Lonesome Dove, Volume 2: Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry

KICKING WOLF could move without sound. When he decided to steal the Buffalo Horse he only took Three Birds with him-except for himself, Three Birds was the quietest warrior in the band. Fast Boy and Red Badger were brave fighters, but clumsy. They could not approach a horse herd in the soundless way that was required if a tricky theft was being contemplated. Kicking Wolf prayed every night that he could keep his grace with animals-few Comanches could go into a horse herd at night without alarming the horses. Buffalo Hump could not do such delicate work, not at all. He was a great raider, Kicking Wolf acknowledged. Buffalo Hump could run off many horses, and kill whatever white men or Mexicans got in his way. But he could not go into a horse herd at night and steal a mare or a stallion-he was too impatient, and he did not bother to disguise his smell. Mainly, he was a fighter, not a thief.

Kicking Wolf, though, was very careful about his smell, and he had instructed Three Birds how to eliminate his odor before going into a horse herd. Kicking Wolf would eat little, for a day or two before a raid. He wanted his body to empty out its smells. Then he gathered herbs and rubbed them on himself, on his armpits, on his privates, on his feet. He chewed sweet roots to make his breath inoffensive. He prepared carefully, but mainly it was his grace, his ability to move without sound, that enabled him to go into a herd of strange horses at night and not alarm them. He wanted to be able to move close to the horses and stroke them-he wanted the stroking to begin before the horse was even aware that a man was there. Once he had the horse's trust he could move through the herd seeing that all the horses stayed calm. It was important to start with a horse that had calmness in him-often Kicking Wolf would study a horse herd for a few days, until he had selected the horse that he would approach first-it had to be a horse with calmness in it, a horse unlikely to panic.