Lonely Dove
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Lonely Dove Chapter 25
JULY JOHNSON HAD BEENRAISED not to complain, so he didn’t complain, but the truth of the matter was, it had been the hardest year of his life: a year in which so many things went wrong that it was hard to know which trouble to pay attention to at any given time. His deputy, Roscoe Brown—forty-eight years of age to July’s twenty-four—assured him cheerfully that the increase in trouble was something he had better get used to. “Yep, now that you’ve turned twenty-four you can’t expect no mercy,” Roscoe said. “I don’t expect no mercy,” July said. “I just wish things would go wrong one at a time. That way I believe I could handle it.” “Well, you shouldn’t have got married then,” Roscoe said. It struck July as an odd comment. He and Roscoe were sitting in front of what passed for a jail in Fort Smith. It just had one cell, and the lock on that didn’t work—when it was necessary
Lonely Dove Chapter 24
IN THE LATE AFTERNOON they strung a rope corral around the remuda, so each hand could pick himself a set of mounts, each being allowed four picks. It was slow work, for Jasper Fant and Needle Nelson could not make up their minds. The Irishmen and the boys had to take what was left after the more experienced hands had chosen. Augustus did not deign to make a choice at all. “I intend to ride old Malaria all the way,” he said, “or if not I’ll ride Greasy.” Once the horses were assigned, the positions had to be assigned as well. “Dish, you take the right point,” Call said. “Soupy can take the left and Bert and Needle will back you up.” Dish had assumed that, as a top hand, he would have a point, and no one disputed his right, but both Bert and Needle were unhappy that Soupy had the other point. They had been with the outfit longer, and felt aggrieved. The Spettle boys were told to help Lippy with the horse herd, and Newt, the Raineys and the Irishmen were left with the drags. Call saw t
Lonely Dove Chapter 23
ALTHOUGH HE KNEW they wouldn’t leave until the heat of the day was over, Newt felt so excited that he didn’t miss sleep and could hardly eat. The Captain had made it final: they were leaving that day. He had told all the hands that they ought to see to their equipment; once they got on the trail, opportunities for repair work might be scarce. In fact, the advice only mattered to the better-equipped hands: Dish, Jasper, Soupy Jones and Needle Nelson. The Spettle brothers, for example, had no equipment at all, unless you called one pistol with a broken hammer equipment. Newt had scarcely more; his saddle was an old one and he had no slicker and only one blanket for a bedroll. The Irishmen had nothing except what they had been loaned. Pea seemed to think the only important equipment was his bowie knife, which he spent the whole day sharpening. Deets merely got a needle and some pieces of rawhide and sewed a few rawhide patches on his old quilted pants. When they saw Mr. Augustus ride u
Lonely Dove Chapter 22
WELL, I’M GOING TO MISS WANZ,” Augustus said, as he and Call were eating their bacon in the faint morning light. “Plus I already miss my Dutch ovens. You would want to move just as my sourdough got right at its prime.” “I’d like to think there’s a better reason for living in a place than you being able to cook biscuits,” Call said. “Though I admit they’re good biscuits.” “You ought to admit it, you’ve et enough of them,” Augustus said. “I still think we ought to just hire the town and take it with us. Then we’d have a good barkeep and someone to play the pianer.” With Call suddenly determined to leave that very day, Augustus found himself regretful, nostalgic already for things he hadn’t particularly cared for but hated to think of losing. “What about the well?” he asked. “Another month and we’d have it dug.” “We?” Call asked. “W
Lonely Dove Chapter 21
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, as the boys were sitting around Bolivar’s cook fire, getting their evening grub, Augustus looked up from his plate and saw Jake and Lorena ride into camp. They were riding two good horses and leading a pack horse. The most surprising thing was that Lorena was wearing pants. So far as he could remember, he had never seen a woman in pants, and he considered himself a man of experience. Call had his back turned and hadn’t seen them, but some of the cowboys had. The sight of a woman in pants scared them so bad they didn’t know where to put their eyes. Most of them began to concentrate heavily on the beans in their plates. Dish Boggett turned white as a sheet, got up without a word to anybody, got his night horse and started for the herd, which was strung out up the valley. It was Dish’s departure that got Call’s attention. He looked around and saw the couple coming. “Wegot you to thank for this,” he said to Gus. “I adm
Lonely Dove Chapter 20
JAKE AWOKEN long after dawn to find Lorena up before him. She sat at the foot of the bed, her face calm, watching the first red light stretch over the mesquite flats. He would have liked to sleep, to hide in sleep for several days, make no decisions, work no cattle, just drowse. But not even sleep was really under his control. The thought that he had to get up and leave town—with Lorie—was in the front of his mind, and it melted his drowsiness. For a minute or two he luxuriated in the fact that he was sleeping on a mattress. It might be a poor one stuffed with corn shucks, but it was better than he would get for the next several months. For months it would just be the ground, with whatever weather they happened to catch. He looked at Lorie for a minute, thinking that perhaps if he scared her with Indian stories she would change her mind. But when he raised up on one elbow to look at her in the fresh light, the urge to discourage her went away. It was a weakness, but he could not bea
Lonely Dove Chapter 19
THE MINUTE Jake stepped in the door of the Dry Bean Lorena saw that he was in a sulk. He went right over to the bar and got a bottle and two glasses. She was sitting at a table, piddling with a deck of cards. It was early in the evening and no one was around except Lippy and Xavier, which was a little surprising. Usually three or four of the Hat Creek cowboys would be there by that time. Lorena watched Jake closely for a few minutes to see if she was the cause of his sulk. After all, she had sold Gus the poke that very afternoon—it was not impossible that Jake had found out, some way. She was not one who expected to get away with much in life. If you did a thing hoping a certain person wouldn’t find out, that person always did. When Gus tricked her and she gave him the poke, she was confident the matter would get back to Jake eventually. Lippy was only human, and things that happened to her got told and repeated. She didn’t exactly want Jake to know, but she
Lonely Dove CHAPTER 18
NEWT’S MIND had begun to dwell on the north for long stretches. Particularly at night, when he had nothing to do butride slowly around and around the herd, listening to the small noises the bedded cattle made, or the sad singing of theIrishmen, he thought of the north, trying to imagine what it must be like. He had grown up with the sun shining, withmesquite and chaparral, armadillos and coyotes, Mexicans and the shallow Rio Grande. Only once had he been to a city:San Antonio. Deets had taken him on one of his banking trips, and Newt had been in a daze from all there was to see.Once, too, he had gone with Deets and Pea to deliver a small bunch of horses to Matagorda Bay, and had seen the greatgray ocean. Then, too, he had felt dazed, staring at the world of water.But even the sight of the ocean had not stirred him so much as the thought of the north. All his life he had heard talk ofthe plains that had no end, and of Indian
Lonely Dove CHAPTER 17
AUGUSTUS RODE BACK to camp a little after sunset, thinking the work would have stopped by then. The cattle were beingheld in a long valley near the river, some five miles from town. Every night Call went across the river with five or six handsand came back with two or three hundred Mexican cattle—longhorns mostly, skinny as rails and wild as deer. Whateverthey got they branded the next day, with the part of the crew that had rested doing the hard end of the work. Only Callworked both shifts. If he slept, it was an hour or two before breakfast or after supper. The rest of the time he worked, andso far as anyone could tell the pace agreed with him. He had taken to riding the Hell Bitch two days out of three, and themare seemed no more affected by the work than he was.Bolivar had not taken kindly to being moved to a straggly camp out in the brush, with no dinner bell to whack or crowbarto whack it with. He kept his ten-gauge n
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