That afternoon they swam the Republican without losing an animal. At supper afterward, Jasper Fant’s spirits were high—he had built up an unreasoning fear of the Republican River and felt that once he crossed it he could count on living practically forever. He felt so good he even danced an impromptu jig.
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“I wish we’d brought a bathtub on this trip,” Augustus said, grinning. “I’m so dirty it’s like kissing a groundhog.” Later, he went to the chuck wagon and brought back some supper. They ate outside the tent. In the distance the Irishman was singing. Gus told her about Jake, but Lorena felt little. Jake hadn’t come to find her. For days she had hoped he would, but when he didn’t, and her hope died, the memory of Jake died with it. When she listened to Gus talk about him it was as if he were talking about a man she hadn’t known. She had a stronger memory of Xavier Wanz. Sometimes she dreamed of Xavier, standing with his dishrag in the Dry Bean. She remembered how he had cried the morning she left, how he’d offered to take her to Galveston.
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That night she asked if they would like to come in and eat supper. Zwey wouldn’t—he was too shy—so the woman brought their suppers out and they ate in the wagon.
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Clara had bought the piano with money saved all those years from the sale of her parents’ little business in Texas. She had never let Bob use the money—another bone of contention between them. She wanted it for her children, so when the time came they could be sent away to school and not have to spend their whole youth in such a raw, lonely place. The first of the money she spent was on the two-story frame house they had built three years before, after nearly fifteen years of life in the sod house Bob had dug for her on a slope above the Platte. Clara had always hated the sod house—hated the dirt that seeped down on her bedclothes, year after year. It was dust that caused her firstborn, Jim, to cough virtually from his birth until he died a year later. In the mornings Clara would walk down and wash her hair in the icy waters of the Platte, and yet by supper time, if she happened to scratch her head, her fingernails would fill with dirt that had seeped down during the day. For some reason, no matter where she moved her bed, the roof would trickle dirt right onto it. She tacked muslin, and finally canvas, on the ceiling over the bed but nothing stopped the dirt for long. It sifted through. It seemed to her that all her children had been conceived in dust clouds, dust rising from the bedclothes or sifting down from the ceiling. Centipedes and other bugs loved the roof; day after day they crawled down the walls, to end up in her stewpots or her skillets or the trunks where she stored her clothes.
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“Why, yes,” Dish said. “I delivered her supper, if you don’t mind.” “Is she still as beautiful?” Lippy asked, remembering their days together at the Dry Bean, when she had come down toward noon every day. He and Xavier would both wait for her and would feel better just watching her walk down the stairs.
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Gus had set up the tent before he left, but it was supper time, so Dish got a plate of beef for Lorena’s supper. He took his responsibilities so seriously that he had tried to pick out the best piece, in the process holding up the line and irritating the crew, none of whom were the least impressed with his responsibilities.
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“Not today,” Augustus said. “Today she’s feeling sulky. If I was you I’d sing to her.” “Sing to Lorie?” Dish said, incredulous. “Why, I’d be so scared I’d choke.” “Well, if you require timid women there’s not much I can do for you,” Augustus said. “Just keep a good guard at night andsee she don’t get kidnapped.” Call hated to leave the herd, and most of the cowboys hated it that he was leaving. Though it was midsummer, the skies clear, and the plains seemingly peaceful, most of the hands looked worried as the little group prepared to leave. They sat around worrying, all but Po Campo, who was singing quietly in his raspy voice as he made supper. Even Lippy was unnerved. He was modest in some matters and had just returned from walking a mile, in order to relieve his bowels in private.
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“I’d like to see her throw rocks better than Frog can shoot,” Roy Suggs said. “I guess Frog could cool her off.” Frog Lip didn’t say much. He was a black man, but Jake didn’t notice anyone giving him many orders. Little Eddie Suggs cooked the supper, such as it was, while Frog Lip sat idle, not even chopping wood for the fire. The horse he rode was the best in the group, a white gelding. It was unusual to see a bandit who used a white horse, for it made him stand out in a group. Frog Lip evidently didn’t care.
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“Why, they didn’t look scary,” Jimmy Rainey said. “I reckon we could have whipped them easy enough.” Po Campo chuckled. “They weren’t here to fight,” he said. “They’re just hungry. When they’re fighting they look different.” “That’s right,” Lippy said. “It don’t take but a second for one to shoot a hole in your stomach. It happened to me.” Call had formed the habit of riding over with Augustus every night as he took Lorena her supper. Augustus usually camped about a mile from the herd, so it gave them a few minutes to talk. Augustus had not seen the Indians, but he had heard about the gift of the beef.
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After pitching his last load up on the pyramid, he wheeled the barrow to his camp, turned it over and sat on it. He looked at Augustus for two or three minutes without saying anything.“Well, are you going to invite me for supper or not?” Augustus asked.
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When it became plain he was not going to be invited for supper, Roscoe ate the two biscuits he had saved. He felt badly treated, but there was little he could do about it. When he finished the biscuits he pitched his bedroll up against the side of the cabin. As soon as he stretched out, the moon came up and lit the little clearing so brightly it made it hard to sleep.
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The old man squinted at him briefly. “If you want supper you’ll have to kill your own varmint,” he said. “And leave the gal alone, she’s mine, bought and paid for.” That struck Roscoe as strange. The old man’s manner was anything but friendly. “Well, it’s a little too late to go possum- huntin’,” Roscoe said, trying to make light talk. “I’ve got a biscuit I can eat.” “Leave the gal alone,” the old man said again.
