Comanche Moon (7 page)

"The Red was my thinking too," Call said.

"Is it?" Augustus said, relieved.

Usually Woodrow took the opposite view, just because it was opposite, as far as he could tell.

Both of them turned for a moment and looked at the camp, fifty yards away. All the rangers were looking at them, waiting to see if they would quarrel.

"The boys depend on us now," Call said.

"It's up to us to get them home." "I just hope we don't run into a big bunch of Comanches," Augustus said. "A big bunch of Comanches could probably finish us." "One of us will have to scout, and the other stay with the troop," Call said.

"I agree," Gus said.

"It's a big thing we're taking on," Call said. "We need to keep our heads and do it right." "We'll get these boys home," Augustus said, proud but a little nervous. He looked once more at Woodrow, to be sure they were still agreed on the directions.

"So the Red River it is?" he said.

"Yes, and let's get started," Call said.

"The Red River it is."

Famous Shoes was surprised to see that Big Horse Scull could walk so well. Usually he could easily walk off and leave any white man, but he did not walk off and leave Scull.

When they camped the first night the man did not seem tired, nor did he insist on the large wasteful fires that the whites usually made when the nights were cold. Their fire was only a few sticks, with just enough flame to singe the prairie chicken Scull had hit with a rock. The clouds blew away and the stars above them were very clear, as they divided the skinny bird, which was old and tough.

Famous Shoes had begun to realize that Scull was a very unusual man. They had walked all day at a fast clip, yet Scull did not seem tired and did not appear to want sleep.

Famous Shoes yawned and grew sleepy but Scull merely kept chewing his tobacco and spitting out the juice. Famous Shoes thought Scull might be some form of witch or possessed person. He was not a comfortable man to be with. There was something in him like the lightning, a small lightning but still apt to flash at any moment. Famous Shoes did not enjoy being with a man who flashed like lightning, causing unquiet feelings, but there was not much he could do about it.

"Do you know this Ahumado?" Scull asked.

"No," Famous Shoes said, very startled by the question. They were pursuing Kicking Wolf, not Ahumado.

"No one knows Ahumado," he added. "I only know where he lives." "Somebody must know him," Scull said. He had begun to think of walking to Mexico, to kill Ahumado, the man who had shot him and also Hector. The thought of a lone strike had only occurred to him that day. Once he had wanted to take cannons to Mexico, to blast Ahumado out of the Yellow Cliffs. But now that he was alone on the prairie, with only the tracker for company, Inish Scull felt that it was time for a turning.

Commanding men was a tiresome chore, one he had done long enough. He might do it again, once the great civil conflict came, but now he had the desire to cast off all that had gone before and go into Mexico alone. The remote parts of the world haunted him: Africa, the Arctic, the great peaks of Asia.

He didn't want merely to go back to Austin, to Inez, to the rangers. He wanted an adventure, and one he could pursue alone.

"A military unit is a fine thing when it works," he said. "But it usually don't work. A solitary feat of arms is better, if the foe is worthy. This Kicking Wolf ain't much of a foe, though I grant that he's a brilliant thief. But I doubt that he's much of a killer--the two skills don't go together." Famous Shoes didn't know what to make of that comment. There were plenty of dead Texans and Mexicans and Indians who were dead because of Kicking Wolf--theirthe families considered him killer enough. If Scull wanted to fight someone who killed better than Kicking Wolf, he should not have passed up Buffalo Hump, a man who could kill plenty well.

He didn't comment. It was night, a good time for napping. If they wanted to catch Kicking Wolf and get the Buffalo Horse back, they would need to be up walking plenty early.

"This fellow Ahumado's been a notable bandit for a long time," Scull said. "Somebody must have some information about him." Famous Shoes kept quiet. Ahumado was a bad, cruel man; even to talk of him was bad luck. Ahumado worked very bad tortures on the people he caught. In Famous Shoes' view it was unwise even to think of a man that bad. The old people of Mexico thought Ahumado could pick up thoughts out of the air. If Scull kept talking about him, or even thinking about him, Ahumado might pick the thoughts out of the air and come north looking for them.

