Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

by Lonesome Dove

  Then Augustus saw the boy walking up from the lots, so tired he was barely moving. Pea Eye was half drunk by the time Newt finally made the wagons.

  "'I god, Newt, I'm glad you got here before fall," Augustus said. "We'd have missed you during the summer." "I been throwin' rocks at the mare," Newt said, with a grin. "Did you see what a hunk she bit out of the Captain?" Newt lifted one foot and carefully scraped the mud from the well off the sole of his boot, while Pea Eye continued to wash the dust out of his throat.

  Augustus had always admired the way Newt could stand on one leg while cleaning the other boot.

  "Look at that, Pea," he said. "I bet you can't do that." Pea Eye was so used to seeing Newt stand on one leg to clean his boot that he couldn't figure out what it was Gus thought he couldn't do. A few big swigs of liquor sometimes slowed his thinking down to a crawl. This usually happened at sundown, after a hard day of well-digging or horseshoeing; at such times Pea was doubly glad he worked with the Captain, rather than Gus. The less talk the Captain had to listen to, the better humor he was in, whereas Gus was just the opposite. He'd rattle off five or six different questions and opinions, running them all together like so many unbranded cattle--it made it hard to pick out one and think about it carefully and slowly, the only ways Pea Eye liked to think. At such times his only recourse was to pretend the questions had hit him in his deaf ear, the left one, which hadn't really worked well since the day of their big fight with the Keechis--what they called the Stone House fight. It had been pure confusion, since the Indians had been smart enough to fire the prairie grass, smoking things up so badly that no one could see six feet ahead. They kept bumping into Indians in the smoke and having to shoot point-blank; a Ranger right next to Pea had spotted one and fired too close to Pea's ear.

  That was the day the Indians got away with their horses, which made Captain Call about as mad as Pea had ever seen him. It meant they had to walk down the Brazos for nearly two hundred miles, worrying constantly about what would happen if the Comanches discovered they were afoot. Pea Eye hadn't noticed he was half deaf until they had walked most of the way out.

  Fortunately, while he was worrying the question of what it was he couldn't do, old Bolivar began to whack the dinner bell, which put an end to discussion. The old dinner bell had lost its clapper, but Bolivar had found a crowbar that somebody had managed to break, and he laid into the bell so hard that you couldn't have heard the clapper if there had been one.

  The sun had finally set, and it was so still along the river that they could hear the horses swishing their tails, down in the lots--or they could until Bolivar laid into the bell. Although he probably knew they were standing around the wagons, in easy hearing distance, Bolivar continued to pound the bell for a good five minutes. Bolivar pounded the bell for reasons of his own; even Call couldn't control him in that regard. The sound drowned out the quiet of sunset, which annoyed Augustus so much that at times he was tempted to go up and shoot the old man, just to teach him a lesson.

  "I figure he's calling bandits," Augustus said, when the ringing finally stopped. They started for the house, and the pigs fell in with them, the shoat eating a lizard he had caught somewhere. The pigs liked Newt even better than Augustus --when he didn't have anything better to do he would feed them scraps of rawhide and scratch their ears.

  "If them bandits were to come, maybe the Captain would let me start wearing a gun," Newt said wi/lly. It seemed he would never get old enough to wear a gun, though he was well into his teens.

  "If you was to wear a gun somebody would just mistake you for a gunfighter and shoot you," Augustus said, noting the boy's wi/l look.

  "It ain't worth it. If Bol ever calls up any bandits I'll lend you my Henry." "That old man can barely cook," Pea Eye remarked. "Where would he get any bandits?" "Why, you remember that greasy bunch he had," Augustus said. "We used to buy horses from 'em. That's the only reason Call hired him to cook. In the business we're in, it don't hurt to know a few horse thieves, as long as they're Mexicans. I figure Bol's just biding his time. As soon as he gains our trust his bunch will sneak up some night and murder us all." He didn't believe anything of the kind--he just liked to stimulate the boy once in a while, and Pea too, though Pea was an exceptionally hard man to stimulate, being insensitive to most fears.

