Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“More likely they ate the Indians,” Call said. “The Indians and everything else.” Newt’s first fear when the cloud hit was that he would suffocate. In a second the grasshoppers covered every inch of his hands, his face, his clothes, his saddle. A hundred were stuck in Mouse’s mane. Newt was afraid to draw breath for fear he’d suck them into his mouth and nose. The air was so dense with them that he couldn’t see the cattle and could barely see the ground. At every step Mouse crunched them underfoot. The whirring they made was so loud he felt he could have screamed and not been heard, although Pea Eye and Ben Rainey were both within yards. Newt ducked his head into the crook of his arm for protection. Mouse Suddenly broke into a run, which meant the cattle were running, but Newt didn’t look up. He feared to look, afraid the grasshoppers would scratch his eyes. As he and Mouse raced, he felt the insects beating against him. It was a relief to find he could breathe.

Then Mouse began to buck and twist, trying to rid himself of some of the grasshoppers, and almost ridding himself of Newt in the process. Newt clung to the saddle horn, afraid that if he were thrown the grasshoppers would smother him.

From the way the ground shook he knew the cattle were running. Mouse soon stopped bucking and ran too. When Newt risked a glimpse, all he saw was millions of fluttering bugs. Even as he raced they clung to his shirt. When he tried to change his reins from one hand to another he closed his hand on several grasshoppers and almost dropped his rein. It would have been a comfort if he could have seen at least one cowboy, but he couldn’t. In that regard, running through a bug cloud wasn’t much different than running in rain: he was alone and miserable, not knowing what his fate might be.

And, as in the rainstorms, his misery increased to a pitch and then was gradually replaced by fatigue and resignation. The sky had turned to grasshoppers—it seemed that simple. The other day it had turned to hailstones, now it was grasshoppers. All he could do was try and endure it—you couldn’t shoot grasshoppers. Finally the cattle slowed, and Mouse slowed, and Newt just plodded along, occasionally wiping the grasshoppers off the front of his shirt when they got two or three layers deep. He had no idea how long a grasshopper storm might last.

In this case it lasted for hours. Newt mainly hoped it wouldn’t go on all night. If he had to ride through grasshoppers all day and then all night, he felt he’d just give up. It was already fairly dark from the cloud they made, though it was only midday.

Finally, like all other storms, the grasshopper storm did end. The air cleared—there were still thousands of grasshoppers fluttering around in it, but thousands were better than millions. The ground was still covered with them, and Mouse still mashed them when he walked, but at least Newt could see a little distance, though what he saw wasn’t very cheering. He was totally alone with fifty or sixty cattle. He had no idea where the main herd might be, or where anything might be.

Dozens of grasshoppers still clung to his shirt and to Mouse’s mane, and he could hear them stirring in the grass, eating what little of it was left. Most of it had been chewed off to the roots.

He gave Mouse his head, hoping he would have some notion of where the wagon might be, but Mouse seemed as lost as he was. The cattle were walking listlessly, worn out from their run. A few of them tried to stop and graze, but there was nothing left to graze on except grasshoppers.

There was a rise a mile or two to the north, and Newt rode over to it. To his vast relief, he saw several riders coming and waved his hat to make sure they saw him. The hoppers had nibbled on his clothes, and he felt lucky not to be naked.

He went back to get the cattle, and when he glanced again at the boys, they looked funny. They didn’t have hats. A second later he realized why: they were Indians, all of them. Newt felt so scared he went weak. He hated life on the plains. One minute it was pretty, then a cloud of grasshoppers came, and now Indians. The worst of it was that he was alone. It was always happening, and he felt convinced it was Mouse’s fault. Somehow he could never stay with the rest of the boys when there was a run. He had to wander off by himself. This time the results were serious, for the five Indians were only fifty yards away. He felt he ought to pull his gun, but he knew he couldn’t shoot well enough to kill five of them—anyhow, the Captain hadn’t shot when the old chief with the milky eye had asked for a beef. Maybe they were friendly.

