Lonely Dove

Chapter 12

he gave no sign of it. The small herd had already been

penned, and he and Deets and the man called Chick were quietly separating out horses with the H I C brand on them. Dish

Boggett worked the gate between the two corrals, letting Wilbarger’s horses run through and waving his rope in the face

of those he didn’t claim. Jake Spoon was nowhere in sight, nor was there any sign of Augustus and the Irishmen. The new

herd was far too large to pen. Call had always meant to fence a holding pasture for just such an eventuality, but he had

never gotten around to it. In the immediate case it didn’t matter greatly; the horses were tired from their long run and

could be left to graze and rest. After breakfast he would send the boy out to watch them.

Wilbarger paused from his work a moment to look at the stream of horses trotting past, then went back to his cutting,

which was almost done. Since there was already enough help in the pen, there was nothing for Newt to do but stand by

the fence and watch. Pea had already climbed up on what they called the “opry seat”—the top rail of the corral—to

watch the proceedings. His bay and Newt’s Mouse, just unsaddled, took a few steps and then lay down and rolled

themselves in the dust.

Call was not quite ready to rest the mare. When Wilbarger finished his sorting and came over to the fence, it was her, not

the Captain, that he had his eye on.

“Good morning,” he said. “Let’s trade. You keep them thirty-eight splendid horses I just sorted out and I’ll take that mean

creature you’re astraddle of. Thirty-eight for one is generous terms, in my book.”

“Keep your book,” Call said, not surprised at the offer.

Pea Eye was so startled by what he was hearing that he almost fell off the fence.

“You mean you’d give up all them horses for the chance of having a hunk bit out of you?” he asked. He knew men fancied

the Captain’s mare, but that anyone would fancy her to that extent was almost more than he could credit.

Dish Boggett walked over, slapping the dust off his chaps with a coiled rope.

“Is that your last word on the subject?” Wilbarger asked. “I’m offering thirty-eight for one. You won’t get a chance like

that every day of your life.”

Dish snorted. He fancied the gray mare himself. “It’d be like tradin’ a fifty-dollar gold piece for thirty-eight nickels,” he

said. He was in a foul temper anyway. The minute they had the horses penned, Jake Spoon had unsaddled and walked

straight to the Dry Bean, as if that were where he lived.

Wilbarger ignored him too. “This outfit is full of opinion,” he said. “If opinions was money you’d all be rich.” He looked at

Call.

“I won’t trade this mare,” Call said. “And that ain’t an opinion.”

“No, it’s more like a damn hard fact,” Wilbarger said. “I live on a horse and yet I ain’t had but good ones my whole life.”

“This is my third,” Call said.

Wilbarger nodded. “Well, sir,” he said, “I’m obliged to you for getting here on time. It’s plain the man you deal with

knows where there’s a den of thieves.”

“A big den,” Call said.

“Well, let’s go, Chick,” Wilbarger said. “We won’t get home unless we start.”

“You might as well stay for breakfast,” Call said. “A couple more of your horses are on their way.”

“What are they doing, traveling on three legs?” Wilbarger asked.

“They’re with Mr. McCrae,” Call said. “He travels at his own pace.”

“Talks at it, too,” Wilbarger said. “I don’t think we’ll wait. Keep them two horses for your trouble.”

“We brought in some nice stock,” Call said. “You’re welcome to look it over, if you’re still short.”

“Not interested,” Wilbarger said. “You won’t rent pigs and you won’t trade that mare, so I might as well be on my way.”

Then he turned to Dish Boggett. “Want a job, son?” he asked. “You look all right to me.”

“I got a job,” Dish said.

“Running off Mexican horses isn’t a job,” Wilbarger said. “It’s merely a gamble. You’ve the look of a cowboy, and I’m

about to start up the trail with three thousand head.”

“So are we,” Call said, amused that the man would try to hire a hand out from under him with him sitting there.

“Going where?” Wilbarger asked.

“Going to Montana,” Call said.

