Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Po Campo led the team down to the grave and Deets was put in and quickly covered. The Irishman, unasked, began tosing a song of mourning so sad that all the cowboys at once began to cry, even the Spettle boy, who had not shed a tear when his own brother was buried.

Augustus turned and walked away. “I hate funerals,” he said. “Particularly this one.” “At the rate we’re dropping off, there won’t be many of us left by the time we get to Montana,” Lippy said, as they were all walking back to camp.

They expected to start the herd that day, as Captain Call had never been known to linger. But this time he did. He came back from the grave, got a big hammer and knocked a board loose from the side of the wagon. He didn’t explain what he was doing to anyone, and the look on his face discouraged anyone from asking. He took the board and carried it down to the grave. The rest of the day he sat alone by Deets’s grave, carving something into it with his knife. The sun flashed on his knife, and the cowhands watched in puzzlement. They just didn’t know what it could be that would take the Captain so long.

“He had a short name,” Lippy observed.

“It wasn’t his full name,” Newt pointed out. He had stopped crying but he felt empty.

“What was the other one then?” Jasper asked.

“It was Josh.” “Well, I swear,” Jasper said. “That’s a fine name. Starts with a J, like mine. We could have been calling him that all the time, if we’d known.” Then they heard the sound of the hammer—it was the big hammer that they used for straightening the rims of the wagon wheels. Captain Call was hammering the long board deep into the dirt by the grave.

Augustus, who had sat by himself most of the day, walked over and squatted down by Newt, who sat a little way apart.

He had been afraid he would start crying again and wanted a little privacy.

“Let’s go see what he wrote for old Deets,” Augustus said. “I’ve seen your father bury many a man, but I never saw him take this kind of pains.” Newt hadn’t really been listening. He had just been sitting there, feeling numb. When he heard Augustus mention his father, the words sank into the numbness for a minute and didn’t affect him.

Then they did. “My what?” Newt asked.

“Your father,” Augustus said. “Your pa.” Newt thought it an odd time for Mr. Gus to make a joke. The Captain wasn’t his pa. Perhaps Mr. Gus had been so affected by Deets’s death that he had gone a little crazy. Newt stood up. He thought it best just to ignore the remark—he didn’t want to embarrass Mr. Gus at such a time. The Captain was still hammering, driving the long board into the hard ground.

They walked down to the grave. Call had finished his hammering and stood resting. Two or three of the cowboys trailed back to the grave, a little tentative, not sure they were invited.

Captain Call had carved the words deeply into the rough board so that the wind and sand couldn’t quickly rub them out.

JOSH DEETS SERVED WITH ME 30 YEARS. FOUGHT IN 21 ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE COMMANCHE AND KIOWA. CHERFUL IN ALL WEATHERS, NEVER SHERKED A TASK. SPLENDID BEHAVIOUR.

The cowboys came down one by one and looked at it in silence. Po Campo crossed himself. Augustus took something out of his pocket. It was the medal the Governor of Texas had given him for service on the border during the hard war years.

Call had one too. The medal had a green ribbon on it, but the color had mostly faded out. Augustus made a loop of the ribbon and put the loop over the grave board and tied it tightly. Captain Call had walked away to put up the hammer.

Augustus followed. Lippy, who had not cried all day, suddenly began to sob, tears running into his loose lip.

“I do wish I’d just stayed in Lonesome Dove,” he said, when he stopped crying.THEY TRAILED THE HERD up the Powder River, whose water none of the cowboys liked. A few complained of stomach cramps and others said the water affected their bowel movements. Jasper Fant in particular had taken to watching his own droppings closely. They were coming out almost white, when any came out at all. It seemed an ominous sign.

“I’ve met ladies that wasn’t as finicky as you, Jasper,” Augustus said, but he didn’t bother to tease Jasper very hard. The whole camp was subdued by Deets’s death. They were not missing Deets so much, most of them, as wondering what fate awaited them in the north.

When they crossed the Powder they could see the Bighorn Mountains looming to the west—not really close, but close enough that anyone could see the snow on top of them. The nights began to be cold, and many of the hands began to regret the fact that they had not bought better coats in Ogallala when they had the opportunity.

The discussions around the campfire began to focus mainly on storms. Many of the hands had experienced plains northers and the occasional ice storm, but they were south Texas cowhands and had seldom seen snow. A few talked of loping over to the mountains to examine the snow at close range and see what it was like.

Newt had always been interested in snow, and looked at the mountains often, but in the weeks following Deets’s death he found it difficult to care much about anything, even snow. He didn’t pay much attention to the talk of storms, and didn’t really care if they all froze, herd and hands together.

Occasionally the strange remark Mr. Gus had made came back to him. He didn’t know what to make of it—the clear meaning had been that Captain Call was his father. It didn’t make sense to Newt. If the Captain had been his father, surely he would have mentioned it at some point in the last seventeen years.

At other times the question would have excited him, but under the circumstances he felt too dull to care much. Set beside the fact that Deets was gone, it didn’t seem to matter greatly.