Lonesome Dove (97 page)

96

AUGUSTUS FLOATED in the red water. Sometimes he saw faces, heard voices, saw more faces. He saw Bolivar and Lippy, his two wives, his three sisters. He saw men long dead whom he had rangered with, saw Pedro Flores and Pea Eye and a redheaded whore he had taken up with for a month in his riverboating days. He sloshed helplessly back and forth, as if something were churning the water.

When the redness receded and he opened his eyes again, he heard a piano playing in the distance. He was in bed in a small hot room. Through the open window he could see the great Montana prairie. Looking around, he noticed a small fat man dozing in a chair nearby. The man wore a black frock coat sprinkled with dandruff. A bottle of whiskey and an old bowler hat nearly as disreputable as Lippy’s sat on a small bureau. The fat man was snoring peacefully.

Feeling considerable pain, Augustus looked down and saw that his left leg was gone. The stump had been bandaged, but the bandage was leaking. Blood seeped through it, though it was a thick bandage.

“If you’re the sawbones, wake up and stop this drip,” Augustus said. He felt irritable and sad, and wished the whiskey bottle were in reach.

The little fat man jerked as if poked with a fork, and opened his eyes. His cheeks were red-streaked—from excessive drinking, Augustus supposed. He put both hands on his head as if surprised that it was still there.

“And pass the whiskey, if you can spare any,” Augustus added. “I hope you ain’t thrown my leg away.”

The doctor jerked again, as if every statement pricked him.

“You’ve got a mighty healthy voice for a sick man,” the doctor said. “In this room, such a voice is a tight fit.”

“Well, it’s the only voice I got,” Augustus said.

The doctor put his hands to his temple again. “It strikes my temples like a ten-pound hammer,” he said. “Though I’m sorry to complain. The truth is I don’t feel well myself.”

“You probably drink too much,” Augustus said. “If you’ll hand me the bottle I’ll reduce your temptations.”

The doctor did, but not before taking a swig. Augustus took several while the doctor shuffled around and stood looking out the window. Across the street the piano was still playing.

“That girl plays beautifully,” the doctor said. “They say she studied music in Philadelphia when she was younger.”

“How old is she now?” Augustus asked. “Maybe I’ll send her a bouquet.”

The doctor smiled. “It’s plain you’re a man of spirit,” he said. “That’s good. I’m afraid you’ve a few fractuosities yet to endure.”

“A few what?” Augustus asked. “You better introduce yourself before you start talking Latin.”

“Dr. Mobley,” the man said. “Joseph C. Mobley, to be precise. The C stands for Cincinnatus.”

“More Latin, I guess,” Augustus said. “Explain that first bunch of Latin you talked.”

“I mean we’ve got to take off that other leg,” Dr. Mobley said. “I should have done it while you were out, but frankly, getting the left leg off exhausted me.”

“It’s a good thing,” Augustus said. “If you’d hacked off my right leg, you’d be the one who was out. I need that right leg.”

His gun belt was hanging over a chair nearby, and he reached out and took his pistol from the holster.

The doctor looked around, reaching out his hand for the whiskey bottle. Augustus gave it to him and he took a long drink and handed it back.

“I understand your attachment to your own appendages,” he said, opening the bandage. He winced when he looked at the wound, but kept working. “I don’t want to cut your other leg off bad enough to get shot in the process. However, you’ll die if you don’t reconsider. That’s a plain fact.”

“Go buy me some more whiskey,” Augustus said. “There’s money in my pants. Is that girl playing the piano a whore?”

“Yes, her name is Dora,” the doctor said. “Consumptive, I’m afraid. She’ll never see Philadelphia again.” He began to wrap the leg in a clean bandage.

Augustus suddenly grew faint. “Give her twenty dollars out of my pants and tell her to keep playing,” he said. “And shove this bed a little closer to the window—it’s stuffy in here.”

The doctor managed to shove the bed over near the window, but the effort tired him so that he sat back down in the chair where he had been dozing.

Augustus recovered a little. He watched the doctor a moment. “Physician, heal thyself, ain’t that what they say?” he remarked.

Dr. Mobley chuckled unhappily. “That’s what they say,” he said. He breathed heavily for a time, and then stood up.

“I’ll go get the whiskey,” he said. “While I’m about it, I’d advise you to take a sober look at your prospects. If you persist in your attachment to your right leg it’ll be the last opportunity you have to take a sober look at anything.”

