Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

by Lonesome Dove

  "Well, I won't shoot them then, I'll just scare them," little Eddie said.

  "No, that's Frog Lip's job, scaring them punkin'-eaters," Dan said. "He'll scare them a sight worse than you will." The next day Frog Lip got his chance. They saw a man plowing beside a team of big horses. A woman and a small boy were carrying buffalo chips in a wheelbarrow and piling them beside a low sod house that was dug into a slope. Two milk cows grazed nearby.

  "He can afford them big horses," Roy pointed out. "Maybe he's got money." Dan had been about to ride past, and Jake hoped he would. He still hoped they'd hit Dodge before the Suggs boys did any regulating. He might get free of them in Dodge. Two accidents wouldn't necessarily brand him for life, but if he traveled much farther with a gun outfit like the Suggses, he couldn't expect a peaceful old age--or any old age, probably.

  But Dan decided, on a whim, to go rob the farmer, if he had anything worth being robbed of.

  "They usually hide their money in the chimney," he said. "Either that or they bury it in the orchard, though I don't see no orchard." Frog Lip kept an extra pistol in his saddlebags. As they approached the farmer he got it out and stuck it in his belt.

  The farmer was plowing a shallow furrow through the tough prairie grass. Seeing the riders approach, he stopped. He was a middle-aged man with a curly black beard, thoroughly sweated from his work. His wife and son watched the Suggses approach. Their wheelbarrow was nearly full of buffalo chips.

  "Well, I guess you can expect a fine crop along about July, if the damn Texas cattle don't come along and eat it all up," Dan said.

  The man nodded in a friendly way, as if he agreed with the sentiment.

  "We're here to see you reap what you sow," Dan went on. "It'll cost you forty dollars gold, but we'll deal with the herds when they show up and your crops won't be disturbed." "No speaken English," the man said, still smiling and nodding in a friendly way.

  "Oh, hell, a damn German," Dan said.

  "I figured this was a waste of time. Round up the woman and the sprout, Frog. Maybe this old Dutchman married an American gal." Frog Lip loped over and drove the woman and the boy near the farmer; he rode so close to them that if they had fallen his horse would have stepped on them. He had taken the pistol out of his belt, but he didn't need it. The woman and the boy were terrified, and the farmer too. He put his arms around his wife and child, and they all stood there, crying.

  "Look at them blubber," little Eddie said.

  "I never seen such cowards." "Will you shut your damn mouth?" Dan said.

  "Why wouldn't they be scared? I would be, in their place. But I'd like to get the woman hushed crying long enough to see if she can talk English." The woman either couldn't or wouldn't. She didn't utter a word in any language. She was tall and skinny, and she just stood there by her husband, crying. It was plain all three of them expected to be killed.

  Dan repeated his request for money, and only the boy looked as if he understood it. He stopped crying for a minute.

  "That's it, sonny, it's only cash we want," Dan said. "Tell your pa to pay us and we'll help him guard his crops." Jake hardly expected a scared boy to believe that, but the boy did stop crying. He spoke to his father in the old tongue, and the man, whose face ran with tears, composed himself a little and jabbered at the boy.

  The boy turned and ran lickety-split for the sod house.

  "Go with him and see what you can find, boys," Dan said. "Me and Jake can ride herd on the family, I guess. They don't look too violent." Ten minutes later the boy came racing back, crying again, and Frog Lip and the two younger Suggses followed. They had an old leather wallet with them, which Roy Suggs threw to Dan.

  It had two small gold pieces in it.

  "Why, this ain't but four dollars," Dan said.

  "Did you look good?" "Yeah, we tore up the chimney and opened all the trunks," Roy said. "That purse was under the pallet they sleep on. They don't have a dern thing worth taking besides that." "Four dollars to see 'em through," Dan said.

  "That won't help 'em much, we might as well take it." He took the two gold pieces and tossed the worn leather purse back at the man's feet.

  "Let's go," he said.

  Jake was glad to see it come to no worse than that, but as they were riding away Frog Lip turned and loped over to the milk cows.

  "What's he aim to do, shoot the milk cows?" little Eddie asked, for Frog Lip had his pistol in his hand.

  "I didn't ask him and he didn't say," Dan replied.

  Frog Lip rode up beside the cows and fired a couple of shots into the air. When the cows started a lumbering run, he skillfully turned them up the slope and chased them right onto the roof of the sod house. The sod on the roof had grass still on it and looked not unlike the prairie. The cows took a few steps onto the roof and then their forequarters disappeared, as if they had fallen into a hole. Then their hindquarters disappeared too.

  Frog Lip reined in his horse and watched as both cows fell through the roof of the sod house. A minute later one came squeezing out the small door, and the other followed. Both cows trotted back to where they had been grazing.

  "That Frog," Dan Suggs said. "I guess he just wanted to ventilate the house a little." "All we got was four dollars," little Eddie said.

