Call had taken the precaution of buying a lead steer from the Pumphreys—a big, docile longhorn they called Old Dog. The steer had never been to Montana, of course, but he had led several herds to Matagorda Bay. Call figured the old steer would at least last until they had the herd well trail-broken.
“Old Dog’s like me,” Augustus said, watching Dish Boggett edge the old steer to the front of the herd in preparation for the crossing.
“How’s that?” Call asked. “Lazy, you mean?”
“Mature, I mean,” Augustus said. “He don’t get excited about little things.”
“You don’t get excited about nothing,” Call said. “Not unless it’s biscuits or whores. So what was Jake up to?” he asked. It rankled him that the man was being so little help. Jake had done many irritating things in his rangering days, but nothing as aggravating as bringing a whore along on a cattle drive.
“Jake was up to being Jake,” Augustus said. “It’s a full-time job. He requires a woman to help him with it.”
Dish had gradually eased Old Dog to the front of the herd, working slowly and quietly. The old steer was twice as big as most of the scrawny yearlings that made up the herd. His horns were long and they bent irregularly, as if they were jointed.
Just before the men reached the river they came out into a clearing a mile or more wide. It was a relief, after the constant battle with the mesquite and chaparral. The grass was tall. Call loped through it with Deets, to look at the crossing. Dish trotted over to Augustus on the trim sorrel he called Mustache, a fine cow horse whose eyes were always watching to see that no rebellious cow tried to make a break for freedom. Dish uncoiled his rope and made a few practice throws at a low mesquite seedling. Then he even took a throw, for a joke, at a low-flying buzzard that had just risen off the carcass of an armadillo.
“I guess you’re practicing up so you can rope a woman, if we make it to Ogallala,” Augustus said.
“You don’t have to rope women in that town, I hear,” Dish said. “They rope you.”
“It’s a long way to Nebrasky,” Augustus said. “You’ll be ready to be roped by then, Dish.”
“Where’d you go for half the morning?” Dish asked. He was hoping Gus would talk a little about Lorena, though part of him didn’t want to hear it, since it would involve Jake Spoon.
“Oh, Miss Lorena and I like to take our coffee together in the morning,” Augustus said.
“I hope the weather didn’t treat her too bad,” Dish said, feeling wistful suddenly. He could think of nothing pleasanter than taking coffee with Lorena in the morning.
“No, she’s fine,” Augustus said. “The fresh air agrees with her, I guess.”
Dish said no more, and Augustus decided not to tease him. Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity—they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour. Young Dish, skilled cowhand that he was, might not live to see the whores of Ogallala, and the tender feelings he harbored for Lorena might be the sweetest he would ever have.
Looking at Dish, so tight with his need for Lorena, whom he would probably never have, Augustus remembered his own love for Clara Allen—it had pained him and pleased him at once. As a young woman Clara had such grace that just looking at her could choke a man; then, she was always laughing, though her life had not been the easiest. Despite her cheerful eyes, Clara was prone to sudden angers, and sadnesses so deep that nothing he could say or do would prompt her to answer him, or even to look at him. When she left to marry her horse trader, he felt that he had missed the great opportunity of his life; for all their fun together he had not quite been able to touch her, either in her happiness or her sadness. It wasn’t because of his wife, either—it was because Clara had chosen the angle of their relation. She loved him in certain ways, wanted him for certain purposes, and all his straining, his tricks, his looks and his experience could not induce her to alter the angle.
The day she told him she was going to marry the horse trader from Kentucky, he had been too stunned to say much. She just told him plainly, with no fuss: Bob was the kind of man she needed, and that was that. He could remember the moment still: they had been standing in front of her little store, in Austin, and she had taken his hand and held it for a time.
“Well, Clara,” he said, feeling very lame, “I think you are a fool but I wish you happiness. I guess I’ll see you from time to time.”
“You won’t if I can help it, Gus,” she said. “You leave me be for the next ten years or so. Then come and visit.”
