The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  “Don’t send Dish,” Lorena said. “I don’t want Dish coming around.”

  Augustus chuckled. “You gals are sure hard on the boys that love you,” he said. “Dish Boggett’s got a truer heart than Jake Spoon, although neither one of them has much sense.”

  “Send me the black man,” she said. “I don’t want none of them others.”

  “I might,” Augustus said. “Or I might come back myself. How would that suit you?”

  Lorena didn’t answer. She felt the anger coming back. Because of some woman named Clara she wasn’t getting to San Francisco, when otherwise Gus would have taken her. She sat silently on the rock.

  “Lorie, you’re a sight,” he said. “I guess I bungled this opportunity. You’d think I’d get smoother, experienced as I am.”

  She kept silent. Gus was nearly out of sight before she looked up. She still felt the anger.

  46.

  “NEWT, YOU LOOK like you just wiggled out of a flour sack,” Pea Eye said. He had taken to making the remark almost every evening. It seemed to surprise him that Newt and the Rainey boys came riding in from the drags white with dust, and he always had the same thing to say about it. It was beginning to annoy Newt, but before he could get too annoyed, Mr. Gus surprised him out of his wits by telling him to lope over to Jake’s camp and keep watch for Lorena until Jake got back.

  “I wish I could clean up first,” Newt said, acutely conscious of how dirty he was.

  “He ain’t sending you to marry her,” Dish Boggett said, very annoyed that Gus had chosen Newt for the assignment. The thought that Jake Spoon had gone off and left Lorena unattended was irritation enough.

  “I doubt Newt can even find her,” he added to Gus, after the boy left.

  “She’s barely a mile from here,” Augustus said. “He can find her.”

  “I would have been glad to take on the chore,” Dish pointed out.

  “I’ve no doubt you would,” Augustus said. “Then Jake would have showed up and you two would have a gunfight. I doubt you could hit one another, but you might hit a horse or something. Anyway, we can’t spare a top hand like you,” he added, thinking the compliment might soothe Dish’s feelings. It didn’t. He immediately walked off in a sulk.

  Captain Call rode in just as Newt was leaving.

  “So where’s the new cook?” Augustus asked.

  “He’ll be along tomorrow,” Call said. “Why are you sending the boy off?”

  Newt heard the question and felt unhappy for a moment. Almost everybody called him Newt, but the Captain still called him “the boy.”

  “Lorie can’t be left by herself tonight,” Augustus said. “I don’t reckon you seen Jake.”

  “I never hit the right saloon,” Call said. “I was after a cook. He’s there, though. I heard his name mentioned several times.”

  “Hear anyone mentioned Blue Duck?” Augustus asked.

  Call was unsaddling the mare. At the mention of the Comanchero he stopped.

  “No, why would I?” he asked.

  “He stopped and introduced himself,” Augustus said. “Over at Jake’s camp.”

  Call could hardly credit the information. He looked at Gus closely to see if it was some kind of joke. Blue Duck stole white children and gave them to the Comanches for presents. He took scalps, abused women, cut up men. What he didn’t steal he burned, always fleeing west onto the waterless reaches of the llano estacado, to unscouted country where neither Rangers nor soldiers were eager to follow. When he and Call quit the Rangers, Blue Duck had been a job left undone. Stories of his crimes trickled as far down as Lonesome Dove.

  “You seen him?” Call asked. In all these years he himself had never actually seen Blue Duck.

  “Yep,” Augustus said.

  “Maybe it wasn’t him,” Call said. “Maybe it was somebody claiming to be him. This ain’t his country.”

  “It was him,” Augustus said.

  “Then why didn’t you kill him?” Call asked. “Why didn’t you bring the woman into camp? He’ll butcher her and the boy too if he comes back.”

  “That’s two questions,” Augustus said. “He didn’t introduce himself at first, and once he did, he was ready. It would have been touch-and-go who got kilt. I might have got him or at least wounded him, but I’d have probably got wounded in the process and I don’t feel like traveling with no wound.”

