Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  Boiling the skull was taking a long time-- Buffalo Hump had to send Lark off several times to gather more firewood. He was boiling the skull because he wanted to make himself a new shield and he needed the thickest part of the bone for the center of his shield. Very few warriors bothered to make bone shields anymore; it was slow work.

  And yet only the thickest part of the buffalo skull would turn back a rifle bullet. He had been fortunate enough to kill a bull buffalo with an exceptionally large head. The buffalo had been watering in the Blue River when Buffalo Hump saw him. He had driven the bull into deep water and killed him with an arrow; then he took the head and carried it all the way back to Texas, despite the flies and the smell, so he could boil it properly and make his shield. The skull was the thickest Buffalo Hump had seen in a long life of hunting--it was so thick that it would turn away any bullet, even one fired at point-blank range. It was important to him that he make the shield correctly. It would not be a very large shield, but it would protect him during the years he had left to raid.

  All over camp the warriors were whooping and dancing because of the news Slipping Weasel had brought. It had been poor hunting lately, mainly because old Slow Tree was too lazy to go back to his own hunting ground--the game in the big canyon was exhausted. Naturally the news about Kicking Wolf's audacious theft cheered the young men up. Many of them wondered why it had not occurred to them to steal the Buffalo Horse. If they ate him they would not have to hunt so hard for a while.

  Buffalo Hump thought it was a good joke too, but he did not allow the news to distract him from the task at hand, which was to fashion the best possible shield from the great head he had taken on the Blue River, far north of his usual hunting range.

  When Slipping Weasel came over to sit with Buffalo Hump for a while Buffalo Hump was skimming the broth from the boiling pot and drinking it.

  In the broth as in the shield was the strength of the buffalo people. He gave Slipping Weasel a cup of the broth, but Slipping Weasel, a poor hunter and indifferent fighter, did not like it much.

  "It has too many hairs in it," he told Buffalo Hump, who thought the comment ridiculous.

  It was the skull of a buffalo; of course the broth had hairs in it.

  "Where is he taking the Buffalo Horse?" he asked. "Why didn't he bring him here, so we could eat him?" Slipping Weasel was silent for a while, mainly because he didn't know what to answer. He had met a Kiowa medicine man on his ride back, and the Kiowa told him that the news was that Kicking Wolf meant to take the big horse to Mexico and sell him to the Black Vaquero.

  Slipping Weasel did not really believe such a tale, since the Black Vaquero hated all Indians, as Kicking Wolf well knew. Buffalo Hump might not believe the story either, but it was the only explanation Slipping Weasel had to offer.

  "They say he is taking the horse to Mexico --he wants to sell him to the Black Vaquero," he said finally.

  Buffalo Hump didn't take that information very seriously.

  "If he gets there Ahumado will boil him like I am boiling this skull," he said.

  Then Slipping Weasel remembered an even more surprising thing he had heard from Straight Elbow, the old Kiowa. Straight Elbow got his name because he had never been able to bend his right arm, as a consequence of which he could not hunt well.

  Straight Elbow had to live on roots and acorns, like a squirrel--he searched constantly for herbs or medicines that might allow him to bend his arm, but he never found the right medicine.

  "Old Straight Elbow told me something else," Slipping Weasel admitted. "He said Big Horse Scull is following Kicking Wolf. Famous Shoes is with him, and they are both walking." Buffalo Hump agreed that that was out of the ordinary. Once there had been whites who walked everywhere, but most of the old walking whites were dead.

  Now the soldiers and rangers were always mounted. He went on boiling his skull. What he heard seemed like a crazy business--Kicking Wolf and Scull were both doing crazy things. Of course, old Straight Elbow was crazy himself, there might be no truth in what he said.

  Buffalo Hump, though, made no comment. He had reached the age where time was beginning to seem short. He wanted to devote all his thought to his own plans, and plans he thought he should make for his people. A few years before, when the shitting sickness struck the P--the cholera--the Comanches had died so fast that he thought the end of the People had come. Then the smallpox came and killed more people, sometimes half the people in a given band. These plagues came from the air; none of the medicine men were wise enough to cure them. He himself had gone on several vigils, but his vigils had had no effect on the plague.

  Still, though many died, some lived. The Comanches were not as powerful a tribe as they had been, but there was still no one on the plains who could oppose them.

  They could still beat the whites back, slipping between the forts to attack farms and ranches. The white soldiers were not yet bold enough to attack them on the llano, where they lived.

  Slow Tree, though boring, was not foolish; he saw what any man of sense could see: that it was the whites, not the People, who were growing more numerous. It would take many years for the young women to bear enough babies to bring the strength of the People back to what it had been before the coming of the plagues.

  But the whites had not suffered much from the plagues. For every white that died, three arrived to take his place. The whites came from far places, from lands no Comanche had ever seen. Like ants they worked their way up the rivers, into the Comanche lands. Soon there would be so many that no chief could hope to kill them all in war, or drive them away.

  Slow Tree was right about the buffalo, too. Every year there were fewer of them. Each fall the hunters had to range farther, and, even so, they came back with less.

