Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  Kicking Wolf wanted to chase them awhile; at the sight of the quick, hardy wild horses, animals able to live where there was little water and almost no grass, his appetite for catching horses revived a little.

  But Buffalo Hump was intent on one purpose, which was to go to the canyon of the Yellow Cliffso and see the jaguar.

  "We know where those horses are now," he told Kicking Wolf. "We can come back and track them anytime. If we chase them they might move into Apache country." "The Apaches don't like horses," Kicking Wolf said.

  "Not to ride, but they like to eat them," Buffalo Hump said. "I would like to have a few of them. The jaguar must have eaten all the deer and antelope but he has not been able to catch those horses." Kicking Wolf was growing very excited. His passion for horses was very great, and these horses did not even have to be stolen, they only had to be caught. Buffalo Hump wouldn't listen to him, though, so he reluctantly had to leave the mustangs, for the moment.

  All he talked about for a whole day was the wild horses they had found near the Rio Grande.

  The next day Kicking Wolf led Buffalo Hump to the place where he and Three Birds had been ambushed.

  "Ahumado was behind us," Kicking Wolf said.

  "He walks as quietly as I do when I go into a herd of horses." "I don't think he is here," Buffalo Hump said, "but if he is I don't want him behind me." He started to reveal the prophecy of the hump, but caught himself. Kicking Wolf was a gossip-- if he knew of the prophecy the whole camp would soon know.

  "Let's go high on the rocks," he said.

  "If he is here I would rather be above him than below him." They picked their way up to the high plateau that led to the Yellow Cliffs. To their surprise there was a declivity on the plateau, a great crater whose sides were steep. Near the center of the crater was a pit, with some charred and broken horse bones in the bottom of it, laying in the deep ashes.

  Kicking Wolf knew at once whose bones he was looking at.

  "This is the place where they ate the Buffalo Horse," he said. "Why did they eat him?" "Why does anyone eat any horse?" Buffalo Hump said. "They were hungry." Kicking Wolf stayed a long time by the pit, looking at the bones of the Buffalo Horse. That Ahumado would kill and eat such a beast, rather than keeping him as a prize, astonished him. He jumped down into the pit and came back with one of the great rib bones.

  Buffalo Hump spent some time riding around the rim of the crater, trying to understand how it had come to be. The rocks in it were black, the walls steep. He knew that the great hole with the black rocks in it was a place of power, a place where people came to pray and perform their spirit ceremonies.

  Some of the old ones thought that such holes were the footprints of the first spirit people to visit the world. His own view was that it might be the hole where the People first came out of the earth; only, in time, it had silted over, so that the People could not go back into the darkness they had left.

  Buffalo Hump put a few of the black rocks in his pouch, to show to Worm and a few of the old men when he got home. It occurred to him that the reason Ahumado had so much power was because he had put his camp near the place of the black rocks. He was said to be black himself, like the rocks.

  The crater was such a powerful place that Buffalo Hump was reluctant to leave it; but they had come to look for the jaguar that had been eating all the game.

  In the afternoon they rode across the plateau to the Yellow Cliffs. They found the place where the posts were, and the cages, all but one of which had human remains in them. From the cliffso they could see far south, down the range of peaks. Several eagles soared along the cliff edge. Buffalo Hump wanted badly to shoot an eagle. He waited until dusk with his arrows ready, but none of the eagles flew close enough for him to risk an arrow.

  "In the morning I will hide myself better," he said. The eagles were the large eagles of the south; he thought if he was patient he might kill one.

  They camped on the plateau. In the morning the sun and moon were in the sky together, one to the east and the other to the west.

  Both men knew that it was time to be careful, when the two powers, sun and moon, were in the sky together.

  At such times unexpected things could happen. Below them the cliff was pocked with caves. Buffalo Hump wondered if the jaguar lived in one of them. It soon became clear that no people were in the old camp. Three jackrabbits were nibbling at the bushes near the edge of the clearing, a thing that would not happen if the people were still nearby.

  As he stood on the cliff looking down, Kicking Wolf suddenly had a memory of his friend Three Birds--a memory so strong that he began to tremble.

  "What's wrong--why are you shaking like that?" Buffalo Hump asked.

  "I was thinking of Three Birds," Kicking Wolf said.

  Although Buffalo Hump waited, Kicking Wolf did not say more, but he continued to tremble for some time.

  Though Buffalo Hump hid himself well near the edge of the cliff, he soon realized that the eagles were not going to come anywhere near him, certainly not close enough that he could kill one with an arrow. One eagle did dip close enough to tempt him, but it was merely a trick on the eagle's part. He tilted and let the arrow pass under his wing --x fell all the way to the bottom of the cliff, so far that Buffalo Hump lost sight of it.

  "Let's go down," he said to Kicking Wolf.

  "I want to find my arrow." Once they rode into the camp at the base of the Yellow Cliffso they saw that no people had been there for some time.

  "The jaguar was here," Buffalo Hump said.

