Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

"That's a thousand and one, so far," Ephaniah said. "I'm stopping till daylight. Got any tobaccy?" Buffalo Hump had none but Worm had plenty. He had filled several pouches with it during the great raid; once back with the tribe he meant to trade it for a young woman who belonged to old Spotted Bull, a warrior with a great taste for tobacco who was much too decrepit to need the young woman.

"Worm will give you some when he comes to the camp," Buffalo Hump said. "Right now he is scared you will witch him so he is staying back." The Old One, Ephaniah, seemed to be amused by this comment. He cupped his hands around his mouth and produced the howl of a wolf. It was such a good howl that Buffalo Hump himself was startled for a moment--then, from the darkness, there came an answering howl, from the wolf that had trotted away when the two Comanches appeared.

It was only a few minutes later that Worm came into the camp. He did not enjoy being alone by the river with wolves howling all around. He did not want to fall asleep in a place where a wolf might come out of his dream and rip his throat.

Once he discovered that the Old One wanted some of his tobacco, Worm forgot about being witched; since the Old One was their host he had to give him some tobacco, or else be thought a bad guest, but he only offered him the smallest of the many plugs of tobacco he had looted from the Texans. The Old One accepted the plug without comment, but Buffalo Hump frowned.

"If you would be a little more generous the Old One might give us some of these nice porcupine quills," he said. "My wives would be pleased if they had such nice quills." "You know Spotted Bull," Worm said.

"He won't give me that woman unless he gets a lot of tobacco." "You have enough tobacco to buy five or six women," Buffalo Hump told him. "If you can't talk Spotted Bull out of that woman, buy someone else. What you are doing is impolite. If you can't be a better guest than this, you deserve to have the dream wolf come and eat you." Worm did not enjoy being spoken to so sternly.

Buffalo Hump was a man whose moods were uncertain, and they were still a long way from home.

Worm was torn; he very much wanted the young wife of Spotted Bull, yet he did not want to make an enemy of Buffalo Hump, not while they had such a way to travel. In the end he gave the Old One three more plugs of tobacco.

The old man took them without comment.

In the morning, though, in the clear sunlight, he continued to remove quills from the hide of the porcupine.

Buffalo Hump sat in silence, watching. The great wolf who travelled with the Old One stood on a little bluff to the east. Worm would have liked to ask the Old One a few questions; he wanted particularly to know if the Old One could speak to fish. But Buffalo Hump discouraged him. He did not want the old man to be bothered while he was extracting the porcupine quills.

When the last quill had been coaxed from the porcupine's hide and laid on the little piece of buckskin, the Old One quickly separated about a quarter of the quills and offered them to Buffalo Hump, who nodded in thanks. The Old One then carefully folded the rest of the quills into the buckskin, put them in a little pouch he carried, and then went down to the cold river to wash his face.

While the two Comanches watched he put his head under the water. When he stood up he shook water off his long hair, as a dog might.

"I think he was just talking to the fish people," Worm said.

"What did he say to them?" Buffalo Hump asked. "He is an old white man. I think he just likes to wash himself." Worm was stumped by the question. He had no idea what the Old One might have said to the fish. But he was convinced there was witching involved--witching of some kind. He was also wishing he had not given away so much tobacco. It would tell against him when he began his trade with Spotted Bull.

The second time the young Comanches caught him, Famous Shoes thought it was probably going to be his time to die. He had found his grandmother at a poor little camp near the Arkansas but did not have a very good visit. His grandmother had immediately set in complaining about his grandfather and had kept up her complaining for two days. Every time Famous Shoes tried to get her to consider more important things, such as how the Kickapoo people had come to be, his grandmother grew irritated and brushed aside his question. Everybody knew of course that the Kickapoo people had come out of a hole in the earth at the time when there were only buffalo in the world. The Kickapoo had been chosen by the buffalo to be the first human beings; Father Buffalo himself had pawed open the hole and allowed the Kickapoo to come up from their deep caves.

Everybody knew about the hole and Father Buffalo and that the Kickapoo had become human beings at a time before rain clouds, when all creatures received their moisture from the dew; they knew that rain had only begun to fall out of the sky once the Kickapoo people had made a prayer that caused the sky to let down its waters.

But what no one knew, or, at least, what his grandmother could not be bothered to tell him, was where the hole was that the Kickapoo had come out of.

The reason Famous Shoes wanted to find the hole so much was because he was convinced there were still underground people who lived somewhere in the earth. At night, when he slept with his ears close to the ground, the underground people spoke to him in dreams.

Over the years he had come to want badly to go visit the underground people and learn the important things they knew. After all, they were the oldest people.

His interest in tracks had only made him more interested in the underground people. Over the years he had become convinced that the underground people were watching the tracks that were made on the earth; sometimes, out of mischief, they altered the tracks of animals and made the tracks vanish. Quite a few animals that he tracked had simply ceased to make visible tracks; they vanished. These odd vanishings had happened so often that it occurred to him that perhaps the underground people had a way of opening the earth, so that animals being pursued could come down with them for a time, and rest.

Famous Shoes had no proof that the underground people could open the earth and take animals into it. He didn't know. He just knew that tracks sometimes stopped--it was one of the mysteries of his work. He thought that if he could find the hole the Kickapoo people had come out of he might be able to go down into the earth for a few days and see if there was someone there who could explain these matters to him.

When, on the third day, his grandmother finally grew tired of complaining about his grandfather's habit of wandering off and leaving her just when she needed him most, she listened to him explain his theory of the underground people and told him it was nonsense.

"There are no underground people," she informed him brusquely. "All the Kickapoo people came out of the hole except one old woman who was our mother, and she died and let her spirit go into the rocks.

She is Old Rock Woman. Those dream people you hear when you sleep on the ground are witch people, and the reason you think those animals vanish is because you have been witched. The witch people take away the power of your eyes. The tracks are still there but you can't see them." Then she cut up a polecat she had caught and started making polecat stew. While the stew was cooking his grandmother made clear to him that she thought it was time he was on his way.

"You can't eat polecat stew," she informed him. "The skunk people are your enemies. If you eat polecat stew you will shit too much and your eyes will grow even weaker." Famous Shoes took the hint and left. He didn't believe his eyes were weak--it was just that his grandmother was stingy with her polecat stew.