Lonesome Dove Part 13

"Well, we may see you up the trail, then," he said to Call. "I wouldn't aim for Montana, though. Too far, too cold, full of bears and I don't know about the Indians. They may be beat but I wouldn't count on it. You might end up making some a present of a fine herd of beef."

"We'll try not to," Call said.

Wilbarger rode off, Chick following at the rear of the small horse herd. As Chick rode past, Dish Boggett was greatly tempted to rope him off his horse and box his ears as a means of relieving his feelings about Lorie and Jake Spoon-but the Captain was sitting there, so he merely gave Chick a hard stare and let him go.

"By gosh, I could eat," Pea Eye said. "I sure hope Gus ain't lost.

"If he's lost I don't know what we'll do for biscuits," he added, since n.o.body commented on his remark.

"You could always get married," Dish observed dryly. "There's plenty of women who can make biscuits."

It was not the first time Pea had had that particular truth pointed out to him. "I know there is," he said. "But that don't mean there's one of 'em that would have me."

Deets gave a rich chuckle. "Why, the widow Cole would have you," he said. "She'd be pleased to have you." Then, well aware that the widow Cole was something of a sore spot with Pea, he walked off toward the house.

Mention of Mary Cole made Pea Eye very uncomfortable. From time to time, throughout his life, it had been pointed out to him that he might marry-Gus McCrae was very fond of pointing it out, in fact.

But once in a while, even if n.o.body mentioned one, the thought of women entered his head all on its own, and once it came it usually tended to stay for several hours, filling his noggin like a cloud of gnats. Of course, a cloud of gnats was nothing in comparison to a cloud of Gulf coast mosquitoes, so the thought of women was not that that bothersome, but it was a thought Pea would rather not have in his head. bothersome, but it was a thought Pea would rather not have in his head.

He had never known what to think about women, and still didn't, but so far as actions went he was content to take his cue from the Captain, whose cue was plain. The Captain left them strictly alone, and had all the years Pea had been with him, excepting only one puzzling instance that had occurred years before, which Pea only remembered once every year or two, usually when he was dreaming. He had gone down to the saloon to get an ax someone had borrowed and not returned, and while he was getting the ax he heard a young woman crying out words and grievances to someone who was with her in her room.

The woman doing the crying was the wh.o.r.e named Maggie, Newt's mother, whom Jake Spoon took such a fancy to later. It was only after Pea had found the ax and was halfway home with it that it occurred to him that Maggie had been talking to the Captain, and had even called him by his first name, which Pea had never used in all his years of service.

The knowledge that the Captain was in the room with a wh.o.r.e struck Pea hard, sort of like the bullet that had hit him just behind the shoulder blades in the big Indian sc.r.a.pe up by Fort Phantom Hill. When the bullet hit he felt a solid whack and then sort of went numb in the brain-and it was the same with the notion that struck him as he was carrying the ax home from the saloon: Maggie was talking to the Captain in the privacy of her room, whereas so far as he knew no one had ever heard of the Captain doing more than occasionally tipping his hat to a lady if he met one in the street.

Overhearing that s.n.a.t.c.h of conversation was an accident Pea was slow to forget. For a month or two after it happened he went around feeling nervous, expecting life to change in some bold way. And yet nothing changed at all. They all soon went up the river to try and catch some bandits raiding out of Chihuahua, and the Captain, so far as he could tell, was the same old Captain. By the time they came back, Maggie had had her child, and soon after, Jake Spoon moved in with her for a while. Then he left and Maggie died and Gus went down one day and got Newt from the Mexican family that had taken him upon Maggie's death.

The years had gone on pa.s.sing, most of them slow years, particularly after they quit rangering and went into the horse-and-cattle business. The only real result of overhearing the conversation was that Pea was cautious from then on about who he let borrow the ax. He liked life slow and didn't want any more mysteries or sharp surprises.

Though he was content to stick with the Captain and Gus and do his daily work, he found that the problem of women was one that didn't entirely go away. The question of marriage, about which Deets felt so free to chuckle, was a persistent one. Gus, who had been married twice and who wh.o.r.ed whenever he could find a wh.o.r.e, was the main reason it was so persistent. Marriage was one of Gus's favorite subjects. When he got to talking about it the Captain usually took his rifle and went for a walk, but by that time Pea would usually be comfortable on the porch and a little sleepy with liquor, so he was the one to get the full benefit of Gus's opinions, one of which was that Pea was just going to waste by not marrying the widow Cole.

