Comanche Moon (77 page)

"Besides that, there's Quanah and his warriors out there somewhere," he added, pointing to the west, into the empty llano. "I don't know what their mood is and you don't neither. We may have to fight our way back, for all you know." Call knew he was right. They were a small force, stranded in a desert. They would be easy prey for any strong band of fighters, whether native or outlaw. They would have to stay together to have any chance. But the fact was, he still wanted to go after Blue Duck--he had a hard time mastering himself, and Augustus knew it.

"He's a damn killer--I hate to let him go," Call said.

"You're as bad as Inish Scull," Augustus commented. "He was so determined to catch Kicking Wolf that he walked off on foot." "Yes, I was with him," Famous Shoes said.

"He walked fast, that man. He did not stop until we were in the land of the Black Vaquero." "I wonder what became of the old Black Vaquero?" Augustus said. "There's been no news of him in years." "He went back to where Jaguar lives," Famous Shoes said.

Augustus saw that Woodrow Call was still not settled in in his mind about Blue Duck. He had never known a man so unwilling to leave a pursuit once he had begun one. It would not be unlike him to go after Blue Duck on foot, even with one boot heel shot off.

"He ain't gone forever, Woodrow," Augustus pointed out. "He'll just go back to the Red River and start raiding again. We can go get him in the fall." "If they let us," Call said. "They may disband us before the fall." "All the better if they do," Gus said. "Then we can just go get him for the fun of it--t way we won't have to keep track of the damn expenses." Famous Shoes was annoyed by the rangers' habit of debating meaningless things while the sun moved and time was lost. Whether they were to be rangers in the fall did not interest him. There was the llano to cross, and talking would not propel them across it.

"We had better go drink some of that water back at the spring," he said.

His ^ws reminded the rangers of what they faced. They had barely survived the trek out, when they had horses. Now they would have to cover the same distance walking--or, at best, riding double a few hours a day.

"That's right," Augustus said. "It's apt to be a long dry walk." "I aim to drink all I can hold," Pea Eye said, turning toward the dry lake. "All I can hold and then some. I sure hate to be dry in my mouth."

In the night Newt knew that his mother must have died because he couldn't hear her breathing anymore. The room felt different--it had become a room in which he was alone. But he didn't know what he was supposed to do, so he lay on his pallet doing nothing until the gray light came into the windows by the street. Then he carefully got up, dressed, and put a few things of his into a shoe box--his top, his ball, his book full of pictures of animals, and a deck of cards the rangers had let him keep. Then he put on his hat--Captain Gus had given it to him--looked just once at his mother, dead in her bed, and hurried down the stairs and over to Mrs. Coleman, who began to sob the minute she saw him--Mrs.

Coleman continued to cry all day. Newt was sad about the fact that Deets and Pea Eye and the other rangers were gone; he knew they would have wanted to say goodbye to his mother, but now they would have no chance. The grave was dug; that same afternoon they put his mother in it--there was a little singing and then they covered her up.

Mrs. Coleman gave him supper. There was a lot of food, but he wasn't very hungry. Mrs. Coleman had mainly got control of herself by then, though tears still dripped out of her eyes from time to time.

"Newt, I know you'll be wanting to stay with the rangers when they all get back," she told him after supper. "But would you like to just stay here for a night or two? There's nobody much in the bunkhouse." Newt shook his head. Though he didn't want to hurt Mrs. Coleman's feelings--he knew she had been his mother's best friend--he didn't want to stay with her, either.

"I better just bunk with the boys," he said, although he knew that the only ranger in the bunkhouse at the time was Ikey Ripple, who was far too old to be called a boy. But he wanted badly to stay in the bunkhouse, and Mrs.

Coleman didn't argue with him. It was dark by the time the meal was finished, so she went with him the few blocks to where the rangers stayed. Ikey was already asleep, and was snoring loudly.

"I hope you can sleep with that snoring, Newt," Mrs. Coleman said--then, suddenly, she hugged him tight for a moment and left the bunkhouse.

Newt put his shoe box under the bunk where he usually slept when he stayed with the rangers. Then he took his rope and went outside. He could hear Mrs. Coleman sobbing as she walked home, a thing which made him feel a little bad.

