“I’ve enjoyed mine,” Call said. “What was wrong with yours?” “I should have married again,” Augustus said. “Two wives ain’t very many. Solomon beat me by several hundred, although I’ve got the same equipment he had. I could have managed eight or ten at least. I don’t know why I stuck with this scraggly old crew.” “Because you didn’t have to work, I guess,” Call said. “You sat around, and we worked.” “I was working in my head, you see,” Augustus said. “I was trying to figure out life. If I’d had a couple more fat women to lay around with I might have figured out the puzzle.” “I never understood why you didn’t stay in Tennessee, if your family was rich,” Call said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“We’re driving three thousand cattle,” Call said. “They’re bound to notice us.” “They ain’t expecting cattle,” Augustus said. “There’s never been cattle here before. They’re probably just out hunting, trying to lay in enough meat to last them the winter.” “I guess we’ll meet soon enough,” Call said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

When Dish moved, Newt saw Deets. He was in the process of yawning when he saw him. Instead of springing up, he lay back down and pulled his blanket tighter. He opened his eyes and looked, and then shut them tightly. He felt angry at the men for having talked so loud that they had awakened him. He wished they would all die, if that was the best they could do. He wanted to go back to sleep. He wanted it to be one of those dreams that you wake up from just as the dream gets bad. He felt that was probably what it was. When he opened his eyes again he wouldn’t see Deets’s body lying on the wagon sheet a few yards away.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Can’t you take that lance out?” Call asked. He didn’t know what to do with the baby, and there Deets lay dying.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

It would have been so much better to stay where they had lived, by the old river. Deets felt a longing to be back, to sit in the corrals at night and wonder about the moon. Many a time he had dozed off, wondering about the moon, whether the Indians had managed to get on it. Sometimes he dreamed he was on it himself—a foolish dream. But the thought made him sleepy, and with one more look of regret at the dead boy who hadn’t understood that he meant no harm, he carefully lay down on his side. Mr. Gus knelt beside him. For a moment Deets thought he was going to try to pull the lance out, but all he did was steady it so the handle wouldn’t quiver.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“The Yellowstone already?” Dish Boggett said. It was the last river—or at least the last river anyone knew much about. At mention of it the whole camp fell silent, looking at the mountains.THEY RESTED ON the Salt for two days, giving the animals and men plenty of time to recover. The men spent much of their time speculating about what lay on beyond the mountains, and how long it would take to get there.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

To Call’s great relief, the storm blew itself out in three hours. The wind gradually died and the sand lay under their feetagain instead of peppering them. The moon was soon visible, and the sky filled with bright stars. It would not be possible to judge how many cattle had strayed until the morning, but at least the main herd was still under their control.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Clara and Augustus sat for an hour in the room where Bob lay. Augustus found it difficult to get used to the fact that the man’s eyes were open. Clara had ceased to care, or even notice.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“That’s the whole trouble with women,” Call said, as if to himself. “They do things that don’t make sense. She wouldn’t give a nickel on the rest of them horses. Most horse traders would have taken off a dollar just to help the deal.”AFTER CALL AND NEWT LEFT with the horses, Clara lit a lantern and took Augustus up to the room where her husband lay.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

She walked over to the bed and lay back on the cornshuck mattress, which crackled in protest. “Come on, try it,” she said.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Dixon lay by the anvil. He had not moved.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

