Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

by Comanche Moon

  Red Badger's poor vision made the buffalo seem as if it were standing up, so he kept shooting over it. In battle he shot wildly, hitting no one. Some of the warriors were even afraid Red Badger might accidentally shoot one of them. He would not be the one to protect them from the Texans, if they followed past the Brazos.

  Fast Boy was taken aback by Kicking Wolf's statement about the Sierra Perdida.

  Those mountains were the stronghold of Ahumado, the dark-skinned bandit whom the whites called the Black Vaquero, because he was so cruel and also because he was so good at stealing cattle from the big ranches of the Texans, down below the Nueces River. Ahumado hated the Texans and killed them in many cruel ways; but what made Kicking Wolf's statement startling was that he also hated Comanches--when he caught Comanches he killed them with tortures just as bad as those he visited on the Texans.

  "The Black Vaquero lives in the Sierra Perdida," Fast Boy reminded Kicking Wolf. "He is a bad old man." "That is where I am going--the Sierra Perdida," Kicking Wolf repeated, and then he was silent.

  Fast Boy didn't say more, mainly because he knew that it was easy to put Kicking Wolf in a bad mood by questioning his decisions. He was far worse than Buffalo Hump in that regard.

  Buffalo Hump didn't mind questions from his warriors--he wanted the men he fought with to understand what they were supposed to do. And he gave careful orders. Problems with Buffalo Hump would come only if the orders were not carried out properly.

  If some warrior failed to do his part in a raid, then Buffalo Hump's anger would be terrible.

  With Kicking Wolf, though, it was unwise to rush in with questions, even though what he wanted to do seemed crazy. Stealing the Buffalo Horse was a little crazy, but then Kicking Wolf was a great stealer of horses and could probably manage it; but the really crazy part of his plan was taking the horse to Ahumado's country, a thing that made no sense at all. Even Buffalo Hump was careful to avoid the Sierra Perdida when he raided into Mexico. It was not from fear--Buffalo Hump feared nothing--but from practicality. In the Sierra Perdida or the villages near it there were no captives to take, because Ahumado had already taken all the children from the villages there--if he did not keep the captives as slaves, he traded them north, to the Apaches. Some people even speculated that Ahumado himself was Apache, but Famous Shoes, the Kickapoo, who went everywhere, said no, Ahumado was not an Apache.

  "Ahumado is from the south," Famous Shoes said.

  When questioned about the statement Famous Shoes could not be more specific. He did not know what tribe Ahumado belonged to, only that it was from the south.

  "From the south, where the jungle is," he said.

  None of the Comanches knew the ^w, so Famous Shoes explained that the jungle was a forest, where it rained often and where Jaguar, the great cat, hunted. That was all Famous Shoes knew.

  Fast Boy did not ask any more questions, but he thought he ought to make his views clear about the foolish thing Kicking Wolf wanted to do. Fast Boy was a warrior, a veteran of many battles with the whites andwiththe Mexicans. He had a right to speak his mind.

  "If we go into the Sierra Perdida, Ahumado will kill us all," he said.

  Kicking Wolf merely looked at him coldly.

  "If you are afraid of him you don't have to go," Kicking Wolf said.

  "I am not afraid of him and I know I don't have to go," Fast Boy said. "I don't have to go anywhere, except to look for something to eat. I wanted you to know what I think." Red Badger was of the same opinion as Fast Boy but he didn't want to state his views quite so plainly.

  "Once I was in Mexico and a bad thorn stuck in my knee," he said. "It was a green thorn. It went in behind my knee and almost ate my leg off. That thorn was more poisonous than a snake." He paused. No one said anything.

  "Ever since then I have not liked going to Mexico," Red Badger added.

  "You don't have to go, either," Kicking Wolf said. "Once Three Birds and I have the Buffalo Horse we will go alone to Mexico." Three Birds looked at the sky. He had heard some geese and looked up to see if he could spot them. He was very fond of geese and thought that if the geese were planning to stop somewhere close by, he might go and try to snare one.

  The geese were there, all right, many geese, but they would not be stopping anywhere nearby. They were very high, almost as high as the clouds. No one else had even noticed them, but Three Birds had good hearing and could always hear geese when they were passing over, even if they were high, near the clouds.

  He made no comment about the business of Mexico. It seemed risky, to him, but if Kicking Wolf wanted to go, that was enough for Three Birds. When there was discussion he rarely spoke his thoughts. He liked to keep his own thoughts inside him, and not mix them up promiscuously with the thoughts of other warriors, or of women, or of anyone.

  His thoughts were his; he didn't want them out in the air. Because of the firm way he stuck to his preference and kept his thoughts inside himself, some Comanches thought he was a mute. They thought he was too dumb to talk and were puzzled that Kicking Wolf put so much stock in his ability.

  Sometimes even Kicking Wolf himself was annoyed by Three Birds' silence, his unwillingness to give an opinion.

