Comanche Moon (53 page)

Maggie .was annoyed. Jake ought to have better manners than to wink while carrying a coffin.

Newt adored Jake; it was not setting the boy a good example to wink at such a solemn time.

What made it worse was that Gus McCrae looked so low and sad.

Sometimes Maggie wondered why she had fixed her heart on Call, and not on Gus--she and Gus were more adaptable people than Woodrow ever had been or ever would be. She thought she could have stayed alive and done nicely by Augustus, had she felt for him what a wife should feel for a husband; and yet, through the years, it was Woodrow she loved and Jake she tolerated. Even then, walking up the street behind the wagon, Maggie felt her spirits droop a little because Woodrow, mindful of the solemnity of the occasion, had walked past them without a nod or a glance.

The hope Maggie held, above all, was that her son would be able to live a respectable life.

She herself might manage to die respectable, but she had not lived respectable, not for much of her life; she placed a high value on it and wanted it for her son. He might never manage to be a hero, as his father was; he might never even be called to do battle--Maggie hoped he wouldn't. But it wasn't necessary to fight Indians or arrest bandits to be respectable.

Respectability was a matter of training and guidance--learning not to wink in funerals, for example, or keeping one's eyes closed during prayer.

There was no managing Jake Spoon, though; there never had been. Maggie knew it, and it was bittersweet knowledge, because, for all his faults, Jake did his best to help her, and had for the whole time she had had Newt. It was Jake who carried her groceries home, if he noticed that she was heavily laden; Jake that tacked up a little shelf in her kitchen, to hold the crockery--Jake Spoon did the chores that Woodrow Call would rarely unbend to do, even if he had the time. Maggie knew her own weaknesses: she could not do entirely without a man, could not be alone always, could not survive and raise her son well without more help than Woodrow Call gave her.

Call and Gus were not heroes to the people for nothing; they were constantly on patrol along the line of the frontier. Skirmishes with the Comanches were frequent, and the border was very unsettled. Call and Gus were always gone but Jake Spoon was usually left at home--he had had the prudence to take a course in penmanship and wrote the neatest hand in the company. There was a man in the legislature, a senator named Sumerskin, who considered the rangers profligate in the matter of expenses. He hectored Call and Gus to produce accountings down to the last horseshoe nail, a vexation that both captains found hard to tolerate. Though Jake Spoon could shoot and might occasionally produce a dashing bit of derring-d during a fracas, he was also lazy, careless of his tack, and prone to exhausting the troop by leading singsongs all night. His main use when they were after bandits was that he could tie the most elegant hang knots in the troop.

Bandits hung with one of Jake's nooses rarely danced or kicked more than a few seconds.

Call, though, could barely tolerate Jake's laziness--Augustus, though an inspired fighter, provided more than enough laziness for any one troop, Call considered, so, usually, Jake got left at home to keep the company records in his elegant hand. He would wad up page after page of ledger paper until he had his columns exact and the loops and curves of his letters precisely as he wanted them to be.

Where Woodrow Call was concerned, Maggie's hopes shrank, year by year, to one need: the need to have Call give Newt his name. She no longer supposed, even in her most hopeful moments, that Woodrow would marry her. It wasn't that he scorned her because of her past, either; the bitter truth Maggie slowly came to accept was that Woodrow Call liked being alone; he liked his solitude as much as Gus and Jake liked female company.

"Woodrow just ain't the marrying kind, Mag," Augustus said to her, on more than one occasion, and he was right.

Still, every time Maggie saw Woodrow her heart fluttered, although she knew that a fluttering heart could not change such things. She ceased mentioning marriage to him; even, in time, ceased to think about it. It had been the central hope of her life, but it wasn't to be. What she didn't cease to think about was Newt. Newt was the spitting image of his father: the two of them walked alike, talked alike, had the same smile and the same forehead, yet Call would not give Newt his name.

The resemblances Maggie catalogued-- resemblances that were obvious to everyone in Austin-- didn't convince him; or, if they did convince him, he hid the realization from himself. Often Maggie could not contain her bitterness at his refusal; she quarrelled with him about it, sometimes loudly. Once on a hot still day they quarrelled so loudly that their argument woke Pea Eye, who had been dozing below them, in the shade of the building.

