The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  Once they safeguarded it so well on Saturday night that they ran it off its rail on Sunday morning and broke two legs off it. Since there weren’t enough sober men in church that morning to carry it inside, Mrs. Pink Higgins, who played it, had to sit out in the street and bang away at the hymns, while the rest of the congregation, ten ladies and a preacher, stayed inside and sang. The arrangement was made more awkward still by the fact that Lorena Wood came out on the backstairs of the saloon, practically undressed, and listened to the hymns.

  Newt was deeply in love with Lorena Wood, though so far he had not even had an opportunity to speak to her. He was painfully aware that if the chance for personal speech ever did arise he would have no idea what to say. On the rare occasions when he had an errand that took him by the saloon he lived in terror, afraid some accident might occur which would actually force him to speak to her. He wanted to speak to Lorena, of course—it represented the very summit of his life’s hopes—but he didn’t want to have to do it until he had decided on the best thing to say, which so far he had not, though Lorena had been in town for several months, and he had been in love with her from the moment he first glimpsed her face.

  On an average day, Lorena occupied Newt’s thoughts about eight hours, no matter what tasks occupied his hands. Though normally an open young man, quick to talk about his problems—to Pea Eye and Deets, at least—he had never so much as uttered Lorena’s name aloud. He knew that if he did utter it a terrible amount of ribbing would ensue, and while he didn’t mind being ribbed about most things, his feeling for Lorena was too serious to admit frivolity. The men who made up the Hat Creek outfit were not great respecters of feeling, particularly tender feeling.

  There was also the danger that someone might slight her honor. It wouldn’t be the Captain, who was not prone to jesting about women, or even to mentioning them. But the thought of the complications that might arise from an insult to Lorena had left Newt closely acquainted with the mental perils of love long before he had had an opportunity to sample any of its pleasures except the infinite pleasure of contemplation.

  Of course, Newt knew that Lorena was a whore. It was an awkward fact, but it didn’t lessen his feelings for her one whit. She had been abandoned in Lonesome Dove by a gambler who decided she was bad for his luck; she lived over the Dry Bean and was known to receive visitors of various descriptions, but Newt was not a young man to choke on such details. He was not absolutely sure what whores did, but he assumed that Lorena had come by her profession as accidentally as he had come by his. It was pure accident that he happened to be a horse wrangler for the Hat Creek outfit, and no doubt an equally pure one that had made Lorena a whore. What Newt loved about her was her nature, which he could see in her face. It was easily the most beautiful face that had ever been seen in Lonesome Dove, and he had no doubt that hers was the most beautiful nature, too. He intended to say something along those lines to her when he finally spoke to her. Much of his time on the porch after supper was spent in trying to figure out what words would best express such a sentiment.

  That was why it irritated him slightly when Bol and Mr. Gus started passing insults back and forth, as if they were biscuits. They did it almost every night, and pretty soon they’d be throwing knives and clicking pistols, making it very hard for him to concentrate on what he would say to Lorena when they first met. Neither Mr. Gus nor Bolivar had lived their lives as peaceful men, and it seemed to him they might both be itching for one last fight. Newt had no doubt that if such a fight occurred Mr. Gus would win. Pea Eye claimed that he was a better pistol shot than Captain Call, though it was hard for Newt to imagine anyone being better at anything than Captain Call. He didn’t want the fight to happen, because it would mean the end of Bol, and despite a slight nervousness about Bol’s bandit friends, he did like Bol. The old man had given him a serape once, to use as a blanket, and had let him have the bottom bunk when he was sick with jaundice. If Mr. Gus shot him it would mean Newt had one less friend. Since he had no family, this was not a thought to be taken lightly.

  “What do you reckon the Captain does out there in the dark?” he asked.

  Augustus smiled at the boy, who was hunched over on the lower step, as nervous as a red pup. He asked the same question almost every night when he thought there might be a fight. He wanted Call around to stop it, if it ever started.

  “He’s just playin’ Indian fighter,” he said.

