Once or twice July was tempted to leave him at one of the farms they passed. Joe was a willing worker and could earn his keep until he could come back and get him. But the only reason for doing that would be to travel even harder, and the horses couldn't stand it. Besides, if he left the boy, it would be a blow to his pride, and Joe didn't have too much pride as it was.
For several days they bore southwest, through the pine woods. It had been a rainy spring and their big problem was mosquitoes. The trees dripped and the puddles lay everywhere. July hardly noticed the mosquitoes himself, but Joe and the horses suffered, particularly at night.
"Pretty soon I'll be all bump," Joe said, grinning, as they slogged through a clearing.
He looked up to see a broad, muddy river curving down from the north.
"I guess that's the Red," July said. "That means we're about to Texas." When they rode up to the banks of the river they were greeted by an amazing sight. Though running freely, the river was shallow and evidently boggy. Evidence for the bogginess was visible in the form of a tall man over toward the far bank. He was standing in knee-high water, between a gaunt horse and a little brown pack mule, both of which had sunk past their hocks in the river mud.
"I've heard this river was half-quicksand," July said.
From Roscoe, Joe had heard terrible stories about quicksand--in the stories, men and horses and even wagons were slowly swallowed up. He had suspected the stories were exaggerated, and the man and his animals proved it.
All might be bogged, but none were sinking. The man wore a tall beaver hat and a long frock coat. Both animals had numerous parcels tied to them, and the man was amusing himself by untying the parcels and pitching them into the river. One by one they began to float away. To their astonishment he even threw away his bedroll.
"The man must be a lunatic," July said.
"He must think that horse will float if he gets off some weight. That horse ain't gonna float." The man noticed them and gave a friendly wave, then proceeded to unburden the mule of most of its pack. Some floated and some merely lay in the shallow water.
July rode upstream until he found a place where both deer and cattle had crossed.
The water was seldom more than a foot deep.
They crossed a reddish bar of earth, and it seemed for a moment they might bog, but July edged south and soon found firm footing. In a few minutes they were on the south bank, whereas the man in the beaver hat had made no progress at all.
He was so cool about his predicament that it was hard to tell if he even wished to make progress.
"Let me have your rope," July said to Joe.
He tied their two ropes together and managed to fling the man a line. After that it was no great trouble to drag the horse and the pack mule out. The man waded out with them.
"Thank you, men," he said. "I believe if my mule hadn't got out soon, he would have learned to live on fish. They're self-reliant creatures." "I'm July Johnson and this is Joe," July said. "You didn't need to throw away your baggage." "I've suffered no loss," the man said.
"I'm glad I found a river to unload that stuff in. Maybe the fish and the tadpoles will make better use of it than I have." "Well, I've never seen a fish that used a bedroll," July said.
Joe had never met a man so careless that he would throw his possessions in a river. But the man seemed as cheerful as if he'd just won a tub of money.
"My name's Sedgwick," he said. "I'm traveling through this country looking for bugs." "I bet you found plenty," July said.
"What do you do with bugs?" Joe asked, feeling that the man was the strangest he had ever met.
"I study them," the man said.
Joe hardly knew what to say. What was there to study about a bug? Either it bit you or it didn't.
"I've left about a thousand bugs in Little Rock," the man said. "That's why I threw away my equipment. I'm out of the mood to study bugs and am thinking of going to Texas to preach the Gospel. I've heard that Texans can use some good straight Gospel." "Why study a bug?" Joe asked again, his curiosity getting the better of him.
"There's more than a million species of insect and only one species of human being," the man said. "When we finish up with this planet the insects will take over. You may not think it, seeing all this fair land, but the days of the human race are numbered. The insects are waiting their turn." July decided the man was mildly touched, but probably no danger to himself or anyone. "I'd watch these crossings, if I were you. Cross where the deer cross and you'll be all right," he said.
The man turned his blue eyes on July for a moment. "Why, son, I'm fine," he said.
"You're the one in trouble. I can see you carry a weight on your heart. You're hurrying along to do something you may not want to do. I see by your badge that you're a lawman. But the crimes the law can understand are not the worst crimes. I have often sinned worse than the murderer, and yet I try to live in virtue." July was so taken aback he hardly knew what to say. This Mr. Sedgwick was one of the queerest men he had ever met.
"This boy looks a little peaked," Mr.
Sedgwick said. "You can leave him with me, if you like. I'll bring him along slow, fatten him up and teach him about the insect kingdom as we travel.
I doubt he's had much chance to get an education." July was half tempted. The stranger seemed kindly. On the other hand he wore a sidearm under his coat, so perhaps he wasn't as kindly as he looked.
"It may be we'll meet down the road," July said, ignoring the offer.
"Perhaps," Mr. Sedgwick said. "I see you're in a hurry to get someplace. It's a great mistake to hurry." "Why?" Joe asked, puzzled by almost everything the traveler said.
