Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Then, to his dismay, though they travelled south through a day of sunlight, the cold struck again.

On the third day of their ride south the sky turned slate black and an icy wind was soon slicing at their backs and making their hands sting.

That night Hector leaned particularly heavily on Pea Eye, and Deets was too busy preparing a meal to help him. Pressing up against the big horse caused Pea Eye to break a sweat; when he finished the sweat froze on his shirt before he could even walk back to the fire. The sun had just gone down; Pea Eye did not know how he was going to make it through the long winter night. He had only a thin coat and one blanket; few of the men had more.

Deets didn't have a coat at all, just an old quilt he kept wrapped around himself as he worked.

It was Deets who showed Pea a way to survive, as the cold deepened. Deets took a little spade and dug out one side of a small hummock of dirt; he dug it so that it formed a sort of bank. Then he made a small fire up against the bank of dirt. He brought a few coals over in a small pan, and, from the coals, made a fire near enough to the bank that the bank caught the heat and reflected it back.

"Here, sit close," Deets said, to Pea Eye. "It ain't much, but it will warm us." He was right. Pea Eye could never get close enough to the big campfire to derive more than a few moments of warmth from it. But the little fire reflected off the bank of dirt, warmed his hands and his feet. His back still froze and his ears pained him badly, but he knew he would survive.

Even with the good fire it was difficult to sleep, though; he would nod for a few minutes and then an icy curl of wind would slip under his collar and chill his very backbone.

Once, in a few minutes of sleep, Pea Eye had a terrible dream. He saw himself freeze as he was walking; he stopped and became immobile on the white plain, like a tree of ice. Pea Eye tried to call out to the rangers, but his voice could not penetrate the sheath of ice.

The rangers rode on and he was alone.

When he woke from the dream there was a red line on the eastern horizon; the sun glowed for a moment and then passed above the slatelike clouds, which reddened for a little while but did not allow the sunlight through.

"Much obliged for keeping this fire going," Pea Eye said--all night Deets had fed the fire little sticks.

"You welcome, sir," Deets said.

Pea Eye, cold but glad to be alive, could not contain himself about the "sir" any longer.

"You don't need to be sirring me, Deets," he said. "I ain't a sir, and I doubt I ever will be one." Deets was startled by the remark. He had never heard such an opinion from a white man, never once in his life. In Texas a black man who didn't call a white man "sir" could get in trouble quick.

Of course Pea Eye wasn't really a grown man yet--he was just a tall boy.

Deets supposed his youth might account for the remark.

"What'll I say?" he asked, with a puzzled look. "I got to call you something." "Why, just "Pea Eye"' will do," Pea Eye said. "I'm just plain "Pea Eye"' so far." Deets didn't think it would do, not in the hearing of the other rangers at least. He turned away and went to gather a few more sticks--the fire was burning well but he needed a little time in which to think about what Mr. Pea had just said.

Then, while he was pulling up a half-buried twist of sagebrush, it occurred to him that his mind had found a solution. He thought of the tall white boy as "Mr. Pea"--he would call him "Mr.

Pea." When he came back with the wood the young ranger was still holding his hands to the little fire.

"I guess I just call you "Mr. Peaea"' if it suits you," Deets said.

"Why, yes--t'll do fine," Pea Eye said. "I guess I'm a mister--I guess everybody's a mister." No, I ain't, black people ain't, Deets thought--but he didn't say it.

Famous Shoes was eating a good fat mallard duck when the Comanche boys found him. He had noticed some ducks on the south Canadian and had crept down to the water and made a clever snare, during the night. His trip to the Washita had been a disappointment. He did not find his grandmother, who had gone to live on the sweet-grass hills near the Arkansas River, but he did find his Aunt Neeta, a quarrelsome old woman who was living with some mixed-blood trapping people in a filthy little camp. The trapping people mostly trapped skunks and muskrats--there were hides everywhere, some of them pretty smelly. The minute he arrived his aunt began to upbraid him about a knife she had lent him years before which he had broken accidentally.

At the time he had been trying to remove a good length of chain from an old wagon that had fallen apart on the prairies. He thought the chain might come in handy, but all the chain did was break the tip off his aunt's knife. Only the tip was broken, most of the knife would still cut, but his Aunt Neeta considered that the knife was now useless and had never forgiven Famous Shoes for his carelessness. Famous Shoes only stayed on the Washita long enough to be courteous, before making his way back to the south Canadian, where he discovered the little flock of fat ducks.

Then the five Comanche boys showed up and began to talk about killing him. One of the boys wanted to kill him immediately, just because he was a Kickapoo, and another because he had scouted for Big Horse Scull. The rudest boy, though, was Blue Duck, who wanted to kill him just because he was there.

Famous Shoes did not think the boys would do him much harm. In any case he was hungry--he went on eating the duck while the boys walked around him, saying ugly things. They were just boys, it was normal that they would strut around and make rude remarks. The boys had been chasing a deer when they found him, but they had lost its track.

Famous Shoes had seen the deer only that morning, running east. The Comanche boys were so impatient that they had overlooked a plain track and let the deer get away. The deer had looked exhausted, too--the boys would have had it if only they had kept their minds on their business.

"That deer you were chasing got away," he told them. "There are plenty of fat ducks on this river, though." "We want to kill Big Horse today, where is he?" Blue Duck asked. "He tried to cut me with the long knife but I was too quick. A vision woman taught me how to fly, so I flew down into the canyon and got away." "You are lucky you found that vision woman," Famous Shoes said. He didn't believe that Blue Duck could fly, but the boy had such a bad reputation for killing people that he thought the best thing to do was be polite, keep eating his duck, and hope to get through the morning without being shot. Blue Duck had an old rifle and kept pointing it at him as he ate, a very rude thing.

"You come to our camp--my father might want to torture you," Blue Duck said. "He is angry because you brought Big Horse here." "Big Horse is chasing Kicking Wolf," Famous Shoes informed them. "He has given up and is on his way south by now. He is not going to bother your father." Nevertheless he was forced to humour the boys.

Instead of settling down they began to threaten him with arrows Famous Shoes decided he had better go with them--they were young boys; they might want to take a scalp just for practice. He trotted along in front of them as they made their way to the canyon. He was not worried that Buffalo Hump would torture him. Buffalo Hump owed him a debt and would never offer him violence, even though he scouted for the Texans.

The debt had come about because of Buffalo Hump's grandmother, a famous prophet woman.

One winter years before, when there were few buffalo on the prairies where the Comanche hunted, the tribe had had to move north, beyond the Arkansas.

The old woman's death was at hand; she was too weak to make the cold journey to the north. So, in the way of such things, she was left with a good fire and enough food to last her until her passing. Everyone said goodbye and the band went north to seek game.