The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  The cemetery was just a plain piece of ground, dusty, without a bush or a tree to lessen its plainness. Most of the grave markers were wooden, and many of them had tilted over, or fallen flat altogether. One of the whores, the smallest, a slip of a girl with curly brown hair, had a beautiful soprano voice.

  When she sang “Amazing Grace,” her voice rose over all the other singers, the other five whores and the few churchwomen. Her voice was clear as the air. They sang “Rock of Ages,” and then “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Three hymns at a funeral was unusual, Lorena thought. Yet, despite the cutting wind, the mourners seemed reluctant to leave. When the women finished the last song, they looked around, wondering if they should sing more. It was odd, Lorena thought, that no one was hurrying away.

  The young whore with the beautiful voice finally spoke to one of the churchwomen, and the women began to sing “There’s a Home Beyond the River.”

  The young soprano poured her heart into the song. No doubt she had an inkling of how Mrs. Plunkert had felt. That, at least, was Lorena’s view. The girl’s voice was so strong and pure that it silenced the other singers. One by one, the other whores and the churchwomen fell silent, and the beautiful voice of the whore with the curly hair soared on, in lonely lament for the lost life of a woman the young whore had not known, and perhaps had not even met.

  When the song ended, the mourners turned away from the grave, and an old Mexican man with a shovel began to push in dirt around the coffin.

  “At least she had a right pretty funeral,” Tinkersley said. He fell in with Lorena as she was hurrying back to the station, anxious to secure her valise. Tinkersley was seeking to make small talk, or any talk, that would persuade her to allow him to stay with her for a while.

  “Get away from me, Tinkersley,” Lorena said. “You done nothing but hurt me, when we was together. I don’t want you to be walking with me. I’m here to find my husband.”

  “But, I bought you pretty dresses,” Tinkersley protested. “I took you to the fanciest shop in San Antonio.”

  “So you could sell me for a higher price,” Lorena reminded him. “Get away from me. I don’t like remembering none of that.”

  “Lorie, I was just hoping we could visit,” Tinkersley said. “I know I done you badly. I came back to find you, but you were gone north with Gus McCrae.”

  Lorena didn’t speak to Tinkersley again. She just ignored him. He walked with her, pleading, until they were nearly back to the station, but Lorena didn’t say another word. She scarcely noticed him, in his slick coat, nor did she listen to his excuses or his pleas. She felt a great longing to be with her husband. Most men would make excuses all day and all night for their failings, but Pea never did. When Pea did something that hurt her feelings, he accepted his error and suffered for it until she had to take him in hand and try to coax him and tease him back into a good humor. She had to convince him, each time, that what he had done was only a small error, not the unforgivable act he believed it to be. Marriage was often vexing, that was all.

  Now, with the funeral over, she wanted to gather such information about where Captain Call might be as she could. She wanted to catch up with Pea and bring him home, before one of the bad men in the world did something to hurt him.

  It was not until that night, in her small, chill room in the drafty hotel, that Lorena’s thoughts returned to the dead woman and the funeral. She remembered the young whore who could sing soprano, and a deep sadness came with the memory. In a building not far away, the young whore with the beautiful voice was back being a whore. The churchwomen who had spoken to her at the funeral wouldn’t allow themselves to speak to her in their day-to-day lives. She was just one of Tinkersley’s whores, as Lorena herself had been, once.

  The only thing that was true in the four hymns the girl had sung was the music itself, Lorena thought. Neither the whore nor the dead woman over whose grave she’d sung had received any grace at all, to draw upon; nor did they have any rock to stand on; nor any circle to shelter or protect them.

  As to the home beyond the river, Lorena didn’t know. She just wanted to find her husband and bring her children back from Nebraska. She wanted the six humans she was responsible for to be back again in their home, where she could watch over them.

  At the telegraph office in the late afternoon, she had been given one good piece of information by the elderly fellow who worked the telegraph. Several telegrams had poured in for Captain Call, instructing him to hurry to San Angelo. Joe Garza had struck there, only the week before.

