Lonesome Dove, Page 44

  "What is it?" he asked one night, turning at the top of the stairs. It was as if her need had pulled the question out of him.

  "Can't you just say my name?" she asked. "Can't you just say it once?"

  The question so took him by surprise that it was the one thing of all those she had said that stayed with him through the years. Why was it important that he say her name?

  "Why, yes," he said, puzzled. "Your name's Maggie."

  "But you don't never say it," she said. "You don't never call me nothin', I just wish you'd say it once when you come."

  "I don't know what that would amount to," he said honestly.

  Maggie sighed. "I'd just feel happy if you did," she said. "I'd just feel so happy."

  Something in the way she said it had disturbed him terribly. She looked as if she would cry or run down the stairs after him. He had seen despair in men and women, but had not expected to see it in Maggie on that occasion. Yet despair was what he saw.

  Two nights later he had started to go to her again, but stopped himself. He had taken his gun and walked out of Lonesome Dove to the Comanche crossing and sat the night. He never went to see Maggie again, though once in a while he might see her on the street. She had had the boy, lived four years, and died. According to Gus she had stayed drunk most of her last year. She had gotten thick with Jake for a spell, but then Jake left.

  Over all those years, he could still remember how her eyes fixed on him hopefully when he entered, or when he was ready to leave. It was the most painful part of the memory — he had not asked her to care for him that much, yet she had. He had only asked to buy what other men had bought, but she had singled him out in a way he had never understood.

  He felt a heavy guilt, though, for he had gone back time after time, and had let the need grow without even thinking about it or recognizing it. And then he left.

  "Broke her heart," Gus said, many times.

  "What are you talking about?" Call said. "She was a whore."

  "Whores got hearts," Augustus said.

  The bitter truth was that Gus was right. Maggie hadn't even seemed like a whore. There was nothing hard about her — in fact, it was obvious to everyone that she was far too soft for the life she was living. She had tender expressions — more tender than any he had ever seen. He could still remember her movements — those more than her words. She could never quite get her hair to stay fixed, and was always touching it nervously with one hand. "It won't behave," she said, as if her hair were a child.

  "You take care of her, if you're so worried," he said to Gus, but Gus shrugged that off. "She ain't in love with me, she's in love with you," he pointed out.

  It was the point in all his years with Gus when they came closest to splitting the company, for Gus would not let up. He wanted Call to go back and see Maggie.

  "Go back and do what?" Call asked. He felt a little desperate about it. "I ain't a marrying man."

  "She ain't proposed, has she?" Gus asked sarcastically.

  "Well, go back and do what?" Call asked.

  "Sit with her — just sit with her," Gus said. "She likes your company. I don't know why."

  Instead, Call sat by the river, night after night. There was a period when he wanted to go back, when it would have been nice to sit with Maggie a few minutes and watch her fiddle with her hair. But he chose the river, and his solitude, thinking that in time the feeling would pass, and best so: he would stop thinking about Maggie, she would stop thinking about him. After all, there were more talkative men than him — Gus and Jake, for two.

  But it didn't pass — all that passed were years. Every time he heard of her being drunk, or having some trouble, he would feel uneasy and guilty, as if he were to blame. It didn't help that Gus piled on the criticism, so much so that twice Call was on the point of fighting him. "You like to have everyone needing you, but you're right picky as to who you satisfy," Gus had said in the bitterest of the fights.

  "I don't much want nobody needing me," Call said.

  "Then why do you keep running around with this bunch of half-outlaws you call Texas Rangers? There's men in this troop who won't piss unless you point to a spot. But when a little thing like Maggie, who ain't the strongest person in the world, gets a need for you, you head for the river and clean your gun."

  "Well, I might need my gun," Call said. But he was aware that Gus always got the better of their arguments.

  All his life he had been careful to control experience as best he could, and then something had happened that was forever beyond his control, just because he had wanted to find out about the business with women. For years he had stayed to himself and felt critical of men who were always running to whores. Then he had done it himself and made a mockery of his own rules. Something about the girl, her timidity or just the lonely way she looked, sitting by her window, had drawn him. And somehow, within the little bits of pleasure, a great pain had been concealed, one that had hurt him far more than the three bullets he had taken in battle over the years..

  When the boy was born it got worse. For the first two years he was in torment over what to do. Gus claimed Maggie had said the boy was Call's, but how could she know for sure? Maggie hadn't had it in her to refuse a man. It was the only reason she was a whore, Call had decided — she just couldn't turn away any kind of love. He felt it must all count as love, in her thinking — the cowboys and the gamblers. Maybe she just thought it was the best love she could get.

  A few times he almost swayed, almost went back to marry her, though it would have meant disgrace. Maybe the boy was his — maybe it was the proper thing to do, although it would mean leaving the Rangers.

