The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  “Why, it’s just an old woman and a boy,” he said when he finally got a clear view of the two figures trudging through the sandstorm, flanked on one side by Shadrach and on the other by Bigfoot Wallace.

  “Shoot, I doubt either one of them has got a cent on them,” Gus said. “I think we ought to sneak off across the river and catch a Mexican while it’s still early.”

  “Just wait,” Call said. He was anxious to see the captives, if they were captives.

  “I swear,” Long Bill said. “I think that old woman’s blind. That boy’s leading her.”

  Long Bill was right. A boy of about ten, who looked more Mexican than Indian, walked slowly toward the campfire, leading an old white-haired Indian woman—Call had never seen anyone who looked as old as the old woman.

  When they came close enough to the fire to smell the sizzling meat, the boy began to make a strange sound. It wasn’t speech, exactly—it was more like a moan.

  “What’s he wanting?” Matilda asked—she was unnerved by the sound.

  “Why, a slice or two of your turtle meat, I expect,” Bigfoot said. “More than likely he’s hungry.”

  “Then why don’t he ask?” Matilda said.

  “He can’t ask, Matilda,” Bigfoot said.

  “Why not, ain’t he got a tongue?” Matilda asked.

  “Nope—no tongue,” Bigfoot said. “Somebody cut it out.”

  2.

  THE NORTH WIND BLEW harder, hurling the sands and soils of the great plain of Texas toward Mexico. It soon obliterated vision. Shadrach and Major Chevallie, mounted, could not see the ground. Men could not see across the campfire. Call found his rifle, but when he tried to sight, discovered that he could not see to the end of the barrel. The sand peppered them like fine shot, and it rode a cold wind. The horses could only turn their backs to it; so did the men. Most put their saddles over their heads, and their saddle blankets too. Matilda’s bloody turtle shell soon filled with sand. The campfire was almost smothered. Men formed a human wall to the north of it, to keep it from guttering out. Bigfoot and Shadrach tied bandanas around their faces—Long Bill had a bandana but it blew away and was never found. Matilda gave up cooking and sat with her back to the wind, her head bent between her knees. The boy with no tongue reached into the guttering campfire and took two slices of the sizzling turtle meat. One he gave to the old blind woman—although the meat was tough and scalding, he gulped his portion in only three bites.

  Kirker and Glanton, the scalp hunters, sat together with their backs to the wind. They stared through the fog of sand, appraising the boy and the old woman. Kirker took out his scalping knife and a small whetstone. He tried to spit on the whetstone, but the wind took the spit away; Kirker began to sharpen the knife anyway. The old woman turned her sightless eyes toward the sound—she spoke to the boy, in a language Call had never heard. But the boy had no tongue, and couldn’t answer.

  Even through the howling of the wind, Call could hear the grinding sound, as Kirker whetted his scalping knife. Gus heard it too, but his mind had not moved very far from his favorite subject, whores.

  “Be hard to poke in a wind like this,” he surmised. “Your whore would fill up with sand—unless you went careful, you’d scrape yourself raw.”

  Call ignored this comment, thinking it foolish.

  “Kirker and Glanton ain’t Rangers—I don’t know why the Major lets ’em ride with the troop,” he said.

  “It’s a free country, how could he stop them?” Gus asked, though he had to admit that the scalp hunters were unsavory company. Their gear smelled of blood, and they never washed. Gus agreed with Matilda that it was good to keep clean. He splashed himself regularly, if there was water available.

  “He could shoot ’em—I’d shoot ’em, if I was in command,” Call said. “They’re low killers, in my opinion.”

  Only the day before there had nearly been a ruckus with Kirker and Glanton. The two came riding in from the south, having taken eight scalps. The scalps hung from Kirker’s saddle. A buzzing cloud of flies surrounded them, although the blood on the scalps had dried. Most of the Rangers gave Kirker a wide berth; he was a thin man with three gappy teeth, which gave his smile a cruel twist. Glanton was larger and lazier—he slept more than anyone else in the troop and would even fall asleep and start snoring while mounted on his horse. Shadrach had no fear of either man, and neither did Bigfoot Wallace. When Kirker dismounted, Shadrach and Bigfoot walked over to examine his trophies. Shadrach fingered one of the scalps and looked at Bigfoot, who swatted the cloud of flies away briefly and sniffed a time or two at the hair.

