The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  “What kind?” Augustus asked. He had vaguely heard of Brazil, but he had never heard of an undertaker beetle.

  “An undertaker beetle, sir,” Captain Scull went on. “Willy wanted to go back into the food chain the fastest way possible, and the fastest way to have himself laid out naked in a tidy spot where these undertaker beetles were plentiful.

  “So that’s what they did with Will,” the Captain continued. “They had no choice—Willy had fixed it all in his will. They laid him out naked in a pretty spot and the beetles immediately got to work. Pretty soon Willy was buried, and by the next day he was part of the food chain again, just as he wished. If we left James Watson to the coyotes and the buzzards, we’d be accomplishing the same thing.”

  Long Bill Coleman was horrified by such talk. He was unfamiliar with Brazil, and the thought of being buried by beetles gave him the shudders. Not only was the Captain forgetting about Jimmy Watson’s widow, whose feelings about the burial had to be considered, he was even forgetting about heaven.

  “Now then, that’s strange talk,” he said. “How would a man get up to heaven, with no one to say any scriptures over him, and with just a dern bunch of beetles for undertakers? Of course, out here in the baldies we can’t expect undertakers, but I guess I’ll try to bury my pards myself—I wouldn’t trust the job to a bunch of dern bugs.”

  “My cousin Willy was of an agnostical bent, Mr. Coleman,” the Captain said. “I don’t think he believed in heaven, but he did believe in bugs. They’re not to be underrated, sir—not according to my cousin Willy. There are more than a million species of insects, Mr. Coleman, and they’re a sight more adaptable than us. I expect there will be bugs aplenty when we humans are all gone.”

  Young Pea Eye Parker was so hungry, he found it hard to pay attention to the conversation. For one thing, he couldn’t figure out what a food chain could be, unless the Captain was talking about link sausage. How a beetle in a country he had never heard of could turn a dead man into link sausage was beyond his ken. Deets’s stew pot was bubbling furiously; now and then, a good odor drifted his way. His only opinion was that he himself did not intend to be buried naked. It would be a hard shock to his ma if he came walking into heaven without a stitch.

  Deets, stirring the stew, did not like to be discussing dead folks so boldly—for all they knew, the dead could still hear. Just because the lungs stopped working didn’t mean the hearing stopped, too. The dead person could still be in there, listening, and if a dead person was to hear bad things said about him, he might witch you. Deets had no desire to be witched—when it became necessary to make some comment about a dead person, he made sure his comment was respectful.

  Call was vexed. He was prepared to go fight the Comanches who had just killed Jimmy Watson—if the rangers had pressed the pursuit at once, they might have got close enough to bring down a Comanche or two. He didn’t think Buffalo Hump was waiting to ambush them; to him it just looked like a party of five young braves, hoping to count coup on the white men—and they had counted coup. How could the Captain stand around talking about beetles when one of their men had been killed?

  Augustus knew what his friend was feeling—he himself felt exactly the same thing. The Comanches had killed a Texas Ranger and got away clean. Behavior such as that would soon make the rangers the laughingstock of the prairies. And yet Captain Scull’s reputation as a deadly and determined fighter was well earned. He and Call had often seen the Captain deal out slaughter. What was wrong with him this morning?

  Captain Scull suddenly looked at the two young rangers, a trace of a smile on his lips—his look, as was often the case, made both men feel that he could read their minds.

  “Why, do I smell discontent? I believe I catch a whiff of it,” the Captain said. “What’s the matter, Mr. Call? Afraid I’ve lost my vinegar?”

  “Why, no sir,” Call said, truthfully. Despite his pique, he had not supposed that Captain Scull had lost his fight. What he felt was that the Captain, as a commander, was changeable in ways he didn’t understand.

  “I would have liked to punish those braves, while we still had a chance to catch them,” Call added.

  “That was my thought, too,” Augustus said. “They killed Jimmy Watson, and he was a mighty fine fellow.”

  “That he was, Mr. McCrae—that he was,” Captain Scull said. “Normally I would have given chase myself, but this morning I’m not in the mood for it—not right this minute, at least.”

