Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

At the thought of them his eyes teared up, making his last look at Lonesome Dove a watery one. The dusty street wavered in his vision as if under a heavy rain.

Augustus happened to notice that Lippy was crying, tears running down both sides of his nose into the floppy pocket of his lip. Lippy normally cried when he got drunk, so the sight was nothing new, except that he didn’t seem drunk. “If you’re sick you can’t go,” he said sternly. “We don’t want no sickly hands.” “I ain’t sick, Gus,” Lippy said, a little embarrassed by his tears. Soon he felt a little better. Lonesome Dove was hidden—he could barely see the top of the little church house across the chaparral flats.

“It’s funny, leaving a place, ain’t it?” he said. “You never do know when you’ll get back.

ALTHOUGH HE KNEW they wouldn’t leave until the heat of the day was over, Newt felt so excited that he didn’t miss sleep and could hardly eat. The Captain had made it final: they were leaving that day. He had told all the hands that they ought to see to their equipment; once they got on the trail, opportunities for repair work might be scarce.

In fact, the advice only mattered to the better-equipped hands: Dish, Jasper, Soupy Jones and Needle Nelson. The Spettle brothers, for example, had no equipment at all, unless you called one pistol with a broken hammer equipment. Newt had scarcely more; his saddle was an old one and he had no slicker and only one blanket for a bedroll. The Irishmen had nothing except what they had been loaned.

Pea seemed to think the only important equipment was his bowie knife, which he spent the whole day sharpening. Deets merely got a needle and some pieces of rawhide and sewed a few rawhide patches on his old quilted pants.

When they saw Mr. Augustus ride up with Lippy, some of the hands thought it might be a joke, but the Captain at once put him in charge of the horses, an action that moved Dish Boggett to scorn.

“Half the remuda will run off once they see him flop that lip,” he said.

Augustus was inspecting the feet of his main horse, a large buckskin he called old Malaria, not a graceful mount but a reliable one.

“It might surprise you, Dish,” he said, “but Lippy was once a considerable hand. I wouldn’t talk if I were you. You may end up with a hole in your own stomach and have to play whorehouse piano for a living.” “If I do I’ll starve,” Dish said. “I never had the opportunity of piano lessons.” Once it was clear he was not going to be constantly affronted by the sight of Jake and Lorena, Dish’s mood improved a little. Since they were traveling along the same route, an opportunity might yet arise to demonstrate that he was a better man than Jake Spoon. She might need to be saved from a flood or a grizzly bear—grizzly bears were often the subject of discussion around the campfire at night. No one had ever seen one, but all agreed they were almost impossible to kill.

Jasper Fant had taken to worrying about them constantly, if only as a change from worrying about drowning.

Jasper’s obsession with drowning had begun to oppress them all. He had talked so much about it that Newt had come to feel it would be almost a miracle if someone didn’t drown at every river.

“Well, if we see one of them bears, Pea can stick him with that knife he keeps sharpening,” Bert Borum said. “It ought to be sharp enough to kill a dern elephant by now.” Pea took the criticism lightly. “It never hurts to be ready,” he said, quoting an old saying of the Captain’s.

Call himself spent the day on the mare, weeding out the weaker stock, both cattle and horses. He worked with Deets.

About noon, they were resting under a big mesquite tree. Deets was watching a little Texas bull mount a cow not far away. The little bull hadn’t come from Mexico. He had wandered in one morning, unbranded, and had immediately whipped three larger bulls that attempted to challenge him. He was not exactly rainbow-colored, but his hide was mottled to an unusual extent—part brown, part red, part white, and with a touch here and there of yellow and black. He looked a sight, but he was all bull. Much of the night he could be heard baying; the Irishmen had come to hate him, since his baying drowned out their singing.

In fact, none of the cowboys liked him—he would occasionally charge a horse, if his temper was up, and was even worse about men on foot. Once, Needle Nelson had dismounted meaning to idle away a minute or two relieving himself, and the little bull had charged him so abruptly that Needle had had to hop back on his horse while still pissing. All the hands had a fine laugh at his expense. Needle had been so angered that he wanted to rope and cut the bull, but Call intervened.

Call thought the bull well made though certainly a peculiar mix of colors, and wanted to keep him.

“Let him be,” he said. “We’ll need some bulls in Montana.” Augustus had been highly amused. “Good God, Call,” he said. “You mean you want to fill this paradise we’re going to with animals that look like that?” “He ain’t bad-looking if you don’t count his color,” Call said.

“Be damned to his color and his disposition too,” Needle said. He knew he would be a long time living down having to mount his horse with his dingus flopping.

“Well, I reckon it’s time to go,” Call said to Deets. “We’ll never get there if we don’t start.” Deets was not so sure they would get there anyway, but he kept his doubts to himself. The Captain usually managed to do what he meant to do.

“I want you to be the scout,” the Captain said. “We got plenty of men to keep the stock moving. I want you to find us water and a good bed ground every night.” Deets nodded modestly, but inside he felt proud. Being made scout was more of an honor than having your name on asign. It was proof that the Captain thought highly of his abilities.

When they got back to the wagon Augustus was oiling his guns. Lippy fanned himself with his bowler, and most of the other hands were just sitting around wishing it was cooler.

“Have you counted the stock yet?” Call asked Augustus. The man possessed a rare skill when it came to counting animals.

He could ride through a herd and count it, something Call had never been able to do.

“No, I ain’t got around to that task,” Augustus said. “Maybe I will if you tell me what difference it makes.” “It would be useful to know how many we’re starting out with,” Call said, “If we get there with ninety percent we’ll be lucky.” “Yes, lucky if we get there with ninety percent of ourselves,” Augustus said. “It’s your show, Call. Myself, I’m just along to see the country.” Dish Boggett had been dozing under the wagon. He sat up so abruptly that he bumped his head on the bottom of the wagon. He had had a terrible dream in which he had fallen off a cliff. The dream had started nice, with him riding along on the point of a herd of cattle. The cattle had become buffalo and the buffalo had started running. Soon they began to pour over a cutbank of some kind. Dish saw it in plenty of time to stop his horse, but his horse wouldn’t stop, and before he knew it he went off the bank, too. The ground was so far below, he could barely see it. He fell and fell, and to make matters worse his horse turned over in the air, so that Dish was upside down and on the bottom. Just as he was about to be mashed, he woke up, lathered in sweat.