Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  When he arrived Captain King had already seated himself at the table with the tablecloth, tucked a napkin under his chin, and was heartily eating the Frenchwoman's omelette. One of the vaqueros had killed a javelina. By the time Jake got there they had the little pig skinned and gutted. One of the men started to throw the pig guts into the bushes but Th@er@ese stopped him.

  "What do you do? You would waste the best part!" Th@er@ese said, scowling at the vaquero. "Xavier, come!" Jake, and a number of the other rangers too, were startled by the avid way Th@er@ese and Xavier Wanz went after the pig guts. Even the vaquero who had killed the pig was taken aback when Th@er@ese plunged her hands to the wrists in the intestines and plumped coil after coil of them on a tray her husband held. Her hands were soon bloody to the elbow, a sight that caused Lee Hitch, not normally a delicate case, to feel as if his stomach might come up.

  "Oh Lord, she's got that gut blood on her," he said, losing his taste for the delicious omelette he had just been served.

  Captain King, eating .his omelette with relish, observed this sudden skittishness and chuckled.

  "You boys must have spent too much time in tea parlors," he said. "I've seen your Karankawa Indians, of which there ain't many, anymore, pull the guts out of a dying deer and start eating them before the deer had even stopped kicking." "This is fine luck, Captain," Th@er@ese said, bringing the heaping tray of guts over for him to inspect. "Tonight we will have the tripes." "Well, that's fine luck for these men--while they're eating tripe I'll be tramping through Mexico," he said. "Some thieving caballeros run off fifty of our cow horses, but I expect we'll soon catch up with them." "You could take us with you, Captain," Stove Jones said. "Call and McCrae, they left us. We ain't got nothing to do." Captain King wiped his mouth with his napkin and shook his head at Stove.

  "No thanks--taking you men would be like dragging several anchors," he said bluntly. "Call and McCrae were unwise to bring you--they should have left you to the tea parlors." He spoke with such uncommon force that none of the men knew quite what to say.

  "It was the Governor sent us on this errand," Lee Hitch said finally.

  "He just wanted to get rid of you so he could claim he'd tried," Captain King said, with the same bluntness. "Ed Pease knows that few Texas cattlemen are such rank fools as to deliver free cattle to an old bandit like Ahumado. He takes what livestock he wants anyway." "It was to ransom Captain Scull," Stove Jones reminded him.

  Captain King stood up, wiped his mouth, scattered some coins on the table, and went to his horse. Only when he was mounted did he bother to reply.

  "Inish Scull is mainly interested in making mischief," he said. "He got himself into this scrape, and he ought to get himself out, but if he can't, I imagine Call and McCrae will bring him back." "Well, they left us," Lee Hitch said.

  "Yes, got tired of dragging anchors, I suppose," the Captain said.

  He motioned to his men, who looked dismayed.

  They had cut up the javelina and prepared it for the fire, but so far the meat was scarcely singed.

  "You will have to finish cooking that pig in Mexico," he informed them. "I cannot be sitting around here while you cook a damn pig. I need to get those horses back and hang me a few thieves." With that he turned and headed for the river. The vaqueros hastily pulled the slabs of uncooked javelina off the fire and stuffed them in their saddlebags. A couple of the slabs were so hot that smoke was seeping out of their saddlebags as they rode away.

  Th@er@ese and Xavier Wanz began to cut up the pig guts, stripping them of their contents as they worked. Xavier had taken off his black coat, but he still wore his neat bowtie.

  Lee Hitch and Stove Jones were both annoyed by Captain King. In their view he had been rude to the point of disrespect.

  "Why does he think we sit around in tea parlors?" Stove asked.

  "The fool, I don't know--why didn't you ask him yourself?" Lee said.

  "Lord, Mexico's a big country," Augustus said. It was a warm night; they had only a small campfire, just adequate to the cooking they needed to do. Just after crossing the river, Call had shot a small deer--meat for a day or two at least. They were camped on a dry plain, and had not seen a human being since coming into Mexico.

  "The sky's higher in Mexico," Gus observed; he felt generally uneasy.

  "It ain't higher, Gus," Call said.

  "We've just travelled sixty miles. Why would the sky be higher, just because we're in Mexico?" "Look at it," Gus insisted. He pointed upward. "It's higher." Call declined to look up. Whenever Gus McCrae was bored and restless he always tried to start some nonsensical argument, on topics Call had little patience with.

  "The sky's the same height no matter what country you're in," Call told him. "We're way out here in the country--y can just see the stars better." "How would you know? You've never been to no country but Texas," Gus commented. "If we was in a country that had high mountains, the sky would have to be higher, otherwise the mountains would poke into it." Call didn't answer--he wanted, if possible, to let the topic die.

  "If a mountain was to poke a hole in the sky, I don't know what would happen," Gus said.

  He felt aggrieved. They had left in such a hurry that he had neglected to procure any whiskey, an oversight he regretted.

  "Maybe the sky would look lower if I had some whiskey to drink," he said. "But you were in such a hurry to leave that I forgot to pack any." Call was beginning to be exasperated. They were in deserted country and could get some rest, which would be the wise thing.