  Pea had just sense enough to fear Comanches--that didn't require an abundance of sense.

  Mexican bandits did not impress him.

  Newt had more imagination. He turned and looked across the river, where a big darkness was about to settle. Every now and then, about sundown, the Captain and Augustus and Pea and Deets would strap on guns and ride off into that darkness, into Mexico, to return about sunup with thirty or forty horses or perhaps a hundred skinny cattle. It was the way the stock business seemed to work along the border, the Mexican ranchers raiding north while the Texans raided south.

  Some of the skinny cattle spent their lives being chased back and forth across the Rio Grande.

  Newt's fondest hope was to get old enough to be taken along on the raids. Many a night he lay in his hot little bunk, listening to old Bolivar snore and mumble below him, peering out the window toward Mexico, imagining the wild doings that must be going on. Once in a while he even heard gunfire, though seldom more than a shot or two, from up or down the river--it got his imagination to working all the harder.

  "You can go when you're grown," the Captain said, and that was all he said. There was no arguing with it, either --not if you were just hired help. Arguing with the Captain was a privilege reserved for Mr.

  Gus.

  They no sooner got in the house than Mr.

  Gus began to exercise the privilege. The Captain had his shirt off, letting Bolivar treat his mare bite. She had got him just above the belt. Enough blood had run down into his pants that one pants leg was caked with it. Bol was about to pack the bite with his usual dope, a mixture of axle grease and turpentine, but Mr. Gus made him wait until he could get a look at the wound himself.

  "'I god, Woodrow," Augustus said. "As long as you've worked around horses it looks like you'd know better than to turn your back on a Kiowa mare." Call was thinking of something and didn't answer for a minute. What he was thinking was that the moon was in the quarter--what they called the rustler's moon. Let it get full over the pale flats and some Mexicans could see well enough to draw a fair bead. Men he'd ridden withfor years were dead and buried, or at least dead, because they'd crossed the river under a full moon. No moon at all was nearly as bad: then it was too hard to find the stock, and too hard to move it. The quarter moon was the right moon for a swing below the border. The brush country to the north was already thick with cattlemen, making up their spring herds and getting trail crews together; it wouldn't be a week before they began to drift into Lonesome Dove. It was time to go gather cattle.

  "Who said she was Kiowa?" he said, looking at Augustus.

  "I've reasoned it out," Augustus said. "You could have done the same if you ever stopped working long enough to think." "I can work and think too," Call said.

  "You're the only man I know whose brain don't work unless it's in the shade." Augustus ignored the remark. "I figure it was a Kiowa on his way to steal a woman that lost that mare," he said. "Your Comanche don't hunger much after se@noritas. White women are easier to steal, and don't eat as much besides. The Kiowa are different. They fancy se@noritas." "Can we eat or do we have to wait till the argument's over?" Pea Eye asked.

  "We starve if we wait for that," Bolivar said, plunking a potful of sowbelly and beans down on the rough table. Augustus, to the surprise of no one, was the first to fill his plate.

  "I don't know where you keep finding these Mexican strawberries," he said, referring to the beans. Bolivar managed to find them three hundred and sixty-five days a year, mixing them with so many red chilies that a spoonful of beans was more or less as hot as a spoonful of red ants. Newt had come to think that only two things were certain if you worked for the Hat Creek Cattle Comp
any. One was that Captain Call would think of more things to do than he and Pea Eye and Deets could get done, and the other was that beans would be available at all meals. The only man in the outfit who didn't fart frequently was old Bolivar himself--he never touched beans and lived mainly on sourdough biscuits and chickory coffee, or rather cups of brown sugar with little puddles of coffee floating on top. Sugar cost money, too, and it irked the Captain to spend it, but Bolivar could not be made to break a habit. Augustus claimed the old man's droppings were so sugary that the blue shoat had taken to stalking him every time he went to shit, which might have been true. Newt had all he could do to keep clear of the shoat, and his own droppings were mostly bean.

