Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Frog Lip owned five guns of various calibers, and spent most of his time cleaning them. He was a fine marksman. The first day out he brought down a deer at a distance Jake would have considered impossible. Frog Lip seemed to take the shot for granted. Jake had the strong feeling that the black man’s guns would soon be pointed at something besides deer, but he himself didn’t plan to be around to see it.

self didn’t plan to be around to see it.JULY RODE FOR DAYS without seeing any person, or, for that matter, many signs of life except the hawks and buzzards circling in the blue prairie sky. Once he saw a wolf loping along a ridge, and at night he heard coyotes, but the only game he saw were jackrabbits, and it was mostly rabbit he ate.

He kept going north, reminding himself that it was a long way to any towns; but soon the unvarying emptiness of the country began to disturb him, and he was already disturbed enough by the deaths of the three people buried on the Canadian. He thought of them more or less all day. Waking in the gray dawn, he would have Roscoe’s face in his mind; when he dreamed, it was of Roscoe and Joe and the young girl. Several times he cried at the thought of the finality of it.

He had a longing to get them back in places they belonged: Fort Smith, in the case of Roscoe and Joe. He didn’t know where the girl had belonged, though it wasn’t in a grave on the Canadian.

What he was doing—indeed, his whole life—now seemed to him completely futile. He rode through the empty land without hope of anything, simply going on because he had to do something. As he went farther and farther onto the plains, he ceased to be able to imagine Fort Smith as a place where he might ever live and work again. What would he do if he did go back? Sit in the jail where he had worked with Roscoe? Or in the cabin where he had lived with Elmira?

July didn’t see how things could get worse, since he had lost his wife and led three people to their deaths. But four days after he left Augustus, his horse went lame. Some small spiky cactus hidden by the tall prairie grass proved more deadly than a snake. A thorn worked its way far up into the horse’s hoof. July had to tie the horse down to get the thorn out, and even then he was not sure he had got it all. They were three days north of the Cimarron when it happened. Water was scarce and the horse soon too lame to ride. He led the horse, taking it slow, hoping the hoof would get better, but it did no good. The horse was lamed and could put no weight on the hoof at all.

Finally, sadly feeling that he was parting with his last companion in life, July unsaddled the horse and shot him. He left his saddle but took his rifle and started walking east. The next day, from a ridge, he saw a great cloud of buzzards over the place where the horse lay. The sight made him cry.

He walked all day, hoping to cross a creek but finding none. He had a half canteen of water—not enough to get him back to the Cimarron. And he had nothing to eat. He made a dry camp and sat all night on his blanket, so wakeful he thought he would never sleep again. He sat for hours, watching the moon climb high amid the bright stars. He remembered the cold nights in their Arkansas cabin when he was a boy—how his mother piled quilts on top of him and his brothers, how peaceful it seemed under the quilts. Then it seemed like sleep was one of the most wonderful things in life.

July wondered if perhaps the sleep of death would be as good, as comforting and warming, as his boyhood slumber. He had a rifle and a pistol—one pull of the trigger would bring him all the sleep he wanted. In his five years as a lawman he had never shot anyone, though he had a reputation as a dangerous fighter. It would be a joke on everyone if the only person he ever killed was himself. He had always assumed that people who killed themselves were cowards. His own uncle had done it in a painful way, by drinking lye.. His uncle had been deep in debt.

Now, as he sat and watched the moon, killing himself merely seemed sensible. His life had been ruined—surprisingly, inexplicably, swiftly, but ruined for sure. He had made wrong choices all along, and it had cost three lives. Killing himself would put him at one with Roscoe, Janey, Joe—and the horse. They had started traveling together; it would be fitting that they all ended in the same place.

He began to think about which gun to use. The barrel of the rifle gleamed in the moonlight; the pistol was heavy in its holster. He took out the pistol and slowly turned the cylinder, listening to the heavy clicks. But he didn’t put it to his head.

He remembered Elmira. It seemed to him he had to find her, to tell her what had happened to her son. It was true she had never seemed fond of the boy—Elmira had never seemed fond of anyone—but Joe had been her son and she might want to know.

July thought all night. Knowing that he had only to raise the pistol eased his mind a little. He had better go and find Elmira first. He wanted to explain to her that he had never meant to do whatever had caused her to run off. Once that was done, he could go off with the pistol and join his dead.

