The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  “Now if we had some shade to drink this in, we’d be in good shape,” Jake said. “I don’t suppose there’s a sporting woman in this town, is there?”

  “You are a scamp,” Augustus said, taking the jug. “Are you so rich that’s all you can think about?”

  “I can think about it, rich or poor,” Jake said.

  They squatted in the shade of the springhouse for a bit, their backs against the adobe, which was still cool on the side the sun hadn’t struck. Augustus saw no need to mention Lorena, since he knew Jake would soon discover her for himself and probably have her in love with him within the week. The thought of Dish Boggett’s bad timing made him smile, for it was certain Jake’s return would doom whatever chance Dish might have had. Dish had committed himself to a day of well-digging for nothing, for when it came to getting women in love with him Jake Spoon had no equal. His big eyes convinced them he’d be lost without them, and none of them seemed to want him just to go on and be lost.

  While they were squatting by the springhouse, the pigs came nosing around the house looking for something to eat. But there wasn’t so much as a grasshopper in the yard. They stopped and looked at Augustus a minute.

  “Get on down to the saloon,” he said. “Maybe you’ll find Lippy’s hat.”

  “Folks that keep pigs ain’t no better than farmers,” Jake said. “I’m surprised at you and Call. If you gave up being lawmen I thought you’d at least stay cattlemen.”

  “I thought you’d own a railroad by now, for that matter,” Augustus said. “Or a whorehouse, at least. I guess life’s been a disappointment to us both.”

  “I may not have no fortune, but I’ve never said a word to a pig, either,” Jake said. Now that he was home and back with friends, he was beginning to feel sleepy. After a few more swigs and a little more argument, he stretched out as close to the springhouse as he could get, so as to have shade for as long as possible. He raised up an elbow to have one more go at the jug.

  “How come Call lets you sit around and guzzle this mash all day?” he asked.

  “Call ain’t never been my boss,” Augustus said. “It’s no say-so of his when I drink.”

  Jake looked off across the scrubby pastures. There were tufts of grass here and there, but mostly the ground looked hard as flint. Heat waves were rising off it like fumes off kerosene. Something moved in his line of vision, and for a moment he thought he saw some strange brown animal under a chaparral bush. Looking more closely he saw that it was the old Mexican’s bare backside.

  “Hell, why’d he take a rope if all he meant to do was shit?” he asked. “Where’d you get the greasy old bastard?”

  “We’re running a charitable home for retired criminals,” Augustus said. “If you’d just retire you’d qualify.”

  “Dern, I forgot how ugly this country is,” Jake said. “I guess if there was a market for snake meat, this would be the place to get rich.”

  With that he put his hat over his face, and within no more than two minutes began a gentle snoring. Augustus returned the jug to the springhouse. It occurred to him that while Jake was napping he might pay a visit to Lorie; once she fell under Jake’s spell he would probably require her to suspend professional activities for a while.

  Augustus viewed this prospect philosophically; it was his experience that a man’s dealings with women were invariably prone to interruptions, often of a more lasting nature than Jake Spoon was apt to prompt.

  He left Jake sleeping and strolled down the middle of Hat Creek. As he passed the corrals, he saw Dish straining at the windlass to bring a big bucket of dirt out of the new well. Call was in the lot, working with the Hell Bitch. He had her snubbed to a post and was fanning her with a saddle blanket. Dish was as wet with sweat as if he’d just crawled out of a horse trough. He’d sweated through the hatband of his hat, and had even sweated through his belt.

  “Dish, you’re plumb wet,” Augustus said. “If there was a well there, I’d figure you fell in it.”

  “If folks could drink sweat you wouldn’t need no well,” Dish said. It seemed to Augustus that his tone was a shade unfriendly.

  “Look at it this way, Dish,” Augustus said. “You’re storing up manna in heaven, working like this.”

  “Heaven be damned,” Dish said.

  Augustus smiled. “Why, the Bible just asks for the sweat of your brow,” he said. “You’re even sweating from the belt buckle, Dish. That ought to put you in good with the Seraphim.”

