Comanche Moon ld-4

by Larry McMurtry

  "Charlie, have you run into our red foes?" Augustus inquired again.

  "Crossed their trail," Goodnight said.

  "It's a hunting party. They're about thirty miles ahead of us, but they're lazing along. I think we can overtake them if we hurry.

  They've got nearly fifty stolen horses and I expect a captive or two." "Then let's go," Augustus said. Before putting spurs in his horse and following Goodnight, who had already left--he had reached down and accepted a tin cup full of coffee from Deets and drained it in three swallows-- Augustus looked back at the few dirty, discouraged, ignorant, and ill-paid men that constituted the troop, all of whom, including Major Featherstonhaugh, looked as if they wished they could be somewhere else in the world.

  "We're going after the Comanches--don't lame your horses," Gus said. "It's lucky you dropped your compass, Major. The horses got a night's rest and that might make the difference." Then he turned and rode. It was cruel to press men as hard as it would be necessary to press them now, but the alternative was to lead a futile expedition that would accomplish nothing. With war raging among the whites, the Comanches had grown bold again--in some places the line of white settlement had been driven back almost one hundred miles. Only those settlers brave enough to live in homemade forts and risk death every day as they worked in their fields farmed the western country now. He and Call had had to abandon the border to banditry; answering raids on the northwestern frontier took all their time and resources.

  Lately they had scarcely been in town long enough to launder their clothes.

  The rangers were too few in number to overwhelm the war parties, but their guns had improved and their marksmanship as well. They would sometimes demoralize their attackers by killing a few prominent warriors--z fighting men they had become a match for the Comanches, but their horses, for the most part heavy and slow, were rarely capable of keeping up with the leaner, faster Comanche ponies.

  Goodnight, in his brief time in the soldiers' camp, had quickly sized up the state of the horses. When Augustus caught up with him he did not hold back his assessment.

  "Those horses are just glue buckets with legs," he told Augustus. "I doubt they've got fifty miles in them." "I doubt they've got forty," Gus agreed.

  Goodnight, of course, was well mounted, on a gelding with sure feet and abundant wind; Augustus, likewise, had taken care to provide himself with a resilient mount. But most of the troopers were not so fortunate.

  "We're fighting horse Indians, not walking Indians," he himself had pointed out, to more than one governor and many legislators, but the rangers were still mounted on the cheapest horseflesh the horse traders could provide, an economy that cost several rangers their lives.

  "Who are we chasing? Do we know?" he asked Goodnight--he had come to know the fighting styles of several Comanche chiefs rather well.

  "Peta Nocona and some of his hunters," Goodnight said. "That's what I think, and Famous Shoes agrees." "I wonder if Buffalo Hump is still alive," Augustus said. "You'll still hear of Kicking Wolf taking horses now and then, but we ain't had to engage Buffalo Hump since the war started." "He's alive," Goodnight said.

  "How do you know?" Gus asked.

  "Because I'd hear of it if he died," Goodnight said. "So would you. He led two raids all the way to the ocean. No other Comanche has done that. They'll be singing about him, when he dies." Goodnight had a disgusted look on his face.

  "I guess you're mad at me, Charlie, for not keeping up," Augustus ventured.

  "No, but I won't come back for that major again," Goodnight said. "If he can't keep hold of his compass then I'd rather he went home."

  Buffalo Hump was slow to recover from the shitting sickness--the cholera; for the first time in his life he was forced to live with weakness in his limbs and body. For two months he could not mount a horse or even draw a bow. His wives fed him and tended to him. A few of the warriors still came to confer with him for a while, but then they began to avoid him, as the strong always avoid the weak. Kicking Wolf was stealing many horses from the Texans, but he did not ask Buffalo Hump to raid with him, anymore.

  No one asked Buffalo Hump to raid with them now, although warriors from many bands raided frequently. Many whites had gone to fight other whites, in the East; there were few blue coated soldiers left, and few rangers to defend the little farms and settlements. The young warriors killed, tortured, raped, and stole, but they did not take Buffalo Hump with them, nor did they come to him to brag of their courage and their exploits when they returned from the raids with horses or captives.

