Comanche Moon ld-4

by Larry McMurtry

  "I expect they're all horse thieves, at least," Gus said, pointing to the sizable horse herd grazing nearby.

  "All right," Call said. "If they're with Blue Duck I've no doubt they need hanging." None of the doomed men said even a ^w in their own defense, and none of the slatternly women followed the little procession to the oak grove. The women seemed numbed by the morning's events--they sat in dejection near one of the smouldering oak grove campfires.

  "I hope you'll at least take these women with you, Sheriff Kettler," Call said. "I imagine some of them were captives. They'll starve if you leave them." "We won't leave them," the sheriff promised.

  When they got to the oak grove they discovered that there was no one tree with a limb strong enough or low enough to hang all the men from. Deets, who rarely betrayed any sign of nerves no matter how dangerous the conflict, looked uncertain as he searched among the oak trees for a suitable hanging tree. He had never tied a hang knot and was conscious that the eyes of the several hard sheriffso were upon him. He was being asked to hang white men, ten at that. He knew he had to do it, though; besides worrying that he might not get the knots right--the lariat ropes he had to work with were of uneven strength and texture--he had already begun to worry about the fact that he would soon be setting ten ghosts loose, ghosts that might pursue him and work spells against him. None of the ten condemned men had made any effort to plead for their lives. They stood silently among the sheriffso and rangers, looking like whipped dogs.

  "Here's one good stout limb," Augustus said.

  "It ought to hold four of them, at least." "I'd make that three," Sheriff Kettler said, looking at the limb in question with a practiced eye. "If you hang men too close together they're apt to bump into one another while they're swinging." "What would it matter, if they're swinging?" Augustus said.

  Call found the proceedings an irritant.

  Time was being wasted. If only the outlaws had put up a fight they could have shot several of them and not had to proceed with such a lengthy hanging. Finally three limbs were selected. The men were put on borrowed horses; Deets carefully tied the hang knots just as he had seen Jake do. Two limbs held three men each and another limb held four. The sheriffso grouped the men carelessly, so that the tallest man ended up hanging from the lowest and weakest limb. His toes, when he bounced on the rope, were less than an inch from the ground.

  Deets, despite his conviction that a passel of spells would soon be unleashed against him, did a careful job. None of the knots failed. The heavier men died instantly, while the lighter fellows kicked and swayed for several minutes.

  Only the tall man occasioned much of a wait.

  At the end of ten minutes he was still alive.

  Call, impatient, wanted to shoot him, but knew that would be improper procedure. Finally the man ceased to kick, but, by the time they were ready to ride off, the limb had sagged so much that the tall man's toes rested on the ground.

  "I thank you for obliging me," Sheriff Kettler said to Call and Augustus. "This has saved the county a passel of expense." "Don't forget the women," Call said, as they rode away.

  Famous Shoes, too, was impatient--he did not understand the Texans' preference for hanging.

  If they didn't want to torture the men, why not just shoot them? It would have been much quicker.

  As they rode away Call observed that Augustus seemed unusually melancholy.

  "What's wrong with you?" he asked.

  "It's gloomy work, hanging men in the morning," Augustus said. "Here the sun's up and it's a nice day, but they won't get to live it.

  "Besides," he added a little later, "I get to thinking that, but for luck, it could have been me hanging there." Call was startled by the remark.

  "You--why would it have been you?" he asked.

  "Ornery as you are, I don't think you deserve a hanging." "No, but for luck I might have," Augustus said, turning in his saddle to take one last look at the grove where the ten bodies hung.

  At night Famous Shoes ranged far ahead of the rangers, who could not push their mounts any harder without putting them at risk. It was the night of the full moon--the prairies were almost as light as day. The tracks of the men they were chasing had not changed direction all day. Blue Duck and the two men with him were heading northwest, into the deepest part of the llano, a course that puzzled Famous Shoes. They would soon be on the long plain of New Mexico, where there was no water. Even the Antelope Comanche had to be careful when they travelled there; he had heard that sometimes the Antelopes had to cut open a horse in order to drink the liquids in the horse's stomach. That they could do such things was the reason they had not yet been conquered by the whites. So far the bluecoat soldiers lacked the skills that would enable them to attack the Antelopes.

  But Blue Duck was not of the Antelope band.

  He raided in country where there was plenty of water. He would be foolish to think he could continue across the llano and not get in trouble. Besides, there was no one in that country at all--no one, at least, to rob or kill. Of course, there was Quanah and his band, but they were poor, and, anyway, if Blue Duck came near them, they would promptly kill him and his companions.

  And yet, the tracks didn't turn. They pointed straight into the longest distance of the llano.

  Famous Shoes thought that perhaps Blue Duck meant to go to Colorado, to the settlements, where no doubt there were plenty of people to rob. But if he meant to go to Colorado he could have gone along the Arkansas River, where there was plenty of water.

