Larry McMurtry - Comanche Moon

Augustus was silent. He was still thinking about Long Bill, wondering what despair had infested his mind while he was looking for the rope and setting the milking stool in place.

"It's funny," he said.

"What is?" Call asked.

"Billy was the worst roper in the outfit," Augustus said. "If you put him in the lots with a tame goat, the goat would die of old age before Billy could manage to get a loop on it.

Remember?" "Why, yes, that's true," Call said. "He was never much of a roper." "It might take him six or seven tries just to catch his own horse," Augustus said. "If we was in a hurry I'd usually catch his horse for him, just to save time." Call started to go up the stairs to see Maggie, but paused a moment.

"You're right," he said. "The only thing the man ever roped on the first try was himself. That's a curiosity, ain't it?" "Why yes," Augustus said. "That's a curiosity." Call still had his hat in his hand; he put it on and went up the steps to Maggie.

Woodrow's lucky and he don't know it, Augustus thought. He's got a girl to go to.

I wish I had a girl to go to. Whore or no whore, I wouldn't care.

With no way to shade his pupils, Scull began to pray for rain--or, if not rain, at least a cloud, anything that might bring his eyes relief. Even on cool days the white light of the sun at noon brought intense headaches. The light was like a hot needle, stabbing and stabbing into his head. Rolling his eyes downward brought a few moments of relief, but not enough--day after day the white light ate at his optic nerve. Even though he heard the caballero Carlos Diaz tell Ahumado that the Texans had agreed to send the cattle for his ransom, Scull felt little hope. He might be blind or insane before the cattle arrived; besides, there was no certainty that Ahumado would honor the ransom anyway. He might take the cattle and kill the Texans-- if he respected the bargain it would be mere whim.

From the noon hour each day until the sun edged behind the western cliffso, Scull felt himself not far from madness, from the pain in his eyes. The only thing that saved him, in his view, was that the season was young and the days still fairly short; also, Ahumado had pitched his camp in a canyon, a deep slot in the earth. In the canyon the sun rose late and set early; it only burned at his eyes for some six hours a day, and often spring thunderheads drifted over the canyon and brought him some minutes of relief.

As soon as the sun went behind the canyon wall Ahumado took him from the skinning post and put him back in the cage. Scull then covered his head with his arms, to make a cave of darkness for his throbbing eyes. Sometimes, instead of drinking the water they brought him, he poured a little in his palms and wet his throbbing temples. He could hear the rippling of the little stream that ran not far away; at night he dreamed of thrusting his head in the cool water and letting it soothe his eyes.

He no longer sang or cursed, and when, now and then, he tried to remember a line of verse, or a fragment of history, he couldn't. It was as if the white light itself had burned away his memory, so that it would no longer give back what was in it. The old bandit was clever, more clever than Scull had supposed. He might take the Texans' cattle and send them back their captain--only the captain he sent back would be blind and insane.

The one weapon Scull had left to him was his hatred--alw, throughout his life, hatred had come easier to him than love. The Christian view that one should love his brethren struck him as absurd.

His brethren were conniving, brutish, dishonest, greedy, and cruel--and that judgment included, particularly, his own brothers and most of the men he had grown up with. From the time he first hefted a rifle and swung a sword he had loved combat.

He sought war and liked it red. His marriage to Inez was a kind of war in itself, which was one reason he stayed in it. Several times he had come close to choking her to death, and once he even managed to heave her out a window, unfortunately only a first-floor window, or he would have been rid of the black bitch, as he sometimes called her. He had no trouble hating any opponent, any prey: red Indians, bandits, horse thieves, card cheats, pimps, bankers, lawyers, governors, senators. He had once pistol-whipped a man in the foyer of the Massachussetts statehouse because the man spat on his foot.

All his earlier hatreds, though, seemed casual and minor when compared to the hatred he felt for Ahumado, the Black Vaquero. There was nothing of chivalry in Scull's hatred--no respect for a worthy opponent, none of the civilities that went with formal warfare. Scull dreamed of getting Ahumado by the throat and squeezing until his old eyes popped out. He wanted to saw off the top of the man's head and scoop out his brains, as they had scooped out the steaming brains of Hector, his great horse. He wanted to open his belly and strew his old guts on the rocks for carrion birds to peck at.

Ahumado had outsmarted him at every turn, had caught him easily, stripped him, hung him in a cage, taken his eyelids; and he had done it all with light contempt, as if it were an easy, everyday matter to outsmart Inish Scull. The old man didn't appear to want his death, particularly; he could have had that at any time.

What he wanted was his pride, and taking the eyelids was a smart way to whittle it down.

When the sun shone full in his face, Scull's pupils seemed as wide as a tunnel, a tunnel that let searing light into his brain. At times he felt as if his own brains were being cooked, as Hector's had been.

The hatred between Scull and Ahumado was a silent thing now. For most of the day the two men were no more than fifty feet apart. Ahumado sat on his blanket; Scull was either in his cage or tied to the skinning post. But no ^ws passed between them--only hatred.

Scull tried, as best he could, to keep track of days. He lined up straws in the corner of his cage. Keeping a crude calendar was a way of holding out. He needed to keep his hatred high, to calculate when he might expect the Texans. Once the season advanced, once spring gave way to summer, the sun would burn even hatred out of him. He knew it. The old dark man sitting a few feet away would become meaningless. The sun would cook away even hatred--and when hatred was gone there would be nothing left.

While he could, though, he lined up straws in the corner of his cage and imagined revenge. One morning it rained, a blessed rain that continued to fall for eight hours or more. They did not bother tying him to the skinning post that day--there was no sun to afflict him. Scull scraped at the puddles in his cage and made a paste of mud, which he plastered over his sore eyes. The relief was so great that he wept, beneath his mud poultices.

All day he kept on, putting the mud poultices over his eyes. No one came near him. Ahumado, who hated rain, stayed in his cave. Later, when the rain had subsided to a cool drizzle, Scull heard two vaqueros talking. The vaqueros wanted to kill him--they were convinced he was a witch. What he did with the mud was a thing a witch would do. The vaqueros had long believed that Scull was a witch and were annoyed at Ahumado for allowing a witch to live in their midst; he might cause someone to be struck by lightning; he might even cause the cliff to fall and bury them all alive. They wanted to take out their guns and shoot many bullets into Scull, the witch in the cage. But they could not because Scull belonged to Ahumado, and only Ahumado could order his death.

When Scull overheard the conversation, he felt his strength revive a little. Because of the rain and the mud, he was saved for a little time. Perhaps he .was a witch--at least, perhaps, he could play on the vaqueros' superstition. At once, in his croak of a voice, he began to sing in Gaelic, a sea ditty a sailor had once taught him in Boston. He couldn't sing loud and had forgotten most of the Gaelic song, but he sang anyway, with mud plastered over his eyes.