  The reference was lost on Dish, who bitterly regretted his foolishness in allowing himself to be drawn into such undignified work. Augustus stood there grinning at him as if the sight of a man sweating was the most amusing thing in the world.

  “I ought to kick you down this hole,” Dish said. “If you hadn’t loaned me that money I’d be halfway to the Matagorda by now.”

  Augustus walked over to the fence to watch Call work the mare. He was about to throw the saddle on her. He had her snubbed close, but she still had her eye turned so she could watch him in case he got careless.

  “You ought to blindfold her,” Augustus said. “I thought you knowed that much.”

  “I don’t want her blindfolded,” Call said.

  “If she was blindfolded she might bite the post next time instead of you,” Augustus said.

  Call got her to accept the blanket and picked up his saddle. Snubbed as she was, she couldn’t bite him, but her hind legs weren’t snubbed. He kept close to her shoulder as he prepared to ease on the saddle. The mare let go with her near hind foot. It didn’t get him but it got the saddle and nearly knocked it out of his hand. He kept close to her shoulder and got the saddle in position again.

  “Remember that horse that bit off all that old boy’s toes—all the ones on the left foot, I mean?” Augustus said. “That old boy’s name was Harwell. He went to the war and got killed at Vicksburg. He never was much of a hand after he lost his toes. Of course, the horse that bit ’em off had a head the size of a punkin. I don’t suppose a little mare like that could take off five toes in one bite.”

  Call eased the saddle on her, and the minute the stirrups slapped against her belly the mare went as high as she could get, and the saddle flew off and landed twenty feet away. Augustus got a big laugh out of it. Call went to the barn and returned with a short rawhide rope.

  “If you want help just ask me,” Augustus said.

  “I don’t,” Call said. “Not from you.”

  “Call, you ain’t never learned,” Augustus said. “There’s plenty of gentle horses in this world. Why would a man with your responsibilities want to waste time with a filly that’s got to be hobbled and blindfolded before you can even keep a saddle on her?”

  Call ignored him. In a moment the mare tentatively lifted the near hind foot with the thought of kicking whatever might be in range. When she did he caught the foot with the rawhide rope and took a hitch around the snubbing post. It left the mare standing on three legs, so she could not kick again without throwing herself. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, trembling a little with indignation, but she accepted the saddle.

  “Why don’t you trade her to Jake?” Augustus said. “If they don’t hang him, maybe he could teach her to pace.”

  Call left the mare saddled, snubbed and on three legs, and came to the fence to have a smoke and let the mare have a moment to consider the situation.

  “Where’s Jake?” he asked.

  “Catching a nap,” Augustus said. “I reckon the anxiety wore him out.”

  “He ain’t changed a bit,” Call said. “Not a dern bit.”

  Augustus laughed. “You’re one to talk,” he said. “When’s the last time you changed? It must have been before we met, and that was thirty years ago.”

  “Look at her watch us,” Call said. The mare was watching them—even had her ears pointed at them.

  “I wouldn’t take it as no compliment,” Augustus said. “She ain’t watching you because she loves you.”

  “Say
what you will,” Call said, “I never seen a more intelligent filly.”

  Augustus laughed again. “Oh, that’s what you look for, is it? Intelligence,” he said. “You and me’s got opposite ideas about things. It’s intelligent creatures you got to watch out for. I don’t care if they’re horses or women or Indians or what. I learned long ago there’s much to be said for dumbness. A dumb horse may step in a hole once in a while, but at least you can turn your back on one without losing a patch of hide.”

  “I’d rather my horses didn’t step in no holes,” Call said. “You reckon somebody’s really on Jake’s trail?”

  “Hard to judge,” Augustus said. “Jake was always nervous. He’s seen more Indians that turned out to be sage bushes than any man I know.”

  “A dead dentist ain’t a sage bush,” Call said.

  “No—in that case it’s the sheriff that’s the unknown factor,” Gus said. “Maybe he didn’t like his brother. Maybe some outlaw will shoot him before he can come after Jake. Maybe he’ll get lost and end up in Washington, D.C. Or maybe he’ll show up tomorrow and whip us all. I wouldn’t lay money.”

