“I can rope the son of a bitch fast enough,” Bert said. “Getting the rope off would be the problem.”
“Getting you buried would be the problem if you was to rope that bull,” Dish said. The fact that he chose to restrain himself and not get drunk in Fort Worth increased his sense of superiority somewhat, and many of the crew had had about all of Dish’s sense of superiority as they could take, particularly since he was restraining himself for love of a young woman who clearly didn’t give a hoot about him.
“If you’re so in love, why didn’t you go bring her back and leave Gus here?” Jasper asked. “Gus is a damn sight more entertaining than you are, Dish.”
At that Dish turned and jumped him but Call soon broke it up. “If you want to fight, collect your wages first,” he said.
The Rainey boys were feeling grown-up and wanted Newt to talk the Captain into letting them go to town. “I wanta try a whore,” Ben Rainey said.
Newt declined to make the request.
“Just ask him,” Ben said.
“I’ll ask him when we get to Nebraska,” Newt said.
“Yeah, and if I drown in the Red River I won’t ever get to try no whore,” Ben said.
Call began to be very worried about Gus. It was unusual for him to be gone so long with only one man to chase. Of course, Blue Duck might have had a gang waiting, and Gus might have ridden into an ambush. He had not done any serious fighting in years. Even Pea Eye had begun to worry about him.
“Here we are all the way to Fort Worth and Gus still ain’t back,” Pea Eye said.
Po Campo didn’t go to Fort Worth either. He sat with his back to one of the wheels of the wagon, whittling one of the little female figures he liked to carve. As he walked along during the day he kept his eye out for promising chunks of wood and, if he saw one, would pitch it in the wagon. Then at night he whittled. He would start with a fairly big chunk, and after a week or so would have it whittled into a little wooden woman about two inches high.
“I hope he comes back,” Po Campo said. “I enjoy his acquaintance, although he doesn’t like my cooking.”
“Well, we wasn’t used to eating bugs and such when you first came,” Pea Eye said. “I expect he’ll work up a taste for it when he comes back. It never used to take him so long to catch a bandit.”
“He won’t catch Blue Duck,” Po Campo said.
“Why, do you know the man?” Call asked, surprised.
“I know him,” Po Campo said. “There is no worse man. Only the devil is worse and the devil won’t bother us on this trip.”
That was surprising talk. Call looked at the old man closely, but Po Campo was just sitting by the wagon wheel, wood shavings all over his short legs. He noticed Call’s look and smiled.
“I lived on the llano once,” he said. “I wanted to raise sheep but I was foolish. The wolves killed them and the Comanches killed them and the weather killed them. Then Blue Duck killed my three sons. After that I left the llano.”
“Why don’t you think Gus will catch him?” Call asked.
Po Campo considered the question. Deets was sitting near him. He loved to watch the old man whittle. It seemed miraculous to Deets that Po could take a plain chunk of wood and make it into a little woman figure. He watched to see if he could figure out how it happened, but so far he had not been able to. Po Campo kept turning the wood in his hand, the shavings dropping in his lap, and then finally it would be done.
“I didn’t like the horse Captain Gus took,” Po Campo said. “He won’t catch Blue Duck on that horse. Blue Duck always has the best horse in the country—that’s why he always gets away.”
“He don’t have the best horse in this country,” Call said. “I do.”
“Yes, that’s true, she is a fine mare,” Po said. “You might catch up with him but Captain Gus won’t. Blue Duck will sell the woman. Captain Gus might get her back if the Indians don’t finish him. I wouldn’t make a bet.”
“I’d make one, if I had money,” Deets said. “Mister Gus be fine.”
“I didn’t think there was much left in the way of Indians,” Call said.
“There are young renegades,” Po said. “Blue Duck always finds them. Some are left. The llano is a big place.”
