Lonesome Dove (27 page)

25

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON they strung a rope corral around the remuda, so each hand could pick himself a set of mounts, each being allowed four picks. It was slow work, for Jasper Fant and Needle Nelson could not make up their minds. The Irishmen and the boys had to take what was left after the more experienced hands had chosen.

Augustus did not deign to make a choice at all. “I intend to ride old Malaria all the way,” he said, “or if not I’ll ride Greasy.”

Once the horses were assigned, the positions had to be assigned as well.

“Dish, you take the right point,” Call said. “Soupy can take the left and Bert and Needle will back you up.”

Dish had assumed that, as a top hand, he would have a point, and no one disputed his right, but both Bert and Needle were unhappy that Soupy had the other point. They had been with the outfit longer, and felt aggrieved.

The Spettle boys were told to help Lippy with the horse herd, and Newt, the Raineys and the Irishmen were left with the drags. Call saw that each of them had bandanas, for the dust at the rear of the herd would be bad.

They spent an hour patching on the wagon, a vehicle Augustus regarded with scorn. “That dern wagon won’t get us to the Brazos,” he said.

“Well, it’s the only wagon we got,” Call said.

“You didn’t assign me no duties, nor yourself either,” Augustus pointed out.

“That simple,” Call said. “I’ll scare off bandits and you can talk to Indian chiefs.”

“You boys let these cattle string out,” he said to the men. “We ain’t in no big hurry.”

Augustus had ridden through the cattle and had come back with a count of slightly over twenty-six hundred.

“Make it twenty-six hundred cattle and two pigs,” he said. “I guess we’ve seen the last of the dern Rio Grande. One of us ought to make a speech, Call. Think of how long we’ve rode this river.”

Call was not willing to indulge him in any dramatics. He mounted the mare and went over to help the boys get the cattle started. It was not a hard task. Most of the cattle were still wild as antelope and instinctively moved away from the horsemen. In a few minutes they were on the trail, strung out for more than a mile. The point riders soon disappeared in the low brush.

Lippy and the Spettle boys were with the wagon. With the dust so bad, they intended to keep the horses a fair distance behind.

Bolivar sat on the wagon seat, his ten-gauge across his lap. In his experience trouble usually came quick, when it came, and he meant to keep the ten-gauge handy to discourage it.

Newt had heard much talk of dust, but had paid little attention to it until they actually started the cattle. Then he couldn’t help noticing it, for there was nothing else to notice. The grass was sparse, and every hoof sent up its little spurt of dust. Before they had gone a mile he himself was white with it, and for moments actually felt lost, it was so thick. He had to tie the bandana around his nose to get a good breath. He understood why Dish and the other boys were so anxious to draw assignments near the front of the herd. If the dust was going to be that bad all the way, he might as well be riding to Montana with his eyes shut. He would see nothing but his own horse and the few cattle that happened to be within ten yards of him. A grizzly bear could walk in and eat him and his horse both, and they wouldn’t be missed until breakfast the next day.

But he had no intention of complaining. They were on their way, and he was part of the outfit. After waiting for the moment so long, what was a little dust?

Once in a while, though, he dropped back a little. His bandana got sweaty, and the dust caked on it so that he felt he was inhaling mud. He had to take it off and beat it against his leg once in a while. He was riding Mouse, who looked like he could use a bandana of his own. The dust seemed to make the heat worse, or else the heat made the dust worse.

The second time he stopped to beat his bandana, he happened to notice Sean leaning off his horse as if he were trying to vomit. The horse and Sean were both white, as if they had been rolled in powder, though the horse Sean rode was a dark bay.

“Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.

“No, I was trying to spit,” Sean said. “I’ve got some mud in my mouth. I didn’t know it would be like this.”

“I didn’t either,” Newt said.

