Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  Ahumado did not reveal his injury to anyone.

  He sat on his blanket, as he always did, watching the great vultures soar across the face of the Yellow Cliffs. There were fewer vultures now, because Ahumado had stopped hanging men in the cages, men the vultures could eat. Only a few of the vultures, or the eagles, still flew along the cliff, waiting to see if Ahumado would cage a man for them to eat.

  Ahumado sat as he had always sat, listening, saying little. The wound in his leg was very small yet; no one had noticed it, or smelled the rot that would soon spread. Once he had thought the matter over for a day or two, Ahumado realized that it was more than just one of Parrot's jokes. Parrot had sent Spider to call him home; Parrot and Jaguar wanted him to leave the Yellow Cliffso, to stop harrying the whites with their thin cattle; Parrot and Jaguar wanted him to return to his home, to the jungle, where great serpents rested in the vine-covered temples. There was a broad tree near one of the temples, a tree with a great hole in it. Lightning had hit the tree and burned it away inside, so that there was a space in the tree large enough for a person to live in. When Ahumado was young an old woman had lived in the tree: her name was Huatl and she was a great curandera, so great that she could even cure the bite of the Spider Who Hides. In his youth Ahumado had often seen old Huatl; she lived in the split tree, near his home. She had told him that he would live long but that in his old age it would be his duty to return to the place of the split tree. When it was time for him to finish with his life as a human being, he was to lie near the tree with the hole in it; then he would sink into the earth and become a root. Lightning would come again and burn the great tree where Huatl lived. That tree would burn up but another tree would grow from the root that had once been the man Ahumado.

  That tree would live for a thousand years and become the tree of medicines. The people would come in their weakness or illness to the tree of medicines and be cured.

  In that tree would be all knowledge, all that Huatl and all the other great healers knew.

  For three days Ahumado watched the tiny hole in his leg become larger; he watched as the ring of rot spread. On the third day he heard a sound deep in his ear and looked up to see Parrot fly like a red streak across the face of the cliff. He thought the sound in his ear was from Jaguar, who was somewhere near.

  Ahumado knew then that he had been summoned. He was spending his last day in the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs. None of the people in the camp knew this, of course. The women went on with their work, washing clothes in the stream and making tortillas. The men played cards, drank tequila, quarrelled over dice, and tried to get the women to couple with them. Scull crouched in his cage, sheltering his lidless eyes from the sun. It was hundreds of miles to the jungle, to the place of temples. Ahumado knew he had better get started. He wanted to get across the first mountains before his leg became too bad.

  He knew that by the time he reached the home of Jaguar he would have no leg. He meant to take a good hatchet with him, so he could make himself a crutch when his leg failed. That night he would crawl through a hole that only he knew about--the hole would take him through the belly of the cliff; it would take him past the dark men. He told no one; he would merely vanish--in the morning there would be no Ahumado. He would travel over rocks and leave no track. None of the people would know where he went. He would simply be gone.

  There was only one thing left for Ahumado to do, in the canyon of the Yellow Cliffso, and it involved old Goyeto, the skinner.

  "Sharpen your knives," he told Goyeto.

  "You had better get them as sharp as you can. They need to be very sharp today." Goyeto brightened, when he received those instructions. They had taken no captives lately; there had been no one to skin. But now Ahumado wanted him to make the knives sharp.

  He wanted the knives to be very sharp. It must mean that he had at last decided to let him skin the white man, Scull. There was no one else who was a candidate for skinning.

  So Goyeto set about to make his little knives sharp--while Ahumado sat on his blanket, Goyeto whetted his knives, with skill. When they were ready he brought them to Ahumado, who tested them one by one. He used fine threads from his blanket, cutting the threads with the mere touch.

  "Are we going to skin the white man?" Goyeto asked. "I'll have him tied to the post, if you want." When Ahumado turned to face him Goyeto's heart almost stopped, from the look that was in Ahumado's eyes. Goyeto did not even have the strength to stammer. He knew he had been discovered; an old sin, one he had committed many years before with one of Ahumado's women, on a blanket amid the horses, had been found out.

  Goyeto had long feared discovery--Ahumado was jealous of his women--but Ahumado had been one hundred miles away, on a trip to catch slaves, when the woman coaxed him onto the blanket. She was a lustful woman; she had tried to coax him onto the blanket many times, but Goyeto had been too fearful of Ahumado's vengeance. He had only coupled with the woman that once.

  When Ahumado turned his snakelike look on him, Goyeto knew who the knives had been sharpened for. He jumped up and tried to run, but the vaqueros quickly caught him. At Ahumado's command they took all his clothes off and tied him to the post where he had practiced his delicate art for so long. Goyeto felt such a fear that he wanted to die. No one but himself knew how to skin a man--if one of the crude young pistoleros tried to skin him it would just be butchery; they would hack his flesh off, with his skin.

  Then Ahumado himself rose from his blanket and took the knives. He stuck them one by one into the post above Goyeto's head, so that, as one became dull, he could take another.

