“Well, I won’t shoot them then, I’ll just scare them,” little Eddie said.
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“I thought we was gonna regulate the settlers,” Roy said one night. “What are we waiting for?” “A nester that’s got something besides a milk cow and a pile of buffalo chips,” Dan Suggs said. “I’m looking for a rich one.” “If one was rich, he wouldn’t be living in a hole dug out of a hill up here in Kansas,” Jake said. “I slept in one of those soddies once—so much dirt leaked out of the roof during the night that I woke up dern near buried.” “That don’t mean some of them couldn’t have some gold,” little Eddie said. “I’d like to practice regulating a little so I’d have the hang of it when we do strike the rich ones.” “All we aim to let you do is watch, anyway,” Dan said. “It don’t take no practice to watch.” “I’ve shot a nester,” little Eddie reminded him. “Shot two. If they don’t pay up, I might make it three.” “The object is to scare them out of their money, not shoot them,” Dan said. “You shoot too many and pretty soon you’ve got the law after you. We want to get rich, not get hung.” “He’s too young to know what he’s talking about,” Roy said.
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He rushed to it with relief. Rain was just wet—it didn’t scare him, and he knew that if it rained hard enough the lightning would finally stop.The cattle ran for many miles, but soon the storm was to the east of them and he had only the rain and darkness to contend with. As he had done before, he plodded along much of the night beside the cattle. Occasionally he would hear the shout of another cowboy, but it was too dark and rainy to see anything. The length of such nights was a torment. A hundred times, or a thousand, he would look in what he thought was an easterly direction, hoping to see the grayness that meant dawn. But all directions were equally black for what seemed like twenty hours.
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He rushed to it with relief. Rain was just wet—it didn’t scare him, and he knew that if it rained hard enough the lightning would finally stop.The cattle ran for many miles, but soon the storm was to the east of them and he had only the rain and darkness to contend with. As he had done before, he plodded along much of the night beside the cattle. Occasionally he would hear the shout of another cowboy, but it was too dark and rainy to see anything. The length of such nights was a torment. A hundred times, or a thousand, he would look in what he thought was an easterly direction, hoping to see the grayness that meant dawn. But all directions were equally black for what seemed like twenty hours.
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“No,” July admitted. “I ain’t done none. About the worst we get in Arkansas are robbers.” “Let’s walk our horses a little closer,” Augustus said. “Don’t let ’em whinny. If we can get within a hundred yards of their camp we’re in good shape. Then I favor charging right into them. They’ll hear us before they see us, which will scare them, and we’ll be on them before they have time to think. Use your handgun and save your rifle—this’ll be close-range work. If there’s any left, we’ll turn and make a second run at them.” “We mustn’t trample the women,” July said.
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“Why, there could be ten of them,” he said. “Do you think you could kill ten men?”“They’re easier to scare at night,” Augustus said. “I expect I’ll just run most of them off. But I do intend to kill Mr. Duck if I see him. He’s stole his last woman.” “I think I ought to go,” July said. “I could be of some help. Roscoe can stay here with the young ones.” “No, I’d rather you stay with your party, Mr. Johnson,” Augustus said. “I’d feel better about it in my mind. You’ve got an inexperienced deputy and two young people to think about. Besides, you said you had urgent business. These things are chancy. You might stop a bullet and never get your business finished.” “I think I ought to go,” July said. It was in his mind that Ellie could even be in the camp. Somebody could have stolen her as easily as the Texas woman. The whiskey traders wouldn’t have put up much fight. Of course, it wasn’t likely she was there, but then what was likely anymore? He felt he ought to have a look, at least.
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When they had been riding about an hour, Roscoe got the scare of his life, for suddenly someone jumped on the horse behind him. For a terrifying second he thought Jim must have gotten loose and come to strangle him or stick a knife in him. Memphis was startled, too, and jumped sideways into Joe’s horse.
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Lorena was too tired for his threat to scare her much. She wasn’t going to run away and give him a reason to cut a hole in her stomach. She did think she was going to die, though. She felt death had her, in the form of the Comanchero. She wouldn’t live to be cut or be gnawed by coyotes. She would die if he touched her, she felt. She was too tired to care much. The one thing that crossed her mind was that she should have gone with Xavier. He was a man of his word, and no worse in most respects than other men. And yet she had been determined to go riding off with Jake, who had not even looked after her three weeks. Jake was probably still in Austin, playing cards. She didn’t particularly blame him—playing cards beat most things you could do.
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A cold fear struck her. She knew she had been wrong not to go to the cow camp. She had even sent the boy away. She should have gone, but she had the silly notion that Jake would show up and scare the bandit off if he came back.
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“Well, you’re a goddamn liar, then,” Jake said. “Once a whore, always a whore. I won’t stand for it. Next time I’ll take a rope to you.” After he ate his bacon he saddled and rode off without another word—to go gamble, she supposed. Far from being scared, Lorena was relieved. Jake’s angers were light compared to some she had known, but it was no pleasure having him around when he was so hot. Probably he thought to scare her, riding off so quick and leaving her in camp, but she felt no fear at all. The herd and all the boys were only a mile away. No one would be likely to bother her with the cow camp so close.
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To make matters worse, one particular red cow had begun to irritate him almost beyond endurance. She had developed a genius for wiggling into thickets and just stopping. Shouting made no impression on her at all—she would stand in the thicket looking at him, well aware that she was safe. Once Newt dismounted, planning to scare her on foot, but she lowered her head menacingly and he abandoned that idea.
