By morning Augustus had a high fever. Though his leg worried him most, he also had pain in his side. He decided he hadbeen wrong in his first analysis, and that he did have a bullet wound there, after all. The fever had him feeling weak.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Well, my lord,” he said, from time to time. “My lord.” An Indian boy had killed him, the Captain said. Deets was still wearing a pair of the old patchy quilt pants that he had favored for so long. Pea Eye scarcely knew what to think. He and Deets had been the main hired help on the Hat Creek outfit ever since there had been a Hat Creek outfit. Now it was down to him. It would mean a lot more chores for him, undoubtedly, for the Captain only trusted the two of them with certain chores. He remembered that he and Deets had had a pretty good conversation once. He had been vaguely planning to have another one with him if the chance came along. Of course that was off, now. Pea Eye went over and leaned against a wagon wheel, wishing he could stop feeling weak in the legs.
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Pea Eye didn’t cry, but he was so shaken he went weak in the legs.
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Augustus loped up, seemingly fresh. “We better get everybody to the front,” he said. “We’ll need to try and spread them when they hit the water. Otherwise they’ll all pile into the first mudhole and tromple themselves.” Most of the cattle were too weak to run, but they broke into a trot. Call finally shook the sleep off and helped Dish and Deets and Augustus split the herd. They were only partially successful. The cattle were moving like a blind army, the scent of water in their nostrils. Fortunately they hit the river above where Call had hit it, and there was more water. The cattle spread of their own accord.
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Call let them rest three hours and then told them to get their best mounts. Some of the cattle were so weak the cowboys had to dismount, pull their tails and shout at them to get them up. Call knew that if they didn’t make it on the next push, they would have to abandon the cattle in order to save the horses. Even after their rest, many of the cattle had their tongues hanging out. They were mulish, reluctant to move, but after much effort on the part of the exhausted men, the drive was started again.
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“We all got weak brains or we wouldn’t be here,” Soupy said sourly. He had grown noticeably more discontented in recent weeks—no one knew why.
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“There’s a bunch you missed,” Augustus said, pointing to the northwest. Deets looked, nodded, and rode away. Jasper Fant looked and saw nothing but heat waves and blue sky. “I guess I need spectacles,” he said. “I can’t see nothing but nothing.” “Weak brains breed weak eyesight,” Augustus said.
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“You’ve ridden a long way for some pretty weak courting,” she said, but she felt better. Gus looked rather hangdog at his failure—one of the few times she had ever seen him look that way.
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“It’s Ellie,” he added. “That soldier said the Indians killed a woman and a buffalo hunter about sixty miles east of town. I have no doubt it was her. They were traveling that way.” “Come on up to the house,” she said. He was almost too weak to walk and was worthless for several days, faint with grief over a woman who had done nothing but run away from him or abuse him almost from the day they married.
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“No,” Cholo said. “She is better.” “Bob taught me,” Clara said. “We didn’t have any help when we first came here. I wasn’t strong enough to hold the horses so I got stuck with the messier job.” They gelded fifteen young horses and left them in the pen where they could be watched. July had stopped feeling weak, but even so it was a wonder to him how hard Clara and the old man worked. They didn’t stop to rest until the job was done, by which time they were all soaked with sweat. Clara splashed water out of the horse trough to wash her hands and forearms, and immediately started for the house.
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After breakfast he got his rifle, but instead of leaving, he walked down to the lots. Every now and then he heard the squeal of a young horse. Walking, he didn’t feel quite so weak, and it occurred to him that he ought to try and be some help—he could start after Ellie later.
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“Don’t feed him just because he hollers,” she said. “Feed him when it’s time.” She looked at July, who felt embarrassed. He was not sick, and yet he felt as weak as if he had had a long fever. A plate with some cold eggs on it and a bit of bacon sat on the table—his breakfast, no doubt. Being the last one up made him feel a burden.
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July wished she would leave him alone. She had taken him in and fed him, saved his wife and cared for his child, and yet he did wish she would just leave him alone. He felt so weak himself that if he hadn’t been braced against the porch railing he might have rolled off the steps. He had nothing to say and nothing to offer. And yet there was something tireless in Clara that never seemed to stop. His head hurt so he felt like shooting himself, the baby was squalling overhead, and yet she would ask questions.
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“Sick to your stomach?” he said. “That’s natural. We’ll try soup.” He tried soup and she spat that out too for a day, but she was too weak to fight the doctor, who was almost as patient as Zwey. They kept her jailed with their patience, when all she wanted to do was die. Dee was gone, after she had come such a way and found him. She hated Zwey and Luke for bringing her to the doctor—surely she would have died right on the street if they hadn’t. The last thing she wanted to do was get well and have to live—but days passed, and the doctor sat in the little chair, feeding her soup, and Zwey stared in the window, even though she wouldn’t look.