“Well, we better keep up,” he added nervously—he didn’t want to neglect his responsibilities. Then, to his dismay, he looked back and saw twenty or thirty cattle standing behind them. He had ridden right past them in the dust. He immediately loped back to get them, hoping the Captain hadn’t noticed. When he turned back, two of the wild heifers spooked. Mouse, a good cow horse, twisted and jumped a medium-sized chaparral bush in an effort to gain a step on the cows. Newt had not expected the jump and lost both stirrups, but fortunately diverted the heifers so that they turned back into the main herd. He found his heart was beating fast, partly because he had almost been thrown and partly because he had nearly left thirty cattle behind. With such a start, it seemed to him he would be lucky to get to Montana without disgracing himself.

Call and Augustus rode along together, some distance from the herd. They were moving through fairly open country, flats of chaparral with only here and there a strand of mesquite. That would soon change: the first challenge would be the brush country, an almost impenetrable band of thick mesquite between them and San Antonio. Only a few of the hands were experienced in the brush, and a bad run of some kind might cost them hundreds of cattle.

“What do you think, Gus?” Call asked. “Think we can get through the brush, or had we better go around?”

Augustus looked amused. “Why, these cattle are like deer, only faster,” he said. “They’ll get through the brush fine. The problem will be the hands. Half of them will probably get their eyes poked out.”

“I still don’t know what you think,” Call said.

“The problem is, I ain’t used to being consulted,” Augustus said. “I’m usually sitting on the porch drinking whiskey at this hour. As for the brush, my choice would be to go through. It’s that or go down to the coast and get et by the mosquitoes.”

“Where do you reckon Jake will end up?” Call asked.

“In a hole in the ground, like you and me,” Augustus said.

“I don’t know why I ever ask you a question,” Call said.

“Well, last time I seen Jake he had a thorn in his hand,” Augustus said. “He was wishing he’d stayed in Arkansas and taken his hanging.”

They rode up on a little knobby hill and stopped for a moment to watch the cattle. The late sun shone through the dust cloud, making the white dust rosy. The riders to each side of the herd were spread wide, giving the cattle lots of room. Most of them were horned stock, thin and light, their hides a mixture of colors. The riders at the rear were all but hidden in the rosy dust.

“Them boys on the drags won’t even be able to get down from their horses unless we take a spade and spade ’em off a little,” Augustus said.

“It won’t hurt ’em,” Call said. “They’re young.”

In the clear late afternoon light they could see all the way back to Lonesome Dove and the river and Mexico. Augustus regretted not tying a jug to his saddle—he would have liked to sit on the little hill and drink for an hour. Although Lonesome Dove had not been much of a town, he felt sure that a little whiskey would have made him feel sentimental about it.

Call merely sat on the hill, studying the cattle. It was clear to Augustus that he was not troubled in any way by leaving the border or the town.

“It’s odd I partnered with a man like you, Call,” Augustus said. “If we was to meet now instead of when we did, I doubt we’d have two words to say to one another.”

“I wish it could happen, then, if it would hold you to two words,” Call said. Though everything seemed peaceful, he had an odd, confused feeling at the thought of what they had undertaken. He had quickly convinced himself it was necessary, this drive. Fighting the Indians had been necessary, if Texas was to be settled. Protecting the border was necessary, else the Mexicans would have taken south Texas back.

A cattle drive, for all its difficulty, wasn’t so imperative. He didn’t feel the old sense of adventure, though perhaps it would come once they got beyond the settled country.

Augustus, who could almost read his mind, almost read it as they were stopped on the little knob of a hill.

“I hope this is hard enough for you, Call,” he said. “I hope it makes you happy. If it don’t, I give up. Driving all these skinny cattle all that way is a funny way to maintain an interest in life, if you ask me.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Call said.

“No, but then you seldom ask,” Augustus said. “You should have died in the line of duty, Woodrow. You’d know how to do that fine. The problem is you don’t know how to live.”

“Whereas you do?” Call asked.

“Most certainly,” Augustus said. “I’ve lived about a hundred to your one. I’ll be a little riled if I end up being the one to die in the line of duty, because this ain’t my duty and it ain’t yours, either. This is just fortune hunting.”

“Well, we wasn’t finding one in Lonesome Dove,” Call said. He saw Deets returning from the northwest, ready to lead them to the bed-ground. Call was glad to see him—he was tired of Gus and his talk. He spurred the mare on off the hill. It was only when he met Deets that he realized Augustus hadn’t followed. He was still sitting on old Malaria, back on the little hill, watching the sunset and the cattle herd.

