Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

by Lonesome Dove

  It perked Newt up that Dish didn't treat him like a kid. Someday, if he was lucky, maybe he and Dish would be cowboys together. Newt could imagine nothing better.

  Augustus had fried the eggs hard as marbles to compensate for the coffee grains, and when they looked done to him he poured the grease into the big three-gallon syrup can they used for a grease bucket.

  "It's poor table manners to piss in hearing of those at the table," he said, directing his remarks to the gentlemen on the porch. "You two are grown men. What would your mothers think?" Dish looked a little sheepish, whereas Pea was merely confused by the question. His mother had passed away in Georgia when he was only six. She had not had time to give him much training before she died, and he had no idea what she might think of such an action. However, he was sure she would not have wanted him to go in his pants.

  "I had to hurry," he said.

  "Howdy, Captain," Dish said.

  Call nodded. In the morning he had the advantage of Gus, since Gus had to cook.

  With Gus cooking, he got his choice of the eggs and bacon, and a little food always brought him to life and made him consider all the things that ought to be done during the day. The Hat Creek outfit was just a small operation, with just enough land under lease to graze small lots of cattle and horses until buyers could be found. It amazed Call that such a small operation could keep three grown men and a boy occupied from sunup until dark, day after day, but such was the case. The barn and corrals had been in such poor shape when he and Gus bought the place that it took constant work just to keep them from total collapse. There was nothing important to do in Lonesome Dove, but that didn't mean there was enough time to keep up with the little things that needed doing. They had been six weeks sinking a new well and were still far from deep enough.

  When Call raked the eggs and bacon onto his plate, such a crowd of possible tasks rushed into his mind that he was a minute responding to Dish's greetings.

  "Oh, hello, Dish," he said, finally. "Have some bacon." "Dish is planning to shave his mustache right after breakfast," Augustus said. "He's getting tired of livin' without women." In fact, with the aid of Gus's two dollars, Dish had been able to prevail on Lorena. He had awakened on the porch with a clear head, but when Augustus mentioned women he remembered it all and suddenly felt weak with love. He had been keenly hungry when he sat down at the table, his mouth watering for the eggs and fryback, but the thought of Lorena's white body, or the portion of it he had got to see when she lifted her nightgown, made him almost dizzy for a moment. He continued to eat, but the food had lost its taste.

  The blue shoat came to the door and looked in at the people, to Augustus's amusement. "Look at that," he said. "A pig watching a bunch of human pigs." Though he had been outpositioned at the frying pan, he was in prime shape to secure his share of the biscuits, half a dozen of which he had already sopped in honey and consumed.

  "Throw that pig them eggshells," he said to Bolivar. "He's starving." "I don't care," Bolivar said, sucking coffee-colored sugar out of a big spoon. "I feel sick." "You're repeating yourself, Bol," Augustus said. "If you're planning on dying today I hope you dig your grave first." Bolivar looked at him sorrowfully. So much talk in the morning gave him a headache to go with his shakes. "If I dig a grave it will be yours," he said simply.

  "Going up the trail, Dish?" Newt asked, hoping to turn the conversation to more cheerful matters.

  "I hope to," Dish said.

  "It would take a hacksaw to cut these eggs," Call said. "I've seen bricks that was softer." "Well, Bol spilled coffee in them," Augustus said. "I expect it was hard coffee." Call finished the rocklike eggs and gave Dish the once-over. He was a lank fellow, loose-built, and a good rider. Five or six more like him and they could make up a herd themselves and drive it north. The idea had been in his mind for a year or more. He had even mentioned it to Augustus, but Augustus merely laughed at him.

  "We're too old, Call," he said.

  "We've forgot everything we need to know." "You may have," Call said. "I ain't." Seeing Dish put Call in mind of his idea again. He was not eager to spend the rest of his life on well-digging or barn repair. If they made up a fair herd and did well with it, they would make enough to buy some good land north of the brush country.

  "Are you signed to go with someone then?" he asked Dish.

  "Oh, no, I ain't signed on," Dish said. "But I've gone before, and I imagine Mr.

  Pierce will hire me again--or if not him someone else." "We might give you work right here," Call said.

  That got Augustus's attention. "Give him work doing what?" he asked. "Dish here's a top hand. He don't cotton to work that requires walking, do you, Dish?" "I don't, for a fact," Dish said, looking at the Captain but seeing Lorena. "I've done a mess of it though. What did you have in mind?" "Well, we're going down to Mexico tonight," Call said. "Going to see what we can raise.

  We might make up a herd ourselves, if you wanted to wait a day or two while we look it over." "That mare bite's drove you crazy," Augustus said. "Make up a herd and do what with it?" "Drive it," Call said.

  "Well, we might drive it over to Pickles Gap, I guess," Augustus said. "That ain't enough work to keep a hand like Dish occupied for the summer." Call got up and carried his dishes to the washtub. Bolivar wearily got off his stool and picked up the water bucket.

  "I wish Deets would come back," he said.

  Deets was a black man; he had been with Cal and Augustus nearly as long as Pea Eye. Three days before, he had been sent to San Antonio with a deposit of money, a tactic Call always used, since few bandits would suspect a black man of having any money on him.

