Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

Lorena watched him. He looked out the window and wouldn't meet her eye.

"I'll be damned if I'll do it," he said. "I ain't no dern cowpuncher. Call just got it in his head to go, for some reason. Well, let him go."

But she knew that bucking Gus and the Captain was no easy thing for Jake. He looked at her finally, a sadness in his eyes, as if he was asking her to think of a way to help him.

Then he grinned, his little smart lazy grin. "Gus thinks we ought to marry," he said.

"I'd rather go to San Francisco," Lorena said.

Jake stroked her leg again. "Well, we will," he said. "But don't Gus come up with some notions! He thinks I ought to bring you along on the drive."

Then he looked at her again, as if trying to fathom what was in her thoughts. Lorena let him look. Tired as he was, with his shirt open, there seemed nothing in the man to fear. It was hard to know what he himself feared. He was proud as a turkey cock around other men, irritable and quick to pass an insult. Sitting on her bed, with his clothes unbuttoned, he seemed anything but tough.

"What was old Gus up to all afternoon?" he asked. "He never got back till sundown."

"The same thing you was just up to," Lorena said.

Jake lifted his eyebrows, not really surprised. "I knowed it, that scamp," he said. "Left me to work so he could come and pester you."

Lorena decided to tell it. That would be better than if he found it out from somebody else. Besides, though she considered herself his sweetheart, she didn't consider him her master. He had not really mastered anything except poking, though he had improved her card game a little.

"Gus offered me fifty dollars," she said.

Jake lifted his eyebrows again in his tired way, as if there was nothing he could possibly be told that would really surprise him. It angered her a little, his acting as if he knew everything in advance.

"He's a fool with money," Jake said.

"I turned him down," Lorena said. "I told him I was with you."

Jake's eyes came alive for a moment and he gave her a smart slap on the cheek, so quick she scarcely saw it coming. Though it stung her cheek, there was no real anger in it-it was nothing to some of the licks she had taken from Tinkersley. Jake hit her the once as if that was the rule in a game they were playing, and then the life went out of his eyes again and he looked at her with only a tired curiosity.

"I reckon he got his poke," he said. "If he didn't, you can hit me a lick."

"We cut the cards for it and he cheated," Lorena said. "I can't prove it but I know it. He gave me the fifty dollars anyway."

"I ought to told you never to cut the cards with that old cud," Jake said. "Not unless you're ready for what he's ready for. He's the best card cheat I ever met. He don't cheat often, but when he does you ain't gonna catch him."

He wiped some of the mud off her belly. "Now that you're rich you can loan me twenty," he said.

"Why should I?" Lorena said. "You didn't earn it and you didn't stop it."

Besides, he had money from his own card playing. If she knew anything, it was not to give a man money. That was nothing more than an invitation to get sold with their help.

Jake looked amused. "Keep it then," he said. "But if it had been any other man than Gus I would have shot you."

"If you'd known," she said, getting up.

Jake stood looking out the window while she stripped the bed. He sipped his whiskey but didn't mention the trail again.

"Are you going with the herd?" she asked.

"Ain't decided," he said. "They'll be here till Monday."

"I plan to leave when you leave," she said. "With the herd or not."

Jake looked around. She was standing in her shift, a little red spot on one cheek where he had slapped her, a lick that made no impression on her at all. It seemed to him there was never much time with women. Before you could look at one twice, you were into an argument, and they were telling you what was going to happen.

"You'd look a sight in a cow camp," he said. "All them dern cowboys are in love with you anyway. I'd had to kill half of 'em before we got to the Red River, if you go along."

"They won't bother me," she said. "Gus is the only one with the guts to try it."

Jake chuckled. "Yes, he'd want to cut the cards twice a day," he said.

It seemed to him harder, as he got older, to find a simple way of life. On the one hand there were his friends, who expected something of him; on the other there was Lorie, who expected something else. He himself had no fixed ideas about what to do, though he thought it would be pleasant to live in a warm town where he could find a card game. Having a pretty woman to stay with made life happier, of course, but not if it meant having to take the woman to San Francisco.

Of course he could run: he wasn't chained to the bedpost or to the friends either. There was Mexico, right out the window. But what would that get him? Mexico was even more violent than Texas. Mexicans were always hanging Texans to make up for all the Mexicans Texans hung. If hanging was all he had to look forward to, he'd rather take his in Arkansas.

Lorie was watching him with a strange heat in her eyes. It wasn't because he had slapped her either. He felt she was reading his mind-somehow most women could read his mind. He had only really outmaneuvered one, a little redheaded whore in Cheyenne who was all heart and no brain. Lorena wasn't going to be fooled. Her look put him on the defensive. Most men would have beat her black and blue for what she had done that afternoon, and yet she hadn't even made an attempt to conceal it. She played by her own rules. It struck him that she might be the one to kill the sheriff from Arkansas, if it came to that. She wouldn't balk at it, if he could keep her wanting him.

"You don't need to stand there looking out of sorts," he said. "I won't run off without you."

"I ain't out of sorts," Lorena said. "You are. You don't want to stay and you don't want to go."

Jake looked at her mildly. "I've been up that way," he said. "It's rough. Why don't we go up to San Antonio and gamble for a spell?"

"Tinkersley took me there," Lorena said. "I don't want to go back."

"You're a hard one to please," Jake said, getting a little testy suddenly.

"I ain't," Lorena said. "You please me fine. I just want to go to San Francisco, like you promised."

"Well, if you don't like San Antone there's Austin, on Fort Worth," Jake said. "There's lots of nice towns that ain't as hard to get to as San Francisco."

"I don't care if it's hard," Lorena said. "Let's just go."

Jake sighed and offered her more of his whiskey. "Lay back down," he said. "I'll rub your back."

"I don't need my back rubbed," she said.

"Lorie, we can't leave tonight," he said. "I was just offering to be friendly."

She had not meant to press him so, but a decision had become important to her. She had spent too many nights in the little hot room they were in. Taking the gritty sheets off the bed made her realize it. She had changed them many times because the men she lay under were as gritty as Jake had been. It was something that had repeated itself once too often. Now she was done with it. She wanted to throw the sheets, and maybe the mattress and the bed, too, out the window. She was through with the room and everything that went with it, and Jake Spoon might as well know it.

"Honey, you look like you've caught a fever," Jake said, not realizing it was a fever of impatience to be done with Lonesome Dove and everything in it. "If you're set on it, I reckon we'll go, but I don't fancy living in no cow camp. Call wouldn't have it anyway. We can ride with them during the day and make our own camp."

Lorena was satisfied. Where they camped made no difference to her. Then Jake started talking about Denver, and how when they got there it would be easy to make their way across to San Francisco. She only half listened. Jake washed off as best he could in the little washbasin. She had Only one spare sheet, so she put it on the bed while he was washing.