"You know when you come to me tired like you are, I will always walk to you, slowly, and bring you a cup of water, like right now..."
-Hazizah, to me, as she placed one of her beautiful kaftans over me. 2007.
And now presenting one of the greatest scores for an epic film ever composed in the history of cinema. An ode and a raise of a glass to travelers everywhere bound for wherever they are bound. May those trails be clear, the chuck wagons always stocked, and your cartridge belts full for whatever comes over these hills yonder.
LARRY MCMURTRY'S LONESOME DOVE. PART II OF THE 'TEXAS' AND 'COMANCHE MOON' TRILOGY.
LLANO ESTACADO (THE STAKED PLAINS), TEXAS, 1860
In the folklore of the Old West, the Goodnight-Loving Cattle Trail has become the very icon of the bravery, absolute prowess in battle and in the saddle, and ingenuity of the Texan Cowboy. Straddling over a thousand miles of rough and inhospitable terrain from the Staked Plains to the Badlands of the Dakotas, the Goodnight-Loving Trail would become the lifeline of a fledgling United States as a global industrial power in the late 19th century.
However, it's beginnings was hardly glorious. In the wake of the great Comanche warpath into the Southwest from 1842 to 1859 that had seen thousands of lives brutally taken and entire societies massacred and burned to ashes, the Staked Plains was the Land of Death. No Anglo, Mexican, or any Native tribesman other than Comanche dared to venture into it's bleak expanse. In these wastelands, a new breed of bandits was forming that would become even more dreaded than their predecessors. Called "Comancheros", or "those who followed the way of the Comanche", they were a hodgepodge of Army deserters, cutthroat criminals, escaped prisoners, Mexican banditos, and former partakers of the grisly human scalp trade of the Southwest, their brutality towards anything in their path would be horrific and their deeds only discussed in whispers, but the treasures they amassed would also be sought after by the most daring adventurers. One of these treasures would be a vast herd of over 1500 cattle, which had originally been taken from Mexican settlements during the first Comanche attacks, but as the wasteland of war grew, they became almost wild, wandering the long grass prairies deep inside Comanchero territory. The Mexicans called it "abuela's, or "grandmother's" herds, a nod to their origins from south of Laredo, but no one wanted to be the few who ventured into the Staked Plains and never returned.
That would soon change. On a pitch black night of the summer new moon in 1860, a band of 200 Texans slowly made their way into the Land of Death of the Comancheros. The group was comprised of Texas Rangers from various county commands, other Texas militiamen from the newly formed State Guard in anticipation of Texas becoming a member of the Confederate States, and privateers seeking prospects of adventure and answering the calls to rescue numerous hostages that have been taken by the bandits. They were led by a young rancher named Charles Goodnight, who had taken a break from his service as a frontier ranger to try his hand in the new and fledgling ranching industry. Dismounting their horses, they quietly plodded across the rare stream and snaked their way through the grass, stopping occasionally to check their approach. Soon, they found their mark in the darkness. A row of muffled campfires shining like beacons up ahead, and the raucous clattering of liquor bottles against stone. A hushed order went down the row and the Texans swiftly mounted their horses, checked their Colt revolvers, and in mechanical precision, arranged into a line of battle 100 yards long.
For the members of the bandit camp, it had been another uneventful night. The scofflaws, after having inspected the ropes that bound their captives in makeshift stockades, had started drinking early and as the dawn approached, even the guards that they posted along the edge of their camp looking out into the black expanse had let their carbines and muskets fall to ground as they stumbled about, cursing and singing profane tunes. In defiance of their leader about keeping their fires low as to maintain as low profile as possible, the Comancheros piled wood and grass onto the blazes and lit up the prairie in a great hue of orange and crimson. Perhaps a few of them had seen the glint of polished metal revolver barrels far in the distance, or heard the clinking of tackle as riders advanced at a trot, then at full gallop, but if they had tried to sound the alarm, it was already too late. Suddenly, cries of "ATAQUE!" and "DIOS MIO!" came from the drunken guards celebrating at the fires in front of the camp. Other bandits, groggily rising from inebriated slumber, desperately tried to get to their rifles. But the Texans were already upon them. Advancing in a single unbroken line, the riders clad in buckskins and State Guard gray slammed into the bandit camp like a sledgehammer. The night was pierced by flashes from revolvers and the great resounding booms of heavy caliber slug guns. The few Comancheros who had managed to grab their rifles fell where they stood, their bodies pierced by .36 caliber balls. Others tried to extract themselves from their sleeping bags, only to be shot by the Texans as they galloped through the camp. By morning, almost all of the bandits who had been at the camp at the start of the raid had been killed, others shot down as they threw up their muskets in surrender as the rules of civilized warfare did not apply to cutthroat killers and the Texans, having been time and time again ravaged by the attacks of the Comancheros, were in no mood to take prisoners or march them back to the settlements to stand trial for their crimes. Over 40 hostages, including Mexican children and members of the Lipan Apache tribe, who were staunch allies of the Texans against the Comanche, were recovered alive. Over 1000 cattle were also recovered that night, and it would mark the beginning of the legendary Goodnight-Loving ranching enterprise that would thrive over the next 8 years even as arduous years of war came and went in the East and the nation recovered from it's bloodshed to become an industrial and economic powerhouse of the rapidly changing world.
my moms not fat
