Comanche Moon ld-4

by Larry McMurtry

  Sometimes, restless in his apprehension, Newt would walk out of town to the little graveyard. He had been to several funerals now, mostly funerals of people his mother knew from church--and he knew that soon there would have to be a funeral for his mother too. At the graveyard he would sometimes talk to his mother, aimless talk about the rangers, about some superstition Deets had told him, or some belief--sch as Deets's belief that Indians lived on the moon, having jumped their horses there at some time long ago when the moon had been only a few feet from the earth. Sometimes Newt would sit and watch the moon rise with Deets, hoping for a glimpse of the Indians; but he could never see them.

  Mainly, though, Newt talked at the graveyard so he could get in practice to talk to his mother once she was dead. There were seldom many live people in the graveyard, but there were often one or two, usually an old man or old woman, or a bereaved young husband or wife whose spouse had died unexpectedly. Many times he had heard the old ones muttering over the graves of their loved ones--it seemed to him that talking to the dead must be an accepted practice. Probably the dead continued to want to know about the goings-on of the living; that seemed natural to Newt.

  Of course, once his mother died, everything would change. He was hoping that Captain Woodrow and Captain Augustus would allow him to live with the rangers then. Even before his mother got sick he had begun to want to live with the rangers. But even if he had to live with Mrs. Coleman or Mrs.

  Stewart until he could become a full-fledged ranger himself, it was to be expected that his mother would still want to know what he was doing, how his lessons were going, what had happened at the general store, whether Mrs. Coleman had decided to marry any of the men who wanted to marry her, whether Mrs. Stewart was still hitting Mr. Stewart with the barrel stave when he came in drunk and tardy.

  Of course, too, she might want to know about Captain Woodrow, or whether there was any news of Jake Spoon, or if Captain Augustus had done anything unusual while drunk. Newt meant to keep a close watch on everything that happened in the community, so that he could come to the graveyard every day or two and give his mother a full report.

  When the day was bright, and he was busy with his chores or his lessons, Newt would manage to put out of his mind for a few hours the fact that his mother was dying. He never mentioned his mother's sickness to anyone, not even to Ikey Ripple, who was so old now that he was practically a dead person himself. Ikey and Newt were good friends, though Ikey was so blind now that he had to feel Newt with his hands to make sure he was there. Ikey told Newt terrifying stories about the days when wild Comanche Indians came into town and ripped people's hair right off their heads. Newt would stop practicing with his rope while Ikey told him stories of the old days, when people often got shot full of arrows, or had their stomachs cut open.

  Sometimes, while he talked, Ikey would whittle a stick with his little thin-bladed pocketknife. Although he never looked at the sticks as he whittled them, he never cut himself with the sharp little knife, either. Ikey whittled and whittled, shaving the stick away until it was only a small white sliver of wood, small enough to be used as a toothpick, although, since Ikey only had three or four teeth and didn't really need a toothpick, he would often give the smooth little slivers of wood to Newt, who saved them as treasures.

  Scary as Ikey's stories were, nothing frightened Newt as much as laying on his pallet at night listening to his mother's labored breathing. He wished his ma could just sleep peacefully and easily, as she had when he had been younger; he didn't want her to have to draw such hard breaths.

  Often he would be awake for hours, looking out the window, waiting for his mother's breathing to get easier.

  He knew, though, that her breathing was growing harder, not easier; when it stopped she wouldn't be well, she would be dead, and would have to be taken to the graveyard and put in the ground.

  Then he would have to begin talking to her in a new way: the way the living talked to the dead.

  In his fright, in the darkness, Newt would begin to wish more than anything that Captain Woodrow and Captain Augustus would hurry and get back to Austin before his mother died. Every day Newt asked Ikey if he knew when they would be back, and every day Ikey said no, he hadn't heard, they would just be back when they got back.

  Of course Captain Woodrow didn't come to see his mother anymore, as he had in earlier years. Though Newt saw him often, in the lots, Captain Woodrow rarely had much to say to him and seldom gave him pennies for sassafras candy now. Still, Newt wanted badly for him to come back. He felt the whole business of his mother's dying would be better taken care of if Captain Woodrow were there, and Captain Gus. They would see that Deets put the grave in a nice spot and see that there was plenty of singing; then, once the funeral was over, maybe they would let him move into the bunkhouse and live until he was big enough to carry a pistol and be a ranger himself.

  That was Newt's hope, but he didn't tell it to his mother because she didn't much approve of guns. He didn't intend to mention it while his mother lived; it might make her mad, and when she was mad she coughed up blood, a thing that upset Graciela so that she would start crying and fanning herself and calling out the names of saints, as if it were she, and not his mother, who was dying. Mainly, Newt talked about his dream of having a pistol to Deets and Pea Eye, who saw no reason why he shouldn't have a pistol, and even, now and then, let him hold their own pistols. Sometimes, if they turned their heads, he would even point the pistol at the milk-pen calf, though of course he didn't shoot.

