The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  But he would not be able to put out his hand to her, when she came near the bed; she would not be able to take his hand and guide it to her. Maria felt that the killer might have known what she and Benito did, when she shut the doors, in the morning. Perhaps that was why the hands were taken, she didn’t know. Some old ones still made necklaces of fingers; perhaps someone had taken Benito’s hands and feet, to be made into necklaces. Maria didn’t know, would never know.

  Beneath Maria’s sorrow was anger. She felt a loyalty to Benito, and though her sorrow was deep, her anger was deeper. Her first two husbands were selfish men. They would have taken younger women, given time. But Benito wanted no one but her—he would never have taken a younger woman. That knowledge fueled her anger. Someday the killer might reveal himself to her. When that happened, she would take her own vengeance, even if it resulted in her death.

  She would have liked to sit on the bed and touch Benito’s hands, one more time. But it couldn’t be.

  “Do you think the killer is in Mexico or Texas?” she asked Joey, a day or two after the funeral. He had gone to the place and looked at the ground, but if he reached any conclusions he kept them to himself.

  “Texas or Mexico, what’s the difference?” Joey asked. He liked to take questions and make them into other questions.

  There were times when her son was so insolent that she wanted to slap him. He toyed with her, in a way that made her angry. He was a smart boy, but too good-looking. He thought his looks gave him the right to be disrespectful to his mother. Joey was blond, a güero. He would look at Maria insolently, waiting for her next question. It did not occur to him to be helpful. It would not have occurred to his father, either. He would rather twist her questions, make them into other questions.

  “One is Texas and the gringos own it,” Maria said. “This is Mexico. We own it. That’s a difference.”

  “It’s two names for the same place,” Joey said. “We should own it all. It was ours once, and we didn’t have to smile at gringos when we crossed the river.”

  “I don’t smile at gringos, but Texas was never mine,” Maria said. “I’m a woman—nothing is mine. Not even my children. Not even you.”

  “I am nobody’s,” Joey said, smugly.

  Maria suddenly slapped him. He was too much like all men. He was insolent, and he didn’t care that she was sad about Benito, the only kind husband she had ever had.

  Joey didn’t move when she slapped him; the cold came into his eyes. He had a hat on when she hit him, a little white sombrero. Her slap knocked it off. Joey picked it up quickly and examined it carefully, to see if it was smudged. He turned it around and around in his hands. He was particular about his clothes. The tiniest speck would spoil the hat, for Joey.

  “That is the last time you hit me, Mother,” Joey said, carefully setting the hat back on his head.

  Maria slapped him again, harder, and again the spotless white hat got knocked to the floor.

  “You’re my son,” she said. “I’ll slap you when you need it.”

  Joey picked up his hat and took it outside, to dust it off. He left, and was gone for a week. When he returned he didn’t speak to Maria. He took his dirty clothes out of his saddlebags, and handed them to her, to clean. He was riding a black horse. Maria had never seen the horse before, or the saddle. He was also wearing silver spurs.

  Maria didn’t ask Joey about the horse. She went outside, to Rafael and Teresa. They were sitting with their chickens and goats, under a little tree. Rafael was chanting one of his melancholy songs. Rafael was a big boy, and much nicer than Joey, only Rafael was lost in his mind. Maria grew sad, thinking about it. She gathered her washing and started to walk to the river. Rafael followed, with two of his goats. Teresa stopped to talk to an old woman who was grinding corn. Teresa was popular in the village. She was so quick and got around so well that some people almost forgot she was blind.

  Her children dirtied a lot of clothes. It took Maria three trips to get all the clothes to the place where the women washed. That morning, because it was late, only one woman was there, old Estela. Old Estela had borne thirteen children, and outlived them all. One drowned in a flood and the rest were killed by diseases. Old Estela had only a few clothes to wash because she had no family. Once she told Maria that she came to the river because she heard the voices of her dead children call, from the water. She had convinced herself that her children were not really dead. They lived in the river, with the frogs and the fish and the little snakes. God had given them gills, like the fish had, so they could breathe. Old Estela knew they were there; every morning, she heard them.

