Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

"Those are just some heads he has cut off people," Tudwal said, in a friendly voice.

Three Birds didn't comment. His view was that Tudwal wasn't really as friendly as he sounded.

He might be the man who skinned people. Three Birds didn't want to banter idly about cut-off heads with a man who might skin him.

"He won't take your head though," Tudwal said. "For you it will be the pit or else the cliff." Three Birds soon observed that the camp they were coming to was poor. Two men had just killed a brown dog and were skinning it so that it could be put in the cook pot. A few women who looked very tired were grinding corn. An old man with several knives strung around his belt came out of a cave and looked at him.

"Is he the one who skins people?" Three Birds asked.

"We all skin people," Tudwal said. "But Goyeto is old, like Ahumado. Goyeto has had the most practice." Three Birds thought it all seemed very odd.

Ahumado was supposed to have stolen much treasure, in his robberies, but he didn't seem rich. He just seemed like an old, dark man who was cruel to people. It was all puzzling. Three Birds broke into his death song while puzzling about it.

He wondered if Kicking Wolf would die from being pulled behind the horse they had tied him to.

Three Birds was soon taken off the horse and allowed to sit by one of the campfires, but nobody offered him food. Around him were the Yellow Cliffso, pocked with caves. Eagles soared high above the cliffso, eagles and buzzards as well. Three Birds was startled to see so many great birds, high above the cliffso. On the plains where he lived he seldom saw many eagles.

He had expected to be tortured as soon as he was brought into the camp, but no one seemed in any hurry to torture him. Tudwal went into a cave with a young woman and was gone for a long time. The great force of pistoleros that Ahumado was said to command were nowhere in evidence. There were only five or six men there. Ahumado walked over and sat on a blanket. Three Birds stopped singing his death song. It seemed foolish to sing it when no one was paying any attention to him at all. Two old women were making tortillas, which gave off a good smell. In the Comanche camp prisoners were always fed, even if they were to be promptly killed or tortured, but that did not seem to be the custom in the camp of Ahumado. No one brought him tortillas, or anything else.

When the day was almost passed Tudwal came and sat with him. A peculiar thing about the man, who was white but very dirty, was that his left eye blinked all the time, a trait that Three Birds found disconcerting.

"I have been with six women today," Tudwal said. "The women are Ahumado's but he lets me have them. He is too old for women himself. His only pleasure is killing." Three Birds kept quiet. It was in his mind that they might start his torture at any time.

If that happened he would need all his courage.

He did not want to weaken his courage by chatting with a braggart like Tudwal. He wondered how Kicking Wolf was faring. If the horse was still dragging him he was probably thoroughly skinned up.

Finally Ahumado stood up and motioned for Tudwal to bring the prisoner. Tudwal cut the throngs that bound Three Birds' ankles and helped him to his feet. Ahumado led them to the base of one of the high cliffso, where there was a big pit. Tudwal led Three Birds to the edge of the pit and pointed down. In the bottom Three Birds could see several rattlesnakes and also a rat or two.

"You can't see the scorpions and spiders but there are many down there," Tudwal said. "Every day the women go out and turn over rocks, to find more scorpions and spiders for the pit." Without a ^w Ahumado turned toward the cliff and began to climb up a narrow trail of steps cut into the rock. The trail led higher and higher, toward the top of the cliff.

Ahumado climbed the trail quite easily, but Three Birds, because his hands were bound, had some trouble. He could not use the handholds Ahumado used, and Tudwal. Because of his difficulty with the steps Tudwal began to insult him.

"You are not much of a climber," he said.

"Ahumado is old but he is already almost to the top of the cliff." That was true. Ahumado had already disappeared above them. Three Birds tried to ignore Tudwal. He concentrated on making his feet go up the trail. He had never been so high before.

In his country, the beautiful country of the plains, even birds did not fly as high as he was being asked to climb. It seemed to him he was as high as the clouds--only it was a clear evening, with no clouds. Behind him Tudwal grew impatient with Three Birds' slow climbing. He began to poke him with a knife. Three Birds tried to ignore the knife, though soon both his legs were bloody. Finally he reached the top of the cliff.

The Black Vaquero was standing there, waiting. The climb had taken so long that the sky was red with sunset. When Three Birds reached the top he found that his lungs were hurting. There didn't seem to be much air atop the old man's Yellow Cliffs.

Around him there was distance, though--a great distance, with the peaks of the Sierra Perdida, reddened by sunset, stretching as far away as he could see.

Three Birds was so high he wasn't quite sure he was still on the earth. It seemed to him he had climbed into the country of the birds--the birds for which he was named. He was in the country of the eagles--it was no wonder he could hardly find air to breathe.

Near the edge of the cliff, not far away, there were four posts stuck in the ground, with ropes going from the posts over the edge of the cliff. Nearby four men, as dark as Ahumado, were squatting by a little fire. Ahumado made a motion and the dark men went to the first post and began to pull on the rope.

Suddenly, as the dark men pulled, Three Birds heard a loud beating of wings and several great vultures swirled up over the edge of the cliff, almost into their faces. One of the vultures, with a red strip of meat in its mouth, flapped so close to Three Birds that he could have touched it.

Three Birds was wondering why the strange old man and his skinny pistolero had brought him so high on the cliff, but he did not have to wonder long, for the dark men pulled a cage made of mesquite branches tightly lashed together onto the top of the cliff. It was not a large cage. The dead man in it had not much room, while he was alive, but the vultures could easily get their heads through and eat the dead man, little by little. The man's bones were still together but a lot of him was eaten. There was not much left of the man, who had been small, like the dark men who raised the cage. As soon as the cage was on solid ground the dark men opened it and quickly pitched what was left of the stinking corpse over the cliff.

Now Three Birds knew why they had brought him to the top of the cliff. They were going to put him in a cage and hang him off the cliff. He walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down. There were three more cages, dangling below him.

"There is a vaquero down there who is still alive," Tudwal said. "We only put him in two weeks ago. A strong man, if he is quick, can stay alive a month, in the cages." "Why does he need to be quick, if he is in a cage?" Three Birds asked.

"Quick, or he don't eat," Tudwal said.

"Pigeons light on the cages. If the man inside is quick he can catch birds to eat. We had a card sharp once who lasted nearly two months--he was quick with his hands." Old Ahumado walked over then. He did not smile.

"The cage or the pit?" he asked. "The snakes or the birds?" "If I were you I would take the pit," Tudwal said. "It's warmer down there. There's some big rats you could eat, if they don't eat you first. Or you could eat a snake." Three Birds was watching the dusk fill up the canyons to the south. He felt he was in the sky, where the spirits lived. Perhaps the spirits of his wife and children were not far away, or the spirits of his parents and grandparents, all dead from the shitting sickness. They were all in the high air somewhere, where he was. It might even be that Kicking Wolf was dead, in which case his spirit would be near.