Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

by Comanche Moon

  Another practical side of captaining was just beginning to worry him, and that was horses. It had been poor grazing lately, and they had had many hard days. None of the horses were in good flesh.

  The skinniest had suffered as much as the men from the cold, sleety weather. Famous Shoes could have looked at the tracks and told them exactly what kind of condition the Indian horses were in, but he couldn't do that. However well or poorly the men fought, it would be the quality of their horseflesh that determined the outcome, if there was a long chase. It might be that their horses weren't a match for the Indian horses, in which case a chase would prove futile.

  "What if we can't catch them? Our horses might be too poorly," Call asked.

  "I don't know--but we've got to try," Augustus said. "That's a dead boy we're burying. We can't just go home and tell them we found a dead boy and didn't try to punish the killers, especially since they're in sight." "In your sight--I can't see them," Call said, but of course he agreed with the point. The boy was dead. It was the second time in his career that he had stumbled on a dead body, on the prairie--the first, long ago, had been a prospector of some kind. The chance of his finding the two bodies, on the wide plain, struck him-- if his route had varied by even fifty yards he might never have seen either body.

  The boy, particularly, would have been hard to see, curled up like a young goat in some low grass. Yet Call had found him. It was curious--but there it was.

  Neely Dickens, besides being quick to flare up, was also prone to attacks of severe pessimism if an undertaking of a dangerous nature was anticipated. When it became clear that they would all be required to go in pursuit of the raiding party, Neely immediately fell prey to dark forebodings.

  "North--I thought we was through going north," he said. "I despise having to travel back toward the dern north, where it's so windy." "Then why'd you get in the rangers, anyway?" Teddy Beatty asked. "Rangers just go whichever direction they need to. You're in the wrong profession if you're picky about directions." "Couldn't get no other job," Neely admitted. "If I'd known I was going to have to go north I'd have tried to make it to Galveston instead." Augustus found the remark puzzling. Why would a fear of the north convince anybody that they ought to go to Galveston?

  "Why Galveston, then, Neely?" he asked. The boy's grave had been hastily covered and the troop was ready to move in the direction Neely despised.

  "Ships," Neely said. "If I was in Galveston I might could hide in a ship." "That don't make no sense," Long Bill observed. "Ships go north too." Neely Dickens was sorry he had ever brought the matter up. All the rangers were looking at him as if he were daft, which he wasn't. All his life he had heard stories about Comanche tortures. Several of the older rangers had described the practices to him. Comanches slit people open and poured hot coals into them while they were still alive.

  "I won't have no Comanche cutting a hole in my belly and pouring in hot coals," he said, by way of explanation of his dislike of the northerly direction.

  "Shut up that talk--let's go," Call said.

  The men had been blue and apprehensive since Captain Scull left anyway--dwelling on the prospect of torture would only make matters worse. He knew from experience that when morale began to slip among a group of tired, ill-fed, nervous men, a whole troop could soon be put at risk, and he didn't intend to let that happen, not on his first try at being a captain.

  He turned his horse and stopped the troop for a moment.

  "You need to think about your horses first and foremost," he said. "Be sure their feet are sound. A lame horse will get you scalped quicker than anything in this country." "And be sure to sight your rifles every morning, too," Augustus added. "Bouncing around all day in a saddle scabbard can throw a gun off sight.

  If a red warrior forty feet away is about to put an arrow in you, you don't want to have to stop and fix your sight." Teddy Beatty resented such instruction, particularly since the two captains were both younger than he was.

  "I can't think about horses and guns all the time," he said, in a tone of complaint. "There's too much time for thinking out here on the plains." "Think about whores, then," Augustus said.

  "Pretend you won enough money in a card game to buy fifty whores." "Buy fifty whores and do what with them?" Long Bill asked. "That's too many whores to worry with even if I wasn't a married man --and I am a married man." "It's just something to think about that's more cheerful than torture," Augustus explained.

  "Survival's more cheerful than torture," Call said. "Watch your weapons and your horses and stay close to the group. That way you won't suffer nothing worse than hearing Gus McCrae talk about whores seven days out of the week." Neely Dickens heard the ^ws, but the ^ws didn't change his opinion. In his view it was hot coals in the belly for sure, if a man lingered too long in the north, in which direction, led by their young captains, they were even then tending.

  Neely still thought the best plan would be to make for Galveston and hide out in a ship.

  Maudy Clark only wanted to die--die and have no more freezing, no more outrage, no more having to worry about what Tana, the cruelest of her captors, would do to her at night, when they camped. Tana led the horse she was tied to himself; sometimes, even as they rode, he would drop back to pull her hair or beat her with a mesquite switch. Those torments were minor compared to what Tana and the other three Comanches did to her in camp. She had never expected to have to bear such abuse from men, and yet she still had two living children, Bessie and Dan, and could not allow herself to think too much about the luxury of death.