PART
II

26

JULY JOHNSON HAD BEEN RAISED not to complain, so he didn’t complain, but the truth of the matter was, it had been the hardest year of his life: a year in which so many things went wrong that it was hard to know which trouble to pay attention to at any given time.

His deputy, Roscoe Brown—forty-eight years of age to July’s twenty-four—assured him cheerfully that the increase in trouble was something he had better get used to.

“Yep, now that you’ve turned twenty-four you can’t expect no mercy,” Roscoe said.

“I don’t expect no mercy,” July said. “I just wish things would go wrong one at a time. That way I believe I could handle it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have got married then,” Roscoe said.

It struck July as an odd comment. He and Roscoe were sitting in front of what passed for a jail in Fort Smith. It just had one cell, and the lock on that didn’t work—when it was necessary to jail someone they had to wrap a chain around the bars.

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” July said. “Anyway, how would you know? You ain’t never been married.”

“No, but I got eyes,” Roscoe said. “I can see what goes on around me. You went and got married and the next thing you know you turned yellow. Makes me glad I stayed a bachelor. You’re still yellow,” he went on to point out.

“It ain’t Elmira’s fault I got jaundice,” July said. “I caught it in Missouri at that dern trial.”

It was true that he was still fairly yellow, and fairly weak, and Elmira was losing patience with both states.

“I wish you’d turn back white,” she had said that morning, although he was noticeably less jaundiced than he had been two weeks before. Elmira was short, skinny, brunette, and had little patience. They had only been married four months, and one of the surprises, from July’s point of view, was her impatience. She wanted the chores done immediately, whereas he had always proceeded at a methodical pace. The first time she bawled him out about his slowness was only two days after the wedding. Now it seemed she had lost whatever respect she had ever had for him. Once in a while it occurred to him that she had never had any anyway, but if that was so, why had she married him?

“Uh-oh, here comes Peach,” Roscoe said. “Ben must have been a lunatic to marry that woman.”

“According to you, all us Johnsons are lunatics,” July said, a little irritated. It was not Roscoe’s place to criticize his dead brother, though it was perfectly true that Peach was not his favorite sister-in-law. He had never known why Ben nicknamed her “Peach,” for she was large and quarrelsome and did not resemble a peach in any way.

Peach was picking her way across the main street of Fort Smith, which was less of a quagmire than usual, since it had been dry lately. She was carrying a red rooster for some reason. She was the largest woman in. town, nearly six feet tall, whereas Ben had been the runt of the Johnson family. Also, Peach talked a blue streak and Ben had seldom uttered three words a week, although he had been the mayor of the town. Now Peach still talked a blue streak and Ben was dead.

That fact, well known to everyone in Fort Smith for the last six weeks, was no doubt what Peach was coming to take up with him.

“Hello, July,” Peach said. The rooster flapped a few times but she shook him and he quieted down.

July tipped his hat, as did Roscoe.

“Where’d you find the rooster?” Roscoe asked.

“It’s my rooster, but he won’t stay home,” Peach said. “I found him down by the store. The skunks will get him if he ain’t careful.”

“Well, if he ain’t careful he deserves it,” Roscoe said.

Peach had always found Roscoe an irritating fellow, not as respectful as he might be. He was little better than a criminal himself, in her view, and she was opposed to his being deputy sheriff, although it was true that there was not much to choose from in Fort Smith.

“When are you aiming to start after that murderer?” she asked July.

“Why, pretty soon,” he said, although he felt tired at the thought of starting after anybody.

“Well, he’ll get over in Mexico or somewhere if you sit around here much longer,” Peach said.

“I expect to find him down around San Antonio,” July said. “I believe he has friends there.”

Roscoe had to snort at that remark. “That’s right,” he said. “Two of the most famous Texas Rangers that ever lived, that’s his friends. July will be lucky not to get hung himself. If you ask me, Jake Spoon ain’t worth it.”

