Comanche Moon

  Maggie concentrated on keeping her head down; and she waited. Woodrow had warned her specifically not to be too quick to come out, in the event of a raid. Some of the Comanches would hold back after the main party left, hoping to snatch women or children who were brought out of hiding.

  Maggie waited. One more Indian did come into the smokehouse, perhaps to snatch a ham or something, but he was there only moments. Maggie peeked briefly and saw the warrior's horse spill out turds, right in front of her.

  The warrior left and Maggie waited for a long time. When she finally began to inch out, she thought it must be noon, at least. When she finally did come out, so did the snake that had buzzed at her earlier. The snake glided through a crack in the lower board and was soon under a bush.

  Many of the buildings along the main street were burning; the saloon had burned to the ground.

  Maggie inched around the building, but soon decided there were no Indians still in the town.

  Several men lay dead in the street, scalped, castrated, split open. She heard sobbing from up the street and saw Pearl Coleman, completely naked andwith four arrows sticking out of her, walking around in circles, sobbing.

  Maggie hurried to her and tried to get her to stop weaving around, but Pearl was beyond listening. Her large body was streaked with blood from the four arrows.

  "Oh, Mag," Pearl said. "They got me down before I could run. They got me down. My Bill, he won't want me now ... if he gets back alive he'll be ashamed of me and put me out." "No, Pearl, that ain't true," Maggie said. "Bill won't put you out." She said it to cheer Pearl up a little, but in fact there was no predicting what Long Bill would do when he heard of his wife's defilement.

  She liked Long Bill Coleman but there was no knowing how a man would react to such news.

  At that moment, through the drifting smoke, they saw three men with rifles coming cautiously up the street. The sight of them brought home to Pearl the fact that she was unclothed.

  "Oh Lord, I'm naked, Maggie .

  what'll I do?" Pearl asked, trying to cover herself with her bloody hands. It it was only when she saw the blood on her own hands that she noticed an arrow in her hip. She put her hand on the arrow, which was only hanging by its tip, and, to her surprise, it came out.

  "You got three more in your back, Pearl," Maggie said. "I'll get them out once I get you inside." "Why, I'm stuck like a pincushion," Pearl said, trying to cover herself with her hands.

  "Just turn around ... those men don't see us yet," Maggie said. "I'll run in the Forsythe store and borrow a blanket for you to cover with." Pearl turned around and hunched over, trying to make herself as small as possible.

  Maggie ran across the street but slowed a little as she came up the steps to the Forsythe store. The windows had all been smashed--a barrel of nails had been heaved through one of them. The barrel had burst when it hit, scattering nails everywhere.

  Maggie, barefoot, had to pick her way carefully through the nails.

  As soon as she stepped into the store she felt something sticky on one foot and assumed she must have cut herself on a nail; but when she looked down she saw that the blood on her foot was not hers. There was a large puddle of it just inside the door of the store. The display cases had all been smashed and flour was everywhere.

  Horse blankets, harness, ladies' hats, men's shoes had been thrown everywhere. The brown Pennsylvania crockery that Clara had been so proud of had been smashed to shards.

  Maggie knew she had stepped in a puddle of blood, but it was dim in the store. She didn't know whose blood it was until she picked her way through the smashed crockery and scattered merchandise and then suddenly saw Mr. Forsythe, dead on the floor, his head split open as if it had been a cantaloupe.

  Beyond him a few steps lay Mrs. Forsythe, naked and half covered with the white flour that had spilled out of the barrels. Three arrows had been driven into her chest, so hard that they had gone through her, pinning her to the floor.

  Maggie felt such a shock at the sight that she grew weak. She had to steady herself against the counter.

  For a moment she thought her stomach might come up.

  Seeing the naked, spraddled woman with the arrows in her chest made her realize how lucky she was; and how lucky Pearl was, and Clara herself, and all the women who were still alive.

  She herself wasn't even injured--she had to help those who were. It was no time to be weak.

  Maggie picked her way back to where the blankets were--instead of taking one blanket she took three. One she carefully put over Mrs. Forsythe--the three arrows stuck up, but there was nothing she could do about that. The blanket didn't cover her well--it left the poor old woman's thin legs exposed, which seemed wrong.

  She went back, took another blanket, and used it to cover Mrs. Forsythe's legs. The men would have to deal with the arrows when they came to remove the bodies.

  Then she put a nice blanket over Mr.

  Forsythe's split head and went outside to help her friend. One of the men with rifles was standing on the porch when she came out.

  "How about the Forsythes?" he asked, peering in one of the smashed windows.

  "They're both dead," Maggie told him.

  "She's got three arrows shot clear through her." Then she opened the other blanket, picked her way through the nails, and wrapped the blanket around Pearl, who was still hunched down in the street. The three arrows were still in her back, but at least she was covered decently as Maggie walked her home.

  As soon as Inish Scull saw the horse in the distance he hid under a little shelf of rock and waited. The horse, still a long way off, seemed to be alone. Scull took out his binoculars and waited for the horse to come round a little closer, for the animal did not seem to be moving or grazing naturally. It moved slowly, and looked back over its shoulder frequently, odd behaviour for a lone horse in empty country.

