Lonesome Dove, Volume 1 by Larry McMurtry

SIX DAYS LATER responsibility descended upon Roscoe Brown with a weight far beyond anything he had ever felt. As usual, it fell out of a clear blue sky-as fine a day as one could want, with the Arkansas River sparkling down at the end of the street. Roscoe, having no pressing duties, was sitting in front of the jail whittling, when he noticed Peach Johnson coming up the street with little Charlie Barnes at her side. Charlie was a banker, and the only man in town to wear a necktie every day. He was also the main deacon in the church, and, by common consent the man most likely to marry Peach if she ever remarried. Charlie was a widower, and richer by far than Benny had ever been. Nobody liked him, not even Peach, but she was too practical a woman to let that stop her if she took a notion to marry.

When Roscoe saw them coming he snapped shut his whittling knife and put the stick he had been whittling in his shirt pocket. There was no law against whittling, but he didn't want to get a reputation as an idler, particularly not with a man who was as apt as not to end up the next mayor of Fort Smith.