“It’s nothing to do with what
he’s
worth,” Peach said. “Ben was the one who was worth it. He was my husband and July’s brother and the mayor of this town. Who else do you think seen to it your salary got paid?”

“The salary I get don’t take much seeing to,” Roscoe said. “A dern midget could see to it.” At thirty dollars a month he considered himself grievously underpaid.

“Well, if you was earning it, the man wouldn’t have got away in the first place,” Peach continued. “You could have shot him down, which would have been no more than he deserved.”

Roscoe was uneasily aware that he was held culpable in some quarters for Jake’s escape. The truth was, the killing had confused him, for he had been a good deal fonder of Jake than of Ben. Also it was a shock and a surprise to find Ben lying in the street with a big hole in him. Everyone else had been surprised too—Peach herself had fainted. Half the people in the saloon seemed to think the mule skinner had shot Ben, and by the time Roscoe got their stories sorted out Jake was long gone. Of course it had been mostly an accident, but Peach didn’t see it that way. She wanted nothing less than to see Jake hang, and probably would have if Jake had not had the good sense to leave.

July had heard it all twenty-five or thirty times, the versions differing a good deal, depending upon the teller. He felt derelict for not having made a stronger effort to run Jake out of town before he himself left for the trial in Missouri. Of course it would have been convenient if Roscoe had promptly arrested the man, but Roscoe never arrested anybody except old man Darton, the one drunk in the county Roscoe felt he could handle.

July had no doubt that he could find Jake Spoon and bring him back for trial. Gamblers eventually showed up in a town somewhere, and could always be found. If he hadn’t had the attack of jaundice he could have gone right after him, but now six weeks had passed, which would mean a longer trip.

The problem was, Elmira didn’t want him to go. She considered it an insult that he would even consider it. The fact that Peach didn’t like her and had snubbed her repeatedly didn’t help matters. Elmira pointed out that the shooting had been an accident, and made it plain that she thought he ought not to let Peach Johnson bully him into making a long trip.

While July was waiting for Peach to leave, the rooster, annoyed at being held so tightly, gave Peach’s hand a couple of hard pecks. Without an instant’s hesitation Peach grabbed him by the head, swung him a few times and wrung his neck. His body flew off a few feet and lay jerking. Peach pitched the head over in some weeds by the jailhouse porch. She had not got a drop of blood on her—the blood was pumping out of the headless rooster into the dust of the street.

“That’ll teach him to peck me,” Peach said. “At least I’ll get to eat him, instead of a skunk having the pleasure.”

She went over and picked the rooster up by the feet and held him out from her body until he quit jerking.

“Well, July,” she said, “I hope you won’t wait too long to start. Just because you’re a little yellow don’t mean you can’t ride a horse.”

“You Johnsons marry the dernest women,” Roscoe said, when Peach was safely out of hearing.

“What’s that?” July said, looking at Roscoe sternly. He would not have his deputy criticizing his wife.

Roscoe regretted his quick words. July was touchy on the subject of his new wife. It was probably because she was several years older and had been married before. In Fort Smith it was generally considered that she had made a fool of July, though since she was from Kansas no one knew much about her past.

“Why, I was talking about Ben and Sylvester,” Roscoe said. “I guess I forgot you’re a Johnson, since you’re the sheriff.”

The remark made no sense—Roscoe’s remarks often made no sense, but July had too much on his mind to worry about it. It seemed he was faced every single day with decisions that were hard to make. Sometimes, sitting at his own table, it was hard to decide whether to talk to Elmira or not. It was not hard to tell when Elmira was displeased, though. Her mouth got tight and she could look right through him and give no indication that she even saw him. The problem was trying to figure out what she was displeased about. Several times he had tried asking if anything was wrong and had been given bitter, vehement lectures on his shortcomings. The lectures were embarrassing because they were delivered in the presence of Elmira’s son, now his stepson, a twelve-year-old named Joe Boot. Elmira had been married in Missouri to a fellow named Dee Boot, about whom she had never talked much—she just said he died of smallpox.

