Текст книги "Comanche Moon"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 46 страниц)

Invariably, when he got back to camp with the horses he had stolen, the other warriors would be jealous. Even Buffalo Hump was a little jealous, although he pretended not to notice Kicking Wolf and his horses.

The other warriors always offered to trade Kicking Wolf for his horses–they would offer him guns, or their ugly old wives, or even, occasionally, a young pretty wife; but Kicking Wolf never traded–he kept his horses and because of them was envied by every warrior in the tribe.

From the moment Kicking Wolf first saw the Buffalo Horse he wanted to steal it. The Buffalo Horse was the most famous horse in Texas. If he could steal such an animal it would make the Texans look puny. It would shame their greatest warrior, Big Horse Scull. It would bring glory back to the Comanche people–the women and the young men would all make songs about Kicking Wolf. The medicine men could take piss from the Buffalo Horse and use it in potions that would make the young men brave and the women amorous. Buffalo Hump would sulk, for he would know that Kicking Wolf had done a great thing, a thing he himself could never have done.

When he saw that the Texans were not going to go chase him to the Rio Pecos he rested for three days in a little cave he had found. He built a warm fire and feasted on the tender meat of one of the young mares he had killed. Then he heard from Red Badger that Blue Duck had attacked the Texans with a few young warriors and killed one ranger. Red Badger was so fond of one of the young women who had come to the camp with Slow Tree that he could not stay in one place. He was in love with the young woman, who was the wife of old Skinny Hand. Though old, Skinny Hand was a violent fighter; Red Badger had to be careful, for Skinny Hand would certainly shoot him if he caught him slipping out with his young wife. Red Badger said that Buffalo Hump was bored with Slow Tree but was trying to be polite.

Kicking Wolf soon got almost as bored with Red Badger as Buffalo Hump was with Slow Tree. Red Badger was a foolish person who was so crazy about women that he could not accomplish much as a warrior. He talked about women so much that everyone who had to listen to him was bored. Fast Boy was so bored that he wanted to tie Red Badger up and cut out his tongue. Everyone was almost that bored, but of course they could not simply cut out a warrior's tongue.

The fact that it was so cold made Kicking Wolf decide that it might be a good time to steal the Buffalo Horse. The Texans did not like cold. They did not know how to shelter themselves and keep themselves warm, as he was doing in his little cave.

When it was cold the Texans all huddled around fires and went to sleep. New snowflakes were falling outside his little cave–it was not going to be warm for many days. Even if the Texans went on south across the llano, the cold and sleet would follow them. With the weather so cold the Texans would not be very watchful of the horses.

At night Scull hobbled the Buffalo Horse, but did not keep it on a grazing rope. Once Kicking Wolf had called the Buffalo Horse by whistling at him–he whistled twice and the big horse came trotting right to him.

Kicking Wolf also noticed that the Buffalo Horse was very alert. If a wolf crossed the prairie, or even a coyote, the Buffalo Horse would be the first to raise its head and look.

It did not whinny, though, like some of the younger horses, who might be frightened by the smell of a wolf. The Buffalo Horse had no reason to fear wolves, or anything else on the llano.

When the morning dawned, gray as sleet, Kicking Wolf walked a mile from his cave and sat on a low hill to pray. When he had prayed some hours he went back to camp and told the few warriors there that he had decided to steal the Buffalo Horse. It was a plan he had never mentioned to anyone. The warriors were so surprised that they could not think of any ^ws to say –x was such a bold idea that everyone was a little scared, even Fast Boy. Kicking Wolf was a great horse stealer, they all knew that. But the Buffalo Horse was a special horse; he was the horse of Scull, the terrible captain with the long knife. What would Scull do if he woke up to find his great horse missing?

"We will all go with you," Red Badger said, after a few minutes' thought.

"Three Birds will go with me," Kicking Wolf said. "No one else." Red Badger wanted to go–stealing the Buffalo Horse was a great and audacious thing; any warrior would want to help do such a great thing. But the firm way Kicking Wolf had spoken caused Red Badger to swallow his protests. Kicking Wolf had spoken in a way that did not invite disagreement.

Fast Boy had meant to say something, also, but Kicking Wolf had such a cold look in his eye that Fast Boy did not speak.

