The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  “I like to keep up with who’s traveling the country,” he said. “I admit I did not expect it to be you.”

  “You’re welcome to coffee,” Call said.

  “I don’t take much else at night,” he added.

  “Hell, if I didn’t take some grub in at night I’d starve,” Goodnight said. “Usually too busy to eat breakfast.”

  “You’re welcome to get down then,” Call said.

  “No, I’m too busy to do that either,” Goodnight said. “I’ve got interests in Pueblo. Besides, I was never a man to sit around and gossip.

  “I reckon that’s McCrae,” he said, glancing at the coffin on the buggy.

  “That’s him,” Call said, dreading the questions that seemed to be inevitable.

  “I owe him a debt for cleaning out that mangy bunch on the Canadian,” Goodnight said. “I’d have soon had to do it myself, if he hadn’t.”

  “Well, he’s past collecting debts,” Call said. “Anyway he let that dern killer get away.

  “No shame to McCrae,” Goodnight said. “I let the son of a bitch get away myself, and more than once, but a luckier man caught him. He butchered two families in the Bosque Redondo, and as he was leaving a deputy sheriff made a lucky shot and crippled his horse. They ran him down and mean to hang him in Santa Rosa next week. If you spur up you can see it.”

  “Well, I swear,” Call said. “You going?”

  “No,” Goodnight said. “I don’t attend hangings, although I’ve presided over some, of the homegrown sort. This is the longest conversation I’ve had in ten years. Goodbye.”

  Call took the buggy over Raton Pass and edged down into the great New Mexican plain. Though he had seen nothing but plains for a year, he was still struck by the immense reach of land that lay before him. To the north, there was still snow on the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo. He hurried to Santa Rosa, risking further damage to the wagon, only to discover that the hanging had been put back a week.

  Everyone in the territory wanted to see Blue Duck hanged, it seemed. The little town was full of cowhands, with women and children sleeping in wagons. There was much argument, most of it in favor of hanging Blue Duck instantly lest he escape. Parties were constantly forming to present petitions to the sheriff, or else storm the jail, but the latter were unenthusiastic. Blue Duck had ranged the llano for so long, and butchered and raped and stolen so often, that superstitions had formed around him. Some, particularly women, felt he couldn’t die, and that their lives would never be safe.

  Call took the opportunity to have a blacksmith completely rebuild the buggy. The blacksmith had lots to work on and took three days to get around to the buggy, but he let Call store the coffin in his back room, since it was attracting attention.

  The only thing to do in town besides drink was to admire the new courthouse, three stories high and with a gallows at the top, from which Blue Duck would be hung. The courthouse had fine glass windows and polished floors.

  Two days before the hanging was to take place, Call decided to go see the prisoner. He had already met the deputy who had crippled Blue Duck’s horse. The man, whose name was Decker, was fat and stone drunk, leading Call to suspect that Goodnight had been right— the shot had been lucky. But every man in the Territory had insisted on buying the deputy a drink since then; perhaps he had been capable of sobriety before he became a hero. He was easily moved to sobs at the memory of his exploit, which he had recounted so many times that he was hoarse.

  The sheriff, a balding man named Owensby, had of course heard of Call and was eager to show him the prisoner. The jail had only three cells, and Blue Duck was in the middle one, which had no window. The others had been cleared, minor culprits having simply been turned loose in order to lessen the chances that Blue Duck might somehow contrive an escape.

  The minute Call saw the man he knew it was unlikely. Blue Duck had been shot in the shoulder and leg, and had a greasy rag wound around his forehead, covering another wound. Call had never seen a man so draped in chains. He was handcuffed; each leg was heavily chained; and the chains draped around his torso were bolted to the wall. Two deputies with Winchesters kept constant watch. Despite the chains and bars, Call judged that both were scared to death.

  Blue Duck himself seemed indifferent to the furor outside. He was leaning back against the wall, his eyes half closed, when Call came in.

  “What’s he doing?” Sheriff Owensby asked. Despite all the precautions, he was so nervous that he had not been able to keep food down since the prisoner was brought in.

