Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Oh, they’re about whipped, I reckon,” July said.

“’Bout?” Roscoe said. “Well, I ’bout knocked out a wasp’s nest last year, but the two I missed near stung me to death.

’Bout ain’t good enough where Comanches are concerned. You must be planning to make San Antonio in one day, since you’re starting this early,” he added, still grumpy from having been routed out of bed.

July let him grumble and took a saddle scabbard off one of the other rifles so there’d be something to put the shotgun in.

By the time light had begun to show over the river, they were ready to go. Roscoe was awake enough by then to feel apprehensive. Being deputy was an easy job while July was around, but the minute he left it became heavy with responsibility. Anything could happen, and he would be the one who would have to handle it.

“Well, I hope the dern Comanches don’t decide they want Fort Smith,” he said morosely. Several times he had dreams of a troop of wild Indians riding right down the street and filling him full of arrows while he sat in front of the jail, whittling.

“They won’t,” July said, anxious to get away before Roscoe thought up other bad things that might happen.

Roscoe noted that Joe was bareheaded, another sign of July’s recklessness. It occurred to him that he had an old black felt hat. It was hanging on a peg, and he went back in and got it for the boy.

“Here, you take this,” he said, surprised at his own generosity.

When Joe put it on, his head disappeared nearly down to his mouth, which was grinning.

“If he wears that he’ll probably ride off a cliff,” July said, although it was true the boy needed a hat.“He can tie it on with some string,” Roscoe said. “It’ll keep that dern sun out of his eyes.” Now that they were ready, July felt strangely unwilling to leave. It was getting good light—far down the street they could see the river shining, and beyond it a faint glow of red on the horizon. In its awakening hour the town seemed peaceful, lovely, calm. A rooster began to crow.

Yet July had a sense that something was terribly wrong. More than once it occurred to him that Elmira might have some strange disease that caused her to act the way she was acting. She had less appetite than most people, for one thing—she just nibbled at her food. Now he had no one to trust her to except Roscoe Brown, who was only slightly less afraid of her than he would be of a Comanche.

“You look after Ellie,” he said sternly. “If she needs her groceries carried, you carry them.” “Okay, July,” Roscoe said.

July got on his horse, adjusted his bedroll and sat looking at the river. They weren’t carrying much bedding, but then the warm weather was coming.

“Take her a fish now and then, if you catch one,” he said.

To Roscoe Brown it seemed a strange instruction. Elmira had made it plain that she didn’t like fish.

“Okay, July,” he said again, though he didn’t mean to waste his time offering fish to a woman who didn’t like them.

July could think of no more instructions. Roscoe knew the town as well as he did.

“Joe, be careful,” Roscoe said. For some reason it affected him to see the boy going. It was a poor saddle he had, too. But the boy still grinned out from under the old hat.

“We’ll catch him,” Joe said proudly.

“Well, I’ll try not to let nobody shoot no more dentists,” Roscoe said.

July regarded the remark as irrelevant, for Roscoe knew well enough that the town had been without a dentist since Benny’s death. “Just watch old man Darton,” he said. “We don’t want him to fall off the ferry.” The old man lived in a shack on the north bank and merely came over for liquor. Once in a while he eluded Roscoe, and twice already he had fallen into the river. The ferrymen didn’t like him anyway, and if it happened again they might well let him drown.

“I’ll handle the old scamp,” Roscoe said confidently. Old man Darton was one responsibility he felt he could handle any day.

“Well, I guess we’ll see you when we see you, Roscoe,” July said. Then he turned his horse away from the river and the glowing sky, and he and little Joe were soon out of town.SIX DAYS LATER responsibility descended upon Roscoe Brown with a weight far beyond anything he had ever felt. As usual, it fell out of a clear blue sky—as fine a day as one could want, with the Arkansas River sparkling down at the end of the street. Roscoe, having no pressing duties, was sitting in front of the jail whittling, when he noticed Peach Johnson coming up the street with little Charlie Barnes at her side. Charlie was a banker, and the only man in town to wear a necktie every day. He was also the main deacon in the church, and, by common consent the man most likely to marry Peach if she ever remarried. Charlie was a widower, and richer by far than Benny had ever been. Nobody liked him, not even Peach, but she was too practical a woman to let that stop her if she took a notion to marry.

When Roscoe saw them coming he snapped shut his whittling knife and put the stick he had been whittling in his shirt pocket. There was no law against whittling, but he didn’t want to get a reputation as an idler, particularly not with a man who was as apt as not to end up the next mayor of Fort Smith.