Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Finally the crow-hopping stopped but by then Scull was not sure where the rifle was--he saw a line of men on the horizon and knew that he had no time to search for the gun. He sawed the reins until he had the paint pointed north, and then urged him into a dead run. I'm gone, he thought--I'm gone.

But then he heard the whirl of bolas as the dark men rose up from behind a low ridge. The running horse went down hard--Scull flew a good distance and lit on his shoulder. As he rose, more bolas were flying at him. One wrapped around his legs. He quickly shot two of the dark men but a third dashed in and hit him on the head with the flat side of a machete. The sky swirled above him as it might if he were on a fast carousel.

This time Ahumado supervised the caging.

The three other cages were pulled up and the pecked-at corpses in them flung over the cliff. Scull was put in the strongest cage.

He was dazed from the blow to his head and made no resistance. Ahumado let him keep the clothes he had taken from Tudwal.

"I have no one to put in these cages," the old man said. "You will be alone on the cliff." "It's a fine honor, I'm sure," Scull said. His head rang so that it was a chore to talk.

"It is no honor--but it means that many birds will come to you. If you are quick you can catch these birds. You might live a long time." "I'll be quick but you ain't smart, se@nor," Scull said. "If you were smart you'd ransom me. I'm a big jefe. The Texans might give you a thousand cattle if you'd send me back.

"Your people could live a good spell on a thousand cattle," he added.

Ahumado stepped close to the cage and looked at him with a look of such contempt that it startled Inish Scull. The look was like the slice of a machete.

"Those are not my people, they are my slaves," Ahumado said. "Those cattle in Texas are mine already. They wandered there from Jaguar's land, and Parrot's. When I want cattle I go to Texas and get them." He stopped, and stepped back. The force of his contempt was so great that Scull could not look away.

"You had better try to catch those fat pigeons when they come to roost," the old man said.

Then he gestured to the dark men, and turned away.

The dark men put their shoulders against the cage and nudged it outward, over the lip of the great cliff.

Slowly the men who stood at the post began to lower it into the Yellow Canyon. The cage twisted a little, as it was lowered; it twisted and swayed. Inish Scull held tightly to the mesquite bars. The height made him dizzy. He wondered if the rope would hold.

Far below him, great black vultures soared and sank. One or two rose toward him, as the cage was lowered, but most of them pecked at the remains of the corpses that had just been thrown off the cliff.

Augustus McCrae, brokenhearted because of Clara's marriage, resorted much to the bottle or jug as the six rangers proceeded west in search of Captain Inish Scull. It was vexing to Call--damn vexing. He was convinced they were on a wild goose chase anyway, trying to find one man in an area as large as west Texas, and a man, besides, who might not appreciate being found even if they did find him.

"It's two men, Woodrow," Augustus reminded him. "Famous Shoes is with him." "Was with him--t was a while ago," Call said. "Are you too drunk to notice that time's passing?" They were riding through the sparsely grassed country near the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos, well beyond the rim of settlement. They had not even come upon a farm for over a week. All they saw ahead of them was deep sky and brown land.

"I ain't drunk at all, though I would be if there was whiskey to be had in this country," Gus said. "I doubt if there's a jug of whiskey within two hundred miles of here." "That's fine," Call said. "You were drunk enough to last you while it .was available." "No, Woodrow--it didn't last," Gus said. "Maybe Clara didn't really marry.

She likes to joke, you know. She might have just been joking, to see what I'd do." Call didn't answer. The conjecture was too foolish to dignify. Augustus had lost his girl, and that was that.

The other rangers were jolly, though--all except Long Bill, who had not expected to leave his Pearl so soon. Imagining domestic delights that he was not at home to experience put Long Bill in a low mood.

Young Jake Spoon, though, was so jolly that he was apt to be irritating. The mere fact that he had survived two weeks in the wilderness without being scalped or tortured convinced him that rangering was easy and himself immortal. He was apt to babble on endlessly about the most normal occurrence, such as killing an antelope or a cougar.

The weather had been warm, which particularly pleased Pea Eye; he did most of the camp chores with will and skill, whereas young Jake had adequate will but little skill. The third morning out he girthed Gus's young horse too tightly.

Gus was too hung over to notice; he mounted and was promptly bucked off, a circumstance that didn't please him. He cussed young Jake thoroughly, plunging the young man into a state of deep embarrassment.

Deets, the black man, was the happiest and least troublesome member of the troop. Deets liked being a scout far better than he liked being in town, the reason being, Call suspected, was because in town there were always men who might abuse him because of his color.

"Why are you so dern hard to convince, Woodrow?" Gus asked. "I've known you forever and I've never been able to convince you of a single thing." "No, you've convinced me of one thing for sure," Call said, "and that's that you're foolish about women.

"I expect Clara turned you down because she knew you were too fond of whores," he added.

"Not a bit of it!" Gus retorted. "She knew I'd give up whores in a minute if she'd marry me." Nonetheless, the thought that what Call said might be true made Augustus so unhappy that he wanted to get down and beat his head against a rock.

They had only been in Austin two days: what happened with Clara happened so fast that, when he thought back on it, it was more like a visit in a dream than something real. He wanted to believe that when they returned to Austin again, things would be as they had always been, with Clara in her father's store, unmarried, waiting for him to rush in and kiss her.

Long Bill Coleman rode up to the two captains in hopes of getting some things clarified. He had quickly come to regret his gallantry in allowing himself to be conscripted for the new expedition. Adjusting to the racket of domestic life was hard for him, after a long trip; it might have been a little quieter had Pearl not insisted on keeping her chickens in the kitchen, but Pearl couldn't stand to be parted from her chickens; so there was the racket to contend with, on top of which Pearl was a fervent woman who liked to make up his absences by lots of fervor--an overwhelming amount of fervor at times, in fact.

Thus Long Bill was subjected to conflicting feelings: part of him wanted Pearl and her fervor, while another part longed for the peace of the prairies.

For the moment he seemed to have the peace of the prairies, though there was no guarantee that the peace would hold. Several times, moving west along the rivers and creeks, they had struck Indian sign--enough Indian sign to make Long Bill nervous. His opinion of the matter, now that he was too far west to do much about it, was that he ought to have stayed with his wife. The chickens, after all, could be tolerated; better chickens than Comanches.

"Shut up, Bill--I don't know where we are and neither does Woodrow," Gus said, when he saw Long Bill riding up, an interrogative look on his face.

"I never asked a question," Long Bill pointed out.

"No, but you were about to--I seen it in the way you was holding your mouth," Gus said.

"I just wanted to know when we give up on finding the Captain," Long Bill said. "I got chores to do at home." "You're a ranger and that comes first," Gus said tartly. "Your wife's big and stout. She can do the confounded chores." "Well, but she's got a baby in her--t will slow some women down," Long Bill said.