Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  "We ought to get the boys settled and see to the horses," Call said. Jake Spoon and Pea Eye Parker both looked as if they might go to sleep in their saddles. Even Deets, who seldom flagged, looked very weary.

  "You do it, Woodrow," Gus said. He stood up and handed his bridle reins to Deets as he went by him. Call turned and followed Gus a step or two, curious as to what was the matter.

  "I guess you're going drinking," he said.

  "By God, you're a genius, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I ain't even close to a saloon, but you figured it out." Call knew it was Clara, or the fact that she was absent, that caused Gus to look so low. It was usually Clara at the bottom of Gus's dark moods.

  "She's alive, at least," he said. "You ought to be glad she's alive." "Oh, I am glad she's alive," Gus said. "I'm mighty glad. But the point is, she ain't here. Your girl is here, Billy's wife is alive, but my girl's married and gone to Nebraska." Call didn't argue--there would be no point. He turned back to the rangers, and Augustus McCrae went on across the street.

  Ahumado had never had a captive who behaved like the small americano, Captain Scull. Most captives despaired once they realized they were in a place they could never get out of, except by death. In his experience, Americans made poor captives. He had had old Goyeto try to skin several Americans--traders, miners, travellers who happened to travel the wrong road--but they all died before Goyeto had got very far with the skinning.

  Even if he only skinned an arm or a leg the Americans usually died. They were weak captives, the whites. Once he had had a small Tarahumara Indian from the north who had stood at the skinning post without making a sound while Goyeto took his whole skin off--t Tarahumara had been an exceptional man.

  Ahumado decided to shelter him and feed him well--he thought it was possible that the man might grow a new skin; but the man took no food and didn't profit much from the shade he was given.

  He died after three days, without having grown any new skin.

  Once or twice Ahumado had tried sticking Americans on the sharpened trees, but there again they had turned out to be disappointing captives, dying after much screaming before the sharpened tree had penetrated very far into their bowels. The Comanches and Apaches he captured on the whole did much better, although it was not unknown for one of them to disgrace himself. Once, though, he put an Apache who had stolen a woman on the sharpened tree and the Apache lived for two days even after the sharp point of the tree had come out behind his shoulder blade. No Comanche and so far no whites had done so well.

  It was clear, though, that the white man Scull, the ranger, was an americano of a different order. Scull had mettle, so much mettle that Ahumado was surprised; and surprise was a thing he rarely experienced.

  As for men in the cage, the best survivor had been an old Yaqui man who had been both exceptionally tough and exceptionally lucky. It had rained often while the old man was in the cage, so the man had moisture. Also, since he was a Yaqui of the hot desert, he wasn't used to eating much. In his days in the cage he cleverly peeled all the bark off the bars of his cage and ate it--the old Yaqui seemed to like the taste of dry bark better than the taste of raw bird meat. Later the blind woman Hema, the curandera, told Ahumado that the bark kept the old man from feeling hunger.

  Even this Yaqui, skilled at going without food, was not as adept at living in the cage as the white man Scull. No one before Scull had ever put his legs through the cage and wiggled them.

  Ahumado spent a good deal of time watching Scull through some binoculars he had taken off a dead federale. Once he even let old Goyeto look through the binoculars and Goyeto was so astonished at what he saw that he did not want to give the binoculars back to Ahumado.

  He called them the Two Eyes That Made Things Large--theirthe ability to make things large left Goyeto speechless, and he was a man who usually chattered a lot. Even when Goyeto was skinning a person and the person was screaming, Goyeto would often be running on, talking about things of little interest or importance. Goyeto had always lived in the mountains, close to the Yellow Canyon. Though he was an old man he had only seen Jaguar once. Sometimes it amused Ahumado to startle Goyeto with trinkets he had stolen from the whites. Some whites carried watches that made sounds, and these sounds never failed to impress Goyeto, who thought they were magical.

  Goyeto did not understand mechanical things; even guns were too complicated for him. He understood only knives--with knives he was better than anyone Ahumado had ever known.

  Once Ahumado had even had Goyeto skin a great rattlesnake alive--a snake that was more than eight feet long. The reason for skinning the snake alive was that it had bitten Ahumado's favorite mare, a fleet gray filly that could outrun the Comanche horses. The snake had bitten the filly right in the nose; when the nose swelled up her air could not get through. She struggled so hard to breathe that her heart gave way.

  Ahumado saw the old snake lying insolently only a few yards from where he had killed the mare. Because the old snake was insolent Ahumado caught him with a crooked stick and nailed him to the ground. Then he instructed Goyeto to skin him, and Goyeto did, turning the snake carefully until it was naked of skin.

  Then, once it was skinned, Ahumado threw it into a pit of hot coals and cooked it. He did not want to turn it loose because snakes were better than humans at growing new skins. If he let the snake go it might grow a new skin and kill another filly. Some of the pistoleros were made nervous by this treatment of the snake. Many of them feared the vengeance of the snake people, and, indeed, the very next day, a pistolero was bitten when he rolled on a rattlesnake in his sleep.

  But Ahumado was indifferent to such worries.

