Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Dern, I missed listening to you, Gus,” Pea Eye said as Augustus was mounting to leave.

Call rode a little way out of camp with Augustus. A flock of cranes came in and settled on the banks of the river.

“This trip is hard on boys,” Augustus said. “We’ve lost two already, and the young sheriff lost a boy and a girl.” They stopped for a smoke. In the distance the night guard was just going out to the herd.

“We should have stayed lawmen and left these boys at home,” Augustus said. “Half of ’em will get drowned or hit by lightning before we hit Montana. We should have just gone ourselves and found some rough old town and civilized it.

That’s the way to make a reputation these days.” “I don’t want a reputation,” Call said. “I’ve had enough outlaws shoot at me. I’d rather have a ranch.” “Well, I got to admit I still like a fight,” Augustus said. “They sharpen the wits. The only other thing that does that is talking to women, which is usually more dangerous.” “Now you’ve ended up the caretaker of that girl,” Call said. “She ain’t the woman you’re after.” “Nope, she ain’t,” Augustus said. He had been pondering that point himself. Of course, for all he knew Clara was still a happily married woman and all his thinking about her no more than idle daydreams. He had long wanted to marry her, and yet life was continually slipping other women between her and him. It had happened with his wives, earlier.

“I wish you’d been married,” he said to Call.

“Why?” Call asked.

“I’d like your thoughts on the subject, that’s why,” Augustus said. “Only you ain’t got no experience, so you can’t be no help.” “Well, I never come close,” Call said. “I don’t know why.” “No interest,” Augustus said. “Also, you ain’t never figured yourself out, and you don’t like to take chances.” “I could argue that,” Call said. “I’ve taken my share of chances, I guess.” “In battle, not in love,” Augustus said. “Unless you want to call what you done with Maggie taking a chance.” “Why do you always want to talk about that?” Call said.

“Because it was as close as you ever came to doing something normal,” Augustus said. “It’s all I’ve got to work with. Here you’ve brought these cattle all this way, with all this inconvenience to me and everybody else, and you don’t have no reason in this world to be doing it.” Call didn’t answer. He sat smoking. The Irishman had begun to sing to the herd.

“Since you know so much about me, have you got any suggestions?” he asked.

“Certainly have,” Augustus said. “Take these cattle over to the nearest cow town and sell ’em. Pay off whatever boys is still alive.” “Then what?” “I’ll go deal with the ladies for a while,” Augustus said. “You take Pea and Deets and ride up the Purgatory River until you find Blue Duck. Then either you’ll kill him or he’ll kill all of you.” “What about the boy?” Call asked.

“Newt can go with me and learn to be a ladies’ man,” Augustus said. “You won’t claim him anyway, and the last boy that got near Blue Duck had his head smashed in with a rifle butt.” “Nope,” Call said. “I’m primed to see Montana. If we’re the first ones there we can take our pick of the land.” “You take your pick,” Augustus said. “I’m in the mood to travel. Once you boys get settled I may go to China, for all you know.” And with that he rode off. Call smoked a while, feeling odd and a little sad. Jake had proved a coward and would never be part of the old crew again. Of course, he hadn’t been for ten years—the old crew was mostly a memory, though Pea and Deets were still there, and Gus, in his strange way. But it was all changing.

He saw the girl come out of the tent when Gus dismounted. She was just a shape in the twilight. Gus said she wouldn’t talk much, not even to him. Call didn’t intend to try her. He loped a mile or two to the west and put the mare on her lead rope. The sky overhead was still light and there was a little fingernail moon.JAKE SPENT MOST of his days in a place called Bill’s Saloon, a little clapboard place on the Trinity River bluffs. It was a two- story building. The whores took the top story and the gamblers and cowboys used the bottom. From the top floor there were usually cattle in sight trailing north, small herds and large. Once in a while a foreman came in for liquor and met Jake. When they found out he had been north to Montana, some tried to hire him, but Jake just laughed at them. The week after he left, the Hat Creek herd had been a good week. He couldn’t draw a bad card, and by the time the week was over he had a stake enough to last him a month or two.

