Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  "Put her on the horse," Quick Antelope said. "You can beat her some more tonight." But Tana's rage was too great. He would not do as he was told. If he could not be left to torture the woman, at least he could kill her. It was what his father would want. He watched her, as she cowered under the little blanket with her children --he wanted her death and he wanted her to know it was coming.

  "You can put the children on the horse," he told Big Neck. "I am going to kill the woman." Tana took out his knife and began to sing a death cry. He looked at the woman and waved the knife at her. He wanted her to know he would step across the fire soon, and cut her throat.

  Satay began to feel uneasy, and it was not because Tana was so determined to kill the woman. He looked around. Big Neck and Quick Antelope felt the uneasiness too. They picked up their weapons and looked around. Though no one could see any danger, they all felt that something was not right--all except Tana, who was advancing on the terrified white woman, waving his knife and singing a loud death cry.

  Tana jumped across the campfire and grabbed the white woman by her long hair. He pulled her up, away from her children, so she would know a lot of fear before he put the knife to her throat. He dragged her through the fire again and lifted her up so that he could cut her throat, but Quick Antelope suddenly ran past him, bumping him a little.

  The bullet hit Tana and knocked him clear of the woman before he saw the horsemen, racing toward them. He rolled over and saw that Quick Antelope had fallen too. Several horsemen were coming and coming fast. Big Neck was among the horses. Tana wanted to reach his gun, but his gun was several yards away. The horsemen were racing down a little slope toward the camp. Tana saw Big Neck leap on a horse and turn to flee, but before he was even out of camp a bullet knocked him off his horse. Tana was almost to his gun when another bullet hit him. It caused him to row over. The ground where he fell was sandy-- he wanted to reach for his gun, but he could not see.

  It was as if the sand was pouring over his eyelids, so heavy that he could not open his eyes. He heard the horsemen, racing closer, but the sand was so heavy on his eyes that he let it bury him--he had ceased to worry about the horsemen, he only wanted to sleep.

  The plan, hastily established, was for eight rangers to charge the four Comanche braves, mainly to distract them. Deets was to watch the spare horses. Call and Augustus dismounted and crawled to within one hundred yards of the camp while the Comanches argued about the woman. When the young brave raised his knife to the woman, Augustus shot him; when the boy got up, he shot him a second time. Call shot the two braves standing by the weapons; one he had to shoot three times.

  By this time the racing rangers were almost in the camp, led by Teddy Beatty. Several of them shot at the large warrior who mounted and was about to escape, but it was a snap shot from Gus McCrae that killed him.

  Call hurried down into the camp and made sure that all four Comanches were dead. Most of the men, Augustus included, were stunned to find that the battle was over so quickly.

  "They're dead, Woodrow--they're dead," Augustus assured him.

  All of them were surprised that the victory had been so easy.

  "I guess we'll be promoted when we get home," Gus said, reloading his rifle.

  "There ain't nothing to promote us to, we're already captains," Call reminded him. "If that ain't high enough for you, then I guess you'll just have to run for governor." "He'd never get elected, he's done too much whoring," Long Bill said.

  Gus knelt by the young Indian boy, to see where he had hit him. Deets came up, leading the extra horses, and went to help the two children.

  Call pulled a slicker off his saddle and gave it to the woman, who was almost naked. She took the slicker but didn't say thank you and didn't look at them. She was staring away.

  Of course, he realized, she had been only a moment from death--perh she couldn't yet comprehend that she was saved. Perhaps in her blind stare she still saw the knife poised above her.

  "You're saved, ma'am--we got here just in time," Call said, before backing away. He didn't think it wise to say more, or to try and rush the woman back from the place she had gone in her mind. It was a place she had had to go to survive, as much as she had survived, he felt sure. If she was let alone she might come back, although he realized there was a chance she wouldn't come back. What was sure was that the men who would have killed her were dead.

  "You made a fine shot to keep that young one from killing her--he was ready," Call said to Gus.

  "They're all four dead and we got the woman and the children back, and some horses besides. We've been fair captains, so far." Augustus was thinking how quick it had been--a few seconds of action and four men dead.

  Deets was talking to the two children, while the other rangers milled. Neely Dickens was becoming more and more exhilarated by the knowledge that he was alive. Long Bill busied himself counting the horses they had recovered, fourteen in all.

  "I guess we won't starve now, boys, even if we get plumb lost," he said. "We got horsemeat now--horsemeat on the hoof." Pea Eye had charged down on the Indians with the rest of the men, but had not fired his gun--he thought he would be unlikely to hit anybody, while running at such a speed. Pea Eye had heard so many tales about how devilishly accurate Indians were with tomahawks and clubs that he had kept as low on his horse's neck as possible, as he raced, hoping to avoid the tomahawks and maybe the arrows too. But then it turned out they were charging only four men, all of whom were dead by the time he reached the camp. Only one of the men had a tomahawk, and the rifles they were equipped with looked older and less reliable even than his own. Pea Eye went over to hold the horses, while Deets tended to the frightened children.

