Roscoe did watch. He stepped so gingerly, getting his bedding arranged, that it took him nearly twenty minutes to settle down. Then he couldn’t get the thought of the big snake off his mind. He had never heard of anyone naming a snake before, but then nothing she did accorded with any procedure he was familiar with. The fact that she had mentioned the snake meant that he had little chance of getting to sleep. He had heard that snakes had a habit of crawling in with people, and he definitely didn’t want to be crawled in with. He wrapped his blanket around him tightly to prevent Ed from slipping in, but it was a hot sultry night and he was soon sweating so profusely that he couldn’t sleep anyway. There was plenty of grass and weeds around, and every time anything moved in the grass he imagined it to be the big rattler. The snake might get along with Louisa, but that didn’t mean he would accept strangers.
Hours passed and he still couldn’t get to sleep, though he was plenty tired. It was clear that if the sleeping didn’t improve he was going to be dead on his feet long before he got back to Fort Smith. His eyelids would fall, but then he’d hear something and jerk awake, a process that went on until he was too tired to care whether he died or not. He had been propped up against the wall of the cabin, but he slowly slid down and finally slept, flat on his back.
When he awoke he got a shock almost worse than if he had found the rattler curled on his chest: Louisa was standing astraddle of him. Roscoe was so tired that it was only his brain that had come awake, it seemed. He would ordinarily have reacted quickly to the sight of anyone standing astraddle of him, much less a woman, but in this case his limbs were so heavy with sleep that he couldn’t move a one: opening his eyes was effort enough. It was nearly sunup, still sultry and humid. He saw that Louisa was barefoot and that her feet and ankles were wet from the dewy grass. He couldn’t see her face or judge her disposition, but he felt a longing to be back on his couch in the jail, where crazy things didn’t happen. Although he was just in his long johns, the blanket was up about his chest, so at least she hadn’t caught him indecent.
For a second he took a sleepy comfort from that reflection, but a second later it ceased to be true. Louisa stuck one of her wet feet under the blanket and kicked it off. Roscoe was so anchored in sleep he still couldn’t react. Then, to his extreme astonishment, Louisa squatted right atop his middle and reached into his long johns and took hold of his tool. Nothing like that had ever happened to him, and he was stunned, though his tool wasn’t. While the rest of him had been heavy with sleep, it had become heavy with itself.
“Why you’re a tom turkey, ain’t you,” Louisa said.
To Roscoe’s astonishment, Louisa proceeded to squat right down on him. Instead of being covered with a blanket, he was covered with her skirts. At that point the sun broke through the mist, lighting the clearing and adding to his embarrassment, for anyone could have ridden up and seen that something mighty improper was happening.
As it was, though, only three or four of Louisa’s chickens watched the act, but even the fact that the chickens were standing around added to Roscoe’s embarrassment. Maybe the chickens weren’t really watching, but they seemed to be. Meanwhile Louisa was wiggling around without much interest in what he thought about it all. Roscoe decided the best approach was to pretend a dream was happening, though he knew quite well it wasn’t. But Louisa’s vigor was such that even if Roscoe had got his thoughts in place they would soon have been jarred awry. A time or two he was practically lifted off the ground by her efforts; he was scooted off his tarp and back into the weeds and was forced to open his eyes again in hopes of being able to spot a bush he could grab, to hold himself in place. About the time Louisa moved him completely off the tarp, matters came to a head. Despite the chickens and the weeds and the danger of witnesses, he felt a sharp pleasure. Louisa apparently did too, soon afterward, for she wiggled even more vigorously and grunted loudly. Then she sat on him for several minutes, scratching at the chigger bites on his wet ankles. He soon sank right out of her, but Louisa was in no hurry to get up. She seemed in a quiet humor. Once in a while she clucked a time or two at the chickens. Roscoe felt his neck begin to itch from the weeds. A swarm of gnats hung right over his face, and Louisa considerately swatted them away.