“I wouldn’t,” Wilbarger said. He rode over to the gate, leaned over to open it, and rode out, leaving the gate for Chick toclose. When Chick tried to lean down and shut the gate his hat fell off. Nobody walked over to pick it up for him,

either—he was forced to dismount, which embarrassed him greatly. Wilbarger waited, but he looked impatient.

“Well, we may see you up the trail, then,” he said to Call. “I wouldn’t aim for Montana, though. Too far, too cold, full of

bears and I don’t know about the Indians. They may be beat but I wouldn’t count on it. You might end up making some a

present of a fine herd of beef.”

“We’ll try not to,” Call said.

Wilbarger rode off, Chick following at the rear of the small horse herd. As Chick rode past, Dish Boggett was greatly

tempted to rope him off his horse and box his ears as a means of relieving his feelings about Lorie and Jake Spoon—but

the Captain was sitting there, so he merely gave Chick a hard stare and let him go.

“By gosh, I could eat,” Pea Eye said. “I sure hope Gus ain’t lost.

“If he’s lost I don’t know what we’ll do for biscuits,” he added, since nobody commented on his remark.

“You could always get married,” Dish observed dryly. “There’s plenty of women who can make biscuits.”

It was not the first time Pea had had that particular truth pointed out to him. “I know there is,” he said. “But that don’t

mean there’s one of ’em that would have me.”

Deets gave a rich chuckle. “Why, the widow Cole would have you,” he said. “She’d be pleased to have you.” Then, well

aware that the widow Cole was something of a sore spot with Pea, he walked off toward the house.

Mention of Mary Cole made Pea Eye very uncomfortable. From time to time, throughout his life, it had been pointed out

to him that he might marry—Gus McCrae was very fond of pointing it out, in fact.

But once in a while, even if nobody mentioned one, the thought of women entered his head all on its own, and once it

came it usually tended to stay for several hours, filling his noggin like a cloud of gnats. Of course, a cloud of gnats was

nothing in comparison to a cloud of Gulf coast mosquitoes, so the thought of women was not that bothersome, but it was

a thought Pea would rather not have in his head.

He had never known what to think about women, and still didn’t, but so far as actions went he was content to take his

cue from the Captain, whose cue was plain. The Captain left them strictly alone, and had all the years Pea had been with

him, excepting only one puzzling instance that had occurred years before, which Pea only remembered once every year or

two, usually when he was dreaming. He had gone down to the saloon to get an ax someone had borrowed and not

returned, and while he was getting the ax he heard a young woman crying out words and grievances to someone who

was with her in her room.

The woman doing the crying was the w***e named Maggie, Newt’s mother, whom Jake Spoon took such a fancy to later.

It was only after Pea had found the ax and was halfway home with it that it occurred to him that Maggie had been talking

to the Captain, and had even called him by his first name, which Pea had never used in all his years of service.

The knowledge that the Captain was in the room with a w***e struck Pea hard, sort of like the bullet that had hit him just

behind the shoulder blades in the big Indian scrape up by Fort Phantom Hill. When the bullet hit he felt a solid whack and

then sort of went numb in the brain—and it was the same with the notion that struck him as he was carrying the ax home

from the saloon: Maggie was talking to the Captain in the privacy of her room, whereas so far as he knew no one had ever

heard of the Captain doing more than occasionally tipping his hat to a lady if he met one in the street.

Overhearing that snatch of conversation was an accident Pea was slow to forget. For a month or two after it happened he

went around feeling nervous, expecting life to change in some bold way. And yet nothing changed at all. They all soon

went up the river to try and catch some bandits raiding out of Chihuahua, and the Captain, so far as he could tell, was the

same old Captain. By the time they came back, Maggie had had her child, and soon after, Jake Spoon moved in with her

for a while. Then he left and Maggie died and Gus went down one day and got Newt from the Mexican family that had

taken him upon Maggie’s death.

