Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

"I see that you are hungry," Red Hand said.

"You should eat some of this deer meat. I will stand guard tonight." Kicking Wolf politely accepted Red Hand's offer. He stayed where he was, but did not eat much of the deer meat. Now that he was back with the warriors of his own band, a great tiredness came over him. He lay down in the warm ashes of the fire and was soon asleep.

Pearl Coleman pushed down her sadness every morning and tried to make her husband a sizable and tasty breakfast. She sat Long Bill down to a good plate of biscuits and four tasty pork chops. Then she told him, as she had every morning since his return, that she wanted him to quit the rangers and quit them now.

"I can't stand you going off in the wilds no more, Bill," she said, beginning to weep at the memory of her recent ordeal. "I can't stand it. I get so scared my toes cramp up when I get in bed. I can't get to sleep with my toes cramping up like that." Though he appreciated the biscuits and the pork chops, Long Bill let his wife's remarks pass without comment--he also let her tears flow without trying to staunch them. Tears and entreaties for him to quit the rangers had become as predictable a part of the morning as the sunrise itself.

"There's worse things than cramped toes, Pearl," he answered, a biscuit in one hand and an unhappy look on his face.

He said no more than that, but Pearl Coleman felt exasperation growing. For the first time in her marriage she felt herself in opposition to her husband, and not casual opposition either. About the need for him to quit the rangers immediately she was right and he was wrong, and if she couldn't get Bill to accept her view then she didn't know what to think about their future as husband and wife.

"I'd be the one to know what's bad better than you," she told him. "I was here. I had four arrows shot into me, and I lost our baby from being so scared. I got so scared our baby died inside me." Long Bill's own view was that the raping Pearl had endured had probably killed the baby, but he didn't say so; he ate another biscuit and held his peace. The overwhelming relief he felt when he saw that Pearl was alive had subsided, drained away by the new problem of adjusting to what had happened to her.

One thing Long Bill had to face immediately was that Pearl had been raped by several Comanches. On his anguished long, nervous ride home he had half expected to have to cope with the knowledge of rape; but once he got home and discovered that Pearl actually had been raped he was so shocked that, so far, he had not even attempted the conjugal act that in normal circumstances he looked forward to so much.

Not only that, Pearl didn't want him to attempt it.

"They done it and you wasn't here to help me," she told him, weeping, the first night he was back. "I can't be a wife to you no more, Bill." All that night, and every night since, Pearl lay beside her husband, her legs squeezed together, so desperately unhappy that she wished one of the Comanche arrows had killed her.

Long Bill, beside her, was no less unhappy. He and the rangers had buried thirteen people on the ride back to Austin. Now, lying beside his unhappy wife, he thought of all the battles he had been in and reflected that a single well-placed bullet could have spared him such a painful dilemna.

"How many done you?" he asked Pearl, finally.

"Seven," Pearl admitted. "It was over quick." Long Bill said no more, then or ever, but if seven Comanches had violated his wife then it didn't seem to him that it could have been over very quick.

Since his return, day by day, life had gotten harder. Pearl cooked him lavish, delicious meals, but, in bed, lay beside him with her legs squeezed shut, and he himself had no desire to persuade her to open them.

Through the long, anxious nights on the trail he had wanted nothing more than to be home and in bed with his wife. Now, though, he left the house the minute supper was over, to sit late in the saloon every night, drinking with Augustus McCrae. Gus drank to ease his broken heart, Long Bill to blur his own vivid and uneasy thoughts. Sometimes they were even joined by Woodrow Call, who had his own worries but wouldn't voice them--the most he would do was take a whiskey or two. By this time everybody in Austin knew that Maggie Tilton was pregnant, and many people assumed the baby was Woodrow Call's, a fact not of much importance to anyone except the young couple themselves.

Austin had the great raid to recover from. Most of the townspeople had homes or businesses to repair; they also had griefs to grieve. The fact that a young Texan Ranger had got a whore pregnant was in the normal order of things, and no one thought the worse of Woodrow or of Maggie, because of it. Few had the leisure to give the matter more than an occasional thought.

Night after night the three of them, Long Bill, Gus, and Call, sat at a table in the back of the saloon, all three troubled in mind because of difficulties with women. Augustus had lost the love of his life, Long Bill's wife had been shamed by the red Comanches, and Woodrow's girl was carrying a child she insisted was his, a child he could not find it in him to want, or even to acknowledge.

"How would a whore know if a child is one man's or another's?" he asked one night. Long Bill was no.ing, so the question was mainly directed at Gus, but Long Bill snapped to an attention and answered.

"Oh, women know," he said. "They got ways." To Call's annoyance, Augustus casually agreed, though he was so drunk at the time that he could scarcely lift his glass.

"If she says it's yours, it's yours," Gus said. "Now don't you be fidgeting about it." Call had asked Gus because Gus had made a study of women, more or less, while he himself had devoted more attention to the practicalities of ranger life on the frontier. Since Maggie had immediately claimed the baby was his, and had remained firm in her opinion, he thought there might be some medical or scientific basis for her conviction, and if there was he was prepared to do his duty. But he wanted to know the science of it, not merely be told that women knew about such things.

"Maggie's honest, that's the point, Woodrow," Gus reminded him. Though drunk, he meant to see that Woodrow Call did not evade the responsibilities of fatherhood.

"I know she's honest," Call replied. "That don't mean she's right about everything. Honest people make mistakes too.

"I'm honest, and I've made plenty," he added.

"I even make mistakes," Long Bill admitted, ruefully. "And I'm as honest as the day is long." "Pshaw, you ain't!" Gus said. "I expect you told Pearl you was standing guard at night, so you lied within the hour. Ain't that true?" "It's not so much a lie as that Pearl don't need to know everything," Long Bill replied. It was true that he lied to Pearl about his evenings in the saloon, but he didn't think Pearl minded. In fact she might even prefer to have him out of the house until it was time for them to sleep. Otherwise, they would have nothing to do but sit in their chairs or lay in their bed and brood about the fact that they were no longer husband and wife as they had been.

"The point is, Maggie ain't a mistake," Gus told Call. "She's a blessing and you're dumb not to see it." "I am right fond of Maggie," Call said.

"But that don't mean the child is mine. I'd just like to know if there's a way she can be sure about the father." Gus, in a poor mood anyway, was annoyed by the very tone of Woodrow Call's voice.

"If I say it's yours and Bill says it's yours and Maggie says it's yours, then that ought to be enough for you," he said hotly. "Do you need the dern Governor to say it's yours?" "No," Call said, making an earnest effort to stay calm about the matter. "I just want to know for sure. I expect any man would want to know for sure. But you can't tell me for sure and Bill can't either. I don't know what the Governor has to do with it." Silence followed. Augustus saw no point in pursuing the matter further. He had been in many arguments with Woodrow Call but had never, so far as he could recall, succeeded in changing his mind. Long Bill must have felt the same. He stared at his whiskey glass and said nothing.