Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

She'll think I'm a devil, he thought. I might yet get free if I could just choke off this Greek.

Xitla, for her part, leaned over the edge and listened to the white man as long as he wanted to talk. She could make no sense of the ^ws but the way he spoke reminded her of the way young men, heart-stricken by her beauty, had sung to her long ago. She thought the white man might be singing to her in a strange tongue he used for songs of love. He spoke with passion, his thin body quivering. He was almost naked; sometimes Xitla could see his member; she began to wonder if the white man was in love with her, as all men had been once. Since Ahumado had run over her with the horse and broken her back, few men had wanted to couple with her--a regret. Always Xitla had had men to couple with her; many of them, it was true, were not skilled at coupling, but at least they wanted her. But once the men knew that Ahumado hated her, they withdrew, even the drunken ones, for fear that he would tie them to the post and have Goyeto skin them. Xitla had not been ready to stop coupling when the men began to ignore her; she did not want to be like the other old women, who talked all day about the act that no one now wanted to do with them. Xitla had coupled happily with many men and thought she could still do so pleasurably if only she had a man with a strong member to be with.

The only possibility was the white man, but before any coupling could take place she would have to get the white man out of Ahumado's scorpion pit and feed him something better than the young green corn.

Xitla didn't know how she was going to do either thing until she remembered Lorenzo, a small caballero who was more skilled than anyone else at breaking horses. About a mile south of the cliff was a spot of bare, level ground, where Lorenzo took the young horses he worked with. There was a big post in the center of the clearing; often Lorenzo would leave the horses roped to the post for a day or two, so that they would have time to realize that he, not they, was in control. Lorenzo left a long rope tied to the snubbing post; perhaps it was still there. With such a rope she could help the white man get out of the pit.

It was a gamble, though. Xitla knew it would take her all day to hobble to the post and back.

There was an irritable old bear who lived somewhere down the canyon, and an old cougar too. If the old bear caught her he would probably eat her, which would put an end to her coupling, for sure.

Still, Xitla decided to try and secure the rope. With all the people gone the old bear might come into camp and eat her anyway. In the early morning she lowered the white man some tortillas and a jug of water and set out for the place where Lorenzo trained his horses.

By midday she regretted her decision. Her bent back pained her so badly that she could only hobble a few steps at a time. Xitla realized she could not go to the post and make it back to the camp by nightfall. The hunting animals would be out--the bear and the puma--if one of them smelled her they would kill her; the pumas in the great canyon were particularly bold. Several women had been attacked while waiting by the cliffso for their lovers to appear.

All day, Xitla crept on, stopping frequently to rest and ease her back. She did not want to be eaten by a puma or a bear. Long before she reached the spot where Lorenzo trained the horses the shadows had begun to fill the canyon.

When she got to the place Xitla saw at once that she had not travelled in vain: the rope that was used to restrain the young horses was still tied to the hitching post. It was a good long rope, as she had remembered. She could tie one end to the skinning post and throw the other end to the white man, so that he could pull himself up. Maybe he would continue to sing his strange love song to her; maybe his member would rise up with the song.

On the way back, though, hobbling slowly through the darkness with the coiled rope, Xitla felt a deep fear growing in her. At first she thought it was fear of the bear or the puma, but, as she crept along, pain from her back shooting down her leg, Xitla realized she had made a terrible mistake. She had allowed the white man's strange love song to drive judgment and reason out of her head; an old vanity and the memory of coupling had driven out her reason just as the shadows were driving the last light out of the canyon. Because she remembered a time when vaqueros would ride one hundred miles just to look on her beauty, she had forgotten that she was an old bent woman nearing the end of her time.

Now that Xitla was caught in the darkness, far from camp, she realized that she had been a fool.

What was it to couple with a man anyway? A little sweat, a jerk, a sigh. The pain shooting down her legs grew more intense. Now she had put herself at the mercy of Bear and Puma, that was bad; but now, as she crept along, a worse fear came, the fear of Ahumado. He was dying somewhere. Xitla knew he must have gone to the south, to their home, to seek the Tree of Medicines; but something was eating at his leg and he would not reach the tree. The pain in her leg came from Ahumado; perhaps Spider had bitten him, or Snake, or Scorpion. A poison was killing Ahumado; those who tasted the poison leaf died of poison when their time arrived. But Ahumado's time was Xitla's time too, and she would suffer it without even the protection of her little shelter at the camp. It was Ahumado who had made the prisoner show her his member and turn her head, Ahumado who had made the white man sing her love songs in the old tongue--perh the ^ws Scull used were in the language of the first human beings, ^ws which no one could resist. Because of it, she had been lured away, far from her little store of herbs and plants, things that might have helped her scare away Bear and Puma--all for a rope to save the white man, for a jerk and a sigh.

Ahumado had made it all happen, so that, as he was dying, a death more cruel than his own would come to Xitla.

She crawled faster, carrying the rope, although she knew well that such haste was foolish. Her fear grew so strong that she threw away the rope she had come so far to get. The rope was only another trick of Ahumado's; its loop was the loop of time that would close and catch her soon.

It was all a joke of Ahumado's, Xitla realized. He had put the white man in the pit to tempt her, to awaken her loins again, to draw her away from camp, where she had herbs and leaves to protect her. She had the black leaves that made a bad smell when burned--if she put them in the fire, then Puma would let her alone.

Puma did not like the smell the black leaves made when they were burned.

Xitla was only halfway back to camp when the night began to end. She had travelled slowly; often she had to stop and rest. Now the light of day was beginning to whiten the sky overhead; when the light sank into the canyon Xitla saw something near the canyon wall, not far ahead. At first she thought it was Puma. She yelled and yelled at it, hoping to scare it away. Puma would sometimes run from people who yelled.

It was not until the animal began to glide toward her that Xitla saw it wasn't Puma, it wasn't Bear: it was Jaguar. Around her neck she had a little red stone; the stone had hung around her neck all her life. The red stone was Parrot. Xitla clutched it in her hand as Jaguar came. Xitla knew that Jaguar would not stop for Parrot. Jaguar was coming to eat her.

But Ahumado too was dying--dying of poison somewhere to the south. He would not reach the Tree of Medicines. Xitla clutched the red stone tight and sent a message to Parrot. She wanted Parrot to find the body of Ahumado and peck out his eyes.

When Scull realized the old woman was no longer in the camp above him, he fell, for the first time, into raw panic, a kind of explosion of nerves that caused him to hop wildly around the floor of the pit, cursing and yelping out strange ^ws; he emitted cries and bursts of language as if he were farting fear out of his mouth.