The years had gone on passing, most of them slow years, particularly after they quit rangering and went into the horse-

and-cattle business. The only real result of overhearing the conversation was that Pea was cautious from then on about

who he let borrow the ax. He liked life slow and didn’t want any more mysteries or sharp surprises.

Though he was content to stick with the Captain and Gus and do his daily work, he found that the problem of women was

one that didn’t entirely go away. The question of marriage, about which Deets felt so free to chuckle, was a persistent

one. Gus, who had been married twice and who whored whenever he could find a w***e, was the main reason it was so

persistent. Marriage was one of Gus’s favorite subjects. When he got to talking about it the Captain usually took his rifle

and went for a walk, but by that time Pea would usually be comfortable on the porch and a little sleepy with liquor, so he

was the one to get the full benefit of Gus’s opinions, one of which was that Pea was just going to waste by not marrying

the widow Cole.The fact that Pea had only spoken to Mary Cole five or six times in his life, most of them times when she was still married

to Josh Cole, didn’t mean a thing to a bystander like Gus, or even a bystander like Deets; both of them seemed to take it

for granted that Mary regarded him as a fit successor to Josh. The thing that seemed to clinch it, in their view, was that,

while Mary was an unusually tall woman, she was not as tall as Pea. She had been a good foot taller than Josh Cole, a mild

fellow who had been in Pickles Gap buying a milk cow when a bad storm hit. A bolt of lightning fried both Josh and his

horse—the milk cow had only been singed, but it still affected her milk. Mary Cole never remarried, but, in Gus’s view,

that was only because Pea Eye had not had the enterprise to walk down the street and ask her.

“Why, Josh was just a half-pint,” Gus said frequently. “That woman needs a full pint. It’d be a blessing for her to have a

man around who could reach the top shelf.”

Pea had never considered that height might be a factor in relations such as marriage. After brooding about it for several

months it occurred to him that Gus was tall too, and educated as well.

“Hell, you’re tall,” he said one night. “You ought to marry her yourself. The both of you can read.”

He knew Mary could read because he had been in church once or twice when the preacher had asked her to read the

Psalms. She had a kind of low, scratchy voice, unusual in a woman; once or twice, listening to it made Pea feel funny, as if

someone was tickling the little hairs at the back of his neck.

Gus vehemently denied that he would be a suitable mate for Mary Cole. “Why, no, Pea, it wouldn’t do,” he said. “I’ve

done been wrung through the wringer of marriage twice. What a widow wants is someone fresh. It’s what all women

want, widows or not. If a man’s got experience it’s bound to be that he got it with another woman, and that don’t never

sit well. A forthright woman like Mary probably considers that she can give you all the experience you’re ever likely to

need.”

To Pea it was all just a troublesome puzzle. He could not remember how the subject had come up in the first place, since

he had never said a word about wanting to marry. Whatever else it meant, it meant leaving the Captain, and Pea didn’t

plan to do that. Of course, Mary didn’t live very far away, but the Captain always liked to have his men handy in case

something came up sudden. There was no knowing what the Captain would think if he were to try and marry. One day he

pointed out to Gus that he was far from being the only available man in Lonesome Dove. Xavier Wanz was available, not

to mention Lippy. A number of the traveling men who passed through were surely unmarried. But when he raised the

point, Gus just ignored him.

Some nights, laying on the porch, he felt a fool for even thinking about such things, and yet think he did. He had lived with

men his whole life, rangering and working; during his whole adult life he couldn’t recollect spending ten minutes alone

with a woman. He was better acquainted with Gus’s pigs than he was with Mary Cole, and more comfortable with them

too. The sensible thing would be to ignore Gus and Deets and think about things that had some bearing on his day’s work,

like how to keep his old boot from rubbing a corn on his left big toe. An Army mule had tromped the toe ten years before,

and since then it had stuck out slightly in the wrong direction, just enough to make his boot rub a corn. The only solution

to the problem was to cut holes in his boot, which worked fine in dry weather but had its disadvantages when it was wet

and cold. Gus had offered to rebreak the toe and set it properly, but Pea didn’t hate the corn that bad. It did seem to him

that it was only common sense that a sore toe made more difference in his life than a woman he had barely spoken to;

yet his mind didn’t see it that way. There were nights when he lay on the porch too sleepy to shave his corn, or even to

worry about the problem, when the widow Cole would pop to the surface of his consciousness like a turtle on the surface

of a pond. At such times he would pretend to be asleep, for Gus was so sly he could practically read minds, and would

surely tease him if he figured out that he was thinking about Mary and her scratchy voice.

