Po Campo sat with his back against a wagon wheel, jingling his tambourine.
“It’s going to get dry,” he said.
“Fine,” Soupy replied. “I got wet enough down about the Red to last me forever.”
“It’s better to be wet than dry,” Po Campo said. Usually cheerful, he had fallen into a somber mood.
“It ain’t if you drown,” Pea Eye observed.
“There won’t be much to cook when it gets dry,” Po said.
Newt and the Rainey boys had begun to talk of whores. Surely the Captain would let them go to town with the rest of the crew when they hit Ogallala. The puzzling thing was how much a whore might cost. The talk around the wagon was never very specific on that score. The Rainey boys were constantly tallying up their wages and trying to calculate whether they would be sufficient. What made it complicated was that they had played cards for credit the whole way north. The older hands had done the same, and the debts were complicated. As the arrival in Ogallala began to dominate their thoughts almost entirely, the question of cash was constantly discussed, and many debts discounted on the promise of actual money.
“What if they don’t pay us here?” the pessimistic Needle asked one night. “We signed on for Montana, we might not get no wages in Nebraska.”
“Oh, the Captain will pay us,” Dish said. Despite his attachment to Lorena he was becoming as excited as the rest about going to town.
“Why would he?” Lippy asked. “He don’t care whether you have a whore or not, Dish.”
That sentiment struck everyone as almost undoubtedly true, and established a general worry. By the time they crossed the Stinking Water the worry had become so oppressive that many hands could think of nothing else. Finally a delegation, headed by Jasper, approached Augustus on the subject. They surrounded him one morning when he came for breakfast and expressed their fear.
Augustus had a big laugh when he figured out what was bothering them. “Why, you girls,” he said. “All you want is orgies.”
“No, it’s whores we want,” Jasper said, a little irritated. “It’s fine for you to laugh, you got Lorie.”
“Yes, but what’s good for me ain’t necessarily good for the weak-minded,” Augustus said.
However, the next day he passed the word that everyone would be paid half wages in Ogallala. Call was not enthusiastic but the men had worked well and he couldn’t oppose giving them a day in town.
As soon as they heard the ruling, spirits improved, all except Po Campo’s. He continued to insist that it would be dry.
80.
WHEN ELMIRA’S FEVER finally broke she was so weak she could barely turn her head on the pillow. The first thing she saw was Zwey, looking in the window of the doctor’s little house. It was raining, but Zwey stood there in his buffalo coat, looking in at her.
The next day he was still there, and the next. She wanted to call out to him to see if he had news of Dee, but she was too weak. Her voice was just a whisper. The doctor who tended her, a short man with a red beard, seemed not much healthier than she was. He coughed so hard that sometimes he would have to set her medicine down to keep from spilling it. His name was Patrick Arandel, and his hands shook after each coughing fit. But he had taken her in and tended her almost constantly for the first week, expecting all the time that she would die.
“He’s as loyal as any dog,” he whispered to her, when she was well enough to understand conversation. For a while she had just stared back at him without comprehension when he spoke to her. He meant Zwey, of course.
“I couldn’t even get the man to go away and eat,” the doctor told her. “I live on tea, myself, but he’s a big man. Tea won’t keep him going. I guess he asked me a thousand times if you were going to live.”
The doctor sat in a little thin frame chair by her bed and gave her medicine by the spoonful. “It’s to build you up,” he said. “You didn’t hardly have no blood in you when you got here.”
Elmira wished there was a window shade so she couldn’t see Zwey staring at her. He stared for hours. She could feel his eyes on her, but she was too weak to turn her head away. Luke seemed to be gone—at least he never showed up.
“Where’s Dee?” she whispered, when her voice came back a little. The doctor didn’t hear her, she said it so faint, but he happened to notice her lips move. She had to say it again.
“Dee Boot?” she whispered.
“Oh, did you follow that story?” the doctor said. “Hung him right on schedule about a week after they brought you in. Buried him in Boot Hill. It’s a good joke on him, since his name was Boot. He killed a nine-year-old boy, he won’t be missed around here.”
