The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  To his annoyance Idahi missed Blue Duck as he was traveling toward the Arkansas. Several people had told him Blue Duck was camped on the Arkansas, when in fact he was camped on a sandy bend of the Red River, well east, where the river curved into the forests.

  “Quicksand,” Blue Duck informed him, when Idahi finally found his camp and asked why he was camping on the Red River. “There’s bad sand along this stretch of the river. If the law tries to come at us from the south they’ll bog their horses. We can shoot them or let them drown. Five or six laws from Texas have drowned already.”

  “If they drown, do you get their guns?” Idahi asked. He was from the Comanche band of Paha-yuca, whom Blue Duck had known long ago, when he was still welcome among the Comanche people. But Paha-yuca had agreed to take his people onto a reservation the whites had promised him. Paha-yuca was old; what had made him agree to go onto the reservation was the news that the big war between the whites might soon end. The white soldiers were said to have reached an agreement to stop killing one another. At least that was the rumor, though there had been other such rumors in the last few years and they had not been accurate. But it was Paha-yuca’s opinion that once the white soldiers stopped killing one another they would start killing Comanches again. The bluecoat soldiers would return to the empty forts stretching westward along the rivers. Many bluecoats would come, and this time they would come onto the llano and press the fight until there were no more free Comanches left to kill.

  Paha-yuca was not a coward, nor was he a fool. Idahi knew that he was probably right in his assessment, right when he said that the People would no longer be able to live in the old ways. If they wanted to live at all they would have to compromise and live as the whites wanted them to. Also, they would have to stop killing whites—they could no longer just kill and scalp and rob and rape whenever they came across a few whites.

  It was that injunction that caused Idahi to leave and seek out Blue Duck, the outcast, the man not welcome in the lodges of the Comanches—Blue Duck continued to kill whites wherever he met them. He also hated Kiowas because they had denied him a woman he wanted—he killed Kiowas when he could, and also Kickapoos and Wichitas.

  Idahi had known Blue Duck when the latter was still with his people; they had ridden together and practiced shooting guns. They both thought it was foolish to try and kill people or game with bows and arrows, since it was so much easier to kill them with bullets. The two had been friends, which is why Idahi decided to seek him out when Paha-yuca made his decision.

  Fortunately Blue Duck was at the camp on the Red River when Idahi rode up—the camp was a violent place, where strangers were not welcome. Everyone stopped what they were doing when they saw a horseman approaching; they all picked up their guns, but Blue Duck recognized Idahi and immediately rode out to escort him into camp, a signal to all the renegades that Idahi enjoyed his protection.

  “All the people are going on reservations now,” Idahi said, when Blue Duck greeted him. “I do not want to live that way. I thought I would come and fight with you.”

  Blue Duck was glad to see Idahi—no other Comanches had ever come to join his band. He remembered Idahi’s love of guns and immediately presented him with a fine shotgun he had taken from a traveler he killed in Arkansas. Idahi was so delighted with his present that he immediately began to shoot off the shotgun, a disturbance hardly noticed in the camp of Blue Duck, where a lot of loud activity was going on. At the edge of the Red River, where the bad sand was supposed to be, two renegades were dragging a white woman through the water. They seemed to be trying to drown her. One man was on horseback—he was dragging the woman through the mud on the end of a rope. The other man followed on foot. Now and then he would jump on the woman, who was screaming and choking in fear.

  Idahi saw to his astonishment that there was a half-grown bear in the camp, tethered by a chain to a willow tree. The bear made a lunge and caught a dog who had been unwary enough to approach it. The bear immediately killed the dog, which seemed to annoy Blue Duck. He immediately grabbed a big club and beat the bear off the corpse of the dog—Blue Duck took the dog’s tail and slung the dead dog in the direction of a number of dirty women who were sitting around a big cook pot. Two half-naked prisoners, both skinny old men, lay securely tied not far from the women. Both had been severely beaten and one had had the soles of his feet sliced off, a torment the Comanches sometimes inflicted on their captives. Usually a captive who had the soles of his feet sliced off was made to run over rocks for a while, or cactus, on his bloody feet; but the old man Idahi saw looked too weak to run very far. The two prisoners stared at Idahi hopefully; perhaps they thought he might rescue them, but of course Idahi had no intention of interfering with Blue Duck’s captives.

