Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  Jake saw from Gus's face that he was very angry--he had no idea why Gus had chosen to take it out on him, but he knew better than to resist. Gus McCrae was fully capable of doing worse.

  "There, you better play possum or I'll have your damn gizzard," Gus said.

  The three men struggling with the mustang noticed the little altercation. They stopped what they were doing, to watch, but there was nothing more to see. A little wind swirled through the lots, blowing several of Jake Spoon's cards off the wheelbarrow. Gus left Jake on his back in the dust and walked over to the horseshoeing crew.

  "Jake's a lazy one, ain't he?" Long Bill said. "The whores like him, though. They fancy that curly hair." "Jakie," Mrs. Scull called him, Gus remembered. Probably she too had fancied his curly hair. The thought brought the bad taste back to his mouth.

  Jake Spoon picked himself up, but cautiously. He left the windblown cards to lie in the dust. Gus McCrae looked as if he were in the mood to give someone a thorough licking. The men resumed working with the horse, but they kept one eye on Gus, who stood with his back to them. It was clear that it wouldn't take much to set him off.

  But when Gus turned it was to motion for Deets to come with him.

  "You, there," he said to Jake, "leave them cards alone and help the boys shoe that horse." Long Bill started to protest the order.

  Deets was handy with a hasp and a horseshoe nail, and there was nothing in the way of labor that Jake was handy with. But he saw that Gus was upset, and held his tongue.

  Augustus walked Deets out of town to where the cemetery lay, in a curve of a stream. They could hear the water rushing before they reached the stream.

  Once amid the live oaks that bordered the river Gus felt a little relief from his sour mood, a mood mostly caused by Inez Scull. He didn't like the woman, but she exuded a strong nectar, too strong to easily ignore.

  Deets followed Gus quietly, glad to be relieved of the horseshoeing. When they came to the cemetery he took off his hat, an old felt Captain Call had given him only the day before.

  It had belonged to one of the rangers killed in the raid. Deets was mighty proud of his hat, but he took it off quickly when they came to the graveyard. It wouldn't do to be disrespectful of the dead.

  Augustus walked him carefully through the fresh graves until he came to those of Clara's mother and father. He knew Deets couldn't read the names on the wooden crosses, so he wanted him to take care to note exactly where the two graves were.

  "These are the Forsythes," he told Deets.

  "They were parents of a good friend of mine. I aim to put up good stone headstones when I get time-- she'd want me to, I expect." The thought of Clara entrusting him with the care of her parents' graves left him briefly overcome.

  He knelt down and didn't try to speak.

  "Deets, can you garden?" he asked, when the mood passed and he had better control of his voice.

  "I can garden," Deets assured him.

  "Kept a big one, back home. Lord, we grew the string beans." Augustus realized he knew almost nothing about the young black man. Deets had just shown up one day, as people did--black people, particularly. Their owners died and they were set to wandering.

  "Where was back home, Deets?" Gus asked.

  "Louisee, I believe," Deets said, after a moment. "It was in Louisee, somewhere on the river." "Oh, Louisiana, I guess you mean," Gus said. "I want you to tend these graves like you would a garden. Only you don't need to grow no string beans, just flowers. My friend's mother was partial to bluebonnets, particularly. I'd like you to get some flowers growing on these graves, come spring." It was clear to Deets that Mr. Gus had a powerful affection for the friend he mentioned. When he mentioned her his voice shook. As for flowers, that was easy.

  "The flowers be coming soon," he said. "I'll get some of the bluebonnets and put them on these graves." "I'll see you get a wage for it--a fair wage," Augustus said. "I want you to keep tending these two graves as long you're in these parts. Just these two, now. You don't have time to be flowering up other people's graves." "No sir," Deets said. "I see which two.

  I'll make 'em pretty." "You tend them, come what may," Gus said.

  "That's how my friend wants it." He paused--he seemed to have difficulty with his voice. Deets waited.

  "You'll need to be keeping them pretty, year after year," Gus said, with a glance at the young black man who knelt, hat in hand, a few feet away.

  "You'll need to do it whatever happens to me," Gus said, looking down at the clods of brown earth on the fresh grave.

  These last ^ws startled Deets. It was clear that Mr. Gus was mighty concerned about the upkeep of the two graves. Deets could not but feel proud that he had been selected, from all the company, to be the one to see that the burial places were well maintained.

  But now Mr. Gus was concerning him a little.

  What did he mean, whatever happened to him? It sounded as if he might be intending to leave, which was startling and upsetting. Of all the rangers only Pea Eye, a young man like himself, had been as kind to him as Mr. Gus.

  "I expect you be seeing for yourself what a good job I do, Captain," Deets said. He tried to pick his ^ws carefully, for the matter clearly meant a lot to Mr. Gus.

  "But if I ain't here to see it for myself, you tend these graves anyway," Gus said, with force in his voice suddenly. "You make 'em pretty anyway, Deets, even if I'm dead and in a grave myself." It had suddenly come to Augustus that he might die without ever seeing Clara again--or, even worse, Clara herself might die before they could ever have another moment together with one another. It was a terrible thought to think, and yet men and women died every day on the frontier; and Nebraska, where Clara had gone, was no less a frontier than Texas. Thirty people, all of them alive when he and Call left Austin, lay buried under the freshly turned earth just before him.

