Lonesome Dove - By Larry McMurtry Page 0,274

seemed to take the shot for granted. Jake had the strong feeling that the black man’s guns would soon be pointed at something besides deer, but he himself didn’t plan to be around to see it.

65

JULY RODE FOR DAYS without seeing any person, or, for that matter, many signs of life except the hawks and buzzards circling in the blue prairie sky. Once he saw a wolf loping along a ridge, and at night he heard coyotes, but the only game he saw were jackrabbits, and it was mostly rabbit he ate.

He kept going north, reminding himself that it was a long way to any towns; but soon the unvarying emptiness of the country began to disturb him, and he was already disturbed enough by the deaths of the three people buried on the Canadian. He thought of them more or less all day. Waking in the gray dawn, he would have Roscoe’s face in his mind; when he dreamed, it was of Roscoe and Joe and the young girl. Several times he cried at the thought of the finality of it. He had a longing to get them back in places they belonged: Fort Smith, in the case of Roscoe and Joe. He didn’t know where the girl had belonged, though it wasn’t in a grave on the Canadian.

What he was doing—indeed, his whole life—now seemed to him completely futile. He rode through the empty land without hope of anything, simply going on because he had to do something. As he went farther and farther onto the plains, he ceased to be able to imagine Fort Smith as a place where he might ever live and work again. What would he do if he did go back? Sit in the jail where he had worked with Roscoe? Or in the cabin where he had lived with Elmira?

July didn’t see how things could get worse, since he had lost his wife and led three people to their deaths. But four days after he left Augustus, his horse went lame. Some small spiky cactus hidden by the tall prairie grass proved more deadly than a snake. A thorn worked its way far up into the horse’s hoof. July had to tie the horse down to get the thorn out, and even then he was not sure he had got it all. They were three days north of the Cimarron when it happened. Water was scarce and the horse soon too lame to ride. He led the horse, taking it slow, hoping the hoof would get better, but it did no good. The horse was lamed and could put no weight on the hoof at all.

Finally, sadly feeling that he was parting with his last companion in life, July unsaddled the horse and shot him. He left his saddle but took his rifle and started walking east. The next day, from a ridge, he saw a great cloud of buzzards over the place where the horse lay. The sight made him cry.

He walked all day, hoping to cross a creek but finding none. He had a half canteen of water—not enough to get him back to the Cimarron. And he had nothing to eat. He made a dry camp and sat all night on his blanket, so wakeful he thought he would never sleep again. He sat for hours, watching the moon climb high amid the bright stars. He remembered the cold nights in their Arkansas cabin when he was a boy—how his mother piled quilts on top of him and his brothers, how peaceful it seemed under the quilts. Then it seemed like sleep was one of the most wonderful things in life.

July wondered if perhaps the sleep of death would be as good, as comforting and warming, as his boyhood slumber. He had a rifle and a pistol—one pull of the trigger would bring him all the sleep he wanted. In his five years as a lawman he had never shot anyone, though he had a reputation as a dangerous fighter. It would be a joke on everyone if the only person he ever killed was himself. He had always assumed that people who killed themselves were cowards. His own uncle had done it in a painful way, by drinking lye.. His uncle had been deep in debt.

Now, as he sat and watched the moon, killing himself merely seemed sensible. His life had been ruined—surprisingly, inexplicably, swiftly, but ruined for sure. He had made wrong choices all along, and it