That was certainly true. Call remembered the few times they had ventured on it. After a day or two the men would grow anxious because of the emptiness. “There’s too much of this nothing,” Pea said. He would say it two or three times a day, like a refrain, as the mirages shimmered in the endless distances. Even a man with a good sense of direction could get lost with so few surface features to guide him. Water was always chancy.
“I miss Gus,” Pea Eye said. “I get to expecting to hear him talk and he ain’t here. My ears sort of get empty.”
Call had to admit that he missed him too, and that he was worried. He had had at least one disagreement a day with Gus for as many years as he could remember. Gus never answered any question directly, but it was possible to test an opinion against him, if you went about it right. More and more Call felt his absence, though fortunately they were having uneventful times—the cattle were fairly well trail-broken and weren’t giving any trouble. The crew for the most part had been well behaved, no more irritable or contrary than any other group of men. The weather had been ideal, water plentiful and the spring grass excellent for grazing.
A thought that nagged Call was that he had let Gus go off alone to do a job that was too big for him—a job they ought to have done together. Often, during the day, as he rode ahead of the herd, he would look to the northwest, hoping to see Gus returning. More and more the thought came to him that Gus was probably dead. Men simply vanished into the llano to die somewhere and lie without graves, their bones eventually scattered by varmints. Of course, Gus was a famous man, in his way. If Blue Duck had killed him he might brag, and word would eventually get back. But what if some young renegade who didn’t know he was famous killed him? Then he would simply be gone.
The thought that Gus was dead began to weigh on Call. It came to him several times a day, at moments, and made him feel empty and strange. They had not had much of a talk before Gus left. Nothing much had been said. He began to wish that somehow things could have been rounded off a little better. Of course he knew death was no respecter. People just dropped when they dropped, whether they had rounded things off or not. Still, it haunted him that Gus had just ridden off and might not ride back. He would look over the cattle herd strung out across the prairie and feel it was all worthless, and a little absurd. Some days he almost felt like turning the cattle loose and paying off the crew. He could take Pea and Deets and maybe the boy, and they would look for Gus until they found him.
The crew came back from Fort Worth hung over and subdued. Jasper Fant’s head was splitting to such an extent that he couldn’t bear to ride—he got off his horse and walked the last two miles, stopping from time to time to vomit. He tried to get the other boys to wait on him—in his state he could have been easily robbed and beaten, as he pointed out—but his companions were indifferent to his fate. Their own headaches were severe enough.
“You can walk to China for all I care,” Needle said, expressing the sentiments of the group. They rode on and left Jasper to creep along as best he could.
Po Campo had anticipated their condition and had a surprise waiting for them—a sugary cobbler made with dewberries he had picked.
“Sugar is the thing for getting over liquor,” he said. “Eat a lot and then lie down for a few minutes.”
“Did Jasper quit?” Call asked.
“No, he’s enjoying the dry heaves somewhere between here and town,” Soupy Jones allowed. “Last I heard of him he sounded like he was about to vomit up his socks.”
“What’s the news of Jake?” Call inquired.
The question produced a remarkable collection of black looks.
“He’s a haughty son of a bitch,” Bert Borum said. “He acted like he never knowed a one of us.”
&nbs
p; “He tolt me I smelled like cowshit,” Needle said. “He was sitting there gambling and had some whore hanging over him.”
“I wouldn’t say he misses that one that got took,” Soupy said.
Jasper Fant finally straggled in. Everyone was standing around grinning, though he couldn’t see why.
“Something must have happened funnier than what I been doing,” he said.
“A lot of things are funnier than vomiting,” Pea Eye said.
“Jasper missed the cobbler, that’s the laugh,” Allen O’Brien said, not feeling too frisky himself. “I used to be better at hangovers, back in Ireland. Of course, then I had one every day,” he reflected. “I had more practice.”
When Jasper realized he had missed a dewberry cobbler, one of his favorite dishes, he threatened to quit the outfit, since they were so ungrateful. But he was too weak to carry out his threat. Po Campo forced him to eat a big spoonful of molasses as a headache cure, while the rest of the crew got the herd on the move.