The fact that Pea had only spoken to Mary Cole five or six times in his life, most of them times when she was still married to Josh Cole, didn't mean a thing to a bystander like Gus, or even a bystander like Deets; both of them seemed to take it for granted that Mary regarded him as a fit successor to Josh. The thing that seemed to clinch it, in their view, was that, while Mary was an unusually tall woman, she was not as tall as Pea. She had been a good foot taller than Josh Cole, a mild fellow who had been in Pickles Gap buying a milk cow when a bad storm hit. A bolt of lightning fried both Josh and his horse-the milk cow had only been singed, but it still affected her milk. Mary Cole never remarried, but, in Gus's view, that was only because Pea Eye had not had the enterprise to walk down the street and ask her.

"Why, Josh was just a half-pint," Gus said frequently. "That woman needs a full pint. It'd be a blessing for her to have a man around who could reach the top shelf."

Pea had never considered that height might be a factor in relations such as marriage. After brooding about it for several months it occurred to him that Gus was tall too, and educated as well.

"h.e.l.l, you're tall," he said one night. "You ought to marry her yourself. The both of you can read."

He knew Mary could read because he had been in church once or twice when the preacher had asked her to read the Psalms. She had a kind of low, scratchy voice, unusual in a woman; once or twice, listening to it made Pea feel funny, as if someone was tickling the little hairs at the back of his neck.

Gus vehemently denied that he would be a suitable mate for Mary Cole. "Why, no, Pea, it wouldn't do," he said. "I've done been wrung through the wringer of marriage twice. What a widow wants is someone fresh. It's what all women want, widows or not. If a man's got experience it's bound to be that he got it with another woman, and that don't never sit well. A forthright woman like Mary probably considers that she can give you all the experience you're ever likely to need."

To Pea it was all just a troublesome puzzle. He could not remember how the subject had come up in the first place, since he had never said a word about wanting to marry. Whatever else it meant, it meant leaving the Captain, and Pea didn't plan to do that. Of course, Mary didn't live very far away, but the Captain always liked to have his men handy in case something came up sudden. There was no knowing what the Captain would think if he were to try and marry. One day he pointed out to Gus that he was far from being the only available man in Lonesome Dove. Xavier Wanz was available, not to mention Lippy. A number of the traveling men who pa.s.sed through were surely unmarried. But when he raised the point, Gus just ignored him.

Some nights, laying on the porch, he felt a fool for even thinking about such things, and yet think he did. He had lived with men his whole life, rangering and working; during his whole adult life he couldn't recollect spending ten minutes alone with a woman. He was better acquainted with Gus's pigs than he was with Mary Cole, and more comfortable with them too. The sensible thing would be to ignore Gus and Deets and think about things that had some bearing on his day's work, like how to keep his old boot from rubbing a corn on his left big toe. An Army mule had tromped the toe ten years before, and since then it had stuck out slightly in the wrong direction, just enough to make his boot rub a corn. The only solution to the problem was to cut holes in his boot, which worked fine in dry weather but had its disadvantages when it was wet and cold. Gus had offered to rebreak the toe and set it properly, but Pea didn't hate the corn that bad. It did seem to him that it was only common sense that a sore toe made more difference in his life than a woman he had barely spoken to; yet his mind didn't see it that way. There were nights when he lay on the porch too sleepy to shave his corn, or even to worry about the problem, when the widow Cole would pop to the surface of his consciousness like a turtle on the surface of a pond. At such times he would pretend to be asleep, for Gus was so sly he could practically read minds, and would surely tease him if he figured out that he was thinking about Mary and her scratchy voice.

Even more persistent than the thought of her reading the Psalms was another memory. One day he had been pa.s.sing her house just as a little thunderstorm swept through the town, scaring the dogs and cats and rolling tumbleweeds down the middle of the street. Mary had hung a washing and was out in her backyard trying to get it in before the rain struck, but the thunderstorm proved too quick for her. Big drops of rain began to splatter in the dust, and the wind got higher, causing the sheets on Mary's clothesline to flap so hard they popped like guns. Pea had been raised to be helpful, and since it was obvious that Mary was going to have a hard time with the sheets, he started over to offer his a.s.sistance.

But the storm had a start on both of them, and before he even got there the rain began to pour down, turning the white dust brown. Most women would have seen at that point that the wash was a lost cause and run for the house, but Mary wasn't running. Her skirt was already so wet it was plastered to her legs, but she was still struggling with one of the flapping sheets. In the struggle, two or three small garments that she had already gathered up blew out of her hand and off across the yard, which had begun to look like a shallow lake. Pea hurried to retrieve the garments and then helped Mary get the wet sheet off the line-she was evidently just doing it out of pure stubbornness, since the sun was shining brightly to the west of the storm and would obviously be available to dry the sheet again in a few minutes.

