Lonesome Dove (89 page)

“I guess it’s our fault,” Call said. “We should have shot sooner.”

“I don’t want to start thinking about all the things we should have done for this man,” Augustus said. “If you’ve got the strength to ride, let’s get out of here.”

They managed to break the lance off so it wouldn’t wave in the air, and loaded Deets’s body on his horse. While Augustus was tying the body securely, Call rounded up the horses. The Indians watched him silently. He changed his mind and cut off three of the horses that were of little account anyway. He rode over to the Indians.

“You better tie them three,” he said. “Otherwise they’ll follow us.”

“I doubt they speak English, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “I imagine they speak Ute. Anyway, we killed their best warrior; they’re done for now unless they find some better country. Three horses won’t last them through the winter.”

He looked around at the parched country, the naked ridges where the earth had split from drought. The ridges were varicolored, smudged with red and salt-white splotches, as if the fluids of the earth had leaked out through the cracks.

“Montana better not be nothing like this,” he said. “If it is, I’m going back and dig up that goddamn Jake Spoon and scatter his bones.”

They rode all night, all the next day and into the following night. Augustus just rode, his mind mostly blank, but Call was sick with self-reproach. All his talk of being ready, all his preparation—and then he had just walked up to an Indian camp and let Josh Deets get killed. He had known better. They all knew better. He had known men killed by Indian boys no older than ten, and by old Indian women who looked as if they could barely walk. Any Indian might kill you: that was the first law of the Rangers. And yet they had just walked in, and now Josh Deets was gone. He had never called the man by his first name, but now he remembered Gus’s foolish sign and how Deets had been troubled by it. Deets had finally concluded that his first name was Josh—that was the way he would think of him from then on, Call decided. He had been Josh Deets. It deepened his sense of reproach that, only a few days before, Josh Deets had been so thoughtful as to lead his horse through the sandstorm, recognizing that he himself was played out.

Then he had stood there with a rifle in his hands and let the man be killed. They had all concluded the Indians were too starved down to do anything. It was a mistake he would never forgive himself.

“I think he knowed it was coming,” Augustus said, to Call’s surprise, as they rode through the cracked valleys toward the Salt Creek.

“What do you mean, knowed it?” Call asked. “He didn’t know it. It was just that one boy who showed any fight.”

“I think he knowed it,” Augustus said. “He just stood there waiting.”

“He had that baby in his hands,” Call reminded him.

“He could have dropped that baby,” Augustus said.

They came back the second night to where the herd had been, only to find it gone. Josh Deets had begun to smell.

“We could bury him here,” Augustus said.

Call looked around at the empty range.

“We ain’t gonna find no churchyard, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Augustus said.

“Let’s take him on,” Call said. “The men will want to pay their respects. I imagine we can catch them tonight.”

They caught the herd not long before dawn. Dish Boggett was the night herder who saw them coming. He was very relieved, for with both of them gone, the herd had been his responsibility. Since he didn’t know the country, it was a heavy responsibility, and he had been hoping the bosses would get back soon. When he saw them he felt a little proud of himself, for he had kept the cattle on grass and had moved them along nicely.

“Mornin’, Captain,” he said. Then he noticed that something was wrong. There were three horses, not counting the stolen ones, but only two riders. There was something on the third horse, but it wasn’t a rider. It was only a body.

“Who’s that, Gus?” he asked, startled.

“It’s what’s left of Deets,” Augustus said. “I hope the cook’s awake.” After feeling nothing for two days, he had begun to feel hungry.

Newt had taken the middle watch and was sleeping soundly when dawn broke. He was using his saddle for a pillow and had covered himself with a saddle blanket as the nights had begun to be quite cool.

The sound of voices reached him. One belonged to the Captain, the other to Mr. Gus. Po Campo’s voice could be heard, too, and Dish Boggett said something. Newt opened his eyes a moment and saw they were all kneeling by something on the ground. Maybe they had killed an antelope. He was very drowsy and wanted to go back to sleep. He closed his eyes again, then opened them. It wasn’t an antelope. He sat up and saw that Po Campo was kneeling down, twisting on something. Someone had been hurt and Po was trying to pull a stob of some kind out of his body. He was straining hard, but the stob wouldn’t come out. He stopped trying, and Dish, who had been holding the wounded man down, turned away suddenly, white and sick.

