Comanche Moon (65 page)

Idahi felt Ermoke's angry eyes following him as he walked around the camp. Even the women of the camp, all of them filthy and most of them thin from hunger, looked at him hostilely, as if he were only one more man who had come to abuse them.

It was not what Idahi had expected; but, on the other hand, he had not expected his own chief, Paha-yuca, to agree to take his people onto a reservation. He knew he could not live on a reservation and be subject to the rules of a white man. He did not want to wait like a beggar by his lodge for whites to give him one of their skinny beeves. He had left his three wives behind, in order to join Blue Duck--aletter he missed his women, and yet he had no intention of bringing them to such a filthy camp, where the men had no respect for anything, not even a bear.

The longer Idahi walked the more troubled and confused he became. He did not know what to do.

He was a hunter and a warrior; he wanted to hunt on the prairies and fight his enemies until he was old, or until some warrior vanquished him. There was no shame in defeat at the hands of a good fighter--Idahi knew that in many of the battles he had fought, but for a lucky move at the right moment, he would have been killed. He did not fear the risks of a warrior's life; he respected the dangers such a life entailed. But Idahi wanted to remain a warrior and a hunter; he did not want to become a mere bandit. He wanted to steal from his enemies, the Texans, but he did not intend to steal from the people who had always been .his people. The men in the camp of Blue Duck had no such qualms, he knew. They would steal from anyone. If they saw a Comanche riding a fine horse, or carrying a fine gun, or married to a pretty plump woman, they would, if they could, kill the Comanche and take the horse, the gun, or the woman.

Fine gun or no fine gun, Idahi knew he could not live with such men. After all, he himself had a fine shotgun now; several of the men in camp had looked at his gift with envious eyes--someday, if Blue Duck happened to be gone, one of the renegades would kill him for it, or try to.

Idahi considered the problem through a long afternoon.

Many ducks and geese landed on the Red River and then flew away again, but Idahi did not shoot them. He was thinking of what he had done, and, by the time the sun set, he had reached a conclusion. It was clear that he had made a mistake. He could not live as Blue Duck lived. Where he would go he was not sure. The way of his chief, Paha-yuca, was not a way he could follow any longer. He would have to give back the fine shotgun and leave. He had begun to feel wrong when he saw Blue Duck beat the bear--now he felt he didn't want to stay where such things happened.

When Idahi walked back to camp it was almost dark. One of the skinny old white men had been killed while he was gone; someone had clubbed him to death. Blue Duck was sitting alone, eating the dog meat the women had cooked. Idahi went to him and handed him back his shotgun.

"What's this--I thought you were going to bring us a goose?" Blue Duck said.

"No, I wasn't hunting," Idahi told him. "This is a fine gun, though." "If it is such a fine gun, why are you giving it back to me?" Blue Duck asked, scowling.

He did not like having his gift returned.

Idahi knew that what he had done was rude, but he had no choice. He wanted to leave and didn't want the renegades following him in order to kill him and take the gun.

"When you gave me this gun I thought I could stay here," Idahi said. "But I am not going to stay." Blue Duck stared at him, a dark look on his face and coldness in his eyes. Idahi remembered that Buffalo Hump had once stared at people like that, when he had been younger; and then, usually, he killed the people he had been staring at with eyes like sleet. Idahi wanted to get his horse and leave. He did not want to fight Blue Duck, in his own camp, where there were so many hostile renegades. He knew, though, that he might have to fight. Blue Duck had gone out of his way to welcome him as a guest, and he was going to think it rude of Idahi to go away so soon.

"Eat a little of this dog--it's tasty," Blue Duck said. "You just got here. I guess you can leave in the morning if you're determined to go." Idahi did as he was asked. He had not changed his mind--he meant to go--but he did not want to be rude, and it was very rude to refuse food. So he sat down by Blue Duck and accepted some of the dog. He had not been eating much on his travels and was happy to have a good portion of dog meat to fill him up.

While they were eating Blue Duck seemed to relax a little, but Idahi remained wary. In deciding to go away he had made a dangerous decision.

"What about my father?" Blue Duck asked.

