Lonesome Dove, Volume 2: Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry

FAMOUS SHOES was eating a good fat mallard duck when the Comanche boys found him. He had noticed some ducks on the south Canadian and had crept down to the water and made a clever snare, during the night. His trip to the Washita had been a disappointment. He did not find his grandmother, who had gone to live on the sweet-grass hills near the Arkansas River, but he did find his Aunt Neeta, a quarrelsome old woman who was living with some mixed-blood trapping people in a filthy little camp. The trapping people mostly trapped skunks and muskrats-there were hides everywhere, some of them pretty smelly. The minute he arrived his aunt began to upbraid him about a knife she had lent him years before which he had broken accidentally. At the time he had been trying to remove a good length of chain from an old wagon that had fallen apart on the prairies. He thought the chain might come in handy, but all the chain did was break the tip off his aunt's knife. Only the tip was broken, most of the knife would still cut, but his Aunt Neeta considered that the knife was now useless and had never forgiven Famous Shoes for his carelessness. Famous Shoes only stayed on the Washita long enough to be courteous, before making his way back to the south Canadian, where he discovered the little flock of fat ducks.

Then the five Comanche boys showed up and began to talk about killing him. One of the boys wanted to kill him immediately, just because he was a Kickapoo, and another because he had scouted for Big Horse Scull. The rudest boy, though, was Blue Duck, who wanted to kill him just because he was there. Famous Shoes did not think the boys would do him much harm. In any case he was hungry-he went on eating the duck while the boys walked around him, saying ugly things. They were just boys, it was normal that they would strut around and make rude remarks. The boys had been chasing a deer when they found him, but they had lost its track. Famous Shoes had seen the deer only that morning, running east. The Comanche boys were so impatient that they had overlooked a plain track and let the deer get away. The deer had looked exhausted, too-the boys would have had it if only they had kept their minds on their business.