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 brought them, let him kill them." Blue Duck was disgusted with the old man's attitude. The whites were only a few miles away. With only half the warriors in their camp they could kill the whites easily. Maybe they could even capture Gun In The Water and torture him. It was easy to cripple a man when the footing was so bad. His father would at last have his vengeance and they could all boast that they had finished Big Horse Scull, a ranger who had been killing Comanches almost as long as Buffalo Hump, his father, had been killing whites.
Yet Buffalo Hump just sat there, tilted sideways a little from the weight of the ugly hump, sucking marrow from buffalo bones. Blue Duck knew his father didn't like Kicking Wolf. The two had quarrelled often: over women, over horses, over the best routes into Mexico, over what villages to raid, over captives. Why let Kicking Wolf have the glory of killing Big Horse and his rangers?
It was on Blue Duck's tongue to call the old man a coward, to tell him it was time he stayed with the old men, time he let the young warriors decide when to fight and who to attack.
But, just as Blue Duck was about to speak, Buffalo Hump looked up at him. The older man had been fiddling with the knife he used to split the buffalo leg bone--suddenly his eyes were as cold as the snake's. Blue Duck could never avoid a moment of fear, when his father's eyes became the eyes of a snake. He choked off his insult--he knew that if he spoke, he might, in an instant, find himself fighting Buffalo Hump. He had seen it happen before, with other warriors. Someone would say one ^w too many, would fail to see the snake in his father's eyes, and the next moment Buffalo Hump would be pulling his long bloody knife from between the other warrior's ribs.
Blue Duck waited. He knew that it was not a day to fight his father.
"Why are you standing there?" Buffalo Hump asked. "I want to think. I gave you Gun In The Water. If you want to fight in the sleet, go fight." "Can I take some warriors?" Blue Duck asked. "Maybe we could take him and bring him back alive." "No," Buffalo Hump said. "Kill him if you are able, but I won't give you the warriors." Angered, Blue Duck turned. He thought the old man was trying to provoke him--perh his father was seeking a fight. But Buffalo Hump was not even looking at him, and had just put his knife back in its sheath.