  More than an hour passed before the horse was close enough for Scull to see that it was dragging a man behind it, an unconscious man and an Indian, securely tied at wrists and ankles and attached to the horse by a rawhide rope.

  There was nothing to see on the vast spare desert except the one horse, walking slowly, dragging the man. Somebody had obviously wanted the horse to drag the man to death; that somebody, in Scull's view, was probably Ahumado.

  Famous Shoes had talked much about Ahumado's cruelty to captives. Being dragged to death by a horse was about as mild a punishment as Ahumado allowed anyone, if Famous Shoes was to be believed.

  When the horse was only one hundred yards away, Scull crept down to take a closer look. As he came near he saw that the tied man's body was just a mass of scrapes, with very little skin left on it.

  Scull watched the southern horizon closely, to be sure there were no clouds of dust in the air, such as riders would make; he also watched the bound man closely, to see if he was merely feigning unconsciousness. It seemed unlikely that a man so skinned and torn could be capable of threatening him; but many a fallen Indian fighter had been fatally lulled by just such reasonable considerations.

  Once satisfied that it was safe to approach, Scull stopped the horse--he soon saw that the bound man was breathing. There were no bullet holes in him that Scull could see. On his back was a small quiver, with no arrows in it.

  There was a deep gash in his forehead. The beadwork on the little quiver was Comanche, Scull thought. The thongs at his wrists and ankles had been pulled so tight that his flesh had swollen around the cords.

  From a swift examination of the horse tracks Scull determined that the horse was one he had just been following for hundreds of miles. It was Three Birds' horse, but Scull didn't think it was Three Birds who was tied to it.

  Three Birds was skinny, Famous Shoes had told him, but the bound man was short and stocky.

  "Kicking Wolf," Scull said aloud. He thought the sound of his name might wake the man up, but of course Kicking Wolf was only his English name; what his Comanche name was, Scull did not know. Scull would have dearly lik
ed to know what had happened to Three Birds, and whether Ahumado was in the vicinity, but he could not expect to get such information from an unconscious man whose language he didn't speak.

  Now that he was in the country of the Black Vaquero, Scull had taken to travelling mostly by night, letting the stars be his map. He knew that the canyon where Ahumado had his stronghold was crevassed and cut with many small caves, some of them no more than pockmarks in the rock but some deep enough to shelter a man nicely.

  Undoubtedly Ahumado would post guards, but Scull had been a commander too long to believe that any arrangement that required men to stay awake long hours in the night was foolproof. If he could sneak in at night and tuck himself into one of the hundred caves, he might, with patience, get a clean shot at Ahumado. Famous Shoes had told him that the old man did not like shade. He spent his days on a blanket and slept outside, by a small campfire, at night. The trick would be to get in a cave within rifle range. Of course, if he shot Ahumado, the pistoleros might swarm into his cave like hornets and kill him, but maybe not. Ahumado was said to be as cruel and unyielding to his men as he was to captives. Most of the pistoleros might only be staying with him out of fear. With the old man dead they might just leave.

  It was a gamble, but Scull didn't mind-- indeed, he had walked into Mexico in order to take just such a gamble. But first he had to get into the Yellow Canyon and find a well-situated cave. Famous Shoes had warned him particularly about a man named Tudwal, a scout whose job it was to roam the perimeters of Ahumado's country and warn him of intruders.

  "Tudwal will know you are there before you know it yourself," Famous Shoes assured him.

  "No, that's too cryptic, what do you mean?" Scull asked, but Famous Shoes would not say more. He had given Scull a warning, but would not elaborate, other than to say that Tudwal rode a paint horse and carried two rifles.

  Scull put the man's reticence down to professional jealousy. Famous Shoes missed no track, and, evidently, Tudwal didn't either.

  Meanwhile, dusk was turning into night and Scull had a horse and an unconscious man to decide what to do about. The Comanche very likely was the man Kicking Wolf, the thief who had stolen Hector. In other circumstances Kicking Wolf was a man he would immediately kill, or try to kill. But now the man was unconscious, bound, helpless. With or without Scull he might not live. With one swipe of his knife Scull knew that he could cut the man's throat and rid the frontier of a notable scourge, but when he did take out his knife it was merely to sever the rawhide rope that attached the man to the horse.

  Then he quickly walked on toward the mountains, leaving the unconscious man tied but not dead.

  "Tit for tat ... Bible and sword," he said aloud, as he walked. Kicking Wolf; daring theft had freed him of a command he was tired of, presenting him with a fine opportunity for pure adventure--solitary adventure, the kind he liked best. He could match his skill against an unforgiving country and an even more unforgiving foe.

  That was why he had come west in the first place: adventure. The task of harassing the last savages until they were exterminated was adventure diluted with policy and duty.

  The man who had been tied to the horse was a mystery, and Scull preferred to leave him a mystery. He didn't want to nurse him, nor did he want to kill him. He might be Kicking Wolf or just some wandering Indian old Ahumado had caught. By cutting the rope Scull had secured the man a chance.

