Lonesome Dove, Volume 1 by Larry McMurtry

WHEN JULY CAME BACK FROM TOWN he was so depressed he couldn't speak. Clara had asked him to do a few errands, but the visit with Elmira troubled him so that he had forgotten them. Even after he got back to the ranch he didn't remember that he had been asked to do anything.

Clara saw at once that he had sustained some blow. When she saw him come back without even the mail, it had been on her tongue to say something about his poor memory. She and the girls hungered for the magazines and catalogues that came in the mail, and it was a disappointment to have someone ride right past the post office and not pick them up. But July looked so low that she refrained from speaking. At the supper table she tried several times to get a word or two out of him, but he just sat there, scarcely even touching his food. He had been ravenous since coming off the plains-so whatever the blow was, it was serious.