Lonesome Dove (84 page)

“We got the whole night to get through,” Mary said. “We can’t waste too much of it on these tadpoles.” She took Ben Rainey’s hand and quickly led him into a little room off the hall.

“Mary gets the fidgets if something ain’t happening every minute,” Buf said. “Come on, Newt.”

Jimmy Rainey didn’t like being left in the hall all by himself.

“Who do I do?” he asked plaintively.

“Just stand there like a post,” Buf said. “Mary’s quick, especially with tadpoles. She’ll get you in a minute.” Jimmy stood where he was, looking forlorn.

She led Newt into a small room with nothing much in it but an iron bedstead and a small washbasin on a tiny stand. A small unlit coal-oil lamp with no shade over the wick sat on a windowsill. The window was open and the rim of the prairie still red, as if a line of coals had been spread along it.

“Come far?” Buf asked in a husky voice.

“Yes, ma’am, from Texas,” Newt said.

“Well, skin them pants off, Texas,” she said, and to his astonishment, unbuttoned three buttons on the front of her gown and pitched it on the bed. She stood before him naked and, since he was too startled to move, reached down and unbuckled his pants.

“The problem with cowboys is all the time it takes to get their boots off,” she confided, as she was unbuttoning his pants. “I don’t get paid for watching cowboys wrestle with their dern boots, so I just leave the sheets off the bed. If they can’t shuck ’em quick, they have to do it with them on.”

Meanwhile she had unbuttoned his pants and reached for his peter, which, once it was freed, met her halfway at least. Newt couldn’t get over how large she was—she would easily make two of him.

“I doubt you’ve had a chance to get much, but it won’t hurt to check,” she said.

She led him to the window and lit the coal-oil lamp. The movement of her large breasts threw strange shadows on the wall. To Newt’s surprise she poured a little water on his peter. Then she lathered her hands with a bar of coarse soap and soaped him so vigorously that before he could stop himself he squirted right at her.

He was horrified, sure that what he had done was a dreadful breach of decorum, far worse than not being able to get his boots off quickly. Of course he had seen boys jerk at themselves, and he had done it plenty, but having a woman use soap and warm water on it brought matters to a head much quicker than was usual.

Buf merely chuckled, exposing her black tooth.

“I forgot you tadpoles are so randy you can’t tolerate a soaping,” she said, wiping him off on a piece of sacking.

She walked over to the bed and lay back on the cornshuck mattress, which crackled in protest. “Come on, try it,” she said. “You might have another load yet.”

“Should I take my boots off first?” Newt said, feeling hopelessly inexperienced and afraid of making another mistake.

“Naw, quick as you are, it ain’t worth the effort,” Buf said, scratching herself indelicately. “You got a pretty good one on, still.”

He knelt between her thighs and she grasped him and tried to pull him in, but he was too far away.

“Flop over here, you ain’t gonna do no good down there at the foot of the bed,” she said. “You spent ten dollars, you oughta at least try. Some girls would charge you ten just to soap you up, but Mary and me, we’re fair.”

Newt allowed himself to be directed and made entrance, but then to his embarrassment he slipped out. He tried to reinsert himself but couldn’t find the spot. Buf’s belly was huge and slippery. Newt got dizzy again and felt himself sliding off it. Again he had the sensation that he might fall off the earth, and he grasped her arms to stop himself.

The Buffalo Heifer was unperturbed by his wigglings.

“You’ll have to come back next time you draw your wages,” she said. “Pull up your pants and send in that other tadpole.”

As Newt got off the bed, he remembered Lorena suddenly. This was what she had done during all those months at the Dry Bean, with any man who had drawn his wages. He felt a terrible regret that he hadn’t had the ten dollars then. Though the Buffalo Heifer had not been unfriendly, he would far rather have had Lorena soap him up—though he knew he probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to go in, if it had been Lorena.

“Is it just the two of you?” he asked, buttoning his pants. He had built up a certain curiosity about Mary, and despite all his embarrassments decided he might try to visit her if he ever got another ten.

