Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

When Worm had eaten, Buffalo Hump mounted and led him inland, back through the twisted trees, toward Mexico.

"It's such a far way back, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I swear I wish we hadn't gone so far from town." He said it at night, as they were burying two men whose scalped and cut-open bodies they found just at dusk, at the foot of a small hill. The two men had been travelling in a little wagon, with nothing much in it except axes. The Indians hadn't destroyed the wagon, but they had used the axes to hack the two men open.

"It's far yet, and we can't make no time for burying folks," Long Bill observed. The three older rangers watched as Pea Eye, Deets, and Jake Spoon dug the grave.

The day before, they had found a family slaughtered by a poor little tent. Evidently they had intended to start a farm. There were two women among the six dead. Seeing the women, whom they wrapped in blankets and buried properly, put Gus in mind of Clara, Long Bill in mind of his Pearl, and Call in mind of Maggie. It would be many days before they knew whether their womenfolk had suffered the fate of the two young women just buried, and the anxiety was tiring them all. For three days they had pushed the horses to their limits, and yet they were still ten days from home.

At night none of the older men could sleep.

Images rose up in their minds, images that kept them tense. Call usually went off with his rifle and sat in the darkness. Long Bill and Gus stayed by the fire, talking about anything they could think to talk about. Pea Eye, Jake, and Deets, with no one at home to worry about, said little. Jake had thrown up at the sight of the mutilated bodies.

"I never seen how a person looks inside themselves before," he said to Pea Eye, who didn't reply.

Pea Eye was afraid to talk about the deaths for fear that he would cry and embarrass himself before the older men. The sight of dead people made so much sadness come in him that he feared he couldn't contain it. In death people looked so small--the dead adults looked like sad children, and the dead children looked like dolls. The fury that found them was so great that it reduced them as they died.

"Why will people come out here, Captain?" Jake asked, as they were burying the two men who were travelling in the small wagon. "This ain't farm country ... what could you grow, out here?" Call had often wondered the same thing himself.

Over and over, rangering, he and Augustus had come upon little families, far out beyond the settlements, attempting to farm country that had never felt the plow. Often such pioneers didn't even have a plow. They might have a churn, a spindle, a spade, and a few axes, an almanac, and a primer for the children. Mainly what they had, as far as Call could tell, was their energies and their hopes. At least they had what most of them had never had before: land they could call their own.

"You can't stop people from coming out here," Call said.

"It's open country now." Later, Call and Augustus walked off from the group a little distance to discuss the problem of Long Bill, who was so distraught at the thought that his Pearl might have been killed or kidnapped that he seemed to be losing his mind.

"Bill's always been steady," Call said.

"I wouldn't have expected him to get this bad." "He's bad, Woodrow," Gus said. "I guess he's as crazy about Pearl as I am about Clara." The fact was, Call himself had had a number of disquieting thoughts about Maggie since hearing about the raid. Maggie had tried three times to talk about the baby she was carrying, a baby she claimed was his, but in his haste to round up his troop and get them started he had put her off, a rudeness he regretted. Now Maggie might be dead, and the child too, if there really was a child.

"I mean to leave Texas forever, if Clara's dead," Augustus told him. "I wouldn't want to live here without my Clara. The memories would be too hard." Call refrained from commenting that the woman Gus was talking about wasn't his anymore.

If Clara had left Austin before the big raid it was because she had married Bob Allen.

"Let's get off the damn Brazos tomorrow," Gus suggested.

"Why?" Call asked. "There's always abundant water in the Brazos." "I know it--t's why," Augustus said. "Where there's water, there's farmers--or people who were trying to be farmers. It means more people to bury. Me, I'd like to get on home." "It's wrong to leave Christian folk unburied," Call told him.

"It ain't if we don't even see 'em," Gus said. "If we get away from all this watered country we won't happen on so many." It was a still, windless night, and very dark. The three young grave diggers had to bring burning sticks from the campfire, in order to determine if they had the grave deep enough. The spades they were digging with had belonged to the two men who were murdered.

"We could start a hardware store with all the spades and axes scattered around out here," Gus remarked.

Long Bill had not come out with them to the grave site. They could see his tall form, pacing back and forth in front of the campfire, making wavy shadows.

"Oh Saint Peterffwas they heard him exclaim. "Oh, Saint Paulffwas "I wish Billy would hear of some new saints to pray to," Gus said. "I'm tired of hearing him pray to Peter and Paul." "He can't read--I guess he's forgot the other saints," Call said. The grave diggers had paused for a moment--they were all exhausted, from hard travel and from fear.

Call felt sorry for Long Bill Coleman. Seldom had he seen a man so broken by grief, though Pearl, the woman he grieved for, might well be alive and well.

Pearl, though large, did not seem to him exceptional in any way. She had none of Clara's wit or spirit, nor Maggie's beauty of face.

"Pearl must be a mighty good cook, for him to take on about her so before he even knows if she's dead." "No, she ain't," Augustus said. "I've et Pearl's cooking and it was only fair. I expect it's the poking." "The what?" Call asked, surprised.

"The poking, Woodrow," Gus said. "Pearl was large and large women are usually a pleasure to poke." "Well, you would think that," Call said.

In the aftermath of the great raid, much to her distress, Maggie's business increased. No one knew exactly where the Comanches were, but rumours of widespread carnage swept the town.

Some said that Buffalo Hump had killed three hundred people in San Antonio, and one hundred more in Houston. Then a counterrumour reversed those numbers; others thought he had burnt Victoria, while someone had heard that he was already in Mexico. There was a general fear that he might come back through Austin and finish what he had begun. Men went about heavily armed, draped with all the weapons they could carry. At nights the streets were empty, though the saloons still did a good business. Men were so scared that they drank, and, having drunk, discovered that they were still too nervous to sleep.

So they came to Maggie--a stream of men, knocking on her door at all hours of the day or night. She couldn't protest, but she was not welcoming, either. She had been sickly of a morning lately, and was often nauseous or queasy during the day. Her belly had begun to swell visibly, yet none of the men seemed to notice.

They were so scared that only what she sold them could bring them a little peace. Maggie understood it. She was scared herself. Some nights she even went down and hid in the crawl space under the smokehouse. It brought her a little relief, both from fear and from the men.

Maggie longed for Woodrow to show up, with the boys. Once Woodrow was there, the men would leave her be. Although they were only two men, they were respected; the townspeople took much comfort from their presence, just as she did.

Every morning at first light Maggie looked out her window, toward the corrals where the rangers kept their horses. She was hoping to see Woodrow's buckskin, Johnny. If she could just spot Johnny she would know that he was back.