Comanche Moon

by Larry McMurtry

  For a minute, there was a circling. Blue Duck shifted the lance from hand to hand; Buffalo Hump held his knife and his shield. Buffalo Hump knew that he could not move well. One of his legs had stiffened when he slept, and it was still stiff. All he could do was wait and hope Blue Duck made some foolish mistake. Buffalo Hump began to sing his war cry as he waited. His voice cracked as he sang, but he wanted his three enemies to know that he was still a Comanche warrior, a man who sang as he went into battle.

  The three men looked amused when he began to sing. They thought it was funny that an old man would sing as he was about to be killed. They were men so degraded that they didn't realize it was a warrior's special obligation to sing in battle and to raise a death song if it was clear that the battle was going against him. Other warriors who might be fighting with him would need to hear that their chief was still making war; if it had to be that he must die in the fighting, then, particularly, the spirits needed to be offered a death song, so that they could welcome the warrior into the spirit world once he had fallen.

  The comancheros didn't know these things.

  They merely thought he was a silly old man, singing in a weak voice to the men who were about to kill him.

  Then Blue Duck disappeared. The other two men pulled knives and waved them at him, though they didn't come within the circle of rocks.

  Buffalo Hump, his vision wavery, realized that his son must have slipped behind him; before he could turn to face him, Blue Duck, who was young and nimble, struck full force with the lance. Buffalo Hump had tried to turn but the stiff leg had kept him from being able to pivot as he once had. He had twisted, and then the lance struck his hump. It went in but did not go through, though the force of the blow knocked Buffalo Hump on his face; dust was in his nostrils. He didn't feel the piercing at all, only the force of the blow. Blue Duck tried to push the lance through, or else pull it out, but could do neither. The lance point was stuck more firmly in the big hump than it had been in the buffalo skull shield. Blue Duck, maddened by the failure of his blow, jumped on his father's back and put all his weight on the lance, determined to shove it through.

  "Come help!" he yelled at the two renegades--soon Buffalo Hump saw several feet moving around him as the two men and Blue Duck leaned as hard as they could on the lance.

  Buffalo Hump realized that once again his foolish son had erred. Once he himself had tried to put his lance through the hump of a running buffalo and had nearly lost his life as a result. Before he could push the lance through, the buffalo jerked him off his horse into the path of other buffalo. Now Blue Duck had made the same error by thrusting the lance into his hump rather than his heart. Buffalo Hump lost his war song --the men were stepping on him as they tried to push the lance through; he could not get his breath well enough to sing.

  He was jerked this way and that as the men struggled with the lance. Once he tried to slash at the feet of the men moving around him, but his fingers had no strength. He lost hold of his knife just as he was losing hold of life itself, his life as a warrior. With a final desperate push Blue Duck shoved the lance through the hump and through Buffalo Hump's body too; its red point went into the earth beneath him, just as his own arrows had once gone through the bodies of his enemies, pinning them to the ground. Buffalo Hump was filled with hatred for his son, for denying him the death of prayer and song that he had hoped for, though he knew, from seeing many men die, most of them at his own hand, that few men were fortunate enough to die as they would have chosen, for death did not belong to the humans or the great creatures either--death came when it would, and now had come to him; he could do no more, and even the last look of hatred which he directed at his son went unnoticed. Blue Duck and the two other renegades were panting behind him somewhere, panting from the effort it had taken to kill him. Even then Buffalo Hump could still move his hands and legs a little, as the lance held him pinned to the earth.

  "Look at him!" one of the men said. "He still ain't dead. He's moving like an old turtle." Buffalo Hump closed his eyes. He remembered that there were old stories--old, old stories, about a great turtle that had let the People ride on its back as he brought them from their home in the earth to the place of light. He remembered the turtle story, an old story he had heard from his grandmother or from somewhere even older than his grandmother, someone who knew about the beginnings of the People in the time before they knew of the light or the buffalo or the grassy plains. He felt the grass growing beneath him, growing and rising to cover him, growing to hide him from wolf and bear. Then he knew no more.

  "He's gone, Duck," Monkey John said, observing that the old Comanche with the ugly hump had ceased to move his arms and legs.

  Blue Duck was still breathing hard from the effort it had taken to kill his father. For a few moments, when the lance stuck in the hump, he had been desperate. His fear was that his father would cheat him again by dying in his own way. His father's last looks, when he had been just a weak old man holding a knife and pretending to be a warrior, had been the same looks of determined hatred that had caused so many men to lose their will and allow Buffalo Hump to kill them. Even when the old man was pinned to the ground by his own lance his look was one of hatred--Blue Duck had been ready to get a hatchet and cut his head off, if it took that to finally kill him; but when he looked again he saw that Monkey John was right. Buffalo Hump was dead. All the same, he started for his horse, meaning to get the hatchet, when Ermoke stopped him.

  "Where are you going, Duck?" Ermoke asked him.

  "I mean to take his head," Blue Duck said.

  "Not today, you ain't got time," Ermoke said, pointing south toward the Lake of Horses.

