Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Augustus crawled off a little distance, to empty his stomach; while he was gone Call surrendered himself to Deets and waited for the black man to tell him he was dying--or, at the very least, crippled or lamed. He felt no pain, just a numbness, which he knew was common enough when a wound was fresh. The pain would come later, and in abundance, usually.

When Deets began to examine the Captain he had the darkest apprehensions. He expected to see a gaping wound, a splintered bone, or both; but he saw immediately, there was no blood on the captain's leg, or on his body anywhere. The horse that had just died bled profusely, but Captain Call wasn't bleeding at all, not that he could see.

"What's the matter?" Call asked, seeing Deets's look of puzzlement.

"You ain't got no blood on you," Deets said. "No blood, Captain." "I must have, somewhere," Call said. "I can't feel my leg." But when he looked again himself he saw that Deets was right. There was no blood on him anywhere. Pea Eye came over to help with the examination, and Augustus, once finished with his vomiting, came too. Deets, Call, and Pea Eye were all dead serious; they were puzzled and almost offended by their inability to spot the blood that would surely issue from such a large wound.

Call took his pants down, fearing that the wound must be higher on his body than he had supposed, but Augustus, after a careful look, smiled and pointed at Call's boot.

"Keep your pants on, Woodrow," he said.

"You ain't shot in the leg, you're just shot in the boot heel." Call looked again at his foot and saw that Augustus was right--the boot heel was entirely missing. He had not been hit at all, and yet the shock of the big bullet hitting his boot heel had thrown him in the air and left his leg as numb as if all its nerves had been removed.

"Well, I swear," he said. "See if you can find the boot heel, Deets. I'd like to tack it back on if I can. Otherwise I've got a long way to hobble." A diligent search failed to turn up even a trace of the boot heel.

"It's a waste of time looking," Augustus said. "That was a fifty-caliber bullet that hit that boot heel. You won't find it because it's been blown to smithereens." Call found it hard to adjust to the fact that he was unhurt. His mind had accepted the thought that he was wounded easier than it would accept the fact that he wasn't. Once the notion that he was crippled or dying left his mind it was succeeded by vexation at the thought that the man they had chased so far was undoubtedly getting away. For a moment he was tempted to take one of the surviving horses and go after him, but Augustus would not hear of that plan.

"We're in a bad enough fix as it is, Woodrow," he said. "It's a long way back to where we need to be, and most of it is dry travelling. We've only got one horse and one mule for four men--we'll have to walk a good part of the way and save the horses for when we have to have them. We may have to eat both animals before we get home. We need to think about saving ourselves now. Blue Duck can wait.

"Besides that, there's Quanah and his warriors out there somewhere," he added, pointing to the west, into the empty llano. "I don't know what their mood is and you don't neither. We may have to fight our way back, for all you know." Call knew he was right. They were a small force, stranded in a desert. They would be easy prey for any strong band of fighters, whether native or outlaw. They would have to stay together to have any chance. But the fact was, he still wanted to go after Blue Duck--he had a hard time mastering himself, and Augustus knew it.

"He's a damn killer--I hate to let him go," Call said.

"You're as bad as Inish Scull," Augustus commented. "He was so determined to catch Kicking Wolf that he walked off on foot." "Yes, I was with him," Famous Shoes said.

"He walked fast, that man. He did not stop until we were in the land of the Black Vaquero." "I wonder what became of the old Black Vaquero?" Augustus said. "There's been no news of him in years." "He went back to where Jaguar lives," Famous Shoes said.

Augustus saw that Woodrow Call was still not settled in in his mind about Blue Duck. He had never known a man so unwilling to leave a pursuit once he had begun one. It would not be unlike him to go after Blue Duck on foot, even with one boot heel shot off.

"He ain't gone forever, Woodrow," Augustus pointed out. "He'll just go back to the Red River and start raiding again. We can go get him in the fall." "If they let us," Call said. "They may disband us before the fall." "All the better if they do," Gus said. "Then we can just go get him for the fun of it--t way we won't have to keep track of the damn expenses." Famous Shoes was annoyed by the rangers' habit of debating meaningless things while the sun moved and time was lost. Whether they were to be rangers in the fall did not interest him. There was the llano to cross, and talking would not propel them across it.

"We had better go drink some of that water back at the spring," he said.

His ^ws reminded the rangers of what they faced. They had barely survived the trek out, when they had horses. Now they would have to cover the same distance walking--or, at best, riding double a few hours a day.

"That's right," Augustus said. "It's apt to be a long dry walk." "I aim to drink all I can hold," Pea Eye said, turning toward the dry lake. "All I can hold and then some. I sure hate to be dry in my mouth."

In the night Newt knew that his mother must have died because he couldn't hear her breathing anymore. The room felt different--it had become a room in which he was alone. But he didn't know what he was supposed to do, so he lay on his pallet doing nothing until the gray light came into the windows by the street. Then he carefully got up, dressed, and put a few things of his into a shoe box--his top, his ball, his book full of pictures of animals, and a deck of cards the rangers had let him keep. Then he put on his hat--Captain Gus had given it to him--looked just once at his mother, dead in her bed, and hurried down the stairs and over to Mrs. Coleman, who began to sob the minute she saw him--Mrs.

Coleman continued to cry all day. Newt was sad about the fact that Deets and Pea Eye and the other rangers were gone; he knew they would have wanted to say goodbye to his mother, but now they would have no chance. The grave was dug; that same afternoon they put his mother in it--there was a little singing and then they covered her up.

Mrs. Coleman gave him supper. There was a lot of food, but he wasn't very hungry. Mrs. Coleman had mainly got control of herself by then, though tears still dripped out of her eyes from time to time.

"Newt, I know you'll be wanting to stay with the rangers when they all get back," she told him after supper. "But would you like to just stay here for a night or two? There's nobody much in the bunkhouse." Newt shook his head. Though he didn't want to hurt Mrs. Coleman's feelings--he knew she had been his mother's best friend--he didn't want to stay with her, either.

"I better just bunk with the boys," he said, although he knew that the only ranger in the bunkhouse at the time was Ikey Ripple, who was far too old to be called a boy. But he wanted badly to stay in the bunkhouse, and Mrs.

Coleman didn't argue with him. It was dark by the time the meal was finished, so she went with him the few blocks to where the rangers stayed. Ikey was already asleep, and was snoring loudly.

"I hope you can sleep with that snoring, Newt," Mrs. Coleman said--then, suddenly, she hugged him tight for a moment and left the bunkhouse.

Newt put his shoe box under the bunk where he usually slept when he stayed with the rangers. Then he took his rope and went outside. He could hear Mrs. Coleman sobbing as she walked home, a thing which made him feel a little bad.