“Me and Mary,” Buf said. “I get the ones that like ’em fat, and she gets the one’s that like ’em skinny. And if it’s a feller who likes ’em either way it’s just a matter of who ain’t busy at the time.”

She was still lying naked on the bed.

“I’ll go get Jimmy,” he said. When he opened the door, Jimmy was not more than a foot away. Probably he had been listening, which Newt resented, but in the dim hall Jimmy looked too sick to be mad at.

“Your turn,” Newt said. Jimmy went in, and Newt clumped down the stairs and found Pete Spettle waiting at the bottom.

“Why’d you leave?” Newt asked.

“Told Ma I’d save my money,” Pete said.

“I wish we had some more beer,” Newt said. Though his experience with the Buffalo Heifer had been mostly embarrassing as it was happening, he did not feel disappointed. Only the fact that he was down to a quarter in cash kept him from going back in and trying his luck with Mary. For all the peculiarity of what was happening, it was powerfully interesting. The fact that it cost ten dollars hardly mattered to him, but it turned out that he was the only one who took that attitude. Ben Rainey came down the stairs just behind him, complaining about how overpriced the experience was.

“I doubt it took a minute, once she got me washed,” he said.

Jimmy Rainey soon followed, and was totally silent about his own experience. He was not over his upset stomach and kept falling behind to vomit as they walked around town looking for Lippy.

“Hell, whores make a sight more than cowboys,” Ben kept saying—it seemed to trouble him a good deal. “We don’t make but thirty dollars a month and them two made thirty dollars off us in about three minutes. It would have been forty if Pete hadn’t backed out.”

To Newt such an argument seemed wide of the point. What the whores sold was unique. The fact that it exceeded top-hand wages didn’t matter. He decided he would probably be as big a whore as Jake and Mr. Gus when he grew up and had money to spend.

They found Lippy by the sound of the accordion, which he had managed to purchase but had not exactly learned to play. He was sitting on the steps of the saloon with the big rack of elkhorns over it, trying to squeeze out “Buffalo Gal” to an audience of one mule skinner and Allen O’Brien. The Irishman was wincing at Lippy’s fumbling efforts.

“He’ll never get the hang of it,” the mule skinner said. “It sounds like a dern mule whinnying.”

“I just bought this accordion,” Lippy said. “I’ll learn to play it by the time we hit Montany.”

“Yeah, and if them Sioux catch you you’ll be squealing worse than that music box,” the mule skinner said.

Allen O’Brien kindly bought the boys each a beer. Though it was well after dark, people were still milling in the streets of Ogallala. At one point they heard gunshots, but no one cared to go investigate.

One beer was sufficient to make Jimmy Rainey start vomiting all over again. As they were riding back to the herd, Newt felt a little sad—there was no telling when he would get the chance to visit another whorehouse.

He was riding along wishing he had another ten dollars when something spooked their horses—they never knew what, although Pete Spettle thought he might have glimpsed a panther. At any rate, Newt and Ben were thrown before they knew what was happening, and Pete and Jimmy were carried off into the darkness by their frightened mounts.

“What if it was Indians?” Ben suggested, when they picked themselves up.

It was bright moonlight and they could see no Indians, but both drew their pistols anyway, just in case, and crouched down together as they listened to the depressing sound of their horses running away.

There was nothing for it but for them to walk to camp on foot, their pistols ready—too ready, really, for Ben almost shot his brother when Jimmy finally came back to see about them.

“Where’s Pete?” Newt asked, but Jimmy didn’t know.

Jimmy’s horse would ride double, but not triple, so Newt had to walk the last two miles, annoyed with himself for not having kept a grip on the reins. It was the second time he had been put afoot on the drive, and he was sure everyone would comment on it the next day.

But when he arrived, his horse was grazing with the rest of the remuda, and only Po Campo was awake to take notice. Po seemed to sleep little. Whenever anyone came in from a watch he was usually up, slicing beef or freshening his coffee. “Have you had a good walk?” he asked, offering Newt a piece of cold meat. Newt took it but discovered once he sat down that he was too tired to eat. He went to sleep with a hunk of beef still in his hand.

