Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

by Comanche Moon

  "How far ahead do you suppose Captain Call's party is?" the Major asked the next morning, as he was sipping coffee.

  "I can't really say, Major," Augustus said. "We're the slow wing of this procession." "We've come quite a distance from that fort, sir," the Major said. "Why do you think we're slow?" "Because we still stop and sleep at night," Augustus said. "Sleep does slow a troop down, unless you sleep in your saddle, and Mr.

  Goodnight is the only one of us who's skilled at saddle snoozing. Call don't sleep at night, neither does Goodnight, and neither does Famous Shoes. I imagine some of the men with them are so tired they'd be willing to get scalped if only they could have a good nap afws." Major Featherstonhaugh seemed unconvinced by the remark--or, if not unconvinced, uninterested.

  "It's time to give out the prunes now," he said. "We mustn't forget the prunes, Captain." Major Hiram Featherstonhaugh was a firm believer in the efficacy of prunes, as an aid to regularity for men on the march. One of the pack mules carried two large sacks of prunes; leaving nothing to chance, the Major had Deets open one of the sacks each morning, so that he himself could dispense the prunes. He personally handed each man in the company six prunes, which, after some experimentation, he had concluded was the number of prunes most likely to ensure clear movements in a troop of men on the march.

  "Here now, have your prunes, gentlemen," the Major said, as he went briskly around the troop. "Clear movements now, clear movements." Augustus, the last man to receive his morning allotment, waited until the Major's back was turned and dropped his back in the sack. He did not insist that the rangers eat prunes, but he urged them not to throw them away, either.

  "We might get to a place out here on the baldies where a prune would taste mighty good," he said. "Just wait till the Major ain't looking and put them back in the sack." Pea Eye particularly hated prunes; he had carelessly eaten one the first morning and had been unable to rid himself of the pruny taste all day.

  "What kind of a tree would grow a prune?" he asked.

  "A Vermont kind of tree, I reckon," Augustus said. "The Major says he grew up eating them." "Maybe that's why he don't never smile," Pea Eye said. "They probably shrunk up his mouth till he can't get a smile out." "Or it might be that he's got nothing to smile about, particularly," Augustus said. "Here he is in Texas, which he don't like, trying to count Indians he can't find and couldn't whip if he did find." Within an hour of breaking camp the rangers found themselves riding into a brisk north wind. The long horizons quickly blurred until there was no horizon, just blowing yellowish dust. The rangers tied their bandannas over their noses and their mouths, but the soldiers lacked bandannas and took the stinging dust full in the face. The wind that whirled across the long spaces sang in their ears, unnerving some of the soldiers, recent arrivals who had never experienced a full norther on the plains. The howling wind convinced some of the young recruits that they were surrounded by wolves or other beasts.

  The rangers had told them many stories of Comanche torture, but had said nothing about winds that sounded like the howling of beasts.

  "On a day like this it's good that the Major don't smile," Pea Eye said to Jake.

  "If he did it would just let in the grit." In the afternoon the wind, which had been high to begin with, increased to gale force. Increasingly, it was difficult to get the horses to face it; also, the temperature was dropping. Augustus tried to persuade Major Featherstonhaugh of the wisdom of stopping until the norther blew itself out.

  "It won't blow like this long, Major," he said. "We could take shelter in one of these gullies and wait it out. Out here it's risky to travel when you can't see where you're going. We might ride off a cliff." Major Featherstonhaugh was unmoved by the advice. Once started, he preferred not to stop until a day's march had been completed, however adverse the weather conditions.

  "I don't need to see where I'm going, Captain," he said. "I have a compass. I consult it frequently. I can assure you that we're going north, due north." An hour later the half-blinded troop stumbled into and out of a steep gully; in the rock terrain, half peppered by blowing sand, the Major dropped his compass, but didn't immediately register the loss. When, at the half hour, he reached for it, meaning to take his bearings, as he always did twice hourly, he discovered that he no longer had his compass, a circumstance which vexed him greatly.

  "I must ask you to stop the troop and wait, Captain," he said. "I must have dropped my compass when we were crossing that declivity--what do you call it?" "A gully, Major," Gus said.

  "Yes, that's probably where it is," the Major said. "It's back in that gully. I'll just hurry back and find it." "Major, I doubt you'll find it," Augustus said. "The sand's blowing so thick you can barely see your horse's ears. That compass will be covered up by now, most likely." "Nonsense, I'm sure I can find it," the Major said. "I'll just retrace my steps.

  You give the men a few prunes, while you're waiting. Important to avoid constipation, Captain--an army can't fight if it's constipated." "Major, I've got a compass, take it," Augustus said, horrified by what the man planned to do. He was convinced that if the Major rode off in such a storm they would probably never see him again.