  William, her husband, had been away, driving some stock to Victoria, when the four Comanches burst into her cabin and took her. The babe at her breast, little Sal, they had killed immediately by dashing her head against a log. Eddie, her oldest boy, hurt his leg in the first scuffle --the pain was such that he couldn't stop whimpering at night. Maudy would hear him crying even as she endured her torments. On the sixth day the Comanches lost patience with his crying and smashed his head in with a gun butt. Eddie was still breathing when they rode on--Maudy prayed someone would find Eddie and save him, but she knew it was an empty prayer. Eddie's head had been broken; no one could save him even if they found him, and who would find a small dying boy in such emptiness?

  But Bessie and Dan, three and five, were still alive. They were hungry and cold, but they had not been hurt, apart from scratches received as the horses crashed through the south Texas brush.

  Several times, during periods of outrage, Maudy had thought of grabbing a knife and slashing her own throat, but she could not surrender her life while her children needed her. Bessie and Dan had stopped watching what the men did to their mother. They sat with their eyes down, silent, trying to get a little warmth from the campfire. When the men let her tend them, Maudy fed them a few scraps of the deer meat she was allowed. She meant to keep them alive, if she could, until rescue came.

  "Pa will be coming--he'll take us home," she told them, over and over.

  Maudy knew that part was a lie. William wouldn't be the one to find them, if they were found and saved. William barely had the competence to raise a small crop and gather a few livestock; he would never be able to follow their trail from the brush country to the empty plains.

  Besides, he had left home to be gone two weeks or more; he might not yet even realize that his cabin was burned, his baby dead, his pigs scattered, and his family stolen. Once he did discover it, there would be little he could do.

  Yet Maudy held on to hope, for Bessie and Dan if not herself. She didn't know why the young Comanche Tana hated her so, but in his eyes she saw her death. She had seen children brought back from Comanche captivity before, and most recovered.

  Bessie and Dan were sturdy children; they would recover too. But for herself she had no hope.

  She and William had discussed the prospect of capture many times; everyone who farmed on the frontier knew women who had been taken. In those discussions William had always firmly instructed Maudy to kill
herself rather than submit to savage outrage. There was always a loaded pistol in the cabin, just for that purpose.

  William hated Indians. His parents and both his brothers had been killed in Indian raids on the Sabine River. More important to William even than the lives of his children was the knowledge that his wife, Maudy, would not be sullied by the embraces of red Comanches.

  Maudy knew William was not alone in that feeling. Many men on the frontier made clear to their wives that they would not be accepted back, if they were taken and allowed themselves to survive. Of course, some men wavered and took their wives back anyway; but William Clark had nothing but scorn for such men. A woman who had lain with a Comanche, or any Indian, could not again hope to be a respectable wife.

  So Maudy knew she was lost--she had been nursing little Sal when the braves burst in. It was a moment of deep peace, her last. She was caught before she could reach the pistol. That night, when Tana began his outraging, Maudy knew that her life with William Clark was lost and gone.

  William would not think her worth recovery.

  Even the children, if they were not brought back quickly, he might disown. But Maudy couldn't think about that; she had to concentrate on keeping her children alive.

  She had to see that they got warmth, and food, and that they did not provoke their captors by lagging or crying.

  At first, as they rose onto the plains and the weather grew sharp, clothes were the first worry. Their farm was in the south; the three of them were lightly clad. All that remained of the cotton dress she had been wearing was a few scraps tied around her loins. When the cold deepened, the Indians let her cover the children with a bit of old blanket at night. She herself had nothing. She had not yet recovered from the birth of little Sal, a fact lost on her captors. She awoke in the morning from her few minutes of restless sleep with blood frozen on her legs. She feared, for a time, that she might bleed to death, but she didn't, though at times she was so weak that her vision swam.

  Fortunately an older man, whose name was Quick Antelope, was not so cruel as Tana. He joined in her torment, but without enthusiasm, and was kindly toward the children. When she could not interest them in taking food, Quick Antelope made a soup which tempted them. Once when Tana began to beat her with a heavy stick, murder in his eyes, Quick Antelope took the stick from him and made him calm down.

  It was not until later that she learned the older warrior's name. At first the only name she knew was Tana, the young man with the deep burn of hatred in his eyes, the man who beat her hardest and devised the most intricate torments for her. It was Tana who hit her with hot sticks from the fire, who outraged her longest, and spat on her if she tried to resist.

  The night after they left Eddie, Maudy began to sob and could not stop. She thought of her boy, lying in the thin grass with his broken head, dying alone, and the wall around her feelings broke.

  She began to sob so loudly that all the warriors grew angry. Bessie and Dan were fearful; they tried to shush her, but Maudy could not be shushed.

  Eddie was dead, little Sal was dead; tears flooded out and she could not stop them, even though Tana dragged her through the fire by one ankle and hit her so hard he knocked out one of her front teeth. But, in her bereavement, Maudy scarcely felt the beating or the burns. She cried until she had no strength left to cry. The Comanches, disgusted and fearful, finally left her alone. Snow began to fall, drifting out of the cold sky onto the dark plains.

