Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“You can pay him if you want but I ain’t going,” she said. “Jake’s my sweetheart.” “I ain’t trying to cut him out,” Augustus said. “I just want a poke.” Lorena felt her silence coming back. It was the only way to deal with such a situation. She sat for a few minutes, not talking, hoping he would go away. But it didn’t work. He just sat and drank, perfectly friendly and in no hurry. Once she thought about it, the sum grew on her a little. It was something, to be offered fifty dollars. She would have thought it crazy in anyone except Gus, but Gus was clearly not crazy! In a way it was a big compliment that he would offer fifty dollars just for that.

“Go get a Mexican woman,” she said. “Why waste your money?” “Because you’re my preference,” Augustus said. “I’ll tell you what, let’s cut the cards. If you’re high, I’ll give you the money and forget the poke. If I’m high, I’ll give you the money and you give me the poke.” Lorena thought she might as well. After all, it was just gambling, which was what Jake did. If she won it would all seem like a joke, something that Gus had cooked up to pass the time. Besides, she would have fifty dollars and could send to San Antonio for some new dresses, so Jake wouldn’t be so critical of her wardrobe. She could tell him she beat Gus to the tune of fifty dollars, which would astonish him, since he played with Gus all the time and seldom won more than a few dollars.

Then, in a second, Gus beat her. She came up with a ten of spades, and him with the queen of hearts. It was her sense that he’d cheated, though she couldn’t have said how. She had not realized before what a determined man he was. He had come in for a purpose and she had not been clever enough to head him off. He paid her the fifty dollars at once—it had not been a bluff. When he had had the poke and was dressing, she found that she felt pretty cheerful and was not in a mood to hurry him out. After all, Gus had paid her many visits and given her nothing to hold against him. The fifty dollars was flattering, and she rather liked it that she was his preference even though he was Jake’s best friend. She had stopped feeling silent and was content to let him loll for a few minutes.

“Well, do you and Jake aim to marry?” he asked, looking at her cheerfully.

“He ain’t mentioned it,” she said. “He’s taking me to San Francisco, though.” Augustus snorted. “I figured that was his game,” he said.

“He promised,” Lorena said. “I mean to hold him to it, Gus.” “You’ll need my help then,” Augustus said. “Jake is a slippery eel. The only way to keep him around is to chain him to a wagon.” “I can keep him around,” Lorena said confidently.

“Oh, he fancies you,” Augustus said. “But that don’t mean he’ll stay around. My guess is he’ll use the drive as an excuse when the time comes.” “If he goes with it, then I’m going too,” she said.

“Why, Lorie, you’re welcome, as far as I’m concerned,” Augustus said. “The problem is Call. He ain’t very tolerant of women.” That was no news. Captain Call was one of the few men in the region who had never been to visit her. In fact, so far as she could remember, he had never been in the saloon.

“It’s a free country, ain’t it?” she said. “I guess I can go where I want.” Gus got off the bed and tucked his carrot back in his pants.

“It’s not very free if you happen to work for Call,” he said.

“You think Lippy will tell on us?” she asked. To her surprise, she felt no guilt at all about operating behind Jake’s back. So far as she was concerned she was still his sweetheart. It had happened only because Gus had been too quick for her in a card game—it didn’t affect the situation one way or another.

“He won’t tell,” Augustus said. “Lippy’s got more sense than you might think. What he figures is that if he keeps quiet he might make another ten dollars sometime. Which is right. He might.” “Well, not unless we play a hand,” Lorena said. “I don’t trust your cut.”Augustus grinned. “A man who wouldn’t cheat for a poke don’t want one bad enough,” he said as he took his hat.

AUGUSTUS RODE BACK to camp a little after sunset, thinking the work would have stopped by then. The cattle were being held in a long valley near the river, some five miles from town. Every night Call went across the river with five or six hands and came back with two or three hundred Mexican cattle—longhorns mostly, skinny as rails and wild as deer. Whatever they got they branded the next day, with the part of the crew that had rested doing the hard end of the work. Only Call worked both shifts. If he slept, it was an hour or two before breakfast or after supper. The rest of the time he worked, and so far as anyone could tell the pace agreed with him. He had taken to riding the Hell Bitch two days out of three, and the mare seemed no more affected by the work than he was.