“I guess the next excitement will be the old Red River,” Dish Boggett said, as he took the point.
60.
JUST AS THE WORLD had been drying out nicely and the drive becoming enjoyable, in Newt’s view, it suddenly got very wet again. Two days before they hit the Red River low black clouds boiled out of the north-west like smoke off grease. It was springlike and fair in the morning, but before it was even afternoon the world turned to water.
It rained so hard for two hours that it was difficult even to see the cattle. Newt moped along on Mouse, feeling chilled and depressed. By this time they were on a rolling plain bare of trees. There was nothing to get under except the sky. They made a wet camp and Po Campo poured hot coffee down them by the gallon, but it still promised to be a miserable night. Po and Deets, the acknowledged experts on weather, discussed the situation and admitted they didn’t know when it might stop raining.
“It probably won’t rain a week,” Po Campo said, which cheered nobody up.
“Dern, it better not rain no week,” Jasper said. “Them rivers will be like oceans.”
That night they all herded, not because the cattle were particularly restless but because it was drier on a horse than on the sopping ground. Newt began to think it had been a mistake to leave Lonesome Dove if it was going to be so wet. He remembered how dry and clear the days had been there. He and Mouse stumbled through the night somehow, though before morning he was so tired he had lost all interest in living.
The next day was no better. The skies were like iron, and Mr. Gus wasn’t back. He had been gone a long time, it seemed, and so had Lorena. Dish Boggett grew increasingly worried and took to confiding in Newt now and then. Newt respected his feelings, whereas the other hands were distinctly callous when it came to Dish’s feelings.
“Because of Jake we lost ’em both, I guess,” Dish said. “Jake is a goddamn bastard.”
It was painful to Newt to have to think of Jake that way. He still remembered how Jake had played with him when he was a little child, and that Jake had made his mother get a lively, merry look in her eyes. All the years Jake had been gone, Newt had remembered him fondly and supposed that if he ever did come back he would be a hero. But it had to be admitted that Jake’s behavior since his return had not been heroic at all. It bordered on the cowardly, particularly his casual return to card playing once Lorena had been stolen.
“If she’s alive and Gus gets her back, I still aim to marry her,” Dish said, as rain poured off his hat in streams.
“Dern, we should be herding fish,” he said, a little later, holding the point nonetheless, though he hardly felt like it. If Lorena was indeed dead, he meant to stay clear of other women and grieve for her for a lifetime.
It was still raining when they came to the low banks of the Red River. The river was up somewhat, but it was still not a very wide channel or a very deep one. What worried Call was the approach to it—over a hundred yards of wet, rusty-colored sand. The Red was famous for its quicksands.
Deets sat with him, looking at the river thoughtfully. It had long represented the northern boundary of their activity. The land beyond the rusty sands was new to them.
“Do you think we ought to wait and let it go down?” Call asked.
“It ain’t going down,” Deets pointed out. “Still raining.”
Dish came over to watch as Deets pointed for a crossing, several times checking his horse and moving to the side to seek firmer footing.
“I guess this will spoil Jasper’s digestion,” he said, for Jasper’s sensitivity on the subject of rivers was becoming more pronounced. “We bogged sixty head of Mr. Pierce’s cattle in this very river, although that was over toward Arkansas. I must have had a hundred pounds of mud on my clothes before we got them out.”
Deets put his horse into the surging water and was soon across the channel, but had to pick his way across another long expanse of sand before he was safely on the north bank. Evidently he didn’t like the crossing, because he waved the others back with his hat and loped away downriver. He was soon out of sight in the rain, but came back in an hour with news of a far better crossing downstream. By then the whole crew was nervous, for the Red was legendary for drowning cowboys, and the fact that they had nothing to do but sit and drip increased general anxiety.
