so important. He could still remember some of the songs she had sung to him—he could have remembered who his father was. It didn’t make sense, and he rode beside Mr. Gus for several miles, puzzling about it silently.
“Did you ask me along just to tell me?” Newt asked finally.
“Yep,” Augustus admitted.
Newt knew he ought to thank him, but he didn’t feel in the mood to thank anybody. The information just seemed to make his whole life more puzzling. It spoiled every good thing he had felt, for most of his life—not only about his mother, but about the Captain, and about the Hat Creek outfit as a whole.
“I know it’s tardy news,” Augustus said. “Since Woodrow ain’t a mentioner, I thought I’d tell you. You never know what might happen.”
“I wish I’d known sooner,” Newt said—it was the one thing he was sure of.
“Yes, I expect you do,” Augustus said. “I ought to have discussed it sooner, but it was really Woodrow’s place to tell you and I kept hoping he’d do it, though I knew he wouldn’t.”
“Is it that he don’t like me?” Newt asked. He felt a longing to be back in Texas. The news, coming when it did, had spoiled Montana.
“No,” Augustus said. “What you have to understand is that Woodrow Call is a peculiar man. He likes to think that things are a certain way. He likes to think everybody does their duty, especially him. He likes to think people live for duty—I don’t know what started him thinking that way. He ain’t dumb. He knows perfectly well people don’t live for duty. But he won’t admit it about anybody if he can help it, and he especially won’t admit it about himself.”
Newt saw that Mr. Gus was laboring to explain it to him, but it was no good. So far as he could tell, the Captain did live for duty. What did that have to do with the Captain being his father?
“Woodrow don’t like to admit that he’s like the rest of us,” Augustus said, seeing the boy’s perplexity.
“He ain’t,” Newt said. That was obvious. The Captain never behaved like other people.
“He ain’t, that’s true,” Augustus said. “But he had a chance to be once. He turned his back on it, and now he ain’t about to admit that he made the wrong choice. He’d as soon kill himself. He’s got to keep trying to be the way he thinks he is, and he’s got to make out that he was always that way—it’s why he ain’t owned up to being your pa.”
Soon they turned and headed back toward the herd.
“It’s funny,” Augustus said. “I knew my pa. He was a gentleman. He didn’t do much but raise horses and hounds and drink whiskey. He never hit me a lick in my life, nor even raised his voice to me. He drank whiskey every night and disappointed my mother, but both my sisters doted on him like he was the only man. In fact one of them’s an old maid to this day because she doted on Dad.
“But he never interested me, Dad,” he went on. “I lit out from that place when I was thirteen years old, and I ain’t stopped yet. I didn’t care one way or the other for Dad. I just seen that horses and hounds would get boring if you tried to make ’em a life. I ’spect I’d have wrecked every marriage in the county if I’d stayed in Tennessee. Or else have got killed in a duel.”
Newt knew Mr. Gus was trying to be kind, but he wasn’t listening. Much of his life he had wondered who his father was and where he might be. He felt it would be a relief to know. But now he knew, and it wasn’t a relief. There was something in it that thrilled him—he was Captain Call’s son—but more that felt sad. He was glad when Mr. Gus put the horses in a lope—he didn’t have to think as much. They loped along over the grassy plains toward the cattle in the far distance. The cattle looked tiny as ants.
94.
THE MEN BEGAN TO TALK of the Yellowstone River as if it were the place where the world ended—or, at least, the place where the drive would end. In their thinking it had taken on a magical quality, partly because no one really knew anything about it. Jasper Fant had somehow picked up the rumor that the Yellowstone was the size of the Mississippi, and as deep. All the way north everyone had been trying to convince Jasper that it didn’t really make any difference how deep a river was, once it got deep enough to swim a horse, but Jasper felt the argument violated common sense. The deeper the river, the more dangerous—that was axiomatic to him. He had heard about something called undercurrents, which could suck you down. The deeper the river, the farther down you could be sucked, and Jasper had a profound fear of being sucked down. Particularly he didn’t want to be sucked down in the Yellowstone, and had made himself a pair of rude floats from some empty lard buckets, just in case the Yellowstone really did turn out to be as deep as the Mississippi.
“I didn’t come all this way just to drown in the last dern river,” Jasper said.
