Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

by Lonesome Dove

  Newt had no idea what it could be, but it seemed there was something. Deets was the only one beside himself who seemed to be aware of it, but Newt could never work up the nerve to question Deets about it directly--he knew Deets wouldn't want to talk about such things. Deets didn't talk much anyway. He tended to express himself more with his eyes and his hands.

  While Newt was thinking of night and Mexico, Dish Boggett strolled happily toward the Dry Bean saloon, thinking of Lorena. All day, laboring at the windlass or in the well, he had thought of her. The night had not gone as well as he had hoped it would--Lorena had not given him anything that could be construed as encouragement --but it occurred to Dish that maybe she just needed more time to get used to the notion that he loved her. If he could stay around a week or two she might get used to it, and even come to like it.

  Behind the general store, an old Mexican saddlemaker was cutting a steerhide into strips from which to make a rope. It occurred to Dish that he might be more presentable if he walked down to the river and washed off some of the sweat that had dried on him during the day, but walking to the river meant losing time and he decided to let that notion slide. What he did do was stop just back of the Dry Bean to tuck his shirttail in more neatly and dust off his pants.

  It was while he was attending to his shirttail that he suddenly got a shock. He had stopped about twenty feet behind the building, which was just two stories of frame lumber. It was a still, hot afternoon, no breeze blowing. A strong fart could have been heard far up the street, but it was no fart that caught Dish's ear. When he first heard the steady crackling, creaking sound he thought nothing of it, but a second or two later something dawned on him that almost made him feel sick. In spite of himself he stepped closer to the building, to confirm his fear.

  From the corner just over his head, where Lorena had her room, came a crackling and a creaking sound such as two people can make in a bad bed with a cornshuck mattress over a weak spring.

  Lorena had such a bed; only last night it had made the same noise beneath them, loud enough that Dish wondered briefly, before pleasure overtook him, if anybody besides themselves was hearing it.

  Now he was hearing it, standing with his shirttail half tucked in, while someone else was making it with Lorena. Memories of her body mingled with the sound, causing such a painful feeling in Dish's breast that for a second he couldn't move. He felt almost paralyzed, doomed to stand in the heat beneath the very room he had been hoping to enter himself. She was part of the sound--he knew just what chords she contributed to the awful music. Anger began to fill him, and for a moment its object was Xavier Wanz, who could at least have seen that Lorena had a cotton-tick mattress instead of those scratchy cornshucks, which weren't even comfortable to sleep on.

  In a second, though, Dish's anger passed Xavier by, and surged in the direction of the man in the room above him, who was also above Lorena, using her body to produce the crackling and the creaking. He had no doubt it was the pockmarked weasel on the swaybacked gray, who had probably pretended to ride up to the house and then cut back down the dry bed of the creek straight to the saloon. It would be a move he would soon regret.

  Dish belted his pants and strode grimly around the saloon to the north side. It was necessary to go all the way around the building to get out of hearing of the bed sounds. He fully meant to kill the little weasel when he came out of the saloon.

  Dish was no gunfighter, but some things could not be borne. He took out his pistol and checked his loads, surprised at how fast life could suck you along; that morning he had awoke with no plans except to be a cowboy, and now he was about to become a man-killer, which would put his whole future in doubt. The man might have powerful friends, who would hunt him down. Still, feeling what he felt, he could see no other course to follow.

  He holstered his pistol and stepped around the corner, expecting to stand by the swaybacked gray until the cowboy came out, so the challenge could be given.

  But stepping around the corner brought another shock. There was no swaybacked gray tied to the hitch rail in front of the saloon. In fact, there were no horses at all in front of the saloon. Over at the Pumphreys' store a couple of big strapping boys were loading rolls of barbed wire into a wagon. Otherwise the street was empty.