It was Pea's one close exposure to an aspect of womankind that Gus was always talking about-their penchant for flying directly in the face of reason. Mary was as wet on the top as on the bottom, and the flapping sheet had knocked one of the combs out of her hair, causing it to come loose. The wash was as wet as it had been before she hung it up in the first place, and yet she wasn't quitting. She was taking clothes off the line that would just have to be hung back on in fifteen minutes, and Pea was helping her do it as if it all made some sense. While he was steadying the clothesline he happened to notice something that gave him almost as hard a jolt as the bolt of lightning that killed Josh Cole: the clothes he had rescued were undergarments-white bloomers of the sort that it was obvious Mary was wearing beneath the skirt that was so wet against her legs. Pea was so shocked that he almost dropped the underpants back in the mud. She was bound to think it bold that he would pick up her undergarments like that-yet she was determined to have the sheets off the line and all he could do was stand there numb with embarra.s.sment. It was a blessing that rain soon began to pour off his hat brim in streams right in front of his face, making a little waterfall for him to hide behind until the ordeal ended. With the water running off his hat he only caught blurred glimpses of what was going on-he could not judge to what extent Mary had been shocked by his helpful but thoughtless act.

To his surprise, nothing terrible happened. When she finally had the sheet under control, Mary took the bloomers from him as casually as if they were handkerchiefs or table napkins or something. To his vast surprise, she seemed to be rather amused at the sight of him standing there with a stream of water pouring off his hat and falling just in front of his nose.

"Pea, it's a good thing you know how to keep your mouth shut," she said. "If you opened it right now you'd probably drown. Many thanks for your help."

She was the kind of forthright woman who called men by their first names, and she was known to salt her speech rather freely with criticism.

"We've the Lord to thank for this bath," she said. "I personally didn't need it, but I'm bound to say it might work an improvement where you're concerned. You ain't as bad-looking as I thought, now that you're nearly clean."

By the time she got to her back porch the rain was slackening and the sun was already striking little rainbows through the sparkle of drops that still fell. Pea had walked on home, the water dripping more slowly from his hat. He never mentioned the incident to anyone, knowing it would mean unmerciful teasing if it ever got out. But he remembered it. When he lay on the porch half drunk and it floated up in his mind, things got mixed into the memory that he hadn't even known he was noticing, such as the smell of Mary's wet flesh. He hadn't meant to smell her, and hadn't made any effort to, and yet the very night after it happened the first thing he remembered was that Mary had smelled different from any other wet thing he had ever smelled. He could not find a word for what was different about Mary's smell-maybe it was just that, being a woman, she smelled cleaner than most of the wet creatures he came in contact with. It had been more than a year since the rainstorm, and yet Mary's smell was still part of the memory of it. He also remembered how she seemed to bulge out of her corset at the top and the bottom both.

It was not every night that he remembered Mary, though. Much of the time he found himself wondering about the generalities of marriage. The princ.i.p.al aspect he worried over most was that marriage required men and women to live together. He had tried many times to envision how it would be to be alone at night under the same roof with a woman-or to have one there at breakfast and supper. What kind of talk would a woman expect? And what kind of behavior. It stumped him: he couldn't even make a guess. Once in a while it occurred to him that he could tell Mary he would like to marry her but didn't consider himself worthy to live under the same roof with her. If he put it right she might take a liberal att.i.tude and allow him to continue to live down the street with the boys, that being what he was used to. He would plan, of course, to make himself available for ch.o.r.es when she required him-otherwise life could go on in its accustomed way.

He was even tempted to sound out Gus on the plan-Gus knew more about marriage than anyone else-but every time he planned to bring it up he either got sleepy first or decided at the last second he had better keep quiet. If the plan was ridiculous in the eyes of an expert, then Pea wouldn't know what to think, and besides, Gus would never let up teasing.

They were all scattered around the table, finishing one of Bol's greasy breakfasts, when they heard the sound of horses in the yard. The next minute Augustus trotted up and dismounted, with the two Irishmen just a few yards behind him. Instead of being bareback the Irishmen were riding big silver-studded Mexican saddles and driving eight or ten skinny horses before them. When they reached the porch they just sat on their horses, looking unhappy.

