Dead Man's Walk

Rosa, still tied, sat by a little bush near Buffalo Hump’s horse. She had seen the two traders looking at her—she felt no hope. Either the white men or the Comanches would use her and kill her. She watched the sand spuming over the ridge as the wind gusted. She wished she could simply lie down and be covered with sand; be dead; be at peace. She watched the sand come, and tried not to think.

Joe Nibbs was wondering the same thing as Sam—what could he offer Buffalo Hump that might make him part with the girl?

“I’ve got that old Gypsy glass,” he said. Some months before he had found a wagon and a dead man, an old Gypsy, on the Kansas plain near Fort Lawrence. Probably the old man had been killed by Pawnees, who had ripped up his body and his wagons, taken his whiskey, and left. Joe had happened to notice something shining through a crack in the wagon bed, and had discovered a ball of glass, or crystal, hidden so well that the Pawnees had not noticed it.

“He might want that glass,” he said, going to his wagon and taking the glass from a blanket he had wrapped it in. It was the size of a small melon. When you looked into it, it made your face elongated.

“It’s Gypsy glass—take it to your medicine man, he can use it for prophesying,” Joe said, offering the ball of glass to Buffalo Hump.

All the warriors crowded around, exclaiming at the way the glass made their faces long. Buffalo Hump thought the glass a very odd thing—he turned it over and over, and let his young braves handle it. It was clearly a thing of power, but he was not convinced that it could be used for prophesying.

“Yes, it’s a prophecy glass, that’s what it is,” Joe insisted. “Take it to your medicine man. It’ll tell him where the buffalo are, and when’s the best time to hunt. It’ll tell you when to go to war, and when to stay home.”

Buffalo Hump was not convinced, but as the afternoon waned, he began to want the glass. He wanted to take it home to his main camp and study it. Perhaps he would come to understand its power. His mother was old, and knew much. Perhaps she would understand why the glass made faces long.

He decided, though, to kill the traders, the old one and the young one, too. He meant to take all the knives; there were several more boxes in the wagons. With so many knives they would not need the traders for several winters; he did not want Joe Nibbs coming into his country with such a thing as the glass. If it was a prophecy glass, then it could do much evil. Some of his people grew sick and died, just from meeting with the whites. With such a glass the old trader might cause many deaths. The glass might be a trick, to spread death among the Comanches, to get their robes and their horses and their hunting lands. The whites were always coming, up the rivers and creeks, always north and west, toward the Comancheria. Buffalo Hump thought the glass was a bad sign. He would take it to the main camp and let the old ones see it—perhaps one of them would know what to do.

Buffalo Hump left them the Mexican girl and took his braves over the ridge, where the sand spumed. Then he told his braves that he had decided to kill the traders, take back the captives, and get all the knives. Kicking Wolf wanted to go back with him and catch the white men and torture them, but Buffalo Hump wouldn’t let him. Instead, he gave him the glass that might be evil, and rode back alone. When he crossed the ridge of blowing sand, the old white man had already tied the girl to a wagon wheel and was abusing her. The young white man sat on the tailgate of the wagon and waited his turn. Buffalo Hump walked quietly, over the soft sand. He had his lance, and a knife.

Sam Douglas sat on the wagon, trying to decide whether to take one of the nine-year-old Mexican girls, or wait for night, when old Joe would be sleeping. Then he could do what he pleased with Rosa. He had meant to leave the nine-year-olds alone, but after all, why should he? They were slaves. They were there. Old Joe was tiresome, when he had a new slave to abuse. He might keep Rosa tied to the wagon wheel for hours.

Then, before he knew it, Sam Douglas found himself doing the one thing he had vowed not to do: he looked straight into Buffalo Hump’s eyes.

It was a mistake: he knew it. He had thought the big Indian was gone. But there he was: the animal, the panther, the bear.

The next second, Buffalo Hump drove his knife straight down through Sam Douglas’s skull. One of the Mexican captives screamed. The old trader, Joe Nibbs, had his hammer in his hand. When he turned, Buffalo Hump threw the lance—the distance was short. Half the lance came out the other side of Joe Nibbs’s body and stuck in the ground, so that his torso was tilted slightly back. He was still alive; he dropped his hammer. Buffalo Hump picked it up and hit him at the base of the neck. Joe Nibbs’s head flopped back, like a chicken’s.

Then the warriors came back; they took the captives, the knives, the donkeys. They decided to burn the wagons and camp for the night; they could eat all the white men’s food.

Buffalo Hump could not get his knife out of Sam Douglas’s skull. It was stuck so deep that not even his strength was enough to pull it out. The braves laughed. Their own war chief had stuck a perfectly good knife into a white man’s skull so deeply that he could not get it out. Finally, Buffalo Hump smashed the skull with the old slaver’s hammer and freed his knife.

Rosa, the young captive, could not stop weeping. She hurt from what the man with the hammer had done to her. She wanted to be with her mother, her brother, and little sisters; but she knew she could not go home. She had been with the Comanche; the people of her village would consider her disgraced, if she went home. She wept, and listened to the sand; she wished that she could sleep beneath the sand, breathe it into her, and die. But she could not; she could only weep, and be cold, and wait for the big Comanche who sat nearby, holding the rawhide string that bound her wrists.

Later, not long before dawn, one of the donkeys began to whinny. The wind had shifted; now it blew from the west, and the donkey had smelled something. The horses pointed their ears to the west, but did not whinny. The braves around the campfire thought it wasan animal. Donkeys were cowards—they would whinny at a coyote, or even a badger. Fast Boy, who slept little, decided that the animal was probably a cougar. Perhaps the cougar they had seen earlier was following them, hoping to eat a donkey. The other braves laughed at Fast Boy, and laughed even more when he mounted his horse and loped off to look for the cougar. They thought it was ridiculous for Fast Boy to suppose he could find a cougar in the darkness.

When Fast Boy returned, running his horse, the sun was just rising. The wind was high; the sun was ringed with a haze of sand. Buffalo Hump was annoyed, when Fast Boy raced into camp. He did not approve of such behaviour. They were cooking horse meat from one of the old slaver’s horses. Fast Boy’s horse kicked dust on the meat, which was gritty enough, anyway.

But Buffalo Hump forgot his irritation when Fast Boy told him that a party of whites was camped only three miles to the west. It was a small party, mostly women, Fast Boy said. There were only four men and a boy, besides the women. But the news that made Buffalo Hump forgive the reckless riding and the gritty meat was that one of the men was Gun-In-The-Water, the young Ranger who had killed his son. When Buffalo Hump heard that, he began to put on his war paint—most of the other warriors put on their war paint, too. Kicking Wolf declined to bother—he did not like to paint himself. He made the point to Buffalo Hump that he himself could sneak over the hill and kill Gun-In-The-Water and all the whites in less time than it would take for Buffalo Hump and the other braves to paint themselves. Buffalo Hump ignored Kicking Wolf. Kicking Wolf had always thought his way of doing things was best. Buffalo Hump didn’t care what Kicking Wolf thought. He intended to paint himself properly. Then he would ride to where the whites were and do to Gun-In-The-Water what he had done to the old slaver: throw his lance so hard that it would go through him without killing him at once. Then, before he died, Buffalo Hump intended to scalp him and cut him. The scalp he would take home to his son’s mother, so she would know the boy had been correctly avenged.