Elmira shut her eyes, hoping she could be dead. From then on she spat out her medicine, letting it dribble onto the gown the doctor had given her. He didn’t understand at first.
“Sick to your stomach?” he said. “That’s natural. We’ll try soup.”
He tried soup and she spat that out too for a day, but she was too weak to fight the doctor, who was almost as patient as Zwey. They kept her jailed with their patience, when all she wanted to do was die. Dee was gone, after she had come such a way and found him. She hated Zwey and Luke for bringing her to the doctor—surely she would have died right on the street if they hadn’t. The last thing she wanted to do was get well and have to live—but days passed, and the doctor sat in the little chair, feeding her soup, and Zwey stared in the window, even though she wouldn’t look.
Even not looking, she could smell Zwey. It was a hot summer, and the doctor left the window open all day. She could hear horses going by on the street and smell Zwey standing there only a few feet from her. Flies bothered her—the doctor asked if she wanted Zwey to come in, for he would be only too happy to sit and shoo the flies, but Elmira didn’t answer. If Dee was dead, she was through with talk.
It occurred to her one night that she could ask Zwey to shoot her. He would give her a gun, of course, but she didn’t think she had the strength to pull the trigger. Better to ask him to shoot her. That would solve it, and they wouldn’t do much to Zwey if he told them he killed her at her own request.
Just thinking of such a simple solution seemed to ease her mind a bit—she could have Zwey shoot her. And yet, days passed and she got so she could sit up in bed, and she didn’t do it. Her mind kept going back to the spot of sunlight where Dee’s face had vanished. His face had just faded into the sunlight. She couldn’t stop thinking of it—in dreams she would see it so clearly that she would wake up, to the sound of Zwey’s snoring. He slept outside her window, with his back to the wall of the house—his snores were so loud a person might have thought a bull was sleeping there.
“What went with Luke?” she asked him one day.
“Went to Santa Fe,” Zwey said. It had been a month since she had spoken to him. He thought probably she never would again.
“Hired on with some traders,” he said. “Come all this way and then headed back.”
“I guess your child didn’t live,” the doctor said one day. “I wouldn’t have expected it to, out on the prairie, with you having such a close call.”
Elmira didn’t answer. She remembered her breasts hurting, that was all. She had forgotten the child, the woman with the two daughters, the big house. Maybe the baby was dead. Then she remembered July, and Arkansas, and a lot that she had forgotten. It was just as well forgotten: none of it mattered compared to Dee. It was all past, well past. Some day she would have Zwey shoot her and she wouldn’t have to think about things anymore.
But she put it off, and in time got well enough to walk. She didn’t go far, just to the door, to get a chamber pot or put one out of the room—the heat made the smells worse. Even Zwey had finally taken off his buffalo coat—he stood at the window in an old shirt, with holes worn in it so that the thick hairs of his chest poked through.
The doctor never asked her about money. Though she had gotten better, he hadn’t. She could hear him coughing through the wall, and sometimes sa
w him spit into a handkerchief. His hands trembled badly, and he always smelled of whiskey. It troubled her that he didn’t ask her for money. She had always been one to pay her way. Finally she mentioned it. She knew Zwey would go to work and get money for her if she asked him to.
“You’ll have to let me know what I owe,” she said, but Patrick Arandel just shook his head.
“I came here to get away from money,” he said. “Did it, too. I got away from it, and it ain’t easy to get away from money.”
Elmira didn’t mention it again. If he wanted to be paid, he could mention it—she had tried.
Then one day, with no warning from anyone, the door to her room opened and July walked in. Zwey was standing at the window when it happened. July’s face seemed thinner.
“I found you, Ellie,” he said, and there were tears in his eyes. Zwey was watching, but because of the shadows she didn’t know if he could see that July was crying.
Elmira looked away. She didn’t know what to do. Mainly she regretted that she had not had Zwey shoot her. Now July had found her. He had not come all the way in the room, but he was standing there, with the door half open, waiting for her to ask him in.
