Even then, it was all they could do to throw the bull, and it took Po Campo over two hours to sew the huge flap of skin back in place. When it was necessary to turn the bull from one side to another, it took virtually the whole crew, plus five horses and ropes, to keep him from getting up again. Then, when the bull did roll, he nearly rolled on Needle Nelson, who hated him anyway and didn’t approve of all the doctoring. When the bull nearly rolled on him Needle retreated to the wagon and refused to come near him again. “I was rooting for the bear,” he said. “A bull like that is going to get somebody sooner or later, and it might be me.” The next day the bull was so sore he could barely hobble, and Call feared the doctoring had been in vain. The bull fell so far behind the herd that they decided to leave him. He fell several miles behind in the course of the day. Call kept looking back, expecting to see buzzards in the sky—if the bull finally dropped, they would feast.
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“It seems a pity to shoot him,” Augustus said. “He fought a draw with a grizzly. Not many critters can say that.” “He can’t walk to Montana with half his skin hanging off his shoulders,” Call pointed out. “The flies will get on that wound and he’ll die anyway.” Po Campo walked to within fifty feet of the bull and looked at him.
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When the Texas bull calmed down enough so that it was possible to approach him, his wounds seemed so extensive that Call at first considered shooting him. He had only one eye, the other having been raked out, and the skin had been ripped off his neck and hung like a blanket over one shoulder. There was a deep gash in his flank and a claw wound running almost the whole length of his back. One horn had been broken off at the skull as if with a sledgehammer. Yet the bull still pawed the earth and bellowed when the cowboys rode too close.
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To the amazement of all who saw it, the bear batted the Texas bull aside. He rose on his hind legs again, dealt the bull a swipe with his forepaw that knocked the bull off its feet. The bull was up in a second and charged the bear again—this time it seemed the bear almost skinned him. He hit the bull on the shoulder and ripped a capelike piece of skin loose on his back, but despite that, the bull managed to drive into the bear and thrust a horn into his flank. The bear roared and dug his teeth into the bull’s neck, but the bull was still moving, and soon bear and bull were rolling over and over in the dust, the bull’s bellows and the bear’s roar so loud that the cattle did panic and begin to run. The Hell Bitch danced backward, and Augustus’s horse began to pitch again and threw him, though Augustus held the rein and managed to get his rifle out of the scabbard before the horse broke free and fled. Then Call found himself thrown too; the Hell Bitch, catlike, had simply doubled out from under him.
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“Well, skin them pants off, Texas,” she said, and to his astonishment, unbuttoned three buttons on the front of her gown and pitched it on the bed. She stood before him naked and, since he was too startled to move, reached down and unbuckled his pants.
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Augustus trotted the few steps to the blacksmith shop and dropped a loop over Call’s shoulders. Then he turned the horse away, took a wrap around the saddle horn, and began to ride up the street. Call wouldn’t turn loose of Dixon at first. He hung on and dragged him a few feet from the anvil. But Augustus kept the rope tight and held the horse in a walk. Finally Call let the man drop, though he turned with a black, wild look and started for whoever had roped him, not realizing who the man was. The skin was torn completely off his knuckles from the blows he had dealt Dixon, but he was lost in his anger and his only thought was to get the next assailant. It was in him to kill—he didn’t know if Dixon was dead, but he would make sure of the next man.
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Zwey did as he was told. The doctor was gone, treating a farmer who had broken his hip. Elmira thought about leaving him a note, but didn’t. The doctor was smart, he would figure out soon enough that she was gone. And before the sun set they left Ogallala, going east. Elmira rode in the wagon on a buffalo skin. Zwey drove. His horse was hitched to the rear of the wagon. She had asked him to take her, which made him proud. Luke had tried to confuse him, but now Luke was gone, and the man who came to see Elmira had been left behind. She had asked him to take her, not the other man. It must mean that they were married, just as he had hoped. She didn’t say much to him, but she had asked him to take her, and that knowledge made him feel happy. He would take her anywhere she asked.
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July looked at her as she fiddled with the baby. The tears had left him feeling empty, but his gratitude to the woman just for being there and treating him kindly was so great that he felt he might cry again if he tried to speak. The woman seemed too beautiful and too kind to be true. It was clear she was older—she had fine wrinkles around her mouth—but her skin was still soft and her face, as she wiggled the baby’s little hand with one finger, was very beautiful. The thought of more news troubled him a little, though—probably one of Elmira’s companions had stolen something or made some mischief.