  Now there were signs that the bluecoat soldiers meant to come into the field against them. Soon an army might come, not just the few rangers who followed them and tried to take back captives or stolen horses. The rangers were too few to attack them in their camps; but the soldiers were not too few. For now the soldiers were only parading, but someday they would come.

  Buffalo Hump saw what Slow Tree saw, but he did not intend to let the whites control him. He had never broken the earth to raise anything, and he did not intend to. It was fine for Kicking Wolf to steal the Buffalo Horse, but that was only a joke, though a bold joke.

  What Buffalo Hump wanted was a great raid--a great raid, such as there had been in the past, when warriors went into even the largest towns and stole captives, or burned buildings, or ran off all the horses and livestock that they wanted. Once he himself had raided all the way to the Great Water, coming back with so many horses that they filled the plains like buffalo.

  The great raids had scared the Texans so badly that they were eager for councils and treaties --they made the Comanches many promises and gave them small gifts, in hopes that they would not raid all the towns and scare the new white people away.

  Buffalo Hump wanted to launch a great raid again; a raid with hundreds of warriors, into Austin and San Antonio. They would kill many Texans, take many captives, and take what booty they wanted. Such a raid would show the Texans that the Comanches were still a people to be feared. Again, they would call for councils and treaties. He himself did not believe in councils or treaties, but old Slow Tree could go. He loved to parley with the whites; he would sit under a tent for weeks, boring the whites with his long speeches.

  Meanwhile, on the plains, the young women would be having babies, bringing a new generation of warriors, to replace the ones lost to the plagues.

  A great raid would remind the Texans that the Comanches were a people still; they could not be turned into farmers just because the whites wanted their land.

  Buffalo Hump wanted to launch such a great raid, and he wanted to do it soon, with all the warriors he could persuade to accompany him, from his band and Slow Tree's and the others. He wanted to make the raid soon, while the north wind was still sharp as a knife--while the snows fel
l and the sleet cut down. Never before had the Comanches made a raid in the coldest month of the winter.

  Whites and Mexicans both--but particularly Mexicans--had come to fear the fall, when the great yellow harvest moon shone. Along the old war trail the moon of the fall was called the "Comanche moon"be for longer than anyone could remember it had been under the generous light of the fall moon that the Comanches had struck deep into Mexico, to kill and loot and bring back captives.

  For most of his life Buffalo Hump had kept to the traditional ways--like his father and grandfather before him he had followed the great Comanche war trail into Mexico in the fall. When he first raided to the Great Water his ferocity had driven whole villages to throw themselves into the sea--^th who could not drown themselves were pulled out like fishes for rape or torture. The captives he had taken would fill a town, and, for every captive taken, two or three Mexicans lay dead in their villages or fields.

  But, since the plagues struck, Buffalo Hump had not raided much. With the game so thin it was hard work just to keep food in the cook pots. He had not had time to follow the great yellow moon into Mexico.

  Now the Mexicans were better armed than they had ever been; often they fought back, and it was pointless to go into the territory of Ahumado; he was indio too and could not be cowed. Besides, he had drained the villages of their wealth and himself had taken all the captives worth having.

  Often now at night Buffalo Hump climbed up high, onto a spur of rock near the edge of the great canyon, to sing and pray and seek instruction from the spirits. With his heavy hump it was hard to climb the spur, but Buffalo Hump did it, night after night, for the matters he prayed about were serious. He felt it was time to raid. The high cold moon that sailed over the canyon in February was as much a Comanche moon as the fat moon of the fall. He knew that most warriors, and many chiefs too, would want to wait until fall to start the great raid, but Buffalo Hump felt strongly that the raid ought to be pressed now, as soon as stores could be got ready. South of them, in the forts along the rivers, bluecoat soldiers were training. There were many of them near the Phantom Hill. In the spring the soldiers might do what they had not yet done: come north and attack them in their camps. If the soldiers fought well and killed too many warriors, the Comanches' pride might be broken forever. Instead of following the way of free Comanches, the way of the arrow and the lance, they might begin to accept the counsel of Slow Tree, which was the counsel of defeat.

  Buffalo Hump wanted to strike before any of that happened--he did not want to wait, in the hope that the white soldiers would leave them alone for another season. The People had never waited to be led into war by the whites--alw they had taken war to the whites, and they would do so again.

  So, night after night, Buffalo Hump climbed to the high rock and prayed for instruction.

  He was not a fool. He knew that the whites were stronger now; they were more numerous than the Comanche, and better armed. That was why he wanted to strike in winter. The soldiers were inside their forts, trying to keep warm. So were the farmers, and the people of the towns.

  They would not expect hundreds of warriors to slash down on them like sleet.

  Yet he knew that, even so, the whites might win. Every time he went into the Brazos country he was shocked to see the whites filling it in such numbers. Always, too, their guns improved.

  They had rifles now that could spit many bullets and strike warriors fatally at ranges well beyond that of any arrow. Armed with their new guns, the whites might win; he and all the chiefs might fall in battle, in which case the day of the Comanche people would be over. If the great raid failed and the strongest chiefs were killed, then there would be no recovery for the People, and the wisdom of Slow Tree would be the wisdom that would have to prevail.