She didn’t ask him in, didn’t speak. It seemed she would always have bad luck, if he could come all that way across the plains and still find her.
Finally July came in the room and closed the door.
“The doctor says you’re strong enough to talk,” July said, wiping his eyes on his shirtsleeve. “You don’t have to talk, though. You just lie there and get well. I won’t stay very long. I just wanted you to know I came.”
Elmira looked at him once and then looked at the wall. Well, you’re a fool, she thought. You ought not to have followed. You ought to just told folks I was dead.
“I got one piece of bad news,” July said, and his eyes filled up again. “It’s real bad, and it’s my fault. Joe got killed, him and Roscoe and a girl. An outlaw killed them. I ought to have stayed with them, but I don’t know if it would have come out different if I had.”
You wouldn’t be here telling me, anyway, Elmira thought.
The news about Joe didn’t touch her. She had never thought much about Joe. He had come when she had other things to worry about and she had never got in the habit of worrying about him. He gave her less trouble than July, though. At least he had sense enough to figure out she didn’t want to be bothered with him, and had let her alone. If he was dead, that was that. She didn’t remember him well—he hadn’t talked much. He had just run out of luck on the plains. It might have happened to her, and she wished it had.
“Ellie, the baby’s fine,” July said. “I didn’t even know it was ours, that’s the funny thing. I seen Clara holding it and I had no notion it was ours. She named him Martin, if that’s all right with you.
“I guess we got our own family now,” July added. His heart was sinking so that his voice almost failed, for Ellie had not turned her head or given much more than a momentary sign of recognition. She hadn’t spoken. He wanted to think it was just her weakness, but he knew it was more than that. She wasn’t happy that he had found her. She didn’t care about the baby—didn’t even care that Joe was dead. Her face had not changed expression since the first look of surprise.
And all the while the large man with the holes in his shirt stood at the window silently, looking in. He was one of the buffalo hunters, July supposed. The doctor had spoken well of the man, mentioning how loyal he was to Elmira. But July didn’t understand why he was standing there, and his heart was sinking because Ellie wouldn’t look at him. He had come such a way, too. But she wouldn’t, and he didn’t think it was just because she was sick.
“We’ll bring the baby in whenever you want it,” July said. “I can rent a room till you’re better. He’s a strong baby. Clara says it won’t hurt him a bit to come in. They’ve got a little wagon.”
Elmira waited. If she didn’t talk, sooner or later he would leave.
His voice was shaky. He sat down in the chair the doctor usually sat in, by the bedside. After a moment he took one of her hands. Zwey was still looking in. July only held her hand for a moment. He dropped it and stood up.
“I’ll check every few days, Ellie,” he said. “The doctor can send for me if you need me.”
He paused. In the face of her silence, he didn’t know what to say. She sat propped up against the pillow, silent—it was almost as if she were dead. It reminded him of times in Arkansas, times in the loft when he felt as if he were with someone who wasn’t there. When he had found out she was alive and at the doctor’s in Ogallala, he had gone off behind Clara’s saddle shed and wept for an hour from relief. After all the worry and doubt, he had found her.
But now, in a minute, the relief was gone, and he was reminded of all her difficulties, how nothing he did pleased her, not even finding her in Ogallala. He didn’t know what more to do or say. She had married him and carried his child, and yet she wouldn’t turn her head to look at him.
Maybe it’s too soon, he thought, as he stumbled, in a daze of pain and worry, out of the doctor’s house. The big man was there watching.
“I’m much obliged for all the help you’ve given Ellie,” he said. “I’ll pay you back for any expense.”
Zwey said nothing, and July walked away to get his horse.
Ellie saw him ride past the window. She got up and watched him until he was out of sight. Zwey stood watching, too.
“Zwey,” Elmira said. “Get the wagon. I want to go.”
Zwey was surprised. He had got used to her being in the bed in the doctor’s house. He liked standing in the warm sun, watching her. She was so pretty in the bed.