  It put Dish in a deep quandary. He had been more than ready to commit murder, but now he had no victim to commit it on. For a moment he tried to convince himself he hadn't heard what he had heard. Perhaps Lorena was just bouncing on the cornshucks for the sake of bouncing. But that theory wouldn't hold. Even a lighthearted girl wouldn't want to bounce on a cornshuck mattress on a hot afternoon, and anyway Lorena wasn't a lighthearted girl. Some man had prompted the bouncing: the question was, Who?

  Dish looked inside, only to discover that the Dry Bean was as empty as a church house on Saturday night. There was no sign of Xavier or Lippy, and, worse, the creaking hadn't stopped. He could still hear it from the front door.

  It was too much for Dish. He hurried off the porch and up the street, but it soon hit him that he had no place to go, not unless he wanted to collect his horse and strike out for the Matagorda, leaving Captain Call to think what he would.

  Dish wasn't quite ready to do that--at least not until he found out who his rival was. Instead, he walked up one side of the street and down the other, feeling silly for doing it. He went all the way to the river, but there was nothing to see there except a strip of brown water and a big coyote. The coyote stood in the shallow, eating a frog.

  Dish sat by the river an hour, and when he got back to the Dry Bean everything was back to normal. Xavier Wanz was standing at the door with a wet rag in his hand, and Lippy was sitting on the bar shaving a big corn off his thumb with a straight razor. They didn't count for much, in Dish's view.

  What counted was that Lorena, looking prettily flushed, was sitting at a table with Jake Spoon, the coffee-eyed stranger with the pearl-handled pistol. Jake had his hat pushed back on his head and was addressing her, with his eyes at least, as if he had known her for years. There was a single glass of whiskey sitting on the table. From the doorway Dish saw Lorena take a sip out of the glass and then casually hand it to Jake, who took more than a sip.

  The sight embarrassed Dish profoundly--it went to the pit of his stomach, like the sound of the creaking bed when he first heard it. He had never seen his ma and pa drink from the same glass, and they had been married people. And yet, the day before, he had been practically unable to get Lorie to look at him at all, and him a top hand, not just some drifter.

  In a flash, as he stood half-through the swinging doors, Dish's whole conception of woman changed; it was as if lightning had struck, burning his old notions to a crisp in one instant. Nothing was going to be as he had imagined it--maybe nothing ever would again. He started to go back out the door, so he could at least go off and adjust to his new life alone, but he had lingered a moment too long. Both Jake and Lorena looked up from one another and saw him in the door. Lorena didn't change expression, but Jake at once gave him a friendly look and lifted his hand.

  "Hooray," he said. "Come on in, son.

  I hope you've the start of a crowd. If there's anything I can't stand it's a dern gloomy saloon." Lippy, content beneath his bowler, turned and shook his lip in Dish's direction for a moment. Then he blew the shavings of his corn off the bar.

  "Dish ain't much of a crowd," he said.

  Dish stepped in, wishing once again that he had never heard of the town of Lonesome Dove.

  Jake Spoon waved at Xavier.

  "Davie, bring your poison," he said. He refused to call Xavier anything but Davie.

  "Anybody's that's had to dig a dern well in this heat deserves a free drink and I'm buying it," Jake added.

  He motioned at a chair, and Dish took it, feeling red in the face one second and pale the next. He longed to know what Lorena was feeling about it all, and when Jake turned his head a minute, he cast her a glance. Her eyes were unusually bright, but they didn't see him.
They returned continually to Jake, who was paying her no particular mind. She tapped her fingers on the table three or four times, a little absently, as if keeping time with her own thoughts, and she drank two more sips from Jake's glass. There were tiny beads of sweat above her upper lip, one right at the edge of the faint scar, but she didn't look bothered by the heat or anything else.

  Dish could hardly pull his eyes away, she was so pretty, and when he did he caught Jake Spoon looking at him. But Jake's look was entirely friendly--he seemed plain glad for company.