“There’s Ed,” Louisa said. Sure enough, a big rattler was crawling over a log about ten yards away. Louisa continued to sit, unconcerned about the snake or anything else.
“Are you a one-timer or are you feisty, Roscoe?” she asked after a while.
Roscoe had a notion that he knew what she meant. “I’m mostly a no-timer,” he said.
Louisa sighed. “You ain’t hopeless, but you sure ain’t feisty,” she said after a while, wiping the sweat off her face with the sleeve of her dress. “Let’s go see if the corn bread’s done.”
She got up and went back around the house. Roscoe quickly got dressed and drug his gear around the corner, dumping it in a heap beside the door.
When he went in, Louisa sat another pan of corn bread on the table and they had breakfast.
“Well, what’s it going to be, marriage or Texas?” Louisa asked after a while.
Roscoe knew it had to be Texas, but it was not so simple a matter to think out as it had been before Louisa came out and sat down on him. For one thing, he had no desire to go to Texas; he felt his chances of finding July to be very slim, and July’s of finding Elmira completely hopeless. In the meantime it had become clear to him that Louisa had her charms, and that the fact that they were being offered him on a trial basis was a considerable enticement. He was beginning to feel that Louisa was right: he had mostly been wasted, and might have more feistiness in him than anyone, himself included, had suspected. There was no likelihood of his getting to use much of this capacity in Texas, either.
“It’s a hard choice,” he said, though one thing that made it a little easier was the knowledge that life with Louisa involved more than featherbeds. It also involved pulling up stumps all day, an activity he had no interest in or aptitude for.
“Well, I don’t take back nothing I said,” Louisa declared. “You men are a worthless race. You’re good for a bounce now and then, and that’s about it. I doubt you’d make much of a farmer.”
For some reason Roscoe felt melancholy. For all her loud talk, Louisa didn’t seem to be as disagreeable to him as he had first thought her to be. It seemed to him she might be persuaded to tone down her farming, maybe even move into a town and settle for putting in a big garden, if it was presented to her right. But he couldn’t, because there was the problem of July, who had given him a job and been good to him. The point was, he owed July. Even if he never found him, he had to make the effort, or know that he had failed a friend. Had it not been for that obligation he would have stayed a day or two and considered Louisa’s offer.
“It ain’t that I ain’t obliged,” he said. “I’m obliged. The dern thing about it is July. Even if Elmira ain’t coming back, he’s got to be told. It’s my dern job, too. July’s the only friend I got in that town except Joe. Joe’s Elmira’s boy.”
Then a happy thought occurred to him. Maybe July had made a slow start. He might not be too far ahead. Perhaps his jaundice had come back on him, in which case he might have had to hole up for a few days. If he himself was lucky he might strike July in a week or two and break the news. Once that was done, his obligation would be satisfied and there would be nothing to keep him from coming back for another visit with Louisa—provided he could find the farm a second time.
“I could come by on my way back,” he said. “July’s been sick—he may have had to hole up. I might not have to look no more than a month.”
Louisa shrugged. “Suit yourself but don’t expect me to hold you no stall,” she said. “Somebody feistier than you might ride in tomorrow for all I know.”
Roscoe found nothing to say. Obviously he was taking a risk.
“What’s the story on this July?” Louisa asked. “That wife of his sounds like a woman of ill fame. What kind of sheriff
would marry a woman of ill fame?”
“Well, July’s slow,” Roscoe said. “He’s the sort that don’t talk much.”
“Oh, that sort,” Louisa said. “The opposite of my late husband, Jim.”
She took a pair of men’s brogans from beside the table and began to lace them on her bare feet.
“The thing about men that don’t talk much is that they don’t usually learn much, either,” Louisa said. She got her sunbonnet off a nail on the wall and tucked her thick brown hair under it.
“You don’t blabber, but I believe you’ve got it in you to learn,” she said. “I’m going to do some farming.”
“What do I owe you for the grub?” Roscoe asked.
