Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Mortified, Jake turned and walked straight down to the river. He had not expected to be rudely dismissed, so early in the day; it was an insult of the worst kind because everybody heard it--Jake would never suppose such a blow to his pride would occur in such a lowly place.

It stung, it burned--the high-handedness of women was intolerable, he decided. Better to do as Woodrow Call had done and form an alliance with a whore--no whore would dare speak so rudely to a man.

The worst of it, though, was having Pea Eye chosen over him, to do a simple chore. Pea Eye was gawky and all thumbs; he was always dropping things, bumping his head, or losing his gun --yet the Frenchwoman had summoned Pea and not himself.

While Jake was brooding on the insult he heard a splashing and looked down the river to see a group of riders coming. At the thought that they might be Indians his heart jumped, but he soon saw that they were white men. The horses were loping through the shallows, throwing up spumes of water.

The man in the lead was Captain King, who loped right past Jake as if he wasn't there.

The men following him were Mexican; they carried rifles and they looked hard. He turned and followed the riders back toward the saloon.

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.