  They fell silent for a moment, the only sound the grinding of the windlass as Dish drew up another bucket of dirt.

  “Why not go north?” Call said, taking Augustus by surprise.

  “Why, I don’t know,” Augustus said. “I’ve never given the matter no thought, and so far as I know you haven’t either. I do think we’re a shade old to do much Indian fighting.”

  “There won’t be much,” Call said. “You heard Jake. It’s the same up there as it is down here. The Indians will soon be whipped. And Jake does know good country when he sees it. It sounds like a cattleman’s paradise.”

  “No, it sounds like a goddamn wilderness,” Augustus said. “Why, there ain’t even a house to go to. I’ve slept on the ground enough for one life. Now I’m in the mood for a little civilization. I don’t have to have oprys and streetcars, but I do enjoy a decent bed and a roof to keep out the weather.”

  “He said there were fortunes to be made,” Call said. “It stands to reason he’s right. Somebody’s gonna settle it up and get that land. Suppose we got there first. We could buy you forty beds.”

  The surprising thing to Augustus was not just what Call was suggesting but how he sounded. For years Call had looked at life as if it were essentially over. Call had never been a man who could think of much reason for acting happy, but then he had always been one who knew his purpose. His purpose was to get done what needed to be done, and what needed to be done was simple, if not easy. The settlers of Texas needed protection, from Indians on the north and bandits on the south. As a Ranger, Call had had a job that fit him, and he had gone about the work with a vigor that would have passed for happiness in another man.

  But the job wore out. In the south it became mainly a matter of protecting the cattle herds of rich men like Captain King or Shanghai Pierce, both of whom had more cattle than any one man needed. In the north, the Army had finally taken the fight against the Comanches away from the Rangers, and had nearly finished it. He and Call, who had no military rank or standing, weren’t welcomed by the Army; with forts all across the northwestern frontier the free-roving Rangers found that they were always interfering with the Army, or else being interfered with. When the Civil War came, the Governor himself called them in and asked them not to go—with so many men gone they needed at least one reliable troop of Rangers to keep the peace on the border.

  It was that assignment that brought them to Lonesome Dove. After the war, the cattle market came into existence and all the big landowners in south Texas began to make up herds and trail them north, to the Kansas railheads. Once cattle became the game and the brush country filled up with cowboys and cattle traders, he and Call finally stopped rangering. It was no trouble for them to cross the river and bring back a few hundred head at a time to sell to the traders who were too lazy to go into Mexico themselves. They prospered in a small way; there was enough money in their account in San Antonio that they could have considered themselves rich, had that notion interested them. But it didn’t; Augustus knew that nothing about the life they were living interested Call, particularly. They had enough money that they could have bought land, but they hadn’t, although plenty of land could still be had wonderfully cheap.

  It was that they had roved too long, Augustus concluded, when his mind turned to such matters. They were people of the horse, not of the town; in that they were more like the Comanches than Call would ever have admitted. They had been in Lonesome Dove nearly ten years, and yet what little property they had acquired was so worthless that neither of them would have felt bad about just saddling up and riding off from it.

  Indeed, it seemed to Augustus that that was what both of them had always expected would happen. They were not of the settled fraternity, he and Call. From time to time they talked of going west of the Pecos, perhaps rangering out there; but so far only the rare settler had cared to challenge the Apache, so there was no need for Rangers.

  Augustus had not expected that Call would be satisfied just to rustle Mexican cattle forever, but neither had he expected him to suddenly decide to strike out for Montana. Yet it was obvious the idea had taken hold of the man.

  “I tell you what, Call,” Augustus said. “You and Deets and Pea go on up there to Montany and build a nice snug cabin with a good fireplace and at least one bed, so it’ll be waiting when I get there. Then clear out the last of the Cheyenne and the Blackfeet and any Sioux that look rambunctious. When you’ve done that, me and Jake and Newt will gather up a herd and meet you on Powder River.”