  "I ain't guaranteed tomorrow--y ain't either," he told Deets. "If I should fall I wouldn't want my friend to have to be ... worrying about these graves not being tended." Deets had never heard Mr. Gus speak so.

  He realized he had been given a solemn responsibility.

  "I'll be seeing to the graves, Captain," he said.

  Mr. Gus nodded. He was looking away; it was as if he were thinking of a far place, a place well distant from the little graveyard outside of Austin. He nodded, but he didn't speak.

  Deets thought it might be best just to leave him alone, to do his looking away. He walked out of the graveyard, put his hat back on, and began to inspect some of the first spring flowers, to see if any of them might do for prettying up the two graves.

  Maggie now seldom went out. The baby was growing inside her, its kicks stronger every day.

  Even with her coat on it was obvious to everyone who saw her that she was with child.

  Fortunately her room was light, with a good south breeze blowing through it most of the time. Woodrow had started taking most of his meals with her, which meant that she did have to go out and shop a little in the market.

  Since the raid beef had become scarce and pricey. There were plenty of cattle but few hunters bold enough to go into the brush country to slaughter them, for fear of encountering Comanches.

  Fortunately, Woodrow liked goat, which was available and cheap. Sometimes Gus McCrae would come up and eat with him--he was always tipsy, it seemed.

  "I fear my partner will end up a drunkard," Woodrow said, one night after Gus had left.

  They stood by the window and watched him make straight for a saloon.

  "That's because of Clara," Maggie said. "He had his heart set on her." "Yes, but she's gone," Call said. "He needs to let it go and find himself another girl." "He can't," Maggie said. "Some folks can't just bend their feelings that way." "Well, he ought to try," Woodrow said.

  "There's plenty of girls that would make him a decent wife if he'd just give them a chance." Then he picked up his rifle and left to walk the river, as he did most every night. He scarcely lingered with Maggie ten minutes now, after takin
g his meal; when he returned it would be nearly dawn. He would merely sleep an hour or two with her, before going down to the rangers.

  Each night's departure left Maggie feeling empty and sad. She wanted to say to him what he had just said about the girls Gus might marry: I could make you a decent wife, if you'd just give me the chance. Already, she tried to treat Woodrow as she would treat a beloved husband, yet all it seemed to get her was the hastiest attentions. The thing that seemed to please him most was that she kept his clothes clean and nicely pressed. As the weather grew warmer, Maggie sometimes felt faint, ironing in the heat, and yet she kept on because Woodrow liked to dress neatly and his pleasure in wearing well-placed clothes was a kind of bond they had, a stronger one than their pleasure even. Anyway the pleasure had become hasty and more and more intermittent. Woodrow seemed to feel that much indulgence in the carnal appetites would be medically inadvisable; or perhaps he was merely put off by her swelling body. He withdrew and walked the river; Maggie felt sad, but continued to do her best.

  The baby that was so visibly there inside her she had given up mentioning at all. That she was pregnant was a fact of their existence, yet a fact they both ignored. Maggie longed for a good chance to talk to Woodrow about the baby; but he was careful in his speech and never gave her one.

  Best wait, she thought--best wait until it's here. Her hope was that once the child was born Woodrow would see it and take to it. In her daydreams she imagined him pleased by the little child, so pleased that he would want everybody to know he was its father. And yet, at night, alone, with Woodrow gone, she couldn't keep herself from wondering if it would really be that way. One day she would be hopeful, the next day despairing. She could well understand why Gus McCrae had turned to drink, from missing Clara Forsythe, now Clara Allen. Maggie missed her too. Although circumstance had not permitted much conversation to pass between them, Maggie felt that Clara liked her.

  Sometimes, sweeping the boardwalk in front of the store, Clara would look up at Maggie's window and smile and wave. When some small need took Maggie into the store, Clara was invariably friendly and welcoming. Knowing that Maggie had a yearning for fine goods, gloves or shoes often well beyond her purse, Clara would sometimes mark a little off an item, so that Maggie could have at least a few things that pleased her.

  Having Clara there broke the loneliness; now there was no one with such a fine spirit who might break it. Maggie had once talked to Pearl Coleman now and then, but since the raid Pearl herself had become too despondent to chatter in the light way she once had. Maggie saw her almost every day, in the market, but Pearl barely responded to her hello. From being an aggressive customer, willing to haggle tirelessly and loudly over the price of a pepper or a squash, Pearl had become indifferent, merely raking a few foodstuffso into her basket and paying the price without dispute.

  Seeing Pearl Coleman, a woman who had always been cheerful and well able to take care of herself, so despondent made Maggie reflect on how precarious life was, in such a place. Thirty people had lost their lives, and several women had had their marriages destroyed by the rapes they endured; most of the children had stopped going to school for fear that the Indians would come back and take them, and the men were nervous about venturing much beyond the outskirts of Austin.