Mrs. Coleman had no one to live with--he supposed she was lonely. Probably he should have stayed with her a night or two. He climbed up on the fence, holding his rope, and watched the moon for a while. He could hear Ikey snoring, all the way out in the lots. In the morning he planned to go down to the graveyard and tell his mother the news, even though there wasn't much--j that he had decided to move into the bunkhouse right away, so he would be there to help water the horses and do the chores. That way he would be ready to help the boys, when they came home.

When Kicking Wolf heard that four rangers were walking across the llano with only one horse and a mule, he didn't know what to make of the news.

A lot of strange news had come lately, some of it distressing and some of it merely puzzling. He had not left the camp in two weeks because one of his legs had a bad cramp in it. Of course now and then a man's leg would cramp, but never in his life had he experienced so debilitating a cramp as the one which afflicted his right leg. Sometimes even when he was moving his bowels a cramp would seize him, playing havoc with even that simple operation.

Kicking Wolf thought it was his old wife, Broken Foot, who was sending the cramp into his leg. The fact was, Broken Foot had been angry with him for several months--he didn't know why. When he asked her she smiled and denied that she was angry, but Kicking Wolf didn't believe her denials. Even though he was aging, Kicking Wolf was still a good hunter; he owned more horses than anyone in the tribe and supplied Broken Foot with everything she needed. Their lodge was the warmest in the camp. Kicking Wolf knew, though, that having many reasons to be content didn't necessarily mean that a person .was content, particularly not if the person in question was a woman. Broken Foot, despite her denials, was angry with him--ei she had put a bad herb in his food, causing his leg to cramp, or else she had conspired with a medicine man and had had the medicine man work a bad spell.

Broken Foot was not much younger than he was, and had grown very fat in her old age. Kicking Wolf gave up trying to get her to stop being angry with him and concentrated on avoiding her. But it was hard to avoid a woman as large as Broken Foot in a tent at night, which was why, as the weather grew warmer, Kicking Wolf started spending more and more nights outside, by himself. It didn't stop the cramps but at least he didn't have Broken Foot there gloating while he tried to get the painful cramps to leave his leg.

It was during the period when Kicking Wolf was sleeping outside that the strange news began to arrive, most of it brought by Dancing Rabbit, a young warrior who had wanderlust badly and just plain lust as well. Dancing Rabbit was constantly visiting the various bands of Comanches, hoping to find a woman who would marry him, but he was poor and also rather ugly. So far no woman had agreed to be his wife.

It was Dancing Rabbit who dashed up to Kicking Wolf one morning while Kicking Wolf was sitting by a pile of white cattle bones, rubbing his leg to lessen the cramp. Dancing Rabbit was very upset with the news he had, which was that Blue Duck had followed Buffalo Hump to his death place and killed him with his own lance.

"Ah!" Kicking Wolf said. He had hoped that Buffalo Hump had been able to make a peaceful death. Certainly he had not led a peaceful life, but to die at the hands of his own son was not a thing Buffalo Hump would have expected to happen.

Kicking Wolf didn't immediately believe it, though. Dancing Rabbit wandered from camp to camp, collecting stories; then, often, he got them all mixed together before he could get back to his own camp and tell everyone the news.

"Blue Duck probably just said that--he was always a braggart," Kicking Wolf said.

"No, it's true--the Antelopes saw his body with the lance sticking through it," Dancing Rabbit insisted. "The lance went into his hump and then it went through his body into the ground." Several of the young men of the tribe had gathered, by this time, to hear Dancing Rabbit tell his tale about the death of the great chief Buffalo Hump, the only chief to lead a raid all the way to the Great Water. Only a few days before, the same young warriors had scorned Buffalo Hump.

To them, while he lived he was just a surly old man with an ugly hump and a violent temper, an old man who was weak, who could not hunt, who had to live by snaring small game. The presence of the young men irritated Kicking Wolf. They had never seen Buffalo Hump in his days as a raider, and had been rude to him many times once he was old and couldn't strike at them; but, now that he was dead, they could not get enough of hearing stories about him. They did not deserve to know about Buffalo Hump, in his view--and, anyway, he himself did not believe half of what Dancing Rabbit was saying.

