Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

Call turned the Hell Bitch loose in the nemuda and came back to the cook wagon. Augustus was eating a beefsteak and a big plate of beans.

"Is this cook you hired a Mexican?" Augustus asked.

Call nodded. "I don't like sending that boy off to sit up with a whore," he said.

"He's young and innocent," Augustus said. "That's why I picked him. He'll just moon over her a little. If I'd sent one of the full-grown rowdies, Jake might have come back and shoot him. I doubt he'd shoot Newt."

"I doubt he'll even come back, myself," Call said. "That girl ought to have stayed in Lonesome Dove."

"If you was a young girl, with life before you, would you want to settle in Lonesome Dove?" Augustus asked. "Maggie done it, and look how long she lasted."

"She might have died anyplace," Call said. "I'll die someplace, and so will you-it might not be no better place than Lonesome Dove."

"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's living," Augustus said. "I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live."

Call got up and went to catch his night horse. Without thinking, he caught the Hell Bitch again, though he had just turned her loose. One of the Spettle boys looked at him curiously and said nothing. Call saddled the Hell Bitch anyway and rode around the herd to see that all was in place. The cattle were calm, most of them already bedded down. Needle Nelson, perennially sleepy, dozed in his saddle.

In the fading light, Call saw a horseman coming. It was Deets, which made him feel better. More and more it seemed Deets was the one man in the outfit he could have a comfortable word with from time to time. Gus turned every word into an argument. The other men were easy to talk to, but they didn't know anything. If one stopped to think about it, it was depressing how little most men learned in their lifetimes. Pea Eye was a prime example. Though loyal and able and brave, Pea had never displayed the slightest ability to learn from his experience, though his experience was considerable. Time and again he would walk up on the wrong side of a horse that was known to kick, and then look surprised when he got kicked.

Deets was different. Deets observed, he remembered; rarely would he volunteer advice, but when asked, his advice was always to the point. His sense of weather was almost as good as an Indian's, and he was a superlative tracker.

Call waited, anxious to know where Blue Duck had gone, or whether it had really been him. "What's the news?" he asked.

Deets looked solemn. "I lost him," he said. "He went southeast about ten miles. Then I lost him. He went into a creek and never came out."

"That's odd," Call said. "You think it was Blue Duck?"

"Don't know, Captain," Deets said.

"Do you think he's gone, then?" Call asked.

Deets shook his head. "Don't think so, Captain," he said. "We better watch the horses."

"Dern," Call said. "I thought we might have a peaceful night for once."

"Full moon coming," Deets said. "We can spot him if he bothers us tonight."

They sat together and watched the moon rise. Soon it shed a pale, cool light over the bed-grounds. The Texas bull began to low. He was across the herd, in the shadows, but in the still air his lowing carried far across the little valley, echoing off the limestone bluffs to the west.

"Well, go get some grub," Call said to Deets. "I'm going over to them bluffs. He might have a gang or he might not. You get between our camp and Jake's camp so you can help if he comes for the girl. Be watchful."

He loped over to the bluffs, nearly a mile away, picked his way to the top and spread his bedroll on the bluff's edge. In the clean night, with the huge moon, he could see far across the bedded herd, see the bright wick of the campfire, blocked occasionally when someone led a horse across in front of it.

Behind him the mare kicked restlessly at the earth for a moment as if annoyed, and then began to graze.

Call got his rifle out of the scabbard and cleaned it, though it was in perfect order. Sometimes the mere act of cleaning a gun, an act he had performed thousands of times, would empty his mind of jarring thoughts and memories-but this time it didn't work. Gus had jarred him with mention of Maggie, the bitterest memory of his life. She had died in Lonesome Dove some twelve years before, but the memory had lost none of its salt and sting, for what had happened with her had been unnecessary and was now uncorrectable. He had made mistakes in battle and led men to their deaths, but his mind didn't linger on those mistakes; at least the battles had been necessary, and the men soldiers. He could feel that he had done as well as any man could have, given the raw conditions of the frontier.

But Maggie had not been a fighting man-just a needful young whore, who had for some reason fixed on him as the man who could save her from her own mistakes. Gus had known her first, and Jake, and many other men, whereas he had only visited her out of curiosity to find out what it was that he had heard men talk and scheme about for so long. It turned out not to be much, in his view-a brief, awkward experience, where the pleasure was soon drowned in embarrassment and a feeling of sadness. He ought not to have gone back twice, let alone a third time, yet something drew him back-not so much the need of his own flesh as the helplessness and need of the woman. She had such frightened eyes. He never met her in the saloon but came up the back stairs, usually after dark; she would be standing just inside the door waiting, her face anxious. Some weakness in him brought him back every few nights, for two months on more. He had never said much to her, but she said a lot to him. She had a small, quick voice, almost like a child's. She would talk constantly, as if to cover his embarrassment at what they had met to do. Some nights he would sit for half an hour, for he came to like her talk, though he had long since forgotten what she had said. But when she talked, her face would relax for a while, her eyes lose their fright. She would clasp his hand while she talked-one night she buttoned his shirt. And when he was ready to leave-always a needto leave, to be away, would come over him-she would look at him with fright in her face again, as if she had one more thing to say but couldn't say it.

"What is it?" he asked one night, turning at the top of the stairs. It was as if her need had pulled the question out of him.

"Can't you just say my name?" she asked. "Can't you just say it once?"

The question so took him by surprise that it was the one thing of all those she had said that stayed with him through the years. Why was it important that he say her name?

"Why, yes," he said, puzzled. "Your name's Maggie."

"But you don't never say it," she said. "You don't never call me nothin'. I just wish you'd say it once when you come."

"I don't know what that would amount to," he said honestly.

Maggie sighed. "I'd just feel happy if you did," she said. "I'd just feel so happy."

Something in the way she said it had disturbed him terribly. She looked as if she would cry or nun down the stairs after him. He had seen despair in men and women, but had not expected to see it in Maggie on that occasion. Yet despair was what he saw.

Two nights later he had started to go to her again, but stopped himself. He had taken his gun and walked out of Lonesome Dove to the Comanche crossing and sat the night. He never went to see Maggie again, though once in a while he might see her on the street. She had had the boy, lived four years, and died. According to Gus she had stayed drunk most of her last year. She had gotten thick with Jake for a spell, but then Jake left.

Over all those years, he could still remember how her eyes fixed on him hopefully when he entered, on when he was ready to leave. It was the most painful part of the memory-he had not asked her to care for him that much, yet she had. He had only asked to buy what other men had bought, but she had singled him out in a way he had never understood.