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

you’ve got too many cattle,” Doc said.
    “You wouldn’t have to milk any,” Wyatt said. “Maybe we could get Teddy Blue to come cowboy for us.”
    “The day he starts is the day I part company with you boys,” Doc said.
    “Oh, forget it,” Wyatt said. “We’ll just go on to Arizona.”
     

 
    - 32 -
    Jessie soon regretted that she had chosen to travel with Warren Earp, who was no talker. The longer the two of them jogged along in their buggy, the less Warren said. They learned about the big stampede from a cowboy who didn’t bother to give his name. He did mention to them that three huge herds had got mixed together, somewhere near Mobetie.
    “You’ll be seeing dead cattle here and there,” he said. “Got trampled under.”
    The cowboy was right. They began to see carcasses here and there, being pecked at by crows. Many crows, many flies.
    Warren skirted the carcasses, but made no comment. He had his sign, the one that said The Last Kind Words Saloon. It filled the back end of the buggy, but Jessie, who had few clothes, didn’t mind.
    Tired of silence, Jessie thought she might tease Warren a little—after all he was probably her brother-in-law, depending on whether Wyatt had actually been divorced when he and Jessie married.
    “If we come on a saloon, what do we do: go in and make sure no kind words are spoken, and if not you’ll hang up your sign.”
    “Silent Warren” the whores called him, and often. Warren was noted for his inability to resist the girls.
    The deeper into them Jessie got, the more the plains depressed her. It would have been better to take the train to California and come to Arizona from the west, as Virgil and Morgan had done. Morgan always had a job, usually marshaling, though once he ran a fire department in Kansas City.
    “Tombstone, Arizona,” Warren said, as if it meant something.
    “That’s not what Wyatt said,” Jessie insisted. “Wyatt said we were settling in Texas.”
    Before Warren answered they saw some antelope, about twenty.
    “Better than venison,” Warren said, picking up his rifle. But the antelope were skittish and they could never get close enough for a shot.
     

 
    - 33 -
    Goodnight grimly backtracked through dead and dying cattle until he found his saddle, which had been trampled badly, as he had expected. It was no big loss—he could get another saddle easily enough. What he could not afford to lose, however, was his brand book, which was in his saddlebag, unharmed. The book contained the specifics of more than two hundred brands: his several and several more belonging to Dan Wagoner and Shanghai Pierce. Goodnight knew that the run had involved at least eight thousand cattle: without the brand books it would be virtually impossible to sort them out. And it would very likely take a full week in any case. It was time lost but there was no help for it.
    But there was a lesson to be learned from the mix-up. Neither he nor Pierce nor Wagoner were particularly cooperative men, but they were greedy stockmen. What had just been demonstrated was that it was unwise to have three herds in close proximity. The plains allowed for a great deal of spreading out. And at least he had a good brand book, which is more than Dan Wagoner could say—when Goodnight came up on him he and three cowboys were digging a grave.
    “How many did you lose, Charlie?” Wagoner asked. He was a short man, but durable.
    “I don’t know yet,” Goodnight said. “But I have my brand book—I expect it will be helpful.”
    “What about Pierce?” he asked.
    “Ain’t seen him, but he’s probably off somewhere drinking whiskey,” Wagoner said.
    Then he turned briefly to the freshly dug grave—with a nod he summoned his cowboys and invited them to take off their hats.
    Goodnight took off his hat.
    “This was Johnny Deakin, a good boy of sixteen I believe,” Wagoner said. “He rode through a prairie dog town, an infernal thing for a cowboy to encounter at night. His horse