"Where will you take the Buffalo Horse when you steal him?" Red Badger asked. The more he thought about what Kicking Wolf planned, the more his breath came short. It was a big thing, to steal such an animal. Many of the Comanches thought the Buffalo Horse was a witch horse–some even thought it could fly. Some of the old women claimed they had heard the whinny of a great horse, coming from high up in the sky, on dark nights when there was no moon.

"I will take him to Mexico," Kicking Wolf said. "To the Sierra Perdida." "Ah, the Sierra Perdida," Red Badger said. "I don't know if the Texans will follow you that far." "If they try to follow us past the Brazos you can shoot them," Kicking Wolf added. It was a little joke. Red Badger had a repeating rifle of which he was very proud; he cleaned it and rubbed it every night. But Red Badger had weak eyesight; he couldn't hit anything with his rifle. Once he had even missed a buffalo that had been laying down.

Red Badger's poor vision made the buffalo seem as if it were standing up, so he kept shooting over it. In battle he shot wildly, hitting no one. Some of the warriors were even afraid Red Badger might accidentally shoot one of them. He would not be the one to protect them from the Texans, if they followed past the Brazos.

Fast Boy was taken aback by Kicking Wolf's statement about the Sierra Perdida.

Those mountains were the stronghold of Ahumado, the dark-skinned bandit whom the whites called the Black Vaquero, because he was so cruel and also because he was so good at stealing cattle from the big ranches of the Texans, down below the Nueces River. Ahumado hated the Texans and killed them in many cruel ways; but what made Kicking Wolf's statement startling was that he also hated Comanches–when he caught Comanches he killed them with tortures just as bad as those he visited on the Texans.

"The Black Vaquero lives in the Sierra Perdida," Fast Boy reminded Kicking Wolf. "He is a bad old man." "That is where I am going–the Sierra Perdida," Kicking Wolf repeated, and then he was silent.

Fast Boy didn't say more, mainly because he knew that it was easy to put Kicking Wolf in a bad mood by questioning his decisions. He was far worse than Buffalo Hump in that regard.

Buffalo Hump didn't mind questions from his warriors–he wanted the men he fought with to understand what they were supposed to do. And he gave careful orders. Problems with Buffalo Hump would come only if the orders were not carried out properly.

If some warrior failed to do his part in a raid, then Buffalo Hump's anger would be terrible.

With Kicking Wolf, though, it was unwise to rush in with questions, even though what he wanted to do seemed crazy. Stealing the Buffalo Horse was a little crazy, but then Kicking Wolf was a great stealer of horses and could probably manage it; but the really crazy part of his plan was taking the horse to Ahumado's country, a thing that made no sense at all. Even Buffalo Hump was careful to avoid the Sierra Perdida when he raided into Mexico. It was not from fear–Buffalo Hump feared nothing–but from practicality. In the Sierra Perdida or the villages near it there were no captives to take, because Ahumado had already taken all the children from the villages there–if he did not keep the captives as slaves, he traded them north, to the Apaches. Some people even speculated that Ahumado himself was Apache, but Famous Shoes, the Kickapoo, who went everywhere, said no, Ahumado was not an Apache.

"Ahumado is from the south," Famous Shoes said.

When questioned about the statement Famous Shoes could not be more specific. He did not know what tribe Ahumado belonged to, only that it was from the south.

"From the south, where the jungle is," he said.

None of the Comanches knew the ^w, so Famous Shoes explained that the jungle was a forest, where it rained often and where Jaguar, the great cat, hunted. That was all Famous Shoes knew.

Fast Boy did not ask any more questions, but he thought he ought to make his views clear about the foolish thing Kicking Wolf wanted to do. Fast Boy was a warrior, a veteran of many battles with the whites andwiththe Mexicans. He had a right to speak his mind.

"If we go into the Sierra Perdida, Ahumado will kill us all," he said.

Kicking Wolf merely looked at him coldly.

"If you are afraid of him you don't have to go," Kicking Wolf said.

"I am not afraid of him and I know I don't have to go," Fast Boy said. "I don't have to go anywhere, except to look for something to eat. I wanted you to know what I think." Red Badger was of the same opinion as Fast Boy but he didn't want to state his views quite so plainly.

