Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  "Oh, shut up, Johnny, and stop telling lies," she said, with a flirtatious toss of her head.

  "What lies? I'm merely pointing out that the U.S. Army can't put itself out every time a bandit demands a ransom." "No, the lie was that you'd be happy to see Inish again," Madame Scull said. "You weren't happy to see him when he was your commanding officer, I seem to recall." "Not happy ... I fail to understand .

  really, Madame," Major Nettleson protested, turning cherry red from embarrassment.

  "Inish always thought you were a fat-gutted fool," Mrs. Scull said. "He said as much many times.

  The only man in the whole army Inish thought had any sense was Bob Lee, and Bob Lee's a little too stiff necked for my taste." Then she looked at Governor Pease, who was staring at her as if she was insane.

  "Close your mouth, Ed, before a bug flies down your gullet," she said. "I'm taking Johnny off to our picnic now. I've managed to find virtues in him that Inish never suspected." As Madame Scull was about to leave she paused a moment and looked at Call.

  "A thousand cattle is a good deal more than Inish is worth," she said. "I wouldn't give three cats for him myself, unless the cats were mangy. If you see that yellow gal of mine while you're looking for Inish, bring her back too. I have yet to find a match for that yellow gal. She had the Cuba touch." "I doubt we'll spot her, ma'am," Call said. "The Comanches went north and we're going south." "And you think life is that simple, do you, Captain?" Inez Scull said, with more than a little mockery in her tone. "You think it's just a matter of plain north or south, do you?" Call was perplexed. He could not clear his mind of the image of Long Bill Coleman, hanging dead by his own hand from a live oak limb. More than ten years of his life had been bound up with Long Bill Coleman--now he was dead. He found it hard to attend to the mocking woman in front of him--his mind wanted to drift backward down the long river of the past, to the beginning of his rangering days. He wished Madame Scull would just go away and not be teasing him with questions.

  "I hope you'll come to tea with me before you leave, Captain," Madame Scull said. "I might be able to teach you that there's more to life than north and south." With that she turned on her heels and left.

  "Can't interfere with Mexico, not the U.S.

  Cavalry," Major Nettleson said. Then he left, putting on his military hat as he went through the door.

  Governor Pease spat once more, inaccurately, at the brass spittoon.

  "If I had a wife like that I'd run farther than Mexico," the Governor said, quietly.

  His own wife had only raised her voice to him once in twenty years of marriage, and that was because the baby was about to knock the soup pot off the table.

  Call didn't know what to say. He thought he had best stick to simple, practical considerations and not let himself be sidetracked by what Madame Scull felt, or didn't feel, about her husband.

  "You mentioned a thousand head of cattle, Governor," Call said.

  "Yes, that's the demand," Governor Pease said, in a slow, weary voice. "A thousand head --we have a month to make the delivery." "What if the Captain's already dead?" Call asked.

  "Why, that's the gamble," the Governor said.

  "The man might take our cattle and send us Inish's head in a sack." "Or he might just take the cattle and vanish," Call said.

  "Yes, he might--but I have to send you," the Governor said. "At least I have to ask you if you'll go--I'm not forgetting that I just sent you off on a wild-goose chase just when we needed you here the most. But Ahumado has Inish and he's set a price on him. Inish is still a hero. They'll impeach me if I don't try to get him back." "Where will we get the cattle?" Call asked.

  "Why, the legislature will vote the money for the cattle, I'm sure," the Governor said.

  Call started to ask a practical question, only to have his mind stall. He saw Long Bill's black face again and couldn't seem to think beyond it.

  The Governor talked and the Governor talked, but Call was simply unable to take in what he was saying, a fact Governor Pease finally noticed.

  "Wrong time--y've got your friend to bury," he said. "We can talk of these arrangements tomorrow, when your sad duty has been done." "Thanks," Call said. He turned and was about to leave, but Governor Pease caught his arm.

  "Just one more thing, Captain Call," he said.

  "Inez mentioned having you to tea--don't go. The state of Texas needs you more than she does, in this troubled hour." "Yes sir, I expect it does," Call said.

  When Call got back to the ranger corrals he heard the sound of hammering from behind the barn.

  Ikey Ripple, the oldest ranger left alive, was making Long Bill a coffin--or, at least, he was supervising. Ikey had never advanced much in the ranks of the rangers due to his taste for supervising, as opposed to actually working.

  He and Long Bill had been sincere friends, though, which is why he stood beside Deets to supervise the sawing of every plank and the driving of every nail.

  "Billy was particular and he'd want to be laid out proper," Ikey said, when Call joined the group, which consisted of the entire ranger troop, such as it then was.

  Augustus sat on one end of the wagon that was to haul Long Bill to his grave: he was silent, somber, and drunk. Deets put the coffin together meticulously, well aware that he was being watched by the whole troop. Lee Hitch and Stove Jones had spent a night of insobriety in a Mexican cantina; they were so hung over as to be incapable of carpentry. Stove Jones was bald and Lee Hitch shaggy--they spent their evenings in the cantina because they had ceased to be able to secure adequate credit in the saloons of Austin. Call noticed that neither man was wearing a sidearm.

