Streets of Laredo: A Novel (43 page)

Plunkert's travail might seem lighter, Lorena knew they had not seemed at all light to the young woman who had so promptly taken her own life. Mrs. Plunkert must have felt that her happiness and her husband's happiness were forfeit anyway. She had become hopeless. Lorena knew enough about hopelessness. She did not want to be reminded of it, not even a hopelessness experienced by a young woman she had never met.

What the death of Mrs. Plunkert meant was that hopelessness was always there. There was never a way or a time one could be safe from it. If Pea Eye died, or one of her children, she knew she would have to feel it again.

"Lorie, you don't know her, you ain't expected to attend the funeral," Tinkersley said.

"I want to attend the funeral, but I'd rather you didn't accompany me," Lorena said.

"But you didn't know the woman," Tinkersley said. He felt a sudden deep need to stay with Lorena. Seeing her had reminded him of the regret he had nursed for years, when he'd left her and lost her. He had even journeyed to the little town of Lonesome Dove, where he heard she worked, hoping to get her back. But he came too late. She had left with the cow herd and the cowboys, for Montana.

Now, through a miracle, she had stepped off the train in Laredo, right in front of him. He didn't want to leave her. When she told him she didn't want him to accompany her to the funeral, he fell back a few steps, but he didn't let Lorena out of his sight.

The cemetery was just a plain piece of ground, dusty, without a bush or a tree to lessen its plainness. Most of the grave markers were wooden, and many of them had tilted over, or fallen flat altogether. One of the whores, the smallest, a slip of a girl with curly brown hair, had a beautiful soprano voice.

When she sang "Amazing Grace," her voice rose over all the other singers, the other five whores and the few churchwomen. Her voice was clear as the air. They sang "Rock of Ages," and then "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." Three hymns at a funeral was unusual, Lorena thought. Yet, despite the cutting wind, the mourners seemed reluctant to leave. When the women finished the last song, they looked around, wondering if they should sing more. It was odd, Lorena thought, that no one was hurrying away.

The young whore with the beautiful voice finally spoke to one of the churchwomen, and the women began to sing "There's a Home Beyond the River." The young soprano poured her heart into the song.

No doubt she had an inkling of how Mrs.

Plunkert had felt. That, at least, was Lorena's view. The girl's voice was so strong and pure that it silenced the other singers. One by one, the other whores and the churchwomen fell silent, and the beautiful voice of the whore with the curly hair soared on, in lonely lament for the lost life of a woman the young whore had not known, and perhaps had not even met.

When the song ended, the mourners turned away from the grave, and an old Mexican man with a shovel began to push in dirt around the coffin.

"At least she had a right pretty funeral," Tinkersley said. He fell in with Lorena as she was hurrying back to the station, anxious to secure her valise. Tinkersley was seeking to make small talk, or any talk, that would persuade her to allow him to stay with her for a while.

"Get away from me, Tinkersley," Lorena said. "You done nothing but hurt me, when we was together. I don't want you to be walking with me.

I'm here to find my husband." "But, I bought you pretty dresses," Tinkersley protested. "I took you to the fanciest shop in San Antonio." "So you could sell me for a higher price," Lorena reminded him. "Get away from me. I don't like remembering none of that." "Lorie, I was just hoping we could visit," Tinkersley said. "I know I done you badly.

I came back to find you, but you were gone north with Gus McCrae." Lorena didn't speak to Tinkersley again.

She just ignored him. He walked with her, pleading, until they were nearly back to the station, but Lorena didn't say another word. She scarcely noticed him, in his slick coat, nor did she listen to his excuses or his pleas.

She felt a great longing to be with her husband.

Most men would make excuses all day and all night for their failings, but Pea never did. When Pea did something that hurt her feelings, he accepted his error and suffered for it until she had to take him in hand and try to coax him and tease him back into a good humor. She had to convince him, each time, that what he had done was only a small error, not the unforgivable act he believed it to be. Marriage was often vexing, that was all.