  Blue Duck saw what he meant. On the dry plain the dust thrown up by the four horses of their pursuers hung in the air. It annoyed Blue Duck that the rangers were so persistent, rushing him, denying him the full pleasure of his triumph over his father.

  "Goddamn them, what's their hurry?" he said. "I wanted to take his ugly old head home with me--I could use it to scare the boys." "Let's go, Duck--y can come back and get his head, if you're that set on having it," Ermoke said. "It was hard enough to kill him. That's Call and McCrae after us. I'm for leaving." Blue Duck wanted to linger, to savor the triumph he had waited for so long; he felt like killing Ermoke for so insistently rushing him off.

  But he knew the renegade was right. Call and McCrae had followed him where no other rangers and no other whites would have dared to go. Ermoke and Monkey John were no match for them. He himself might be, but only if he could insure himself proper cover, and there was no cover close.

  "You kilt the man you came to kill, Duck," Ermoke said. "Let's leave." "We'll go, but once they're gone I mean to come back for his head," Blue Duck said. He went to his horse, mounted, and rode once more around the still body of his father. He rode close and put his hand on the lance. He wanted to keep it but knew it would take much too long to pull it out.

  "He must have liked them black rocks," Monkey John said. "He gathered up a bunch of them before we got here." Blue Duck had a vague memory of his father saying something to him about the black rocks, long ago on their journey to the Lake of Horses. But he couldn't remember what he had said, and Call and McCrae were getting closer.

  He left the lance in his father's body and turned to the north.

  As they were leaving, Monkey John reached down and picked up Buffalo Hump's big knife.

  Famous Shoes had not wanted to go north of the dry lake. He thought the fact that the spring was so small and so well hidden meant that the dry lake was as far as men ought to go--al, he had seen the two Antelope Comanches; it worried him that they were watching. Also, they had no sooner left the lake than he began to notice the black rocks.

  The three things taken together were to him powerful evidence that they had followed Blue Duck far enough. All the Kickapoos agreed that black rocks were to be avoided--they were not normal rocks and were only likely to be in places where the spirits were malign.

&
nbsp; When they left the lake Famous Shoes said as much to Captain Call, but the captain paid no more attention to his ^ws than he would have paid to a puff of wind. Captain Call didn't care about the black rocks. He did care about the Antelope Comanches--he knew they represented danger, but he was not willing to turn back on their account.

  "Woodrow wants Blue Duck, and Blue Duck ain't five miles ahead," Augustus pointed out, when the tracker came to him with his worries. "If you think Woodrow Call will turn back with his quarry in sight you've hired on with the wrong company." Famous Shoes concluded that there was no point in talking to the two captains. He had been patient and intelligent in explaining his reasoning as to why it was unwise to go farther north at that time, yet both men ignored him. They just kept going.

  Famous Shoes thought he might as well go home--it was a waste of time to advise men who wouldn't listen. He didn't want to stay with the rangers if they were going to proceed so foolishly.

  Nonetheless, he went ahead for a few miles, because he wanted to see if there was another lake nearby, or any reason to continue north.

  It was while he was trotting ahead of the cautious rangers that he noticed a lance sticking up from the ground a short distance ahead. Since Buffalo Hump was the only man likely to be in that area who carried a lance, Famous Shoes immediately became more cautious, fearing that the old man was plotting some kind of ambush.

  While he was studying the land, trying to figure where the old man could be hiding, Famous Shoes saw his body. The lance held it pinned to the earth.

  The sight startled Famous Shoes so that for a moment his legs felt weak. He had long surmised that Buffalo Hump was making his last journey, seeking a hiding place of some sort, in which to die. But that surmise did not diminish his shock when he saw the body with the lance driven through it.

  On weak legs he went forward until he stood on the edge of the circle of black rocks.

  He was too shocked to wave at the rangers, or do anything but stand and look. Buffalo Hump had been killed with his own lance, and it was undoubtedly Blue Duck and his men who had killed him. The lance went right through the hump; Famous Shoes remembered hearing some prophecy or old story to the effect that Buffalo Hump would only die when his hump was pierced. It might have been Buffalo Hump's own grandmother who told him the story, long ago when he was caring for her as she waited to die.

  The old man's great buffalo skull shield lay beside him. It was a shield that many warriors wanted, yet Blue Duck had left it, as if it were a thing without value or power. That too was a shock.

  Famous Shoes was squatting just outside the circle of black rock when the rangers rode up.

  "Oh my Lord," Augustus said, when he saw that Buffalo Hump was dead. "Oh my Lord." Call was just as shocked, though he didn't speak. He dismounted and stood by Famous Shoes; the others dismounted too, but, for a time, no one spoke. Deets, who had never seen Buffalo Hump up close, was so scared that he wanted to leave. It was his belief that only a witch would have such a hump, and, though the man appeared to be dead, a lance through his body, it was not clear to Deets that a witch would have to stay dead. He thought it would be better to stand a little farther away, in case the witch with the big hump suddenly rose up and did some witchery on them.

