Read "Lonesome Dove, Volume 1" by Larry McMurtry online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
JAKE AWOKE not long after dawn to find Lorena up before him. She sat at the foot of the bed, her face calm, watching the first red light stretch over the mesquite flats. He would have liked to sleep, to hide in sleep for several days, make no decisions, work no cattle, just drowse. But not even sleep was really under his control. The thought that he had to get up and leave town-with Lorie-was in the front of his mind, and it melted his drowsiness. For a minute or two he luxuriated in the fact that he was sleeping on a mattress. It might be a poor one stuffed with corn shucks, but it was better than he would get for the next several months. For months it would just be the ground, with whatever weather they happened to catch.
He looked at Lorie for a minute, thinking that perhaps if he scared her with Indian stories she would change her mind.