Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

by Comanche Moon

  Worm believed that the Old One could breathe in water, like a fish. He bathed in the icy water of the high streams and did not seem to be affected.

  Some thought his power was in his hair, and that if he could be scalped he would die like other men. But no one yet had been able to take his hair, though he had more hair than any woman. Others thought that he could speak the language of animals and birds and even fish. Some had seen him put his head under water; they believed that he could call the fish and make them come to him when he was hungry.

  He was often seen eating fish when others could find no fish.

  It was certain that the Old One knew the languages of many tribes; it might be that he knew the language of fish and birds as well, or the language of wolves. Buffalo Hump neither believed the stories nor disbelieved them.

  He was not a man who felt that he always knew the truth of things. He liked to watch and listen. A man such as the Old One must know things that other people had forgotten. It might be that the Old One had stumbled on the spring of life and could not die, but was that good? In life was much pain; what man would want to bear it forever? Besides, any man who was curious would want at last to enter the mystery, to walk the plains of the spirit land. Buffalo Hump was in no hurry to have his own life end, and yet the knowledge that it would end someday and that he would go to where the spirits were brought a kind of peace, after struggles and warfare and wounds and the quarrels of women.

  And yet, what he had noticed the few times he had come across the Old One was that he seemed to be a cheerful man, and practical. His first request was always for tobacco, and so it was now.

  "Those are fine quills you are taking from that porcupine," Buffalo Hump said, once he had dismounted at the Old One's camp.

  "Leave off the talk, I'm counting and don't want to lose my count," Ephaniah said, which amused Buffalo Hump no end. Worm was a long distance back, quivering and trying to make a protective spell of some kind, while the Old One with the long white hair was merely counting the quills of his porcupine.

  Buffalo Hump accepted his rebuke and sat quietly by the campfire as the old man plucked out each quill carefully and laid it on the buckskin. He worked with ease and skill; not once, while Buffalo Hump watched, did he break a single quill. Now and then Buffalo Hump turned and gestured for Worm to come to the camp, but Worm was too fearful. Soon the dusk hid him. When darkness filled the sky, with only the small speckle of firelight to interrupt it, the old man put the porcupine aside. He had not been able to finish his work before dark and evidently did not want to jeopardize it by working when the light was poor.

  "That's a thousand and one, so far," Ephaniah said. "I'm stopping till daylight. Got any tobaccy?" Buffalo Hump had none but Worm had plenty. He had filled several pouches with it during the great raid; once back with the tribe he meant to trade it for a young woman who belonged to old Spotted Bull, a warrior with a great taste for tobacco who was much too decrepit to need the young woman.

  "Worm will give you some when he comes to the camp," Buffalo Hump said. "Right now he is scared you will witch him so he is staying back." The Old One, Ephaniah, seemed to be amused by this comment. He cupped his hands around his mouth and produced the howl of a wolf. It was such a good howl that Buffalo Hump himself was startled for a moment--then, from the darkness, there came an answering howl, from the wolf that had trotted away when the two Comanches appeared.

  It was only a few minutes later that Worm came into the camp. He did not enjoy being alone by the river with wolves howling all around. He did not want to fall asleep in a place where a wolf might come out of his dream and rip his throat.

  Once he discovered that the Old One wanted some of his tobacco, Worm forgot about being witched; since the Old One was their host he had to give him some tobacco, or else be thought a bad guest, but he only offered him the smallest of the many plugs of tobacco he had looted from the Texans. The Old One accepted the plug without comment, but Buffalo Hump frowned.

  "If you would be a little more generous the Old One might give us some of these nice porcupine quills," he said. "My wives would be pleased if they had such nice quills." "You know Spotted Bull," Worm said.

  "He won't give me that woman unless he gets a lot of tobacco." "You have enough tobacco to buy five or six women," Buffalo Hump told him. "If you can't talk Spotted Bull out of that woman, buy someone else. What you are doing is impolite. If you can't be a better guest than this, you deserve to have the dream wolf come and eat you." Worm did not enjoy being spoken to so sternly.

  Buffalo Hump was a man whose moods were uncertain, and they were still a long way from home.

  Worm was torn; he very much wanted the young wife of Spotted Bull, yet he did not want to make an enemy of Buffalo Hump, not while they had such a way to travel. In the end he gave the Old One three more plugs of tobacco.

  The old man took them without comment.

  In the morning, though, in the clear sunlight, he continued to remove quills from the hide of the porcupine.

  Buffalo Hump sat in silence, watching. The great wolf who travelled with the Old One stood on a little bluff to the east. Worm would have liked to ask the Old One a few questions; he wanted particularly to know if the Old One could speak to fish. But Buffalo Hump discouraged him. He did not want the old man to be bothered while he was extracting the porcupine quills.

  When the last quill had been coaxed from the porcupine's hide and laid on the little piece of buckskin, the Old One quickly separated about a quarter of the quills and offered them to Buffalo Hump, who nodded in thanks. The Old One then carefully folded the rest of the quills into the buckskin, put them in a little pouch he carried, and then went down to the cold river to wash his face.

