'Maybe--or they might take after us both,' Call said.
Famous Shoes thought that the little spring must be holy. The old people who had talked about it said it was near the place where the People had come out of the earth.
Now only a few birds and the Antelope Comanche knew where it was. If the spring .was holy it might not want to give its water to strangers; that might be why it flowed so slowly.
He was glad when the horses and the men had finished drinking--he did not want to disturb the spring that might be holy by taking too much from it.
When Buffalo Hump awoke he reached for his lance, but Blue Duck had already taken it.
Buffalo Hump had been deep in a dream--in his dream he had seen millions of buffalo grazing, as they had grazed on the plains in his youth. Because of the buffalo, he did not want to wake up. He wanted to dream his way into the spirit world, where Comanches rode forever. For that reason he had tried to ignore the voices that he had begun to hear in his dream.
The voices were not the voices of Comanches, and they were not ghosts. For that reason he tried to ignore them, to stay in his comfortable sleep, dreaming of buffalo.
But the voices were too loud; soon he felt the prickling in his senses that he always felt when an enemy was near, or when there was some threat from the wild. Once the prickling awakened him when a herd of buffalo were stampeding toward the place where he rested. He had had to mount quickly and ride for his life. Another time the prickling saved him from a great she-bear, angry because a hunter had killed her cub; many times it had alerted him to the approach of human enemies, some of them Indian and some of them white.
Buffalo Hump had come to the place of black rocks to die. He wanted to help his spirit slip away from his body, and, for that reason, he ignored the prickling and the voices. It was when he felt the point of his own lance touch his side that he could ignore the voices no longer.
He opened his eyes and rose to his feet, but he was stiff; he rose slowly, and, anyway, it was too late. Blue Duck had his lance. It was Blue Duck who had poked him in the ribs with his own lance: he thrust with it again, but this time Buffalo Hump blocked the lance with his buffalo skull shield, which he had kept in his lap as he slept.
The lance point hit the shield and, for a moment, stuck in the thick bone of the buffalo's skull.
Buffalo Hump held on to his shield, Blue Duck to the lance. The men with Blue Duck, one half-breed and one white, watched the brief moment of pushing and pulling silently. One of them held the short bow that Buffalo Hump had brought with him. It was plain, though, that the man could not shoot the bow. He had merely taken it so Buffalo Hump could not shoot at them with the small arrows that were only good for killing rabbits and other small game. The third man was short and misshapen, with eyes like a goat. Buffalo Hump saw that the men were comancheros or renegades of some kind, low men his son had brought with him on his errand of killing.
Finally, with a jerk that almost pulled Buffalo Hump out of the circle of black rocks, Blue Duck freed the end of the lance. He did not speak and neither did Buffalo Hump. It was obvious that Blue Duck had learned of his departure from the camp and had followed him to kill him. It was clear, too, that Blue Duck wanted to kill him badly, for he had gone to a great deal of trouble to follow him to the place of the black rocks. He and his two comancheros might have starved.
Rather than talk, Buffalo Hump took out his knife, the one weapon left to him. A knife was not much use against a lance but was all he had to fight with; and it .was a knife that had pierced the vitals of many enemies. Buffalo Hump had taken the knife off the body of a bluecoat soldier near the Rio Concho many years before.
Blue Duck was smiling--he knew it would be easy to kill an old man who had only a knife to fight with. Besides the lance, he and his men had several guns.
'I reckon you took too long a nap, old man,' Blue Duck said. He moved just outside the ring of rocks, holding the lance as if he might throw it.
Buffalo Hump saw from the awkward way Blue Duck held the lance that he had not changed. He seemed undecided as to whether to throw the lance or jab with it. Any well-trained Comanche, who knew how to use a lance, could have killed the young fool in only a few seconds.
Buffalo Hump felt the scorn he had always felt at Blue Duck's crude disregard of the old weapons. He saw that Blue Duck rode a Mexican saddle and had a buffalo gun strapped to it. But such failings didn't matter now. His son had come to kill him and had even awakened him from his death sleep to do it. All that was left was one fight, and since his son had brought two well-armed helpers, it would not be a long fight. Buffalo Hump crouched a little and waited, hoping Blue Duck would be fool enough to grapple with him. Even though he was weak, Buffalo Hump still trusted his skill with the knife. If Blue Duck were fool enough to come near him, Buffalo Hump meant to slash at his throat. Several times he had opened an enemy's windpipe so cleanly that the enemy would not even know he had been touched until blood blew out with the bubbles of air.
For a minute, there was a circling. Blue Duck shifted the lance from hand to hand; Buffalo Hump held his knife and his shield. Buffalo Hump knew that he could not move well. One of his legs had stiffened when he slept, and it was still stiff. All he could do was wait and hope Blue Duck made some foolish mistake. Buffalo Hump began to sing his war cry as he waited. His voice cracked as he sang, but he wanted his three enemies to know that he was still a Comanche warrior, a man who sang as he went into battle.
The three men looked amused when he began to sing. They thought it was funny that an old man would sing as he was about to be killed. They were men so degraded that they didn't realize it was a warrior's special obligation to sing in battle and to raise a death song if it was clear that the battle was going against him. Other warriors who might be fighting with him would need to hear that their chief was still making war; if it had to be that he must die in the fighting, then, particularly, the spirits needed to be offered a death song, so that they could welcome the warrior into the spirit world once he had fallen.
The comancheros didn't know these things.
They merely thought he was a silly old man, singing in a weak voice to the men who were about to kill him.
Then Blue Duck disappeared. The other two men pulled knives and waved them at him, though they didn't come within the circle of rocks.
Buffalo Hump, his vision wavery, realized that his son must have slipped behind him; before he could turn to face him, Blue Duck, who was young and nimble, struck full force with the lance. Buffalo Hump had tried to turn but the stiff leg had kept him from being able to pivot as he once had. He had twisted, and then the lance struck his hump. It went in but did not go through, though the force of the blow knocked Buffalo Hump on his face; dust was in his nostrils. He didn't feel the piercing at all, only the force of the blow. Blue Duck tried to push the lance through,
