Dead Man's Walk

“Not unless lightning struck half of them,” Bigfoot said. “I was watching you youngsters take target practice yesterday. Half of you couldn’t hit your foot if your gun barrel was resting on it.”

Shadrach conversed a little more with the old woman. When he finished, she began to wail again. The sound was so irritating that Call felt like putting cotton in his ears, but he had no cotton.

“She don’t know nothing about Gomez,” Shadrach said. “I think your dern dream was off.”

“We’ll see,” Bigfoot said. He didn’t press the issue, not with Shadrach, a man who trusted no opinions except his own.

Gus McCrae got to his feet. He wanted to test his leg, in case he had to run again. He walked slowly over and picked up his rifle. His hip didn’t hurt much, but he felt uneasy in his stomach. When the lance stuck in his hip he saw it rather than felt it. He was even able to hold the shaft of the lance off the ground as he ran. Now, even in the midst of his fellow Rangers, the fear he felt then wouldn’t leave him. He had the urge to hide someplace. Gus had never supposed he would run from any man, yet he felt as if he should still be running. He needed to get farther from Buffalo Hump than he was, and as fast as he could. He just didn’t know where to run.

Matilda thought the tall Tennessee boy looked a little green around the gills. Though she was stiff with Gus when he importuned her, she liked the boy, and winced when the lance was being pulled out. He was a lively boy, brash but not really bad. Once or twice she had even extended him credit—he seemed to need it so,and a minute or less did for him, usually. She could occasionally spare a minute for a brash boy with a line of gab.

“Sit down, Gussie,” she said. “You oughtn’t to be exercising too much just yet.”

“Let him exercise, it might keep that leg from stiffening up,” the Major said. “It’s a good thing that wound bled like it did.”

“Yes, good,” Sam said. “Otherwise he be dying soon.”

“Comanches dip their lances in dog shit,” Bigfoot informed them. “You don’t want to get that much dog inside you, if you can help it. Better to bleed it out. “

“Sit down, Gussie,” Matilda said again. “Sit down by me, unless you don’t like me anymore.”

Gus hobbled over and sat down by Matilda. He was a little surprised that she had been so inviting. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her anymore, it was that he liked her too much; for a moment he had an urge to throw himself into Matilda’s lap and cry. Of course, such an action would be the ruin of him, among the hardened Rangers. Rather than cry, he scooted as close to Matilda’s comforting bulk as he could get without actually sitting in her lap. He gulped a time or two, but managed not to break down and sob. He saw old Shadrach mount his horse and ride off into the darkness. Shadrach said not a word, and no one tried to stop him or ask him where he was going.

“Doesn’t he know that big Comanche with the hump is still out there?” Gus asked. He thought the old man must be completely daft, to ride into the darkness with such an Indian near.

Call, too, was shocked by Shadrach’s departure. Buffalo Hump was out there, and even Shadrach would be no match for him. No one Call knew would be a match for him — not alone; Call felt sure of that, although he had only seen the man for a second, in the flash of a lightning strike.

But Shadrach left, with no one offering him a word of caution. Bigfoot didn’t seem to give Shadrach’s departure a se’cond thought, and Major Chevallie merely frowned a little when he saw the mountain man ride away.

“What now, Major?” Ezekiel Moody asked. It was a question everyone would have liked an answer to, but Major Chevallie ignored the question. He said nothing.

Ezekiel looked at Josh Corn, and Josh Corn looked at Rip Green.Long Bill looked at Bob Bascom, who looked at one-eyed Johnny Carthage.

“Now where would Shad be going, this time of night?” Johnny asked. “It’s no time to be exercising your mount—not if it means leaving the troop, not if you ask me.”

“I didn’t hear Shad ask you, Johnny,” Bigfoot said.

“That’s twice today he’s left, though,” the Major said. “It’s vexing.

Bigfoot walked over to the edge of the camp, lay flat down, and pressed his ear to the ground.

“Is he listening for worms—does he mean to fish?” Gus asked Call, perplexed by Bigfoot’s behaviour.

“No, he’s listening for horses—Comanche horses,” Matilda said. “Shut up and let him listen.”

Bigfoot soon stood up and came back to the fire.

“Nobody’s coming right this minute,” he said. “If there were hundreds of horses on the move, I’d hear them.”

“That don’t mean they won’t show up tomorrow, though,” he added.

“Why tomorrow?” several men asked at once. Tomorrow was only an hour or two away.

“Full moon,” Bigfoot said. “It’s what they call the Comanche moon. They like to raid into Mexico, down this old war trail, when the moon is full. They like that old Comanche moon.”

Major Chevallie knew he had only about an hour in which to decide on a course of action. Of course the old woman might be daft; there might be no plan to raid Chihuahua City and no great war party, hundreds of warriors strong, headed down from the Llano Estacado to terrorize the settlements in Mexico and Texas. It might all simply be the ravings of an old woman who was afraid of having her nose cut off.

But if what the old woman said was true, then the settlements needed to be warned. That many warriors moving south would threaten the whole frontier. All the farms west of the Austin-San Antonio line would be vulnerable—even half a dozen warriors split off from the main bunch could burn homesteads, steal children, and generally wreak havoc.

The devil of it was that they were just at the midpoint of theirexploration, as far from the settlements to the east as they were from the Pass of the North. Striking on west to El Paso might be the safest option for his troop—the war trail ran well east of El Paso. On the other hand, Buffalo Hump already knew they were there, and knew he was only up against a few men. If he had a large force at his disposal, he might pursue them simply for his pleasure. He no doubt knew that the two scalp hunters were with them. Scalping a scalp hunter was a pursuit that would interest any Indian, Comanche or Apache.

Turning east would mean the end of their mission—and they were only a week or two from completing it—and would also take them directly across the path of the raiders, if there were raiders. They would have to depend on speed and luck, if they turned east.

What was certain was that a decision had to be made, and made soon. He had no shackles on his men—Rangers mostly served because they wanted to; if they stopped wanting to, they might all do what Shadrach had just done. They might just ride off. The youngsters, Call and McCrae, would stay, of course. They were too green to strike out for themselves. But the more experienced men were unlikely to sit around and wait for his decision much past sunup. The sight of the buffalo lance sticking out of Augustus McCrae’s hip was vivid in their minds. They wouldn’t be inclined to play cards, or solicit Matilda, or shoot at cactus pods, not with a big war party swooping down the plains toward them.

The Major sighed. Going to jail in Baltimore was beginning to look like it might have some advantages. He walked over to Bigfoot —the tall scout was idly chewing on a chaparral twig.

“That old woman’s blind,” the Major said. “Do you think she was right about the raiding party? Maybe Shadrach misunderstood her about the figures. Maybe she was talking about some raid that took place thirty years ago.”

Bigfoot spat out the twig. “Maybe,” he said. “But maybe not.”

Bigfoot was thinking about how lucky the two young Rangers were—young Gus particularly. To walk right up on Buffalo Hump and live to tell about it was luck not many men could claim. Even to have seen the humpbacked chief was more than many experienced men could claim. He himself had glimpsed Buffalo Hump once, in a sleet storm near the Clear Fork of the Brazos, several years earlier. He had stepped out of a little post-oak thicket and looked up to see the humpbacked chief aiming an arrow at him. Just as Buffalo Hump loosed the arrow, Bigfoot stepped on an ice-glazed root and lost his footing. The arrow glanced off the bowie knife stuck in his belt. He rolled and brought his rifle up, but by the time he did, the Comanche was gone. That night, afraid to make a fire for fear Buffalo Hump would find him, he almost froze. The large feet that produced his nickname turned as numb as stone.