Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Pearl's view was that the Almighty would soon pour hot lava over the world, as a response to human wickedness. Now they were beside the Palo Duro Canyon, a big, mysterious hole in the ground--what if it suddenly filled up with hot lava and overflowed onto the world? Cold as he was, the prospect of the world ending in a flood of hot lava did not appeal to Long Bill at all. The fact that Captain Scull had questioned whether there would be a sunup had the effect of making him nervous. He had never met a man as learned as Captain Scull--if the Captain had some reason to doubt the likelihood of future sunrises, then there might be something to Pearl's apprehension, after all.

"Oh, I'm confident the sun will do its duty, and the planets as well," Captain Scull said.

"The sun will be there, where it should be. Whether we will see it is another matter, Mr. Coleman." Gus McCrae found the remark curious.

If the sun was where it should be, of course they would see it.

"Captain, if the sun's there, why wouldn't we see it?" he asked.

"Well, it could be cloudy weather--I expect it will be," Captain Scull said. "That's one reason we might not see sunup. Another reason is that we all might be dead. Beware the pale horse, the Bible says." Inish Scull let that remark soak in--it amused him to say such things to his untutored and uncomprehending men. Then he turned his horse.

"Don't be peeking into canyons unless I tell you to, Mr. Call," he said. "It's icy footing, and too dark for accurate observation anyway." Call was irked by the Captain's tone. Of course he knew it was icy footing. But he said nothing--"then Inish Scull had turned his great horse and gone clomping away, into the night. There was no one to say anything to, except Augustus and Long Bill. After one more glance into the darkening canyon, he got back on his horse and followed his captain north.

"Gun In The Water is with them," Blue Duck said. "Gun In The Water and the other one --Silver Hair McCrae." Buffalo Hump sat on a deerskin near his campfire. He was under an overhanging rock, which held the heat of the campfire while protecting him from the driving sleet. He was splitting the leg bone of a buffalo. When splitting a bone he was particular and careful--he did not want to lose any of the buttery marrow. Most men were impatient, young men especially. When they attempted the old tasks, they took little care.

Blue Duck, his son, rarely split a bone, and when he did, he lost half the marrow.

Buffalo Hump had fathered the boy on a Mexican captive named Rosa, a beautiful but troublesome woman who persisted in trying to escape. Buffalo Hump caught her three times and beat her, then his wives beat her even more harshly, but Rosa was stubborn and kept escaping.

The winter after the boy was born she escaped again, taking the young baby with her. Buffalo Hump was gone on a raid at the time--when he got back he went after Rosa himself, but a great wind came, blowing snow over the prairie in clouds so thick that even the buffalo turned their backs to it. When he finally found Rosa, under a cutbank on the Washita, she was frozen, but the boy, Blue Duck, was alive, still pulling on her cold teat.

It was a good sign, Buffalo Hump thought then, that the boy was strong enough to survive such cold; but the boy grew up to be even more troublesome than his mother. Blue Duck stole, killed, and fought bravely, but all without judgment. He had no interest in the old weapons; he coveted only the white man's guns. His temper was terrible--he had no friends. He would kill a Comanche or a friendly Kiowa as quickly as he would kill a Texan. The elders of the tribe finally came and talked to Buffalo Hump about the boy.

They reminded him that the boy was half Mexican.

They thought maybe the Mexicans had put a witch inside Blue Duck when his mother died.

After all, the boy had suckled a dead woman's teat; death might have come into him then. The old men wanted to kill Blue Duck, or else expel him from the tribe.

"I will kill him, when he needs to be killed," Buffalo Hump told them. He didn't like Blue Duck much, but he didn't kill him, or send him away. He delayed, hoping the boy would change with age. Two of his wives were barren and his only other son had been killed years before on the Brazos, by the white ranger Call, whom the Comanche called "Gun In The Water." Blue Duck had no good in him, that he could see, but he had no other living son and did not want to kill him if he could avoid it. Perhaps Blue Duck did have evil in him, an evil that prompted his sudden killings; but the evil might be there for a purpose. Blue Duck might be so bad that he would be the leader who drove back the whites, who were squirming like maggots up the rivers and onto the comancher@ia. Buffalo Hump was undecided. He knew he might have to kill Blue Duck to keep harmony in the tribe.

But, for the moment, he waited.

He did not look up at his tall son until he had split the heavy bone expertly, exposing the rich marrow, which he sucked until the last drop was gone. As Buffalo Hump grew older, his appetites had changed. When they took buffalo now, he only ate the liver and, sometimes, the hump. But he insisted on first pick of the bones, so he could find the marrow. He knocked down prairie chickens whenever he could, and had developed a taste for possums, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and armadillo.

When one of his wives wanted to please him they would catch him a plump prairie hen or perhaps a young possum. The elders of the tribe thought it odd that their great chief no longer hungered for horsemeat or buffalo. Buffalo Hump didn't care what the elders thought, not in this instance. He had heard much prophecy, from many elders, and little of it had come true; worse, the only prophecies that had come true were the bad ones. The whites were more numerous than ever, and better armed. Even a simple raid on a small farm--j a couple and their children--cd seldom be accomplished without a warrior or two falling to the white man's guns. Even the Mexicans in poor villages were better armed now. Once, the mere appearance of a single Comanche warrior could cause such panic in the villages of Mexico that the men could ride in and take captives almost at will; but now even the smallest, poorest villages were apt to put up stiff resistance.

Also, now, the Texans came with bluecoat soldiers, andwith agents who talked to the elders of the People about the advantages of reservation life. Some of the chiefs and elders, tired of running and fighting, had begun to listen to these agents of the Texans. So far the Comanches were still a free people, but Buffalo Hump knew, and the elders knew as well, that they could not simply scare the whites away by tortures and killings, or by taking a few captives now and then. There were too many Texans--too many. The very thought of them made him weary and sad.

Finally, when he had finished with his marrow bone, he tossed it aside and looked up at Blue Duck. The boy was tall and strong, but also rude, impatient, disrespectful.

"If you saw Gun In The Water, why didn't you kill him for me?" he asked his son.

"You should have brought me his hair." Blue Duck was annoyed--he had brought his father a report on the Texans and had not expected criticism.

"He was with Big Horse Scull," he said.

"He had twelve men with him." He stopped, uncertain. Surely his father did not expect him to kill twelve men, on a day when the sleet was so bad a horse could not run without slipping.

Buffalo Hump merely looked at Blue Duck. He was gaunt now; his great hump was a weight he had grown tired of carrying. Once it had scarcely slowed him, but now he had to manage carefully if he was to avoid embarrassment.

"You can kill him. I give him to you," he said to Blue Duck. "Do you think you can kill him tomorrow?" "I told you he was with Big Horse," Blue Duck said. The old man annoyed him.