Lonesome Dove (41 page)

But a runaway girl was not the sort of guide he had in mind. After all, the only reason he was looking for July was to report on a runaway woman. How would it look if he showed up with another? July would think it highly irregular, and if the folks back in Fort Smith got wind of it it could easily be made to look bad. After all, old Sam hadn’t kept her around just because she could fry a possum in the dark.

The memory of the frying possum crossed his mind, reminding him that he was very hungry. What with the wasp stings on top of the hunger, it was difficult to express himself clearly, or even to think clearly, for that matter.

As if reading his hunger from his expression, the girl quickly moved to strengthen her case. “I can catch varmints,” she said. “Bill taught me the trick. Mostly I can outrun ’em. I can fish if you’ve got a hook.”

“Oh,” Roscoe said, “I guess you caught that possum then.”

The girl shrugged. “I can walk faster than possums can run,” she said. “If we can get to the creek I’ll fix them stings.”

The stings were burning like fire. Roscoe decided there would be no impropriety in letting the girl go as far as the creek. He considered offering to let her ride double, but before he could mention it she ran on ahead. Not only could she walk faster than a possum could run, she could run faster than Memphis could walk. He had to put the horse into a trot to keep up with her. By the time they got to the creek, Roscoe felt lightheaded from the combination of hunger and wasp stings. His vision was swimming again, as it had when he was drunk. A wasp had got him close to one eye; soon the eye swelled shut. His head felt larger than it usually did. It was a very inconvenient life, and, as usual when traveling got bad, he felt resentful of July for having married a woman who would run off.

The girl beat him to the creek and began making mud poultices and spitting in them. She immediately dismantled a couple of crawdad houses to get the kind of mud she required. Fortunately the creek had a high bank, which cast a little shade. Roscoe sat in the shade and allowed the girl to pack the mud poultices over the stings on his face. She even managed to get one on the swelling near his eye.

“You get that shirt off,” she said, startling Roscoe so that he obeyed. The mud felt cool.

“Old Sam et crawdads,” she said, as she sat back to survey her handiwork. “He can’t shoot worth a dern so he had to live off the varmints I could catch.”

“Well, I wish you could catch a fat rabbit,” Roscoe said. “I’m plumb starved.”

The next moment the girl was gone. She disappeared over the bank. Roscoe felt silly, for of course he had not really meant for her to go catch a rabbit. She might be fast, but rabbits were surely faster.

His feeling of lightheadedness came back and he lay down in the cool shade, thinking a little nap wouldn’t hurt. He shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he saw a surprising sight—or two sights, really. One was a dead cottontail lying near him. The other was the girl, who was wading down the edge of the creek, a short stick in her hands. Suddenly a big bullfrog jumped off the bank. While the frog was in the air, the girl hit it with the stick and knocked it far up the bank. She scrambled up after it, and Roscoe stood up to watch, although he had only one eye to watch with. She had knocked the frog into some weeds, which slowed its hopping some. The frog cleared the weeds once, but it couldn’t jump far, and the girl was soon on it with her stick. A moment later she came down the bank holding the squashed frog by the legs. Its pink tongue was hanging out.

“Got a rabbit and a frog,” she said. “You want ’em fried up?”

“I never et no frog,” Roscoe said. “Who eats frogs?”

“You just eat the legs,” the girl said. “Gimme your knife.”

Roscoe handed it over. The girl rapidly skinned the cottontail, which was indeed plump. Then she whacked the knife into the frog, threw the top half into the creek and peeled the skin off the legs with her teeth. Roscoe had a few simple utensils in his saddlebag, which she got without a word from him. Roscoe assumed the stings must be affecting him because he felt like he was in a dream. He wasn’t asleep, but he felt no inclination to move. The top half of the frog, its dangling guts pale in the water, drifted over to shore. Two gray turtles surfaced and began to nibble at the guts. Roscoe mainly watched the turtles while the girl made a little fire and cooked the rabbit and the frog legs. To his surprise, the frog legs kept hopping out of the pan as if the frog was still alive.