It was the squeal that caught Call’s attention. After loading the heavy oak water barrel, he and Augustus had stepped back into the store a minute. Augustus was contemplating buying a lighter pistol to replace the big Colt he carried, but he decided against it. He carried out some of the things he had bought for Lorena, and Call took a sack of flour. They heard the horse squeal while they were still in the store, and came out to see Dixon quirting Newt, as Dish Boggett’s mare turned round and round. Two cowboys lay on the ground, one of them Dish.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Come help me shuck this corn,” Clara said. “The roasting ears are about gone. I get so hungry for them during the winter, I could eat a dozen.”She went on toward the house, carrying her heavy garden basket. When she didn’t hear his footsteps, she looked back at him. July wiped his face and followed her to the house.THE NEXT MORNING, when he managed to get up, July came into the kitchen to find Cholo sharpening a thin-bladed knife. The baby lay on the table, kicking his bare feet, and Clara, wearing a man’s hat, was giving the two girls instructions.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Only unhappy,” Patrick Arandel said. He felt sorry for the young man. Five idle young whores were listening to the conversation, while one of their friends lay in labor in the next room.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Now she didn’t care. The sickness had changed her—that and the death of Dee. She had lost the fear. A few miles from town they stopped and camped. She lay awake in the wagon much of the night. Zwey slept on the ground, snoring, his rifle held tightly in his big hands. She wasn’t sleepy, but she wasn’t afraid, either. It was cloudy, and the plains were very dark. Anything could come out of the darkness—Indians, bandits, snakes. The doctor had claimed there were panthers.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Hang ’em?” “Yes, hung them all, including Jake Spoon.” “Well, I’ll swear,” Dish said, shocked. “I didn’t like the man but I never figured him for a killer.” “He wasn’t a killer,” Augustus said. “Jake liked a joke and didn’t like to work. I’ve got exactly the same failings. It’s lucky I ain’t been hung.” He pulled the saddle off his tired horse. The horse lay down and had a good roll, scratching its sweaty back.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

There was no shade on the bluff. He covered his face with his hat and lay back against his saddle, sweating, and ashamed of his own carelessness. He grew delirious and in his delirium would have long talks with Roscoe. He could see Roscoe’s face as plain as day. Roscoe didn’t seem to blame him for the fact that he was dead. If he himself was soon going to be dead, too, it might not matter so much. July didn’t die. His leg felt terrible, though. In the night came a rainstorm and he could do nothing but huddle under his saddle blanket. His teeth began to chatter and he couldn’t stop them. He almost wished he could go on and die, it was so uncomfortable. But in the morning the sun was hot, he soon dried out. He felt weak, but he didn’t feel as if he were dying. Mainly he had to avoid looking at his leg. It looked so bad he didn’t know what to think. If a doctor saw it he could probably just cut it off and be done with it. When he tried to bend it even a little, a terrible pain shot through him—yet he had to get down to the river or else die of thirst, even though it had just rained.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Yet there he was, his eyes staring upward, as helpless as the baby. She put the child down again and fed Bob soup until her wrist got tired from holding his head. Then she lay Bob’s head back on his pillow, and ate the rest of the chicken soup herself.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

She looked down at Bob and saw that the baby had made no difference. He lay as he had, nothing left to him but need.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

When night fell she went in and lit a lamp in the room where Elmira lay. Clara, seeing that her eyes were open, started to take the baby to her. But once again Elmira turned her head away.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Goodness, you best lay down,” Clara said. “You’ve lost blood—we’ve got to build you up.” Elmira obeyed passively. She allowed Clara to feed her a few spoonfuls of the soup.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“My goodness, that is a ways,” Clara said. “I lived in Texas once.” Then she turned and saw that the woman was sitting on the ground. Before Clara could reach her she had toppled sideways and lay face up on the trail that led from the house to the barn.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

In the mornings she lay wrapped in a quilt until the smell of Cholo’s coffee waked her. She had fallen into the habit of letting Cholo make the coffee, mainly because he was better at it than she was. She would lie in her quilt, watching the mists float over the Platte, until one or both of the girls tiptoed out. They always tiptoed, as if they might wake their father, though his eyes were as wide open as ever.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

Besides, Bob wasn’t really alive, even then—his eyes never flickered. It was only reflex that enabled him to swallow the soup she fed him. That his rod still seemed to live when she bathed him, that, too, was reflex, an obscene joke that life was playing on the two of them. It raised no feelings of tenderness in her, just a feeling of disgust at the cruelties of existence. It seemed to mock her, to make her feel that she was cheating Bob of something, though it was not easy to say what. She had married him, followed him, fed him, worked beside him, borne his children—and yet even as she changed his sheets she felt there was a selfishness in her that she had never mastered. Something had been held back—what it was, considering all that she had done, was hard to say. But she felt it anyway, fair judgment or not, and lay awake on her cot through half the night, tense with self-reproach.
>> 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