Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

by Comanche Moon

  His one disappointment was that he had never found the hole where the People emerged from the earth. He had talked about the hole so much that the Kickapoos had come to consider him rather a bore. Of course, the hole where the People had emerged was important, but they themselves did not have time to look for it and had lost interest in talking to Famous Shoes about it.

  It was while returning from his trip to the Cimarron that Famous Shoes had the misfortune to run into three of Blue Duck's half-breed renegades. They had just ambushed an elderly white man who was riding a fine gray horse.

  It was the white man Famous Shoes saw first.

  He had been shot two or three times, stripped of all his clothes, and left to die. When Famous Shoes spotted him he had just stumbled into a little gully; by the time Famous Shoes reached him he was staring the stare of death, though he was still breathing a little.

  Then the renegades themselves came riding down into the gully. One of them rode the old man's fine horse and the others had donned pieces of his clothing, which was better clothing than their filthy rags.

  "Leave him alone, he is ours," one of the renegades said insolently.

  Famous Shoes was startled by the bad tone the renegades adopted. Apparently they had decided to torture the dying man a little, but before they could start the man coughed up a great flood of blood, and died.

  "He is not yours now," Famous Shoes pointed out. "He is dead." "No, he is still ours," the renegade said. The three renegades were drunk. They began to hack the old man up--soon they had blood all over the clothes they had taken from him.

  While the renegades were cutting up the old man, Famous Shoes left. They were in such a frenzy of hacking and ripping that they didn't notice him leaving. He was a mile away before one of the drunken killers decided to pursue him. It was not the bandit who had taken the gray horse; that man was called Lean Head.

  The man who pursued Famous Shoes was a skinny fellow with a purple birthmark on his neck. Birthmarks brought either good luck or bad, and this bandit's did not bring him good luck.

  Famous Shoes noticed the other two bandits riding off in the direction the old man had come from.

  No doubt they wanted to scavenge among his possessions a little more thoroughly.

  Because the skinny renegade was alone, and his companions headed in the other direction, Famous Shoes saw no reason not to kill his pursuer, which he did with dispatch. He had a bow and a few arrows with him which he used to provide himself with game. When the renegade loped up behind him Famous Shoes turned and put three arrows in him before the man could catch his breath. In fact, the renegade never did catch his breath again. He opened his mouth to yell for help, but before he could yell Famous Shoes pulled him off the horse and cut his throat--then he grabbed the horse's bridle and cut the horse's throat too. The horse was as skinny as the rider; Famous Shoes left them together, their lifeblood ebbing into the prairie. He left the arrows in the dead man-- there were so many guns on the plains now that it was becoming rare to see a man killed with arrows. The renegades might be so ignorant that they could not tell Kickapoo arrows from any other; they might conclude that their friend had been killed by a passing Kiowa.

  The renegades, though, were not quite so ignorant.

  By the middle of the afternoon Famous Shoes saw their dust, far behind him. Once he knew they were pursuing him he turned due west, onto the llano. He was soon into a land of gullies--he skipped from rock to rock and walked so close to the edge of the gullies that the pursuers could not follow his steps without riding so close to the gullies that they risked falling in.

  That night he only rested for an hour. However drunken or foolish the renegades might be, pursuit was likely to make them determined, or even bold. They would think that he was a rabbit they could run to ground. They would never think that since he had killed one of them he might kill them too. In general he preferred to avoid killing men, even rude, ignorant, dangerous men, for it meant setting a spirit loose that might become his enemy and conspire against him with witches.

  He ran west into the llano all night and most of the next day, not merely to evade his pursuers but to put as much distance as possible between himself and the spirit of the dead man. Now that the skinny man was dead Famous Shoes began to worry about the birthmark, which might mean that the man had had an affinity with witches.

  It was as he moved deeper into the waterless llano that he heard the faint singing, at night, and determined that it was made by a single Comanche.

  Famous Shoes thought he ought to just pass by the Comanche, but the closer he came to the singing, the more curious he felt. Though he knew it was dangerous to approach a Comanche, in this case he could not resist. As he eased closer to the singer it became clear to him that the man was singing the song of his life. He was singing of his deeds and victories, of his defeats and sorrows, of the warriors he had known and the raids he had ridden on.

  As he came closer Famous Shoes saw that the man was indeed alone. He had only a tiny fire, made of buffalo dung, and a dead horse lay nearby. The song he sang was both a life song and a death song: the warrior had decided to leave life and had sensibly decided to take his horse along with him, so that he could ride comfortably in the spirit world.

  Famous Shoes decided that he wanted to know this warrior, who had chosen such a fine way to leave life. He didn't think the Comanche would turn on him and kill him--f listening to the life song that was a death song he knew that the warrior would probably not be interested in him at all.

  He knew, though, that it was not polite to interrupt such a song. He waited where he was, napping a little, until the gray dawn came; then he stood up and walked toward the warrior, who was poking up his fire a little.