  "If I was to try well-digging, I doubt I'd survive an hour," he said. "You boys ought to stand up to Call and make him dig his own well." At that point Xavier brought out a bottle and a glass. Jake took the bottle himself and poured liberally. "This is better likker than they got in Arkansas," he said.

  "Arkansas," Xavier said contemptuously, as if the word spoke for itself.

  At that point Dish felt himself lose belief in what was happening. There was no place he would rather not be than at a table with Lorie and another man, yet that appeared to be where he was. Lorie didn't seem to mind him being there, but on the other hand it was clear she would not have minded if he were a thousand miles away. Xavier stood by his elbow, with the rag dripping onto his pants leg, and Jake Spoon drank whiskey and looked friendly. With Jake's hat pushed back, Dish could see a little strip of white skin right at his forehead, skin the sun never struck.

  For a time Dish lost all sense of what life was about. He even lost the sense that he was a cowboy, the strongest sense he had to work with.

  He was just a fellow with a glass in his hand, whose life had suddenly turned to mud. The day before he had been a top hand, but what did that mean anymore?

  Though the day was hot and bright, Dish felt cold and cloudy, so puzzled by the strange business called life that he couldn't think where to look, much less what to say. He took a drink and then another and then several, and, though life remained cloudy, the inside of the cloud began to be warm. By the middle of the second bottle he had stopped worrying about Lorie and Jake Spoon and was sitting by the piano, singing "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," while Lippy played.

  Augustus was on the front porch, biding his time, when Wilbarger rode up. Biding his time seemed to him the friendly thing to do, inasmuch as Jake Spoon had ridden a long way and had likely been scared to seek out womankind during his trip.

  Jake was one of those men who seemed to stay in rut the year round, a great source of annoyance to Call, who was never visibly in rut.

  Augustus was subject to it, but, as he often said, he wasn't going to let it drive him like a mule --a low joke that still went over the heads of most of the people who heard it. He enjoyed a root, as he called it, but if conditions weren't favorable, could make do with whiskey for lengthy spells. It was clear that with Jake just back, conditions wouldn't be too favorable that afternoon, so he repaired to his jug with the neighborly intention of giving Jake an hour or two to whittle down his need before he followed along and tried to interest him in a card game.

  Wilbarger of course was a surprise. He trotted his big black horse right up to the porch, which surprised the blue pigs as much as it did Augustus. They woke up and grunted at the horse.

  Wilbarger looked enviously at Augustus's jug. "By God, I bet that ain't persimmon juice you're drinking," he said. "I wish I could afford an easy life." "If you was to dismount and stop scaring my pigs you'd be welcome to a drink," Augustus said. "We can introduce ourselves later." The shoat got up and walked right under the black horse, which was well broke enough that it didn't move. Wilbarger was more shocked than the horse.

  In fact, Augustus was shocked himself. The shoat had never done such a thing before, though he had always been an unpredictable shoat.

  "I guess that's one of the pigs you don't rent," Wilbarger said. "If I'd been riding my mare she'd have kicked it so far you'd have had to hunt to find your bacon." "Well, that pig had been asleep," Augustus said. "I guess it didn't expect a horse to be standing there when it woke up." "Which are you, Call or McCrae?" Wilbarger asked, tired of discussing pigs.

  "I'm McCrae," Augustus said. "Call wouldn't put up with this much jabbering." "Can't blame him," Wilbarger said. "I'm Wilbarger." At that moment Call stepped out of the house. In fact his bite had pained him all day and he had been in the process of making himself a poultice of cactus pulp. It took a while to make, which is why he had come in early.

  As he came out on the porch a small man on a gray came riding around the house.

  "Why, hell, you had us surrounded and we didn't even know it," Augustus said. "This is Captain Call, standing here with his shirttail out." "I'm Wilbarger," Wilbarger said. "This is my man Chick." "You're free to get down," Call said.

  "Oh, well," Wilbarger said, "why get down when I would soon just have to climb back up?