87

CLARA WAS UPSTAIRS when she saw the four riders. She had just cleaned her husband—the baby was downstairs with the girls. She happened to glance out a window and see them, but they were still far away, on the north side of the Platte. Any approaching rider was something to pay attention to in that country. In the first years the sight of any rider scared her and made her look to see where Bob was, or be sure a rifle was handy. Indians had been known to dress in white men’s clothes to disarm unwary settlers, and there were plenty of white men in the Territory who were just as dangerous as Indians. If she was alone, the sight of any rider caused her a moment of terror.

But through the years they had been so lucky with visitors that Clara had gradually ceased to jump and take fright at the sight of a rider on the horizon. Their tragedies had come from weather and sickness, not attackers. But the habit of looking close had not left her, and she turned with a clean sheet in one hand and watched out her window as the horsemen dipped off the far slopes and disappeared behind the brush along the river.

Something about the riders struck her. Over the years she had acquired a good eye for horses, and also for horsemen. Something about the men coming from the north struck a key in her memory, but struck it so weakly that she only paused for a moment to wonder who it could be. She finished her task and then washed her face, for the dust was blowing and she had gotten gritty coming back from the lots. It was the kind of dust that seemed to sift through your clothes. She contemplated changing blouses, but if she did that, the next thing she knew she would be taking baths in the morning and changing clothes three times a day like a fine lady, and she didn’t have that many clothes, or consider herself that fine. So she made do with a face wash and forgot about the riders. July and Cholo were both working the lots and would no doubt notice them too. Probably it was just a few Army men wanting to buy horses. Red Cloud was harrying them hard, and every week two or three Army men would show up wanting horses.

It was one of those who had brought July the news about his wife, although of course the soldier didn’t know it was July’s wife when he talked about finding the corpses of the woman and the buffalo hunter. Clara had been washing clothes and hadn’t heard the story, but when she went down to the lots a little later she knew something was wrong. July stood by the fence, white as a sheet.

“Are you sick?” she asked. Cholo had ridden off with the soldier to look at some stock.

“No, ma’am,” he said, in a voice she could barely hear. At times, to her intense irritation, he called her “ma’am,” usually when he was too upset to think.

“It’s Ellie,” he added. “That soldier said the Indians killed a woman and a buffalo hunter about sixty miles east of town. I have no doubt it was her. They were traveling that way.”

“Come on up to the house,” she said. He was almost too weak to walk and was worthless for several days, faint with grief over a woman who had done nothing but run away from him or abuse him almost from the day they married.

The girls were devoted to July by this time, and they nursed him constantly, bringing him bowls of soup and arguing with one another over the privilege of serving him. Clara let them, though she herself felt more irritated than not by the man’s foolishness. The girls couldn’t understand her attitude and said so.

“His wife got butchered up, Ma!” Betsey protested.

“I know that,” Clara said.

“You look so stern,” Sally said. “Don’t you like July?”

“I like July a lot,” Clara said.

“He thinks you’re mad at him,” Betsey said.

“Why would he care?” Clara said, with a little smile. “He’s got the two of you to pamper him. You’re both nicer than I’ve ever been.”

“We want you to like him,” Betsey said. She was the more direct of the two.

“I told you I like him,” Clara said. “I know people ain’t smart and often love those who don’t care for them. Up to a point, I’m tolerant of that. Then past a point, I’m not tolerant of it. I think it’s a sickness to grieve too much for those who never cared a fig for you.”

Both of the girls were silent for a time.

“You remember that,” Clara said. “Do your best, if you happen to love a fool. You’ll have my sympathy. Some folks will preach that it’s a woman’s duty never to quit, once you make a bond with a man. I say that’s folly. A bond has to work two ways. If a man don’t hold up his end, there comes a time to quit.”

She sat down at the table and faced the girls. July was outside, well out of hearing. “July don’t want to face up to the fact that his wife never loved him,” she said.

“She
ought
to have loved him,” Sally said.

“Ought don’t count for as much as a gnat, when you’re talking about love,” Clara said. “She didn’t. You seen her. She didn’t even care for Martin. We’ve already given July and Martin more love than that poor woman ever gave them. I don’t say that to condemn her. I know she had her troubles, and I doubt she was often in her right mind. I’m sorry she had no more control of herself to run off from her husband and child and get killed.”