"How do you know where the lance went in?" he asked, in a tone that was not friendly. "Were you there?" "No, but the Antelopes saw the body," Dancing Rabbit insisted. "The Texans saw it too. The Texans tried to pull the lance out but they couldn't remove it. Then Blue Duck shot two of their horses--t is why they are walking across the llano. They have little water. We can go and steal their horses if you want to." Kicking Wolf sat in silence for a long time after hearing this speech. Dancing Rabbit was claiming knowledge he didn't have; also, there were several issues that needed to be studied and assessed before he could make up his mind what to do.

Dancing Rabbit was annoyed that old Kicking Wolf kept silent, even though he had brought him exciting news. The Texans were not far, only thirty miles. They had walked a long way and were tired and low on water. They could easily be killed; or, if Kicking Wolf was not interested in killing them, they could at least steal the Texans' horse and mule. That would be a simple thing, for a master horse thief such as Kicking Wolf.

In fact, Dancing Rabbit was very anxious to go with Kicking Wolf and watch how he went about stealing horses. Dancing Rabbit, at the moment, possessed only two horses, and neither of them was a very good horse. The fact that he was poor and had no horses to offer was one thing that was making it difficult for him to find a wife. He wanted a wife badly, but knew that he would have to get some horses first, if he expected to purchase a wife who had much appeal. That is why he spent so much time with Kicking Wolf, the great horse thief. Dancing Rabbit hoped to get Kicking Wolf interested in stealing horses again; perhaps if they could manage to steal a good many horses Kicking Wolf would allow him to keep a few-- enough, at least, to allow him to trade for an acceptable wife. But now Kicking Wolf was sitting by some cattle bones in silence; he showed little interest in the story Dancing Rabbit had ridden all night to tell him.

Kicking Wolf was thinking that most of what Dancing Rabbit told him was probably a lie. For one thing, he claimed that his information came from the Antelope--but the Antelope were an aloof people, so contemptuous of other Indians, even other Comanches, that they routinely made up big lies in order to mislead them.

"If the Antelopes saw these Texans, why didn't they kill them?" Kicking Wolf asked. "You said there were only four Texans. The Antelopes are hard fighters. They could easily kill four Texans." One of the things Dancing Rabbit liked least about Kicking Wolf was that he was always skeptical.

He was never willing just to accept the information that was given him. Now Kicking Wolf was embarrassing him in front of several young warriors by doubting the information he had brought. Now the young warriors, including some of his best friends, were beginning to look skeptical too. Dancing Rabbit was vexed that an old man would put him in such a position.

"They didn't kill the Texans because they don't have very many bullets," he said--in fact he had no idea himself why the Antelope Comanche were letting the Texans get away.

"Gun In The Water was one of the Texans," he added. It was information he had just remembered, and it did cause Kicking Wolf to raise his head and look a little more interested.

"If Gun In The Water was there, Silver Hair McCrae is there too," Kicking Wolf said.

At mention of the two rangers Kicking Wolf lapsed into memory, but it was not the two rangers he was remembering--r, he was thinking of the young Mexican woman who had been Blue Duck's mother. His memory would not bring back her name, but it did bring back her beauty. He had tried hard to get Buffalo Hump to let him have the girl.

He had offered many horses, and fine horses too, but Buffalo Hump had ignored him, insulted him, kept the girl, and then let her run away and freeze in a blizzard, not long after she bore Blue Duck. If Buffalo Hump had only accepted his offer--it had been a handsome offer, too--the woman might be alive and he might not have to suffer the anger of his fat old wife, Broken Foot, every day and every night.

He wouldn't let me have that pretty Mexican girl and now the son she bore him has killed him, Kicking Wolf thought, but he said nothing of what he was remembering to Dancing Rabbit and the other young warriors. Already, several of the young men had concluded that Dancing Rabbit was only telling more lies--they had begun to wander off, making jokes about coupling with women. They were young men, they did not want to waste all day hearing an old man tell stories of the past.

"What is wrong with you?" Dancing Rabbit asked, unable to contain his annoyance with Kicking Wolf any longer. "Are you too old to steal horses from the Texans now?" "You are just a boy--g away and tell your lies to the women," Kicking Wolf said. "Right now I have to think about some things." He wanted Dancing Rabbit to calm down and stop pestering him, but, once he had given the matter some thought, he decided to go see if it really was Gun In The Water and McCrae who were crossing the llano. Many Texans came to the plains now, but those two hadn't, not in some years.