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“I hate to squish every move I make,” he said. “It ain’t supposed to get this wet in these parts.” Now that the scare was over, Lorena found that she didn’t mind that things were damp. It beat being hot, in her book.
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The river was green and the water cold underneath the surface. She waded in and stood chest-deep, letting the water wash away the layers of dust and sweat. As she was wading out, feeling clean and light, she got a scare: a big snapping turtle sat on the bank right where she had entered the river. It was big as a tub and so ugly Lorena didn’t want to get near it. She waded upstream, and just as she got out heard a shot—Jake was shooting his pistol at the turtle. He walked down to the water, probably just because he liked to see her naked.
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Lately more and more cowboys passed through the town. Once the wild men of Shanghai Pierce had come through, nearly destroying two saloons. They were not bad men, just rowdy and wild to see a town. They tended to scare people’s livestock and rope their pets, and were intolerant of any efforts to curb their play. They were not gunmen, but they could box—July had been forced to crack one or two of them on the jaw and keep them in jail overnight.
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“That simple,” Call said. “I’ll scare off bandits and you can talk to Indian chiefs.” “You boys let these cattle string out,” he said to the men. “We ain’t in no big hurry.” Augustus had ridden through the cattle and had come back with a count of slightly over twenty-six hundred.
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Now, in only a few days, he would be going north, a prospect so exciting that for hours at a stretch he was taken away from himself, into imaginings. He continued to do his normal work, although his mind wasn’t really on it. He could imagine himself and Mouse out in a sea of grass, chasing buffalo. He could scare himself to the point where his breath came short, just imagining the great thick bears.
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Pedro Flores was a far cry from being the fighter Kicking Wolf had been. Pedro seldom rode without twenty or thirty vaqueros to back him up, whereas Kicking Wolf, a small man no bigger than the boy, would raid San Antonio with five or six braves and manage to carry off three women and scare all the whites out of seven or eight counties just by traveling through them. But Pedro was of the same time, and had occupied them just as long.
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Call knew that it had been rare luck, running into the four Mexican horsethieves and getting most of the horses they had just brought over from Texas. The Mexicans had thought they had run into an army—who but an army would have somany horses?—and had not really stayed to make a fight, though he had had to scare off one vaquero who kept trying to turn the herd.
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Newt looked back over his shoulder and saw red in the east. It was just a line of red, like somebody had drawn it with a crayon, over the thick black line of the land, but it meant that the night was ending. He didn’t know where they were, but they still had a lot of horses. The horses were well spread by then, and he eased out of the herd. Despite the red in the east, the land seemed darker than it had all night; he could see nothing and just exerted himself to keep up, hoping they were going in the right direction. It felt a little odd to be alive and unharmed after such a deep scare, and Newt kept looking east, wishing the light would hurry so he could see around him and know whether it was safe to relax. For all he knew, Mexicans with Winchesters could be a hundred yards behind him.
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In fact, though, Gus McCrae was a cool customer, perhaps the coolest Call had ever known—and he had known many men who didn’t scare easy. His disregard of danger was so complete that Call initially thought he must want to die. He had known men who did want to die—who for some reason had ended up with a dislike of life—and most of them had got the death they wanted. In Texas, in his time, getting killed was easy.
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Augustus considered that an absurd precaution. “’I god,” he said. “The dern camp’s five miles away. We can likely slip past it without going clear around by Mexico City.” “It don’t hurt to give it room,” Call said. “We might scare some more cattle. I’ve known men who could hear the sound of running cattle a long way off.” “I couldn’t hear Jehovah’s trumpet from no five miles off,” Augustus said. “Anyway, we ain’t the only thing in this country that can spook cattle. A lobo wolf can spook them, or a lion.” “I didn’t ask for a speech,” Call said. “It’s foolish to take chances.” “Some might think it foolish to try and steal horses from the best-armed ranch in northern Mexico,” Augustus said.
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“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were trying to scare up a war,” Augustus said. “Old Pedro Flores ain’t gonna make us a gift of a hundred horses, even if he did steal all of them himself.” “Everything’s got its risks,” Call said.
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“If the man pointed a gun at you and you shot him, then that was self-defense,” Call said. “I still don’t see where the dentist comes in.” “It was bad luck all around,” Jake said. “I never even shot the mule skinner. I did shoot, but I missed, which was enough to scare him off. But of course I shot that dern buffalo gun. It was just a little plank saloon we were sitting in. A plank won’t stop a fifty-caliber bullet.” “Neither will a dentist,” Augustus observed. “Not unless you shoot down on him from the top, and even then I expect the bullet would come out his foot.” Call shook his head—Augustus could think of the damndest things.
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Augustus was not particularly nervous, but even so he had hardly started down the street before he got a scare: a little ball of shadow ran right at his feet. He jumped sideways, fearing snakebite, although his brain knew snakes didn’t roll like balls. Then he saw an armadillo hustle past his feet. Once he saw what it was, he tried to give it a kick to teach it not to walk in the street scaring people, but the armadillo hurried right along as if it had as much right to the street as a banker.
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“Well, that’s your choice,” Augustus said. “It’s my view that there are more fragrant ways to make a fortune. Card playing, for one. I believe I’ll straggle down to that gin palace and see if I can scare up a game.” Call was about finished with his smoke. “I don’t mind your card playin’, if that’s all it is,” he said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