Comanche Moon (72 page)

Of course the owl meant death--thus it had always been. But it was not an ordinary owl, so the death it presaged would not be that of an ordinary man. Though Famous Shoes had been very frightened when the owl flew at him, he soon decided that the owl did not want his death. He was only an ordinary man who liked to lie with his wives when he was home and who liked to travel the country when he had got enough, for a time, of lying with his wives. He was a good tracker, too, but not good enough that his death would need to be announced by the appearance of a great white owl.

It was another death, the death of a great man, that the white owl must have come to announce. Famous Shoes thought that one of the captains, who were great men of the Texans, might be about to die. It could mean that Blue Duck's apparent foolishness in journeying into the llano was in fact just a ruse.

Maybe somewhere ahead he was plotting an ambush.

Maybe he was hiding in a hole somewhere, as the owl had been, waiting to shoot one of the captains.

"Did you see the owl?" Famous Shoes asked, when he reached the captains.

"We seen it, it was right pretty," Captain McCrae said cheerfully. "You don't see too many of them big snow owls low down this way now." Augustus was happy that the troop had been pared down to the men who were necessary, even though it meant that he would have fewer victims in the event of an evening card game.

Famous Shoes realized then, when he heard Captain McCrae's casual and cheerful tone, that it was as he had always believed, which was that it was no use talking to white men about serious things. The owl of death, the most imposing and important bird he had ever seen, had flown right over the two captains' heads, and they merely thought it was a pretty bird. If he tried to persuade them that the bird had come out of the earth, where the death spirits lived, they would just think he was talking nonsense.

Captain Call was no more bothered by the owl than Captain McCrae, a fact which made Famous Shoes decide not to speak. He turned and led them west again, but this time he proceeded very carefully, expecting that Blue Duck might be laying his ambush somewhere not far ahead, in a hole that one would not notice until it was too late.

As her strength began its final ebbing, the thing that tormented Maggie most was the fear in her son's eyes. Newt knew she was dying--everybody knew it. He struggled mightily to relieve her of the household chores. He was an able boy, too: he could cook a little, and clean--if there was a chore to be done that was within his capacity, Maggie seldom had to ask him to do it. He just did it, and did it competently; in that way and many others he reminded her of his father.

Yet it was in thinking of Newt that Maggie found her best peace. She thought she had done a fair job with him. If the rangers or the Stewarts would just take him for a year or two he would be old enough to earn his keep. Maggie hoped it would be the rangers.

"A boy ought to be with his father," she told her friend Pearl Coleman one afternoon. Maggie had managed to get down the steps, meaning to rake a little in her garden, but just getting down the steps exhausted her strength; she was able to do little more than sit amid her bean plants. Newt was particularly fond of green beans and snap peas.

Though Pearl Coleman had suitors aplenty, she had never remarried. Her suitors were mainly men new to the area; most of them didn't know about her rape by the Comanches, didn't know why Long Bill had hung himself. Though Pearl was lonely, she was afraid to remarry. Once the old news came to light her new husband might turn her out, or else do as Long Bill had done.

Because she was lonely and knew that she was never likely to have a child of her own, Pearl offered to take young Newt when Maggie passed.

"He ought to be with his father even if his father won't claim him," Maggie went on.

Pearl had little patience with Woodrow Call, but she didn't want to tire her friend with argument.

There would not be many more chances for Maggie Tilton to sit in her garden in the spring sunlight; best not to spoil it.

"Mag, it don't have to be one way or the other," Pearl said. "Newt can stay with me when the menfolks are gone, and bunk with the boys when they're home." "Well, if you wouldn't mind," Maggie said.

It was just a short walk from Pearl's house to the ranger barracks, such as they were. Pearl was such a good cook; it would be a shame for Newt to miss out on her tasty meals.

"I think the Stewarts will be wanting him to work in the store a little, when there's unpacking to do," Maggie said.

Pearl did not particularly like the Stewarts-- in her view they were too quick to insist on payment of her bills--but she did not demur. If Newt could earn a quarter now and then, so much the better.

