Lonesome Dove Page 24

  "Dern, I'm sandy," he said. "I should have bathed in the river."

  He sighed, poured himself a whiskey and sat with his back against the wall, idly running a hand up and down her leg. Lorena waited, taking a sip or two of whiskey. Jake looked tired.

  "Well, these boys," he said. "They are aggravating devils."

  "Which boys?" she asked.

  "Call and Gus," he said. "Just because I mentioned Montana to 'em they expect me to help 'em drive them dern cattle up there."

  Lorena watched him. He looked out the window and wouldn't meet her eye.

  "I'll be damned if I'll do it," he said. "I ain't no dern cowpuncher. Call just got it in his head to go, for some reason. Well, let him go."

  But she knew that bucking Gus and the Captain was no easy thing for Jake. He looked at her finally, a sadness in his eyes, as if he was asking her to think of a way to help him.

  Then he grinned, his little smart lazy grin. "Gus thinks we ought to marry," he said.

  "I'd rather go to San Francisco," Lorena said.

  Jake stroked her leg again. "Well, we will," he said. "But don't Gus come up with some notions! He thinks I ought to bring you along on the drive."

  Then he looked at her again, as if trying to fathom what was in her thoughts. Lorena let him look. Tired as he was, with his shirt open, there seemed nothing in the man to fear. It was hard to know what he himself feared. He was proud as a turkey cock around other men, irritable and quick to pass an insult. Sitting on her bed, with his clothes unbuttoned, he seemed anything but tough.

  "What was old Gus up to all afternoon?" he asked. "He never got back till sundown."

  "The same thing you was just up to," Lorena said.

  Jake lifted his eyebrows, not really surprised. "I knowed it, that scamp," he said. "Left me to work so he could come and pester you."

  Lorena decided to tell it. That would be better than if he found it out from somebody else. Besides, though she considered herself his sweetheart, she didn't consider him her master. He had not really mastered anything except poking, though he had improved her card game a little.

  "Gus offered me fifty dollars," she said.

  Jake lifted his eyebrows again in his tired way, as if there was nothing he could possibly be told that would really surprise Mm. It angered her a little, his acting as if he knew everything in advance.

  "He's a fool with money," Jake said.

  "I turned him down," Lorena said. "I told him I was with you."

  Jake's eyes came alive for a moment and he gave her a smart slap on the cheek, so quick she scarcely saw it coming. Though it stung her cheek, there was no real anger in it — it was nothing to some of the licks she had taken from Tinkersley. Jake hit her the once as if that was the rule in a game they were playing, and then the life went out of his eyes again and he looked at her with only a tired curiosity.

  "I reckon he got his poke," he said. "If he didn't you can hit me a lick."

  "We cut the cards for it and he cheated," Lorena said. "I can't prove it but I know it. He gave me the fifty dollars anyway."

  "I ought to told you never to cut the cards with that old cud," Jake said. "Not unless you're ready for what he's ready for. He's the best card cheat I ever met. He don't cheat often, but when he does you ain't gonna catch him."

  He wiped some of the mud off her belly. "Now that you're rich you can loan me twenty," he said.

  "Why should I?" Lorena said. "You didn't earn it and you didn't stop it."

  Besides, he had money from his own card playing. If she knew anything, it was not to give a man money. That was nothing more than an invitation to get sold with their help.

  Jake looked amused. "Keep it then," he said. "But if it had been any other man than Gus I would have shot you."

  "If you'd known," she said, getting up.

  Jake stood looking out the window while she stripped the bed. He sipped his whiskey but didn't mention the trail again.

  "Are you going with the herd?" she asked.

  "Ain't decided," he said. "They'll be here till Monday."

  "I plan to leave when you leave," she said. "With the herd or not."

  Jake looked around. She was standing in her shift, a little red spot on one cheek where he had slapped her, a lick that made no impression on her at all. It seemed to him there was never much time with women. Before you could look at one twice, you were into an argument, and they were telling you what was going to happen.