However, when she got them cooked, he ate one and was very pleased with the taste. Then he and the girl divided the rabbit and ate it to the last bite, throwing the bones into the creek. The combination of rabbit and frog innards had caused quite a congregation of turtles to collect.

“Niggers eat turtles,” the girl said, cracking a rabbit bone between her teeth.

“They eat most anything,” Roscoe said. “I guess they can’t be choosy.”

After the meal, Roscoe felt less lightheaded. The girl sat a few feet away, staring into the waters of the creek. She seemed just a child. Her legs were muddy from wading in the creek, her arms still bruised from her troubles with old Sam. Some of the bruises were blue, others had faded to yellow. The cotton-sack dress was torn in several places.

The problem of what to do about her began to weigh on Roscoe’s mind. It had been nice of her to feed him, but that didn’t answer the question of what was to be done with her. Old Sam had not looked like a man who would take kindly to losing something he regarded as his property. He might be trailing them at that very moment, and since they weren’t far from the cabin he might be about to catch up.

“I guess that old man will be coming after you,” Roscoe said, feeling nervous.

“Nope,” the girl said.

“Well, he said you was his,” Roscoe said. “Why wouldn’t he come after you?”

“He’s got rheumatism in his knees,” the girl said.

“Don’t he have a horse?”

“No, it foundered,” she said. “Besides, I took the big pan and whacked him across the knees to keep him still a few days.”

“My goodness,” Roscoe said. “You’re a rough customer, I guess.”

The girl shook her head. “I ain’t rough,” she said. “Old Sam was rough.”

She took the utensils to the creek and washed them before putting them back in the packs.

Roscoe was painfully aware that he had to make a decision. It was near midday and he had only covered a few miles. The girl was a handy person to have along on a trip, he had to admit. On the other hand, she was a runaway, and it would all be hard to explain to July.

“Don’t you have no folks?” he asked, hoping there was a relative somewhere ahead whom he could leave the girl with.

She shook her head. “They died,” she said. “I had a brother but the Indians run off with him. Ma died and Pa went crazy and shot himself. I lived with a Dutchman till Bill got me.”

“My lord,” Roscoe said. “Who was this Bill?”

A look of unhappiness crossed the girl’s face. “Bill was taking me to Fort Worth,” she said. “Then he run across old Sam up there by Waco and they got drunk and Sam traded for me.

She never explained who Bill was, but Roscoe let it go. He decided to put off deciding what to do about her for at least a day. His wasp stings were paining him and he didn’t feel he could make a competent decision when he could only see out of one eye. Maybe they would hit a settlement and he could find some nice family who needed help. They might take her off his hands.

The only problem was the one horse. It didn’t seem right for him to ride and her to walk. Of course, she weighed next to nothing. It wouldn’t hurt Memphis to carry them both.

“You best come for a day or two,” he said. “Maybe we can find you someplace better than where you left. I’d hate for you to have to go back.”

“I ain’t going back,” the girl said. “Old Sam would kill me.”

When Roscoe offered her a stirrup up, she looked at him strangely.

“I don’t mind the walk,” she said.

“Well, we got to hurry,” he said. “July’s way ahead. Jump up here.”

The girl did. Memphis looked annoyed, but he was too lazy to put up a fuss. The girl hooked her toes in the girth and held onto the saddle strings.

“It’s high, ain’t it?” she said. “I can see over the bushes.”

“You tell me if I go wrong,” Roscoe said, as they splashed across the creek. “I can’t afford to miss that San Antone.”

44

NORTH OF SAN ANTONIO the country finally began to open up, to the relief of everyone. Two weeks of mesquite had tried everyone’s patience. Gradually the mesquite thinned and the country became less heavily wooded. The grass was better and the cattle easier to handle. They grazed their way north so slowly most days that Newt felt it would take forever just to get out of Texas, much less make it to Montana.

He still worked the drags; as the grass improved the work was a little less dusty. He mainly rode along with the Rainey boys, discussing things they might see up the trail. A major topic of speculation was whether the Indians had actually been whipped or not.