Dish Boggett had not really believed there were any Irishmen down in Mexico, and when he stepped out on the back porch and saw them he burst right out laughing.

Newt felt a little sorry for the two of them, but he had to admit they were a comical sight. The Mexican saddles were all clearly meant for men with longer legs. Their feet did not come anywhere near the stirrups. Even so, the Irishmen seemed disinclined to dismount.

Augustus jerked the saddle off his tired horse and turned him loose to graze.

"Get down, boys," he said to the Irishmen. "You're safe now, as long as you don't eat the cooking. This is what we call home."

Allen O'Brien had both hands around the big Mexican saddle horn. He had been holding it so tightly for the last two hours that he was not sure he could turn it loose. He looked down with apprehension.

"I'd not realized how much taller a horse is than a mule," he said. "It seems a long ways down."

Dish regarded the remark as the most comical he had ever heard. It had never occurred to him that there could be such a thing as a grown man who didn't know how to dismount from a horse. The sight of the two Irishmen stuck with their short legs dangling down the sides of the horses struck him as so funny that he doubled over with laughter.

"I guess we'll have to build 'em a ladder, by G.o.d," he said, when he could catch his breath.

Augustus too was mildly amused by the Irishmen's ignorance. "Why, boys, you just have to flop over and drop," he said.

Allen O'Brien accomplished the dismounting with no real trouble, but Sean was reluctant to drop once he flopped over. He hung from the saddle horn for several seconds, which puzzled the horse, so that it began to try and buck a little. It was too thin and too tired to do much, but Sean did get jerked around a little, a sight so funny that even Call laughed. Allen O'Brien, once safe on the ground, immediately joined in the laughter out of relief. Sean finally dropped and stood glaring at his brother.

"Well, I don't see Jake-that figures," Augustus said, taking himself a big dipper of water and squishing a few mouthfuls around and spitting them out, to clear the dust from his throat. He then offered the dipper to Allen O'Brien, who imitated the squishing and spitting, thinking it must be a custom of the new country he found himself in.

"You took your time, I see," Call said. "I was about to start back with a burial party."

"Shucks," Augustus said. "Bringing these boys in was such a light task that I went over to Sabinas and stopped off at the wh.o.r.ehouse."

"That explains the saddles," Call said.

"Yes, and the horses too," Augustus said. "All the bandits was dead drunk by the time we got there. These Irish boys can't maintain much of a pace riding bareback so we helped ourselves to a few saddles and the best of the nags."

"Them horses wouldn't make good soap," Dish said, looking at the horses Augustus had brought back.

"If I wasn't so hungry I'd argue the point," Augustus said. "Bile them horses for a week or two and they'd produce a fine soap."

Young Sean O'Brien could not conceal his disappointment with America.

"If this is America, where's the snow?" he asked, to everyone's surprise. His image of the new country had been strongly influenced by a scene of Boston Harbor in winter that he had seen in an old magazine. There had been lots of snow, and the hot backyard he found himself in was nothing like what he had expected. Instead of ships with tall masts there was just a low adobe house, with lots of old saddles and pieces of rotting harness piled under a little shed at one corner. Worse still, he could not see a spot of green anywhere. The bushes were gray and th.o.r.n.y, and there were no trees at all.

"No, son, you've overshot the snow," Augustus said. "What we have down here is sand."

Call felt his impatience rising. The night had been far more successful than he could have hoped. They could keep the best horses and sell the rest-the profits would easily enable them to hire a crew and outfit a wagon for the trip north. Then all they would have to do would be gather the cattle and brand them. If everyone would work like they should, it could all be accomplished in three weeks, and they could be on the trail by the first of April-none too soon, considering the distance they had to go. The problem would be getting everyone to work like they should. Jake was already off with his wh.o.r.e, and Augustus hadn't had breakfast.

"You men go eat," Call said to the Irishmen; having rescued them, he could do no less than feed them.

Allen O'Brien was looking dejectedly at the few buildings that made up Lonesome Dove. "Is this all there is to the town?" he asked.

"Yes, and it's worse than it looks," Augustus said.

To the embarra.s.sment of everyone, Sean O'Brien began to cry. It had been an extremely tense night, and he hadn't expected to survive it. All during the ride he had expected to fall off his horse and become paralyzed. He a.s.sociated paralysis with falls because a cousin of his had fallen off a cottage he was thatching and had been paralyzed ever since. The horse Sean had been given seemed to him at least as tall as a cottage, and he felt he had good reason to worry. He had spent a long boat ride growing more and more homesick for the green land he had left. When they were put ash.o.r.e at Vera Cruz he had not been too disappointed; it was only Mexico they were in, and no one had ever told him Mexico was green.