  If he came to he could chew his way free and try to make it to water.

  But Inish Scull didn't intend to waste any of the night worrying the issue. The man could go if he was able. He himself had ten hours of fast walking to do and he wanted to be at it. The thought of what was ahead stirred his blood and quickened his stride. He had only himself to consider, only himself to depend on, which was exactly how he liked things to be. By morning, if he kept moving, he should be in the canyon of the Yellow Cliffs. Then he could lie under a rock and wait for the sun to complete its short winter arc. Perhaps when night fell again, if he made good progress, he could crawl through Ahumado's guard and work his way into the cliffso, where he might find a cave deep enough to shelter him for a day. If he could find a suitable cave he would then need to be sure that his rifle was in good order--he had walked a long distance with the rifle over his shoulder. The sights might well need adjusting. Ahumado was said to be quick, despite his age. Certainly he had been quick the first time Scull went after him. It was not likely that the old man would linger long in plain view, once Scull started shooting at him.

  He needed to cripple him, at least, with the first shot--killing him outright would be better still.

  A brisk, nipping north wind rose during the night, but Scull scarcely noticed it. He walked rapidly, rarely slowing for longer than it took him to make water, for ten hours. Twice he startled small herds of javelina and once almost stumbled over a sleeping mule deer.

  Normally he would have shot the deer or one of the pigs for meat, but this time he refrained, remembering Tudwal, the scout who would know he was there even before he knew it himself. It would not do to go shooting off guns with such a man on patrol.

  Toward dawn, Scull stopped. The closer he got to danger, the keener he felt. For a moment, pissing, he remembered his wife, Inez --the woman thought she could hold him with her hot lusts, but she had failed. He was alone in Mexico, in the vicinity of a merciless enemy, and yet he found it possible to doubt that there was a happier man alive.

  At the entrance to the camp in the Yellow Cliffso was a pile of human heads. Three Birds would have liked to stop and look through the heads for a while to see if any friends of his were represented in the pile. Ahumado had killed many Comanches, some of them his friends. Probably a few of their heads were in the pile. Many of the heads still had the hair on them, from what he could see.

  Three Birds was curious. He had never seen a pile of heads before and would have liked to know how many heads were in the pile, but it didn't seem a polite thing to ask.

  "Those are just some heads he has cut off people," Tudwal said, in a friendly voice.

  Three Birds didn't comment. His view was that Tudwal wasn't really as friendly as he sounded.

  He might be the man who skinned people. Three Birds didn't want to banter idly about cut-off heads with a man who might skin him.

  "He won't take your head though," Tudwal said. "For you it will be the pit or else the cliff." Three Birds soon observed that the camp they were coming to was poor. Two men had just killed a brown dog and were skinning it so that it could be put in the cook pot. A few women who looked very tired were grinding corn. An old man with several knives strung around his belt came out of a cave and looked at him.

  "Is he the one who skins people?" Three Birds asked.

  "We all skin people," Tudwal said. "But Goyeto is old, like Ahumado. Goyeto has had the most practice." Three Birds thought it all seemed very odd.

  Ahumado was supposed to have stolen much treasure, in his robberies, but he didn't seem rich. He just seemed like an old, dark man who was cruel to people. It was all puzzling. Three Birds broke into his death song while puzzling about it.

  He wondered if Kicking Wolf would die from being pulled behind the horse they had tied him to.

  Three Birds was soon taken off the horse and allowed to sit by one of the campfires, but nobody offered him food. Around him were the Yellow Cliffso, pocked with caves. Eagles soared high above the cliffso, eagles and buzzards as well. Three Birds was startled to see so many great birds, high above the cliffso. On the plains where he lived he seldom saw many eagles.

  He had expected to be tortured as soon as he was brought into the camp, but no one seemed in any hurry to torture him. Tudwal went into a cave with a young woman and was gone for a long time. The great force of pistoleros that Ahumado was said to command were nowhere in evidence. There were only five or six men there. Ahumado walked over and sat on a blanket. Three Birds stopped singing his death song. It seemed foolish to sing it when no one was paying any attention
to him at all. Two old women were making tortillas, which gave off a good smell. In the Comanche camp prisoners were always fed, even if they were to be promptly killed or tortured, but that did not seem to be the custom in the camp of Ahumado. No one brought him tortillas, or anything else.

  When the day was almost passed Tudwal came and sat with him. A peculiar thing about the man, who was white but very dirty, was that his left eye blinked all the time, a trait that Three Birds found disconcerting.

  "I have been with six women today," Tudwal said. "The women are Ahumado's but he lets me have them. He is too old for women himself. His only pleasure is killing." Three Birds kept quiet. It was in his mind that they might start his torture at any time.

  If that happened he would need all his courage.

  He did not want to weaken his courage by chatting with a braggart like Tudwal. He wondered how Kicking Wolf was faring. If the horse was still dragging him he was probably thoroughly skinned up.