  Inish Scull went to his saddlebags and took out the huge brown plug of tobacco he cut his chaws from. He had a special little knife with a mother-of-pearl handle, just for cutting his tobacco. He was so fearful of losing his little knife that he kept it attached to his belt by a thin silver chain, such as he might use on a pocket watch.

  The Captain took out his knife, found a place not far from the fire, and began to cut himself a day’s worth of chaws, working carefully—he liked to make each chaw as close to square as possible. Often, once the Captain had cut off a chaw, he would hold it up for inspection, and trim it a little more, removing a sliver here and a sliver there, to make it a little closer to square.

  “I believe our stew’s about ready, Deets,” he said, once he had restored the big brownish plug to his saddlebag. “Let’s eat. I might recover my chasing mood once I’ve sampled the grub.

  “Ever work in an office, Mr. Call?” he then inquired, as the men lined up with their tin plates to get their stew. Call was startled. Why would the Captain suppose he had ever worked in an office, when the records plainly showed that he had been employed as a Texas Ranger from the age of nineteen?

  “No sir, I’ve worked outside my whole life,” Call said.

  “Well, I have worked in an office, sir,” the Captain said. “It was the Customs House in Brooklyn, and I was sent to work there by my pa, in the hope of breaking me of certain bad habits. I worked there for a year and did the same thing, in the same way, every day. I arrived at the same time, left at the same time, took my sip of wine and bite of bread at the same time. I even pissed and shat at the same time—I was a regular automaton while I held that office job, and I was bored, sir—bored! Intolerably bored!”

  Inish Scull’s face reddened suddenly, at the memory of his own boredom in the office in Brooklyn. He neatly stacked up his ten squares of cut tobacco and looked at Call.

  “The tragedy of man is not death or epidemic or lust or rage or fitful jealousy,” he said loudly—his voice tended to rise while declaiming unpleasant facts.

  “No sir, the tragedy of man is boredom, sir—boredom!” the Captain said. “A man can only do a given thing so many times with freshness and spirit—then, no matter what it is, it becomes like an office task. I enjoy cards and whoring, but even cards and whoring can grow boresome. You tup your wife a thousand times and that becomes an office task, too.”

  Scull paused, to see if the hard truths he was expounding were having any effect on his listeners, and found that they were. All the men were listening, with the exception of an old fellow named Ikey Ripple, who had gulped a little stew and fallen back to sleep.

  “You see?” the Captain said. “Mr. Ike Ripple is bored even now, even though Buffalo Hump could show up any minute and lift his hair.

  “Now . . . that’s my point, sir!” he said, looking directly at Call. “I will break the resistance of the goddamn red Comanches on these plains, given the time and the resources, but I’ll be damned if I’ll jump up and chase every Indian brat that fires a gun off at me. Do that and it becomes office work—do you get my point, Mr. Call?”

  Call thought he got the point, but he wasn’t sure he agreed with it. Fighting Indians meant risking your life—how many men in offices had to risk their lives?

  “Why, yes, Captain, I believe I do,” Call said mildly. After all, the Captain was older—he had survived more Indian fights than any man on the frontier. Perhaps they had grown boresome to him.

  “Uh, Captain, you never said how your cousin died—that one
that got buried by the beetles,” Long Bill remarked. The details of the unorthodox burial had been preying on his mind; he was curious as to what sort of death had led up to it.

  “Oh, cousin Willy—why, snakebite,” the Captain said. “Willy was bitten by a fer-de-lance, one of the deadliest snakes in the world.”

  He had begun to stuff the square-cut plugs of tobacco into his coat pocket, for use during the day.

  “He was a scientist to the end, our William,” he went on. “He timed his own death, you know—timed it with a stopwatch.”

  “Timed it? But why, sir?” Gus asked. “If I was dying of snakebite I doubt I’d get out my watch.”

  “Oh—then what would you do, Mr. McCrae?” the Captain asked, in a pleasant tone.

  Augustus thought of Clara Forsythe, so fetching with her curls and her frank smile.