  Bolivar missed him because one of Deets's jobs was to carry water.

  "He'll be back this morning," Call said.

  "You can set your clock by Deets." "You might set yours," Augustus said. "I wouldn't set mine. Old Deets is human.

  If he ever run into the right dark-complexioned lady you might have to wind your clock two or three times before he showed up. He's like me. He knows that some things are more important than work." Bolivar looked at the water bucket with irritation. "I'd like to shoot this damn bucket full of holes," he said.

  "I don't think you could hit that bucket if you was sitting on it," Augustus said. "I've seen you shoot. You ain't the worst shot I ever knew --that would be Jack Jennell--but you run him a close race. Jack went broke as a buffalo hunter quicker than any man I ever knew. He couldn't have hit a buffalo if one had swallowed him." Bolivar went out the door with the bucket, looking as if it might be a while before he came back.

  Dish meanwhile was doing some hard thinking. He had meant to leave right after breakfast and ride back to the Matagorda, where he had a sure job. The Hat Creek outfit was hardly known as a trail-driving bunch, but on the other hand Captain Call was not a man to indulge in idle talk. If he was contemplating a drive he would probably make one. Meanwhile there was Lorena, who might come to see him in an entirely different light if he could spend time with her for a few days running. Of course, getting to spend time with her was expensive, and he had not a cent, but if word got around that he was working for the Hat Creek outfit he could probably attract a little credit.

  One thing Dish prided himself on was his skill at driving a buggy; it occurred to him that since Lorena seemed to spend most of her time cooped up in the Dry Bean, she might appreciate a buggy ride along the river in a smart buggy, if such a creature could be found in Lonesome Dove. He got up and carried his plate to the wash bucket.

  "Captain, if you mean it I'd be pleased to stay the day or two," Dish said.

  The Captain had stepped out on the back porch and was looking north, along the stage road that threaded its way through the brush country toward San Antonio. The road ran straight for a considerable distance before it hit the first gully, and Captain Call had his eyes fixed on it. He seemed not to hear Dish's reply, although he was only a few feet away. Dish stepped out on the porch to see what it was that distracted the man.
r />   Far up the road he could see two horsemen coming, but they were so far yet that it was impossible to tell anything about them. At moments, heat waves from the road caused a quavering that made them seem like one horseman. Dish squinted but there was nothing special about the riders that his eye could detect. Yet the Captain had not so much as turned his head since they appeared.

  "Gus, come out here," the Captain said.

  Augustus was busy cleaning his plate of honey, a process that involved several more biscuits.

  "I'm eating," he said, though that was obvious.

  "Come see who's coming," the Captain said, rather mildly, Dish thought.

  "If it's Deets my watch is already set," Augustus said. "Anyway, I don't suppose he's changed clothes, and if I have to see his old black knees sticking out of them old quilts he wears for pants it's apt to spoil my digestion." "Deets is coming all right," Call said. "The fact is, he ain't by himself." "Well, the man's always aimed to marry," Augustus said. "I imagine he just finally met up with that dark-complexioned lady I was referring to." "He ain't met no lady," Call said with a touch of exasperation. "Who he's met is an old friend of ours. If you don't come here and look I'll have to drag you." Augustus was about through with the biscuits anyway.

  He had to use a forefinger to capture the absolute last drop of honey, which was just as sweet licked off a finger as it was when eaten on good sourdough biscuits.

  "Newt, did you know honey is the world's purest food?" he said, getting up.

  Newt had heard enough lectures on the subject to have already forgotten more than most people ever know about the properties of honey. He hurried his plate to the tub, more curious than Mr. Gus about who Deets could have found.

  "Yes, sir, I like it myself," he said, to cut short the talk of honey.

  Augustus was a step behind the boy, idly licking his forefinger. He glanced up the road to see what Call could be so aroused about. Two riders were coming, the one on the left clearly Deets, on the big white gelding they called Wishbone. The other rider rode a pacing bay; it took but a moment for recognition to strike. The rider seemed to slump a little in the saddle, in the direction of his horse's off side, a tendency peculiar to only one man he knew. Augustus was so startled that he made the mistake of running his sticky fingers through his own hair.

  "'I god, Woodrow," he said. "That there's Jake Spoon."

  The name struck Newt like a blow, so much did Jake Spoon mean to him. As a very little boy, when his mother had still been alive, Jake Spoon was the man who came most often to see her. It had begun to be clear to him, as he turned over his memories, that his mother had been a whore, like Lorena, but this realization tarnished nothing, least of all his memories of Jake Spoon. No man had been kinder, either to him or his mother--her name had been Maggie. Jake had given him hard candy and pennies and had set him on a pacing horse and given him his first ride; he had even had old Jesus, the bootmaker, make him his first pair of boots; and once when Jake won a lady's saddle in a card game he gave the saddle to Newt and had the stirrups cut down to his size.

  Those were the days before order came to Lonesome Dove, when Captain Call and Augustus were still Rangers, with responsibilities that took them up and down the border. Jake Spoon was a Ranger too, and in Newt's eyes the most dashing of them all. He always carried a pearl-handled pistol and rode a pacing horse-- easier on the seat, Jake claimed. The dangers of his profession seemed to sit lightly on him.

