Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

When Maggie saw the six dollars on her table something stirred in her, something mixed. She realized it was as close as Woodrow could come to admitting that he lived with her. On the other hand, she had always cared for herself. She might long for a man who might marry her and want to support her --and yet she could not convince herself that Woodrow really did want to support her. He just felt he ought to; it was his conscience, not his heart, which moved him to put the six dollars on her table every month.

Sometimes Maggie left the money on the table a day or two before she picked it up. The sight of it made her feel both better and worse; it made her feel that she was being kept by a man who, though he might care for her, had no true desire to keep her, much less marry her and claim their child.

Still, Woodrow Call, with his nightly absences and the six dollars a month which he punctually left, was still the best that life offered, or was likely to offer, in the place where Maggie was. Sometimes she felt so defeated that she wondered if she ought to give up on the idea of respectability alt. She might as well just whore and whore and whore, until she got too old. Even if she only saw a few customers, now and then, she could still make a lot more than six dollars a month.

They had travelled up the Rio Grande almost to the crossings on the great war trail when they saw the Old One. Worm at once became upset and began to shake and to speak incoherently, although the Old One was merely squatting by a little fire, carefully removing the quills from a large porcupine he had shot.

The Old One, whose long white hair touched the ground when he squatted, was devoting careful attention to the dead porcupine. He did not want to break any of the porcupine quills--one by one he took them out and laid them on a little strip of buckskin he had unfurled and placed on a rock by his campfire. The big wolf that travelled with the Old One gave one howl when he smelled Buffalo Hump and Worm, and loped away into the bed of the river.

Buffalo Hump stopped, respectfully, a good distance away. The Old One turned his head briefly and looked at them; then he went back to the careful extraction of the porcupine quills.

"We must not stay here," Worm said, in a shaky voice. "The wolf can hide in a dream.

In the dream it will be a bird, or a woman you want to couple with. But when you do, the wolf will come out of the dream and open your throat." "Be quiet," Buffalo Hump said. "I am not afraid of any wolf. If we are respectful, the Old One might give us some of those nice quills." "No, we cannot take the quills," Worm protested. "The Old One might witch them.

They might turn into scorpions while you carry them. Nothing about the Old One is as it seems." Buffalo Hump was beginning to wish he had sent Worm home after the great raid. Worm had become too nervous to make good company. Everything he had seen on their ride up the river seemed malign to him. At the mouth of the river, where the water was salt, they had caught a young alligator that had got into the wrong waters somehow. Worm made a big fuss over the alligator. Later they came upon a dead eagle and Worm made a big fuss about that too. Now they had stumbled on the Old One and Worm was terrified. Once Worm had been a competent medicine man but now everything seemed to scare him or upset him.

"The Old One is just an old man," Buffalo Hump said. "I have seen him several times and he has never witched me. He probably found that wolf when it was a pup and raised it as we would a dog.

"The Old One is not a fighting man now," he added, but Worm was still not reassured.

"He is too old," Worm contended. "He belongs to death and he brings death with him. His breath is the breath of death." Buffalo Hump decided just to ignore Worm. If Worm didn't want to visit with the Old One, then Worm could take himself home.

"The Old One isn't dead," he pointed out.

"He belongs to the river, and he has killed a fine porcupine. It is hard to find a porcupine on the llano now. I want some of those quills for my wives--they always like porcupine quills." He rode slowly on down to where the Old One was working--Worm hung back, but he did not leave for home. Buffalo Hump knew all the stories about Ephaniah, the Old One, the man who walked with a wolf. It was said that he had come to the West with the first whites, the ones who took the beaver. One story was that he had bathed in a stream where the river was born, in a place no one else had ever found, and that the water in that place had made him unable to die. It was said that he would only die when the world died. That was why he called himself the Lord of the Last Day. Because the sacred waters of the spring of life had bathed him he had been able to escape the dangers that had long ago finished all the other white men who took the beaver. Once, it was said, the fastest warriors the Blackfeet could muster got after the Old One for taking their beaver; they ran him hard for a hundred miles. Though the warriors were young and fleet, Ephaniah was faster. He ran on and on and could not be overtaken. It was said, too, that he had made a pact with the beaver people, so that they would let him hide in their houses when he was in danger.

Worm believed that the Old One could breathe in water, like a fish. He bathed in the icy water of the high streams and did not seem to be affected.

Some thought his power was in his hair, and that if he could be scalped he would die like other men. But no one yet had been able to take his hair, though he had more hair than any woman. Others thought that he could speak the language of animals and birds and even fish. Some had seen him put his head under water; they believed that he could call the fish and make them come to him when he was hungry.

He was often seen eating fish when others could find no fish.

It was certain that the Old One knew the languages of many tribes; it might be that he knew the language of fish and birds as well, or the language of wolves. Buffalo Hump neither believed the stories nor disbelieved them.

He was not a man who felt that he always knew the truth of things. He liked to watch and listen. A man such as the Old One must know things that other people had forgotten. It might be that the Old One had stumbled on the spring of life and could not die, but was that good? In life was much pain; what man would want to bear it forever? Besides, any man who was curious would want at last to enter the mystery, to walk the plains of the spirit land. Buffalo Hump was in no hurry to have his own life end, and yet the knowledge that it would end someday and that he would go to where the spirits were brought a kind of peace, after struggles and warfare and wounds and the quarrels of women.

And yet, what he had noticed the few times he had come across the Old One was that he seemed to be a cheerful man, and practical. His first request was always for tobacco, and so it was now.

"Those are fine quills you are taking from that porcupine," Buffalo Hump said, once he had dismounted at the Old One's camp.

"Leave off the talk, I'm counting and don't want to lose my count," Ephaniah said, which amused Buffalo Hump no end. Worm was a long distance back, quivering and trying to make a protective spell of some kind, while the Old One with the long white hair was merely counting the quills of his porcupine.

Buffalo Hump accepted his rebuke and sat quietly by the campfire as the old man plucked out each quill carefully and laid it on the buckskin. He worked with ease and skill; not once, while Buffalo Hump watched, did he break a single quill. Now and then Buffalo Hump turned and gestured for Worm to come to the camp, but Worm was too fearful. Soon the dusk hid him. When darkness filled the sky, with only the small speckle of firelight to interrupt it, the old man put the porcupine aside. He had not been able to finish his work before dark and evidently did not want to jeopardize it by working when the light was poor.