  "Parrot told me what you did with my woman," Ahumado said. "He told me in a dream. I have watched you skin people for many years. I am your pupil in this matter. Now we will see if I have learned well." Goyeto didn't plead. He was so frightened that all ^ws left his mind and became screams.

  Ahumado began at his armpits and began to work downward. Old Goyeto had a big stomach-- Ahumado thought such a stomach would be easy to skin, but it wasn't. Goyeto screamed so loudly that people became confused and began to flee the camp. It was not merely the loudness of the screams that confused them, either. Ahumado was skinning the skinner --no one knew what it meant. It might mean that he was tired of them, that he meant to skin them all.

  If they ran he might merely shoot them, which would be better than being skinned.

  Goyeto's voice wore out long before Ahumado worked downward to the part that had been active in committing the sin, years before on the horse blanket. Goyeto's mind broke; he spewed liquids out of his mouth that mixed with his blood. Ahumado tried to skin one of his ears but Goyeto didn't feel it. He died in the afternoon, well before the sun touched the rim of the Yellow Cliff. Disappointed, Ahumado stuck all of Goyeto's skinning knives in him, and walked away.

  There were only a few people left in the camp by then; a few old women, too crippled to run, and one or two of the older vaqueros; all of them hated Goyeto and wanted to see how long he would last. Like Ahumado, they were disappointed.

  The other person left was the white man, Scull. He had not watched the skinning. It was a bright day. He had to crouch with his arms over his head to keep the brightness from burning his brain. Scull knew what happened, though. Ahumado had seen him glance once or twice at the skinning post.

  Scull noticed that people were leaving the camp. It was only when dusk fell and deep shadows filled the canyon that Scull could look. Ahumado had returned to his blanket--a few old women sat by the fires.

  In the night, when the camp slept, Ahumado went to the cage where Scull was kept. Scull flashed his white eyes at him but didn't speak.

  Neither did Ahumado. Goyeto, dead, hung from the skinning post. Even some of the old women had begun to hobble away. Ahumado pulled the cage, with Scull in it, toward the pit of snakes and scorpions and, without delay, pushed it over the edge. He heard it splinter when it hit the floor of the pit. There was no sound from Scull, but Ahumado heard the buzz of several rattlesnake
s as he walked away.

  Ahumado took his rifle and his blanket and moved quickly until he found the hole that led through the belly of the mountain.

  By morning, when old Xitla woke and began to stir the campfire, the vultures had begun to curl down into the camp, to feast on Goyeto; but Ahumado, the Black Vaquero, was gone.

  As Scull listened to Old Goyeto's screams he wondered what had occurred. The skinner was being skinned, that much he could see, although he only glanced up once or twice. He could not risk more; not with the sun so bright. But Ahumado was doing the skinning and, to judge from the intensity of Goyeto's screams, doing it badly on purpose. Where the skinner, Goyeto, had only taken skin, Ahumado pulled away strips of flesh, and did it so cavalierly that Goyeto soon wore out his voice and his heart. He died well before sunset, only partially skinned.

  Once the shadows came Scull could risk more looks--he saw that almost all the people in the camp were leaving, unnerved by the unexpected execution of Goyeto.

  Then, once it was dark, Ahumado suddenly appeared and began to push the cage toward the pit.

  He didn't speak; Scull didn't either. The two had contested in silence so far; let it stay silent, Scull thought, though he was disturbed by what was occurring. He had seen men hurled into the pit and had heard their dying screams. He didn't know how deep the pit was--perh he would be killed or crippled by the drop. He knew there were snakes in the pit because he could hear them buzzing; but he didn't know how many snakes, or what else might be there. Once Ahumado appeared there was no time to reflect or plan.

  Ahumado didn't even glance at him, or speak ^ws of hatred and triumph. He just pushed the cage a few feet and, without ceremony, shoved it over the edge of the pit.

  The darkness Scull fell into was soon matched by the darkness in his head. He heard snakes buzzing and then he heard nothing. The cage turned in the air--he landed upside down and struck his head sharply on one of the wooden bars.

  When he came to, it was night--in the moonlight he could see the opening of the pit above him. Scull didn't move. He heard no buzzing, but didn't consider it prudent to move.

  If there was a snake close by he didn't want to disturb it. In the morning he could assess matters more intelligently. There was dried blood on his cheek; he assumed he had cut his head when the cage hit bottom. But he was alive.

  At the moment his worst affliction was the stench.

  The rich Mexicans who had died in the pit were still there, of course, and they were fragrant. But he was alive, Bible and sword; under the circumstances, phenomenal luck. It could easily have been himself, and not Goyeto, at the skinning post.

  The pistoleros, the vaqueros, the young men of the camp, and the young women seemed to have gone. Always at night there would be singing around the campfires; there would be laughter, quarrels, the sounds of flirtation, drunkenness, strife. Sometimes guns were fired; sometimes women shrieked.

  But now the camp above him was silent, a fact which bothered Scull considerably. To be alive, after such a drop, was exhilarating; but after relief and euphoria came terrible thoughts.

  What if they had all left? The old man might just have pushed him into the cage and left him to starve. The walls of the pit looked sheer. What if he couldn't scale then? What would he survive on? What if no rains came and he had no water?

