“You could do worse than to listen to me,” Augustus said.
Dish Boggett had risen again. His eyes had a wide, glassy look, and he held himself carefully, as if afraid that another fall would break him like glass.
“What happened to you?” Call asked.
“Why, Captain,” Dish said, “I wish I could say.”
“Why can’t you say?”
“Because I can’t remember,” Dish said.
“Aw, he’s all right,” Augustus said. “He just wanted to see how fast he could drink two bottles of whiskey.”
“Who put him up to that?” Call asked.
“Not me,” Augustus said.
“Not me, neither,” Jake said, grinning. “All I done was offer to hunt a funnel. I believe he could have got it down a little faster if he’d had a funnel.”
“I can ride, Captain,” Dish said. “Once I get on a horse it’ll all wear off.”
“I hope you’re right,” Call said. “I’ll not keep a man in my crew who can’t do his job.”
Bolivar was still clanging the bell, which caused Jake to look more out of temper.
“Hell, if this is the Fourth of July I’ll set off my own firecrackers,” he said, taking out his pistol. Before anybody could say a word, he shot three times in the general direction of the house. The clanging continued as if the shots hadn’t happened, but Newt, at least, was shocked. It seemed a reckless way to act, even if Bol was making too much noise.
“If you’re that trigger-happy, no wonder you’re on the run,” Augustus said. “If you want to stop the noise, go hit him in the head with a brick.”
“Why walk when you can shoot?” Jake asked with another grin.
Call said nothing. He had noticed that Jake actually raised his barrel enough to eliminate any danger to their cook. It was typical—Jake always liked to act meaner than he was.
“If you men want grub, you better go get it,” he said. “Sundown would be the time to leave.”
• • •
After supper Jake and Augustus went outside to smoke and spit. Dish sat on the Dutch oven, sipping black coffee and squeezing his temples with one hand—each temple felt like someone had given it a sharp rap with a small ax. Deets and Newt started for the lots to catch the horses, Newt very conscious of the fact that he was the only one in the group without a sidearm. Deets had an old Walker Colt the size of a ham, which he only wore when he went on trips, since even he wouldn’t have been stout enough to carry it all day without wearing down.
The Captain had gone to the lots ahead of them, since it took a little time to get the Hell Bitch saddled. He had her snubbed to the post when Deets and Newt arrived. When Newt walked in the barn to get a rope, the Captain turned and handed him a holstered pistol and a gun belt.
“Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it,” he added, a little solemnly.
Newt took the gun and slipped it out of its holster. It smelled faintly of oil—the Captain must have oiled it that day. It was not the first time he had held a pistol, of course. Mr. Gus had given him thorough training in pistol shooting and had even complimented him on his skill. But holding one and actually having one of your own were two different things. He turned the cylinder of the Colt and listened to the small, clear clicks it made. The grip was wood, the barrel cool and blue; the holster had kept a faint smell of saddle soap. He slipped the gun back in its holster, put the gun belt around his waist and felt the gun’s solid weight against his hip. When he walked out into the lots to catch his horse, he felt grown and complete for the first time in his life. The sun was just easing down toward the western horizon, the bullbats were dipping toward the stone stock tank that Deets and the Captain had built long ago. Deets had already caught Mr. Gus’s horse, a big solid sorrel they called Mud Pie, and was catching his own mount. Newt shook out a loop, and on the first throw caught his own favorite, a dun gelding he called Mouse. He felt he could even rope better with the gun on his hip.
“Oh, my, they done put a gun on you, ain’t they,” Deets said with a big grin. “I guess next thing you’ll be boss of us all.”
No thought that ambitious had ever crossed Newt’s mind. The summit of his hopes had been to be one of the crew—to be allowed to go along and do whatever there was to do. But Deets had said it as a joke, and Newt was in the perfect mood to take a joke.
“That’s right,” he said. “I’spect they’ll make me boss any day. And the first thing I’ll do is raise your wages.”