  "Where's your guns?" he asked them.

  Lee Hitch looked at his hip and saw no pistol, which seemed to surprise him as much as if his whole leg were missing.

  "Well, where is it, damn it?" he asked himself.

  "I don't require you to swear," Call said. "We've a mission to go on soon and you'll need you your weapons. Where's yours, Stove?" Stove Jones took refuge in deep, silent solemnity when asked questions he didn't want to answer. He stared back at Call solemnly, but Call was not to be bluffed by such tactics, forcing Stove to rack his brain for a suitable answer.

  "I expect it's under my saddle," he said finally.

  "They pawned their guns, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I say just let them fight the Comanches with their pocketknives. A man who would sink so low as to pawn his own pistol deserves a good scalping, anyway." "It's not the Comanches," Call told him.

  "It's Ahumado. He's got Captain Scull and he's offered to ransom him for a thousand cattle." "That lets me out--I ain't got a thousand cattle," Gus said.

  "The state will buy the cattle. We have to deliver them and bring back the Captain," Call told him.

  "Well, that still lets me out because I ain't a cowboy," Gus said. "I have no interest in gathering cattle for some old bandit. Let him just come and steal them. He can leave off the Captain if he wants to." Call noted that the coffin was almost finished. He saw no reason to pursue an argument with Gus at such a time. In his present mood Gus would easily find a reason to disagree with anything he might say. The men were all stunned by Long Bill's suicide. The best procedure would probably be to go on and hold the funeral, if the women were up to it. With no undertaker and no preacher, funerals were rude affairs, but they were still funerals. The womenfolk could sing, and the ceremony would draw the men away from the saloons for a few minutes. Once their old compa@nero was laid to rest there would be time to consider the matter of Ahumado and the thousand cattle.

  "We don't have to worry about the mission right this minute," Call said. "We've got a month to deliver the cattle. Let's go see how the womenfolk are doing, while Deets finishes the coffin." "Nearly done," Deets said, wondering if he was expected to go to the funeral-- or if he would even be allowed to. He worked carefully on the coffin; one of the laundresses had brought over an old quilt to line it with.

  Deets took special care to see that the lining was
laid in smoothly. He knew that the spirits of suicides were restless; they were more likely than other people to float out of their graves and become spooks, harassing those who had offended them in life. He was not aware that he had offended Long Bill--he had helped him with quite a few chores, but all that might be forgotten if he then built him an uncomfortable coffin, a coffin his spirit could not be at rest in. Mr. Bill, as Deets had always called him, had rangered far in his life; it would be too bad if his spirit had to keep rangering, for want of a comfortable resting place.

  "We ought to caulk this coffin, I expect," Ikey Ripple said, rendering his first judgment on the matter. The coffin was sitting on two sawhorses. He bent over and peered underneath it, an action that aggravated his rheumatism. It was a coffin that could profit from a good caulking, in his view.

  "I doubt we have anything to caulk it with," Call said.

  "It won't hold out the worms or the maggots no time, if we don't give it a caulking," Ikey insisted.

  "Well, the store's closed, I don't know where we could get any caulking," Call said.

  With the Forsythe store still out of operation, everyone in town was constantly discovering that they needed some small necessity which there was no way to procure.

  "Billy Coleman was a fine fellow," Ikey went on. "He deserves better than to be bloated up with screwworms before he's hardly in his grave. The dern state of Texas ought to have some caulking, somewhere." Mention of screwworms at a moment of such solemnity made everyone queasy, even Call, for they had all seen the dreadful putrefaction that resulted when screwworms infested a deer or a cow. The thought that such might happen to Long Bill Coleman, a comrade who had been walking among them only yesterday, made everyone unhappy.

  "Shut up talking about worms and maggots, Ikey," Augustus said. "Long Bill's just as apt to be up in heaven playing a harp as he is to be having screwworms infect him." Ikey Ripple considered the remark obtuse --and, besides that, it was made in an unfriendly tone, a tone particularly unwelcome for having come from a raw youth such as Gus McCrae. Ikey had passed his seventieth year and considered anyone under fifty to be callow, at best.

  "I don't know what happens in heaven but I do know what happens when you stick a coffin in the ground that ain't caulked," Ikey said. "Worms and maggots, that's what." Deets had just finished the coffin lid, which fitted snugly.

  "Ikey, stop your griping," Gus said.

  "Plenty of our fine rangers have been buried without no coffin at all." "Them boards are thin--I expect the worms will get in pretty soon even if you do caulk it," Stove Jones observed.

  "Worms and varmints--a hungry varmint will dig up a coffin unless it's buried deep," Lee Hitch added.

  "You are all too goddamn gloomy," Augustus said. "I say let's bury Billy Coleman and go get soundly drunk in his memory." He got off the wagon and began to walk toward the Coleman house.

  "I expect we'll just have to do without the caulking," Call said. "Just load the coffin in the wagon and bring it to the house. I believe it would be best to get this burying done." Then he followed Gus, who was walking slowly. Ahead, a knot of women stood around the back porch of the Coleman house. Call looked for Maggie but didn't see her at first.