  "You'd look a sight in a cow camp," he said. "All them dern cowboys are in love with you anyway. I'd had to kill half of 'em before we got to the Red River, if you go along."

  "They won't bother me," she said. "Gus is the only one with the guts to try it."

  Jake chuckled. "Yes, he'd want to cut the cards twice a day," he said.

  It seemed to him harder, as he got older, to find a simple way of life. On the one hand there were his friends, who expected something of him; on the other there was Lorie, who expected something else. He himself had no fixed ideas about what to do, though he thought it would be pleasant to live in a warm town where he could find a card game. Having a pretty woman to stay with made life happier, of course, but not if it meant having to take the woman to San Francisco.

  Of course he could run: he wasn't chained to the bedpost or to the friends either. There was Mexico, right out the window. But what would that get him? Mexico was even more violent than Texas. Mexicans were always hanging Texans to make up for all the Mexicans Texans hung. If hanging was all he had to look forward to, he'd rather take his in Arkansas.

  Lorie was watching him with a strange heat in her eyes. It wasn't because he had slapped her either. He felt she was reading his mind — somehow most women could read his mind. He had only really out-maneuvered one, a little redheaded whore in Cheyenne who was all heart and no brain. Lorena wasn't going to be fooled. Her look put him on the defensive. Most men would have beat her black and blue for what she had done that afternoon, and yet she hadn't even made an attempt to conceal it. She played by her own rules. It struck him that she might be the one to kill the sheriff from Arkansas, if it came to that. She wouldn't balk at it, if he could keep her wanting him.

  "You don't need to stand there looking out of sorts," he said. "I won't run off without you."

  "I ain't out of sorts," Lorena said. "You are. You don't want to stay and you don't want to go."

  Jake looked at her mildly. "I've been up that way," he said. "It's rough. Why don't we go up to San Antonio and gamble for a spell?"

  "Tinkersley took me there," Lorena said. "I don't want to go back."

  "You're a hard one to please," Jake said, getting a little testy suddenly.

  "I ain't," Lorena said. "You please me fine. I just want to go to San Francisco, like you promised."

  "Well, if you don't like San Antone there's Austin, or Fort Worth," Jake said. "There's lots of nice towns that ain't as hard to get to as San Francisco."

  "I don't care if it's hard," Lorena said. "Let's just go."

  Jake sighed and offered her more of his whiskey. "Lay back down," he said. "I'll rub your back."

  "I don't need my back rubbed," she said.

  "Lorie, we can't leave tonight," he said. "I was just offering to be friendly."

  She had not meant to press him so, but a decision had become important to her. She had spent too many nights in the little hot room they were in. Taking the gritty sheets off the bed made her realize it. She had changed them many times because the men she lay under were as gritty as Jake had been. It was something that had repeated itself once too often. Now she was done with it. She wanted to throw the sheets, and maybe the mattress and the bed, too, out the window. She was through with the room and everything that went with it, and Jake Spoon might as well know it.

  "Honey, you look like you've caught a fever," Jake said, not realizing it was a fever of impatience to be done with Lonesome Dove and everything in it. "If you're set on it, I reckon we'll go, but I don't fancy living in no
cow camp. Call wouldn't have it anyway. We can ride with them during the day and make our own camp."

  Lorena was satisfied. Where they camped made no difference to her. Then Jake started talking about Denver, and how when they got there it would be easy to make their way across to San Francisco. She only half listened. Jake washed off as best he could in the little washbasin. She had only one spare sheet, so she put it on the bed while he was washing.

  "Let's leave tomorrow," she said.

  "But the herd don't leave till Monday," he reminded her.

  "It ain't our herd," she said. "We don't have to wait for it."

  There was something different about her, Jake had to admit. She had a beautiful face, a beautiful body, but also a distance in her such as he had never met in a woman. Certain mountains were that way, like the Bighorns. The air around them was so clear you could ride toward them for days without seeming to get any closer. And yet, if you kept riding, you would get to the mountains. He was not so sure he would ever get to Lorie. Even when she took him, there was a distance between them. And yet she would not let him leave.

