Lonesome Dove (86 page)

“You don’t plan on returning to Arkansas, Mr. Johnson?” he asked.

“I don’t know that I will,” July said. In fact, he had given no thought to his future at all.

Augustus ate most of the fried chicken and marveled at how comfortable Lorena seemed to be. She liked the girls, and seeing her with them reminded him that she was not much more than a girl herself, despite her experiences. He knew that she had been advanced too quickly into life, though perhaps not so far to yet enjoy a bit of girlhood.

When it came time to go back to the ranch he helped Lorie into the wagon with the girls, and he and Clara walked behind. Newt, who had enjoyed the picnic mightily, fell into conversation with Sally and rode beside the wagon. Lorena didn’t seem concerned—she and Betsey had taken to one another at once, and were chatting happily.

“You should leave that girl here,” Clara said, startling Augustus. He had been thinking the same thing.

“I doubt she’d stay,” he said.

“If you stay out of it she might,” Clara said. “I’ll ask her. You have no business taking a girl like that into Montana. She might not survive.”

“In some ways she ain’t so young,” he said.

“I like her,” Clara said, ignoring him. “I expect you’ll marry her and I’ll have to watch you have five or six babies in your old age. I guess I’d be annoyed, but I could live with it. Don’t take her up to Montana. She’ll either die or get killed, or else she’ll age before her time, like I have.”

“I can’t tell that you’ve aged much,” Augustus said.

“You’ve just been around me one day,” Clara said. “There’s certain things I can still do and certain things I’m finished with.”

“What things are you finished with?” he asked.

“You’d find out if you stayed around me much,” Clara said.

“I notice you’ve taken a fancy to young Mr. Johnson,” Augustus said. “I expect if I did stay around he’d beat me out.”

“He’s nearly as dull as Woodrow Call, but he’s nicer,” Clara said. “He’ll do what he’s told, mostly, and I’ve come to appreciate that quality in a man. I could never count on you to do what you’re told.”

“So do you aim to marry him?”

“No, that’s one of the things I’m through with,” Clara said. “Of course I ain’t quite—poor Bob ain’t dead. But if he passes away, I’m through with it.”

Clara smiled. Augustus chuckled. “I hope you ain’t contemplating an irregular situation,” he said.

Clara smiled. “What’s irregular about having a boarder?” she asked. “Lots of widows take boarders. Anyway, he likes my girls better than he likes me. He might be ready to marry again by the time Sally’s of age.”

At that moment Sally was chattering away to young Newt, who was getting his first taste of conversation with a sprightly young lady.

“Who’s his mother?” Clara asked. She liked the boy’s looks, and also his manners. “I never knew Call was prone to ladies,” she added.

“Oh, Woodrow ain’t,” Augustus said. “He can barely stand to be within fifty yards of you.”

“I know that,” Clara said. “He’s been stiff all day because I won’t bargain away my horses. My price is my price. But that boy’s his, and don’t you tell me he ain’t. They walk alike, they stand alike, and they look alike.”

“I expect you’re right,” Augustus said.

“Yes, I’m right,” Clara said. “You ain’t answered my question.”

“His mother was a woman named Maggie,” he said. “She was a whore. She died when Newt was six.”

“I like that boy,” Clara said. “I’d keep
him
too, if I got the chance. He’s about the age my Jimmy would be, if Jimmy had lived.”

“Newt’s a fine boy,” Augustus said.

“It’s a miracle, ain’t it, when one grows up nice,” Clara said. “He’s got a quiet way, that boy. I like that. It’s surprising to find gentle behavior when his father is Captain Call.”

“Oh, Newt don’t know Call’s his father,” Augustus said. “I expect he’s heard hints, but he don’t know it.”

“And Call don’t claim him, when anybody can see it?” Clara said, shocked. “I never had much opinion of Call, and now I have less.”

“Call don’t like to admit mistakes,” Augustus said. “It’s his way.”