  They did not ask Buffalo Hump, or brag to him, because he was not young anymore. He had lost his strength, and, with his strength, lost his power.

  Buffalo Hump was resentful--it was not pleasant to be ignored or even scorned by the very warriors he had trained, the very people he had led--but he was not surprised. Many times he had seen great warriors weaken, sicken, grow old, lose their power; the young men who would have once been eager to ride with them quickly came to scorn them. The young warriors were cruel: they whispered and snickered if one of the older men failed to make a kill, or let a captive escape. They respected only the strong men who could not be insulted without a price being paid in blood.

  When Buffalo Hump saw that the time had passed when he could be a powerful chief, he had his wives move his lodge into a cleft in the canyon some distance from camp. He wanted to be where he would not have to listen to the young men brag after each raid--even the screams of tortured captives had begun to irritate him. Buffalo Hump would not be scorned, not in his own camp; if he heard some young warrior whispering about him he would fight, even if it meant his death. But he thought it was only a foolish man who put himself deliberately in the way of such challenges. He took himself away, too far from the main camp for the shouting and dancing to disturb him.

  Then he instructed his wives, Lark and Heavy Leg, how to make good snares--it was a craft he expected them to learn. There was little large game in the canyon now, but plenty of small game: rabbits, skunks, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, quail and dove, possums, and fat prairie hens. He wanted his wives to work their snares and catch what food they needed. When his strength returned, so that he could draw his bow and throw his lance, he meant to journey alone with his wives north to the cold rivers where the buffalo still lived. He would take two pack horses and kill enough meat to last all winter.

  The shitting sickness had not affected his eyes, though, or his ears. He saw the young men riding south, murder in their hearts, singing their war songs; and he could count, as well. He saw how many young men rode out and he saw how many came back. In his days of raiding he rarely lost more than one or two warriors to the guns of the Texans. If he lost more than three men he did not claim victory; and, always, he recovered and brought back the bodies of the fallen warriors, so they could have a proper burial. Now, though, when the young men came back, claiming victory, they had sometimes lost five or six men; once they even lost eight, and, another time, ten. Seldom, in those battles, did they recover more than one or two bodies to bring home. Many warriors were left unburied, a thing that in his time would have shamed any chief or warrior who led a raid.

  But it did not seem to shame the young men--they spoke only of the Texans they had killed and said nothing about the warriors who were lost and whose bodies had been abandoned.

  Usually, after such a raid, a few of the old men would come to Buffalo Hump in his new camp, to discuss the shameful losses and the even more shameful abandonment of bodies. Some of the elders, old Sunrise in particular, wanted Buffalo Hump to speak to the young men; they wanted him to ride with them on a raid, to instruct them of the correct way to behave toward the dead; but Buffalo Hump refused: he would not ride with warriors who didn't want him. The young men had no use for him now--they made that clear by the arrogant looks they gave him when he walked through the camp or rode out to the horse herd to watch the young horses.

  When the old men came to him with their compla
ints he listened but did not say much in reply. He had led the band for a long time, but now could not. Let the young men decide who should be chief; let them do without a chief, if they could not decide. After all, any warrior could follow anyone he wanted to--or follow no one, if that was his choice. Buffalo Hump did not like what he saw, but he could do little about it. His own time was short--it had almost ended in the weeks of his sickness--and he did not intend to use it giving advice to young men who did not want it.

  With Kicking Wolf, though, he sometimes did talk and talk frankly about what the large losses meant.

  "The Texans have learned to fight us," he said.

  Heavy Leg had caught a fat coon in a snare and was cooking it.