"Once I was in Mexico and a bad thorn stuck in my knee," he said. "It was a green thorn. It went in behind my knee and almost ate my leg off. That thorn was more poisonous than a snake." He paused. No one said anything.

"Ever since then I have not liked going to Mexico," Red Badger added.

"You don't have to go, either," Kicking Wolf said. "Once Three Birds and I have the Buffalo Horse we will go alone to Mexico." Three Birds looked at the sky. He had heard some geese and looked up to see if he could spot them. He was very fond of geese and thought that if the geese were planning to stop somewhere close by, he might go and try to snare one.

The geese were there, all right, many geese, but they would not be stopping anywhere nearby. They were very high, almost as high as the clouds. No one else had even noticed them, but Three Birds had good hearing and could always hear geese when they were passing over, even if they were high, near the clouds.

He made no comment about the business of Mexico. It seemed risky, to him, but if Kicking Wolf wanted to go, that was enough for Three Birds. When there was discussion he rarely spoke his thoughts. He liked to keep his own thoughts inside him, and not mix them up promiscuously with the thoughts of other warriors, or of women, or of anyone.

His thoughts were his; he didn't want them out in the air. Because of the firm way he stuck to his preference and kept his thoughts inside himself, some Comanches thought he was a mute. They thought he was too dumb to talk and were puzzled that Kicking Wolf put so much stock in his ability.

Sometimes even Kicking Wolf himself was annoyed by Three Birds' silence, his unwillingness to give an opinion.

"What is wrong with you?" he asked Three Birds one time. "You never speak. Where are your ^ws? Are you so ignorant that you have forgotten all your ^ws?" Three Birds had been a little offended by Kicking Wolf's rude speech. When Kicking Wolf asked him that question Three Birds got up and left the camp for a week. He saw no reason to stay around if Kicking Wolf was going to be rude to him. He had not forgotten his ^ws and would speak them when he felt like it. He did not feel he had to speak idle ^ws just because Kicking Wolf had decided that he was in a mood to hear him speak.

What Three Birds saw, when he looked in the sky, besides the geese that were not stopping, was that it was going to get even colder than it had been; it was going to stay very cold for a while yet. There would be more snow and more sleet.

"When will you steal the Buffalo Horse?" Red Badger asked. Red Badger was the opposite of Three Birds. He could not hold in his questions, or stay quiet for long. Red Badger often talked even when he had nothing to say that anyone at all would want to hear.

Kicking Wolf didn't answer the loquacious young warrior. He was thinking of the south, andof how angry Big Horse Scull would be when he woke up and discovered that his great warhorse was gone.

Maggie could tell by the footsteps that the man outside her door was drunk. The footsteps were unsteady and the man had just lurched into the wall, though it was early morning. A man so drunk at that hour of the morning that he could not walk steadily might have been drinking all night. The thought made her very apprehensive, so apprehensive that she considered not opening her door. A man that drunk might well be violent–he might beat her or tear her clothes. Maybe he would be quick and pass out–t sometimes happened with men who were very drunk–but that was about the best that she could expect, if she opened her door to a drunk. Some drunks merely wallowed on her, unable to finish; or the exertion might agitate the man's stomach–m than once men had thrown up on her or fouled her bed with vomit.

For Maggie, it had never been easy, opening her door to a man. Once the door was open she was caught; if a bad man or a cruel man was standing there, then she was in for a bad time. Sometimes, of course, the customer outside her door would just be some unhappy man whose wife had passed away.

Those men, who were just looking for a little pleasure or comfort, were not a problem. The men she feared were the men who wanted to punish women–t was the chief peril of her profession; Maggie had endured many sweaty, desperate times, dealing with such men.

She always opened the door, though; not opening it could cause consequences just as grave. The man outside might grow angry enough to break down the door, in which case the landlord might throw her out.

At the very least, she would have to pay for the door.

Besides that, the customer might go to the sheriff and complain; he might claim that she had stolen money –t or some other accusation. The ^w of any man, however dishonest, was more with a sheriff than the ^w of a whore. Or the aggrieved customer might complain to his friends and stir them up; several times gangs of men had caught her, egged on by some dissatisfied customer. Those times had been bad. Much as it might frighten her to open her door, Maggie never let herself forget that she was a whore and had to live by certain rules, one being that you opened the door to the customer before the customer got mad enough to break it down.

