Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

As the sun lit the grass, he rode east along the road of buffalo bones.

MONKEY JOHN HATED IT that she wouldn't talk. "By God, I'll cut your tongue out if you ain't gonna use it," he said once, and he knocked her down and sat on her, his big knife an inch from her face, until Dog Face threatened to shoot him if he didn't let her be. Lorena expected him to do it. He was the worst man she had ever known, worse even than Ermoke and the Kiowas, though they were bad enough. She shut her eyes, expecting to feel the knife, but Dog Face cocked his pistol and Monkey John didn't cut her. He continued to sit on her chest though, arguing with Dog Face about her silence.

"What do you care if she talks?" Dog Face said. "I wouldn't talk to you either, you goddamn old runt."

"She can talk, goddamn her," Monkey John said. "Duck said she talked to him."

"It's her business if she don't want to talk," Dog Face insisted. He was a thin scarecrow of a man, but he had crazy eyes, and Monkey John never pushed him too far.

"By God, we bought her," Monkey John said. "Give all them hides for her. She oughta do what we say."

"You get your damn money's worth," Dog Face said. "Most of them hides was mine anyway.

"You old runt," he added.

Monkey John was old and short. His hair was a dirty white and he was under five feet, but that didn't keep him from being mean. Twice he had grabbed sticks out of the fire and beat her with them. There was nothing she could do but curl up as tight as she could. Her back and legs were soon burned and bruised and she knew Monkey John would do worse than that if he ever got her alone long enough, but Dog Face owned half of her and he stuck close to be sure his investment didn't get too damaged.

Though she had seen Dog Face and Monkey John give Blue Duck the skins in trade for her, it seemed they weren't full owners, for whenever the Kiowas showed up, every two or three days, they drug her off to their camp for their share, and the two white men didn't try to stop them. There was no love lost between the white men and the Kiowas, but both sides were too afraid of Blue Duck to get into it with one another.

Blue Duck was the only man of the bunch who seemed to take no interest in her. He had stolen her to sell, and he had sold her. It was clear that he didn't care what they did to her. When he was in camp he spent his time cleaning his gun or smoking and seldom even looked her way. Monkey John was bad, but Blue Duck still scared her more. His cold, empty eyes frightened her more than Monkey John's anger or Dog Face's craziness. Blue Duck had scared the talk completely out of her. She had never been much for talk, but her silence in the camp was different from her old silence. In Lonesome Dove she had often hidden her words, but she could find them if she needed them; she had brought them out quick enough when Jake came along.

Now speech had left her; fear took its place. The two white men talked constantly of killing. Blue Duck didn't talk about it, but she knew he could do it whenever it pleased him. She didn't expect to live to the end of any day-only the fact that the men weren't tired of her yet kept her alive. When they did tire they would kill her. She thought about how it would happen but couldn't picture it in her mind. She only hoped it wasn't Blue Duck that finally did it. She was so dirty and stank so that it seemed strange the men would even want to use her, but of course they were even dirtier and stank worse. They camped not far from a creek, but none of the men ever washed. Monkey John told her several times what he would do to her if she tried to run away-terrible things, on the order of what Blue Duck had threatened, on the morning after he kidnapped her, only worse if possible. He said he would sew her up with rawhide threads so tight she couldn't make water and then would watch her till she burst.

Lorena tried to shut her mind when he talked like that. She knew the trick of not talking, and was learning not to hear. At night she wondered sometimes if she could just learn to die. She wanted to, and imagined how angry they would be if they woke up one morning and she was dead so they could get no more from her.

But she couldn't learn that trick. She thought of being dead, but she didn't die, and she didn't try to escape either. She didn't know where she was, for the plains stretched around, empty and bare, as far as she could see. They had horses and they would catch her and do something to her, or else give her to the Kiowas. Monkey John threatened that too, describing what the Kiowas would do if they got the chance. At night that was mostly what the men talked about-what the Indians did to people they caught. She believed it. Often with the Kiowas she felt a deep fright come over her. They did what they wanted with her but it wasn't enough-she could see them looking at her after they finished, and the looks made her more scared even than the things Monkey John threatened. The Kiowas just looked, but there was something in their looks that made her wish she could be dead and not have to think about it.

Blue Duck came and went. Some days he would be there at the camp, sharpening his knife. Other days he would ride off. Sometimes the Kiowas went with him, other days they sat around their camp doing nothing. Monkey John swore at them, but the Kiowas didn't listen. They laughed at the old man and gave him looks of the sort they gave Lorena. It wasn't only women they could do things to.

One day the Kiowas found a crippled cow, left by some herd. The cow had a split hoof and could barely hobble along on three legs. The Kiowas poked it with their lances and got it in sight of camp. Then one hit it in the head with an ax and the cow fell dead. The Kiowas split open the cow's stomach and began to pull out her guts. They sliced off strips of the white guts and squeezed out what was in them, eating it greedily. That's what he said he'd do to me, Lorena thought. Pull out my guts like that cow.

"Look at them dern gut eaters," Dog Face said. "I'd be derned if I'd eat guts raw."

"You might if you was hungry," Monkey John said.

"They ain't hungry, they got the whole cow," Dog Face pointed out.

If there was hope for her, Lorena knew it lay with Dog Face. He was rough and crazy, but he wasn't hard like the old man. He might cuff her if she disappointed him, but he didn't beat her with hot sticks or kick her stomach like the old man did. At times she caught Dog Face looking at her in a friendly way. He was getting so he didn't like Monkey John to hurt her or even touch her. He was cautious about what he said, for the old man would flare up in an instant, but when Monkey John bothered her, Dog Face got restless and would often take his gun and leave the camp. Monkey John didn't care-he played with her roughly whether anyone was in camp or not.

One night Blue Duck rode in from one of his mysterious trips with some whiskey, which he dispensed freely both to the two white men and to the Kiowas. Blue Duck drank with them, but not much, whereas in an hour Monkey John, Dog Face and the Kiowas were very drunk. It was a hot night but they built a big campfire and sat around it, passing the bottle from hand to hand.

Lorena began to feel frightened. Blue Duck had not so much as looked at her, but she felt something was about to happen. He had several bottles of whiskey, and as soon as the men finished one he handed them another. Monkey John was particularly sloppy when he drank. The whiskey ran out of the corners of his mouth and into his dirty beard. Once he stood up and made water without even turning his back.

"You could go off aways," Dog Face said. "I don't want to sit in your piss."

The old man continued to make water, most of it hitting the campfire and making a spitting sound, but some splattering on the ground near where Dog Face sat.