Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Augustus went quickly to the camp and tied each body in a blanket. Blue Duck had been so confident of his victims that he hadn’t even bothered to shoot. The deputy and the girl had been knifed, ripped open from navel to breastbone.

Evidently it hadn’t been enough for the girl, because her head had been smashed in too. So had the boy’s, probably with the butt of the rifle Gus had given him. The deputy had been castrated as well. Using saddle strings, Gus tied the blankets as tightly around them as he could. It was strange that three such people had been on the Canadian, but then, that was the frontier—people were always wandering where they had no business being. He himself had done it and got away with it—had been a Ranger in Texas rather than a lawyer in Tennessee. The three torn specimens he was tying into their shrouds had not been so lucky.

He carried the bodies up to the prairie, laid them in their shallow graves and helped July pile rocks on the graves, a pitiful expedient that wouldn’t deter the varmints for long. In the other camp he had merely laid the buffalo hunters and the dead Kiowas in a line and left them.

“I guess he took Joe’s horse,” July said.

“Yes, and his life,” Augustus said. “I’m sure he had more interest in the horse.” “If you’re going after him I’d like to try and help,” July said.

“I got nothing to go after him on,” Augustus said. “He’s better mounted than us, and this ain’t no place to go chasing a man who’s got you out-horsed. He’s headed for the Purgatory this time, I bet.” “The what?” July asked.

“It’s a river up in Colorado,” Augustus said. “He’s probably got another gang there. We best let him go this time.” “I hate to,” July said. He had begun to imagine confronting the man and shooting him down.

“Son, this is a sad thing,” Augustus said. “Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don’t you go attempting vengeance. You’ve got more urgent business. If I ever run into Blue Duck I’ll kill him. But if I don’t, somebody else will.

He’s big and mean, but sooner or later he’ll meet somebody bigger and meaner. Or a snake will bite him or a horse will fall on him, or he’ll get hung, or one of his renegades will shoot him in the back. Or he’ll just get old and die.”He went over and tightened the girth on his saddle.

“Don’t be trying to give back pain for pain,” he said. “You can’t get even measures in business like this. You best go find your wife.” July looked across the river at the unending prairie. If I find her she’ll hate me worse now, he thought.

Augustus watched him mount, thinking how young he looked. He couldn’t be much over twenty. But he was old enough to have found a wife and lost her—not that it took long to lose one, necessarily.

“Where is this Adobe Walls place?” July asked.

“It ain’t far down the river,” Augustus said, “but I’d pass by it if I were you. Your wife ain’t there. If she went up the Arkansas I’d imagine she’s up in Kansas, in one of the towns.” “I would hate to miss her,” July said.

If she’s at Adobe Walls, you’d do better to miss her, Augustus thought, but he didn’t say it. He shook hands with the young sheriff and watched him mount and ride across the river. Soon he dipped out of sight, in the rough breaks to the north. When he reappeared on the Vast plain, he was only a tiny speck.

Augustus went to Lorena. He had spent most of the night simply holding her in his arms, hoping that body heat would finally help her stop trembling and shaking. She had not said a word so far, but she would look him in the face, which was a good sign. He had seen women captives too broken even to raise their eyes.

“Come on, Lorie,” he said. “Let’s take a little ride.” She stood up obediently, like a child.

“We’ll just ride over east a ways and see if we can find us some shade,” Augustus said. “Then we’ll loll around for a couple of weeks and let Call and the boys catch up with us. They’ll be coming with the cattle pretty soon. By then I expect you’ll be feeling better.” Lorena didn’t answer, but she mounted without help and rode beside him all day.

CALL EXPECTED GUS to be back in a day or two. Maybe he’d have the girl and maybe he wouldn’t, but it was not likely he’d be gone long. Gus was a hard traveler and usually overtook whoever he was after promptly, arrested them or dispatched them, and got back.

For a day or two he didn’t give Gus’s absence much thought. He was irritated with Jake Spoon for having been so troublesome and undependable, but then, he partly had himself to blame for that. He should have set Jake straight before they left Lonesome Dove—informed him in no uncertain terms that the girl wasn’t coming.

When the third day passed and Gus wasn’t back, Call began to be uneasy. Augustus had survived so much that Call didn’t give his safety much thought. Even men accustomed all their lives to sudden death didn’t expect it to happen to Gus McCrae. The rest of them might fall by the wayside, their mortality taking gentle or cruel forms, but Gus would just go on talking.

Yet five days passed, and then a week, and he didn’t return. The herd crossed the Brazos without incident, and then the Trinity, and there was still no Gus.

They camped west of Fort Worth and Call allowed the men to go into town. It would be the last town they would see until they hit Ogallala, and it might be that some of them wouldn’t live to hit Ogallala. He let them go carouse, keeping just the boys, to help him hold the herd. Dish Boggett volunteered to stay, too—he still had his thoughts on Lorena and was not about to leave camp while there was a chance that Gus would bring her back.

“Dern, he’s behaving like a deacon,” Soupy said. “I expect to hear him preach a sermon any day.” Needle Nelson took a more charitable view. “He’s just in love,” he said. “He don’t want to go trashing around with us.” “By God, he’ll wish he had before we hit Nebraska,” Jasper Fant said. “You don’t see me waiting. I’d like to drink a couple of more bottles of good whiskey before I have to cross any more of them cold rivers. They got real cold rivers up north, I hear. Some of them even got ice in them, I guess.” “If I was to see a chunk of ice in a river, I’d rope it and we could use it to water our drinks,” Bert Borum said.

Bert was inordinately proud of his skill with a rope, the men thought. He was indeed quick and accurate, but the men were tired of hearing him brag on himself and were constantly on the lookout for things he could rope that might cause him to miss. Once Bert had silenced them for a whole day by roping a coyote on the first throw, but they were not the sort of men to keep silent long.

“Go rope that dern bull, if you’re so good at roping,” Needle Nelson said, referring to the Texas bull. The bull seemed to resent it when the cowboys sat in groups—he would position himself fifty yards away and paw the earth and bellow.