  “Comanche—who said you could smell ’em?” Kirker asked. He was chewing on some antelope jerky that Black Sam, the cook, had provided. The sight of the old mountain man and the big scout handling his new trophies annoyed him.

  “We picked all eight of them off, at a waterhole,” Glanton said. “I shot four and so did John.”

  “That’s a pure lie,” Bigfoot said. “Eight Comanches could string you and Kirker out from here to Santa Fe. If you was ever unlucky enough to run into that many at once, we wouldn’t be having to smell your damn stink anymore.”

  He waved at Major Chevallie, who strolled over, looking uncomfortable. He drew his pistol, a precaution the Major always took when he sensed controversy. With his pistol drawn, decisive judgment could be reached and reached quickly.

  “These low dogs have been killing Mexicans, Major,” Bigfoot said. “They probably took supper with some little family and then shot ’em all and took their hair.”

  “That would be unneighborly behavior, if true,” Major Chevallie said. He looked at the scalps, but didn’t touch them.

  “This ain’t Indian hair,” Shadrach said. “Indian hair smells Indian, but this don’t. This hair is Mexican.”

  “It’s Comanche hair and you can both go to hell,” Kirker said. “If you need a ticket I can provide it.”

  The gap-toothed Kirker carried three pistols and a knife, and usually kept his rifle in the crook of his arm, where it was now.

  “Sit down, Kirker, I’ll not have you roughhousing with my scouts,” the Major said.

  “Roughhousing, hell,” Kirker said. He flushed red when he was angry, and a blue vein popped out alongside his nose.

  “I’ll finish them right here, if they don’t leave my scalps alone,” he added. Glanton had his eyes only half open, but his hand was on his pistol, a fact both Bigfoot and Shadrach ignored.

  “There’s no grease, Major,” Bigfoot said. “Indians grease their hair—take a Comanche scalp and you’ll have grease up to your elbow. Kirker ain’t even sly. He could have greased this hair if he wanted to fool us, but he didn’t. I expect he was too lazy.”

  “Get away from them scalps—they’re government property now,” Kirker said. “I took ’em and I intend to collect my bounty.”

  Shadrach looked at the Major—he didn’t believe the Major was firm, although it was undeniable that he was an accurate shot.

  “If a Mexican posse shows up, let ’em have these two,” he advised. “This ain’t Indian hair, and what’s more, it ain’t grown-up hair. These two went over to Mexico and killed a passel of children.”

  Kirker merely sneered.

  “Hair’s hair,” he said. “This is government property now, and you’re welcome to keep your goddamn hands off it.”

  Call and Gus waited, expecting the Major to shoot Kirker, and possibly Glanton too, but the Major didn’t shoot. Bigfoot and Shadrach walked away, disgusted. Shadrach mounted, crossed the river, and was gone for several hours. Kirker kept on chewing his antelope jerky, and Glanton went sound asleep, leaning against his horse.

  Major Chevallie did look at Kirker hard. He knew he ought to shoot the two men and leave them to the flies. Shadrach’s opinion was no doubt accurate: the men had been killing Mexican children; Mexican children were a lot easier to hunt than Comanches.

  But the Major didn’t shoot. His troop was in an uncertain position, vulnerable
to attack at any minute, and Kirker and Glanton made two more fighting men, adding two guns to the company’s meager strength. If there was a serious scrape, one or both of them might be killed anyway. If not, they could always be executed at a later date.

  “Stay this side of the river from now on,” the Major said—he still had his pistol in his hand. “If either of you cross it again, I’ll hunt you down like dogs.”

  Kirker didn’t flinch.

  “We ain’t dogs, though—we’re wolves—at least I am. You won’t be catching me, if I go. As for Glanton, you can have him. I’m tired of listening to his goddamn snores.”

  Gus soon forgot the incident, but Call didn’t. He listened to Kirker sharpen his knife and wished he had the authority to kill the man himself. In his view Kirker was a snake, and worse than a snake. If you discovered a snake in your bedclothes, the sensible thing would be to kill it.

  Major Chevallie had looked right at the snake, but hadn’t killed it.

