Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

by Comanche Moon

  "I admit that I was lucky it was so dark," Gus said. "If it had been daylight I expect he would have got me." In Famous Shoes' opinion that was true.

  If the encounter with Buffalo Hump had occurred in daylight Captain McCrae would probably be dead.

  "If I have all this luck, why do my wives keep dying?" Augustus asked.

  It seemed to Famous Shoes that Captain McCrae was wanting to know the answer to questions that had no answer. Though it was sometimes possible to say why a particular woman died, it was not possible to say why one man's wives died while another man's lived. Such things were mysteries--no man could understand them, any more than a man could understand the rain and the wind. In some springs there were rain clouds, in other springs none. In some years frost came early, in other years it came late. Some women bore children easily, others died in the effort. Why one man fell in battle while the man fighting right beside him lived was a thing that could not be known. Some medicine man might know about the arrowheads he had found, and about the scraper, or the pots, but no medicine man or wise man knew why one man died and another lived. Wise men themselves often died before fools, and cowards before men who were brave. Famous Shoes knew that Captain McCrae enjoyed discussing such matters, but he himself could not spare the time for extended conversation, not when he had such a great distance to travel, on such an urgent errand.

  "It was good that you showed me those arrowheads that were not from the Comanche," Famous Shoes said. "That was a good place to look for old arrowheads. I found some for myself." "I've heard they sell arrowheads, back east," Augustus told him. "The Indians back east have forgotten how to make them--I guess they've got too used to guns. Back in Carolina and Georgia and them places, the only way folks can get arrowheads is to buy them in a store." Famous Shoes was feeling very impatient.

  Captain McCrae was one of the most talkative people he had ever known. Sometimes, when there was leisure for lengthy conversation, he was an interesting man to listen to. He was curious about things that most white men paid no attention to. But everyone was curious about death--Famous Shoes didn't feel he could spend any more time discussing it with Captain McCrae, and he had no interest in discussing tribes of Indians who were so degenerate that they no longer knew how to make arrowheads.

  "I will see you again when I have time," he said.

  "Damnit, I wish you wasn't always in such a hurry," Augustus said, but his ^ws simply floated away. Famous Shoes was already walking toward the Trinity River.

  Augustus could not restrain his amusement that Woodrow Call, stiff and nervous, confided his suspicion that Maggie Tilton had an involvement with Jake Spoon that went beyond the friendly.

  "Didn't you ever notice Jake carrying her groceries, or helping her with her garden?" Augustus asked.

  "I noticed," Call said. "But a man ought to help a woman carry groceries, or help her with a garden if he knows anything about gardens.

  I'm ignorant in that field myself." "Not as ignorant as you are in the woman field," Augustus said. "If Maggie was the sun you'd have to carry around a sundial to let you know if it's a cloudy day." "You can hold off on the fancy talk, Gus," Call said, annoyed. It had taken him a week to work up to confiding in Augustus and he did not appreciate the flippant way his confidence was being treated.

  "I think he bunks there," he added, so there would be no doubt as to the nature of his suspicions.

  Augustus realized that his friend was considerably upset. With effort he held in his amusement and even passed up a chance to make another flowery comparison in regard to Woodrow's ignorance about women--an ignorance he believed to be profound.

  He knew there were times when Call could be safely teased and times when he couldn't; in his judgment much more teasing in the present situation might result in fisticuffso. Woodrow appeared to be drawn about as tightly as it was safe to draw him.

  "Woodrow, you're correct--Jake's been bunking with Maggie for a while," Augustus said, keeping his tone mild.

  It was the news Call had feared; yet Augustus delivered it as matter-of-factly as if he were merely announcing that he needed a new pair of boots. They were standing by the corrals in bright sunlight, watching Pea Eye try to rope a young gelding, a strawberry roan. The boy Newt watched from a perch atop the fence.

  Pea Eye caught the gelding on the third throw and dug in his heels as the young horse began to fight the rope.

  "Pea's getting trained up to a point where he can almost rope," Gus said. "I can remember when it took him thirty throws to catch his horse." Call was silent. He wasn't interested in how many throws it took Pea Eye to catch a horse, nor was he interested in the six young horses the rangers had just purchased from a horse trader near Waco, though he had approved the purchase himself and signed the check.

  Normally the arrival of six new horses, acquired at no small cost, would have occupied him immediately--but what occupied him then was Augustus's acknowledgment that Jake was living with Maggie Tilton and her son, Newt--or, if not fully living with her, at least bunking with her to the extent that suited his pleasure and hers.

  Augustus saw that his friend was stumped, if not stunned, by the discovery of a situation that had been no secret to most of the rangers for well over a year. It was a peculiar oversight on Woodrow's part, not to notice such things, but then Woodrow Call always had been able to overlook almost everything in life not connected with the work of being a Texas Ranger.

  "If you knew about this why didn't you tell me?" Call asked.

