Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

They played until the rustler’s moon had crossed to the other side of town. Lorena brightened so much that Dish Boggett fell worse in love with her than ever; she filled him with such an ache that he didn’t mind that Xavier won half of his next month’s wages. The ache was very much with him when he finally decided there was no hope and stepped out into the moonlight to unhitch his horse.

Augustus had come with him, while Lippy sneaked out the back door to retrieve his hat. The light in Lorena’s room came on while they were standing there, and Dish looked up at it, catching just her shadow as she passed in front of the lamp.

“Well, Dish, so you’re leaving us,” Augustus said. “Which outfit’s lucky enough to have you this trip?” The quick glimpse of Lorena put Dish in such perplexity of spirit that he could hardly focus on the question.

“Reckon I’m going with the UU’s,” he said, his eyes still on the window.

The cause of Dish’s melancholy was not lost on Augustus.

“Why that’s Shanghai Pierce’s bunch,” he said.

“Yup,” Dish said, starting to lift his foot to his stirrup.

“Now hold on a minute, Dish,” Augustus said. He fished in his pocket and came out with two dollars, which he handed to the surprised cowboy.

“If you’re riding north with old Shang we may never meet again this side of the bourn,” Augustus said, deliberately adopting the elegiac tone. “At the very least you’ll get your hearing ruint. That voice of his could deafen a rock.” Dish had to smile. Gus seemed unaware that one of the more persistent topics of dispute on the Texas range was whether his voice was louder than Shanghai Pierce’s. It was commonly agreed that the two men had no close rivals when it came to being deafening.

“Why’d you give me this money?” Dish asked. He had never been able to figure Gus out.

“You asked me for it, didn’t you?” Augustus said. “If I’d given it to you before the game started I might as well have handed it to Wanz, and he don’t need no two dollars of mine.” There was a pause while Dish tried to puzzle out the real motive, if there was one.

“I’d not want it thought I’d refuse a simple loan to a friend,” Augustus said. “Specially not one who’s going off with Shanghai Pierce.” “Oh, Mr. Pierce don’t go with us,” Dish said. “He goes over to New Orleans and takes the train.” Augustus said nothing, and Dish soon concluded that he was to get the loan, even if the aggravation of Mr. Pierce’s company wasn’t involved.

“Well, much obliged then,” Dish said. “I’ll see you in the fall if not sooner.” “There’s no need for you to ride off tonight,” Augustus said. “You can throw your blanket down on our porch, if you like.” “I might do that,” Dish said. Feeling rather awkward, he rehitched his horse and went to the door of the Dry Bean, wanting to get upstairs before Lorie turned off her light.

“I believe I left something,” he said lamely, at the door of the saloon.

“Well, I won’t wait, Dish,” Augustus said. “But we’ll expect you for breakfast if you care to stay.” As he strolled away he heard the boy’s footsteps hitting the stairs at the back of the saloon. Dish was a good boy, not much less green than Newt, though a more experienced hand. Best to help such boys have their moment of fun, before life’s torments snatched them.

From a distance, standing in the pale street, he saw two shadows against the yellow box of light from Lorie’s room. She wasn’t that set against Dish, it seemed to him, and she had been pepped up from the card playing. Maybe even Lorie would be surprised and find a liking for the boy. Occasionally he had known sporting women to marry and do well at it—ifLorie were so inclined Dish Boggett would not be a bad man to settle on.

The light had gone off at the Pumphreys’ and the armadillo was no longer there to roll its shadow at him. The pigs were stretched out on the porch, lying practically snout to snout. Augustus was about to kick them off to make room for the guest he more or less expected, but they looked so peaceful he relented and went around to the back door. If Dish Boggett, with his prairie dog of a mustache, considered himself too refined to throw his bedroll beside two fine pigs, then he could rout them out himself.

WHATEVER SUBJECT Augustus had on his mind when he went to bed was generally still sitting there when he woke up. He was such a short sleeper that the subject had no time to slip out of mind. Five hours was as much as he ever slept at a stretch, and four hours was more nearly his average.

“A man that sleeps all night wastes too much of life,” he often said. “As I see it the days was made for looking and the nights for sport.” Since sport was what he had been brooding about when he got home, it was still in his thoughts when he arose, which he did about 4 A.M., to see to the breakfast—in his view too important a meal to entrust to a Mexican bandit. The heart of his breakfast was a plenitude of sourdough biscuits, which he cooked in a Dutch oven out in the backyard. His pot dough had been perking along happily for over ten years, and the first thing he did upon rising was check it out. The rest of the breakfast was secondary, just a matter of whacking off a few slabs of bacon and frying a panful of pullet eggs. Bolivar could generally be trusted to deal with the coffee.

Augustus cooked his biscuits outside for three reasons. One was because the house was sure to heat up well enough anyway during the day, so there was no point in building any more of a fire than was necessary for bacon and eggs. Two was because biscuits cooked in a Dutch oven tasted better than stove-cooked biscuits, and three was because he liked to be outside to catch the first light. A man that depended on an indoor cookstove would miss the sunrise, and if he missed sunrise in Lonesome Dove, he would have to wait out a long stretch of heat and dust before he got to see anything so pretty.

Augustus molded his biscuits and went out and got a fire going in the Dutch oven while it was still good dark—just enough of a fire to freshen up his bed of mesquite coals. When he judged the oven was ready he brought the biscuits and his Bible out in the backyard. He set the biscuits in the oven, and sat down on a big black kettle that they used on the rare occasions when they rendered lard. The kettle was big enough to hold a small mule, if anybody had wanted to boil one, but for the last few years it had remained upside down, making an ideal seat.

The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the backyard was filled with little rainbows as the sun touched the dew.

It was tribute enough to sunup that it could make even chaparral bushes look beautiful, Augustus thought, and he watched the process happily, knowing it would only last a few minutes. The sun spread reddish-gold light through the shining bushes, among which a few goats wandered, bleating. Even when the sun rose above the low bluffs to the south, a layer of light lingered for a bit at the level of the chaparral, as if independent of its source. Then the sun lifted clear, like an immense coin. The dew quickly died, and the light that filled the bushes like red dust dispersed, leaving clear, slightly bluish air.

It was good reading light by then, so Augustus applied himself for a few minutes to the Prophets. He was not overly religious, but he did consider himself a fair prophet and liked to study the styles of his predecessors. They were mostly too long-winded, in his view, and he made no effort to read them verse for verse—he just had a look here and there, while the biscuits were browning.

While he was enjoying a verse or two of Amos the pigs walked around the corner of the house, and Call, at almost the same moment, stepped out the back door, pulling on his shirt. The pigs walked over and stood directly in front of Augustus. The dew had wet their blue coats.