Comanche Moon ld-4

by Larry McMurtry

  What Scull wanted was some way to trigger Ahumado's anger, as he had triggered it when he suggested a ransom. Ahumado's hatred would give him something to challenge and resist: not just the endless swinging over an abyss. Confinement induced torpor, and from torpor he could easily slip to passivity, resignation, death. He needed a fight to keep his blood up. He had been three weeks in the cage, long enough to grow sick of the sight and taste of raw fowl--yet long enough, too, that news of his plight might have reached Texas--sch news would travel quickly, across even the most seemingly deserted country. A peon would mention something to a traveller and that single comment would radiate outward, like sunlight.

  Soldiers in the northern forts would soon hear of things happening below the border--of course the information might be distorted, but that was to be expected. Even well-informed journalists, writing for respectable papers, were not free of the risk of distortion.

  Even now, for all Scull knew, the Governor of Texas might have got wind of his peril; with luck a rescue party might already be on the way.

  While rescue was still a possibility, it was all the more imperative that he keep his blood up, which he could do best by reminding the old man on the blanket that he, Inish Scull, was still alive and kicking, still a fighter to be reckoned with.

  Hardest were the days when Ahumado failed to lift the binoculars, when he seemed indifferent to the white man hanging in the cage. On those days, the days when Ahumado did not look, the birds seemed to know that Scull was losing. The great vultures roosted in a line on the cliff above him, waiting. Pigeons and doves, the staple of Scull's diet, rested in numbers on the cage itself; he could, with a little stealth, have caught a week's supply, and yet he didn't.

  On such days it was often only the evening light that brought Scull out of despair. The space before him would grow golden at sunset, leaving the distant mountains in haze until the glow faded and they became blue and then indigo. Staring into the distance, Scull would slowly relax and forget, for a time, the struggle he had to wage.

  It was on such an evening that he began to file away the bindings on the side of the cage that faced outward, away from the cliff. If the vast echoing space was to be his balm and his ally, he didn't want bars interfering with his relation to it. The bars were ugly anyway, and stained with bird droppings.

  He didn't want them between himself and the light of morning or evening.

  Once, long before, as a youth, walking in Cambridge, he had seen a man of the East, a Buddhist monk who sat cross-legged in bright orange robes by the Charles River; the man was merely sitting, with his robe covering his legs and his hands folded in his lap, watching the morning sunlight scatter gold over the gray water.

  The memory came back to Scull as he cut through the bindings at the front of his cage. The Buddhist had been an old man, with a shaven head and a long drooping wisp of beard; he had attentive eyes and he seemed to be thoughtfully studying the air as it brightened amid the buildings of Cambridge.

  Scull, high on his cliff, thought he might emulate the old Buddhist man he had seen only that once, on a Cambridge morning, by the Charles River. When it came to air, he had, before him, a grander prospect for study than the old man had by the Charles. Before him, indeed, was a very lexicon of air, a dictionary or cyclopedia that would be hard to exhaust. He could study the gray air of morning, the white air of the bright noon, the golden air of evening. He wanted no bars to interfere with his contemplation, his study of the airy element--and to that end he sawed and sawed, with his little file, well into the deep Mexican night.

  Ahumado had just walked out of the cave when Scull gave a great yell. At first Ahumado didn't look up. He knew well that the white man, Scull, craved his attention-- the stronger prisoners always craved his attention, or, at least, the attention of the people in the camp.

  They didn't want to be forgotten by the people who were alive--they wanted to remind everyone that they were still of the living.

  But then one of the vaqueros shouted and Ahumado looked up in time to see Scull heave the front of the cage as far as he could pitch it. The people sitting with coffee or tobacco jumped up when they saw what was happening--they got out of the way of the piece of cage that was falling. The only thing that didn't get out of the way was a red hen; the falling piece of cage hit the hen and caused her to flop around for a minute or two--then she died.

  Ahumado picked up the binoculars and looked up at the man in the cage--fora moment he was annoyed because he supposed Scull had decided to commit suicide, as the sly Comanche had. With the front of the cage gone Scull could jump to his death at any time, which was a thing not to be tolerated.

  Ahumado did not put prisoners in the cage in order to provide them with a choice in the matter of their own deaths.

  Yet, when Ahumado looked, he saw that Scull did not seem to be getting ready to jump. He was sitting comfortably in the cage, singing one of the songs he was always singing. This penchant for song was another annoying thing about the man. It made the villagers restive. Many of them considered Scull to be a powerful witch. There were a few, probably, who thought that Scull might prove to be more powerful than Ahumado. Why was he singing? Why wouldn't he just die? The most logical answer was that Scull was a witch.

  Ahumado had carefully considered that possibility when Scull began scratching on the rock, and he was still a little uneasy about it. The notion that Scull might make the mountain fall had come to him in a dream, and dreams of that sort were not to be lightly disregarded. Although time passed and the mountain didn't fall, Ahumado did not forget his dream and continued to be suspicious of Scull.