  When they blew out the lamp a shaft of moonlight came in the window and cut across their bodies. Lorie let him rub her back, since he enjoyed doing it. She was not sleepy. In her mind she had already left Lonesome Dove; she was simply waiting for the night to end so they could really leave. Jake got tired of the back rub and tried to roll her over for another poke but she wouldn't have it. She pushed his carrot away, a response he didn't like at all.

  "What's the matter now?" he asked.

  Lorie didn't answer. There was nothing to say. He made a second try and she pushed it away again. She knew he hated to be denied but didn't care. He would have to wait. Listening to his heavy, frustrated breathing, she thought for a while that he might be going to make a fight over it, but he didn't. His feelings were hurt, but pretty soon he yawned. He kept twisting and turning, hoping she would relent. From time to time he nudged her hip, as if by accident. But he had worked all day; he was tired. Soon he slept. Lorie lay awake, looking out the window, waiting for it to be time to leave.

  21

  JAKE AWOKE not long after dawn to find Lorena up before him. She sat at the foot of the bed, her face calm, watching the first red light stretch over the mesquite flats. He would have liked to sleep, to hide in sleep for several days, make no decisions, work no cattle, just drowse. But not even sleep was really under his control. The thought that he had to get up and leave town — with Lorie — was in the front of his mind, and it melted his drowsiness. For a minute or two he luxuriated in the fact that he was sleeping on a mattress. It might be a poor one stuffed with corn shucks, but it was better than he would get for the next several months. For months it would just be the ground, with whatever weather they happened to catch.

  He looked at Lorie for a minute, thinking that perhaps if he scared her with Indian stories she would change her mind.

  But when he raised up on one elbow to look at her in the fresh light, the urge to discourage her went away. It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good. At least he couldn't disappoint them to their faces. Leaving them was his only out, and he knew he wasn't ready to leave Lorie. Her beauty blew the sleep right out of his brain, and all she was doing was looking out a window, her long golden hair spilling over her shoulders. She wore an old threadbare cotton shift that should have been thrown away long ago. She didn't own a decent dress, and had nothing to show her beauty to advantage, yet most of the men on the border would ride thirty miles just to sit in a saloon and look at her. She had the quality of not yet having really started her life — her face had a freshness unusual in a woman who had been sporting for a while. The thought struck him that the two of them might do well in San Francisco, if they could just get there. There were men of wealth there, and Lorie's beauty would soon attract them.

  "You don't look like you've changed your mind," he said. "I guess I've got to get up and go buy you a horse."

  "Take my money," she said. "Don't get one that's too tall."

  She gave him Gus's fifty dollars.

  "Hell, I don't need all this," he said. "There ain't a horse in

  town worth fifty dollars, unless it's that mare of Call's, and she ain't for sale." But he took the money, thinking it a fine joke on Gus that the money from his poke would buy Lorie a mount to ride to Montana, or however far they went. He had known perfectly well Gus would try something of the sort, for Gus would never let him have a woman to himself. Gus liked to be a rival more than anything else, Jake figured. And as for Lorie going through with it — well, it relieved him of a certain level of responsibility for her. If she was going to keep that much independence, so would he.

  Lorena kept looking out the window. It was as if her mind had already left Lonesome Dove and moved up the trail. Jake sat up and put his arms around her. He loved the way she smelled in the mornings; he liked to sniff at her shoulders or her throat. He did it again. She didn't reject these little morning attentions, but she didn't encourage them either. She waited for him to leave and go buy the horse, running over in her mind the few things she could take with her. There was not much. Her favorite thing was a mother-of-pearl comb Tinkersley had bought her when they first got to San Antonio. She had a thin gold ring that had been her mother's, and one or two other trifles. She had never liked to buy things; in Lonesome Dove it didn't matter, for there was nothing much to buy.

  Jake sat and scratched himself for a while, smelling Lorie's flesh and hoping she would encourage him, but since she didn't, he finally got dressed and went off to see about horses and equipment.