Even more persistent than the thought of her reading the Psalms was another memory. One day he had been passing her

house just as a little thunderstorm swept through the town, scaring the dogs and cats and rolling tumbleweeds down the

middle of the street. Mary had hung a washing and was out in her backyard trying to get it in before the rain struck, but

the thunderstorm proved too quick for her. Big drops of rain began to splatter in the dust, and the wind got higher,

causing the sheets on Mary’s clothesline to flap so hard they popped like guns. Pea had been raised to be helpful, and

since it was obvious that Mary was going to have a hard time with the sheets, he started over to offer his assistance.

But the storm had a start on both of them, and before he even got there the rain began to pour down, turning the white

dust brown. Most women would have seen at that point that the wash was a lost cause and run for the house, but Mary

wasn’t running. Her skirt was already so wet it was plastered to her legs, but she was still struggling with one of the

flapping sheets. In the struggle, two or three small garments that she had already gathered up blew out of her hand and

off across the yard, which had begun to look like a shallow lake. Pea hurried to retrieve the garments and then helped

Mary get the wet sheet off the line—she was evidently just doing it out of pure stubbornness, since the sun was shining

brightly to the west of the storm and would obviously be available to dry the sheet again in a few minutes.

It was Pea’s one close exposure to an aspect of womankind that Gus was always talking about—their penchant for flyingdirectly in the face of reason. Mary was as wet on the top as on the bottom, and the flapping sheet had knocked one of

the combs out of her hair, causing it to come loose. The wash was as wet as it had been before she hung it up in the first

place, and yet she wasn’t quitting. She was taking clothes off the line that would just have to be hung back on in fifteen

minutes, and Pea was helping her do it as if it all made some sense. While he was steadying the clothesline he happened

to notice something that gave him almost as hard a jolt as the bolt of lightning that killed Josh Cole: the clothes he had

rescued were undergarments—white bloomers of the sort that it was obvious Mary was wearing beneath the skirt that

was so wet against her legs. Pea was so shocked that he almost dropped the underpants back in the mud. She was bound

to think it bold that he would pick up her undergarments like that—yet she was determined to have the sheets off the

line and all he could do was stand there numb with embarrassment. It was a blessing that rain soon began to pour off his

hat brim in streams right in front of his face, making a little waterfall for him to hide behind until the ordeal ended. With

the water running off his hat he only caught blurred glimpses of what was going on—he could not judge to what extent

Mary had been shocked by his helpful but thoughtless act.

To his surprise, nothing terrible happened. When she finally had the sheet under control, Mary took the bloomers from

him as casually as if they were handkerchiefs or table napkins or something. To his vast surprise, she seemed to be rather

amused at the sight of him standing there with a stream of water pouring off his hat and falling just in front of his nose.

“Pea, it’s a good thing you know how to keep your mouth shut,” she said. “If you opened it right now you’d probably

drown. Many thanks for your help.”

She was the kind of forthright woman who called men by their first names, and she was known to salt her speech rather

freely with criticism.

“We’ve the Lord to thank for this bath,” she said. “I personally didn’t need it, but I’m bound to say it might work an

improvement where you’re concerned. You ain’t as bad-looking as I thought, now that you’re nearly clean.”