  From exhilaration he slid toward hopelessness; he had to will himself to stop, to collect his thoughts.

  Intelligence, intelligence, he told himself.

  Think! The fact that he was in a hard situation didn't mean the final doom was come. At least in the pit he could shade himself, and the rangers might be well on their way with the cattle. With Ahumado gone all they would have to do was ride in and hoist him out of the pit.

  Slowly, Scull's panic subsided. He reminded himself that in the pit there was shade; the torture of sunlight would be avoided.

  Finally a gray light began to filter into the air above the pit. The stars faded. Scull looked first for the snakes and saw none. Perhaps they were hiding in crevices. The dead men were far gone in rot. Fortunately his cage had splintered and he soon freed himself of it. The stench all but overcame him; he thought his best bet to contain it would be to scoop dirt over the bodies. If he could cover them over with dirt it would cut at least some of the smell. He pulled loose a couple of bars, from his cage, to use as digging instruments.

  He could dig at the side of the pit until he had enough dirt to cover the bodies. Though not particularly fastidious, he felt that a day or two of the stench might unhinge his mind.

  He was just about to begin digging at the wall of the pit when he heard the buzzing again and realized he had been wrong about the snakes. The light was gray and so was the dust in the pit--in the gray dust the snakes were almost invisible. One large rattler had been resting not a yard from where he stood. The snake started to crawl away, only rattling a little, not coiling, but Scull leapt at it and crushed its head with his stick. He knew he had to be careful. His eyes were apt to water when he focused too long on one thing. He couldn't see well enough to spot the snakes. He edged around the perimeter of the pit and killed three more snakes before he was done. Then he began to dig at the walls. By noon, when he had to quit and hide his eyes, the dead Mexicans lay buried under sizable mounds of earth. Before burying the men Scull held his nose with one hand and forced himself to investigate their pockets. He was hoping Ahumado had overlooked a pocketknife, or another file, but in that he was disappointed. All he got off the corpses was their belts.

  From time to time he dug, heaping more dirt on the corpses, but his time in the cage had weakened him; he could not dig long at a stretch, and no matter how careful he was, dirt got into his lidless eyes. The dust and dirt felt as painful as if it were gravel. Finally he took off his shirt, tied it over his eyes, and dug at the walls blindly.

  By the afternoon, exhausted, he huddled in the shade.

  One of his ankles was inflamed. He had seen several scorpions and wondered if he had been bitten by one during the night, when he was unconscious. He saw no sign of a bite, but the ankle was very sore, which chastened him. The pit seemed to be only fifteen feet deep, only some three times his size. Perhaps he could dig a few handholds and pull himself out. But his throbbing ankle, coupled with his exhaustion and the beginnings of a fever, brought home to him again the desperate character of the situation. No sound at all came from what had been, only the day before, a bustling camp.

  There might be no one left to bring him water or food. The rangers might not have been able to get the cattle; no help might be coming. The pit he was in, though not really deep, was just deep enough to constitute the perfect trap for a man in his condition. Even if he could dig the handholds, he might not have the strength to climb out; his ankle would scarcely bear his weight. He could eat the snakes he had killed, but, after that, he would have nothing. Every day he would get a little weaker, and have less and less hope of effecting his own escape.

  Barring a miracle, Ahumado had beaten him after all. The old man had even robbed him of time. As soon as Ahumado noticed that Scull was keeping a little calendar of twigs, he moved the cage and scattered the twigs. It was a thing to brood about. Ahumado had known that time meant something special to his prisoner. Now and then he would approach the cage and say, "Do you know what day it is, Captain?" Scull refused to answer--but Ahumado knew that Scull's hold on time had been broken.

  "I know what day it is," he would say quietly, before returning to his blanket.

  That night, as Scull's fever rose, he dreamed of a flood. He dreamed that water filled the pit to its brim, cool water that allowed him to float free. "Forty days and forty nights," he mumbled, but he awoke to dry sunlight and pain in his eyes. The dirt he had got in them the day before left them swollen.

  "Noah," Scull said, aloud. "I need what Noah had. I need a flood to raise me up." His own ^ws sounded crazy to him. As his mind swirled, touching the edges of madness, he suddenly thought of Dolly, his Dolly-
-Inez to the world but always Dolly to him. Even at that moment, as he lay starving in a scorpion pit in Mexico, she probably was in a bed or a closet, stoking her own fires with some stout illiterate lad.

  "The black bitch!" he said.

  Then, anger pulsing through him, he yelled the ^ws as loudly as he could: "The black bitch!

  The bitch!" The sound echoed off the cliffso, where a few buzzards still circled.

  Then, dizzy from his own spurt of anger, Scull sat back against the wall of the pit, exhausted. In his mind he saw exactly how the handholds should be dug, in an ascending circle around the pit. He stood five foot two; he only needed to raise himself a bit over ten feet to escape--nothing to what Hannibal had faced with his elephants at the base of the Alps. Yet it was those ten feet that would defeat him. His eye saw the way clearly, but his body, for the first time in his life, would not respond.