"Because the grave's our destination," Mr.
Sedgwick said. "Those who hurry usually get to it quicker than those who take their time. Now, me, I travel, and when I'll get anywhere is anybody's guess. If you two hadn't come along I'd have likely stood there in the river for another hour or two. The moving waters are ever a beautiful sight." Mr. Sedgwick turned and walked down the riverbank without another word. From time to time he squatted to peer closely at the ground.
"I reckon he's spotted a bug," Joe said.
July didn't answer. Crazy or not, the tall traveler had been smart enough to figure out that the sheriff of Fort Smith was traveling with a heavy heart.
The death of the young Irishman cast a heavy gloom over the cow camp. Call could do nothing about it. For the next week it seemed no one talked of anything but the death.
At night while they were having their grub, or just waiting for their turn at night herding to start, the cowboys talked endlessly about deaths they had witnessed, deaths they had heard about. Most of them had lived through rough times and had seen men die, but no one of their acquaintance had ridden into a nest of snakes in a river, and they could not keep the subject off their tongues.
The worst, by far, was Jasper Fant, who was so unnerved by what he had seen that for a time Call felt he might be losing his mind. Jasper had never been reticent, but now it seemed he had to be talking every waking minute as a means of holding his own fears in balance.
Allen O'Brien had the opposite response. He rode all day in silence, as nervous and withdrawn as the Spettle brothers.
He would sit by the fire crying while the others talked of memorable deaths.
The cattle, still fresh to the trail, were not easily controlled. The brush was bad, the weather no better. It rained for three days and the mosquitoes were terrible. The men were not used to the night work and were irritable as hens. Bert Borum and Soupy Jones had an argument over how to hobble a horse and almost came to blows. Lippy had been put in charge of firewood, and the wood he cut didn't suit Bolivar, who was affronted by Lippy's very presence. Deets had fallen into one of his rare glooms, probably because he felt partly to blame for the boy's death.
Dish Boggett was proving a treasure as a point man. He kept the point all day, true as a rule, and little happened with the cattle that he didn't see.
By contrast the Rainey boys were disappointing.
Both had taken homesick, missing their jolly mother and her well-stocked table. They drug around listlessly, not actually shirking their work but taking a long time to do it.
Augustus roamed freely about the outfit.
Sometimes he rode ahead of the herd, which put Dish Boggett in a bad mood--nobody was supposed to be ahead of him except the scout. Other days Augustus would idle along with his pigs, who frequently stopped to wallow in puddles or root rats out of their holes.
Everyone had been dreading the next river, which was the San Antonio. There was much controversy about how far north moccasins could live--were they in the Cimarron, the Arkansas, the Platte? No one knew for sure, but everyone knew there were plenty in the San Antonio River.
One morning after breakfast Deets came back to say he had found a shallow crossing only a mile or two from the camp.
"What's the snake population?" Augustus asked. It was another gray wet day and he was wearing his big yellow slicker.
"Seen a few turtles, that's all," Deets said. "If they're there, they're hid." "I hope they ain't there," Augustus said.
"If a mouse snake was to show itself now, half these waddies would climb a tree." "I'm more worried about Indians," Pea Eye said.
It was true. The minute they left Lonesome Dove he had begun to have his big Indian dreams. The same big Indian he had dreamed about for years had come back to haunt his sleep.
Sometimes just dozing on his horse he would dream about the Indian. He slept poorly, as a result, and felt he would be tired and good for nothing by the time they reached Montana.
"It's curious how things get in your head," he said. "I've got an Indian in mine." "I expect your ma told you you'd be stolt, when you was young," Augustus said.
He and Call rode over to the crossing and looked carefully for snakes, but saw none.
"I wish you'd stop talking about that boy's death," Call said. "If you would maybe they'd get over it." "Wrong theory," Augustus said. "Talk's the way to kill it. Anything gets boring if you talk about it enough, even death." They sat on the bank of the river, waiting for the herd to come in sight. When it did, the Texas bull was walking along beside Old Dog. Some days the bull liked to lead, other days he did nothing but fight or worry the heifers.
"This ain't a well-thought-out journey," Augustus remarked. "Even if we get these cattle to Montana, who are we gonna sell 'em to?" "The point ain't to sell 'em next week," Call said. "The point is to get the land. The people will be coming." "Why are we taking that ugly bull?" Augustus asked. "If the land's all that pretty, it don't need a lot of ugly cattle on it." To their relief the crossing went off well. The only commotion was caused by Jasper, who charged the river at a gallop and caused his horse to stumble and nearly fall.
"That might have worked if there'd been a bridge," Soupy Jones said, laughing.
Jasper was embarrassed. He knew he couldn't run a horse across a river, but at the last minute a fear of snakes had overcome him and blocked out his common sense.
Newt was too tired to be afraid of anything.
He had not adjusted to night herding. While his horse was watering, Mr. Gus rode up beside him. The clouds had broken to the west.
