Comanche Moon (35 page)

Then the old chief did worse. To Blue Duck's intense annoyance, Slow Tree apologized to Famous Shoes.

"I am sorry you were disturbed," Slow Tree said. "I hope you were not taken too far from where you wanted to be." At this point, Blue Duck, a rude and impatient boy, interrupted.

"He was only looking in snake holes," he said. "I caught him and brought him here so you could torture him. He is a Kickapoo and should be tortured to death." Slow Tree paid no attention to the rude young man.

"Were you catching snakes?" he asked Famous Shoes, in mild tones.

"Oh no," Famous Shoes said. "I was looking for the hole the People came out of. I thought some snakes might have found the hole and started living in it." "Oh, that hole is far to the north," Slow Tree said, in a pompous tone, as if he knew perfectly well which of the many holes in the earth the People had come out of.

"I thought it might be around the caprock somewhere," Famous Shoes replied, in a mild tone. He wanted to be as polite with Slow Tree as Slow Tree was being with him. As he was not of the Comanche tribe, certain courtesies had to be respected, but, once these courtesies had been observed, Slow Tree might turn back into a cruel old killer and torture him after all. The chief didn't appear to be in a torturing mood, but he was a crafty old man and his mood could always change.

Blue Duck, though, continued to behave with poor manners. He looked scornfully at Slow Tree, who was, after all, one of the most respected of the chiefs of the Comanche people. He spoke scornfully, also. So far he had not even bothered to dismount, a serious discourtesy in itself.

All the other Comanche boys had immediately dismounted.

But Blue Duck still sat on his prancing horse.

"When you saw this Kickapoo in my father's camp you wanted to torture him," Blue Duck said. "You wanted to put scorpions in his nose.

We caught him and brought him to you, though it was out of our way. We were going after antelope when we saw this man. I would not have brought him to you if I had known you would only turn him loose. I would have killed him myself." Blue Duck's tone was so rude that even his own companions looked unhappy. Fat Knee walked away--he did not want to be associated with such rude behaviour.

Slow Tree looked up at Blue Duck casually, with no expression on his face. It was as if he had just noticed the loud-spoken boy who had not had the manners to dismount. He looked Blue Duck up and down and his eyes became the color of sleet. He still had a knife in his hand, the one he had used to set Famous Shoes free.

"You are not a Comanche, you are a mexicano," Slow Tree said. "Get out of my camp." Blue Duck was shocked--it was as if the old man had slapped him. No one had ever offered him such an insult before. He wanted to kill old Slow Tree, but the chief was backed by more than thirty warriors, and his own friends had dismounted and quickly walked away from him. They were all being so polite it disgusted him; it made him think they were cowards. He was sorry he had ever ridden with them.

"Go on, leave," Slow Tree said. "If your father has any sense he will listen to the elders and make you leave his camp too. You are rude like the mexicanos--y don't belong with the Comanche." "I am a Comanche!" Blue Duck insisted, in a loud voice. "I went on the great raid! I killed many whites and raped their women. You should give me food at least." Slow Tree, not amused, stood his ground.

"You will get no food in my camp," he said.

"Then I will take my prisoner!" Blue Duck said, riding toward Famous Shoes, who stood just where he had been standing when Slow Tree released him.

"You have no prisoner," Slow Tree said.

"Your father granted this man protection. I heard him say so myself, with my two ears. You were there.

You heard the same ^ws I heard, and they were your father's ^ws. Your father said not to interfere with this man, and you should have obeyed." "You are afraid of my father," Blue Duck said. "You are old." Slow Tree didn't answer, but several of his warriors scowled. They did not like hearing their chief insulted.

Slow Tree just stood, looking.

"You have no prisoner," he repeated. "You had better be gone." Blue Duck saw that the situation was against him.

His own friends had walked away. He could not reclaim his prisoner without fighting the whole camp. Fat Knee had been right to begin with. They should have tortured the Kickapoo themselves. He himself had insisted that they take him to Slow Tree, never supposing that Slow Tree would consider that he was bound by Buffalo Hump's instructions regarding the Kickapoo tracker. He thought Slow Tree might be so happy to get the Kickapoo to torture that he would reward him with a fine horse, or, at least, a woman. Now he had lost his prisoner and had been insulted in front of the whole camp. He was angry at his father, at Slow Tree, and at Famous Shoes, all three. He had expected to gain much respect, from bringing Slow Tree such a desirable prisoner; but Slow Tree was more interested in remaining at peace with Buffalo Hump. Instead of gaining respect, and perhaps a horse and a woman, he had been humiliated by an old fat chief.