  "I know mine probably ain't as good as yours, but it will point you north, at least," he assured the Major, holding out his own compass.

  "I don't want your compass, Captain--I want my own," Major Featherstonhaugh said firmly. "It was my father's compass--it was made in Reading, England--x's our family compass.

  It's made the trip around the Cape. I'm not going to leave it in some declivity in west Texas. I'd never be able to face Pa. He expects me to have this compass when I come home, I can assure you of that, Captain McCrae.

  Prunes, men, prunes." With that, the Major turned and was gone.

  Augustus was nonplussed. He knew he ought to send someone with the Major, to help him find his way back, but he had no one to send except himself and he did not feel it wise to leave the troop, in such a situation. The men were huddled around him--in the blowing sand they seemed spectral, like gray ghosts. His rangers, veterans of many severe northers, were stoical, but the army boys were nervous, stunned by the abrupt departure of their commander.

  "I guess I should have roped him, but it's too late now," Augustus observed. The sandstorm had promptly swallowed up the Major.

  "Now he's rode off and left me in command," Lieutenant Dikuss said, appalled at being thrust into a position of responsibility under such conditions, at such a time and in such a place.

  Augustus smiled. He could not help being amused by the large lieutenant from Wisconsin.

  At that moment Lieutenant Dikuss was staring hopelessly at the wall of sand into which his commanding officer had just disappeared.

  "It must have been a mighty good compass," Jake Spoon said. "It would have to be made of emeralds for me to go looking for it in a wind like this." "I doubt you'd know an emerald if you swallowed one, Jake," Augustus said, dismounting. "That compass was made in Reading, England, and besides, the Major's got his pa to think about." "I don't know what to do, Captain," Lieutenant Dikuss admitted, looking at his gray, cold, gritty men.

  "Well, one thing we can do is let the prunes be," Augustus said. "Myself, I'd vote for a cup of coffee over a goddamned prune."

  The sandstorm raged until sunset; the whirling sand seemed to magnify the sun as it sank--fora time the sand and dust even made it seem that the sun had paused in its descent. It seemed to hang just above the horizon, a great malign orb, orange at the edges but almost bluish in the center.

  Some of the young army men, newcomers, like their Major, to the country of sand and wind, thought something had gone wrong with nature. One private, a thin boy from Illinois, almost frozen from a day in the biting wind, thought the bluish sun meant that the world was coming to an end. He had a memory of a church in Paducah, Illinois, where he had lived as a boy, saying that the world would end with the setting of a blue sun.

  The boy's name was Briarley Crisp; he was the youngest
man in the troop. His mother and all his sisters wept when he left home; they all expected Briarley to be killed. Briarley had been eager, at the time, to get gone into the army, mainly to escape the plowing, which he detested. Now, looking at the ominous blue sun, its edges tinged with the orange hues of hellfire, andwiththe sand piling up on his eyelids so heavy he could hardly focus his eyes, Briarley knew he had made a terrible, fatal mistake. He had come all the way to Texas to be a soldier, and now the world was ending.

  He began to shiver so violently that his shaking caught the eye of Lieutenant Dikuss, who, though nervous himself, felt it was now his responsibility to see that morale did not falter within the troop.

  "Stop that shaking, Private Crisp," he said. "If you're chilly get a soogan off the pack mule and wrap up in it." "I ain't shivering from the chill, Lieutenant," Briarley Crisp said. "I see that old blue sun there--a preacher told me once the world would end the night the sun set blue, like that one's setting." "I doubt that that preacher who upset you had spent much time along the Pecos River," Augustus said. "I've seen the sun set blue many a time in these sand showers, but the world hasn't ended. What I do doubt is that we'll see any more of Major Featherstonhaugh this evening--hm or his compass either." They didn't. To Briarley Crisp's relief the sun finally did set; the night that followed saw the temperatures drop so far that the men slept beneath white clouds of frozen breath.

  Toward midnight the sandstorm finally blew out--"four the stars were visible again. Augustus debated with himself whether to take advantage of the faint starlight to conduct a quick search for Major Featherstonhaugh; but, in the end, he didn't. The morning promised to be clear--they could easily find the Major then, assuming he had survived the chilly night.

  They were not long in doubt on that issue. There was still so much sand in the air that the sun rose in haze, with a fine nimbus around it. To Private Crisp's joy, the world was still there and still dry.

  Augustus had just picked up his coffee cup when he saw a moving dot to the south, a dot that soon became Major Featherstonhaugh, cantering briskly toward them on his heavy white mare.

  Augustus had advised against the mare, not because of her heft but because she was white. The Comanches they were supposed to be scouting particularly loved a white horse.

  "If Kicking Wolf gets sight of her that's one more horse the army won't have to feed, Major," Augustus had informed him, but the Major had only returned a chilly stare.

