Dead Man's Walk

Now the Major was stumping about, trying to convince himself that Shadrach and the old Comanche woman were wrong about the raiding party. The men were scared, and with good reason; the Major had still not been able to think of an order to give.

“Damn it, I hate to double back,” the Major said. “I was aiming to wet my whistle in El Paso.”

He mounted and walked his sorrel slowly around the camp for a few minutes—the horse was likely to crow-hop on nippy mornings. Shadrach came back while he was riding slowly around. Settling his horse gave the Major time to think, and time, also, to ease his head a little. He was prone to violent headaches, and had suffered one most of the night. But the sun was just rising. It looked to be a fine morning; his spirits improved and he decided to go on west. Turning back didn’t jibe with his ambitions. If he found a clear route to El Paso, he might be made a colonel, or a general even.

“Let’s go, boys—it’s west,” he said, riding back to the campfire. “We were sent to find a road, so let’s go find it.”

The Rangers had survived a terrifying night. As soon as they mounted, warmed by the sun, many of them got sleepy and nodded in their saddles. Gus’s wounded hip was paining him. Walking wasn’t easy, but riding was hard, too. His black nag had a stiff trot. He kept glancing across the sage flats, expecting to see Buffalo Hump rise up from behind a sage bush.

The scalp hunters, Kirker and Glanton, rode half a mile with the troop, and then turned their horses.

“Ain’t you coming, boys?” Long Bill asked.

The scalp hunters didn’t answer. Once the pack mules passed, they rode toward Mexico.

“THERE AIN’T MANY SOLDIERS that know what they’re doing, are there, Shad?” Bigfoot asked. “This major sure don’t.”

“I doubt he’s a major, or even a soldier,” Shadrach said. “I expect he just stole a uniform.”

They were riding west through an area so dry that even the sage had almost played out.

Bigfoot suspected Shadrach was right. Probably Major Chevallie had just stolen a uniform. Texas was the sort of place where people could simply name themselves something and then start being whatever they happened to name. Then they could start acquiring the skills of their new profession—or not acquiring them, as the case might be.

“Well, I ain’t a soldier boy, neither,” Shadrach said.

“Was you ever a soldier?” Bigfoot asked. He was looking up at a crag, or a little hump of mountain, a few miles to the north. In the clear, dry air, he thought he saw a spot of white on the mountain,which was puzzling. What could be white on a mountain far west of the Pecos?

Shadrach ignored Bigfoot’s question—he didn’t answer questions about his past.

“See that white speck, up on that hill?” Bigfoot asked.

Shadrach looked, but saw nothing. Bigfoot was singular for the force of his vision, which was one reason he was sought after as a scout. He was not careful or meticulous—not by Shadrach’s standards—but there was no denying that he could see a long way.

“I swear, I think it’s mountain goat,” Bigfoot said. “I never heard of mountain goat in Texas, but there it is, and it’s white.”

He immediately forgot his vexation with the Major in his excitement at spotting what he was now sure must be a mountain goat— a creature he had heard of but never previously seen.

After a little more looking he thought he spotted a second goat, not far from the first one.

“Look, boys, it’s mountain goats,” he informed the startled Rangers, most of whom were straggling along, half asleep.

At Bigfoot’s cry, excitement instantly flashed through the troop. Rangers with weak visions, such as one-eyed Johnny Carthage or little Rip Green, could barely see the mountain, much less the goats, but that didn’t weaken their excitement. Within a minute the whole troop was racing toward the humpy mountain, where the two goats, invisible to everyone but Bigfoot, were thought to be grazing. Only Matilda and Black Sam resisted the impulse to race wildly off. They continued at a steady pace. The old Comanche woman and the tongueless boy followed on a pack mule.

Gus and Call were racing along with the rest of the troop, their horses running flat out through the thin sage. Gus forgot the throb of his wounded hip in the excitement of the race.

“What do they think they’re going to do, Sam, fly up that mountain?” Matilda asked. From the level plain the sides of the mountain where the goats were seemed far too steep for horses to climb.

Sam was wishing Texas wasn’t so big and open—you could look and look, as far as you could see, and there would be nothing to give’you encouragement. He had been in jail for dropping a watermelon, when Bigfoot happened to get locked up. He had picked a watermelon off a stall and thumped it, to see if it was ripe; but then he dropped it and it burst on the cobblestones. The merchant demanded ten cents for his burst melon, but Sam had only three cents. He offered to work off the difference, but the merchant had him arrested instead. The cook in the San Antonio jail got so drunk that he let a wagon run over his foot and crush it, making him too sick to cook. Sam was offered his job and took it— he had known how to cook since he was six. Bigfoot liked the grub so much that he suggested Sam to Major Chevallie, who promptly paid the debt of seven cents and took Sam with him.

Now here he was, in the biggest country he had ever seen, with a horizon so distant that his eyes didn’t want to seek it, and a sun so bright that he could only tolerate it by pulling the brim of his old cap down over his eyes; he was riding along with a whore after a bunch of irritable white men who had decided to chase goats. At least the whore was friendly, even if she did eat snapping turtle for breakfast.

The Rangers, young Gus in the lead, had raced to the foot of the mountain, only to discover at close range what Matilda had discerned at a distance: the little mountain was much too steep for horses, and perhaps even too steep for men. Now that they were directly underneath the crag they couldn’t see the goats, either; they were hidden by rocks and boulders, somewhere above them. Also, their horses were winded from the chase; the mountain that in the clear air had looked so close had actually been several miles away. Many of the horses—skinny nags, mostly—were stumbling and shaking by the time the Rangers dismounted.

Call had never seen a mountain before, although of course he was familiar with hills. This mountain went straight up—if you could get on top of it, you wouldn’t be very far from the sky. But they weren’t at the top of it; they were at the bottom, near several good-sized boulders that had toppled off at some point and rolled out onto the plain.

Major Chevallie, like most of his men, had enjoyed the wild race immensely. After all the worry and indecision it was a relief just to race a horse at top speed over the plain. Besides, if they could bring down a mountain goat or two there would be meat for the pot. He had often hunted in Virginia—deer mostly, bear occasionally, and of course turkeys and geese—but he had never been in sight of a Western mountain goat and was anxious to get in a shot before someone beat him to the game. Several of the men had already grabbed their rifles and were ready to shoot.