  "You should clean your guns and stop worrying about the sky being too high," he said.

  "I wish you talked more, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I get gloomy if I have to sit around with you all night. You don't talk enough to keep my mind off them gloomy topics." "What topics?" Call asked. "We're healthy and we've got no reason to be gloomy, that I can see." "You can't see much anyway," Gus said.

  "Your eyesight's so poor you can't even tell that the sky's higher in Mexico." "The fact is, I was thinking about Billy," Augustus said. "We've never gone on a rangering trip without Billy before." "No, and it don't feel right, does it?" Call agreed.

  "Now if he were here I'd have someone to help me complain, and you'd be a lot more comfortable," Augustus said.

  They were silent for a while; both stared into the campfire.

  "I feel he's around somewhere," Augustus said. "I feel Billy's haunting us. They say people who hang themselves don't ever rest. They don't die with their feet on the ground so their spirits float forever." "Now, that's silly," Call said, although he had heard the same speculation about hanged men.

  "I can't stop thinking about him, Woodrow," Gus said. "I figure it was just a mistake Billy made, hanging himself. If he'd thought it over a few more minutes he might have stayed alive and gone on rangering with us." "He's gone, though, Gus--he's gone," Call reminded him, without reproach. He realized he had many of the feelings Augustus was trying to express. All through the bush country he had been nagged by a sense that something was missing, the troop incomplete. He knew it was Long Bill Coleman he missed, and Augustus missed him too. It was, in a way, as if Long Bill were following them at an uncomfortable distance; as if he were out somewhere, in the thin scrub, hoping to be taken back into life.

  "I hate a thing like death," Augustus said.

  "Well, everybody hates it, I expect," Call said.

  "One reason I hate it is because it don't leave you no time to finish conversations," Gus said.

  "Oh," Call said. "Was you having a conversation with Billy that night before ... it happened?" Augustus remembered well what he and Billy Coleman had been talking about the night before the suicide. Bill had heard from somebody that Matilda Jane Roberts, their old travelling companion, had opened a bordello in Denver. Matty, as they called her, had ever been a generous whore. Once, on the Rio Grande, bathing not far from camp, she had plucked a big snapping turtle out of the water and walked into camp carrying it by its tail. He and Long Bill always talked about th
e snapping turtle when Matilda's name came up.

  "We was talking about Matty, I believe she's in Denver now," Gus said.

  "I guess she never made it to California, then," Call said. "She was planning to go to California, when we knew her." "People don't always do what they intend, Woodrow," Gus said. "Billy Coleman had it in mind to turn carpenter, only he couldn't drive a nail." "He was only a fair shot," Call remembered. "I guess it's a wonder he survived as a ranger as long as he did." "You survive, and you're just a fair shot yourself," Augustus pointed out.

  "He married," Call said. He remembered how anguished Long Bill had been after he learned that Pearl had been outraged by the Comanches. That discovery changed him more than all their scrapes and adventures on the prairies.

  "He's out there now, Woodrow--I feel him," Gus said. "He's wanting to come back in the worst way." "He's in your memory, that's where he is," Call said. "He's in mine too." He did not believe Long Bill's ghost was out in the sage and the thin chaparral; it was in their memories that Long Bill was a haunt.

  "Rangers oughtn't to marry," he said. "They have to leave their womenfolk for too long a spell.

  Things like that raid can happen." Augustus didn't answer for a while.

  "Things like that happen, married or not," he said finally. "You could be a barber and still get killed." "I just said what I believe," Call said.

  "Rangering means ranging, like Captain Scull said. It ain't a settled life. I expect Bill would be alive, if he hadn't married." "I guess it's bad news for Maggie, if you feel that way, Woodrow," Gus said.

  "She's needing to retire." "She can retire, if she wants to," Call said.

  "Yes, retire and starve," Gus said.

  "What would a retired whore do, in Austin, to earn a living? The only thing retired whores can do is what Matty just did, open a whorehouse, and I doubt Maggie's got the capital. I imagine she could borrow it if you went on her note." Call said nothing. He was being as polite as he could. They would need to be at their best, if they were to rescue Captain Scull.

  They ought not to be quarrelling over things they couldn't change. He believed what he had just said: rangers ought not to marry. The business about going on Maggie's note was frivolous--Maggie Tilton had no desire to open a whorehouse.

  "I doubt Captain Scull is even alive," Gus said. "That old bandit probably killed him long ago." "Maybe, but we still have to look," Call said.

  "Yes, but what's our chances?" Gus asked.

  "We'll be looking for one man's bones--they could be anywhere in Mexico." "We still have to look," Call said, wishing Augustus would just quiet down and go to sleep.

  On the third day the rangers came into terrain that looked familiar--they had crossed the same country before, when Inish Scull had first pursued Ahumado into the Sierra Perdida.

  "We've got to be alert now," Call said.

  "We're in his country." In the afternoon they both had the feeling that they were being watched--and yet, as far as they could see, the country was entirely empty of human beings. The mountains were now a faint line, far to the west.

  Augustus kept looking behind him, and Call did too, but neither of them saw anyone. Once Gus noticed a puff of dust, far behind them. They hid and waited, but no one came. Gus saw the puff of dust again.

