Lonesome Dove Part 94

Dish tried every way he could to draw Lorena into some of the games, but the most Lorena would do was sit in the room. She sat silently, not watching, while July sat just as silently. He could not help but wish that Dish Boggett had got lost in Wyoming or had somehow gone on to Texas. Hardly a day pa.s.sed without him seeing what he thought were signs that Clara was taken with the man. Sooner or later, when Dish gave up on Lorena, he would be bound to notice. July felt helpless-there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes he sat near Lorena, feeling that he had more in common with her than with anyone else at the ranch. She loved a dead man, he a woman who hardly noticed him. But whatever they had in common didn't cause Lorena to so much as look his way. Lorena looked more beautiful than ever, but it was a grave beauty since news of the death had come. Only the young girl, Betsey, who loved Lorena completely, could occasionally bring a spark of life to her eyes. If Betsey was ill, Lorena nursed her tirelessly, taking her into her own bed and singing to her. They read stories together, Betsey doing the reading. Lorena could only piece out a few words-the sisters planned to teach her reading, but knew it would have to wait until she felt better.

Even Sally, usually so jealous of any attention her sister got, respected the fact that Betsey and Lorena were especially close. She would let off teasing Betsey if Lorena looked at her in a certain way.

Clara felt no terrible stab of grief when the news of Gus's death came. The years had kept them too separate. It had been a tremendous joy to see him when he visited-to realize that he still loved her, and that she still enjoyed him. She liked his tolerance and his humor, and felt an amused pride in the thought that he still put her above other women, despite all the years since they had first courted.

Often she sat out on her upper porch at night, wrapped in Bob's huge coat. She liked the bitter cold, a cold that seemed to dim the stars. Reflecting, she decided there had been something in what she and Gus had felt that needed separation. At close quarters she felt she would have struggled bitterly with him. Even during his brief visit she felt the struggle might start, and if it did start, gentler souls, such as July and Lorena, might have been destroyed.

In the dark nights on the ice-encrusted porch she occasionally felt a cold tear on her cheek. In Gus she had lost her ultimate ally, and felt that much more alone, but she had none of the tired despair she had felt when her children died.

Now there was July Johnson, a man whose love was nearly mute. Not only was he inept where feelings were concerned, he was also a dolt with horses. Loving horses as she did, Clara was hard put to know why she could even consider settling in with a man who was no better with them than Bob had been. Of course, the settling-in process was hardly complete, and Clara was in no hurry that it should be. Closer relations would probably only increase her impatience with him.

It amused her that he was so jealous of Dish, who, though friendly, companionable and an excellent hand, was not interested in her at all. His love for Lorena leaped out of every look he cast in her direction, although not one of them penetrated Lorena's iron grief. Clara herself didn't try to touch or change Lorena's grief-it was like Martin's fever: either it would kill her or it wouldn't. Clara would not have been surprised by a gunshot if it had come from Lorena's room. She knew the girl felt what she had felt when her boys died: unrelievable grief. In those times, the well-meaning efforts of Bob or the neighbors to cheer her up had merely affronted her. She hadn't wanted to live, particularly not cheerfully. Kindly people told her that the living must live. I don't, if my boys can't, she wanted to say to them. Yet the kindly people were right; she came slowly back to enjoyment and one day would even find herself making a cake again and eating it with relish.

Watching Lorena, as she sat blank with grief every day, scarcely stirring unless Betsey urged her to, Clara felt helpless. Lorena would either live or die, and Clara felt it might be die. Lorena's only tie to life was Betsey. She didn't care for sweets or men or horses; her only experience with happiness had been Gus. The handsome young cowboy who sent her countless looks of love meant nothing to her. Pleasure had no hold on Lorena-she had known little of it, and Clara didn't count on its drawing her back to life. The young cowboy would be doomed to find his love blocked by Gus in death even as it had been in life. Betsey had a better chance of saving Lorena than Dish. Betsey worried about her constantly and tried to get her mother to do something.

"I can't make Mr. McCrae alive again, which is all she wants," Clara said. "What do you think I can do?"

"Make her not so sad," Betsey pleaded.

"n.o.body can do that," Clara said. "I can't even make you not sad when you're sad."

Yet one day she did try. She came upon Lorie standing in the hall, her hair uncombed. She had the look of a beaten dog. Clara stopped and hugged her, as suddenly as she had hugged July Johnson. In him her hug had stirred a fever of hope; in Lorena it stirred nothing.

"I guess you wish you'd gone with him," Clara said. "It would have given you a little more time."

