Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

by Lonesome Dove

  It might suit you to a T. If it did, you wouldn't have to do risky work like being a deputy." It was true that being a deputy had become almost intolerably risky--Roscoe had to grant that.

  But judging from July's experience, marriage had its risks too.

  "I don't favor mustaches much," Louisa said. "But then life's a matter of give-and-take." They had eaten the corn bread right out of the pan, so there were no dishes to wash. Louisa got up and threw a few crumbs out the door to her chickens, who rushed at them greedily, two of them coming right into the cabin.

  "Don't you eat them chickens?" Roscoe asked, thinking how much better the corn bread would have tasted if there had been a chicken to go with it.

  "No, I just keep 'em to control the bugs," Louisa said. "I ate enough chicken in Alabama to last me a lifetime." Roscoe felt plenty nervous. The question of sleeping arrangements could not be postponed much longer. He had looked forward briefly to sleeping in the cabin, where he would feel secure from snakes and wild pigs, but that hope was dashed.

  He hadn't spent a night alone with a woman in his whole life and didn't plan to start with Louisa, who stood in the doorway drinking a dipper of water. She squished a swallow or two around in her mouth and spat it out the door.

  Then she put the dipper back in the bucket and leaned over Roscoe, so close he nearly tipped over backward in his chair out of surprise.

  "Roscoe, you've went to waste long enough," she said. "Let's give it a tryout." "Well, I wouldn't know how to try," Roscoe said. "I've been a bachelor all my life." Louisa straightened up. "Men are about as worthless a race of people as I've ever encountered," she said. "Look at the situation a minute.

  You're running off to catch a sheriff you probably can't find, who's in the most dangerous state in the union, and if you do find him he'll just go off and try to find a wife that don't want to live with him anyway. You'll probably get scalped before it's all over, or hung, or a Mexican will get you with a pigsticker. And it'll all be to try and mend something that won't mend anyway. Now I own a section of land here and I'm a healthy woman. I'm willing to take you, although you've got no experience either at farming or matrimony. You'd be useful to me, whereas you won't be a bit of use to that sheriff or that town you work for either. I'll teach you how to handle an ax and a mule team, and guarantee you all the corn bread you can eat. We might even have some peas to go with it later in the year. I can cook peas. Plus I've got one of the few feather mattresses in this part of the country, so it'd be easy sleeping. And now you're scared to try. If that ain't cowardice, I don't know what is." Roscoe had never expected to hear such a speech, and he had no idea how to reply to it.

  Louisa's approach to marriage didn't seem to resemble any that he had observed, though it was true he had not spent much time studying the approaches to matrimony. Still, he had only ridden into Louisa's field an hour before sundown, and it was not yet much more than an hour after dark. Her proposal seemed hasty to him by any standards.

  "Well, we ain't much acquainted," he said.

  "How do you know we'd get along?" "I don't," Louisa said. "That's why I offered just to give it a tryout. If you don't like it you can leave, and if I can't put up with you I expect I could soon run you off. But you ain't even got the gumption to try. I'd say you're scared of women." Roscoe had to admit that was true, except for a whore now and then. But he only admitted it to himself, not to Louisa. After some reflection he decided it was best to leave her charge unanswered.

  "I guess I'll bed down out back," he said.

  "Well, fine," Louisa said. "Just watch out for Ed." That was a surprise. "Who's Ed?" he asked.

  "Ed's a snake," Louisa said. "Big rattler. I named him after my uncle, because they're both lazy. I let Ed stay around because he holds down the rodents. He don't bother me and I don't bother him. But he hangs out around to the back, so watch out where you throw down your blanket." Roscoe did watch. He stepped so gingerly, getting his bedding arranged, that it took him nearly twenty minutes to settle down. Then he couldn't get the thought of the big snake off his mind. He had never heard of anyone naming a snake before, but then nothing she did accorded with any procedure he was familiar with. The fact that she had mentioned the snake meant that he had little chance of getting to sleep. He had heard that snakes had a habit of crawling in with people, and he definitely didn't want to be crawled in with. He wrapped his blanket around him tightly to prevent Ed from slipping in, but it was a hot sultry night and he was soon sweating so profusely that he couldn't sleep anyway. There was plenty of grass and weeds around, and every time anything moved in the grass he imagined it to be the big rattler. The snake might get along with Louisa, but that didn't mean he would accept strangers.

  Hours passed and he still couldn't get to sleep, though he was plenty tired. It was clear that if the sleeping didn't improve he was going to be dead on his feet long before he got back to Fort Smith. His eyelids would fall, but then he'd hear something and jerk awake, a process that went on until he was too tired to care whether he died or not. He had been propped up against the wall of the cabin, but he slowly slid down and finally slept, flat on his back.

  When he awoke he got a shock almost worse than if he had found the rattler curled on his chest: Louisa was standing astraddle of him.