  He felt weak, so weak that he thought he might have to sit down. Even so he did better than Neely Dickens, who passed through his phase of exhilaration, grew weak suddenly, and fainted.

  Neely flopped down as if dead, but, since none of the Comanches had so much as fired a gun, no one supposed Neely to be dead. Teddy Beatty fanned him with a hat a few times and then paid him no more attention.

  "He ain't hurt, the little rascal," Teddy said. "Let him nap, I say." Call noticed that the woman had a lot of blood on her legs--the travelling must have been rough.

  "We need to go," he said to Augustus. "These four are dead, but there could be forty more not far away." "Or four hundred more--how would that be?" Augustus said. The fight had left him feeling a little distanced from himself, all the men seemed to feel that way, even Call. But it wasn't a condition they could afford to indulge, not with Buffalo Hump's camp just to the north.

  "Do we bury them, Woodrow?" he asked, no.ing toward the dead warriors.

  It was a question Call had not had to consider before.

  There were four dead Comanches. Did they bury them, or leave them as they had fallen?

  "I'm told the Comanches bury their own," he said, uncertain as to what was right in such a case.

  "I expect they would if they were here," Gus said. "But these men are dead--they can't bury themselves, and I expect they'll be bad torn up by the time a Comanche finds them." "I'm worried about that woman," Call said.

  "I think she's about lost her mind." Deets boiled a little coffee over the Comanche campfire and fed the children a little bacon; the woman would take none. The men dug a grave and put the four dead warriors in it. While they were filling it in the woman began to shriek.

  "He won't want me! I can't go home!" she shrieked. Then she ran away, out onto the prairie, shrieking, as she ran.

  "I was afraid of this," Call said. The children were crying, though Deets tried to shush them. The men all stood, numb and confused, listening to the woman scream. Augustus mounted his horse.

  "I'll get her," he said. He touched his horse with the spur and went loping after the woman.

  "I was afraid of this," Call said again, looking at the stunned men.

  Maudy Clark ran away several times a day, every day, of the two weeks it took the rangers to reach Austi
n. Another sleet storm delayed them, and then heavy rains, which made the rivers high and treacherous. Three horses bogged in the swollen Red River and drowned.

  Still, whatever the weather, Maudy Clark ran away. Once caught, she was docile--she seemed to mind Deets less than the other men, so Deets was assigned the task of seeing that she didn't escape or hurt herself. It was Deets, too, who cared for her children; she seemed not to recognize them as her children now.

  "Something's broke in her, Woodrow," Gus said. "She won't even help her own young 'uns, anymore." All the men were careful not to let Mrs. Clark snatch a knife or a gun; Call instructed them to be especially watchful. He did not want the woman to grab a weapon and kill herself.

  "Bodies can heal--I expect minds can too," he said.

  At night they had taken to tying Maudy's ankles with a soft cotton rope, hobbling her like a horse.

  "If I were to break my whiskey jug I expect I could glue it so it would look like a fine jug," Augustus replied. "But it would still be leaky and let the whiskey run out. That's the way it is with her, Woodrow. They might get her back in church and sing hymns at her till she stops screaming them screams. But she'll always be leaky. She won't never be right." "I can't judge it," Call said. "It's our job to bring her home. Then the doctors can judge it." Finally they breasted all the rivers and came to the limestone country west of Austin.

  "We're coming back with a passel of extra horses," Long Bill pointed out. "I expect we'll be heroes to the crowd." Just then, Maudy Clark started screaming. She ran right through the campfire. Neely Dickens made a grab for her, but missed. Deets, who had been cooking, got up without a ^w and followed her into the darkness.

  "Hurry up, Deets, there's bluffso out here she might fall off of," Augustus said.

  "I don't know how anybody could feel like a hero with that poor woman running around out of her mind," Call said.

  "Well, but she might have been dead," Long Bill said. "That brave had a knife at her throat." "She might prefer to be dead," Call replied. "I expect she would prefer it." Just then Deets came back, leading Maudy, talking to her softly; all the men became silent.

  The woman's despair dampened all their moods. They had not even had a lively card game on the trip south.

  "I'm longing to see my Clara," Augustus said--they were in country that was familiar, where they had patrolled often; the familiar hills and streams made him think of his many picnics with Clara, the laughter and the kissing he had enjoyed throughout his long courtship. Surely, now that he had been promoted to captain, Clara wouldn't make him wait any longer. Surely she would marry him now.

  "I hope we can find this woman's husband," Call said.

  "You better hope he'll take her back, while you're hoping," Gus said.

  "That's right, Woodrow," Long Bill said.

  "Some men won't have their wives back, once they've been with the Comanches." "That's wrong," Call said. "It wasn't her fault she got taken. He oughtn't to have gone off and left her unguarded." "Sing to us, Deets," Augustus said. "It's too boresome at night, without no singing." Deets had been singing to the two little children at night, to quiet them and put them to sleep. Without his singing they grew restless and fearful; their mother rarely came near them now. Deets had a low soothing voice, and knew many melodies, hymns mostly, and a few songs of the field; it was not only the children that were soothed by his singing. Long Bill was able to accompany Deets on his harmonica, most of the time.

