Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

Indeed, that proved the case, although they were rather smelly and a little too familiar to suit Newt. They smelled like the lard Bolivar had used on his hair. They crowded right around him, several of them talking to him in words he couldn't understand. All of them were armed with old rifles. The rifles looked in bad repair, but they would have sufficed to kill him if that had been what the Indians wanted to do. Newt was sure they would want the cattle, for they were as skinny as the first bunch of Indians.

He began to try and work out in his mind how many he could let them have without risking dishonor. If they wanted them all, of course, he would just have to fight and be killed, for he could never face the Captain if he had been responsible for the loss of fifty head. But if they could be bought off with two or three, that was different.

Sure enough, a little, short Indian began to point at the cattle. He jabbered a lot, and Newt assumed he was saying he wanted them all.

" No sabe ," he said, thinking maybe some of the Indians knew Mexican. But the little short Indian just kept jabbering and pointing west. Newt didn't know what to make of that. Meanwhile the others crowded around, not being mean exactly, but being familiar, fingering his hat and his rope and his quirt, and generally making it difficult for him to think clearly. One even lifted his pistol out of its holster, and Newt's heart nearly stopped. He expected to be shot with his own gun and felt foolish for allowing it to be taken so easily. But the Indians merely passed it around for comment and then stuck it back in the holster. Newt smiled at them, relieved. If they would give him his gun back, they couldn't mean to harm him.

But he shook his head when they pointed at the cattle. He thought they wanted to take the cattle and go west. When he shook his head, it caused a big laugh. The Indians seemed to think everything he did was pretty comical. They jabbered and pointed to the west, laughing, and then, to his dismay, three of them began to whoop at the cattle and got them started west. It seemed they were just going to take them. Newt felt sick with confusion. He knew the point had been reached when he ought to draw his pistol and try to stop it, but he couldn't seem to do it. The fact that the Indians were laughing and seemed friendly made it difficult. How shoot people who were laughing? Maybe the Captain could have, but the Captain wasn't there.

The Indians motioned for him to come with them, and, very reluctantly, Newt went. He felt he ought to make a break for it, go find the cowboys and get them to help him reclaim the sixty head. Of course the Indians might shoot him if he ran, but what really stopped him was the fact that he had no idea where the rest of the boys were. He might just charge off and be lost for good.

So, with a sinking heart, he slowly followed the five Indians and the cattle. At least he wasn't deserting by doing that. He was still with the cattle, for what it was worth.

Before he had gone a mile or two he wished he had thought of another alternative. The plains had always seemed empty, and somehow, with the grass chewed off and him captured by Indians, they seemed even more empty. He began to remember all the stories he had heard about how tricky Indians were and decided these were just laughing to trick him. Probably they had a camp nearby, and when they got there they might stop laughing and butcher him and the cattle both. The surprising thing was how young they were. None of them looked army older than Ben Rainey.

Then they rode over a ridge so low it hardly seemed like a ridge, and there was the herd and the cowboys too. They were two or three miles away, but it was them-he could even see the wagon. Instead of stealing him, the Indians had just been keeping him from getting lost, for he had been angling off in the wrong direction. He realized then that the young Indians were laughing because he was so dumb he didn't even know which way his own cattle were. He didn't blame them. Now that he was safe, he felt like laughing too. He wanted to thank the Indians, but he didn't know their words. All he could do was smile at them.

Then Dish Boggett and Soupy Jones rode over to help him hurry the cattle along. Their clothes had little holes in them where the grasshoppers had nibbled through.

"It's a good thing they found you, we ain't had time to look," Soupy said. "If we'd gone on north, it would he sixty miles to water, the Indians say. Most of these cattle wouldn't make no sixty miles."

"Nor most of these men, either," Dish said.

"Did the grasshoppers hurt anybody?" Newt asked, still amazed that such a thing could happen.

"No, but they ruint my Sunday shirt," Soupy said. "Jasper's horse spooked and he got thrown and claims his collarbone might be broken, but Deets and Po don't think so."

"I hope Lorie didn't suffer," Dish said. "Their horses could have spooked. They might be afoot and a long way from grub."

"I suppose you'd like to go check on their safety?" Soupy said.

"Somebody ought," Dish said.

"Ask the Captain," Soupy said. "I expect he'll want to assign you the chore."

Dish thought otherwise. Already the Captain was looking at him as if he expected him to rush back to the point, although the cattle were moving along fine.

"You ask him, Newt," Dish said.

"Newt?" Soupy said. "Why, Newt was just lost himself. If he went looking for Gus he'd just be lost again."

"Ask him, Newt," Dish said again, with such intensity that Newt knew he had to do it. He knew it meant Dish trusted him a lot to ask such a thing of him.

The Captain was talking in sign to ten or twelve young Indians. Then the Indians went over to the herd and cut out three beeves. Newt rode over, feeling foolish. He didn't want to ask the Captain, but on the other hand he couldn't ignore Dish's request.

"Do you think I ought to go check on Mr. Gus?" Newt asked. "The boys think they might be in trouble." Call noticed how nervous the boy seemed and sensed that somebody had put him up to asking the question.

"No, we better all drive," he said. "Gus had a tent. I imagine he's happy as a badger. They're probably just sitting there playing cards."

It was what he had expected, but Newt still felt chastened as he turned back to the drags. He felt he would never learn to say the right thing to the Captain.

ALMOST AT ONCE, before the group even got out of Texas, Jake had cause to regret that he had ever agreed to ride with the Suggs brothers. The first night he camped with them, not thirty miles north of Dallas, he heard talk that frightened him. The boys were discussing two outlaws who were in jail in Fort Worth, waiting to hang, and Dan Suggs claimed it was July Johnson who had brought them in. The robbers had put out the story that July was traveling with a young girl who could throw rocks better than most men could shoot.

"I'd like to see her throw rocks better than Frog can shoot," Roy Suggs said. "I guess Frog could cool her off."

Frog Lip didn't say much. He was a black man, but Jake didn't notice anyone giving him many orders. Little Eddie Suggs cooked the supper, such as it was, while Frog Lip sat idle, not even chopping wood for the fire. The horse he rode was the best in the group, a white gelding. It was unusual to see a bandit who used a white horse, for it made him stand out in a group. Frog Lip evidently didn't care.

"We oughta go get them boys out of jail," Roy Suggs said. "They might make good regulators."

"If a girl and one sheriff can take 'em, I wouldn't want 'em," Dan Suggs said. "Besides, I had some trouble with Jim once, myself. I'd go watch him hang, if I had time, damn him."

Their talk, it seemed, was mostly of killing. Even little Eddie, the youngest, claimed to have killed three men, two nesters and a Mexican. The rest of the outfit didn't mention numbers, but Jake had no doubt that he was riding with accomplished killers. Dan Suggs seemed to hate everybody he knew-he spoke in the vilest language of everyone, but his particular hatred was cowboys. He had trailed a herd once and not done well with it, and it had left him resentful of those with better luck.