Part 94 (1/2)

Dish tried every way he could to draw Lorena into some of the games, but the most Lorena would do was sit in the room. She sat silently, not watching, while July sat just as silently. He could not help but wish that Dish Boggett had got lost in Wyoming or had somehow gone on to Texas. Hardly a day pa.s.sed without him seeing what he thought were signs that Clara was taken with the man. Sooner or later, when Dish gave up on Lorena, he would be bound to notice. July felt helpless-there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes he sat near Lorena, feeling that he had more in common with her than with anyone else at the ranch. She loved a dead man, he a woman who hardly noticed him. But whatever they had in common didn't cause Lorena to so much as look his way. Lorena looked more beautiful than ever, but it was a grave beauty since news of the death had come. Only the young girl, Betsey, who loved Lorena completely, could occasionally bring a spark of life to her eyes. If Betsey was ill, Lorena nursed her tirelessly, taking her into her own bed and singing to her. They read stories together, Betsey doing the reading. Lorena could only piece out a few words-the sisters planned to teach her reading, but knew it would have to wait until she felt better.

Even Sally, usually so jealous of any attention her sister got, respected the fact that Betsey and Lorena were especially close. She would let off teasing Betsey if Lorena looked at her in a certain way.

Clara felt no terrible stab of grief when the news of Gus's death came. The years had kept them too separate. It had been a tremendous joy to see him when he visited-to realize that he still loved her, and that she still enjoyed him. She liked his tolerance and his humor, and felt an amused pride in the thought that he still put her above other women, despite all the years since they had first courted.

Often she sat out on her upper porch at night, wrapped in Bob's huge coat. She liked the bitter cold, a cold that seemed to dim the stars. Reflecting, she decided there had been something in what she and Gus had felt that needed separation. At close quarters she felt she would have struggled bitterly with him. Even during his brief visit she felt the struggle might start, and if it did start, gentler souls, such as July and Lorena, might have been destroyed.

In the dark nights on the ice-encrusted porch she occasionally felt a cold tear on her cheek. In Gus she had lost her ultimate ally, and felt that much more alone, but she had none of the tired despair she had felt when her children died.

Now there was July Johnson, a man whose love was nearly mute. Not only was he inept where feelings were concerned, he was also a dolt with horses. Loving horses as she did, Clara was hard put to know why she could even consider settling in with a man who was no better with them than Bob had been. Of course, the settling-in process was hardly complete, and Clara was in no hurry that it should be. Closer relations would probably only increase her impatience with him.

It amused her that he was so jealous of Dish, who, though friendly, companionable and an excellent hand, was not interested in her at all. His love for Lorena leaped out of every look he cast in her direction, although not one of them penetrated Lorena's iron grief. Clara herself didn't try to touch or change Lorena's grief-it was like Martin's fever: either it would kill her or it wouldn't. Clara would not have been surprised by a gunshot if it had come from Lorena's room. She knew the girl felt what she had felt when her boys died: unrelievable grief. In those times, the well-meaning efforts of Bob or the neighbors to cheer her up had merely affronted her. She hadn't wanted to live, particularly not cheerfully. Kindly people told her that the living must live. I don't, if my boys can't, she wanted to say to them. Yet the kindly people were right; she came slowly back to enjoyment and one day would even find herself making a cake again and eating it with relish.

Watching Lorena, as she sat blank with grief every day, scarcely stirring unless Betsey urged her to, Clara felt helpless. Lorena would either live or die, and Clara felt it might be die. Lorena's only tie to life was Betsey. She didn't care for sweets or men or horses; her only experience with happiness had been Gus. The handsome young cowboy who sent her countless looks of love meant nothing to her. Pleasure had no hold on Lorena-she had known little of it, and Clara didn't count on its drawing her back to life. The young cowboy would be doomed to find his love blocked by Gus in death even as it had been in life. Betsey had a better chance of saving Lorena than Dish. Betsey worried about her constantly and tried to get her mother to do something.

”I can't make Mr. McCrae alive again, which is all she wants,” Clara said. ”What do you think I can do?”

