Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Everyone assumed that the Comanches had come back.

Men in wagons hastily grabbed their weapons.

"It might not be Indians--it might just be a cougar or a bear that's strayed into town," Gus said, as he and Call, keeping to what cover there was, ran toward the Colemans' house.

"Whatever it is you best load your gun," Call said. "You shot at that bottle, remember?" Gus immediately loaded his pistol, which still dripped.

Call happened to glance around, toward the house where Maggie boarded. Maggie Tilton stood on her landing in plain view, looking at whatever caused Pearl Coleman to shriek. Maggie had her hands clasped to her mouth and stood as if stunned.

"It ain't Indians, Gus," Call said.

"There's Maggie. She ain't such a fool as to be standing in plain sight if there's Indians around." Yet the shrieks continued to rake the skies, one after another.

"Could she be snakebit?" Gus asked. "I recall she was always worried about snakes." "If she's snakebit, where's Bill?" Call said. "I know he's a sound sleeper, but he couldn't sleep through this." Two more women were in sight, two laundresses who had been making their way back from the well with loads of laundry. Like Maggie they were looking at something. Like her, they had clasped their hands over their mouths in horror. They had dropped their laundry baskets so abruptly that the baskets tipped over, spilling clean laundry into the dirt.

"It might just be a big bear," Call said.

On occasion bears still wandered into the outskirts of town.

The shrieks were coming from behind the Coleman house.

There was a big live oak tree a little ways back from the house--in happier days Gus and Long Bill had spent many careless hours in its shade, gossiping about women and cards, cards and women.

As the two men approached the corner of the Coleman house, pistols drawn, they slowed, out of caution. Pearl Coleman shrieked as loudly as ever. Gus suddenly stopped alt, filled with dread, such a dread as he had not felt in years. He didn't want to look around the corner of the Coleman house.

Woodrow Call didn't want to look, either, but of course they had to. In the streets behind them, men were crouched behind wagons, their rifles ready.

Whatever it was had to be faced.

"Somebody's dead or she wouldn't be shrieking like that," Gus said. "I fear something's happened to Bill. I fear it, Woodrow." Both of them remembered Long Bill's doleful face, as it had been for the last few weeks; no longer was he the stoical man who had once walked the Jomada del Muerto and eaten gourd soup.

Call stepped around the corner, his pistol cocked, not knowing what he expected, but he did not expect what he saw, which was Long Bill Coleman, dead at the end of a hang rope, dangling from a stout limb of the live oak tree, a kicked-over milking stool not far from his feet.

Pearl Coleman stood a few yards away, shrieking, unable to move.

The pistol in Call's hand became heavy as an anvil, suddenly. With difficulty he managed to uncock it and poke it back in its holster.

Gus stepped around the corner too.

"Oh my God ..." he said. "Oh, Billy ..." "After all we went through," Call said. The shock was too much. He could not finish his thought.

The townspeople, seeing that there was no battle, rose up behind, wagons and barrels. They edged out of stores, women and men.

The barbers came out in their aprons; their customers, some half shaven, followed them. The butcher came, cleaver in hand, carrying half a lamb. The two laundresses, their work wasted, had not moved--the clean clothes were still strewn in the dirt.

Above them, Maggie Tilton, clearly pregnant and too shocked to trust herself to walk down her own steps, stood sobbing.

Augustus holstered his gun and came a few steps closer to the swaying body. Long Bill's toes were only an inch off the ground; his face was purple-black.

"Billy could have done this easier if he'd just taken a gun," he said, in a weak voice.

"Remember how Bigfoot Wallace showed us where to put the gun barrel, back there years ago?" "A gun's noisy," Call said. "I expect he done it this way so as not to wake up Pearl." "Well, she's awake now," Gus said.

The silent crowd stood watching as the two of them went to the tree and cut their old friend down.

Together Call and Augustus cut Long Bill down, pulled the noose from his neck, and then, feeling weak, left him to the womenfolk. One of the laundresses covered him with a sheet that had spilled out when her basket overturned. Maggie came down the steps and went to Pearl, but Pearl was beyond comforting. She sobbed deep guttural sobs, as hoarse as a cow's bellow. Maggie got her to sit down on an overturned milk bucket. The two laundresses helped Maggie as best they could.

"I don't want him going to heaven with his face so black," Pearl said suddenly. "They'll take him for a nigger." Maggie didn't answer. The undertaker had been killed in the raid--funerals since then had been hasty and plain.

Call and Gus caught their horses and rode on to the Governor's. Though the distance was not great, both felt too weak to walk that far.

"What are we going to say to the Governor, now that this has happened?" Augustus asked.

"He's the Governor, I guess he can do the talking." Call said, as they rode up the street.

When informed of the tragedy, Governor Pease shook his head and stared out the window for several minutes. A military man was with him when the two captains came in, a Major Nettleson of the U.S. Cavalry.

"That's three suicides since the raid," Governor Pease said. "Raids on that scale have a very poor effect on the nerves of the populace. Happens even in the army, don't it, Major?" "Why, yes, we sometimes have a suicide or two, after a violent scrap," the Major said.

He looked at the rangers impatiently, either because they were late or because they were interrupting his own interview with the Governor.

"Bill Coleman had been with us through it all, Governor," Call said. "We never expected to lose him that way." Governor Pease turned from the window and sighed. Call noticed that the Governor's old brown coat was stained; since the raid he had often been seen in an untidy state. He had grown careless with his tobacco juice, too.

Judging from the carpet, he missed his spittoon about as often as he hit it.

"It's one more murder we can charge to Buffalo Hump," the Governor said. "A people can only tolerate so much scalping and raping. They get nervous and start losing sleep. The lack of sound sleep soon breaks them down. The next thing you know they start killing themselves rather than worry about when the Comanches will show up again." Just then Inez Scull came striding into the room. Major Nettleson, who had been sitting, hefted himself up--he was a beefy man.

Madame Scull merely glanced at him, but her glance caused the Major to flush. Augustus, who was merely waiting dully for the interview to be over, noted the flush.

"Why, there you are, Johnny Nettleson," Inez said. "Why'd you leave so early? I rather prefer for my house guests to stay around for breakfast, though I suppose that's asking too much of a military man." "It's my fault, Inez," the Governor said quickly. "I wanted a ^w with the Major--since he's leaving, I thought we'd best meet early." "No, Johnny ain't leaving, not today," Madame Scull said. "I've planned a picnic and I won't allow anything to spoil it.

It's rare that I get a major to picnic with." Then she looked at Governor Pease defiantly. The Governor, surprised, stared back at her, while Major Nettleson, far too embarrassed to speak, stared solemnly at his own two feet.

Augustus suspected that it was stout Major Nettleson that Madame Scull was trotting with now; the picnic she was anxious not to have spoiled might not be of the conventional kind. But this suspicion only registered with him dully. His mind was on the night before, most of which, as usual, he had spent drinking with Long Bill Coleman. It was a close night, and the saloon an immoderately smelly place. During the raid a bartender had been stabbed and scalped in a rear corner of the barroom; the bartender had been murdered, and so had the janitor, which meant that the bloody corner had been only perfunctorily cleaned. On close nights the smells made pleasant drinking difficult, so difficult that Gus had left a little early, feeling that he needed a breath of river air.