Free Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry Page B

livestock; he would never be able to follow their trail from the brush country to the empty plains.
    Besides, he had left home to be gone two weeks or more; he might not yet even realize that his cabin was burned, his baby dead, his pigs scattered, and his family stolen. Once he did discover it, there would be little he could do.
    Yet Maudy held on to hope, for Bessie and Dan if not herself. She didn't know why the young Comanche Tana hated her so, but in his eyes she saw her death. She had seen children brought back from Comanche captivity before, and most recovered.
    Bessie and Dan were sturdy children; they would recover too. But for herself she had no hope.
    She and William had discussed the prospect of capture many times; everyone who farmed on the frontier knew women who had been taken. In those discussions William had always firmly instructed Maudy to kill herself rather than submit to savage outrage. There was always a loaded pistol in the cabin, just for that purpose.
    William hated Indians. His parents and both his brothers had been killed in Indian raids on the Sabine River. More important to William even than the lives of his children was the knowledge that his wife, Maudy, would not be sullied by the embraces of red Comanches.
    Maudy knew William was not alone in that feeling. Many men on the frontier made clear to their wives that they would not be accepted back, if they were taken and allowed themselves to survive. Of course, some men wavered and took their wives back anyway; but William Clark had nothing but scorn for such men. A woman who had lain with a Comanche, or any Indian, could not again hope to be a respectable wife.
    So Maudy knew she was lost--she had been nursing little Sal when the braves burst in. It was a moment of deep peace, her last. She was caught before she could reach the pistol. That night, when Tana began his outraging, Maudy knew that her life with William Clark was lost and gone.
    William would not think her worth recovery.
    Even the children, if they were not brought back quickly, he might disown. But Maudy couldn't think about that; she had to concentrate on keeping her children alive.
    She had to see that they got warmth, and food, and that they did not provoke their captors by lagging or crying.
    At first, as they rose onto the plains and the weather grew sharp, clothes were the first worry. Their farm was in the south; the three of them were lightly clad. All that remained of the cotton dress she had been wearing was a few scraps tied around her loins. When the cold deepened, the Indians let her cover the children with a bit of old blanket at night. She herself had nothing. She had not yet recovered from the birth of little Sal, a fact lost on her captors. She awoke in the morning from her few minutes of restless sleep with blood frozen on her legs. She feared, for a time, that she might bleed to death, but she didn't, though at times she was so weak that her vision swam.
    Fortunately an older man, whose name was Quick Antelope, was not so cruel as Tana. He joined in her torment, but without enthusiasm, and was kindly toward the children. When she could not interest them in taking food, Quick Antelope made a soup which tempted them. Once when Tana began to beat her with a heavy stick, murder in his eyes, Quick Antelope took the stick from him and made him calm down.
    It was not until later that she learned the older warrior's name. At first the only name she knew was Tana, the young man with the deep burn of hatred in his eyes, the man who beat her hardest and devised the most intricate torments for her. It was Tana who hit her with hot sticks from the fire, who outraged her longest, and spat on her if she tried to resist.
    The night after they left Eddie, Maudy began to sob and could not stop. She thought of her boy, lying in the thin grass with his broken head, dying alone, and the wall around her feelings broke.
    She began to sob so loudly that all the warriors grew angry.