  By the time Call got his shirt on and came to the table, Augustus was reaching for a second helping.

  Pea and Newt were casting nervous glances at the pot, hoping for seconds themselves but too polite to grab before everyone had been served. Augustus's appetite was a kind of natural calamity.

  Call had watched it with amazement for thirty years and yet it still surprised him to see how much Augustus ate. He didn't work unless he had to, and yet he could sit down night after night and out-eat three men who had put in a day's labor.

  In their rangering days, when things were a little slow the boys would sit around and swap stories about Augustus's eating. Not only did he eat a lot, he ate it fast. The cook that wanted to hold him at the grub for more than ten minutes had better have a side of beef handy.

  Call pulled out a chair and sat down. As Augustus was ladling himself a big scoop of beans, Call stuck his plate under the ladle.

  Newt thought it such a slick move that he laughed out loud.

  "Many thanks," Call said. "If you ever get tired of loafing I guess you could get a job waiting tables." "Why, I had a job waiting tables once," Augustus said, pretending he had meant to serve Call the beans. "On a riverboat. I wasn't no older than Newt when I had that job. The cook even wore a white hat." "What for?" Pea Eye asked.

  "Because it's what real cooks are supposed to wear," Augustus said, looking at Bolivar, who was stirring a little coffee into his brown sugar.

  "Not so much a hat as a kind of big white cap --it looked like it could have been made out of a bedsheet." "I'd be damned if I'd wear one," Call said.

  "Nobody would be loony enough to hire you to cook, Woodrow," Augustus said. "The cap is supposed to keep the cook's old greasy hairs from falling into the food. I wouldn't be surprised if some of Bol's hairs have found their way into this sow bosom." Newt looked at Bolivar, sitting over by the stove in his dirty serape. Bolivar's hair looked like it had had a can of secondhand lard poured over it. Once every few months Bol would change clothes and go visit his wife, but his efforts at improving his appearance never went much higher than his mustache, which he occasionally tried to wax with grease of some kind.

  "How come you to quit the riverboat?" Pea Eye asked.

  "I was too young and pretty," Augustus said.

  "The whores wouldn't let me alone." Call was sorry it had come up. He didn't like talk about whores--not anytime, but particularly not in front of the boy. Augustus had little shame, if any. It had long been a sore spot between them.

  "I wish they'd drownt you then," Call said, annoyed. Conversation at the table seldom led to any good.

  Newt kept his eyes on his plate, as he usually did when the Captain grew annoyed.

  "Drown me?" Augustus said. "Why, if anybody had tried it, those girls would have clawed them to shreds." He knew Call was mad, but wasn't much inclined to humor him. It was his dinner table as much as Call's, and if Call didn't like the conversation he could go to bed.

  Call knew there was no point in arguing. That was what Augustus wanted: argument. He didn't really care what the question was, and it made no great difference to him which side he was on. He just plain loved to argue, whereas Call hated to.

  Long experience had taught him that there was no winning arguments with Augustus, even in cases where there was a simple right and wrong at issue. Even in the old days, when they were in the thick of it, with Indians and hardcases to worry about, Augustus would seize any chance for a dispute. Practically the closest call they ever had, when the two of them and six Rangers got surprised by the Comanches up the Prairie Dog Fork of the Red and were all digging holes in the bank that could have turned out to be their graves if they hadn't been lucky and got a cloudy night and sneaked away, Augustus had kept up a running argument with a Ranger they called Ugly Bobby. The argument was entirely about coon dogs, and Augustus had kept it up all night, though most of the Rangers were so scared they couldn't pass water.

  Of course the boy lapped up Augustus's stories about riverboats and whores. The boy hadn't been anywhere, so it was all romance to him.

  "Listening to you brag about women don't improve the taste of my food," he said, finally.