  Any man should be able to watch out for snakes. He had the skin of the big snake made into a fine quirt.

  After Scull had been in the cage three days Ahumado noticed that he had acquired a small tool of some kind. By watching closely with the glasses he saw that it was a small file that Tudwal had once used to sharpen things. It did not surprise Ahumado that Scull had managed to kill Tudwal, who was not a smart man; but he was curious as to what Scull meant to do with the file now that he had it. Of course he could use the file to saw through the bindings of the cage, but where would that leave him? He would either fall to his death or have to climb the rope to the top of the cliff.

  Ahumado suspected that climbing was what Scull had in mind--he immediately sent ^w to the dark men to watch the rope carefully, day and night. If Scull did make it to the top of the cliff the dark men were instructed to chop off his feet with their machetes. A lack of feet would quickly put an end to his travels.

  Ahumado noticed, though, that Scull did not seem to be interested in filing through the bindings, at least not in daylight. One day Scull spent the whole day scratching at the rock face with his file. It was the most puzzling thing he had done since his capture--Ahumado watched closely but could not make out the purpose of the scratching.

  Scull was so absorbed by his scratching that he did not even try to catch several fat pigeons that lit on the cage while he was working. Most men, once in the cage, made desperate efforts to catch any bird that came near, fearing that they would starve if they didn't. But Scull seemed confident that he could catch birds when he needed them. Hunger didn't seem to worry him.

  It occurred to Ahumado one day that Scull might be a witch. He had had that suspicion from the beginning, but the suspicion increased when Parrot appeared one day from the south and soared close to Scull's cage. Ahumado was not one who thought much about witches. He didn't believe there were very many witches--most vision people, in his view, were just charlatans, full of foolish talk.

  That did not mean, though, that there were no witches at all. Ahumado believed there were only a few witches, but those few possessed powers that enabled them to do very unusual things. It was possible that the small ranger, Scull, was just such a rare thing: a witch.

  Fortunately the old blind curandera, Hema, knew something about witches. Hema was a woman of the desert who
knew more than anyone else about plants that could heal. Ahumado went to her and asked her what she thought Scull might be doing, scratching on the rock with Tudwal's file. Hema of course could not see Scull but she had an acquaintance with witches. Her own sister had been a famous witch who had been taken by the Apache Gomez many years before.

  Hema was not a witch herself, but she was skilled with herbs and plants. She could help barren women, and old men who could no longer couple pleasantly with their wives. One woman, barren for years, had come to Hema and borne four babies, one of which was carried off by a she-wolf. She was able to brew concoctions that made the organs of aging men stiffenough again when they went to their wives.

  Sometimes Ahumado talked to Hema when he needed to know about things which were beyond sight. Scull, of course, was not really beyond sight; Ahumado could see him clearly, through the binoculars he had secured by killing the federale. But the fact that Scull was scratching on the rock with a file was worrisome. Why did he scratch on the mountain?

  Ahumado knew that whites could find things in the earth that others couldn't see. Sometimes they would dig into a mountain at a certain place and come out with gold. Some Indians believed that whites could make the earth shake; they might even be able to make whole mountains fall. In the war with the americanos Ahumado himself had seen the little cannons of the whites knock down a great church and several smaller buildings. When the cannonballs hit the earth they tore it up terribly. Ahumado was a child of the earth; he didn't like the way the guns of the whites could scar it and disturb it.

  Now the fact that Captain Scull chose to scratch on the mountain annoyed Ahumado. The more he watched it and wondered about it, the more it annoyed him. What if the white man knew how to open a hole or tunnel into the mountain? Then he could simply file through the bindings on the cage and escape. He knew that the whites opened great holes in the mountains when they mined; then they walked into the earth, through the holes. A white man such as Scull might even be able to make the whole cliff fall all at once, like the church that had been knocked down during the war.

  Ahumado soon developed such a strong curiosity about what Scull was doing on the cliff that he considered having himself lowered down beside him in one of the other cages, in order to watch Scull closely. He himself had no fear of heights and would not have minded being in a cage. But he soon rejected the notion of having himself lowered in a cage because of the dark men. Though they were obedient if he ordered them to chop off someone's feet, the truth was that they hated him. Once they got him in a cage they might simply cut the rope and let him fall; or they might just leave him in the cage to starve and go home to their villages in the south. Though very curious about what Scull was up to, Ahumado was not so foolish as to put himself at the mercy of the dark men.

  One day he went to the hut where blind Hema sat, and told her his fears about the white man Scull opening a hole in the mountain. He wanted her to go up to the top and be lowered to the place where Scull was, in hopes that she could determine what he was doing. Though blind, Hema had hearing so sharp that she could tell what sort of bird was flying just by listening to its wing beats.

  Ahumado wanted her to listen to the rock and see if the rock was all right. If she thought the earth might be about to move he would have to shift his campsite. Ahumado had become convinced that Scull was not a normal man. He did not put men in cages so that they could enjoy themselves, and yet Scull seemed to be enjoying himself. While Scull scratched on the rock he sang and whistled so loudly that everyone looked up at him. That in itself was highly unusual. Most of the men put in the cages quickly lost their spirit; they did not sing and whistle. They might yell down pleas, and beg for a day or two, but after that they usually sat quietly and waited for their deaths.