Deets slapped his leg and laughed, the thought was so funny. When the rest of the outfit finally wandered down from the house, they found the two of them grinning back and forth at one another.
“Look at ’em,” Augustus said. “You’d think they just discovered teeth.”
As the day died and the afterglow stretched upward in the soft, empty sky, the Hat Creek outfit, seven strong, crossed the river and rode southeast, toward the Hacienda Flores.
10.
THE FIRST DIFFERENCE Newt noticed about being grown up was that time didn’t pass as slow. The minute they crossed the river the Captain struck southeast in a long trot, and in no time the land darkened and they were riding by moonlight, still in a long trot. Since he had never been allowed in Mexico, except once in a while in one of the small villages down the river when they were buying stock legitimately, he didn’t really know what to expect, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so dark and empty. Pea Eye and Mr. Gus were always talking about how thick the bandits were, and yet the seven of them rode for two hours into country that seemed to contain nothing except itself. They saw no lights, heard no sounds—they just rode, across shallow gullies, through thinning chaparral, farther and farther from the river. Once in a while the Captain stepped up the pace and they traveled in a short lope, but mostly he stuck with the trot. Since Mouse had an easy trot and a hard lope, Newt was happy with the gait.
He was in the middle of the company. It was Pea Eye’s traditional job to watch the rear. Newt rode beside Dish Boggett, who had not said one word since leaving and whose state Newt couldn’t judge, though at least he hadn’t fallen off his horse. The thin moon lit the sky but not the ground. The only landmarks were shadows, low shadows, mostly made by chaparral and mesquite. Of course, it was not Newt’s place to worry about the route, but it occurred to him that he had better try to keep some sense of where he was in case he got separated from the outfit and had to find his own way back. But the farther they rode, the more lost he felt; about all he knew for sure was that the river was on his left. He tried to watch the Captain and Mr. Gus and to recognize the landmarks they were guiding the outfit by. But he could detect nothing. They did not seem to be paying much attention to the terrain. It was only when they loped over a ridge and surprised a sizable herd of longhorns that the Captain drew rein. The cattle, spooked by the seven riders, were already running away.
By this time the stars were bright, and the Milky Way like a long speckled cloud. Without a word the Captain got off. Stepping to the end of his rein, he began to relieve himself. One by one the other men dismounted and did the same, turning slightly so as not to be pointed at one another. Newt thought he had better do what the others were doing, but to his embarrassment could not make water. All he could do was button up again and hope nobody had noticed.
In the silence that followed the pissing they could still hear the sound of running cattle, the only sound to be heard other than the breath of the horses or the occasional jingling spur. The Captain seemed to feel the horses deserved a short rest; he stayed on the ground, looking in the direction of the fleeing cattle.
“Them cattle could be had for the taking,” he said. “Anybody get a count?”
“No, I never,” Augustus said, as if he would be the only one who could possibly have made a count.
“Oh, was them cattle?” Jake said. “I thought they was dern antelope. They went over the ridge so fast I never got a look.”
“It’s lucky they run west,” Ca
ll said.
“Lucky for who?” Augustus asked.
“For us,” Call said. “We can come back and pick them up tomorrow night. I bet it was four hundred or more.”
“Them of us that wants to can, I guess,” Augustus said. “I ain’t worked two nights running since I can remember.”
“You never worked two nights running,” Jake said as he swung back up on his horse. “Not unless you was working at a lady, anyhow.”
“How far have we come, Deets?” Call asked. Deets had one amazing skill—he could judge distances traveled better than any man Call had ever known. And he could do it in the daytime, at night, in all weathers, and in brush.
“It’s five miles yet to the out camp,” Deets said. “It’s a little ways north, too.”
“Let’s bear around it,” Call said.
Augustus considered that an absurd precaution. “ ’I god,” he said. “The dern camp’s five miles away. We can likely slip past it without going clear around by Mexico City.”
“It don’t hurt to give it room,” Call said. “We might scare some more cattle. I’ve known men who could hear the sound of running cattle a long way off.”
