Free The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel by Larry McMurtry

stairs into the strange tower Benny had had built. She was just in time too: cattle began to surge through the castle, smashing the great table. A steer tried to come up the stairs behind, but his long horns wouldn’t allow him into the stairwell.
    “It’s a flood of cattle,” Nellie said—the whole castle shook from their passage.
    Just as Nellie thought the whole structure might collapse the tide of animals began to ebb. The lightning still flashed, but not so close by: the distant plains danced with lightning.
    In one of the flashes Mary saw Bose, carefully making his way through the remnants of the herd, toward the castle.
    “Trust Bose to come through,” Mary said. “Charlie says he’s the best cowboy there is.”
    “Even better than himself?” Nellie asked.
    “I don’t think Charlie considers himself a cowboy—Charlie mainly considers himself a boss.”
    It occurred to Mary that Charlie just might be dead. He had told her many times that anybody can be dead, and dead any day.
    It could just be a matter of a man’s luck running out.
    In the lightning flashes she could see the carcasses of a dozen or more cattle, trampled to death by the surviving herd.
    Mary got a lantern going and the light caused Bose to lope over their way.
    “Glad you made it, Bose, where’s Charlie?” Mary asked.
    “Don’t know,” Bose said. “He was riding bareback, off east of me. Then I didn’t see him again.”
    Mary felt a stab of fear. Her husband might well be dead. For all her griping at him, she really did love him.
    “He might have gone back and tried to find his saddle,” Bose said.
    “Anybody killed?”
    Her imagination was in full flower—she was imagining her husband dead.
    Nellie Courtright had the same thought. Lord Ernle, Bill Cody, and now Charlie.
    “Could you go find him, Bose? I’m plenty worried,” Mary said.
    “I’ll find him,” Bose said. “Probably just looking for that saddle.”
    “And hurry please,” Mary said.
    Bose nodded, but he didn’t like to hurry; once he was out of sight of the ladies he slowed down, and took his time.
     

 
    - 31 -
    “We’re lucky this town had a good-sized tree,” Doc said. He was speaking about Mobetie, Texas, the town with one tree. He and Wyatt had just been concluding a successful night of card playing when the stampede arrived. The cowboys knew what it was—Teddy Blue was out the door and on horseback in seconds; but some of the gamblers were not so quick: they milled around in the street and three of them paid the ultimate price for it: they were trampled to jelly. Fortunately Wyatt remembered the one tree and the two of them got up in it just as the surge of cattle filled the street.
    “Too many goddamn cattle,” Doc said, but no one heard him.
    Wyatt had supposed he was alone in the tree, except for Doc; but then he felt something bump him. It felt like a head; in the next flash he saw that it was a head; indeed, two heads: twisted heads with bodies attached.
    “Oh my god, we climbed the hanging tree,” he said, after which he immediately jumped to the ground, twisting an ankle in the process. It was several minutes before he could stand up but by then the big stampede had subsided.
    “They’re just carcasses,” Doc pointed out. He himself had descended rather hastily but did himself no damage that he could find.
    Dawn was breaking—the clarity of early morning lit the vast plain. Wyatt looked up at the two cadavers: both of them were young.
    “I wonder if Teddy Blue made it to safety—or Charlie Goodnight,” he said.
    As the light improved it was possible to see that, though the cattle had stopped running, hundreds of them were still there.
    “There’s hundreds of cattle around Mobetie,” Wyatt said. “We could cut off a hundred or so and start a ranch. Jessie could be the cook.”
    “No,” Doc said. “I abhor the mere presence of cattle.”
    “It would be easy money,” Wyatt reminded him.
    “Once you get beyond a milk cow