Boone's Lick by Larry McMurtry Page A

shut up, for once.
    Then Uncle Seth turned from the door as if he had never intended to go out it. He made as if he felt light as a feather, all of a sudden—though none of us believed that. Still, we were all glad when the silence ended.
    â€œThere’s Rosie McGee,” he said, in a softer tone. “What do we do with her, when we start this big trip you’re determined to go on?”
    â€œWhy, take her with us, of course,” Ma said. “Did you suppose I planned to leave my sister in a place like this?”
    That surprised us all—and pleased me, I must say. I wouldn’t be having to leave Aunt Rosie so quickly.
    That seemed to ease Uncle Seth’s mind.
    â€œAll right, Mary Margaret,” he said. “But Joe Tate don’t know how lucky he is.”
    â€œGo on—get the doctor, Shay,” Ma said, and I went.
    I ran all the way down the hill but then had to look in three saloons before I found Doc, who was alittle tipsy. When I mentioned that it was Rosie who was hurt he got right up and came with me, but he had such trouble hitching his nag to the buggy that I finally did it for him.
    â€œLet’s hurry, Rosie’s a prize,” he said, offering me the reins. Twice more, on the way, he mentioned that Aunt Rosie was a prize. He doctored her cuts pretty well but shook his head over the matter of the ribs.
    â€œThey’ll just have to mend in their own time, Rosie,” he said.
    The next night, while making his midnight rounds, Sheriff Joe Tate got trampled by a runaway horse. The horse came bearing down on him in a dark alley and knocked him winding—one hip was broken, plus his collarbone and several ribs; besides that, he was unconscious for several hours and could make no report on the horse or the rider, if there had been a rider.
    I don’t know what Ma or Aunt Rosie thought about the matter, but G.T. and I suspected Uncle Seth, who had gone to the saloon as usual, that night. When G.T. asked him about it, Uncle Seth just looked bored.
    â€œHe should have carried a lantern,” Uncle Seth said. “Any fool who wanders the streets at midnight without a lantern ought to expect to get trampled by a horse, I don’t care if he is a lawman. It’s only common sense to carry a light.”
    He never changed his story, either. To this day I don’t know if Uncle Seth was on the horse that trampled Sheriff Joe Tate.

15
    T HE morning before we left I went down to the lots alone about sunrise, to feed the mules—I always liked being out early, if I was awake. The world just seemed so fresh, in the first hour of the day. The river, usually, would be white with mist—then the big red sun would swell up over the world’s edge and the light would touch the church spire and the few roofs of Boone’s Lick. All the roosters in town would be crowing, and our three roosters too. The mules seemed glad to see me, though I imagine they would have been glad to see anyone who fed them. In the wintertime the frost would sparkle on the ground and on the trees. Sometimes, when I got back to the cabin, Ma would allow me a cup of coffee, once she was satisfied that I had finished my chores.
    G.T. was a late sleeper, and Neva too. Sometimes I’d get to sit alone with Ma for a minute, before the day got started.
    Unless the weather was wet Uncle Seth slept outside, in a little camp he had made not far from the cabin. He had spent so much time on the open prairies, with the stars to look at, that he could no longer tolerate the confinements of a roof.
    â€œI’d like to spend as many nights as possible looking straight up at heaven,” he said.
    â€œLooking is all you’ll get to do,” Ma said. “You’re too bad a sinner to expect to get any closer.”
    I didn’t understand that, since about the most sinful thing Uncle Seth did was get drunk—since he was sleeping outdoors anyway, his getting drunk didn’t