He thought often of the men he had left up on the Milk, and of the boy. He had not expected the parting to go as it had, and could not get his mind off it. For several hundred miles, down through Montana and Wyoming, he left them all over again in his mind, day after day. He imagined many times that he had said things he had not said, and, from concentrating on it too much as he traveled down the plains, he began to grow confused. He missed being able to sit at the corrals and watch Newt work with the horses. He wondered if the boy was handling the Hell Bitch well and if any more men had left the ranch.
Then, before he had scarcely reined in at Clara’s house, where he found Dish Boggett breaking horses with the young sheriff from Arkansas, the woman began a quarrel with him. She had acquired some small shrubs somehow and was out planting them, bareheaded and in overshoes, when he arrived.
“So you’re doing it, are you, Mr. Call?” Clara said, when she saw him. She had a look of scorn in her eyes, which puzzled him, since he was merely carrying out the request of the man who had loved her for so long. Of course Dish had told her that Gus wanted his body taken to Texas.
“Well, he asked, and I said I’d do it,” Call said, wondering why she disliked him so. He had just dismounted.
“Gus was crazy and you’re foolish to drag a corpse that far,” Clara said bluntly. “Bury him here and go back to your son and your men. They need you. Gus can rest with my boys.”
Call flinched when she said the word “son,” as if she had never had a doubt that Newt was his. He himself had once been a man of firm opinion, but now it seemed to him that he knew almost nothing, whereas the words Clara flung at him were hard as rocks.
“I told him that very thing,” Call said. “I told him you’d likely want him here.”
“I’ve always kept Gus where I wanted him, Mr. Call,” Clara said. “I kept him in my memory for sixteen years. Now we’re just talking of burying his body. Take him to the ridge and I’ll have July and Dish get a grave dug.”
“Well, it wasn’t what he asked of me,” Call said, avoiding her eyes. “It seems that picnic spot you had in Texas is where he wanted to lay.”
“Gus was a fine fool,” Clara said. “He was foolish for me or any other girl who would have him for a while. Because it was me he thought of, dying, is no reason to tote his bones all the way to Texas.”
“It was because you picnicked in the place,” Call said, confused by her anger. He would have thought a woman would feel complimented by such a request, but Clara clearly didn’t take it that way.
“Yes, I remember our picnics,” she said. “We mostly quarreled. He wanted what I wouldn’t give. I wanted what he didn’t have. That was a long time ago, before my boys died.”
Tears came to her eyes when she said it, as they always did when the thought of her boys struck her. She was aware that she was being anything but hospitable, and that the man didn’t understand what she said. She scarcely knew what she meant herself—she just knew that the sight of Woodrow Call aroused in her an unreasoning hate and disgust.
“He wrote you,” Call said, remembering why he had come. “There’s a letter for you and one for her. He left her his half of our cattle.” He untied his saddlebag and brought out the two notes, handing them to Clara.
“I would have sent them with Dish but he left in the winter and there was no knowing if he’d get through,” Call said.
“But you always get through, don’t you, Captain?” Clara said, with a look so hard that Call turned aside from it and stood by the horses, tired. He was ready to agree with her that Gus had been foolish to make such a request of him.
Then he turned and saw Clara walk over to Greasy, the mule. She stroked the mule along his neck and spoke to him softly before breaking into sobs. She hid her face against the mule, who stood as if planted, though normally he was a rather skittish animal. But he stood while Clara sobbed against his side. Then, taking the notes and not looking at Call, she hurried into the house.
From the lots, Dish and July were watching. Dish felt a little queasy, seeing Gus’s coffin. He had not gotten over his nervousness about the dead. It seemed to him quick burial was the best way to slow their ghosts.
July, of course, had heard all about Gus McCrae’s death, and his strange request, but had not quite believed it. Now it had turned out to be true. He remembered that Gus had ridden down with him on the Kiowa campfire and killed every single man, while he himself had not been able to pull a trigger. Now the same man, dead a whole winter, had turned up in Nebraska. It was something out of the ordinary, of that he felt sure.
