Larry McMurtry: Comanche Moon

"Crowd close now," he said, turning to the weary rangers. "Gus and me will keep up with Hector, but you'll have to keep up with us. Don't veer to the right, whatever you do. The canyon's to the right, and the drop is sheer." "Sheer--t means straight down to doom," Augustus said to the men. He remembered the first time he and Woodrow had skirted the Palo Duro, after foolishly signing up for an ill-planned expedition whose aim had been to capture Santa Fe and annex Nuevo Mexico. That time the whole troop, more than one hundred men, had to scramble over the edge of the canyon to escape a blazing ring of grass, set afire by Buffalo Hump's Comanches. Many of the men and most of the horses had fallen to their deaths.

But, on that occasion at least, they had made their scramble in daylight and had run for the cliffso over firm prairie. Now it was dusk on a winter's night, with no cover, poor visibility, and ground so slick that it was hard even to travel at a steady clip. A slip on the edge of the canyon would send a man straight into space.

"You didn't loan me that sacking--don't you have any?" Augustus asked.

"I have mine--where's yours?" Call asked.

"I don't know if mine will stretch for two horses." Augustus did not reply. In fact, he had been in a whore's tent near Fort Belknap when the news came that Kicking Wolf had run off twenty horses from a ranch near Albany.

Gus had barely had time to pull his pants on before the rangers were in the saddle and on the move.

It had been a warmish day, and he was sweaty from his exertions with the whore--the notion that four days later he would be in a sleet storm at dusk on the Palo Duro, a storm so bad that his horse's eyelids were in danger of freezing, had never crossed his mind. Most pursuits of Comanche or Kiowa lasted a day or two at most-- usually the Indians would stop to feast on stolen horseflesh, laying themselves open to attack.

Kicking Wolf, of course, had always been superior when it came to making off with Texas horses. On the errant Santa Fe expedition, when Call and Augustus had been green rangers, not yet twenty years old, Kicking Wolf had stolen a sizable number of horses from them, just before the Comanches set the grass fire that had trapped the whole troop and forced them into the very canyon they were skirting now.

"I plumb forgot my sacking," Gus admitted--he didn't mention the whore.

"You can have my sacking," Call said. "I don't intend to ride a blind horse, sleet or no sleet." Horses were apt to slip or step in holes even when they could see where they were going.

To be riding a blind horse over slippery footing on the edge of a canyon seemed to him to be asking for worse trouble than frozen eyelids.

While Augustus was adjusting Call's piece of rough sacking over his horse's eyes, Long Bill Coleman came trotting up beside them. Long Bill had been with them on the Santa Fe expedition, after which, due to the rigors he had endured on their march as captives across the Jornada del Muerto, he had given up rangering in favor of carpentry, a change of profession that only lasted a few months, thanks to Bill Coleman's inability to drive a nail straight or saw a plank evenly.

After six months of bent nails and crookedly sawn planks, Long Bill gave up on town trades forever and rejoined the ranger troop.

"It's night, ain't we stopping, Gus?" Long Bill asked.

"Do we look like we're stopped?" Gus replied, a little testily. Long Bill had the boresome habit of asking questions to which the answers were obvious.

"If we were stopping there'd be a campfire," Gus added, growing more and more annoyed with Long Bill for his thoughtless habits. "Do you see a campfire, sir?" "No, and don't you be sirring me, you dern yapper," Long Bill said. "All I was asking is how long it will be before we have a chance to get warm." "Shush," Call said. "You two can argue some other time. I hear something." He drew rein, as did Gus. The rangers behind crowded close. Soon they all heard what Call heard: a wild, echoing war cry from somewhere in the dark, sleety canyon below. The war cry was repeated, and then repeated again. There was one voice at first, but then other voices joined in--Call, who liked to be precise in such matters, thought he counted at least seven voices echoing up from the canyon. He could not be sure, though--the canyon ran with echoes, and the gusts of north wind snatched the war cries, muffling some and bringing others closer.

"They're mocking us," Call said. "They know we can't chase 'em down a cliff in the dark--not in this weather. They're mocking us, boys." "It's nothing but extremes around this damn Palo Duro Canyon," Long Bill remarked. "Last time we was here we nearly got cooked, and this time we're half froze." "I guess your mouth ain't froze, you're still asking them dumb questions," Gus observed.

"I wonder if the Captain heard that?" Call said. "The Captain's a little deaf." "Not that deaf, he ain't," Gus said. "When he wants to hear something, he hears it. When he don't want to hear it, you might as well save your breath." "What'd you ever say to the Captain that he didn't want to hear?" Call asked, dismounting.

He intended to make careful approach to the canyon edge and see if he could spot any campfires down below them. If there was evidence of a sizable camp of Comanches, perhaps Captain Scull could be persuaded to make camp and wait for a chance to attack.

"I asked him for a five-dollar advance on my wages, one time," Augustus said. "He could have said no, but he didn't say anything. He just acted as if I wasn't there." "You shouldn't have asked in the first place," Call said. "Wages are supposed to last till payday." "I had expenses," Gus said, knowing well that it was pointless to discuss financial problems with his frugal friend. Woodrow Call rarely even spent up his wages in the course of a month, whereas Gus never failed to spend his to the last penny, or perhaps even a few dollars beyond the last penny. Something always tempted him: if it wasn't just a pretty whore it might be a new six-shooter, a fine vest, or even just a better grade of whiskey, which, in most of the places he bought whiskey, just meant a liquor mild enough that it wouldn't immediately take the hide off a skunk.

Before they could discuss the matter further, they heard sleet crunching just ahead, and suddenly the great horse Hector, his shaggy coat steaming, loomed over them. Captain Inish Scull hadn't stopped, but at least he had turned.

"Why are we halted, Mr. Call?" he asked. "I didn't request a halt." "No sir, but we heard a passel of whooping, down in the canyon," Call said. "I thought I'd look and see if I could spot the Comanche camp." "Of course there's a camp, Mr. Call, but they're the wrong Comanches," Captain Scull said. "That's Buffalo Hump down there--we're after Kicking Wolf, if you'll remember.

He's our horse thief." As usual, Captain Scull spoke with complete assurance. They had only been on the edge of the Palo Duro a few minutes, and it was too dark to see much, even if the sleet would have let them. Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf, though rivals, often raided together: how did the Captain know that one was camped in the canyon and the other ranging somewhere ahead?

They had a gifted scout, to be sure, a Kickapoo named Famous Shoes, but Famous Shoes had been gone for two days and had made no report.

"That's Buffalo Hump's main camp down there, Mr. Call," Inish Scull said.

"We're no match for him--we're only thirteen men, and anyway it's Kicking Wolf I want. I expect to overtake him on the Canadian River about sunup day after tomorrow, if there is a sunup day after tomorrow." "Why, sir, there's always sunup," Long Bill Coleman said--he was a little jolted by the Captain's remark, and the reason he was jolted was that his large wife, Pearl--the one town trade he hadn't abandoned--was convinced on religious grounds that the world would end in the near future.