  The next morning, at breakfast—she was the only woman in the small hotel dining room—Lorena happened to overhear a conversation that sent her heart leaping. Two Texas Rangers were at a table talking, and she heard the name Call mentioned.

  The Rangers had looked at her hard when they walked in and saw her alone in the dining room, but Lorena had not sent her children away and traveled so far to be balked by hard looks from lawmen.

  She got up and went over to their table.

  “Excuse me, I heard you mention Captain Call,” she said. “My husband is his deputy. I’d be grateful if you’d give me any news of the group.”

  The men looked surprised. The larger one rattled his spoon in his coffee cup; he was uncomfortable talking to women in public places.

  “Don’t know much, ma’am,” he said, finally. “Call nearly killed a sheriff in Presidio. They don’t know yet whether the man will live. Call was getting his deputy out of jail and just went wild. He got his deputy and an old Indian he uses to track down bandits.”

  “That’s my husband. He oughtn’t to have been in jail, he’s never broken the law,” Lorena said.

  “Well, you don’t have to break much law out in Joe Doniphan’s part of the country,” the large Ranger said. “He’d arrest you for spittin’, if he didn’t like your looks.”

  “I guess Captain Call didn’t like his looks,” the other Ranger said.

  “Thank you, I appreciate the news,” Lorena said, politely.

  She went back to her table in a happier frame of mind. Pea was alive, and with the Captain. She didn’t like the Captain, but he was able enough. He would protect Pea until she found him.

  When the two Rangers left the room, they didn’t look at Lorena so hard. They even stopped for a moment, and tipped their hats.

  9.

  THE EVENING OF the second day, as the party traveled east from Presidio, Call, Brookshire, the two deputies, and Famous Shoes climbed out of the Maravilla Canyon just at dusk and made a camp. The winter sun was filling the canyon behind them with red light.

  “That old man who kills bears is coming with his dogs,” Famous Shoes remarked. “I saw his track on the Salt Fork of the Brazos, but then, he was going north. I did not expect him to be coming this way.”

  “If it’s Ben Lily, he don’t ask nobody’s opinion when he changes directions,” Pea Eye said. Twice the old bear hunter had turned up at their farmhouse on the Red River, on his way to kill cougars in the Palo Duro Canyon. He had killed the last bears in the Palo Duro years before, but there were many cougars, and from time to time, Ben Lily rested from his lifelong bear hunt and killed cougars for a while instead.

  “I’ll feed him, but I won’t feed his dogs,” Call said. “It don’t take that many dogs to run lions, and I doubt there’s any bears left in Texas for him to run. He’s killed them all.”

  A few minutes later, they heard the baying of six or seven dogs. In the still, silent night it was hard to tell how far away Ben Lily and his dog pack might be.

  “He is like me, no horse,” Famous Shoes said. “I doubt he can finish off the lions, in the time he has left. He is an old man.

  “Who’s this?” Brookshire asked. He had never heard of the person they were talking about, though that fact was not particularly odd. Six months ago, he had scarcely even heard of Texas, and could not have named one living Texan. Now he knew several Texans in person, and several more by reputation.

  “He’s a
hunter, he don’t do nothing else,” Pea Eye said. “I don’t guess he ever has done nothing else.”

  “They say he hunted all the bears out of Louisiana and Arkansas before he come here,” Deputy Plunkert said. Since leaving Presidio, the deputy had been in a lighter mood. They were on their way to San Angelo, which was not that long a distance from Laredo. If they were successful and captured the Garza boy promptly, he might be on his way home within two weeks. Just being north of the border made him feel a lot better about life. Once he got home, he meant to plan his life so that he never had to enter Mexico again. If necessary, he and Doobie would move north, to San Antonio, or even Austin, to avoid the possibility that anything would require him to cross the border again.

  As the winter night deepened and the half-moon rose, they heard the baying of Ben Lily’s dogs, coming closer.

  “If the man travels so much, maybe he’ll know something,” Brookshire suggested. “He’s coming from the east, and the last robbery was east, unless there’s been one we don’t know about.”