  “Why’d you leave the woman?”

  “She didn’t want to come and I don’t think he’s after her,” Augustus said. “I think he’s after horses. I sent Deets to track him—he won’t get Lorie with Deets on his trail, and if he’s circling and means to make a play for our horses, Deets will figure it out.”

  “Maybe,” Call said. “Maybe that killer will figure it out first and lay for Deets. I’d hate to lose Deets.”

  Pea Eye, who had been standing around waiting for the Irishman to cook the evening’s meat, suddenly felt his appetite going. Blue Duck sounded just like the big Indian of his dreams, the one who was always in the process of knifing him when he woke up.

  Call turned the Hell Bitch loose in the remuda and came back to the cook wagon. Augustus was eating a beefsteak and a big plate of beans.

  “Is this cook you hired a Mexican?” Augustus asked.

  Call nodded. “I don’t like sending that boy off to sit up with a whore,” he said.

  “He’s young and innocent,” Augustus said. “That’s why I picked him. He’ll just moon over her a little. If I’d sent one of the full-grown rowdies, Jake might have come back and shoot him. I doubt he’d shoot Newt.”

  “I doubt he’ll even come back, myself,” Call said. “That girl ought to have stayed in Lonesome Dove.”

  “If you was a young girl, with life before you, would you want to settle in Lonesome Dove?” Augustus asked. “Maggie done it, and look how long she lasted.”

  “She might have died anyplace,” Call said. “I’ll die someplace, and so will you—it might not be no better place than Lonesome Dove.”

  “It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living,” Augustus said. “I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.”

  Call got up and went to catch his night horse. Without thinking, he caught the Hell Bitch again, though he had just turned her loose. One of the Spettle boys looked at him curiously and said nothing. Call saddled the Hell Bitch anyway and rode around the herd to see that all was in place. The cattle were calm, most of them already bedded down. Needle Nelson, perennially sleepy, dozed in his saddle.

  In the fading light, Call saw a horseman coming. It was Deets, which made him feel better. More and more it seemed Deets was the one man in the outfit he could have a comfortable word with from time to time. Gus turned every word into an argument. The other men were easy to talk to, but they didn’t know anything. If one stopped to think about it, it was depressing how little most men learned in their lifetimes. Pea Eye was a prime example. Though loyal and able and brave, Pea had never displayed the slightest ability to learn from his experience, though his experience was considerable. Time and again he would walk up on the wrong side of a horse that was known to kick, and then look surprised when he got kicked.

  Deets was different. Deets observed, he remembered; rarely would he volunteer advice, but when asked, his advice was always to the point. His sense of weather was almost as good as an Indian’s, and he was a superlative tracker.

  Call waited, anxious to know where Blue Duck had gone, or whether it had really been him. “What’s the news?” he asked.

  Deets looked solemn. “I lost him,” he said. “He went southeast about ten miles. Then I lost him. He went into a creek and never came out.”

  “That’s odd,” Call said. “You think it was Blue Duck?”

  “Don’t know, Captain,” Deets said.

  “Do you think he’s gone, then?” Call asked.

  Deets shook his head. “Don’t think so, Captain,” he said. “We better watch the horses.”

  “Dern,�
� Call said. “I thought we might have a peaceful night for once.”

  “Full moon coming,” Deets said. “We can spot him if he bothers us tonight.”

  They sat together and watched the moon rise. Soon it shed a pale, cool light over the bed-grounds. The Texas bull began to low. He was across the herd, in the shadows, but in the still air his lowing carried far across the little valley, echoing off the limestone bluffs to the west.

  “Well, go get some grub,” Call said to Deets. “I’m going over to them bluffs. He might have a gang or he might not. You get between our camp and Jake’s camp so you can help if he comes for the girl. Be watchful.”