“Don’t forget to tip that girl,” Augustus said. “Hurry back with my whiskey and bring a glass.”

Dr. Mobley turned at the door. “We should operate today,” he said. “Within the hour, in fact, although we could wait long enough for you to get thoroughly drunk, if that would help. There’s men enough around here to hold you down, and I think I could have that leg off in fifteen minutes.”

“You ain’t getting that leg,” Augustus said. “I might could get by without the one, but I can’t without both.”

“I assure you the alternative is gloomy,” Dr. Mobley said. “Why close your own case? You’ve a taste for music and you seem to have funds. Why not spend the next few years listening to whores play the piano?”

“You said the girl was dying,” Augustus said. “Just go get the whiskey.”

Dr. Mobley returned a little later with two bottles of whiskey and a glass. A young giant of a man, so tall he had to stoop to get in the room, followed him.

“This is Jim,” Dr. Mobley said nervously. “He’s offered to sit with you while I go make my rounds.”

Augustus cocked his pistol and leveled it at the young man. “Get out, Jim,” he said. “I don’t need company.”

Jim left immediately—so immediately that he forgot to stoop and bumped his head on the door frame. Dr. Mobley looked even more nervous. He moved the bureau a little nearer the bed and sat both bottles within Augustus’s reach.

“That was rude,” he said.

“Listen,” Augustus said. “You can’t have this leg, and if you’re thinking of overpowering me you have to calculate on losing about half the town. I can shoot straight when I’m drunk, too.”

“I only want to save your life,” Dr. Mobley said, taking a drink from the first bottle before pouring Augustus a glassful.

“It’s my worry, mainly,” Augustus said. “You stated your case, but the jury went against you. Jury of one. Did you pay the whore?”

“I did,” Dr. Mobley said. “Since you refuse company, you’ll have to drink alone. I have to go deliver a child into this unhappy world.”

“It’s a fine world, though rich in hardships at times,” Augustus said.

“You won’t need to worry about hardships much longer if you insist on keeping that leg,” Dr. Mobley said somewhat pettishly.

“I guess you don’t care much for stubborn customers, do you?”

“No, they irk me,” Dr. Mobley said. “You might have lived, but now you’ll die. Your reasoning escapes me.”

“Well, I’ll pay your bill right now,” Augustus said. “My reasoning ain’t your concern.”

“Are you a man of property?” the doctor asked.

“I’ve funds in a bank in San Antonio,” Augustus said. “Also I own half a cattle herd. It ought to be north of the Yellowstone by now.”

“I brought pen and ink,” the doctor said. “If I were you I’d make your will while you’re still sober.”

Augustus drank all afternoon and did not use the pen or ink. Once, when the music stopped, he looked out the window and saw a skinny pockmarked girl in a black dress standing in the street looking up at him curiously. He waved but could not be sure she saw him. He took another twenty-dollar gold piece from his pants pocket and sailed it out the window toward her. It landed in the street, to the puzzlement of the girl. She walked over and picked up the gold piece, looking up.

“It’s yours, for the music,” Augustus said loudly. The pockmarked girl smiled, picked up the money and went back into the saloon. In a minute, Augustus heard the piano again.

A little later his fever rose. He felt hungry, though, and banged on the floor with his pistol until a timid-looking little bartender with a walrus mustache as good as Dish Boggett’s opened the door.

“Is beefsteak to be had in this town?” Augustus asked.

“No, but I can get you venison,” the bartender said. He was as good as his word. Augustus ate and then vomited in a brass spittoon. His leg was as black as the one that had been lost. He went back to the whiskey and from time to time recovered the misty feeling that he had always been so fond of—the feeling that reminded him of Tennessee mornings. He wished for a woman’s company and thought of having someone ask the pockmarked girl if she would come and sit a while. But there was no one to ask, and in time he lost the impulse.

In the night, sweating heavily, he awoke to a familiar step. W. F. Call stepped into the room and set a lantern on the bureau.

“Well, slow but sure,” Augustus said, feeling relieved.

“Not too dern slow,” Call said. “We just found Pea Eye yesterday.”

He turned back the covers and looked at Augustus’s leg. Dr. Mobley was also in the room. Call stood looking at the black leg a minute. Its meaning was clear enough.