  It's unnecessary labor. I hear you men trade horses." "We do," Call said. "Cattle too." "Don't bother me about cattle," Wilbarger said. "I got three thousand ready to start up the trail. What I need is a remuda." "It's a pity cattle can't be trained to carry riders," Augustus said. The thought had just occurred to him, so, following his habit, he put it at once into speech.

  Both Call and Wilbarger looked at him as if he were daft.

  "You may think it a pity," Wilbarger said.

  "I can call it a blessing. I suppose you wrote that sign." "That's right," Augustus said. "Want me to write you one?" "No, I ain't ready for the sanatorium yet," Wilbarger said. "I never expected to meet Latin in this part of Texas but I guess education has spread." "How'd you round up that much stock without horses?" Call asked, hoping to get the conversation back around to business.

  "Oh, well, I just trained a bunch of jackrabbits to chase 'em out of the brush," Wilbarger said, a bit testy.

  "In fact some dern Mexicans stole our horses," he added. "I had heard you men hung all the Mexican horse thieves when you was Rangers, but I guess you missed a few." "Why, hell, we hung ever one of 'em," Augustus said, glad to see that their visitor was of an argumentative temper. "It must be the new generation that stole your nags. We ain't responsible for them." "This is idle talk," Wilbarger said. "I happen to be responsible for three thousand cattle and eleven men. If I could buy forty horses, good horses, I'd feel happier. Can you oblige me?" "We expect to have a hundred head available at sunup tomorrow," Call said. Gus's talkativeness had one advantage--it often gained him a minute or two in which to formulate plans.

  "I had no intention of spending the night here," Wilbarger said. "Anyway, I don't need a hundred head, or fifty either. How many could I get this afternoon?" Augustus dug out his old brass pocket watch and squinted at it.

  "Oh, we couldn't sell horses now," he said. "We're closed for the day." Wilbarger abruptly dismounted and automatically loosened his horse's girth a notch or two to give him an easier breath.

  "I never expected to hear talk like this," he said. "I never heard of a livery stable closing in bright daylight." "Oh, the stable don't close," Augustus said. "We can stable anything you want us to. It's just the horse-trading part of the operation that's closed." Wilbarger walked up to the porch. "If that jug's for rent I'll rent a swig," he said.

  "I guess that jug's about the only thing that's still open in this town." "It's open and it's free," Augustus said, handing it to him.

  While Wilbarger was drinking, Augustus looked at Call. The remark about the hundred horses had struck him as bold talk, even if they were planning a swing through Mexico. Their main object on recent swings had been cattle.

  Now and again they ran into a few horses and threw them in with the cattle, but seldom more than ten or twelve in one night. Where the other ninety were to come from Augustus didn't know.

  "Ain't there a whore in this town?" Chick asked. He was still horseback. The remark took everybody by surprise. Wilbarger seemed quite displeased with it.

  "Chick, I thought you had a few manners," he said. "Talking that kind of talk down at the lots is one thi
ng. Talking it up here when I'm trying to discuss business with these gentlemen is something else." "Well, them boys at the lots wouldn't tell me," Chick said, with a touch of a whine.

  "That's because they're God-fearing boys," Augustus said. "You wouldn't catch them boys with no Jezebel." "Is that her name?" Chick asked. "It ain't the name I heard." "He's never learned to curb his passions," Wilbarger said. "I hope you'll excuse him." "A loose tongue is never welcome," Augustus said mildly.

  "Horses," Wilbarger said, returning to the more important subject. "This business about being closed is an irritation. I'd hoped to be back to my herd by sunup. It's held in a bad place. The mosquitoes will eat most of my crew if I don't hurry. If I could just get enough ponies to get me started I might be able to pick up some extras as I go north." "That's a risk," Call said.

  "I know it's a risk--what ain't?" Wilbarger said. "How many could you sell me this afternoon?" Call was tired of beating around the bush.