  Newt doubted that. The Captain was not one to play. If he felt he had to go off and sit in the dark every night, he must think it important.

  Mention of Indians woke Pea Eye from an alcoholic doze. He hated Indians, partly because for thirty years’ fear of them had kept him from getting a good night’s sleep. In his years with the Rangers he never closed his eyes without expecting to open them and find some huge Indian getting ready to poke him with something sharp. Most of the Indians he had actually seen had all been scrawny little men, but it didn’t mean the huge one who haunted his sleep wasn’t out there waiting.

  “Why, they could come,” he said. “The Captain’s right to watch. If I wasn’t so lazy I’d go help him.”

  “He don’t want you to help him,” Augustus said testily. Pea’s blind loyalty to Call was sometimes a trial. He himself knew perfectly well why Call headed for the river every night, and it had very little to do with the Indian threat. He had made the point many times, but he made it again.

  “He heads for the river because he’s tired of hearing us yap,” he said. “He ain’t a sociable man and never was. You could never keep him in camp, once he had his grub. He’d rather sit off in the dark and prime his gun. I doubt he’d find an Indian if one was out there.”

  “He used to find them,” Pea said. “He found that big gang of them up by Fort Phantom Hill.”

  “ ’I god, Pea,” Augustus said. “Of course he found a few here and there. They used to be thicker than grass burrs, if you remember. I’ll guarantee he won’t scratch up none tonight. Call’s got to be the one to out-suffer everybody, that’s the pint. I won’t say he’s a man to hunt glory like some I’ve knowed. Glory don’t interest Call. He’s just got to do his duty nine times over or he don’t sleep good.”

  There was a pause. Pea Eye had always been uncomfortable with Gus’s criticisms of the Captain, without having any idea how to answer them. If he came back at all he usually just adopted one of the Captain’s own remarks.

  “Well, somebody’s got to take the hard seat,” he said.

  “Fine with me,” Augustus said. “Call can suffer for you and me and Newt and Deets and anybody else that don’t want to do it for themselves. It’s been right handy having him around to assume them burdens all these years, but if you think he’s doing it for us and not because it’s what he happens to like doing, then you’re a damn fool. He’s out there sitting behind a chaparral bush congratulating himself on not having to listen to Bol brag on his wife. He knows as well as I do there isn’t a hostile within six hundred miles of here.”

  Bolivar stood over by the wagon and relieved himself for what seemed to Newt like ten or fifteen minutes. Often when Bol started to relieve himself Mr. Gus would yank out his old silver pocket watch and squint at it until the pissing stopped. Sometimes he even got a stub of a pencil and a little notebook out of the old black vest he always wore and wrote down how long it took Bolivar to pass his water.

  “It’s a clue to how fast he’s failing,” Augustus pointed out. “An old man finally dribbles, same as a fresh calf. I best just keep a record, so we’ll know when to start looking for a new cook.”

  For once, though, the pigs took more interest in Bol’s performance than Mr. Gus, who just drank a little more whiskey. Bol yanked his knife out of the side of the wagon and disappeared into the house. The pigs came to Newt to get their ears scratched. Pea Eye slumped against the porch railing—he had begun to snore.

  “Pea, wake up and go to bed,” Augustus said, kicking at his leg until he waked him. “Newt and I might forget and
leave you out here, and if we done that these critters would eat you, belt buckle and all.”

  Pea Eye got up without really opening his eyes and stumbled into the house.

  “They wouldn’t really eat him,” Newt said. The blue shoat was on the lower step, friendly as a dog.

  “No, but it takes a good threat to get Pea moving,” Augustus said.

  Newt saw the Captain coming back, his rifle in the crook of his arm. As always, Newt felt relieved. It eased something inside him to know the Captain was back. It made it easier to sleep. Lodged in his mind somewhere was the worry that maybe some night the Captain wouldn’t come back. It wasn’t a worry that he would meet with some accident and be killed, either: it was a worry that he might just leave. It seemed to Newt that the Captain was probably tired of them all, and with some justice. He and Pea and Deets did their best to pull their weight, but Mr. Gus never pulled any weight at all, and Bol sat around and drank tequila most of the day. Maybe the Captain would just saddle up the Hell Bitch some night and go.