“Why ten years?” he asked, puzzled.
Clara grinned—her humor never rested for long. “Why, I’ll be a wife,” she said. “I won’t be wanting to be tempted by the likes of you. But once I’ve got the hang of married life I’ll want you to come.”
It made no sense at all to Augustus. “Why?” he asked. “Planning to run off after ten years, or what?”
“No,” Clara said. “But I’d want my children to know you. I’d want them to have your friendship.”
It struck him that he was already years late—it had been some sixteen years since Clara held his hand in front of the store. He had not watched the time closely, but it wouldn’t matter. It might only mean that there would be more children for him to be friends with.
“I may just balk in Ogallala,” he said out loud.
Dish was surprised. “Well, balk any time you want to, Gus,” he said.
Augustus was put out with himself for having spoken his thoughts. Still, the chance of settling near Clara and her family appealed to him more than the thought of following Call into another wilderness. Clara was an alert woman who, even as a girl, had read all the papers; he would have someone to talk to about the events of the times. Call had no interest in the events of the times, and a person like Pea Eye wouldn’t even know what an event was. It would be nice to chat regularly with a woman who kept up—though of course it was possible that sixteen years on the frontier had taken the edge off Clara’s curiosity.
“Can you read, Dish?” he asked.
“Well, I know my letters,” Dish said. “I can read some words. Of course there’s plenty I ain’t had no practice with.”
A few hundred yards away they could see Call and Deets riding along the riverbank, studying the situation.
“I wisht we was up to the Red River,” Dish said. “I don’t like this low country.”
“I wish we was to the Yellowstone, myself,” Augustus said. “Maybe Captain Call would be satisfied with that.”
When they reached the river it seemed that it was going to be the smoothest crossing possible. Old Dog seemed to have an affinity for Deets and followed him right into the water without so much as stopping to sniff. Call and Dish, Augustus and Pea and Needle Nelson spread out on the downriver side, but the cattle showed no signs of wanting to do anything but follow Old Dog.
The water was a muddy brown and the current fast, but the cattle only had to swim a few yards. One or two small bunches attempted to turn back, but with most of the crew surrounding them they didn’t make a serious challenge.
Despite the smoothness, Newt felt a good deal afraid and shut his eyes for a second when his horse went to swimming depth and the water came over the saddle. But he got no wetter, and he opened his eyes to see that he was almost across the river. He struck the far bank almost at the same time as a skinny brown longhorn; Mouse and the steer struggled up the bank side by side.
It was just as Newt turned to watch the last of the cattle cross that a scream cut the air, so terrible that it almost made him faint. Before he could even look toward the scream Pea Eye went racing past him, with the Captain just behind him. They both had coiled ropes in their hands as they raced their horses back into the water—Newt wondered what they meant to do with the ropes. Then his eyes found Sean, who was screaming again and again, in a way that made Newt want to cover his ears. He saw that Sean was barely clinging to
his horse, and that a lot of brown things were wiggling around him and over him. At first, with the screaming going on, Newt couldn’t figure out what the brown things were—they seemed like giant worms. His mind took a moment to work out what his eyes were seeing. The giant worms were snakes—water moccasins. Even as the realization struck him, Mr. Gus and Deets went into the river behind Pea Eye and the Captain. How they all got there so fast he couldn’t say, for the screams had started just as Mouse and the steer reached the top of the bank, so close that Newt could see the droplets of water on the steer’s horns.
Then the screams stopped abruptly as Sean slipped under the water—his voice was replaced almost at once by the frenzied neighing of the horse, which began to thrash in the water and soon turned back toward the far bank. As he gained a footing and rose out of the water he shook three snakes from his body, one slithering off his neck.