  "Call, if you want better food you have to start by shooting Bolivar," Augustus said, reminded of his own grievance against the cook.

  "Bol, I want you to quit whackin' that bell with that crowbar," he said. "You can do it at noon if you want to but let off doin' it at night. A man with any sense can tell when it's sundown.

  You've spoilt many a pretty evening for me, whackin' that bell." Bolivar stirred his sugary coffee and held his peace. He whacked the dinner bell because he liked the sound, not because he wanted anybody to come and eat. The men could eat when they liked--he would whack the bell when he liked. He enjoyed being a cook--it was a good deal more relaxing than being a bandit--but that didn't mean that he intended to take orders. His sense of independence was undiminished.

  "Gen-eral Lee freed the slaves," he remarked in a surly tone.

  Newt laughed. Bol never had been able to get the war straight, but he had been genuinely sorry when it ended. In fact, if it had kept going he would probably have stayed a bandit--it was a safe and profitable profession with most of the Texans gone. But the ones who came back from the war were mostly bandits themselves, and they had better guns.

  The profession immediately became overcrowded. Bolivar knew it was time to quit, but once in a while he got the urge for a little shooting.

  "It wasn't General Lee, it was Abe Lincoln who freed the slaves," Augustus pointed out.

  Bolivar shrugged. "No difference," he said.

  "A big difference," Call said. "One was a Yankee and one wasn't." Pea Eye got interested for a minute. The beans and sowbelly had revived him. He had been very interested in the notion of emancipation and had studied over it a lot while he went about his work.

  It was obviously just pure luck that he himself hadn't been born a slave, but if he had been unlucky Lincoln would have freed him. It gave him a certain admiration for the man.

  "He just freed Americans," he pointed out to Bolivar.

  Augustus snorted. "You're in over your head, Pea," he said. "Who Abe Lincoln freed was a bunch of Africans, no more American than Call here." Call pushed back his chair. He was not about to sit around arguing slavery after a long day, or after a short one either.

  "I'm as American as the next," he said, taking his hat and picking up a rifle.

  "You was born in Scotland," Augustus reminded him. "I know they brought you over when you was still draggin' on the tit, but that don't make you no less a Scot." Call didn't reply. Newt looked up and saw him standing at the door, his hat on and his Henry in the crook of his arm. A couple of big moths flew past his head, drawn to the light of the kerosene lamp on the table. With nothing more said, the Captain went out the door.

  Call walked the river for an hour, though he knew there was no real need. It was just an old habit he had, left over from wilder times: checking, looking for a sign of one kind or another, honing his instincts, as much as anything. In his years as a Ranger captain it had been his habit to get off by himself for a time, every night, out of camp and away from whatever talking and bickering were going on. He had discovered early on that his instincts needed privacy in which to operate.
/>   Sitting around a fire being sociable, yawning and yarning, might be fine in safe country, but it could cost you an edge in country that wasn't so safe.

  He liked to get off by himself, a mile or so from camp, and listen to the country, not the men.

  Of course, real scouting skills were superfluous in a place as tame as Lonesome Dove, but Call still liked to get out at night, sniff the breeze and let the country talk. The country talked quiet; one human voice could drown it out, particularly if it was a voice as loud as Augustus McCrae's. Augustus was notorious all over Texas for the strength of his voice. On a still night he could be heard at least a mile, even if he was more or less whispering. Call did his best to get out of range of Augustus's voice so that he could relax and pay attention to other sounds. If nothing else, he might get a clue as to what weather was coming--not that there was much mystery about the weather around Lonesome Dove. If a man looked straight up at the stars he was apt to get dizzy, the night was so clear. Clouds were scarcer than cash money, and cash money was scarce enough.

  There was really little in the way of a threat to be looked for, either. A coyote might sneak in and snatch a chicken, but that was about the worst that was likely to happen. The mere fact that he and Augustus were there had long since discouraged the local horse thieves.