  Before Jake had been gone ten minutes Lorena got a surprise. There was a timid knock at her door. She opened it a peek and there was Xavier, standing on the stairs in tears. He just stood there looking as if it was the end of the world, tears running down his cheeks and dripping onto his shirt. She didn't know what to make of it, but since she wasn't dressed, she didn't want to let him in.

  "Is it true, what Jake says?" he asked. "You are leaving today?"

  Lorena nodded. "We're going to San Francisco," she said.

  "I want to marry you," Xavier said. "Do not go. If you go I don't want to live. I will burn the place down. It's a filthy place anyway. I will burn it tomorrow."

  Well, it's your place, she thought. Burn it if you want to. But she didn't say it. Xavier had not been unkind to her. He had given her a job when she didn't have a penny, and had paid promptly for whatever services he required. Now he was standing on the stairs, so wrought up he could hardly see.

  "I'm going," she said.

  Xavier shook his head in despair. "But Jake is not true," he said. "I know him. He will leave you somewhere. You will never get to San Francisco."

  "I'll get there," Lorena said. "If Jake don't stay, I'll get there with someone else."

  He shook his head. "You will die somewhere," he said. "He'll take you the wrong way. We could marry. I will sell this place. We can go to Galveston and take a boat for California. We can get a restaurant, there. I have Therese's money. We can get a clean restaurant, with tablecloths. You won't have to see men anymore."

  Except I'd have to see you, she thought.

  "Let me come in," he said, "I will give you anything . . . more than Gus."

  She shook her head. "Jake would kill you," she said. "You go on now."

  "I can't," he said, still crying. "I am dying for you. If he kills me I would be better. I will give you anything."

  Again she shook her head, not quite sure what to think. She had seen Xavier have fits before, but usually fits of anger. This fit was different. His chest was heaving and his eyes poured tears.

  "You should marry me," he said. "I will be good to you. I am not like these men. I have manners. You would see how kind I would be. I would never leave you. You could have an easy life."

  Lorena just kept shaking her head. The most interesting thing he said was about the bo
at. She didn't know much, but she knew Galveston was closer than Denver. Why was Jake wanting to ride to Denver, if they could take a boat?

  "You better leave," she said. "I don't want Jake to catch you up here. He might shoot you."

  "No!" Xavier exclaimed. "I will shoot him! I have a shotgun. I will shoot him when he comes back if you don't let me in."

  Lorena hardly knew what to think. It was crazy behavior. Xavier didn't seem to want to budge from the stairs. He did own a shotgun. It was not likely Jake would let someone as pitiful as Xavier shoot him, but then if he shot Xavier, that would be almost as bad. He already had his Arkansas trouble from shooting someone. They might not get to leave if there was a shooting, and Xavier looked desperate enough to do anything.

  Then Xavier began to pull money out of his pocket. It was hard to say how much he held out to her, but it was a good deal more than fifty dollars. It might even be a hundred dollars. The sight of it made her feel tired. No matter what plans she made or how she tried to live, some man would always be looking at her and holding out money. Without giving it much thought, Mosby had started something that nothing seemed to stop. She thought Jake had stopped it, but he hadn't. His talk about killing men was just talk. If he had cared that much he would have shot Gus, friend or no friend. It was hard to believe he would even shoot Xavier — probably he would just give her another slap and forget about it.

  "Please," Xavier said. "Please. I need you."

  At least it might calm him down, she thought, opening the door. Also, he was usually quick as a rabbit when he came to her.

  "I ain't messin' this bed," she said. "It's the last sheet."

  Xavier didn't care. He put the money on her little chest of drawers and turned to her. Lorie shut the door and leaned against it, lifting her shift. With a grateful look Xavier dropped his pants. Soon his legs were trembling so she was afraid he would collapse before he was done. But he didn't. When he finished he put his head against her bosom for a moment, wetting her breasts with his tears even as she felt his drip on her thigh.

  Then he stepped back and pulled up his pants.