Read Online The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel by Larry McMurtry - Free Book Online

was on the tip of Goodnight’s tongue to question the respectability of two of the three, but he realized that Mary did need company and it wouldn’t do to be too picky. Besides, in his years on the plains he had often seen whores go on to become excellent wives to some farmer or cowhand; better wives in some cases than women with unblemished records in all departments.
    “I’ll hire them if you say so, Mary,” he said. “I guess eventually we’ll figure out what they’ve been hired to do. I hope they don’t mind rough camping, though—that’s what it’s gonna be, for a while.”
    “We don’t mind,” San Saba said.
    Mary hugged the Creole girl, too.
    “You two can call me Molly,” she said. “That’s what Chief Quanah calls me—and my friends as well.”
    “What does the Colonel call you?” San Saba asked on a whim.
    Mary burst out laughing.
    “What would he be a colonel of?” she said. “When he’s not cussin’ he calls me Mary, but I’m Molly to my friends.”
    “Fine name,” San Saba said.

MOBETIE

     

 
    - 27 -
    As Wyatt and Doc were approaching Mobetie, on a day that was very dusty they ran into a small hunched man making a modest camp near the Canadian River. He was skinning a skunk at the time and had forty or fifty more hides piled up behind him. He showed no apprehension when they showed up; in fact he even offered them a stew he had prepared. The stew was in an Indian bowl—which tribe neither of them knew.
    “I’m Caddo Jake, I live by the skunk,” the old trapper said. “Care to buy my hides?”
    “No, and for that matter anything can wind up in a stew,” Doc said.
    “It’s jackrabbit in this one,” Caddo Jake said.
    “Oh, well that’s different,” Doc said, helping himself to a bowl of the stew, which he enjoyed.
    “Caddo Jake’s a known fibber, I expect you just ate skunk,” Wyatt said.
    They had stopped to count the buildings in Mobetie—it didn’t take long.
    “I just count seven,” Wyatt went on. “And one of them’s a barbershop.”
    “All you have to do to acquire a barbershop is shoot the barber, which I’ll be glad to do,” Doc said.
    “It’s my experience that people will shoot dentists even quicker than barbers,” Wyatt said. “Let’s find a saloon and soak our tonsils.”
    They were about to go in one of the battered little frame buildings when a cowboy on a bay horse came surging through the swinging doors. The bay jumped the little porch and went tearing down the street; then it broke into bucking and quickly managed to throw the cowboy.
    “That cowboy’s name is Teddy Blue, he works for Shanghai Pierce, or did,” Wyatt said.
    “I don’t know him, neither,” Doc said. “That cowboy nearly trampled me—we ought to at least go pummel him.”
    “If there’s ever a restless cowboy it’s Teddy,” Wyatt said. “I tried to arrest him once in Dodge, but he got on with a herd and went all the way to Montana. I didn’t know he was back on the plains until I saw him ride out that door.”
    “Montana’s a fine place to freeze to death, I hear,” Doc said.
    “I need to travel with someone better educated,” Wyatt said. “There are few subjects you can even discuss intelligently.”
    “I don’t claim to know much: cards, fucking, and dentistry about covers it,” Doc said.
    “I entrusted my wife to my brother Warren, I hope he gets her here safe,” Wyatt said. “What’s the best thing we can do while we’re waiting for them to get here?”
    “If you’re not going to let me pull teeth, then next best recreation would be to get drunk.”
    “I vote for drunk,” Doc said.
     

 
    - 28 -
    Teddy Blue, having been decisively thrown, lay for a while in the main street of Mobetie, Texas. Fortunately none of his fellow cowboys noticed his weak performance as a bronc rider. He had ridden his horse into the saloon on a dare from a whore—his practice was always to accept dares; it spiced life up a little. As he lay in the street,