  A time or two he even stood up to go to her, but his resolve always broke. He just could not go back. The night he heard she was dead he left the town without a word to anyone and rode up the river alone for a week. He knew at once that he had forever lost the chance to right himself, that he would never again be able to feel that he was the man he had wanted to be. The man he had wanted to be would never have gone to Maggie in the first place. He felt like a cheat — he was the most respected man on the border, and yet a whore had a claim on him. He had ignored the claim, and the woman died, but somehow the claim remained, like a weight he had to carry forever.

  The boy, growing up in the village, first with a Mexican family and then with the Hat Creek outfit, was a living reminder of his failure. With the boy there he could never be free of the memory and the guilt. He would have given almost anything just to erase the memory, not to have it part of his past, or in his mind, but of course he couldn't do that. It was his forever, like the long scar on his back, the result of having let a horse throw him through a glass window.

  Occasionally Gus would try to get him to claim the boy, but Call wouldn't. He knew that he probably should, not out of certainty so much as decency, but he couldn't. It meant an admission he couldn't make — an admission that he had failed someone. It had never happened in battle, such failure. Yet it had happened in a little room over a saloon, because of a small woman who couldn't keep her hair fixed. It was strange to him that such a failure could seem so terrible, and yet it did. It was such a torment when he thought of it that he eventually tried to avoid all situations in which women were mentioned — only that way could he keep the matter out of mind for a stretch of time.

  But it always came back, for sooner or later men around the campfires or the wagon or the outfit would begin to talk of whores, and the thought of Maggie would sting his mind as sweat stings a cut. He had only seen her for a few months. The memory should have died, and yet it wouldn't. It had a life different from any other memory. He had seen terrible things in battle and had mostly forgotten them, and yet he couldn't forget the sad look in Maggie's eyes when she mentioned that she wished he'd say her name. It made no sense that such a statement could haunt him for years, but as he got older, instead of seeming less important it became more important. It seemed to undermine all that he was, or that people thought he was. It m
ade all his trying, his work and discipline, seem fraudulent, and caused him to wonder if his life had made sense at all.

  What he wanted most was what he could never have: for it not to have happened — any of it. Better by far never to have known the pleasure than to have the pain that followed. Maggie had been a weak woman, and yet her weakness had all but slaughtered his strength. Sometimes just the thought of her made him feel that he shouldn't pretend to lead men anymore.

  Sitting on the low bluff, watching the moon climb the dark sky, he felt the old sadness again. He felt, almost, that he didn't belong with the very men he was leading, and that he ought to just leave: ride west, let the herd go, let Montana go, be done with the whole business of leading men. It was peculiar to seem so infallible in their eyes and yet feel so empty and sad when he thought of himself.

  Call could faintly hear the Irishman still singing to the cattle. Once more the Texas bull lowed. He wondered if all men felt such disappointment when thinking of themselves. He didn't know. Maybe most men didn't think of themselves. Probably Pea Eye gave no more thought to his life than he did to which side of a horse he approached. Probably, too, Pea Eye had no Maggie — which was only another irony of his leadership. Pea had been faithful to his tenets, whereas he had not.

  And yet, Call remembered, that very day he had seen Gus McCrae cry over a woman who had been gone fifteen years and more: Gus, of all men he knew, the most nonchalant.

  Finally he felt a little better, as he always did if he stayed alone long enough. The breeze flickered over the little bluff. Occasionally the Hell Bitch pawed the ground. At night he let her graze on the end of a long rope, but this time he carefully wrapped the end of the rope around his waist before lying back against his saddle to sleep. If Blue Duck was really in the vicinity a little extra caution might pay.

  47

  AS NEWT RODE through the dusk, he felt so anxious that he began to get a headache. Often that would happen when he felt a lot was expected of him. By the time he had ridden a couple of miles he began to have strong apprehensions. What if he missed Lorena's camp? Mr. Gus had said it was due east, but Newt couldn't be sure he was traveling due east. If he missed the camp there was no doubt in his mind that he would be disgraced. It would make him a permanent laughingstock, and Dish Boggett would probably refuse to have anything more to do with him — it was widely known that Dish was partial to Lorena.

  It was a great relief to him when Mouse nickered and Lorena's horse nickered back. At least that disgrace had been avoided. He loped on to the little camp, and at first couldn't see Lorena at all, just the horse and the mule. Then he finally saw her sitting with her back against a tree.

  He had spent most of the ride rehearsing things he might say to her, but at the sight of her he completely forgot them all. He slowed Mouse to a walk in hope of thinking up something to say before he had to speak, but for some reason his mind wouldn't work. He also found that he couldn't breathe easily.

  Lorena looked up when she saw him coming, but she didn't rise. She sat with her back against the tree and waited for him to explain himself. Newt could see her pale face, but it was too dark to tell anything about her expression.

  "It's just me," Newt managed to say. "My name's Newt," he added, realizing that Lorena probably didn't know it.

  Lorena didn't speak. Newt remembered having heard men comment on the fact that she didn't talk much. Well, they were right. The only sound from the camp was the sound of crickets. His pride at having been given such an important errand began to fade.

  "Mr. Gus said to come," he pointed out.