Lorena looked surprised-it was the one thing she had been thinking since the news came.

"I should have," she said.

"No," Clara said. "You. would have had a little more time, I grant you, but now you'd be stuck in Montana with a bunch of men who don't care that you loved Gus. They'd want you to love them. Dish wants it so much that he rode to you through the blizzards."

The thought of Dish merely made Lorena feel cold. "He wasted his time," she said.

"I know that, but don't expect him to realize it," Clara said.

"He bought me once, when I was a wh.o.r.e," Lorena said, surprised at the word on her tongue. She had never used it before.

"And Gus didn't?" Clara said.

Lorena was silent. Of course Gus had. She wondered if Clara would ask her to leave, knowing what she had been.

"Dish loved you and took the only way he had to get your attention," Clara said.

"He didn't get my attention," Lorena said. "He didn't get anything."

"And Gus did the same and got everything," Clara said. "Gus was lucky and Dish isn't."

"I ain't either," Lorena said.

Clara offered no advice. A few days later, when she was sewing, Lorena came and stood in front of her. She looked no better. "Why did you ask me to stay, when it was you Gus loved?" she asked. "Why didn't you ask him to stay? If you had he'd be alive."

Clara shook her head. "He loved us both," she said, "but Gus would never miss an adventure. Not for you or me or any other woman. No one could have kept him home. He was a rake and a rambler, though you'd have kept him longer than I could have."

Lorena didn't believe it. She remembered how often Gus had talked of Clara. Of course it no longer mattered-nothing like that mattered anymore, and yet she couldn't keep her mind from turning to it.

"It ain't so," she said. She had used her voice so little that it sounded weak.

"It is is so," Clara said. "You're more beautiful and less bossy. When I told Gus I was marrying Bob, all those years ago, he looked relieved. He tried to act disappointed, but he was relieved. I've never forgot it. And he had proposed to me thirty times at least. But he saw it would be a struggle if he won me, and he didn't want it." so," Clara said. "You're more beautiful and less bossy. When I told Gus I was marrying Bob, all those years ago, he looked relieved. He tried to act disappointed, but he was relieved. I've never forgot it. And he had proposed to me thirty times at least. But he saw it would be a struggle if he won me, and he didn't want it."

Clara was silent for a moment, looking into the other woman's eyes.

"Bob was too dumb to realize there'd be a struggle," Clara said. "Half the time he didn't notice it even when he was in it. So mainly I had the struggle with myself.

"It's been lonely," she added.

She thought the conversation a good sign. Maybe Lorie was going to come out of it. But it was the last conversation they had for months. Lorena lived through the winter in silence, only speaking to Betsey, who remained as loyal as ever.

Dish Boggett remained loyal too, although Lorena gave him no encouragement. He spent more and more time playing cards with Sally, whose bright girlish chatter he had come to like. Every day he tried his best with Lorena, but he had begun to feel hopeless. She would not even speak to him, no matter how sweetly he asked. She met everything he said with silence-the same silence she had had in Lonesome Dove, only deeper. He told himself that if the situation didn't improve by the spring he would go to Texas and try to forget her.

Yet when spring came Dish told Clara he would be glad to stay and help her with the colts.

100.

IT CAME TO RANKLE CALL that Gus had left his half of the cattle herd to the woman. The woman was down in Nebraska. She was not there helping. Of course, if she had been there helping, there would have been trouble, but that didn't lessen the aggravation of what Gus had done. He could simply have given her money-he had money. As it was, every time Call sold a bunch of stock to the Army he had to put aside half the money for a woman he had never approved of, who might, for all any of them knew, have already forgotten Gus and married someone else, or even gone back to being a wh.o.r.e.

Still, Call had halved the money. However aggravating it was, Gus had meant it, and he would do it, though when he went back with the body he planned to see if he could at least buy her out. He didn't like the thought of being in partners.h.i.+p with a woman, much less a wh.o.r.e-although he conceded that she might have reformed.

He lived in the tent all winter, keeping the men working but taking little interest in the result. Sometimes he hunted, taking the h.e.l.l b.i.t.c.h and riding off onto the plains. He always killed game but was not much interested in the hunt. He went because he no longer felt comfortable around the men. The Indians had not bothered them, and the men did well enough by themselves. Soupy Jones had a.s.sumed the top-hand role, once Dish left, and flourished in it. The other men did well too, although there was some grumbling and many small disputes. Hugh Auld and Po Campo became friends and often tramped off together for a day or two so Hugh could show Po Campo some pond where there were still beaver, or some other interesting place he knew about. Lippy, starved for music, played the accordion and spent nearly the whole winter trying to make a fiddle from a s...o...b..x. The instrument yielded a powerful screeching sound, but none of the cowboys were ready to admit that the sound was music.