  The warrior by the small fire did not rise when he saw Famous Shoes coming. His voice was a little hoarse, from all his singing. At first, when he saw Famous Shoes approaching, his look was indifferent, like the look of warriors so badly wounded in battle that their spirits were already leaving their bodies, or like the look of old people who were looking beyond, into the spirit home. The warrior was very thin and very tired. He had not eaten any of the dead horse that lay nearby; he was exhausted with the effort it took to get his life into the song.

  Famous Shoes did not know him.

  "I was passing and heard your song," Famous Shoes said. "Some of Blue Duck's men were chasing me. I had to kill one of them--t was two days ago." At mention of Blue Duck the warrior's expression changed from one of indifference to one of contempt.

  "I was at the camp of Blue Duck," he said, in his hoarse voice. "He was camped on the Rio Rojo, near the forests. I did not stay.

  They had a bear there and were mistreating it. The men with Blue Duck are only thieves. I am glad you killed one." He paused and looked into the fire.

  "If I had been there I would have killed the other two," he said. "I did not like the way they abused the bear." Famous Shoes knew the man was in a state not far from death. It was most uncommon for a Comanche to say he would have fought along with a Kickapoo, since the two peoples were enemies, one of the other.

  "What did they do to the bear?" he asked.

  "I killed the bear," Idahi said, remembering the expression on the bear's face when he had walked up to shoot it. It had been a sad bear, broken by many beatings.

  Though Idahi felt no anger at the Kickapoo who had stopped to talk with him, he did feel a great tiredness when he tried to speak to the man. He had been almost out of life, singing the song of his deeds, but the Kickapoo was not out of life at all. He was a fully living man, still curious about the things that living men did. Idahi found it hard to come back. He had turned inside him, toward the spirit time, and could not easily concern himself with Blue Duck or the things of fleshly life.

  Famous Shoes saw that the Comanche was weary and only wanted to get on with his dying. Though he knew it was impolite to detain a person bent on travelling in the spirit time, he could not resist one more question.

>   "Why are you alone?" he asked.

  The Comanche seemed a little annoyed by the question.

  "You are alone yourself," he pointed out, with a touch of disdain.

  "Yes, but I am merely travelling," Famous Shoes said. "You have killed your horse.

  I don't think you want to travel any farther." Idahi thought the Kickapoo was a pesky fellow--t was the problem with Kickapoos. They were all pesky, continually asking questions about things that were none of their business. Probably that was one reason his own people always killed Kickapoos as soon as possible, when they happened on one of them. Idahi decided just to tell this Kickapoo what he wanted to know; maybe then he would leave so Idahi could continue singing his song.

  "My people have gone to the place the whites wanted them to go," he said. "I did not want to go to that place, so I left. I went to be with the Antelope Comanche but they have nothing to eat. They live on mice and prairie dogs and roots they pull out of the ground. I am not a good hunter, so they did not want me.

  "None of the Comanches have much to eat now," he added.

  "But the Comanches have many horses," Famous Shoes reminded him. It had always struck him as a vanity that the Comanches were so reluctant to eat their horses. They were not practical people like the Kickapoo, who would as cheerfully eat a horse as a deer or buffalo.

  Idahi didn't answer. Of course the Comanches had horses--even the Antelopes had quite a few horses. But Quanah, war chief of the Antelopes, still meant to fight the Texans, and fighting men could not afford to eat their mounts while they still contemplated war. Their horses were their power; without horses they would not really be Comanches anymore. He did not want to talk of this to the Kickapoo, so he began to sing again, although in a faint voice.

  Famous Shoes knew he had stayed long enough. The Comanche had chosen to go on and die, which was a wise thing. His own people had gone onto the reservation, and the other bands of Comanches did not want him. Probably the warrior was tired of being hungry and alone and had decided to go on to the place that was well peopled by spirits.

  "I am going on with my travelling," Famous Shoes told him. "I hope those two renegades who ride with Blue Duck do not bother you--they are very rude." Idahi did not respond to the remark. He was remembering a feast his people had once had, when they had managed to stampede a herd of buffalo off a cliff into the Palo Duro.

  There had been meat enough for the whole band to feast for a week--one or two of the neighboring bands had come too.

  Famous Shoes did not have much food either; he did not like prairie dog meat, which was the easiest meat to obtain on the dry llano. He would have liked to take a little horsemeat from the Comanche warrior's dead horse, but he knew that it would not be a polite thing to do.

  The lone Comanche who had decided to die sang his final song so faintly that before Famous Shoes had taken many steps he could no longer hear him singing.

  Kicking Wolf was the last person in the tribe to have a conversation with Buffalo Hump, and the conversation, as usual, had been about horses.

  Both of Buffalo Hump's wives were now dead; of the two, Heavy Leg had lived the longer, though Lark was much the younger woman. Lark had foolishly let a deer kick her--though the deer was down and dying, it still managed to kick Lark so badly in the ribs that she began to spit blood.

  Within two days she was dead. Heavy Leg had not been foolish in regard to dying deer, but, in the winter, she had died anyway, leaving Buffalo Hump with no one to tend his lodge.

  Of course, Buffalo Hump possessed many horses. He could easily have bought himself another wife, but he didn't. The young women still tittered about the old chief's hump. Some of them wondered what it would be like to couple with such a man, but none of them found out because Buffalo Hump ignored them.