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“Well, that’s all the supper,” Louisa said. “What about my proposition?” “I can’t,” Roscoe said, putting it as politely as he knew how. “If I don’t keep on till I find July I might lose my job.” Louisa looked exasperated. “You’re a fine guest,” she said. “I tell you what, let’s give it a tryout. You ain’t had enough experience of women to know whether you like the married life or not. It might suit you to a T. If it did, you wouldn’t have to do risky work like being a deputy.” It was true that being a deputy had become almost intolerably risky—Roscoe had to grant that. But judging from July’s experience, marriage had its risks too.
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“I’d leave ’em out but they’d run off,” she said. “They don’t like farming as much as I do. I guess we’ll have corn bread for supper. It’s about all I eat.” “Why not bacon?” Roscoe asked. He was quite hungry and would have appreciated a good hunk of bacon or a chop of some kind. Several chickens were scratching around the cabin—any one of them would have made good eating but he didn’t feel he ought to mention it, since he was the guest.
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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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She seldom did eat with them. It bothered July a good deal, though he made no complaint. Since their little table was almost under the loft he could look up and see Elmira’s bare legs as he ate. It didn’t seem normal to him. His mother had died when he was six, yet he could remember that she always ate with the family; she would never have sat with her legs dangling practically over her husband’s head. He had been at supper at many cabins in his life, but in none of them had the wife sat in the loft while the meal was eaten. It was a thing out of the ordinary, and July didn’t like for things to be out of the ordinary in his life. It seemed to him it was better to do as other people did—if society at large did things a certain way it had to be for a good reason, and he looked upon common practices as rules that should be obeyed. After all, his job was to see that common practices were honored—that citizens weren’t shot, or banks robbed.
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When they got there she had already cooked the supper—just bacon and cornbread—and was sitting up in the loft with her feet dangling. She liked to sit and let her feet dangle down into the cabin. Elmira liked being alone and spent most of her time in the loft, occasionally doing a little sewing.
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Roscoe was fond of the boy, too. Often he and Joe went down to the river to fish for catfish. Sometimes if they made a good catch July would bring Roscoe home for supper, but those occasions were seldom successful. Elmira thought little of Roscoe Brown, and though Roscoe was as nice to her as he could be, the fish suppers were silent, tense affairs.
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Call got up and went to get his supper. As soon as he left, Augustus stretched his legs and grinned at Jake.
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AUGUSTUS RODE BACK to camp a little after sunset, thinking the work would have stopped by then. The cattle were being held in a long valley near the river, some five miles from town. Every night Call went across the river with five or six hands and came back with two or three hundred Mexican cattle—longhorns mostly, skinny as rails and wild as deer. Whatever they got they branded the next day, with the part of the crew that had rested doing the hard end of the work. Only Call worked both shifts. If he slept, it was an hour or two before breakfast or after supper. The rest of the time he worked, and so far as anyone could tell the pace agreed with him. He had taken to riding the Hell Bitch two days out of three, and the mare seemed no more affected by the work than he was.
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“No, we ain’t,” Call said. “I guess Gus is saving him for Christmas, or else he just likes to talk to him.” “Well, step down and have a wash at the bucket,” Maude said. “I’m cooking one of that shoat’s cousins right this minute.” It had to be admitted that Maude Rainey set a fine table. Call had no sooner got his sleeves rolled up and his hands clean than supper began. Joe Rainey just had time to mumble a prayer before Maude started pushing around the cornbread.
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“All right,” he said. “Tell me what you want for supper, Gus, and I’ll go eat it for you once we get these penned.” Augustus ignored the sally. “Deets, you watch close,” he said. “This young spark will probably have to go and get drunk, or maybe married before the night is over.” Dish waved and started the horses; just as he did, Jake came loping over.
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It was not every night that he remembered Mary, though. Much of the time he found himself wondering about the generalities of marriage. The principal aspect he worried over most was that marriage required men and women to live together. He had tried many times to envision how it would be to be alone at night under the same roof with a woman—or to have one there at breakfast and supper. What kind of talk would a woman expect? And what kind of behavior. It stumped him: he couldn’t even make a guess. Once in a while it occurred to him that he could tell Mary he would like to marry her but didn’t consider himself worthy to live under the same roof with her. If he put it right she might take a liberal attitude and allow him to continue to live down the street with the boys, that being what he was used to. He would plan, of course, to make himself available for chores when she required him—otherwise life could go on in its accustomed way.
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“If you men want grub, you better go get it,” he said. “Sundown would be the time to leave.” After supper Jake and Augustus went outside to smoke and spit. Dish sat on the Dutch oven, sipping black coffee and squeezing his temples with one hand—each temple felt like someone had given it a sharp rap with a small ax. Deets and Newt started for the lots to catch the horses, Newt very conscious of the fact that he was the only one in the group without a sidearm. Deets had an old Walker Colt the size of a ham, which he only wore when he went on trips, since even he wouldn’t have been stout enough to carry it all day without wearing down.
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No sooner had he said it than they saw the Captain come out of the house and walk toward them. Dish was still on his hands and knees. About that time Bolivar began to beat the dinner bell with the crowbar, though it was much earlier than their usual supper hour. He had evidently not cleared his action with the Captain, who looked around in annoyance. The clanging of iron on iron didn’t do much to improve Dish’s condition—he began to make the boggy sound again.
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