Call had begun to think of Gus, and the promise he had made. It would soon be spring, and he would have to be going if he were to keep the promise, which of course he must. Yet the ranch had barely been started, and it was hard to know who to leave in command. The question had been in his mind all winter. There seemed to be no grave danger from Indians or anything else. Who would best keep things going? Soupy was excellent when set a task, but had no initiativeand was unused to planning. The men were all independent to a fault and constantly on the verge of fist fights because they fancied that someone had attempted to put himself above them in some way. Pea Eye was clearly the senior man, but Pea Eye had contentedly taken orders for thirty years; to expect him to suddenly start giving them was to expect the impossible.
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“I guess it’s our fault,” Call said. “We should have shot sooner.” “I don’t want to start thinking about all the things we should have done for this man,” Augustus said. “If you’ve got the strength to ride, let’s get out of here.” They managed to break the lance off so it wouldn’t wave in the air, and loaded Deets’s body on his horse. While Augustus was tying the body securely, Call rounded up the horses. The Indians watched him silently. He changed his mind and cut off three of the horses that were of little account anyway. He rode over to the Indians.
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“Graze ’em upriver,” he said. “Start tomorrow if we ain’t back, but don’t push ’em. Just let ’em graze along. You’ll make the Powder in a few days.” Newt felt very nervous when he saw the three men ride off. It was Lippy’s fault that he felt so nervous—all morning Lippy had done nothing but talk about how it felt to be scalped. Lippy hadn’t been scalped, and couldn’t possibly know, but that didn’t keep him from talking and scaring everybody.
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Deets felt it was mainly his fault, since it was his job to watch for Indian sign. He had always had a good ear for Indians, but he had sat by the wagon, listening to the singing, and had heard nothing.
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“Don’t you be scolding me,” he said. “It ain’t my fault you went off and got married.” “If I’d married you, you would have left me for somebody younger and stupider long before now, I imagine,” Clara said.
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“I got one piece of bad news,” July said, and his eyes filled up again. “It’s real bad, and it’s my fault. Joe got killed, him and Roscoe and a girl. An outlaw killed them. I ought to have stayed with them, but I don’t know if it would have come out different if I had.” You wouldn’t be here telling me, anyway, Elmira thought.
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“Why, Lorie—have you had so many beauties that you’ve forgotten?” Augustus said. “That damn outlaw took her away.” To Jake it seemed as remote as his rangering days—he could barely get his mind back to it. Call walked over. Now that they were about it he felt a keen sorrow. Jake had ridden the river with them and been the life of the camp once—not the steadiest boy in the troop, but lively and friendly to a fault.
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AS SOON AS HE HAD the herd well settled, Dish decided to see if there was anything he could do for Lorena. It had been months since the afternoon in Lonesome Dove when he had got so drunk, and in all that time he had not even spoken to her. He was out of practice—in fact, had never been in practice, though that was not his fault. He would cheerfully have talked to Lorena all day and all night, but she didn’t want it and they had never exchanged more than a few words. His heart was beating hard, and he felt more fearful than if he were about to swim a swift river, as he approached her tent.
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“There ain’t no bushes,” she pointed out. “I just don’t want you to go, Gus.” “I got to,” Augustus said. “A man’s dying and he asked for me. We’re kind of friends, and think what would have happened when the grasshoppers hit if we hadn’t had this tent to hide in. I’ll be back, and I’ll see that Dish looks after you in the meantime.” “Why him?” she asked. “I don’t need him. Just tell him to leave me be.” “Dish is the best hand,” Augustus said. “Just because he’s in love with you don’t mean he couldn’t be helpful if a storm blew up or something. It ain’t his fault he’s in love with you. He’s smitten, and that’s all there is to it.” “I don’t care about him,” Lorena said. “I want you to come back.” “I will, honey,” he said, checking the loads in his rifle.
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Augustus had made a fire of buffalo chips and was complaining about it. “Dern, I hate to cook with shit,” he said. “I hear you lost your pony.” “Yes. Ben was riding him. It wasn’t his fault, though,” Newt said.
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He went back to get the cattle, and when he glanced again at the boys, they looked funny. They didn’t have hats. A second later he realized why: they were Indians, all of them. Newt felt so scared he went weak. He hated life on the plains. One minute it was pretty, then a cloud of grasshoppers came, and now Indians. The worst of it was that he was alone. It was always happening, and he felt convinced it was Mouse’s fault. Somehow he could never stay with the rest of the boys when there was a run. He had to wander off by himself. This time the results were serious, for the five Indians were only fifty yards away. He felt he ought to pull his gun, but he knew he couldn’t shoot well enough to kill five of them—anyhow, the Captain hadn’t shot when the old chief with the milky eye had asked for a beef. Maybe they were friendly.
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Augustus laughed at the tidy way she did it. “I know I’m a shameful sight,” he said. “It’s all Call’s fault. He wouldn’t let me bring my tailor on this trip.” Lorena was silent, but fear was building up in her. Gus had become too important to her. It was disturbing to think that he might leave her someday. She wanted to make sure of him, but she didn’t know how to do it. After all, he had already told her there was a woman in Ogallala. She began to tremble again from her sudden fear.
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When the Hat Creek outfit passed through, some of the men came in and said hello to Jake, but he froze them out. It was their fault that Lorena was lost, and he had no more use for them. But tales about him were told, and they soon got back to Sally Skull.
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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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“It’s my fault,” July said. “If I’d done what you said, maybe they’d be alive.” “And maybe you’d be dead and I’d have had to tidy you up,” Augustus said. “Don’t be reviling yourself. None of us is such fine judges of what to do.” “You told me to stay,” July said.