“I knowed the Captain would do it,” Dish said. “I bet them boys up on the Milk are good and skeert, now he’s gone.”
“I hear it’s hard winters up there,” July said—not that they were easy in Nebraska.
The Captain, as if distracted, walked a little way toward the lots and then stopped. Dish walked out to greet him, followed by July, and was shocked by the change in the man. The Captain looked like an old man—he had little flesh on his face and his beard and mustache were sprinkled with gray.
“Why, Captain, it’s fine to see you,” Dish said. “How are them northern boys doing?”
Call shook Dish’s hand, then July’s. “We wintered without losing a man, or much stock either,” he said, very tired.
Then he saw that Dish was looking beyond him. He turned and saw that the blond woman had come out of the house. She walked to the buggy and stood by the coffin. Clara’s two daughters followed her out on the back porch, a toddling child between them. The girls didn’t follow Lorena to the buggy. They watched a minute and then guided the child back in the house.
Dish Boggett would have given anything to be able to go to Lorena, but he knew he couldn’t. Instead he led the Captain back down to the lots and tried to interest him in the horses. But the Captain’s mind was elsewhere.
When the plains darkened and they went in to supper, Lorena still stood by the wagon. The meal was eaten in silence, except for little Martin’s fretting. He was used to being the center of gay attention and couldn’t understand why no one laughed when he flung his spoon down, or why no one sang to him, or offered him sweets.
“Oughtn’t we to go get Lorie?” Dish asked at one point, anguished that she was left to stand alone in the darkness.
Clara didn’t answer. The girls had cooked the meal, and she directed the serving with only a glance now and then. Watching Woodrow Call awkwardly handling his fork caused her to repent a little of her harshness when he arrived, but she didn’t apologize. She had stopped expecting July to contribute to the conversation, but she resented his silence nevertheless. Once Martin spat out a bite of perfectly good food and Clara looked at him sharply and said “You behave,” in a tone that instantly put a stop to his fretting. Martin opened his mouth to cry but thought better of it and chewed miserably on his spoon until the meal was finished.
After supper the men went out of the house to smoke, all glad to escape the company of the silent woman. Even Betsey and Sally, accustomed to chattering through supper, competing for the men’s attention, were subdued by their mother’s silence, and merely attended to serving.
After supper Clara went to her bedroom. Gus’s letter lay on her bureau, unread. She lit her lamp and picked it up, scratching at the dried blood that stained one corner of the folded sheet. “I ought not to read this,” she said, aloud. “I don’t like the notion of words from the dead.”
“What, Momma?” Betsey asked. She had come upstairs with Martin and had overheard.
“Nothing, Betsey,” Clara said. “Just a crazy woman talking to herself.”
“Martin acts like he’s got a stomachache,” Betsey complained. “You didn’t have to look so mean at him, Ma.”
Clara turned for a moment. “I won’t have him spitting out food,” she said. “The reason men are awful is because some woman has spoiled them. Martin’s going to learn manners if he learns nothing else.”
“I don’t think men
are awful,” Betsey said. “Dish ain’t.”
“Let me be, Betsey,” Clara said. “Put Martin to bed.”
She opened the letter—just a few words in a scrawling hand:
DEAR CLARA—
I would be obliged if you’d look after Lorie. I fear she’ll take this hard.
I’m down to one leg now and this life is fading fast, so I can’t say more. Good luck to you and your gals, I hope you do well with the horses.
GUS
Clara went out on her porch and sat, twisting her hands, for an hour. She could see that the men were below, still smoking, but they were silent. It’s too much death, she thought. Why does it keep coming to me?
The dark heavens gave no answer, and after a while she got up and went downstairs and out to Lorena, who still stood by the buggy, where she had been from the time Call arrived.
“Do you want me to read you this letter?” she said, knowing the girl couldn’t read. “It’s bad handwriting.”