“What mistake?” Clara said. “I wouldn’t call it a mistake if I raised a boy that nice. My Jimmy had wildness in him. I couldn’t handle him, though he died when he was eight. I expect he’d have ended like Jake. Now where’d it come from? I ain’t wild, and Bob ain’t wild.”

“I don’t know,” Augustus said.

“Well, I had two sweet ones, though,” Clara said. “My last one, Johnny, was the sweetest. I ain’t been the same since that child died. It’s a wonder the girls aren’t worse-behaved than they are. I don’t consider that I’ve ever had the proper feeling for them. It went out of me that winter I lost Jeff and Johnny.”

They walked in silence for a while.

“Why don’t you tell that boy who his pa is?” Clara said. “I’d do it, if he was around here long. He should know who his pa is. He’s got to wonder.”

“I always thought Call would work up to it, eventually,” Augustus said. “I still think so.”

“I don’t,” Clara said.

A big gray wolf loped up out of the riverbed, looked at them for a moment, and loped on.

Ahead, the baby was fretting, and the girls and Lorena were trying to shush it.

When they got back to the ranch, Call gave in and told Clara he’d pay her price for the horses. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t stay around there forever, and her horses were in far better condition than the nags he had looked at in Ogallala.

“Fine, go help him, boys,” Clara said. Cholo and July went off to help. Newt was helping the girls carry the remains of the picnic in.

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.

As he was coming down the steps, Clara stopped him. She put an arm across his shoulder and walked him to his horse. No woman had ever done such a thing with him.

“Newt, we’ve enjoyed having you,” Clara said. “I want you to know that if Montana don’t suit you, you can just head back here. I’ll give you all the work you can stand.”

“I’d like to,” Newt said. He meant it. Since meeting the girls and seeing the ranch, he had begun to wonder why they were taking the herd so far. It seemed to him Nebraska had plenty of room.

For most of the trip Newt had supposed that nothing could be better than being allowed to be a cowboy, but now that they had got to Nebraska, his thinking was changing. Between the Buffalo Heifer and the other whores in Ogallala and Clara’s spirited daughters, he had begun to see that a world with women in it could be even more interesting. The taste he had of that world seemed all too brief. Though he had been more or less scared of Clara all day, and was still a little scared of her, there was something powerfully appealing about her, too.

“Thank you for the picnic,” he said. “I never went on one before.”

Something in the boy touched Clara. Boys had always touched her—far more than girls. This one had a lonely look in his eye although he also had a quick smile.

“Come back when you can, we’ll go on many more,” she said. “I believe Sally’s taken a fancy to you.”

Newt didn’t know what to say to that. He got on his horse. “I expect I better go help, ma’am,” he said.

“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.

“Captain,” she said, “there’s a three-year-old sorrel gelding with a white star on his forehead in this lot you bought. I want to give that horse to Newt, so don’t let anyone have him. You can deduct him from the price.”

“Give it to him?” Call asked, surprised. Newt, who overheard, was surprised too. The woman who drove such a hard bargain wanted to give him a horse.

“Yes, I’m making him a gift,” Clara said. “I’d feel better knowing Newt was well mounted, if you’re really going to take him to Montana.” With that she went back to the house.

Call looked at the boy. “Why’d she do that?” he asked. Of course it was fine for the boy to have the horse—it saved fifty dollars.

“I don’t know,” Newt said.

“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.”

88

AFTER CALL AND NEWT LEFT with the horses, Clara lit a lantern and took Augustus up to the room where her husband lay. Lorena sat at the kitchen table with the girls, playing draughts. July watched, but could not be persuaded to take part in the game. Even Betsey, his favorite, couldn’t persuade him, and Betsey could usually get July to do anything she wanted him to do. Lorena’s presence made him shy. He enjoyed sitting and looking at her in the lamplight, though. It seemed to him he had never seen anyone so beautiful. He had only seen her before on that dreadful morning on the plains when he had had to bury Roscoe, Joe and Janey, and had been too stricken to notice her. Then she had been bruised and thin from her treatment by Blue Duck and the Kiowas. Now she was neither bruised nor thin.