  Maggie herself felt like going to a safer place-- San Antonio, perhaps, or one of the towns on the coast. But she knew that if she moved she would lose all hope of marriage to Woodrow Call. The rangers were quartered in Austin and he had been promoted to captain. He would not be likely to leave.

  One good thing about the promotion was that Woodrow had started giving her six dollars a month toward her housekeeping expenses.

  "Woodrow, what's this for?" Maggie asked, very startled, the first time he gave her the money.

  "Take it--it will be easier for you to make ends meet," Call said. The fact was, he lived frugally and seldom spent all his salary; a factor in his modest prosperity was that Maggie fed him several meals a week and looked after his laundry. Nobody gave her the food she served him, and she could scarcely do much whoring with her belly so swollen. He felt that he was an expense Maggie could ill afford. Mainly he would just put the money on the table, or by the cupboard; often he would leave it at night, before he left to walk the river.

  When Maggie saw the six dollars on her table something stirred in her, something mixed. She realized it was as close as Woodrow could come to admitting that he lived with her. On the other hand, she had always cared for herself. She might long for a man who might marry her and want to support her --and yet she could not convince herself that Woodrow really did want to support her. He just felt he ought to; it was his conscience, not his heart, which moved him to put the six dollars on her table every month.

  Sometimes Maggie left the money on the table a day or two before she picked it up. The sight of it made her feel both better and worse; it made her feel that she was being kept by a man who, though he might care for her, had no true desire to keep her, much less marry her and claim their child.

  Still, Woodrow Call, with his nightly absences and the six dollars a month which he punctually left, was still the best that life offered, or was likely to offer, in the place where Maggie was. Sometimes she felt so defeated that she wondered if she ought to give up on the idea of respectability alt. She might as well just whore and whore and whore, until she got too old. Even if she only saw a few customers, now and then, she could still make a lot more than six dollars a month.

  They had travelled up the Rio Grande almost to the crossings on the great war trail when they saw the Old One. Worm at once became upset and began to shake and to speak incoherently, although the Old One was merely squatting by a little fire, carefully removing the quills from a large porcupine he had shot.

  The Old One, whose long white hair touched the ground when he squatted, was devoting careful attention to the dead porcupine. He did not want to break any of the porcupine quills--one by one he took them out and laid them on a little strip of buckskin he had unfurled and placed on a rock by his campfire. The big wolf that travelled with the Old One gave one howl when he smelled Buffalo Hump and Worm, and loped away into the bed of the river.

  Buffalo Hump stopped, respectfully, a good distance away. The Old One turned his head briefly and looked at them; then he went back to the careful extraction of the porcupine quills.

  "We must not stay here," Worm said, in a shaky voice. "The wolf can hide in a dream.

  In the dream it will be a bird, or a woman you want to couple with. But when you do, the wolf will come out of the dream and open your throat." "Be quiet," Buffalo Hump said. "I am not afraid of any wolf. If we are respectful, the Old One might give us some of those nice quills." "No, we cannot take the quills," Worm protested. "The Old One might witch them.

  They might turn into scorpions while you carry them. Nothing about the Old One is as it seems." Buffalo Hump was beginning to wish he had sent Worm home after the great raid. Worm had become too nervous to make good company. Everything he had seen on their ride up the river seemed malign to him. At the mouth of the river, where the water was salt, they had caught a young alligator that had got into the wrong waters somehow. Worm made a big fuss over the alligator. Later they came upon a dead eagle and Worm made a big fuss about that too. Now they had stumbled on the Old One and Worm was terrified. Once Worm had been a competent medicine man but now everything seemed to scare him or upset him.

  "The Old One is just an old man," Buffalo Hump said. "I have seen him several times and he has never witched me. He probably found that wolf when it was a pup and raised it as we would a dog.

  "The Old One is not a fighting man now," he added, but Worm was still not reassured.

  "He is too old," Worm contended. "He belongs to death and he brings death with him. His breath is the breath of death." Buffalo Hump decided just to ignore Worm. If Worm didn't want to visit with the Old One, then Worm could take himself home.

  "The Old One isn't dead," he
pointed out.

  "He belongs to the river, and he has killed a fine porcupine. It is hard to find a porcupine on the llano now. I want some of those quills for my wives--they always like porcupine quills." He rode slowly on down to where the Old One was working--Worm hung back, but he did not leave for home. Buffalo Hump knew all the stories about Ephaniah, the Old One, the man who walked with a wolf. It was said that he had come to the West with the first whites, the ones who took the beaver. One story was that he had bathed in a stream where the river was born, in a place no one else had ever found, and that the water in that place had made him unable to die. It was said that he would only die when the world died. That was why he called himself the Lord of the Last Day. Because the sacred waters of the spring of life had bathed him he had been able to escape the dangers that had long ago finished all the other white men who took the beaver. Once, it was said, the fastest warriors the Blackfeet could muster got after the Old One for taking their beaver; they ran him hard for a hundred miles. Though the warriors were young and fleet, Ephaniah was faster. He ran on and on and could not be overtaken. It was said, too, that he had made a pact with the beaver people, so that they would let him hide in their houses when he was in danger.