“I couldn’t hear Jehovah’s trumpet from no five miles off,” Augustus said. “Anyway, we ain’t the only thing in this country that can spook cattle. A lobo wolf can spook them, or a lion.”
“I didn’t ask for a speech,” Call said. “It’s foolish to take chances.”
“Some might think it foolish to try and steal horses from the best-armed ranch in northern Mexico,” Augustus said. “Pedro must work about a hundred vaqueros.”
“Yes, but they’re spread around, and most of them can’t shoot,” Call said.
“Most of us can’t, either,” Augustus said. “Dish and Newt ain’t never spilt blood, and one of ’em’s drunk anyway.”
“Gus, you’d talk to a possum,” Jake said.
“I wisht we had one along,” Augustus said. “I’ve seen possums that could outthink this crowd.”
After that, the talk died and they all slipped back into the rhythm of the ride. Newt tried hard to stay alert, but their pace was so steady that after a while he stopped thinking and just rode, Deets in front of him, Dish beside him, Pea behind. If he had been sleepy he could almost have gone to sleep at a high trot, it was all so regular.
Dish Boggett had ridden off the worst of his drunk, though there were moments when he still felt queasy. Dish had spent most of his life on a horse and could ride in any condition short of paralysis; he had no trouble keeping his place in the group. In time his head quit throbbing and he felt well enough to take an interest in the proceedings at hand. He was not troubled by any sense of being lost, or any apprehension about Mexican bandits. He was confident of his mount and prepared to outrun any trouble that couldn’t be otherwise handled. His main trouble was that he was riding just behind Jake Spoon and thus was reminded of what had happened in the saloon every time he looked up. He knew he had become a poor second in Lorena’s affections to the man just in front of him, and the knowledge rankled. The one consoling thought was that there might be gunplay before the night was over—Dish had never been in a gun battle but he reasoned that if bullets flew thick and fast Jake might stop one of them, which could change the whole situation. It wasn’t exactly that Dish hoped he’d be killed outright—maybe just wounded enough that they’d have to leave him someplace downriver where there might be a doctor.
More than once they spotted bunches of longhorn cattle, all of whom ran like deer at the approach of the horsemen.
“Why, hell, if we was to start to Montana with cattle like these, we’d be there in a week,” Augustus said. “A horse couldn’t keep up with them, nor a steam locomotive neither.”
“The big camp, Captain,” Deets said, “it’s over the ridge.”
“We don’t want the camp, we want the horse herd,” Augustus said in his full voice.
“Talk up, Gus,” Jake said. “If you talk a little louder they’ll probably bring the horse herd to us, only they’ll be riding it.”
“Well, they’re just a bunch of bean eaters,” Augustus said. “As long as they don’t fart in my direction I ain’t worried.”
Call turned south. The closer they were to action, the more jocularity bothered him. It seemed to him that men who had been in bad fights and seen death and injury ought to develop a little respect for the dangers of their trade. The last thing he wanted to do at such times was talk—a man who was talking couldn’t listen to the country, and might miss hearing something that would make the crucial difference.
Gus’s disregard of common sense in such matters was legendary. Jake appeared to have the same disregard, but Call knew his was mostly bluff. Gus started the joking, and Jake felt like he had to keep up his end of it, because he wanted to be thought a cool customer.
In fact, though, Gus McCrae was a cool customer, perhaps the coolest Call had ever known—and he had known many men who didn’t scare easy. His disregard of danger was so complete that Call initially thought he must want to die. He had known men who did want to die—who for some reason had ended up with a dislike of life—and most of them had got the death they wanted. In Texas, in his time, getting killed was easy.
But Gus loved to live and had no intention of letting anyone do him out of any of his pleasures. Call finally decided his coolness was just a by-product of his general vanity and overconfidence. Call himself spent plenty of time on self-appraisal. He knew what he could certainly do, and what he might do if he was lucky, and what he couldn’t do barring a miracle. The problem with Gus was that he regarded himself as the miracle, in such situations. He treated danger with light contempt or open scorn, and scorn was about all he seemed to have for Pedro Flores, although Pedro had held on to his stony empire through forty violent years.
