Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Still, though many died, some lived. The Comanches were not as powerful a tribe as they had been, but there was still no one on the plains who could oppose them.

They could still beat the whites back, slipping between the forts to attack farms and ranches. The white soldiers were not yet bold enough to attack them on the llano, where they lived.

Slow Tree, though boring, was not foolish; he saw what any man of sense could see: that it was the whites, not the People, who were growing more numerous. It would take many years for the young women to bear enough babies to bring the strength of the People back to what it had been before the coming of the plagues.

But the whites had not suffered much from the plagues. For every white that died, three arrived to take his place. The whites came from far places, from lands no Comanche had ever seen. Like ants they worked their way up the rivers, into the Comanche lands. Soon there would be so many that no chief could hope to kill them all in war, or drive them away.

Slow Tree was right about the buffalo, too. Every year there were fewer of them. Each fall the hunters had to range farther, and, even so, they came back with less.

Now there were signs that the bluecoat soldiers meant to come into the field against them. Soon an army might come, not just the few rangers who followed them and tried to take back captives or stolen horses. The rangers were too few to attack them in their camps; but the soldiers were not too few. For now the soldiers were only parading, but someday they would come.

Buffalo Hump saw what Slow Tree saw, but he did not intend to let the whites control him. He had never broken the earth to raise anything, and he did not intend to. It was fine for Kicking Wolf to steal the Buffalo Horse, but that was only a joke, though a bold joke.

What Buffalo Hump wanted was a great raid--a great raid, such as there had been in the past, when warriors went into even the largest towns and stole captives, or burned buildings, or ran off all the horses and livestock that they wanted. Once he himself had raided all the way to the Great Water, coming back with so many horses that they filled the plains like buffalo.

The great raids had scared the Texans so badly that they were eager for councils and treaties --they made the Comanches many promises and gave them small gifts, in hopes that they would not raid all the towns and scare the new white people away.

Buffalo Hump wanted to launch a great raid again; a raid with hundreds of warriors, into Austin and San Antonio. They would kill many Texans, take many captives, and take what booty they wanted. Such a raid would show the Texans that the Comanches were still a people to be feared. Again, they would call for councils and treaties. He himself did not believe in councils or treaties, but old Slow Tree could go. He loved to parley with the whites; he would sit under a tent for weeks, boring the whites with his long speeches.

Meanwhile, on the plains, the young women would be having babies, bringing a new generation of warriors, to replace the ones lost to the plagues.

A great raid would remind the Texans that the Comanches were a people still; they could not be turned into farmers just because the whites wanted their land.

Buffalo Hump wanted to launch such a great raid, and he wanted to do it soon, with all the warriors he could persuade to accompany him, from his band and Slow Tree's and the others. He wanted to make the raid soon, while the north wind was still sharp as a knife--while the snows fell and the sleet cut down. Never before had the Comanches made a raid in the coldest month of the winter.

Whites and Mexicans both--but particularly Mexicans--had come to fear the fall, when the great yellow harvest moon shone. Along the old war trail the moon of the fall was called the "Comanche moon"be for longer than anyone could remember it had been under the generous light of the fall moon that the Comanches had struck deep into Mexico, to kill and loot and bring back captives.

For most of his life Buffalo Hump had kept to the traditional ways--like his father and grandfather before him he had followed the great Comanche war trail into Mexico in the fall. When he first raided to the Great Water his ferocity had driven whole villages to throw themselves into the sea--^th who could not drown themselves were pulled out like fishes for rape or torture. The captives he had taken would fill a town, and, for every captive taken, two or three Mexicans lay dead in their villages or fields.

But, since the plagues struck, Buffalo Hump had not raided much. With the game so thin it was hard work just to keep food in the cook pots. He had not had time to follow the great yellow moon into Mexico.

Now the Mexicans were better armed than they had ever been; often they fought back, and it was pointless to go into the territory of Ahumado; he was indio too and could not be cowed. Besides, he had drained the villages of their wealth and himself had taken all the captives worth having.

Often now at night Buffalo Hump climbed up high, onto a spur of rock near the edge of the great canyon, to sing and pray and seek instruction from the spirits. With his heavy hump it was hard to climb the spur, but Buffalo Hump did it, night after night, for the matters he prayed about were serious. He felt it was time to raid. The high cold moon that sailed over the canyon in February was as much a Comanche moon as the fat moon of the fall. He knew that most warriors, and many chiefs too, would want to wait until fall to start the great raid, but Buffalo Hump felt strongly that the raid ought to be pressed now, as soon as stores could be got ready. South of them, in the forts along the rivers, bluecoat soldiers were training. There were many of them near the Phantom Hill. In the spring the soldiers might do what they had not yet done: come north and attack them in their camps. If the soldiers fought well and killed too many warriors, the Comanches' pride might be broken forever. Instead of following the way of free Comanches, the way of the arrow and the lance, they might begin to accept the counsel of Slow Tree, which was the counsel of defeat.

Buffalo Hump wanted to strike before any of that happened--he did not want to wait, in the hope that the white soldiers would leave them alone for another season. The People had never waited to be led into war by the whites--alw they had taken war to the whites, and they would do so again.

So, night after night, Buffalo Hump climbed to the high rock and prayed for instruction.

He was not a fool. He knew that the whites were stronger now; they were more numerous than the Comanche, and better armed. That was why he wanted to strike in winter. The soldiers were inside their forts, trying to keep warm. So were the farmers, and the people of the towns.

They would not expect hundreds of warriors to slash down on them like sleet.

Yet he knew that, even so, the whites might win. Every time he went into the Brazos country he was shocked to see the whites filling it in such numbers. Always, too, their guns improved.

They had rifles now that could spit many bullets and strike warriors fatally at ranges well beyond that of any arrow. Armed with their new guns, the whites might win; he and all the chiefs might fall in battle, in which case the day of the Comanche people would be over. If the great raid failed and the strongest chiefs were killed, then there would be no recovery for the People, and the wisdom of Slow Tree would be the wisdom that would have to prevail.

Sitting on the rock every night, in wind or sleet or snow, Buffalo Hump did not see defeat in his visions. Instead he saw the houses of the white men burning, their women killed, their children taken from them. He saw himself as he had been when young, leading his warriors into towns and villages, bursting into farmhouses and killing the whites where they stood. He saw his warriors coming back north with a great herd of livestock, enough to cover the plains where the buffalo had been.