  Witches were often known to bide their time. An old witch from the south, who had a grudge against his father, had caused a tumour to grow in his father's stomach.

  Though they caught the old witch and cut her throat, the tumour continued to grow in his father's stomach until it killed him. It was a thing Ahumado had never forgotten. He knew better than to underestimate the patience of a powerful witch.

  Now Scull had cut open his cage--he could leap out if he wanted to. The old woman Hema, the one who had foamed at the mouth when she was listening to the mountain, came hobbling over, carrying the red hen that the fallen cage had killed.

  "We should cut open this hen and look inside her," Hema said. "He might have put a message in her." "No," Ahumado said, "if we look inside her we will only find chicken guts." In his view vision people who tried to see the future by looking at the entrails of animals were frauds. The future might be visible in the smoke that rose from a campfire, if only one knew how to look into the smoke, but he didn't believe that the spirits who made the future would bother leaving messages in the guts of goats or hens.

  He gave old Hema the hen, to get rid of her, but before she left she came out with another prophecy, one that was a little more plausible.

  "A great bird is going to come and get the white man soon," old Hema said. "The great bird lives on a rock at the top of the world. The reason the white man cut away the front of his cage is because the great bird will soon be coming to fly him back to Texas." "Go away and eat your hen," Ahumado said.

  She was a long-winded old woman and he did not want to waste his mornings listening to her. Still, his mind was not entirely easy where Scull was concerned. Once or twice, when he looked up and saw the white man sitting there in the open cage, he considered taking his Winchester and shooting the man right where he hung. That would end his worry about the mountain falling down. The mention of the great bird was worrisome too; there were many stories about a great bird that lived at the top of the world.

  Perhaps the white man's strange singing was in the language of the birds. Perhaps he was telling the eagles that flew around the cage to go to the top of the world and bring the great bird. The language that Scull sang in was not the language of the Texans; perhaps it was the language of the birds.

  To make matters even more uncertain, that very afternoon the largest vulture that anyone
had ever seen came soaring over the cliff and flew down past the cage. The vulture was so large that for a moment Ahumado thought it might .be the great bird.

  Though it proved to be only an exceptionally large vulture, its appearance annoyed him.

  Big Horse Scull was proving to be the most troublesome prisoner he had ever captured; Scull did so many things that were witchlike that it might be better just to kill him.

  That evening, by the campfire, he discussed the matter with old Goyeto, the skinner. Usually old Goyeto had only one response when asked about a prisoner; he wanted to skin the prisoner at once. This time, though, to Ahumado's surprise, Goyeto took a different tack.

  "You could sell him to the Texans," Goyeto said. "They might give you many cattle--nobody around here has very many cattle." Ahumado remembered that Scull had mentioned a ransom. He had never bargained with the Texans --he had only taken from them, in the way of a bandit. But the old simple-minded skinner, Goyeto, had made a good point. Perhaps the Texans would want Big Horse Scull so badly that they would bring them a lot of cattle.

  Scull had said so himself--because he had said it, Ahumado had scorned the idea. He did not like suggestions from prisoners.

  Besides, he had supposed that Scull would soon lose heart, like other men in the cage. But Scull was not like other men, and he had not lost heart. He had boldly cut away the front of his cage, he scratched on the face of the mountain, he sang loudly, and he ate raw birds as if he liked them. All this was annoying behaviour, so annoying that Ahumado was still tempted just to shoot the man--then if the great bird came to free him he would only find a corpse.

  There had not been much to eat lately, in the camp. The thought of cattle made Goyeto's mouth water, but, of course, he still wanted to use his sharp skinning knives on Big Horse Scull. It would be vexing to send him home without skinning even a little part of him. Goyeto knew that would vex Ahumado too.

  It was then that Goyeto remembered the small federale, Major Alonso, a strong fighter they had been lucky to catch alive.

  Major Alonso had killed six of their pistoleros before one of the dark men caught him with a bola. When they tied Major Alonso to the skinning post, Goyeto had had one of his most brilliant ideas. Without even telling Ahumado what he had in mind he had delicately removed the Major's eyelids.

  Tied to the skinning post, with no eyelids or any means of shielding his eyes, the Major had to bear the full light of the August sun for a whole day, and by the end of it he was insane. It was as if the sun had burned away his brain. Major Alonso gibbered and made the sounds of a madman.

  Ahumado was so pleased by Goyeto's inventiveness with Major Alonso that he did not bother to torture the man more. Why torture a man whose brain had been burned up? They merely took away the Major's clothes and chased him out into the desert. He stumbled around with no eyelids until he died. A vaquero found his body only a few miles from camp.

  "I could take his eyelids and we could leave him in the sun until the Texans come with the cattle," Goyeto suggested, to Ahumado.

  "I guess he would be crazy, like that federale." "Ah," Ahumado said.

  It was rare that the Black Vaquero exclaimed. It usually meant that he was impressed. Goyeto was pleased with himself, for having had such a timely idea. That very afternoon Ahumado dispatched a caballero that he trusted, Carlos Diaz, to Texas to tell the Texans that they could have Scull if they brought a thousand cattle to a grassy place below the river, where Ahumado's vaqueros would take them.