  When he did spot her she was not with the women on the porch--they were respectable women, of course.

  Maggie sat alone on the steps going up to her rooms. She had her face in her hands and her shoulders were shaking.

  "Mag's upset," Gus said. "I expect one of these old church biddies ran her off from the mourning." "I expect," Call said. "Maggie's close to Pearl. She took the arrows out of her after the raid, she said. The doctor was busy with the serious wounds." When Call walked over and asked Maggie if one of the ladies had been rude to her, Maggie shook her head. She looked up at him, her face wet with tears.

  "It's just so hard, Woodrow," she said.

  "It's just so hard." "Well, but there's easy times, too," Call said awkwardly; he immediately felt he had said something wrong. He could never come up with the right ^ws, when Maggie cried. His remark was true enough-- there were easy times--but the day of Long Bill's death was not one of them.

  Not for me, Maggie wanted to say, when he mentioned easy times. She wanted to go be with Pearl Coleman, but she couldn't, because of her position.

  It was hard, not easy, but there was no point in trying to make Woodrow understand how hard it was for her.

  "It's sunny, at least," Call said.

  "Bill hung himself on a mighty pretty day." That didn't sound right either, although it was true: the day was brilliant.

  To his dismay, Maggie began to cry all the harder. He didn't know whether it was the standoffish women, or Long Bill's death, or his ill-chosen remarks. He had thought to comfort her, but he didn't know how. He stood awkwardly by the steps, feeling that he would have been wiser just to go along with Gus and see that Bill was wrapped up proper and ready for the coffin.

  "Hush, Woodrow, you don't have to talk," Maggie said, grateful that he had come to stand beside her. It was the first time he had done such a thing, when there were people watching.

  Just then the rangers came around the corner with the coffin in the wagon. Old Ikey Ripple, who had once pestered Maggie endlessly, drove the wagon. The other rangers rode behind the wagon.

  All of them saw Call standing by Maggie at the bottom of the steps.

  "I best go--w you be coming?" Call asked.

  "Yes, I'll follow along," Maggie said, surprised that he asked.

  There was green spring grass in the little graveyard when they buried Long Bill Coleman. Trees were leafing out, green on the distant slopes; fine clear sunlight shone on the mourners; mockingbirds sang on after the hymn singing stopped and the mound of red dirt was shovelled back in the grave. Maggie, fearing censure, hadn't followed very close. Pearl Coleman, bereft, heaved her deep cow sobs throughout the brief service.

  "I'm a poor talker, you talk over him," Call whispered to Augustus, when the time had come for someone to speak a few ^ws over the departed.

  Augustus McCrae stood so long in thought that Call was afraid he wouldn't find it in him to speak. But Gus, hat in hand, finally looked up at the little crowd.

  "It's too pretty a day to be dying, but Long Bill's dead and that's that," he said. "I recall that he liked that scripture about the green pastures--it's spring weather and there'll be green grass growing over him soon." He paused a minute, fumbling with his hat.

  When he spoke again he had some trouble controlling his voice.

  "Billy, he was a fine pard, let's go home," he said finally.

  Pearl Coleman had a brother, Joel, who was stout like her. Joel helped his sobbing sister back down the path toward town. The ladies who liked Pearl and had come to support her in her hour of grief followed the brother and sister away. The other townspeople trickled away in twos and threes but the rangers were reluctant to leave. In the heat of battle they had surrendered many comrades to death, often having no opportunity to bury them or take note of their passing at all. But this death had not occurred in battle; it occurred because Long Bill, a man who had been stouthearted through much violent strife, wanted it.

  "I wish we'd had time to caulk the coffin," Ikey Ripple said. "I expect it'll be worms and maggots for Billy, pretty soon." The others cast hard glances at him, causing Ikey to conclude that his views were not appreciated. He decided to seek a saloon, and was joined in his search by Lee Hitch and Stove Jones, men disposed to overlook his views of worms and maggots.

  "Reckon Bill would change his mind, if he had a chance to?" Gus asked Call. They were the last to leave, although Pea Eye was not far from them on the path.

  Call had been asking himself the same question all day. The last conversation he had had with Long Bill Coleman had been a casual one about the relative merits of mares and geldings, as saddle horses. Long Bill argued for geldings, as being more stable; Call argued for mares, for their alertness. Long Bill talked fondly of a horse he had favored in earlier years, a
sorrel gelding named Sugar who had carried him safely on many patrols. Call reminded Bill of a time when Sugar had shied at a badger and run away with him. They had a chuckle, remembering the runaway.

  It had been an easy conversation about horses, of the sort he had often had with Long Bill over the years. Sugar grew old and had to be put out to pasture, but Long Bill, from time to time, would have another gelding whose virtues he would brag about, just as Call, from time to time, would acquire an exceptional mare. They would often talk about horses, he and Bill--whatever troubles might be elsewhere in their lives never dampened their interest in the pleasure to be had with good horses.