Scull fell silent for a while. Famous Shoes was hoping he would nod, and sleep. It was better to sleep a little and then apply themselves to the pursuit of Kicking Wolf than to be talking around a campfire about Ahumado. The smoke of the fire might drift south into Mexico, carrying their thoughts with it. Perhaps Ahumado was so wise that he could find out what people were saying about him just from little whiffso of drifting smoke. It was a new thought--Famous Shoes didn't know if it was true. But it might be true, which was a good reason to stop talking about Ahumado.

"He might be a man to match me," Scull said. "Very damn few can match me. I have to seek them out, otherwise the salt might lose its savor." "We have to track Kicking Wolf first, and that will take a lot of time," Famous Shoes said.

Scull had taken his little book out of his pocket, but he didn't look into it. He merely held it in his hand, as he stared into the fire.

On the plain to the south, two wolves began to howl. One howled and then another answered, which was very disturbing to Famous Shoes. Many coyotes often spoke to one another, but it was rare for two wolves to howl. Famous Shoes didn't know what it meant, but he didn't like it. The two wolves should not be speaking to one another, not so early in the night. When he got home he meant to ask the old ones what it meant when two wolves howled early. He would have to seek the old ones--they would surely know.

When Call found the dead boy, and the tracks of twenty horses going north, he knew there would not be a simple trek back to Austin. The Indians were not far--piles of horse turds were still warm, and the blood from the boy's crushed skull had only just coagulated. Call was less than a mile ahead of the troop, scouting. The boy was no more than six years old, skinny and pale, and the raiders who killed him had only just passed.

Probably he had been too sickly to travel; they had hit him in the head with a rifle butt and left him, dead or dying.

Call pulled his rifle out of its scabbard and got down to examine the tracks. It was annoying that Scull had taken Famous Shoes--the Kickapoo could have read the tracks easily, told them what band the raiders belonged to, and, probably, how many captives they were carrying into captivity. Call was not so skilled, nor was anyone else in the troop.

He knelt by the dead boy and felt again the weariness that the sight of such quick, casual death raised in him. The boy was barefoot, and so skinny that it seemed he had never had a filling meal in his life; probably he hadn't. The likelihood was that he had been snatched off some poor farm off one of the several branches of the Brazos, the river that tempted settlement most, due to the fertility of its long, lightly wooded valleys.

When the troop came in sight and saw that Call was dismounted, the rangers spurred up and sped to him, only to stop and stare in silence at the dead boy, the thin line of blood from his broken skull streaking the gray grass.

"Lord, he was just a young 'un," Long Bill said.

"I just missed the raiding party," Call said.

"I doubt they're five miles ahead." Augustus, whose keen vision was his pride, looked far north and saw the raiding party--they were so far away that they were dots--too far away for him to make a count.

"I expect it was a hundred Indians at least, from all these tracks," Neely Dickens said, unnerved by the thought that there might be a massive army of Indians nearby.

"I can see them, you fool--there's not more than twenty," Augustus said. "And some of them are probably captives." "I ain't a fool and don't you be cussing me just because you got made a captain," Neely replied. His pride was easily wounded; when insulted he was apt to respond with a flurry of fisticuffso.

To Augustus's annoyance Neely looked as if he might be about to flare into the fistfight mode, even though they were in a chancy situation, with major decisions to be made.

"Well, you gave a high count, I'm sorry I bruised your feelings," Gus said. He realized that he had to watch his comments, now that he had risen in rank. In the old days a man who didn't appreciate his remarks could take a swing at him--several had--but now that he was a captain, a man who tried to give him a licking might have to be court-martialed, or even hung.

Though Neely's fistfights were ridiculous-- Neely was small and had never whipped anybody --Augustus thought it behooved him to be tolerant in the present situation; there were larger issues to be decided than whether Neely Dickens was a fool.

Call was glad Gus had made amends to Neely--it wouldn't do to have a big silly dispute, with Indians in sight.

"What do we do, Woodrow?" Long Bill asked. "Do we chase the rascals or do we let 'em go?" The minute he spoke Long Bill wondered if he had done wrong to call Woodrow by his first name. He had known Call for years and always called him merely by his name, but now Woodrow was a captain and Gus too. Was he expected to address both of them as "Captain"his He felt so uncertain that merely speaking to either one of them made him nervous.