At Christmas, hungering for pork, they killed Gus's pigs. The most surprising development was that Jasper Fant learned to cook. He took it up mainly out of boredom, but, tutored by Po Campo, his progress was so rapid that when Po Campo went off with Old Hugh the cuisine didn't suffer.

In the early spring, while the weather was still chancy, fifteen horses disappeared one night. It was only by luck that the theft was discovered, for in such a place at such a time horsethieves were the last thing they were expecting. Call had taken the precaution of going with Old Hugh to two or three of the nearest Indian camps to meet the chiefs and do the usual diplomacy, in the hope of preventing the sort of surprise encounter that had proven deadly for Gus. The visits made him sad, for the Indians were not belligerent and it was apparent that Gus had merely struck the wrong bunch at the wrong time, in the wrong manner. It was a depressing irony, for Gus had always been one to preach diplomacy with the red man and over the years had engaged in many councils that Call himself thought pointless. Gus had talked to many a warrior that Call would merely have shot, and yet had got killed in a place where most of the Indians were happy to talk, particularly to a man who owned an endless supply of beef.

But Call noticed on the visits that, in the main, the Indians had better horses than he did, and he had even arranged a trade with the Blackfeet: fifty beeves for ten horses. The negotiations had required Old Hugh to talk for two days and had left him hoa.r.s.e.

Thus, when the Spettle boy came in to report the horses gone, Call was surprised. Where would a horsethief come from, and where would one go?

Still, a fact was a fact: the horses were gone. Call took Pea, Newt, Needle Nelson, and Old Hugh, and went in pursuit. He soon ruled out Indians, for the thieves were traveling too slow, and had even stopped to camp not thirty miles from their headquarters, which Indians with stolen horses would never have been foolish enough to do. It was soon plain that they were only chasing two men. They crossed into Canada on the second day and caught the thieves on the third, surprising them at breakfast. They were a shaky old man with a dirty gray beard and a strapping boy about Newt's age. The old man had a single-shot buffalo gun, and the boy a cap-and-ball pistol. The boy was cooking venison and the old man propped against his saddle muttering over a Bible when Call walked in with his pistol drawn. The boy, though big as an ox, began to tremble when he saw the five men with guns.

"I tolt you, Pa," he said. "Now we're caught."

The old man, who had a jug beside his saddle, was clearly drunk, and seemed scarcely conscious of what was occurring.

"Why, I'm a minister of the Lord," he said. "Don't point your dern guns at me, we're just having breakfast. This is my boy, Tom."

Call disarmed the two, which only took a second. The fifteen horses were grazing in plain sight not a hundred yards from the camp.

"We didn't know they were your horses," the boy said, quivering with fright. "We thought they were Indian horses."

"They're all branded," Call said. "You could see that, unless you're blind."

"Not blind and not sinners, either," the old man said, getting to his feet. He was so drunk he couldn't walk straight.

"Well, you're horsethieves, and that's a sin in my book," Call said. "Where do you people come from?"

"From G.o.d, man," the old fellow said.

"Where on earth, I meant," Call said, feeling weary. He wondered what had possessed a minister and a boy to run off their horses, each plainly branded. It struck him as a stupid and pointless crime, for they were driving the horses north, where there were no towns and no ranches. It was clear the two were poor, and the old man out of his head. Call could tell the hands were glum at the prospect of hanging such a pair, and he himself didn't relish it, but they were horse-thieves and he felt he had no choice. His own distaste for the prospect caused him to make a mistake-he didn't immediately tie the old man, who seemed so weak he could hardly stand. He was not too weak, though, to s.n.a.t.c.h up a hatchet and strike a blow at Needle that would have killed him had not Needle jerked back-as it was, the blade of the hatchet tore a bad cut in his arm. Call shot the old man before he could strike again. The boy took off running across the open prairie. He was easily caught, of course, but by the time he was tied and led back the old man was dead. The boy sat down in the thin snow and wept.

"He was all right until Ma died and Sister died," he said. "We were in a wagon train. Then he just went daft and said we had to go off by ourselves. I didn't want to."

"I wish he hadn't taken our horses," Call said.

The boy was trembling and crying. "Don't hang me, mister," he said. "I never stole in my life. I told him to leave them horses, but he said they were horses the Indians had already stole.

