Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

Yet it didn't work. He couldn't go back to sleep, and when he sat up the body was there-though if it hadn't been black he might not have known it was Deets.

He looked and saw that Pea Eye knelt on the other side of the body, looking dazed. Far away, toward the river, he saw the Captain and Lippy, digging. Mr. Gus sat by himself, near the cook fire, eating. The three horses had been unsaddled but no one had returned them to the remuda. They grazed nearby. Most of the hands stood in a group near Deets's feet, just looking as Po Campo worked.

Finally Po Campo gave up. "Better to bury him with it," he said. "I would have liked to see that boy. The lance went all the way to his collarbone. It went through the heart."

Newt sat in his blankets, feeling alone. No one noticed him or spoke to him. No one explained Deets's death. Newt began to cry, but no one noticed that either. The sun had risen, and everyone was busy with what they were doing, Mr. Gus eating, the Captain and Lippy digging the grave. Soupy Jones was repairing a stirrup and talking in subdued tones to Bert Borum. Newt sat and cried, wondering if Deets knew anything about what was going on. The Irishman and Needle and the Rainey boys held the herd. It was a beautiful morning, too-mountains seemed closer. Newt wondered if Deets knew about any of it. He didn't look at the corpse again, but he wondered if Deets had kept on knowing, somehow. He felt he did. He felt that if anyone was taking any notice of him, it was probably Deets, who had always been his friend. It was only the thought that Deets was still knowing him, somehow, that kept him from feeling totally alone.

Even so, the Deets who had walked around and smiled and been kind to him day after day, through the years-that Deets was dead. Newt sat in his blankets and cried until he was afraid he would never stop. No one seemed to notice. No one said anything to him as preparations for burying Deets went on.

Pea Eye didn't cry, but he was so shaken he went weak in the legs.

"Well, my lord," he said, from time to time. "My lord." An Indian boy had killed him, the Captain said. Deets was still wearing a pair of the old patchy quilt pants that he had favored for so long. Pea Eye scarcely knew what to think. He and Deets had been the main hired help on the Hat Creek outfit ever since there had been a Hat Creek outfit. Now it was down to him. It would mean a lot more chores for him, undoubtedly, for the Captain only trusted the two of them with certain chores. He remembered that he and Deets had had a pretty good conversation once. He had been vaguely planning to have another one with him if the chance came along. Of course that was off, now. Pea Eye went over and leaned against a wagon wheel, wishing he could stop feeling weak in the legs.

The other hands were somber. Soupy Jones and Bert Borum, who didn't feel it appropriate for white men to talk much to niggers, exchanged the view that nevertheless this one had been uncommonly decent. Needle Nelson offered to help dig the grave, for Deets had been the man who finally turned the Texas bull the day the bull got after him. Dish Boggett hadn't said much to Deets, either, but he had often been cheered, from his position on the point, to see Deets come riding back through the heat waves. It meant he was on course, and that water was somewhere near. Dish wished he had said more to the man at some point.

Lippy offered to help with the grave-digging, and Call let him. It was the task that usually got assigned to Deets himself, grave-digging. Call had laid many a compañero in graves Josh Deets had dug, including, most recently, Jake Spoon. Lippy was not a good digger-in fact, he was mostly in the way, but Call tolerated him. Lippy also talked constantly, saying nothing. They were digging on a little rise, north of the juncture of where Salt Creek joined the Powder River.

Augustus wrapped Deets carefully in a piece of wagon sheet and tied the sheet around him with heavy cord.

"A shroud for a journey," Augustus said.

No one else said anything. They loaded Deets in the wagon. Newt finally got out of his blanket, though he was almost blind from crying.

Po Campo led the team down to the grave and Deets was put in and quickly covered. The Irishman, unasked, began to sing a song of mourning so sad that all the cowboys at once began to cry, even the Spettle boy, who had not shed a tear when his own brother was buried.

Augustus turned and walked away. "I hate funerals," he said. "Particularly this one."

"At the rate we're dropping off, there won't be many of us left by the time we get to Montany," Lippy said, as they were all walking back to camp.

They expected to start the herd that day, as Captain Call had never been known to linger. But this time he did. He came back from the grave, got a big hammer and knocked a board loose from the side of the wagon. He didn't explain what he was doing to anyone, and the look on his face discouraged anyone from asking. He took the board and carried it down to the grave. The rest of the day he sat alone by Deets's grave, carving something into it with his knife. The sun flashed on his knife, and the cowhands watched in puzzlement. They just didn't know what it could be that would take the Captain so long.

"He had a short name," Lippy observed.

"It wasn't his full name," Newt pointed out. He had stopped crying but he felt empty.

"What was the other one then?" Jasper asked.

"It was Josh."

"Well, I swear," Jasper said. "That's a fine name. Starts with a J, like mine. We could have been calling him that all the time, if we'd known."

Then they heard the sound of the hammer-it was the big hammer that they used for straightening the rims of the wagon wheels. Captain Call was hammering the long board deep into the dirt by the grave.

Augustus, who had sat by himself most of the day, walked over and squatted down by Newt, who sat a little way apart. He had been afraid he would start crying again and wanted a little privacy.

"Let's go see what he wrote for old Deets," Augustus said. "I've seen your father bury many a man, but I never saw him take this kind of pains."

Newt hadn't really been listening. He had just been sitting there, feeling numb. When he heard Augustus mention his father, the words sank into the numbness for a minute and didn't affect him.

Then they did. "My what?" Newt asked.

"Your father," Augustus said. "Your pa."

Newt thought it an odd time for Mr. Gus to make a joke. The Captain wasn't his pa. Perhaps Mr. Gus had been so affected by Deets's death that he had gone a little crazy. Newt stood up. He thought it best just to ignore the remark-he didn't want to embarrass Mr. Gus at such a time. The Captain was still hammering, driving the long board into the hard ground.

They walked down to the grave. Call had finished his hammering and stood resting. Two or three of the cowboys trailed back to the grave, a little tentative, not sure they were invited.

Captain Call had carved the words deeply into the rough board so that the wind and sand couldn't quickly rub them out.

JOSH DEETS

SERVED WITH ME 30 YEARS. FOUGHT IN 21 ENGAGEMENTS

WITH THE COMMANCHE AND KIOWA. CHERFUL IN ALL

WEATHERS, NEVER SHERKED A TASK. SPLENDID BEHAVIOUR.

The cowboys came down one by one and looked at it in silence. Po Campo crossed himself. Augustus took something out of his pocket. It was the medal the Governor of Texas had given him for service on the border during the hard war years. Call had one too. The medal had a green ribbon on it, but the color had mostly faded out. Augustus made a loop of the ribbon and put the loop over the grave board and tied it tightly. Captain Call had walked away to put up the hammer. Augustus followed. Lippy, who had not cried all day, suddenly began to sob, tears running into his loose lip.