  "Some have," Kicking Wolf admitted. "Some are fools." "Yes, some are fools, but Gun In The Water is not a fool, and neither is McCrae," Buffalo Hump said. "They don't get scared now just because we yell at them--theirthe men wait until we are close and then they shoot us. They have better guns now--if they had better horses they would follow us and kill us all." "Their horses are too fat and too slow," Kicking Wolf agreed.

  "That is because you have stolen so many of the good ones," Buffalo Hump told him. Though Kicking Wolf had often annoyed him, it was clear that he was the best horse thief the tribe had ever produced. Now he felt annoyed again, but it was not because Kicking Wolf had been rude. Kicking Wolf had always been rude. What was annoying was that he was younger--he had not been sick, and the hand of age had not touched him. The young men made a little fun of him, but not much. They didn't fear him as a fighter, but they respected him as a thief.

  "Slow Tree has sat down with the white man," Kicking Wolf informed him one day. "So have Moo-ray and Little Cloud. They are all going to the place the whites want to put them, near the Brazos. The Texans have promised to give them beef." That news came as no surprise to Buffalo Hump. He had never sat down with the white men and never would, but it did not surprise him that Slow Tree and others, worn out by the difficulty of feeding their bands, would talk with the whites and go to the places the white men wanted to put them.

  "It is because the buffalo have left," Kicking Wolf said, a little apologetically. Buffalo Hump was looking angry. He did not like the news that Comanches were giving in to the white men, ceasing to fight or be free. Yet he knew how thin the game was; he saw that the buffalo were gone.

  "The buffalo haven't left the world," Buffalo Hump told him. "They have only gone to the north, to be away from the Texans. If we go north we can still kill buffalo." "Slow Tree and the other chiefs are too old," Kicking Wolf said. "They don't like to go into the snows." "No, I see that," Buffalo Hump said.

  "They had rather sit with the Texans and make speeches. They had rather be given beef than steal them, although cattle are easy to steal." Kicking Wolf was sorry he had mentioned that the chiefs were too old. It brought anger to Buffalo Hump's face. He was fingering his knife, the cold look in his eyes. Kicking Wolf understood that the anger was because Buffalo Hump himself was now old--he could not ride the war trail again.

  It was known that he planned to go north, to hunt buffalo alone. Kicking Wolf thought that was foolish but he didn't say anything. There were many whites to the north and they did have good guns.

  "Would you let the whites tell you where to live?" Buffalo Hump asked him. "Would you let them buy you off for a few of their skinny beeves?" "No, I would rather eat horsemeat than beef," Kicking Wolf said. "I can eat the horses I steal. I will never sit down with the whites." There was a long silence. The coon had been chopped up--it was bubbling in the pot. The flesh sagged on Buffalo Hump's arms and his torso was thin now--his hump seemed as if it would pull his body over backward.

  "Doesn't Slow Tree have horses he could eat?" Buffalo Hump asked. "Doesn't Moo-ray?" "They have some horses," Kicking Wolf said.

  "I think they are just tired of fighting. Many of their young men have been killed, and their women are unhappy. They have been fighting for a long time." "We all have been fighting for a long time," Buffalo Hump reminded him. "We have been fighting for our whole lives. That is our way." He was silent again. He had begun to think that it was time for him to leave his people--perh even leave his wives. If, one by one, the chiefs of the various bands were giving up, making peace with the white men, then the time of the free Comanche was over--and so was his own time. Perhaps he should go away, alone, and seek a place to die. The greatest warriors inconvenienced no one when their time was ending. They simply went away, alone or with one old horse. Of course it was a thing rarely done now, a custom that was almost forgotten; the Texans had made it hard for any man to survive long enough to come to the natural end of his time. Now so many warriors fell in battle that few could survive until they could die with dignity, in the old way.

