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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DEETS FOUND WILBARGER by backtracking his horse. The horse, with dried blood on the saddle and crusted in its mane, was waiting for them on the north bank of the Arkansas. Several times, as they were bringing the cattle to the crossing, the horse started to swim over to them, but turned back. Deets crossed first, ahead of Old Dog, and recognized the horse even before he hit the bank. It was the big bay Wilbarger had ridden into Lonesome Dove several months before.
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“Jake?” Call asked. “Why would he be around?” “Might not be him, but his horse is around,” Deets said. “I crossed the track yesterday. It was that pacing horse he come home on.” “I’ll swear,” Call said. “Are you sure about the horse?” “Oh, yes,” Deets said. “I know the track. Four other horses with him. I guess Mr. Jake could have sold the horse.” “I doubt he would,” Call said. “Jake likes a pacer.” He thought the information over as they trotted back toward the herd. He had meant it when he told Gus he wanted no more to do with Jake Spoon. Jake had only come back to Lonesome Dove to use them for support, and no doubt he would try to do it again if he got in trouble. This time it would probably be worse trouble, too. Once a man like Jake—who had got by on dash and little else all his life—started sliding, he might slide faster and faster.
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Gus was perfectly patient with her silence. He didn’t seem to mind it. He just went on talking as if they were having a conversation, talking of this and that. He didn’t talk about what had happened to her but treated her as he always had in Lonesome Dove.
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“Dern, it better not rain no week,” Jasper said. “Them rivers will be like oceans.” That night they all herded, not because the cattle were particularly restless but because it was drier on a horse than on the sopping ground. Newt began to think it had been a mistake to leave Lonesome Dove if it was going to be so wet. He remembered how dry and clear the days had been there. He and Mouse stumbled through the night somehow, though before morning he was so tired he had lost all interest in living.
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For a day or two he didn’t give Gus’s absence much thought. He was irritated with Jake Spoon for having been so troublesome and undependable, but then, he partly had himself to blame for that. He should have set Jake straight before they left Lonesome Dove—informed him in no uncertain terms that the girl wasn’t coming.
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“By God, that’s a good one,” Augustus said. “We were expecting you down in Lonesome Dove, and here you are practically in Kansas. If you’re still after Jake Spoon, you’ve missed him by about three hundred miles.” “I have more urgent business,” July said rather solemnly.
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Blue Duck was the only man of the bunch who seemed to take no interest in her. He had stolen her to sell, and he had sold her. It was clear that he didn’t care what they did to her. When he was in camp he spent his time cleaning his gun or smoking and seldom even looked her way. Monkey John was bad, but Blue Duck still scared her more. His cold, empty eyes frightened her more than Monkey John’s anger or Dog Face’s craziness. Blue Duck had scared the talk completely out of her. She had never been much for talk, but her silence in the camp was different from her old silence. In Lonesome Dove she had often hidden her words, but she could find them if she needed them; she had brought them out quick enough when Jake came along.
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Of course they had heard that the buffalo were being wiped out, but with the memory of the southern herd so vivid, they had hardly credited the news. Discussing it in Lonesome Dove they had decided that the reports must be exaggerated—thinned out, maybe, but not wiped out. Thus the sight of the road of bones stretching over the prairie was a shock. Maybe roads of bones were all that was left. The thought gave the very emptiness of the plains a different feel.
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It struck him that he had forgotten emptiness such as existed in the country that stretched around him. After all, for years he had lived within the sound of the piano from the Dry Bean, the sound of the church bell in the little Lonesome Dove church, the sound of Bol whacking the dinner bell. He even slept within the sound of Pea Eye’s snoring, which was as regular as the ticking of a clock.
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“You’ve overshot Mr. Spoon,” he said. “He was recently seen in the town of Lonesome Dove, where he won twenty dollars from a hand of mine. However, he’s headed this way. He partnered up with the gentlemen who got my horses back. If I were you I’d camp here and put this boy in school. They’ll be along in two or three weeks.” “I thank you for the information,” July said. “I don’t suppose you’ve run across a man named Roscoe Brown along the trail.”“Nope, who’d he kill?” Wilbarger asked.
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“Mr. Gus used to make the biscuits, but he had to leave his ovens behind,” Newt said. He was hungry, and the memory of how good Mr. Gus’s biscuits had tasted when they lived in Lonesome Dove came over him so strongly that for a second he felt faint.
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Two nights later he had started to go to her again, but stopped himself. He had taken his gun and walked out of Lonesome Dove to the Comanche crossing and sat the night. He never went to see Maggie again, though once in a while he might see her on the street. She had had the boy, lived four years, and died. According to Gus she had stayed drunk most of her last year. She had gotten thick with Jake for a spell, but then Jake left.