"I'll work for you," the boy added. "I can blacksmith. I worked two years at a forge back in Missouri, before we left."

Call knew there was not a decent tree in miles. It would be a hards.h.i.+p on them to ride along with the boy for a day in order to hang him. Besides, they needed a blacksmith. As for the boy's story, maybe it was true and maybe it wasn't. The old man had appeared to be mad, but Call had seen many thieves act that way in hopes that it would save them.

"Pa said he'd shoot me if I didn't help," the boy said.

Call didn't believe him. He had been about to cut the boy loose, but he didn't. He put him on one of the stolen horses, and they started back.

Newt felt sick at the thought of what would happen. He didn't want to see another person hang.

"You ask him," he said to Pea.

"Ask him what?" Pea said.

"Not to hang him," Newt said.

"He'll hang him," Pea said. "He hung Jake, didn't he?"

"His pa made him do it," Newt said.

"Maybe," Pea said. "And maybe he's just a dern horse-thief."

When they came to a good tree, Call rode on, all the way to the Hat Creek headquarters. Once there, he cut the boy loose.

"You can work," he said.

For ten days the big boy was the friendliest person in the outfit. He shoed all the horses, cut wood, did every ch.o.r.e he was asked to do and some that he wasn't. He chattered constantly and tried his best to be friendly, and yet no one really liked him. Even Newt didn't really like him. Tom stood too close to him, when he talked, and he talked all the time. His large face was always sweaty, even on the coldest days. Even Po Campo didn't like him, and gave him food grudgingly.

Then, before dawn one morning Call caught Big Tom, as they called him, saddling a horse and preparing to ride off. He had four of the men's wallets on him, stolen so smoothly that none of the men had even missed them. He had also taken the best saddle in the outfit, which belonged to Bert Borum.

Call had been expecting the move for two or three days and had made Pea Eye help him watch. Big Tom tried to make a dash for it, and Call shot him off his horse. Cowboys ran out of their house in their long johns, at the shot. Even wounded, the boy proved full of fight-Call had to rap him with the barrel of his Henry before he could be tied. This time he was summarily hung, though he wept again and begged for mercy.

"It's wasted on horsethieves," Call said, before kicking the boy's horse out from under him. None of the men said a word.

"Should have hung him in the first place, although he did shoe them horses," Pea Eye commented later.

Call had begun to think of Gus, and the promise he had made. It would soon be spring, and he would have to be going if he were to keep the promise, which of course he must. Yet the ranch had barely been started, and it was hard to know who to leave in command. The question had been in his mind all winter. There seemed to be no grave danger from Indians or anything else. Who would best keep things going? Soupy was excellent when set a task, but had no initiative and was unused to planning. The men were all independent to a fault and constantly on the verge of fist fights because they fancied that someone had attempted to put himself above them in some way. Pea Eye was clearly the senior man, but Pea Eye had contentedly taken orders for thirty years; to expect him to suddenly start giving them was to expect the impossible.

Call thought often of Newt. He watched him with increasing pride all winter. The boy was the only one left in the crew whom he enjoyed being with. The boy's skill and persistence with horses pleased him. He knew it would be chancy to leave a seventeen-year-old boy in charge of a group of grown men-yet he himself had led men at that age, and that had been in rougher times. He liked the way the boy went about his work without complaint. He had filled out physically during the year and could work all day energetically and accomplish more than most of the men.

Once, watching the boy cross a corral after having worked with one of the mustangs, Pea Eye said innocently, "Why, Captain, little Newt walks just like you."

Call flinched, but Pea Eye didn't notice-Pea Eye was no noticer, as Augustus had often said.

That night, sitting in Wilbarger's little tent, Call remembered the remark. He also remembered Gus's efforts to talk to him about the boy. With Gus pressing him, it was his nature to resist, but with Gus gone he didn't find it so distasteful to consider that the boy was his son. He had certainly gone to his mother, hateful as the memory was. Maggie, of course, had not been hateful-it was the strange need she induced in him that he disliked to remember.

He started taking the boy with him on every trip he made to the forts, not merely to familiarize him with the country but to let him partic.i.p.ate in the selling and trading. Once, as a test, he sent Pea and the boy and the Raineys to Fort Benton with a sizable bunch of cattle, stipulating that the boy was to handle the details of the sale and bring home the money. Newt did well, as well as he himself could have done. He delivered the cattle safely, sold them for a fair amount and brought the money home.