Pea Eye and the Captain were beating about themselves with their coiled ropes. Newt saw Sean come to the surface downstream, but he wasn’t screaming anymore. Pea leaned far off his horse and managed to catch Sean’s arm, but then his horse got frightened of the snakes and Pea lost his hold. Deets was close by. When Sean came up again Pea got him by the collar and held on. Sean was silent, though Newt could see that his mouth was open. Deets got Pea’s horse by the bridle and kept it still. Pea managed to get his hands under Sean’s arms and drag him across the saddle. The snakes had scattered, but several could be seen on the surface of the river. Dish Boggett had his rifle drawn but was too shaken by the sight to shoot. Deets waved him back. Suddenly there was a loud crack—Mr. Gus had shot a snake with his big Colt. Twice more he shot and two more snakes disappeared. The Captain rode close to Pea and helped him support Sean’s body.
In a minute Pea’s horse was across the deep water and found its footing. Call and Deets held the horse still while Pea took the dying boy in his arms—then Deets led the horse ashore. Augustus rode out of the water behind Call. The cattle were still crossing, but no cowboys were crossing with them. Bert, the Rainey boys and Allen O’Brien were on the south bank, not eager to take the water. A mile back, across the long clearing, the wagon and the horses had just come in sight.
Pea handed the boy down to Dish and Deets. Call quickly took his slicker off his saddle and they laid the boy on it. His eyes were closed, his body jerking slightly. Augustus cut the boy’s shirt off—there were eight sets of fang marks, including one on his neck.
“That don’t count the legs,” Augustus said. “There ain’t no point in counting the legs.”
“What done it?” Dish asked. He had seen the snakes plainly and had even wanted to shoot them, but he couldn’t believe it or understand it.
“It was his bad luck to strike a nest of them, I guess,” Augustus said. “I never seen a nest of snakes in this river.”
“The storm got ’em stirred up,” Deets said.
Call knelt by the boy, helpless to do one thing for him. It was the worst luck—to come all the way from Ireland and then ride into a swarm of water moccasins. He remembered, years before, in a hot droughty summer, stopping to water his horse in a drying lake far up the Brazos—he had ridden his horse in so he could drink and had happened to look down and see that the muddy shallows of the lake were alive with cottonmouths. The puddles were like nests, filled with wiggling snakes, as brown as chocolate. Fortunately he had not ridden into such a puddle. The sight unnerved him so that he shot a snake on reflex—a useless act, to shoot one where there were hundreds.
He had seen the occasional snake in rivers along the coast but never more than one or two together; there had been at least twenty, probably more, around the boy. On the south bank, the horse he had ridden was rolling over and over in the mud, ignored by the frightened cowboys. Maybe the horse was bitten too.
Pea, who had been the first to the rescue, swimming his mount right into the midst of the snakes, suddenly felt so weak he thought he would fall off his horse. He dismounted, clinging to the horn in case his legs gave out.
Augustus noticed how white he was and went to him.
“Are you snakebit, Pea?” he asked, for in the confusion a man could get wounds he wasn’t aware of. He had known more than one man to take bullets without noticing it; one Ranger had been so frightened when his wound was pointed out to him that he died of fright, not the bullet.
“I don’t think I’m bit,” Pea said. “I think I whupped them off.”
“Get your pants down,” Call said. “One could have struck you down low.”
They could find no wound on Pea—meanwhile, the cattle had begun to drift, with no one watching them cross. Some were making the bank a hundred yards downstream. The cowboys on the south bank had still not crossed.
“Gus, you and Deets watch him,” Call said, mounting. “We’ve got to keep the cattle from drifting.”
He noticed Newt sitting beside Pea’s horse, his face white as powder.
“Come help us,” he said, as Pea and Dish loped off toward the cattle.
Newt turned his horse and followed the Captain, feeling that he was doing wrong. He should have said something to Sean, even if Sean couldn’t hear him. He wanted to tell Sean to go on and find a boat somewhere and go back to Ireland quick, whatever the Captain might think. Now he knew Sean was going to die, and that it was forever too late for him to find the boat, but he wanted to say it anyway. He had had a chance to say it, but had missed it.