  Once in a great while Newt dreamed that the Captain not only left, but took him with him, to the high plains that he had heard about but never seen. There was never anyone else in the dreams: just him and the Captain, horseback in a beautiful grassy country. Those were sweet dreams, but just dreams. If the Captain did leave he would probably just take Pea along, since Pea had been his corporal for so many years.

  “I don’t see any scalps,” Augustus said, when Call came up.

  Call ignored him, leaned his rifle against the porch rail and lit a smoke.

  “This would have been a good night to cross some stock,” he said.

  “Cross ’em and do what with ’em?” Augustus asked. “I ain’t seen no cattle buyers yet.”

  “We could actually take the cattle to them,” Call said. “It’s been done. It ain’t against the law for you to work.”

  “It’s against my law,” Augustus said. “Them buyers ain’t nailed down. They’ll show up directly. Then we’ll cross the stock.”

  “Captain, can I go next time?” Newt asked. “I believe I’m getting old enough.”

  Call hesitated. Pretty soon he was going to have to say yes, but he wasn’t ready to just then. It wasn’t really fair to the boy—he would have to learn sometime—but still Call couldn’t quite say it. He had led boys as young, in his day, and seen them killed, which was why he kept putting Newt off.

  “You’ll get old quick if you keep sitting up all night,” he said. “Work to do tomorrow. You best go to bed.”

  The boy went at once, looking a little disappointed.

  “Night, son,” Augustus said, looking at Call when he said it. Call said nothing.

  “You should have let him sit,” Augustus said, a little later. “After all, the boy’s only chance for an education is listening to me talk.”

  Call let that one float off. Augustus had spent a year in a college, back in Virginia somewhere, and claimed to have learned his Greek letters, plus a certain amount of Latin. He never let anyone forget it.

  They could hear the piano from down at the Dry Bean. An old-timer named Lippy Jones did all the playing. He had the same problem Sam Houston had had, which was a hole in his belly that wouldn’t quite heal shut. Someone had shot Lippy with a big bore gun; instead of dying he ended up living with a leak. With a handicap like that, it was lucky he could play the piano.

  Augustus got up and stretched. He took his Colt and holster off the back of the chair. So far as he was concerned the night was young. He had to step over the shoat to get off the porch.

  “You oughtn’t to be so stubborn about that boy, Woodrow,” he said. “He’s spent about enough of his life shoveling horseshit.”

  “I’m a sight older than him and I still shovel my share of it,” Call said.

  “Well, that’s your choice,” Augustus said. “It’s my view that there are more fragrant ways to make a fortune. Card playing, for one. I believe I’ll straggle down to that gin palace and see if I can scare up a game.”

  Call was about finished with his smoke. “I don’t mind your card playin’, if that’s all it is,” he said.

  Augustus grinned. Call never changed. “What else would it be?” he asked.

  “You never used to gamble this regular,” Call said. “You better watch that girl.”

  “Watch her for what?”

  “To see she don’t get you to marry her,” Call said. “You’re just enough of an old fool to do it. I won’t have that girl around.”

  Augustus had a good laugh. Call was given to some funny notions, but that was one of the funniest, to think that a man of his years and experience would marry a whore.

  “See you for breakfast,” he said.

  Call sat on the steps a little while longer, listening to the blue pigs snore.

  3.

  LORENA HAD NEVER LIVED in a place where it was cool—it was her one aim. It seemed to her she had learned to sweat at the same time she had learned to breathe, and she was still doing both. Of all the places she had heard men talk about, San Francisco sounded the coolest and nicest, so it was San Francisco she set her sights on.

  Sometimes it seemed like slow going. She was nearly twenty and hadn’t got a mile past Lonesome Dove, which wasn’t fast progress considering that she had only been twelve when her parents got nervous about Yankees and left Mobile.