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“You didn’t hardly have no blood in you when you got here.” Elmira wished there was a window shade so she couldn’t see Zwey staring at her. He stared for hours. She could feel his eyes on her, but she was too weak to turn her head away. Luke seemed to be gone—at least he never showed up.
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The next day he was still there, and the next. She wanted to call out to him to see if he had news of Dee, but she was too weak. Her voice was just a whisper. The doctor who tended her, a short man with a red beard, seemed not much healthier than she was. He coughed so hard that sometimes he would have to set her medicine down to keep from spilling it. His name was Patrick Arandel, and his hands shook after each coughing fit. But he had taken her in and tended her almost constantly for the first week, expecting all the time that she would die.
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WHEN ELMIRA’S FEVER finally broke she was so weak she could barely turn her head on the pillow. The first thing she saw was Zwey, looking in the window of the doctor’s little house. It was raining, but Zwey stood there in his buffalo coat, looking in at her.
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Augustus had a big laugh when he figured out what was bothering them. “Why, you girls,” he said. “All you want is orgies.” “No, it’s whores we want,” Jasper said, a little irritated. “It’s fine for you to laugh, you got Lorie.” “Yes, but what’s good for me ain’t necessarily good for the weak-minded,” Augustus said.
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There was no shade on the bluff. He covered his face with his hat and lay back against his saddle, sweating, and ashamed of his own carelessness. He grew delirious and in his delirium would have long talks with Roscoe. He could see Roscoe’s face as plain as day. Roscoe didn’t seem to blame him for the fact that he was dead. If he himself was soon going to be dead, too, it might not matter so much. July didn’t die. His leg felt terrible, though. In the night came a rainstorm and he could do nothing but huddle under his saddle blanket. His teeth began to chatter and he couldn’t stop them. He almost wished he could go on and die, it was so uncomfortable. But in the morning the sun was hot, he soon dried out. He felt weak, but he didn’t feel as if he were dying. Mainly he had to avoid looking at his leg. It looked so bad he didn’t know what to think. If a doctor saw it he could probably just cut it off and be done with it. When he tried to bend it even a little, a terrible pain shot through him—yet he had to get down to the river or else die of thirst, even though it had just rained.
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“It’s just me,” Elmira whispered. She was beginning to feel scared—she felt so weak she could hardly hold her eyes open, and she wanted more than anything to talk to Dee. She didn’t want to faint before they had their talk, and yet she was afraid she might.
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“I don’t know if there is one,” the cowboy said. “We just got here last night. I know about Boot because they were talking about him in the saloon.” Ellie began to try and climb over the side of the wagon. “Help me, Zwey,” she said. “I wanta see Dee.” She got one leg over the side board of the wagon and suddenly began to feel weak again. She clung to the board, trembling.
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Elmira began to feel cold. She started to shiver and reached for the pile of blankets in the wagon, but she was too weak even to untangle the blankets.
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They came when you didn’t want them and had needs you didn’t always want to meet. Worst of all, they died no matter how much you loved them—the death of her own had frozen the hope inside her harder than the wintry ground. Her hopes had frozen hard and she vowed to keep it that way, and yet she hadn’t: the hopes thawed. She had hopes for her girls, and might even come to have them for the baby at her bosom, child of another mother. Weak as it was, and slim though its chances, she liked holding the child to her. I stole you, she thought. I got you and I didn’t even have to go through the pain. Your mother’s a fool not to want you, but she’s smart to realize you wouldn’t have much of a chance with her and those buffalo hunters.
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“I wish we had a goat,” Clara said. “I’ve heard goat’s milk is better for babies than cow’s milk. If you see any goats next time you go to town, let’s buy a couple.” Then she grew a little embarrassed. Sometimes she talked to Cholo as if he were her husband, and not Bob. She went downstairs, made a fire in the cookstove and began to boil some milk. When it was boiled, she took it up and gave the baby a little, dipping a cotton rag in the milk and letting the baby suck it. It was a slow method and took patience. The child was too weak to work at it, but she knew if she didn’t persist the baby would only get weaker and die. So she kept on, dribbling milk into its mouth even when it grew too tired to suck on the rag.“I know this is slow,” she whispered to it. When the baby had taken all it would, she got up to walk it. It was a nice moonlight night and she went out on her porch for a while. The baby was asleep, tucked against her breast. You could be worse off, she thought, looking at it. Your mother had pretty good sense—she waited to have you until she got to where there were people who’ll look after you.
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Clara tried several times during the day to get Elmira interested in the little boy, but with no success. Elmira allowed it to nurse, but that was not successful, either. The milk was so weak that the baby would only sleep an hour and then be hungry again. Her girls wanted to know why the baby cried so much. “He’s hungry,” Clara said.
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