  "The Apache who spoke with Slow Tree did not lie." Near one of the little caves they found some scat, and, everywhere, there were tracks. But the scat was old and none of the tracks were fresh. The jaguar had slept in a little cave near where the people had been.

  He had left some of his hairs on the rock.

  Carefully the two men collected as many hairs as they could--the hair of a jaguar would be very useful to Worm or the other medicine men.

  While Buffalo Hump finished collecting the hairs, and some of the scat to be used in medicine, Kicking Wolf walked a good distance along the base of the cliff, looking for any trace of his friend. They had looked in the smelly pit and determined that the hastily buried bodies in it were Mexican. There was nothing of Three Birds in the pit, and it was not he rotting from the post in the center of what had been the camp. Yet Kicking Wolf felt that Three Birds would not have come to him so powerfully in memory if his remains, or at least some part of them, were not near the cliff somewhere.

  "Be careful," Buffalo Hump told him.

  "The jaguar might be clever. He might be hiding." Kicking Wolf did not answer. He wanted to be away from Buffalo Hump for a while.

  Buffalo Hump was so strong in himself that when you were with him it was hard to think about other people, even such an old friend as Three Birds.

  Kicking Wolf thought that if he just got away from Buffalo Hump for a while he might receive another strong memory and be able to locate some trace of his friend; his thinking was correct. Near the base of the cliff, below where the cages hung, Kicking Wolf found the bones of the Comanche Three Birds. The bones were scattered and most of them broken, with only a little skin clinging to them here and there, but when Kicking Wolf found the skull he knew that he had located his friend. Three Birds had a knot, a little ridge of bone, located just below his left temple. As a boy he had been hit in the head with a war club while playing at war with the other boys: the blow left the little ridge or knot of bone behind his temple.

  Kicking Wolf looked up at the cliff, so high that it was hard to see the top--there two eagles were soaring. He wondered if Ahumado had had Three Birds thrown from the cliff, or if he had fallen out of one of the cages. It might be that he had jumped, in hopes of becoming a bird as he was falling to his death.

  Kicking Wolf knew that he would never know the answer to that question, but at least he had found what he had journeyed to Mexico to find.

  He went back to his h
orse and got a deerskin he had brought just for that purpose; then he wrapped the bones of Three Birds carefully in the deerskin and tied them securely with a rawhide thong. Buffalo Hump came to him as he was working. When Kicking Wolf showed him the skull and the hand he merely said, "Ho!" and helped Kicking Wolf search the site so they would not miss any bones. It was Buffalo Hump who found one of Three Birds' feet.

  The next day the two of them left the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs. Kicking Wolf carried the bones of Three Birds tied safely in the deerskin. He meant to take them to Three Birds' brother.

  "We must come back soon and catch those wild horses," he said to Buffalo Hump, as they were crossing the river, back into Texas.

  "I have never known a man who wanted horses so much," Buffalo Hump said. Book III

  Augustus McCrae was sitting at the bedside of his second wife, Nellie, when Woodrow Call tapped lightly on the door.

  Bright sunlight poured through the window, but, to Gus's eye, the sunlight only pointed up the shabbiness of the two poor rooms where Nellie was having to die. There was no carpet on the floor, and the curtains were dusty; the windows faced on Austin's busiest street--horses and wagons were always throwing up dust.

  "Come in," Augustus said. Call opened the door and stepped inside. The sick woman was pale as a bedsheet, as she had been for several weeks. He thought it could not be long before Nellie McCrae breathed her last.

  Augustus, weary and confused, held one of the dying woman's hands.

  "Well, what's the news, Woodrow?" he asked.

  "War--civil war," Call said. "War between the North and the South. The Governor just found out." Augustus didn't answer. Nellie was in a war, too, at the moment, and was losing it. Thought of a larger war, one that could split the nation, seemed remote when set beside Nellie's ragged breathing.

  "The Governor would like to see us, when you can spare a moment," Call said.

  Augustus looked up at his friend. "I can't spare one right now, Woodrow--I'm helping Nellie die. I don't expect it will be much longer." "No--it's not likely to," Call agreed.

  A bottle of whiskey and a glass with a swallow or two left in it sat on a little table by the bed, along with two vials of medicine and a wet rag that, now and then, Augustus used to wipe his wife's face.

  "Captain Scull predicted this war years ago," Call said. "Do you remember that?" "Old Blinders--I expect he's already enlisted on the Yankee side," Gus said.

  Once they had returned Captain Scull from captivity, his mind recovered, though not immediately.

  For months he was still subject to bursts of hopping, which could seize him in the street or anywhere. He soon invented a kind of goggle, containing a thin sheet of darkened glass, to protect his lidless eyes from the sunlight. The goggles gained him the nickname "Blinders" Scull--he and Madame Scull were soon as intemperately married as ever, yelling curses at one another as they raced through town in an elegant buggy the Captain had ordered.

  Then, overnight, they were gone, moved to Switzerland, where a renowned doctor attempted to make Scull usable eyelids, using the skin of a brown frog; rumour had it that the experiment failed, forcing the Captain to get by with his goggles from then on.