Bolivar had not taken kindly to being moved to a straggly camp out in the brush, with no dinner bell to whack or crowbar to whack it with. He kept his ten-gauge near the chuck box and scowled at everybody. The Irishmen were so intimidated that they were always the last ones in line. As a consequence they got little to eat and were no longer as fat as they had been the day they arrived.

It seemed the Irishmen were part of the outfit, though. Their total inexperience was offset by an energy and a will to learn that impressed even Call. He let them stay in the first place, because he was so short-handed he couldn’t afford to turn away any willing hand. By the time more competent men arrived the Irishmen had gotten over their fear of horses and worked with a will. Not being cowboys, they had no prejudice against working on the ground. Once shown the proper way to throw a roped animal, they cheerfully flung themselves on whatever the ropers drug up to the branding fire, even if it was a two-year-old bull with lots of horn and a mean disposition. They had no great finesse, but they were dogged, and would eventually get the creature down.

This willingness to work on the ground was indispensable, for most cowboys would rather eat poison than be forced to dismount. They all fancied themselves ropers, and swelled like toads if asked to do work they considered beneath their dignity.

Since there were few goats to steal near the camp, Bol’s menus relied heavily on beef, with the usual admixture of beans.

He had brought along a sack of chilies, and he dumped them liberally into his beans, feeling free to augment the dish with pieces of whatever varmints strayed into his path—rattlesnakes mostly, with an occasional armadillo.

For several days the crew ate the fiery beans without complaint, only the Irishmen showing pronounced ill effects. Young Sean had difficulty with the peppers. He could not eat the beans without weeping, but, with all the work, his appetite raged to such a point that he could not avoid the beans. He ate them and wept. Most of the crew liked the boy and had decided to treat his frequent weepings as simply a mild aberration, related in some way to his nationality.

Then one day Jasper Fant caught Bolivar skinning a rattlesnake. He assumed Bolivar was merely going to make himself a rattlesnake belt, but he happened to turn around as Bol sliced the snake right into the stewpot, a sight which agitated him greatly. He had heard that people ate snake but had never expected to do so himself. When he told the other hands what he had seen they were so aroused that they wanted to hang Bolivar on the spot, or at least rope him and drag him through the prickly pear to improve his manners. But when they approached Augustus with the information about the snake, he laughed at them.

“You boys must have been raised on satin pillows,” he said. “If you’d rangered you’d have got a taste for snake long ago.” He then proceeded to give them a lecture on the culinary properties of rattlesnake—a lecture that Jasper, for one, received rather stiffly. It might be superior to chicken, rabbit and possum, as Gus claimed, but that didn’t mean he wanted to eat it. His visits to the stewpot became a source of irritation to everyone; he would fish around in the pot for several minutes, seeking portions of meat that he could feel confident hadn’t come from a snake. Such delicacy exacerbated the rest of the crew, who were usually so hungry by suppertime that they could ill abide waits.

Call and Jake rode in while Augustus was eating. The sight of Gus with his plate full put Jake in a low temper, since he himself had handled branding irons all day while Gus had amused himself in town and stayed fresh. They had branded over four hundred cattle since sunup, enough to make Jake wish he had never brought up the notion of taking cattle to Montana.

“Hello, girls,” Augustus said. “You look like you’ve done a heavy laundry. Wait till I finish my beef and I’ll help you off your horses.” “I don’t want off mine,” Jake said. “Hand me a plate and I’ll eat on the way to town.” Call felt irritated. It was the first full day Jake had put in since the work started, and mostly he had lazed through it.

“Why? Must you go?” he asked, trying to keep it mild. “We’re going to make our last drag tonight. We have to get started, you know.” Jake dismounted and walked over to the grub, pretending he hadn’t heard. He didn’t want an argument with Call if he could avoid one. In truth, he had not been thinking very far ahead since drifting back to Lonesome Dove. He had often thought of the fortune that could be made in cattle in Montana, but then a man could think of a fortune without actuallyhaving to go and make one. The only good thing to be said for trailing cattle that far north was that it beat hanging in Arkansas, or rotting in some jail.

Then there was Lorie. So far she hadn’t had a single fit, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t if she found out he was leaving.