“Let’s take him on,” Call said. “The men will want to pay their respects. I imagine we can catch them tonight.” They caught the herd not long before dawn. Dish Boggett was the night herder who saw them coming. He was very relieved, for with both of them gone, the herd had been his responsibility. Since he didn’t know the country, it was a heavy responsibility, and he had been hoping the bosses would get back soon. When he saw them he felt a little proud of himself, for he had kept the cattle on grass and had moved them along nicely.
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“You better tie them three,” he said. “Otherwise they’ll follow us.” “I doubt they speak English, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “I imagine they speak Ute. Anyway, we killed their best warrior; they’re done for now unless they find some better country. Three horses won’t last them through the winter.” He looked around at the parched country, the naked ridges where the earth had split from drought. The ridges were varicolored, smudged with red and salt-white splotches, as if the fluids of the earth had leaked out through the cracks.
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All day he rode west, and the country around him grew more bleak. Not fit for sheep, Call thought. Not hardly fit for lizards—in fact, a small gray lizard was the only life he saw all day. That night he made a dry camp in sandy country where the dirt was light-colored, almost white. He supposed he had come some sixty miles and could not imagine that the herd would make it that far, although the Hell Bitch seemed unaffected. He slept for a few hours and went on, arriving just after sunup on the banks of Salt Creek. It was not running, but there was adequate water in scattered shallow pools. The water was not good, but it was water. The trouble was, the herd was nearly eighty miles back—a four-day drive under normal conditions; and in this case the miles were entirely waterless, which wouldn’t make for normal conditions.
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“If you get to choose one of my horses, choose that little sorrel with the star on his forehead,” Clara said. “He’s the best of that bunch.” “Oh, I imagine Dish will get the first pick,” Newt said. “Dish is our top hand.” “Well, I don’t want Dish to have him,” Clara said. “I want you to have him. Come on.” She started for the lots and made straight for Call.
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He was sorry they were leaving. Sally had been telling him all she planned to do when she grew up. She was going East to school and then planned to play the piano professionally, she said. That seemed unusual to Newt. The only musician he knew was Lippy, and he couldn’t imagine Sally doing what Lippy did. But he enjoyed listening to her talk about her future life.
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“Don’t you be scolding me,” he said. “It ain’t my fault you went off and got married.” “If I’d married you, you would have left me for somebody younger and stupider long before now, I imagine,” Clara said.
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On their way to the lots Call tried to think of something to say, but he was at a loss. “You have a pretty ranch,” he said finally. “I hope we do as well in Montana.” “I just hope you get there alive,” Clara said. “You ought to settle around here and wait five years. I imagine Montana will be safer by then. It ain’t safe now.” “We’re set on being the first there,” Call said. “It can’t be no rougher than Texas used to be.” Clara set such a stiff price for her horses that Call was tempted to balk. He felt sure he would have done better with her husband, if he had been up and about. There was something uncompromising in Clara’s look when she named the prices.
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“You girls go catch three pullets,” she said. “I imagine Miss Wood is tired of eating beefsteak. It’s such a fair day, we might want to picnic a little later.” “Oh, Ma, let’s do,” Sally said. She loved picnics.
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“I thought you, went to her,” she said. “I didn’t believe you went to town.” “Ain’t the moon beautiful?” he said. “These plains seem like fine country under a full moon.” Lorena didn’t look up. She wasn’t interested in the moon. She only wanted it to be settled about the woman. If Gus was going to leave, she wanted to know it, although she couldn’t imagine a life if that happened.
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“It’s a good thing this grass don’t depend on me,” Augustus said. “There’s a lot more of it than I can get watered.” They were on a plain of grass so huge that it was hard to imagine there was a world beyond it. The herd, and themselves, were like a dot, surrounded by endless grass. Lorena had come to like the space—it was a relief after her years of being crowded in a little saloon.
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“He’s just unnerved—he’s come along a long way and I imagine he had stopped expecting to make it,” Clara said.
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“Bad men would have a better team,” Clara said. “Find any colts?” Cholo shook his head. His hair was white—Clara had never been able to get his age out of him, but she imagined he was seventy-five at least, perhaps eighty. At night by the fire, with the work done, Cholo wove horsehair lariats. Clara loved to watch the way his fingers worked. When a horse died or had to be killed, Cholo always saved its mane and tail for his ropes. He could weave them of rawhide too, and once had made one for her of buckskin, although she didn’t rope. Bob had been puzzled by the gift—“Clara couldn’t rope a post,” he said—but Clara was not puzzled at all. She had been very pleased. It was a beautiful gift; Cholo had the finest manners. She knew he appreciated her as she appreciated him. That was the year she bought him the coat. Sometimes, reading her magazines, she would look up and see Cholo weaving a rope and imagine that if she ever did try to write a story she would write it about him. It would be very different from any of the stories she read in the English magazines.
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“I tell you we bought them horses!” Dan said.“Oh, drop your bluff,” Augustus said. “I buried Wilbarger myself, not to mention his two cowboys. We buried them farmers and we’ll bury that body over there. I imagine it’s all your doings, too. Your brothers don’t look so rough, and Jake ain’t normally a killer.” Augustus looked at Jake, who was still sitting down. “What’s the story on that one, Jake?” he asked.