"I doubt this boy was the only captive," Call said. "It's a large party. They might have his sisters and brothers, if he had any, or even his mother." "They probably stole a few horses, too," Augustus said. "I say we go after them." Call saw that Deets already had the dead boy's grave half dug. Deets had been given a sidearm, but no rifle, when they left Austin. An old pistol with a chipped sight was all he had to defend himself with--it was something Call meant to remedy, once they got home.

"Should we take all the boys, or just the best fighters?" he asked Augustus. That was the most worrisome question, in his view.

"I guess take 'em all," Gus said.

He was well aware that the men's fighting abilities varied greatly; still, it was a large party of Indians: the rangers ought to attack with a respectable force.

Call wasn't so sure. Half the men, at least, would just be in the way, in a running battle.

But the complexities of being a captain had begun to present themselves to him forcefully. If they just took the good fighters, who would take care of those who were left? As a group the less able men would be lucky to stay alive, even without Indians.

They'd get lost, or hunt badly; they might starve. But if he took them and they got killed or captured, their lives would be on his conscience, and Augustus's.

Another practical side of captaining was just beginning to worry him, and that was horses. It had been poor grazing lately, and they had had many hard days. None of the horses were in good flesh.

The skinniest had suffered as much as the men from the cold, sleety weather. Famous Shoes could have looked at the tracks and told them exactly what kind of condition the Indian horses were in, but he couldn't do that. However well or poorly the men fought, it would be the quality of their horseflesh that determined the outcome, if there was a long chase. It might be that their horses weren't a match for the Indian horses, in which case a chase would prove futile.

"What if we can't catch them? Our horses might be too poorly," Call asked.

"I don't know--but we've got to try," Augustus said. "That's a dead boy we're burying. We can't just go home and tell them we found a dead boy and didn't try to punish the killers, especially since they're in sight." "In your sight--I can't see them," Call said, but of course he agreed with the point. The boy was dead. It was the second time in his career that he had stumbled on a dead body, on the prairie--the first, long ago, had been a prospector of some kind. The chance of his finding the two bodies, on the wide plain, struck him-- if his route had varied by even fifty yards he might never have seen either body.

The boy, particularly, would have been hard to see, curled up like a young goat in some low grass. Yet Call had found him. It was curious--but there it was.

Neely Dickens, besides being quick to flare up, was also prone to attacks of severe pessimism if an undertaking of a dangerous nature was anticipated. When it became clear that they would all be required to go in pursuit of the raiding party, Neely immediately fell prey to dark forebodings.

"North--I thought we was through going north," he said. "I despise having to travel back toward the dern north, where it's so windy." "Then why'd you get in the rangers, anyway?" Teddy Beatty asked. "Rangers just go whichever direction they need to. You're in the wrong profession if you're picky about directions." "Couldn't get no other job," Neely admitted. "If I'd known I was going to have to go north I'd have tried to make it to Galveston instead." Augustus found the remark puzzling. Why would a fear of the north convince anybody that they ought to go to Galveston?

"Why Galveston, then, Neely?" he asked. The boy's grave had been hastily covered and the troop was ready to move in the direction Neely despised.

"Ships," Neely said. "If I was in Galveston I might could hide in a ship." "That don't make no sense," Long Bill observed. "Ships go north too." Neely Dickens was sorry he had ever brought the matter up. All the rangers were looking at him as if he were daft, which he wasn't. All his life he had heard stories about Comanche tortures. Several of the older rangers had described the practices to him. Comanches slit people open and poured hot coals into them while they were still alive.

"I won't have no Comanche cutting a hole in my belly and pouring in hot coals," he said, by way of explanation of his dislike of the northerly direction.

"Shut up that talk--let's go," Call said.

The men had been blue and apprehensive since Captain Scull left anyway--dwelling on the prospect of torture would only make matters worse. He knew from experience that when morale began to slip among a group of tired, ill-fed, nervous men, a whole troop could soon be put at risk, and he didn't intend to let that happen, not on his first try at being a captain.