The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.

  It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. Then the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dust dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.

  It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning.

  While he was enjoying a verse or two of Amos, the pigs walked around the corner of the house, and Call, at almost the same moment, stepped out the back door, pulling on his shirt. The pigs walked over and stood directly in front of Augustus. The dew had wet their blue coats.

  “They know I’ve got a soft heart,” he said to Call. “They’re hoping I’ll feed them this Bible.”

  “I hope you pigs didn’t wake up Dish,” he added, for he had checked and seen that Dish was there, sleeping comfortably with his head on his saddle and his hat over his eyes, only his big mustache showing.

  To Call’s regret he had never been able to come awake easily. His joints felt like they were filled with glue, and it was an irritation to see Augustus sitting on the black kettle looking as fresh as if he’d slept all night, when in fact he had probably played poker till one or two o’clock. Getting up early and feeling awake was the one skill he had never truly perfected—he got up, of course, but it never felt natural.

  Augustus lay down the Bible and walked over to look at Call’s wound.

  “I oughta slop some more axle grease on it,” he said. “It’s a nasty bite.”

  “You tend to your biscuits,” Call said. “What’s Dish Boggett doing here?”

  “I didn’t ask the man his business,” Augustus said. “If you die of gangrene you’ll be sorry you didn’t let me dress that wound.”

  “It ain’t a wound, it’s just a bite,” Call said. “I was bit worse by bedbugs down in Saltillo that time. I suppose you set up reading the Good Book all night.”

  “Not me,” Augustus said. “I only read it in the morning and the evening, when I can be reminded of the glory of the Lord. The rest of the day I’m just reminded of what a miserable stink hole we stuck ourselves in. It’s hard to have fun in a place like this, but I do my best.”

  He went over and put his hand on top of the Dutch oven. It felt to him like the biscuits were probably ready, so he took them out. They had puffed up nicely and were a healthy brown. He took them quickly into the house and Call followed. Newt was at the table, sitting straight upright, a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, but sound asleep.

  “We come to this place to make money,” Call said. “Nothing about fun was in the deal.”

  “Call, you don’t even like money,” Augustus said. “You’ve spit in the eye of every rich man you’ve ever met. You like money even less than you like fun, if that’s possible.”

  Call sighed, and sat down at the table. Bolivar was up and stumbling around the stove, shaking so that he spilled coffee grounds on the floor.

  “Wake up, Newt,” Augustus said. “If you don’t you’ll fall over and stick yourself in the eye with your own fork.”

  Call gave the boy a little shake and his eyes popped open.

  “I was having a dream,” Newt said, sounding very young.

  “Your tough luck, then, son,” Augustus said. “Morning around here is more like a nightmare. Now look what’s happened!”

  In an effort to get the coffee going, Bolivar had spilled a small pile of coffee grounds into the grease where the eggs and bacon were frying. It seemed a small enough matter to him, but it enraged Augustus, who liked to achieve an orderly breakfast at least once a week.

  “I guess it won’t hurt the coffee none to taste like eggs,” he said testily. “Most of the time your eggs taste like coffee.”

  “I don’t care,” Bolivar said. “I feel sick.”

  Pea Eye came stumbling through about that time, trying to get his pizzle out of his pants before his bladder started to flood. It was a frequent problem. The pants he wore had about fifteen small buttons, and he got up each morning and buttoned every one of them before he realized he was about to piss. Then he would come rushing through the kitchen trying to undo the buttons. The race was always close, but usually Pea would make it to the back steps before the flood commenced. Then he would stand there and splatter the yard for five minutes or so. When he could hear sizzling grease in one ear and the sound of Pea Eye pissing in the other, Augustus knew that the peace of the morning was over once again.

  “If a woman ever stumbled onto this outfit at this hour of the day she’d screech and poke out her eyes,” Augustus said.

  At that point someone did stumble onto it, but only Dish Boggett, who had always been responsive to the smell of frying bacon.

  It was a surprise to Newt, who immediately snapped awake and tried to get his cowlick to lay down. Dish Boggett was one of his heroes, a real cowboy who had been up the trail all the way to Dodge City more than once. It was Newt’s great ambition: to go up the trail with a herd of cattle. The sight of Dish gave him hope, for Dish wasn’t somebody totally out of reach, like the Captain. Newt didn’t imagine that he could ever be what the Captain was, but Dish seemed not that much different from himself. He was known to be a top hand, and Newt welcomed every chance to be around him; he liked to study the way Dish did things.

  “Morning, Dish,” he said.

  “Why, howdy there,” Dish said, and went to stand beside Pea Eye and attend to the same business.

  It perked Newt up that Dish didn’t treat him like a kid. Someday, if he was lucky, maybe he and Dish would be cowboys together. Newt could imagine nothing better.

  Augustus had fried the eggs hard as marbles to compensate for the coffee grains, and when they looked done to him he poured the grease into the big three-gallon syrup can they used for a grease bucket.