  That much slow progress would have discouraged most women, but Lorena didn’t allow her mind to dwell on it. She had her flat days, of course, but that was mostly because Lonesome Dove itself was so flat. She got tired of looking out the window all day and seeing nothing but brown land and gray chaparral. In the middle of the day the sun was so hot the land looked white. She could see the river from her window, and Mexico. Lippy told her she could make a fortune if she cared to establish herself in Mexico, but Lorena didn’t care to. From what she could see of the country it didn’t look any more interesting than Texas, and the men stunk just as bad as Texans, if not worse.

  Gus McCrae claimed to have been to San Francisco, and would talk to her for hours about how blue the water was in the bay, and how the ships came in from everywhere. In the end he overtalked it, like he did everything. Once or twice Lorena felt she had a clear picture of it, listening to Gus, but by the time he finally quit talking she would have lost it and just be lying there, wishing it would cool off.

  In that respect, Gus was unusual, for most men didn’t talk. He would blab right up until he shoved his old carrot in, and then would be blabbing again, before it was even dry. Generous as he was by local standards—he gave her five dollars in gold every single time—Lorena still felt a little underpaid. It should have been five dollars for wetting his carrot and another five dollars for listening to all the blab. Some of it was interesting, but Lorena couldn’t keep her mind on so much talk. It didn’t seem to hurt Gus’s feelings any. He talked just as cheerful whether she was listening or not, and he never tried to talk her into giving him two pokes for the price of one, as most of the younger men did.

  It was peculiar that he was her most regular customer, because he was also her oldest. She made a point of not letting anything men did surprise her much, but secretly it did surprise her a little that a man as old as Gus would still be so partial to it. In that respect he put a lot of younger men to shame, including Mosby Marlin, who had held her up for two years over in east Texas. Compared to Gus, Mosby couldn’t even be said to have a carrot, though he did have a kind of little stringy radish that he was far too proud of.

  She had only been seventeen when she met Mosby, and both her parents were dead. Her pa fell out in Vicksburg, and her ma only made it to Baton Rouge, so it was Baton Rouge where she was stranded when Mosby found her. She hadn’t done any sporting up to that time, though she had developed early and had even had some trouble with her own pa, though he was feverish to the point of delirium when the trouble happened. He died soon after. She knew Mosby was a drunkard from the first, but he told her he was a Souther
n gentleman and he had an expensive buggy and a fine pair of horses, so she believed him.

  Mosby claimed that he wanted to marry her, and Lorena believed that too, and let him drag her off to a big old drafty house near a place called Gladewater. The house was huge, but it didn’t even have glass in the windows or rugs or anything; they had to set smoke pots in the rooms to keep the mosquitoes from eating them alive, which the mosquitoes did anyway. Mosby had a mother and two mean sisters and no money, and no intention of marrying Lorena anyway, though he kept claiming he would for a while.

  In fact, the womenfolk treated Lorena worse than they treated the nigras, and they didn’t treat the nigras good. They didn’t treat Mosby good, either, or one another good—about the only creatures that ever saw any kindness around that house were Mosby’s hounds. Mosby assured her he’d set the hounds on her if she ever tried to run away.

  It was in the nights, when Lorena had to lay there with the smoke from the smoke pots so thick she couldn’t breathe, and the clouds of mosquitoes nearly as thick as the smoke, and Mosby constantly bothering her with his radish, that Lorena’s spirits sunk so low she ceased to want to talk. She became a silent woman. Soon after, the sporting started, because Mosby lost so much money one night that he offered two of his friends a poke in exchange for his debt. Lorena was so surprised that she didn’t have time to arm herself, and the men had their way, but the next morning when the two were gone she went at Mosby with his own quirt and cut his face so badly they put her in the cellar for two days and didn’t even bring her food.

  Two or three months later it happened again with some more friends, and this time Lorena didn’t fight. She was so tired of Mosby and his radish and the smoke pots that she was willing to consider anything different. The mother and the mean sisters wanted to drive her out of the house, and Lorena would have been glad to go, but Mosby threw such a fit that one of the sisters ran off herself to live with an aunt.