Still, it was her room–she felt she could at least take her time buttoning her dress. It was important to her that her dress be buttoned modestly before she let a man into her room. She knew it might seem contradictory, since the man outside was coming in to pay her to unbutton the same dress; but Maggie still buttoned up. She felt that if she ever started opening the door with her dress unbuttoned she would lose all hope for herself. There was time enough to do what she had to do when the man had paid his money.

She opened the door cautiously and received a grim shock: the person who had just lurched down the hall was the young ranger Jake Spoon, who had only been in the troop a few weeks. He was so drunk that he had dropped to his knees and was holding his stomach–but when he saw Maggie he mastered his gut and put out a hand, so she could help him up.

"Why, Mr. Spoon," Maggie said. "Are you sickly?" Instead of answering Jake Spoon crawled past her, into her room. Once inside he got to his feet and walked unsteadily across the room to her bed–then he sat down on the bed and began to pull off his boots and unbutton his shirt.

Jake Spoon looked up at her mutely–he seemed to be puzzled by the fact that she was still standing in the doorway.

"I got money," he said. "I ain't a cheat." Then he pulled his shirt off, dropped it on the floor, and stood up, holding on to a bedpost to steady himself. Without even looking at her again he opened his pants.

Maggie felt her heart sink. Jake was a Texas Ranger, although just come to the troop. In the years that Maggie had been seeing Woodrow Call it had become known to the rangers that she and Woodrow had an attachment. It was not yet the sort of attachment that Maggie yearned for; if it had been she would not have been renting a cheap room, and opening her door to drunken strangers.

But it was an attachment; she wanted it and Woodrow wanted it, though he might have been slow to admit it. Sensing the attachment, the other rangers who knew Woodrow well had gradually begun to leave Maggie alone. They soon realized that it was distasteful to her, to be selling herself to Woodrow's friends. Though Call never said anything directly, the rangers could tell that he didn't like it if one of them went with Maggie. Augustus McCrae, an indiscriminate whorer, would never think of approaching Maggie, although he had long admired her looks and her deportment. Indeed, Gus had often urged Woodrow to marry Maggie, and end her chancy life as a whore, a life that so often led to sickness or death at an early age.

Woodrow had so far declined to marry her but lately he had been more helpful, and more generous with money. Now he sometimes gave her money to buy things for her room, small conveniences that she couldn't afford. It was her deepest hope and fondest dream that Woodrow would someday forbid her to whore; maybe what they had wouldn't go as far as marriage, but at least it might remove her from the rough traffic that had been her life.

Woodrow's argument, the few times they had approached the subject, was that he was often gone for months on hazardous patrols, any one of which could result in his death. He felt Maggie ought to take care of herself and continue to earn what she could in case he was cut down in battle. Of course, Maggie knew that rangering was dangerous and that Woodrow might be killed, in which case her dream of a life with him would never be realized.

She never spoke of her life as a whore, when she was with Woodrow; in her own mind her real life was their life. The rest of it she tried to pretend was happening to someone else. But the pretense was only a lie she told herself to help her get through the days. In fact it .was her who opened her door to the men, who took their money, who inspected them to see that they were not diseased, who accepted them into her body. She had been a desperate girl, with both parents dead, when she was led into whoring in San Antonio; now she was no longer a girl, but the desperation was still with her.

She felt it even then, as Jake Spoon stood there in her room, drunk almost to the point of nausea, with his pants open, pointing himself at her and waiting sullenly.

Woodrow didn't know about her desperation– Maggie had never told him how much she hated what she did. He might have sensed it at times, but he didn't know how hard it was, on a morning when all she wanted to do was sit quietly and sew, to have to deal with a man so drunk that he had to crawl into her room. Worse than that, he was a ranger, the same as Woodrow; he ought to have known to seek another whore.

"Why are you standing over there? I'm ready," Jake said. His pants had slipped down to his ankles; he had to bend to pull them up, so he could dig into his pocket and come out with the coins.

"But you're sickly, Mr. Spoon–y can barely stand up," Maggie said, trying to think of some stratagem that would cause him to get dressed again and go away.

"Don't need to stand up and I ain't sick," Jake said, though, to his dismay, the act of speaking almost caused his stomach to come up. He swayed for a moment but fought the nausea down. It was the whore's fault, he decided–she hadn't come over to help him with his clothes, as a whore should.