Of course, when trouble came Gus was reliable, but the only man in the outfit who was really much help as a planner was Deets. Nobody expected Deets to talk, which left him free to pay attention, and he paid careful attention, often noticing things that Call had overlooked, or confirming judgments that Call felt uncertain about. Even Gus was quick to admit that Deets had the best hearing in the outfit, although Deets himself claimed to rely just as much on his sense of smell—a claim Augustus poked fun at.
“What does trouble smell like then?” he asked. “I never noticed it had an odor. You right sure you ain’t just smelling yourself?”
But Deets would never explain himself or allow Gus to draw him very deeply into argument. “How do the coyote know?” he sometimes replied.
When they had ridden south two or three more miles, Call drew rein. “There’s another out camp off this way,” he said. “His wranglers stay in it. I doubt there’s more than one or two of them, but we don’t want one to get loose to warn the big house. We best sneak in and catch them. Me and Deets can do it.”
“Them vaqueros are probably drunk by now,” Augustus said. “Drunk and asleep both.”
“We’ll split,” Call said. “You and Jake and Pea and Dish go get the horses. We’ll catch the wranglers.”
Only after he said it did he remember the boy. He had forgotten he was along. Of course it would have been safer for the boy to go after the horse herd, but the order had been given and he never liked to change his plan once one was struck.
Augustus dismounted and tightened his cinch a notch. “I hope we don’t strike too many gullies,” he said. “I dislike jumping gullies in the dark.”
Newt’s heart gave a little jump when he realized the Captain meant to keep him with him. It must mean the Captain thought he was worth something, after all, though he had no idea how to catch a wrangler, Mexican or otherwise.
Once the group split up, Call slowed his pace. He was inwardly annoyed with himself for not sending the boy with Gus. He and Deets had worked together so long that very little talk was needed between them. Deets just did what needed to be done, silently. But the boy wouldn’t know what needed to be done and
might blunder into the way.
“You reckon they keep a dog?” Call asked—a dog was likely to bark at anything, and a smart vaquero would heed it and take immediate precautions.
Deets shook his head. “A dog would already be barking,” he said. “Maybe the dog got snakebit.”
Newt gripped his reins tightly and mashed his hat down on his head every few minutes—he didn’t want to lose his hat. Two worries seesawed in his mind: that he might get killed or that he might make a stupid blunder and displease the Captain. Neither was pleasant to contemplate.
Call stopped and dismounted when it seemed to him they were about a quarter of a mile from the camp. The boy did the same, but Deets, for some reason, still sat his horse. Call looked at him and was about to speak, but Deets lifted his big hand. He apparently heard something they didn’t hear.
“What is it?” Call whispered.
Deets got down, still listening. “Don’t know,” he said. “Sounded like singin’.”
“Why would the vaqueros be singing this time of night?” Call asked.
“Nope, white folks singin’,” Deets said.
That was even more puzzling. “Maybe you hear Gus,” Call said. “Surely he wouldn’t be crazy enough to sing now.”
“I’m going a little closer,” Deets said, handing Newt his reins.
Newt felt awkward, once Deets left. He was afraid to speak, so he simply stood, holding the two horses.
It embarrassed Call that his own hearing had never been as good as it should be. He listened but could hear nothing at all. Then he noticed the boy, who looked tense as a wire.
“Do you hear it?” he asked.
At any other time the question would have struck Newt as simple. Either he heard something or he didn’t. But under the press of action and responsibilities, the old certainties dissolved. He did think he heard something, but he couldn’t say what. The sound was so distant and indistinct that he couldn’t even be sure it was a sound. The harder he strained to hear, the more uncertain he felt about what he heard. He would never have suspected that a simple thing like sound could produce such confusion.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 138