Now, with the funeral over, she wanted to gather such information about where Captain Call might be as she could. She wanted to catch up with Pea and bring him home, before one of the bad men in the world did something to hurt him.

It was not until that night, in her small, chill room in the drafty hotel, that Lorena's thoughts returned to the dead woman and the funeral.

She remembered the young whore who could sing soprano, and a deep sadness came with the memory.

In a building not far away, the young whore with the beautiful voice was back being a whore. The churchwomen who had spoken to her at the funeral wouldn't allow themselves to speak to her in their day-to-day lives. She was just one of Tinkersley's whores, as Lorena herself had been, once.

The only thing that was true in the four hymns the girl had sung was the music itself, Lorena thought.

Neither the whore nor the dead woman over whose grave she'd sung had received any grace at all, to draw upon; nor did they have any rock to stand on; nor any circle to shelter or protect them.

As to the home beyond the river, Lorena didn't know. She just wanted to find her husband and bring her children back from Nebraska. She wanted the six humans she was responsible for to be back again in their home, where she could watch over them.

At the telegraph office in the late afternoon, she had been given one good piece of information by the elderly fellow who worked the telegraph.

Several telegrams had poured in for Captain Call, instructing him to hurry to San Angelo. Joey Garza had struck there, only the week before.

The next morning, at breakfast--she was the only woman in the small hotel dining room-- Lorena happened to overhear a conversation that sent her heart leaping. Two Texas Rangers were at a table talking, and she heard the name Call mentioned.

The Rangers had looked at her hard when they walked in and saw her alone in the dining room, but Lorena had not sent her children away and traveled so far to be balked by hard looks from lawmen.

She got up and went over to their table.

"Excuse me, I heard you mention Captain Call," she said. "My husband is his deputy.

I'd be grateful if you'd give me any news of the group." The men looked surprised. The larger one rattled his spoon in his coffee cup; he was uncomfortable talking to women in public places.

"Don't know much, ma'am," he said, finally.

"Call nearly killed a sheriff in Presidio. They don't know yet whether the man will live. Call was getting his deputy out of jail and just went wild. He got his deputy and an old Indian he uses to track down bandits." "That's my husband. He oughtn't to have been in jail, he's never broken the law," Lorena said.

"Well, you don't have to break much law out in Joe Doniphan's part of the country," the large Ranger said. "He'd arrest you for spittin', if he didn't like your looks." "I guess Captain Call didn't like his looks," the other Ranger said.

"Thank you, I appreciate the news," Lorena said, politely.

She went back to her table in a happier frame of mind. Pea was alive, and with the Captain. She didn't like the Captain, but he was able enough. He would protect Pea until she found him.

When the two Rangers left the room, they didn't look at Lorena so hard. They even stopped for a moment, and tipped their hats.

The evening of the second day, as the party traveled east from Presidio, Call, Brookshire, the two deputies, and Famous Shoes climbed out of the Maravilla Canyon just at dusk and made a camp. The winter sun was filling the canyon behind them with red light.

"That old man who kills bears is coming with his dogs," Famous Shoes remarked. "I saw his track on the Salt Fork of the Brazos, but then, he was going north. I did not expect him to be coming this way." "If it's Ben Lily, he don't ask nobody's opinion when he changes directions," Pea Eye said. Twice the old bear hunter had turned up at their farmhouse on the Red River, on his way to kill cougars in the Palo Duro Canyon. He had killed the last bears in the Palo Duro years before, but there were many cougars, and from time to time, Ben Lily rested from his lifelong bear hunt and killed cougars for a while instead.

"I'll feed him, but I won't feed his dogs," Call said. "It don't take that many dogs to run lions, and I doubt there's any bears left in Texas for him to run. He's killed them all." A few minutes later, they heard the baying of six or seven dogs. In the still, silent night it was hard to tell how far away Ben Lily and his dog pack might be.