At night around the campfire there were always Indian stories being told, mostly by Mr. Gus. Once the crew had settled into the rhythm of night work, the Captain took to doing what he always done: he removed himself from the company a little distance. Almost every night he would catch the Hell Bitch and ride away. It puzzled some of the men.

“Reckon he don’t like the way we smell?” Bert Borum asked.

“If that’s what it is, I don’t blame him,” Jasper said. “Pea needs to wash his underwear more than twice a year.”

“The Captain likes to go off,” Pea said, ignoring the remark about his underwear.

Augustus was in a card game with the Irishman and Lippy. The stakes were theoretical, since he had already won six months of their wages.

“Woodrow likes to be out where he can sniff the wind,” he said. “It makes him feel smart. Of course he would be the first one massacred if there was any smart Indians left.”

“I hope there ain’t none,” Lippy remarked.

“They wouldn’t want you,” Augustus said. “They don’t bother with crazies.”

“I wisht we’d get a cook,” Jasper said. “I’m dern tired of eating slop.”

It was a common complaint. Since Bolivar’s departure the food had been uneven, various men trying their hand at cooking. Call had ridden into several settlements, hoping to find someone they could hire as cook, but he had had no luck. Augustus usually cooked breakfast, catering to his own interest entirely and drawing many complaints because he favored scrambling eggs—a style several hands, Dish Boggett in particular, found revolting.

“I like my eggs with just a light fry,” Dish said, morning after morning, only to watch helplessly as Augustus turned them into batter and poured them into a big skillet. “Don’t do that, Gus,” he said. “You’ll get the white and the yellow all mixed up.”

“They’re going to get mixed up in your stomach anyway,” Augustus pointed out.

Dish was not the only one who hated scrambled eggs. “I don’t eat the white of eggs if I can help it,” Jasper said. “I hear it causes blindness.”

“Where’d you hear nonsense like that?” Augustus asked, but Jasper couldn’t remember.

However, by breakfast time everyone was usually so hungry they ate whatever they could get, complaining with every bite.

“This coffee would float a stove lid,” Call said one morning. He always rode in in time for breakfast.

“I generally eat mine with a spoon,” Lippy said.

“This is a free country we live in,” Augustus reminded them. “Anyone who don’t like this coffee can spit it out and make their own.”

No one cared to do anything that extreme. Since Call didn’t believe in stopping for a meal at noon, breakfast was a necessity, whoever cooked it.

“We got to get a cook, even if it’s a bad one,” Augustus said. “It’s too dangerous for a valuable man like me. I might get shot yet, over eggs.”

“Well, Austin ain’t far,” Call said. “We can try there.”

The day was fine and the herd moving nicely, with Dish holding the point as if he had held it all his life. Austin was only twenty miles to the east. Call was ready to go but Augustus insisted on changing his shirt.

“I might meet a lady,” he said. “You can look for the cook.”

They rode east and soon picked up the wagon trail into Austin, but they had not followed it far when Augustus suddenly swung his horse to the north.

“That ain’t the way to Austin,” Call said.

“I just remembered something,” Augustus said.

He loped off without another word. Call turned the Hell Bitch and followed. He thought perhaps Gus was thirsty—they weren’t far from a little creek that fed into the Guadalupe.

Sure enough, it was the little spring-fed creek that Augustus had been looking for. It ran through a small grove of live oaks, spread along the slope of a good-sized hill. Gus and old Malaria stopped on the hill, looking down at the creek and a little pool it formed below the trees. Gus was just sitting and looking, which was odd—but then Gus
was
odd. Call rode up, wondering what had drawn Gus’s attention to the spot, and was shocked to see that Gus had tears in his eyes. They wet his cheeks and glistened on the ends of his mustache.

Call didn’t know what to say because he had no idea what was wrong. Gus sometimes laughed until he cried, but he seldom just cried. Moreover, it was a fine day. It was puzzling, but he decided not to ask.

Gus sat for five minutes, not saying a word. Call got down and relieved himself to pass the time. He heard Gus sigh and looked up to see him wiping his eyes with a bandana.

“What has come over you?” Call asked finally.

Augustus took off his hat for a moment to let his head cool. “Woodrow, I doubt you’d understand,” he said, looking at the grove and the pool.

