Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The quality of determination had always intrigued him. Lorie had it, and Jake didn’t. Hers was nothing compared to W. F.

Call’s, but hers would probably be sufficient to get her to San Francisco, where no doubt she would end up a respectable woman.

After accepting a cup of coffee from Lorie, he took a look at Jake’s thumb, which was swollen and turning white.

“You better be sure you got all that thorn out,” Gus said. “If you didn’t you’ll probably lose the hand, and maybe the arm that goes with it.” “I won’t lose no arm, and if I did I could still beat you dealing one-handed,” Jake said. “I hope you invite us to breakfast one of these days, to repay the favor.” When Augustus reached Lonesome Dove, the one street was still and empty, with only one horse twitching its tail in front of the Pumphreys’ store. The dust his wagon stirred hung straight as a column before settling back into the street.

Augustus stopped in front of the deserted blacksmith shop. The blacksmith, an uncommunicative man named Roy Royce, had ridden out of town some months before and had not come back.

Augustus found a small crowbar among the tools the man had cavalierly abandoned, and rode up the street to the Hat Creek corrals, where he easily pried his sign off the fence. The Dutch ovens were more resistant. They showed signs of crumbling, so he left them. There would be no time for leisurely biscuit making on the trail anyway.

He walked through the house and had a look at the roofless barn, amused at how little trace remained of their ten years’ residence. They had lived the whole time as if they might leave at any minute, and now that was exactly what they had done. The barn would stay roofless, the well only partially dug. The rattlesnakes could take the springhouse, for all he cared—he had already removed his whiskey jug. It would be a while before he had such a good shady porch to sit on, drinking the afternoon out. In Texas he had drunk to take his mind off the heat; in Montana, no doubt, it would be to take his mind off the cold. He didn’t feel sad. The one thing he knew about Texas was that he was lucky to be leaving it alive—and, in fact, he had a long way to go before he could be sure of accomplishing that much.

He drove down to the saloon for a last word with Xavier. At first he thought the saloon was empty, but then he saw Xavier sitting at a little table near the shadowy end of the bar. He had not bothered to shave for two days, a sign of profound demoralization.“Dern, Wanz, you look poorly,” Augustus said. “I see the morning rush ain’t started yet.” “It will never start,” Xavier said in a desperate voice.

“Just because you lost your whore don’t mean the sun won’t rise again,” Augustus assured him. “Take a trip to San Antonio and recruit another whore.” “I would have married her,” Xavier said, feeling too hopeless even to conceal that he was hopeless.

“I ain’t surprised,” Augustus said gently. It was one thing to make light of a young man’s sorrows in love, but another to do it when the sorrower was Xavier’s age. There were men who didn’t get over women. He himself, fortunately, was not one of them, though he had felt fairly black for a year after Clara married. It was curious, for Xavier had had stuff enough to survive a hellion like Therese, but was devastated by the departure of Lorena, who could hardly, with reason, have been expected to stay in one room over a saloon all her life.

“I would have taken her to San Francisco,” Xavier said. “I would have given her money, bought her clothes.” “In my opinion the woman made a poor bargain,” Augustus said. “I seen her not an hour ago, trying to cook over a dern smoky fire. But then we don’t look at life like women do, Wanz. They don’t always appreciate convenience.” Xavier shrugged. Gus often talked about women, but he had never listened and didn’t intend to start. It wouldn’t bring Lorena back, or make him feel less hopeless. It had seemed a miracle, the day she walked in the door, with nothing but her beauty. From the first he had planned to marry her someday. It didn’t matter that she was a whore. She had intelligence, and he felt sure her intelligence would one day guide her to him. She would see, in time, how much kinder he was than other men; she would recognize that he treated her better, loved her more.

Yet it hadn’t worked. She went with him willingly enough when he requested it, but no more willingly than she went with other men. Then Jake had come and taken her, just taken her, as easily as picking a hat off a rack. Often Xavier had passed the boring hours by dreaming of how happy Lorie would be when he made his proposal, offering to free her from whoring and every form of drudgery. But when he offered, she had merely shaken her head, and now his dreams were ruined.

He remembered that when he declared his love her eyes hadn’t changed at all—it was as if he had suggested she sweep out the bar. She had only tolerated him to avoid a scene with Jake, and had seemed scarcely aware that he had given her nearly two hundred dollars, four times as much as Gus. It was enough to buy her passage to San Francisco. But she had merely taken it and shut the door. It was cruel, love.

“Well, it’s too bad you ain’t a cowboy,” Augustus said. “You look like you could use a change of air. Where’s Lippy?” Xavier shrugged. The last thing that would interest him was the whereabouts of Lippy.

Augustus drank a glass but said no more. He knew he could not talk Xavier out of his depression.

“If Jake gets killed, tell her I will come,” Xavier said—there was always that prospect. After all, he had only met Therese because her first husband had fallen off a roof and broken his neck. A man like Jake, a traveler and a gambler, might meet a violent end at any time.

“I doubt it’ll happen,” Augustus said, not wishing to encourage faint hopes.

When he went out he found Lippy sitting in the wagon with his bowler on his head.

“How’d you get in my wagon?” Augustus asked.

“Jumped off the roof and this is where I landed,” Lippy said. He liked to joke.

“Jump back on the roof then,” Augustus said. “I’m going to Montana.” “I’m hiring on,” Lippy said. “The pianer playin’s over around here. Wanz won’t feed me and I can’t cook. I’ll starve to death.” “It might beat drowning in the Republican River,” Augustus said. Lippy had a little bag packed and sitting between his feet. It was clear he was packed and ready.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Well, we got two Irishmen, I guess we can always use a man with a hole in his stomach,” Augustus said. Lippy had been a fair horseman once. Maybe Call would let him look after the remuda.

As they rode out of town the widow Cole was hanging out her washing. Hot as the sun was, it seemed to Augustus it would be dry before she got it on the line. She kept a few goats, one of which was nibbling on the rope handle of her laundry basket. She was an imposing woman, and he felt a pang of regret that he and she had not got on better, but the truth was they fell straight into argument even if they only happened to meet in the street. Probably her husband, Joe Cole, had bored her for twenty years, leaving her with a taste for argument. He himself enjoyed argument, but not with a woman who had been bored all her life. It could lead to a strenuous existence.As they passed out of town, Lippy suddenly turned sentimental. Under the blazing sun the town looked white—the only things active in it were the widow and her goats. There were only about ten buildings, hardly enough to make a town, but Lippy got sentimental anyway. He remembered when there had been another saloon, one that kept five Mexican whores.

He had gone there often and had great fun in the days before he got the wound in his belly. He had never forgotten the merry whores—they were always sitting on his lap. One of them, a girl named Maria, would sleep with him merely because she liked the way he played the piano. Those had been the years.