It didn't sit well with Soupy Jones that Newt was being given such authority. It seemed to Soupy that he should have taken the cattle, and possibly received a commission, in his capacity as top hand. Soupy was rude to Newt from time to time, and Newt ignored him as best he could. Call did nothing, but two weeks later he let it be known that he was preparing to send the boy to the fort again-at which point Soupy boiled over. He took it as a slight and said he would draw his wages and go if that was how things were going to be.

Call promptly paid him his wages, much to Soupy's astonishment. He had never imagined such an outcome. "Why, Captain, I don't want to leave," he said plaintively. "I got nothing to go to back down south."

"Then give me back the money and behave yourself," Call said. "I decide who'll do what around here."

"I know, Captain," Soupy said. He was aware that he had chosen a bad moment to make his scene-right after breakfast, with many of the hands standing around.

"If you have other complaints, I'm listening," Call said. "You seem to be mad at Newt."

The words made the hairs stand up on the back of Newt's neck. It was the first time he could ever remember the Captain having spoken his name.

"Well, no, I ain't," Soupy said. "He's a fair hand, but it don't seem right a fair hand should be put over a top hand unless there's a reason."

"He's young and needs the training-you don't. That's the reason," Call said. "If I tell you to take orders from him you will, or else leave. They'll be my orders, at second hand."

Soupy reddened at the disgusting thought of taking orders from a boy. He stuffed his wages in his pocket, planning to leave, but an hour's contemplation caused him to mellow and he gave Call back the wages. That night, though, he suddenly stuck out a foot and tripped Newt, when Newt walked past with a plateful of food. Newt fell on his face but he rose and flung himself on Soupy in a second, so angry at the insult that he even held his own for a few licks, until Soupy could bring his weight and experience into play-after which Newt got thoroughly pounded, so thoroughly that he was not aware when the fight stopped. He was sitting on the ground spitting blood, and Soupy had walked away. Call had expected the fight and watched impa.s.sively, pleased that the boy had fought so hard. Winning would have been beyond his powers.

The battle won Soupy no friends; he had a.s.sumed so many airs once Dish left that he had few friends anyway, whereas Newt was popular. Reaction was so unfavorable that a few days later Soupy drew his wages again and left, taking Bert with him. They had concluded they could make Texas, if they went together.

Call was worried for a few weeks about being short-handed, but then three young men he had seen at the fort decided to quit soldiering and try their hand at ranching. All three were from Kentucky. They were inept at first but industrious. Then two genuine cowboys showed up; lured all the way north from Miles City by the news that there was a ranch on the Milk. They had given up cowboying for mule skinning the year before and concluded they had made a bad mistake. Then a tall boy named Jim wandered in alone. He had been with a wagon train but had lost interest in getting to Oregon.

Soon, instead of being short-handed, Call found that he had almost more men than he needed. He decided to start the branding early. Several hundred calves had been born since they left Texas; many were yearlings, and a struggle to brand. A few of the men questioned the necessity, since they were the only cattle outfit in the Territory, but Call knew that would soon change. Others would come.

The roundup took ten days. The cattle had spread themselves wide over the range between the Milk and the Missouri in their foraging during the winter. Then the branding took a week. At first the men enjoyed the activity, competing with one another to see who could throw the largest animals the quickest. There was also much disagreement over who should get to rope and who should work on foot. Newt improved so rapidly as a roper that he was soon sharing that task with Needle Nelson, the only one of the original crew skilled with a lariat.

With the branding ended, and the spring gra.s.s spiking through the thin May snows, Call knew the time had come for him to fulfill his promise to his old friend. It was awkward-indeed, it seemed absurd-to have to tote a six-months-old corpse to Texas, but there it was.

Yet May wore on and June approached, and still he had not gone. The snows had melted, all down the plains, he imagined, and yet something held him. It wasn't work. There were plenty of men to do the work-they had even had to turn away three or four men who came looking to hire on. Many times Call spent much of the afternoon watching Newt work with the new batch of horses they had bought on a recent trip to the fort. It was work he himself had never been particularly good at-he had always lacked the patience. He let the boy alone and never made suggestions. He liked to watch the boy with the horses; it had become a keen pleasure. If a cowboy came over and tried to talk to him while he was watching he usually simply ignored the man until he went away. He wanted to watch the boy and not be bothered. It could only be for a few days, he knew. It was a long piece to Texas and back. Sometimes he wondered if he would even come back. The ranch was started, and the dangers so far had been less than he feared. He felt sometimes that he had no more to do. He felt much older than anyone he knew. Gus had seemed young even when he was dying, and yet Call felt old. His interest in work had not returned. It was only when he was watching the boy with the horses that he felt himself.