  “Ain’t doin’ much,” one deputy said. “What can he do?”

  “Well, it’s been said he can escape from any jail,” the sheriff reminded them. “We got to watch him close.”

  “Only way to watch him closer is to go in with him, and I’ll quit before I’ll do that,” the other deputy said.

  Blue Duck opened his slumbrous eyes a fraction wider and looked at Call.

  “I hear you brought your stinkin’ old friend to my hanging,” Blue Duck said, his low, heavy voice startling the deputies and the sheriff too.

  “Just luck,” Call said.

  “I should have caught him and cooked him when I had the chance,” Blue Duck said.

  “He would have killed you,” Call said, annoyed by the man’s insolent tone. “Or I would have, if need be.”

  Blue Duck smiled. “I raped women and stole children and burned houses and shot men and run off horses and killed cattle and robbed who I pleased, all over your territory, ever since you been a law,” he said. “And you never even had a good look at me until today. I don’t reckon you would have killed me.”

  Sheriff Owensby reddened, embarrassed that the man would insult a famous Ranger, but there was little he could do about it. Call knew there was truth in what Blue Duck said, and merely stood looking at the man, who was larger than he had supposed. His head was huge and his eyes cold as snake’s eyes.

  “I despise all you fine-haired sons of bitches,” Blue Duck said. “You Rangers. I expect I’ll kill a passel of you yet.”

  “I doubt it,” Call said. “Not unless you can fly.”

  Blue Duck smiled a cold smile. “I can fly,” he said. “An old woman taught me. And if you care to wait, you’ll see me.”

  “I’ll wait,” Call said.

  On the day of the hanging the square in front of the courthouse was packed with spectators. Call had to tie his animals over a hundred yards away—he wanted to get started as soon as the hanging was over. He worked his way to the front of the crowd and watched as Blue Duck was moved from the jail to the courthouse in a small wagon under heavy escort. Call thought it likely somebody would be killed accidentally before it was over, since all the deputies were so scared they had their rifles on cock. Blue Duck was as heavily chained as ever and still had the greasy rag tied around his head wound. He was led into the courthouse and up the stairs. The hangman was making last-minute improvements on the hangrope and Call was looking off, thinking he saw a man who had once served under him in the crowd, when he heard a scream and a sudden shattering of glass. He looked up and the hair on his neck rose, for Blue Duck was flying through the air in his chains. It seemed to Call the man’s cold smile was fixed on him as he fell: he had managed to dive through one of the long glass windows on the third floor—and not alone, either. He had grabbed Deputy Decker with his handcuffed hands and pulled him out too. Both fell to the stony ground right in front of the courthouse. Blue Duck hit right on his head, while the Deputy had fallen backwards, like a man pushed out of a hayloft. Blue Duck didn’t move after he hit, but the deputy squirmed and cried. Tinkling glass fell about the two men.

  The crowd was too stunned to move. Sheriff Owensby stood high above them, looking out the window, mortified that he had allowed hundreds of people to be cheated of a hanging.

  Call walked out alone and knelt by the two men. Finally a few others joined him. Blue Duck was stone dead, his eyes wide open, the cruel smile still on his lips. Decker was b
roken to bits and spitting blood already—he wouldn’t last long.

  “I guess that old woman didn’t teach you well enough,” Call said to the outlaw.

  Owensby ran down the stairs and insisted that they carry Blue Duck up and string him from the gallows. “By God, I said he’d hang, and he’ll hang,” he said. Many of the spectators were so afraid of the outlaw that they wouldn’t touch him, even dead. Six men who were too drunk to be spooked finally carried him up and left him dangling above the crowd.

  Call thought it a silly waste of work, though he supposed the sheriff had politics to think of.

  He himself could not forget that Blue Duck had smiled at him in the moment that he flew. As he walked through the crowd he heard a woman say she had seen Blue Duck’s eyes move as he lay on the ground. Even with the man hanging from a gallows, the people were priming themselves to believe he hadn’t died. Probably half the crimes committed on the llano in the next ten years would be laid to Blue Duck.

