Free Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry Page B

and splatter the yard for five minutes or so. When he could hear sizzling grease in one ear and the sound of Pea Eye pissing in the other, Augustus knew that the peace of the morning was over once again.
    “If a woman ever stumbled onto this outfit at this hour of the day she’d screech and poke out her eyes,” Augustus said.
    At that point someone did stumble onto it, but only Dish Boggett, who had always been responsive to the smell of frying bacon.
    It was a surprise to Newt, who immediately snapped awake and tried to get his cowlick to lay down. Dish Boggett was one of his heroes, a real cowboy who had been up the trail all the way to Dodge City more than once. It was Newt’s great ambition: to go up the trail with a herd of cattle. The sight of Dish gave him hope, for Dish wasn’t somebody totally out of reach, like the Captain. Newt didn’t imagine that he could ever be what the Captain was, but Dish seemed not that much different from himself. He was known to be a top hand, and Newt welcomed every chance to be around him; he liked to study the way Dish did things.
    “Morning, Dish,” he said.
    “Why, howdy there,” Dish said, and went to stand beside Pea Eye and attend to the same business.
    It perked Newt up that Dish didn’t treat him like a kid. Someday, if he was lucky, maybe he and Dish would be cowboys together. Newt could imagine nothing better.
    Augustus had fried the eggs hard as marbles to compensate for the coffee grains, and when they looked done to him he poured the grease into the big three-gallon syrup can they used for a grease bucket.
    “It’s poor table manners to piss in hearing of those at the table,” he said, directing his remarks to the gentlemen on the porch. “You two are grown men. What would your mothers think?”
    Dish looked a little sheepish, whereas Pea was merely confused by the question. His mother had passed away in Georgia when he was only six. She had not had time to give him much training before she died, and he had no idea what she might think of such an action. However, he was sure she would not have wanted him to go in his pants.
    “I had to hurry,” he said.
    “Howdy, Captain,” Dish said.
    Call nodded. In the morning he had the advantage of Gus, since Gus had to cook. With Gus cooking, he got his choice of the eggs and bacon, and a little food always brought him to life and made him consider all the things that ought to be done during the day. The Hat Creek outfit was just a small operation, with just enough land under lease to graze small lots of cattle and horses until buyers could be found. It amazed Call that such a small operation could keep three grown men and a boy occupied from sunup until dark, day after day, but such was the case. The barn and corrals had been in such poor shape when he and Gus bought the place that it took constant work just to keep them from total collapse. There was nothing important to do in Lonesome Dove, but that didn’t mean there was enough time to keep up with the little things that needed doing. They had been six weeks sinking a new well and were still far from deep enough.
    When Call raked the eggs and bacon onto his plate, such a crowd of possible tasks rushed into his mind that he was a minute responding to Dish’s greetings.
    “Oh, hello, Dish,” he said, finally. “Have some bacon.”
    “Dish is planning to shave his mustache right after breakfast,” Augustus said. “He’s getting tired of livin’ without women.”
    In fact, with the aid of Gus’s two dollars, Dish had been able to prevail on Lorena. He had awakened on the porch with a clear head, but when Augustus mentioned women he remembered it all and suddenly felt weak with love. He had been keenly hungry when he sat down at the table, his mouth watering for the eggs and fryback, but the thought of Lorena’s white body, or the portion of it he had got to see when she lifted her nightgown, made him almost dizzy for a moment. He continued to eat, but the