"Everybody in this town likes your boy," Pearl assured her. "He'll be well cared for--y can rest your mind about that." Maggie knew Pearl was right. There were many kindly folks in Austin who took an interest in Newt--p she had met at church, or served in the store. Hard as times had been, since the war, and poor as most people were, she didn't doubt that people would see that her child was fed and clothed. Knowing that, though, didn't put her mind at rest--how could a mother not worry about her child? She would have liked to have one more good talk with Augustus, about Newt's future; she would have liked, even, to sit at her window and watch Newt practice roping with Deets and Pea Eye--it reassured her to see him with the men who would be his companions once she was gone; it was unfortunate that they had had to leave on patrol just as she felt herself slipping into a deeper weakness.

Newt, in the lots with his rope, would look up every few minutes, to see if he could catch a glimpse of his mother's pale face in her window.

He knew his mother was dying; he spent hour after hour with his rope, throwing loops at chickens, or the milk-pen calf, or stumps, or posts, to distract himself a little from this frightening knowledge. He was so proficient with the lariat now that the milk-pen calf and even some of the chickens had taken to stopping submissively when he approached with the rope in his hands.

Sometimes, restless in his apprehension, Newt would walk out of town to the little graveyard. He had been to several funerals now, mostly funerals of people his mother knew from church--and he knew that soon there would have to be a funeral for his mother too. At the graveyard he would sometimes talk to his mother, aimless talk about the rangers, about some superstition Deets had told him, or some belief--sch as Deets's belief that Indians lived on the moon, having jumped their horses there at some time long ago when the moon had been only a few feet from the earth. Sometimes Newt would sit and watch the moon rise with Deets, hoping for a glimpse of the Indians; but he could never see them.

Mainly, though, Newt talked at the graveyard so he could get in practice to talk to his mother once she was dead. There were seldom many live people in the graveyard, but there were often one or two, usually an old man or old woman, or a bereaved young husband or wife whose spouse had died unexpectedly. Many times he had heard the old ones muttering over the graves of their loved ones--it seemed to him that talking to the dead must be an accepted practice. Probably the dead continued to want to know about the goings-on of the living; that seemed natural to Newt.

Of course, once his mother died, everything would change. He was hoping that Captain Woodrow and Captain Augustus would allow him to live with the rangers then. Even before his mother got sick he had begun to want to live with the rangers. But even if he had to live with Mrs. Coleman or Mrs.

Stewart until he could become a full-fledged ranger himself, it was to be expected that his mother would still want to know what he was doing, how his lessons were going, what had happened at the general store, whether Mrs. Coleman had decided to marry any of the men who wanted to marry her, whether Mrs. Stewart was still hitting Mr. Stewart with the barrel stave when he came in drunk and tardy.

Of course, too, she might want to know about Captain Woodrow, or whether there was any news of Jake Spoon, or if Captain Augustus had done anything unusual while drunk. Newt meant to keep a close watch on everything that happened in the community, so that he could come to the graveyard every day or two and give his mother a full report.

When the day was bright, and he was busy with his chores or his lessons, Newt would manage to put out of his mind for a few hours the fact that his mother was dying. He never mentioned his mother's sickness to anyone, not even to Ikey Ripple, who was so old now that he was practically a dead person himself. Ikey and Newt were good friends, though Ikey was so blind now that he had to feel Newt with his hands to make sure he was there. Ikey told Newt terrifying stories about the days when wild Comanche Indians came into town and ripped people's hair right off their heads. Newt would stop practicing with his rope while Ikey told him stories of the old days, when people often got shot full of arrows, or had their stomachs cut open.

Sometimes, while he talked, Ikey would whittle a stick with his little thin-bladed pocketknife. Although he never looked at the sticks as he whittled them, he never cut himself with the sharp little knife, either. Ikey whittled and whittled, shaving the stick away until it was only a small white sliver of wood, small enough to be used as a toothpick, although, since Ikey only had three or four teeth and didn't really need a toothpick, he would often give the smooth little slivers of wood to Newt, who saved them as treasures.

Scary as Ikey's stories were, nothing frightened Newt as much as laying on his pallet at night listening to his mother's labored breathing. He wished his ma could just sleep peacefully and easily, as she had when he had been younger; he didn't want her to have to draw such hard breaths.