But now they were in America, and all he could see was dust and low bushes with thorns, and almost no gra.s.s at all. He had expected coolness and dew and green gra.s.s on which to stretch out for a long nap. The bare hot yard was a cruel letdown, and besides, Sean was an easy weeper. Tears ran out of his eyes whenever he thought of anything sad.

His brother Allen was so embarra.s.sed by the sight of Sean's tears that he walked straight into the house and sat down at the table. They had been asked to eat-if Sean preferred to stand in the yard crying, that was his problem.

Dish concluded that the young Irishman was probably crazy. Only someone crazy would break out crying in front of several grown men.

Augustus saved the day by going over and taking Sean by the arm. He spoke kindly to him and led him toward the house. "Let's go eat, son," he said. "It won't look quite so ugly on a full stomach."

"But where's the gra.s.s?" Sean asked, snuffling.

Dish Boggett let out a whoop. "I guess he was meaning to graze," he said.

"Why, no, Dish," Augustus said. "He was just reared in a place where the gra.s.s covers the ground-not in no desert, like you."

"I was reared on the Matagorda," Dish said. "We got gra.s.s knee high over there."

"Gus, we need to talk a minute," Call said.

But Augustus had already led the boy through the door, and Call had to follow him in.

A surprised Bolivar watched the Irishmen put away sowbelly and beans. He was so startled by their appearance that he picked up a shotgun that he kept by the cookstove and put it across his lap. It was his goat-gun, a rusty .10 gauge, and he liked to have it handy if anything unusual happened.

"I hope you don't decide to shoot that thing off in here," Augustus said. "It'd take a wall out if you did-not to mention us."

"I don't shoot yet," Bol said sullenly, keeping his options open.

Call waited until Augustus filled his plate, since there would be no getting his attention until he had food before him. The young Irish boy had stopped crying and was putting away beans faster even than Augustus-starvation was probably all that was wrong with him.

"I'm going to go see if I can hire some hands," Call said. "You better move them horses this afternoon."

"Move 'em where?" Augustus asked.

"Upriver, as far as you want," Call said.

"These Irishmen have fine voices," Augustus remarked. "It's a pity there ain't two more of 'em-we'd have a barbershop quartet."

"It would be a pity if you lost them horses while I'm off hiring the hands, too," Call pointed out.

"Oh, you mean you want me to sleep out on the ground for several nights just to keep Pedro from stealing these horses back?" Gus asked. "I'm out of practice sleeping on the ground."

"What was you planning to sleep on on the way to Montana?" Call asked in turn. "We can't take the house with us, and there ain't many hotels between here and there."

"I hadn't been planning on going to Montana," Augustus said. "That's your plan. I may come if I feel like it. Or you may change your mind. I know you never have changed your mind about anything yet, but there's a first time for everything."

"You'd argue with a stump," Call said. "Just watch them horses. We may never get that lucky again."

Call saw there was no point in losing any more time. If Augustus was not of a mind to be serious, nothing could move him.

"Jake did come back, didn't he?" Augustus asked.

"His horse is here," Call said. "I guess he probably come with it. Do you think he'll work, once we start?"

"No, and I won't, either," Augustus said. "You better hire these Irish boys while you got the chance."

"It's work we're looking for," Allen said. "What we don't know we'll gladly learn."

Call refrained from comment. Men who didn't know how to get on and off a horse would not be much use around a cow outfit.

"Where you goin' hiring?" Augustus asked.

"I might go to the Raineys'," Call said. "As many boys as they got they ought to be able to spare a few."

"I sparked Maude Rainey once upon a time," Augustus said, tilting back his chair. "If we hadn't had the Comanches to worry with, I expect I'd have married her. Her name was Grove before she married. She lays them boys like hens lay eggs, don't she?"

Call left, to keep from having to talk all day. Deets was catching a short nap on the back porch, but he sat up when Call came out. Dish Boggett and the boy were roping low bushes, Dish teaching the boy a thing or two about the craft of roping. That was good, since n.o.body around the Hat Creek outfit could rope well enough to teach him anything. Call himself could rope in an emergency, and so could Pea, but neither of them were ropers of the first cla.s.s.

"Practice up, boys," he said. "As soon as we gather some cattle there's gonna be a pile of roping to do."

Then he caught his second-best horse, a sorrel gelding they called Sunup, and headed northeast toward the brush country.

13.