Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

He liked the sound it made, a sound that came from depths he could not see.

"I like the land--it doesn't move," Worm said. "This water sighs like a woman who is sad." There was some truth in that comment, Buffalo Hump thought. The ocean did sigh like a woman, as she sighed in sorrow, or at the slowing of her passion.

"There are great fish in that water with mouths so wide they can swallow buffalo," Worm worried. Buffalo Hump sang over Worm's droning, his complaints. He sang much of the night, in the warm salt air.

In the gray mist before the dawn Buffalo Hump got on his horse and sat waiting for the sun. On impulse he forced the horse into the water and made him swim until the small waves broke over them. Then he swam back to land. Worm was beside himself when he saw Buffalo Hump in the water. He was worried about the snake as long as a pine tree, but Buffalo Hump had no such worry. He merely wanted to watch the sun rise out of the water. All his life he had watched the sun rise upward out of the prairie; now he wanted to see it come out of the water. When it came, at first it was only a faint glow in the grayness of water and sky.

"We had better move back there in those trees," Worm said, when Buffalo Hump came out.

"Why?" Buffalo Hump asked.

"They say the sun rides all night on the back of a great fish," Worm said. "When it is time for morning the great fish brings it back so it can shine on the people of the land and make them warm." In the mist it was hard to see the sun clearly.

Buffalo Hump wondered if there was a great fish so large that it could carry the sun. He watched the surface of the water and saw no great fish, though that didn't mean that the story was untrue. The sun was now well up. Maybe the great fish that carried it had gone back to its home in the deep water.

Maybe the fish slept all day, while the people of the land enjoyed the sun. He didn't know.

What Buffalo Hump did know was that the ocean was a great mystery. In his country the stars and the moon were the great mysteries; he had been studying them all his life, and yet he knew nothing of the stars and the moon. The ocean was such a mystery, too. He could live his life on the sand, as the Indians of the seaside did, and yet never know the secrets of the ocean--why its waves moved in and out, why it sighed like a woman. Perhaps the ocean was even more powerful than the moon and stars. After all, it had called him to it, across hundreds of miles of land. Although the fighting had been good, he had finally grown restive with it; he did not want to delay any longer his trip to the Great Water.

When the sun was high Buffalo Hump rode back to Worm, who was crouched nervously over the little campfire. Often Worm could be irritating, a cranky man with half an upper lip and many fears and complaints. But Worm, for all his complaining, was a powerful prophet, and sometimes his clearest prophecies were called forth by his fears.

Buffalo Hump wanted a prophecy--all through the fighting he had wanted one, for his feelings were not good. Although he had felt again the excitement of war and the thrill of running down and killing his enemies, there had been a sadness in him through it all. At night as the young men sang and bragged of their killing, he had felt apart and could not make the sadness leave. In his life he had had many victories; the young men bragging and singing were as he had been in his youth, brave and unthinking. They expected that they would live their life as warriors and have many victories over the whites and the Mexicans. In their dreams and in their songs they saw themselves as Comanche warriors always, men of the bow andofthe horse.

Buffalo Hump knew, though, that for most of them, it would not be that way. A warrior skilled with the lance and the bow might, if he were bold, prevail over a man with a gun; but a thousand men with guns, whether they were skilled or not, would win in a battle against even the bravest warriors with bows. His son, Blue Duck, though foolish and rude, would have to fight with the gun if he were to live.

Buffalo Hump knew that the bluecoat soldiers would come in thousands someday. Their defeat would sting; they would try to reverse the Comanche victory. They would not come this year, but they would come; there were as many of them as there had once been buffalo. It was a bitter truth, but a truth.

The young warriors who were even then stringing white scalps on their lances would either die in battle or end their days as old Slow Tree had predicted, growing corn on little patches of land the white men let them keep.

Buffalo Hump wanted to see the ocean because the ocean would always be as it was. Few things could stay forever in the way they were when the spirits made them.

Even the great plains of grass, the home of the People, would not be always as it had been. The whites would bring their plows and scar the earth; they would put their cattle on it and the cattle would bring the ugly mesquite trees. The grass that had been high forever would be trampled and torn. The llano would not be always as it had been. The ocean and the stars were eternal, things whose power and mystery were greater than the powers of men.

Long before, when Buffalo Hump was a boy, his own grandmother had predicted the end of the Comanche people.

She thought it would come through sickness and plague; and, indeed, sickness and plague had carried off almost half the p. Now, looking at the Great Water, Buffalo Hump wanted to know if Worm had a prophecy that would tell him how the next years would be.

He got off his horse and sat for a few minutes with the old man, Worm. It was Worm who had said that the pox and the shitting sickness were caused by gold. He had a vision in which he saw a river of gold flowing out of a mountain to the west.

The whites ran through their country like ants, seeking the gold, and left their sicknesses behind them.

"I will take you away from this water you dislike so much if you will tell me a prophecy," Buffalo Hump said. "I won't let a great fish get you, either, or a snake as long as a pine tree." "I have the vision now," Worm said. "Last night I could not sleep because I heard too many horses squealing in my head." "I heard no horses squeal," Buffalo Hump said. Then he realized he had made a foolish comment. Worm was not talking about their horses, but about the horses in his vision.

"It was not these horses with us," Worm said.

"It was the horses we have taken in the raid, and the others, the horses at home." "Why did they squeal--was there a cougar near?" Buffalo Hump asked.

"They were squealing because they were dying," Worm said. "The white men were killing them all, and the sky was black but it was not a storm. The sky was black because all the buzzards in the world had come to eat our horses. There were so many buzzards flying over that I could not see the sun. All I could see were black wings." "Is that the whole prophecy?" Buffalo Hump asked.

Worm merely nodded. He seemed tired and sad.

"That is a terrible prophecy--we need our horses," Buffalo Hump said. "Eat a little of this meat. Then we will go." "We will have to slip along at night," Worm said. "All the whites will be looking for us now." "Eat your meat," Buffalo Hump said.

"Don't worry about the whites. I am going to take you up the Rio Grande. Once we are far enough up it we can go home along the old war trail we used to ride, when we went into Mexico and caught all those Mexicans. I don't think we will see many whites out that way--if we do see whites I will kill them." Worm was relieved. They had travelled far on the great raid, all the way from the llano to the sea. He did not care for the sea, he was tired, and he had no more armadillo meat to eat. But Buffalo Hump gave him a little of his pig meat and he ate it.