"He is like me, no horse," Famous Shoes said. "I doubt he can finish off the lions, in the time he has left. He is an old man." "Who's this?" Brookshire asked. He had never heard of the person they were talking about, though that fact was not particularly odd. Six months ago, he had scarcely even heard of Texas, and could not have named one living Texan. Now he knew several Texans in person, and several more by reputation.

"He's a hunter, he don't do nothing else," Pea Eye said. "I don't guess he ever has done nothing else." "They say he hunted all the bears out of Louisiana and Arkansas before he come here," Deputy Plunkert said. Since leaving Presidio, the deputy had been in a lighter mood. They were on their way to San Angelo, which was not that long a distance from Laredo. If they were successful and captured the Garza boy promptly, he might be on his way home within two weeks. Just being north of the border made him feel a lot better about life. Once he got home, he meant to plan his life so that he never had to enter Mexico again. If necessary, he and Doobie would move north, to San Antonio, or even Austin, to avoid the possibility that anything would require him to cross the border again.

As the winter night deepened and the half-moon rose, they heard the baying of Ben Lily's dogs, coming closer.

"If the man travels so much, maybe he'll know something," Brookshire suggested. "He's coming from the east, and the last robbery was east, unless there's been one we don't know about." "No, he won't know anything, he only pays attention to bears and lions," Call said.

"Humans don't interest him. If he was on the track of a bear or cougar and a train was being robbed right in front of him, I doubt he'd even stop to look." Many times, over the years, Call had encountered the hunter, but on no occasion had he gotten any cooperation from him. Ben Lily expected to get information, not give it. He had no use for civilizations, nor for society, nor individuals, and was even impatient with his dogs.

All he liked to do was kill bears. He only hunted lions to pass the time, or to earn a little money now and then, from ranchers who wanted lions or wolves cleaned off their ranches.

Toward midnight, the horses and mules began to snort and whinny. They pulled at their picket ropes. Call got up and went to quiet the animals, and when he had them calm, he walked east about a mile, meaning to intercept the dogs.

Ben Lily usually traveled with a pack of eight or ten, and eight or ten dogs running into camp might spook the horses so badly that one or two might injure themselves. Call had only a sidearm with him. He did not expect trouble.

Ben Lily's dogs were usually shy of humans, since they rarely saw any, other than the old hunter himself.

Call's hands were aching. He wished he had a little whiskey, although he had never been a drinker, really. Augustus, his old partner, had been the drinker. But in the last few winters, particularly if he happened to be at home in his shack on the Goodnight ranch, Call had taken to using a glass or two of whiskey in order to help him sleep. A doctor in Amarillo had assured him that a glass or two would be medicinal. Even with the whiskey, he frequently awoke as early as two a.m., and had little to do but pace around the cabin until dawn came.

The next whiskey to be had was at Judge Roy Bean's saloon, three days away.

Call had not yet decided whether to pay the judge a visit. He wasn't quite as uncooperative as Ben Lily--nobody was as uncooperative as Ben Lily--but he ran him a close race. Roy Bean was cranky, and in his conversation, he never strayed far from the subject of money. On the other hand, little that occurred on the border escaped his attention. A visit to Roy Bean would take them out of their way. The train had been robbed near San Angelo. But of course, the Garza boy had time to be back in Mexico, or perhaps back in Crow Town, depending on which way he had felt inclined to go. The next train stopped by the boy might be leaving Saltillo, or Tucumcari, or almost anywhere.

While Call was thinking of Roy Bean and his harsh tongue, the dogs began to bay again. This time, they sounded farther away than they had the last time they howled. Perhaps they were running ahead of the old hunter, on the spoor of a lion, and maybe the lion had doubled back.

Just as Call was settling down to enjoy his solitude--he still liked to separate himself from the camp for an hour or two, at night--Famous Shoes came walking through the moonlight. Call felt a little irritated. He needed his solitary hours. They helped him clear his head, and think through the next few days of whatever campaign he was waging. Why wouldn't the old Indian stay put? Call slept little, but Famous Shoes, who was older, slept even less.