  Rafael helped Maria with the clothes. There were one or two simple tasks he could do, and he always did them. He liked to beat the clothes against the rocks, and to spread them so that the cold water ran over them. Once in a while a shirt would slip away, before he could place a rock on it. Then Rafael would have to wade in the water to retrieve it. The sheep, disturbed by seeing him in the water, would set up a bleating. Sometimes Teresa would follow them. She knew the path to the river, and all the other paths around the village. Teresa and Rafael did not like to be apart too long. They needed one another. Teresa could not sleep, except with Rafael. He had become her eyes; she became his mind. It touched Maria, that her boy and her girl were so careful to help one another.

  “Do you hear your children today, Estela?” Maria asked.

  “I hear the girls,” Estela said, in her tiny crack of a voice. “They are over by that bush, where the coyote drinks.”

  Near the bush, the water made a rilling sound.

  “The boys, I don’t hear them,” Estela said. “Maybe they have gone to Piedras Negras.”

  “I think that’s where my boy went,” Maria said, thinking of the black horse and the silver spurs.

  9.

  JOEY GARZA JOURNEYED to the City of Mexico in search of a better gun. When he was seventeen, an old prospector named Lichtenberg had come through Ojinaga, carrying a little case made of fine leather, with a crest stamped on it in gold. Joey was interested in fine things. He admired the little case, and wanted to know what was in it. Old Tomas, who had once worked for the German on one of his prospecting ventures, said it was where Señor Lichtenberg carried his rifle.

  Joey thought that a gun carried inside a case would be useless when trouble arrived. If trouble arrived, it usually arrived quickly. The Apaches who bought him from Juan Castro could kill you several times, in several ways, while you were trying to get a rifle out of a leather case. Joey had seen them kill people who had their guns in their hands, but were too terrified to fire. Because they were terrified of dying, they died.

  The old German was very tired, when he reached Ojinaga. He was weaving on his feet. He politely asked Maria for board, and he gave her a gold coin, which she accepted. Then he removed his high-topped boots and was soon asleep. He took no precautions at all with his possessions.

  Maria had a husband then, Roberto Sanchez. He came home from the cantina to find that Maria had rented their bed. He took the gold coin from her, but raged anyway, about the loss of the bed. Due to a fear of scorpions, Roberto hated to sleep on the ground. He was a fool, Joey thought. Scorpions could come in a house and bite people, they often did. Roberto raged for a long time, but Maria finally persuaded him that renting the bed was a smart move. One night on the ground wouldn’t hurt them. She herself would clean the ground, to make sure no scorpions were there to bother them. Roberto Sanchez was still drinking tequila, but he finally stumbled after Maria.

  Rafael, the idiot boy, was playing with a chicken behind the house while he sang a little idiot song. A sad tone came into his voice when he saw his mother go into the darkness. Teresa sat near Rafael. When she heard the sad note enter the song she scooted closer to Rafael and put her fingers to his lips, to feel from his breath what sadness he felt. She herself didn’t care that her mother had gone out of the house. She heard her go, but for Teresa it only meant that she could whisper through t
he night, to Rafael, and not be scolded. Teresa loved whispering to her brother at night. In the darkness she felt that she and Rafael were the same. Neither could see, and it didn’t matter that Rafael sang songs that had meaning only to him.

  As soon as Maria and Roberto left, Joey took the little case into another room, where he lit a lamp and examined it carefully. It had a small lock, but he opened it with a piece of wire.

  Inside the case, resting in velvet grooves, was a rifle, the most beautiful Joey Garza had ever seen. The barrel was heavy; it weighed as much as most rifles. In Joey’s mind that gave the gun dignity. This rifle was not merely a gun; it was so beautifully crafted that holding it made him feel powerful. The stock was of polished wood, and the trigger guards curved beautifully. The German rifle was the most desirable weapon Joey had ever seen. He determined at once that he must have it, or one that was as good or better. If he had to kill the old German, he would do it, but he didn’t intend to kill him right away.