“I’d hate to think I’d charge for corn bread,” Louisa said. They went out and Roscoe began to roll up his bedroll. He was preoccupied and made such a sloppy job of it that Louisa burst out laughing. She had a happy laugh. One corner of his tarp hung down over his horse’s flank.
“Roscoe, you’re a disgrace in most respects,” Louisa said. “I bet you lose that bedroll before you get to Texas.”
“Well, should I stop back?” Roscoe asked, for she seemed in a fair humor.
“Why, I guess so,” Louisa said. “I’ve put up with worse than you, and probably will again.”
Roscoe rode off, though Memphis didn’t take kindly to having the tarp flopping at his flank, so he had to get down and retie the roll. When he finally got it tied and remounted to ride on, he saw that Louisa had already hitched her mules to a stump and was giving them loud encouragement as they strained at the harness. It seemed to him he had never met such a curious woman. He gave her a wave that she didn’t see, and rode on west with very mixed feelings. One moment he felt rather pleased and rode light in the saddle, but the next moment the light feeling would turn heavy. A time or two Roscoe could barely hold back the tears, he felt so sad of a sudden—and it would have been hard to say whether the sadness came because of having to leave Louisa or because of the uncertain journey that lay ahead.
38.
JOE KNEW RIGHT OFF that something was bothering July, because he didn’t want to talk. It was not that July had ever been a big talker, like Roscoe could be if he was in the mood, but he was seldom as silent as he was the first week of the trip. Usually he would talk about horses or fishing or cowboys or the weather or something, but on the trip west it just seemed he didn’t want to talk at all.
At first it made a problem because Joe had never been on such an important journey, and there were many things he wanted to ask about. For one thing, he was curious to know how they were going to go about catching Jake Spoon. Also, he was curious about Indians, and about the famous Texas Rangers Roscoe said were protecting Jake. He wanted to know how far it was to Texas and if they would see an ocean on the trip.
Once he started asking these questions it became clear at once that it was a strain for July even to listen, much less answer. It cost him such an effort to respond that Joe soon gave up asking and just rode along in silence, waiting for the land to change and the Indians to appear.
In fact they rode so hard that Joe soon stopped missing the talk. Although still curious, he discovered that travel was harder than he had expected it to be. Besides hating to talk, July also seemed to hate to stop. When they came to a creek he would let the horses water, and now and then he got down to relieve himself; otherwise they rode from first light until it was too dark to see. On nights when there was a moon they rode well into the night.
It was a strange business, traveling, Joe decided. July went at it hard. Yet Joe didn’t wish for a minute that he had stayed home. Going with July was the most exciting thing he had ever done by far.
Several times they came upon farms. July asked the farmers if they had seen Jake, and twice was told that yes, Jake had spent the night. But they themselves didn’t spend the night, and rarely even took a meal. Once on a hot afternoon July did accept a glass of buttermilk from a farmer’s wife. Joe got one too. There were several little girls on that farm, who giggled every time they looked at Joe, but he ignored them. The farmer’s wife asked them twice to stay overnight, but they went on and made camp in a place thick with mosquitoes.
“Does Texas have mosquitoes too?” Joe asked.
July didn’t answer. He knew the boy was starved for talk, and that he himself had been a sorry companion on the trip, but in fact he had no talk in him. He was so filled with worry that the only way he could contain it was just to keep silent and concentrate on the travel. He knew he was pushing both the boy and the horses harder than he ought to, but he couldn’t keep from it. Only hard, constant travel allowed him to hold down the worry—which was all to do with Elmira.
Almost from the day they left, he felt something was wrong. He had had a feeling that something bad had happened, and no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on the job at hand, the worry wouldn’t leave. It was all he could do to keep from turning the horses around and heading back for Fort Smith.