  "Yes, I expect he's signed up," Call said. It was not likely that Inish Scull would sit out a war, eyelids or not.

  Call put his hand on Gus's shoulder for a moment and prepared to leave, but Gus looked up and stopped him.

  "Sit with me for a minute, Woodrow," he said, feeling sad. It was not much more than a year ago that his first wife, Geneva, had been carried off by a fever.

  "You've no luck with wives, Gus," Call said. He sat back down and listened as the sick woman drew her shallow breaths.

  "I don't, for a fact," Augustus said.

  "Geneva barely lasted four months and it's not yet been a year since Nellie and I wed." He was quiet for a bit, looking out the window.

  "I guess it's a good thing Clara turned me down," he said. "If we'd married, I fear she would have died off years ago." Call was surprised that Gus would bring up Clara, with Nellie dying scarcely a yard away. But the sick woman didn't react--she seemed to hear little of what was said.

  Neither of the two women Gus had married had been able to survive a year. Call knew it had discouraged his friend profoundly. Unable to secure a healthy wife, he had already gone back to the whores.

  "I wish Nell could go on and go," Gus said.

  "She ain't going to get well." "I would prefer to be shot, myself, if I get that sick," Call said. "Once there's no avoiding death I see no point in lingering." Augustus smiled at the comment, and poured himself a little more whiskey.

  "We're all just lingering, Woodrow," he said.

  "None of us can avoid dying--though old Scull did the best job of it of any man I know, while that old bandit had him." "Do you have an opinion about the war?" Call asked. "One I could take to Governor Clark?" The hubbub in the streets had already grown louder. Soon the citizens of Austin, some of whom sided with the Yankees and more of whom sided with the South, might decide to begin a war at the local level, in which case there would soon be more people dying than Gus McCrae's wife.

  "No opinion--andthe Governor has no right to press me, at a time like this," Augustus said.

  "He just wants to know if we'll stay," Call told him. In the last few years he and Augustus had been the twin mainstays of frontier defense. Naturally a governor wouldn't want to lose his two most experienced captains, not at a time when most of the fighting men in the state would be going off to fight in the great civil war.

  "I don't know yet--y vote for me, Woodrow," Augustus said. "Once Nellie dies I'm going to want to go drinking. When Nellie's buried and I'm fully sober again, I'll get around to thinking about this war." Call smiled at the comment.

  "I've known you a good many years and I've rarely seen you fully sober," he remarked.

  "I wouldn't be surprised if this war is fought and finished before that happens.

  "The whole nation might kill itself before you're fully sober," he added.

  He smiled when he said it, and Gus returned a weary glance.

  "You go on and manage the Governor, Woodrow," he said. "I've got to manage Nellie." Hearing gunfire in the street, Call hurried out, to discover that it was only a few rowdies shooting off their guns. They wanted to celebrate the fact that, at long last, war had come.

  Call made slow progress up the street.

  Every man he saw wanted his opinion about the war; but the sight of Gus and his Nellie, in the poor cheap bedroom, left him feeling melancholy--it was hard to deal with the war question because he couldn't get his mind off Gus and Nellie. He had not known Nellie well--Gus had married her on only a week's acquaintance, but she seemed to be a decent young woman who had done her best to settle Augustus down and make him comfortable with the little they had. The only thing he knew about Nellie McCrae was that she was from Georgia; the only fondness he had ever heard her express was for mint tea. Now Lee Hitch and Stove Jones came crowding up with war questions, when all Call could think about was the sadness Gus must feel at having married twice, only to lose both wives.

  "When are you leaving to fight the Yankees, Captain?" Stove Jones asked--it was only at that moment, when he saw Lee Hitch draw back in shock, that Stove realized he and Lee might favor different sides. It dawned on him too late that Lee Hitch hailed from Pennsylvania, a Yankee state, as well as he could remember.

  Call didn't have to answer. Lee and Stove were looking at one another in astonishment. The two old friends agreed about almost everything; it had not occurred to either of them that they might be divided on the issue of the war that had just begun.

  "Why, are you a Reb, Stove?" Lee asked, in puzzlement.

  "I'm a Carolina boy," Stove reminded him; but his appetite for discussion of the coming conflict had suddenly diminished.

  "We've still got the Comanches to fight, here in Texas," Call reminded them. "I suppose they're Yankees enough for me." "But everybody's
going to war, Captain--t's the talk, up and down the street," Stove Jones said. "There'll be some grand battles before this is settled." "Some grand battles and some grand dying," Augustus said. He had come quietly up to where Call and the two men were talking. His arrival, so soon, took Call by surprise, though Augustus did not seem quite as sad as he had been in the rooming house.

  "Nell's gone," Gus added, before Call could ask. "She opened her eyes and died. I never had a chance to ask her if she needed anything. Why will people die on days this pretty?" Sunlight poured down on them; the sky was cloudless and the air soft. No one had an answer to Gus's question. Darkness and death seemed far away; but war had been declared between South and North, and Nellie McCrae lay dead not two blocks away.