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.

“He’s been that way two months,” she said. “I guess he sees some, but I don’t think he hears.”

“It reminds me of old Tom Mustard,” Augustus said. “He rangered with us when we started the troop. His horse went over a cutbank on the salt fork of the Brazos one night and fell on him. Broke his back. Tom never moved a muscle after that, but his eyes were open when we found him. We started back to Austin with Tom on a travois, but he died a week later. He never closed his eyes in all that time, that I know of.”

“I wish Bob would go,” Clara said. “He’s no use to himself like this. All Bob liked to do was work, and now he can’t.”

They walked out on the little upper porch, where it was cooler. “Why’d you come up here, Gus?” she asked. “You ain’t a cowboy.”

“The truth is, I was hoping to find you a widow,” he said. “I didn’t miss by much, either.”

Clara was amused that her old beau would be so blunt. “You missed by years,” she said. “I’m a bony old woman now and you’re a deceiving man, anyway. You always were a deceiving man. I think the best thing would be for you to leave me your bride to be and I’ll see if I can give her some polish.”

“I never meant to get in the position I’m in, to be truthful,” Augustus said.

“No, but you like it, now that you’re in it,” Clara said, taking his hand. “She’s got nearly as high an opinion of you as you have of yourself, Gus. I could never match it. I know your character too well. She’s younger and prettier, which is always a consideration with you men.”

Augustus had forgotten how fond she was of goading him. Even with a dying husband in the next room, she was capable of it. The only chance with Clara was to be as bold as she was. He looked at her, and was thinking of kissing her.

Clara saw the look and was startled by it. Although she kissed her girls every day and lavished kisses on the baby, it had been years since she had been kissed by a man. Bob would occasionally kiss her cheek if he had returned from a trip—otherwise kissing played no part in his view of married love. Looking off the porch, with Augustus standing near her, Clara felt sad. She mainly had snatched kisses from her courtship, with Gus or Jake, twenty years before, to remember.

She looked at Gus again, wondering if he would really be so bold or so foolish. He didn’t move to kiss her, but he still stood close and looked into her face.

“The older the violin, the sweeter the music,” he said with a smile.

“That proves you’re a deceiving man, if you think that,” she said. “You’ve had a long ride for nothing, I guess.”

“Why, no,” he said. “It’s happiness to see you.”

Clara felt a sudden irritation. “Do you think you can have us both?” she said. “My husband isn’t dead. I haven’t seen you in sixteen years. I’ve mostly raised children and horses during those years. Three of the children died, and plenty of the horses. It took all the romance out of me, if romance is what you were hoping for. I read about it in my magazines but I left it behind for myself when I left Austin.”

“Don’t you regret it?” Augustus asked.

“Oh, well,” Clara said, “yes and no. I’m too strong for the normal man and too jealous once my feelings get started. I’m surprised you dare bring another woman into my house.”

“I thought you liked her,” he said.

“I do like her,” Clara said. “I mind you doing it, though. Don’t you understand the facts of nature yet? She’s younger and prettier.”

“It happened accidentally, like I mentioned,” Augustus said.

“I never noticed you having such accidents with ugly girls,” Clara said. “I don’t care how it happened. You’ve been my dream, Gus. I used to think about you two or three hours a day.”

“I wish you’d wrote, then,” he said.

“I didn’t want you here,” she said. “I needed the dreams. I knew you for a rake and a rambler but it was sweet to pretend you only loved me.”

“I do only love you, Clara,” he said. “I’ve grown right fond of Lorie, but it ain’t like this feeling I have for you.”

“Well, she loves you,” Clara said. “It would destroy her if I was to have you. Don’t you know that?”

“Yes, I know that,” Augustus said, thinking there would never again be such a woman as the one who looked at him with anger in her face.

