Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“You have to admit that’s us,” he said. “Why would you keep our picture propped up behind your bar and then expect us to stand there and be treated like spit when we walk in?” “Oh, well, I never even noticed them dern pictures,” John said. “I ought to have thrown all that old junk out, but I never got around to it. Just drink your drink and skedaddle or be ready to go to jail. Here comes the sheriff now.” Sure enough, in about a minute, Tobe Walker stepped into the bar. He was a heavyset man with a walrus mustache who looked older than his years. Call was amused to see him, for what the angry young man didn’t know was that Tobe had been in their Ranger troop for four years, just before they quit. He had only been sixteen then, but he made a good Ranger. Tobe had looked up to both of them as if they were gods, and was an unlikely man to arrest them. His eyes widened when he saw them.

“Why, can it be?” he asked. “Captain Call?” “Well, Tobe,” Call said, shaking his hand.

Augustus, too, was highly amused by the turn of events.

“’I god, Tobe,” he said, “I guess it’s your duty to handcuff us and march us off to jail.” “Why would I do that?” Tobe asked. “There’s times when I think I ought to jail myself, but I don’t know why I’d want to jail you two.” “Because you’re hired to keep the peace and these old soaks have been disturbing it,” John said. The fact that Tobe obviously recognized them only made him more testy.

Tobe became immediately frosty. “What’s that you say, John?” he asked.

“I guess you heard me, sheriff, unless you’re deaf,” John said. “These men came in here and broke my bartender’s nose.

Then one of them shot off a gun for no reason. Then they pistol-whipped the bartender. I offered them a chance to leave, but since they haven’t, I’m a notion to file charges and let the law take its course.” He said his little say so pompously that it struck the three of them as funny. Augustus laughed out loud, Call and Tobe smiled, and even Ned Tym chimed in with a chuckle.

“Son, you’ve misjudged our reputation,” Augustus said. “We was the law around here when you was still sucking a teat.

So many people think we saved them from the Indians that if you was to bring charges against us, and any of the boys that rangered with us got wind of it, they’d probably hang you. Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain’t much of a crime.” “John, I’d advise you to stop your name-calling,” Tobe said. “You’re acting too hot. You’d best just apologize and bring me a whiskey.” “I’ll be damned if I’ll do either one,” John said, and without another word stepped over the fallen bartender and wentback upstairs.

“What’s he got, a whore up there?” Augustus asked hopefully. He was beginning to feel restive and would have liked some female company.

“Yes, John keeps a señorita,” Tobe said. “I guess you’ll have to excuse him. He’s from Mobile and I’ve heard it said people in those parts are hotheaded.” “Well, it ain’t a local prerogative,” Augustus said. “We’ve got hotheads in our crew, and ain’t none of them from Mobile, Alabama.” They got a whiskey bottle, sat down at a table and chatted for a while, talking of old times. Tobe inquired after Jake, and they carefully refrained from mentioning that he was on the run from the law. While they were talking, the bartender got up and staggered out the back way. His nose had stopped bleeding but his shirt was drenched in blood.

“Hell, he looks like he’s been butchered,” Tobe said cheerfully.

Ned Tym and his friends soon resumed their card game, but the other players’ nerves were shaken and Ned soon drained them of money.

Tobe Walker looked wistful when they told him they were taking a herd to Montana. “If I hadn’t married, I bet I’d go with you,” he said. “I imagine there’s some fair pastures up there. Being a lawman these days is mostly a matter of collaring drunks, and it does get tiresome.” When they left, he went off dutifully to make his rounds. Augustus hitched the new mules to the new wagon. The streets of San Antonio were silent and empty as they left. The moon was high and a couple of stray goats nosed around the walls of the old Alamo, hoping to find a blade of grass. When they had first come to Texas in the Forties people had talked of nothing but Travis and his gallant losing battle, but the battle had mostly been forgotten and the building neglected.

“Well, Call, I guess they forgot us, like they forgot the Alamo,” Augustus said.