  “No, he won’t know anything, he only pays attention to bears and lions,” Call said. “Humans don’t interest him. If he was on the track of a bear or cougar and a train was being robbed right in front of him, I doubt he’d even stop to look.”

  Many times, over the years, Call had encountered the hunter, but on no occasion had he gotten any cooperation from him. Ben Lily expected to get information, not give it. He had no use for civilizations, nor for society, nor individuals, and was even impatient with his dogs. All he liked to do was kill bears. He only hunted lions to pass the time, or to earn a little money now and then, from ranchers who wanted lions or wolves cleaned off their ranches.

  Toward midnight, the horses and mules began to snort and whinny. They pulled at their picket ropes. Call got up and went to quiet the animals, and when he had them calm, he walked east about a mile, meaning to intercept the dogs. Ben Lily usually traveled with a pack of eight or ten, and eight or ten dogs running into camp might spook the horses so badly that one or two might injure themselves. Call had only a sidearm with him. He did not expect trouble. Ben Lily’s dogs were usually shy of humans, since they rarely saw any, other than the old hunter himself.

  Call’s hands were aching. He wished he had a little whiskey, although he had never been a drinker, really. Augustus, his old partner, had been the drinker. But in the last few winters, particularly if he happened to be at home in his shack on the Goodnight ranch, Call had taken to using a glass or two of whiskey in order to help him sleep. A doctor in Amarillo had assured him that a glass or two would be medicinal. Even with the whiskey, he frequently awoke as early as two A.M., and had little to do but pace around the cabin until dawn came.

  The next whiskey to be had was at Judge Roy Bean’s saloon, three days away. Call had not yet decided whether to pay the judge a visit. He wasn’t quite as uncooperative as Ben Lily—nobody was as uncooperative as Ben Lily—but he ran him a close race. Roy Bean was cranky, and in his conversation, he never strayed far from the subject of money. On the other hand, little that occurred on the border escaped his attention. A visit to Roy Bean would take them out of their way. The train had been robbed near San Angelo. But of course, the Garza boy had time to be back in Mexico, or perhaps back in Crow Town, depending on which way he had felt inclined to go. The next train stopped by the boy might be leaving Saltillo, or Tucumcari, or almost anywhere.

  While Call was thinking of Roy Bean and his harsh tongue, the dogs began to bay again. This time, they sounded farther away than they had the last time they howled. Perhaps they were running ahead of the old hunter, on the spoor of a lion, and maybe the lion had doubled back.

  Just as Call was settling down to enjoy his solitude—he still liked to separate himself from the camp for an hour or two, at night—Famous Shoes came walking through the moonlight. Call felt a little irritated. He needed his solitary hours. They helped him clear his head, and think through the next few days of whatever campaign he was waging. Why wouldn’t the old Indian stay put? Call slept little, but Famous Shoes, who was older, slept even less.

  “Now those dogs are going east,” Famous Shoes said. “I think they must be chasing a mule deer.”

  “No, they would have run it down by now if it was a mule deer,” Call said. “That many dogs will run a mule deer to death pretty quick.”

  Famous Shoes ignored the correction, which he thought invalid. It could well be a large, well-fed mule deer who was not ready to die just because Ben Lily had come along with his dogs. The mule deer might have had a long start, too. But Famous Shoes saw no point in arguing with the Captain. Call did not accept argument, from his men or from anyone.

  “They could be after those two wolves whose tracks I saw this morning,” he replied. “The dogs might be running those wolves.”

  Famous Shoes had just stopped speaking when they heard the sound of gunshots, coming from the direction where they had last heard the dogs. There were many gunshots. In the Indian days, Call had been competent at counting gunshots, for it was a way of estimating the enemy’s strength. But he was out of practice. He would have guessed that about forty shots were fired. In a lull, they heard the yelping of one of the dogs. It had been wounded in the gunfight, probably.

  There were four or five more gunshots, scattered, and then silence.

  “Somebody shot those dogs, that’s what I think,” Famous Shoes said. He was a little agitated. The flurry of shots had been an unwelcome surprise. It took several men to shoot that many dogs so rapidly. But what kind of men would shoot dogs in the middle of the night?