"Is he going to the reservation too, with his people?" "No, only Paha-yuca is going now," Idahi said. "Slow Tree has already taken his people in, and so has Moo-ray." "I didn't ask you about them, I asked about Buffalo Hump," Blue Duck said.

"He is old now--p do not speak of him anymore," Idahi said. "His people still live in the canyon. They have not gone to the reservation." "I want to kill Buffalo Hump," Blue Duck said. "Will you go with me and help me?" Idahi decided at once to change the subject. Blue Duck had always hated Buffalo Hump, but killing him was not a matter he himself wanted to discuss.

"I wish you would let the bear go," Idahi said. "It is not right to tie a bear to a tree.

If you want to kill him, kill him, but don't mistreat him." "I drug that bear out of a den when he was just a cub," Blue Duck informed him. "He's my bear. If you don't like the way I treat him, you can go kill him yourself." He said it with a sly little smile. Idahi knew he was being taunted, and that he was in danger, but, where the bear was concerned, Idahi suffered no doubt and had to disregard such considerations.

"He's my pet bear," Blue Duck added.

"If I was to turn him loose he wouldn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to hunt anything but dogs." Idahi thought that was a terrible comment. No bear should have its freedom taken away in order to be a pet. He himself had once seen a bear kill an elk, and he had also had two of his best stallions killed by bears. It was right that bears should kill elk and stallions; it was a humiliating thing that a bear should be reduced to killing dogs in a camp of sullen outlaws.

Idahi didn't know what life he was going to have now, anyway. He had left his people and did not intend to go back. He could go to one of the other free bands of Comanches and see if they would accept him and let him hunt and fight with them, but it might be that they would refuse. His home would be the prairie and the grasslands; he might not, again, be able to live with his people. It seemed to him that he ought to do what he could to see that a great animal such as a bear was treated in a dignified manner, even if it meant his own death.

"If you would turn him loose I wouldn't have to kill him," Idahi said.

"It's my bear and I ain't turning him loose," Blue Duck said. "Kill him if you want to." Idahi decided that his life was probably over. He got up and began to sing a song about some of the things he had done in his life. He made a song about the bear that he had seen kill an elk.

While he sang the camp grew quiet.

Idahi thought it might be his last song, so he did not hurry. He sang about Paha-yuca, and the people who would no longer be free.

Then he walked over to his horse, took his rifle, and went to the willow tree where the bear was chained. The bear looked up as he approached; it still had blood on its nose from the beating Blue Duck had given it. Idahi was still singing. The bear was such a sad bear that he didn't think it would mind losing its life. He stepped very close to the bear, so he would not have to shoot it a second time. The bear did not move away from him; it merely waited.

Idahi shot the bear dead with one shot placed just above its ear. Then, still singing, he took the chain off it, so that it would not have, in death, the humiliations it had had to endure in its life.

Idahi expected then that Blue Duck would kill him, or order Ermoke or some of the other renegades to kill him, but instead Blue Duck merely ordered the camp women to skin the bear and cut up the meat. Idahi went on singing until he was well out of camp. He didn't know why Blue Duck had let him go, but he went on singing as loudly as he could. He made a song about some of the hunts he had been on in his life. If the renegades were going to follow him he wanted them to know exactly where he was: he didn't want them to think he was a coward who would slink away.

That night he thought he heard a ghost bear, far away on the prairie, howling in answer to his song.

Though Ermoke knew it was dangerous to question Blue Duck, he was so angry at what he had seen Idahi do that he went to him anyway, to complain about his lax behaviour with the Comanche from the south. One of the rules of the band was that there could be no visitors; those who came either stayed or were killed. Blue Duck had made the rule himself, and now had broken it, and broken it flagrantly.

Within the space of a single day a man had ridden in, surveyed the camp, and ridden out.

That Idahi had killed the bear also bothered Ermoke. No one liked the bear, a coward whose spirit Blue Duck had broken long ago. When they tried to use it to make sport with captives the bear only whimpered and turned its back.

