Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

"Oh," July said, embarrassed. He had even forgotten he was waiting for someone named Jennie.

"We could get going, even if you ain't the right cowboy," Jennie said. "If you can afford that much whiskey you can afford me. You could even buy me a drink if you felt polite."

July had never in his life bought a woman a drink, or even sat with a woman who liked to drink. Any other time such an invitation would have shocked him, but in this case it just made him feel that his manners weren't all they should be. Jennie had huge brown eyes, too large for her thin face. She was looking at him impatiently.

"Yes, have a drink," he said. "I'm running up a bill."

Jennie sat down and waved at the bartender, who immediately appeared with a bottle. "This one's drinking like a fish," he said cheerfully. "I guess it's been a long, dry trail."

July suddenly remembered why he was waiting to see the girl named Jennie.

"Did you know Ellie?" he asked. "I heard you knowed her."

It was Jennie's turn to be surprised. Elmira had been her best friend for three years, and she hardly expected a drunken young cowboy to mention her name.

"You mean Ellie Tims?" she asked.

"Yes," July said. "That's the Ellie. I was hoping you had news of her. I don't know where she is."

"Well, she moved to Missouri," Jennie said. "Then we heard she married a sheriff from Arkansas, but I didn't put no stock in that kind of rumor. I can't imagine Ellie staying married to no sheriff."

"She didn't," July said. "She run off while I was was chasing Jake Spoon, and I got three people killed since I started looking for her."

Jennie looked at the young man more closely. She had noticed right off that he was drunk, but drunks were an everyday sight and she had not looked close. The man seemed very young, which is why she had taken him for a cowboy. They were mostly just boys. But this man didn't have the look of a cowboy once she looked close. He had a solemn face and sad eyes, the saddest she had looked into for a while. On the basis of the eyes he was an unlikely man for Ellie to have married-Ellie liked her laughs. But then people often did unlikely things.

"Are you a sheriff?" she asked, sipping the whiskey Sam had poured.

"I was," July said. "I'm most likely going to have to give it up."

"Why do that?" Jennie asked.

"I ain't a good fighter," July said. "I can crack a drunk on the head and get him to jail, but I ain't really a good fighter. When we rode into that camp, the man with me killed six or seven men and I never killed a one. I went off and left Roscoe and the others and they got killed before I could get back. It was only Jake Spoon I went to catch, but I made a mess of it. I don't want to be a sheriff now."

He had not expected such words to rush out-he had suddenly lost control of his speech somehow.

Jennie had not expected it either. She sipped her whiskey and watched him.

"They say Ellie left on a whiskey boat," July said. "I don't know why she would have done it, but that's what they say. Roscoe thought a bear might have got her, but they didn't see no tracks."

"What's your name?" Jennie asked.

"July Johnson," he said, glad that she was no longer looking at him quite so impatiently.

"It sounds like Ellie to me," Jennie said. "When Ellie gets enough of a place, she jumps in the first wagon and goes. I remember when she went to Abilene I didn't have no idea she was even thinking of leaving, and then, before it was even time to go to work, she had paid some mule skinners to take her, and she was gone."

"I got to find her," July said simply.

"You come to the wrong town, mister," Jennie said. "She ain't in Dodge."

"Well, then I'll have to keep looking," July said.

He thought of the empty plains, which it seemed to him he had been lucky to get across. There seemed only the smallest chance that Ellie would have been so lucky.

"I fear she's dead," he said.

"She's hunting Dee, I'd say," Jennie said. "Did you know Dee?"

"Why, no," July said. "I was told he died of smallpox."

Jennie chuckled. "Dee ain't dead," she said. "He's in Ogallala. There's a gambler sitting right over there who seen him not two months ago."

"Where?" July asked, and Jennie pointed to a pudgy man in a white shirt and black coat who sat alone at a table, shuffling cards.

"That's Webster Witter," Jennie said. "He keeps up with Dee Boot. I used to but I quit."

"Why?" July asked. He sensed that it was a rather loose-tongued question, but the fact was, his tongue was out of control and behaving ever more loosely.

"It's like trying to keep up with a tumbleweed," Jennie said. "Dee wears out one town and then he's off to another. I ain't that way. I like to settle in. I been here in Dodge five years already and I guess this is where I'll stay."

"I don't know why she married me," July said. "I ain't got any idea about it."

Jennie looked at him for a bit. "Do you always drink like this?" she asked.

"No, I seldom drink," July said. "Though I do like toddy in the winter."

Jennie looked at him a while. "You ought to stop worrying about Ellie, mister," she said. "No man's ever been able to stop Ellie for long, not even Dee."

"She married me," July said. He felt he had to insist on that point.

"Well, I married Dee once, myself," Jennie said. "I just did it because he was good-looking. That and the fact that I was mad at somebody else. Ellie and me are a lot alike," she added.

July just looked at her sadly. Jennie sighed. She had not expected to encounter such misery in the middle of the afternoon.

"You're right good-looking," she said. "I expect that explains it. If I were you I'd start getting over it."

"I got to find her," July said. "I got to tell her about little Joe. He got killed on the Canadian."

"She oughtn't to had him," Jennie said. "I told her not to. I wouldn't have one for anything. I've had offers, too."

July drank two more whiskeys but had little more to say.

"Well, the bar's getting rich but I ain't," Jennie said. "Don't you want a little fun, to take your mind off it?"

It seemed to July that he was not so much sitting in the chair as floating in it. The world seemed kind of watery to him, but it was all right because he was easily able to float.

Jennie giggled, looking at him. "You sure are drunk, Mister Johnson," she said. "Let's go have a little fun. I always liked stealing Ellie's boys and here I've got a chance to steal her husband."

The way she giggled made July feel happy suddenly. He had not heard a woman giggle in a long time. Ellie never giggled. So he got up and followed Jennie up the stairs, walking carefully so as not to embarrass himself. He got upstairs all right, but before they could get to Jennie's room he began to feel wrong. His stomach began to float higher than he was. It began to float right out of his mouth.

Jennie had kept a close eye on him, and she quickly guided him to the outside stairs. July knelt down on the little landing and vomited over the edge. The next thing he knew he was lying flat on the landing, still vomiting. From time to time he quit vomiting and just lay there, but then he would start again, his body heaving upward like a bucking horse. He held to the rail of the landing with one hand so he wouldn't accidentally heave himself over. It was a bright day, the Kansas sun beating down, but July felt like he was in darkness. Cowboys rode up and down the street below him-once in a while one would hear him vomiting and look up and laugh. Wagons went by, and the drivers didn't even look up. Once, while he was resting two cowboys stopped and looked at him.

"I guess we ought to rope him and drag him to the graveyard," one said. "He looks dead to me."

"Hell, I wish all I had to do was lay on them stairs and vomit," the other cowboy said. "It beats loading them longhorns."