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Zwey felt afraid. He had never carried a woman, much less Ellie. He felt he might break her, if he wasn’t careful. But she was looking at him and he felt he had to try. He lifted her in his arms and found again that she was light as a doll. She smelled different from anything he had ever carried, too. Mostly he had just carried skins, or carcasses of game.
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“Dee, is that you?” she asked. “Where have you been?” Then she fell back against the skins.
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“Help me, boys,” she said. “I’m real cold.” Zwey immediately handed the reins to Luke and went back to help cover her up. It was a warm night, but Ellie was still shivering. He put the blankets on her, but she didn’t stop shivering. On the wagon seat, Luke would laugh from time to time when he thought of Zwey’s baby. Before they had gone five miles, Ellie was delirious. She huddled in the blankets, talking to herself, mostly about the man called Dee Boot. Her look was so wild that Zwey became frightened. Once his hand happened to brush her and her skin was as hot as if the sun were burning down on her.
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Luke began to laugh. He turned to Ellie, who was still sitting with her back against the skins.
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“Let’s go, Zwey,” he said. “She don’t want the baby.” Zwey started the wagon, and they were soon out of sight of the house, but he was bothered. He kept looking back at Ellie, propped against the buffalo skins, her eyes wide open. Why didn’t she want her baby? It was a puzzle. He had never understood the whole business, but he knew mothers took care of babies, just as husbands took care of wives. In his eyes he had married Ellie, and he intended to take good care of her. He felt he was her husband. They had come all that way together in the wagon. Luke had tried to marry her too, but Zwey had soon stopped that, and Luke had been behaving a lot better since.
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Elmira didn’t answer. She had no breath to answer with, she was so tired. Walking downstairs and out to the wagon had taken all her strength. Zwey had to lift her into the wagon, at that, and she sat propped against the buffalo skins, too tired even to care about the smell. She was so tired that she felt like she wasn’t there. She couldn’t even tell Zwey to start—Luke had to do it.
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By the time it registered that they were really Indians, they had already cut off the steer and were driving it away, as the Captain sat and watched. Newt was almost afraid to look at them, but when he did he was surprised at how thin and poor they looked. The old man who was their leader was just skin and bones. He rode near enough for Newt to see that one of his eyes was milky white. The other Indians were young. Their ponies were as thin as they were. They had no saddles, just saddle blankets, and only one had a gun, an old carbine. The Indians boxed the steer out of the herd as skillfully as any cowboys and soon had him headed across the empty plain. The old man raised his hand to the Captain as they left, and the Captain returned the gesture.
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“He just keeps wanting to marry you,” Zwey said. “Looks like he’d quit it.” Luke did quit, at that point. He lay in the wagon for four days, trying to get his breath through his broken nose. One of his ears had been nearly scraped off on the wheel; his lips were smashed and several of his teeth broken. His face swelled tosuch a point that they couldn’t tell at first if his jaw was broken, but it turned out it wasn’t. The first day, he could barely mumble, but he did persuade Elmira to try and sew his ear back on. Zwey was for cutting it off, since it just hung by a bit of skin, but Elmira took pity on Luke and sewed on the ear. She made a bad job of it, mainly because Luke yelped and jerked every time she touched him with the needle. When she finished, the ear wasn’t quite in its right place; it set a little lower than the other and she had pulled the threads a little too tight, so that it didn’t have quite the right shape. But at least it was on his head.
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“Come in, Lorie,” he said several times. “A bath won’t hurt you.” Finally she did. She had not washed in a long time, and it felt good. Gus was sitting on a rock not far away, letting the sun dry him. The water was rapid, and she didn’t wade in too deep. She was surprised to see how white her skin looked, once the dirt was all washed off. The sight of her own brown legs and white belly surprised her so that she began to cry. Once the crying started, she couldn’t stop it—she cried as if she would never stop. Gus noticed and walked over to help her out of the river, for she was just standing there sobbing, the water up to her thighs.