  Roscoe was so tired that it was only his brain that had come awake, it seemed. He would ordinarily have reacted quickly to the sight of anyone standing astraddle of him, much less a woman, but in this case his limbs were so heavy with sleep that he couldn't move a one: opening his eyes was effort enough. It was nearly sunup, still sultry and humid. He saw that Louisa was barefoot and that her feet and ankles were wet from the dewy grass. He couldn't see her face or judge her disposition, but he felt a longing to be back on his couch in the jail, where crazy things didn't happen. Although he was just in his long johns, the blanket was up about his chest, so at least she hadn't caught him indecent.

  For a second he took a sleepy comfort from that reflection, but a second later it ceased to be true. Louisa stuck one of her wet feet under the blanket and kicked it off. Roscoe was so anchored in sleep he still couldn't react. Then, to his extreme astonishment, Louisa squatted right atop his middle and reached into his long johns and took hold of his tool. Nothing like that had ever happened to him, and he was stunned, though his tool wasn't. While the rest of him had been heavy with sleep, it had become heavy with itself.

  "Why you're a tom turkey, ain't you," Louisa said.

  To Roscoe's astonishment, Louisa proceeded to squat right down on him. Instead of being covered with a blanket, he was covered with her skirts.

  At that point the sun broke through the mist, lighting the clearing and adding to his embarrassment, for anyone could have ridden up and seen that something mighty improper was happening.

  As it was, though, only three or four of Louisa's chickens watched the act, but even the fact that the chickens were standing around added to Roscoe's embarrassment. Maybe the chickens weren't really watching, but they seemed to be.

  Meanwhile Louisa was wiggling around without much interest in what he thought about it all. Roscoe decided the best approach was to pretend a dream was happening, though he knew quite well it wasn't.

  But Louisa's vigor was such that even if Roscoe had got his thoughts in place they would soon have been jarred awry. A time or two he was practically lifted off the ground by her efforts; he was scooted off his tarp and back into the weeds and was forced to open his eyes again in hopes of being able to spot a bush he could grab, to hold himself in place. About the time Louisa moved him completely off the tarp, matters came to a head.

  Despite the chickens and the weeds and the danger of witnesses, he felt a sharp pleasure. Louisa apparently did too, soon afterward, for she wiggled even more vigorously and grunted loudly.

  Then she sat on him for several minutes, scratching at the chigger bites on his wet ankles. He soon sank right out of her, but Louisa was in no hurry to get up. She seemed in a quiet hu
mor. Once in a while she clucked a time or two at the chickens.

  Roscoe felt his neck begin to itch from the weeds.

  A swarm of gnats hung right over his face, and Louisa considerately swatted them away.

  "There's Ed," Louisa said. Sure enough, a big rattler was crawling over a log about ten yards away. Louisa continued to sit, unconcerned about the snake or anything else.

  "Are you a one-timer or are you feisty, Roscoe?" she asked after a while.

  Roscoe had a notion that he knew what she meant. "I'm mostly a no-timer," he said.

  Louisa sighed. "You ain't hopeless, but you sure ain't feisty," she said after a while, wiping the sweat off her face with the sleeve of her dress. "Let's go see if the corn bread's done." She got up and went back around the house.

  Roscoe quickly got dressed and drug his gear around the corner, dumping it in a heap beside the door.

  When he went in, Louisa sat another pan of corn bread on the table and they had breakfast.

  "Well, what's it going to be, marriage or Texas?" Louisa asked after a while.

  Roscoe knew it had to be Texas, but it was not so simple a matter to think out as it had been before Louisa came out and sat down on him. For one thing, he had no desire to go to Texas; he felt his chances of finding July to be very slim, and July's of finding Elmira completely hopeless. In the meantime it had become clear to him that Louisa had her charms, and that the fact that they were being offered him on a trial basis was a considerable enticement. He was beginning to feel that Louisa was right: he had mostly been wasted, and might have more feistiness in him than anyone, himself included, had suspected. There was no likelihood of his getting to use much of this capacity in Texas, either.

  "It's a hard choice," he said, though one thing that made it a little easier was the knowledge that life with Louisa involved more than featherbeds. It also involved pulling up stumps all day, an activity he had no interest in or aptitude for.

  "Well, I don't take back nothing I said," Louisa declared. "You men are a worthless race. You're good for a bounce now and then, and that's about it. I doubt you'd make much of a farmer." For some reason Roscoe felt melancholy.

  For all her loud talk, Louisa didn't seem to be as disagreeable to him as he had first thought her to be. It seemed to him she might be persuaded to tone down her farming, maybe even move into a town and settle for putting in a big garden, if it was presented to her right. But he couldn't, because there was the problem of July, who had given him a job and been good to him. The point was, he owed July. Even if he never found him, he had to make the effort, or know that he had failed a friend. Had it not been for that obligation he would have stayed a day or two and considered Louisa's offer.

  "It ain't that I ain't obliged," he said.

  "I'm obliged. The dern thing about it is July.

  Even if Elmira ain't coming back, he's got to be told. It's my dern job, too.

  July's the only friend I got in that town except Joe. Joe's Elmira's boy." Then a happy thought occurred to him. Maybe July had made a slow start. He might not be too far ahead. Perhaps his jaundice had come back on him, in which case he might have had to hole up for a few days. If he himself was lucky he might strike July in a week or two and break the news. Once that was done, his obligation would be satisfied and there would be nothing to keep him from coming back for another visit with Louisa--provided he could find the farm a second time.