Elmira also often lectured Joe as freely as she lectured July. One result was that he and Joe had become allies and good friends; both of them spent much of their time just trying to avoid Elmira’s wrath. Little Joe spent so much time around the jail that he became a kind of second deputy. Like Elmira, he was skinny, with big eyes that bulged a little in his thin face.

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.

“Well, July, I guess you’re between a rock and a hard place,” Roscoe said. “You either got to go off and fight them Texas Rangers or else stay here and fight Peach.”

“I could send you after him,” July said. “You’re the one that let him get away.”

Of course he was only teasing. Roscoe could hardly handle old man Darton, who was nearly eighty. He wouldn’t stand much of a chance against Jake Spoon and his friends.

Roscoe almost tipped over in his chair, he was so astonished. The notion that he might be sent on a job like that was ridiculous—living with Elmira must have made July go crazy if he was thinking such thoughts.

“Peach ain’t gonna let it rest,” July said, as much to himself as to Roscoe.

“Yes, it’s your duty to catch the man,” Roscoe said, anxious to get himself as far off the hook as possible. “Benny was your brother, even if he was a dentist.”

July didn’t say it, but the fact that Benny had been his brother had little to do with his decision to go after Jake Spoon. Benny had been the oldest and he himself the youngest of the ten Johnson boys. All but the two of them went away after they grew up, and Benny seemed to feel that July should have gone away too. He was reluctant to give July the sheriffs job when it came open, although there had been no other candidate than Roscoe. July got the job, but Benny remained resentful and had balked at even providing a new lock for the jail’s one cell. In fact, Benny had never done one kind thing for him that July could remember. Once when he pulled a bad tooth of July’s he had charged the full fee.

July’s feelings of responsibility had to do with the town, not the man who was killed. Since pinning on the sheriff’s badge two years before, his sense of responsibility for the town had grown steadily. It seemed to him that as sheriff he had a lot more to do with the safety and well-being of the citizens than Benny had as mayor. The rivermen were the biggest problem—they were always drinking and fighting and cutting one another up. Several times he had had to pile five or six into the little cell.

Lately more and more cowboys passed through the town. Once the wild men of Shanghai Pierce had come through, nearly destroying two saloons. They were not bad men, just rowdy and wild to see a town. They tended to scare people’s livestock and rope their pets, and were intolerant of any efforts to curb their play. They were not gunmen, but they could box—July had been forced to crack one or two of them on the jaw and keep them in jail overnight.

Little Joe worshiped the cowboys—it was plain to July that he would run off with one of the outfits, given the chance. When not doing chores he would spend hours practicing with an old rope he had found, roping stumps, or sometimes the milk-pen calf.

July was prepared to accept a certain rowdiness on the part of the cowboys as they passed through, but he felt no leniency at all for men like Jake Spoon. Gamblers offended him, and he had warned several out of town.

Roscoe loved to whittle better than any man July had ever known. If he was sitting down, which was usually the case, he was seldom without a whittling stick in his hands. He never whittled them into anything, just whittled them away, and the habit had come to irritate July.

“I guess if I leave you’ll whittle up the whole dern town before I get back,” he said.

Roscoe held his peace. He could tell July was in a touchy mood—and who could blame him, with a wife like Elmira and a sister-in-law like Peach. He enjoyed his whittling but of course he was not going to whittle down any houses. July often exaggerated when he was in a bad mood.

July stood up. He wasn’t very tall, but he was sturdy. Roscoe had once seen him lift an anvil down at the blacksmith’s shop, and he had just been a boy then.

“I’m going home,” July said.

“Well, send little Joe over, if he ain’t busy,” Roscoe said. “We’ll play some dominoes.”

“It’s milking time,” July said. “He’s got to milk. Anyway, Ellie don’t like him playing dominoes with you. She thinks it’ll make him lazy.”

“Why, it ain’t made me lazy, and I’ve played dominoes all my life,” Roscoe said.

July knew the statement was absurd. Roscoe was only a deputy because he was lazy. But if there was one thing he didn’t want to get into, it was an argument over whether Roscoe was lazy, so he gave him a wave and walked on off.