Lorena held the letter tightly in her hand. “No, I’ll just keep it,” she said. “He put my name on it. I can read that. I’ll just keep it.”
She didn’t want Clara to see the letter. It was hers from Gus. What the words were didn’t matter.
Clara stood with her for a bit and went back in.
The moon rose late, and when it did the men walked to the little shack by the lots where they slept. The old Mexican was coughing. Later Lorena heard the Captain get his bedroll and walk away with it. She was glad when the lights went out in the house and the men were all gone. It made it easier to believe Gus knew she was there.
They’ll all forget you—they got their doings, she thought. But I won’t, Gus. Whenever it comes morning or night, I’ll think of you. You come and got me away from him. She can forget and they can forget, but I won’t, never, Gus.
The next morning Lorena still stood by the buggy. The men scarcely knew what to think about it. Call was perplexed. Clara made breakfast as silently as she had presided over supper. They could all look out the window and see the blond girl standing like a statue by the buggy, the letter from Augustus clutched in her hand.
“For that girl’s sake I wish you’d forget your promise, Mister Call,” Clara said finally.
“I can’t forget no promise to a friend,” Call said. “Though I do agree it’s foolish and told him so myself.”
“People lose their minds over things like this,” Clara said. “Gus was all to that girl. Who’ll help me, if she loses hers?”
Dish wanted to say that he would, but couldn’t get the words out. The sight of Lorie, standing in grief, made him so unhappy that he wished he’d never set foot in the town of Lonesome Dove. Yet he loved her, though he could not approach her.
Clara saw that it was hopeless to hammer at Call. He would go unless she shot him. His face was set, and only the fact that the girl stood by the buggy had kept him from leaving already. It angered her that Gus had been so perverse as to extract such a promise. There was no proportion in it—being drug three thousand miles to be buried at a picnic site. Probably he had been delirious and would have withdrawn the request at once if he had been allowed a lucid moment. What angered her most was Gus’s selfishness in regard to Call’s son. He had been a sweet boy with lonesome eyes, polite. He was the kind of boy she would have given anything to raise, and here, for a romantic whim, Gus had seen to it that father and son were separated.
It seemed so wrong to her, and raised such anger in her, that for a moment she was almost tempted to shoot Call, just to thwart Gus. Not kill, but shoot him enough to keep him down until Gus could be buried and the folly checked.
Then, between one minute and the next, Lorena crumpled to the ground, unconscious. Clara knew it was only a faint, but the men had to carry her in and upstairs. Clara shooed them out as soon as she could, and put Betsey to watching her. By that time Captain Call had mounted and hitched the brown mule to the buggy and mounted his horse. He was ready to go.
Clara walked out to try once more. Dish and July were shaking hands with Call, but they beat an immediate retreat when they saw her coming.
“I put it to you once more, in the plainest terms, Mr. Call,” Clara said. “A live son is more important than a dead friend. Can you understand that?”
“A promise is a promise,” Call said.
“A promise is words—a son is a life,” Clara said. “A life, Mr. Call. I was better fit to raise boys than you’ve ever been, and yet I lost three. I tell you no promise is worth leaving that boy up there, as you have. Does he know he’s your son?”
“I suppose he does—I give him my horse,” Call said, feeling that it was hell to have her, of all women, talk to him about the matter.
“Your horse but not your name?” Clara said. “You haven’t even given him your name?”
“I put more value on the horse,” Call said, turning the dun. He rode off, but Clara, terrible in her anger, strode beside him.
“I’ll write him,” she said. “I’ll see he gets your name if I have to carry the letter to Montana myself. And I’ll tell you another thing: I’m sorry you and Gus McCrae ever met. All you two done was ruin one another, not to mention those close to you. Another reason I didn’t marry him was because I didn’t want to fight you for him every day of my life. You men and your promises: they’re just excuses to do what you plan to do anyway, which is leave. You think you’ve always done right—that’s your ugly pride, Mr. Call. But you never did right and it would be a sad woman that needed anything from you. You’re a vain coward, for all your fighting. I despised you then, for what you were, and I despise you now, for what you’re doing.”
