That night he wondered if he ought to leave. He could not stay around Clara without nursing hopes, and yet he could detect no sign that she cared about him. Sometimes he thought she did, but when he thought it over he always concluded that he had just been imagining things. Her remarks to him generally had a stinging quality, but he would often not realize he had been stung until after she left the scene. Working together in the lots, which they did whenever the weather was decent, she often lectured him on his behavior with the horses. She didn’t feel he paid close attention to them. July was at a loss to know how anyone could pay close attention to a horse when she was around, and yet the more his eyes turned to her the worse he did with the horses and the more disgusted she grew. His eyes would turn to her, though. She had taken to wearing her husband’s old coat and overshoes, both much too big for her. She wouldn’t wear gloves—she claimed the horses didn’t like it—and her large bony hands often got so cold she would have to stick them under the coat for a few minutes to warm them. She wore a variety of caps that she had ordered from somewhere—apparently she liked caps as much as she liked cake. None of them were particularly suited to a Nebraska winter. Her favorite one was an old Army cap Cholo had picked up on the plains somewhere. Sometimes Clara would tie a wool scarf over it to keep her ears warm, but usually the scarf came untied in the course of working with the horses, so that when they walked back up for a meal her hair was usually spilling over the collar of the big coat. Yet July couldn’t stop his eyes from feasting on her. He thought she was wonderfully beautiful, so beautiful that merely to walk with her from the lots to the house, when she was in a good mood, was enough to make him give up for another month all thought of leaving. He told himself that just being able to work with her was enough. And yet, it wasn’t—which is why the question finally forced itself out. He was miserable all night, for she hadn’t answered the question. But he had spoken the words and revealed what he wanted. He supposed she would think worse of him than she already did, once she thought it over.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The Major found out that Newt was good at breaking horses and asked Call if he would mind leaving the boy at the fort for a few weeks to rough out the new string of horses. Call didn’t want to, but the Major had dealt with him on fair terms and he didn’t feel he could refuse the request, particularly since there was not much to do back at ranch headquarters.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Dish resolved that as soon as the building was done he would go like a streak for Nebraska. The thought that a stranger might come along and win Lorie before he could get back was a torment to him—but it made him one of the more vigorous members of the logging crew once the building got started. Most of the other members of the crew, Jasper and Needle particularly, were less vigorous, and they irritated Dish by taking frequent breaks, leaving him to chop alone. They would sit around smoking, keeping a close watch for bears, while Dish flailed away, the sound of the striking ax echoing far across the valley of the Milk River.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

That night, camping alone, he dreamed of Gus. Frequently he woke up to hear Gus’s voice, so real he looked around expecting to see him. Sometimes he would scarcely fall asleep before he dreamed of Gus, and it was even beginning to happen in the daytime if he rode along not paying much attention to his surroundings. Gus dead invaded his thoughts as readily as he had when he was alive. Usually he came to josh and tease, much as he had in life. “Just because you’ve got to the top of the country, you don’t have to stop,” he said, in one dream. “Turn east and keep going until you hit Chicago.” Call didn’t want to turn east, but neither did he particularly want to stop. Gus’s death, and the ones before it, had caused him to lose his sense of purpose to such an extent that he scarcely cared from one day to the next what he was doing. Hekept on going north because it had become a habit. But they had reached the Milk River and winter was coming, so he had to break the habit or else lose most of the men and probably the cattle too.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Call had no time to soothe the men with elaborate instructions. If Gus was badly wounded, he would weaken rapidly, and every hour counted. Arriving ten minutes too late would be as bad as ten days, or a year, for that matter. Besides, the almost beseeching way the men looked at him was irritating. Sometimes they acted as if they would forget how to breathe if he or Gus wasn’t there to show them. They were all resourceful men—he knew that, if they didn’t—and yet at certain times they became like children, wanting to be led. All his adult life, he had consented to lead, and yet occasionally, when the men seemed particularly dumbstruck, he wondered why he had done it.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Just move the stock on north,” he said. “Be alert. I’m going to get Gus.” The thought of him leaving sent a ripple of apprehension through the camp. Though independent to a man in some respects, the outfit was happier in all respects when Captain Call was around. Or if not the Captain, then Gus. Only a few hours earlier, they had felt cocky enough to take on an army. After all, they were the conquerors of the Yellowstone. But now, watching the Captain catch a horse for Gus to ride back on, they all felt daunted. The vast plain was beautiful, but it had reduced Pea Eye to a scarred wreck. And the Indians had Gus holed up somewhere. They might kill him and the Captain too. All men were mortal, and they felt particularly so. A thousand Indians might come by nightfall. The Indians might fall on them as they had fallen on Custer.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“There he is,” Dish said suddenly. “If it ain’t Pea.” Dish was almost stunned with surprise. Pea was no longer walking. He was sitting down in the grass, naked, nodding his head as if in conversation with somebody. When he heard them he looked around, as if not particularly surprised, but when they dismounted there were tears in his eyes.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