When Dish moved, Newt saw Deets. He was in the process of yawning when he saw him. Instead of springing up, he lay back down and pulled his blanket tighter. He opened his eyes and looked, and then shut them tightly. He felt angry at the men for having talked so loud that they had awakened him. He wished they would all die, if that was the best they could do. He wanted to go back to sleep. He wanted it to be one of those dreams that you wake up from just as the dream gets bad. He felt that was probably what it was. When he opened his eyes again he wouldn’t see Deets’s body lying on the wagon sheet a few yards away.

Yet it didn’t work. He couldn’t go back to sleep, and when he sat up the body was there—though if it hadn’t been black he might not have known it was Deets.

He looked and saw that Pea Eye knelt on the other side of the body, looking dazed. Far away, toward the river, he saw the Captain and Lippy, digging. Mr. Gus sat by himself, near the cook fire, eating. The three horses had been unsaddled but no one had returned them to the remuda. They grazed nearby. Most of the hands stood in a group near Deets’s feet, just looking as Po Campo worked.

Finally Po Campo gave up. “Better to bury him with it,” he said. “I would have liked to see that boy. The lance went all the way to his collarbone. It went through the heart.”

Newt sat in his blankets, feeling alone. No one noticed him or spoke to him. No one explained Deets’s death. Newt began to cry, but no one noticed that either. The sun had risen, and everyone was busy with what they were doing, Mr. Gus eating, the Captain and Lippy digging the grave. Soupy Jones was repairing a stirrup and talking in subdued tones to Bert Borum. Newt sat and cried, wondering if Deets knew anything about what was going on. The Irishman and Needle and the Rainey boys held the herd. It was a beautiful morning, too—mountains seemed closer. Newt wondered if Deets knew about any of it. He didn’t look at the corpse again, but he wondered if Deets had kept on knowing, somehow. He felt he did. He felt that if anyone was taking any notice of him, it was probably Deets, who had always been his friend. It was only the thought that Deets was still knowing him, somehow, that kept him from feeling totally alone.

Even so, the Deets who had walked around and smiled and been kind to him day after day, through the years—that Deets was dead. Newt sat on his blankets and cried until he was afraid he would never stop. No one seemed to notice. No one said anything to him as preparations for burying Deets went on.

Pea Eye didn’t cry, but he was so shaken he went weak in the legs.

“Well, my lord,” he said, from time to time. “My lord.” An Indian boy had killed him, the Captain said. Deets was still wearing a pair of the old patchy quilt pants that he had favored for so long. Pea Eye scarcely knew what to think. He and Deets had been the main hired help on the Hat Creek outfit ever since there had been a Hat Creek outfit. Now it was down to him. It would mean a lot more chores for him, undoubtedly, for the Captain only trusted the two of them with certain chores. He remembered that he and Deets had had a pretty good conversation once. He had been vaguely planning to have another one with him if the chance came along. Of course that was off, now. Pea Eye went over and leaned against a wagon wheel, wishing he could stop feeling weak in the legs.

The other hands were somber. Soupy Jones and Bert Borum, who didn’t feel it appropriate for white men to talk much to niggers, exchanged the view that nevertheless this one had been uncommonly decent. Needle Nelson offered to help dig the grave, for Deets had been the man who finally turned the Texas bull the day the bull got after him. Dish Boggett hadn’t said much to Deets, either, but he had often been cheered, from his position on the point, to see Deets come riding back through the heat waves. It meant he was on course, and that water was somewhere near. Dish wished he had said more to the man at some point.

Lippy offered to help with the grave-digging, and Call let him. It was the task that usually got assigned to Deets himself, grave-digging. Call had laid many a
compañero
in graves Josh Deets had dug, including, most recently, Jake Spoon. Lippy was not a good digger—in fact, he was mostly in the way, but Call tolerated him. Lippy also talked constantly, saying nothing. They were digging on a little rise, north of the juncture of where Salt Creek joined the Powder River.

