Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Augustus McCrae, who had been in a pleasurably relaxed state, found that he had suddenly become an object of wild amusement to the men. Th@er@ese, though, brooked no resistance; she finished his nose to her satisfaction and began to yank hairs out of his ears, oblivious to the laughter from the saloon.

She proceeded briskly with her tweezers, seizing a hair and extracting it with the same motion.

Xavier Wanz, standing stiffly behind a bar, thought the men he was serving must be crazy. He had never heard such desperate laughter, and at what? Because his wife was giving their captain the hair-offs? Not knowing quite what to do, he contented himself with folding and refolding his little white towel several times.

The hairs out, Th@er@ese began to rub Gus with an unguent whose smell she liked. The young monsieur had nice hair; she felt she might enjoy entertaining him in her tent for a bit, if only Xavier could be distracted, which didn't seem likely.

Meanwhile, there was business. Once she had combed Gus's hair the way she considered that it ought to be combed, she took the sheet off him and announced that he could stand up.

"One dollars, monsieur," she said. "Now you look like a fine cavalier." Augustus was somewhat startled by the price; he had not expected to pay more than fifty cents for his barbering, in such a place. Many a whore would cost little more than the haircut. But Th@er@ese smiled at him and whisked him off with her little brush. He liked her plump shoulders--why be tight?

"A bargain at the price, ma'am," he said, and paid her the dollar.

When Call came back to Lonesome Dove with the four carpenters he was surprised to find that the whole troop had been barbered and shaved. Pea Eye was just rising from the chair when he rode up.

Only Deets, watching silently from a seat on a stump, had not been worked on. All the men were preening as if they had just come out of church.

Th@er@ese Wanz, the woman who had clipped the considerable pile of hair that was around the barber chair, was bent over a large washtub, wringing out a towel.

"Ma'am, you need to strop your razor--here's one more," Gus said. "I'll take your horse, Woodrow--y've got a treat in store." Madame Wanz was evidently a woman of cheerful temperament. She sat Call down and poured out a torrent of French.

"Do you know what she's saying?" he asked Augustus.

"Just keep still and do your duty, Woodrow," Gus said.

Madame Wanz made a little bow when she sat Call in the barber's chair. He felt a touch of embarrassment; he had heard of women barbers but had never been worked on by one before. All of the men were in high good humour. They looked more presentable than they had looked in months.

"I expect you better shear me," Call said. "It'll probably be a good spell before I see a barber again." Call had relaxed and slipped into a half doze by the time Th@er@ese Wanz got around to the extraction of his nose hairs. He jumped so violently at the first jerk of the tweezers that he turned the barber chair over--all the men, who had been watching for just such a reaction, exploded with laughter. Augustus laughed so hard he had to hold his side. Even Call had to smile. It must have been funny, seeing him tip over a barber's chair.

"I wish we had old Buffalo Hump here," he said. "I expect he'd think this was a pretty fancy torture." Th@er@ese, undeterred, sat him down again and applied the tweezers until his nose was plucked clean of hairs.

Later, when they were all cleaned up enough to look almost as respectable as Xavier Wanz's tablecloth, Th@er@ese proved that she was as skilled a cook as she was a barber. A sizable flock of half-wild chickens chirped amid the crumbling adobe huts. Th@er@ese snatched four of them, collected a great number of eggs, and made them all a feast which included potatoes.

The men ate so much they could scarcely stumble off the floor of the saloon-to-be, where the feast had been served on a folding table Xavier had produced from under the wagon sheet.

"If people knew they could get fed like this, Lonesome Dove would be a town in no time," Gus said.

"I wouldn't mind moving here myself. It would save the expense of all that high-priced Austin liquor." "Yes, but what would you do for cash?" Call asked. "It's fine eating, but there'd be no one to pay you a wage." Th@er@ese had put two candles on the folding table. Other than their flickering light, the only illumination came from the high moon.

"Captain King expects there'll be businesses here someday, because of the fine river crossing," Gus said. "If there's businesses here, I guess we could have one too." "Speak for yourself," Call said. "I'm a Texas Ranger and I aim to stay one." "Now that's a damn boresome point of view," Gus said. "Just because we started out being rangers don't mean we have to stay rangers all our lives. The army will whip out the Indians in a few more years and there won't be much to do, anyway." "Maybe, but there's plenty to do right now," Call said.

"Mr. Xavier, now he's a curious fellow," Gus said. "He's been standing behind that bar all day and he's still standing behind it." Call looked. Sure enough, Xavier still held his position behind the long bar, although all the rangers had either fallen asleep or left the floor of the saloon.

"Between the barbering and the liquor they made a pretty penny on us today," Call said. "I expect they'll soon prosper." The two of them strolled away from the unbuilt saloon and the camp where their comrades slept, and meandered toward the river. They heard the water before they saw it, and, when they did see it, it was only the flicker of moonlight here and there on the surface.

"Lonesome Dove will need a whore or two, otherwise it won't grow," Augustus allowed.

"Prosperous businessmen won't long tolerate the absence of whores." "You can't tolerate it, you mean," Call said.

"That's one reason you'll never be a prosperous businessman." "Well, I just wasn't meant to work at one trade all my life," Augustus said. "I'm too fond of variety." "If you like variety I don't see how you can beat rangering," Call said. "A month ago we were freezing on the plains, trying not to get scalped, and now we're off to Mexico, where we'll be hot and probably get shot." "Is the Captain sending the cattle?" Gus asked. "If he is, I hope they don't come for a day or two. A little more of that woman's cooking might improve my cowboying." "He's not sending the cattle--no interest," Call said.

"No interest?" Gus said, astonished. "No cattle? What are we going to do, Woodrow?" They both stood looking across the river, at Mexico, the dark country.

"Maybe the Captain's already escaped," Gus said. "He's sly, the Captain. He could be halfway home by now." "He might be halfway dead, too," Call pointed out.

"If we can't raise the cattle, what do we do?" Augustus asked. "Go after him anyway, or give up again?" "You're a captain, same as I am," Call said. "What do you want to do? The two of us might go in alone and sneak him out." "Why, yes, and pigs might cuss," Gus said. "What'll happen is we'll get caught too--andthe state of Texas won't bother sending no expedition after us." Still, once he thought about it, something about the adventure of trying to rescue Captain Scull appealed to him, and the thought of a herd of cattle did not.

"It's getting to be the fly season, Woodrow," Gus said.

Call waited. Augustus didn't elaborate.

"What's your point?" Call asked, finally.

"We can't stop the seasons from turning." "No, but we could avoid cattle during the fly season," Gus said. "A thousand cattle would attract at least a million flies, which is more flies than I care to swat." "We don't have them anyway," Call said.

"And if Captain King won't give them to us, nobody will. Anyway, he's right. We could no more drive a thousand cattle across Mexico than we could a thousand jackrabbits." "That's right, we ain't vaqueros," Gus said.