“It ain’t the last,” Augustus said. “Montana don’t stop at the Yellowstone. The Missouri’s up there somewhere, and it’s a whale of a river.”
“Well, I don’t aim to cross it,” Jasper said. It seemed to him he had spent half the trip imagining how it would be to be sucked down into a deep river, and he wanted it understood that he was only willing to take so many chances.
“I guess you’ll cross it if the Captain wants to keep going,” Dish said. Jasper’s river fears grated on everybody’s nerves. Nobody liked crossing rivers, but it didn’t help to talk about the dangers constantly for three thousand miles.
“Well, Jake talked of a Milk River, and one called the Marais,” Augustus said.
“Looks like you’d be satisfied,” Jasper said. “Ain’t we traveled enough? I’d like to step into a saloon in good old Fort Worth, myself. I’d like to see my home again while my folks are still alive.”
“Why, that ain’t the plan,” Augustus said. “We’re up here to start a ranch. Home and hearth don’t interest us. We hired you men for life. You ought to have said goodbye to the old folks before you left.”
“What are we going to do, now that we’re here?” Lippy asked. The question was on everyone’s minds. Usually when a cattle drive ended, the men just turned around and went back to Texas, but then most drives stopped in Kansas, which seemed close to home compared to where they were now. Many of them harbored secret doubts about their ability to navigate a successful return to Texas. Of course, they knew the direction, but they would have to make the trip in winter, and the Indians that hadn’t been troublesome on the way north might want to fight as they went south.
“I like a town,” Lippy added. “It don’t have to be St. Louis, just a town. As long as it has a saloon or two I can get by. But I wasn’t meant to live out in the open during the winter.”
Call knew the men were wondering, but he wasn’t ready to stop. Jake had said some of the most beautiful land was far to the north, near Canada. It would be a pity to stop and make a choice before they had looked around thoroughly.
He contemplated leaving the men and going on a long look around himself, north of Yellowstone, but decided against it, mainly because of Indians. Things looked peaceful, but that didn’t mean they would stay peaceful. There could easily be a bad fight, and he didn’t want to be gone if one came.
Finally he decided to send Augustus. “I hate to give you the first look, but somebody’s got to look,” he said. “Would you want to go?”
“Oh, sure,” Augustus said. “I’d be happy to get away from all this tedious conversation. Maybe I’ll trot through this Miles City community and see if anyone stocks champagne.”
“Take the look around first, if you can be bothered,” Call said. “I doubt the main street of Miles City would make a good ranch, and I doubt you’ll get any farther, once you spot a saloon. We need to find a place and get some shelters built before winter hits. Take a man with you, in case you get into trouble,” Call suggested.
“I can
get myself out of trouble,” Augustus said. “But if I have to lead some quaking spirit like Jasper Fant it’ll slow me down. None of these cowpokes is exactly wilderness hands. We buried the last reliable man down on the Powder, remember?”
“I remember,” Call said.
“You don’t want to make too many mistakes in this part of the country,” Augustus said. “You’ll end up bearshit.”
“Take Pea,” Call said. “Pea can follow orders.”
“Yes, that’s what he can do,” Augustus said. “I guess I’ll take him, though he won’t provide much conversation.”
Pea Eye was not enthusiastic about going on a scout with Gus, but since the Captain told him to, he tied his bedroll on his saddle and got ready. Other than securing his bedroll, his preparations consisted mainly of sharpening his knife. One thing Pea Eye firmly believed was that it was foolish to start on a trip without a sharp knife. Inevitably on a trip there were things that needed cutting or skinning or trimming. Once his knife was sharp, Pea Eye was ready, more or less. He knew he wouldn’t get much relaxation on the trip because he was traveling with Gus, and Gus talked all the time. It was hard to relax when he had to be constantly listening. Besides, Gus was always asking questions which were hard to understand, much less answer.
It was a breezy morning when they started out—a dark cloud bank had formed in the northwest, and the men were talking of snow.
“I said way back in Lonesome Dove we’d be crossing the dern Yellowstone on the ice if we didn’t get started,” Jasper reminded them. “Now all this time has passed, and I may be right.”
“Even if you was right, you’d be wrong, Jasper,” Augustus said, as he stuffed an extra box or two of ammunition into his saddlebags.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 219