  Lorena was sorry Gus had sent him. The bandit hadn't returned and she didn't feel in danger. She had a feeling Jake would be coming — even angry, he wouldn't want to do without her three nights in a row. She didn't want the boy around. The alone feeling had come back, the feeling that had been with her most of her life. In a way she was glad it had. Being alone was easier and more restful than having to talk to a boy. Anyway, why send a boy? He wouldn't be able to stand up to a bandit.

  "You go on back," she said. It tired her to think of having the boy around all night.

  Newt's spirits fell. It was just what he had feared she would say. He had been ordered to come and look after her, and he couldn't just blithely disobey an order. But neither did he want to disobey Lorena. He sat where he was, on Mouse, in the grip of terrible indecision. He almost wished something would happen — a sudden attack of Mexicans or something. He might be killed, but at least he wouldn't have to make a choice between disobeying Mr. Gus and disobeying Lorena.

  "Mr. Gus said I was to stay," he said nervously.

  "Gus can lump it," Lorena said. "You go on back,"

  "I guess I'll just tell him you said you were all right," Newt said, feeling hopeless.

  "How old are you?" Lorena asked suddenly, to his immense surprise.

  "I'm seventeen," Newt said. "I knew Jake when I was real little."

  "Well, you ride on back," she said. "I don't need looking after."

  She said it with more friendliness in her voice, but it didn't make it easier to do. He could see her plainly in the white night. She sat with her knees drawn up.

  "Well, goodbye, then," he said. Lorena didn't answer. He turned back toward the herd, feeling a worse failure than ever.

  Then it occurred to Newt that he would just have to trick her. He could watch without her knowing it. That way he wouldn't have to go back to camp and admit that Lorena didn't want him in camp with her. If he did that, the cowboys would make jokes about it all the way to Montana, making out that he had tried to do things he hadn't tried to do. He wasn't even sure what you were supposed to try to do. He had a sort of cloudy sense, but that was all.

  He trotted what he judged to be about a half a mile from Lorena's camp before stopping and dismounting. His new plan for watching Lorena involved leaving Mouse — if he tried to sneak back on Mouse, Lorena's mare might nicker. He would have to tie Mouse and sneak back on foot, a violation of a major rule of cowboying. You were never supposed to be separated from your horse. The rule probably had to do with Indian fighting, Newt supposed: you would obviously be done for if the Indians caught you on foot.

  But it was such a beautiful, peaceful night, the moon new and high, that Newt decided to chance it. Lorena might already be asleep, it was so peaceful. On such a night it would be little risk to tie Mouse for a few hours. He looped his rein over a tree limb and went walking back toward Lorena's. He stopped at a little stand of live oak about a hundred yards from the camp, sat down with his back against a tree and drew his pistol. Just holding it made him feel ready for anything.

  Resting with his back against the tree, Newt let himself drift back into the old familiar daydreams in which he got better and better as a cowboy until even the Captain had to recognize that he was a top hand. His prowess was not lost on Lorena, either. He didn't exactly dream that they got married, but she did ask him to get off his horse and talk for a while.

  But while they were talking he began to feel that something was wrong. Lorena's face was there and then it wasn't. Somehow the daydream had become a night dream, and the night dream was ending. He woke up very frightened, though at first he didn't know why he was frightened. He just knew that something was wrong. He still sat under the tree, the gun in his hand, only there was a sound that was wrong, a sound like drumming. For a second it confused him — then he realized what it was: the cattle were running. Instantly he was running too, running for Mouse. He wasn't sure how close the cattle were or whether they were running in his direction, but he didn't stop to listen. He knew he had to get to Mouse and then ride back to Lorena, to help her in case the cattle swerved her way. He began to hear men yelling to the west, obviously the boys trying to turn the cattle. Then suddenly a bunch of running cattle appeared right in front of him, fifty or sixty of them. They ran right past him and on toward the bluffs.

  Newt ran as hard as he could, not because he was afraid of being trampled but b
ecause he had to get Mouse and try to be some help. He kept running until he was covered with sweat and could barely get breath into his lungs. He was hoping none of the cowboys saw him afoot. He held onto the gun as he ran.

  Finally he had to slow down. His legs refused to keep up the speed and he trotted the last two hundred yards to where he had tied Mouse. But the horse wasn't there! Newt looked around to be sure he had the right place. He had used a boulder as a landmark, and the boulder was where it should be — but not the horse. Newt knew the stampede might have scared him and caused him to break the rein, but there was no broken rein hanging from the tree where Mouse had been tied.

  Before he could stop himself, Newt began to cry. He had lost the Mouse, an unforgivable thing, and all because he thought he had conceived a good plan for watching Lorena. He hated to think what the Captain would say when he had to confess. He ran one way and then the other for a while, thinking there might be two identical boulders — that the horse might still be there. But it wasn't true. The horse was just gone. He sat down under the tree where Mouse should have been, sure that he was ruined as a cowboy unless a miracle happened. He didn't think one would.