  Ahumado then wasted no time hauling Scull up the cliff. The dark men swarmed over him before he could run, although he did stab one of them fatally with the small file he had concealed--he shoved the file straight into the dark man's jugular vein, causing him to lose so much blood that he died. Scull was taken down the cliff and pinioned securely to the skinning post--Goyeto finally got to use his knives. He took away Big Horse Scull's eyelids with even more delicacy than he had managed with the federale, Major Alonso. Scull fought his bonds and cried out curses but there was so little pain involved in the operation that he didn't moan or groan. Ahumado seemed pleased by the skill with which Goyeto worked.

  But then, before the sun could begin to bring its searing heat into Big Horse Scull's brain, clouds, heavy and dark, begin to roll in from the west. Thunder shook the cliffso and hard rain fell.

  Before the little stream of blood from the cuts died on Scull's cheeks the rain washed the blood away. The thunder was so loud that some of the people started to run away. They were more than ever convinced that Scull might bring the mountain down on them because of what had been done to his eyes. Goyeto thought so too, for a time. He began to regret that he had even had such a crazy idea. Why had he ignored all the signs that Scull was a witch?

  If the mountain fell on them he would be dead, and even if it didn't, Ahumado might kill him for exercising such bad judgment in regard to Big Horse Scull.

  The mountain didn't fall, though the sun was not seen for three days, during which time nothing bad at all happened to Captain Scull's brain.

  Ahumado, though, exhibited no doubt--he had another cage made for Scull and put it right in the center of the village, not far from where he sat on his blanket. He wanted all the people to see the man without eyelids. Scull did not curse anymore. The women were instructed to feed him, and he ate. He was silent, watching Ahumado out of eyes he could not close.

  On the fourth day the sun came back and Scull was immediately tied to the skinning post, so he could not shield his eyes. Even so, Goyeto worried. It was only May. The sun was not strong, as it had been in August, when he had removed Major Alonso's eyelids.

  "I don't know," Goyeto said. "This is not a very strong sun." Ahumado was getting tired of the old skinner and his endless anxieties. He wished Goyeto had a wife to distract him, but unfortunately Goyeto's wife had grown a tumour almost as large as the one that had killed his own father. Not many women were willing even to couple with Goyeto, because he smelled always of blood. Probably some of the women were afraid he might skin them, if he got angry.

  "This is the only sun there is," Ahumado pointed out. "Do you think you can find another?" "I can't find another," Goyeto said meekly. "There is only this sun. What if it doesn't make him crazy before the Texans come with all those cattle?" "Then I may let you skin the rest of him." Ahumado said.

  Then he gave Goyeto a hard look, the kind of look he gave people when he wanted them to go away and do so promptly.

  Goyeto knew what that look meant. He had talked too much. Immediately he got up and went away.

  When Slow Tree saw Famous Shoes bounced into camp on the back of Fat Knee's sorrel horse, he looked severely displeased, but Blue Duck, not Famous Shoes, was the object of his displeasure. Instead of yanking the Kickapoo off the horse and marching him straight to the torture post, as Blue Duck had supposed he would do, Slow Tree took a knife and cut Famous Shoes' bonds himself.

  Then the old chief did worse. To Blue Duck's intense annoyance, Slow Tree apologized to Famous Shoes.

  "I am sorry you were disturbed," Slow Tree said. "I hope you were not taken too far from where you wanted to be." At this point, Blue Duck, a rude and impatient boy, interrupted.

  "He was only looking in snake holes," he said. "I caught him and brought him here so you could torture him. He is a Kickapoo and should be tortured to death." Slow Tree paid no attention to the rude young man.

  "Were you catching snakes?" he asked Famous Shoes, in mild tones.

  "Oh no," Famous Shoes said. "I was looking for the hole the People came out of. I thought some snakes might have found the hole and started living in it." "Oh, that hole is far to the north," Slow Tree said, in a pompous tone, as if he knew perfectly well which of the many holes in the earth the People had come out of.

  "I thought it might be around the caprock somewhere," Famous Shoes replied, in a mild tone. He wanted to be as polite with Slow Tree as Slow Tree was being with him. As he was not of the Comanche tribe, certain courtes
ies had to be respected, but, once these courtesies had been observed, Slow Tree might turn back into a cruel old killer and torture him after all. The chief didn't appear to be in a torturing mood, but he was a crafty old man and his mood could always change.

  Blue Duck, though, continued to behave with poor manners. He looked scornfully at Slow Tree, who was, after all, one of the most respected of the chiefs of the Comanche people. He spoke scornfully, also. So far he had not even bothered to dismount, a serious discourtesy in itself.

  All the other Comanche boys had immediately dismounted.

  But Blue Duck still sat on his prancing horse.

  "When you saw this Kickapoo in my father's camp you wanted to torture him," Blue Duck said. "You wanted to put scorpions in his nose.