He fumbled again for the coins and finally got them out of his pocket.

Looking at the whore, who had closed the door behind her but still stood across the room, staring at him, Jake felt his anger rising. Her name was Maggie, he knew; the boys all said she was sweet on Woodrow Call, but Woodrow Call was far up the plains and the warning meant little to Jake. All whores were sweet on somebody.

"Come here–I got the money!" he demanded.

In his mind, which swirled from drink, was the recent memory of the wild games he had played with Inez Scull–acts so raw that even whores might not do them. He didn't like it that the whore he had chosen was so standoffish. What of it if she was sweet on Woodrow Call?

Maggie saw there was no way out of it, without risking the sheriff, or a worse calamity. In another minute the young ranger would start yelling, or else do her violence. She didn't want the yelling or the violence, which might lead to her having to move from the room she had tried to make into a pleasant place for Woodrow to visit when he was home.

She didn't want to get thrown out, so she went across the room and accepted Jake Spoon's money. She didn't look Jake in the eye; she tried to make herself small. Maybe, if she was lucky, the boy would just do it and go.

Maggie wasn't lucky, though. The minute she took Jake's money he drew back his hand and slapped her hard in the face.

Jake slapped the whore because he was angry with her for being so standoffish and lingering so long, but he also gave her the slap because that was how Madame Scull had started things with him. The minute he walked upstairs she would come out of the bedroom and slap his face. The next thing he knew they would be on the floor, tussling fiercely. Then they would do the raw things.

He wanted, again, what he had had with Inez Scull. He didn't understand why she had cut his hair and thrown him out. Her coldness upset him so that he stole a bottle of whiskey from a shed behind the saloon and drank the whole bottle down.

The whiskey burned at first, and then numbed him a little, but it didn't cool the fever he felt at the memory of his hot tusslings with Inez Scull. Only a woman could cool that fever, and the handiest woman happened to be Woodrow Call's whore.

She had very white skin, the whore–when he slapped her, her cheek became immediately red. But the slap didn't set things off, as it had when Madame Scull slapped him. Maggie, Call's whore, didn't utter a sound. She didn't slap him back, or grab him, or do anything wild or raw. She just put the money away, took off her dress, and lay back on the bed, waiting. She wouldn't even so much as look at him, although, in an effort to make her a little more lively, he pulled her hair. But neither the slap nor the hair pulling worked at all.

Except for flexing herself a little when he crawled on top of her, the whore didn't move a muscle, or speak or cry out or yell or bite or even sigh. She didn't scream and kick and jerk, as Madame Scull did every time they were together.

As soon as the young ranger finished–it took considerably longer than she had hoped–Maggie got off the bed and went behind a little screen, to clean herself. She meant to stay behind the screen, hiding, until Jake Spoon left. She knew she would have a bad bruise on her cheek, from the slap. She didn't want to see the young man again, if she could help it.

Again, though, Maggie was not lucky. While she was cleaning herself she heard Jake retching and went out to find him on his hands and knees again. At least he was vomiting in a basin; he had not ruined the new carpet she had saved up to buy.

Jake Spoon heaved and heaved.

Maggie saw how young he was and took a little pity.

When he finished being sick she cleaned him up a little and helped him out the door.

"Now boys, look there!" Inish Scull said, pointing westward at a small red butte.

"See that? Pretend it's your Alps." "Our what, Captain?" Long Bill inquired. It was breakfast time–Deets had just fried up some tasty bacon, and the breeze, though chilly, could be tolerated, particularly while he was sitting at the campfire holding a tin mug of scalding coffee that in texture was almost as thick as mud. All the rangers were hunched over their cups, letting the steam from the scalding coffee warm their cold faces. The exception was Woodrow Call, already saddled up and ready to ride–though even he had no notion of where they were headed, or why. They had travelled due south for a few days, but then the Captain suddenly bent to the west, toward a long empty space where, so far as any of the rangers knew, there was nothing to see or do.

The low, flat-topped hill was red in the morning sunlight.

"The Alps, Mr. Colemanffwas the Captain repeated. "If you find yourself in Switzerland or France you have to cross them before you can get to Italy and eat the tasty noodle. That was Hannibal's challenge. He had all those elephants, but the Alpine passes were deep in snow. What was he to do?" Captain Scull was drinking brandy, his morning drink and his evening drink, too, when he could have it.

