Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Always her eyes seemed to be looking for something that wasn’t there. She might look pleased for a time, watching her daughters or watching some young horse, but then the rolling would start inside her again and the pleased look would give way to one that was sad.

“What do you think happens when you die?” she asked, surprising him. Cholo shrugged. He had seen much death, but had not thought much about it. Time enough to think about it when it happened.

“Not too much,” he said. “You’re just dead.” “Maybe it ain’t as big a change as we think,” Clara said. “Maybe you just stay around near where you lived. Near your family, or wherever you was happiest. Only you’re just a spirit, and you don’t have the troubles the living have.” A minute later she shook her head, and stood up. “I guess that’s silly,” she said, and started back to the house.

That afternoon July came back with a minister. The two nearest neighbors came—German families. Clara had seen more of the men than of the women—the men would come to buy horses and stay for a meal. She almost regretted having notified them. Why should they interrupt their work just to see Bob put in the ground? They sang two hymns, the Germans singing loudly in poor English. Mrs. Jensch, the wife of one of the German farmers, weighed over three hundred pounds. The girls had a hard time not staring at her. The buggy she rode in tilted far to one side under her weight. The minister was invited to stay the night and got rather drunk after supper—he was known to drink too much, when he got the chance. His name was the Reverend Spinnow and he had a large purple birthmark under one ear. A widower, he was easily excited by the presence of women. He was writing a book on prophecy and rattled on about it as they all sat in the living room. Soon both Clara and Lorena felt like choking him.

“Will you be thinking of moving into town now, Mrs Allen?” the Reverend asked hopefully. It was worth the inconvenience of a funeral way out in the country to sit with two women for a while.

“No, we’ll be staying right here,” Clara said.

July and Cholo carried out the mattress Bob had died on—it needed a good airing. Betsey cried a long time that night and Lorena went up to be with her. It was better than listening to a minister go on about prophecy.

The baby was colicky and Clara rocked him while the minister drank. July came in and asked if there was anything else she needed him to do.

“No,” Clara said, but July sat down anyway. He felt he should offer to rock his son, but knew the baby would just cry louder if he took him away from Clara. The minister finally fell asleep on the sofa and then, to their surprise, rolled off onthe floor and began to snore loudly.

“Do you want me to carry him out?” July asked, hoping to feel useful. “He could sleep in a wagon just as well.” “Let him lie,” Clara said, thinking it had been an odd day. “I doubt it’s the first time he’s slept on a floor, and anyway he isn’t your lookout.” She knew July was in love with her and was irritated that he was so awkward about it. He was as innocent as Bob, but she didn’t feel moved to patience, in July’s case. She would save her patience for his son, who slept at her breast, whimpering now and then. Soon she got up with the baby and went to her room, leaving July sitting silently in a chair while the drunken minister snored on the floor.

Once upstairs she called Sally. Sally had not cried much. When she came into Clara’s room she looked drawn. Almost immediately she began to sob. Clara put the baby down and held her daughter.

“Oh, I’m so bad,” Sally said, when she could talk. “I wanted Daddy to die. I didn’t like it that he just lay up there with his eyes open. It was like he was a spook. Only now I wish he hadn’t died.” “Hush,” Clara said. “You ain’t bad. I wanted him to die too.” “And now you wish he hadn’t, Ma?” Sally asked.

“I wish he had been more careful around horses, is what I wish,” Clara said.

AS THE HERD and the Hat Creek outfit slowly rode into Montana out of the barren Wyoming plain, it seemed to all of them that they were leaving behind not only heat and drought, but ugliness and danger too. Instead of being chalky and covered with tough sage, the rolling plains were covered with tall grass and a sprinkling of yellow flowers. The roll of the plains got longer; the heat shimmers they had looked through all summer gave way to cool air, crisp in the mornings and cold at night. They rode for days beside the Bighorn Mountains, whose peaks were sometimes hidden in cloud.

The coolness of the air seemed to improve the men’s eyesight—they fell to speculating about how many miles they could see. The plains stretched north before them. They saw plenty of game, mainly deer and antelope. Once they saw a large herd of elk, and twice small groups of buffalo. They saw no more bears, but bears were seldom far from then-thoughts.

