The Last Kind Words Saloon: A Novel by Larry McMurtry

Author:Larry McMurtry
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780871407863
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2014-05-07T04:00:00+00:00

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“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 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.”

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