When the redness receded and he opened his eyes again, he heard a piano playing in the distance. He was in bed in a small hot room. Through the open window he could see the great Montana prairie. Looking around, he noticed a small fat man dozing in a chair nearby. The man wore a black frock coat sprinkled with dandruff. A bottle of whiskey and an old bowler hat nearly as disreputable as Lippy’s sat on a small bureau. The fat man was snoring peacefully.
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Backing out of the weeds, he stepped on the pistol that had misfired, an old cap-and-ball gun. He stuck it in his belt and hurried back to Pea, who looked white. He had sense enough to realize he had just almost been shot. Augustus glanced at the other dead Indian, a fat boy of maybe seventeen. His rifle was an old Sharps carbine, which Augustus threw to Pea.
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“Pea, you ain’t got your grip on the point,” Augustus said. “I just wanted to chase a buffalo once more. I won’t have the chance much longer, and nobody else will either, because there won’t be no buffalo to chase. It’s a grand sport too.” “Them bulls can hook you,” Pea Eye reminded him. “Remember old Barlow? A buffalo bull hooked his horse and the horse fell on Barlow and broke his hip.” “Barlow was a slow thinker,” Augustus observed. “He just loped along and got hooked.” “A slow walker, too, once his hip got broke,” Pea Eye said. “I wonder what happened to Barlow.” “I think he migrated to Seguin, or somewhere over in there,” Augustus said. “Married a fat widow and had a passel of offspring. You ought to have done the same, but here you are in Montana.” “Well, I’d hate not to be a bachelor,” Pea Eye said.
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“I’ve enjoyed mine,” Call said. “What was wrong with yours?” “I should have married again,” Augustus said. “Two wives ain’t very many. Solomon beat me by several hundred, although I’ve got the same equipment he had. I could have managed eight or ten at least. I don’t know why I stuck with this scraggly old crew.” “Because you didn’t have to work, I guess,” Call said. “You sat around, and we worked.” “I was working in my head, you see,” Augustus said. “I was trying to figure out life. If I’d had a couple more fat women to lay around with I might have figured out the puzzle.” “I never understood why you didn’t stay in Tennessee, if your family was rich,” Call said.
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It amused Lorena that Gus had got stuck with the baby. Somehow it made things more relaxed that the woman would just hand him to Gus that way. She stopped feeling quite so nervous, and she watched the baby chew on his fat little fist.
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“Me and Mary,” Buf said. “I get the ones that like ’em fat, and she gets the one’s that like ’em skinny. And if it’s a feller who likes ’em either way it’s just a matter of who ain’t busy at the time.” She was still lying naked on the bed.
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She had fat legs, but she was always friendly, Maggie. Of all the whores he had known, she was the easiest to get along with. The thought crossed his mind that he ought to have married her and not gone rambling. If he had, he wouldn’t be in such a fix. But he felt little fear; just an overpowering fatigue. Life had slipped out of line. It was unfair, it was too bad, but he couldn’t find the energy to fight it any longer.
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WHEN THEY FOUND Wilbarger’s man Chick and the boy who had been traveling with them, there wasn’t much left to bury. The coyotes and buzzards had had a full day at them. As they rode toward the little knoll where the buzzards swarmed, they passed a fat old badger carrying a human hand—a black hand at that. Newt was stunned—he assumed they would shoot the badger and get the hand back so it could be buried, but no one seemed concerned that the badger had someone’s hand.
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“Hell, I’m the only one of your customers that’s taken a bath this year,” Jake complained. “You could take up with bankers and lawyers, and the sheets wouldn’t stink so.” “I like ’em muddy and bloody,” Sally said. “I ain’t nice, this ain’t a nice place, and it ain’t a nice life. I’d take a hog to bed if I could find one that walked on two legs.” Jake had seen hogs that kept cleaner than some of the men Sally Skull took upstairs, but something about her raw behavior stirred him, and he stayed with her and paid the daily ten dollars. The cowboys that came through were very poor cardplayers, so he could usually make his fee back in an hour. He tried other whores in other saloons, skinny ones and fat ones, but with them a time came when he would remember Lorena and immediately lose interest. Lorena was the most beautiful woman he had ever known, and her beauty grew in his memory. He thought of her often with a pang, but also with anger, for in his view it was entirely her own fault that she had been stolen. Whatever was happening to her, it was her punishment for stubbornness. She could easily have been living with him in a decent hotel in Austin or Fort Worth.
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Not only could Janey keep them on the trail but she was also extremely useful when it came to rounding up grub. Once they got settled in a camp at night she would disappear and come back five minutes later with a rabbit or a possum or a couple of squirrels. She could even catch birds. Once she came back with a fat brownish bird of a sort Roscoe had never seen.
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“Well, it’s peculiar,” Augustus said. “I never was drawn to fat women, and yet I married two of them. People do odd things, all except you. I don’t think you ever wanted to be happy anyway. It don’t suit you, so you managed to avoid it.” “That’s silly,” Call said.
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“Old Sam et crawdads,” she said, as she sat back to survey her handiwork. “He can’t shoot worth a dern so he had to live off the varmints I could catch.” “Well, I wish you could catch a fat rabbit,” Roscoe said. “I’m plumb starved.” The next moment the girl was gone. She disappeared over the bank. Roscoe felt silly, for of course he had not really meant for her to go catch a rabbit. She might be fast, but rabbits were surely faster.