  "It's them," he said. "They're laying back." Too nervous to leave the problem uninvestigated, they crept back, only to see that the dust had been kicked up by a big mule deer. Gus wanted to shoot the deer, but Call advised against it.

  "The sound of a gun would travel too far," he said.

  "The sound of my belly rumbling will too, pretty soon, if we don't raise some more grub," Gus said.

  "Throw your knife at him--I don't object to that," Call said. "I think it's time we started travelling at night." "Aw, Woodrow, I hate travelling at night in a foreign country," Augustus said.

  "I get to thinking about Billy being a ghost. I'd see a spook behind every rock." "That's better than having Ahumado catch you," Call told him. "We're not as important as Captain Scull. They won't send no expeditions after us." "Woodrow, he ain't important either," Augustus said. "None of these ranchers let us have a single cow--I guess they figure the Captain's rich enough to pay his own way out." They rode all night and, the next day, hid under some overhanging rocks. Gus thought to amuse himself by playing solitaire, only to discover that his deck of cards was incomplete.

  "No aces," he informed his companion. "That damn Lee Hitch stole every one of them. What good is a deck of cards that don't have no aces?" "You're just playing against yourself," Call pointed out. "Why do you need aces?" "You ain't a card-playing man and you wouldn't understand," Gus said. "I always knew Lee Hitch was a card cheat. I mean to give him a good licking once we get back to town." "I'd suggest hitting him with a post, if you want to whip him," Call said. "Lee Hitch is stout." As dusk approached they started to edge into the foothills and immediately began to see tracks. People had been on the move, some on horseback, some on foot, and all the tracks led out of the Sierra. Gus, who considered himself a tracker of high skill, jumped down to study the tracks but was frustrated by poor light.

  "I could read these tracks if we'd got here a little earlier," he said.

  "Let's keep going," Call said. "These tracks were probably just made by some poor people looking for a better place to settle." As they passed from the foothills into the first narrow canyon, the darkness deepened. Above them, soon, was a trough of stars, but their light didn't do much to illuminate the canyon. The terrain was so rocky that they dismounted and began to lead their horses. They had but one mount apiece and could not risk laming them. They entered an area where there were large boulders, some of them the size of small houses.

  "There could be several pistoleros behind every one of those big rocks," Augustus pointed out.

  "We might be surrounded and not know it." "I doubt it," Call said. "I don't think there's anybody here." When they had ridden into the Yellow Canyon before, there had been no army of pistoleros, just three or four riflemen, shooting from caves in the rock. Only their Apache scout had seen Ahumado lean out briefly and shoot Hector and the Captain. No one else saw him.

  Ahumado was not like Buffalo Hump--he didn't prance around in front of his enemies, taunting them. He hid and shot; he was only seen by his enemies once he had made them his prisoner.

  As they walked their horses deeper and deeper into the Sierra Perdida, Call became more and more convinced that they were alone. From years of rangering in dangerous territory he had gained some confidence: he believed he could sense the presence of hostiles before he saw them. There would be a sense of threat that could not be traced to any one element of the situation: the horses might be nervous, the birds might be more noisy; or the threat might be detectable by the absence of normal sounds. Even if there was nothing specific to point to, he would tense a little, grow nervous, and rarely was his sense of alarm without basis. If he felt there was about to be a fight, usually there would be a fight.

  Now, in the canyon that led to the cliff of caves, he felt no special apprehension.

  Few landscapes were more threatening, physically-- Gus was right about the boulders being a good place for pistoleros to hide--but he didn't believe there were any pistoleros. The place felt empty, and he said so.

  "He's gone," he said. "We've come too late, or else we've come to the wrong place." "It's the place we came to before, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I remember that sharp peak to the south. This is the same place." "I know that," Call agreed, "but I don't think anybody's here." "Why would they leave?" Gus asked. "They'd be pretty hard to attack, in these rocks." Call didn't answer--he felt perplexed.

  They were only a few miles from the place where they expected to find the Captain, but they had heard nothing and seen nothing to indicate that anyone was there.

  "Maybe we came all this way for nothing," he said.

  "Maybe," Gus said. "We've had a lot of practice, going on expeditions for nothing.

 
; That's how it's mostly turned out. You ride awhile in one direction and then you turn around and ride back." In the rocky terrain they had several times heard rattlesnakes sing, so many that Augustus had become reluctant to put his foot on the ground.

  "We'll just get snakebit if we keep tramping on in the dark like this," he said. "Let's stop, Woodrow." "We might as well," Call agreed. "We can't be more than a mile or two from the place where the camp was. In the morning we can ride in and see what we see." "I hope I see a whore and a jug of tequila," Gus said. "Two whores wouldn't hurt, either. I'm so randy I might wear one of them down." Now that he didn't have to march through rattlesnakes, Augustus felt a little more relaxed. He immediately took off his boots and shook them out.

  "What was in your boots?" Call inquired.

  "Just my feet, but I like to shake my boots out regular," Gus said.

  "Why?" "Scorpions," Gus replied. "They crawl around everywhere, down here in Mexico. One could sneak off a rock and go right in my boot.