“I did plead with him, Captain,” Dr. Mobley said. “I told him it should come off. I regret now that I didn’t take it when we took the other.”

“You should have,” Call said bluntly. “I would have known to do that, and I ain’t a medical man.”

“Don’t berate the man, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “If I had waked up with no legs, I would have shot the first man I saw, and Dr. Joseph C. Mobley was the first man I saw.”

“Leaving you a gun was another mistake,” Call said. “But I guess he didn’t know you as well as I do.”

He looked at the leg again, and at the doctor. “We could try it now,” he said. “He’s always been strong. He might still live.”

Augustus immediately cocked the pistol. “You don’t boss me, Woodrow,” he said. “I’m the one man you don’t boss. You also don’t boss most of the women, but that don’t concern us now.”

“I wouldn’t think you’d shoot me for trying to save your life,” Call said quietly. Augustus looked sweaty and unsteady, but the range was short.

“Not to kill,” Augustus said. “But I’ll promise to disable you if you don’t let me be about this leg.”

“I never took you for a suicide, Gus,” Call said. “Men have gotten by without legs. Lots of ’em lost legs in the war. You don’t like to do nothing but sit on the porch and drink whiskey anyway. It don’t take legs to do that.”

“No, I also like to walk around to the springhouse once in a while, to see if my jug’s cooled proper,” Augustus said. “Or I might want to kick a pig if one aggravates me.”

Call saw that it was pointless unless he wanted to risk a fight. Gus had not uncocked the pistol either. Call looked at the doctor to see what he thought.

“I wouldn’t bother him now,” the doctor said. “It’s much too late. I suppose I’m to blame for not outwitting him. He was brought to me unconscious, or I might have figured out what a testy character he is.”

Augustus smiled. “Would you bring Captain Call a glass, and some of that venison?” he said. “I imagine he’s hungry.”

Call wasn’t ready to give up, although he felt it was probably hopeless. “You got those two women, back in Nebraska,” he pointed out. “Those women would race to take care of you.”

“Clara’s got one invalid already, and she’s bored with him,” Augustus said. “Lorie would look after me but it would be a sorry life for her.”

“Not as sorry as the one you rescued her from,” Call reminded him.

“You don’t get the point, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “I’ve walked the earth in my pride all these years. If that’s lost, then let the rest be lost with it. There’s certain things my vanity won’t abide.”

“That’s all it is, too,” Call said bitterly. “Your goddamn vanity.” He had expected to find Gus wounded, but not to find him dying. The sight affected him so much that he felt weak, of a sudden. When the doctor left the room, he sat down in a chair and took off his hat. He looked at Gus for a long time, trying to think of some argument he might use, but Gus was Gus, and he knew no argument would be of any use. None ever had been. He could either fight him and take off the leg if he won, or else sit and watch him die. The doctor seemed convinced he would die now in any case, though doctors could be wrong in such matters.

He tried to gird himself for a fight—Gus might miss, or not even shoot, though both were doubtful—but his own weakness held him in the chair. He was trembling and didn’t know why.

“Woodrow, I wish you’d relax,” Augustus said. “You can’t save me, and it would be a pity if we fought at this stage. I might kill you accidentally and them boys would sit out on the plains and freeze.”

Call didn’t answer. He felt tired and old and sad. He had pressed the mare all day and all night, had easily found the river where the battle took place, recovered Pea Eye’s rifle and even his boots and shirt, found Gus’s saddle, and raced for Miles City. He had risked ruining the Hell Bitch—he hadn’t, though she was tired—and still he had arrived too late. Gus would die, and all he could do was keep a death watch.

The bartender brought a plate of venison, but he had no appetite. He accepted a glass of whiskey, though, and then another. They had no effect.

“I hope you won’t become a drunkard over this,” Augustus said.

“I won’t,” Call said. “You can uncock that pistol. If you want to die, go ahead.”

Augustus laughed. “You act like you hold it against me,” he said.

“I do,” Call said. “You got a good head, if you’d use it. A man with a good head can be useful.”

“Doing what, braiding ropes?” Augustus asked. “Not my style, Captain.”

“Your goddamn style is your downfall, and it’s a wonder it didn’t come sooner. Any special funeral?”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking of that,” Augustus said. “I’ve a big favor to ask you, and one more to do you.”

“What favor?”

“The favor I want from you will be my favor to you,” Augustus said. “I want to be buried in Clara’s orchard.”