Comanche Moon

In the night Buffalo Hump, though weak from lack of food, began to sing a little, though his voice was cracked. Again, he was remembering scraps of things. The wind came up. He was glad he had a good blanket to put over his shoulders. A little dust began to blow, reminding him of his grandmother and her lamentations, her wailings, her prophecies of the end of the Comanche time.

It was then that he remembered his grandmother's prophecy about his own end, a thing he had not thought of in years. She had said that he would only die when his great hump was pierced, and had suggested in her prophecy that this would happen when a dark woman came, riding a white mule and holding aloft a sword. At the time his grandmother made the prophecy Buffalo Hump thought she was just a crazy old woman. Half the old men and old women of the tribe spent their time making strange prophecies. No one paid their mutterings much mind.

But then, a few years later, on a plain west of the Rio Pecos, he had seen a dark woman on a white mule, holding aloft a great sword. Buffalo Hump might have tried to kill her, then and there, except that, with her, there had been a naked white woman with a rotting body, singing a high war song and carrying a great snake: a witch, undoubtedly, and a powerful one.

All his men had run away at the sight of the naked witch whose body was rotting; even Kicking Wolf had run away. Buffalo Hump had not run, but he did remember his grandmother's prophecy about his hump being pierced. The sight of the witch was so horrible that Buffalo Hump retreated, but he retreated slowly, backing his horse step by step, so that his hump would not be exposed to the dark woman with the sword.

All that had happened so many years before that Buffalo Hump had almost forgotten it. The dark woman with the sword was the servant of a powerful witch--it puzzled him that the witch had made no effort to pierce his hump and kill him.

But then the years began to pass. He fought the Texans and the Mexicans, he stole many captives, he made his first great raid to the sea and then his second; the buffalo were still on the plains and there were hunts to pursue. Buffalo Hump had much to do, trying to drive the white people back so the plains would be free of their smell. The sickness came; it became difficult to find enough good warriors to make war. As the years passed, the memory of the dark woman and the rotting witch faded; his grandmother died and her prophecies were lost, with the many prophecies of the old women of the tribe. He had even forgotten the prophecy about his hump being pierced, but now he remembered it.

He remembered how careful he had been not to turn his back on Slow Tree, for fear that Slow Tree would stick him with a lance behind and succeed in killing him.

Though his grandmother had been right about the wars and pestilences, about the whites, and about the departure of the buffalo, it seemed now that she had just been talking nonsense about the dark woman on the white mule. He was dying all right, in a circle of black rocks near the Lake of Horses, but his hump was as it had always been, a thing woven into his muscles, a hunk of gristle that had always been there to slow him when he drew a bow or mounted a horse. He had lived with it and now he would die with it; neither the rotting witch nor Slow Tree would come to pierce it.

Between the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon Buffalo Hump dozed. When he woke he saw a form walking near the ring of black rocks, a white bird which rose when he moved.

The bird was the owl of his dreams, the white owl of death. In flight the owl passed between him and the thin moon and flew away. Though it had a

"Famous Shoes don't like these snow owls-- that's four we've seen now," Augustus said.

"He thinks it means the world's coming to an end." "They're just birds," Call said, impatiently. They were in the driest country he had been in since he had been marched as a prisoner across the Jornada del Muerto many years before, a trip that Augustus also had made and survived. This time they were in pursuit of a dangerous man, and had their horses to think of.

Finding water for them and their horses was what Famous Shoes ought to be thinking about--water, not the fact that a few snow owls from the north had decided to linger in Texas.

"He ought to be worried about this dry country," Call said. "Not those birds." Augustus, as usual, found himself having to explain the obvious to Woodrow Call, the obvious being that a white owl meant one thing to a white man and another thing to a Kickapoo tracker.

"He might be right, though, Woodrow," Augustus said. "Maybe the owls mean there ain't no water out here anywhere. If we die of thirst, then the world will have come to an end, don't you see?" He knew Woodrow Call was a single-minded man who couldn't think about but one problem at a time; but a glance at Pea Eye and Deets, not to mention the agitated Famous Shoes, convinced him that something had to be done to improve company morale, else they would die of worrying before they died of thirst.

Famous Shoes was indeed very upset about the white owls, because they should not be where they were. The white owls were there to bring death. Famous Shoes knew that, and did not care what the whites thought about it. He was very thirsty; so were the other men and so were the horses. That morning, though, he had seen a plover flying north, which meant that there was water somewhere near. Plovers were not birds that flew far. Also, Blue Duck and his two men were still ahead of them, their tracks as plain as rocks.

For Famous Shoes, the important thing was that Blue Duck was ahead of them. Where Blue Duck could go, he could go.

Twice Famous Shoes had thought he saw Blue Duck, far ahead, but Captain McCrae, who still had his keen eyesight, insisted that he was wrong--it was only an antelope they saw.

Call and Augustus too could plainly see the tracks bearing to the northwest. The tracks didn't deviate, either, as they would have if Blue Duck and his two companions had been casting about for water. Blue Duck either knew where he was going, or thought he did--he was gambling his life and the lives of the two men with him that water would be where he thought it was.

"Wherever he's going, he's been there before," Call said, when they stopped for the night.

"Yes, he has been there before, and so has the other one," Famous Shoes said.

"Other one--I thought you said there were two men riding with Blue Duck," Call said.

Augustus protested, confused by the statement.

"There are two men riding with Blue Duck, but there is another one, an old one," Famous Shoes said. "He is the one they are looking for." "Oh Lord, that's four against us now," Pea Eye said. Although they were five themselves, he feared the Comanche tendency to multiply unexpectedly.