  "Well, it was your idea," Dan said. "You wanted the practice, and you got it." "He's mad because he didn't get to shoot nobody," Roy said. "He thinks he's a shooter." "Well, this is a gun outfit, ain't it?" little Eddie said. "We ain't cowboys, so what are we then?" "Travelers," Dan said. "Right now we're traveling to Kansas, looking for what we can find." Frog Lip rejoined them as silently as he had left. Despite himself Jake could not conquer his fear of the man. Frog Lip had never said anything hostile to him, or even looked his way on the whole trip, and yet Jake felt a sort of apprehension whenever he even rode close to the man. In all his travels in the west he had met few men who gave off such a sense of danger. Even Indians didn't--although of course there had been few occasions when he had ridden close to an Indian.

  "I wonder if them soddies will get that roof fixed before the next rain?" Dan Suggs said.

  "If they had had a little more cash, Frog might have left them alone." Frog Lip didn't comment.

  It took July only a day or two to determine that Elmira was not in Dodge City.

  The town was a shock to him, for almost every woman in it seemed to be a whore and almost every business a saloon. He kept trying to tell himself he shouldn't be surprised, for he had heard for years that Kansas towns were wild. In Missouri, where he had gone to testify at the trial, there was much talk of Kansas. People in Missouri seemed to consider that they had gotten rid of all their riffraff to the cow towns. July quickly concluded that they were right. There might be rough elements in Missouri, but what struck him in Kansas was the absence of any elements that weren't rough. Of course there were a few stores and a livery stable or two in Dodge--even a hotel of sorts, though the whores were in and out of the hotel so much that it seemed more like a whorehouse. Gamblers were thick in the saloons and he had never seen a place where as many people went armed.

  The first thing July did was buy a decent horse. He went to the post office, for he felt he owed Fort Smith an explanation as to why he had not come back. For some reason he felt a surge of optimism as he walked down the street to the post office. Now that he had survived the plains it seemed possible that he could find Ellie after all. He had lost all interest in catching Jake Spoon; he just wanted to find his wife and go home. If Peach didn't like it--and she wouldn't--she would just have to lump it.

  If Ellie wasn't in Dodge she would probably be in Abilene. He would soon catch up with her.

  But to his surprise, the minute he stepped inside the door of the post office his optimism gave way in a flash to bitter depression. In trying to think of what he would say in his letter he remembered all that had happened. Roscoe was dead, Joe was dead, the girl was dead, and Ellie not found--maybe she too was dead. All he had to report was death and failure.
At the thought of poor Roscoe, gutted and left under a little pile of rocks on the prairie, his eyes filled with tears and he had to turn and walk back out the door to keep from embarrassing himself.

  He walked along the dusty street for a few minutes, wiping the tears out of his eyes with his shirtsleeve. One or two men observed him curiously. It was obvious that he was upset, but no one said anything to him. He remembered walking into the post office in Fort Worth and getting the letter that told him about Ellie. Since then, it had all been puzzlement and pain. He felt that in most ways it would have been better if he had died on the plains with the rest of them. He was tired of wandering and looking.

  But he hadn't died, and eventually he turned and went back to the post office, which was empty except for an elderly clerk with a white mustache.

  "Well, you're back," the clerk said. "That was you a while ago, wasn't it?" "That was me," July admitted.

  He bought an envelope, a stamp and a couple of sheets of writing paper, and the clerk, who seemed kindly, loaned him a pencil to write with.

  "You can write it right here at the window," the clerk said. "We're not doing much business today." July started, and then, to his embarrassment, began to cry again. His memories were too sad, his hopes too thin. To have to say things on paper seemed a terrible task, for it stirred the memories.

  "I guess somebody died and you've got to write their folks, is that it?" the clerk said.

  "Yes," July said. "Only two of them didn't have no folks." He vaguely remembered that Roscoe had a few brothers, but none of them lived around Fort Smith or had been heard of in years. He wiped his eyes on his shirtsleeve again, reflecting that he had cried more in the last few weeks than he had in his whole life up to that point.

  After standing there staring at the paper for a few minutes, he finally wrote a brief letter, addressed to Peach:

  DEAR PEACH-- Roscoe Brown was killed by a bad outlaw, so was Joe. A girl named Janey was also kilt, I don't know much about her, Roscoe said he met her in the woods.

  I don't know when I will be back--the folks can hire another sheriff if they want to, somebody has to look after the town.

  YOUR BROTHER-IN-LAW, July Johnson

  He had already pretty well convinced himself that Elmira was not in Dodge City, for he had been in every public place in town and had not seen her.

  But since the old clerk seemed kindly, he thought he might as well ask. Maybe she had come in to mail a letter at some point.

  "I'm looking for a woman named Elmira," he said. "She's got brown hair and she ain't very big." "Ellie?" the clerk said. "Why, I ain't seen Ellie in two or three years. Seems like I heard she moved to Abilene." "That's her," July said, encouraged again all of a sudden. Ellie had been living in Abilene before she moved to St. Jo, where he had found her.

  "I thought she might have come back," he added.

  "No, ain't seen her," the clerk said. "But you might ask Jennie, up at the third saloon.

  She and Elmira used to be thick once. I think they even married the same man, if you want to call it married." "Oh, Mr. Boot?" July asked.