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She went into the tent and lay awake all night while Dish Boggett sat nearby, keeping watch. It seemed to him he had never felt so lonely. The mere fact that she was so close, and yet they were separate, made the loneliness keener. When he had just thrown his blanket down with the boys, he didn’t imagine her so much, and he could sleep. Now she was just a few yards away—he could have crept up to the tent and heard her breathing. And yet it seemed he would never be able to eliminate those few yards. In some way Lorie would always be as distant from him as the Kansas stars. At times he felt that he had almost rather not be in love with her, for it brought him no peace. What was the use of it, if it was only going to be so painful? And yet, she had spoken to him in a friendly voice only that day. He couldn’t give up while there was a chance.
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“Fifty dollars?” Dish said, genuinely astonished. He had never heard of such extravagance in his life. “Did he actually pay it?” “Well, he give me the ten,” Lippy said. “I imagine he give Lorie the fifty, too. Gus ain’t cheap, he’s just crazy.” Dish remembered the night before he had hired on with the Hat Creek outfit, when Gus had lent him two dollars for the same purpose on which he had apparently spent fifty. There was no figuring the man out.“You oughtn’t to blabbed,” he told Lippy.
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“Yes,” July said. “That’s the Ellie. I was hoping you had news of her. I don’t know where she is.” “Well, she moved to Missouri,” Jennie said. “Then we heard she married a sheriff from Arkansas, but I didn’t put no stock in that kind of rumor. I can’t imagine Ellie staying married to no sheriff.” “She didn’t,” July said. “She run off while I was chasing Jake Spoon, and I got three people killed since I started looking for her.” Jennie looked at the young man more closely. She had noticed right off that he was drunk, but drunks were an everyday sight and she had not looked close. The man seemed very young, which is why she had taken him for a cowboy. They were mostly just boys. But this man didn’t have the look of a cowboy once she looked close. He had a solemn face and sad eyes, the saddest she had looked into for a while. On the basis of the eyes he was an unlikely man for Ellie to have married—Ellie liked her laughs. But then people often did unlikely things.
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The clerk shook his head. “Not so far as I know,” he said. “He’s up in Ogallala or Deadwood or somewhere, where there’s lots of whores and not too much law. I imagine he’s got five or six whores in his string right now. Of course he could have died, but he’s my nephew and I ain’t heard no news to that effect.” “Thank you for the loan of the pencil,” July said. He turned and walked out. He went straight to the livery stable and got his new horse, whose name was Pete. If Elmira wasn’t in Dodge she might be in Abilene, so he might as well start. But he didn’t start. He rode halfway out of town and then went back to the third saloon from the post office and inquired about the woman named Jennie. They said she had moved to another bar, up the street—a cowboy was even kind enough to point out the bar. A herd had been sold that morning and was being loaded onto boxcars. July rode over and watched the work a while—slow work and made slower by the cattle’s long horns, which kept getting tangled with one another as the cattle were being forced up the narrow loading chute. The cowboys yelled and popped their quirts, and the horses behaved expertly, but despite that, it seemed to take a long time to fill a boxcar.
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“No, we better all drive,” he said. “Gus had a tent. I imagine he’s happy as a badger. They’re probably just sitting there playing cards.” It was what he had expected, but Newt still felt chastened as he turned back to the drags. He felt he would never learn to say the right thing to the Captain.
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What he was doing—indeed, his whole life—now seemed to him completely futile. He rode through the empty land without hope of anything, simply going on because he had to do something. As he went farther and farther onto the plains, he ceased to be able to imagine Fort Smith as a place where he might ever live and work again. What would he do if he did go back? Sit in the jail where he had worked with Roscoe? Or in the cabin where he had lived with Elmira?
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The storm that struck them half a day from the Canadian was of a different intensity because of the lightning. By midafternoon, Newt, who was as usual with the drags, became conscious of rumblings and flashing far on the west. He saw Deets conferring with the Captain, though it was hard to imagine what advice might help. They were out in the middle of the plain, far from any shelter.
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For all the talk, they saw neither Indians nor cowboys for days on end. They saw no one—just an occasional wolf or coyote. It seemed to Newt that the sky got bigger and the country emptier every day. There was nothing to see but grass and sky. The space was so empty that it was hard to imagine that there might ever be towns in it, or people.
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The storm that struck them half a day from the Canadian was of a different intensity because of the lightning. By midafternoon, Newt, who was as usual with the drags, became conscious of rumblings and flashing far on the west. He saw Deets conferring with the Captain, though it was hard to imagine what advice might help. They were out in the middle of the plain, far from any shelter.
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For all the talk, they saw neither Indians nor cowboys for days on end. They saw no one—just an occasional wolf or coyote. It seemed to Newt that the sky got bigger and the country emptier every day. There was nothing to see but grass and sky. The space was so empty that it was hard to imagine that there might ever be towns in it, or people.
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“Now then, we ought to be set,” Augustus said, once he had the tent secured. “I imagine the boys will be along in a week or so.” Lorena didn’t care if they never came along, but she was glad they had the tent. It was scarcely up before rain clouds boiled again out of the northwest.
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“It ain’t far down the river,” Augustus said, “but I’d pass by it if I were you. Your wife ain’t there. If she went up the Arkansas I’d imagine she’s up in Kansas, in one of the towns.” “I would hate to miss her,” July said.
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