Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“I been thinking I might better go on and catch Jake Spoon,” July said. He said everything in the same tone of voice, making it doubly difficult to pay attention to him, but Elmira caught his meaning.

“Do what?” she asked.

“Go get Jake Spoon,” July said. “I’m over my jaundice enough to ride.” “Let him go,” Elmira said. “Who wants him, anyway?” July was not about to tell her Peach wanted him. “Well, he killed Benny,” he said.

“I say let him go,” Elmira said. “That was an accident.” She came downstairs and dipped her face in the cool water, then wiped it on an old piece of sacking they used for a towel.

“He shouldn’t have run,” July said. “He might have got off.” “No, Peach would have shot him,” Elmira said. “She’s the one don’t care about the law.” That was a possibility. Peach had an uncontrollable temper.

“Well, I’ve got to catch him—it’s my job,” he said.

Elmira felt like laughing. July was flattering himself if he thought he could catch a man like Jake Spoon. But then, if she laughed she would be giving herself away. July had no idea that she knew Jake Spoon, but she had known Jake even before she knew Dee. He and Dee had been buddies up in Kansas. Jake even asked her to marry him once, in a joking way—for Jake was not the marrying kind and she hadn’t been then, either. He had always kidded her, in the days when she was a sporting girl in Dodge, that she would end up respectable, though even he couldn’t have guessed that she’d marry a sheriff. It amused him no end when he found out. She had seen him twice in the street after he came to Fort Smith, and she could tell by the way he grinned and tipped his hat to her that he thought it one of the world’s finest jokes. If he had ever come to the cabin and seen that it had a dirt floor, he would have realized it was one of those jokes that aren’t funny.

And yet she had not hesitated when July proposed, though she had only known him three days. It was the buffalo hunters who convinced her she had better change her way of life. One had taken a fancy to her, a man so big and rough that she feared to refuse him, though she should have—in all her days she had never been used so hard. And the buffalo hunters were numerous. Had it not been for Dee, they might have finished her. But Dee had always been partial to her and loaned her enough money to make a start in a town where she had no reputation: St. Jo, Missouri, which was where July came to testify. She met him in court, for she had no job at the time and was watching the trial to pass the hours.

She just had a dusty little room in a boardinghouse in St. Jo, and the boy a cubbyhole in the attic. Dee snuck in twice, in the dead of night, so as not to tarnish her reputation. He liked Joe, too, and had the notion that he ought to grow up to be something. It was the last time she saw Dee that they had worked out the smallpox story.

“I’m going north, Ellie—I’m tired of sweating,” he said. “You go south and you’ll be fine. If anybody asks say your husband died of smallpox—you can get to be a widow without ever having been married. I might get the smallpox anyway, unless I’m lucky.” “I’d go north with you, Dee,” she said quietly, not putting much weight on it. Dee didn’t care to have much weight put on things.But Dee just grinned and pulled at his little blond mustache.

“Nope,” he said. “You got to go respectable. I bet you make a schoolmarm yet.” Then he had given her a sweet kiss, told her to look after his boy, and left her with ten dollars and the memory of their reckless years together in Abilene and Dodge. She had known he wouldn’t take her north—Dee traveled alone. It was only when he settled in a town to gamble that he liked a woman. But he had offered to go shoot the buffalo hunter who had used her so hard. She had pretended she didn’t know the man’s name. Dee wasn’t a hard man, certainly not as hard as the buffalo hunter. He would have been the one to end up dead.

As for July, it had been no trick to marry him. He was like some of the young cowboys who had never touched a woman or even spoken to one. In two days he was hers. She soon knew that he made no impression on her. His habits never varied. He did the same things in the same way every day. Nine days out of ten he even forgot to wipe the buttermilk off his upper lip. But he wasn’t hard like the buffalo hunters. With him she was safe from that kind of treatment, at least.

When she heard Jake was in town she thought she might just run away with him, though she knew he was even less dependable than Dee. But once he shot Benny she had to give up that little dream, the only little dream she had.

Since then, life had been very boring. She spent most of her days sitting in the loft, letting her feet dangle, remembering the old days with Dee and Jake.

July was sitting in the dark, buttermilk on his lip, looking at her as patiently as if he were a calf. The very look of him, so patient, made her want to torment him any way she could.

July knew that for some reason he irritated Elmira—she reacted crossly to almost everything he said or suggested.

Sometimes he wondered if all men only made their wives look hostile and sullen. If it wasn’t the case, then he wondered what made the difference.

He had always taken pains to be as nice as possible, sharing all the chores with little Joe and sparing her inconveniences whenever he could. Yet it seemed the more polite he tried to be, the more he stumbled or said the wrong thing or generally upset her. At night it had gotten so he could hardly put a hand on her, she looked at him so coldly. She could lie a foot from him and make him feel that he was miles away. It all made him feel terrible, for he had come to love her more than anything.

“Wipe your lip, July,” she said. “I wish you’d ever learn, or else stop drinking that buttermilk.” Embarrassed, he wiped it. When Elmira was annoyed she made him so nervous that he couldn’t really remember whether he had eaten, or what.

“You ain’t sick, are you?” he asked. There were fevers going around, and if she had one it would explain why she felt so testy.

“I ain’t sick,” she said.

Since he had started the business about Jake, he thought he might as well finish it. She was mad anyway.

“If I start after Spoon now, I expect I could be back in a month,” he said.

Ellie just looked at him. It was all right with her if he was gone for a year. The only reason she objected to his going was that she knew Peach was behind it; if somebody was going to tell the man what to do, it ought to be her, not Peach.

“Take Joe with you,” she said.