Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“This is the Red,” one soldier said. “That’s Texas right across yonder.” Roscoe crawled out of his wagon, thinking to ride Memphis across, but found he couldn’t make the climb into the saddle.

Of course, Memphis was a tallish horse, but normally the saddle was reachable. Suddenly it wavered in the heat. It wasn’t that the saddle was rising, it was that Roscoe’s legs were sinking. He found himself sitting on the ground, holding to one stirrup.

The soldiers laughed at his plight and pitched him on Memphis as if he were a sack of potatoes.

“It’s a good thing you run into us, Deputy,” one soldier said. “If you’d kept on going west into the Territory, the dern Indians would have got you and et your testicles off.” “Et my what?” Roscoe asked, appalled at the casual way the soldier dropped such a terrible remark.

“I’ve heard that’s what occurs if you let ’em catch you alive,” the soldier said.

“Well, what’s the Indian situation in Texas then?” Roscoe asked. The soldiers seemed completely uninformed on the subject. They were from Missouri. All they knew about Indians was that they liked to do bad things to white captives. One mentioned that a soldier he knew had been shot with an arrow at such close range that the arrow went in one ear and the point came out the other side of the soldier’s head.

The soldiers seemed to enjoy telling such stories, but Roscoe couldn’t share their enthusiasm. He lay awake most of the night, thinking about testicles and arrows in the head.

The next afternoon the soldiers turned west, assuring him that he only had to hold a course southwest and he would eventually hit San Antonio. Though recovered from his drunk, he didn’t feel very vigorous—lack of proper sleeping conditions was slowly breaking down his health, it seemed.

That evening, as dusk was falling, he was about to reconcile himself to another night spent propped against a tree. He didn’t like sleeping sitting up, but it meant he could be up and running quicker, if the need arose. But before he could select a tree to lean against he spotted a cabin a little distance ahead.

When he approached, he saw an old man with a tobacco-stained beard sitting on a stump skinning a small animal—a possum, as it turned out. Roscoe felt encouraged. The old man was the first person he had seen in Texas, and perhaps would be a source of accurate information about the road.

“Howdy,” he said loudly, for the old man had not looked up from his skinning and Roscoe considered it dangerous to take people by surprise.

The old man didn’t look up, but a form appeared in the doorway of the cabin—a girl, Roscoe thought, though in the dusk he couldn’t be sure.

“Mind if I stop for the night?” Roscoe asked, dismounting.

The old man squinted at him briefly. “If you want supper you’ll have to kill your own varmint,” he said. “And leave the gal alone, she’s mine, bought and paid for.” That struck Roscoe as strange. The old man’s manner was anything but friendly. “Well, it’s a little too late to go possum- huntin’,” Roscoe said, trying to make light talk. “I’ve got a biscuit I can eat.” “Leave the gal alone,” the old man said again.

The old man, a hard-looking customer, didn’t look up again until he had finished skinning the possum. All Roscoe could do was stand around uneasily. The silence was heavy. Roscoe almost wished he had ridden on and spent the night sitting up against a tree. The level of civilization in Texas definitely wasn’t very high if the old man was an example of it.

“Come get the varmint,” the old man said to the girl.

She slipped out and took the bloody carcass without a word. In the dusk it was hard to make out much about her except that she was thin. She was barefoot and had on a dress that looked like it was made from part of a cotton sack.

“I gave twenty-eight skunk hides for her,” the old man said suddenly. “You got any whiskey?” In fact, Roscoe did have a bottle that he had bought off the soldiers. He could already smell frying meat—the possum, no doubt—and his appetite came back. He had nothing in his stomach and could think of little he would rather eat than a nice piece of fried possum. Around Fort Smith the Negroes kept the possums thinned out; they were seldom available on the tables of white folks.

“I got a bottle in my bag,” Roscoe said. “You’re welcome to share it.” He assumed that such an offer would assure him a place at the table, but the assumption was wrong. The old man took the whiskey bottle when he offered it, and then sat right on the stump and drank nearly all of it. Then he got up without a word and disappeared into the dark cabin. He did not reappear. Roscoe sat on the stump—the only place there was to sit—and the darkness got deeper and deeper until he could barely see the cabin fifteen feet away. Evidently the old man and the girl had no light, for the cabin was pitch-dark.

When it became plain he was not going to be invited for supper, Roscoe ate the two biscuits he had saved. He felt badly treated, but there was little he could do about it. When he finished the biscuits he pitched his bedroll up against the side of the cabin. As soon as he stretched out, the moon came up and lit the little clearing so brightly it made it hard to sleep.

Then he heard the old man say, “Fix the pallet.” The cabin was crudely built, with cracks between the logs big enough for a possum to crawl through, it seemed to Roscoe. He heard the old man stumbling around. “Goddamn you, come here,” the old man said. Roscoe began to feel unhappy that he had stopped at the cabin. Then he heard a whack, as if the old man had hit the girl with a belt or a razor strap or something. There was a scuffle which he couldn’t help but hear, and the strap landed a couple more times. Then the girl began to whimper.

“What’s that?” Roscoe said, thinking that if he spoke up the old man might let be. But it didn’t work. The scuffling continued and the girl kept whimpering. Then it seemed they fell against the cabin, not a foot from Roscoe’s head. “If you don’t lay still I’ll whup you tomorrow till you’ll wisht you had,” the old man said. He sounded out of breath. Roscoe tried to think of what July would do in such a situation. July had always cautioned him about interfering in family disputes—the most dangerous form of law work, July claimed. July had once tried to stop a woman who was going after her husband with a pitchfork and had been wounded in the leg as a result.

In this case, Roscoe didn’t know if it was even a family dispute that he was hearing. The old man had just said he bought the girl, though of course slavery had been over for years, and in any case the girl was white. The girl seemed to be putting up a good fight, despite her whimpering, for the old man was breathing hard and cursing her when he could get his breath. Roscoe wished more than ever that he had never spotted the cabin. The old man was a sorry customer, and the girl could only be having a miserable life with him.

The old man soon got done with the girl, but she whimpered for a long time—an unconscious whimpering, such as a dog makes when it is having a bad dream. It disturbed Roscoe’s mind. She seemed too young a girl to have gotten herself into such a rough situation, though he knew that in the hungry years after the war many poor people with large families had given children to practically anyone who would take them, once they got of an age to do useful work.

Roscoe woke up soaked, though not from rain. He had rolled off his blanket in the night and been soaked by the heavy dew. As the sun rose water sparkled on the grass blades near his eyes. In the cabin he could hear the old man snoring loudly. There was no sound from the girl.