Lonesome Dove Part 97

"Can we help you, mister?" the young man asked.

"Much obliged," Call said. "I've only a short way to go."

The young settlers moved down the ridge toward San Antonio. Call walked down to the little pool, meaning to rest a few minutes. He fell into a heavy sleep and didn't wake until dawn. The business of the sign worried him, one more evidence of Augustus's ability to vex well beyond the grave. If one young man supposed it meant there was a livery stable nearby, others would do the same. People might be inconvenienced for days, wandering through the limestone hills, trying to find a company who were mostly ghosts.

Besides, Augustus's name wasn't on the sign, though it was his grave. No one might ever realize that it was was his grave. Call walked back up the hill and got out his knife, thinking he might carve the name on the other side of the board, but the old board was so dry and splintery that he felt he might destroy it altogether if he worked on it much. Finally he just scratched A.M. on the other side of the board. It wasn't much, and it wouldn't last, he knew. Somebody would just get irritated at not finding the livery stable and bust the sign up anyway. In any case, Gus was where he had decided he wanted to be, and they had both known many fine men who lay in unmarked graves. his grave. Call walked back up the hill and got out his knife, thinking he might carve the name on the other side of the board, but the old board was so dry and splintery that he felt he might destroy it altogether if he worked on it much. Finally he just scratched A.M. on the other side of the board. It wasn't much, and it wouldn't last, he knew. Somebody would just get irritated at not finding the livery stable and bust the sign up anyway. In any case, Gus was where he had decided he wanted to be, and they had both known many fine men who lay in unmarked graves.

Call remembered he had told the young couple that he only had a short way to travel. It showed that his mind was probably going, for he had no place in particular to travel at all. Worn out, and with a festering wound, he was in no shape to turn back for Montana, and Jerry, the dun, could never have made the trip, even if he himself could have. He didn't know that he wanted to go back, for that matter. He had never felt that he had any home on the earth anyway. He remembered riding to Texas in a wagon when just a boy-his parents were already dead. Since then it had been mostly roaming, the years in Lonesome Dove apart.

Call turned south toward San Antonio, thinking he might find a doctor. But when he came to the town he turned and went around it, spooked at the thought of all the people. He didn't want to go among such a lot of people with his mind so shaky. He rode the weary dun on south, feeling that he might just as well go to Lonesome Dove as anywhere.

Crossing the green Nueces, he remembered the snakes and the Irish boy. He knew he ought to go by and find the widow Spettle to tell her she had one less son, but decided the bad news could wait. It had already waited a year, unless she had gotten it from one of the returning cowhands.

He rode the dun into Lonesome Dove late on a day in August, only to be startled by the harsh clanging of the dinner bell, the one Bolivar had loved to beat with the broken crowbar. The sound made him feel that he rode through a land of ghosts. He felt lost in his mind and wondered if all the boys would be there when he got home.

But when he trotted through the chaparral toward the Hat Creek barn, he saw that it was old Bolivar himself, beating the same bell with the same piece of crowbar. The old man's hair was white and his serape filthier than ever.

When Bolivar looked up and saw the Captain riding out of the sunset, he dropped the piece of crowbar, narrowly missing his foot. His return to Mexico had been a trial and a disappointment. His girls were married and gone, his wife unrelenting in her anger at his years of neglect. Her tongue was like a saw and the look in her eyes made him feel bad. So he had left her one day forever, and walked to Lonesome Dove, living in the house the gringos had abandoned. He sharpened knives to earn a living, which for himself was merely coffee and frijoles. He slept on the cookstove; rats had chewed up the old beds. He grew lonely, and could not remember who he had been. Still, every evening, he took the broken crowbar and beat the bell-the sound rang through the town and across the Rio Grande.

When Call dismounted and dropped his reins old Bolivar walked over, trembling, a look of disbelief on his face. "Oh, Capitan, Capitan Capitan, Capitan," he said, and began to blubber. Tears of relief rolled down his rough cheeks. He clutched at Call's arms, as if he were worn out and might fall.

"That's all right, Bol," Call said. He lead the shaking man to the house, which was all shambles and filth, spiderwebs and rat s.h.i.t everywhere. Bol shuffled around and heated coffee, and Call stood on the front porch and drank a cup. Looking down the street, he was surprised to see that the town didn't look the same. Something wasn't there that had been. At first he couldn't place what, and he thought it might be the dust or his erratic vision, but then he remembered the Dry Bean. It was the saloon that seemed to be gone.

Call took the dun down to the roofless barn and unsaddled him. The stone watering trough was full of water, clear water, but there was not much to feed the horse. Call turned him out to graze and watched while he took a long roll.

Then, curious to know if the saloon was really gone, he walked across the dry bed of Hat Creek and into the main street.

He had no sooner turned into the street than he saw a one-legged man coming toward him through the dusk. Why, Gus? he thought, not knowing for a second if he were with the living or the dead. He remembered sitting in the grave on the Guadalupe, and for a moment could not remember climbing out.

But the one-legged man only turned out to be Dillard Brawley, the barber who had ruined his voice screeching the time he and Gus had had to take off his leg.

For his part, Dillard Brawley was so surprised to see Captain Call standing in the street that he almost dropped the few perch he had managed to catch in the river. In the growing dark he had to step close to see it was the Captain-there was only a little light left.

"Why, Captain," Dillard said in his hoa.r.s.e whisper, "did you and the boys finally get back?"

"Not the boys," Call said. "Just me. What happened to the saloon?"

He could see that he had been right-the general store was still there, but the Dry Bean was gone.

"Burnt," Dillard whispered. "Burnt near a year ago."

"What started the fire?" Call asked.

"Wanz started it. Burnt up in it, too. Locked himself in that wh.o.r.e's room and wouldn't come out."

"Well, I swear," Call said.

"The pi-aner burnt up with him," Dillard said. "Made the church folks mad. They thought if he was gonna roast himself he ought to have at least rolled the pi-aner out the door. They've had to sing hymns to a fiddle ever since."

Call walked over and stood where the saloon had been. There was nothing left but pale ashes and a few charred boards.

"When she left, Wanz couldn't stand it," Dillard said. "He sat in her room a month and then he burnt it."

"Who?" Call asked, looking at the ashes.

"The woman," Dillard whispered. "The woman. They say he missed that wh.o.r.e."

LARRY McMURTRY, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and many other awards, is the author of more than twenty-four novels, two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, and is the editor of an anthology of modern Western fiction. His reputation as a critically acclaimed and bestselling author is unequaled.

BY LARRY LARRY MCMURTRY MCMURTRY.

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Crazy Horse Comanche Moon Dead Man's Walk The Late Child Streets of Laredo The Evening Star

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Film Flam: Essays on Hollywood

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Lonesome Dove

The Desert Rose

Cadillac Jack

Somebody's Darling

Terms of Endearment

All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers

Moving On

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BY LARRY MCMURTRY AND DIANA OSSANA.

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