Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4) QUOTES

2 " The thing that Buffalo Hump was most grateful for, as he rode into the emptiness, was the knowledge that in the years of his youth and manhood he had drawn the lifeblood of so many enemies. He had been a great killer; it was his way and the way of his people; no one in his tribe had killed so often and so well. The killings were good to remember, as he rode his old horse deeper into the llano, away from all the places where people came. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

4 " I suppose she's just dying of living--that's the one infection that strikes us all down, sooner or later. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

6 " A man can only do a given thing so many times with freshness and spirit--then, no matter what it is, it becomes like an office task. I enjoy cards and whoring, but even cards and whoring can grow boresome. You tup your wife a thousand times and that becomes an office task, too. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

8 " The buffalo will return," Kicking Wolf said. "They have only gone to the north for a while. The buffalo have always returned."

"You are a fool," Buffalo Hump said. "The buffalo won't return, because they are dead. The whites have killed them. When you go north you will only find their bones."

"The whites have killed many, but not all," Kicking Wolf insisted. "They have only gone to the Missouri River to live. When beaten the whites back we have they will return."

But, as he was speaking, Kicking Wolf suddenly lost heart. He realized that Buffalo Hump was right, and that the words he had just spoken were the words of a fool. The Comanches were not beating the whites, and they were not going to beat them. Only their own band and three or four others were still free Comanches. The bands that were free were the bands that could survive on the least, those who would eat small animals and dig roots from the earth. Already the bluecoat soldiers had come back to Texas and begun to fill up the old forts, places they had abandoned while they fought one another. Even if all the free tribes banded together there would not be enough warriors to defeat the bluecoat soldiers. With the buffalo gone so far north, the white soldiers had only to drive them farther and farther into the llano, until they starved or gave up.

"The whites are not foolish," Buffalo Hump said. "They know that it is easier to kill a buffalo than it is to kill one of us. They know that if they kill all the buffalo we will starve – then they won't have to fight us. Those who don't want to starve will have to go where the whites want to put them."

The two men sat in silence for a while. Some young men were racing their horses a little farther down the canyon. Kicking Wolf usually took a keen interest in such contests. He wanted to know which horses were fastest. But today he didn't care. He felt too sad.

"The medicine men are deceiving the young warriors when they tell them the buffalo will return," Buffalo Hump said. "If any buffalo come back they will only be ghost buffalo. Their ghosts might return because they remember these lands. But that will not help us. We cannot eat their ghosts. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

10 " Buffalo Hump wanted to see the ocean because the ocean would always be as it was. Few things could stay forever in the way they were when the spirits made them. Even the great plains of grass, the home of the People, would not be always as it had been. The whites would bring their plows and scar the earth; they would their put cattle on it and the cattle would bring the ugly mesquite trees. The grass that had been high forever would be trampled and torn. The llano would not be always as it had been. The ocean and the stars were eternal, things whose power and mystery were greater than the powers of men. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

12 " 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. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

14 " It wasn’t merely damage done by the sun that was causing him to slip suddenly into Greek; it was the Scull dementia, damage from the broken seed. His father, Evanswood Scull, intermittently mad but a brilliant linguist, used to stomp into the nursery, thundering out passages in Latin, Greek, Icelandic, and Old Law French, a language which it was said that he was the only man in America to have a thorough mastery "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

16 " As they were riding north, Buffalo Hump brought up the matter of his name again. “People who are named for parts of the body can only be jokesters and clowns,” Buffalo Hump told him. “Look at Straight Elbow—his name ruined him. If you were named for your scrotum it would be the same. No matter how hard you fought in battle, people would get tickled when they said your name. Soon you would forget about being brave. It would be enough that you were funny. You would only be a clown. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

18 " Though a Kickapoo, the man had respect for the old ways. 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. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)

20 " Maybe," Gus said. "We've had a lot of practice, going on expeditions for nothing. That's how it mostly turned out. You ride awhile in one direction and then you turn around and ride back. "

― Larry McMurtry , Comanche Moon (Lonesome Dove, #4)