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“We didn’t fight on the wrong side,” Call said. “What’s a miracle is that you stayed on the right side of the law for as long as you have. Jake’s too cowardly to be much of an outlaw, but you ain’t.” “I may be one yet,” Augustus said. “It’d be better than ending up like Tobe Walker, roping drunks for a living. Why, the man nearly cried when we left, he wanted to come so bad. Tobe used to be quick, and look at him now, fat as a gopher.” “It’s true he’s put on weight, but then Tobe was always chunky built,” Call said. On that one, though, he suspected Gus was right. Tobe had looked at them sadly when they mounted to ride away.AS FAR AS ROSCOE WAS CONCERNED, travel started bad and got worse. For one thing, it seemed he would never find Texas, a fact that preyed on his mind. From all indications it was a large place, and if he missed it he would be laughed out of Fort Smith—assuming he ever got back.
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Call glanced around in time to see the glass shatter. Augustus had always been a wonderful pistol shot—it was pleasing to see he still was. All of the cardplayers scurried for cover except a fat man in a big hat. Looking more closely, Call remembered him—his name was Ned Tym, and he was a seasoned gambler, too seasoned to be disturbed by a little flying glass. When it stopped flying, Ned Tym coolly took his hat off and blew the glass from the brim.
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“The skinny ones last longer than the fat ones,” Louisa said. “You’ll probably last till you’re about sixty.” “Or longer, I hope,” Roscoe said.
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“Roscoe, you’re invited to supper,” she said, before he could make up his mind to go. “I bet you can eat better than you chop.” “Oh, I ought to get on after July,” Roscoe said, halfheartedly. “His wife run off.” “I meant to run off, before Jim went and died,” Louisa said. “If I had, I wouldn’t have had to bury him. Jim was fat. I had to hitch a mule to him to drag him out of the house. Spent all day pulling up stumps and then had to work half the nightplanting a husband. How old are you getting to be?” “Why, forty-eight, I guess,” Roscoe said, surprised to be asked.
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“I’m Louisa,” the woman said. “Louisa Brooks. I was born in Alabama and I wish I’d stayed. Got two husbands buried there and there’s another buried on this property here. Right back of the house, he’s buried, that was Jim,” she added. “He was fat and I couldn’t get him in the wagon so I dug the hole and there he lies.” “Well, that’s a shame,” Roscoe said.
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It was true that the crew presented an odd appearance, though Newt wouldn’t have compared them to chickens. Most of them were burned a deep brown on the face, neck and hands, but the rest of their bodies, which the sun never touched, were stark white. Bert Borum was the funniest-looking without a shirt, for he had a round fat belly with curly black on it that ran right down into his pants.
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“When have you seen her?” Charlie Barnes asked. He was looking stern, though it was hard for a man so short and fat to really muster much sternness.
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Bolivar had not taken kindly to being moved to a straggly camp out in the brush, with no dinner bell to whack or crowbar to whack it with. He kept his ten-gauge near the chuck box and scowled at everybody. The Irishmen were so intimidated that they were always the last ones in line. As a consequence they got little to eat and were no longer as fat as they had been the day they arrived.
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“Oh,” he asked politely, “what kind of varmints?” “Whatever the dogs catch,” Maude said. “Or the dogs themselves, if they don’t manage to catch nothing. I won’t support a lazy dog.” “She put a possum in,” one of the little girls said. She seemed as full of mischief as her fat mother, who, fat or not, had made plenty of mischief among the men of the area before she settled on Joe.
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He made the Rainey ranch by sundown, a far more cheerful place than the Spettle homestead. Joe Rainey had a twisted leg, the result of an accident with a buckboard, but he got around on the leg almost as fast as a healthy man. Call was not as fond of Maude, Joe’s fat red-faced wife, as Augustus was, but then he had to admit he was not as fond of any woman as Augustus was.
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“These nags is barely worth a night’s sleep,” he said to Deets and Pea. “If we was aiming to start a soap factory they might do, but so far as I know, we ain’t. I’ve a notion to keep the best fifty and run the rest off.” “My lord,” Pea said, aghast at what Gus had suggested. “The Captain would shoot all of us if we run off any of these horses.” “I don’t doubt he’d foam at the mouth,” Augustus said. “What do you think, Deets?” “They skinny,” Deets said. “Might get fat, if we give ’em enough time.” “You might grow wings, if I give you enough time,” Augustus said. They looked across the river. The sun was slipping fast—in an hour or two they could expect a loud visit.
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“Murderers!” the young one yelled. He sprang to his feet and darted past the Captain so fast the Captain didn’t even have time to trip him or hit him with his rifle barrel. For a fat man he moved fast, springing on the back of the mule before the other two could even move. Newt expected the Captain to shoot him or at least step over and knock him off the mule, but to his surprise the Captain just stood and watched, his rifle in the crook of his arm. The boy—for he was no older—pounded the mule desperately with his heels and the mule responded with a short leap and then went crashing down, throwing the boy over its head and almost back to the spot he had left. Looking more closely, Newt saw why the Captain had not bothered to stop the escape: the mule was hobbled.
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Her cheeks hollowed a little—it gave her a distracting beauty. Augustus’s experience had taught him that hollow-cheeked beauty was a dangerous kind. His two wives had both been fat-cheeked and trustworthy but had possessed little resistance to the climate. One had expired of pleurisy in only the second year of their marriage, while the other had beencarried off by scarlet fever after the seventh. But the woman Lorena put him most in mind of was Clara Allen, whom he had loved hardest and deepest, and still loved. Clara’s eyes were direct and sparkled with interest, whereas Lorena’s were always side-looking. Still, there was something about the girl that reminded him of Clara, who had chosen a stolid horse trader when she decided to marry.
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