Comanche Moon

Before they could discuss the matter further, they heard sleet crunching just ahead, and suddenly the great horse Hector, his shaggy coat steaming, loomed over them. Captain Inish Scull hadn't stopped, but at least he had turned.

"Why are we halted, Mr. Call?" he asked. "I didn't request a halt." "No sir, but we heard a passel of whooping, down in the canyon," Call said. "I thought I'd look and see if I could spot the Comanche camp." "Of course there's a camp, Mr. Call, but they're the wrong Comanches," Captain Scull said. "That's Buffalo Hump down there--we're after Kicking Wolf, if you'll remember.

He's our horse thief." As usual, Captain Scull spoke with complete assurance. They had only been on the edge of the Palo Duro a few minutes, and it was too dark to see much, even if the sleet would have let them. Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf, though rivals, often raided together: how did the Captain know that one was camped in the canyon and the other ranging somewhere ahead?

They had a gifted scout, to be sure, a Kickapoo named Famous Shoes, but Famous Shoes had been gone for two days and had made no report.

"That's Buffalo Hump's main camp down there, Mr. Call," Inish Scull said.

"We're no match for him--we're only thirteen men, and anyway it's Kicking Wolf I want. I expect to overtake him on the Canadian River about sunup day after tomorrow, if there is a sunup day after tomorrow." "Why, sir, there's always sunup," Long Bill Coleman said--he was a little jolted by the Captain's remark, and the reason he was jolted was that his large wife, Pearl--the one town trade he hadn't abandoned--was convinced on religious grounds that the world would end in the near future.

Pearl's view was that the Almighty would soon pour hot lava over the world, as a response to human wickedness. Now they were beside the Palo Duro Canyon, a big, mysterious hole in the ground--what if it suddenly filled up with hot lava and overflowed onto the world? Cold as he was, the prospect of the world ending in a flood of hot lava did not appeal to Long Bill at all. The fact that Captain Scull had questioned whether there would be a sunup had the effect of making him nervous. He had never met a man as learned as Captain Scull--if the Captain had some reason to doubt the likelihood of future sunrises, then there might be something to Pearl's apprehension, after all.

"Oh, I'm confident the sun will do its duty, and the planets as well," Captain Scull said.

"The sun will be there, where it should be. Whether we will see it is another matter, Mr. Coleman." Gus McCrae found the remark curious.

If the sun was where it should be, of course they would see it.

"Captain, if the sun's there, why wouldn't we see it?" he asked.

"Well, it could be cloudy weather--I expect it will be," Captain Scull said. "That's one reason we might not see sunup. Another reason is that we all might be dead. Beware the pale horse, the Bible says." Inish Scull let that remark soak in--it amused him to say such things to his untutored and uncomprehending men. Then he turned his horse.

"Don't be peeking into canyons unless I tell you to, Mr. Call," he said. "It's icy footing, and too dark for accurate observation anyway." Call was irked by the Captain's tone. Of course he knew it was icy footing. But he said nothing--"then Inish Scull had turned his great horse and gone clomping away, into the night. There was no one to say anything to, except Augustus and Long Bill. After one more glance into the darkening canyon, he got back on his horse and followed his captain north.

"Gun In The Water is with them," Blue Duck said. "Gun In The Water and the other one --Silver Hair McCrae." Buffalo Hump sat on a deerskin near his campfire. He was under an overhanging rock, which held the heat of the campfire while protecting him from the driving sleet. He was splitting the leg bone of a buffalo. When splitting a bone he was particular and careful--he did not want to lose any of the buttery marrow. Most men were impatient, young men especially. When they attempted the old tasks, they took little care.

Blue Duck, his son, rarely split a bone, and when he did, he lost half the marrow.

Buffalo Hump had fathered the boy on a Mexican captive named Rosa, a beautiful but troublesome woman who persisted in trying to escape. Buffalo Hump caught her three times and beat her, then his wives beat her even more harshly, but Rosa was stubborn and kept escaping.

The winter after the boy was born she escaped again, taking the young baby with her. Buffalo Hump was gone on a raid at the time--when he got back he went after Rosa himself, but a great wind came, blowing snow over the prairie in clouds so thick that even the buffalo turned their backs to it. When he finally found Rosa, under a cutbank on the Washita, she was frozen, but the boy, Blue Duck, was alive, still pulling on her cold teat.

It was a good sign, Buffalo Hump thought then, that the boy was strong enough to survive such cold; but the boy grew up to be even more troublesome than his mother. Blue Duck stole, killed, and fought bravely, but all without judgment. He had no interest in the old weapons; he coveted only the white man's guns. His temper was terrible--he had no friends. He would kill a Comanche or a friendly Kiowa as quickly as he would kill a Texan. The elders of the tribe finally came and talked to Buffalo Hump about the boy.

They reminded him that the boy was half Mexican.

They thought maybe the Mexicans had put a witch inside Blue Duck when his mother died.

After all, the boy had suckled a dead woman's teat; death might have come into him then. The old men wanted to kill Blue Duck, or else expel him from the tribe.

"I will kill him, when he needs to be killed," Buffalo Hump told them. He didn't like Blue Duck much, but he didn't kill him, or send him away. He delayed, hoping the boy would change with age. Two of his wives were barren and his only other son had been killed years before on the Brazos, by the white ranger Call, whom the Comanche called "Gun In The Water." Blue Duck had no good in him, that he could see, but he had no other living son and did not want to kill him if he could avoid it. Perhaps Blue Duck did have evil in him, an evil that prompted his sudden killings; but the evil might be there for a purpose. Blue Duck might be so bad that he would be the leader who drove back the whites, who were squirming like maggots up the rivers and onto the comancher@ia. Buffalo Hump was undecided. He knew he might have to kill Blue Duck to keep harmony in the tribe.

But, for the moment, he waited.

He did not look up at his tall son until he had split the heavy bone expertly, exposing the rich marrow, which he sucked until the last drop was gone. As Buffalo Hump grew older, his appetites had changed. When they took buffalo now, he only ate the liver and, sometimes, the hump. But he insisted on first pick of the bones, so he could find the marrow. He knocked down prairie chickens whenever he could, and had developed a taste for possums, ground squirrels, prairie dogs, and armadillo.