“I believe I’ll just stay,” he told the foreman. “I like the view.” He also liked a long-legged whore named Sally Skull—at least that was what she called herself. She ran the whoring establishment for Bill Sloan, who owned the saloon. There were five girls but only three rooms, and with the herds coming through in such numbers the cowboys were in the place practically all the time. Sally had alarm clocks outside the rooms—she gave each man twenty minutes, after which the big alarm clocks went off with a sound like a firebell. When that happened, Sally would throw the door open and watch while the cowboys got dressed. Sally was skinny but tall, with short black hair. She was taller than all but a few of the cowboys, and the sight of her standing there unnerved most of the men so much they could hardly button their buttons. The majority of them were just boys, anyway, and not used to whorehouse customs and alarm clocks.

One or two of the bolder ones complained, but Sally was unimpressed and uncompromising.

“If you can’t squirt your squirt in twenty minutes, you need a doctor, not a whore,” she said.

Sally drank hard from the time she woke up until the time she passed out. She kept one of the three rooms for her own exclusive use—the one with a little porch off it. When Jake got tired of card playing he would come and sit with his feet propped up on the porch rail and watch the wagons move up and down the streets of Fort Worth. Once Sally had the alarm clocks set she would come in for a few minutes herself, with a whiskey glass, and help him watch. He had hit it off with her at once, and she let him sleep in her bed, but the bed and the privileges that went with it cost him ten dollars a day—a sum he readily agreed to, since he was on a winning streak. Once he had got his first ten dollars’ worth, he felt free to discuss the arrangements.

“What if we don’t do nothing but sleep?” he asked. “Is it still ten dollars?” “Yep,” Sally said.

“I can buy a dern bed for the night a sight cheaper than that,” Jake pointed out.

“If it’s got me in it, it ain’t just a bed,” Sally said. “Besides, you get to sit on the balcony all you want to, unless one of my good sweethearts is in town.” It turned out that Sally Skull had quite a number of good sweethearts, some of them so rank that Jake didn’t see how she could stand them. She didn’t mind mule skinners or buffalo hunters; in fact, she seemed to prefer them.

“Hell, I’m the only one of your customers that’s taken a bath this year,” Jake complained. “You could take up with bankers and lawyers, and the sheets wouldn’t stink so.” “I like ’em muddy and bloody,” Sally said. “I ain’t nice, this ain’t a nice place, and it ain’t a nice life. I’d take a hog to bed if I could find one that walked on two legs.” Jake had seen hogs that kept cleaner than some of the men Sally Skull took upstairs, but something about her raw behavior stirred him, and he stayed with her and paid the daily ten dollars. The cowboys that came through were very poor cardplayers, so he could usually make his fee back in an hour. He tried other whores in other saloons, skinny ones and fat ones, but with them a time came when he would remember Lorena and immediately lose interest. Lorena was the most beautiful woman he had ever known, and her beauty grew in his memory. He thought of her often with a pang, but also with anger, for in his view it was entirely her own fault that she had been stolen. Whatever was happening to her, it was her punishment for stubbornness. She could easily have been living with him in a decent hotel in Austin or Fort Worth.

Sally Skull had bad teeth and a thin body with no particular beauties. Her long legs were skinny as a bird’s, and she had nothing that could match Lorena’s fine bosom. If anyone said a wrong word to her they got a tongue-lashing that would make the coarsest man blush. If one of her girls got too sweet on a cowboy, which could always happen in her profession, Sal promptly got rid of her, shoving her out the back door of the saloon into the dusty street. “Don’t get in love around me,” she would say. “Go do it in the alley if you want to give it away.” Once she fired three girls in one day for lazing around with the boys. For the next week she serviced most of the customers herself.

Jake decided he was crazy for taking up with Sally—she lived too raw for him. Besides the drinking and the men, she also took powders of various kinds, which she bought from a druggist. She would take the powders and lay beside him wide- eyed, not saying a word for hours. Still, he would be awakened at dawn when she pulled the cork out of the whiskeybottle she kept by the bed. After a few swigs to wake herself up, she would always want him, no matter that she had serviced twenty cowboys the night before. Sally flared with the first light—he couldn’t think what he liked about her, yet he couldn’t deny her, either. She made a hundred dollars a day, or more, but spent most of it on her powders or on dresses, most of which she only wore once or twice.

When the Hat Creek outfit passed through, some of the men came in and said hello to Jake, but he froze them out. It was their fault that Lorena was lost, and he had no more use for them. But tales about him were told, and they soon got back to Sally Skull.

“Why’d you let that Indian get your whore?” she asked him bluntly.