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Though she had seen Dog Face and Monkey John give Blue Duck the skins in trade for her, it seemed they weren’t full owners, for whenever the Kiowas showed up, every two or three days, they drug her off to their camp for their share, and the two white men didn’t try to stop them. There was no love lost between the white men and the Kiowas, but both sides were too afraid of Blue Duck to get into it with one another.
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“I’ve heard him talk,” she said. “He talks to the men.” Fowler laughed and said no more. Elmira felt angry. She was in a spot if some man was wanting to marry her. Someonehad thrown a fresh buffalo skin into the warehouse and she could hear the flies buzzing on it from where she sat.
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Fowler did his best for Elmira. He got the traders to let her have a little room—just a tiny, dirty closet, really. It was next to a warehouse where piles of buffalo skins were stored. The smell of the skins was worse than anything that had happened on the river. Her room was full of fleas that had escaped from the skins. She spent much of her time scratching.
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“Got a rabbit and a frog,” she said. “You want ’em fried up?” “I never et no frog,” Roscoe said. “Who eats frogs?” “You just eat the legs,” the girl said. “Gimme your knife.” Roscoe handed it over. The girl rapidly skinned the cottontail, which was indeed plump. Then she whacked the knife into the frog, threw the top half into the creek and peeled the skin off the legs with her teeth. Roscoe had a few simple utensils in his saddlebag, which she got without a word from him. Roscoe assumed the stings must be affecting him because he felt like he was in a dream. He wasn’t asleep, but he felt no inclination to move. The top half of the frog, its dangling guts pale in the water, drifted over to shore. Two gray turtles surfaced and began to nibble at the guts. Roscoe mainly watched the turtles while the girl made a little fire and cooked the rabbit and the frog legs. To his surprise, the frog legs kept hopping out of the pan as if the frog was still alive.
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Elmira also watched the distant banks, which were green with the grass of spring. As the river gradually narrowed, she saw many animals: deer, coyote, cattle—but no Indians. She remembered stories heard over the years about women being carried off by Indians; in Kansas she had had such a woman pointed out to her, one who had been rescued and brought back to live with whites again. To her the woman seemed no different from other women, though it was true that she seemed cowed; but then, many women were cowed by events more ordinary. It was hard to see how the Indians could be much worse than the buffalo hunters, two of whom were on board. The sight of them brought back painful memories. They were big men with buffalo-skin coats and long shaggy hair—they looked like the animals they hunted. At night, in her cubbyhole, she would sometimes hear them relieving themselves over the side of the boat; they would stand just beyond the whiskey casks and pour their water into the Arkansas.
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“If we was in town we’d have a fine funeral,” Augustus said. “But as you can see, we ain’t in town. There’s nothing you can do but kick your horse.” “I wish I could have finished the song,” Allen said.THE WHISKEY BOAT STANK, and the men on it stank, but Elmira was not sorry she had taken passage. She had a tiny little cubbyhole among the whiskey casks, with a few planks and some buffalo skins thrown over it to keep the rain out, but she spent most of her time sitting at the rear of the boat, watching the endless flow of brown water. Some days were so hot that the air above the water shimmered and the shore became indistinct; other days a chill rain blew and she wrapped herself in one of the buffalo robes and kept fairly dry. The rain was welcome, for it discouraged the fleas. They made her sleep uneasy, but it was a small price to pay for escaping from Port Smith. She had lived where there were fleas before, and worse things than fleas.
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In the short lulls in the wind he could hear the clicking of long horns, as the cattle bumped into one another in the darkness. They were walking slowly, and Newt let Mouse walk along beside them. He had worried as much as he could, and he simply rode, his mind blank. It seemed like he had been riding long enough for the night to be over, but it wasn’t, and the sand still stung his skin. He was surprised suddenly by a flicker of light to the west—so quick and so soon lost that he didn’t at first recognize it as lightning. But it flickered again and soon was almost constant, though still far away. At first Newt welcomed it—it enabled him to see that he was still with the several hundred cattle, and also helped him avoid thickets.
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Already he could feel a change in the wind. The day had been still, but there was a hot breath against his cheek, coming from the south. He had waited out many such winds in Lonesome Dove, with the sand whirling up from Mexico so fast it felt like birdshot when it hit the skin. The Hell Bitch looked around restlessly, well aware of what was coming.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