  Late in the night Famous Shoes went back to the rangers. Although the tracks of Blue Duck and his men were plain, he had learned that it was not wise to assume that the Texans would see what to him was plain. The Texans--even experienced men such as Captain Call and Captain McCrae--had curious eyes. He could never be confident that he knew what they would see, when following a trail. Often they took incorrect routes which had to be corrected with much loss of time.

  In such dry country Famous Shoes did not want to risk having the rangers go astray. When he came, the rangers were just finishing their brief breakfast. Famous Shoes saw to his surprise that Pea Eye Parker had his trousers off--one of his legs was an angry red. Deets was studying the leg carefully, a big needle in his hand.

  "Bad luck," Call said, when Famous Shoes approached. "He knelt on a cactus when he went to hobble his horse. Now his leg's as bad as if he had been snakebit." When Famous Shoes was shown the cactus in question, he agreed with the captain's assessment. The thorns of the little green cactus were as poisonous as the bite of a rattlesnake.

  "The thorn's under the kneecap," Augustus said.

  "Get it out," Famous Shoes said. "If you get it out he will soon be well, but if you leave it in his leg he will never walk far again." "Go to it, Deets--otherwise Pea will have to retire," Gus said.

  When Deets finally succeeded in coaxing the tiny tip of the cactus thorn out of Pea Eye's leg, he and all the other men were surprised that such a tiny thorn could produce such a bad inflammation. But Famous Shoes was right. In ten minutes Pea Eye declared himself fit for travel.

  Famous Shoes took a little coffee and made a thorough inspection of the rangers' horses.

  What he found did not please him. Only five or six of the horses looked strong enough to go where Blue Duck was going.

  "If you know where he's going, I wish you'd tell us," Call said, although he knew it was probably unwise to put a direct question to the tracker. Famous Shoes had never ceased to madden and frustrate him. Sometimes he would speak as plainly as a white man, but, at other times, no amount of questioning would produce any but the most elliptical replies.

  "I don't know where he is going unless it is to Black Mesa," Famous Shoes said. "I don't know why he would want to go there. It is where the Comanches used to go to pray, but I don't know if that is why he is going." "Doubtful. He don't strike me as being a man of prayer," Augustus said. "I never heard of Black Mesa. How far away is it?" "It is a mesa where the rocks are black," Fa
mous Shoes said. "I have never been there--there is no water in that country. His men have only one horse apiece. They will die if they try to follow him." He looked around at the rangers, hoping that Captain Call or Captain McCrae would understand what he meant, which was that they should send most of the men home. He thought either of the captains would be a match for Blue Duck: he saw no reason why they should take eight rangers into the driest part of the llano and try to keep them alive.

  Call and Augustus immediately took his point, which was that they too had more men than they could hope to keep alive.

  "There's only three outlaws," Call said to Augustus. "I'd say that Pea and Deets are all we need. We better send the rest of these men home while they can find their way." "If they can find their way," Augustus said.

  "We're way out here in the big empty. They might just ride around in circles until they fall over and drop." Call knew there was a chance that Gus was right.

  Few men were truly competent at navigating the deceptive, featureless plains. Even experienced plainsmen sometimes lost confidence in their judgments, or even in their compasses. Some familiar-looking ridge or rise in the ground would tease their memories and tempt them to rethink their course, often with serious or even fatal consequences.

  Augustus looked around. It was a beautiful spring day; the sweep of the long horizons was appealing, and yet, except for the arch of the sun, there was nothing in sight that would suggest direction. Some of the men had already become nervous, at the thought of being left with no guide.

  "These men hired on to ranger, Woodrow, let 'em ranger on back home," Gus said. A few minutes later, six nervous, apprehensive men, under the nominal leadership of Stove Jones, were trotting away to the southeast, toward the distant rivers and the even more distant settlements. Call, Augustus, Pea Eye, and Deets kept one pack mule. More important, they kept Famous Shoes.

  While the men who were being sent home were saddling up and dividing the few supplies, Famous Shoes walked a few hundred yards to the north, to smell the wind. It disturbed him that he could not sense where Blue Duck was going, or what he might do. Why the man would simply plunge into the llano, far from any route where travellers went, puzzled him--and it was while he was walking around in puzzlement that the owl flew out of the ground. A great white owl, with wings as wide as a man's arm spread, suddenly rose right at his feet, in his face. The owl flew from a hole in the ground, near a ridge with a few rocks on it. That the owl flew so near his face frightened Famous Shoes badly--s badly that he stumbled as he tried to run back to camp. His heart began to pound; he had never been so frightened, not even when a brown bear tried to catch him on the Brazos once.

  The owl that flew in his face went up high and glided over the rangers--it was snow white.

  Of course Famous Shoes knew that little brown owls sometimes went into prairie dog holes to catch snakes, or to eat the young prairie dogs--but this was not such an owl. This owl had been snow white, though it was not winter and there was no reason for a white owl to be rising out of a hole on a ridge. Captain Call and Captain McCrae looked up at it, and then it flew so far that Famous Shoes lost it in the white sunlight.