  Blind Hema listened closely to what Ahumado said. Then she got up and moved slowly to the base of the cliff. She moved along the cliff for an hour or more, putting her ear close to the rock and listening. The longer she moved along, listening to the cliff, the more agitated she became. When she came back to where Ahumado waited, she was trembling--in a moment her teeth began to chatter and froth came out of her mouth.

  Ahumado had known the old blind woman for many years and had never seen her so upset that froth came out of her mouth.

  "He is calling the Serpent," old Hema said. "That is what he is doing when he scratches on the rock. He is sending signals to the great snake that lives in the earth.

  He wants the Serpent to shake the mountain down on us." Then the old blind woman stumbled around the camp until she found someone who would give her tequila. Soon she became drunk--v drunk, so drunk, finally, that she fell on her face in the dust. She could not stand up, for drunkenness, but had to crawl around the camp on all fours. Seeing her on her hands and knees, some of the pistoleros began to tease her. They pulled up her skirts and pretended that they wanted to couple with her in the manner of dogs--of course it was only a joke. Hema was an old woman, too old for a man to be interested in.

  Ahumado paid no attention to the teasing, and not much attention to what old Hema said about the Serpent. There were many people who believed that there was a great serpent in the center of the earth whose coilings and uncoilings caused the earth to move. These were not beliefs Ahumado shared. He had seen many large snakes in his youth, in the jungles of the south, but no snakes large enough to move the earth, and he did not believe that there was a serpent god who lived within the earth. Even if there was such a serpent in the earth there would be no reason for it to respond to the scratchings of a small americano.

  The gods Ahumado believed in were Jaguar and Parrot; the thing that worried him most about Scull was that Parrot had flown by his cage and looked at him. None of the spirits were as intelligent as Parrot, in his view. In his youth in the jungles he had often seen parrots who could speak the ^ws of men. Though men could imitate the calls of many birds, no man could speak to a bird unless the bird was Parrot. Parrot was to be feared for his brain, Jaguar for his power.

  Jaguar was not interested in the human beings; he might eat one but he would not talk to one. In his youth Ahumado had been like Parrot; he talked to many men--now that he was old he had become like Jaguar. Rather than talk to men he merely had Goyeto skin them, or else thrust them onto the sharpened trees.

  In the morning old Hema stumbled back to her hut. She had forgotten her ^ws about the Serpent.

  She had forgotten that her teeth chattered and that froth came out of her mouth. Still, Ahumado kept a close watch on Scull, up in his cage. Scull was still scratching on the rock with the little file that had been Tudwal's, but Ahumado no longer cared about that very much. He only wanted to know if Parrot would come again.

  When Kicking Wolf was halfway home he began to encounter signs of the great raid. He crossed the tracks of many bands of warriors, all of them going north. The bands travelled in a leisurely way--they drove many horses ahead of them and they were not being pursued. At first he thought that only a few bands had been raiding, but then, as he saw more and more tracks, all flowing north, he began to realize that a great raid had been launched against the whites. Twice he came upon the bodies of white children who had died in travel.

  Several times he saw pieces of garments that had been torn off captive women, either by thorny brush or by warriors who had outraged the women and left their clothes.

  By good luck he even came upon three stray horses and was able to catch one of them. The sorrel horse of Three Birds had travelled a long way in rocky country. Its hooves were in poor condition. Kicking Wolf had been about to abandon him and go home on foot; it was a boon to find the three horses.

  The night after he caught the fresh horses Kicking Wolf heard the faint sound of singing from a camp that was not too distant. Even though at first he could scarcely hear the singing he recognized the voice of one of the singers, a brave named Red Hand, from his own band. He had often raided with Red Hand and did not think he could mistake his voice, which was deep
, like the bellow of a bull buffalo. Red Hand was the fattest man in the tribe, and the biggest eater. When there was meat Red Hand ate until he fell back in sleep; when he woke up he ate some more. He was something of a braggart, who, when he was not eating, sang of his own exploits. Though fat, Red Hand was quick, and deadly with the bow. He had three wives who complained that he didn't lie with them enough. When Red Hand was at home he devoted himself to eating, and to the making of arrows.

  Kicking Wolf was tired, but he was also hungry. Ahumado had left him no weapons and he had had a hard time getting anything to eat on his trip north. He survived on roots and wild onions and several fish he speared with a crude spear when he was crossing the Rio Grande. He had been so hungry that he had been almost ready to kill Three Birds' horse and eat him.

  Though he had been about to sleep he decided it was better to go on to the camp where Red Hand was singing. There would probably be food in the camp, unless Red Hand had eaten it all.

  The camp was farther away than he thought, but Red Hand and a few others were still singing when Kicking Wolf appeared on his new horse. There were almost twenty warriors in the party; they had two captive girls. The warriors were so confident that they hadn't even posted guards. When Kicking Wolf appeared they all stopped singing and stared at him, as if he were someone they didn't know. Red Hand had been eating venison but he stopped when he saw Kicking Wolf.