  Augustus found himself finally having the conversation he had been dreading for a year. He had long known that Woodrow was more attached to Maggie Tilton than he allowed himself to admit. He wouldn't marry her or claim as a son the nice little boy sitting on the fence of the corral; but neither of those evasions meant that Woodrow Call wasn't mighty fond of Maggie Tilton--even though he knew that Call had stopped visiting her as a lover about the time Newt was born. Call had known Maggie longer than he himself had known Clara Allen. It was a long stretch of time, during which Woodrow had displayed no interest, serious or trivial, in any other woman.

  Augustus knew, too, that the fact that Woodrow was awkward about his feelings didn't mean that his feelings were light--Maggie Tilton, he felt sure, knew this as well as anyone.

  Evidence that Woodrow Call harbored no light feeling for Maggie was right before him: Call looked blank and sad, not unlike the way survivors looked after an Indian raid or a shoot-out of some kind.

  "I suppose I am a fool," Call said.

  "I would never have expected her to accept Jake Spoon." "Why?" Gus asked. "Jake ain't a bad fellow, which ain't to say that he's George Washington, or a fine hero like me." "He's lazy and will shirk what he can shirk," Call replied. "I will admit that he writes a nice hand." "Well, that's it, Woodrow--t's accurate," Augustus said. "Jake's just a middling fellow. He ain't really a coward, though he don't seek fights. He's lazy and he'll whore, and I expect he cheats a little at cards when he thinks he can get away with it.

  But he helps ladies with their groceries and is handy at gardening and will even paint a lady's house for her if the lady is pretty enough." "Maggie's pretty enough," Call replied.

  "She is, yes," Augustus said. "I will have to say I ain't noticed Jake doing too many favors for the ugly gals." "Damn it, he's taken advantage of her!" Call said. He could think of no other explanation for the situation.

  "No, I don't think he has," Gus said.

  "I think Jake's been about as good to Maggie as he's able to be." "Why would you say that?" Call asked--of course it was like Augustus to take the most irritating position possible.

  "I say it because it's true," Gus said.

  "He's been a damn sight more helpful to her than you've ever been." There was a silence between the two men. Neither looked at one another for a bit--both pretended they were watching Pea Eye, who had managed to get the gelding snubbed to the heavy post in the center of the corral.

  Call started to make a hot reply, b
ut choked it off. He knew he wasn't really much help to Maggie--z his duties as a ranger captain had increased, he had less and less time to devote to the common chores that Maggie, like everyone else, might need help with. He didn't carry her groceries or help her with her gardening; the fact was, rangering or no rangering, he had never felt comfortable doing things with Maggie in public. If they met in the street he spoke and tipped his hat, but he rarely strolled with her or walked her home. It was not his way. If Jake or Gus or any decent fellow wanted to do otherwise, that was fine with him.

  But what Jake was doing now--or seemed to be doing--went well beyond giving Maggie a hand with her groceries or her garden. It bothered him, but he was getting no sympathy from Augustus; what he was getting, instead, was criticism.

  "I have no doubt you think I'm in the wrong," Call said. "You always do, unless it's just rangering that's involved." "You're always fussing at me about my whoring and drinking," Augustus reminded him. "I suppose I have a right to fuss at you when the matter is crystal clear." "It may be crystal clear to you, but it's damn murky to me," Call said.

  Augustus shrugged. He nodded toward Newt, who still sat on the fence, absorbed by the struggle between Pea Eye and the gelding. The boy loved horses. The rangers took him riding, when they could, and there was talk about finding him a pony or at least a small gentle horse.

  "That boy sitting there is yours as sure as sunlight, but you won't claim him or give him your name and you've been small help with his raising," Augustus pointed out. "Pea Eye's more of a pa to him than you've been, and so am I and so is Jake. Maggie would like to be married to you, but she ain't. The only thing I don't understand about it is why she tolerates you at all. A man who won't claim his child wouldn't be sitting in my parlor much, if I was a gal." Call turned and walked off. He didn't need any more conversation about the boy; in particular he was sick of hearing how much the boy resembled him. The business about the resemblances annoyed him intensely: the boy just looked like a boy.

  Discussing such matters with Augustus was clearly a waste of time. Augustus had held to his own view for years, and was not likely to change it.

  He heard the whirl of a grindstone behind the little shed where the rangers did most of their harness repair and handiwork. Deets was there, sharpening an axe and a couple of spades. The cockleburs were bad in the river bottom where the horses watered --Deets sharpened the spades so he could spade them down and spare the rangers the tedious labor of pulling cockleburs out of their horses' tails, an annoyance that put them all out of temper.

  "Deets, would you go get Newt and walk him to his mother?" Call asked. "It's a hot day, and he won't stay in the shade. He'll get too hot if he just sits there in the sun." "That boy need a hat," Deets observed.

  The grindstone was the kind that operated with a pedal, but the pedal had a tendency to stick. He had a cramp in his calf from working the old sticking pedal most of the day; but he had an impressive pile of well-sharpened tools to show for his effort: four axes, seven hatchets, an adze, five spades, and a double-bladed pickaxe. Walking a little with Newt would be a nice relief. Captain Call had promised to get him a better grindstone at some point, but so far the money for it hadn't been made available. Captain Augstus said it was the legislature's fault.