Without another ^w he turned his horse and rode out of Slow Tree's camp. He didn't look back, or wait for his companions to join him. He didn't even know if they would join him. Probably they, too, were only interested in staying in good with his father, Buffalo Hump.

When Blue Duck rode away, only Fat Knee chose to follow him. The other boys made themselves at home in Slow Tree's camp.

Famous Shoes watched the two young Comanches ride away--he did his best to maintain a calm demeanor. He figured the only reason he was alive was because Slow Tree, who still had sleet in his eyes, did not want trouble with Buffalo Hump, not when Buffalo Hump had just led the great raid that all the warriors were talking about--and all the travellers too. Famous Shoes was still a Kickapoo, in the camp of Comanches--and some of the young warriors were undoubtedly more reckless than Slow Tree. They didn't have a chief's responsibilities, and most of them probably didn't care what Buffalo Hump thought. They were free Comanches and would feel that they had every right to kill a Kickapoo if they could catch one.

"I think I will go now," Famous Shoes said.

"I want to keep looking for that hole where the People came out." Slow Tree no longer looked at him so politely. Though he felt obliged to respect Buffalo Hump's wishes in this matter, he did not look happy about it. The braves who stood behind him didn't look friendly, either.

"That hole is to the north, where the great bears live," Slow Tree said. "If you are not careful one of those bears might eat you." Famous Shoes knew that Slow Tree himself was the bear most likely to eat him--or at least to do something bad to him. It was not a place to linger, not with the old chief so moody. He got his knife and his pouch back from the Comanche boy who had taken them, and trotted out of the camp.

Call found Gus McCrae asleep by the river, under a bluff that looked familiar. Long before, when the two of them were young rangers, Augustus had stumbled off that very bluff one night and twisted his ankle badly when he hit. Then, because of Clara Forsythe, Gus had been too agitated to watch where he was going; now, an hour after sunup, he was snoring away and probably hung over because he pined for the same woman. In a boat, turning slowly in the middle of the river, an old man was fishing. An old man had been fishing the night Gus hurt his ankle--for all Call knew, it might even be the same old man, in the same boat. Years had worn off the calendar, but what had changed? The river still flowed, the old man still fished, and Augustus McCrae still pined for Clara.

"Get up, the Governor wants to see us," Call said, when he got back to where his friend was sleeping. Gus had stopped snoring; he was nestled comfortably against the riverbank with his hat over his eyes.

"It's too early to be worrying with a governor," Gus said, without removing his hat.

"It ain't early, the sun's up," Call said. "Everybody in town is up, except you.

The barber is waiting to give you a good shave." Gus sat up and reached for an empty whiskey bottle by his side. He heaved the bottle out into the river and drew his pistol.

"Here, don't shoot," Call said. "There's an old man fishing, right in front of you." "Yell at him to move, then, Woodrow," Augustus said. "I'm in the mood for target practice." He immediately fired three shots at the bottle, to no effect. The bottle floated on, and the old fisherman continued to fish, unperturbed.

"That fisherman must be deaf," Call said.

"He didn't realize he was nearly shot." Gus stood up, shot twice more, and then heaved his pistol at the bottle, scoring a solid hit. The bottle broke and sank, and the pistol sank with it.

"Now, that was foolishness," Call said.

Gus waded into the river and soon fished out his gun.

"Which barber did you hire to shave me?" he inquired.

"The small one, he's cheaper," Call said, as they walked back toward town.

"I don't like that short barber, he farts," Gus said. "The tall one's slow but he don't fart as often." They were almost to the barbershop when a shriek rent the calm of the morning. The shriek came from the direction of the Colemans' house--one shriek followed by another and another.

"That's Pearl," Gus said. "Nobody else in town can bellow that loud." The shrieks caused a panic in the streets.

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.