“Ain’t you sick?” he asked.
“No, get the wagon,” she said. “I want to go today.”
“Go which way?” he asked.
“Go,” Elmira said. “Go away from here. I don’t care where. Over to St. Louis will do.”
“I don’t know the way to St. Louis,” Zwey said.
“Oh, get the wagon, we’ll find the way,” she said. “There’s a road, I guess.” She was out of patience with men. They were great ones for asking questions. Even Zwey asked them, and he could barely talk.
Zwey did as he was told. The doctor was gone, treating a farmer who had broken his hip. Elmira thought about leaving him a note, but didn’t. The doctor was smart, he would figure out soon enough that she was gone. And before the sun set they left Ogallala, going east. Elmira rode in the wagon on a buffalo skin. Zwey drove. His horse was hitched to the rear of the wagon. She had asked him to take her, which made him proud. Luke had tried to confuse him, but now Luke was gone, and the man who came to see Elmira had been left behind. She had asked him to take her, not the other man. It must mean that they were married, just as he had hoped. She didn’t say much to him, but she had asked him to take her, and that knowledge made him feel happy. He would take her anywhere she asked.
The only troublesome thought he had was the result of something the man at the livery stable said. He had been a dried-up little fellow, smaller than Luke. He had asked which way they were going and Zwey pointed east—he knew St. Louis was east.
“You might as well leave your scalps, then,” the man said. “Have ’em sent by mail, once you get there.”
“Why?” Zwey asked, puzzled. He had never heard of anyone sending a scalp in the mail.
“Because of the Sioux,” the man said.
“We never saw no Indians, the whole way from Texas,” Zwey remarked.
“You might not see the Sioux, either,” the man said. “But they’ll see you. You’re a damn fool to take a woman east of here.”
Zwey mentioned it to Elmira while he was helping her into the wagon.
“There might be Indians that way,” he said.
“I don’t care,” Elmira said. “Let’s go.”
Many nights on the trail from Texas she had lain awake, in terror of Indians. They saw none, but the fear stayed with her all the way to
Nebraska. She had heard too many stories.
Now she didn’t care. The sickness had changed her—that and the death of Dee. She had lost the fear. A few miles from town they stopped and camped. She lay awake in the wagon much of the night. Zwey slept on the ground, snoring, his rifle held tightly in his big hands. She wasn’t sleepy, but she wasn’t afraid, either. It was cloudy, and the plains were very dark. Anything could come out of the darkness—Indians, bandits, snakes. The doctor had claimed there were panthers. All she heard was the wind, rustling the grass. Her only worry was that July might follow. He had followed all the way from Texas—he might follow again. Maybe Zwey would kill him if he followed. It was peculiar that she disliked July so, but she did. If he didn’t leave her alone she would have Zwey kill him.
Zwey woke early. The man at the livery stable had worried him. He had been in three Indian fights, but both times he had several men with him. Now it was just he who would have to do all the fighting, if it came to that. He wished Luke hadn’t been so quick to rush off to Santa Fe. Luke didn’t always behave right, but he was a good shot. The livery-stable man acted as if they were as good as dead. It was morning, and they weren’t dead, but Zwey felt worried. He felt perhaps he had not explained things well to Ellie.
“It’s them Ogallala Sioux,” he said, looking in the wagon at her. It was a warm morning, and she had thrown off the blankets. “He said the Army had them all stirred up,” he added.
“I’ll stir you up if you don’t quit blabbing to me about Indians,” Elmira said. “I told you yesterday. I want to get gone a good ways before July shows up in town again.”
Her eyes flashed when she spoke, as they had before she got sick. Ashamed to have angered her, Zwey began to stir the fire under the coffeepot.
81.
WHEN JULY CAME BACK FROM TOWN he was so depressed he couldn’t speak. Clara had asked him to do a few errands, but the visit with Elmira troubled him so that he had forgotten them. Even after he got back to the ranch he didn’t remember that he had been asked to do anything.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 204