  “I believe I’d just scrawl off a letter to my girl,” Gus said. “I’d be wanting to bid her goodbye, I expect.”

  “Why, that’s fine—that’s the human instinct,” Captain Scull said. “You’re a romantic fellow, I see. So was our Willy, in his way—only he was romantic about science. Professor Agassiz taught him to never waste an experience, and he didn’t. The average time of death from the bite of a fer-de-lance is twenty minutes. I expect Willy hoped to improve on the average, but he didn’t. He died in seventeen minutes, thirty-four seconds, give or take a second or two.”

  Captain Scull stood up and looked across the gray plain.

  “Willy was alone when he was bitten,” the Captain said. “His stopwatch was in his hand when they found him. Seventeen minutes and thirty-four seconds, he lived. Now that’s bravery, I’d say.”

  “I’d say so too, Captain,” Call said, thinking about it.

  6.

  “DO YOU BELIEVE that tale about the beetles and the stopwatch?” Augustus asked. Call sat with his back to a large rock, looking off the edge of the canyon; the wind had died, the sleet had stopped blowing, but it was still bitter cold. In the clear night they could see Comanche campfires, far below them and halfway across the Palo Duro Canyon.

  “There’s forty campfires down there,” Call commented. “There’s enough Indians in this canyon to wipe us out six times.”

  “Well, but maybe they ain’t interested—the Captain wasn’t,” Gus replied. “Why don’t you just answer the question I asked you?”

  “I’m on guard duty, that’s why,” Call said. “We need to be listening, not talking.”

  Augustus found the remark insulting, but he tried not to get riled. Woodrow was so practical minded that he was often rude without intending rudeness.

  “I’m your oldest friend, I guess I can at least ask you a question,” Augustus said. “If I can’t, then I’ve a notion just to roll you off this bluff.”

  “Well, I do believe the Captain’s story—why wouldn’t I?” Call said.

  “Myself, I think it was just a tale,” Gus said. “He wasn’t in the mood for an Indian fight, so he told us a tale. You’re so gullible you’d believe anything, Woodrow. I’ve never met anybody who behaves like the people the Captain talks about.”

  “You don’t know educated people, that’s why,” Call said. “Besides, his cousin was in Brazil. You’ve never been to Brazil—you don’t know how people behave down there.”

  “No, and if they’ve got snakes that can kill you in seventeen minutes, I ain’t never going, either,” Augustus said.

  Call watched the wink of campfires in the darkness far below.

  “Oh Lord, I hope the Captain don’t drag us off to Mexico,” Gus said. “I’d like to see my Clara before the month’s out.”

  Call was silent—if he didn’t respond, maybe the subject of Clara Forsythe would die away. Usually it didn’t die quickly, though. For ten years, at guard posts all over the Texas frontier, he had listened to Augustus talk about Clara Forsythe. It wasn’t even that the subject was boresome, particularly—it was just that it was pointless. Clara had set her mind against marrying Gus, and that was that.

  “Buffalo Hump’s down there,” he remarked, hoping Gus would accept a change of subject. Under the circumstances it would be a prudent change. Buffalo Hump might be older now, but he was still the most feared war chief on the southern plains. If he woke up in the mood to do battle, Gus would have more to worry about than Clara’s refusal.

  “I miss Clara,” Augustus said, ignoring his friend’s feint. “It helps to talk about her, Woodrow. Don’t be so stingy with me.”

  Of course, Augustus knew that Woodrow Call hated talking about romance, or marriage, or anything having to do with women. He wouldn’t even discuss poking, one of Augustus’s favorite topics of discussion, as well as being a highly favored activity. Many a night he had sat with Woodrow Call on guard duty and engaged in the same tussle, when it came to conversation. Call always wanted to talk about guns, or saddles, or military matters, and Gus himself would try to steer the conversation onto love or marriage or women or whores—something more interesting than the same old boots-and-saddles stuff.

  “I expect you’re a lucky man, Woodrow,” he said. “You’ll probably be married long before I am.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard,” Call admitted. “You’ll never be married, unless you give up on Clara. She don’t mean to marry you and that’s that.”

