“You’ve overshot Mr. Spoon,” he said. “He was recently seen in the town of Lonesome Dove, where he won twenty dollars from a hand of mine. However, he’s headed this way. He partnered up with the gentlemen who got my horses back. If I were you I’d camp here and put this boy in school. They’ll be along in two or three weeks.” “I thank you for the information,” July said. “I don’t suppose you’ve run across a man named Roscoe Brown along the trail.”“Nope, who’d he kill?” Wilbarger asked.
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“Yes, I met a couple,” Wilbarger said. “They were excellent horsethieves themselves. They stole my remuda back from some sly Mexicans. Are you looking for a killer or what?” “Yes, a man named Jake Spoon,” July said. “He killed a dentist in Fort Smith.” Wilbarger tucked his book carefully into his bedroll and tossed the bedroll in the back of the wagon.
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“This is a worrisome situation,” Augustus said. “I probably ought to track that man or send Deets to do it. Deets is a better tracker than me. Jake ain’t back and I ain’t got your faith in him. I best send one of the hands to guard you until we know where that bandit’s headed.” “Don’t send Dish,” Lorena said. “I don’t want Dish coming around.” Augustus chuckled. “You gals are sure hard on the boys that love you,” he said. “Dish Boggett’s got a truer heart than Jake Spoon, although neither one of them has much sense.” “Send me the black man,” she said. “I don’t want none of them others.” “I might,” Augustus said. “Or I might come back myself. How would that suit you?” Lorena didn’t answer. She felt the anger coming back. Because of some woman named Clara she wasn’t getting to San Francisco, when otherwise Gus would have taken her. She sat silently on the rock.
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“A woman named Clara,” Augustus said.
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“Ma called me her Janey,” the girl said. “I run off from old Sam.” “Oh,” Roscoe said, wishing that the wasps had picked another time to sting him, and also that the girl named Janey had picked another time to run off.
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“Ed’s a snake,” Louisa said. “Big rattler. I named him after my uncle, because they’re both lazy. I let Ed stay around because he holds down the rodents. He don’t bother me and I don’t bother him. But he hangs out around to the back, so watch out where you throw down your blanket.” Roscoe did watch. He stepped so gingerly, getting his bedding arranged, that it took him nearly twenty minutes to settle down. Then he couldn’t get the thought of the big snake off his mind. He had never heard of anyone naming a snake before, but then nothing she did accorded with any procedure he was familiar with. The fact that she had mentioned the snake meant that he had little chance of getting to sleep. He had heard that snakes had a habit of crawling in with people, and he definitely didn’t want to be crawled in with. He wrapped his blanket around him tightly to prevent Ed from slipping in, but it was a hot sultry night and he was soon sweating so profusely that he couldn’t sleep anyway. There were plenty of grass and weeds around, and every time anything moved in the grass he imagined it to be the big rattler. The snake might get along with Louisa, but that didn’t mean he would accept strangers.
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To Roscoe it seemed a bold question, and he took his time answering it. Once about twenty years earlier he had fancied agirl named Betsie and had been thinking about asking her to take a walk with him some night. But he was shy, and while he was getting around to asking, Betsie died of smallpox. He had always regretted that they never got to take their walk, but after that he hadn’t tried to have much to do with women.
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Nonetheless, the next morning he found himself saddling up the big white gelding he had ridden for the last ten years, a horse named Memphis, the town of his origin. Several of the townspeople were there at the jail, watching him pack his bedroll and tie on his rifle scabbard, and none of them seemed worried that he was about to ride off and leave them unprotected. Although Roscoe said little, he felt very pettish toward the citizens of Fort Smith, and toward Peach Johnson and Charlie Barnes in particular. If Peach had just minded her own business, nobody would even have discovered that Elmira was missing until July returned, and then July would have been able to take care of the problem, which rightly was his problem anyway.
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It came to her more strongly every day how much she missed Dee Boot. He was the exact opposite of July Johnson. July could be predicted down to the least gesture, whereas Dee was always doing what a person least expected. Once, in Abilene, to get revenge on a madam he hadn’t liked, he had pretended to bring her a nice pie from the bakery, and indeed he had got the baker to produce what looked like a perfect piecrust—but he had gone over to the livery stable and filled the piecrust with fresh horse turds. The madam, a big, mean woman named Sal, had actually cut into it before she sensed the joke.
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It seemed he was faced every single day with decisions that were hard to make. Sometimes, sitting at his own table, it was hard to decide whether to talk to Elmira or not. It was not hard to tell when Elmira was displeased, though. Her mouth got tight and she could look right through him and give no indication that she even saw him. The problem was trying to figure out what she was displeased about. Several times he had tried asking if anything was wrong and had been given bitter, vehement lectures on his shortcomings. The lectures were embarrassing because they were delivered in the presence of Elmira’s son, now his stepson, a twelve-year-old named Joe Boot. Elmira had been married in Missouri to a fellow named Dee Boot, about whom she had never talked much—she just said he died of smallpox.
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He had gone there often and had great fun in the days before he got the wound in his belly. He had never forgotten the merry whores—they were always sitting on his lap. One of them, a girl named Maria, would sleep with him merely because she liked the way he played the piano. Those had been the years.
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Augustus stopped in front of the deserted blacksmith shop. The blacksmith, an uncommunicative man named Roy Royce, had ridden out of town some months before and had not come back.
