Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The young man didn’t need his lance—he could just take the squalling baby back to its mother.

Call and Augustus thought too that the young man would probably stop once he saw that Deets meant no harm. If not, Deets could whop him—Deets was a good hand-to-hand fighter.

It was only at the last second that they both realized that the Indian wasn’t going to stop. His charge was desperate, and he didn’t notice that Deets was friendly. He closed at a run.

“Shoot him, Deets!” Call yelled, raising his own gun.

Deets saw, too, at the last second, that the boy wasn’t going to stop. The young warrior wasn’t blind, but the look in hiseyes was as unseeing as the baby’s. He was still screaming a war cry—it was unnerving in the stillness—and his eyes were filled with hate. The old lance just looked silly. Deets held the baby out again, thinking the boy hadn’t understood.

“Here, take him, I just helping him up,” he said. Only then he saw it was too late—the young man couldn’t stop coming and couldn’t stop hating, either. His eyes were wild with hatred. Deets felt a deep regret that he should be hated so by this thin boy when he meant no harm. He tried to sidestep, hoping to gain a moment so he could set the baby down and wrestle with the Indian and maybe calm him.

But when Deets turned, the boy thrust the lance straight into his side and up into his chest.

Call and Augustus shot almost at the same time—the boy died with his hands still on the lance. They ran down to Deets, who still had the baby in his hands, although he had over a foot of lance inside him.

“Would you take him, Captain?” Deets asked, handing Call the child. “I don’t want to sit him back in all that blood.” Then Deets dropped to his knees. He noticed with surprise that the young Indian was near him, already dead. For a moment he feared that somehow he had killed him, but then he saw that his own gun was still holstered. It must have been the Captain, or Mr. Gus. That was a sad thing, that the boy had had to die just because he couldn’t understand that they were friendly. It was one more regret—probably the boy had just been so hungry he couldn’t think straight.

Then he realized that he was on his knees and tried to get up, but Mr. Gus put a hand on his shoulder and asked him to wait.

“No, you don’t have to get up yet, Deets,” Augustus said. “Just rest a minute.” Deets noticed the handle of the lance protruding from his side. He knew the dead boy had put it there, but he felt nothing. The Captain stood in front of him, awkwardly holding the Indian baby. Deets looked at the Captain sadly. He hoped that now the Captain would see that he had been right to feel worried about leaving Texas. It was a mistake, coming into other people’s country. It only disturbed them and led to things like the dead boy. People wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t know that they were friendly.

It would have been so much better to stay where they had lived, by the old river. Deets felt a longing to be back, to sit in the corrals at night and wonder about the moon. Many a time he had dozed off, wondering about the moon, whether the Indians had managed to get on it. Sometimes he dreamed he was on it himself—a foolish dream. But the thought made him sleepy, and with one more look of regret at the dead boy who hadn’t understood that he meant no harm, he carefully lay down on his side. Mr. Gus knelt beside him. For a moment Deets thought he was going to try to pull the lance out, but all he did was steady it so the handle wouldn’t quiver.

“Where’s little Newt?” Deets asked.

“Well, Newt didn’t come, Deets,” Augustus said. “He’s with the boys.” Then it seemed to Deets that something was happening to Mr. Gus’s head. It had grown larger. He couldn’t see it all well.

It was as if he were looking through water—as if he had come back to the old river and were lying on the bottom, looking at Mr. Gus through the shallow brown water. Mr. Gus’s head had grown larger, was floating off. It was rising toward the sky like the moon. He could barely see it and then couldn’t see it at all, but the waters parted for a moment and he saw a blade or two of grass, close to his eye; then to his relief the brown waters came back and covered him again, deep this time and warm.

“Can’t you take that lance out?” Call asked. He didn’t know what to do with the baby, and there Deets lay dying.

“I will in a minute, Call,” Augustus said. “Just let him be dead for a minute.” “Is he dead already?” Call asked. Though he knew from long experience that such things happened quickly, he could not accept it in Deets’s case. “I guess it went to the heart,” he added pointlessly.

Augustus didn’t answer. He was resting for a moment, wondering if he could get the lance out or if he should just break it off or what. If he pulled it out he might bring half of Deets out with it. Of course Deets was dead—in a way, it didn’t matter. Yet it did—if there was one thing he didn’t want to do, it was tear Deets up.

“Can’t you give that squalling baby to the women?” he asked. “Just set it down over there and maybe they’ll come and get it.” Call took a few steps toward the huddled Indians, holding out the baby. None of the Indians moved. He went a few more steps and set the baby on the ground. When he turned back he saw Augustus put a foot against Deets’s side and try to remove the lance, which did not budge.

Augustus gave up and sat down beside the dead man. “I can’t do this today, Deets,” he said. “Somebody else will have to do it if it gets done.” Call also knelt down by Deets’s body. He could not get over his surprise. Though he had seen hundreds of surprising things in battle, this was the most shocking. An Indian boy who probably hadn’t been fifteen years old had run up toDeets and killed him.

It must have shocked Augustus just as much, because he didn’t have anything to say.

“I guess it’s our fault,” Call said. “We should have shot sooner.” “I don’t want to start thinking about all the things we should have done for this man,” Augustus said. “If you’ve got the strength to ride, let’s get out of here.” They managed to break the lance off so it wouldn’t wave in the air, and loaded Deets’s body on his horse. While Augustus was tying the body securely, Call rounded up the horses. The Indians watched him silently. He changed his mind and cut off three of the horses that were of little account anyway. He rode over to the Indians.

“You better tie them three,” he said. “Otherwise they’ll follow us.” “I doubt they speak English, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “I imagine they speak Ute. Anyway, we killed their best warrior; they’re done for now unless they find some better country. Three horses won’t last them through the winter.” He looked around at the parched country, the naked ridges where the earth had split from drought. The ridges were varicolored, smudged with red and salt-white splotches, as if the fluids of the earth had leaked out through the cracks.

“Montana better not be nothing like this,” he said. “If it is, I’m going back and dig up that goddamn Jake Spoon and scatter his bones.” They rode all night, all the next day and into the following night. Augustus just rode, his mind mostly blank, but Call was sick with self-reproach. All his talk of being ready, all his preparation—and then he had just walked up to an Indian camp and let Josh Deets get killed. He had known better. They all knew better. He had known men killed by Indian boys no older than ten, and by old Indian women who looked as if they could barely walk. Any Indian might kill you: that was the first law of the Rangers. And yet they had just walked in, and now Josh Deets was gone. He had never called the man by his first name, but now he remembered Gus’s foolish sign and how Deets had been troubled by it. Deets had finally concluded that his first name was Josh—that was the way he would think of him from then on, Call decided. He had been Josh Deets. It deepened his sense of reproach that, only a few days before, Josh Deets had been so thoughtful as to lead his horse through the sandstorm, recognizing that he himself was played out.

Then he had stood there with a rifle in his hands and let the man be killed. They had all concluded the Indians were too starved down to do anything. It was a mistake he would never forgive himself.