“I thought we was going to strike Ogallala,” Needle reminded him.
“I don’t say we won’t,” Dish said. “That’s up to the Captain. But if it ain’t no bigger than Dodge, it wouldn’t take much to miss it.”
Po Campo had become a great favorite with the men because of the tastiness of his cooking. He was friendly and kind to everyone, and yet, like the Captain, he kept apart. Po just did it in a different way. He might sing to them in his throaty voice, but he was a man of mystery, a strange man, walking all day behind the wagon, and at night whittling his little women. Soon each of the cowboys had been given one of the carvings.
“To remind you of your sisters,” Po said.
A day and a half before they reached the Canadian the rains started again. At the sight of the great gray clouds forming in the west, morale immediately sank and the men untied their slickers, resigned to a long, cold, dangerous night.
The storm that struck them half a day from the Canadian was of a different intensity because of the lightning. By midafternoon, Newt, who was as usual with the drags, became conscious of rumblings and flashing far on the west. He saw Deets conferring with the Captain, though it was hard to imagine what advice might help. They were out in the middle of the plain, far from any shelter.
All through the late afternoon lightning flickered in the west. As the sun was setting Newt saw something he had never seen: a bolt of lightning shot south to north, bisecting the setting sun. The bolt seemed to travel the whole length of the western horizon—the crack that came with it was so sharp that Newt almost expected to see the sun split in half, like a big red melon.
After that bolt, the clouds rolled down on the group like a huge black herd, snuffing out the afterglow in five minutes. The remuda became restless, and Newt rode over to help Pete Spettle, but a bolt of lightning struck so close by that his horse went into a violent fit of pitching and promptly threw him. He had kept a tight grip on the reins and the horse didn’t break free, but Newt had a time calming him enough that he could remount. Claps of thunder were almost constant by then, and so loud that they made his head ring. The herd was stopped, the cowboys spread around it in as tight a ring as possible.
Just as Newt mounted, a bolt of lightning struck the edge of the herd not a hundred feet from where the Captain rode. A number of cattle instantly fell, as if clubbed by the same club. It was as if a portion of the wall of cattle had broken and fallen to earth like so many bricks.
A second later the cattle were running. They broke west in a mass and surged through the riders as if they weren’t there, although Dish, the Captain and Deets were all trying to turn them. The rain came almost as the cattle began to move. Newt spurred and tried to reach the head of the herd, which was nearer him than anyone. He saw a long line of lightning curl down and strike, but the cattle didn’t stop. He heard the clicking of thousands of horns as the cattle bumped one another. Again he saw the bluish light rolling on the tips of the cattle’s horns, and was glad when the wall of rain came. He rushed to it with relief. Rain was just wet—it didn’t scare him, and he knew that if it rained hard enough the lightning would finally stop.
The cattle ran for many miles, but soon the storm was to the east of them and he had only the rain and darkness to contend with. As he had done before, he plodded along much of the night beside the cattle. Occasionally he would hear the shout of another cowboy, but it was too dark and rainy to see anything. The length of such nights was a torment. A hundred times, or a thousand, he would look in what he thought was an easterly direction, hoping to see the grayness that meant dawn. But all directions were equally black for what seemed like twenty hours.
When dawn did come, it was a low and gloomy one, the sky heavily overcast. Newt, with Dish, the Irishman and Needle Nelson, was with a large portion of the herd, perhaps a thousand cattle. No one was quite sure where the rest of the herd was. The cattle were too tired to be troublesome, so Dish loped off to look and was gone what seemed like half a day. When he finally came back, Deets was with him. The main herd was six or seven miles east.
“How many did the lightning hit?” Newt asked, remembering the sight of the cattle falling dead.
“Thirteen,” Dish said. “That ain’t the worst, though. It kilt Bill Spettle. Knocked him right off his horse. They’re burying him now.”
Newt had been feeling very hungry, but the news took his appetite. He had been chatting with Bill Spettle not two hours before the storm began. Bill was beginning to be rather talkative, after hundreds of miles of silence.
