Lonesome Dove

"What, Momma?" Betsey asked. She had come upstairs with Martin and had overheard.

"Nothing, Betsey," Clara said. "Just a crazy woman talking to herself."

"Martin acts like he's got a stomachache," Betsey complained. "You didn't have to look so mean at him, Ma."

Clara turned for a moment. "I won't have him spitting out food," she said. "The reason men are awful is because some woman has spoiled them. Martin's going to learn ma

"I don't think men are awful," Betsey said. "Dish ain't."

"Let me be, Betsey," Clara said. "Put Martin to bed."

She opened the letter-just a few words in a scrawling hand:

DEAR CLARA

I would be obliged if you'd look after Lorie. I fear she'll take this hard.

I'm down to one leg now and this life is fading fast, so I can't say more. Good luck to you and your gals, I hope you do well with the horses.

Gus

Clara went out on her porch and sat, twisting her hands, for an hour. She could see that the men were below, still smoking, but they were silent. It's too much death, she thought. Why does it keep coming to me?

The dark heavens gave no answer, and after a while she got up and went downstairs and out to Lorena, who still stood by the buggy, where she had been from the time Call arrived.

"Do you want me to read you this letter?" she said, knowing the girl couldn't read. "It's bad handwriting."

Lorena held the letter tightly in her hand. "No, I'll just keep it," she said. "He put my name on it. I can read that. I'll just keep it."

She didn't want Clara to see the letter. It was hers from Gus. What the words were didn't matter.

Clara stood with her for a bit and went back in.

The moon rose late, and when it did the men walked to the little shack by the lots where they slept. The old Mexican was coughing. Later Lorena heard the Captain get his bedroll and walk away with it. She was glad when the lights went out in the house and the men were all gone. It made it easier to believe Gus knew she was there.

They'll all forget you-they got their doings, she thought. But I won't, Gus. Whenever it comes morning or night, I'll think of you. You come and got me away from him. She can forget and they can forget, but I won't, never, Gus.

The next morning Lorena still stood by the buggy. The men scarcely knew what to think about it. Call was perplexed. Clara made breakfast as silently as she had presided over supper. They could all look out the window and see the blond girl standing like a statue by the buggy, the letter from Augustus clutched in her hand.

"For that girl's sake I wish you'd forget your promise, Mister Call," Clara said finally.

"I can't forget no promise to a friend," Call said. "Though I do agree it's foolish and told him so myself."

"People lose their minds over things like this," Clara said. "Gus was all to that girl. Who'll help me, if she loses hers?"

Dish wanted to say that he would, but couldn't get the words out. The sight of Lorie, standing in grief, made him so unhappy that he wished he'd never set foot in the town of Lonesome Dove. Yet he loved her, though he could not approach her.

Clara saw that it was hopeless to hammer at Call. He would go unless she shot him. His face was set, and only the fact that the girl stood by the buggy had kept him from leaving already. It angered her that Gus had been so perverse as to extract such a promise. There was no proportion in it-being drug three thousand miles to be buried at a picnic site. Probably he had been delirious and would have withdrawn the request at once if he had been allowed a lucid moment. What angered her most was Gus's selfishness in regard to Call's son. He had been a sweet boy with lonesome eyes, polite. He was the kind of boy she would have given anything to raise, and here, for a romantic whim, Gus had seen to it that father and son were separated.

It seemed so wrong to her, and raised such anger in her, that for a moment she was almost tempted to shoot Call, just to thwart Gus. Not kill, but shoot him enough to keep him down until Gus could be buried and the folly checked.

Then, between one minute and the next, Lorena crumpled to the ground, unconscious. Clara knew it was only a faint, but the men had to carry her in and upstairs. Clara shooed them out as soon as she could, and put Betsey to watching her. By that time Captain Call had mounted and hitched the brown mule to the buggy and mounted his horse. He was ready to go.

Clara walked out to try once more. Dish and July were shaking hands with Call, but they beat an immediate retreat when they saw her coming.

"I put it to you once more, in the plainest terms, Mr. Call," Clara said. "A live son is more important than a dead friend. Can you understand that?"

"A promise is a promise," Call said.

"A promise is words-a son is a life," Clara said. "A life, Mr. Call. I was better fit to raise boys than you've ever been, and yet I lost three. I tell you no promise is worth leaving that boy up there, as you have. Does he know he's your son?"

"I suppose he does-I give him my horse," Call said, feeling that it was hell to have her, of all women, talk to him about the matter.

"Your horse but not your name?" Clara said. "You haven't even given him your name?"

"I put more value on the horse," Call said, turning the dun. He rode off, but Clara, terrible in her anger, strode beside him.

"I'll write him," she said. "I'll see he gets your name if I have to carry the letter to Montana myself. And I'll tell you another thing: I'm sorry you and Gus McCrae ever met. All you two done was ruin one another, not to mention those close to you. Another reason I didn't marry him was because I didn't want to fight you for him every day of my life. You men and your promises: they're just excuses to do what you plan to do anyway, which is leave. You think you've always done right-that's your ugly pride, Mr. Call. But you never did right and it would be a sad woman that needed anything from you. You're a vain coward, for all your fighting. I despised you then, for what you were, and I despise you now, for what you're doing."

Clara could not check her bitterness-even now, she knew, the man thought he was doing the right thing. She strode beside the horse, pouring out her contempt, until Call put the mule and the dun into a trot, the buggy, with the coffin on it, squeaking as it bounced over the rough plain.

102.

SO CAPTAIN CALL TURNED back down the rivers, cut by the quint of Clara's contempt and seared with the burn of his own regret. For a week, down from the Platte and across the Republican, he could not forget what she said: that he had never done right, that he and Gus had ruined one another, that he was a coward, that she would take a letter to the boy. He had gone through life feeling that he had known what should be done, and now a woman flung it at him that he hadn't. He found that he could not easily forget a word Clara said. He could only trail the buggy down the lonely plains, her words stinging in his heart and head.

Before he reached Kansas, word had filtered ahead of him that a man was carrying a body home to Texas. The plain was filled with herds, for it was full summer. Cowboys spread the word, soldiers spread it. Several times he met trappers, coming east from the Rockies, or buffalo hunters who were finding no buffalo. The Indians heard-Pawnee and Arapahoe and Ogallala Sioux. Sometimes he would ride past parties of braves, their horses fat on spring grass, come to watch his journey. Some were curious enough to approach him, even to question him. Why did he not bury the compañero? Was he a holy man whose spirit must have a special place?

No, Call answered. Not a holy man. Beyond that he couldn't explain. He had come to feel that Augustus had probably been out of his mind at the end, though he hadn't looked it, and that he had been out of his mind to make the promise he had.