Once the night got late, the woods were as noisy as a saloon, only Roscoe didn’t know what most of the noises meant. To him they meant threats. He sat with his back to a tree all night, his pistol in his hand and his rifle across his lap. Finally, about the time it grew light, he got too tired to care if bears or pigs ate him, and he stretched out for a little while.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Why, Lorie,” he said, “I guess traveling agrees with you. You look pretty as the morning.” Lorena smiled. It was funny. Out in the open she felt more at ease with Gus than she had in the saloon.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

But she wasn’t there. At the saloon he asked Renfro, the barkeep, if he knew of a whore who had left town lately, but there were only two whores in town, and Renfro said they were both upstairs asleep.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Life in Fort Smith was different, too—so dull that she found little reason to raise herself from her quilts, most days. The women of the town, though they had no reason to suspect her, suspected her anyway and let her alone. Often she was tempted just to walk into a saloon where there was a girl or two she might have talked to, but instead she had given way to apathy, spending whole days sitting on the edge of her sleeping loft, doing nothing.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Lately more and more cowboys passed through the town. Once the wild men of Shanghai Pierce had come through, nearly destroying two saloons. They were not bad men, just rowdy and wild to see a town. They tended to scare people’s livestock and rope their pets, and were intolerant of any efforts to curb their play. They were not gunmen, but they could box—July had been forced to crack one or two of them on the jaw and keep them in jail overnight.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Well, if you was earning it, the man wouldn’t have got away in the first place,” Peach continued. “You could have shot him down, which would have been no more than he deserved.” Roscoe was uneasily aware that he was held culpable in some quarters for Jake’s escape. The truth was, the killing had confused him, for he had been a good deal fonder of Jake than of Ben. Also it was a shock and a surprise to find Ben lying in the street with a big hole in him. Everyone else had been surprised too—Peach herself had fainted. Half the people in the saloon seemed to think the mule skinner had shot Ben, and by the time Roscoe got their stories sorted out Jake was long gone. Of course it had been mostly an accident, but Peach didn’t see it that way. She wanted nothing less than to see Jake hang, and probably would have if Jake had not had the good sense to leave.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

As they rode out of town the widow Cole was hanging out her washing. Hot as the sun was, it seemed to Augustus it would be dry before she got it on the line. She kept a few goats, one of which was nibbling on the rope handle of her laundry basket. She was an imposing woman, and he felt a pang of regret that he and she had not got on better, but the truth was they fell straight into argument even if they only happened to meet in the street. Probably her husband, Joe Cole, had bored her for twenty years, leaving her with a taste for argument. He himself enjoyed argument, but not with a woman who had been bored all her life. It could lead to a strenuous existence.As they passed out of town, Lippy suddenly turned sentimental. Under the blazing sun the town looked white—the only things active in it were the widow and her goats. There were only about ten buildings, hardly enough to make a town, but Lippy got sentimental anyway. He remembered when there had been another saloon, one that kept five Mexican whores.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“I ain’t surprised,” Augustus said gently. It was one thing to make light of a young man’s sorrows in love, but another to do it when the sorrower was Xavier’s age. There were men who didn’t get over women. He himself, fortunately, was not one of them, though he had felt fairly black for a year after Clara married. It was curious, for Xavier had had stuff enough to survive a hellion like Therese, but was devastated by the departure of Lorena, who could hardly, with reason, have been expected to stay in one room over a saloon all her life.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

He drove down to the saloon for a last word with Xavier. At first he thought the saloon was empty, but then he saw Xavier sitting at a little table near the shadowy end of the bar. He had not bothered to shave for two days, a sign of profound demoralization.“Dern, Wanz, you look poorly,” Augustus said. “I see the morning rush ain’t started yet.” “It will never start,” Xavier said in a desperate voice.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“It does seem a pity you’re so independent, Jake,” Augustus said. “If you come in with us you could be a cattle baron yet.” “Nope, I’d rather be pore than chew the dust,” Jake said, standing up. Lorie stood up too. She felt her silence coming back. It was men watching her while trying to pretend they weren’t watching her that brought it on. Few of them were bold enough just to look straight at her. They had to be sneaky about it. Being among them in the camp was worse than the saloon, where at least she had her room. In the camp there was nothing she could do but sit and listen to the talk pass her by.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

While Jake had been fixing the pack horse Lippy had come out on the steps of the saloon and waved his lip at her one more time.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