Clara could not check her bitterness—even now, she knew, the man thought he was doing the right thing. She strode beside the horse, pouring out her contempt, until Call put the mule and the dun into a trot, the buggy, with the coffin on it, squeaking as it bounced over the rough plain.
102.
So Captain Call turned back down the rivers, cut by the quirt of Clara’s contempt and seared with the burn of his own regret. For a week, down from the Platte and across the Republican, he could not forget what she said: that he had never done right, that he and Gus had ruined one another, that he was a coward, that she would take a letter to the boy. He had gone through life feeling that he had known what should be done, and now a woman flung it at him that he hadn’t. He found that he could not easily forget a word Clara said. He could only trail the buggy down the lonely plains, her words stinging in his heart and head.
Before he reached Kansas, word had filtered ahead of him that a man was carrying a body home to Texas. The plain was filled with herds, for it was full summer. Cowboys spread the word, soldiers spread it. Several times he met trappers, coming east from the Rockies, or buffalo hunters who were finding no buffalo. The Indians heard—Pawnee and Arapahoe and Ogallala Sioux. Sometimes he would ride past parties of braves, their horses fat on spring grass, come to watch his journey. Some were curious enough to approach him, even to question him. Why did he not bury the compañero? Was he a holy man whose spirit must have a special place?
No, Call answered. Not a holy man. Beyond that he couldn’t explain. He had come to feel that Augustus had probably been out of his mind at the end, though he hadn’t looked it, and that he had been out of his mind to make the promise he had.
In one week in Kansas he ran into eight cattle herds—he would no sooner pass one than he encountered another. The only advantage to him was that the trail bosses were generous with wire and pliers. The Miles City buggy had been patched so many times that it was mostly wire by then, Call felt. He knew it would never make Texas, but he determined to keep going as long as he could—what he would do when it finally fell apart he didn’t know.
Finally he was asked about Augustus and the purpose of his journey so many times that he couldn’t tolerate it. He turned west into Colorado, meaning to skirt the main cattle trails. He was tired of meeting people. His only moments of peace came la
te in the day when he was too tired to think and was just bouncing along with Gus.
He rode through Denver, remembering that he had never sent Wilbarger’s brother the telegram he had promised, notifying him of Wilbarger’s death. It had been a year and he felt he owed Wilbarger that consideration, though he soon regretted coming into the town, a noisy place filled with miners and cattlemen. The sight of the buggy with the coffin excited such general curiosity that by the time he was out of the telegraph office a crowd had gathered. Call had scarcely walked out the door when an undertaker in a black hat and a blue bow tie approached him.
“Mister, you ain’t nowhere near the graveyard,” the man said. He had even waxed his mustache and was altogether too shiny for Call’s taste.
“I wasn’t looking for it,” Call said, mounting. People were touching the coffin as if they had the right.
“We give a nice ten-dollar funeral,” the undertaker said. “You could just leave the fellow with me and come pick out the gravestone at your leisure. Of course the gravestone’s extra.”
“Not in the market,” Call said.
“Who is it, mister?” a boy asked.
“His name was McCrae,” Call said.
He was glad to put the town behind him, and thereafter took to driving at night to avoid people, though it was harder on the buggy, for he couldn’t always see the bumps.
One night he felt the country was too rough for evening travel so he camped by the Purgatoire River, or Picketwire, as the cowboys called it. He heard the sound of an approaching horse and wearily picked up his rifle. It was only one horse. Dusk had not quite settled into night, and he could see the rider coming—a big man. The horse turned out to be a red mule and the big man Charles Goodnight. Call had known the famous cattleman since the Fifties, and they had ridden together a few times in the Frontier Regiment, before he and Gus were sent to the border. Call had never taken to the man—Goodnight was indifferent to authority, or at least unlikely to put any above his own—but he could not deny that the man had uncommon ability. Goodnight rode up to the campfire but did not dismount.
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