Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Augustus and Deets could do little for Sean except sit with him while his life was ending.

“I guess it would have been better if Pea had just let him drown,” Augustus said. “He was an unlucky young sprout.” “Mighty unlucky,” Deets said. He felt an unsteadiness in his limbs. Though he had seen much violent death, he had not seen one more terrible than the one that had just occurred. He felt he would never again cross a river without remembering it.

Before his brother crossed the river, Sean O’Brien died. Augustus covered the boy with his slicker just as the horse herd came clambering up the bank. The herd passed so close that when some of the horses stopped to shake themselves the fine spray wet Deets’s back. The Spettle boys came out of the river wide-eyed with fright, clinging to their wet mounts. On the far bank Call had the other men helping to ease the wagon down the steep crossing.

“Now if them snakes had come at Bol, he would have had a chance,” Augustus said. “He has his ten-gauge.” “The storm stirred’ them up,” Deets said again. He felt guilty, for he had chosen the crossing in preference to one up the river, and now a boy was dead.

“Well, Deets, life is short,” Augustus said. “Shorter for some than for others. This is a bad way to start a trip.” Bolivar was unhappy. He didn’t think the wagon would make it, even across such a small river, but he was not willing to leave it either. He sat grimly on the wagon seat, Lippy beside him, while the cowboys got ropes on the wagon.

“You mean Sean’s dead?” Allen O’Brien asked the Captain, so stunned he could barely speak.

“Yes, he’s dead,” Call said—he had seen Gus cover the corpse.

“It’s me that done it,” Allen said, tears on his round face. “I never should have brought the boy. I knew he was too young.” Call said nothing more. The boy’s age had had nothing to do with what had happened, of course; even an experiencedman, riding into such a mess of snakes, wouldn’t have survived. He himself might not have, and he had never worried about snakes. It only went to show what he already knew, which was that there were more dangers in life than even the sharpest training could anticipate. Allen O’Brien should waste no time on guilt, for a boy could die in Ireland as readily as elsewhere, however safe it might appear.

Jasper and Bert had seen the snakes, and Jasper was so terrified that he couldn’t look at the water. Soupy Jones was almost as scared. The Rainey boys looked as if they might fall off their horses.

More than anything, Jasper wanted to quit. He had crossed the Nueces many times, and yet, as the moment approached when he would have to do it again, he felt he couldn’t. Pea and Dish and the others who had already crossed seemed to him like the luckiest men in the world.

“Captain, do you reckon them snakes are gone?” he asked.

“Well, they’re scattered,” Call said.

As they got ready to go in Jasper drew his pistol, but Call shook his head. “No shooting,” he said. He had no confidence that any of the men could shoot from a swimming horse and hit anything, as Gus had.

“Just quirt ’em if you see any,” he added.

“I hope none don’t crawl in this wagon,” Lippy said, his lip quivering with apprehension.

The wagon floated better than expected—Bolivar barely got his feet wet. Jasper flinched once when he saw a stick he thought was a snake, but the moccasins had scattered and were not seen again.

Allen O’Brien dismounted and stood and cried over his brother. Jasper Fant cried, too, mostly from relief that he was still alive.

While they were having their cry, Deets and Pea got shovels from the wagon and dug a grave, back from the river a hundred yards, beside a live oak tree. Then they cut off part of one of the wagon sheets, wrapped the dead boy in it and carried him in the wagon to the grave. They laid him in it and Deets and Pea soon covered him, while most of the crew stood around, not knowing what to do or say.

“If you’d like to sing or something, do it,” Call said. Allen stood a moment, started singing an Irish song in a quavering voice, then broke down crying and couldn’t finish it.

“I don’t have no pianer or I’d play one of the church hymns,” Lippy said.

“Well, I’ll say a word,” Augustus said. “This was a good, brave boy, for we all saw that he conquered his fear of riding. He had a fine tenor voice, and we’ll all miss that. But he wasn’t used to this part of the world. There’s accidents in life and he met with a bad one. We may all do the same if we ain’t careful.” He turned and mounted old Malaria. “Dust to dust,” he said. “Lets the rest of us go on to Montana.” He’s right, Call thought. The best thing to do with a death was to move on from it. One by one the cowboys mounted and went off to the herd, many of them taking a quick last look at the muddy grave under the tree.

Augustus waited for Allen O’Brien, who was the last to mount. He was so weak from shock, it seemed he might not be able to, but he finally got on his horse and rode off, looking back until the grave was hidden by the tall gray grass. “It seems too quick,” he said. “It seems very quick, just to ride off and leave the boy. He was the babe of our family,” he added.

“If we was in town we’d have a fine funeral,” Augustus said. “But as you can see, we ain’t in town. There’s nothing you can do but kick your horse.” “I wish I could have finished the song,” Allen said.THE WHISKEY BOAT STANK, and the men on it stank, but Elmira was not sorry she had taken passage. She had a tiny little cubbyhole among the whiskey casks, with a few planks and some buffalo skins thrown over it to keep the rain out, but she spent most of her time sitting at the rear of the boat, watching the endless flow of brown water. Some days were so hot that the air above the water shimmered and the shore became indistinct; other days a chill rain blew and she wrapped herself in one of the buffalo robes and kept fairly dry. The rain was welcome, for it discouraged the fleas. They made her sleep uneasy, but it was a small price to pay for escaping from Port Smith. She had lived where there were fleas before, and worse things than fleas.

As the boat inched its way up the Arkansas, the brown river gradually narrowed, and as it narrowed the boatmen and whiskey traders grew more restless. They drank so much whiskey themselves that Elmira felt they would be lucky to have any left to sell. Though she often felt them watching her as she sat at the end of the boat, they let her alone. Only Bowler, the chief trader, ever spoke more than a word or two to her. Fowler was a burly man with a dirty yellow beard and one eyelid that wouldn’t behave. It twitched and jerked up and down erratically, so that looking at him was disconcerting: one minute he would be looking at you out of both eyes, and then the eyelid would droop and he would only be looking with an eye and a half.

Fowler drank continuously—all day and all night, so far as Elmira could tell. When she woke, from the fleas or the rocking of the boat, she would always hear his hoarse voice, talking to anyone who would listen. He kept a heavy rifle in the crook of his arm, and his eyes were always scanning the banks.