  Buffalo Hump did not want to discuss this possibility with Kicking Wolf. He wanted only one more piece of information: he wanted to know about Quanah, the young chief of the Antelope band, the Comanches who lived the farthest west, in the barren llano. These Comanches had never sat down with the whites. They survived in their harsh land even when the buffalo didn't come. The Antelope Comanches would live on roots and grubs, on weeds and prairie dogs and bulbs they dug from the earth. Buffalo Hump himself had only been among the Antelope Comanches once or twice in his life; they lived too far away, and were not friendly--the fact that they were not friendly was something he had come to admire. They lived in their own place, in the old way, hunting, moving as the game moved, finding enough water to survive in a place where no one else could find water. The Antelope rarely fought the whites, because the whites could not find them. When the whites came the Antelope merely retreated deeper and deeper into the long space of the llano. Always, the whites ran out of food and out of water before they could attack them. Antelope knew their country and could survive in it; the whites didn't know it, and feared it. Even Famous Shoes, the Kickapoo who went everywhere, did not try to follow the Antelope Comanches to their watering holes.

  Even he found the llano too hard a test.

  Now Buffalo Hump had heard that there was a young chief of the Antelope band--his name was Quanah. Though scarcely more than a boy he was said to be a great fighter, decisive and terrible in battle, a horseman and hunter, one who had no fear either of the whites or of the country. The talk was that Quanah was half white, the son of Peta Nocona and the captive Naduah, who had been with the Comanche for many years. She had been taken in a raid near the Brazos when Buffalo Hump himself had been young. Naduah had been with the People so long that she had forgotten that she was a captive--now her son led the Antelope Comanches and kept his people far from the whites and their councils.

  When Buffalo Hump asked about Quanah, Kicking Wolf did not answer immediately. The subject seemed to annoy him.

  "I took him four good horses but he didn't want them," he said, finally.

  "Did you try to fool him?" Buffalo Hump asked. "I remember that you used to try and trade me bad horses. You only wanted to trade the horses there was something wrong with. Maybe Quanah is too smart for you. Maybe he knew those horses had something wrong with them." Kicking Wolf immediately rose and prepared to leave.

  "There was nothing wrong with the horses I took him, or with the horses I traded you, either," he said. "Someday Quanah will wish he had horses as good as those I took him." Then he walked away, to the embarrassment of Heavy Leg and Lark, who had been preparing to offer him some of the coon--t was the polite thing to do. When Buffalo Hump visited Kicking Wolf he always politely ate a little of what Kicking Wolf's wives had prepared. He was a good guest--he did not simply get up and leave just as the meal was ready. Lark and Heavy Leg were afraid they might have done something to offend their guest. Perhaps he was forbidden to eat coon? They didn't know what to think, but they were fearful. If they had erred, Buffalo Hump would surely beat them--since his sickness he was often in a bad temper and beat them for the smallest errors in the management of the lodge. They knew that the beatings mainly
came about because Buffalo Hump was old and ill, but they were severe beatings anyway, so severe that it behooved them to be as careful as possible.

  This time, though, Buffalo Hump merely ate his food; he said nothing to his wives. It amused him that Kicking Wolf was annoyed with Quanah, the young war chief of the Antelopes, just because he was a good judge of horseflesh. It only impressed Buffalo Hump more, that Quanah had refused to trade with Kicking Wolf. Living where he lived, on the llano, where the distances to be travelled were great and the forage sparse, a war chief could not afford to make mistakes about horses. If a horse's feet were poor it might imperil the success of a hunt, and the P's survival depended on the hunt.

  Of course, Kicking Wolf was notorious--and had been throughout his whole career as a thief--for attempting to trade off horses that looked like fine horses but that had one hard-to-detect flaw. Perhaps a given horse was deficient in endurance, or had no wind, or had hooves that were prone to splitting. Kicking Wolf was skilled at glossing over flaws that only a man with an experienced eye could see. There was a way of knowing that some men had and some men didn't. Kicking Wolf could watch a horse graze for a few minutes and know whether he was watching a good horse. But fewer and fewer could do that. Buffalo Hump had never been an exact appraiser of horseflesh himself. What he knew was that Kicking Wolf was tricky and that he ought to be wary of the horses that Kicking Wolf praised the most.