  The dog the bear had killed was the only fat dog in the camp, which was no doubt why Blue Duck took it away from the bear and gave it to the women to cook.

  “A fat dog is too good to waste on a bear,” Blue Duck said. “You and me will eat that dog ourselves.”

  “What does the bear eat?” Idahi asked. Personally he thought it was bad luck to keep a bear in camp; he had been shocked when Blue Duck casually picked up the club and beat the young bear until blood came out of its nose. He had been raised to believe that bears were to be respected; their power was as great as the power of the buffalo. Seeing Blue Duck beat the bear as casually as most men would beat a dog, or a recalcitrant horse, gave Idahi a moment of doubt—if Blue Duck had forgotten the need to respect the power of the bear, then he might have been foolish to come to Blue Duck’s camp. Though Idahi had left the Comanches he had only done so a few days ago; he had not forgotten or discarded any of the important ways or teachings of his people. But Blue Duck had been a renegade for years. Perhaps the old teachings no longer mattered to him. It was a thought that made Idahi uneasy.

  A little later, while the dog was cooking, Blue Duck dragged the old man whose soles had been sliced off over to where the bear was. He wanted the bear to eat the old man, who was so terrified to be at the mercy of a bear that he could not even scream. He lay as if paralyzed, with his lips trembling and his eyes wide open. But the bear had no interest in the old man, a fact which annoyed Blue Duck. He picked up the club and beat the bear some more; but, though the bear whimpered and whined, he would not touch the skinny old captive.

  The second beating of the bear was too much for Idahi. He took his new shotgun and walked away, beside the Red River, pretending he wanted to hunt geese; he was a new guest and did not want to complain, but he knew it was wrong for Blue Duck to beat the bear. Behind him, he heard screams. The two renegades who had been playing at drowning the woman had brought her back to camp and were tormenting her with hot sticks. Idahi walked away until the sounds of the camp grew faint. The thought of finding Blue Duck had excited him so much that he had ridden all the way to the Arkansas River and then back to the Red. But what he found, now that he was in Blue Duck’s camp, troubled him. He didn’t know if he wanted to stay, even though Blue Duck had already given him a fine shotgun and would certainly expect him to stay. But Blue Duck’s treatment of the bear discouraged him. Idahi knew that Blue Duck had formed a company of raiders, but he had thought that most of them would be Kiowa or men of other tribes who had joined Blue Duck in order to keep killing the whites in the old way. But the men in the camp were mostly white men; some were mixed blood, and all of them, he knew, would kill him without a qualm if they could do it without Blue Duck knowing. They didn’t like it that Blue Duck had ridden out especially to escort him in, and the longhaired half-breed Ermoke liked him least of all. Idahi felt Ermoke’s angry eyes following him as he walked around the camp. Even the women of the camp, all of them filthy and most of them thin from hunger, looked at him hostilely, as if he were only one more man who had come to abuse them.

  It was not what Idahi had expected; but, on the other hand, he had not expected his own chief, Paha-yuca, to agree to take his people onto a reservation. He knew he could not liv
e on a reservation and be subject to the rules of a white man. He did not want to wait like a beggar by his lodge for whites to give him one of their skinny beeves. He had left his three wives behind, in order to join Blue Duck—already he missed his women, and yet he had no intention of bringing them to such a filthy camp, where the men had no respect for anything, not even a bear.