“Well if I don’t, I don’t,” Call said. “I sure don’t so far.”

“I call this Clara’s orchard,” Augustus said. “Me and her discovered it one day while on a buggy ride. We come out here on picnics many a time.”

“Oh,” Call said. “I might have known it would have something to do with her. I doubt there’s another human being over whom you’d shed a tear.”

Augustus wiped his eyes with his fingers. “Well, Clara was lovely,” he said. “I expect it was the major mistake of my life, letting her slip by. Only you don’t understand that, because you don’t appreciate women.”

“If she didn’t want to marry you I don’t guess there was much you could have done about it,” Call said, feeling awkward. The subject of marriage was not one he was comfortable with.

“It weren’t that simple,” Augustus said, looking at the creek and the little grove of trees and remembering all the happiness he had had there. He turned old Malaria and they rode on toward Austin, though the memory of Clara was as fresh in his mind as if it were her, not Woodrow Call, who rode beside him. She had had her vanities, mainly clothes. He used to tease her by saying he had never seen her in the same dress twice, but Clara just laughed. When his second wife died and he was free to propose, he did one day, on a picnic to the place they called her orchard, and she refused instantly, without losing a trace of her merriment.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I’m used to my own ways,” she said. “You might try to make me do something I wouldn’t want to do.”

“Don’t I indulge your every whim?” he asked.

“Yes, but that’s because you haven’t got me,” Clara said. “I bet you’d change fast if I ever let you get the upper hand.”

But she had never let him get the upper hand, though it seemed to him she had surrendered it without a fight to a dumb horse trader from Kentucky.

Call was a little embarrassed for Augustus.

“When was you the happiest, Call?” Augustus asked.

“Happiest about what?” Call asked.

“Just about being a live human being, free on the earth,” Augustus said.

“Well, it’s hard to single out any one particular time,” Call said.

“It ain’t for me,” Augustus said. “I was happiest right back there by that little creek. I fell short of the mark and lost the woman, but the times were sweet.”

It seemed an odd choice to Call. After all, Gus had been married twice.

“What about your wives?” he asked.

“Well, it’s peculiar,” Augustus said. “I never was drawn to fat women, and yet I married two of them. People do odd things, all except you. I don’t think you ever wanted to be happy anyway. It don’t suit you, so you managed to avoid it.”

“That’s silly,” Call said.

“It ain’t, either,” Augustus said. “I don’t guess I’ve watched you punish yourself for thirty years to be totally wrong about you. I just don’t know what you done to deserve the punishment.”

“You’ve got a strange way of thinking,” Call said.

They had hardly ridden three miles from the grove when they spotted a little camp at the foot of a limestone bluff. It was near a pool and a few trees.

“I bet that’s Jake,” Call said.

“No, it’s just Lorie,” Augustus said. “She’s resting by a tree. I bet Jake’s gone to town and left her.”

Call looked again, but the camp was a half a mile away and all he could see was the horses and the pack mule. Throughout his years as a Ranger, Augustus had always been renowned for his remarkable eyesight. Time and again, on the high plains and in the Pecos country, it had been proven that he could see farther than other people. In the shimmering mirages the men were always mistaking sage bushes for Indians. Call himself could shade his eyes and squint and still not be certain, but Augustus would merely glance at the supposed Indian for a moment, laugh and go back to card playing or whiskey drinking or whatever he might be doing.

“Yep, that’s a big tribe of sage bushes,” he would say.

Pea, particularly, stood in awe of Augustus’s vision, his own being notably weak. Sometimes on a hunt Augustus would try in vain to show Pea Eye an antelope or a deer.

“I might could see it if we could get closer,” Pea would say.

“Pea, I don’t know what keeps you from riding off a cliff,” Augustus responded. “If we get closer the animal will just get farther.”

“Let’s hire Lorie to cook,” Augustus said.

“Let’s don’t,” Call said. “Bring her into that camp and there’d be fights ever day, even if she was a decent woman.”

“I don’t know why you’re so down on whores, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “You had yours, as I remember.”