He trotted beside the Captain, feeling that he might vomit, and also feeling disloyal to Sean.
“He wanted to go back to Ireland!” he said suddenly, tears pouring out of his eyes. He was so grieved he didn’t care.
“Well, I expect he did,” the Captain said quietly.
Newt held his reins, still crying, and let Mouse do the work. He remembered Sean’s screams, and how much the snakes had looked like giant wiggly worms. When at last the cattle were started back toward the main herd, the Captain put his horse back into the river, which startled Newt. He didn’t see how anybody could just ride back into a river that could suddenly be filled with snakes, but this time no snakes appeared. Newt saw that Mr. Gus and Deets had not moved, and wondered if Sean was dead yet. He kept feeling he ought to leave the cattle and go talk to Sean, even if it was too late for Sean to answer, but he was afraid to. He didn’t know what to do, and he sat on his horse and cried until he started vomiting. He had to lean over and vomit beneath his horse’s neck.
In his mind he began to wish for some way to undo what had happened—to make the days run backward, to the time when they were still in Lonesome Dove. He imagined Sean alive and well—and did what he had not done, told him to go off to Galveston and find a boat to take him home. But he kept looking back, and there was Deets and Mr. Gus, kneeling by Sean. He longed to see Sean sit up and be all right, but Sean didn’t, and Newt could only sit hopelessly on his horse and hold the cattle.
Augustus and Deets could do little for Sean except sit with him while his life was ending.
“I guess it would have been better if Pea had just let him drown,” Augustus said. “He was an unlucky young sprout.”
“Mighty unlucky,” Deets said. He felt an unsteadiness in his limbs. Though he had seen much violent death, he had not seen one more terrible than the one that had just occurred. He felt he would never again cross a river without remembering it.
Before his brother crossed the river, Sean O’Brien died. Augustus covered the boy with his slicker just as the horse herd came clambering up the bank. The herd passed so close that when some of the horses stopped to shake themselves the fine spray wet Deets’s back. The Spettle boys came out of the river wide-eyed with fright, clinging to their wet mounts. On the far bank Call had the other men helping to ease the wagon down the steep crossing.
“Now if them snakes had come at Bol, he would have had a chance,” Augustus said. “He has his ten-gauge.”
“The storm stirred them up,” Deets said again. He felt guilty, for he had chosen the crossing in
preference to one up the river, and now a boy was dead.
“Well, Deets, life is short,” Augustus said. “Shorter for some than for others. This is a bad way to start a trip.”
Bolivar was unhappy. He didn’t think the wagon would make it, even across such a small river, but he was not willing to leave it either. He sat grimly on the wagon seat, Lippy beside him, while the cowboys got ropes on the wagon.
“You mean Sean’s dead?” Allen O’Brien asked the Captain, so stunned he could barely speak.
“Yes, he’s dead,” Call said—he had seen Gus cover the corpse.
“It’s me that done it,” Allen said, tears on his round face. “I never should have brought the boy. I knew he was too young.”
Call said nothing more. The boy’s age had had nothing to do with what had happened, of course; even an experienced man, riding into such a mess of snakes, wouldn’t have survived. He himself might not have, and he had never worried about snakes. It only went to show what he already knew, which was that there were more dangers in life than even the sharpest training could anticipate. Allen O’Brien should waste no time on guilt, for a boy could die in Ireland as readily as elsewhere, however safe it might appear.
Jasper and Bert had seen the snakes, and Jasper was so terrified that he couldn’t look at the water. Soupy Jones was almost as scared. The Rainey boys looked as if they might fall off their horses.
More than anything, Jasper wanted to quit. He had crossed the Nueces many times, and yet, as the moment approached when he would have to do it again, he felt he couldn’t. Pea and Dish and the others who had already crossed seemed to him like the luckiest men in the world.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 159
