Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Is it just the two of you?” he asked, buttoning his pants. He had built up a certain curiosity about Mary, and despite all his embarrassments decided he might try to visit her if he ever got another ten.

“Me and Mary,” Buf said. “I get the ones that like ’em fat, and she gets the one’s that like ’em skinny. And if it’s a feller who likes ’em either way it’s just a matter of who ain’t busy at the time.” She was still lying naked on the bed.

“I’ll go get Jimmy,” he said. When he opened the door, Jimmy was not more than a foot away. Probably he had been listening, which Newt resented, but in the dim hall Jimmy looked too sick to be mad at.

“Your turn,” Newt said. Jimmy went in, and Newt clumped down the stairs and found Pete Spettle waiting at the bottom.

“Why’d you leave?” Newt asked.

“Told Ma I’d save my money,” Pete said.

“I wish we had some more beer,” Newt said. Though his experience with the Buffalo Heifer had been mostly embarrassing as it was happening, he did not feel disappointed. Only the fact that he was down to a quarter in cash kept him from going back in and trying his luck with Mary. For all the peculiarity of what was happening, it was powerfully interesting. The fact that it cost ten dollars hardly mattered to him, but it turned out that he was the only one who took that attitude. Ben Rainey came down the stairs just behind him, complaining about how overpriced the experience was.

“I doubt it took a minute, once she got me washed,” he said.

Jimmy Rainey soon followed, and was totally silent about his own experience. He was not over his upset stomach and kept falling behind to vomit as they walked around town looking for Lippy.

“Hell, whores make a sight more than cowboys,” Ben kept saying—it seemed to trouble him a good deal. “We don’t make but thirty dollars a month and them two made thirty dollars off us in about three minutes. It would have been forty if Pete hadn’t backed out.” To Newt such an argument seemed wide of the point. What the whores sold was unique. The fact that it exceeded top- hand wages didn’t matter. He decided he would probably be as big a whore as Jake and Mr. Gus when he grew up and had money to spend.

They found Lippy by the sound of the accordion, which he had managed to purchase but had not exactly learned to play.

He was sitting on the steps of the saloon with the big rack of elkhorns over it, trying to squeeze out “Buffalo Gal” to an audience of one mule skinner and Allen O’Brien. The Irishman was wincing at Lippy’s fumbling efforts.

“He’ll never get the hang of it,” the mule skinner said. “It sounds like a dern mule whinnying.” “I just bought this accordion,” Lippy said. “I’ll learn to play it by the time we hit Montany.” “Yeah, and if them Sioux catch you you’ll be squealing worse than that music box,” the mule skinner said.

Allen O’Brien kindly bought the boys each a beer. Though it was well after dark, people were still milling in the streets of Ogallala. At one point they heard gunshots, but no one cared to go investigate.

One beer was sufficient to make Jimmy Rainey start vomiting all over again. As they were riding back to the herd, Newt felt a little sad—there was no telling when he would get the chance to visit another whorehouse.

He was riding along wishing he had another ten dollars when something spooked their horses—they never knew what, although Pete Spettle thought he might have glimpsed a panther. At any rate, Newt and Ben were thrown before they knew what was happening, and Pete and Jimmy were carried off into the darkness by their frightened mounts.

“What if it was Indians?” Ben suggested, when they picked themselves up.

It was bright moonlight and they could see no Indians, but both drew their pistols anyway, just in case, and crouched down together as they listened to the depressing sound of their horses running away.

There was nothing for it but for them to walk to camp on foot, their pistols ready—too ready, really, for Ben almost shot his brother when Jimmy finally came back to see about them.

“Where’s Pete?” Newt asked, but Jimmy didn’t know.Jimmy’s horse would ride double, but not triple, so Newt had to walk the last two miles, annoyed with himself for not having kept a grip on the reins. It was the second time he had been put afoot on the drive, and he was sure everyone would comment on it the next day.

But when he arrived, his horse was grazing with the rest of the remuda, and only Po Campo was awake to take notice. Po seemed to sleep little. Whenever anyone came in from a watch he was usually up, slicing beef or freshening his coffee.

“Have you had a good walk?” he asked, offering Newt a piece of cold meat. Newt took it but discovered once he sat down that he was too tired to eat. He went to sleep with a hunk of beef still in his hand.CLARA WAS UPSTAIRS when she saw the four riders. She had just cleaned her husband—the baby was downstairs with the girls. She happened to glance out a window and see them, but they were still far away, on the north side of the Platte.

Any approaching rider was something to pay attention to in that country. In the first years the sight of any rider scared her and made her look to see where Bob was, or be sure a rifle was handy. Indians had been known to dress in white men’s clothes to disarm unwary settlers, and there were plenty of white men in the Territory who were just as dangerous as Indians. If she was alone, the sight of any rider caused her a moment of terror.

But through the years they had been so lucky with visitors that Clara had gradually ceased to jump and take fright at the sight of a rider on the horizon. Their tragedies had come from weather and sickness, not attackers. But the habit of looking close had not left her, and she turned with a clean sheet in one hand and watched out her window as the horsemen dipped off the far slopes and disappeared behind the brush along the river.

Something about the riders struck her. Over the years she had acquired a good eye for horses, and also for horsemen.