He sat with the young warrior most of the night, watching the moon arch over the still prairies. He saw Famous Shoes come back and lay down to rest. He watched as the Texans--exhausted, all of them--fell asleep. Even Gun In The Water, whose habit was to stand guard outside of camp, did not stand guard that night.
"When will you do it?" Dancing Rabbit asked him several times. "It will be light soon." He was worried that Kicking Wolf wouldn't do it; but then he looked again and Kicking Wolf was gone. The old man had been sitting quietly, a few feet away, but now he was gone.
Then, to his astonishment, he saw Kicking Wolf standing by the mule, stroking its neck. The black man who had tethered the mule was sleeping only a few yards away, but the mule was calm and so was Kicking Wolf. The old man stood by the mule for a few minutes, as if talking quietly to it, and then he disappeared again. He had been by the mule, but now he wasn't. Dancing Rabbit had no idea where the old man had gone. Hastily he made his way back to the gully where the horses were, only to find, when he reached it, that Kicking Wolf was there and had already mounted his horse.
"We had better go," Kicking Wolf said.
"The Kickapoo will see my track first thing in the morning. I don't think they will follow us, but I don't know. Gun In The Water might chase us on the mule." "I didn't see you move," Dancing Rabbit said, when they were riding together. "You were with me and then you were with the mule. I didn't see you move." Kicking Wolf smiled. It had been pleasant to do his old trick again, to walk without making a sound, to go up to a horse, or, in this case, a mule, to touch it and make it his while the owner slept nearby. It was a skill he had that no other Comanche had ever equalled. Though he had had to travel a long way across the llano in dry weather, it was good to know that he still had his old gift. It made up a little for Broken Foot and the cramps in his leg and the sadness of knowing that the old ways were gone.
"I don't move," he said, to the credulous young man who could still not quite believe what he had seen. "When the time is right I am just there, by the horse." "But I saw you--y were with me and then you were by the horse. I know you moved," Dancing Rabbit said.
"It isn't moving--it is something else," Kicking Wolf said.
Dancing Rabbit pestered him all the way home, wanting to know how Kicking Wolf did what he did when he approached a horse; but Kicking Wolf didn't tell him, because he couldn't. It was a way--his way--and that was all.
When Famous Shoes saw Kicking Wolf standing by the mule he thought at first that it was just another of his dreams. Since seeing the white owl come out of the earth he had had many dreams that were not good. In some of them Comanches were killing his children. In another Ahumado had him, and, in a third, a great flood came while he was on the llano. He tried to outrun the water but the flood swept over him and carried him down to where there was a great fish shaped like Jaguar.
Compared to those nightmares, seeing Kicking Wolf standing by the brown mule was not so bad. Then, waking, he thought he saw Kicking Wolf walking in the white moonlight--it might have been Kicking Wolf or it might have been his ghost.
In the morning, when he had almost forgotten his dream, Famous Shoes walked over to where the brown mule grazed and saw at once that no dream had occurred: Kicking Wolf had been there. On the ground, plain to see, was the footprint that he had seen so many times when he and Big Horse Scull had followed the Comanche horse thieves into Mexico. What he had seen in the moonlight was not a ghost but a man. Kicking Wolf had come for the mule and then left it.
Famous Shoes found it surprising that the old Comanche would follow them all the way into the llano after one mule, but it was not surprising that he had left the mule once he saw how skinny it was. Kicking Wolf was a man who had always been choosy about horseflesh. He only took the best horses, and Deets's brown mule could not even be said to be a horse.
When Famous Shoes went to the campfire and announced that Kicking Wolf had been there, all the Texans put down their coffee cups and ran over to look at the tracks, bringing their rifles with them, as if they feared attack. They all looked around anxiously, but, of course, the llano was empty in all directions. Captain Call was vexed, but he had been vexed the whole way back because of the trouble with his boot heels. His boots were now so nearly useless that when they were in grassy country he often walked barefoot. On the worst of the walk the rangers had had to drink their own piss, a thing that bothered Captain Call less than the fact that Blue Duck's first shot had ruined his only boots.
Fortunately they were only two days from the Brazos now and would not have to drink their own piss again. Far to the south, thunderclouds rumbled--the rain might soon fill the many little declivities that dotted the llano, turning them into temporary water holes.
"Well, I swear," Pea Eye said, looking at the tracks. "A man was here but he didn't take the mule." The sight of the footprints made him nervous, though. A Comanche had come close enough to kill, and no one had heard him. It was a scary thing, just as scary as it had been the first time he journeyed onto the plain.
"Didn't take it and I'm glad," Deets said, for he was very fond of his brown mule, the only animal, after all, to survive their trip --the other horses had either starved or been shot.
Augustus took his hat off and scratched his head, amused by what he saw--even though it was a dark joke. After the walk they had had, any joke seemed better than none, to him.
"Why, he turned up his nose at our mule, old Kicking Wolf," he said.
Call didn't find it amusing. He would have liked to chase the man--it seemed that half his life had been spent chasing Kicking Wolf--but he had only a tired mule to chase him on. The rain clouds hovering to the south had been dancing away from them for a week; the Brazos River, still a full two days to the south, might have to be their salvation, as it had been for many travellers.
Once again he had to carry with him, on a long trip home, a sense of incompletion. They had travelled a long way, hung ten bandits, but missed their leader, Blue Duck, murderer of his own father, and many others besides.
Augustus, though, would not be denied his amusement.
"How's this for a scandal, Woodrow?" he said.
"We didn't get our man, and now we've sunk so low that a Comanche won't even steal our mule. I guess that means the fun's over." "It may be over but it wasn't fun," Call said, looking at the long dry distance that still waited to be crossed.
The End
Comanche Moon Page 78