"Now you see the planet Jupiter, right up there," he would say, pointing straight up into the million-starred Milky Way; he knew that most of the men would not want to admit that they had no idea which star Jupiter might be.
"Well, Jupiter went into eclipse--I believe it was a double eclipse--y won't see that again in your lifetime, and it's all that saved us," he would conclude. "Otherwise you'd see a wall of water eighty feet high coming right at us," he would remark, to his awed listeners, some of whom thought that the mere fact that he was a captain meant that he understood such things.
Pea Eye had that belief, for a while, and worried much about the floods and earthquakes, but Call, who put little stock in almanacs, reproached Gus for scaring the men so.
"Why do you want to tell them such bosh?" Call would ask. "Now they'll lose such little sleep as we can allow them." "Tactics, Woodrow--tactics," Gus would reply. "You need to finish that book on Napoleon so you'll understand how to use tactics, when you're leading an army." "We ain't an army, we're just ten rangers," Call would point out heatedly, to no avail.
Since Augustus was travelling alone this time, he didn't try to frighten himself with dire predictions, but he did keep a close calendar as he travelled west. He wanted to know how many days from home he had come, in case he developed a strong nostalgia for the saloons and whorehouses of Austin and needed to hurry home.
On the twelfth day, with a few mountain crags visible to the north, Augustus picked his way along the banks of the Rio Grande, to the campsite where, long before, as a fledgling ranger, travelling far from the settlement for the first time, he and Call, Long Bill, and a number of rangers now dead had camped and waited out a terrible dust storm. A fat major named Chevallie had been leading them; Bigfoot Wallace and old Shadrach, the mountain man, had been their scouts.
In the morning before the storm struck, Matty Roberts, naked as the air, had picked the big snapping turtle out of the river, carried it into camp, and threw it at Long Bill Coleman and One-eyed Johnny Carthage, both of whom owed her money at the time.
Augustus recognized the little scatter of rocks by the water's edge where Matty had found the turtle; he recognized the crags to the north and even remembered the small mesquite tree--st small--where he and Call had snubbed a mustang mare they were trying to saddle.
No trace of the rangers' presence remained, of course, but Augustus was, nevertheless, glad that he had come. Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the first time around. He knew such a thing was impossible, but it was still pleasant to dream about it, to conjure, in fantasy, a different and more successful life, and that is what he did, sitting on a large rock by the river and watching the brown water as it rippled over the rocks where Matty had caught the turtle.
While he sat Gus noticed a number of snapping turtles, no smaller than the one Matty had captured; at least things were stable with the turtles.
While the river flowed through the wide, empty landscape a parade of dead rangers streamed through the river of his memory--Black Sam, Major Chevallie, One-eyed Johnny, Bigfoot Wallace, Shadrach, the Button brothers, and several more. And now, by Goodnight's account, Matty Roberts herself was dying, which of course was not wholly surprising: whores as active as Matty had been were seldom known to live to a ripe old age. For a moment he regretted not going with Goodnight, over the dry plains to Denver. He would have liked to see Matty again, to lift a glass with her and hear her thoughts on the great game of life, now that she was about to lose it.
She had always hoped to make it to California someday, and yet was dying in Denver, with California no closer than it had been when she was a girl.
"If I could, Matty, I'd buy you a ticket on the next stage," Augustus said, aloud, overcome by the same regretful emotion he had felt when he pressed the sixty dollars into Charles Goodnight's hand.
Later in the day Gus walked away from the camp, attempting to locate the rocky hillock where he had first come face-to-face with Buffalo Hump. It had been stormy; the two of them had seen one another in a lightning flash. Gus had run as he had never run in his life, before or since, and had only escaped because of the darkness.
Because it had been so dark, he could not determine which of the rocky rises he was looking for, though no moment of his life was so clearly imprinted on his memory as the one when he had seen, in a moment of white light, Buffalo Hump sitting on his blanket. He could even remember that the blanket had been frayed a little, and that the Comanche had a rawhide string in his hand.
When he tired of his search he caught the black mare and rode on west a few miles, to the high crag of rock where the Comanches had lured them into ambush. A few warriors had draped themselves in white mountain-goat skins, and the rangers had taken the bait. Gus himself had only survived the ambush because he stumbled in his climb and rolled down the hill, losing his rifle in the process.
Augustus tied his horse and climbed up to the boulder-strewn ridge where the Comanches had hidden. In walking around, he picked up two arrowheads; they seemed older than the arrowheads the Comanches had used that day, one of which had to be extracted from Johnny Carthage's leg, but he could not be sure, so he put the arrowheads in his pocket, meaning to show them to someone more expert than himself. It might be that the Comanches had been fighting off that crag for centuries.
As Augustus was walking back down the hill to his horse, his eye caught a movement far to the east, from the direction of the old camp on the river. He stepped behind the same rock that had shielded him long ago and saw that two men approached, one on horseback and one on foot. He didn't at first recognize the horse and rider, but he did recognize the quick lope of the man on foot--Famous Shoes' lope. His first feeling was annoyance: Woodrow Call had had him tracked at a time when all he wanted was a few days to himself.