  "I could come by on my way back," he said.

  "July's been sick--he may have had to hole up. I might not have to look no more than a month." Louisa shrugged. "Suit yourself but don't expect me to hold you no stall," she said.

  "Somebody feistier than you might ride in tomorrow for all I know." Roscoe found nothing to say. Obviously he was taking a risk.

  "What's the story on this July?" Louisa asked. "That wife of his sounds like a woman of ill fame. What kind of sheriff would marry a woman of ill fame?" "Well, July's slow," Roscoe said.

  "He's the sort that don't talk much." "Oh, that sort," Louisa said. "The opposite of my late husband, Jim." She took a pair of men's brogans from beside the table and began to lace them on her bare feet.

  "The thing about men that don't talk much is that they don't usually learn much, either," Louisa said.

  She got her sunbonnet off a nail on the wall and tucked her thick brown hair under it.

  "You don't blabber, but I believe you've got it in you to learn," she said. "I'm going to do some farming." "What do I owe you for the grub?" Roscoe asked.

  "I'd hate to think I'd charge for corn bread," Louisa said. They went out and Roscoe began to roll up his bedroll. He was preoccupied and made such a sloppy job of it that Louisa burst out laughing. She had a happy laugh. One corner of his tarp hung down over his horse's flank.

  "Roscoe, you're a disgrace in most respects," Louisa said. "I bet you lose that bedroll before you get to Texas." "Well, should I stop back?" Roscoe asked, for she seemed in a fair humor.

  "Why, I guess so," Louisa said. "I've put up with worse than you, and probably will again." Roscoe rode off, though Memphis didn't take kindly to having the tarp flopping at his flank, so he had to get down and retie the roll. When he finally got it tied and remounted to ride on, he saw that Louisa had already hitched her mules to a stump and was giving them loud encouragement as they strained at the harness. It seemed to him he had never met such a curious woman. He gave her a wave that she didn't see, and rode on west with very mixed feelings.

  One moment he felt rather pleased and rode light in the saddle, but the next moment the light feeling would turn heavy. A time or two Roscoe could barely hold back the tears, he felt so sad of a sudden--and it would have been hard to say whether the sadness came because of having to leave Louisa or because of the uncertain journey that lay ahead.

  Joe knew right off that something was bothering July, because he didn't want to talk. It was not that July had ever been a big talker, like Roscoe could be if he was in the mood, but he was seldom as silent as he was the first week of the trip. Usually he would talk about horses or fishing or cowboys or the weather or something, but on the trip west it just seemed he didn't want to talk at all.

  At first it made a problem because Joe had never been on such an important journey, and there were many things he wanted to ask about. For one thing, he was curious to know how they were going to go about catching Jake Spoon. Also, he was curious about Indians, and about the famous Texas Rangers Roscoe said were protecting Jake. He wanted to know how far it was to Texas and if they would see an ocean on the trip.

  Once he started asking these questions it became clear at once that it was a strain for July even to listen, much less answer. It cost him such an effort to respond that Joe soon gave up asking and just rode along in silence, waiting for the land to change and the Indians to appear.

  In fact they rode so hard that Joe soon stopped missing the talk. Although still curious, he discovered that travel was harder than he had expected it to be. Besides hating to talk, July also seemed to hate to stop. When they came to a creek he would let the horses water, and now and then he got down to relieve himself; otherwise they rode from first light until it was too dark to see.

  On nights when there was a moon they rode well into the night.

  It was a strange business, traveling, Joe decided. July went at it hard. Yet Joe didn't wish for a minute that he had stayed home.

  Going with July was the most exciting thing he had ever done by far.

  Several times they came upon farms. July asked the farmers if they had seen Jake, and twice was told that yes, Jake had spent the night. But they themselves didn't spend the night, and rarely even took a meal. Once on a hot afternoon July did accept a glass of buttermilk from a farmer's wife. Joe got one too. There were several little girls on that farm, who giggled every time they looked at Joe, but he ignored them. The farmer's wife asked them twice to stay overnight, but they went on and made camp in a place thick with mosquitoes.

  "Does
Texas have mosquitoes too?" Joe asked.

  July didn't answer. He knew the boy was starved for talk, and that he himself had been a sorry companion on the trip, but in fact he had no talk in him. He was so filled with worry that the only way he could contain it was just to keep silent and concentrate on the travel. He knew he was pushing both the boy and the horses harder than he ought to, but he couldn't keep from it. Only hard, constant travel allowed him to hold down the worry--which was all to do with Elmira.

  Almost from the day they left, he felt something was wrong. He had had a feeling that something bad had happened, and no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on the job at hand, the worry wouldn't leave. It was all he could do to keep from turning the horses around and heading back for Fort Smith.

  At first Joe was cheerful and eager, but he was not a particularly strong boy, and he was not used to riding sixteen hours a day. He didn't complain, but he did grow tired, sleeping so deeply when they stopped that July could barely get him awake when it was time to move on. Often he rode in a doze for miles at a stretch.