Comanche Moon

"Goddamn them, what's their hurry?" he said. "I wanted to take his ugly old head home with me--I could use it to scare the boys." "Let's go, Duck--y can come back and get his head, if you're that set on having it," Ermoke said. "It was hard enough to kill him. That's Call and McCrae after us. I'm for leaving." Blue Duck wanted to linger, to savor the triumph he had waited for so long; he felt like killing Ermoke for so insistently rushing him off.

But he knew the renegade was right. Call and McCrae had followed him where no other rangers and no other whites would have dared to go. Ermoke and Monkey John were no match for them. He himself might be, but only if he could insure himself proper cover, and there was no cover close.

"You kilt the man you came to kill, Duck," Ermoke said. "Let's leave." "We'll go, but once they're gone I mean to come back for his head," Blue Duck said. He went to his horse, mounted, and rode once more around the still body of his father. He rode close and put his hand on the lance. He wanted to keep it but knew it would take much too long to pull it out.

"He must have liked them black rocks," Monkey John said. "He gathered up a bunch of them before we got here." Blue Duck had a vague memory of his father saying something to him about the black rocks, long ago on their journey to the Lake of Horses. But he couldn't remember what he had said, and Call and McCrae were getting closer.

He left the lance in his father's body and turned to the north.

As they were leaving, Monkey John reached down and picked up Buffalo Hump's big knife.

Famous Shoes had not wanted to go north of the dry lake. He thought the fact that the spring was so small and so well hidden meant that the dry lake was as far as men ought to go--al, he had seen the two Antelope Comanches; it worried him that they were watching. Also, they had no sooner left the lake than he began to notice the black rocks.

The three things taken together were to him powerful evidence that they had followed Blue Duck far enough. All the Kickapoos agreed that black rocks were to be avoided--they were not normal rocks and were only likely to be in places where the spirits were malign.

When they left the lake Famous Shoes said as much to Captain Call, but the captain paid no more attention to his ^ws than he would have paid to a puff of wind. Captain Call didn't care about the black rocks. He did care about the Antelope Comanches--he knew they represented danger, but he was not willing to turn back on their account.

"Woodrow wants Blue Duck, and Blue Duck ain't five miles ahead," Augustus pointed out, when the tracker came to him with his worries. "If you think Woodrow Call will turn back with his quarry in sight you've hired on with the wrong company." Famous Shoes concluded that there was no point in talking to the two captains. He had been patient and intelligent in explaining his reasoning as to why it was unwise to go farther north at that time, yet both men ignored him. They just kept going.

Famous Shoes thought he might as well go home--it was a waste of time to advise men who wouldn't listen. He didn't want to stay with the rangers if they were going to proceed so foolishly.

Nonetheless, he went ahead for a few miles, because he wanted to see if there was another lake nearby, or any reason to continue north.

It was while he was trotting ahead of the cautious rangers that he noticed a lance sticking up from the ground a short distance ahead. Since Buffalo Hump was the only man likely to be in that area who carried a lance, Famous Shoes immediately became more cautious, fearing that the old man was plotting some kind of ambush.

While he was studying the land, trying to figure where the old man could be hiding, Famous Shoes saw his body. The lance held it pi

The sight startled Famous Shoes so that for a moment his legs felt weak. He had long surmised that Buffalo Hump was making his last journey, seeking a hiding place of some sort, in which to die. But that surmise did not diminish his shock when he saw the body with the lance driven through it.

On weak legs he went forward until he stood on the edge of the circle of black rocks.

He was too shocked to wave at the rangers, or do anything but stand and look. Buffalo Hump had been killed with his own lance, and it was undoubtedly Blue Duck and his men who had killed him. The lance went right through the hump; Famous Shoes remembered hearing some prophecy or old story to the effect that Buffalo Hump would only die when his hump was pierced. It might have been Buffalo Hump's own grandmother who told him the story, long ago when he was caring for her as she waited to die.

The old man's great buffalo skull shield lay beside him. It was a shield that many warriors wanted, yet Blue Duck had left it, as if it were a thing without value or power. That too was a shock.

Famous Shoes was squatting just outside the circle of black rock when the rangers rode up.

"Oh my Lord," Augustus said, when he saw that Buffalo Hump was dead. "Oh my Lord." Call was just as shocked, though he didn't speak. He dismounted and stood by Famous Shoes; the others dismounted too, but, for a time, no one spoke. Deets, who had never seen Buffalo Hump up close, was so scared that he wanted to leave. It was his belief that only a witch would have such a hump, and, though the man appeared to be dead, a lance through his body, it was not clear to Deets that a witch would have to stay dead. He thought it would be better to stand a little farther away, in case the witch with the big hump suddenly rose up and did some witchery on them.

Call was curious at last to see Buffalo Hump up close. It had been some years since he had thought much about the man, yet he knew that his career as a ranger had been, in large measure, a pursuit of the Comanche who lay dead at his feet.

Augustus was so startled that all color had drained from his face.

"That's a lance like the one he stuck me with, way back then," he said.

Pea Eye, too, wanted to go. He knew that Buffalo Hump had been a mighty, fearsome chief, but now he was dead and it was wasteful just to stand there looking at his body if they hoped to catch the bandits they had been chasing for so long.

Captain Call and Captain McCrae, though, showed no inclination to hurry on, and neither did Famous Shoes. Pea Eye only looked once at the hump; he did not care to examine deformities, for fear it would result in bad dreams.

To Call's eye, Buffalo Hump looked smaller in death than he had looked in life-- he was not the giant they had supposed him to be, but only a man of medium height.

"I thought he was bigger," Call added, squatting for a moment by the body.

"I did too, Woodrow," Augustus said.