At first Joe was cheerful and eager, but he was not a particularly strong boy, and he was not used to riding sixteen hours a day. He didn’t complain, but he did grow tired, sleeping so deeply when they stopped that July could barely get him awake when it was time to move on. Often he rode in a doze for miles at a stretch. Once or twice July was tempted to leave him at one of the farms they passed. Joe was a willing worker and could earn his keep until he could come back and get him. But the only reason for doing that would be to travel even harder, and the horses couldn’t stand it. Besides, if he left the boy, it would be a blow to his pride, and Joe didn’t have too much pride as it was.
For several days they bore southwest, through the pine woods. It had been a rainy spring and their big problem was mosquitoes. The trees dripped and the puddles lay everywhere. July hardly noticed the mosquitoes himself, but Joe and the horses suffered, particularly at night.
“Pretty soon I’ll be all bump,” Joe said, grinning, as they slogged through a clearing. He looked up to see a broad, muddy river curving down from the north.
“I guess that’s the Red,” July said. “That means we’re about to Texas.”
When they rode up to the banks of the river they were greeted by an amazing sight. Though running freely, the river was shallow and evidently boggy. Evidence for the bogginess was visible in the form of a tall man over toward the far bank. He was standing in knee-high water, between a gaunt horse and a little brown pack mule, both of which had sunk past their hocks in the river mud.
“I’ve heard this river was half-quicksand,” July said.
From Roscoe, Joe had heard terrible stories about quicksand—in the stories, men and horses and even wagons were slowly swallowed up. He had suspected the stories were exaggerated, and the man and his animals proved it. All might be bogged, but none were sinking. The man wore a tall beaver hat and a long frock coat. Both animals had numerous parcels tied to them, and the man was amusing himself by untying the parcels and pitching them into the river. One by one they began to float away. To their astonishment he even threw away his bedroll.
“The man must be a lunatic,” July said. “He must think that horse will float if he gets off some weight. That horse ain’t gonna float.”
The man noticed them and gave a friendly wave, then proceeded to unburden the mule of most of its pack. Some floated and some merely lay in the shallow water.
July rode upstream until he found a place where both deer and cattle had crossed. The water was seldom more than a foot deep. They crossed a reddish bar of earth, and it seemed for a moment they might bog, but July edged south and soon found firm footing. In a few minutes they were on the south bank, whereas the man in the beaver hat had made no progress at all. He was so cool about his predicament that it was hard to tell if he even wished to make progress.
“Let me have your rope,” July said to Joe. He tied their two ropes together and managed to fling the man a line. After that it was no great trouble to drag the horse and the pack m
ule out. The man waded out with them.
“Thank you, men,” he said. “I believe if my mule hadn’t got out soon, he would have learned to live on fish. They’re self-reliant creatures.”
“I’m July Johnson and this is Joe,” July said. “You didn’t need to throw away your baggage.”
“I’ve suffered no loss,” the man said. “I’m glad I found a river to unload that stuff in. Maybe the fish and the tadpoles will make better use of it than I have.”
“Well, I’ve never seen a fish that used a bedroll,” July said.
Joe had never met a man so careless that he would throw his possessions in a river. But the man seemed as cheerful as if he’d just won a tub of money.
“My name’s Sedgwick,” he said. “I’m traveling through this country looking for bugs.”
“I bet you found plenty,” July said.
“What do you do with bugs?” Joe asked, feeling that the man was the strangest he had ever met.
“I study them,” the man said.
Joe hardly knew what to say. What was there to study about a bug? Either it bit you or it didn’t.
“I’ve left about a thousand bugs in Little Rock,” the man said. “That’s why I threw away my equipment. I’m out of the mood to study bugs and am thinking of going to Texas to preach the Gospel. I’ve heard that Texans can use some good straight Gospel.”
“Why study a bug?” Joe asked again, his curiosity getting the better of him.
“There’s more than a million species of insect and only one species of human being,” the man said. “When we finish up with this planet the insects will take over. You may not think it, seeing all this fair land, but the days of the human race are numbered. The insects are waiting their turn.”
July decided the man was mildly touched, but probably no danger to himself or anyone. “I’d watch these crossings, if I were you. Cross where the deer cross and you’ll be all right,” he said.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 162