  The sandstorm blew for another hour, until the camp and everything in it was covered with sand. When it finally blew out, men discovered that they couldn’t find utensils they had carelessly laid down before the storm began. The sky overhead was a cold blue. The plain in all directions was level with sand; only the tops of sage bushes and chaparral broke the surface. The Rio Grande was murky and brown. The little mare, still snubbed to the tree, was in sand up to her knees. All the men stripped naked in order to shake as much sand as possible out of their clothes; but more sand filtered in, out of their hair and off their collars. Gus brushed the branch of a mesquite tree and a shower of sand rained down on him.

  Only the old Indian woman and the boy with no tongue made no attempt to rid themselves of sand. The fire had finally been smothered, but the old woman and the boy still sat by it, sand banked against their backs. To Call they hardly seemed human. They were like part of the ground.

  Gus, in high spirits, decided to be a bronc rider after all. He took it into his head to ride the Mexican mare.

  “I expect that storm’s got her cowed,” he said to Call.

  “Gus, she ain’t cowed,” Call replied. He had the mare by the ears again, and detected no change in her attitude.

  Sure enough, the mare threw Gus on the second jump. Several of the naked Rangers laughed, and went on shaking out their clothes.

  3.

  IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON, still carrying more sand in his clothes than he would have liked, Major Chevallie attempted to question the old woman and the boy. He gave them coffee and fed them a little hardtack first, hoping it would make them talkative—but the feast, such as it was, failed in its purpose, mainly because no one in the troop spoke any Comanche.

  The Major had supposed Bigfoot Wallace to be adept in the tongue, but Bigfoot firmly denied any knowledge of it.

  “Why no, Major,” Bigfoot said. “I’ve made it a practice to stay as far from the Comanche as I can get,” Bigfoot said. “What few I ever met face-on I shot. Some others have shot at me, but we never stopped to palaver.”

  The old woman wore a single bear tooth on a rawhide cord around her neck. The tooth was the size of a small pocketknife. Several of the men looked at it with envy; most of them would have been happy to own a bear tooth that large.

  “She must have been a chief’s woman,” Long Bill speculated. “Otherwise why would a squaw get to keep a fine grizzly tooth like that?”

  Matilda Roberts knew five or six words of Comanche and tried them all on the old woman, without result. The old woman sat where she had settled when she walked into the camp, backed by a hummock of sand. Her rheumy eyes were focused on the campfire, or on what had been the campfire.

  The tongueless boy, still hungry, dug most of the sandy turtle meat out of the ashes of the campfire and ate it. No one contested him, although Matilda dusted the sand off a piece or two and gnawed at the meat herself. The boy perked up considerably, once he had eaten the better part of Matilda’s snapping turtle. He did his best to talk, but all that came out were moans and gurgles. Several of the men tried to talk to him in sign, but got nowhere.

  “Goddamn Shadrach, where did he go?” the Major asked. “We’ve got a Comanche captive here, and the only man we have who speaks Comanche leaves.”

  As the day wore on, Gus and Call took turns getting pitched off the mare. Call once managed to stay on her five hops, which was the best either of them achieved. The Rangers soon lost interest in watching the boys get pitched around. A few got up a card game. Several others took a little target practice, using cactus apples as targets. Bigfoot Wallace pared his toenails, several of which had turned coal black as the result of his having worn footgear too small for his feet—it was that or go barefooted, and in the thorny country they were in, bare feet would have been a handicap.

  Toward sundown Call and Gus were assigned first watch. They took their position behind a good clump of chaparral, a quarter of a mile north of the camp. Major Chevallie had been making another attempt to converse with the old Comanche woman, as they were leaving camp. He tried sign, but the old woman looked at him, absent, indifferent.

  “Shadrach just rode off and he ain’t rode back,” Call said. “I feel better when Shadrach’s around.”

  “I’d feel better if there were more whores,” Gus commented. In the afternoon he had made another approach to Matilda Roberts, only to be rebuffed.

  “I should have stayed on the riverboats,” he added. “I never lacked for whores, on the riverboats.”