  As Call was getting into his wagon, a newspaperman ran up, a redheaded boy scarcely twenty years old, white with excitement at what he had just seen.

  “Captain Call?” he asked. “I write for the Denver paper. They pointed you out to me. Can I speak to you for a minute?”

  Call mounted the dun and caught the mule’s lead rope. “I have to ride,” he said. “It’s still a ways to Texas.”

  He started to go, but the boy would not give up. He strode beside the dun, talking, much as Clara had, except that the boy was merely excited. Call thought it strange that two people on one trip would follow him off.

  “But, Captain,” the boy said. “They say you were the most famous Ranger. They say you’ve carried Captain McCrae three thousand miles just to bury him. They say you started the first ranch in Montana. My boss will fire me if I don’t talk to you. They say you’re a man of vision.”

  “Yes, a hell of a vision,” Call said. He was forced to put spurs to the dun to get away from the boy, who stood scribbling on a pad.

  It was a dry year, the grass of the llano brown, the long plain shimmering with mirages. Call followed the Pecos, down through Bosque Redondo and south through New Mexico. He knew it was dangerous—in such a year, Indians might follow the river too. But he feared the drought worse. At night lightning flickered high above the plains; thunder rumbled but no rain fell. The days were dull and hot, and he saw no one—just an occasional antelope. His animals were tiring, and so was he. He tried driving at night but had to give it up—too often he would nod off, and once came within an ace of smashing a buggy wheel. The coffin was sprung from so much bouncing and began to leak a fine trail of salt.

  A day above Horsehead Crossing, as he was plodding along half asleep in the still afternoon, he felt something hit him and immediately put his hand to his side. It came away bloody, although he had not seen an Indian or even heard a gunshot. As he turned to race for the river he glimpsed a short brown man rising from behind a large yucca plant. Call didn’t know how badly he was shot, or how many Indians he was up against. He went off the bank too fast and the buggy crashed against a big rock at the water’s edge. It splintered and turned over, the coffin underneath it. Call glanced back and saw only four Indians. He dismounted, snuck north along the river for a hundred yards, and was able to shoot one of the four. He crossed the river and waited all day and all night, but never saw the other three again. His wound felt minor, though the bullet was somewhere in him, and would have to stay until he made Austin, he knew.

  The narrow-channeled Pecos was running and the coffin was underwater. Call finally cut it loose, and with the help of Greasy dragged it from the mud. He knew he was in a fine fix, for it was still five hundred miles to the south Guadalupe and the buggy was ruined. For all he knew, more Indians might arrive at any moment, which meant that he had to work looking over his shoulder. He managed to drag the coffin over, but it was a sorry, muddy affair by the time he was done. Also, the Pecos water scalded his innards and drained his strength.

  Call knew he could never drag the coffin all the way to Austin—he himself would be lucky to get across the bleached, waterless land to the Colorado or the San Saba. On the other hand he had no intention of leaving Gus, now that he had brought him so far. He broke open the coffin and rewrapped his friend’s remains in the tarp he had been using for a bed cover on wet nights—there were few of those to worry about. Then he lashed the bundle to Gus’s sign, itself well weathered, with most of the lettering worn off. He cut down a small salt-cedar and made a crude axle, fixing the sign between the two buggy wheels. It was more travois than buggy, but it moved. He felt his wound a trifle less every day, though he knew it had been a small-bore bullet that hit him. A larger bore and he would be down and probably dead.

  Several times he thought he glimpsed Indians slipping over a ridge or behind distant yucca, but could never be sure. Soon he felt feverish and began to distrust his own eyesight. In the shining mirages ahead he thought he saw horsemen, who never appeared. Once he thought he saw Deets, and another time Blue Duck. He decided his reason must be going and began to blame Gus for it all. Gus had spent a lifetime trying to get him into situations that confused him, and had finally succeeded.

  “You done this,” he said aloud several times. “Jake started me off, but you was the one sent me back across here.”