One well-padded brace of saddlebags contained nothing but brandy. A tipple or swallow or two in the morning cleared his head wonderfully, when he was campaigning, and also rarely failed to put him in a pedagogical mood. History, military history in particular, was his passion.

Harvard wanted him to teach it, but he saw no reason to be teaching military history when he could go out in the field and make it, so he packed up the ardent Dolly Johnson, his Birmingham bride, and went to Texas to fight in the Mexican War, where he promptly captured three substantial towns and a number of sad villages. The air of the raw frontier so invigorated him that he gave little thought to going back to Boston, to the library and the ivied hall. Because of his long string of victories in Mexico he was soon offered the command of the disheveled but staunch band of irregulars known as the Texas Rangers.

Inish Scull was convinced, from what he knew of politics, that a great civil conflict was looming in America, but that conflict was yet some years away. When it came, Inish Scull meant to have a generalship–and what better way to capture the attention of the War Department than to whip the Comanche, the Kiowa, the Apache, the Pawnee, or any other tribe that attempted to resist the advance of Anglo-Saxon settlement?

Scull might not have broken the wild tribes yet, but he had harried them vigorously for almost ten years, while, little by little, settlement crept up the rivers and into the fertile valleys. Farms and ranches were established, burned out by the red men, and built again. Small poor townships were formed; wagon roads rutted the prairie; and the government slowly placed its line of forts along the northern and western line of settlement. All the while, Scull and his rangers ranged and ranged, hanging cattle thieves in the south and challenging the fighting Indians to the north.

Still, now and then, with a prickle of brandy in his nostrils, and a cold wind worthy of New England cooling his neck, Scull found that the professor was likely to revive in him, a little.

At moments he missed the learned talk of Cambridge; at times he grew depressed when he considered the gap in knowledge between himself and the poor dull fellows he commanded–they were brave beyond reason, but, alas, untutored. Young Call, it was true, was eager to learn, and Augustus McCrae sometimes mimicked a few lines of Latin picked up in some Tennessee school. But, the truth was, the men were ignorant, which is why, from time to time, with no immediate enemy to confront, he had started giving little impromptu lectures on the great battles of history. It was true that the little butte to the west did not look much like an Alp, but it was the only hill in sight, and would have to serve.

"No, you see, Hannibal and his elephants were on the wrong side of the hills–or at least he wanted his enemies to think so," Scull said, pacing back and forth, his brandy glass in his hand. He hated to drink brandy out of anything but glass. On every patrol he carefully wrapped and packed six brandy glasses, but, despite his caution, he would usually be reduced to taking his brandy out of a tin cup before the scout was finished.

"What was he doing with elephants if he was out there in the snows?" Augustus asked. He hated it when the Captain got in one of his lecturing moods–though, since as far as he could tell they were just wandering aimlessly now, it probably didn't much matter whether they were riding or getting a history lesson. Now there the Captain was, drunk on brandy, pointing at some dull little hill and prattling on about Hannibal and elephants and snow and Alps and Romans.

Gus could not remember ever having heard of Hannibal, and he did not expect to enjoy any lecture he might receive, mainly because one of his socks had wrinkled up inside his boot somehow and left him a painful blister on the bottom of his foot. He wanted to be back in Austin. If he limped into the Forsythe store looking pitiful enough Clara might tend to his blister and permit him a kiss besides. Instead, all he had in the way of comfort was a mug of coffee and a piece of sandy bacon, and even that comfort was ending. Deets had just confided in him that they only had bacon for one more day.

"Why, Hannibal was African," Scull said. "He was a man of Carthage, and not the only great commander to use war elephants, either.

Alexander the Great used them in India and Hannibal took his on over the Alps, snow or no snow, and fell on the Romans when they least expected it. Brilliant fighting, I call it." Call tried to imagine the scene the Captain was describing–the great beasts winding up and up, into the snowy passes–but he had never seen an elephant, just a few pictures of them in books. Though he knew most of the rangers found it boresome when the Captain started in lecturing, he himself enjoyed hearing about the battles Captain Scull described. His reading ability was slowly improving, enough so that he hoped, in time, to read about some of the battles himself.