Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Call walked away, back across the street, past the house where Maggie Tilton still boarded.

He wondered, for a moment, what she was thinking, now that the man who had carried her groceries and tended her garden was going. He seldom thought much of Maggie now, though, sometimes, from habit, crossing beneath her window at night, he would look up to see if her lamp was lit.

In the dusk, by the lots, the men were urging Jake to stay at least until morning. Newt could not control his emotions--tears kept leaking out of his eyes. He kept turning his back to wipe them away, so that Pea Eye and Deets and the others would not see him crying. Jake was his best pard and his mother's best friend. With his mother sickly and Jake leaving, Newt hardly knew what he would do; he would have to try and do all the things that Jake did, when it came to helping his mother. He didn't know much about gardening, but thought he could manage the firewood, at least.

Pea Eye, too, was disturbed. Jake had been talking about leaving the rangers the whole of the time Pea Eye had known him; he supposed it was just the kind of dreamy talk men indulged in when they were restless or blue; but now his horse was saddled and all his goods packed on a mule he had bought with some saved-up wages. Pea Eye considered the move a dreadful mistake--but no one could argue Jake out of it.

Deets said only a brief goodbye. The comings and goings of white men were beyond his understanding and concern.

Now and then, though, he saw things in the stars he didn't like, things that suggested Mr. Jake might be having some trouble, someday. No doubt his leaving would make Miss Maggie sad.

When Augustus learned that Jake had purchased a mule to carry his tack, he was indignant.

"Why, Jake, you scamp--y've been hoarding up money," he said. "Your job was to bring out your money and lose it to me in a fair game of poker. Now that I know you're a hoarder I ain't so sorry you're leaving." Jake had taken a good amount of liquor in the course of his goodbyes. In fact, he had been drunk for the last three days, attempting to work himself up to departing. No one could understand why he wanted to leave at such a time, with the war just ended.

Jake hadn't wanted to be a soldier in that war, but he did want to get rich. He had seen a little booklet about the silver prospects in Colorado and the thought of discovering silver had given him a bad case of wanderlust.

Besides, Texas was poor, impoverished by the war; the Indians were still bad, and Woodrow Call didn't like him--all reasons for leaving. Even if Call had liked him there would have been no way to get rich in Texas--Jake had a longing for fine clothes that would never be satisfied if he stayed in Texas.

Of course, there was Maggie and Newt--they'd been a family to him for a few years, although Maggie had refused him the one time he suggested marriage. Later, Jake was relieved by the refusal. Maggie was not well, and, even if she had been, it was too hard to earn a living in a poor place such as Texas.

Besides, he had heard a rumour that the Yankee military meant to come in and hang all the Texas Rangers, as being sympathizers with the Rebs. He didn't want to hang, so now he was leaving, but it wasn't an easy thing. He had bidden goodbye to Maggie three times now, and to Newt; he had said several goodbyes to Pea Eye and the boys. It was time to go, and yet he lingered.

"Go on now, Jake, if you're going," Augustus said, finally. "I can't afford no more goodbye toasts." With no further ado, Augustus walked away, and the rangers, after a final farewell handshake, wandered off to the part of town where the whores plied their trade. Jake felt lonely, suddenly--lonely and confused. Part of him had hoped, until the end, that someone would come out with an argument that would cause him to change his mind and stay. But now the street was empty; the boys had blandly accepted his decision to leave and it seemed he must go. If he waited until morning and announced that he had changed his mind the boys would only scorn him and take him for an irresolute fool.

Sad and unsteadied, Jake managed to secure the lead rope attached to the pack mule. Now that he actually had to leave, the fact of the mule irritated him. It had already proven itself to be an annoying beast, but if he waited until morning and tried to sell it back to the horse traders they would only offer him a pittance. He decided to sell the mule in Fort Worth, instead. Perhaps there was a shortage of good mules up there--he would see.

In leaving he passed beneath Maggie's window.

If the lamp had been lit he would have hitched his animals and rushed up for one more farewell, perhaps even one more embrace; but the window was dark.

Tears rushed out at the thought that he was leaving his Mag, but Jake didn't stop. He knew Newt wanted him to stay, but he wasn't so sure about Maggie. She didn't chatter much with him anymore; perhaps it was her illness. In any case there were said to be merry women in Colorado, and Colorado was where he was bound.

Above him in the dark room, Maggie watched him leave. Newt had come in sobbing and cried himself to sleep. Maggie watched out the darkened window as Jake made his extended farewells. She left the light off deliberately, so that Jake would not rush at her again, confused, sad, importunate; one minute he wanted her to bless his departure, the next he wanted her to marry him and keep him in Austin. In either mood he sought her welcome, wanted her to lie with him. It had been months since Maggie had felt well. She had a cough that wouldn't leave her. She did her job and tended her child, but she rarely had the energy now to deal with Jake Spoon's confusions, or his needs.

Though Maggie knew she would miss Jake-- she felt a certain sadness as he passed beneath her window--she also felt relieved that he was going.

Though he was as helpful as he knew how to be, having him with her was like having two children, and she no longer had the energy for it. She had never been able to be quite what Jake wanted, though she had tried; though she would now have no one to carry her groceries or help her with her garden, she would also be free of the strain involved in never being quite what a man wanted.

Her true regret was for Newt. Jake had been what father Newt had; Newt's life would be the poorer, for his leaving. Maggie was glad that all the ranger boys liked her son; they let him stay with them all day, when they were in town. The fear that haunted Maggie, that seized her every time she coughed, was that she would die before Newt was grown.

What would happen to Newt then? Sometimes Maggie imagined that with her death Woodrow would soften and accept his son, but it was not a thing she could be confident of. Many nights she scarcely slept.

She tried to evaluate her own coughing; she wondered what her son would do, if she died.

At least she knew he was welcome with the ranger boys, Augustus and Pea Eye and Deets.

Newt had grown up with those men; they had all had a hand in his raising. Ikey Ripple was like a grandfather to the boy. Maggie knew Augustus well enough to know that, with all his whoring and his drinking, he would see to it that Newt was well cared for.

Gus wouldn't desert him, nor would Deets or Pea--even without her, Newt would be better off than many of the orphaned children adrift in the country now, children whose parents the war had taken.

But such reflections didn't end Maggie's fears. Augustus McCrae was not immortal, and neither were the others. What if they had to leave Texas to earn a living, as Jake was doing?

What if they were all killed in an Indian fight?

The worry about Newt and his future was a worry Maggie could not entirely put down--it made her determined to last. If she could just last a few more years Newt would be old enough that someone might employ him--she knew that many cowboys were no more than twelve or thirteen when they first gained employment on the many ranches to the south.