"I wish the sun would come out and fry these skeeters," Augustus said.
The wagon was slowly approaching the crossing, Bolivar driving and Lippy riding in the back.
Behind came the horse herd and the Spettle boys.
It was strange, Newt thought, that one river could be so peaceful and another suddenly boil up with snakes and kill Sean. Several times, mostly at night, he had imagined Sean was still alive.
Being so sleepy made it harder to keep from mixing dreams with what was actually happening. He even had conversations with the other hands that seemed like they were conversations in dreams. He had never known the sadness of losing a friend, and had begun to consider what a long way they had to go.
"I hope don't nobody else get killed," he said.
"Well, it's hard to calculate the odds in this kind of a situation," Augustus said. "We may not have another bad injury the whole way. On the other hand, half of us may get wiped out. If we have much bad luck I doubt I'll make it myself." "Why?" Newt asked, startled to hear him say such a thing.
"Because I ain't spry like I used to be," Augustus said. "Used to be I was quick to duck any kind of trouble. I could roll off a horse quicker than a man can blink. I'm still faster than some folks, but I ain't as fast as I was." The wagon made the crossing easily, and the two blue pigs, who had been ambling along behind it, walked in and swam the San Antonio River.
"Look at them," Augustus said happily.
"Ain't they swimmers?"
As the days passed, Lorena found she liked the traveling more and more. The nights were no easier--almost every night the lightning flickered and thunderstorms rolled over them. Often, while she and Jake slept, big drops of rain would hit them in the face and force them to grab for the tarp. Soon the blankets seemed permanently damp, causing Jake to grumble and complain. But the tarp was hot and stiff, and he himself never thought to keep it handy.
She would have to stumble around and arrange it in the dark, while Jake cussed the weather.
But no matter how uncomfortable the nights, the sky usually cleared in the morning. She liked to sit on the blankets and feel the sun getting warmer. She watched her arms getting slowly tanned and felt that a life of travel was what she was meant for. Her mare had gotten used to the travel too and no longer looked back toward Lonesome Dove.
Lorena might love the traveling, but it was clear that Jake didn't. More and more he was inclined to sulk. The fact that she had refused to go into San Antonio festered like the thorn he had had in his hand. Every day he brought it up, but she had said all she intended to say on the subject and just shook her head. Often she traveled all day in silence, thinking her thoughts and ignoring Jake's complaints.
"Dern you, why can't you talk?" he said one night as she was making the campfire. Deets, who stopped by their camp almost every day to see that they were all right, had shown her how to make a fire. He had also taught her how to pack the mule and do various other chores that Jake mostly neglected.
"I can talk," Lorena said.
"Well, you don't," Jake said. "I never seen a woman keep so quiet." He spoke hotly--indeed, had been angry at her most of the trip. He was spoiling for a battle of some kind, but Lorena didn't want to battle. She had nothing against Jake, but she didn't feel she had to jump every time he whistled, which seemed to be what he expected. Jake was very fussy, complaining about the way she cooked the bacon or laid out the blankets. She ignored him. If he didn't like the way she did things, he was free to do them different--but he never did them different. He just fussed at her.
"We could be sleeping in a fine hotel tonight," he said. "San Antonio ain't but an hour's ride." "Go sleep in one, if you want to," Lorena said. "I'll stay in camp." "I guess you do wish I'd leave," Jake said. "Then you could whore with the first cowpoke that came along." That was too silly to answer. She had not whored since the day she met him, unless you counted Gus.
She sipped her coffee.
"That's your game, ain't it?" Jake said, his eyes hot.
"No," Lorena said.
"Well, you're a goddamn liar, then," Jake said. "Once a whore, always a whore.
I won't stand for it. Next time I'll take a rope to you." After he ate his bacon he saddled and rode off without another word--to go gamble, she supposed.
Far from being scared, Lorena was relieved.
Jake's angers were light compared to some she had known, but it was no pleasure having him around when he was so hot. Probably he thought to scare her, riding off so quick and leaving her in camp, but she felt no fear at all. The herd and all the boys were only a mile away. No one would be likely to bother her with the cow camp so close.
She sat on her blankets, enjoying the night. It was deep dusk, and birds-- bullbats
--were whooshing around--she could see them briefly as shadows against the darkening sky. She and Jake had camped in a little clearing. While she was sipping her coffee, a possum walked within ten feet of her, stopped a moment to look at her stupidly, and walked on. After a while she heard faraway singing--the Irishman was singing to the cattle herd. Deets had told them about the terrible death of his brother.
Before she could get to sleep a horse came racing toward the camp. It was only Jake, running in in the hope of scaring her. He raced right into camp, which was irritating because it raised dust that settled in the blankets. He had ridden into town and bought whiskey, and then had rushed back, thinking to catch her with Gus or one of the cowhands.
He was jealous every hour of the day.
Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove Page 39