  "Yes, Dee Boot, the scoundrel," the clerk said.

  "How could he be married to the two of them?" July asked, not sure he wanted the information but unable to stop talking to a man who could tell him something about Ellie.

  "Why, Dee Boot would bed down with a possum, if the possum was female. He was a cutter with the ladies." "Didn't he die of smallpox?" July asked.

  The clerk shook his head. "Not so far as I know," he said. "He's up in Ogallala or Deadwood or somewhere, where there's lots of whores and not too much law. I imagine he's got five or six whores in his string right now. Of course he could have died, but he's my nephew and I ain't heard no news to that effect." "Thank you for the loan of the pencil," July said. He turned and walked out. He went straight to the livery stable and got his new horse, whose name was Pete. If Elmira wasn't in Dodge she might be in Abilene, so he might as well start. But he didn't start.

  He rode halfway out of town and then went back to the third saloon from the post office and inquired about the woman named Jennie. They said she had moved to another bar, up the street--a cowboy was even kind enough to point out the bar. A herd had been sold that morning and was being loaded onto boxcars.

  July rode over and watched the work a while-- slow work and made slower by the cattle's long horns, which kept getting tangled with one another as the cattle were being forced up the narrow loading chute. The cowboys yelled and popped their quirts, and the horses behaved expertly, but despite that, it seemed to take a long time to fill a boxcar.

  Still, July liked the look of the cowboys--he always had, even when they got a little rowdy, as they sometimes did in Fort Smith. They were young and friendly and seemed not to have a care in the world. They rode as if they were grown to their horses. Their teamwork when the cattle misbehaved and tried to break out was interesting to see. He saw a cowboy rope a running steer by the horns and then cleverly trip it so that the steer fell heavily. When the animal rose, it showed no more fight and was soon loaded.

  After watching the loading for a while he went back to the saloon where the woman named Jennie was said to work. He inquired for her at the bar, and the bartender, a skinny runt, said she was busy and asked if he wanted a whiskey. July seldom drank whiskey but he said yes, to be courteous, mainly. If he was taking up space in a bar he ought to pay for it, he figured. So he took the whiskey and sipped it until it was gone, and then took another. Soon he was feeling heavy, as if it would be difficult to walk fast if he had to, but in fact he didn't have to.

  Women came and went in the saloon, but the bartender who poured the whiskeys kept assuring him that Jennie would be down any minute. July kept drinking. It seemed to him that he was taking on weight in a hurry. He felt that just getting out of his chair would be more than he could do, he felt so heavy.

  The bartender kept bringing whiskeys and it seemed to July he must be running up quite a bill, but it didn't worry him. Occasionally a cowboy would pass by, his spurs jingling. Some of them gave July a look, but none of them spoke to him. It was comfortable to sit in the saloon--as sheriff, he had usually avoided them unless he had business in one. It had always puzzled him how some men could spend their days just sitting in a saloon, drinking, but now it was beginning to seem less puzzling. It was re/l, and the heavy feeling that came with the drinking was a relief to him, in a way. For the last few weeks he had been struggling to do things which were beyond his powers --he knew he was supposed to keep trying, even if he wasn't succeeding, but it was pleasant not to try for a little while.

  Then he looked up and saw a woman standing by the table--she was skinny, like Elmira, and had stringy black hair.

  "Let's get going, cowboy," she said. "You can't do nothing sitting there." "Get going where?" he asked, taken by surprise. No one had ever called him "cowboy" before, but it was a natural mistake.

  He had taken off his sheriff's star for a few days --a precaution he often took in a strange town.

  "I'm Jennie," she said. "Sam said you were looking for me, or have I got the wrong cowboy?" "Oh," July said, embarrassed. He had even forgotten he was waiting for someone named Jennie.

  "We could get going, even if you ain't the right cowboy," Jennie said. "If you can afford that much whiskey you can afford me. You could even buy me a drink if you felt polite." July had never in his life bought a woman a drink, or even sat with a woman who liked to drink. Any other time such an invitation would have shocked him, but in this case it just made him feel that his manners weren't all they should be. Jennie had huge brown eyes, too large for her thin face. She was looking at him impatiently.

  "Yes, have a drink," he said. "I'm running up a bill." Jennie sat down and waved at the bartender, who immediately appeared with a bottle. "This one's drinking like a fish," he said cheerfully. "I guess it's been a long, dry trail." July suddenly remembered why he was waiting to see the girl named Jennie.

  "D
id you know Ellie?" he asked. "I heard you knowed her." It was Jennie's turn to be surprised. Elmira had been her best friend for three years, and she hardly expected a drunken young cowboy to mention her name.

  "You mean Ellie Tims?" she asked.

  "Yes," July said. "That's the Ellie. I was hoping you had news of her. I don't know where she is." "Well, she moved to Missouri," Jennie said. "Then we heard she married a sheriff from Arkansas, but I didn't put no stock in that kind of rumor. I can't imagine Ellie staying married to no sheriff." "She didn't," July said. "She run off while I was chasing Jake Spoon, and I got three people killed since I started looking for her." Jennie looked at the young man more closely.