Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

She longed, sometimes, to talk to a person who actually wrote stories and had them printed in magazines. It interested her to speculate how it was done: whether they used people they knew, or just made people up. Once she had even ordered some big writing tablets, thinking she might try it anyway, even if she didn't know how, but that was in the hopeful years before her boys died. With all the work that had to be done she never actually sat down and tried to write anything-and then the boys died and her feeling changed. Once the sight of the writing tablets had made her hopeful, but after those deaths it ceased to matter. The tablets were just another reproach to her, something willful she had wanted. She burned the tablets one day, trembling with anger and pain, as if the paper and not the weather had been somehow responsible for the deaths of her boys. And, for a time, she stopped reading the magazines. The stories in them seemed hateful to her: how could people talk that way and spend their time going to balls and parties, when children died and had to be buried?

But a few years passed, and Clara went back to the stories in the magazines. She loved to read aloud, and she read snatches of them to her daughters as soon as they were big enough to listen. Bob didn't particularly like it, but he tolerated it. No other woman he knew read as much as his wife, and he thought it might be the cause of certain of her vanities: the care she took with her hair, for instance, washing it every day and brushing it. To him it seemed a waste-hair was just hair.

As Clara watched the wagon the girls had spotted drawing closer, she saw Cholo come riding in with two mares who were ready to foal. Cholo had seen the wagon too, and had come to look after her. fle was a cautious old man, as puzzled by Clara as he was devoted to her. It was her recklessness that disturbed him. She was respectful of dangerous horses, but seemed to have no fear at all of dangerous men. She laughed when Cholo tried to counsel her. She was not even afraid of Indians, though Cholo had showed her the scars of the arrow wounds he had suffered.

Now he penned the mares and loped over to be sure she wasn't threatened by whoever was coming in the wagon. They kept a shotgun in the saddle shed, but Clara only used it to kill snakes, and she only killed snakes because they were always stealing her eggs. At times the hens seemed to her almost more trouble than they were worth, for they had to be protected constantly from coyotes, skunks, badgers, even hawks and eagles.

"I don't see but two men, Cholo," Clara said, watching the wagon.

"Two men is two too many if they are bad men," Cholo said.

"Bad men would have a better team," Clara said. "Find any colts?"

Cholo shook his head. His hair was white-Clara had never been able to get his age out of him, but she imagined he was seventy-five at least, perhaps eighty. At night by the fire, with the work done, Cholo wove horsehair lariats. Clara loved to watch the way his fingers worked. When a horse died or had to be killed, Cholo always saved its mane and tail for his ropes. He could weave them of rawhide too, and once had made one for her of buckskin, although she didn't rope. Bob had been puzzled by the gift-"Clara couldn't rope a post," he said-but Clara was not puzzled at all. She had been very pleased. It was a beautiful gift; Cholo had the finest manners. She knew he appreciated her as she appreciated him. That was the year she bought him the coat. Sometimes, reading her magazines, she would look up and see Cholo weaving a rope and imagine that if she ever did try to write a story she would write it about him. It would be very different from any of the stories she read in the English magazines. Cholo was not much like an English gentleman, but it was his gentleness and skill with horses, in contrast to Bob's incompetence, that made her want badly to encourage him to stay with them. He talked little, which would be a problem if she put him in a story-the people in the stories she read seemed to talk a great deal. He had been stolen as a child by Comanches and had gradually worked his way north, traded from one tribe to another, until he had escaped one day during a battle. Though he was an old man and had lived among Indians and whites his whole life, he still preferred to speak Spanish. Clara knew a little from her girlhood in Texas, and tried to speak it with him. At the sound of the Spanish words his wrinkled face would light up with happiness. Clara persuaded him to teach her girls. Cholo couldn't read, but he was a good teacher anyway-he loved the girls and would take them on rides, pointing at things and giving them their Spanish names.

Soon all the mares in the corral were pricking their ears and watching the approaching wagon. A big man in a coat heavier than Cholo's rode beside it on a little brown horse that looked as if it would drop if it had to carry him much farther. A man with a badly scarred face rode on the wagon seat, beside a woman who was heavy with child. The woman drove the team. All three looked so blank with exhaustion that even the sight of people, after what must have been a long journey, didn't excite them much. A few buffalo hides were piled in the wagon. Cholo watched the travelers carefully, but they didn't seem to pose a threat. The woman drew rein and looked down at them as if dazed.

"Are we to Nebraska yet?" she asked.

"Yes," Clara said. "It's nearly twenty miles to town. Won't you get down and rest?"

"Do you know Dee Boot?" the woman said. "I'm looking for him."

" Sí-pistolero ," Cholo said quietly. He did most of their shopping and knew practically everyone in Ogallala.

Elmira heard the word, and knew what it meant, but she didn't care what anybody called Dee-the fact that he was nearby was all that mattered. If Dee was near, it meant that she was safe and could soon be rid of Luke and Big Zwey, and not have to ride on the jolting wagon seat all day or be scared all night that they would run into Indians at the last minute.

"Get down-at least you'll want to water your stock," Clara said. "You're welcome to stay the night, if you like. You can easily make town tomorrow. I'd say you all could use a rest."

"What town would that be?" Luke asked, easing down from the wagon seat. He had twisted a leg several days before, running to try and get a better shot at an antelope-it was all he could do to walk.

Elmira didn't want to stop, even when told that it was still over half a day to Ogallala, but Zwey had already dismounted and unhitched the horses. I wish I could get to Dee, she thought-but then decided one more day wouldn't matter. She got slowly down from the wagon seat.

"Come on up to the house," Clara said. "I'll have the girls draw some water. I guess you've come a ways."

"Arkansas," Elmira said. The house didn't look very far away, but as they walked toward it, it seemed to wobble in her vision.

"My goodness, that is a ways," Clara said. "I lived in Texas once." Then she turned and saw that the woman was sitting on the ground. Before Clara could reach her she had toppled sideways and lay face up on the trail that led from the house to the barn.

Clara was not too alarmed. Just tired, she thought. A journey all the way from Arkansas, in a wagon like that, would wear anybody out. She fanned the woman's face for a while but it did no good. Cholo had seen the woman fall and he ran to her, but the big man lifted the Woman as easily as if she were a child and carried her to the house.

"I didn't get your name, or her name either," Clara said.

The big man just looked at her silently. Is he mute? Clara thought. But later the man with the scarred face came to the house and said no, the big man just didn't talk much. "Name's Zwey," he said. "Big Zwey. I'm Luke. I got my face bunged up coming, and now I hurt this dern leg. Her name's Elmira."