“They say it turned him black,” Dish remarked. “I didn’t see it.”
Newt was never to see where Bill Spettle was buried. When they rejoined the main herd it was on the move, the grave somewhere behind on the muddy plain. No one knew quite what to say to Pete Spettle, who had somehow held the remuda together all night. He was holding it together still, though he looked weary and stunned.
The men were all starving, so Call allowed them to stop for a quick feed, but only a quick one. It was looking like rain again. He knew the Canadian was near and he wanted to cross it before more rains came; otherwise they might be trapped for a week.
“Ain’t we gonna rest?” Jasper asked, appalled that they were required to keep driving after such a night.
“We’ll rest north of the river,” Call said.
Deets had been sent to find a crossing, but came back almost before he had left. The Canadian was only four miles away, and there was a crossing that had obviously been used by many herds.
“We all gonna have to swim,” he said, to Jasper’s consternation.
“I just hope we don’t have to swim it in a dern rainstorm,” Dish said, looking at the heavy clouds.
“I don’t see what difference it makes,” Needle said. “It can get just so wet, and if you’re swimming you’re bound to be wet.”
“It oughta quit raining, it’s rained enough,” Pea Eye said, but the heavens ignored him.
Call was more worried than he let on. They had already lost a boy that day—another boy hastily buried, who would never see his home again. He had no wish to risk any more, and yet the river had to be crossed. He loped up to look at the crossing and satisfied himself that it was safe. The river was high, but it wasn’t a wide river—they wouldn’t need to swim far.
He rode back to the herd. Many of the men had changed into their dry clothes while he was gone, a wasteful effort, with the river coming up.
“You best strip off when we get to the river or you’ll just get those clothes wet too,” Call said. “Wrap your clothes up good in your slickers so you’ll have something dry to put on when we get across.”
“Ride naked?” Jasper asked, shocked that such a thing would be required of him. Northern travel was proving even worse than he had thought it would be. Bill Spettle had been so stiffened when they found him that they had not been able to straighten him out properly—they had just wrapped him in a bedroll and stuck him in a hole.
“Well, I’d rather be naked a spell than to have to travel in wet duds, like we done all last night,” Pea Eye said.
When they approached the river, the herd was held up so the men could strip off. It was so chilly that Newt got goose bumps all over his body when he undressed. He wrapped his clothes and tied them high on his saddle, even his boots. The sight of all the men riding naked would have been amusing if he hadn’t been so tired and nervous about the crossing. Everyone looked white as a fish belly, except their hands and faces, which were brown.
“Good lord, we’re a bunch of beauties,” Dish said, surveying the crew. “Deets is the best-looking of the lot, at least he’s one color. The rest of us is kind of brindled.”
Nobody expected weather conditions to get worse, but it seemed that in plains weather there was always room for surprises. A squall blew up as they were starting the cattle into the water, and by the time Old Dog was across the twenty yards of swimming water, Dish on one side of him and Call on the other, the gray s
ky suddenly began to spit out little white pellets. Dish, who was out of the saddle, hanging on to his saddle strings as his horse swam, saw the first pellets plunking into the water and jerked with fear, for he assumed they were bullets. It was only when he looked up and had a small hailstone peck at his cheek that he realized what was happening.
Call, too, saw the hail begin to pepper the river. At first the stones were small, and he wasn’t too worried, for he had seen fleeting hail squalls pass in five minutes.
But by the time he and Dish hit the north shore and regained their wet saddles, he realized it was more than a squall. Hailstones were hitting all around him, bouncing off his arms, his saddle, his horse—and they were getting larger by the minute. Dish came riding over, still naked, trying to shelter his face and head with one arm. Hailstones were falling everywhere, splashing into the river, bouncing off the backs of the cattle and plunking into the muddy banks.
“What will we do, Captain?” Dish asked. “They’re getting bigger. Reckon they’ll beat us to death?”