”Make her not so sad,” Betsey pleaded.

”n.o.body can do that,” Clara said. ”I can't even make you not sad when you're sad.”

Yet one day she did try. She came upon Lorie standing in the hall, her hair uncombed. She had the look of a beaten dog. Clara stopped and hugged her, as suddenly as she had hugged July Johnson. In him her hug had stirred a fever of hope; in Lorena it stirred nothing.

”I guess you wish you'd gone with him,” Clara said. ”It would have given you a little more time.”

Lorena looked surprised-it was the one thing she had been thinking since the news came.

”I should have,” she said.

”No,” Clara said. ”You. would have had a little more time, I grant you, but now you'd be stuck in Montana with a bunch of men who don't care that you loved Gus. They'd want you to love them. Dish wants it so much that he rode to you through the blizzards.”

The thought of Dish merely made Lorena feel cold. ”He wasted his time,” she said.

”I know that, but don't expect him to realize it,” Clara said.

”He bought me once, when I was a wh.o.r.e,” Lorena said, surprised at the word on her tongue. She had never used it before.

”And Gus didn't?” Clara said.

Lorena was silent. Of course Gus had. She wondered if Clara would ask her to leave, knowing what she had been.

”Dish loved you and took the only way he had to get your attention,” Clara said.

”He didn't get my attention,” Lorena said. ”He didn't get anything.”

”And Gus did the same and got everything,” Clara said. ”Gus was lucky and Dish isn't.”

”I ain't either,” Lorena said.

Clara offered no advice. A few days later, when she was sewing, Lorena came and stood in front of her. She looked no better. ”Why did you ask me to stay, when it was you Gus loved?” she asked. ”Why didn't you ask him to stay? If you had he'd be alive.”

Clara shook her head. ”He loved us both,” she said, ”but Gus would never miss an adventure. Not for you or me or any other woman. No one could have kept him home. He was a rake and a rambler, though you'd have kept him longer than I could have.”

Lorena didn't believe it. She remembered how often Gus had talked of Clara. Of course it no longer mattered-nothing like that mattered anymore, and yet she couldn't keep her mind from turning to it.

”It ain't so,” she said. She had used her voice so little that it sounded weak.

”It is is so,” Clara said. ”You're more beautiful and less bossy. When I told Gus I was marrying Bob, all those years ago, he looked relieved. He tried to act disappointed, but he was relieved. I've never forgot it. And he had proposed to me thirty times at least. But he saw it would be a struggle if he won me, and he didn't want it.” so,” Clara said. ”You're more beautiful and less bossy. When I told Gus I was marrying Bob, all those years ago, he looked relieved. He tried to act disappointed, but he was relieved. I've never forgot it. And he had proposed to me thirty times at least. But he saw it would be a struggle if he won me, and he didn't want it.”

Clara was silent for a moment, looking into the other woman's eyes.

”Bob was too dumb to realize there'd be a struggle,” Clara said. ”Half the time he didn't notice it even when he was in it. So mainly I had the struggle with myself.

”It's been lonely,” she added.

She thought the conversation a good sign. Maybe Lorie was going to come out of it. But it was the last conversation they had for months. Lorena lived through the winter in silence, only speaking to Betsey, who remained as loyal as ever.

Dish Boggett remained loyal too, although Lorena gave him no encouragement. He spent more and more time playing cards with Sally, whose bright girlish chatter he had come to like. Every day he tried his best with Lorena, but he had begun to feel hopeless. She would not even speak to him, no matter how sweetly he asked. She met everything he said with silence-the same silence she had had in Lonesome Dove, only deeper. He told himself that if the situation didn't improve by the spring he would go to Texas and try to forget her.

Yet when spring came Dish told Clara he would be glad to stay and help her with the colts.

100.

