Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

"I'm feared you'll die," Lorena said.

Augustus chuckled. "Dern right, I'll die," he said. "What else worries you?"

"I'm feared you'll marry that woman," she said.

"I doubt it," Augustus said. "That woman had two or three chances to marry me already, and she didn't take them. She's an independent type, like you used to be."

That was so, Lorena reflected. She had been quite independent, but now all she could think of was keeping Gus. She wasn't ashamed, though. He was worth keeping.

"It's funny humans take to the daylight so," he said. "Lots of animals would rather work at night."

Lorena wanted him to want her. She knew he did want her, but he had none nothing. She didn't care about it, but if she could be sure that he still wanted her, then the dread of losing him might go away.

"Let's go in," she whispered, hoping he'd know what she meant. He immediately turned to her with a grin.

"My, my," he said. "Times do change. I remember when I had to cheat at cards to get a poke. We don't have to go in that old hot tent. I'll drag the bedding out here."

Lorena didn't care that the cowboys might see, or who might see. Gus had become her only concern. The rest of the world could watch out. But Gus merely hugged her and gave her a kiss. Then he held her tight all night, and when the sun woke her the herd was already gone.

"Did anybody see us?" she asked.

"If they did they're lucky," Augustus said. "They won't get too many chances to see such beauties as us."

He laughed and got up to make the coffee.

NEWT COULDN'T GET JAKE out of his mind-how he had smiled at the end and given him his horse. He rode the horse every third day and liked his gait so much that he soon became his favorite horse. Jake hadn't told him what the horse's name was, which worried Newt. A horse needed a name.

Jake's hanging had happened so quickly that it was hard to remember-it was like a terrible dream, of the kind you can only remember parts of. He remembered the shock it had been to see Jake with his hands tied, sitting on his horse with a noose around his neck. He remembered how tired Jake looked, too tired even to care that he was going to be hung. Also, nobody talked much. There should have been some discussion, it seemed to Newt. Jake might have had a good excuse for being there, but nobody even asked him for it.

Not only had no one talked at the hanging, no one had talked since, either. Captain Call kept well to himself, riding far from the herd all day and sleeping apart at night. Mr. Gus stayed back with Lorena, only showing up at mealtimes. Deets was very quiet when he was around, and he wasn't around much-he spent his days scouting far ahead of the herd, which was traveling easily. The Texas bull had assumed the lead position, passing Old Dog almost every day and only giving up the lead to go snort around the tails of whatever cows interested him. He had lost none of his belligerence. Dish, who rode the point, had come to hate him even more than Needle Nelson did.

"I don't know why we don't cut him," Dish said. "It's only a matter of time before he kills one of us."

"If he kills me he'll die with me," Needle said grimly.

Of course, all the hands were curious about Jake. They asked endless questions. The fact that the farmers had been burned puzzled them. "Do you think they was trying to make people think Indians did it?" Jasper asked.

"No, Dan Suggs just did it because he felt like it," Pea Eye said. "What's more, he hung 'em after they were already dead. Shot 'em, hung 'em, and then burned 'em."

"He must have been a hard case, that Dan," Jasper said. "I seen him once. He had them little squint eyes."

"I'm glad he never squinted them at me, if that's the way he behaves to white men," Needle said. "What was Jake doing with an outfit like that?"

"If you ask my opinion, that whore that Gus has got was Jake's downfall," Bert Borum volunteered.

"You can keep your damn opinion to yourself, if that's what you think," Dish said. He was as touchy as ever where Lorena was concerned.

"Just because you're in love with a whore don't mean I can't express my opinion," Bert countered.

"You can express it and I can knock your dern teeth down your throat for you," Dish said. "Lorie didn't make Jake Spoon into no criminal."

Bert had always considered that Dish had been awarded the tophand position unfairly, and he was not about to put up with such insolence from him. He took his gun belt off, and Dish did the same. They squared off, but didn't immediately proceed to fisticuffs. Each walked cautiously around the other, watching for an opening-their cautiousness provoked much jocularity in the onlookers.

"Look at them priss around," Needle Nelson said. "I used to have a rooster I'd match against either one of them."

"It'll be winter before they hit the first lick at this rate," Jasper said.

Dish finally leaped at Bert, but instead of boxing, the two men grappled and were soon rolling on the ground, neither gaining much of an advantage. Call had seen the men square off, and he loped over. When he got there they were rolling on the ground, both red in the face but doing one another no harm. He rode the Hell Bitch right up to them, and when they saw him they both stopped. He had it in his mind to dress them down, but the fact that the other hands were laughing at their ineffectual combat was probably all that was needed. Anyway, the men were natural rivals in ability and could be expected to puff up at some point. He turned and rode back out of camp without saying a word to them.

When he saw him go, Newt's heart sank. The Captain said less and less to him, or to anyone. Newt felt more and more of a need for Somebody to talk about Jake. He had been the Captain's friend, and Mr. Gus's. It didn't seem right that he could be killed and buried, and no more said.

It was Deets, finally, who understood and helped. Deets was good at mending things, and one night as he was mending Newt's bridle Newt said what was on his mind. "I wish we could at least have taken him to jail," Newt said.

"They'd hang him too," Deets said. "I 'spect he'd rather us did it."

"I wish we hadn't even come," Newt said. "It's just too many people dying. I didn't think we'd ever kill Jake. It wasn't like an accident.

"If he didn't kill anybody, then it wasn't fair," he added.

"Well, there was the horses, too," Deets said.

"He only liked pacers," Newt said. "He wouldn't be bothered to steal horses as long as he had one to ride. Just being along didn't make him a horsethief."

"It do to the Captain," Deets said. "It do to Mr. Gus."

"They didn't even talk to him," Newt said bitterly. "They just hung him. They didn't even act like they were sorry."

"They sorry," Deets said. "Saying won't change it. He's gone, don't worry about him. He's gone to the peaceful place."

He put his hand for a moment on Newt's shoulder. "You need to rest your mind," he said. "Don't worry about the sleepers."

How do you stop? Newt wondered. It wasn't a thing he could forget. Pea Eye mentioned it as he would mention the weather, something natural that just happened and was over. Only for Newt it wasn't over. Every day it would rise in his mind and stay there until something distracted him.

Newt didn't know it, but Call, too, lived almost constantly with the thought of Jake Spoon. He felt half sick from thinking about it. He couldn't concentrate on the work at hand, and often if spoken to he wouldn't respond. He wanted somehow to move time backwards to a point where Jake could have been saved. Many times, in his thoughts, he managed to save Jake, usually by having made him stay with the herd. As the herd approached the Republican, Call's thoughts were back on the Brazos, where Jake had been allowed to go astray.