The cowboys had lived for months under the great bowl of the sky, and yet the Montana skies seemed deeper than the skies of Texas or Nebraska. Their depth and blueness robbed even the sun of its harsh force—it seemed smaller, in the vastness, and the whole sky no longer turned white at noon as it had in the lower plains. Always, somewhere to the north, there was a swath of blueness, with white clouds floating in it like petals in a pond.

Call had scarcely spoken since the death of Deets, but the beauty of the high prairies, the abundance of game, the coolness of the mornings finally raised his spirits. It was plain that Jake Spoon, who had been wrong about most things, had been right about Montana. It was a cattleman’s paradise, and they were the only cattlemen in it. The grassy plains seemed limitless, stretching north. It was strange that they had seen no Indians, though. Often he mentioned this to Augustus.

“Custer didn’t see them either,” Augustus pointed out. “Not till he was caught. Now that we’re here, do you plan to stop, or will we just keep going north till we get into the polar bears?” “I plan to stop, but not yet,” Call said. “We ain’t crossed the Yellowstone. I like the thought of having the first ranch north of the Yellowstone.” “But you ain’t a rancher,” Augustus said.

“I guess I am now.” “No, you’re a fighter,” Augustus said. “We should have left these damn cows down in Texas. You used them as an excuse to come up here, when you ain’t interested in them and didn’t need an excuse anyway. I think we oughta just give them to the Indians when the Indians show up.” “Give the Indians three thousand cattle?” Call said, amazed at the notions his friend had. “Why do that?” “Because then we’d be shut of them,” Augustus said. “We could follow our noses, for a change, instead of following their asses. Ain’t you bored?” “I don’t think like you do,” Call said. “They’re ours. We got ’em. I don’t plan on giving them to anybody.” “I miss Texas and I miss whiskey,” Augustus said. “Now here we are in Montana and there’s no telling what will become of us.” “Miles City’s up here somewhere,” Call said. “You can buy whiskey.” “Yes, but I’ll have to drink it indoors,” Augustus complained. “It’s cool up here.” As if to confirm his remark, the very next day an early storm blew out of the Bighorns. An icy wind came up and snow fell in the night. The men on night herd wrapped blankets around themselves to keep warm. A thin snow covered the plains in the morning, to the amazement of everyone. The Spettle boy was so astonished to wake and see it that he refused to come out of his blankets at first, afraid of what might happen. He lay wide-eyed, looking at the whiteness. Only when he saw the other hands tramping in it without ill effect did he get up.

Newt had been curious about snow all the way north, but he had lost his jacket somewhere in Kansas, and now that snow had actually fallen he felt too cold to enjoy it. All he wanted was to be warm again. He had taken his boots off when he lay down to sleep, and the snow had melted on his feet, getting his socks wet. His boots were a tight fit, and it was almost impossible to get them on over wet socks. He went over to the fire barefoot, hoping to dry his socks, but so many of the cowboys were huddled around the fire that he couldn’t get a place at first.

Pea Eye had scooped up a handful of snow and was eating it. The Rainey boys had made snowballs, but all the cowboys were stiff and cold and looked threatening, so the Raineys merely threw the snowballs at one another.

“This snow tastes like hail, except that it’s soft,” Pea Eye observed.

The sun came out just then and shone so brightly on the white plains that some of the men had to shield their eyes. Newt finally got a place by the fire, but by then the Captain was anxious to move on and he didn’t get to dry his socks. He tried to pull his boots on but had no luck until Po Campo noticed his difficulty and came over with a little flour, which he sprinkled in the boots.“This will help,” he said, and he was right, though getting the boots on still wasn’t easy.

The sun soon melted the thin snow, and for the next week the days were hot again. Po Campo walked all day behind the wagon, followed by the pigs, who bored through the tall grass like moles—a sight that amused the cowboys, although Augustus worried that the pigs might stray off.

“We ought to let them ride in the wagon,” he suggested to Call.