Augustus wrapped Deets carefully in a piece of wagon sheet and tied the sheet around him with heavy cord.

“A shroud for a journey,” Augustus said.

No one else said anything. They loaded Deets in the wagon. Newt finally got out of his blanket, though he was almost blind from crying.

Po Campo led the team down to the grave and Deets was put in and quickly covered. The Irishman, unasked, began to sing a song of mourning so sad that all the cowboys at once began to cry, even the Spettle boy, who had not shed a tear when his own brother was buried.

Augustus turned and walked away. “I hate funerals,” he said. “Particularly this one.”

“At the rate we’re dropping off, there won’t be many of us left by the time we get to Montana,” Lippy said, as they were all walking back to camp.

They expected to start the herd that day, as Captain Call had never been known to linger. But this time he did. He came back from the grave, got a big hammer and knocked a board loose from the side of the wagon. He didn’t explain what he was doing to anyone, and the look on his face discouraged anyone from asking. He took the board and carried it down to the grave. The rest of the day he sat alone by Deets’s grave, carving something into it with his knife. The sun flashed on his knife, and the cowhands watched in puzzlement. They just didn’t know what it could be that would take the Captain so long.

“He had a short name,” Lippy observed.

“It wasn’t his full name,” Newt pointed out. He had stopped crying but he felt empty.

“What was the other one then?” Jasper asked.

“It was Josh.”

“Well, I swear,” Jasper said. “That’s a fine name. Starts with a J, like mine. We could have been calling him that all the time, if we’d known.”

Then they heard the sound of the hammer—it was the big hammer that they used for straightening the rims of the wagon wheels. Captain Call was hammering the long board deep into the dirt by the grave.

Augustus, who had sat by himself most of the day, walked over and squatted down by Newt, who sat a little way apart. He had been afraid he would start crying again and wanted a little privacy.

“Let’s go see what he wrote for old Deets,” Augustus said. “I’ve seen your father bury many a man, but I never saw him take this kind of pains.”

Newt hadn’t really been listening. He had just been sitting there, feeling numb. When he heard Augustus mention his father, the words sank into the numbness for a minute and didn’t affect him.

Then they did. “My what?” Newt asked.

“Your father,” Augustus said. “Your pa.”

Newt thought it an odd time for Mr. Gus to make a joke. The Captain wasn’t his pa. Perhaps Mr. Gus had been so affected by Deets’s death that he had gone a little crazy. Newt stood up. He thought it best just to ignore the remark—he didn’t want to embarrass Mr. Gus at such a time. The Captain was still hammering, driving the long board into the hard ground.

They walked down to the grave. Call had finished his hammering and stood resting. Two or three of the cowboys trailed back to the grave, a little tentative, not sure they were invited.

Captain Call had carved the words deeply into the rough board so that the wind and sand couldn’t quickly rub them out.

JOSH DEETS

SERVED WITH ME 30 YEARS. FOUGHT IN 21 ENGAGEMENTS WITH THE COMMANCHE AND KIOWA. CHERFUL IN ALL WEATHERS, NEVER SHERKED A TASK. SPLENDID BEHAVIOUR.

The cowboys came down one by one and looked at it in silence. Po Campo crossed himself. Augustus took something out of his pocket. It was the medal the Governor of Texas had given him for service on the border during the hard war years. Call had one too. The medal had a green ribbon on it, but the color had mostly faded out. Augustus made a loop of the ribbon and put the loop over the grave board and tied it tightly. Captain Call had walked away to put up the hammer. Augustus followed. Lippy, who had not cried all day, suddenly began to sob, tears running into his loose lip.

“I do wish I’d just stayed in Lonesome Dove,” he said, when he stopped crying.

91

THEY TRAILED THE HERD up the Powder River, whose water none of the cowboys liked. A few complained of stomach cramps and others said the water affected their bowel movements. Jasper Fant in particular had taken to watching his own droppings closely. They were coming out almost white, when any came out at all. It seemed an ominous sign.