“Would you destroy her, then, if I said stay?” Clara asked.

“I expect so,” Augustus said.

“That ain’t an answer.”

“Yes, you know I would,” he said. “I’d smother Bob for you and send Lorie to perdition.”

Clara sighed, and her anger wore out with the sigh.

“Such talk,” she said. “Bob’ll die when he can manage it, and I’ll see what I can do for your bride. It’s just her beauty that set me off. I was always the youngest and prettiest, and now I’m not.”

“You’re mighty pretty, and anyway pretty ain’t everything,” he said.

“Where men like you are concerned it’s ninety-nine percent,” she said. “You ain’t had time to look at me close. I ain’t the prettiest anymore. The prettiest is downstairs.”

“I’d still like a kiss,” he said.

A tickle of amusement took her. He saw her smile and took it for encouragement. When he bent forward the result was so bland that after a moment Clara drew back her head and laughed.

“You’ve ridden a long way for some pretty weak courting,” she said, but she felt better. Gus looked rather hangdog at his failure—one of the few times she had ever seen him look that way.

“You beat any woman I ever saw for taking the starch out of a man,” he said, a little perplexed. Despite all the complications, he felt his old love for her returning with its old power. So much feeling flooded him, just looking at her, that he felt shaky. It was a puzzle to him that such a thing could happen, for it was true she had become rather bony and her face had thinned too much, and certainly she was as taxing as a woman could be. And yet the feeling made him shaky.

“Think I’m rough, Gus?” she asked with a smile.

“I ain’t been scorched by lightning, but I doubt it could be hotter than being scorched by you,” he said.

“Still think you’d have been up to being married to me?”

“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.

Clara laughed and took his arm to lead him downstairs.

“What about the young sheriff?” he asked, stopping her. He was unwilling to end their privacy so soon.

“What sheriff?”

“Why, July Johnson,” he said. “It seems you’ve adopted him.”

“I mainly wanted the baby, but I guess it’s only fair to keep the father too,” she said.

“Keep him and do what with him?”

“What do you care?” Clara said. “You’re engaged. You can ride all over the country with a pretty girl, I guess I can be allowed a man. I’d forgotten how jealous you were. You were jealous of Jake and I did little more than flirt with Jake.”

“To hear him talk, you did,” Augustus said.

“Neither of us will hear him talk again,” Clara said. “And I won’t marry again.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I don’t have enough respect for men,” she said. “I’ve found very few who are honest, and you ain’t one of the few.”

“I’m about half honest,” Augustus said.

“That’s right,” she said, and led him on downstairs.

To his surprise, Clara simply walked into the kitchen and invited Lorena to stay with them while the herd went on to Montana.

“We could use your help and you’d be more than welcome,” she said. “Montana’s no place for a lady.”

Lorena blushed when she said it—no one had ever applied the word “lady” to her before. She knew she didn’t deserve it. She wasn’t a lady like Clara. She had never even met a lady like Clara, and in the space of a day had come to admire her more than she had ever admired anyone excepting Gus. Clara had shown her nothing but courtesy and had made her welcome in her house, whereas other respectable women had always shunned her because of the way she lived.

Sitting in the kitchen with the girls and the baby, Lorena felt happy in a way that was new to her. It stirred in her distant memories of the days she had spent in her grandmother’s house in Mobile when she was four. Her grandmother’s house had been like Clara’s—she had gone there only once that she could remember. Her grandmother had put her in a soft bed, the softest she had ever slept in, and sung songs to her while she went to sleep. It was her happiest memory, one she treasured so, that in her years of traveling she grew almost afraid to remember it—someday she might try to remember it and find it gone. She was very afraid of losing her one good, warm memory. If she lost that, she felt she might be too sad to go on.

But in Clara’s house she wasn’t afraid to remember her grandmother, and the softness of the bed. Clara’s house was the kind of house she thought she might live in someday—at least she had hoped to when she was little. But when her parents sickened and died, she lost hope of living in such a house. Mosby’s home had been nothing like it, and then she had started living in hotels or little rooms. She slowly stopped thinking of nice houses and the things that went with them, such as little girls and babies.