All the way north everyone had been trying to convince Jasper that it didn’t really make any difference how deep a river was, once it got deep enough to swim a horse, but Jasper felt the argument violated common sense. The deeper the river, the more dangerous—that was axiomatic to him. He had heard about something called undercurrents, which could suck you down. The deeper the river, the farther down you could be sucked, and Jasper had a profound fear of being sucked down. Particularly he didn’t want to be sucked down in the Yellowstone, and had made himself a pair of rude floats from some empty lard buckets, just in case the Yellowstone really did turn out to be as deep as the Mississippi.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Augustus turned and walked away. “I hate funerals,” he said. “Particularly this one.” “At the rate we’re dropping off, there won’t be many of us left by the time we get to Montana,” Lippy said, as they were all walking back to camp.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The men had had the last of Po Campo’s water that morning, barely enough to wet their tongues. Po Campo doled it out with severity, careful to see that no one got more than his share. Though the old man had walked the whole distance, using his ax-handle cane, he seemed not particularly tired.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Well, he’s mighty fond of that horse,” he said. “And she might kill him yet.” “She ain’t gonna kill the Captain,” Deets said. He had the sad sense that things were not right. It seemed they were going to go north forever, and he couldn’t think why. Life had been orderly and peaceful in Texas. He himself had particularly enjoyed his periodic trips to San Antonio to deposit money. Texas had always been their country, and it was a puzzle to him why they were going to a country that would probably be so wild there wouldn’t even be banks to take money to.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Was it me?” Newt asked, feeling that maybe he should have managed things better. “Was it just that he was quirting me?” “That was part of it,” Augustus said. “Call don’t know himself what the rest of it was.”“Why, he’d have killed that man, if you hadn’t roped him,” Dish said. “He would have killed anybody. Anybody!” Augustus, eating his candy, did not dispute it.IT WAS BECAUSE of the fight that the boys ended up amid the whores. Dish saddled and left, and Augustus finished loading the wagon and started out of town. When he turned the wagon around, Newt and the Raineys were talking to Pea Eye, who had been up the street getting barbered and had missed the fight. Pea Eye had so much toilet water on that Augustus could smell him from ten feet away. He and the boys were standing around the bloody anvil and the boys were explaining the matter to him. Pea didn’t seem particularly surprised.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Yep,” Augustus said. “I’ll bring it.” Call saw that everyone was looking at him, the hands and cowboys and townspeople alike. The anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling tired. He didn’t remember the fight, particularly, but people were looking at him as if they were stunned. He felt he should make some explanation, though it seemed to him a simple situation.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

But she didn’t remember Jake particularly. He had faded into all the other men who had come and gone. He had got a thorn in his hand, she remembered that, but she didn’t remember much else. She didn’t much care that he was dead—he wasn’t a good man, like Gus.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

To see a woman so suddenly, after so much time alone, made him very nervous—particularly since the woman was so out of temper. But as they drew closer he found that, out of temper or not, he couldn’t stop looking at her. Her eyes flashed as she lectured her daughters, neither of whom was taking the lecture silently—both were trying to talk back but the mother didn’t pause to listen. She had abundant brown hair tucked into a bun at the back of her neck, though the bun had partly come loose.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Dee just stared at her and at the large man holding her in his arms. Ellie realized he might have the wrong idea about Zwey, although he had never been particularly the jealous type.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Make ’em come in, Ma,” Sally whispered. She was particularly fascinated by the one with the scarred face.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

But a few years passed, and Clara went back to the stories in the magazines. She loved to read aloud, and she read snatches of them to her daughters as soon as they were big enough to listen. Bob didn’t particularly like it, but he tolerated it. No other woman he knew read as much as his wife, and he thought it might be the cause of certain of her
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