  Almost as fascinating as the rifle was a little spyglass that nestled in its own velvet groove. It had a fitting that attached it to the gun barrel. Joey attached it, and looked through the spyglass. Even in the dark room, lit only by the flickering lamp, he could see what the spyglass did. It brought the target near, even when the target was far. He slipped outside and practiced sighting through the spyglass, with only the moon and stars for light. He wished it were day. At first light, he meant to take the gun and sight through the spyglass. Having the spyglass was like having a better eye. The rifle was so well balanced that Joey knew he could kill from great distances with it. He could lie on a roof in Ojinaga and kill gringos across the river in Presidio. If the wind was blowing strongly the gringos would never even hear the report of the rifle. Three gringos could be walking in the street, and in a second, two of them would be dead. The third would have no idea who was shooting.

  Joey considered stealing the rifle, then and there. He could leave and go where no one would ever find him. He knew the mountains to the south, in the great bend of the river, and knew the Madre. He could live in the mountains for years, eating the roasts of fat mule deer. But the old prospector’s rifle was the first fine gun he had ever seen. In the City of Mexico there were bound to be many, and perhaps some that were even finer.

  He sat outside his mother’s house until almost dawn, simply holding the gun in his hands. Then he detached the little spyglass, took the rifle apart, and put it carefully back in its case. He felt divided; impatient, yet patient. He wanted to take the rifle and go, but he also wanted to learn patience. Among the Apaches, the best hunters and the best man killers were the most patient men in the tribe. Though it was hard to wait, they waited. The best hunters did not take the first deer they saw; they waited for the fattest deer. They shot when they were sure, and Joey resolved to do the same. He would shoot when he was sure.

  When the old German woke up the next morning, Joey politely asked about the little case. The old man seemed surprised, but after he had several cups of Maria’s strong coffee, he opened the little case and showed Joey the rifle. He explained the function of the little spyglass, and showed Joey how to attach it. Joey pretended to be amazed, when he looked through the little glass.

  Later in the morning, the old German walked up and asked Joey if he would like to shoot with him. He suggested a little contest.

  “If we shoot I will beat you,” Joey said. He had nothing against the old man until he saw him looking at his mother, when she was bending over, getting a tick off her old dog’s ear. His mother loved the old brown dog for some reason, though the dog was mangy and had a broken tail, and a sore that had never really healed, from where a javelina had gored him.

  Joey considered his mother a whore, and if Roberto Sanchez died he had no doubt she would take another man. Only a whore would seek four husbands, Joey thought, but that didn’t lessen his hatred of the men who helped his mother whore. The minute he saw old Lichtenberg looking at his mother’s bosom he decided to kill him someday. For now, he would be content with a shooting lesson.

  Joey took some melons far down the river and lined them up on rocks.

  “But they are too far,” Lichtenberg complained, when Joey came walking back. There was something about the light-skinned Mexican boy that was a little disturbing. He had a coldness in his face like some of the Indians had, particularly the Indians in the mountains. His mother was a desirable woman, though. Lichtenberg had meant to leave that morning, but he thought he might stay a few days. Perhaps for a coin or two the woman would go with him. In his travels in Mexico he had paid for many brown women. He could afford to pay for one more.

  First, though, he would show the cold blond boy, the güero, how to shoot.

  “You first,” Lichtenberg said. “When you miss, I will shoot.”

  Joey had lined up eight melons on the rocks. He took the beautiful rifle with the heavy barrel and caused the eight melons to explode, one by one.

  Lichtenberg was startled. The boy could never have shot such a gun before, yet he hadn’t missed. One of his own beliefs was that Indians had better eyesight than white men. In the Madre the Indians would sometimes see things he could not see at all. Often they would mention landmarks that to them were obvious but that he could not see until he had walked several hours. This boy must have some Indian in him, Lichtenberg thought.

  Joey set up eight more melons. Lichtenberg, on his mettle, burst them all.

  “A draw,” Lichtenberg said, relieved. His hand was shaky that day. It would have been embarrassing to be beaten with his own gun, by a boy who had never shot a German rifle before.