  "What is wrong with you?" he asked Three Birds one time. "You never speak. Where are your ^ws? Are you so ignorant that you have forgotten all your ^ws?" Three Birds had been a little offended by Kicking Wolf's rude speech. When Kicking Wolf asked him that question Three Birds got up and left the camp for a week. He saw no reason to stay around if Kicking Wolf was going to be rude to him. He had not forgotten his ^ws and would speak them when he felt like it. He did not feel he had to speak idle ^ws just because Kicking Wolf had decided that he was in a mood to hear him speak.

  What Three Birds saw, when he looked in the sky, besides the geese that were not stopping, was that it was going to get even colder than it had been; it was going to stay very cold for a while yet. There would be more snow and more sleet.

  "When will you steal the Buffalo Horse?" Red Badger asked. Red Badger was the opposite of Three Birds. He could not hold in his questions, or stay quiet for long. Red Badger often talked even when he had nothing to say that anyone at all would want to hear.

  Kicking Wolf didn't answer the loquacious young warrior. He was thinking of the south, andof how angry Big Horse Scull would be when he woke up and discovered that his great warhorse was gone.

  Maggie could tell by the footsteps that the man outside her door was drunk. The footsteps were unsteady and the man had just lurched into the wall, though it was early morning. A man so drunk at that hour of the morning that he could not walk steadily might have been drinking all night. The thought made her very apprehensive, so apprehensive that she considered not opening her door. A man that drunk might well be violent--he might beat her or tear her clothes. Maybe he would be quick and pass out--t sometimes happened with men who were very drunk--but that was about the best that she could expect, if she opened her door to a drunk. Some drunks merely wallowed on her, unable to finish; or the exertion might agitate the man's stomach--m than once men had thrown up on her or fouled her bed with vomit.

  For Maggie, it had never been easy, opening her door to a man. Once the door was open she was caught; if a bad man or a cruel man was standing there, then she was in for a bad time. Sometimes, of course, the customer outside her door would just be some unhappy man whose wife had passed away.

  Those men, who were just looking for a little pleasure or comfort, were not a problem. The men she feared were the men who wanted to punish women--t was the chief peril of her profession; Maggie had endured many sweaty, desperate times, dealing with such men.

  She always opened the door, though; not opening it could cause consequences just as grave. The man outside might grow angry enough to break down the door, in which case the landlord might throw her out.

  At the very least, she would have to pay for the door.

  Besides that, the customer might go to the sheriff and complain; he m
ight claim that she had stolen money --t or some other accusation. The ^w of any man, however dishonest, was more with a sheriff than the ^w of a whore. Or the aggrieved customer might complain to his friends and stir them up; several times gangs of men had caught her, egged on by some dissatisfied customer. Those times had been bad. Much as it might frighten her to open her door, Maggie never let herself forget that she was a whore and had to live by certain rules, one being that you opened the door to the customer before the customer got mad enough to break it down.

  Still, it was her room--she felt she could at least take her time buttoning her dress. It was important to her that her dress be buttoned modestly before she let a man into her room. She knew it might seem contradictory, since the man outside was coming in to pay her to unbutton the same dress; but Maggie still buttoned up. She felt that if she ever started opening the door with her dress unbuttoned she would lose all hope for herself. There was time enough to do what she had to do when the man had paid his money.

  She opened the door cautiously and received a grim shock: the person who had just lurched down the hall was the young ranger Jake Spoon, who had only been in the troop a few weeks. He was so drunk that he had dropped to his knees and was holding his stomach--but when he saw Maggie he mastered his gut and put out a hand, so she could help him up.

  "Why, Mr. Spoon," Maggie said. "Are you sickly?" Instead of answering Jake Spoon crawled past her, into her room. Once inside he got to his feet and walked unsteadily across the room to her bed--then he sat down on the bed and began to pull off his boots and unbutton his shirt.

  Jake Spoon looked up at her mutely--he seemed to be puzzled by the fact that she was still standing in the doorway.

  "I got money," he said. "I ain't a cheat." Then he pulled his shirt off, dropped it on the floor, and stood up, holding on to a bedpost to steady himself. Without even looking at her again he opened his pants.

  Maggie felt her heart sink. Jake was a Texas Ranger, although just come to the troop. In the years that Maggie had been seeing Woodrow Call it had become known to the rangers that she and Woodrow had an attachment. It was not yet the sort of attachment that Maggie yearned for; if it had been she would not have been renting a cheap room, and opening her door to drunken strangers.

  But it was an attachment; she wanted it and Woodrow wanted it, though he might have been slow to admit it. Sensing the attachment, the other rangers who knew Woodrow well had gradually begun to leave Maggie alone. They soon realized that it was distasteful to her, to be selling herself to Woodrow's friends. Though Call never said anything directly, the rangers could tell that he didn't like it if one of them went with Maggie. Augustus McCrae, an indiscriminate whorer, would never think of approaching Maggie, although he had long admired her looks and her deportment. Indeed, Gus had often urged Woodrow to marry Maggie, and end her chancy life as a whore, a life that so often led to sickness or death at an early age.

  Woodrow had so far declined to marry her but lately he had been more helpful, and more generous with money. Now he sometimes gave her money to buy things for her room, small conveniences that she couldn't afford. It was her deepest hope and fondest dream that Woodrow would someday forbid her to whore; maybe what they had wouldn't go as far as marriage, but at least it might remove her from the rough traffic that had been her life.

