Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

"Didn't she have shoes on, when they got hitched?" he asked.

Peach looked disgusted. "Of course she had shoes on," she said. "She wasn't that crazy."

"Well, I don't see no shoes in this cabin, men's or women's," Roscoe said. "If she's gone, I guess she wore 'em."

They went out and walked around the cabin. Roscoe was hoping to find a trail, but there were weeds all around the cabin, wet with dew, and all he did was get his pants legs wet. He was growing more and more uneasy-if Elmira was just in hiding from Peach he wished she'd give up and come out. If July came back and found his new wife missing, there was no telling how upset he'd be.

It seemed to him the most likely explanation was bears, though he knew it wasn't a foolproof explanation. If a bear had just walked in and got her, there would have been some blood on the floor. On the other hand, no bear had ever walked into Fort Smith and got a woman, though one had entered a cabin near Catfish Grove and carried off a baby.

"I guess a bear got her unless she's hiding," he said, unhappily. Being a deputy sheriff had suddenly gotten a lot harder.

"We think she's gone," Charlie Barnes said, with irritating persistence. If a bear had got her, of course she would be gone.

"He means we think she's left," Peach said.

That made no sense at all, since the woman had just married July.

"Left to go where?" he said. "Left to do what?"

"Roscoe, you ain't got the sense God gave a turkey," Peach said, abandoning her good manners. "If she left, she just left-left. My guess is she got tired of living with July."

That was such a radical thought that merely trying to think it gave Roscoe the beginnings of a headache.

"My God, Peach," he said, feeling stunned.

"There's no need to swear, Roscoe," Peach said. "We all seen it coming. July's a fool or he wouldn't have married her."

"It could have been a bear, though," Roscoe said. All of a sudden, it seemed the lesser of two evils. If Elmira was dead July might eventually get over it-if she had run off, there was no telling what he might do.

"Well, where's the tracks, then?" Peach asked. "If a bear came around, all the dogs in this town would have barked, and half the horses would have run away. If you ask me, Elmira's the one that run away."

"My God," Roscoe said again. He knew he was going to get blamed, no matter what.

"I bet she took that whiskey boat," Peach said. In fact, a boat had headed upriver only a day or two after July left.

It was the only logical explanation. No stage had passed through in the last week. A troop of soldiers had come through, going west, but soldiers wouldn't have taken Elmira. The boat had been filled with whiskey traders, headed up for Bents' Fort. Roscoe had seen a couple of the boatmen staggering on the street, and when the boat had left with no fights reported, he had felt relieved. Whiskey traders were rough men-certainly not the sort married women ought to be traveling with.

"You better go see what you can find out, Roscoe," Peach said. "If she's run off, July's gonna want to know about it."

That was certainly true. July doted on Elmira.

It took no more than a walk to the river to confirm what Peach had suspected. Old Sabin, the ferryman, had seen a woman get on the whiskey boat the morning it left.

"My God, why didn't you tell me?" Roscoe asked.

Old Sabin just shrugged. It was none of his business who got on boats other than his own.

"I figert it was a whore," he said.

Roscoe walked slowly back to the jail, feeling extremely confused. He wanted badly for it all to be a mistake. On the way up the street he looked in every store, hoping he would find Elmira in one of them spending money like a normal woman. But she wasn't there. At the saloon he asked Renfro, the barkeep, if he knew of a whore who had left town lately, but there were only two whores in town, and Renfro said they were both upstairs asleep.

It was just the worst luck. He had worried considerably about the various bad things that might happen while July was gone, but the loss of Elmira had not been among his worries. Men's wives didn't usually leave on a whiskey barge. He had heard of cases in which they didn't like wedded life and went back to their families, but Elmira hadn't even had a family, and there was no reason for her not to like wedded life, since July had riot worked her hard at all.

Once it was plain that she was gone, Roscoe felt in the worst quandary of his life. July was gone too, off in the general direction of San Antonio. It might be a month before he got back, at which point someone would have to tell him the bad news. Roscoe didn't want to be the someone, but then he was the person whose job it was to sit around the jail, so he would probably have to do it.

Even worse, he would have to sit there for a month or two worrying about July's reaction when he finally got back. Or it could be three months or six months-July had been known to be slow. Roscoe knew he couldn't take six months of anxiety. Of course it just proved that July had been foolish to marry, but that didn't make the situation any easier to live with.

In less than half an hour it seemed that every single person in Fort Smith found out that July Johnson's wife had run off on a whiskey barge. It seemed the Johnson family provided almost all the excitement in the town, the last excitement having been Benny's death. Such a stream of people came up to question Roscoe about the disappearance that he was forced to give up all thought of whittling, just at a time when having a stick to whittle on might have settled his nerves.

People who had seldom laid eyes on Elmira suddenly showed up at the jail and began to question him about her habits, as if he was an authority on them-though all he had ever seen the woman do was cook a catfish or two.

One of the worst was old lady Harkness, who had once taught school somewhere or other in Mississippi and had treated grownups like schoolchildren ever since. She helped out a little in her son's general store, where evidently there wasn't work enough to keep her busy. She marched across the street as if she had been appointed by God to investigate the whole thing. Roscoe had already discussed it with the blacksmith and the postmaster and a couple of cotton farmers, and was hoping for a little time off in which to think it through. Old lady Harkness didn't let that stop her.

"Roscoe, if you was my deputy, I'd arrest you," she said. "What do you mean lettin' somebody run off with July's wife?"

"Nobody run off with her," Roscoe said. "She just run off with herself, I guess."

"What do you know about it?" Old lady Harkness said. "I don't guess she'd just have got on a boatful of men if she wasn't partial to one of them. When are you going after her?"

"I ain't," Roscoe said, startled. It had never occurred to him to go after Elmira.

"Well, you will unless you're good for nothing, I guess," the old lady said. "This ain't much of a town if things like that can happen and the deputy just sit there."

"It never was much of a town," Roscoe reminded her, but the point, which was obvious, merely seemed to anger her.

"If you ain't up to getting the woman, then you better go get July," she said. "He might want his wife back before she gets up there somewhere and gets scalped."

She then marched off, much to Roscoe's relief. He went in and took a drink or two from a bottle of whiskey he kept under his couch and usually only used as a remedy for toothache. He was careful not to drink too much, since the last thing he needed was for the people in Fort Smith to get the notion he was a drunk. But then, the next thing he knew, despite his care, the whiskey bottle was empty, and he seemed to have drunk it, although it did not feel to him like he was drunk. In the still heat he got drowsy and went to sleep on the couch, only to awake in a sweat to find Peach and Charlie Barnes staring down at him.