“Yes, that was my mistake,” Call said, annoyed that Gus would bring it up.

“It ain’t a mistake to behave like a human being once in a while,” Augustus said. “Poor Maggie got her heart broke, but she gave you a fine son before she quit.”

“You don’t know that and I don’t want to talk about it,” Call said. “He could be yours, or Jake’s, or some damn gambler’s.”

“Yes, but he ain’t, he’s yours,” Augustus said. “Anybody with a good eye can see it. Besides, Maggie told me. She and I were good friends.”

“I don’t know about friends,” Call said. “I’m sure you were a good customer.”

“The two can overlap,” Augustus pointed out, well aware that his friend was not happy to have such a subject broached. Call had been secretive about it when it was happening and had been even more secretive about it since.

When they rode into the little camp, Lorena was sitting under the tree, quietly watching them. She had evidently just bathed in the pool, for her long blond hair was wet. Once in a while she squeezed water off a strand with her fingers. She had a bruise below one eye.

“’I god, Lorie, it looks like an easy life,” Augustus said. “You got your own swimming hole. Where’s Jake?”

“He went to town,” Lorena said. “He’s done been gone two days.”

“Must be in a good game,” Augustus said. “Jake will play for a week if he’s ahead.”

Call thought it was unconscionable to leave any woman alone that long in such rough country.

“When do you expect him back?” he asked.

“He said he wasn’t coming back,” Lorena said. “He left mad. He’s been mad the whole way up here. He said I could have the horse and the mule and go where I pleased.”

“I doubt he meant it,” Augustus said. “What do you think?”

“He’ll be back,” Lorena said.

Call was not so sure. Jake had never been one to load himself with responsibilities unnecessarily.

To his annoyance, Gus got down and hitched his horse to a bush. Then he unsaddled.

“I thought you was going to Austin,” Call said.

“Woodrow, you go,” Augustus said. “I ain’t in the mood for city life just now. I’ll stay here and play cards with Lorie until that scamp shows up.”

Call was very annoyed. One of Gus’s worst traits was an inability to stick to a plan. Call might spend all night working out a strategy, and Augustus might go along with it for ten minutes and then lose patience and just do whatever came into his mind. Of course, going into town to hire a cook was no great project, but it was still irritating that Gus would just drop off. But Call knew it was pointless to argue.

“Well, I hope you get back to the herd tonight, in case I’m late,” he said. “There should be somebody with some experience around.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Augustus said. “It’s time that outfit got a little practice in doing without us. They probably think the sun won’t come up unless you’re there to allow it.”

Rather than re-argue yet another old argument, Call turned the Hell Bitch. Even experienced men were apt to flounder badly in crises if they lacked leadership. He had seen highly competent men stand as if paralyzed in a crisis, though once someone took command and told them what to do they might perform splendidly. A loose group like the Hat Creek outfit wouldn’t even know how to decide who was to decide, if both he and Gus were gone.

He put the Hell Bitch into a lope—it was a pleasure to watch the easy way the mare ate up the miles. With such a horse under him he could soon forget most of his vexations.

Then, for no reason, between one stride and the next, the Hell Bitch suddenly rolled out of her easy gait into a flying buck. Call was riding along relaxed and, before he could even jerk her head up, he lost a stirrup and knew he was thrown. Well, goddamn you, you finally got me, he thought, and a second later was on the ground. But he had taken a wrap around his hand with one rein and held on, hoping the rein wouldn’t snap. The rein held, and Call got to his feet and caught the other rein.

“Well, your little plan failed,” he said to the mare. He knew that with a little better luck she would have been loose and gone. She didn’t fight at all when he remounted, and she showed no sign of wanting to buck anymore. Call kept her in a trot for a mile or two before letting her go back to the lope. He didn’t expect her to try it again. She was too intelligent to waste her energies at a time when she knew he would be set for trouble. Somehow she had sensed that he had his mind on other things when she exploded. In a way it pleased him—he had never cared for totally docile horses. He liked an animal that was as alert as he was—or, in the mare’s case, even more alert. She had been aware of his preoccupations, whereas he had had no inkling of her intentions.