It seemed to her, after a month of it, that she was carrying Bob away with those sheets; he had already lost much weightand every morning seemed a little thinner to her. The large body that had lain beside her so many nights, that had warmed her in the icy nights, that had covered her those many times through the years and given her five children, was dribbling away as offal, and there was nothing she could do about it. The doctors in Ogallala said Bob’s skull was fractured; you couldn’t put a splint on a skull; probably he’d die. And yet he wasn’t dead. Often when she was cleaning him, bathing his soiled loins and thighs with warm water, the stem of life between his legs would raise itself, growing as if a fractured skull meant nothing to it. Clara cried at the sight—what it meant to her was that Bob still hoped for a boy. He couldn’t talk or turn himself, and he would never beat another horse, most likely, but he still wanted a boy. The stem let her know it, night after night, when all she came in to do was clean the stains from a dying body. She would roll Bob on his side and hold him there for a while, for his back and legs were developing terrible bedsores. She was afraid to turn him on his belly for fear he might suffocate, but she would hold him on his side for an hour, sometimes napping as she held him. Then she would roil him back and cover him and go back to her cot, often to lie awake half the night, looking at the prairies, sad beyond tears at the ways of things. There Bob lay, barely alive, his ribs showing more every morning, still wanting a boy. I could do it, she thought—would it save him if I did? I could go through it one more time—the pregnancy, the fear, the sore nipples, the worry—and maybe it would be a boy. Though she had borne five children, she sometimes felt barren, lying on her cot at night. She felt she was ignoring her husband’s last wish—that if she had any generosity she would do it for him. How could she lie night after night and ignore the strange, mute urgings of a dying man, one who had never been anything but kind to her, in his clumsy way. Bob, dying, still wanted her to make a little Bob. Sometimes in the long silent nights she felt she must be going crazy to think about such things, in such a way. And yet she came to dread having to go to him at night; it became as hard as anything she had had to do in her marriage. It was so hard that at times she wished Bob would go on and die, if he couldn’t get well. The truth was, she didn’t want another child, particularly not another boy. Somehow she felt confident she could keep her girls alive—but she lacked that confidence where boys were concerned. She remembered too well the days of icy terror and restless pain as she listened to Jim cough his way to death. She remembered her hatred of, and helplessness before, the fevers that had taken Jeff and Johnny. Not again, she thought—I won’t live that again, even for you, Bob. The memory of the fear that had torn her as her children approached death was the most vivid of her life: she could remember the coughings, the painful breathing. She never wanted to listen helplessly to such again.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Ease ’em along,” Call told Dish. “Bert can scout ahead and make sure there’s water.” If Dish felt subdued, Newt felt nothing but pride to have been selected for the trip. He could tell some of the other hands were envious, particularly the Rainey boys, but it was the Captain’s order, and no one dared say a word. When he saw the Captain put two boxes of rifle shells into his saddlebag he felt even prouder, for it meant he might be expected to fight.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

It was a sunny day, and Jake rode along happily. Sometimes he got a lucky feeling—the feeling that he was meant for riches and beautiful women and that nothing could keep him down for long. The lucky feeling came to him as he rode, and the main part of it was his sense that he was about to get free of the Suggs brothers. They were hard men, and he had made a bad choice in riding with them, but nothing very terrible had come of it, and they were almost to Dodge. It seemed to him he had slid into bad luck in Arkansas the day he accidentally shot the dentist, and now he was about to slide out of it in Kansas and resume the kind of enjoyable life he felt he deserved. Frog Lip was riding just in front of him, and he felt how nice it would be not to have to consort with such a man again. Frog Lip rode along silently, as he had the whole trip, but there was menace in his silence, and Jake was ready for lighter company—a whore, particularly. There were sure to be plenty of them in Dodge.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The Irishman particularly found the huge emptiness disturbing. “I guess we left the people,” he said often. Or, “When’s the next people?” Nobody was quite sure when to expect the next people. “It’s too bad Gus ain’t here,” Pea Eye said. “Gus would know.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

The Irishman particularly found the huge emptiness disturbing. “I guess we left the people,” he said often. Or, “When’s the next people?” Nobody was quite sure when to expect the next people. “It’s too bad Gus ain’t here,” Pea Eye said. “Gus would know.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Because of Jake we lost ’em both, I guess,” Dish said. “Jake is a goddamn bastard.” It was painful to Newt to have to think of Jake that way. He still remembered how Jake had played with him when he was a little child, and that Jake had made his mother get a lively, merry look in her eyes. All the years Jake had been gone, Newt had remembered him fondly and supposed that if he ever did come back he would be a hero. But it had to be admitted that Jake’s behavior since his return had not been heroic at all. It bordered on the cowardly, particularly his casual return to card playing once Lorena had been stolen.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“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.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