Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Then they were through the cattle. She looked, hoping to see Gus or one of the cowboys—anyone who might help her.

But she saw no one.

When the sound of the stampede died, Lorena let go all hope. She had been stolen by a man Gus said was bad. The man put the horses into a lope, and it seemed to Lorena they were going to lope forever. Blue Duck didn’t look back and didn’t speak. At first she was only conscious of how scared she was, though she felt flickers of anger at Jake for letting it happen.

She knew it was as much her fault as Jake’s, but she soon stopped caring whose fault it was. She knew she was as good as dead, and would never get to see San Francisco, the one thing she had always looked forward to. Soon even that loss and the prospect of death ceased to mean much, she grew so tired. She had never ridden so hard. Before morning, all she could think of was stopping, although for all she knew, when they did stop something bad would happen. But in time it came to seem to be worth it just to stop.

Yet when they did stop, in the faint dawn, it was only for five minutes. They had crossed many creeks during the night.

Her legs had been wet several times. In a little creek scarcely five feet wide he decided to let the horses water. He untied Lorena’s ankles and nodded for her to get down. She did, and almost fell, her limbs were so weak and numb. It was dark in the little creek bed, but light on the ridge above it. As she stood by her horse, holding onto a stirrup until some feeling came back in her legs, Blue Duck opened his trousers and made water, while the horses drank.

“Get to it, if you plan to,” he said, hardly looking at her.

Lorena couldn’t. She was too scared. And it didn’t occur to her to drink, an omission she would soon regret. Blue Duck drank and then motioned for her to mount again. He quickly retied her ankles. They were moving again as the dawn came. At first the light made her hopeful. Jake or somebody might be riding after them. They might pass a town or a farm—somebody might see that she was being stolen.

But the country they rode through was completely empty. It was a country of rocky hills and ridges and a hot, cloudless sky. A blankness came to her, replacing her foolish hope. Blue Duck never looked back. He seemed to be taking the horses through the roughest country he could find, but he never slackened his pace.

As the day grew hotter, she became thirsty, so thirsty that it was painful to remember that she had stood near a creek and hadn’t drunk. She could remember the sound the creek made as it ran over the rocks. At moments it haunted her; most of the time she was too tired to remember anything. It seemed to her the horses would die if they just rode all day.

They rode at a steady trot. In time she regretted, too, that she had not relieved herself—she had been too scared. Hours passed and they crossed creek after creek, but the man didn’t stop again. He just kept riding. The need to relieve herself became an agony—it was mixed with thirst and fatigue, until she didn’t know which was worse. Then she realized that her pants were wet and her thighs stinging—she had gone while she was dozing. Soon her thighs felt scalded from the urine and the constant rubbing of the saddle. The pain was minor compared to her thirst. During the afternoon, with thesun beating down so hot that her shirt was as wet from sweat as if she had swum a river in it, she thought she was going to break down, that she would have to beg the man for water. Her lips were cracked and the sweat off her face ran into the cracks and stung her, but she licked at it. At least it was wet and even a second of wetness on her tongue felt good.

She had never been so thirsty in her life, and had not imagined it could be such a pain. The most terrible part was when they crossed water—for creeks were numerous. She would look down at the water as they crossed, and she wanted to beg. She leaned over at one of the deeper creeks, trying to get a little water in her hand, but she couldn’t reach it, though it splashed beneath the horse’s belly. She cried then, tears mingling with the sweat. Her head throbbed from the beating sunlight, and she began to lose hold on life for minutes at a time. She felt she might cross over. What a joke it would be on the man if, when he got her wherever he was taking her, she was dead. He wouldn’t get much from her dead.

But she didn’t die—she just got thirstier and thirstier. Her tongue began to bother her. It seemed to fill her mouth, and when she licked at the drops of sweat it felt as large as her hand.

Then, as she was dreaming of water, she opened her eyes to find that they were stopped by a sizable stream. Blue Duck was untying her ankles.

“I’d say you wet your pants,” he said.

Lorena didn’t care what he said. Her legs wouldn’t work, but she wanted the water so bad she crawled to it, getting her pants muddy, and her arms. She couldn’t drink fast enough—in gulping the water she got some up her nose. While she was drinking, Blue Duck waded in beside her and pulled her up by her hair.

“Don’t drink so fast,” he said. “You’ll founder.” Then he pushed her head under and held it there. Lorena thought he meant to drown her and tried to grab his legs to pull herself out; but evidently he just wanted to give her a bath, because he soon let go and walked back to the horses. Lorena sat in the water, her clothes soaked, not caring. She drank until she couldn’t drink any more. Blue Duck had unsaddled the horses, and they were standing in the river, drinking.

When she waded out of the river, Blue Duck was sitting under a tree, chewing on a piece of dried meat. He fished in his saddlebag and gave her a piece. Lorena didn’t feel hungry—but then she remembered she had not felt thirsty that morning, either. She took the piece of jerky.

“We’ll rest a spell till it’s dark,” he said.

She looked at the sun, which was not high. It wouldn’t be much of a rest. She nibbled at the meat, which was so hard her teeth could barely dent it. She went and sat in the shade of a small tree growing by the creek.

Blue Duck hobbled the horses, then came and looked down at her. “I got a treatment for women that try to run away,” he said casually. “I cut a little hole in their stomachs and pull out a gut and wrap it around a limb. Then I drag them thirty or forty feet and tie them down. That way they can watch the coyotes come and eat their guts.” He went back and lay down under a tree, adjusted his saddlebags for a pillow, and was soon asleep.

Lorena was too tired for his threat to scare her much. She wasn’t going to run away and give him a reason to cut a hole in her stomach. She did think she was going to die, though. She felt death had her, in the form of the Comanchero. She wouldn’t live to be cut or be gnawed by coyotes. She would die if he touched her, she felt. She was too tired to care much. The one thing that crossed her mind was that she should have gone with Xavier. He was a man of his word, and no worse in most respects than other men. And yet she had been determined to go riding off with Jake, who had not even looked after her three weeks. Jake was probably still in Austin, playing cards. She didn’t particularly blame him—playing cards beat most things you could do.

She dozed for what seemed like a minute and woke to find Blue Duck shaking her. It was dusk, the sun just down.

“Let’s git,” he said. “We don’t want to miss the cool of the evening.” Once again they rode all night. Lorena slept in the saddle and would have fallen off if she hadn’t been tied in the stirrups.

At dawn he let her down again, by another creek, and this time she did as he did—peed and drank. They rode all day again through empty country, never seeing a horseman, a town, even an animal. The only thing she noticed was that there were fewer trees. She grew so tired of riding that she would have been glad to die, if only because it meant being stopped. She wanted sleep more than she had ever wanted anything. The sun blazed all day. When she dozed, sweat stood on her eyelids and wet her face when she awoke.