  His water ran out the third day. The mule and the dun chewed on the greasewood bushes or what sage there was, but both were weakening. Call longed for the Kiowa mare. He wished he had given the boy his name and kept the mare.

  Then Greasy, the mule, stopped—he had decided to die. Call had to use the dun to pull the travois. Greasy didn’t bother following them.

  Call supposed the dun would die too, but the horse walked on to the Colorado. After that, there was little more to fear, although his wound festered somewhat, and leaked. It reminded him of Lippy—often his eyes would fill when he thought of the boys left up north.

  By the time he finally rode onto the little hill with the live oaks above the Guadalupe, the sign was about gone. The Latin motto, of which Augustus had been so proud, being at the bottom, had long since been broken off. The part about the pigs was gone, and the part about what they rented and sold, and Deets’s name as well. Most of Pea Eye’s name had flaked off, and his own also. Call hoped to save the plank where Gus had written his own name, but the rope he had tied the body with had rubbed out most of the lettering. In fact, the sign was not much more than a collection of splinters, two of which Call got in his hand as he was untying Gus. Only the top of the sign, the part that said “Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium” was still readable.

  Call dug the grave with a little hand shovel. In his condition it took most of a day; at one point he grew so weak that he sat down in the grave to rest, sweat pouring off him—if there had been anyone else to shovel he would have been inclined to be buried there himself. But he pulled himself up and finished the work and lowered Augustus in.

  “There,” he said. “This will teach me to be more careful about what I promise.”

  He used the plank with “Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium” on it as a crossbar, tying it to a long mesquite stick, which he drove into the ground with a big rock. While he was tying the crossbar tight with two saddle strings, a wagon with settlers in it came along the ridge. They were a young couple, with two or three children peeking shyly around them, narrow-faced as young possums. The young man was fair and the sun had blistered him beet-red; his young wife had a bonnet pulled close about her face. It was clear that the grave marker puzzled them. The young man stopped the wagon and stared at it. Not having seen him put Augustus under, they were not sure whether they were looking at a grave, or just a sign.

  “Where is this Hat Creek outfit, mister?” the young man asked.

  “Buried, what ain’t in Montana,” Call said. He knew it wasn’t helpful, but he was in no mood for conversation.

  “Dern, I was hoping to come to a place with a blacksmith
,” the young man said. Then he noticed that Call walked stiffly, and saw that he was wounded.

  “Can we help you, mister?” the young man asked.

  “Much obliged,” Call said. “I’ve only a short way to go.”

  The young settlers moved down the ridge toward San Antonio. Call walked down to the little pool, meaning to rest a few minutes. He fell into a heavy sleep and didn’t wake until dawn. The business of the sign worried him, one more evidence of Augustus’s ability to vex well beyond the grave. If one young man supposed it meant there was a livery stable nearby, others would do the same. People might be inconvenienced for days, wandering through the limestone hills, trying to find a company who were mostly ghosts.

  Besides, Augustus’s name wasn’t on the sign, though it was his grave. No one might ever realize that it was his grave. Call walked back up the hill and got out his knife, thinking he might carve the name on the other side of the board, but the old board was so dry and splintery that he felt he might destroy it altogether if he worked on it much. Finally he just scratched A.M. on the other side of the board. It wasn’t much, and it wouldn’t last, he knew. Somebody would just get irritated at not finding the livery stable and bust the sign up anyway. In any case, Gus was where he had decided he wanted to be, and they had both known many fine men who lay in unmarked graves.

  Call remembered he had told the young couple that he only had a short way to travel. It showed that his mind was probably going, for he had no place in particular to travel at all. Worn out, and with a festering wound, he was in no shape to turn back for Montana, and Jerry, the dun, could never have made the trip, even if he himself could have. He didn’t know that he wanted to go back, for that matter. He had never felt that he had any home on the earth anyway. He remembered riding to Texas in a wagon when just a boy—his parents were already dead. Since then it had been mostly roaming, the years in Lonesome Dove apart.