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Call got his rifle, out of the scabbard and cleaned it, though it was in perfect order. Sometimes the mere act of cleaning a gun, an act he had performed thousands of times, would empty his mind of jarring thoughts and memories—but this time it didn’t work. Gus had jarred him with mention of Maggie, the bitterest memory of his life. She had died in Lonesome Dove some twelve years before, but the memory had lost none of its salt and sting, for what had happened with her had been unnecessary and was now uncorrectable. He had made mistakes in battle and led men to their deaths, but his mind didn’t linger on those mistakes; at least the battles had been necessary, and the men soldiers. He could feel that he hadBut Maggie had not been a fighting man—just a needful young whore, who had for some reason fixed on him as the man who could save her from her own mistakes. Gus had known her first, and Jake, and many other men, whereas he had only visited her out of curiosity to find out what it was that he had heard men talk and scheme about for so long. It turned out not to be much, in his view—a brief, awkward experience, where the pleasure was soon drowned in embarrassment and a feeling of sadness. He ought not to have gone back twice, let alone a third time, yet something drew him back—not so much the need of his own flesh as the helplessness and need of the woman. She had such frightened eyes. He never met her in the saloon but came up the back stairs, usually after dark; she would be standing just inside the door waiting, her face anxious. Some weakness in him brought him back every few nights, for two months or more. He had never said much to her, but she said a lot to him. She had a small, quick voice, almost like a child’s. She would talk constantly, as if to cover his embarrassment at what they had met to do. Some nights he would sit for half an hour, for he came to like her talk, though he had long since forgotten what she had said. But when she talked, her face would relax for a while, her eyes lose their fright. She would clasp his hand while she talked—one night she buttoned his shirt. And when he was ready to leave—always a need to leave, to be away, would come over him—she would look at him with fright in her face again, as if she had one more thing to say but couldn’t say it.
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“He’s young and innocent,” Augustus said. “That’s why I picked him. He’ll just moon over her a little. If I’d sent one of the full-grown rowdies, Jake might have come back and shot him. I doubt he’d shoot Newt.” “I doubt he’ll even come back, myself,” Call said. “That girl ought to have stayed in Lonesome Dove.” “If you was a young girl, with life before you, would you want to settle in Lonesome Dove?” Augustus asked. “Maggie done it, and look how long she lasted.” “She might have died anyplace,” Call said. “I’ll die someplace, and so will you—it might not be no better place than Lonesome Dove.” “It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living,” Augustus said. “I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” Call got up and went to catch his night horse. Without thinking, he caught the Hell Bitch again, though he had just turned her loose. One of the Spettle boys looked at him curiously and said nothing. Call saddled the Hell Bitch anyway and rode around the herd to see that all was in place. The cattle were calm, most of them already bedded down. Needle Nelson, perennially sleepy, dozed in his saddle.
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Stories of his crimes trickled as far down as Lonesome Dove.
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“I didn’t used to down in Lonesome Dove,” she said. “I mainly just felt the same from one day to the next.” “Yes, hopeless,” Augustus said. “You didn’t expect nothing. Then Jake come along and started you expecting again.” “I didn’t expect this,” Lorena said.
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At times, waiting, she had almost decided just to take the horse and the mule and try to find her way back to Lonesome Dove. Xavier had said he would marry her and take her anywhere she wanted to go. She remembered the day he had come into the room—his wild eyes, his threat to kill Jake. When she had nothing to do but sit around and think about it, her capacity for mistakes discouraged her so that she considered drowning herself in the little pool. But it was a sunny, pretty morning, and when she went into the pool a little later, it was only to wash her hair in the cool water. For a moment she put her head under and opened her eyes, but it felt silly—to die in such an element was only ridiculous. She began to wonder if perhaps she was touched—if that was why she made mistakes. Her mother had been touched. She often babbled of people no one knew. She talked to dead relatives, dead babies, speaking to them as if they were still alive. Lorena wondered if it was mistakes that had made her mother do that. Perhaps, after so many mistakes, your mind finally broke loose and wandered back and forth between past and present.
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He decided that, since he was in no hurry, he would stop in Lonesome Dove and beat the bell a few more times. He could say it was the Capitán’s orders. The thought was comforting. It made up for the fact that most of his decisions had been stupid. He rode south without looking back.
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Life in Lonesome Dove had been easy. Goats were plentiful and easy to catch, and his wife was the right distance away.
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But his departure surprised and saddened Newt. It spoiled his relief that Lippy was alive—after all, he had lost another friend, Bol instead of Lippy. Newt didn’t say so, but he would rather have lost Lippy. He didn’t want Lippy to die, of course, but he wouldn’t have minded if he had decided to return to Lonesome Dove.
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Watching her lie there, calm and silent, Jake felt hopeless and took another long drink from the whiskey bottle. Heconsidered himself a smart man, and yet he had got himself in a position that would have embarrassed a fool. He had no business traveling north with a woman like Lorie, who had her own mind and wouldn’t obey the simplest order unless it happened to suit her. The more he drank, the sorrier he felt for himself. He wished he had just told Lorie no, and left her to sweat it out in Lonesome Dove. Then at least he could be in camp with the men, where there were card games to be had, not to mention protection. Despite himself, he could not stop worrying about July Johnson.
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But no matter how uncomfortable the nights, the sky usually cleared in the morning. She liked to sit on the blankets and feel the sun getting warmer. She watched her arms getting slowly tanned and felt that a life of travel was what she was meant for. Her mare had gotten used to the travel too and no longer looked back toward Lonesome Dove.
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It was true. The minute they left Lonesome Dove he had begun to have his big Indian dreams. The same big Indian he had dreamed about for years had come back to haunt his sleep. Sometimes just dozing on his horse he would dream about the Indian. He slept poorly, as a result, and felt he would be tired and good for nothing by the time they reached Montana.
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In his mind he began to wish for some way to undo what had happened—to make the days run backward, to the time when they were still in Lonesome Dove. He imagined Sean alive and well—and did what he had not done, told him to go off to Galveston and find a boat to take him home. But he kept looking back, and there was Deets and Mr. Gus, kneeling by Sean. He longed to see Sean sit up and be all right, but Sean didn’t, and Newt could only sit hopelessly on his horse and hold the cattle.
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