  Woodrow's argument, the few times they had approached the subject, was that he was often gone for months on hazardous patrols, any one of which could result in his death. He felt Maggie ought to take care of herself and continue to earn what she could in case he was cut down in battle. Of course, Maggie knew that rangering was dangerous and that Woodrow might be killed, in which case her dream of a life with him would never be realized.

  She never spoke of her life as a whore, when she was with Woodrow; in her own mind her real life was their life. The rest of it she tried to pretend was happening to someone else. But the pretense was only a lie she told herself to help her get through the days. In fact it .was her who opened her door to the men, who took their money, who inspected them to see that they were not diseased, who accepted them into her body. She had been a desperate girl, with both parents dead, when she was led into whoring in San Antonio; now she was no longer a girl, but the desperation was still with her.

  She felt it even then, as Jake Spoon stood there in her room, drunk almost to the point of nausea, with his pants open, pointing himself at her and waiting sullenly.

  Woodrow didn't know about her desperation-- Maggie had never told him how much she hated what she did. He might have sensed it at times, but he didn't know how hard it was, on a morning when all she wanted to do was sit quietly and sew, to have to deal with a man so drunk that he had to crawl into her room. Worse than that, he was a ranger, the same as Woodrow; he ought to have known to seek another whore.

  "Why are you standing over there? I'm ready," Jake said. His pants had slipped down to his ankles; he had to bend to pull them up, so he could dig into his pocket and come out with the coins.

  "But you're sickly, Mr. Spoon--y can barely stand up," Maggie said, trying to think of some stratagem that would cause him to get dressed again and go away.

  "Don't need to stand up and I ain't sick," Jake said, though, to his dismay, the act of speaking almost caused his stomach to come up. He swayed for a moment but fought the nausea down. It was the whore's fault, he decided--she hadn't come over to help him with his clothes, as a whore should.

  He fumbled again for the coins and finally got them out of his pocket.

  Looking at the whore, who had closed the door behind her but still stood across the room, staring at him, Jake felt his anger rising. Her name was Maggie, he knew; the boys all said she was sweet on Woodrow Call, but Woodrow Call was far up the plains and the warning meant little to Jake. All whores were sweet on somebody.

  "Come here--I got the money!" he demanded.

  In his mind, which swirled from drink, was the recent memory of the wild games he had played with Inez Scull--acts so raw that even whores might not do them. He didn't like it that the whore he had chosen was so standoffish. What of it if she was sweet on Woodrow Call?

  Maggie saw there was no way out of it, without risking the sheriff, or a worse calamity. In another minute the young ranger would start yelling, or else do her violence. She didn't want the yelling or the violence, which might lead to her having to move from the room she had tried to make into a pleasant place for Woodrow to visit when he was home.

  She didn't want to get thrown out, so she went across the room and accepted Jake Spoon's money. She didn't look Jake in the eye; she tried to make herself small. Maybe, if she was lucky, the boy would just do it and go.

  Maggie wasn't lucky, though. The minute she took Jake's money he drew back his hand and slapped her hard in the face.

  Jake slapped the whore because he was angry with her for being so standoffish and lingering so long, but he also gave her the slap because that was how Madame Scull had started things with him. The minute he walked upstairs she would come out of the bedroom and slap his face. The next thing he knew they would be on the floor, tussling fiercely. Then they would do the raw things.

  He wanted, again, what he had had with Inez Scull. He didn't understand why she had cut his hair and thrown him out. Her coldness upset him so that he stole a bottle of whiskey from a shed behind the saloon and drank the whole bottle down.

  The whiskey burned at first, and then numbed him a little, but it didn't cool the fever he felt at the memory of his hot tusslings with Inez Scull. Only a woman could cool that fever, and the handiest woman happened to be Woodrow Call's whore.

  She had very white skin, the whore--when he slapped her, her cheek became immediately red. But the slap didn't set things off, as it had when Madame Scull slapped him. Maggie, Call's whore, didn't utter a sound. She didn't slap him back, or grab him, or do anything wild or raw. She just put the money away, took off her dress, and lay back on the bed, waiting. She wouldn't even so much as look
at him, although, in an effort to make her a little more lively, he pulled her hair. But neither the slap nor the hair pulling worked at all.

  Except for flexing herself a little when he crawled on top of her, the whore didn't move a muscle, or speak or cry out or yell or bite or even sigh. She didn't scream and kick and jerk, as Madame Scull did every time they were together.

  As soon as the young ranger finished--it took considerably longer than she had hoped--Maggie got off the bed and went behind a little screen, to clean herself. She meant to stay behind the screen, hiding, until Jake Spoon left. She knew she would have a bad bruise on her cheek, from the slap. She didn't want to see the young man again, if she could help it.

  Again, though, Maggie was not lucky. While she was cleaning herself she heard Jake retching and went out to find him on his hands and knees again. At least he was vomiting in a basin; he had not ruined the new carpet she had saved up to buy.