'Well, I'll swear,' Dish said, shocked. 'I didn't like the man but I never figured him for a killer.'
'He wasn't a killer,' Augustus said. 'Jake liked a joke and didn't like to work. I've got exactly the same failings. It's lucky I ain't been hung.'
He pulled the saddle off his tired horse. The horse lay down and had a good roll, scratching its sweaty back.
'Howdy do, miss,' Augustus said, opening the tent. 'Give me a hug.'
Lorena did. It made her blush that he just asked, like that.
'If hugs are to be had for the asking, what about kisses?' Augustus asked.
Lorena turned her face up-the feel of his whiskers made her want to cry, and she held him as tight as she could.
'I wish we'd brought a bathtub on this trip,' Augustus said, grinning. 'I'm so dirty it's like kissing a groundhog.'
Later, he went to the chuck wagon and brought back some supper. They ate outside the tent. In the distance the Irishman was singing. Gus told her about Jake, but Lorena felt little. Jake hadn't come to find her. For days she had hoped he would, but when he didn't, and her hope died, the memory of Jake died with it. When she listened to Gus talk about him it was as if he were talking about a man she hadn't known. She had a stronger memory of Xavier Wanz. Some- times she dreamed of Xavier, standing with his dishrag in the Dry Bean. She remembered how he had cried the morning she left, how he'd offered to take her to Galveston.
But she didn't remember Jake particularly. He had faded into all the other men who had come and gone. He had got a thorn in his hand, she remembered that, but she didn't remember much else. She didn't much care that he was dead-he wasn't a good man, like Gus.
What scared her was all the death. Now that she had found Gus, it was very frightening to her to think that he might die. She didn't want to be without him. Yet that very night she dreamed that he had died and she couldn't find the body. When she came out of the dream and heard him breathing, she clung so tightly to him that he woke up. It was very hot and her clinging made them sweaty.
'What scared you?' Augustus asked.
'I dreamed you died,' Lorena said. 'I'm sorry I woke you.'
Augustus sat up. 'Don't fret,' he said. 'I need to go water the grass, anyway.'
He went out, made water, and stood in the moonlight awhile, cooling off. There was no breeze in the tent, so Lorena came out too.
'It's a good thing this grass don't depend on me,' Augustus said. 'There's a lot more of it than I can get watered.'
They were on a plain of grass so huge that it was hard to imagine there was a world beyond it. The herd, and themselves, were like a dot, surrounded by endless grass. Lorena had come to like the space-it was a relief after her years of being crowded in a little saloon.
Gus was staring at the moon and scratching himself. 'I keep thinking we'll see the mountains,' he said. 'I grew up in mountains, you know. Tennessee. I hear them Rockies are a lot higher than the Smokies. They say they have snow on top of them the year round, which you won't find in Tennessee.'
He sat down in the grass. 'Let's sit out,' he said. 'We can nap in the morning. It will scandalize Call.'
'Why does he go off at night?' Lorena asked.
'He goes off to be by himself,' Augustus said. 'Woodrow ain't a sociable man.'
Lorena remembered her other worry, the woman in Nebraska. 'When will we get there, Gus?' she asked. 'Nebraska, I mean.'
'I ain't sure,' he said. 'Nebraska's north of the Republican River, which we ain't come to yet. It might take us three weeks yet.'
Lorena felt a dread she couldn't get rid of. She might lose him to the woman. The strange trembling started-it was beyond her control. Gus put his arms around her to make it stop.
'Well, it's natural to worry,' he said. 'This is a chancy life. What's the main thing that worries you?'
'I'm feared you'll die,' Lorena said.
Augustus chuckled. 'Dern right, I'll die,' he said. 'What else worries you?'
'I'm feared you'll marry that woman,' she said.
'I doubt it,' Augustus said. 'That woman had two or three chances to marry me already, and she didn't take them. She's an independent type, like you used to be.'
That was so, Lorena reflected. She had been quite independent, but now all she could think of was keeping Gus. She wasn't ashamed, though. He was worth keeping.
'It's funny humans take to the daylight so,' he said. 'Lots of animals would rather work at night.'
Lorena wanted him to want her. She knew he did want her, but he had none nothing. She didn't care about it, but if she could be sure that he still wanted her, then the dread of losing him might go away.
'Let's go in,' she whispered, hoping he'd know what she meant. He immediately turned to her with a grin.
'My, my,' he said. 'Times do change. I remember when I had to cheat at cards to get a poke. We don't have to go in that old hot tent. I'll drag the bedding out here.'
Lorena didn't care that the cowboys might see, or who might see. Gus had become her only concern. The rest of the world could watch out. But Gus merely hugged her and gave her a kiss. Then he held her tight all night, and when the sun woke her the herd was already gone.
'Did anybody see us?' she asked.
'If they did they're lucky,' Augustus said. 'They won't get too many chances to see such beauties as us.'
He laughed and got up to make the coffee.
79.
NEWT COULDN'T GET JAKE out of his mind-how he had smiled at the end and given him his horse. He rode the horse every third day and liked his gait so much that he soon became his favorite horse. Jake hadn't told him what the horse's name was, which worried Newt. A horse needed a name.
Jake's hanging had happened so quickly that it was hard to remember-it was like a terrible dream, of the kind you can only remember parts of. He remembered the shock it had been to see Jake with his hands tied, sitting on his horse with a noose around his neck. He remembered how tired Jake looked, too tired even to care that he was going to be hung. Also, nobody talked much. There should have been some discussion, it seemed to Newt. Jake might have had a good excuse for being there, but nobody even asked him for it.
Not only had no one talked at the hanging, no one had talked since, either. Captain Call kept well to himself, riding far from the herd all day and sleeping apart at night. Mr. Gus stayed back with Lorena, only showing up at mealtimes. Deets was very quiet when he was around, and he wasn't around much-he spent his days scouting far ahead of the herd, which was traveling easily. The Texas bull had assumed the lead position, passing Old Dog almost every day and only giving up the lead to go snort around the tails of whatever cows interested him. He had lost none of his belligerence. Dish, who rode the point, had come to hate him even more than Needle Nelson did.
'I don't know why we don't cut him,' Dish said. 'It's only a matter of time before he kills one of us.'
'If he kills me he'll die with me,' Needle said grimly.
Of course, all the hands were curious about Jake. They asked endless questions. The fact that the farmers had been burned puzzled them. 'Do you think they was trying to make people think Indians did it?' Jasper asked.
'No, Dan Suggs just did it because he felt like it,' Pea Eye said. 'What's more, he hung 'em after they were already dead. Shot 'em, hung 'em, and
'He must have been a hard case, that Dan,' Jasper said. 'I seen him once. He had them little squint eyes.'
'I'm glad he never squinted them at me, if that's the way he behaves to white men,' Needle said. 'What was Jake doing with an outfit like that?'
'If you ask my opinion, that whore that Gus has got was Jake's downfall,' Bert Borum volunteered.
'You can keep your damn opinion to yourself, if that's what you think,' Dish said. He was as touchy as ever where Lorena was concerned.