Maggie knew Pea Eye overheard them; she happened to look out the window and saw his startled face turned up in surprise.

That Newt would someday bear his father's name was the one hope Maggie would not relinquish, though she came to realize that no effort of hers would make it happen. Her hope, she felt, lay with Newt himself--z the boy grew, his own sweetness might have an effect on Woodrow that she herself had not been able to have. All the rangers liked Newt; they kept him with them whenever they could. They sat him on their horses, whittled him toy guns, let him pet the crippled possum that Lee Hitch found in the hay one morning and adopted. As Newt grew they taught him little skills, and Newt was a quick pupil. All of them, Maggie was convinced, knew he was Call's.

Now, in the strong sunlight, the crowd followed the wagon with the coffin in toward the green cemetery by the river. Maggie heard, all about her, murmurs about the war. She scarcely knew herself what it meant; she longed for a moment with Woodrow, so he could explain it. But he had not, as she hoped, dropped back to walk with her. Instead, it was Jake Spoon who dropped back, when they were almost to the graveyard. Jake had a habit of touching her in public that Maggie despised; she worked in a store now, she had a respectable job, but even if she hadn't she would not have wanted Jake to touch her in public. Even in private her acceptance of him had some reluctance in it. When he attempted to touch her arm Maggie drew away.

"You oughtn't to be winking at Newt--not at a funeral," she reproached him.

Jake, though, could not be managed. He turned to Newt and winked again.

"Why, the preaching was over," he said. "There's no harm in a wink. Nobody noticed, anyway. All they can think about is the war. It's a wonder anybody even came to see Nellie buried.

"Gus does have poor luck with wives," he added. "If I was a woman I'd think twice before hitching up with him--it'd be a death sentence." "I wish you'd be nice," Maggie whispered.

"I just wish you'd be nice. You can be nice, Jake, when you try." Maggie knew that Jake Spoon wasn't really bad; but neither was he really good, either. Though he was capable of sweetness, at times, she often felt that she would be better off having no man than a man like Jake; but, if she sent him away, Newt would be the lonelier for it. She never completely turned Jake out, though she was often tempted to. It vexed her that she was spending so much of her energy on a large child, when there was a better man, one she had long loved, not one hundred yards away--yet, there it was.

"I see Deets," Newt whispered, as the procession reached the little graveyard. Sure enough, Deets and two other Negroes, men who had worked for Nellie McCrae or her family, stood deferentially, waiting, near a grove of trees.

Newt was wondering if Graciela had died of the snakebite, in which case they might have to bury her, too, when they got back home. He did like Graciela; she gave him honey cakes and taught him how to tie little threads on grasshoppers' legs and make them pull sticks along, like tiny wagons. But if Graciela had died and they had to go through the singing and praying again, it would be a long time before he got to play.

Besides, the brown coat his mother was so proud of scratched his neck. There was more singing, and the grown-ups all gathered around a hole in the ground. Newt seemed sleepy--the brown coat made him hot. He held his mother's hand, put his head against her leg, and shut his eyes. The next thing he knew, Deets, who carried him home, was setting him down in his own kitchen.

Graciela, who was still alive, helped him take off the scratchy coat.

Once he had become a rich man, Blue Duck began to think of killing his father. Getting rich had been easy--the whites were on the roads in great numbers, and they were careless travellers.

They travelled as if there were no Comanches left --most of these whites did not even post guards at night. Blue Duck supposed they must be coming from lands where the Indians were tame, or where they had all been killed. Otherwise the whites would long since have been robbed and killed. They drank at night until they passed out, or else lay with their women carelessly. They were easy to kill and rob, and even the poorest of them had at least a few things of value: guns, watches, a little money; some of the women had jewels hidden away.

Often there would be a horse or two Blue Duck could add to the herd he was building at his camp near the Cimarron River.