But when he raised up on one elbow to look at her in the fresh light, the urge to discourage her went away. It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good. At least he couldn’t disappoint them to their faces. Leaving them was his only out, and he knew he wasn’t ready to leave Lorie. Her beauty blew the sleep right out of his brain, and all she was doing was looking out a window, her long golden hair spilling over her shoulders. She wore an old threadbare cotton shift that should have been thrown away long ago. She didn’t own a decent dress, and had nothing to show her beauty to advantage, yet most of the men on the border would ride thirty miles just to sit in a saloon and look at her. She had the quality of not yet having really started her life—her face had a freshness unusual in a woman who had been sporting for a while. The thought struck him that the two of them might do well in San Francisco, if they could just get there. There were men of wealth there, and Lorie’s beauty would soon attract them.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

It put her out of sorts with Lippy, for it was still hot in her room and she would rather have stayed in the saloon, where there was at least a breath of breeze.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

He quickly ducked. Newt was embarrassed—at the moment he had made his slip, his mind had drifted to Lorena. He was wondering what spending a day with her would actually be like. Would they just sit in the saloon playing cards, or what?
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“What I can’t figure out is why there ain’t but two sinners in this saloon,” Gus said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Then, before the issue came to a head, something happened that took Lorena completely unaware. It was a blistering day, the saloon totally empty except for Lippy. Xavier, who had a taste for fish, had gone off to the river to see if he could catch any. Lorena was sitting at a table, practicing one or two card tricks Jake had taught her, when who should walk in but Gus. His shirt was as wet from sweat as if he’d been underwater a week, and even his hatband was sweated through.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

At first Xavier was cheered by all the new customers, until it occurred to him that they would only be there for a week or two. Then the thought of how empty the saloon would soon be filled him with gloom, and he stood by the door most of the night, his washrag dripping down his leg.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

But he wouldn’t. He liked talk, woman’s talk, and the comforts of the bed. He even liked it that she lived above the saloon, since it meant a game was handy if he felt like playing.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“It’s a scoundrel named Jake Spoon,” Dish said. “I reckon he’s beguiled her.” “Oh, so that’s it,” Jasper said. “I believe I’ve heard the name. A pistolero of some kind, ain’t he?” “I wouldn’t know what he is,” Dish said, in a tone that was meant to let Jasper know he had no great interest in discussing the matter further. Jasper took the hint and the two of them rode over to the Hat Creek pens in silence, their minds on the white-armed woman in the saloon. She was no longer unfriendly, but it seemed to both of them that things had gone a little better before the change.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Now Jake Spoon had spoiled it all, and the only way Xavier could vent his annoyance was by winning money from Jasper Fant, most of which he would never collect.“Where’s Jake?” Lorie asked—a shock to Dish. His hopes, which had been soaring as he walked through the dark to the saloon, flopped down to boot level. For her to inquire about the man so shamelessly bespoke a depth of attachment that Dish could barely imagine. It was not likely she would ever inquire at all about him, even if he stepped out the door and vanished for a year.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“I reckon it’ll be some while before anything happens, if anything does,” he said. “I believe I’ll just stroll over to that saloon and bathe my throat.” “Yes, sir, you go along,” Deets said. “I can look after the stock.” “You just shoot, if you need help,” Dish said. “I’ll get back here in a minute if there’s trouble.” He took his horse, so he wouldn’t be caught afoot in the event of trouble, and went trotting off.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Now that he was back, though, he wouldn’t mind spending a few warm idle months in Lonesome Dove. Lorie was more of a beauty than he had expected to find. Her room over the saloon wasn’t much, but it was better accommodation than they could expect on the way to Montana.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The knowledge that the Captain was in the room with a whore struck Pea hard, sort of like the bullet that had hit him just behind the shoulder blades in the big Indian scrape up by Fort Phantom Hill. When the bullet hit he felt a solid whack and then sort of went numb in the brain—and it was the same with the notion that struck him as he was carrying the ax home from the saloon: Maggie was talking to the Captain in the privacy of her room, whereas so far as he knew no one had ever heard of the Captain doing more than occasionally tipping his hat to a lady if he met one in the street.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

He had never known what to think about women, and still didn’t, but so far as actions went he was content to take his cue from the Captain, whose cue was plain. The Captain left them strictly alone, and had all the years Pea had been with him, excepting only one puzzling instance that had occurred years before, which Pea only remembered once every year or two, usually when he was dreaming. He had gone down to the saloon to get an ax someone had borrowed and not returned, and while he was getting the ax he heard a young woman crying out words and grievances to someone who was with her in her room.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