  While the two Comanches watched he put his head under the water. When he stood up he shook water off his long hair, as a dog might.

  "I think he was just talking to the fish people," Worm said.

  "What did he say to them?" Buffalo Hump asked. "He is an old white man. I think he just likes to wash himself." Worm was stumped by the question. He had no idea what the Old One might have said to the fish. But he was convinced there was witching involved--witching of some kind. He was also wishing he had not given away so much tobacco. It would tell against him when he began his trade with Spotted Bull.

  The second time the young Comanches caught him, Famous Shoes thought it was probably going to be his time to die. He had found his grandmother at a poor little camp near the Arkansas but did not have a very good visit. His grandmother had immediately set in complaining about his grandfather and had kept up her complaining for two days. Every time Famous Shoes tried to get her to consider more important things, such as how the Kickapoo people had come to be, his grandmother grew irritated and brushed aside his question. Everybody knew of course that the Kickapoo people had come out of a hole in the earth at the time when there were only buffalo in the world. The Kickapoo had been chosen by the buffalo to be the first human beings; Father Buffalo himself had pawed open the hole and allowed the Kickapoo to come up from their deep caves.

  Everybody knew about the hole and Father Buffalo and that the Kickapoo had become human beings at a time before rain clouds, when all creatures received their moisture from the dew; they knew that rain had only begun to fall out of the sky once the Kickapoo people had made a prayer that caused the sky to let down its waters.

  But what no one knew, or, at least, what his grandmother could not be bothered to tell him, was where the hole was that the Kickapoo had come out of.

  The reason Famous Shoes wanted to find the hole so much was because he was convinced there were still underground people who lived somewhere in the earth. At night, when he slept with his ears close to the ground, the underground people spoke to him in dreams.

  Over the years he had come to want badly to go visit the underground people and learn the important things they knew. After all, they were the oldest people.

  His interest in tracks had only made h
im more interested in the underground people. Over the years he had become convinced that the underground people were watching the tracks that were made on the earth; sometimes, out of mischief, they altered the tracks of animals and made the tracks vanish. Quite a few animals that he tracked had simply ceased to make visible tracks; they vanished. These odd vanishings had happened so often that it occurred to him that perhaps the underground people had a way of opening the earth, so that animals being pursued could come down with them for a time, and rest.

  Famous Shoes had no proof that the underground people could open the earth and take animals into it. He didn't know. He just knew that tracks sometimes stopped--it was one of the mysteries of his work. He thought that if he could find the hole the Kickapoo people had come out of he might be able to go down into the earth for a few days and see if there was someone there who could explain these matters to him.

  When, on the third day, his grandmother finally grew tired of complaining about his grandfather's habit of wandering off and leaving her just when she needed him most, she listened to him explain his theory of the underground people and told him it was nonsense.

  "There are no underground people," she informed him brusquely. "All the Kickapoo people came out of the hole except one old woman who was our mother, and she died and let her spirit go into the rocks.

  She is Old Rock Woman. Those dream people you hear when you sleep on the ground are witch people, and the reason you think those animals vanish is because you have been witched. The witch people take away the power of your eyes. The tracks are still there but you can't see them." Then she cut up a polecat she had caught and started making polecat stew. While the stew was cooking his grandmother made clear to him that she thought it was time he was on his way.

  "You can't eat polecat stew," she informed him. "The skunk people are your enemies. If you eat polecat stew you will shit too much and your eyes will grow even weaker." Famous Shoes took the hint and left. He didn't believe his eyes were weak--it was just that his grandmother was stingy with her polecat stew.

  It was while he was headed for a place on the caprock where there were many snake dens that the young Comanches caught him. Famous Shoes knew there were Comanches about because he saw the tracks of their horses, but he wanted to go to the snake-den place anyway and look for the hole that led into the earth. He didn't believe his grandmother's story about Old Rock Woman--it was just a way of getting rid of him. He thought his own theory made better sense and he wanted to spend a few days in the place of snake dens, looking for the hole that the Kickapoo people had come out of.

  Of course he knew of Buffalo Hump's great raid long before Blue Duck and the other Comanche boys caught him. Six buffalo hunters were the first to tell him about it. They were well armed, but they were hurrying to get north of the Comanche country, out of fear. The Comanches were strong in their pride again--they were apt to kill any whites they encountered.

  When Blue Duck and his haughty young friends spotted Famous Shoes they were on their way to try and trade a captive to old Slow Tree. The captive was a white boy who looked as if he had only a few more days of life in him. The young braves ran over and immediately pointed guns at Famous Shoes. They thought he would be better trading material than a white boy who was sick and near death.

  "Slow Tree wanted to torture you before, so I will give you to him," Blue Duck told Famous Shoes. Blue Duck was arrogant and boastful; even as his friends were tying Famous Shoes' wrists Blue Duck was trying to impress him with stories of his rapings on the raid. He poked Famous Shoes three or four times with his lance, not deep, but deep enough to draw blood. Famous Shoes didn't bother pointing out to the young man that his father, Buffalo Hump, had told him in front of many warriors that Famous Shoes was to be left alone. Such a reminder might only inflame Blue Duck-- he was of an age to be defiant of his father.