  Long before Buffalo Hump came to the dry lake where the first people had lain in wait to catch the wild horses that came to refresh themselves at the little seeping spring, he wished he had used better judgment in picking a horse for his own last journey. The problem was that the old horse he had chosen had worn away all his teeth; in the canyon there was tall grass that he could masticate, but on the dry llano, in the vicinity of the Lake of Horses, there was no tall grass. The old horse was reduced to dirtying its nose as it tried to get at the sparse, short grass with its yellow nubs of teeth. Though the horse had frisked along briskly for some twenty miles, its strength soon gave out and it became what it was: an old horse slowly dying for lack of teeth. That was the way of old horses, just as shaky hands and wavery eyesight was the way of old men. Buffalo Hump knew he had made a poor choice. He wanted to reach Black Mesa, to sing his way into death among the black rocks that were the oldest rocks. Some believed that only in the black rocks were the spirits that welcomed one into death.

  But, because the old horse had slowed to a walk, Buffalo Hump was still a long way even from the Lake of Horses. He knew, though, that if the little spring was still seeping, the old horse might refresh itself and make it on to Black Mesa.

  The old horse was so weak now that he was only stumbling. For a time Buffalo Hump dismounted and led him, a thing he had not had to do in his long life as a horseman. Always, when a horse of his came up lame, he had simply left it, switching to another horse or going on foot if he had no other horse. He had owned many horses in his life and had never let a failing horse slow him down.

  But the fact was he had chosen the old black horse to be the horse that would carry him to the place of his death. For him, Buffalo Hump, there would be no more horses; he had to do what he could to get the old horse to take him where he needed to go. It would not do to abandon him, which would leave him afoot in the spirit world; he did not want such a thing to happen. If it did he would be disgraced; all his victories and conquests would be as naught. Where the black horse died, he would die; and he wanted it, if possible, to be where the black rocks were.

  For most of a day and all of one night he nursed the old horse along, leading him carefully over the sparse grass, letting him stop to rest when he needed to, watching him nuzzle the sparse brown grass with his stubs of teeth to get a few bites of nourishment. Always, on the llano, Buffalo Hump's eyes had sought the horizon, the distant line drawn by earth and sky. But now, when he looked tow
ard a horizon, there was no line, but a wavering, in which sunlight, sky, and earth were all mixed and indistinct. Once he would have known exactly how far he was from the Lake of Horses and, again, how far from Black Mesa--but he was no longer sure of the distances to either place.

  What Buffalo Hump knew was that he must not leave the black horse; their fates were now linked. When the horse stumbled and wanted to stop, Buffalo Hump let him rest. As the horse rested he began to sing again the high songs of the war trail. For a time the old horse did nothing.

  Then he lifted his head and pricked up his ears, as if hearing again his own hoofbeats from the time of warring.

  Buffalo Hump was not singing to the horse--he was singing the memories of his own life--but the horse, once he was rested a little, was able to go a few more miles, though at a slow walk. As the heat of the day grew, though, the horse weakened again, and stopped, though they were not yet to the Lake of Horses.

  Now Buffalo Hump began to beat the old horse with his lance. He beat it with all his strength. He twisted the horse's tail and pounded it on the sides with his lance. He was determined, once more, to make a horse go where he wanted it to go, and he succeeded. The black horse, which had been about to sink down and die, quivered while he was being beaten; then he revived and walked on another few miles until Buffalo Hump saw the cracked earth of the dry lake not far ahead. Soon the horse smelled the water from the little spring and became excited. He ran toward the water in a wobbly canter--when Buffalo Hump caught up with him he had pushed aside the thick weeds that hid the spring and was sucking the cold water. The spring was so small that it left only a little film of water around the stems of the weeds.

  Nonetheless, it was water--pure water--and it saved both Buffalo Hump and the old black horse. They drank and then drank again. The horse was even able to nibble on the tops of the thick weeds around the spring, nourishment enough to enable him to continue the walk to the north when the cool of the evening came.

  Though the horse could eat the tops of the weeds, Buffalo Hump couldn't, and he was out of food.

  He had his short bow and some snares, but the only animals he saw were some prairie dogs. He could not see well enough to hit one of the prairie dogs with an arrow and did not have the time or the patience to lay an effective snare. He wanted to hurry on to where the black rocks were.

  In the night, after they left the spring, it was he, rather than the black horse, that faltered. By the middle of the next day he was as unsteady on his feet as a baby just learning to balance himself and stand upright. Buffalo Hump became so weak and unsteady that he mounted the black horse again and made it carry him a few more miles. By the evening, to his joy, he began to see a black rock here and there on the ground, although, strain his eyes as he might, he could see no sign of the mesa land he sought. He began to feel uncertain about the mesa. Perhaps it was only the black rocks that he remembered; perhaps he had imagined the mesa, or dreamed it, or confused it with a mesa in another place. He wasn't sure; but at least he had found the black rocks, the rocks which were said to welcome the dead.

  Then, in the heat of the day, the horse fell. It didn't wobble; it simply fell, throwing Buffalo Hump to the ground. Slowly he got up, meaning to beat the horse again and urge him to get up and go on a few more miles, but before he could even find his lance and raise it, the black horse heaved a sigh and died.