Indeed, that proved the case, although they were rather smelly and a little too familiar to suit Newt. They smelled like the lard Bolivar had used on his hair. They crowded right around him, several of them talking to him in words he couldn’t understand. All of them were armed with old rifles. The rifles looked in bad repair, but they would have sufficed to kill him if that had been what the Indians wanted to do. Newt was sure they would want the cattle, for they were as skinny as the first bunch of Indians.

He began to try and work out in his mind how many he could let them have without risking dishonor. If they wanted them all, of course, he would just have to fight and be killed, for he could never face the Captain if he had been responsible for the loss of fifty head. But if they could be bought off with two or three, that was different.

Sure enough, a little, short Indian began to point at the cattle. He jabbered a lot, and Newt assumed he was saying hewanted them all.

“No sabe,” he said, thinking maybe some of the Indians knew Mexican. But the little short Indian just kept jabbering and pointing west. Newt didn’t know what to make of that. Meanwhile the others crowded around, not being mean exactly, but being familiar, fingering his hat and his rope and his quirt, and generally making it difficult for him to think clearly.

One even lifted his pistol out of its holster, and Newt’s heart nearly stopped. He expected to be shot with his own gun and felt foolish for allowing it to be taken so easily. But the Indians merely passed it around for comment and then stuck it back in the holster. Newt smiled at them, relieved. If they would give him his gun back, they couldn’t mean to harm him.

But he shook his head when they pointed at the cattle. He thought they wanted to take the cattle and go west. When he shook his head, it caused a big laugh. The Indians seemed to think everything he did was pretty comical. They jabbered and pointed to the west, laughing, and then, to his dismay, three of them began to whoop at the cattle and got them started west. It seemed they were just going to take them. Newt felt sick with confusion. He knew the point had been reached when he ought to draw his pistol and try to stop it but he couldn’t seem to do it. The fact that the Indians were laughing and seemed friendly made it difficult. How do you shoot people who were laughing? Maybe the Captain could have, but the Captain wasn’t there.

The Indians motioned for him to come with them, and, very reluctantly, Newt went. He felt he ought to make a break for it, go find the cowboys and get them to help him reclaim the sixty head. Of course the Indians might shoot him if he ran, but what really stopped him was the fact that he had no idea where the rest of the boys were. He might just charge off and be lost for good.

So, with a sinking heart, he slowly followed the five Indians and the cattle. At least he wasn’t deserting by doing that. He was still with the cattle, for what it was worth.

Before he had gone a mile or two he wished he had thought of another alternative. The plains had always seemed empty, and somehow, with the grass chewed off and him captured by Indians, they seemed even more empty. He began to remember all the stories he had heard about how tricky Indians were and decided these were just laughing to trick him.

Probably they had a camp nearby, and when they got there they might stop laughing and butcher him and the cattle both. The surprising thing was how young they were. None of them looked any older than Ben Rainey.

Then they rode over a ridge so low it hardly seemed like a ridge, and there was the herd and the cowboys too. They were two or three miles away, but it was them—he could even see the wagon. Instead of stealing him, the Indians had just been keeping him from getting lost, for he had been angling off in the wrong direction. He realized then that the young Indians were laughing because he was so dumb he didn’t even know which way his own cattle were. He didn’t blame them. Now that he was safe, he felt like laughing too. He wanted to thank the Indians, but he didn’t know their words. All he could do was smile at them.

Then Dish Boggett and Soupy Jones rode over to help him hurry the cattle along. Their clothes had little holes in them where the grasshoppers had nibbled through.

“It’s a good thing they found you, we ain’t had time to look,” Soupy said. “If we’d gone on north, it would be sixty miles to water, the Indians say. Most of these cattle wouldn’t make no sixty miles.” “Nor most of these men, either,” Dish said.

“Did the grasshoppers hurt anybody?” Newt asked, still amazed that such a thing could happen.

“No, but they ruint my Sunday shirt,” Soupy said. “Jasper’s horse spooked and he got thrown and claims his collarbone might be broken, but Deets and Po don’t think so.” “I hope Lorie didn’t suffer,” Dish said. “Their horses could have spooked. They might be afoot and a long way from grub.” “I suppose you’d like to go check on their safety?” Soupy said.