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Probably she would have worse to deal with than hard travel unless she was very lucky, and Augustus knew it was his fault. He should have packed her into camp the minute he discovered who Blue Duck was; in retrospect he couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t. It was the kind of lapse he had been subject to all his life: things that were clearly dangerous didn’t worry him enough.
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“Dee,” Joe said. “Dee Boot.” “But he’s dead,” July said, looking very disturbed. “Ellie told me he died of smallpox.” From the look on July’s face, Joe knew he had made a mistake in mentioning Dee. Of course, it was his mother’s fault. She had never told him that Dee had died—if he had. Joe didn’t believe he was dead either. It was probably just something his mother had told July for reasons of her own.
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He looked at Joe, angry with the boy for a moment though he knew it was wrong to be. If Joe had stayed in Fort Smith, Ellie couldn’t have left so easily. Then he remembered that it was Ellie who had insisted that the boy come along. None of it was Joe’s fault.
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She knew it was as much her fault as Jake’s, but she soon stopped caring whose fault it was. She knew she was as good as dead, and would never get to see San Francisco, the one thing she had always looked forward to. Soon even that loss and the prospect of death ceased to mean much, she grew so tired. She had never ridden so hard. Before morning, all she could think of was stopping, although for all she knew, when they did stop something bad would happen. But in time it came to seem to be worth it just to stop.
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It ain’t the boy’s fault.” Then Jake spotted Po Campo, who was sitting propped against a wagon wheel, his serape wrapped around him.
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Jake might have missed her.” “No, Blue Duck stole her,” Augustus said. “It’s my fault for not shooting the son of a bitch while he was drinking. I didn’t know who he was at the time, but I should have shot him on suspicion. And then I plumb forgot about it all day. I’m getting too foolish to live.” “Blue Duck was here?” Jake said, looking sick.
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“No, but he got you hoping, at least,” Augustus said. “The trouble is, Jake ain’t a man to support nobody’s hopes but his own.” Lorena shrugged. It hadn’t been Jake’s fault. He hadn’t asked her to turn herself over to him, although he had accepted readily enough when she did.
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“Oh, now, John, I wouldn’t threaten these gentlemen if I was you,” Ned Tym said, appalled at what he was hearing. “This is Captain Call and Captain McCrae.” “Well, what’s that to me?” the man said, whirling on Ned. “I never heard of them and I won’t have these old cowboys coming in here and making this kind of mess.” “They ain’t old cowboys,” Ned said. “They’re Texas Rangers. You’ve heard of them. You’ve just forgot.” “I don’t know why I would have,” the man said. “I just lived here two years, miserable ones at that. I don’t necessarily keep up with every old-timer who ever shot at an Indian. It’s mostly tall tales anyway, just old men bragging on themselves.” “John, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ned said, growing more alarmed. “Captain Call and Captain McCrae would be the last ones to brag.” “Well, that’s your opinion,” John said. “They look like braggarts to me.” Call was beginning to feel annoyed, for the young man was giving them unmannerly looks and talking to them as if they were trash; but then it was partly Gus’s fault. The fact that the bartender had been a little slow and insolent hadn’t necessarily been a reason to break his nose. Gus was touchy about such things though. He enjoyed having been a famous Texas Ranger and was often put out if he didn’t receive all the praise he thought he had coming.
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“Now look at that,” Augustus said. “The dern people are making towns everywhere. It’s our fault, you know.” “It ain’t our fault and it ain’t our business, either,” Call said. “People can do what they want.” “Why, naturally, since we chased out the Indians and hung all the good bandits,” Augustus said. “Does it ever occur to you that everything we done was probably a mistake? Just look at it from a nature standpoint. If you’ve got enough snakes around the place you won’t be overrun with rats or varmints. The way I see it, the Indians and the bandits have the same job to do. Leave ’em be and you won’t constantly be having to ride around these dern settlements.” “You don’t have to ride around them,” Call said. “What harm do they do?” “If I’d have wanted civilization I’d have stayed in Tennessee and wrote poetry for a living,” Augustus said. “Me and you done our work too well. We killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with.”Call didn’t answer. It was one of Gus’s favorite themes, and if given a chance he would expound on it for hours. Of course it was nonsense. Nobody in their right mind would want the Indians back, or the bandits either. Whether Gus had ever been in his right mind was an open question.
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It was in his first moment of blindness that the cattle began to run, as if pushed into motion by the river of sand. Newt heard Soupy’s horse break into a run, and Mouse instantly was running too, but running where, Newt had no idea. He dug a finger into his eyes, hoping to get the sand out, but it was like grinding them with sandpaper. Tears flowed, but the sand turned them to mud on his lashes. Now and then he could get a blurred glimpse out of one eye, and at the first glimpsewas horrified to discover that he was in among the cattle. A horn nudged his leg, but Mouse swerved and nothing more happened. Newt stopped worrying about seeing and concentrated on keeping his seat. He knew Mouse could leap any bush not higher than his head. He felt a horrible sense of failure, for surely he had not done his job. The Captain had not meant for him to stay near the head of the herd; he was there because he had not moved quick enough, and it was his fault if he was doomed, as he assumed he was. Once he thought he heard a whoop and was encouraged, but the sound was instantly sucked away by the wind—the wind keened like a cry, its tone rising over the lower tone of the pounding hooves. When Newt began to be able to see again, it did him little good, for it was then almost pitch-dark.
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