Few of his father's band hunted that far east; Comanches didn't bother him, nor did the Indians to the east, the Cherokees or Choctaws or other tribes that the whites had driven into the Indian Territory. Those Indians were not raiders anyway: they tried to build towns and farms. They hunted a little, but they had few horses and did not go after the buffalo. A few renegades from those tribes tried to join up with Blue Duck, but the only one he allowed into his band was a Choctaw named Broken Nose, who was an exceptional shot with the rifle. Blue Duck wanted only Indians who were skilled horsemen, like his own people, the Comanches. Sometimes he liked to strike deep into the forested country, where the whites had many little settlements; for such work he needed men who could ride. He wanted to raid as the Comanches raided, only in the eastern places, where the whites were numerous and careless.

Blue Duck had five women, two who were Kiowa and three white women he had stolen. There were many other stolen women that he let his men play withfora while, and then killed. He wanted the whites to know that once he had one of their women, the woman was lost. Ermoke, the first man to join up with him once he had left his father's band, was very lustful, so lustful that he had to be restrained. Blue Duck wanted wealth but Ermoke only wanted women--he would raid any party if he saw a woman that he wanted.

Soon there were fifteen men in the camp on the Cimarron; they had many guns, a good herd of horses, and many women. Sometimes Blue Duck would get tired of all the drinking and quarrelling that went on in the camp. Once or twice he had risen up in fury and killed one or two of his own men, just to quiet the camp. He had learned from his father that the way to deal death was to do it quickly, when people were least expecting death to be dealt. Blue Duck kept an axe near the place where he spread his robes. Sometimes he would spring up and kill two or three renegades with his axe, before they could react and flee.

At other times he would simply ride away from the camp for a few days, to rest his mind, and when he left he always rode west, toward the Comanche lands. It rankled him that he had been made an outcast. He would have liked to ride again with the Comanche, to live again in the Comanche way. He missed the great hunts; he missed the raids.

The renegades he commanded seldom took a buffalo, or any game larger than a deer.

Once or twice Blue Duck rode north alone and took a buffalo or two--he did it for the meat, but also because it reminded him of a time he had gone hunting with Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf and the other Comanche hunters. The knowledge that he had been driven out, that he could never go back, filled him sometimes with anger and other times with sadness. He did not understand it. He had done no worse than many young warriors; he had only been trying to prove his bravery, which it was right to do.

Blue Duck decided that the real reason for his exile was that the old men feared his strength. They knew he would be a chief someday, and they feared for themselves, just as the renegades on the Cimarron were afraid for themselves.

He decided too--one night when the sleet was blowing and he was eating buffalo liver, far north of the Canadian River--t his father also feared his strength. Buffalo Hump was older; soon his strength would begin to fade. But he had been war chief of his band for a long time; he would not want to surrender his power, to a son or anyone.

His power would have to be taken, and Blue Duck wanted to be the one to take it.

In the cold morning he skinned the buffalo he had killed and took the hide back to the camp on the Cimarron, for the women to work. Only the two Kiowa women knew how to work with skins; the stolen white women had no such skills. The women were inept and so were many of the men. They were adequate when raiding white farmers, travellers with families, and the like, but in battle none of them were equal to the Comanches. They had no skill with any weapon except the rifle, and most of them were cowards, as well. A few Comanche warriors could make short work of them, a thing Blue Duck knew well.

He meant to kill his father, but it was not a thing he would attempt hastily. His father was too alert, and too dangerous. He might have to wait until his father weakened; perhaps an illness would strike Buffalo Hump, or a white soldier kill him; or perhaps he would just grow careless when on a hunt and die of an accident.

As the years passed Blue Duck's fame spread, thanks to his random and merciless killings. He was a wanted man in the eastern country, the country of trees. In Arkansas and in east Texas or Louisiana his name was feared by people who had never heard of Buffalo Hump; people who had no reason to fear a Comanche attack feared Blue Duck. He became expert at working the line between the wild country and the settled.

He knew where there were effective lawmen and where there were not. Many of his renegades were shot, and not a few captured, tried, and hung, but Blue Duck shifted away. He robbed at night, then went north into Kansas; few white lawmen had ever seen him, but all knew of him.