“I’ve met ladies that wasn’t as finicky as you, Jasper,” Augustus said, but he didn’t bother to tease Jasper very hard. The whole camp was subdued by Deets’s death. They were not missing Deets so much, most of them, as wondering what fate awaited them in the north.

When they crossed the Powder they could see the Bighorn Mountains looming to the west—not really close, but close enough that anyone could see the snow on top of them. The nights began to be cold, and many of the hands began to regret the fact that they had not bought better coats in Ogallala when they had the opportunity.

The discussions around the campfire began to focus mainly on storms. Many of the hands had experienced plains northers and the occasional ice storm, but they were south Texas cowhands and had seldom seen snow. A few talked of loping over to the mountains to examine the snow at close range and see what it was like.

Newt had always been interested in snow, and looked at the mountains often, but in the weeks following Deets’s death he found it difficult to care much about anything, even snow. He didn’t pay much attention to the talk of storms, and didn’t really care if they all froze, herd and hands together.

Occasionally the strange remark Mr. Gus had made came back to him. He didn’t know what to make of it—the clear meaning had been that Captain Call was his father. It didn’t make sense to Newt. If the Captain had been his father, surely he would have mentioned it at some point in the last seventeen years.

At other times the question would have excited him, but under the circumstances he felt too dull to care much. Set beside the fact that Deets was gone, it didn’t seem to matter greatly.

Anyway, if Newt had wanted to question the Captain about it, he would have had a hard time catching him. The Captain took Deets’s job and spent his days ranging far ahead. Usually he only rode back to the herd about dark, to guide them to a bed-ground. Once during the day he had come back in a high lope to report that he had crossed the tracks of about forty Indians. The Indians had been heading northwest, the same direction they were heading.

For the next few days everyone was tense, expecting Indian attack. Several men took alarm at the sight of what turned out to be sagebrush or low bushes. No one could sleep at night, and even those hands who were not on guard spent much of the night checking and rechecking their ammunition. The Irishman was afraid to sing on night duty for fear of leading the Indians straight to them. In fact, night herding became highly unpopular with everyone, and instead of gambling for money men began to gamble over who took what watch. The midnight watch was the most unpopular. No one wanted to leave the campfire: the men who came in from the watches did so with profound relief, and the men who went out assumed they were going to their deaths. Some almost cried. Needle Nelson trembled so that he could barely get his foot in his stirrup. Jasper Fant sometimes even got off and walked when he was on the far side of the herd, reasoning that the Indians would be less likely to spot him if he was on foot.

But a week passed and they saw no Indians. The men relaxed a little. Antelope became more common, and twice they saw small groups of buffalo. Once the remuda took fright in the night; the next morning Call found the tracks of a cougar.

The country began to change slightly for the better. The grass improved, and occasionally there were clumps of trees and bushes along the river bed. It was still hot in the afternoon, but the mornings were crisp.

Finally Call decided to leave the valley of the Powder. He felt the threat of drought was over. The grass was thick and wavy and there were plenty of streams. Not long after leaving the Powder, they crossed Crazy Woman Creek. Every day it seemed there was more snow on the mountains. Traveling became comparatively easy, and the cattle regained most of the flesh they had lost on the hard drive.

Almost daily, from then on, Call saw Indian sign, but no Indians. It bothered him a little. He had fought Indians long enough not to underrate them, but neither did he exaggerate their capacities. Talk of Indians was never accurate, in his view. It always made them seem worse or better than they were. He preferred to judge the northern Indians with his own eyes, but in this case the Indians didn’t oblige him.

“We’re driving three thousand cattle,” Call said. “They’re bound to notice us.”

“They ain’t expecting cattle,” Augustus said. “There’s never been cattle here before. They’re probably just out hunting, trying to lay in enough meat to last them the winter.”

“I guess we’ll meet soon enough,” Call said.

“If not too soon. They may come biling out of them hills and wipe us out any day. Then they’d have enough meat to last the winter. They’d be rich Indians, and we’d be dead fools.”

“Fools for doing what?” Call asked. “This country’s looking better all the time.”

“Fools for living the lives we’ve lived,” Augustus said.