Often he would be awake for hours, looking out the window, waiting for his mother's breathing to get easier.

He knew, though, that her breathing was growing harder, not easier; when it stopped she wouldn't be well, she would be dead, and would have to be taken to the graveyard and put in the ground.

Then he would have to begin talking to her in a new way: the way the living talked to the dead.

In his fright, in the darkness, Newt would begin to wish more than anything that Captain Woodrow and Captain Augustus would hurry and get back to Austin before his mother died. Every day Newt asked Ikey if he knew when they would be back, and every day Ikey said no, he hadn't heard, they would just be back when they got back.

Of course Captain Woodrow didn't come to see his mother anymore, as he had in earlier years. Though Newt saw him often, in the lots, Captain Woodrow rarely had much to say to him and seldom gave him pennies for sassafras candy now. Still, Newt wanted badly for him to come back. He felt the whole business of his mother's dying would be better taken care of if Captain Woodrow were there, and Captain Gus. They would see that Deets put the grave in a nice spot and see that there was plenty of singing; then, once the funeral was over, maybe they would let him move into the bunkhouse and live until he was big enough to carry a pistol and be a ranger himself.

That was Newt's hope, but he didn't tell it to his mother because she didn't much approve of guns. He didn't intend to mention it while his mother lived; it might make her mad, and when she was mad she coughed up blood, a thing that upset Graciela so that she would start crying and fanning herself and calling out the names of saints, as if it were she, and not his mother, who was dying. Mainly, Newt talked about his dream of having a pistol to Deets and Pea Eye, who saw no reason why he shouldn't have a pistol, and even, now and then, let him hold their own pistols. Sometimes, if they turned their heads, he would even point the pistol at the milk-pen calf, though of course he didn't shoot.

Long before Buffalo Hump came to the dry lake where the first people had lain in wait to catch the wild horses that came to refresh themselves at the little seeping spring, he wished he had used better judgment in picking a horse for his own last journey. The problem was that the old horse he had chosen had worn away all his teeth; in the canyon there was tall grass that he could masticate, but on the dry llano, in the vicinity of the Lake of Horses, there was no tall grass. The old horse was reduced to dirtying its nose as it tried to get at the sparse, short grass with its yellow nubs of teeth. Though the horse had frisked along briskly for some twenty miles, its strength soon gave out and it became what it was: an old horse slowly dying for lack of teeth. That was the way of old horses, just as shaky hands and wavery eyesight was the way of old men. Buffalo Hump knew he had made a poor choice. He wanted to reach Black Mesa, to sing his way into death among the black rocks that were the oldest rocks. Some believed that only in the black rocks were the spirits that welcomed one into death.

But, because the old horse had slowed to a walk, Buffalo Hump was still a long way even from the Lake of Horses. He knew, though, that if the little spring was still seeping, the old horse might refresh itself and make it on to Black Mesa.

The old horse was so weak now that he was only stumbling. For a time Buffalo Hump dismounted and led him, a thing he had not had to do in his long life as a horseman. Always, when a horse of his came up lame, he had simply left it, switching to another horse or going on foot if he had no other horse. He had owned many horses in his life and had never let a failing horse slow him down.

But the fact was he had chosen the old black horse to be the horse that would carry him to the place of his death. For him, Buffalo Hump, there would be no more horses; he had to do what he could to get the old horse to take him where he needed to go. It would not do to abandon him, which would leave him afoot in the spirit world; he did not want such a thing to happen. If it did he would be disgraced; all his victories and conquests would be as naught. Where the black horse died, he would die; and he wanted it, if possible, to be where the black rocks were.

For most of a day and all of one night he nursed the old horse along, leading him carefully over the sparse grass, letting him stop to rest when he needed to, watching him nuzzle the sparse brown grass with his stubs of teeth to get a few bites of nourishment. Always, on the llano, Buffalo Hump's eyes had sought the horizon, the distant line drawn by earth and sky. But now, when he looked toward a horizon, there was no line, but a wavering, in which sunlight, sky, and earth were all mixed and indistinct. Once he would have known exactly how far he was from the Lake of Horses and, again, how far from Black Mesa--but he was no longer sure of the distances to either place.