  Although his lodge soon grew tattered and poorly kept, and he had to prepare his own meals, he did not send for a new wife, or seek one. He spent most of his days sitting on his favorite pinnacle of rock, watching the hawks and eagles soar high above the canyon. He had no visitors. Many of the young people of the tribe had forgotten that he had ever been a chief. Only when there was singing and a few of the old warriors sang about the thousand-warrior raid was Buffalo Hump recalled.

  Buffalo Hump himself kept apart from the singing, which, itself, had become a rare thing. Singing was most likely to happen when there was a feast; since there was less and less to feast on, there were fewer and fewer feasts.

  Kicking Wolf, of course, was still an active horse thief. He seldom fired a gun at a Texan, and seldom was fired at, preferring, as always, to work at night and depend on stealth.

  The reason Kicking Wolf sought out Buffalo Hump was because he wanted his opinion on the horse herd. Peta, the war chief, thought there could never be too many horses, the result being that almost two thousand grazed on the grasslands near the camp.

  Kicking Wolf's view was different. He thought there could be too many horses. He wanted to divide the horse herd and give some of the horses to the other bands that were still free. He even favored driving some of the horses away alt, letting them go wild, and he thought his arguments were sound. Having so many horses together made it easier for the bluecoat soldiers to find them. There was not enough grass in the canyon itself to graze so many horses, and their presence kept the buffalo from coming back.

  Kicking Wolf was a firm believer in the return of the buffalo. There had been too many buffalo simply to vanish. They had gone north, he believed, because they did not like the smell of the whites, or the smell of their cattle, either. But the buffalo were not gone from the earth; they had merely gone north. Someday they would return to the southern plains--they would, at least, if the People were patient and respectful and did not graze out the plains with too many horses.

  When Kicking Wolf found Buffalo Hump he had just climbed down from his rock. It was a hard climb, almost beyond Buffalo Hump's strength. He was sitting in a patch of shade, resting, when Kicking Wolf approached.

  "Why do you climb that rock?" Kicking Wolf asked. "Haven't you climbed it enough in your life?" Buffalo Hump didn't answer--he found the question annoying. It was none of Kicking Wolf's business how many times he climbed the rock. In the last year or two he had not only grown indifferent to company, he had begun to find it irritating. Everyone who came to see him asked questions that were either stupid or impertinent.

  Better to see no one than to see fools.

  For himself, the one sad thing about climbing the rock was that he could no longer really see the hawks and eagles. He knew they were there; sometimes he could almost feel their flight, but he could not see them as he had seen them when he was a younger man. Now his eyes would water when he tried to look hard at a flying bird or even a running deer. Sometimes he would think he saw a jackrabbit, sitting for a moment, but when he came closer the jackrabbit would become a rock or a clump of grass. The plains became a blur now, when he tried to look across them to some distant point. Often his ears were of more use than his eyes--he could tell what animals were near by listening. He could hear an armadillo scratching, hear the slow walk of a possum. [ it not for his skill at snaring small game, he would have had a hard time finding food.

  He did not mention his problems to Kicking Wolf--z always, Kicking Wolf had only one thing on his mind, which was horses. He immediately started talking about the horse herd--it was too big, it needed to be divided, it would lead the soldiers to them, it would keep the buffalo from returning. Buffalo Hump had heard it all before. The only part he felt like responding to was the nonsense about the buffalo. It annoyed him that an experienced warrior such as Kicking Wolf, a horse Comanche all his life, could be so foolish as to think that the size of the horse herd had anything to do with the disappearance of the buffalo. What were a thousand horses, or two thousand, to the millions of buffalo that had once roamed the prairies?

  "The buffalo won't come back," he said angrily.

  Kicking Wolf was startled by the anger in Buffalo Hump
's voice--the old chief had seemed half asleep, his eyes staring vacantly across the prairie. But his voice, when he spoke, was the voice of the fighter, the man whose cold eyes had made even brave warriors want to run.

  "The buffalo will return," Kicking Wolf said. "They have only gone to the north for a while.

  The buffalo have always returned." "You are a fool," Buffalo Hump said.

  "The buffalo won't return, because they are dead.

  The whites have killed them. When you go north you will only find their bones." "The whites have killed many, but not all," Kicking Wolf insisted. "They have only gone to the Missouri River to live. When we have beaten the whites back they will return." But, as he was speaking, Kicking Wolf suddenly lost heart. He realized that Buffalo Hump was right, and that the ^ws he had just spoken .were the ^ws of a fool. The Comanches were not beating the whites, and they were not going to beat them. Only their own band and three or four others were still free Comanches. The bands that were free were the bands that could survive on the least, those who would eat small animals and dig roots from the earth. Already the bluecoat soldiers had come back to Texas and begun to fill up the old forts, places they had abandoned while they fought one another. Even if all the free tribes banded together there would not be enough warriors to defeat the bluecoat soldiers. With the buffalo gone so far north, the white soldiers had only to drive them farther and farther into the llano, until they starved or gave up.