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“Oh, Bol’s got the adventurer’s spirit,” Augustus said. “He’ll go. If he don’t, he’ll just have to go home and whet his wife more often than he cares to.” With that he went and got the two mules that constituted their wagon team. The bigger mule, a gray, was named Greasy, and the smaller, a bay, they called Kick Boy, out of respect for his lightning rear hooves. They had not been worked very much, there seldom having been a need to take the wagon anywhere. It was theoretically for rent, but rarely got rented more than once a year. Greasy and Kick Boy were an odd-looking team, the former being nearly four hands higher than the latter. Augustus hitched them to the wagon, while Call went to inspect the remuda, meaning to weed out any horses that looked sickly.
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Since the Hat Creek outfit had been gathering cattle and getting ready for their drive, games were handier than they had been for a while. Several cowboys drifted into Lonesome Dove, looking for work; some of them had enough snap left at night to wander in and cut the cards. A tall cowboy named Needle Nelson showed up from north of San Antonio, and a cheerful cowboy from Brownsville named Bert Borum.
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“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.
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Augustus took the lead on a big white horse named Puddin’ Foot, and Jake Spoon followed him. Jake looked sour as clabber, which suited Dish fine. Maybe Lorena hadn’t fallen quite in love with him, after all.
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“Do we ask their names before we shoot them?” he inquired.“It ain’t necessary,” Augustus assured him. “Most of them are named Jesus anyway.” “Well, I ain’t named Jesus,” Jake said. “You boys try not to do your learning in my direction. I’ve been known to get riled when I’m shot at.” When the two Irishmen came trotting up to the horse herd behind Augustus and Jake, Dish Boggett could hardly believe his eyes. He had always heard that the Hat Creek outfit was peculiar, but arming men who didn’t even know how to dismount from their horses was not so much peculiar as insane.
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That night, when a skinny cowboy named Jasper Fant came in from the river and approached her, Lorie just stared at him silently until he got embarrassed and backed off, never having actually said a word. Staring was all she had to do. Jasper consulted with Lippy and Xavier, and by the end of the week, all the cowboys along the river knew that the only sporting woman in Lonesome Dove had abruptly given up the sport.WHEN JAKE FINALLY came ambling up to the house, having spent the better part of the day asleep in Lorena’s bed, Augustus was already nuzzling his jug from time to time. He was sitting on the front porch, waving off flies and watching the two Irishmen, who were sleeping as if dead under the nearest wagon. They had gone to sleep in the wagon’s meager shade; the shade had moved, but not the Irishmen. The boy had no hat. He slept with his arm across his face. Jake didn’t even glance at them as he walked past, a fact Augustus noted. Jake had never been renowned for his interest in people unless the people were whores.
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The woman doing the crying was the whore named Maggie, Newt’s mother, whom Jake Spoon took such a fancy to later.
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“That would be a long story,” Allen said. “Are we far from Galveston? That was our destination.” “You overshot it by a wide mark,” Call said. “This hut you’re resting in belongs to a man named Pedro Flores. He ain’t a gentle man, and if he finds you tomorrow I expect he’ll hang you.” “Oh, he will,” Deets agreed. “He’ll be mad tomorrow.” “Fine, we’ll go with you,” Allen said. He courteously offered the bottle to both Deets and Newt, and when they refused drained it with one gulp and flung it into the darkness.
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“That hat looks about like a buffalo cud,” Augustus said. “A hat ain’t meant to be a chamber pot, you know. If I was you I’d throw it away.” Lippy was so named because his lower lip was about the size of the flap on a saddlebag. He could tuck enough snuff under it to last a normal person at least a month; in general the lip lived a life of its own, there toward the bottom of his face.
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There was only one horse hitched outside the Dry Bean when Augustus strolled up—a rangy sorrel that he recognized as belonging to a cowboy named Dishwater Boggett, so named because he had once rushed into camp so thirsty from a dry drive that he wouldn’t wait his turn at the water barrel and had filled up on some dishwater the cook had been about to throw out. Seeing the sorrel gave Augustus a prime feeling because Dish Boggett loved card playing, though he lacked even minimal skills. Of course he also probably lacked ante money, but that didn’t necessarily rule out a game. Dish was a good hand and could always get hired—Augustus didn’t mind playing for futures with such a man.
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They could hear the piano from down at the Dry Bean. An old-timer named Lippy Jones did all the playing. He had the same problem Sam Houston had had, which was a hole in his belly that wouldn’t quite heal shut. Someone had shot Lippy with a big bore gun; instead of dying he ended up living with a leak. With a handicap like that, it was lucky he could play the piano.
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The damp burlap the jug was wrapped in naturally appealed to the centipedes, so Augustus made sure none had sneaked under the wrapping before he uncorked the jug and took a modest swig. The one white barber in Lonesome Dove, a fellow Tennessean named Dillard Brawley, had to do his barbering on one leg because he had not been cautious enough about centipedes. Two of the vicious red-legged variety had crawled into his pants one night and Dillard had got up in a hurry and had neglected to shake out the pants. The leg hadn’t totally rotted off, but it had rotted sufficiently that the family got nervous about blood poisoning and persuaded he and Call to saw it off.
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His stubborn partner, Captain W. F. Call, maintained that there was excellent shade as close as Pickles Gap, only twelve miles away, but Augustus wouldn’t allow it. Pickles Gap was if anything a more worthless community than Lonesome Dove. It had only sprung up because a fool from north Georgia named Wesley Pickles had gotten himself and his family lost in the mesquites for about ten days. When he finally found a clearing, he wouldn’t leave it, and Pickles Gap came into being, mainly attracting travelers like its founder, which is to say people too weak-willed to be able to negotiate a few hundred miles of mesquite thicket without losing their nerve.
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