She stopped, to let the girls work on the various questions a little. It interested her which they would pick as the main point.

“We want July to stay,” Betsey said finally. “You’ll just make him run off, being so stern, and then he’ll get butchered up too.”

“You think I’m that bad?” Clara asked, with a smile.

“You’re pretty bad,” Betsey said.

Clara laughed. “You’ll be just as bad, if you don’t reform,” she said. “I got a right to my feelings too, you know. We’re doing a nice job of taking care of July Johnson. It just gripes me that he let himself be tromped on and can’t even figure out that it wasn’t right, and that he didn’t like it.”

“Can’t you just be patient?” Sally said. “You’re patient with Daddy.”

“Daddy got his head kicked,” Clara said. “He can’t help how he is.”

“Did he keep his bond?” Betsey asked.

“Yes, for sixteen years,” Clara said. “Although I never liked his drinking.”

“I wish he’d get well,” Sally said. She had been her father’s favorite and grieved over him the most.

“Ain’t he going to die?” Betsey asked.

“I fear he will,” Clara said. She had been careful not to let that notion take hold of the girls, but she wondered if she was wrong. Bob wasn’t getting better, and wasn’t likely to.

Sally started to cry, and Clara put her arms around her.

“Anyway, we have July,” Betsey said.

“If I don’t run him off,” Clara said.

“You just better not!” Betsey said, eyes flashing.

“He might get bored and leave of his own accord,” Clara volunteered.

“How could he get bored? There’s lots to do,” Sally said.

“Don’t be so stern with him, Ma,” Betsey pleaded. “We don’t want him to leave.”

“It won’t hurt the man to learn a thing or two,” Clara said. “If he plans to stay here he’d better start learning how to treat women.”

“He treats
us
fine,” Sally pointed out.

“You ain’t women yet,” Clara said. “I’m the only one around here, and he better spruce up if he wants to keep on my good side.”

July soon returned to work, but his demeanor had not greatly improved. He had little humor in him and could not be teased successfully, which was an irritant to Clara. She had always loved to tease and considered it an irony of her life that she was often drawn to men who didn’t recognize teasing even when she was inflicting it on them. Bob had never responded to teasing, or even noticed it, and her powers in that line had slowly rusted from lack of practice. Of course she teased the girls, but it was not the same as having a grown man to work on—she had often felt like pinching Bob for being so stolid. July was no better—in fact, he and Bob were cut from the same mold, a strong but unimaginative mold.

When she came down from washing her face, she heard talk from the back and stopped dead on the stairs, for there was no doubt who was talking. The chord of memory that had been weakly struck by the sight of the horsemen resounded through her suddenly like an organ note. No sound in the world could have made her happier, for she heard the voice of Augustus McCrae, a voice like no other. He sounded exactly as he always had—hearing his voice so unexpectedly after sixteen years caused her eyes to fill. The sound took the years away. She stood on the stairs in momentary agitation, uncertain for a second as to when it was, or where she was, so much did it remind her of other times when Augustus would show up unexpectedly, and she, in her little room over the store, would hear him talking to her parents. Only now he was talking to her girls. Clara regretted not changing blouses—Gus had always appreciated her appearance. She walked on down the stairs and looked out the kitchen window. Sure enough, Gus was standing there, in front of his horse, talking to Betsey and Sally. Woodrow Call sat beside him, still mounted, and beside Call, on a bay horse, was a young blond woman wearing men’s clothes. A good-looking boy on a brown mare was the last of the group.

Clara noted that Gus had already charmed the girls—July Johnson would be lucky to get another bowl of soup out of them as long as Gus was around.

She stood at the window a minute studying him. To her he seemed not much older. His hair had already turned white when he was young. He had always made her feel keen, Gus—his appetite for talk matched hers. She stood for a moment in the kitchen doorway, a smile on her lips. Just seeing him made her feel keen. She was in the shadows and he had not seen her. Then she took a step or two and Augustus looked around. Their eyes met and he smiled.

“Well, pretty as ever,” he said.