  "That legislature, it's slow," Augustus often said.

  Deets thought probably the reason the legislature was so slow to provide a grindstone was because so many of the senators were drunk most of the time. Deets had had one or two senators pointed out to him and later had seen the very same man sprawled out full length in the street, heavily drunk. One senator had even lost a hand while sleeping in the middle of the street on a foggy morning. A wagon came along the street and a rear wheel passed over the senator's wrist, cutting off his hand as neatly as a butcher or a surgeon could have. Deets had been struggling to extract a long mesquite thorn from the hock of one of the pack mules at the time: he still remembered the senator's piercing scream, when he awoke to find that his hand was gone and his right wrist spurting blood into the fog. The scream had such terror in it that Deets and most of the other people who heard it assumed it could only mean an Indian attack. Men rushed for their guns and women for their hiding places. While the rushing was going on the senator fainted. While the whole town hunkered down, waiting for the scalping Comanches to pour in among them, the senator lay unconscious in the street, bleeding. When the fog lifted, with no one scalped and no Comanches to be seen, the local blacksmith found the senator, still fainted, and, by that time, bled white. The man lived, but he soon stopped being a senator. As Deets understood it, the man decided just to stay home, where he could drink with much less risk.

  Now the Captain was wanting him to carry Newt home to his mother, a task he was happy to undertake. He liked Newt, and would have bought him a good little hat to shade him on sunny days, if he could have afforded it. Mainly, though, Deets was just given his room and board and a dollar a month toward expenses--in his present situation he could not afford to be buying little boys hats.

  The boy still sat on the fence, watching Pea Eye trying to rope a second gelding, the first one having been firmly snubbed to the post. Call stood watching--not at the boy or the roper; just watching generally, it seemed to Deets.

  "Newt wishing he could be a roper," Deets said. "A roper like Mr. Pea." Call had just watched Pea Eye miss the skinny gelding for the fourth time; he was not pleased.

  "If he ever is a roper, I hope he's better at it than Pea Eye Parker," he said, before he walked away.

  "Yes, he stays here, when I can keep him out of the saloons," Maggie said, when Call asked her if Jake was sleeping at her house.

  She didn't say it bashfully, either. Newt had an earache; she was warming cornmeal in a sock, for him to hold against his ear. Graciela had told her she ought to drip warm honey in Newt's ear, but Maggie didn't think the earache was severe enough to risk making that big a mess. In fact, she wondered if it was an earache at all, or just a new way Newt had thought of to get himself a little more attention. Newt enjoyed his minor illnesses. Sometimes he could persuade his mother to let him sleep with her when he was a little sick, or could pretend to be. Maggie suspected that this was only a pretend earache, but she warmed the cornmeal anyway. She did not appreciate Woodrow Call's question and didn't bother to conceal how she felt. For years she had concealed most of what she felt about Woodrow, but she had given up on him and had no reason to conceal her feelings anymore.

  "Well, I am surprised," Call said cautiously. He felt on unfamiliar ground with Maggie; possibly infirm ground as well.

  She didn't look up when she informed him that Jake was sleeping there.

  "I ain't a rock," Maggie said, in reply, and this time she did look up.

  Call didn't know what she meant--he had never suggested that she was a rock.

  "I guess I don't know what you're trying to say," he said cautiously. "I can see you ain't a rock." "No, I doubt you can see it," Maggie said.

  "You're too strong, Woodrow. You don't understand what it's like to be weak, because you ain't weak, and you've got no sympathy for those who are." "What has that got to do with Jake bunking here?" Call asked.

  Maggie turned her eyes to him; her mouth was set. She didn't want to cry--she had done more than enough crying about Woodrow Call over the years. She might do more, still, but if so, she hoped at least not to do it in front of him. It was too humiliating to always be crying about the same feeling in front of the same man.

  "I need somebody here at night," Maggie said. "Not every night, but sometimes. I get scared.

  Besides that, I've got a boy. He needs someone around who can be like a pa. You don't want to stay with me, and you don't want to be a pa to Newt." She paused; despite her determination to control herself, her hands were shaking as she spooned the hot cornmeal into the old sock.

  It always seemed to come back to the same thing, Call thought. He wasn't willing to be her husband and he wasn't willing, either, to clai
m Newt as his son. He knew that might give him a limited right to criticize, and he hadn't come to criticize, merely to find out if his suspicion about Maggie and Jake was true. It seemed that it was true; he had merely been honest when he said the fact surprised him.

  "If it makes you think the less of me, I can't help it," Maggie said. "Jake ain't my first choice--I reckon I don't have to tell you that. But he ain't a bad man, either. He's kind to me and he likes Newt. If I didn't have someone around who liked my son, I expect I would have given up the ghost." "I don't want you to give up the ghost," Call said at once; he was shocked by the comment.

  "The rangering does keep me busy," he adding not knowing what else to say.

  "You wouldn't help me if helping me was the last thing in the world you had to do," Maggie told him, unable to hold back a flash of anger. "You don't know how to help nobody, Woodrow--at least you don't know how to help nobody who's female.