Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

The young man in the black coat went over behind the bar and looked at the fallen bartender.

"Why did you have to break his nose," he asked.

"He'll thank me someday," Augustus said. "It will make him more appealing to the ladies. He looked too much like a long-tailed rat, as it was. With no better manners than he had, I expect he was in for a lonely life."

"Well, I won't have this!" the young man said loudly. "I don't know why you old cowboys think you can just walk in and do what you please. What's that picture doing on the bar?"

"Why, it's just a picture of us boys, back in the days when they wanted to make us senators," Augustus said. "Willie kept it on the mirror there so when we happened in we could see how handsome we used to look."

"I'm a notion to call the sheriff and have the two of you arrested," the young man said. "Shooting in my bar is a crime, and I don't care what you done twenty years ago. You can get out of here and be quick about it or you'll end up spending your night in jail." He got angrier as he spoke.

"Oh, now, John, I wouldn't threaten these gentlemen if I was you," Ned Tym said, appalled at what he was hearing. "This is Captain Call and Captain McCrae."

"Well, what's that to me?" the man said, whirling on Ned. "I never heard of them and I won't have these old cowboys coming in here and making this kind of mess."

"They ain't old cowboys," Ned said. "They're Texas Rangers. You've heard of them. You've just forgot."

"I don't know why I would have," the man said. "I just lived here two years, miserable ones at that. I don't necessarily keep up with every old-timer who ever shot at an Indian. It's mostly tall tales anyway, just old men bragging on themselves."

"John, you don't know what you're talking about," Ned said, growing more alarmed. "Captain Call and Captain McCrae would be the last ones to brag."

"Well, that's your opinion," John said. "They look like braggarts to me."

Call was beginning to feel annoyed, for the young man was giving them unmannerly looks and talking to them as if they were trash; but then it was partly Gus's fault. The fact that the bartender had been a little slow and insolent hadn't necessarily been a reason to break his nose. Gus was touchy about such things though. He enjoyed having been a famous Texas Ranger and was often put out if he didn't receive all the praise he thought he had coming.

Gus held the picture out so the young man could see it.

"You have to admit that's us," he said. "Why would you keep our picture propped up behind your bar and then expect us to stand there and be treated like spit when we walk in?"

"Oh, well, I never even noticed them dern pictures," John said. "I ought to have thrown all that old junk out, but I never got around to it. Just drink your drink and skedaddle or be ready to go to jail. Here comes the sheriff now."

Sure enough, in about a minute, Tobe Walker stepped into the bar. He was a heavyset man with a walrus mustache who looked older than his years. Call was amused to see him, for what the angry young man didn't know was that Tobe had been in their Ranger troop for four years, just before they quit. He had only been sixteen then, but he made a good Ranger. Tobe had looked up to both of them as if they were gods, and was an unlikely man to arrest them. His eyes widened when he saw them.

"Why, can it be?" he asked. "Captain Call?"

"Well, Tobe," Call said, shaking his hand.

Augustus, too, was highly amused by the turn of events.

"'I God, Tobe," he said, "I guess it's your duty to handcuff us and march us off to jail."

"Why would I do that?" Tobe asked. "There's times when I think I ought to jail myself, but I don't know why I'd want to jail you two."

"Because you're hired to keep the peace and these old soaks have been disturbing it," John said. The fact that Tobe obviously recognized them only made him more testy.

Tobe became immediately frosty. "What's that you say, John?" he asked.

"I guess you heard me, sheriff, unless you're deaf," John said. "These men came in here and broke my bartender's nose. Then one of them shot off a gun for no reason. Then they pistol-whipped the bartender. I offered them a chance to leave, but since they haven't, I'm a notion to file charges and let the law take its course."

He said his little say so pompously that it struck the three of them as funny. Augustus laughed out loud, Call and Tobe smiled, and even Ned Tym chimed in with a chuckle.

"Son, you've misjudged our reputation," Augustus said. "We was the law around here when you was still sucking a teat. So many people think we saved them from the Indians that if you was to bring charges against us, and any of the boys that rangered with us got wind of it, they'd probably hang you . Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain't much of a crime."

"John, I'd advise you to stop your name-calling," Tobe said. "You're acting too hot. You'd best just apologize and bring me a whiskey."

"I'll be damned if I'll do either one," John said, and without another word stepped over the fallen bartender and went back upstairs.

"What's he got, a whore up there?" Augustus asked hopefully. He was beginning to feel restive and would have liked some female company.

"Yes, John keeps a señorita ," Tobe said. "I guess you'll have to excuse him. He's from Mobile and I've heard it said people in those parts are hotheaded."

"Well, it ain't a local prerogative," Augustus said. "We've got hotheads in our crew, and ain't none of them from Mobile, Alabama."

They got a whiskey bottle, sat down at a table and chatted for a while, talking of old times. Tobe inquired after Jake, and they carefully refrained from mentioning that he was on the run from the law. While they were talking, the bartender got up and staggered out the back way. His nose had stopped bleeding but his shirt was drenched in blood.

"Hell, he looks like he's been butchered," Tobe said cheerfully.

Ned Tym and his friends soon resumed their card game, but the other players' nerves were shaken and Ned soon drained them of money.

Tobe Walker looked wistful when they told him they were taking a herd to Montana. "If I hadn't married, I bet I'd go with you," he said. "I imagine there's some fair pastures up there. Being a lawman these days is mostly a matter of collaring drunks, and it does get tiresome."

When they left, he went off dutifully to make his rounds. Augustus hitched the new mules to the new wagon. The streets of San Antonio were silent and empty as they left. The moon was high and a couple of stray goats nosed around the walls of the old Alamo, hoping to find a blade of grass. When they had first come to Texas in the Forties people had talked of nothing but Travis and his gallant losing battle, but the battle had mostly been forgotten and the building neglected.

"Well, Call, I guess they forgot us, like they forgot the Alamo," Augustus said.

"Why wouldn't they?" Call asked. "We ain't been around."

"That ain't the reason-the reason is we didn't die," Augustus said. "Now Travis lost his fight, and he'll get in the history books when someone writes up this place. If a thousand Comanches had cornered us in some gully and wiped us out, like the Sioux just done Custer, they'd write songs about us for a hundred years."

It struck Call as a foolish remark. "I doubt there was ever a thousand Comanches in one bunch," he said. "If there had been they would have taken Washington, D.C."

But the more Augustus thought about the insults they had been offered in the bar-a bar where once they had been hailed as heroes-the more it bothered him.

"I ought to have given that young pup from Mobile a rap or two," he said.

"He was just scared," Call said. "I'm sure Tobe will lecture him next time he sees him."