  Sitting on the rock every night, in wind or sleet or snow, Buffalo Hump did not see defeat in his visions. Instead he saw the houses of the white men burning, their women killed, their children taken from them. He saw himself as he had been when young, leading his warriors into towns and villages, bursting into farmhouses and killing the whites where they stood. He saw his warriors coming back north with a great herd of livestock, enough to cover the plains where the buffalo had been.

  He had not yet called a council of the braves, because, every night, his vision grew stronger.

  In his vision he saw a thousand warriors riding together, in war paint, wearing all the finery they could assemble, sweeping down on the white towns, singing their war songs, killing whites, and burning settlements all the way to the Great Water.

  Slipping Weasel was disappointed by Buffalo Hump's casual response to his news. The whole camp was excited about it, but Buffalo Hump was barely moved to comment. Of course, Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf were old rivals, and often quarrelled. Maybe Buffalo Hump was glad that Kicking Wolf had left.

  "You could go catch Scull," Slipping Weasel suggested. "He is walking not far from the Pecos. You could catch him in a few days." "Am I a rabbit hunter?" Buffalo Hump said. "Scull is just a rabbit. Let him hop down to Mexico. The Black Vaquero will catch him and make a tree grow through him." He was referring to a strange torture that the Black Vaquero sometimes inflicted on his enemies, if he caught them alive. He would trim the leaves and limbs off a small, slim tree and then sharpen the boll to a fine point. Then he would strip his enemy and lift him up and lower him onto the sharp point of the skinned tree. The man's weight would carry him downward, so that the tree went higher and higher into his body.

  Ahumado was an expert at the torture. He would spend an hour or more sitting a man on the sharp tree, so that as the tree passed through his body it would not pierce any vital organs and allow the man to die too easily.

  Sometimes the slim trees would pass all the way through the captive's body and poke out behind his body, and yet he would still be living and suffering.

  Once Slipping Weasel and Buffalo Hump and a few warriors had come upon a little forest of such trees, with men stuck on them like rotting fruit.

  There were more than ten in all, and two of the men were still alive, panting hoarsely and crying for water. It had been a startling sight, the little forest of trees with men hanging on them like fruit. The Comanches had lingered by the forest of tree-stuck men for half a day, studying the dead men and the living. The living men were in such agony that even the slightest touch made them scream with pain. Buffalo Hump and the other Comanches were surprised by the sight. They did not often see tortures that were worse than their own-- all the way back to the plains they talked about the torture of the little trees. On the way home they surprised a few Texans driving a horse herd west. They wanted to catch one of the Texans and stick him on a little tree, to learn the technique, but the Texans fought so fiercely that they had to kill them all and did not get to practice the little-tree torture. Those who had seen the forest of dead and dying men did not forget it, though--none of them, after that, were eager to go into Ahumado's country.

  Slipping Weasel finally got up and left Buffalo Hump alone, since the chief seemed to be in a bad mood and had little to say. More and more Buffalo Hump spent his days with his young wife, Lark. Once when they were engaged with one another they forgot themselves to such an extent that they rolled out from under their tent and coupled, for a brief time in full view of some old women who were scraping a buffalo hide. The old women were agitated by the sight; they tittered about it for days. Buffalo Hump's other wives did not appreciate the tittering. A day or two later they found an excuse to beat Lark, and they beat her soundly.

  Slipping Weasel thought he could find a few warriors who would want to go catch Big Horse Scull; but when he tried to talk some warriors into going they all made excuses and put him off.

  The reason was Buffalo Hump. Everyone knew that the chief was planning something. They saw him leave the camp night after night, to climb a rock far up the canyon, where he prayed and sang. Except for Lark he paid little attention to anyone--he only wanted to copulate with Lark or sit
on his rock praying--everyone knew that he was seeking visions. Old Slow Tree had finally left the camp in annoyance because Buffalo Hump was so uninterested in his notions of how to get along with the whites.

  What the warriors thought was that Buffalo Hump would soon find his vision and call them all to war.

  Earlier, they would have been glad to track down Big Horse Scull and take revenge on him, but now they were afraid to leave, for fear that they would not be there when Buffalo Hump called them to the war trail. Old Slow Tree's warriors did not much want to go away with him; they didn't share his peaceful views and were eager to fight the whites again.

  Though it annoyed him, Slipping Weasel had to abandon his plan for catching Big Horse Scull. He waited, as the others waited, doing a little hunting, but mainly looking to his weapons.

  He and the other warriors spent many days making arrows, sharpening their points, smoothing their stems.

  They rewrapped the heads of their lances and made sure their buffalo-skin shields were taut.

  Then one day Buffalo Hump finished boiling the great skull he had brought back from the Blue River. All day he worked to make the hard part into a small heavy shield, much heavier than the skin shields the other warriors carried. At dusk, when he finished the shield, he went out to the horse herd and brought back the strong white gelding he rode when he went raiding. That night he kept the horse tethered behind his tent. It was late in the night when he came out of his tent and walked back up the canyon to the high rock.