Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

by Larry McMurtry

“Post coitum omne animal triste,”

‘After copulation every animal is sad,’ ” the Captain said. “It’s true, too—though who can say why? The seed flies, and the seeder feels blue.”

“But it’s not only rutting that can bring on that little gloom. Killing can do it too—especially if you’re killing something sizable, like a buffalo, or a man. Something that has a solid claim to life.”

“The acts ain’t much alike, and yet the gloom’s alike. First excitement, then sadness.

They have to kill the buffalo to live. And they have killed it. But now they’re sad, and they don’t know why.”

Buffalo Hump might follow the rules of courtesy, but being near him was too much like being near a bear. It was possible to come close to a bear, even a grizzly, and talk to it; the bear might allow it. But the bear was still a bear, and might stop allowing the courteous talk at any time.

He behaved like the old ones behaved; the old ones, too, would go to any lengths to learn some useful fact about the animals or the birds. They would figure that someone might need to know those facts; they themselves might not need to, but their children might, or their grandchildren might.

It was important to start with a horse that had calmness in him—often

it had to be a horse with calmness in it,

McMurtry often repeats himself two or three times

stealing the Buffalo Horse was a great and audacious thing;

It was a big thing, to steal such an animal.

Kicking Wolf was a great stealer of horses

Whites and Mexicans both—but particularly Mexicans—had come to fear the fall, when the great yellow harvest moon shone. Along the old war trail the moon of the fall was called the “Comanche moon”; for longer than anyone could remember it had been under the generous light of the fall moon that the Comanches had struck deep into Mexico, to kill and loot and bring back captives.

“Am I a rabbit hunter?” Buffalo Hump said. “Scull is just a rabbit. Let him hop down to Mexico. The Black Vaquero will catch him and make a tree grow through him.”

Yet some cool part of her, some tendency to think and consider when she was most tempted just to stop thinking and open her arms, had kept her from saying yes.

It was not wise to talk to white men about certain things, and one of them was power: the power a warrior needed to gain respect for himself.

Once in the Sierra Madre, in Chihuahua, he had even crawled into the den of a grizzly bear. The bear had not yet awakened from its winter sleep, but spring was coming and the bear was restless. At any time the bear might have awakened and killed Famous Shoes. But he had stayed in the den of the restless bear for three days, and when he came out the power of the bear was with him as he walked. Without risk there was no power, not for a grown man.

That was why Kicking Wolf was taking the Buffalo Horse to Ahumado—if he went into Ahumado’s stronghold and survived he could sing his power all the way home;

There was nothing crazy in such behavior. There was only courage in it, the courage of a great warrior who goes where his pride leads him.

From such daring actions he gained power—great power.

Then she heard a scream she recognized: it was Pearl Coleman screaming. Pearl screamed and screamed.

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.

He had only himself to consider, only himself to depend on, which was exactly how he liked things to be.

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.

he remembered another of Papa Franklin’s fine sayings: “Haste makes waste.”

Since Maggie had immediately claimed the baby was his, and had remained firm in her opinion, he thought there might be some medical or scientific basis for her conviction, and if there was he was prepared to do his duty. But he wanted to know the science of it, not merely be told that women knew about such things.

In life was much pain; what man would want to bear it forever?

any man who was curious would want at last to enter the mystery, to walk the plains of the spirit land.

Hump was in no hurry to have his own life end, and yet the knowledge that it would end someday and that he would go to where the ...

Everybody knew of course that the Kickapoo people had come out of a hole in the earth at the time when there were only buffalo in the world. The Kickapoo had been chosen by the buffalo to be the first human beings; Father Buffalo himself had pawed open the hole and allowed the Kickapoo to come up from their deep caves.

Even well-informed journalists, writing for respectable papers, were not free of the risk of distortion.

he had seen a man of the East, a Buddhist monk who sat cross-legged in bright orange robes by the Charles River; the man was merely sitting,

Years had worn off the calendar, but what had changed? The river still flowed,

“Why, yes, we sometimes have a suicide or two, after a violent scrap,”

Augustus said. “I ain’t that much of a worker, myself. I can skip a chore now and then, if it’s a sunny day.” “I don’t know what sunny has to do with chores—they need to be done whether it’s sunny or not,” Call said.

Dichotomy

always, throughout his life, hatred had come easier to him than love.

It was, in a way, as if Long Bill were following them at an uncomfortable distance; as if he were out somewhere, in the thin scrub, hoping to be taken back into life.

What was it to couple with a man anyway? A little sweat, a jerk, a sigh.

“I would prefer to be shot, myself, if I get that sick,” Call said. “Once there’s no avoiding death I see no point in lingering.” Augustus smiled at the comment, and poured himself a little more whiskey. “We’re all just lingering, Woodrow,” he said.

As a rule he did not, like his friend Call, enjoy solitude.

Extro intro

Had her name been Sally? Or had it been Mary? Had her eyes been blue? Or had they been brown? He had danced with her once at a hoedown. Was it her father she had been with on the boat trip? Or was it her mother?

that girl—was it Mary or Sally, were her eyes blue or brown, was it her mother or her father she was in the boat with?—he had danced with at a hoedown

The simplest places, where there was only rock and sky, or water and rock, changed the least.

Captain McCrae might be going back to someplace that he had been before,

“I think he is going back to a place he has been before,” Famous Shoes said,

the plains did not encourage his dreams, as they once had.

He was hoping to find a place with a high mountain nearby. He thought it might be good to sit high up once in a while.

He thought living in a place where there were eagles to watch might encourage some pretty good dreams.

Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the first time around.

Sunlight flecked the cornmeal on her hands and forearms—a visitor might have thought that her hands and forearms were flecked with gold dust.