  He loped over to the bluffs, nearly a mile away, picked his way to the top and spread his bedroll on the bluff’s edge. In the clear night, with the huge moon, he could see far across the bedded herd, see the bright wick of the campfire, blocked occasionally when someone led a horse across in front of it.

  Behind him the mare kicked restlessly at the earth for a moment as if annoyed, and then began to graze.

  Call got his rifle out of the scabbard and cleaned it, though it was in perfect order. Sometimes the mere act of cleaning a gun, an act he had performed thousands of times, would empty his mind of jarring thoughts and memories—but this time it didn’t work. Gus had jarred him with mention of Maggie, the bitterest memory of his life. She had died in Lonesome Dove some years before, but the memory had lost none of its salt and sting, for what had happened with her had been unnecessary and was now uncorrectable. He had made mistakes in battle and led men to their deaths, but his mind didn’t linger on those mistakes; at least the battles had been necessary, and the men soldiers. He could feel that he had done as well as any man could have, given the raw conditions of the frontier.

  But Maggie had not been a fighting man—just a needful young whore, who had for some reason fixed on him as the man who could save her from her own mistakes. Gus had known her first, and Jake, and many other men, whereas he had only visited her out of curiosity to find out what it was that he had heard men talk and scheme about for so long. It turned out not to be much, in his view—a brief, awkward experience, where the pleasure was soon drowned in embarrassment and a feeling of sadness. He ought not to have gone back twice, let alone a third time, yet something drew him back—not so much the need of his own flesh as the helplessness and need of the woman. She had such frightened eyes. He never met her in the saloon but came up the back stairs, usually after dark; she would be standing just inside the door waiting, her face anxious. Some weakness in him brought him back every few nights, for two months or more. He had never said much to her, but she said a lot to him. She had a small, quick voice, almost like a child’s. She would talk constantly, as if to cover his embarrassment at what they had met to do. Some nights he would sit for half an hour, for he came to like her talk, though he had long since forgotten what she had said. But when she talked, her face would relax for a while, her eyes lose their fright. She would clasp his hand while she talked—one night she buttoned his shirt. And when he was ready to leave—always a need to leave, to be away, would come over him—she would look at him with fright in her face again, as if she had one more thing to say but couldn’t say it.

  “What is it?” he asked one night, turning at the top of the stairs. It was as if her need had pulled the question out of him.

  “Can’t you just say my name?” she asked. “Can’t you just say it once?”

  The question so took him by surprise that it was the one thing of all those she had said that stayed with him through the years. Why was it important that he say her name?

  “Why, yes,” he said, puzzled. “Your name’s Maggie.”

  “But you don’t never say it,” she said. “You don’t never call me nothin’. I just wish you’d say it once when you come.”

  “I don’t know what that would amount to,” he said honestly.

  Maggie sighed. “I’d just feel happy if you did,” she said. “I’d just feel so happy.”

  Something in the way she said it had disturbed him terribly. She looked as if she would cry or run down the stairs after him. He had seen despair in men and women, but had not expected to see it in Maggie on that occasion. Yet despair was what he saw.

  Two nights later he had started to go to her again, but stopped himself. He had taken his gun and walked out of Lonesome Dove to the Comanche crossing and sat the night. He never went to see Maggie again, though once in a while he might see her on the street. She had had the boy, lived several years, and died. According to Gus she had stayed drunk most of her last year. She had gotten thick with Jake for a spell, but then Jake left.

  Over all those years, he could still remember how her eyes fixed on him hopefully when he entered, or when he was ready to leave. It was the most painful part of the memory—he had not asked her to care for him that much, yet she had. He had only asked to buy what other men had bought, but she had singled him out in a way he had never understood.

  He felt a heavy guilt, though, for he had gone back time after time, and had let the need grow without even thinking about it or recognizing it. And then he left.

  “Broke her heart,” Gus said, many times.

  “What are you talking about?” Call said. “She was a whore.”

  “Whores got hearts,” Augustus said.