But their fears were unfounded. The rain slowed and the sun broke through as they were easing the cattle across the mud flats toward the brownish water. Deets had found a gravel bar that made the entrance to the river almost as good as a road. Old Dog led the herd right in and was soon across and grazing on the long wet grass of the Oklahoma Territory. Five or six of the weaker cows bogged as they were coming out, but they were soon extracted. Dish and Soupy took off their clothes and waded into the mud and got ropes on the cows, and Bert Borum pulled them out.
The sight of the sun put the men in high spirits. Hadn’t they crossed the Red River and lived to tell about it? That night the Irishman sang for hours, and a few of the cowboys joined in—they had gradually learned a few of the Irish songs.
Sometimes Po Campo sang in Spanish. He had a low, throaty voice that always seemed like it was about to die for lack of breath. The songs bothered some of the men, they were so sad.
“Po, you’re a jolly fellow, how come you only sing about death?” Soupy asked. Po had a little rattle, made from a gourd, and he shook it when he sang. The rattle, plus his low throaty voice, made a curious effect.
The sound could make the hairs stand up on Pea Eye’s neck. “That’s right, Po. You do sing sad, for a happy man,” Pea Eye observed once, as the old man shook his gourd.
“I don’t sing about myself,” Campo said. “I sing about life. I am happy, but life is sad. The songs don’t belong to me.”
“Well, you sing them, who do they belong to?” Pea asked.
“They belong to those who hear them,” Po said. He had given Deets one of the little women figures he whittled—Deets was very proud of it, and kept it in the pocket of his old chaps.
“Don’t give none of them to me,” Pea Eye said. “They’re too sad. I’ll get them nervous dreams.”
“If you hear them, they belong to you,” Po said. It was hard to see his eyes. They were deep-set anyway, and he seldom took his big-brimmed hat off.
“I wish we had a fiddle,” Needle said. “If we had a fiddle, we could dance.”
“Dance with who?” Bert asked. “I don’t see no ladies.”
“Dance with ourselves,” Needle said.
But they didn’t have a fiddle—just Po Campo shaking his rattle and the Irishman singing of girls.
Even on a nice clear night the sad singing and the knowledge that there were no ladies was enough to make the men feel low. They ended up talking of their sisters, those that had them, most nights.
Call heard little of the talk or the singing, for he continued to make his camp apart. He thought it best. If the herd ran, he would be in a better position to head it.
Gus’s absence depresse
d him. It could only mean that something had gone wrong, and they might never find out what.
One night, cleaning his rifle, he was startled by the sound of his own voice. He had never been one to talk to himself, but as he cleaned the gun, he had been having, in his head, the conversation with Gus that there had not been time to have before Gus left. “I wish you’d killed the man when you had a chance,” he said. “I wish you’d never encouraged Jake to bring that girl.”
The words had just popped out. He was doubly glad he was alone, for if the men had heard him they would have thought him daft.
But no one heard him except the Hell Bitch, who grazed at the end of a long rope. Every night he slipped one end of the rope beneath his belt and then looped it around his wrist, so there would be no chance of her taking fright and suddenly jerking loose from him. Call had become so sensitive to her movements that if she even raised her head to sniff the air he would wake up. Usually it was no more than a deer, or a passing wolf. But the mare noticed, and Call rested better, knowing she would watch.
61.
AUGUSTUS FIGURED THAT two or three days’ ride east would put them in the path of the herds, but on the second day the rains struck, making travel unpleasant. He cut Lorena a crude poncho out of a tarp he had picked up at the buffalo hunter’s camp, but even so it was bad traveling. The rains were chill and it looked like they might last, so he decided to risk Adobe Walls—the old fort offered the only promise of shelter.
They got there to find the place entirely deserted and most of the buildings in ruins.
“Not enough buffalo,” Augustus said. “It wasn’t two years ago that they had that big fight here, and now look at it. It looks like it’s been empty fifty years.” The only signs of life were the rattlesnakes, of which there were plenty, and mice, which explained the snakes. A few owls competed with the snakes for the mice.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 183
