Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

"You look after Ellie," he said sternly. "If she needs her groceries carried, you carry them."

"Okay, July," Roscoe said.

July got on his horse, adjusted his bedroll and sat looking at the river. They weren't carrying much bedding, but then the warm weather was coming.

"Take her a fish now and then, if you catch one," he said.

To Roscoe Brown it seemed a strange instruction. Elmira had made it plain that she didn't like fish.

"Okay, July," he said again, though he didn't mean to waste his time offering fish to a woman who didn't like them.

July could think of no more instructions. Roscoe knew the town as well as he did.

"Joe, be careful," Roscoe said. For some reason it affected him to see the boy going. It was a poor saddle he had, too. But the boy still grinned out from under the old hat.

"We'll catch him," Joe said proudly.

"Well, I'll try not to let nobody shoot no more dentists," Roscoe said.

July regarded the remark as irrelevant, for Roscoe knew well enough that the town had been without a dentist since Benny's death. "Just watch old man Darton," he said. "We don't want him to fall off the ferry."

The old man lived in a shack on the north bank and merely came over for liquor. Once in a while he eluded Roscoe, and twice already he had fallen into the river. The ferrymen didn't like him anyway, and if it happened again they might well let him drown.

"I'll handle the old scamp," Roscoe said confidently. Old man Darton was one responsibility he felt he could handle any day.

"Well, I guess we'll see you when we see you, Roscoe," July said. Then he turned his horse away from the river and the glowing sky, and he and little Joe were soon out of town.

SIX DAYS LATER responsibility descended upon Roscoe Brown with a weight far beyond anything he had ever felt. As usual, it fell out of a clear blue sky-as fine a day as one could want, with the Arkansas River sparkling down at the end of the street. Roscoe, having no pressing duties, was sitting in front of the jail whittling, when he noticed Peach Johnson coming up the street with little Charlie Barnes at her side. Charlie was a banker, and the only man in town to wear a necktie every day. He was also the main deacon in the church, and, by common consent the man most likely to marry Peach if she ever remarried. Charlie was a widower, and richer by far than Benny had ever been. Nobody liked him, not even Peach, but she was too practical a woman to let that stop her if she took a notion to marry.

When Roscoe saw them coming he snapped shut his whittling knife and put the stick he had been whittling in his shirt pocket. There was no law against whittling, but he didn't want to get a reputation as an idler, particularly not with a man who was as apt as not to end up the next mayor of Fort Smith.

"Morning, folks," he said, when the two walked up.

"Roscoe, I thought July gave you instructions to look after Elmira," Peach said.

"Well, he said take her a fish if I caught one, but I ain't caught any lately," Roscoe said. He felt a little guilty without even knowing what was wrong, for Elmira had not once crossed his mind since July left.

"If I know July-and I do know July-I bet he said more than that," Peach said.

"Well, he said to carry her some groceries if she asked, but she ain't asked," he said.

"When have you seen her?" Charlie Barnes asked. He was looking stern, though it was hand for a man so short and fat to really muster much sternness.

The question stumped Roscoe. Probably he had seen Elmira recently, but when he thought about it he couldn't think when. The woman was not much for traipsing around town. Right after the marriage she had been seen in the stores some, spending July's money, but he couldn't recollect having seen her in a stone in recent days.

"You know Elmira," he said. "She don't come out much. Mainly she just stays in the cabin."

"Well, she ain't in it now," Peach said.

"We think she's gone," Charlie Barnes said.

"Why, where would she go?" Roscoe said.

Peach and Charlie didn't answer, and a silence fell.

"Maybe she just took a walk," Roscoe said, although he knew that sounded weak.

"That's what I thought yesterday," Peach said. "She wasn't there yesterday and she ain't there today. I doubt she'd take no overnight walk."

Roscoe had to admit it was unlikely. The nearest town, Catfish Grove, was fourteen miles away, and not much of a destination at that.

"Maybe she just don't want to answer the door," he said. "She takes a lot of naps."

"Nope, I went in and looked," Peach said. "There ain't a soul in that cabin, and there wasn't yesterday, neither."

"We think she's gone," Charlie Barnes said again. He was not a talkative man.

Roscoe got up from his comfortable seat. If Elmira was indeed gone, that constituted a serious problem. Peach and Charlie stood there as if they expected him to do something, or tell them right off where she had gone.

"I wonder if something got her?" he asked, thinking out loud. There were still plenty of bears in the woods, and some said there were panthers, though he himself had never seen one.

"If she wandered off, anything could have got her," Peach said. "Could have been an animal or it could have been a man."

"Why, Peach, I don't know why a man would want her," Roscoe said, only to realize that the remark probably sounded funny. After all, Peach was related to her.

"I don't either, but I ain't a man," Peach said, giving Charlie Barnes a hard look. Roscoe thought it unlikely that Charlie wanted Elmira. It might be that he didn't even want Peach.

He walked to the edge of the porch and looked up the street, hoping to see Elmira standing in it. In all his years as a deputy he had never heard of a woman just getting lost, and it seemed unfair that it should happen to July's wife. There was nobody in the street but a farmer with a mule team.

"Why, I'll go have a look," he said. "Maybe she just went visiting."

"Who would she visit?" Peach asked. "She ain't been out of that cabin more than twice since July married her. She don't know the names of five people in this town. I was just going to take her some dumplings, since July is gone off. If I hadn't done it I doubt she would have even been missed."

From her tone Roscoe got the clear implication that he had been remiss in his duty. In fact, he had meant to look in on Elmira at some point, but the time had passed so quickly he had forgotten to.

"Well, I'll go right up there," he said, trying to sound cheerful. "I expect she'll turn up."

"We think she's gone," Charlie Barnes said, for the third time.

Roscoe decided to go at once to keep from having to hear Charlie Barnes repeat himself all morning. He tipped his hat to Peach and started for the cabin, but to his dismay Peach and Charlie stayed right at his heels. It disturbed him to have company, but there was nothing he could do about it. It seemed to him curious that Peach would take Elmira dumplings, for the two women were known not to get along; it crossed his mind that Elmira had seen Peach coming and gone into hiding.

Sure enough, the cabin was empty. There was no sign that anybody had been in it for a day or two. A slab of corn bread sat on the cookstove, already pretty well nibbled by the mice.

"She mostly sat in the loft," Roscoe said, mainly to hear himself talk. Hearing himself was better than hearing Peach.

"There ain't nothing up there but a pallet," Peach said.

That proved to be the truth. It was not much of a pallet, either-just a couple of quilts. July, being the youngest of the Johnson family, had never had any money and had not accumulated much in the way of goods.

Roscoe racked his brain to try and think if there was anything missing, but he had never been in the loft before and could not think of a possession that might have been missing-just Elmira.