  The bitter truth was that Gus was right. Maggie hadn’t even seemed like a whore. There was nothing hard about her—in fact, it was obvious to everyone that she was far too soft for the life she was living. She had tender expressions—more tender than any he had ever seen. He could still remember her movements—those more than her words. She could never quite get her hair to stay fixed, and was always touching it nervously with one hand. “It won’t behave,” she said, as if her hair were a child.

  “You take care of her, if you’re so worried,” he said to Gus, but Gus shrugged that off. “She ain’t in love with me, she’s in love with you,” he pointed out.

  It was the point in all his years with Gus when they came closest to splitting the company, for Gus would not let up. He wanted Call to go back and see Maggie.

  “Go back and do what?” Call asked. He felt a little desperate about it. “I ain’t a marrying man.”

  “She ain’t proposed, has she?” Gus asked sarcastically.

  “Well, go back and do what?” Call asked.

  “Sit with her—just sit with her,” Gus said. “She likes your company. I don’t know why.”

  Instead, Call sat by the river, night after night. There was a period when he wanted to go back, when it would have been nice to sit with Maggie a few minutes and watch her fiddle with her hair. But he chose the river, and his solitude, thinking that in time the feeling would pass, and best so: he would stop thinking about Maggie, she would stop thinking about him. After all, there were more talkative men than him—Gus and Jake, for two.

  But it didn’t pass—all that passed were years. Every time he heard of her being drunk, or having some trouble, he would feel uneasy and guilty, as if he were to blame. It didn’t help that Gus piled on the criticism, so much so that twice Call was on the point of fighting him. “You like to have everyone needing you, but you’re right picky as to who you satisfy,” Gus had said in the bitterest of the fights.

  “I don’t much want nobody needing me,” Call said.

  “Then why do you keep running around with this bunch of half-outlaws you call Texas Rangers? There’s men in this troop who won’t piss unless you point to a spot. But when a little thing like Maggie, who ain’t the strongest person in the world, gets a need for you, you head for the river and clean your gun.”

  “Well, I might need my gun,” Call said. But he was aware that Gus always got the better of their arguments.

  All his life he had been careful to control experience as best he could, and then something had happened that was forever beyond his control, just because he had wanted to find out about the business with women. For years he had stayed to himself and felt
critical of men who were always running to whores. Then he had done it himself and made a mockery of his own rules. Something about the girl, her timidity or just the lonely way she looked, sitting by her window, had drawn him. And somehow, within the little bits of pleasure, a great pain had been concealed, one that had hurt him far more than the three bullets he had taken in battle over the years.

  When the boy was born it got worse. For the first two years he was in torment over what to do. Gus claimed Maggie had said the boy was Call’s, but how could she know for sure? Maggie hadn’t had it in her to refuse a man. It was the only reason she was a whore, Call had decided—she just couldn’t turn away any kind of love. He felt it must all count as love, in her thinking—the cowboys and the gamblers. Maybe she just thought it was the best love she could get.

  A few times he almost swayed, almost went back to marry her, though it would have meant disgrace. Maybe the boy was his—maybe it was the proper thing to do, although it would mean leaving the Rangers.

  A time or two he even stood up to go to her, but his resolve always broke. He just could not go back. The night he heard she was dead he left the town without a word to anyone and rode up the river alone for a week. He knew at once that he had forever lost the chance to right himself, that he would never again be able to feel that he was the man he had wanted to be. The man he had wanted to be would never have gone to Maggie in the first place. He felt like a cheat—he was the most respected man on the border, and yet a whore had a claim on him. He had ignored the claim, and the woman died, but somehow the claim remained, like a weight he had to carry forever.

  The boy, growing up in the village, first with a Mexican family and then with the Hat Creek outfit, was a living reminder of his failure. With the boy there he could never be free of the memory and the guilt. He would have given almost anything just to erase the memory, not to have it part of his past, or in his mind, but of course he couldn’t do that. It was his forever, like the long scar on his back, the result of having let a horse throw him through a glass window.