  “Listen a minute,” Call said. “They could have been shooting at whatever the dogs were chasing. If that’s it, they weren’t Ben Lily’s dogs. Ben Lily travels alone and shoots a rifle. What we heard were mainly pistol shots.”

  They listened for fifteen minutes. There were no more gunshots, and no dogs howled.

  “They probably shot the dogs. I’d like to know why,” Call said. “Let’s go to camp.”

  When Call got back to camp, all three men were sound asleep. Probably that was because the weather had warmed up. For the first time, they weren’t so freezing cold.

  Call expected no better of Brookshire or Deputy Plunkert, but he was irritated with Pea Eye. It was a small lapse, but a lapse nonetheless. As long as he and Pea Eye had been camping together, they had consulted about night duties—who would sleep first, who would sleep second. Never before, no matter how tired he might be, had Pea Eye just gone to sleep without discussing these arrangements. Of course, Call had lapsed himself, by leaving the camp without assigning a watch. But he had done that often, through the years, and when he did it, Pea Eye always stayed awake until he returned.

  It wasn’t like Pea Eye, going to sleep in dangerous country. It made Call wonder if urging Pea Eye to leave his family and join him had really been wise. He had done it from habit. Pea Eye was the last of his men, and one of the few people Call trusted. It had seemed natural to call on him, and it had disturbed him when Pea Eye refused to come.

  Now he found that having him along disturbed him almost as much. Pea Eye wasn’t behaving like himself. It might be because he was no longer the Ranger that Call had known and counted on for so long. He was a farmer and a husband, with the habits of a farmer and a husband, rather than the habits of a fighting man. Probably Pea Eye had been right, in deciding to stay with his family. Loyalty had made him change his mind, but foolishly, and too late. If he wasn’t going to be able to be the competent Ranger he had been, then staying home was the better choice.

  Pea Eye woke up the minute Captain Call reentered the camp, and immediately realized that he had been derelict.

  “Oh, dern, I dropped off,” he said. “I intended to stand watch.”

  “Well, Famous Shoes was up, and so was I,” Call said. “Somebody just shot Ben Lily’s dog pack, if them dogs we’ve been hearing really belonged to Ben Lily. If they weren’t, I’d like to know who would be running in
these parts, with eight or ten dogs.”

  Pea Eye felt such embarrassment at having gone to sleep that he scarcely attended to what the Captain was saying. He had no intention of going to sleep, when the Captain left the camp. The Captain always left the camp, for an hour or two in the evening. When he returned, the two of them would work out watch duties, for what remained of the night. Pea Eye usually stood the first watch.

  But this evening, he had simply gone to sleep. The Captain didn’t mention it. He had even been polite enough to change the subject, but Pea Eye knew he would remember it. The very fact that he hadn’t been reprimanded made Pea Eye feel at a loss. In fact, he had been feeling at a loss from the moment the Captain led them out of Presidio. Pea Eye should have been feeling fine. With Famous Shoes’ help, he had been able to connect with the Captain with only a minimum of travel. The Garza boy was probably east of them now. The whole job might be over soon, and he could go right home, back to Lorie and the children.

  But Pea Eye didn’t feel fine. He felt awkward; maybe he had irritated the Captain too much, by refusing to go with him initially. Maybe the Captain, as he got older, was becoming even harder to please. At no time had he been easy to please.

  But whatever it was, there was a difference in the way he and the Captain were, and it made Pea Eye all the more homesick. He felt he had been foolish, after all, to leave home. The Captain had promptly recruited another deputy, and he had the Yankee, Brookshire, as well. The Yankee seemed to be fairly competent. He had made the campfires, both nights, and had done it well. The other deputy was no good at packing horses or mules, but was handy enough at unpacking them. There was not much for Pea Eye to do. Standing watch was one area where his experience would have been useful, but he had gone right off to sleep and hadn’t even heard the shots that killed Ben Lily’s dogs, if they were Ben Lily’s dogs.