Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

In the short lulls in the wind he could hear the clicking of long horns, as the cattle bumped into one another in the dankness. They were walking slowly, and Newt let Mouse walk along beside them. He had worried as much as he could, and he simply rode, his mind blank. It seemed like he had been riding long enough for the night to be over, but it wasn't, and the sand still stung his skin. He was surprised suddenly by a flicker of light to the west-so quick and so soon lost that he didn't at first recognize it as lightning. But it flickered again and soon was almost constant, though still far away. At first Newt welcomed it-it enabled him to see that he was still with the several hundred cattle, and also helped him avoid thickets.

But as the lightning came closer thunder came with it-the sound seemed to roll over them like giant boulders. Mouse flinched, and Newt began to flinch too. Then, instead of running across the horizon like snakes' tongues, the lightning began to drive into the earth, with streaks thick as poles, and with terrible cracks.

In one of the flashes Newt saw Dish Boggett, not thirty yards away. Dish saw him, too, and came toward him. In the next flash Newt saw Dish pulling on a yellow slicker.

"Where's Soupy?" Dish asked. Newt had no idea.

"He must have got turned wrong," Dish said. "We've got most of the cattle. You should have brought a slicker. We're going to get some rain."

As the flashes continued, Newt strained his eyes to keep Dish in sight, but soon lost him. To his amazement he saw that the cattle seemed to have caught the lightning-little blue balls of it rolled along their horns. While he was watching the strange sight, a horse bumped his. It was Deets.

"Ride off the cattle," he said. "Don't get close to them when they got the lightning on their horns. Get away from 'em."

Newt needed no urging, for the sight was scary and he remembered Dish describing how lightning had hit a cowboy he knew and turned him black. He wanted to ask Deets some questions, but between one flash and another Deets vanished.

The wind had become fitful, gusting and then dying, and instead of beating steadily at his back, the sand was fitful too, swirling around him one moment and gone the next. In the flashes of lightning he could see that the sky was clearing high to the east, but a wall of clouds loomed to the west, the lightning darting underneath them.

Almost before the last of the sand had stung his eyes, it seemed, the rain began, pelting down in big scattered drops that felt good after all the grit. But the drops got thicken and less scattered and soon the rain fell in sheets, blown this way and that at first by the fitful wind. Then the world simply turned to water. In a bright flash of lightning Newt saw a wet, frightened coyote run across a few feet in front of Mouse. After that he saw nothing. The water beat down more heavily even than the wind and the sand: it pounded him and ran in streams off his hat brim. Once again he gave up and simply sat and let Mouse do what he wanted. As far as he knew, he was completely lost, for he had moved away from the cattle in order to escape the lightning and had no sense that he was anywhere near the herd. The rain was so heavy that at moments he felt it might drown him right on his horse. It blew in his face and poured into his lip from his hat brim. He had always heard that cowboying involved considerable weather, but had never expected so many different kinds to happen in one night. An hour before, he had been so hot he thought he would never be cool again, but the drenching water had already made him cold.

Mouse was just as dejected and confused as he was. The ground was covered with water-there was nothing to do but splash along. To make matters worse they hit another thicket and had to back out, for the wet mesquite had become quite impenetrable. When they finally got around it the rain had increased in force. Mouse stopped and Newt let him-there was no use proceeding when they didn't know where they needed to proceed. The water pouring off his hat brim was an awkward thing-one stream in front, one stream behind. A stream of water poured night in front of his nose while another sluiced down his back.

Then Mouse began to move again and Newt heard the splashing of a horse ahead. He didn't know if it carried a friendly rider, but Mouse seemed to think so, for he was trotting through the hock-high water, trying to locate the other horse. In one of the weakening flashes of lightning Newt saw cattle trotting along, fifty yards to his night. Suddenly, with no warning, Mouse began to slide. His back feet almost went out from under him-they had struck a gully, and Newt felt water rising up his legs. Fortunately it wasn't a deep gully; Mouse regained his balance and struggled through it, as scared as Newt.

There was nothing to do but plod on. Newt remembered how happy he had been when dawn finally came after the night they had gone to Mexico. If he could just see such a dawn again he would know how to appreciate it. He was so wet it didn't seem as if he could ever be dry, or that he could do such a simple thing as sit in the bright sun again feeling hot, on stretch out on the grass and sleep. As it was, he couldn't even yawn without water blowing in his mouth.

Soon he got too tired to think and could only hope that it would finally be morning. But the night went on and on. The lightning died and the hard rain stopped, but a drizzle continued; they hit intermittent patches of thick brush and had to back and turn and go on as best they could. When he had crossed the gully, one boot had filled with water. Newt wanted to stop and empty it-but what if he dropped it and couldn't find it in the dark? Or got it off and couldn't get it back on? A fine sight he would make, if he even saw camp again, riding in with one boot in his hand. Thinking about the ridicule that would involve, he decided just to let the boot squish.

All the same, he felt proud of Mouse, for many horses would have fallen, sliding into a gully.

"Good horse," he said. "If we just keep going maybe it'll get light."

Mouse swung his head to get his wet forelock out of his eyes, and kept on plodding through the mud.

JAKE HAD FORGOTTEN to hobble the horses-he remembered it when the first lightning struck and Lorena's young mare suddenly snapped her rein and ran off. It was dank and the sand was still blowing. He managed to get the hobbles on his own horse and the pack mule, but had to let the mare go.

"She won't go far," he said, when he got back to Lorie. She was huddled under a blanket, her back against a big mesquite tree and her legs half buried in the sand.

"No better than she likes to swim. I expect we'll find her on this side of the river," Jake said.

Lorena didn't answer. The lightning filled her with such tension that she didn't think she could endure it. If it went on much longer she felt it would twist her like a wire.

She held the blanket around her as tightly as she could, and her teeth were clenched as they had been when she crossed the river. She kept trying to think about something besides the lightning, but she couldn't. She kept thinking of how it would feel if it hit her-it was said to be like a burn, but how could a burn travel through your body in an instant?

Then the lightning began to strike in the trees nearby, with cracks so loud that it made her head ring. She didn't mind the wet. Jake had tried to rig a tarp, but it wasn't big enough.

A bolt hit just behind them, with a sound so loud that it took her breath. I want to go back, she thought. When she got her breath back she was crying, the tears mingling with the rain on her face.

"We got to get out from under this dern tree," Jake yelled.

Lorena didn't move. He was crazy. The tree was all that was keeping them from death. Out in the open the lightning would immediately strike them.