  “It’s poor table manners to piss in hearing of those at the table,” he said, directing his remarks to the gentlemen on the porch. “You two are grown men. What would your mothers think?”

  Dish looked a little sheepish, whereas Pea was merely confused by the question. His mother had passed away in Georgia when he was only six. She had not had time to give him much training before she died, and he had no idea what she might think of such an action. However, he was sure she would not have wanted him to go in his pants.

  “I had to hurry,” he said.

  “Howdy, Captain,” Dish said.

  Call nodded. In the morning he had the advantage of Gus, since Gus had to cook. With Gus cooking, he got his choice of the eggs and bacon, and a little food always brought him to life and made him consider all the things that ought to be done during the day. The Hat Creek outfit was just a small operation, with just enough land under lease to graze small lots of cattle and horses until buyers could be found. It amazed Call that such a small operation could keep three grown men and a boy occupied from sunup until dark, day after day, but such was the case. The barn and corrals had been in such poor shape when he and Gus bought the place that it took constant work just to keep them from total collapse. There was nothing important to do in Lonesome Dove, but that didn’t mean there was
enough time to keep up with the little things that needed doing. They had been six weeks sinking a new well and were still far from deep enough.

  When Call raked the eggs and bacon onto his plate, such a crowd of possible tasks rushed into his mind that he was a minute responding to Dish’s greetings.

  “Oh, hello, Dish,” he said, finally. “Have some bacon.”

  “Dish is planning to shave his mustache right after breakfast,” Augustus said. “He’s getting tired of livin’ without women.”

  In fact, with the aid of Gus’s two dollars, Dish had been able to prevail on Lorena. He had awakened on the porch with a clear head, but when Augustus mentioned women he remembered it all and suddenly felt weak with love. He had been keenly hungry when he sat down at the table, his mouth watering for the eggs and fryback, but the thought of Lorena’s white body, or the portion of it he had got to see when she lifted her nightgown, made him almost dizzy for a moment. He continued to eat, but the food had lost its taste.

  The blue shoat came to the door and looked in at the people, to Augustus’s amusement. “Look at that,” he said. “A pig watching a bunch of human pigs.” Though he had been outpositioned at the frying pan, he was in prime shape to secure his share of the biscuits, half a dozen of which he had already sopped in honey and consumed.

  “Throw that pig them eggshells,” he said to Bolivar. “He’s starving.”

  “I don’t care,” Bolivar said, sucking coffee-colored sugar out of a big spoon. “I feel sick.”

  “You’re repeating yourself, Bol,” Augustus said. “If you’re planning on dying today I hope you dig your grave first.”

  Bolivar looked at him sorrowfully. So much talk in the morning gave him a headache to go with his shakes. “If I dig a grave it will be yours,” he said simply.

  “Going up the trail, Dish?” Newt asked, hoping to turn the conversation to more cheerful matters.

  “I hope to,” Dish said.

  “It would take a hacksaw to cut these eggs,” Call said. “I’ve seen bricks that was softer.”

  “Well, Bol spilled coffee in them,” Augustus said. “I expect it was hard coffee.”

  Call finished the rocklike eggs and gave Dish the once-over. He was a lank fellow, loose-built, and a good rider. Five or six more like him and they could make up a herd themselves and drive it north. The idea had been in his mind for a year or more. He had even mentioned it to Augustus, but Augustus merely laughed at him.

  “We’re too old, Call,” he said. “We’ve forgot everything we need to know.”

  “You may have,” Call said. “I ain’t.”

  Seeing Dish put Call in mind of his idea again. He was not eager to spend the rest of his life on well-digging or barn repair. If they made up a fair herd and did well with it, they would make enough to buy some good land north of the brush country.

  “Are you signed to go with someone then?” he asked Dish.

  “Oh, no, I ain’t signed on,” Dish said. “But I’ve gone before, and I imagine Mr. Pierce will hire me again—or if not him someone else.”

  “We might give you work right here,” Call said.

  That got Augustus’s attention. “Give him work doing what?” he asked. “Dish here’s a top hand. He don’t cotton to work that requires walking, do you, Dish?”

  “I don’t, for a fact,” Dish said, looking at the Captain but seeing Lorena. “I’ve done a mess of it though. What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, we’re going down to Mexico tonight,” Call said. “Going to see what we can raise. We might make up a herd ourselves, if you wanted to wait a day or two while we look it over.”

  “That mare bite’s drove you crazy,” Augustus said. “Make up a herd and do what with it?”

  “Drive it,” Call said.

  “Well, we might drive it over to Pickles Gap, I guess,” Augustus said. “That ain’t enough work to keep a hand like Dish occupied for the summer.”

  Call got up and carried his dishes to the washtub. Bolivar wearily got off his stool and picked up the water bucket.

  “I wish Deets would come back,” he said.

  Deets was a black man; he had been with Cal and Augustus nearly as long as Pea Eye. Three days before, he had been sent to San Antonio with a deposit of money, a tactic Call always used, since few bandits would suspect a black man of having any money on him.