A moment later Augustus saw that the rider was young Pea Eye Parker, a choice which amused him, since he knew that Pea Eye hated expeditions, particularly lone expeditions across long stretches of Indian country. On such trips Pea Eye scarcely slept or rested, from nervousness. Now Call had sent the boy hundreds of miles from home, with no companion except a Kickapoo tracker who was known to wander away on his own errands for days at a stretch.
Augustus waited by his horse while the horseman and the walker came toward him from the river. While he was waiting he dug the two small arrowheads out of his pocket and studied them a little more, but without reaching a conclusion as to their age.
"You have gone far--I don't know why," Famous Shoes said, when he came to where Augustus waited.
"Why, I was just looking for arrowheads," Augustus said lightly. "What do you make of these?" Famous Shoes accepted the two arrowheads carefully and looked at them for a long time without speaking. Pea Eye came up and dismounted. He looked, to Gus's eye, more gaunt than ever.
"Hello, Pea--h you slept well on your travels?" he asked.
Pea Eye was so glad to see Captain McCrae that he didn't hear the question. He shook Gus's hand long and firmly. It was clear from his tense face that travel had been a strain.
"I'm glad you ain't dead, Captain," Pea Eye said. "I'm real glad you ain't dead." Augustus was a little startled by the force of the young man's emotion. The trip must have been even more of a trial to him than he had imagined.
"No, I ain't dead," Augustus told him. "I just rode off to think for a few days, and one of the things I wanted to think about was the fact that I ain't dead." "Why would you need to think about that, Captain?" Pea asked.
"Well, because people die," Augustus said.
"Two of my wives are dead. Long Bill Coleman is dead. Quite a few of the men I've rangered with are dead--three of them died right on this hill we're standing on. Jimmy Watson is dead--y knew Jimmy yourself, and you knew Long Bill. A bunch of farmers and their families got massacred that day we found you sitting by the corncrib.
" Pea Eye mainly remembered the corn.
"I was mighty hungry that day," Pea Eye said. "That hard corn tasted good to me." Now that Captain McCrae had reminded him, Pea Eye did remember that there had been three dead bodies in the cabin where he found the scattered corn. He remember that the bodies had arrows in them; but what he remembered better was walking through the woods for three days, lost, so hungry he had tried to eat the bark off trees.
Finding the corn seemed like such a miracle that he did not really think about the bodies in the cabin.
"I guess people have been dying all over," he said, not sure how to respond to the Captain's comments.
Augustus saw that Pea Eye was exhausted, not so much from the long ride as from nervous strain.
He turned back to Famous Shoes, who was still looking intently at the two arrowheads.
"I was in a fight with Buffalo Hump and some of his warriors here, years ago," Gus said.
"Do you think they dropped these arrowheads then, or are they older?" Famous Shoes handed the two arrowheads back to Augustus.
"These were not made by the Comanche, they were made by the Old P," he said.
Famous Shoes started up the hill Augustus had just come down.
"I want to find some of these arrowheads too," he said. "The Old People made them." "You're welcome to look," Gus said. "I mean to keep these myself. If they're so old they might bring me luck." "You already have luck," Famous Shoes told him--but he did not pause to explain. He was too eager to look for the arrowheads that had been made by the Old p.
"I guess you're here to bring me home, is that right, Pea?" Augustus asked.
"The Governor wants to see you--Captain Call told me that much," Pea Eye said.
Though Augustus knew he ought to go light on the young man, something about Pea Eye's solemn manner made teasing him hard to resist.
"If I'm under arrest you best get out your handcuffso," he said, sticking out his hands in surrender.
Pea Eye was startled, as he often was by Captain McCrae's behaviour.
"I ain't got no handcuffso, Captain," he said.
"Well, you might have to tie me, then," Gus said. "I'm still a wild boy. I might escape before you get me back to Austin." Pea Eye wondered if the Captain had gone a little daft. He was holding out his hands, as if he expected to be tied.
"Captain, I wouldn't arrest you," he said.
"I just came to tell you Captain Call asked if you'd come back. The Governor asked too, I believe." "Yes, and what will you tell them if I decide to slip off?" Gus asked.
Pea Eye felt that he was being given a kind of examination, just when he least expected one.
"I'd just tell them you didn't want to come," he said. "If you don't want to come back, you don't have to, that's how I see it." "I'm glad you feel that way, Pea," Augustus said, letting his hand drop, finally.
"I fear I'd be uncomfortable travelling with a man who had a commission to arrest me." "I was not given no papers," Pea Eye said --he thought a commission must involve a document of some kind.
Augustus looked past the crag of rock toward El Paso del Norte, the Pass of the North.
"I guess I've travelled long enough in a westerly direction," he said. "I believe I'll go back with you, Pea--x'll help your career." "My what?" Pea Eye asked.
"Your job, Pea--j your job," Augustus said, annoyed that he was unable to employ his full vocabulary with the young man. "You might make sergeant yet, just for bringing me home."