  “Can we shoot again?” Joey asked, politely. “I will find something smaller.”

  Lichtenberg was not eager. He would have been happy with a draw. But the boy had a challenge in his tone that he, as a German, could not simply ignore.

  This time, Joey chose prickly pear apples, handling them carefully, so as not to get the tiny, fuzzy stickers in his fingers.

  “Would you like to shoot first?” he asked the old man politely.

  “No—you first,” Lichtenberg said. He was sorry he had been polite to the boy. Better to have stayed in the hut and waited for the woman’s husband to leave. Then he could have tried his money. He had a bad feeling about the shooting. It was as if the boy was the teacher, the one with confidence. He had young eyes, eyes that were accustomed to the distances of Chihuahua, to the space that the great eagles looked across. Lichtenberg didn’t know if he could hit a prickly pear apple at such a distance, even with his scope.

  Joey hit ten apples. He balanced the gun beautifully and aimed only for an instant, before firing. When he finished he politely gave the gun to Lichtenberg, who took it and missed five times. Twice he hit the rock beneath the little red apples, the bullets whining off down the valley. The rest of the time he shot high. After the fifth miss, he quit. He did not feel it would be a good day. The Mexican woman wouldn’t accept his coin; his horse might go lame; a snake might bite him; he might be robbed; he would not find any gold, or even a stream in which to pan for it. A sense of the melancholy of life began to crush him. Why had he come to this stinking village, in a stinking country, where neither the water nor the food agreed with him? Why had he left Prussia? He had known Bismarck once—if he had stayed in Prussia he might have been a minister, or a rich man; not a tired, wandering prospector, going from village to village, trying to scrape up a few flecks of gold. Any day he might be killed, by a bandit, an Indian, anyone he happened to meet. Now he had been defeated by a boy who could shoot his own rifle better than he could. He walked slowly back to Maria’s hut and put the rifle back in its case. For a moment, looking across the hot plain, he considered shooting himself with it. One bullet and he would not have to go on with such an uncomfortable existence, traveling on a horse that was narrow-backed and surly.

  But he put the gun back in its case. In a few minutes he began to feel a little better. The sun shone beautifully, and the coffee that
Maria brewed had a fine aroma. Lichtenberg loved coffee. He had thought of going south, far south, where they grew coffee in the mountains. He decided not to kill himself, because of the coffee smells and the comely woman. Her husband was a brute, that was clear. The brute had made it known that he did not like Lichtenberg sleeping in his house. The husband smelled of drink. But the woman was very comely. The husband might go away, and even if he didn’t go away, Lichtenberg could always look.

  For her part, Maria wished the old German would go. She saw him looking at her. There were many men who showed their lust in their eyes; she could not keep them all from looking at her.

  Roberto, her husband, had a harelip. He had once worked across the river, for a big ranch, shoeing horses—the cowboys teased him about his harelip, so much that he hated all whites, and the old German was very white. In the wrong mood, if he intercepted one of the old man’s lustful looks, Roberto might take a knife to him, or an ax, or a gun.

  A more likely problem, though, was that Joey would rob him of something valuable. Joey was a quick and gifted thief. Although the old man’s clothes were ragged, from neglect and hard wear, many of the things he owned were nice. There was the fine rifle, and, in another leather case, a set of mining instruments. His belt had a silver buckle, and he wore a ring with a green stone in it. Maria had not touched his bags, but he had produced the gold coin from one of them and might have other gold coins in his valise.

  Joey might steal any of it, Maria knew that. He might steal it out of curiosity. Joey liked to look at interesting things, particularly weapons. There was no telling what the old German might have that Joey would like to steal, but if he did steal something, trouble would come from across the river. The hard sheriff, Doniphan, liked nothing better than to beat Mexicans who stole things. The river meant nothing to Doniphan. The notion that Mexico was a nation with rights, like other nations, and with a border that needed to be respected, made Joey laugh. Mexico was a nation of whores, lazy men, Indians, and bandits, in Doniphan’s view. He crossed the border when it suited him, taking any prisoners he wanted to take. In Ojinaga there was no one to stand up to him.