  Now, though, he was simply relieved that Major was alive--it would have been a task to locate him, if he had lost himself on the llano.

  "Good morning, Major--I hope you found that compass," Augustus said when Featherstonhaugh trotted up, his uniform caked with dust.

  "Of course I found it--t was why I went back," Major Featherstonhaugh said. Dusty as he was he still seemed startled by the suggestion that he might not have found the compass.

  "It was made in Reading, England," he added.

  "My father took it around the Cape." "I wish I had a bath to offer you, Major," Augustus said. "You look like you've been buried and dug up." "Oh, it was weathery," the Major admitted.

  "I thought I might find one of those springs and have a wash, but I couldn't find one--of course I had to wait for daylight before I could locate my compass." The Major dismounted and took a little coffee, carefully inspecting his compass while he breakfasted.

  "I wish it would snow," he remarked, to Lieutenant Dikuss. "I'm accustomed to snow when it's this weathery." Lieutenant Dikuss regarded it as a miracle that the Major had reappeared at all; the absence of snow, of which there was an abundance in Wisconsin, did not disturb him.

  "You can melt snow, and once it's melted you can heat the water and have a wash," the Major said.

  "Does it ever snow here, Captain?" "It snows, but not too many people care to wash in it, Major," Augustus said. "I doubt that washing's as popular in this country as it is in Vermont." An hour later, pressing on north with the aid of Major Featherstonhaugh's compass, Augustus spotted a rider coming toward them across the long sage flats.

  "That's Charlie Goodnight--I expect he's got news," Augustus said.

  Major Featherstonhaugh and Lieutenant Dikuss both looked in the direction Augustus was pointing but they could see nothing, just high clouds and wavery horizon. The Major could think of very little besides how much he desired to wash. He was sixty-one years old and never, in his more than three decades of soldiering, had he felt as thoroughly soiled as he felt at the moment.

  During the weathery night the blowing sand had worked its way into his skin to a depth no dust had ever been allowed to penetrate before. Besides that, his canteen was empty; he could not even wet his kerchief and wipe the dust off his face; his lips were so cracked from the dryness that he would have been hard put to eat even if they had more palatable food; all day the men talked of game, but they saw no game. The Major had once been offered a favorable position in a dry goods firm in Baltimore, but had turned it down out of a distaste for the frivolity of town life. As he stared at the Texas plain, dirt under his collar, incapable of seeing the rider that Captain McCrae could not only see but identify, the Major could not help wondering if he had been wise to turn down that position in the dry goods firm. After all, he could have resided outside of Baltimore and ridden in a buggy--if nothing else there would have been plenty of fine, meltable snow.

  "How can you tell who it is?" Lieutenant Dikuss asked. He had finally been able to detect motion in the sage flats to the north, but he could not even tell that the motion was made by a human on a horse. Yet Augustus McCrae could see the horse and even identify the rider.

  "Why, I know Charlie," Augustus said.

  "I know how he rides. He comes along kind of determined. He don't look fast, but the next thing you know he's there." Events soon bore out Augustus's point-- the next thing the troop knew, Goodnight was there.

  "I expected you to be farther along, Captain," Goodnight said. "I suppose the military had a hard time keeping up." Goodnight nodded at Major Featherstonhaugh and promptly turned his horse, as if assuming that the company would immediately respond and follow him. His impatience with military behaviour was well known.

  "Nope, this is a speedy troop, Charlie," Augustus said. "The fact is the Major dropped his compass in that sandstorm yesterday and had to go back for it. It's a prominent compass, made in Reading, England." Major Featherstonhaugh, though startled by the man's manner, did not intend to let himself be deflected from his original purpose by mere frontier rudeness; he was dusty as an old boot and felt that his efficiency as a commander would soon diminish if he could not secure a good wash.

  "Any springs ahead of us, sir?" he asked Goodnight. "The sand has been plentiful the last two days--I think we could all profit from a good bath.

  "I imagine our weapons need cleaning as well," he added--it had just occurred to him that the blowing dust might have gummed up mechanisms to their pistols and rifles and revolvers.

  Military ignorance did not surprise Goodnight.

  "There's a fine spring about three hundred miles due north of here, Major," he said.

  "I expect you could reach it in a week if you don't lose your compass again." "Sir, three hundred miles?" Major Featherstonhaugh asked, aghast.

  "That is, if you can get through the Comanches," Goodnight added.

  "How many Comanches, and how far ahead?" Augustus asked.

  The soldiers, some of whom had been grimly amused by Goodnight's brusque treatment of Major Featherstonhaugh--he was not a popular leader--ceased to be amused; mention of Comanches was enough to quell all merriment in the troop and replace it with dread. The thought of Comanches called into their minds scenes of torture and dismemberment. They had all heard too many stories.

  "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 ove
rtake 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.