Explore "Lonesome Dove, Volume 2: Comanche Moon" by Larry McMurtry on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
AUGUSTUS FELT STUNNED-for a moment he was unable to speak. Once, while he was reluctantly trying his hand at blacksmithing, a horse that he was shoeing caught him with a powerful kick that struck him full in the diaphragm. For ten minutes he could only gasp for breath; he could not have spoken a word had his life depended on it.
That was how he felt now, standing in the sunny Austin street with Clara Forsythe, the girl he had raced in to kiss only an hour before, holding his hand. The words Clara had just spoken were the words he had long feared to hear, and their effect on him was as paralyzing as the kick of the horse.