  Call looked almost amused. “I’d like to see the herd you and Jake could get there with,” he said. “A herd of whores, maybe.”

  “I’m sure it would be a blessing if we could herd a few up that way,” Augustus said. “I don’t suppose there’s a decent woman in the whole territory yet.”

  Then the thought struck him that there could be no getting to Montana without crossing the Platte, and Clara lived on the Platte. Bob Allen or no, she would ask him to supper, if only to show off her girls. Jake’s news might be out of date. Maybe she had even run her husband off since Jake had passed through. Anyway, husbands had been got around a few times in the history of the world, if only to the extent of having to set a place for an old rival at the supper table. Such thoughts put the whole prospect in a more attractive light.

  “How far do you reckon it is to Montany, Call?” he asked.

  Call looked north across the dusty flats, as if estimating in his mind’s eye the great rise of the plains, stretching even farther than hearsay, away and beyond the talk of men. Jake that morning had mentioned the Milk River, a stream he had never heard of. He knew the country he knew, and had never been lost in it, but the country he knew stopped at the Arkansas River. He had known men to speak of the Yellowstone as if it were the boundary of the world; even Kit Carson, whom he had met twice, had not talked of what lay north of it.

  But then his memory went back to a camp they had made on the Brazos, many years before, with an Army captain; there was a Delaware scout with him who had been farther than any man they knew—all the way to the headwaters of the Missouri.

  “Remember Black Beaver, Gus?” he asked. “He’d know how far it was.”

  “I remember him,” Augustus said. “It was always a puzzle to me how such a short-legged Indian could cover so much ground.”

  “He claimed to have been all the way from the Columbia to the Rio Grande,” Call said. “That’s knowing the country, I’d say.”

  “Well, he was an Indian,” Augustus said. “He didn’t have to go along establishing law and order and making it safe for bankers and Sunday-school teachers, like we done. I guess that’s why you’re ready to head off to Montany. You want to help establish a few more banks.”

  “That’s aggravating,” Call said. “I ain’t a banker.”

  “No, but you’ve done many a banker a good turn,” Augus
tus said. “That’s what we done, you know. Kilt the dern Indians so they wouldn’t bother the bankers.”

  “They bothered more than bankers,” Call said.

  “Yes, lawyers and doctors and newspapermen and drummers of every description,” Augustus said.

  “Not to mention women and children,” Call said. “Not to mention plain settlers.”

  “Why, women and children and settlers are just cannon fodder for lawyers and bankers,” Augustus said. “They’re part of the scheme. After the Indians wipe out enough of them you get your public outcry, and we go chouse the Indians out of the way. If they keep coming back then the Army takes over and chouses them worse. Finally the Army will manage to whip ’em down to where they can be squeezed onto some reservation, so the lawyers and bankers can come in and get civilization started. Every bank in Texas ought to pay us a commission for the work we done. If we hadn’t done it, all the bankers would still be back in Georgia, living on poke salad and turnip greens.”

  “I don’t know why you stuck with it, if that’s the way you think,” Call said. “You should have gone home and taught school.”

  “Hell, no,” Augustus said. “I wanted a look at it before the bankers and lawyers get it.”

  “Well, they ain’t got to Montana,” Call said.

  “If we go they won’t be far behind,” Augustus said. “The first ones that get there will hire you to go hang all the horsethieves and bring in whichever Indians have got the most fight left, and you’ll do it and the place will be civilized. Then you won’t know what to do with yourself, no more than you have these last ten years.”

  “I ain’t a boy,” Call said. “I’ll be dead before all that happens. Anyhow, I ain’t going there to law. I’m going there to run cattle. Jake said it was a cattleman’s paradise.”

  “You ain’t a cattleman, Call,” Augustus said. “No more than I am. If we was to get a ranch I don’t know who would run it.”

  It seemed to Call the mare had probably stood on three legs long enough, and he had surely jawed with Gus long enough. Sometimes Gus sang a strange tune. He had killed as many Indians as any Ranger, and had seen enough of their butchery that you’d think he knew why he was doing it; and yet when he talked he seemed to be on their side.