  Finally Maudy got up and pulled the scrap of blanket over Bessie and Dan; they watched the big snowflakes flutter into the campfire, causing it to make a spitting sound.

  Across the campfire Tana was still looking at her, but Maudy sat close to her children and avoided his eyes.

  Tana wanted Quick Antelope, Satay, and Big Neck to go on to the main camp with the captive white children and the fourteen horses they had stolen. The horses were not the skinny horses Kicking Wolf was always stealing from the poor farmers along the Brazos. These horses were used to eating good grass. They were strong fat horses, of the sort Buffalo Hump liked. Tana thought Buffalo Hump would be impressed with the horses --he wanted the other warriors to hurry and take the horses and the two children to Buffalo Hump's camp. The two children were sturdy; they had borne the trip well and could be traded, or else put to work in the camp.

  What Tana wanted was to stay behind with the white woman and torture her to death, as vengeance against the whites who had killed his father. Long before, when Tana had been younger than the captive children, his father, Black Hand, had gone with many other chiefs to a big parley with the whites in a place of council. The whites had promised the chiefs safe passage--when they went into the tent to parley, the white chief had asked all the Comanche and Kiowa leaders to leave their weapons outside. Many of the chiefs, including Black Hand, had been reluctant to do this, but the whites made them strong promises and some chiefs agreed, though they were wary. They had no reason to trust the whites, and they didn't trust them.

  Some of chiefs concealed at least a knife, when they went into the tent.

  They were right to be wary, for the whites immediately tried to place all the chiefs under arrest, claiming that the chiefs had not returned all the white captives they were supposed to return.

  Tana's father, Black Hand, protested that he had never agreed to return any captives, but the whites were arrogant and told the chiefs they would all be put in chains. The chiefs with knives immediately drew them and stabbed a few of the whites.

  Then they cut their way out of the tent, but the tent had been surrounded by riflemen and all but four of the chiefs were immediately cut down, or captured. Black Hand was shot in the hip and taken prisoner. That night the white soldiers tormented him with hot bayonets and, in the morning they hung him, not with a rope but with a fine chain, so that he was a long time dying. Then, because Black Hand had been the most important chief to attend the parley, the whites cut off his head and kept it in a sack. They said they would return the head only when all the remaining white captives had been returned to Austin.

  But it was too late to return any captives. The four chiefs who escaped told all the tribes about the dishonesty and treachery of the whites. The few captives held by the tribes at that time were immediately tortured to death.

  Tana's own mother went to Austin to beg for the head of her husband. She wanted to put it with his body, so his spirit would be at rest. But the whites merely laughed at her and chased her out of town. One white man cut her legs with a whip--cut them so deeply that she still bore the scars.

  Tana was young, but he had waited all his life to capture a white person, someone he could torture to avenge his father, whose head the whites had never returned. They had even lost the sack it was kept in; no one knew where the head of Black Hand was.

  Though he had abused and beaten the white woman, what he had done was nothing compared to what he intended to do, once Quick Antelope and the others took the horses and left. Because of the whites and their treachery he had had no father to instruct him as he was growing up. He had yearned bitterly for his father; the torture of the skinny white woman would not make up for his loss, but it would help.

  Quick Antelope, though, would not agree to go.

  "We have to take all the captives to Buffalo Hump," he insisted. "Then if he says you can have the woman, you can have her. The women will help you with what you want to do." "I do not need any women to help me," Tana said. "I want to do it here and I want to do it now. Take the horses and go." Big Neck, though he had known Black Hand and understood the reasons why Tana wanted to torture the woman himself, agreed with Quick Antelope. Tana was only one raider, and a young one. The woman did not belong to him alone.

  Satay did not take part in the argument with Tana. He made it his business to see that the stolen horses did not stray. Satay thought the white woman would die anyway, soon. Her breasts were swollen with the milk she had been feeding the infant they killed. Her breasts dripped milk all day and her legs were
bloody. She had made a big fuss in the night, crying for dead children, who could not come back. Though Quick Antelope and Big Neck were right to point out to Tana that the woman did not belong to him alone, Satay would have let him have her. She would only last a few hours at most. Even if she did survive until they reached the big camp, the women would make short work of her. They made short work of white women stronger than this one.

  Satay thought it was foolish to argue so much about one woman. The sun had been up for some time.

  They needed to be on the move. But Tana was a stubborn young warrior; he would not stop arguing.

  Quick Antelope and Big Neck were firm with him, though. He could prance up and down and make threats, but they were not going to let him have the woman.

  Tana was very angry at the two men who opposed him. He felt like fighting them both.

  Quick Antelope had never been much of a fighter, but Big Neck was different. Though he looked old he moved quickly and was almost as strong as Buffalo Hump. The only way to beat him would be to kill him with an arrow, or shoot him, and Tana, though very angry, knew he would not be welcomed in the tribe if he killed Big Neck over a white woman.