Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

"I was thinking of Mexico, Mr. Call," Captain Scull said finally. "I see no point in pursuing Kicking Wolf for the sake of three horses. We'll corner the man sooner or later, or if we don't get him the smallpox will." "What? The smallpox?" Augustus said; he had a big nervousness about diseases, the various poxes particularly.

"Yes, it's travelling this way," Inish Scull said impatiently, his mind being now on Mexico.

"The theory is that the Forty-niners spread it among the red men, as they were running out to California to look for gold," he added. "Very damn few of them will find any of the precious ore. But they've brought the pox to the prairies, I guess. The Indians along the Santa Fe Trail have it bad, and I hear that those along the Oregon Trail are dying by the hundreds.

It'll be among the Comanches soon, if it ain't already. Once the pox gets among them they'll die off so quick we'll probably have to disband the rangers. There'll be no healthy Indians left to fight." Captain Scull finished his speech and lifted his coffee cup, but before he could sip, a peppering of gunfire swept the camp.

"It's Buffalo Hump, I knowed it!" Augustus said.

Call had only gulped down a few bites of stew when the shooting started. He ran back to his horse and pulled out his rifle, expecting the Indians to be upon them, but when he turned the prairie looked empty. Most of the rangers had taken cover behind their horses, there being no other cover to take.

Captain Scull had drawn his big pistol, but had not moved from his spot by the coffeepot. He had his head tilted slightly to one side, watchful and curious.

"We just lost Watson," he said, examining the camp. "Either that, or he's enjoying a mighty heavy nap." Augustus ran over and knelt by Jimmy Watson, a man a year or two older than himself and Call. At first he saw no wound and thought the Captain might be right about the heavy nap, but when he turned Jimmy Watson slightly he saw that a bullet had got him right under his armpit. He must have been lifting his gun and the bullet passed just beneath it and killed him.

"Nope, Jim's dead," Gus said. "I wish the damn Comanches would stand up, so we could see them." "Wish for Christmas and roast pig, while you're wishing," Call said. "They ain't going to stand up." Then, a moment later, five young warriors appeared horseback, a considerable distance from the camp. They were yelling and whooping, but they weren't attacking. The lead horseman was a tall youth whose hair streamed out behind him as he raced his pony.

Several of the rangers lifted their rifles, but no one fired a shot. The Comanches had gauged the distance nicely--they were already just out of rifle range.

Call watched Captain Scull, waiting for him to give the order to mount and pursue--the Captain had taken out his binoculars and was studying the racing horsemen.

"I was looking for brands on the horses," he said. "I was hoping our Abilene ponies might be there. But no luck--they're just Comanche ponies." All the rangers stood by their horses, waiting for the order to pursue the Comanches, but Captain Scull merely stood watching the five young warriors race away, as casual as if he had been watching a Sunday horse race.

"Captain, ain't we gonna chase 'em?

They kilt Jimmy Watson," Augustus asked, puzzled by the Captain's casual attitude.

"No, we'll not chase them--not on tired horses," the Captain said. "Those are just the pups. The old he-wolf is down there somewhere, waiting. I doubt those youngsters expected to hit anybody, when they shot--they were just trying to lure us down into some box canyon, where the he-wolf can cut us off and tear out our throats." He turned and put his binoculars back in their leather case.

"I'd prefer to wait for that stew to mature and then take breakfast," he said. "If the old he-wolf wants us bad enough, let him come.

We'll oblige him with a damn good scrap, and when it's over I'll take his hide back to Austin and nail it to the Governor's door." "Sir, what'll we do with Jimmy?" Long Bill asked. "This ground's froze hard.

It'll take a good strong pick to hack out a grave in ground like this, and we ain't got a pick." Captain Scull came over and looked at the dead man--he knelt, rolled the man over, and inspected the fatal wound.

"There's no remedy for bad luck, is there?" he said, addressing the question to no one in particular.

"If Watson hadn't raised his arm just when he did, the worst he would have gotten out of this episode would have been a broken arm. But he lifted his gun and the bullet had a clear path to his vitals. I'll miss the man. He was someone to talk wives with." "What, sir?" Augustus asked. The remark startled him.

"Wives, Mr. McCrae," Inish Scull said. "You're a bachelor. I doubt you can appreciate the fascination of the subject--but James Watson appreciated it. He was on his third wife when he had the misfortune to catch his dying. He and I could talk wives for hours." "Well, but what happened to his wives?" Long Bill inquired. "I'm a married man.

I'd like to know." "One died, one survives him, and the one in the middle ran off with an acrobat," the Captain said. "That's about average for wives, I expect. You'll find that out soon enough, Mr.

McCrae, if you take it into your head to marry." Augustus was thoroughly sorry that the subject of marriage had come up. It seemed to him that he had been trying to get married for half his life-- he had just happened, unluckily, to fall in love with the one woman who wouldn't have him.

"Sir, even if one of his wives did run off with an acrobat, we've still got to bury him, someway," Long Bill said. Once Long Bill got his mind on something he rarely allowed it to be deflected until the question at hand was closed. Now the question at hand was how to bury a man when the ground was too frozen to yield them a grave. When Jimmy Watson had been alive he needed wives, apparently, and it was a need Long Bill understood and sympathized with. But now he was dead: what he needed was a grave.

"Well, I suppose we do need to bury James Watson--t's the Christian way," the Captain said. "It was not the way taken by my cousin Willy, though. Cousin Willy was a biologist. He studied with Professor Agassiz, at Harvard. Willy was particularly fond of beetles--excessively fond, some might say. He fancied tropical beetles, in particular. Professor Agassiz took him to Brazil, where there are some wonderful beetles--m beetles than any place in the world except Madagascar, Willy claimed. They've even got an undertaker beetle, down there in Brazil." "What kind?" Augustus asked. He had vaguely heard of Brazil, but he had never heard of an undertaker beetle.

"An undertaker beetle, sir," Captain Scull went on. "Willy wanted to go back into the food chain the fastest way possible, and the fastest way was to have himself laid out naked in a tidy spot where these undertaker beetles were plentiful.

"So that's what they did with W," the Captain continued. "They had no choice--Willy had fixed it all in his will. They laid him out naked in a pretty spot and the beetles immediately got to work. Pretty soon Willy was buried, and by the next day he was part of the food chain again, just as he wished. If we left James Watson to the coyotes and the buzzards, we'd be accomplishing the same thing." Long Bill Coleman was horrified by such talk. He was unfamiliar with Brazil, and the thought of being buried by beetles gave him the shudders. Not only was the Captain forgetting about Jimmy Watson's widow, whose feelings about the burial had to be considered, he was even forgetting about heaven.

"Now then, that's strange talk," he said.

"How would a man get up to heaven, with no one to say any scriptures over him, andwith just a dern bunch of beetles for undertakers? Of course, out here in the baldies we can't expect undertakers, but I guess I'll try to bury my pards myself --I wouldn't trust the job to a bunch of dern bugs." "My cousin Willy was of an agnostical bent, Mr. Coleman," the Captain said. "I don't think he believed in heaven, but he did believe in bugs. They're not to be underrated, sir--not according to my cousin Willy. There are more than a million species of insects, Mr.