Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

"Well, I'd hate not to be a bachelor," Pea Eye said.

"Just because it's all you know don't mean it's all you'd enjoy," Augustus said. "You had a chance at a fine widow right there in Lonesome Dove, as I recall."

Pea Eye was sorry the subject of widows had come up. He had nearly forgotten the Widow Cole and the day he had helped her take the washing off the line. He didn't know why he hadn't forgotten it completely-he surely had forgotten more important things. Yet there it was, and from time to time it shoved into his brain. If he had married some widow his brain would probably have been so full of such things that he would have no time to think, or even to keep his knife sharp.

"Ever meet any of the mountain men?" Augustus asked. "They got up in here and took the beavers."

"Well, I met old Kit," Pea Eye said. "You ought to remember. You was there."

"Yes, I remember," Augustus said. "I never thought much of Kit Carson."

"Why, what was wrong with Kit Carson?" Pea Eye asked. "They say he could track anything."

"Kit was vain," Augustus said. "I won't tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman. If I had gone north in my youth I might have got to be a mountain man, but I took to riverboating instead. The whores on them riverboats in my day barely wore enough clothes to pad a crutch."

As they rode north they saw more buffalo, mostly small bunches of twenty or thirty. The third day north of the Yellowstone they killed a crippled buffalo calf and dined on its liver. In the morning, when they left, there were a number of buzzards and two or three prairie wolves hanging around, waiting for them to leave the carcass.

It was a beautiful morning, crisp for an hour or two and then sunny and warm. The country rolled on to the north, as it had for thousands of miles, brown in the distance, the prairie grass waving in the breeze.

"Lord, how much land does the Captain want?" Pea Eye asked. "Looks like this country around here would be good enough for anybody."

"Plenty would settle for it, you're right," Augustus said. "Call might himself. But let's just go on for a day or two more. We ain't struck the Milk River yet."

"Does it run milk?" Pea Eye asked.

"Now think a minute, Pea," Augustus said. "How could it run milk when there ain't no cows up here yet?"

"Why did they call it the Milk, then? Milk is milk."

"Crazy is crazy, too," Augustus said. "That's what I'll be before long from listening to you. Crazy."

"Well, Jasper's mind might break if he don't stop worrying about them rivers," Pea Eye allowed. "I expect the rest of us will keep our wits."

Augustus laughed heartily at the notion of the Hat Creek outfit keeping its wits. "It's true they could be kept in a thimble," he said, "but who brought a thimble?"

There was a little rise to the west, and Augustus loped over to it to see what the land looked like in that direction. Pea trotted along north, as he had been doing, not paying much attention. Gus was always loping off to test the view, as he called it, and Pea didn't feel obliged to follow him every time.

Then Pea heard the sound of a running horse and looked for Gus, supposing he had jumped another little bunch of buffalo. What he saw froze him instantly in place. Gus was racing down the little slope he had just gone up, with at least twenty mounted Indians hot on his heels. He must have ridden right into them. The Indians were shooting both guns and arrows. A bullet cut the grass ahead of Pea and he yanked out his rifle and popped a shot back at the Indians before whirling his horse and fleeing. Gus and he had crossed a good-sized creek less than an hour back, with some trees along it and some weeds and shrubbery in the creek bed. He assumed Gus must be racing for that, since it was the only shelter on the wide prairie. Even as he started, Pea saw five or six Indians veer toward him. He swerved over to join Gus, who had two arrows in his leg. Gus was flailing his horse with his rifle barrel and the horse was running full out.

Fortunately the Indians were poorly mounted-their horses were no match for the Hat Creek horses, and the two men soon widened the gap between them and their pursuers. They were out of range of arrows, and of bullets too, Pea hoped, but he had hardly hoped it when a bullet stung him just above the shoulder blade. But the creek was only three or four miles ahead. If they could make it there would be time enough to worry about wounds.

Gus was trying to pull the arrows out of his leg as he rode, but he was having no luck.

They saw the curve of the little creek from two miles away and angled for the nearest juncture. The Indians had fallen nearly a quarter of a mile back, but were still coming. When they struck the creek Augustus raced along the bank until he found a spot where the weeds and brush were thickest. Then he jumped his horse off the bank and grabbed his saddlebags.

"Get all the ammunition you can," he said. "We're in for a shooting match. And tie the horses in the best cover you can find, or they'll shoot 'em. This is long country to be afoot in."

Then he hobbled to the bank, wishing he had time to cut the two arrows out of his leg. But if they were poisoned it was already too late, and if he didn't do some fine shooting it wouldn't matter anyway because the Indians would overrun them.

Pea heard the big Henry rifle begin to roar as he dragged the sweating horses into the thickest part of the underbrush. It was thick but low, and he didn't think there was much chance for the horses. He yanked the saddlebags and bedrolls off both horses and was hiding them under the bank when Gus stopped firing for a moment.

"Get my saddle," he said. "I'll show you a trick."

Then he began to fire again. Evidently he had turned the Indians, or they would already have been in the creek bed. Pea dutifully got the saddle.

When he got back Gus was reloading. Pea peeped over the bank and saw the Indians, stopped some distance away. Many of them had dismounted and were standing behind their horses, using them as shields.

"How many'd you kill?" he asked.

"Not but three," Augustus said. "This is a smart bunch we're up against. They seen right off a rush would cost them dear."

Pea Eye watched the Indians for a while. They weren't yelling, and they didn't seem excited.

"I don't see what's so smart about them," he said. "They're just standing there."

"Yes, but they're out of range," Augustus said. "They're hoping to tempt me to waste ammunition."

Augustus propped the saddle on the bank in such a way that he could shoot under it and be that much safer if the Indians shot back. He then proceeded to shoot six times, rapidly. Five of the Indians horses dropped, and a sixth ran squealing over the prairie-it fell several hundred yards away. The Indians fired several shots in reply, their bullets slicing harmlessly into the underbrush.

The party of Indians then split. Several Indians went north of them, several south, and eight or ten stayed where they were.

"Well, we're practically surrounded," Augustus said. "I don't expect we'll hear any more from them till dark."

"I'd hate to wait around here till dark," Pea Eye said.

"Did you know you're shot?" Augustus asked.

Pea had forgotten it. Sure enough, the front of his shirt was soaked with blood. He took it off and Augustus examined the wound, which was clean. The bullet had gone right through.

They turned their attention to the arrows in Augustus's left leg. Augustus twisted at them whenever he got a moment. One arrow he soon got out, but the other wouldn't budge.

"This one's in deep," he said. "That brave wasn't more than twenty yards away when he let fly. I think it's worked under the bone, but it ain't poisoned. If it was I'd be feeling it by now."

Pea had a try at removing the arrow, while Gus gritted his teeth and held his leg steady with both hands. The arrow wouldn't budge. It wouldn't even turn, though Pea Eye twisted hard enough to cause a stream of blood to flow down Gus's leg.