So when Clara came downstairs and asked her to stay, it felt like being given back something—something that had been lost so long that she had ceased to think about it. Just before Clara and Gus came in, the girls had been nagging her to teach them how to sew. Lorena could sew fairly well. The girls complained that their mother never took the time to teach them. Their mother, about whom they were full of gripes, was more interested in horses than in sewing.

The girls were not at all surprised when Clara asked Lorena to stay.

“Oh, do,” Sally said. “We could learn to sew if you would.”

“We could sew new dresses, we never get any,” Betsey said.

Lorena looked at Gus. He seemed flustered, and he seldom was flustered. She thought he might be bothered by the thought of her staying.

“Would you come back, Gus?” she asked. It seemed all right to ask him in front of Clara and the girls. Clara, after issuing the invitation, had started making coffee.

Augustus saw that she wanted to stay. If asked that morning if such a thing could occur, he would have said it was impossible. Lorena had clung to him since the rescue. But being at Clara’s, even for so short a space, had changed her. She had refused to go to Ogallala, and was frightened of the thought of going into a store, but she wasn’t frightened of Clara.

“I sure will come back,” he said, smiling. “A ladies’ man like me could hardly be expected to resist such a passel of ladies.”

“Good, that’s settled, but I warn you, Lorie, these girls will wear you down,” Clara said. “You may wish you were back in a cow camp before it’s all over. I’m going to turn them over to you, you know. All they want to do is quarrel with me, and I’m tired of it. You can argue with them, and I’ll break horses.”

After the coffee, Clara made the girls go to bed, and tactfully went up herself, so that Augustus and Lorena could have a moment alone. She saw that Augustus was a little shocked that she had so easily persuaded the girl away from his side.

Lorena felt embarrassed—she had not expected to be asked to stay, or to want to, and yet both things had happened. She was afraid at first that Gus might have his feelings hurt. She looked at him a little fearfully, hard put to explain the strange desire she had to stay at Clara’s. Only that morning she had been resolved to stay with Gus at all costs.

“I’ll go if you want, Gus,” she said. “But it’s so nice here, and they’re friendly.”

“I’m happy for you to stay,” Augustus said. “You’ll be a help to Clara, and you’ll enjoy those girls. You’ve spent time enough in that dirty tent of Wilbarger’s. Winter’s said to be hard in Montana, too.”

“I didn’t think I’d want to stay,” Lorena admitted. “I never thought about it till she asked. Don’t you still want to marry her, Gus?”

“No,” Augustus lied.

“I don’t see why you wouldn’t,” she said. Now that she knew Clara a little, it seemed perfectly natural that Gus would want to marry her.

“Well, time’s changed us,” he said, feeling very uneasy in the conversation. Lorena was looking at him solemnly. He had had women look at him solemnly before and it always made him uncomfortable—it meant they were primed to detect any lies.

“I don’t think nobody could change you, Gus,” she said. “Maybe you’ll want to marry her when you come back.”

“Why, I’ll be coming back to
you
, Lorie,” Augustus said. “Of course, by then you might change, too. You might not want me.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you’ll have discovered there’s more to the world than me,” he said. “You’ll find that there are others that treat you decent.”

What he said caused Lorena to feel confused. Since the rescue, life had been simple: it had been just Gus. With him gone it might change, and when he came back it might have changed so much that it would never be simple again.

Yet when it had been simple, she had always worried that Gus didn’t want it. Maybe he was just being kind. She didn’t know—didn’t know what things meant, or didn’t mean. She had never expected to find, in the whole world, a place where someone would
ask
her to stay—even in her dreams of San Francisco no one had ever asked her to stay. She had seldom even spoken to a woman in her years in Lonesome Dove, and had no expectation that one would speak to her. The fact that Clara had volunteered made everything seem different.