  “Hush that talk,” Gus said. “If you knew anything about women you’d know that women change their minds every day. The only reason you don’t want to hear no talk of marriage is because you know you ought to marry Maggie, but you don’t want to. You’d have made a good Indian, Woodrow. You’ve got no use for the settled life.”

  Call didn’t argue; what Augustus said was true, in the main. Maggie Tilton was a kind woman who would undoubtedly make some man a good wife—but he would not be that man. The truth was he’d rather be right where he was, sitting on a canyon’s rim, looking down on the campfires of the last wild, dangerous Indians in Texas, eating horsemeat stew and breasting weather that would freeze you one night and burn your skin off the next day, than to live in a town, be married, and buy vittles out of a store. Maggie was pretty and sweet; she might yet find a man who would protect her. He himself had no time to protect anybody, except himself and his comrades. That was the way it was, and that was the way it would stay, at least until the Indians camped below them had been whipped and scattered, so that they could no longer raid, burn farms, take white children captive, and scare back settlement on the southern edge of the plains.

  Augustus was bored, and when he was bored he liked to devil his friend as much as possible. It annoyed Call that he wouldn’t just shut up. It was a fine, still night. Now and then he could hear the Comanches’ horses nickering, from the floor of the canyon.

  “I know one thing,” he said. “If I was a Comanche I would have had your scalp long before this. You’re so dern careless it’s lucky you’ve even survived.”

  “Now that’s brash talk,” Augustus said. “You could spend a lifetime trying to take my scalp, and not disturb a hair.”

  “That’s bragging,” Call replied. “You’ve always had a troop of rangers with you—that’s why you have your hair.”

  “If I’m going to take risks I prefer to take them with women,” Gus said. “Any fool can wander off and get scalped.”

  “Go back to camp—it ain’t your turn to stand guard anyway,” Call told him. “I’d rather listen to owl hoots than to listen to you yap.”

  Augustus was mildly insulted, but he made no move to leave.

  “I wonder what Jimmy Watson and the Captain had to say to one another about wives,” he said. “I would have liked to listen in on a few of those conversations.”

  “Why, it would be none of your business,” Call told him.

  “That wife of the Captain’s is fancy,” Augustus said. “A woman who can spend twenty-five dollars every day of the week is too dern expensive for me.”

  “He’s rich and so is she—I don’t suppose it matters,” Call said.

/>   Augustus gave up on getting his friend to talk about women—he scooted a little closer to the edge of the deep canyon.

  “Look down there, Woodrow,” he said. “That’s probably all that’s left of the fighting Comanche.”

  “No it ain’t,” Call said. “There’s several bands off to the west—they call them the Antelopes. However many there are, it’s enough to scare most of the white people out of the country north of the Brazos. They just picked off one of us, this very day.”

  “Woodrow, you’re the most arguesome person I’ve ever met,” Augustus said. “Here I’ve been trying to talk sense to you all night and you ain’t agreed with a single thing I’ve said. Why am I even talking to you?”

  “I don’t know, but if you’ll stop we can stand guard in peace,” Call said.

  Augustus made no answer. He scooted a little closer to where Call sat and pulled his long coat up around his ears, as protection from the deep cold of the night.

  7.

  BUFFALO HUMP had taught Blue Duck that the safest time to attack a white man, and a Texas Ranger particularly, was while the man was squatting to do his morning business. The whites were foolish in their choice of clothes; they wore tight trousers that slowed their movements when they squatted to shit. Blue Duck, like most braves, only wore leggins—even those he discarded unless it was bitter cold. The leggins didn’t interfere with his movements, if he had to rise quickly. But a squatting white man was like a hobbled horse: you could put an arrow in him or even jump on him and cut his throat before he could get his pants up and run.

  Blue Duck knew they had killed a ranger the morning before. He had seen the other men hacking out a shallow grave with their bowie knives. They even spent a long time gathering rocks and piling them on the grave, to protect the corpse; a foolish labor. Then they sang a death song of some kind over the rocks, and rode off.