Famous Shoes was so excited by the old things he was finding on the hill of arrowheads that he did not want to leave. All afternoon he stayed on the hill, searching the ground carefully for things the Old People might have left. He looked at the base of rocks and into holes and cracks in the land. He saw the two rangers leave and ride back toward the camp by the river, but he did not have time to join them. After only a little searching he found six more arrowheads, a fragment of a pot, and a little tool of bone that would have been used to scrape hides. With every discovery his excitement grew. At first he spread the arrowheads on a flat rock, but then he decided it would be wiser not to leave them exposed. The spirits of the Old People might be nearby; they might not like it that he was finding the things they had lost or left behind. If he left the arrowheads exposed, the old spirits might turn themselves into rats or chipmunks and try to carry the arrowheads back to the spirit place. The objects he was finding might be the oldest things in the world. If he took them to the elders of the tribe they could learn many things from them.
It would not do to leave them at risk, particularly not after he found the bear tooth. Famous Shoes saw something white near the base of the crag and discovered, once he dug it out with his knife, that it was the tooth of a great bear. It was far larger than the tooth of any bear he had ever seen, and its edge had been scraped to make it sharp. It could be used as a small knife, or as an awl, to punch holes in the skins of buffalo or deer.
Famous Shoes knew he had made a tremendous discovery. He was glad, now, that he had been sent after Captain McCrae; because of it he had found the place where the Old People had once lived. He wrapped his finds carefully in a piece of deerskin and put them in his pouch. He meant to go at once to find the Kickapoo elders, some of whom lived along the Trinity River. While the elders studied what he had found, which included a small round stone used to grind corn, he meant to come back to the hill of arrowheads and look some more. There were several more such hills nearby where he might look. If he were lucky he might even find the hole in the earth where the People had first come out into the light. Famous Shoes thought it possible that he had been acting on wrong information in regard to the hole of emergence.
It might not be near the caprock at all. It might be somewhere around the very hill he was standing on, where the Old People had dropped so many of their arrowheads.
The possibility that the hole might be nearby was not something he meant to tell the rangers. When darkness fell he left the hill and went toward their campfire, which he could see winking in the darkness, back by the river. He thought it would be courteous to tell Captain McCrae that he had to leave at once, on an errand of great importance. Captain McCrae was not lost, and would not need him to guide them home.
When Famous Shoes reached the camp he saw that the young ranger who had travelled with him was already asleep. In fact he was snoring and his snores could be heard some distance from the camp. The snores reminded Famous Shoes of the sounds an angry badger would make.
"Snores awful, don't he?" Augustus said, when Famous Shoes appeared. He had been enjoying a little whiskey--he had used his supply only sparingly, so as not to run out before he got back to a place where he could count on finding a settler with a jug.
"He did not snore like that while he was with me," Famous Shoes said. "He did not snore at all while we were looking for you." "I doubt he slept, while he was with you," Augustus said. "It's hard to snore much if you're wide awake. I expect he was afraid you would scalp him if he went to sleep while he was with you." Famous Shoes did not reply. He knew that Captain McCrae often joked, but the discoveries he had just made were serious; he did not have the leisure to listen to jokes or to talk that made no sense.
"Did you find any more of them old arrowheads?" Gus asked.
"I have to go visit some people now," Famous Shoes said. He did not want to discuss his findings with Captain McCrae. Even though Captain McCrae had shown him the old arrowheads, Famous Shoes still thought it was unwise to discuss the Old People and their tools with him. He himself did not know what was sacred and what wasn't, with such old things--t was for the elders to interpret.
"Well, you ain't chained, go if you like," Augustus said. "I'll tell Woodrow Call you done your job proper, so he won't cut your pay." Famous Shoes did not answer. He was wondering if all the hills beyond the Pecos had old things on them. It would take a long time to search so many hills. He knew he had better get busy. It had been windy lately--the wind had blown the soil away, making it easier to se
e the arrowheads and pieces of pots. He wanted to hurry to the Trinity and then come back.
Some white man looking for gold might dig in one of the hills and disturb the arrowheads and other tools.
Augustus saw that Famous Shoes was anxious to leave but he didn't want him to go before he could attempt to interest him in the great issue of mortality, the problem he had been pondering in the last two weeks, as he rode west. His efforts to interest Pea Eye in the matter of mortality had met with complete failure. Pea Eye was mindful that he might die sooner rather than later, from doing the dangerous work of rangering, but he didn't have much to say on the subject. When Augustus tried to get his opinion on factors that prevailed in life or death situations such as Indian fights, he found that Pea Eye had no opinion. Some men died and some men lived, Pea Eye knew that, but the why of it was well beyond his reasoning powers; even beyond his interest. When questioned on the subject, Pea Eye just went to sleep.
"Before you go loping off, tell me why you think I'm lucky," Augustus asked. "Is it just because I found them arrowheads?" "No, that was not luck, you have good eyes," Famous Shoes said. "No arrow has ever found you--no bullet either--though you have been in many battles. No bear has eaten you and no snake has bitten you." "Buffalo Hump's lance bit me, though," Augustus said, pointing. "It bit me right out there on those flats." "It only bit your hip a little," Famous Shoes reminded him--he had heard the story often.
Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon Page 60