  Bolivar missed him because one of Deets’s jobs was to carry water.

  “He’ll be back this morning,” Call said. “You can set your clock by Deets.”

  “You might set yours,” Augustus said. “I wouldn’t set mine. Old Deets is human. If he ever run into the right dark-complexioned lady you might have to wind your clock two or three times before he showed up. He’s like me. He knows that some things are more important than work.”

  Bolivar looked at the water bucket with irritation. “I’d like to shoot this damn bucket full of holes,” he said.

  “I don’t think you could hit that bucket if you was sitting on it,” Augustus said. “I’ve seen you shoot. You ain’t the worst shot I ever knew—that would be Jack Jennell—but you run him a close race. Jack went broke as a buffalo hunter quicker than any man I ever knew. He couldn’t have hit a buffalo if one had swallowed him.”

  Bolivar went out the door with the bucket, looking as if it might be a while before he came back.

  Dish meanwhile was doing some hard thinking. He had meant to leave right after breakfast and ride back to the Matagorda, where he had a sure job. The Hat Creek outfit was hardly known as a trail-driving bunch, but on the other hand Captain Call was not a man to indulge in idle talk. If he was contemplating a drive he would probably make one. Meanwhile there was Lorena, who might come to see him in an entirely different light if he could spend time with her for a few days running. Of course, getting to spend time with her was expensive, and he had not a cent, but if word got around that he was working for the Hat Creek outfit he could probably attract a little credit.

  One thing Dish prided himself on was his skill at driving a buggy; it occurred to him that since Lorena seemed to spend most of her time cooped up in the Dry Bean, she might appreciate a buggy ride along the river in a smart buggy, if such a creature could be found in Lonesome Dove. He got up and carried his plate to the wash bucket.

  “Captain, if you mean it I’d be pleased to stay the day or two,” Dish said.

  The Captain had stepped out on the back porch and was looking north, along the stage road that threaded its way through the brush country toward San Antonio. The road ran straight for a considerable distance before it hit the first gully, and Captain Call had his eyes fixed on it. He seemed not to hear Dish’s reply, although he was only a few feet away. Dish stepped out on the porch to see what it was that distracted the man. Far up the road he could see two horsemen coming, but they were so far yet that it was impossible to tell anything about them. At moments, heat waves from the road caused a quavering that made them seem like one horseman. Dish squinted but there was nothing special about the riders that his eye could detect. Yet the Captain had not so much as turned his head since they appeared.

  “Gus, come out here,” the Captain said.

  Augustus was busy cleaning his plate of honey, a process that involved several more biscuits.

  “I’m eating,” he said, though that was obvious.

  “Come see who’s coming,” the Captain said, rather mildly, Dish thought.

  “If it’s Deets my watch is already set,” Augustus said. “Anyway, I don’t suppose he’s changed clothes, and if I have to see his old black knees sticking out of them old quilts he wears for pants it’s apt to spoil my digestion.”

  “Deets is coming all right,” Call said. “The fact is, he ain’t by himself.”

  “Well, the man’s always aimed to marry,” Augustus said. “I imagine he just finally met up with that dark-complexioned lady I was referring to.”

  “He ain’t met no lady,” Call said with a touch of exasperation. “Who he
’s met is an old friend of ours. If you don’t come here and look I’ll have to drag you.”

  Augustus was about through with the biscuits anyway. He had to use a forefinger to capture the absolute last drop of honey, which was just as sweet licked off a finger as it was when eaten on good sourdough biscuits.

  “Newt, did you know honey is the world’s purest food?” he said, getting up.

  Newt had heard enough lectures on the subject to have already forgotten more than most people ever know about the properties of honey. He hurried his plate to the tub, more curious than Mr. Gus about who Deets could have found.

  “Yes, sir, I like it myself,” he said, to cut short the talk of honey.

  Augustus was a step behind the boy, idly licking his forefinger. He glanced up the road to see what Call could be so aroused about. Two riders were coming, the one on the left clearly Deets, on the big white gelding they called Wishbone. The other rider rode a pacing bay; it took but a moment for recognition to strike. The rider seemed to slump a little in the saddle, in the direction of his horse’s off side, a tendency peculiar to only one man he knew. Augustus was so startled that he made the mistake of running his sticky fingers through his own hair.

  “ ’I god, Woodrow,” he said. “That there’s Jake Spoon.”

  6.

  THE NAME STRUCK NEWT like a blow, so much did Jake Spoon mean to him. As a very little boy, when his mother had still been alive, Jake Spoon was the man who came most often to see her. It had begun to be clear to him, as he turned over his memories, that his mother had been a whore, like Lorena, but this realization tarnished nothing, least of all his memories of Jake Spoon. No man had been kinder, either to him or his mother—her name had been Maggie. Jake had given him hard candy and pennies and had set him on a pacing horse and given him his first ride; he had even had old Jesus, the bootmaker, make him his first pair of boots; and once when Jake won a lady’s saddle in a card game he gave the saddle to Newt and had the stirrups cut down to his size.