  But then the fighting gradually died down along the border and the Captain and Mr. Gus and Jake and Pea Eye and Deets all quit rangering and formed the Hat Creek outfit. But the settled life seemed not to suit Jake, and one day he was just gone. No one was surprised, though Newt's mother was so upset by it that for a time he got a whipping every time he asked when Jake was coming back. The whippings didn't seem to have much to do with him, just with his mother's disappointment that Jake had left.

  Newt stopped asking about Jake, but he didn't stop remembering him. It was barely a year later that his mother died of fever; the Captain and Augustus took him in, although at first they argued about him. At first Newt missed his mother so much that he didn't care about the arguments. His mother and Jake were both gone and arguments were not going to bring them back.

  But when the worst pain passed and he began to earn his keep around the Hat Creek outfit by doing the numerous chores that the Captain set him, he often drifted back in his mind to the days when Jake Spoon had come to see his mother. It seemed to him that Jake might even be his father, though everyone told him his name was Newt Dobbs, not Newt Spoon. Why it was Dobbs, and why everyone was so sure, was a puzzle to him, since no one in Lonesome Dove seemed to know anything about a Mr. Dobbs. It had not occurred to him to ask his mother while she was alive--last names weren't used much around Lonesome Dove, and he didn't realize that the last name was supposed to come from the father. Even Mr. Gus, who would talk about anything, seemed to have no information about Mr.

  Dobbs. "He went west when he shouldn't have" was his only comment on the man.

  Newt had never asked Captain Call to amplify that information--the Captain preferred to volunteer what he wanted you to know. In his heart, though, Newt didn't believe in Mr.

  Dobbs. He had a little pile of stuff his mother had left, just a few beads and combs and a little scrapbook and some cutout pictures from magazines that Mr. Gus had been kind enough to save for him, and there was nothing about a Mr.

  Dobbs in the scrapbook and no picture of him amid the pictures, though there was a scratchy picture of his grandfather, Maggie's father, who had lived in Alabama.

  If, as he suspected, there had been no Mr. Dobbs, or if he had just been a gentleman who stopped at the rooming house a day or two--they had lived in the rooming house when Maggie was alive--then it might be that Jake Spoon was really his father. Perhaps no one had informed him of it because they thought it more polite to let Jake do so himself when he came back.

  Newt had always assumed Jake would come back, too. Scraps of news about him had blown back down the cow trails--word that he was a peace officer in Ogallala, or that he was prospecting for gold in the Black Hills.

  Newt had no idea where the Black Hills were, or how you went about finding gold in them, but one of the reasons he was eager to head north with a cow herd was the hope of running into Jake somewhere along the way. Of course he wanted to wear a gun and become a top hand and have the adventure of the drive --maybe they would even see buffalo, though he knew there weren't many left. But underneath all his other hopes was the oldest yearning he had, one that could lie covered over for months and years and still be fresh as a toothache: the need to see Jake Spoon.

  Now the very man was riding toward them, right there beside Deets, on a pacing horse as pretty as the one he had ridden away ten years before. Newt forgot Dish Boggett, whose every move he had been planning to study. Before the two riders even got very close Newt could see Deets's big white teeth shining in his black face, for he had gone away on a routine job and was coming back proud of more than having done it. He didn't race his horse up to the porch or do anything silly, but it was plain even at a distance that Deets was a happy man.

  Then the horses were kicking up little puffs of dust in the wagon yard and the two were almost there.

  Jake wore a brown vest and a brown hat, and he still had his pearl-handled pistol. Deets was still grinning. They rode right up to the back porch before they drew rein. It was obvious that Jake had come a long way, for the pacing bay had no flesh on him.

  Jake's eyes were the color of coffee, and he wore a little mustache. He looked them all over for a moment, and then broke out a slow grin.

  "Howdy, boys," he said. "What's for breakfast?" "Why, biscuits and fatback, Jake," Augustus said. "The usual fare. Only we won't be serving it up for about twenty-four hours.

  I hope you've got a buffalo liver or a haunch of venison on you to tide you over." "Gus, don't tell me you've et," Jake said, swinging off the bay. "We rode
all night, and Deets couldn't think of nothing to talk about except the taste of them biscuits you make." "While you was talking, Gus was eating them," Call said. He and Jake shook hands, looking one another over.

  Jake looked at Deets a minute. "I knowed we should have telegraphed from Pickles Gap," he said, then turned with a grin and shook Gus's hand.

  "You always was a hog, Gus," Jake said.

  "And you were usually late for meals," Augustus reminded him.

  Then Pea Eye insisted on shaking hands, though Jake had never been very partial to him. "By gosh, Jake, you stayed gone a while," Pea Eye said.

  While they were shaking Jake noticed the boy, standing there by some lank cowhand with a heavy mustache.

  "My lord," he said. "Are you little Newt? Why you're plumb growed. Who let that happen?" Newt felt so full of feeling that he could hardly speak. "It's me, Jake," he said.

  "I'm still here." "What do you think, Captain?" Deets asked, handing Call the receipt from the bank.