order of Captain McCrae.
For a time, July did not go into the camp. He couldn't. He stood and listened to the flies buzz over them. He didn't want to see what had been done to them. Now, when he did find Elmira, it would only be to tell her that her son was dead. And if lie lived to return to Fort Smith it would be without Roscoe Brown, a loyal man who had never asked for much.
The strange girl who could catch rabbits would catch no more rabbits.
After a time, July took his knife and began to dig graves. He climbed out of the canyon and dug them on the plain. Digging with a knife was slow work, but it was the only digging tool he had. The loose dirt he threw out with his hands. He was still digging at sunup, yet the graves were pitifully shallow affairs. He would have to do better than that, or the coyotes would get the corpses. Once in a while he looked down at the bodies. Joe lay apart from the other two, sprawled on his blanket as if asleep.
July began to gather rocks to pile on the graves. There were plenty along the canyon, though some had to be pried out of the dirt. While he was carrying one, he saw two riders far across the plain, black dots in the bright sunlight. His horse whinnied, eager for company.
When Augustus rode up with Lorena, the Arkansas sheriff was still digging. Augustus rode over to the canyon edge and looked down.
'More dead to tidy up,' he said, dismounting. He had given Lorena Roscoe's horse, which had an easy gait, and was riding on the best of the Indian ponies, a skinny paint.
'It's my fault,' July said. 'If I'd done what you said, maybe they'd be alive.'
'And maybe you'd be dead and I'd have had to tidy you up,' Augustus said. 'Don't be reviling yourself. None of us is such fine judges of what to do.'
'You told me to stay,' July said.
'I know I did, son,' Augustus said. 'I'm sure you wish you had. But yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back. Go on with your digging and I'll tidy up.'
He turned to Lorena and helped her down. 'You stay here, darling,' he said.
But when he started down the canyon, Lorena followed him. She didn't want Gus to be far away.
'No, I don't want you to go down there and see this mess,' Augustus said. 'Sit right here, where you can watch me. I won't be out of sight.'
He turned to July. 'Sit with her,' he said. 'She don't have much to say right now. Just sit with her, Mr. Johnson.'
July stopped his work. The woman didn't look at him. Her sad eyes were fixed on Captain McCrae as he made his way down the canyon. Her legs were black and blue and there was a yellowing bruise on one cheek. She didn't turn her head or look at him at all.
'My name is July Johnson,' he said, to be polite, but the woman didn't appear to hear.
Augustus went quickly to the camp and tied each body in a blanket. Blue Duck had been so confident of his victims that he hadn't even bothered to shoot. The deputy and the girl had been knifed, ripped open from navel to breastbone. Evidently it hadn't been enough for the girl, because her head had been smashed in too. So had the boy's, probably with the butt of the rifle Gus had given him. The deputy had been castrated as well. Using saddle strings, Gus tied the blankets as tightly around them as he could. It was strange that three such people had been on the Canadian, but then, that was the frontier-people were always wandering where they had no business being. He himself had done it and got away with it-had been a Ranger in Texas rather than a lawyer in Tennessee. The three torn specimens he was tying into their shrouds had not been so lucky.
He carried the bodies up to the prairie, laid them in their shallow graves and helped July pile rocks on the graves, a pitiful expedient that wouldn't deter the varmints for long. In the other camp he had merely laid the buffalo hunters and the dead Kiowas in a line and left them.
'I guess he took Joe's horse,' July said.
'Yes, and his life,' Augustus said. 'I'm sure he had more interest in the horse.'
'If you're going after him I'd like to try and help,' July said.
'I got nothing to go after him on,' Augustus said. 'He's better mounted than us, and this ain't no place to go chasing a man who's got you out-horsed. He's headed for the Purgatory this time, I bet.'
'The what?' July asked.
'It's a river up in Colorado,' Augustus said. 'He's probably got another gang there. We best let him go this time.'
'I hate to,' July said. He had begun to imagine confronting the man and shooting him down.
'Son, this is a sad thing,' Augustus said. 'Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don't you go attempting vengeance. You've got more urgent business. If I ever run into Blue Duck I'll kill him. But if I don't, somebody else will. He's big and mean, but sooner or later he'll meet somebody bigger and meaner. Or a snake will bite him or a horse will fall on him, or he'll get hung, or one of his renegades will shoot him in the back. Or he'll just get old and die.'
He went over and tightened the girth on his saddle.
'Don't be trying to give back pain for pain,' he said. 'You can't get even measures in business like this. You best go find your wife.'
July looked across the river at the unending prairie. If I find her she'll hate me worse now, he thought.
Augustus watched him mount, thinking how young he looked. He couldn't be much over twenty. But he was old enough to have found a wife and lost her-not that it took long to lose one, necessarily.
'Where is this Adobe Walls place?' July asked.
'It ain't far down the river,' Augustus said, 'but I'd pass by it if I were you. Your wife ain't there. If she went up the Arkansas I'd imagine she's up in Kansas, in one of the towns.'
'I would hate to miss her,' July said.
If she's at Adobe Walls, you'd do better to miss her, Augustus thought, but he didn't say it. He shook hands with the young sheriff and watched him mount and ride across the river. Soon he dipped out of sight, in the rough breaks to the north. When he reappeared on the vast plain, he was only a tiny speck.
Augustus went to Lorena. He had spent most of the night simply holding her in his arms, hoping that body heat would finally help her stop trembling and shaking. She had not said a word so far, but she would look him in the face, which was a good sign. He had seen women captives too broken even to raise their eyes.
'Come on, Lorie,' he said. 'Let's take a little ride.'
She stood up obediently, like a child.
'We'll just ride over east a ways and see if we can find us some shade,' Augustus said. 'Then we'll loll around for a couple of weeks and let Call and the boys catch up with us. They'll be coming with the cattle pretty soon. By then I expect you'll be feeling better.'
Lorena didn't answer, but she mounted without help and rode beside him all day.
59.
CALL EXPECTED Gus to be back in a day or two. Maybe he'd have the girl and maybe he wouldn't, but it was not likely he'd be gone long. Gus was a hard traveler and usually overtook whoever he was after promptly, arrested them or dispatched them, and got back.
For a day or two he didn't give Gus's absence much thought. He was irritated with Jake Spoon for having been so troublesome and undependable, but then, he partly had himself to blame for that. He should have set Jake straight before they left Lonesome Dove-informed him in no uncertain terms that the girl wasn't coming.
When the third day passed and Gus wasn't back, Call began to be uneasy. Augustus had survived so much that Call didn't give his safety much thought. Even men accustomed all their lives to sudden death didn't expect it to happen to Gus McCrae. The rest of them might fall by the wayside, their mortality taking gentle or cruel forms, but Gus would just go on talking.
Yet five days passed, and then a week, and he didn't return. The herd crossed the Brazos without incident, and then the Trinity, and there was still no Gus.
They camped west of Fort Worth and Call allowed the men to go into town. It would be the last town they