By the time she got to her back porch the rain was slackening and the sun was already striking little rainbows through the

sparkle of drops that still fell. Pea had walked on home, the water dripping more slowly from his hat. He never mentioned

the incident to anyone, knowing it would mean unmerciful teasing if it ever got out. But he remembered it. When he lay

on the porch half drunk and it floated up in his mind, things got mixed into the memory that he hadn’t even known he

was noticing, such as the smell of Mary’s wet flesh. He hadn’t meant to smell her, and hadn’t made any effort to, and yet

the very night after it happened the first thing he remembered was that Mary had smelled different from any other wet

thing he had ever smelled. He could not find a word for what was different about Mary’s smell—maybe it was just that,

being a woman, she smelled cleaner than most of the wet creatures he came in contact with. It had been more than a

year since the rainstorm, and yet Mary’s smell was still part of the memory of it. He also remembered how she seemed to

bulge out of her corset at the top and the bottom both.

It was not every night that he remembered Mary, though. Much of the time he found himself wondering about the

generalities of marriage. The principal aspect he worried over most was that marriage required men and women to live

together. He had tried many times to envision how it would be to be alone at night under the same roof with a

woman—or to have one there at breakfast and supper. What kind of talk would a woman expect? And what kind of

behavior. It stumped him: he couldn’t even make a guess. Once in a while it occurred to him that he could tell Mary he

would like to marry her but didn’t consider himself worthy to live under the same roof with her. If he put it right she

might take a liberal attitude and allow him to continue to live down the street with the boys, that being what he was used

to. He would plan, of course, to make himself available for chores when she required him—otherwise life could go on in

its accustomed way.

He was even tempted to sound out Gus on the plan—Gus knew more about marriage than anyone else—but every time

he planned to bring it up he either got sleepy first or decided at the last second he had better keep quiet. If the plan was

ridiculous in the eyes of an expert, then Pea wouldn’t know what to think, and besides, Gus would never let up teasing.

They were all scattered around the table, finishing one of Bol’s greasy breakfasts, when they heard the sound of horses in

the yard. The next minute Augustus trotted up and dismounted, with the two Irishmen just a few yards behind him.

Instead of being bareback the Irishmen were riding big silver-studded Mexican saddles and driving eight or ten skinny

horses before them. When they reached the porch they just sat on their horses, looking unhappy.

Dish Boggett had not really believed there were any Irishmen down in Mexico, and when he stepped out on the back

porch and saw them he burst right out laughing.

Newt felt a little sorry for the two of them, but he had to admit they were a comical sight. The Mexican saddles were all

clearly meant for men with longer legs. Their feet did not come anywhere near the stirrups. Even so, the Irishmen seemed

disinclined to dismount.

Augustus jerked the saddle off his tired horse and turned him loose to graze.

“Get down, boys,” he said to the Irishmen. “You’re safe now, as long as you don’t eat the cooking. This is what we call home.”

Allen O’Brien had both hands around the big Mexican saddle horn. He had been holding it so tightly for the last two hours

that he was not sure he could turn it loose. He looked down with apprehension.

“I’d not realized how much taller a horse is than a mule,” he said. “It seems a long ways down.”

Dish regarded the remark as the most comical he had ever heard. It had never occurred to him that there could be such a

thing as a grown man who didn’t know how to dismount from a horse. The sight of the two Irishmen stuck with their

short legs dangling down the sides of the horses struck him as so funny that he doubled over with laughter.

“I guess we’ll have to build ’em a ladder, by God,” he said, when he could catch his breath.

Augustus too was mildly amused by the Irishmen’s ignorance. “Why, boys, you just have to flop over and drop,” he said.

Allen O’Brien accomplished the dismounting with no real trouble, but Sean was reluctant to drop once he flopped over.

He hung from the saddle horn for several seconds, which puzzled the horse, so that it began to try and buck a little. It was

too thin and too tired to do much, but Sean did get jerked around a little, a sight so funny that even Call laughed. Allen

O’Brien, once safe on the ground, immediately joined in the laughter out of relief. Sean finally dropped and stood glaring

at his brother.