were more numerous than ever, and better armed. Even a simple raid on a small farm--j a couple and their children--cd seldom be accomplished without a warrior or two falling to the white man's guns. Even the Mexicans in poor villages were better armed now. Once, the mere appearance of a single Comanche warrior could cause such panic in the villages of Mexico that the men could ride in and take captives almost at will; but now even the smallest, poorest villages were apt to put up stiff resistance.
Also, now, the Texans came with bluecoat soldiers, andwith agents who talked to the elders of the People about the advantages of reservation life. Some of the chiefs and elders, tired of running and fighting, had begun to listen to these agents of the Texans. So far the Comanches were still a free people, but Buffalo Hump knew, and the elders knew as well, that they could not simply scare the whites away by tortures and killings, or by taking a few captives now and then. There were too many Texans--too many. The very thought of them made him weary and sad.
Finally, when he had finished with his marrow bone, he tossed it aside and looked up at Blue Duck. The boy was tall and strong, but also rude, impatient, disrespectful.
'If you saw Gun In The Water, why didn't you kill him for me?' he asked his son.
'You should have brought me his hair.' Blue Duck was annoyed--he had brought his father a report on the Texans and had not expected criticism.
'He was with Big Horse Scull,' he said.
'He had twelve men with him.' He stopped, uncertain. Surely his father did not expect him to kill twelve men, on a day when the sleet was so bad a horse could not run without slipping.
Buffalo Hump merely looked at Blue Duck. He was gaunt now; his great hump was a weight he had grown tired of carrying. Once it had scarcely slowed him, but now he had to manage carefully if he was to avoid embarrassment.
'You can kill him. I give him to you,' he said to Blue Duck. 'Do you think you can kill him tomorrow?' 'I told you he was with Big Horse,' Blue Duck said. The old man annoyed him.
He knew that his father had been the greatest Comanche leader ever to ride the plains--f the age of ten, Blue Duck had been allowed to ride with him on raids and had seen how terrible his anger was against the Mexicans and the whites. No one in the tribe could throw a lance as far and as accurately as Buffalo Hump--and only Kicking Wolf was as quick and deadly with the bow. Though nowadays his father raided less, he was still a man to be feared. But he was older; he no longer had the strength of the bear, and the ugly hump, though it might scare the Texans, was just an ugly mound of gristle on the old man's back. It had white hairs sticking out of it. Soon his father would just be an old chief, worn out, no longer able to raid; the young warriors would soon cease to follow him. He would just be an old man, sitting on his deer hides sucking at greasy bones.
'If you can't kill Gun In The Water, kill the other one--kill McCrae,' Buffalo Hump suggested. 'Or if you are too lazy to kill a strong fighting man, then kill the Buffalo Horse.' 'Kill the Buffalo Horse?' Blue Duck asked. He knew he was being insulted, but he tried to hold his temper. Buffalo Hump had his lance at his side, and he was still quick with it.
The ranger they called 'Big Horse'-- Scull, the great captain--rode the Buffalo Horse. Why ask him to kill the horse--why not ask him to kill Scull?
'I will kill Scull,' Blue Duck said.
'Later we can kill the Buffalo Horse--he is so big it will take all winter to eat him.' Buffalo Hump regretted that his son was boastful. Blue Duck thought he could kill anybody. He hadn't learned that some men were harder to kill than even the great grizzly bears.
Once the great bears had lived in the Palo Duro, and along the broken ledge that the whites called the caprock. In his youth, Buffalo Hump had killed three of the great bears. It had not been easy. One of his legs bore a scar from the claws of the last of these bears--when he went into battle he wore a necklace made from that bear's teeth and claws.
Now there were none of the great bears in the Palo Duro or along the caprock. They had all gone north, to the high mountains, to escape the guns of the Texans. Now his boastful son stood before him, a boy with none of the wisdom of the great bears. Blue Duck thought he could kill Scull, but Buffalo Hump knew better.
Big Horse Scull was a short man, but a great fighter--even without a weapon he would win against Blue Duck. He would tear open Blue Duck's throat with his teeth, if he had to.
Scull might suffer injuries, but he would win.
'You can't kill Big Horse,' Buffalo Hump told the boy, bluntly. Blue Duck was tall and strong, but he was awkward. He had not yet learned how to run smoothly. He was too lazy to learn to use the old weapons--he could not throw a lance accurately, or hit an animal with an arrow. He wore a great knife that he had taken off a dead soldier, but he did not know how to fight with a knife. Without his gun he was helpless, and he was too foolish even to realize that he might lose his gun, or that it might misfire. Buffalo Hump liked weapons that he had made himself, and could depend on. He chose the wood for his own arrows; he scraped and honed the shafts and set the points himself. He chose the wood for his bow and saw that the bowstrings were of tough sinew. Every night, before turning to his women, he looked at his weapons, felt them, tested them; he made sure his lance head was securely set. If he had to fight in the night, he wanted to be ready. He did not want to jump into a fight and discover that he had mislaid his weapons or that they were not in good working order.
All Blue Duck knew of weapons was how to push bullets into a pistol or a rifle. He was a boy, too ill prepared to give battle to a warrior as fierce as Big Horse Scull. Unless he was lucky he would not even be able to kill Gun In The Water, who had been too quick for his other, better son, in the encounter on the Brazos years before.
'I did not give you Big Horse, I gave you Gun In The Water,' Buffalo Hump said. 'Go take him if you can.' 'There are only twelve Texans, and Big Horse,' Blue Duck said. 'We have many warriors. We could kill them all.' 'Why have they come?' Buffalo Hump asked.
'I have done no raiding. I have been killing buffalo.' 'They are chasing Kicking Wolf,' Blue Duck said. 'He stole many horses.' Buffalo Hump was annoyed--Kicking Wolf had gone raiding without even asking him if he cared to go, too. Besides, he did not feel well. In bitter weather an ache made his bones hurt--the ache seemed to start in his hump. It made his bones throb as if someone were pounding them with a club.
The cold and sleet were of little moment--he had lived with plains weather all his life. But in recent years the ache in his bones had come, forcing him to pay more attention to the cold weather. He had to be sure, now, that his lodges were warm.
'Why are you talking to me about killing these Texans?' he asked Blue Duck. 'If it is Kicking Wolf who has