The next morning he started walking, but he didn’t feel the same. He felt like he no longer belonged to life. It would not have surprised him to see a cloud of buzzards circling over him. In spirit he had gone to visit Roscoe. He finished his water that night, having walked all day through the brown wavy grass. He tried a long shot at a deer but missed. The next morning he was awakened by the cawing of crows. He looked up to see several of them flapping overhead in the early grayness. He was tired from his long day’s walk and didn’t get up immediately. There was nothing to get up for but the bright sun and the shimmering plains. But he kept hearing the crows, cawing and quarreling not far away. When he stood up, he saw a little grove of low trees not two hundred yards away—they weren’t much, but they were trees, and the crows were resting in them.

Among the trees he found a spring—just a trickle of a spring, but it had formed a shallow pool ten feet wide. A black snake was curled on a rock at the water’s edge—it was probably what the crows were complaining about.July spent the day by the spring. He drank, bathed, and soaked his dirty clothes, spreading them out on the grass to dry.

While he rested, a big badger walked up to the spring and July shot him with his pistol. He had never eaten badger, but he ate this one and drank the spring water. Even better than food were the trees. Being in the shade again eased his spirit a little. He could look across the hot prairies for miles, from the comfort of his shade. The sun couldn’t parch him while he was under the trees.

But he couldn’t live forever on spring water and one badger. Besides, he had his chore to do. He waited until the cool of the evening and then set out again. The second day he crossed a wagon track coming from the south. It led him to a running creek, but he saw no wagon. The next day he saw a dust cloud, which turned out to be a small cow herd. The cowboys were mighty surprised to see a lone figure walking toward them from the west, and dumbfounded to learn that he was a sheriff from Arkansas.

“Did you come from California, or where?” the trail boss asked. He was an old white-mustached man named Johns, suspicious at first. Not many men came walking out of Texas. But July soon persuaded the old man to sell him a horse. It was the worst horse in the remuda, but it was a horse. July gave forty dollars for it. The Johns outfit had no saddle to spare, but they did give him directions. They tried to get him to stay the night with them—they had been on the trail six weeks and a stranger was a welcome novelty.

But once he was mounted, July felt a sense of hurry seize him. He ate with them, thanked them again, and left under a rising moon. Four days later, sore from riding bareback on the little sharp-spined bay, he trotted into Dodge City.

risingLONG BEFORE THEY STRUCK the Republican River, Elmira had begun to wonder if any of it was worth it. For two weeks, when they were on the open plain, it rained, hailed, lightning flashed. Everything she owned was wet, and she didn’t like feeling like a muskrat, though it didn’t bother Luke and Zwey. It was cold at night. She slept on wet blankets in the hard wagon and woke up feeling more tired than when she lay down. The plains turned soggy and the wagon bogged time after time. The hides smelled and the food was chancy. The wagon was rough, even when the going was good. She bounced around all day and felt sick to her stomach. If she lost the baby in such a place, she felt she would probably die.

It occurred to her that she had taken a hard route, just to escape July Johnson. Her own folly amused her: she had once thought of herself as smart—but look at where she was. If Dee Boot could see her he would laugh his head off. Dee loved to laugh about the absurd things people did for bad reasons. The fact that she had done it because she wanted to see him would only amuse him more. Dee would tell her she ought to have gone back to Dodge and asked one of the girls to get her work.

Instead, she was driving a mule wagon across northern Kansas. They had been lucky and seen no Indians, but that could always change. Besides, it soon developed that Luke was going to be as much trouble as an Indian. It was something she knew that Zwey hadn’t noticed. Zwey treated her kindly, insofar as he treated her at all. Now that he had got her to come on a trip he seemed well content. She didn’t have to do anything but be there, and he was surprised when she offered to cook, which she mainly did out of boredom and because Zwey and Luke were such dirty cooks she was afraid she would get poisoned if she didn’t take that chore into her own hands. Zwey exhibited no lustful intentions at all—he seemed happy just to rest his eyes on her at the end of the day.

Luke, on the other hand, was a feisty little rabbit who lost no time in making his wants known. In the early morning he would stand and relieve himself in plain sight of her, grinning and looking at her while he did it. Zwey, who slept like a rock, never noticed this strange habit.

Luke was not easy to discourage. Soon he took a new tack, which was to persuade Zwey that when they hunted the two of them ought to hunt in separate directions. It was true that game was scarce, but that wasn’t the reason Luke hunted by himself. All he was hunting was Elmira. As soon as he knew that Zwey was two or three miles from the wagon, he circled back and pressed his suit. He was direct about it, too. He would tie his horse to the wagon and climb right in with her. He put his arm around her and made crude suggestions.

“No,” Elmira said. “I came with Zwey. He told me I wouldn’t be bothered.” “What bother?” Luke asked.