  Of course the owl meant death--thus it had always been. But it was not an ordinary owl, so the death it presaged would not be that of an ordinary man. Though Famous Shoes had been very frightened when the owl flew at him, he soon decided that the owl did not want his death. He was only an ordinary man who liked to lie with his wives when he was home and who liked to travel the country when he had got enough, for a time, of lying with his wives. He was a good tracker, too, but not good enough that his death would need to be announced by the appearance of a great white owl.

  It was another death, the death of a great man, that the white owl must have come to announce. Famous Shoes thought that one of the captains, who were great men of the Texans, might be about to die. It could mean that Blue Duck's apparent foolishness in journeying into the llano was in fact just a ruse.

  Maybe somewhere ahead he was plotting an ambush.

  Maybe he was hiding in a hole somewhere, as the owl had been, waiting to shoot one of the captains.

  "Did you see the owl?" Famous Shoes asked, when he reached the captains.

  "We seen it, it was right pretty," Captain McCrae said cheerfully. "You don't see too many of them big snow owls low down this way now." Augustus was happy that the troop had been pared down to the men who were necessary, even though it meant that he would have fewer victims in the event of an evening card game.

  Famous Shoes realized then, when he heard Captain McCrae's casual and cheerful tone, that it was as he had always believed, which was that it was no use talking to white men about serious things. The owl of death, the most imposing and important bird he had ever seen, had flown right over the two captains' heads, and they merely thought it was a pretty bird. If he tried to persuade them that the bird had come out of the earth, where the death spirits lived, they would just think he was talking nonsense.

  Captain Call was no more bothered by the owl than Captain McCrae, a fact which made Famous Shoes decide not to speak. He turned and led them west again, but this time he proceeded very carefully, expecting that Blue Duck might be laying his ambush somewhere not far ahead, in a hole that one would not notice until it was too late.

  As her strength began its final ebbing, the thing that tormented Maggie most was the fear in her son's eyes. Newt knew she was dying--everybody knew it. He struggled mightily to relieve her of the household chores. He was an able boy, too: he could cook a little, and clean--if there was a chore to be done that was within his capacity, Maggie seldom had to ask him to do it. He just did it, and did it competently; in that way and many others he reminded her of his father.

  Yet it was in thinking of Newt that Maggie found her best peace. She thought she had done a fair job with him. If the rangers or the Stewarts would just take him for a year or two he would be old enough to earn his keep. Maggie hoped it would be the rangers.

  "A boy ought to be with his father," she told her friend Pearl Coleman one afternoon. Maggie had managed to get down the steps, meaning to rake a little in her garden, but just getting down the steps exhausted her strength; she was able to do little more than sit amid her bean plants. Newt was particularly fond of green beans and snap peas.

  Though Pearl Coleman had suitors aplenty, she had never remarried. Her suitors were mainly men new to the area; most of them didn't know about her rape by the Comanches, didn't know why Long Bill had hung himself. Though Pearl was lonely, she was afraid to remarry. Once the old news came to light her new husband might turn her out, or else do as Long Bill had done.

  Because she was lonely and knew that she was never likely to have a child of her own, Pearl offered to take young Newt when Maggie passed.

  "He ought to be with his father even if his father won't claim him," Maggie went on.

  Pearl had little patience with Woodrow Call, but she didn't want to tire her friend with argument.

  There would not be many more chances for Maggie Tilton to sit in her garden in the spring sunlight; best not to spoil it.

  "Mag, it don't have to be one way or the other," Pearl said. "Newt can stay with me when the menfolks are gone, and bunk with the boys when they're home." "Well, if you wouldn't mind," Maggie said.

  It was just a short walk from Pearl's house to the ranger barracks, such as they were. Pearl was such a good cook; it would be a shame for Newt to miss out on her tasty meals.

  "I think the Stewarts will be wanting him to work in the store a little, when there's unpacking to do," Maggie said.

  Pearl did not particularly like the Stewarts-- in her view they were too quick to insist on payment of her bills--but she did not demur. If Newt could earn a quarter now and then, so much the better.

  "Everybody in this town likes your boy," Pearl assured her. "He'll be well cared for--y can rest your mind about that." Maggie knew Pearl was right. There were many kindly folks in Austin who took an
interest in Newt--p she had met at church, or served in the store. Hard as times had been, since the war, and poor as most people were, she didn't doubt that people would see that her child was fed and clothed. Knowing that, though, didn't put her mind at rest--how could a mother not worry about her child? She would have liked to have one more good talk with Augustus, about Newt's future; she would have liked, even, to sit at her window and watch Newt practice roping with Deets and Pea Eye--it reassured her to see him with the men who would be his companions once she was gone; it was unfortunate that they had had to leave on patrol just as she felt herself slipping into a deeper weakness.

  Newt, in the lots with his rope, would look up every few minutes, to see if he could catch a glimpse of his mother's pale face in her window.

  He knew his mother was dying; he spent hour after hour with his rope, throwing loops at chickens, or the milk-pen calf, or stumps, or posts, to distract himself a little from this frightening knowledge. He was so proficient with the lariat now that the milk-pen calf and even some of the chickens had taken to stopping submissively when he approached with the rope in his hands.