Call had never heard of anyone being killed by hailstones, but he had just taken a hard crack behind the ear from a stone the size of a pullet egg. Yet they couldn’t stop. Two of the boys were in the river, swimming, and the cattle were still crossing.
“Get under your horse if it gets worse,” he said. “Use your saddle for cover.”
“This horse would kick me to death, if I was to try that,” Dish said. He quickly unsaddled and used his saddle blanket for immediate shelter.
Newt didn’t know what was happening when the first hailstones hit. When he saw the tiny white pellets bouncing on the grass he assumed he was at last seeing snow.
“Look, it’s snowing,” he said excitedly to Needle Nelson, who was near him.
“It ain’t snow, it’s hail,” Needle said.
“I thought snow was white,” Newt said, disappointed.
“They’re both white,” Needle said. “The difference is, hail is harder.”
Within a few minutes, Newt was to find out just how hard. The sky began to rain balls of ice—small at first, but then not so small.
“By God, we better get in that river,” Needle said. He had a large hat and was trying to hide under it, but the hailstones pounded his body.
Newt looked around for the wagon, but couldn’t see it, the hail was so thick. Then he couldn’t see Needle, either. He spurred hard and raced for the river, though he didn’t know what he was supposed to do once he got there. As he ran for the river, he almost trampled Jasper, who had dismounted and made a kind of tent of his slicker and saddle—he was crouching under it in the mud.
It was hailing so thickly that when they did reach the river Mouse jumped off a six-foot bank, throwing Newt. Again, he managed to hang on to his reins, but he was naked, and hailstones were pounding all around him. When he stood up he happened to notice that Mouse made a kind of wall. By crouching close under him Newt avoided most of the hailstones—Mouse absorbed them. Mouse wasn’t happy about it, but since he had taken it upon himself to jump off the bank, Newt didn’t feel very sorry for him.
He crouched under the horse until the hailstorm subsided, which was not more than ten minutes after it began. The muddy banks of the Canadian were covered with hailstones, and so were the plains around them. The cattle and horses crunched through the hail as they walked. Isolated stones continued to plop down now and then, bouncing off the ones already there.
Newt saw that the cattle had crossed the wild Canadian, the river that had scared everybody, without much help from the cowboys, who were scattered here and there, naked, crouched under their saddles or, in some cases, their horses. It was a funny sight; Newt was so glad to be alive that suddenly he felt like laughing. Funniest of all was Pea Eye, who stood not thirty yards away, up to his neck in the river, with his hat on. He was just standing there calmly, waiting for the hail to stop.
“How come you got in the water?” Newt asked, when Pea waded out.
“It’s fine protection,” Pea said. “It can’t hail through water.”
It was amazing to Newt to see the plains, which had been mostly brown a few minutes before, turned mostly white.
The Irishman walked up leading his horse and kicking hailstones out of the way. He began to pick up the hailstones and throw them in the river. Soon several of the cowboys were doing it, seeing who could throw the farthest or make the hailstones skip across the water.
Then they saw a strange sight: Po Campo was gathering hailstones in a bucket, the two pigs following him like dogs.
“What do you reckon he expects to do with them?” Needle Nelson asked.
“I guess he’ll stew ’em, probably,” Pea said. “He’s looking them over like he’s picking peas.”
“I wouldn’t want to see this outfit naked tomorrow,” Jasper said. “I guess we’ll all be black and blue. One hit me on the elbow and I can’t straighten my arm yet.”
“You don’t do much with it when you do straighten it,” Bert remarked unsympathetically.
“Just ’cause he can’t rope like you can don’t mean he wouldn’t like to use his arm,” Pea Eye said. Everyone picked on Jasper, and once in a while Pea felt obliged to come to his defense. He swung onto his horse and froze before getting his other foot in the stirrup. He had happened to glance across the river and had spotted a horseman riding toward them. The crew on the north bank had their backs to the rider and hadn’t seen him.