“I’ve enjoyed mine,” Call said. “What was wrong with yours?”

“I should have married again,” Augustus said. “Two wives ain’t very many. Solomon beat me by several hundred, although I’ve got the same equipment he had. I could have managed eight or ten at least. I don’t know why I stuck with this scraggly old crew.”

“Because you didn’t have to work, I guess,” Call said. “You sat around, and we worked.”

“I was working in my head, you see,” Augustus said. “I was trying to figure out life. If I’d had a couple more fat women to lay around with I might have figured out the puzzle.”

“I never understood why you didn’t stay in Tennessee, if your family was rich,” Call said.

“Well, it was tame, that’s why,” Augustus said. “I didn’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer, and there wasn’t nothing else to do in those parts. I’d rather go outlaw than be a doctor or a lawyer.”

The next day, as they were trailing along a little stream that branched off Crazy Woman Creek, Dish Boggett’s horse suddenly threw up its head and bolted. Dish was surprised and embarrassed. It had been a peaceful morning, and he was half asleep when he discovered he was in a runaway, headed back for the wagon. He sawed on the reins with all his might but the bit seemed to make no difference to the horse.

The cattle began to turn too, all except the Texas bull, who let out a loud bellow.

Call saw the runaway without seeing what caused it at first. He and Augustus were riding along together, discussing how far west they ought to go before angling north again.

“Reckon that horse ate loco weed or what?” Call asked, spurring up to go help hold the cattle. He almost went over the mare’s neck, for he leaned forward, expecting her to break into a lope, and the mare stopped dead. It was a shock, for she had been quite obedient lately and had tried no tricks.

“Call, look,” Augustus said.

There was a thicket of low trees along the creek, and a large, orangish-brown animal had just come out of the thicket.

“My lord, it’s a grizzly,” Call said.

Augustus didn’t have time to reply, for his horse suddenly began to buck. All the cowhands were having trouble with their mounts. The horses were turning and running as if they meant to run back to Texas. Augustus, riding a horse that hadn’t bucked in several years, was almost thrown.

Instead of fleeing, most of the cattle turned and looked at the bear. The Texas bull stood all by himself in front of the herd.

Call drew his rifle and tried to urge the Hell Bitch a little closer, but had no luck. She moved, but she moved sideways, always keeping her eyes fixed on the bear, though it was a good hundred and fifty yards away. No matter how he spurred her, the mare sidestepped, as if there were an invisible line on the prairie that she would not cross.

“Damnation, there goes the grub,” Augustus said. He had managed to subdue his mount.

Call looked and saw that the mules were dashing off back toward the Powder, Lippy sawing futilely on the reins and bouncing a foot off the wagon seat from time to time.

“Captain, it’s a bear,” Dish Boggett said. He had managed to turn his horse in a wide circle, but he couldn’t stop him and he yelled the words as he raced past.

There was confusion everywhere. The remuda was running south, carrying the Spettle boy along with it. Two or three of the men had been thrown and their mounts were fleeing south. The thrown cowhands, expecting to die any minute, though they had no idea what was attacking, crept around with their pistols drawn.

“I expect they’ll start shooting one another right off,” Augustus said. “They’ll mistake one another for outlaws if they ain’t stopped.”

“Go stop them,” Call said. He could do nothing except watch the bear and hold the mare more or less in place. So far, the bear had done nothing except stand on its hind legs and sniff the air. It was a very large bear, though; to Call it looked larger than a buffalo.

“Hell, I don’t care if they shoot at one another,” Augustus said. “None of them can hit anything. I doubt we’ll lose many.”

He studied the bear for a time. The bear was not making any trouble, but he apparently had no intention of moving either. “I doubt that bear has ever seen a brindle bull before,” Augustus said. “He’s a mite surprised, and you can’t blame him.”

“Dern, that’s a bit big bear,” Call said.

“Yes, and he put the whole outfit to flight just by walking up out of the creek,” Augustus said.