  The longer Idahi walked the more troubled and confused he became. He did not know what to do. He was a hunter and a warrior; he wanted to hunt on the prairies and fight his enemies until he was old, or until some warrior vanquished him. There was no shame in defeat at the hands of a good fighter—Idahi knew that in many of the battles he had fought, but for a lucky move at the right moment, he would have been killed. He did not fear the risks of a warrior’s life; he respected the dangers such a life entailed. But Idahi wanted to remain a warrior and a hunter; he did not want to become a mere bandit. He wanted to steal from his enemies, the Texans, but he did not intend to steal from the people who had always been his people. The men in the camp of Blue Duck had no such qualms, he knew. They would steal from anyone. If they saw a Comanche riding a fine horse, or carrying a fine gun, or married to a pretty plump woman, they would, if they could, kill the Comanche and take the horse, the gun, or the woman.

  Fine gun or no fine gun, Idahi knew he could not live with such men. After all, he himself had a fine shotgun now; several of the men in camp had looked at his gift with envious eyes—someday, if Blue Duck happened to be gone, one of the renegades would kill him for it, or try to.

  Idahi considered the problem through a long afternoon. Many ducks and geese landed on the Red River and then flew away again, but Idahi did not shoot them. He was thinking of what he had done, and, by the time the sun set, he had reached a conclusion. It was clear that he had made a mistake. He could not live as Blue Duck lived. Where he would go he was not sure. The way of his chief, Paha-yuca, was not a way he could follow any longer. He would have to give back the fine shotgun and leave. He had begun to feel wrong when he saw Blue Duck beat the bear—now he felt he didn’t want to stay where such things happened.

  When Idahi walked back to camp it was almost dark. One of the skinny old white men had been killed while he was gone; someone had clubbed him to death. Blue Duck was sitting alone, eating the dog meat the women had cooked. Idahi went to him and handed him back his shotgun.

  “What’s this—I thought you were going to bring us a goose?” Blue Duck said.

  “No, I wasn’t hunting,” Idahi told him. “This is a fine gun, though.”

  “If it is such a fine gun, why are you giving it back to me?” Blue Duck asked, scowling. He did not like having his gift returned. Idahi knew that what he had done was rude, but he had no choice. He wanted to leave and didn’t want the renegades following him in order to kill him and take the gun.

  “When you gave me this gun I thought I could stay here,” Idahi said. “But I am not going to stay.”

  Blue Duck stared at him, a dark look on his face and coldness in his eyes. Idahi remembered that Buffalo Hump had once stared at people like that, when he had been younger; and then, usually, he killed the people he had been staring at with eyes like sleet. Idahi wanted to get his horse and leave. He did not want to fight Blue Duck, in his own camp, where there were so many hostile renegades. He knew, though, that he might have to fight. Blue Duck had gone out of his way to welcome him as a guest, and he was going to think it rude of Idahi to go away so soon.

  “Eat a little of this dog—it’s tasty,” Blue Duck said. “You just got here. I guess you can leave in the morning if you’re determined to go.”

  Idahi did as he was asked. He had not changed his mind—he meant to go—but he did not want to be rude, and it was very rude to refuse food. So he sat down by Blue Duck and accepted some of the dog. He had not been eating much on his travels and was happy to have a good portion of dog meat to fill him up.

  While they were eating Blue Duck seemed to relax a little, but Idahi remained wary. In deciding to go away he had made a dangerous decision.

  “What about my father?” Blue Duck asked. “Is he going to the reservation too, with his people?”

  “No, only Paha-yuca is going now,” Idahi said. “Slow Tree has already taken his people in, and so has Moo-ray.”

  “I didn’t ask you about them, I asked about Buffalo Hump,” Blue Duck said.

  “He is old now—people do not speak of him anymore,” Idahi said. “His people still live in the canyon. They have not gone to the reservation.”

  “I want to kill Buffalo Hump,” Blue Duck said. “Will you go with me and help me?”

  Idahi decided at once to change the subject. Blue Duck had always hated Buffalo Hump, but killing him was not a matter he himself wanted to discuss.

  “I wish you would let the bear go,” Idahi said. “It is not right to tie a bear to a tree. If you want to kill him, kill him, but don’t mistreat him.”

  “I drug that bear out of a den when he was just a cub,” Blue Duck informed him. “He’s my bear. If you don’t like the way I treat him, you can go kill him yourself.”