  Though the men were calmed by the singing, Call wasn't. Usually, after listening a few minutes, he took his rifle and went off to stand guard.

  What rested him, after a day of contending with the circumstances of travel--the girth on the pack mule might break, or they might strike a creek that looked dangerous to cross--was to be by himself, a hundred yards or so from camp. Whereas guard duty seemed to make most of the rangers sleepy--there being nothing to do but sit and stare--it made Call feel at his most alert. He had a keen ear for night sounds--the rustling of varmints, the cries of owls and bullbats, deer nibbling leaves, the death squeak of a rabbit when a coyote or bobcat caught it. He listened for variations in the regular sounds, variations that could mean Indians were near; or, if not Indians, then some rarely encountered animal, like a bear.

  Often he would sit all night at his guard post, refusing to change guards even when it was time.

  From time to time in the night, Maudy Clark shrieked--j two or three shrieks, sounds that seemed to be jerked out of her. Call wondered if it might be dreams that called up the shrieks.

  He doubted the poor woman would live long enough for the violent memories to fade.

  When he came back to camp, a little before dawn, only Deets and Maudy were awake. The woman was fiddling with the buttons of an old shirt Long Bill had given her. She looked wild in her eyes, as if she might be getting ready to make one of her dashes out of camp. There was gray mist rising, making it hard to see more than a few feet. If the woman got away, with it so foggy, there might be a long delay while they located her.

  Deets anticipated the very thing that Call feared.

  "Don't you be running now, ma'am," he said.

  "You'll get thorns in your feet if you do.

  Prickly pear all over the ground. You'll be picking them little fine stickers out all day, if you go running off now." She had untied the cotton rope that he bound her ankles with. Gently, Deets retied it, and Maudy Clark made no protest.

  "Just till breakfast," Deets assured her.

  "Then I'll let you go."

  They brought the horses and the rescued captives into Austin on a fine sunny morning. Nothing prompted a crowd like the rangers' return, whether they had been patrolling north or south.

  Folks that had been dawdling in stores came into the street to ask questions. The blacksmith neglected his tasks until he heard the report. The barber left customers half shaven. The dentist ceased pulling teeth.

  Somebody ran to alert the Governor and the legislators, though most of the latter were drunk or in bordellos and thus not easily rounded up.

  The first thing everybody noticed was that no short man on a big horse was leading the troop back home: where was the great Captain Scull?

  "Tracking a horse thief, that's where," Augustus said, a little annoyed that most of the questions were about the captain who had cavalierly deserted them while they were doing brave work. Gus saw Jake Spoon lurking over by the blacksmith's and waved at him to come help with the horses. He was anxious to get on to a barroom and sample some whiskey, quick.

  "Don't get too drunk," Call said, when he saw where Gus was heading. "The Governor will be wanting a report." "Well, you report," Augustus said. "If the both of us go we'll just confuse the old fool." "We're both captains, we both should go," Call insisted.

  "I despise governors, and besides, I need to see my girl before I get into business like that," Gus said. One of the reasons he was feeling a little grim was that there was, as yet, no sign of Clara. Usually, when he rode in with the boys, she came running out of the store to give him a big kiss--it was something he would begin to look forward to while still fifty miles away.

  But today, though the street was thronged, there was no Clara.

  Call spotted Maggie, watching their return from a discreet spot in the shade of a building; he nodded and tipped his hat to her, an act that didn't escape the attention of Augustus McCrae. The other rangers had just penned the horses; Long Bill Coleman immediately headed for a saloon, to fortify himself a little before heading home to Pearl, his large, enthusiastic wife.

  "This is a damn disgrace," Augustus muttered. "Your girl's here to smile at you and Billy has Pearl to go home to, but Clara's lagging, if she's home." "I expect she's just running errands," Call said. "It's a passel of work, running a store that size." Augustus, though, was growing steadily more annoyed, and also more agitated. In his mind Clara's absence could mean only one of two things: she had died, or else she'd married.

  What if the big horse trader
Bob Allen had showed up while he was away; what if Clara had lost her head and married the man? The thought disturbed him so that he turned his horse and went full tilt back up the street toward the Forsythe store, almost colliding with a buggy as he raced.

  He jumped off his horse, not even bothering to hitch him, and plunged into the store, only to see old Mr. Forsythe, Clara's father, unpacking a box of women's shoes.

  "Hello, Clara ain't sick, is she?" he asked at once.

  Mr. Forsythe was startled by Augustus's sudden appearance.

  "Who, Clara?--I'm trying to count these shoes and see that they're properly paired up," the old man said, a little nervously, it seemed to Gus.

  Normally George Forsythe was loquacious to a fault; he would pat Gus's shoulder and talk his arm off about any number of topics that held no interest for him, but this morning he seemed annoyed by Gus's question.