  Call was curious at last to see Buffalo Hump up close. It had been some years since he had thought much about the man, yet he knew that his career as a ranger had been, in large measure, a pursuit of the Comanche who lay dead at his feet.

  Augustus was so startled that all color had drained from his face.

  "That's a lance like the one he stuck me with, way back then," he said.

  Pea Eye, too, wanted to go. He knew that Buffalo Hump had been a mighty, fearsome chief, but now he was dead and it was wasteful just to stand there looking at his body if they hoped to catch the bandits they had been chasing for so long.

  Captain Call and Captain McCrae, though, showed no inclination to hurry on, and neither did Famous Shoes. Pea Eye only looked once at the hump; he did not care to examine deformities, for fear it would result in bad dreams.

  To Call's eye, Buffalo Hump looked smaller in death than he had looked in life-- he was not the giant they had supposed him to be, but only a man of medium height.

  "I thought he was bigger," Call added, squatting for a moment by the body.

  "I did too, Woodrow," Augustus said.

  "When he was after me with his lance I thought he was as big as a god." "He's old," Call said. "He might have shrunk a little in his old age." "No, we just remember him as bigger than he was because he was so fierce and had that terrible war cry," Augustus said.

  To Pea Eye it seemed that the discovery of Buffalo Hump's body had put the two captains into a kind of memory trance.

  "He was the first Comanche I ever saw," Call remarked. "I remember when he came racing out of that gully with that dead boy behind him on his horse --I forget the boy's name." "Josh Corn was his name," Augustus said.

  "He went into the bushes to take a shit and picked the wrong bunch of bushes to go into--it was the end of him." "This old man was gaunt," Call said. "I doubt he found much to eat, these last few years." Famous Shoes started to tell the two rangers that they should not be standing within the circle of black rocks as they talked. Buffalo Hump had made a death circle with the rocks, and it should be respected. But he had, himself, another concern which also involved respect. He wanted the great buffalo skull shield. He wanted the shield badly. It was just laying there, ignored by Blue Duck and ignored too by the rangers. Though he wanted it, Famous Shoes knew the shield should remain within the circle of rocks. If he himself took it the Comanches might find out and try to kill him because of what he had done. He knelt down and looked closely at the shield, knowing that it contained great power, but he was afraid to take it.

  "We ought to get that lance out of him, if we can," Call said. He pulled, and then he and Augustus pulled together, but they soon saw that the task was hopeless. The lance point came free of the ground, but it did not come free of Buffalo Hump's body. It had gone through his hump, through his ribs, and through his chest.

  "It's like a tree grew through him," Gus said.

  "He was a great chief--he ought to be laid out proper, but there's now no way to do it with this lance sticking through him," Call said.

  "Well, I ain't holding a funeral for him, he's killed too many of my friends," Augustus said. "I expect but for him Long Bill would be alive, and Neely Dickens and several more I could name." "I didn't mention a funeral," Call said.

  "I just think any man ought to be laid out proper." He looked again at the body of Buffalo Hump and then, mindful that their task was not done, turned toward the horses. He didn't feel the relief he had always supposed he would feel, at the death of Buffalo Hump. The man who lay before him was no longer the terror of the plains-- he was just an old man, dead. Though they were in pursuit of Blue Duck, Call felt, for a moment, that there was little point in going on. He felt he had used up his energy. When he walked back to his horse he didn't, for a moment, have the strength to mount.

  "Those were Comanches watching us at the lake," he told Gus. "I expect they'll find Buffalo Hump and do what's proper." Famous Shoes knew better. The two Comanches were of the Antelope band, and the Antelopes had always held aloof from the other tribes. Probably the warriors who watched them were too young to have heard of Buffalo Hump-- even if they rode over to look at the body, the deformity would scare them away. When they saw the hump they would think witchery was involved. They would want nothing to do with the old dead man with the ugly hump.

  He himself wanted nothing to do with the Antelopes.

  Though their country was poor and harsh, they were not broken men. He didn't know why the two warriors were watching the dry lake, but he was glad there were only two. Maybe the rest of the band were hunting somewhere. If more of them had been there they would probably have attacked.

  Captain Call and Captain McCrae lingered by their horses; for som
e reason they were reluctant to mount and ride on, although their quarry, Blue Duck, was not many miles ahead.

  The delay broke down Famous Shoes' resolve in regard to the shield. It was an important thing. None of the whites seemed to realize that; none of them had even picked it up, or looked at it. Famous Shoes, though, couldn't take his eyes off it. Even though he knew he should leave it with Buffalo Hump, so that he could use it in battle in the spirit world, Famous Shoes wanted it too much. After all, once they left, no one might ever come near the spot where Buffalo Hump lay. They might be the only ones who would ever look on the body of the old chief. But the animals would look. Wolf would come, and Coyote and Badger and Bobcat.

  Buzzards would come, and beetles, to take what they could of old Buffalo Hump. If he left the shield a wolf or a coyote might drag it away. With all the animals that would soon be coming, the shield of Buffalo Hump might soon be lost, and yet it was a shield made by a great chief from a buffalo skull. With the buffalo now almost gone, it might be that no one would ever make such a shield again.