  "You should just leave this white boy and let him die," he told Blue Duck, but no one paid any attention. Once they had Famous Shoes securely tied they fell to quarreling about what to do with him--several of the braves wanted to torture him right there. One, a stout boy named Fat Knee, the grandson of old Spotted Bull, thought the best course would be to bury Famous Shoes in the ground, with only his head sticking out, and then ride off and leave him. Fat Knee was afraid of what Buffalo Hump might do when he found out they had delivered the man to Slow Tree--af all, Buffalo Hump had explicitly said he was to be let alone. Fat Knee had seen Buffalo Hump kill men over small disputes--he did not want to be killed over Famous Shoes. His argument was that if they just buried him and rode off, some animal would kill him; Buffalo Hump might never know about it.

  "If we bury him good and poke out his eyes he won't last long," Fat Knee said.

  Blue Duck was contemptuous of the suggestion-- he was determined to have his way about the disposal of the prisoner.

  "We are going to the camp of Slow Tree," he insisted pompously.

  So Famous Shoes was put on a horse behind Fat Knee, and the braves hurried on to the camp of the old chief, a camp that lay below the caprock thirty or more miles to the south. Famous Shoes would have preferred to walk; he had never liked the pace of horses very much.

  It seemed to him that a man who bounced around on the back of horses risked injury to his testicles--indeed, he had known men whose testicles were injured when their horses suddenly jumped a stream or did something else injurious to the testicles.

  But he was a prisoner of several hotheaded Comanche boys. Under the circumstances it would have been foolish to complain. Such boys were apt to change their minds at the slightest provocation.

  If he argued with them they might do what Fat Knee suggested, in which case he would be blind and unable to follow tracks that interested him. It was better to keep quiet and hope that Fat Knee didn't jump his sorrel horse over too many creeks.

  It was on the days when Ahumado paid him no attention, never once raising his binoculars to the Yellow Cliffso, that Scull came closest to despair. As long as Ahumado watched, Scull could feel that he was in a fair contest of wills. When Ahumado watched, Scull immediately responded. Though he had given up scratching Greek hexameters, or anything else, on the rock wall, he grabbed his file and pretended to be scratching something. If that didn't hold the old man's interest then Scull tried singing. He roared out the "Battle Hymn" at the top of his lungs--then, hoping to puzzle Ahumado, he warbled a few snatches of Italian opera, an aria or two that he knew imperfectly but that might fool the old dark man who sat on the blanket far below him. It was all a bluff, but it was his only chance. He had to keep Ahumado interested in order to stay interested himself; otherwise he was just a man hanging in a cage, eating raw birds and waiting to die. One book might have saved him; a tablet to write on might have saved him. He tried recalling his Shakespeare, his Pope, his Milton, his Virgil, his Burns--he even tried composing couplets in his head; he had always been partial to the well-rhymed couplet. But his memory, stretch as it might, would only get him through two or three hours of the day. His memory wasn't weak, he could snatch back much of the poetry that he had read, and not just poetry either. Lines came to him from Clarendon's History, from Gibbon, even from the Bible. His memory was vigorous and Scull enjoyed exercising it; but he wasn't at war with it and war was what he needed: someone or something to fight. For days he studied the cliff above and below him, thinking he might fight it. But the thought of the dark men, waiting with their machetes, made him hesitate about the climb.

  Most of all, what he needed was Ahumado's attention. The Black Vaquero was a man worth fighting--Scull warbled and howled, sometimes yelling out curses, anything to let Ahumado know that he was still an opponent, a challenger, a captain.

  Ahumado heard him, too--often he would train the binoculars on the cage. Sometimes he would study Scull for many minutes--but Ahumado was sly. Often he would do his studying while Scull was napping, or distracted by the effort to catch some bird that was nervous and would not quite settle on the cage. Ahumado w
anted to watch but not be watched in turn; it was another way of being behind, in a position to surprise his opponent. He was subtle with his attention; perhaps he knew that Scull drew his energy from it.

  What Scull wanted was some way to trigger Ahumado's anger, as he had triggered it when he suggested a ransom. Ahumado's hatred would give him something to challenge and resist: not just the endless swinging over an abyss. Confinement induced torpor, and from torpor he could easily slip to passivity, resignation, death. He needed a fight to keep his blood up. He had been three weeks in the cage, long enough to grow sick of the sight and taste of raw fowl--yet long enough, too, that news of his plight might have reached Texas--sch news would travel quickly, across even the most seemingly deserted country. A peon would mention something to a traveller and that single comment would radiate outward, like sunlight.

  Soldiers in the northern forts would soon hear of things happening below the border--of course the information might be distorted, but that was to be expected. Even well-informed journalists, writing for respectable papers, were not free of the risk of distortion.