To the huge astonishment of her girls, Clara walked straight off the porch and into the stranger’s arms. She had a look in her eyes that they had never seen, and she raised her face to the stranger and kissed him right on the mouth, an action so startling and so unexpected that both girls remembered the moment for the rest of their lives.

Newt was so surprised that he scarcely knew where to look.

When Clara kissed him, Lorena looked down, nothing but despair in her heart. There the woman was, Gus loved her, and she herself was lost. She should have stayed in the tent and not come to see it—yet she had wanted to come. Now that she had, she would have given anything to be somewhere else, but of course it was too late. When she looked up again she saw that Clara had stepped back a bit and was looking at Gus, her face shining with happiness. She had thin arms and large hands, Lorena noticed. Two men were walking up from the lots, having seen the crowd.

“Well, introduce your friends, Gus,” Clara said. She had a hand on his arm, and walked with him over to the horses.

“Oh, you know Woodrow,” Augustus said.

“How do you do?” Call said, feeling at a loss.

“This is Miss Lorena Wood,” Augustus said, reaching up to help her dismount. “She’s come a far piece with us. All the way from Lonesome Dove, in fact. And this young gentleman is Newt.”

“Newt who?” Clara asked.

“Newt Dobbs,” Augustus said, after a pause.

“Hello, Miss Wood,” Clara said. To Lorena’s surprise she seemed quite friendly—far more so than most women were to her.

“I don’t know whether to envy you or pity you, Miss Wood,” Clara said. “Riding all that way with Mr. McCrae, I mean. I know he’s entertaining, but that much entertainment could break a person for life.”

Then Clara laughed, a happy laugh—she was amused that Augustus had seen fit to arrive with a woman, that she had stunned her girls by kissing him, and that Woodrow Call, a man she had always disliked and considered scarcely more interesting than a stump, had been able to think of nothing better to say to her after sixteen years than “How do you do?” It added up to a lively time, in her book, and she felt she had been in Nebraska long enough to deserve a little liveliness.

She saw that the young woman was very frightened of her. She had dismounted but kept her eyes cast down. July and Cholo walked up just at that time, July with a look of surprise on his face.

“Why, Sheriff Johnson,” Augustus said. “I guess, as they say, it’s a small world.”

“Just to you, Gus, you’ve met everybody in it now, I’m sure,” Clara said. She glanced at July, who so far hadn’t spoken. He was watching her and it struck her that it might be because she was still holding Gus’s arm. It made Clara want to laugh again. In minutes, the arrival of Gus McCrae had mixed up everyone, just as it usually had in the past. It had always been a peculiarity of her friendship with Augustus. Nobody had ever been able to figure out whether she was in love with him or not. Her parents had puzzled over the question for years—it had replaced Bible arguments as their staple of conversation. Even when she had accepted Bob, Gus’s presence in her life confused most people, for she had soon demonstrated that she had no intention of giving him up just because she was planning to marry. The situation had been made the more amusing by the fact that Bob himself worshipped Gus, and would probably have thought it odd that she had chosen him over Gus if he had been sharp enough to figure out that she could have had Gus if she’d wanted him.

It had been one-sided adoration, though, for Gus considered Bob one of the dullest men alive, and often said so. “Why are you marrying that dullard?” he asked her often.

“He suits me,” she said. “Two racehorses like us would never get along. I’d want to be in the lead, and so would you.”

“I never thought you’d marry a man with nothing to say,” he said.

“Talk ain’t everything,” she said—words she had often remembered with rue during years when Bob scarcely seemed to utter two words a month.

Now Gus was back, and had instantly captured her girls—that was clear. Betsey and Sally were fascinated, if embarrassed, that this white-haired man had ridden up and kissed their mother.

“Where’s Robert?” Augustus asked, to be polite.

“Upstairs, sick,” Clara said. “A horse kicked him in the head. It’s a bad wound.”

For a second, remembering the silent man upstairs, she thought how unfair life was. Bob was slipping away, and yet that knowledge couldn’t quell her happiness at the sight of Gus and his friends. It was a lovely summer day, too—a fine day for a social occasion.