Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

When the horse was only one hundred yards away, Scull crept down to take a closer look. As he came near he saw that the tied man's body was just a mass of scrapes, with very little skin left on it.

Scull watched the southern horizon closely, to be sure there were no clouds of dust in the air, such as riders would make; he also watched the bound man closely, to see if he was merely feigning unconsciousness. It seemed unlikely that a man so skinned and torn could be capable of threatening him; but many a fallen Indian fighter had been fatally lulled by just such reasonable considerations.

Once satisfied that it was safe to approach, Scull stopped the horse--he soon saw that the bound man was breathing. There were no bullet holes in him that Scull could see. On his back was a small quiver, with no arrows in it.

There was a deep gash in his forehead. The beadwork on the little quiver was Comanche, Scull thought. The thongs at his wrists and ankles had been pulled so tight that his flesh had swollen around the cords.

From a swift examination of the horse tracks Scull determined that the horse was one he had just been following for hundreds of miles. It was Three Birds' horse, but Scull didn't think it was Three Birds who was tied to it.

Three Birds was skinny, Famous Shoes had told him, but the bound man was short and stocky.

"Kicking Wolf," Scull said aloud. He thought the sound of his name might wake the man up, but of course Kicking Wolf was only his English name; what his Comanche name was, Scull did not know. Scull would have dearly liked to know what had happened to Three Birds, and whether Ahumado was in the vicinity, but he could not expect to get such information from an unconscious man whose language he didn't speak.

Now that he was in the country of the Black Vaquero, Scull had taken to travelling mostly by night, letting the stars be his map. He knew that the canyon where Ahumado had his stronghold was crevassed and cut with many small caves, some of them no more than pockmarks in the rock but some deep enough to shelter a man nicely.

Undoubtedly Ahumado would post guards, but Scull had been a commander too long to believe that any arrangement that required men to stay awake long hours in the night was foolproof. If he could sneak in at night and tuck himself into one of the hundred caves, he might, with patience, get a clean shot at Ahumado. Famous Shoes had told him that the old man did not like shade. He spent his days on a blanket and slept outside, by a small campfire, at night. The trick would be to get in a cave within rifle range. Of course, if he shot Ahumado, the pistoleros might swarm into his cave like hornets and kill him, but maybe not. Ahumado was said to be as cruel and unyielding to his men as he was to captives. Most of the pistoleros might only be staying with him out of fear. With the old man dead they might just leave.

It was a gamble, but Scull didn't mind-- indeed, he had walked into Mexico in order to take just such a gamble. But first he had to get into the Yellow Canyon and find a well-situated cave. Famous Shoes had warned him particularly about a man named Tudwal, a scout whose job it was to roam the perimeters of Ahumado's country and warn him of intruders.

"Tudwal will know you are there before you know it yourself," Famous Shoes assured him.

"No, that's too cryptic, what do you mean?" Scull asked, but Famous Shoes would not say more. He had given Scull a warning, but would not elaborate, other than to say that Tudwal rode a paint horse and carried two rifles.

Scull put the man's reticence down to professional jealousy. Famous Shoes missed no track, and, evidently, Tudwal didn't either.

Meanwhile, dusk was turning into night and Scull had a horse and an unconscious man to decide what to do about. The Comanche very likely was the man Kicking Wolf, the thief who had stolen Hector. In other circumstances Kicking Wolf was a man he would immediately kill, or try to kill. But now the man was unconscious, bound, helpless. With or without Scull he might not live. With one swipe of his knife Scull knew that he could cut the man's throat and rid the frontier of a notable scourge, but when he did take out his knife it was merely to sever the rawhide rope that attached the man to the horse.

Then he quickly walked on toward the mountains, leaving the unconscious man tied but not dead.

"Tit for tat ... Bible and sword," he said aloud, as he walked. Kicking Wolf; daring theft had freed him of a command he was tired of, presenting him with a fine opportunity for pure adventure--solitary adventure, the kind he liked best. He could match his skill against an unforgiving country and an even more unforgiving foe.

That was why he had come west in the first place: adventure. The task of harassing the last savages until they were exterminated was adventure diluted with policy and duty.

The man who had been tied to the horse was a mystery, and Scull preferred to leave him a mystery. He didn't want to nurse him, nor did he want to kill him. He might be Kicking Wolf or just some wandering Indian old Ahumado had caught. By cutting the rope Scull had secured the man a chance.

If he came to he could chew his way free and try to make it to water.

But Inish Scull didn't intend to waste any of the night worrying the issue. The man could go if he was able. He himself had ten hours of fast walking to do and he wanted to be at it. The thought of what was ahead stirred his blood and quickened his stride. He had only himself to consider, only himself to depend on, which was exactly how he liked things to be. By morning, if he kept moving, he should be in the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs. Then he could lie under a rock and wait for the sun to complete its short winter arc. Perhaps when night fell again, if he made good progress, he could crawl through Ahumado's guard and work his way into the cliffso, where he might find a cave deep enough to shelter him for a day. If he could find a suitable cave he would then need to be sure that his rifle was in good order--he had walked a long distance with the rifle over his shoulder. The sights might well need adjusting. Ahumado was said to be quick, despite his age. Certainly he had been quick the first time Scull went after him. It was not likely that the old man would linger long in plain view, once Scull started shooting at him.

He needed to cripple him, at least, with the first shot--killing him outright would be better still.

A brisk, nipping north wind rose during the night, but Scull scarcely noticed it. He walked rapidly, rarely slowing for longer than it took him to make water, for ten hours. Twice he startled small herds of javelina and once almost stumbled over a sleeping mule deer.

Normally he would have shot the deer or one of the pigs for meat, but this time he refrained, remembering Tudwal, the scout who would know he was there even before he knew it himself. It would not do to go shooting off guns with such a man on patrol.

Toward dawn, Scull stopped. The closer he got to danger, the keener he felt. For a moment, pissing, he remembered his wife, Inez --the woman thought she could hold him with her hot lusts, but she had failed. He was alone in Mexico, in the vicinity of a merciless enemy, and yet he found it possible to doubt that there was a happier man alive.

At the entrance to the camp in the Yellow Cliffso was a pile of human heads. Three Birds would have liked to stop and look through the heads for a while to see if any friends of his were represented in the pile. Ahumado had killed many Comanches, some of them his friends. Probably a few of their heads were in the pile. Many of the heads still had the hair on them, from what he could see.

Three Birds was curious. He had never seen a pile of heads before and would have liked to know how many heads were in the pile, but it didn't seem a polite thing to ask.