Indeed, the Hat Creek outfit was in disarray, the wagon and the remuda still fleeing south, half the hands thrown and the other half fighting their horses. The cattle hadn’t run yet, but they were nervous. Newt had been thrown sky-high off the sorrel Clara had given him and had landed painfully on his tailbone. He started to limp back to the wagon, only to discover that the wagon was gone. All that was left of it was Po Campo, who looked puzzled. He was too short to see over the cattle and had no idea there was a bear around.

“Is it Indians?” Newt asked. He had not yet seen the bear either.

“I don’t know what it is,” Po Campo said. “But it’s something mules don’t like.”

Only the two pigs were relatively undisturbed. A sack of potatoes had bounced out of the fleeing wagon and the pigs were calmly eating them, grunting now and then with satisfaction.

The Texas bull was the only animal directly facing the bear. The bull let out a challenging bellow and began to paw the earth. He took a few steps forward and pawed the earth again, throwing clouds of dust above his back.

“You don’t think that little bull is fool enough to charge that bear, do you?” Augustus asked. “Charging Needle Nelson is one thing. That bear’ll turn him wrong side out.”

“Well, if you want to go rope that bull and lead him to the barn, help yourself,” Call said. “I can’t do nothing with this horse.”

The bull trotted forward another few steps and stopped again. He was no more than thirty or forty yards from the bear. The bear dropped on all fours, watching the bull. He growled a rough, throaty growl that caused a hundred or so cattle to scatter and run back a short distance. They stopped again to watch. The bull bellowed and slung a string of slobber over his back. He was hot and angry. He pawed the earth again, then lowered his head and charged the bear.

To the amazement of all who saw it, the bear batted the Texas bull aside. He rose on his hind legs again, dealt the bull a swipe with his forepaw that knocked the bull off its feet. The bull was up in a second and charged the bear again—this time it seemed the bear almost skinned him. He hit the bull on the shoulder and ripped a capelike piece of skin loose on his back, but despite that, the bull managed to drive into the bear and thrust a horn into his flank. The bear roared and dug his teeth into the bull’s neck, but the bull was still moving, and soon bear and bull were rolling over and over in the dust, the bull’s bellows and the bear’s roar so loud that the cattle did panic and begin to run. The Hell Bitch danced backward, and Augustus’s horse began to pitch again and threw him, though Augustus held the rein and managed to get his rifle out of the scabbard before the horse broke free and fled. Then Call found himself thrown too; the Hell Bitch, catlike, had simply doubled out from under him.

It came at an inopportune moment too, for the bull and the bear, twisting like cats, had left the creek bank and were moving in the direction of the herd, although the dust the battle raised was so thick no one could see who had the advantage. It seemed to Call, when he looked, that the bull was being ripped to pieces by the bear’s teeth and claws, but at least once the bull knocked the bear backward and got a horn into him again.

“Reckon we ought to shoot?” Augustus said. “Hell, this outfit will run clean back to the Red River if this keeps up.”

“If you shoot, you might hit the bull,” Call said. “Then we’d have to fight the bear ourselves, and I ain’t sure we can stop him. That’s a pretty mad bear.”

Po Campo came up, holding his shotgun, Newt a few steps behind him. Most of the men had been thrown and were watching the battle tensely, clutching their guns.

The sounds the two animals made were so frightening that they made the men want to run. Jasper Fant wanted badly to run—he just didn’t want to run alone. Now and then he would see the bear’s head, teeth bared, or his great claws slashing; now and then he would see the bull seem to turn to bunched muscle as he tried to force the bear backward. Both were bleeding, and in the heat the blood smell was so strong that Newt almost gagged.

Then it stopped. Everyone expected to see the bull down—but the bull wasn’t down. Neither was the bear. They broke apart, circling one another in the dust. Everyone prepared to pour bullets into the bear if he should charge their way, but the bear didn’t charge. He snarled at the bull, the bull answering with a slobbery bellow. The bull turned back toward the herd, then stopped and faced the bear. The bear rose on his hind legs again, still snarling—one side was soaked with blood. To the men, the bear seemed to tower over them, although fifty yards away. In a minute he dropped back on all fours, roared once more at the bull, and disappeared into the brush along the creek.