IT CAME TO RANKLE CALL that Gus had left his half of the cattle herd to the woman. The woman was down in Nebraska. She was not there helping. Of course, if she had been there helping, there would have been trouble, but that didn't lessen the aggravation of what Gus had done. He could simply have given her money-he had money. As it was, every time Call sold a bunch of stock to the Army he had to put aside half the money for a woman he had never approved of, who might, for all any of them knew, have already forgotten Gus and married someone else, or even gone back to being a wh.o.r.e.

Still, Call had halved the money. However aggravating it was, Gus had meant it, and he would do it, though when he went back with the body he planned to see if he could at least buy her out. He didn't like the thought of being in partners.h.i.+p with a woman, much less a wh.o.r.e-although he conceded that she might have reformed.

He lived in the tent all winter, keeping the men working but taking little interest in the result. Sometimes he hunted, taking the h.e.l.l b.i.t.c.h and riding off onto the plains. He always killed game but was not much interested in the hunt. He went because he no longer felt comfortable around the men. The Indians had not bothered them, and the men did well enough by themselves. Soupy Jones had a.s.sumed the top-hand role, once Dish left, and flourished in it. The other men did well too, although there was some grumbling and many small disputes. Hugh Auld and Po Campo became friends and often tramped off together for a day or two so Hugh could show Po Campo some pond where there were still beaver, or some other interesting place he knew about. Lippy, starved for music, played the accordion and spent nearly the whole winter trying to make a fiddle from a s...o...b..x. The instrument yielded a powerful screeching sound, but none of the cowboys were ready to admit that the sound was music.

At Christmas, hungering for pork, they killed Gus's pigs. The most surprising development was that Jasper Fant learned to cook. He took it up mainly out of boredom, but, tutored by Po Campo, his progress was so rapid that when Po Campo went off with Old Hugh the cuisine didn't suffer.

In the early spring, while the weather was still chancy, fifteen horses disappeared one night. It was only by luck that the theft was discovered, for in such a place at such a time horsethieves were the last thing they were expecting. Call had taken the precaution of going with Old Hugh to two or three of the nearest Indian camps to meet the chiefs and do the usual diplomacy, in the hope of preventing the sort of surprise encounter that had proven deadly for Gus. The visits made him sad, for the Indians were not belligerent and it was apparent that Gus had merely struck the wrong bunch at the wrong time, in the wrong manner. It was a depressing irony, for Gus had always been one to preach diplomacy with the red man and over the years had engaged in many councils that Call himself thought pointless. Gus had talked to many a warrior that Call would merely have shot, and yet had got killed in a place where most of the Indians were happy to talk, particularly to a man who owned an endless supply of beef.

But Call noticed on the visits that, in the main, the Indians had better horses than he did, and he had even arranged a trade with the Blackfeet: fifty beeves for ten horses. The negotiations had required Old Hugh to talk for two days and had left him hoa.r.s.e.

Thus, when the Spettle boy came in to report the horses gone, Call was surprised. Where would a horsethief come from, and where would one go?

Still, a fact was a fact: the horses were gone. Call took Pea, Newt, Needle Nelson, and Old Hugh, and went in pursuit. He soon ruled out Indians, for the thieves were traveling too slow, and had even stopped to camp not thirty miles from their headquarters, which Indians with stolen horses would never have been foolish enough to do. It was soon plain that they were only chasing two men. They crossed into Canada on the second day and caught the thieves on the third, surprising them at breakfast. They were a shaky old man with a dirty gray beard and a strapping boy about Newt's age. The old man had a single-shot buffalo gun, and the boy a cap-and-ball pistol. The boy was cooking venison and the old man propped against his saddle muttering over a Bible when Call walked in with his pistol drawn. The boy, though big as an ox, began to tremble when he saw the five men with guns.

”I tolt you, Pa,” he said. ”Now we're caught.”

The old man, who had a jug beside his saddle, was clearly drunk, and seemed scarcely conscious of what was occurring.

”Why, I'm a minister of the Lord,” he said. ”Don't point your dern guns at me, we're just having breakfast. This is my boy, Tom.”

Call disarmed the two, which only took a second. The fifteen horses were grazing in plain sight not a hundred yards from the camp.