“Why wouldn’t they?” Call asked. “We ain’t been around.” “That ain’t the reason—the reason is we didn’t die,” Augustus said. “Now Travis lost his fight, and he’ll get in the history books when someone writes up this place. If a thousand Comanches had cornered us in some gully and wiped us out, like the Sioux just done Custer, they’d write songs about us for a hundred years.” It struck Call as a foolish remark. “I doubt there was ever a thousand Comanches in one bunch,” he said. “If there had been they would have taken Washington, D.C.” But the more Augustus thought about the insults they had been offered in the bar—a bar where once they had been hailed as heroes—the more it bothered him.

“I ought to have given that young pup from Mobile a rap or two,” he said.

“He was just scared,” Call said. “I’m sure Tobe will lecture him next time he sees him.” “It ain’t the pint, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “You never do get the pint.” “Well, what is it, dern it?” Call asked.

“We’ll be the Indians, if we last another twenty years,” Augustus said. “The way this place is settling up it’ll be nothing but churches and dry-goods stores before you know it. Next thing you know they’ll have to round up us old rowdies and stick us on a reservation to keep us from scaring the ladies.” “I’d say that’s unlikely,” Call said.

“It’s dern likely,” Augustus said. “If I can find a squaw I like, I’m apt to marry her. The thing is, if I’m going to be treated like an Indian, I might as well act like one. I think we spent our best years fighting on the wrong side.” Call didn’t want to argue with nonsense like that. They were nearly to the edge of town, passing a few adobe hovels where the poorer Mexicans lived. In one of them a baby cried. Call was relieved to be leaving. With Gus on the prod, anything could happen. In the country, if he got mad and shot something, it would probably be a snake, not a rude bartender.

“We didn’t fight on the wrong side,” Call said. “What’s a miracle is that you stayed on the right side of the law for as long as you have. Jake’s too cowardly to be much of an outlaw, but you ain’t.” “I may be one yet,” Augustus said. “It’d be better than ending up like Tobe Walker, roping drunks for a living. Why, the man nearly cried when we left, he wanted to come so bad. Tobe used to be quick, and look at him now, fat as a gopher.” “It’s true he’s put on weight, but then Tobe was always chunky built,” Call said. On that one, though, he suspected Gus was right. Tobe had looked at them sadly when they mounted to ride away.AS FAR AS ROSCOE WAS CONCERNED, travel started bad and got worse. For one thing, it seemed he would never find Texas, a fact that preyed on his mind. From all indications it was a large place, and if he missed it he would be laughed out of Fort Smith—assuming he ever got back.

When he started out, he supposed that the easiest way to find Texas would be just to ask the settlers he encountered, but the settlers proved a remarkably ignorant lot. Most of them seemed never to have been more than a few hundred feet from the place they happened to be settled. Many were unable to give directions to the next settlement, much less to a place as remote as Texas. Some were able to point in the general direction of Texas, but after riding a few miles, dodging thickets and looking for suitable crossings on the many creeks, Roscoe could not be sure he was still proceeding in that direction.

Fortunately the problem of direction was finally solved one afternoon when he ran into a little party of soldiers with a mule team. They claimed to be heading for someplace called Buffalo Springs, which was in Texas. There were only four soldiers, two horseback and two in the wagon, and they had relieved the tedium of travel by getting drunk. They were generous men, so generous that Roscoe was soon drunk too. His relief at finding men who knew where Texas was caused him to imbibe freely. He was soon sick to his stomach. The soldiers considerately let him ride in the wagon—not much easier on his stomach, for the wagon had no springs. Roscoe became so violently ill that he was forced to lie flat in the wagon bed with his head sticking out the back end, so that when the heaves hit him he could vomit, or at least spit, without anyone losing time.

An afternoon passed in that way, with Roscoe alternately vomiting and lying on his back in the wagon, trying to recover his equilibrium. When he lay on his back the hot sun, beat right down in his face, giving him a hard headache. The only way to block the sun was to put his hat over his face, but when he did that the close atmosphere in the hat, which smelled like the hair lotion Pete Peters, the barber back in Fort Smith, had used liberally, made him sick to his stomach again.

Soon Roscoe had nothing left in him to throw up but his guts, and he was expecting to see them come up any time. When he finally sat up, feeling extremely weak, he found that they had come to the banks of a wide, shallow river. The soldiers had ignored his illness, but they couldn’t ignore the river.