  Call was watching the north. He wondered if it was really true that Shadrach and Bigfoot could smell Indians. Of course if you got close to an Indian, or to anybody, you could smell them. There were times on sweaty days when he could easily smell Gus, or any other Ranger who happened to be close by. Black Sam, the cook, had a fairly strong smell, and so did Ezekiel—the latter had not bothered to wash the whole time Call had known him.

  But dirt and sweat weren’t what Bigfoot and Shadrach had been talking about, when they said they smelled Indians. The old woman and the boy had been nearly a mile away, when they claimed to smell them. Surely not even the best scout could smell a person that far away.

  “There could have been more Indians out there, when Shad said he smelled them,” Call speculated. “There could be a passel out there, just waiting.”

  Gus McCrae took guard duty a good deal more lightly than his companion, Woodrow Call. He looked at his time on guard as a welcome escape from the chores that cropped up around camp—gathering firewood, for example, or chopping it, or saddle-soaping the Major’s saddle. Since he and Woodrow were the youngest Rangers in the troop, they were naturally expected to do most of the chores. Several times they had even been required to shoe horses, although Black Sam, the cook, was also a more than adequate blacksmith.

  Gus found such tasks irksome—he believed he had been put on earth to enjoy himself, and there was no enjoyment to be derived from shoeing horses. Horses were heavy animals—most of the ones he shoed had a tendency to lean on him, once he picked up a foot.

  Drinking mescal was far more to his liking—in fact he had a few swallows left, in a small jug he had managed to appropriate. He had kept the jug buried in the sand all day, lest some thirsty Ranger discover it and drain the mescal. He owned a woolen serape, purchased in a stall in San Antonio, and had managed to sneak the jug out of camp under the serape.

  When he brought it out and took a swig, Call looked annoyed.

  “If the Major caught you drinking on guard he’d shoot you,” Call said. It was true, too. The Major tolerated many foibles in his troop, but he did demand sobriety of the men assigned to keep guard. They were camped not far from the great Comanche war trail—the merciless raiders from the north could appear at any moment. Even momentary inattention on the part of the guards could imperil the whole troop.

  “Well, but how could he catch me?” Gus asked. “He’s trying to talk to that old woman—he’d have to sneak up on us to catch me, and I’d have to be drunker than this
not to notice a fat man sneaking up.”

  It was certainly true that Major Chevallie was fat. He outweighed Matilda by a good fifty pounds, and Matilda was not small. The Major was short, too, which made his girth all the more noticeable. Still, he was the Major. Just because he hadn’t shot the scalp hunters didn’t mean he wouldn’t shoot Gus.

  “I don’t believe you was ever on a riverboat—why would they hire you?” Call asked. At times of irritation he began to remember all the lies Gus had told him. Gus McCrae had no more regard for truth than he did for the rules of rangering.

  “Why, of course I was,” Gus said. “I was a top pilot for a dern year—I’m a Tennessee boy. I can run one of them riverboats as well as the next man. I only run aground once, in all the time I worked.”

  The truth of that was that he had once sneaked aboard a riverboat for two days; when he was discovered, he was put off on a mud bar, near Dubuque. A young whore had hidden him for the two days—the captain had roundly chastised her when Gus was discovered. Shortly after he was put off, the riverboat ran aground—that was the one true fact in the story. The tale sounded grand to his green friend, though. Woodrow Call had got no farther in the world than his uncle’s scratchy farm near Navasota. Woodrow’s parents had been taken by the smallpox, which is why he was raised by the uncle, a tyrant who stropped him so hard that when Woodrow got old enough to follow the road to San Antonio, he ran off. It was in San Antonio that the two of them had met—or rather, that Call had found Gus asleep against the wall of a saloon, near the river. Call worked for a Mexican blacksmith at the time, stirring the forge and helping the old smith with the horseshoeing that went on from dawn till dark. The Mexican, Jesus, a kindly old man who hummed sad harmonies all day as he worked, allowed Call to sleep on a pallet of nail sacks in a small shed behind the forge. Blacksmithing was dirty work. Call had been on his way to the river to wash off some of the smudge from his work when he noticed a lanky youth, sound asleep against the wall of the little adobe saloon. At first he thought the stranger might be dead, so profound were his slumbers. Killings were not uncommon in the streets of San Antonio—Call thought he ought to stop and check, since if the boy was dead it would have to be reported.