  For a few minutes Buffalo Hump was upset with himself for having ridden along carelessly, singing battle songs, as if he were a young warrior again, on a spirited warhorse, when in fact he was an old man on a horse that was walking its last steps. If he had dismounted and led the horse again they might have made it a few more miles into the country of the black rocks.

  But now it was too late: the horse was dead, and the place where he stood was the place he would die. At least, though, he had reached the place of the black rocks. Buffalo Hump would have preferred to be high on the mesa, looking over the plains where he had spent his life; but that was a thing he had not been granted; he would have to make the best death he could on the spot where his horse had fallen.

  Buffalo Hump went to his horse and, with his knife, neatly and quickly took out its eyes and buried them in a small hole. The eyes a horse needed in life were not the eyes it would need when it trod the plains of death. Then he began to gather up as many of the black rocks as he could.

  He meant to make a ring of rocks in which to sit until he died. He could not find the mesa, which might only be a dream mesa anyway. As he worked, gathering the rocks, he began to remember bits and pieces of his life, scraps of things that had been said to him by various people. Once his memory had been good, but now it was as leaky as a water sack that had been pierced by a thorn. He could not remember very much--j bits and pieces of things said long ago. While memories flowed in and out of his mind, like a river eddying, he worked at gathering the rocks.

  As Buffalo Hump was about to finish the ring of black rocks that he meant to sit in until he left his body and became a spirit, he remembered another thing his old grandmother had told him long ago, when he was a boy, too young to ride the war trail. It had been dry in the fall and winter; there were many sandstorms. The sandstorms put his grandmother in a bad mood; she did not like it when the air was dusty. One day when the dogs were turning their tails to the wind that whipped through the camp his grandmother had begun to wail and utter lamentations.

  Because of her bad mood she began to sing dark prophecies, in which she foresaw the end of the Comanche people. She predicted wars and pestilence; the People would lose their place. The plains would be covered with white people, as numerous as ants; the People would die of their plagues. Then the buffalo would go away and the time of the Comanche would end.

  As Buffalo Hump arranged the rocks in a large circle--large because he wanted to show that he was one with the plains, with the great ring of the sky--he realized that his grandmother had prophesied truly. At the time he had thought she was just a bad-tempered old woman who ought to keep her wailing to herself. Now, though, he realized that he had been unjust. The whites had swarmed like ants up the rivers, spreading their pestilence, just as his grandmother had predicted. And, as she had predicted, the buffalo had gone.

  Evening came. Buffalo Hump seated himself on a fine buffalo robe he had brought with him; he put his bow and his lance and the fine bone shield he had carefully made from the skull of the great buffalo he had killed near to hand. It was a clear day with little wind--the sun sank clearly in the west, free of the yellow haze which blowing sand sometimes produced. Buffalo Hump kept his face turned toward the red light of sunset until the light died and the horizon grew purple. He was sorry to see the sun go. He wanted to keep the sunlight that had bathed him his whole life, but the sun went and the plain darkened; no man could slow the sun.

  In the night Buffalo Hump, though weak from lack of food, began to sing a little, though his voice was cracked. Again, he was remembering scraps of things. The wind came up. He was glad he had a good blanket to put over his shoulders. A little dust began to blow, reminding him of his grandmother and her lamentations, her wailings, her prophecies of the end of the Comanche time.

  It was then that he remembered his grandmother's prophecy about his own end, a thing he had not thought of in years. She had said that he would only die when his great hump was pierced, and had suggested in her prophecy that this would happen when a dark woman came, riding a white mule and holding aloft a sword. At the time his grandmother made the prophecy Buffalo Hump thought she was just a crazy old woman. Half the old men and old women of the tribe spent their time making strange prophecies. No one paid their mutterings much mind.

  But then, a few years later, on a plain west of the Rio Pecos, he had seen a dark woman on a white mule, holding aloft a great sword. Buffalo Hump might have tried to kill her, then and there, except that, with her, there had been a naked white woman with a rotting body, singing a high war song and carrying a great snake: a witch, undoubtedly, a
nd a powerful one.

  All his men had run away at the sight of the naked witch whose body was rotting; even Kicking Wolf had run away. Buffalo Hump had not run, but he did remember his grandmother's prophecy about his hump being pierced. The sight of the witch was so horrible that Buffalo Hump retreated, but he retreated slowly, backing his horse step by step, so that his hump would not be exposed to the dark woman with the sword.

  All that had happened so many years before that Buffalo Hump had almost forgotten it. The dark woman with the sword was the servant of a powerful witch--it puzzled him that the witch had made no effort to pierce his hump and kill him.

  But then the years began to pass. He fought the Texans and the Mexicans, he stole many captives, he made his first great raid to the sea and then his second; the buffalo were still on the plains and there were hunts to pursue. Buffalo Hump had much to do, trying to drive the white people back so the plains would be free of their smell. The sickness came; it became difficult to find enough good warriors to make war. As the years passed, the memory of the dark woman and the rotting witch faded; his grandmother died and her prophecies were lost, with the many prophecies of the old women of the tribe. He had even forgotten the prophecy about his hump being pierced, but now he remembered it.