“Why, I swear, it’s Gus,” Pea Eye said. “He ain’t dead at all.”
They all looked, and saw the rider coming.
“How do you know it’s him?” Bert wanted to know. “He’s too far. It could be an Indian chief for all you know.”
“I guess I know Gus,” Pea said. “I wonder where he’s been.”
63.
CALL AND DISH were just getting into their dry pants when Augustus came riding up. It was not until they heard the sound of his horse crushing the hailstones that they turned around. Call saw at once that Gus was riding a different horse from the one on which he had ridden off, but he himself looked fit.
“ ’I god, I never thought you boys would start working naked,” Augustus said. “I guess the minute I left camp things went right to hell. You jaybirds look like you’re scattered from here to Fort Worth.”
“Well, the river was deep and we ain’t overloaded with dry clothes,” Call said. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing much,” Augustus said. “I got here last week and decided there wasn’t no sense in riding south. I’d just have to turn around and come back.”
“Did you ever find Lorie?” Dish asked.
“Oh, sure,” Augustus said. “I found her. She’s probably sitting out in front of the tent right now watching you prance around naked.”
At that Dish blushed and made haste to get the rest of his clothes on, though when Gus pointed out the tent to him he saw it was too far away for Lorie to have seen anything.
At that point several of the naked cowboys on the south bank plunged into the river and swam over, so excited by Gus’s return that they forgot caution.
“I swear, Gus, we near give you up,” Pea Eye said. “Did you catch the bandit?”
“No, but I hope I do someday,” Augustus said. “I met plenty of his friends, but he slipped by me.”
“Did you get to town or what?” Dish asked. “You didn’t have no tent when you rode off.”
“Mr. Wilbarger loaned me that tent,” Augustus said. “Lorie’s feeling shy and she needs a little privacy.”
“We best get the wagon across,” Call said. “We can listen to Gus’s story later. You boys that ain’t dressed go back and help.”
The sun came out, and that plus Gus’s arrival put the hands in a high mood. Even Jasper, normally so worried about rivers, forgot his fear and swam right back across the Canadian to help get the wagon. They all treated swimming the river like a frolic, though they had been anxious about it for a week. Before long they had the wagon across.
They had put both pigs in it but the blue shoat jumped out and swam across.
“That’s an independent pig,” Augustus said. “I see you still got that old cook.”
“Yes, his food’s right tasty,” Call said. “Is the girl all right?”
“She’s had an ordeal but she’s young,” Augustus said. “She won’t forget it, but she might outlive it.”
“We’re a long way from any place we could leave her,” Call said.
“Oh, I have no intention of leaving her,” Augustus said. “We’ve got Wilbarger’s tent. We’ll go along with you cowboys until we hit Nebraska.”
“Then what?” Call asked.
“I don’t know, we ain’t there yet,” Augustus said. “What’s the word on Jake?”
“He was in Fort Worth when we passed by,” Call said. “I guess he’s mainly card playing.”
“I met that sheriff that’s after him,” Augustus said. “He’s ahead of us somewhere. His wife run off and Blue Duck killed his deputy and two youngsters who were traveling with him. He’s got other things on his mind besides Jake.”
“He’s welcome to Jake, if he wants him,” Call said. “I won’t defend a man who lets a woman get stolen and just goes back to his cards.”
“It was wisdom,” Augustus said. “Blue Duck would have scattered Jake over two counties if he had run into him.”
“I call it cowardice,” Call said. “Why didn’t you kill Blue Duck?”
“He’s quick,” Augustus said. “I couldn’t follow him on this piece of soap I’m riding. Anyway, I had Lorie to consider.”
“I hate to let a man like that get away,” Call said.
“Go get him, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “He’s west of here, probably in Colorado. You go get him and I’ll nurse these cows along until you get back. Now what’s that old cook doing?”
They saw all the cowboys gathered around the wagon, which still dripped from its passage through the river.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 185