  He said it with a sly little smile. Idahi knew he was being taunted, and that he was in danger, but, where the bear was concerned, Idahi suffered no doubt and had to disregard such considerations.

  “He’s my pet bear,” Blue Duck added. “If I was to turn him loose he wouldn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to hunt anything but dogs.”

  Idahi thought that was a terrible comment. No bear should have its freedom taken away in order to be a pet. He himself had once seen a bear kill an elk, and he had also had two of his best stallions killed by bears. It was right that bears should kill elk and stallions; it was a humiliating thing that a bear should be reduced to killing dogs in a camp of sullen outlaws. Idahi didn’t know what life he was going to have now, anyway. He had left his people and did not intend to go back. He could go to one of the other free bands of Comanches and see if they would accept him and let him hunt and fight with them, but it might be that they would refuse. His home would be the prairie and the grasslands; he might not, again, be able to live with his people. It seemed to him that he ought to do what he could to see that a great animal such as a bear was treated in a dignified manner, even if it meant his own death.

  “If you would turn him loose I wouldn’t have to kill him,” Idahi said.

  “It’s my bear and I ain’t turning him loose,” Blue Duck said. “Kill him if you want to.”

  Idahi decided that his life was probably over. He got up and began to sing a song about some of the things he had done in his life. He made a song about the bear that he had seen kill an elk. While he sang the camp grew quiet. Idahi thought it might be his last song, so he did not hurry. He sang about Paha-yuca, and the people who would no longer be free.

  Then he walked over to his horse, took his rifle, and went to the willow tree where the bear was chained. The bear looked up as he approached; it still had blood on its nose from the beating Blue Duck had given it. Idahi was still singing. The bear was such a sad bear that he didn’t think it would mind losing its life. He stepped very close to the bear, so he would not have to shoot it a second time. The bear did not move away from him; it merely waited.

  Idahi shot the bear dead with one shot placed just above its ear. Then, still singing, he took the chain off it, so that it would not have, in death, the humiliations it had had to endure in its life.

  Idahi expected then that Blue Duck would kill him, or order Ermoke or some of the other renegades to kill him, but instead Blue Duck merely ordered the camp women to skin the bear and cut up the meat. Idahi went on singing until he was well out of camp. He didn’t know why Blue Duck had let him go, but he went on singing as loudly as he could. He made a song about some of the hunts he had been on in his life. If the renegades were going to follow him he wanted them to know exactly where he was: he didn’t want them to think he was a coward who would slink away.

  That night he th
ought he heard a ghost bear, far away on the prairie, howling in answer to his song.

  22.

  THOUGH ERMOKE KNEW IT was dangerous to question Blue Duck, he was so angry at what he had seen Idahi do that he went to him anyway, to complain about his lax behavior with the Comanche from the south. One of the rules of the band was that there could be no visitors; those who came either stayed or were killed. Blue Duck had made the rule himself, and now had broken it, and broken it flagrantly. Within the space of a single day a man had ridden in, surveyed the camp, and ridden out.

  That Idahi had killed the bear also bothered Ermoke. No one liked the bear, a coward whose spirit Blue Duck had broken long ago. When they tried to use it to make sport with captives the bear only whimpered and turned its back. Once they had even convinced a terrified white woman that they were going to force the bear to mate with her, but of course the bear did not mate with her or even scratch her. Besides, even though it was a skinny bear, it had to be fed from time to time. The bear was only a source of discontent. Sometimes, just to flaunt his authority, Blue Duck would feed the bear choice cuts of venison or buffalo that the men in camp would have liked to eat themselves. It galled them to see a bear eating meat while they had to subsist on mush or fish.

  What infuriated Ermoke was that the Comanche, Idahi, had been in the camp long enough to count and identify every man in it. Besides, he knew exactly where the camp was; if he cared to sell his knowledge to the white law, the white law would make him rich. It was to prevent that very thing from happening that Blue Duck had made the rule regarding visitors.