Once they had even convinced a terrified white woman that they were going to force the bear to mate with her, but of course the bear did not mate with her or even scratch her. Besides, even though it was a skinny bear, it had to be fed from time to time. The bear was only a source of discontent. Sometimes, just to flaunt his authority, Blue Duck would feed the bear choice cuts of venison or buffalo that the men in camp would have liked to eat themselves. It galled them to see a bear eating meat while they had to subsist on mush or fish.

What infuriated Ermoke was that the Comanche, Idahi, had been in the camp long enough to count and identify every man in it. Besides, he knew exactly where the camp was; if he cared to sell his knowledge to the white law, the white law would make him rich. It was to prevent that very thing from happening that Blue Duck had made the rule regarding visitors.

Ermoke marched up to Blue Duck in a fury, which was the safest way to approach him in the event of a dispute. Blue Duck showed the timid no mercy, but he was sometimes indulgent of angry men.

"Why did you let the Comanche go?" Ermoke asked. "Now he can tell the white men where we are and how many of us there are." "Idahi does not like white men," Blue Duck said.

"People are not supposed to come and go from our camp," Ermoke insisted. "You said so yourself. If people can come and go someone will betray us and we will all be dead." "You should go help those women skin that bear--I don't think they know how to skin bears," Blue Duck said. It was an insult and he knew it.

If Ermoke helped the women do their work he would soon be laughed out of camp. He thought the insult would make Ermoke mad enough that he would kill one or two of the filthy, cowardly white men--they were men who would betray anyone if they could do so profitably. There were always too many people in the camp. Men drifted in, hoping for quick riches, and were too lazy to leave. There was never enough food in the camp, or enough women. Several times Blue Duck had killed some of the white men himself; he would merely prop a rifle across his knees and start shooting. Sometimes the men would sit, stupefied and stunned, like buffalo in a herd, while he shot such victims as caught his eye.

"I wish I could follow that man and kill him," Ermoke said. "I don't like it that he knows where our camp is." Blue Duck looked at Ermoke in surprise. He saw that the man was angry, so angry that he didn't care what he did.

Usually when Ermoke was angry he took his anger out on captive women. He was very lustful.

But the one woman captive in the camp had already been abused so badly that she offered no sport--s now Ermoke had decided to be angry at Idahi. Blue Duck thought Ermoke was a fool. Idahi was a Comanche warrior, Ermoke just a renegade. If the two men fought, Idahi would not be the one who lost his scalp.

But Blue Duck had another reason for letting Idahi leave the camp without challenge, a reason he did not intend to share with Ermoke.

He had asked Idahi to help him kill Buffalo Hump. Of course, Idahi had refused, but Idahi was a gossip. Soon all the Comanches would know that Blue Duck intended to kill Buffalo Hump. Blue Duck knew that when a chief was old and had lost his power he could expect little help from the young warriors. Old chiefs were just old men--they could expect no protection as they waited to die.

Blue Duck wanted Idahi to spread the ^w that he intended to kill his father--t was why he had let Idahi go. The nice thing was that Idahi had even given him back the shotgun. He had lost nothing from Idahi's visit except the bear, and the bear had become more trouble than it was worth.

Ermoke still faced him, still hot.

"If you want to kill somebody, go kill that other old man," Blue Duck said. "I'm tired of looking at him--g club him out. But don't bother my friend Idahi. If you bother him I'll club you out." Ermoke didn't like what he was told--he didn't like it that a Comanche was allowed to come and go, just because he was a Comanche. There was little food in the camp. Tomorrow he meant to take a few of the better warriors and try to find game. He thought he might follow the Comanche while he was at it.

He didn't know. He was angry, but not angry enough to start a fight with Blue Duck, not then.

To relieve his anger he got a club and beat the old white man until he had broken most of his ribs. Several of the renegades watched the beating, idly. One of them, a short whiskey trader with a bent leg named Monkey John, began to upbraid the women for doing such a crude job of skinning the bear. They had got the skin off but it was cut in several places. The bear lay on its back, a naked pile of meat. When Monkey John got tired of yelling at the cowering women he took his knife and cut off the bear's paws, meaning to extract all the claws. Some of the half-breeds put great store in bear claws--Monkey John meant to use them as money and gamble with them.