Dead Man's Walk

The area where the cabin had been was a wild litter. It was almost dark, but the Rangers could see that clothes and utensils and tools and animals were as jumbled as if they had all been hastily shoveled out of a wagon. A black rooster stood on one of the fallen logs, complaining loudly. Two shoats were grunting and rooting amid the mess, and several hens squawked.

No one paid much attention when Matilda and the six Rangers came walking up in the last of the light. The only person who seemed reasonably calm was the young woman of the house, and she was quietly picking up utensils and clothes and putting them in neat piles.

“Dern the luck—it’s a pain to lose that roof,” the stout man said. He didn’t address the remark either to his wife or to the Rangers— he seemed to be talking to himself.

“That’s enough cussing, Roy,” the young woman said. “We got visitors, and the children don’t need to hear you cussing just because the cabin got blown away. We can build another cabin.”

“I can, you mean, Melly,” the man said. “You ain’t strong enough to hoist no logs.”

“I said we got visitors, Roy—why don’t you be polite and ask them to sit, at least?” the young woman said, with a flash of temper.“You have to take weather as it comes,” she added. “Cussing don’t change it.”

“Here, maybe we can help you pick up,” Gus offered. He liked the looks of the young woman, Melly. Even in the dim light he could tell she was pretty. The husband seemed a rude sort—Gus felt it was a pity he hadn’t been blown away. A young woman that pretty might entice him to give up rangering, if she took a notion.

“Well, men, I hope you ain’t thieves, because our worldly possessions are spread out here for the picking of any damn thieves who happen to walk up,” Roy said. He was still agitated by the loss of his roof.

The Rangers did what they could by lantern light to help the little family reassemble its scattered possessions. There were no pork chops, but the young woman did have some bacon and a little cornmeal. Long Bill Coleman was a master fire builder; he soon had a good blaze going in the ruins of the little chimney. They all ate bacon and corn cakes and talked about how curious it was to see an ordinary thundercloud turn into a cyclone.

“It sucked the dern bark off that tree over there,” Roy said, pointing in the darkness to a tree nobody could see. “What kind of wind would suck the bark off an elm tree?”

“We’re all alive, though, thank the Lord,” Melly observed gratefully. She was sitting by Matilda Roberts. Though too polite to inquire, she was wondering what kind of woman would be traipsing across the prairies with six Texas Rangers. Of course on the frontier, things were less regular than they had been in eastern Missouri, where she was from.

Matilda, for her part, indulged in a little daydream in which she was married to a farmer with a beard, and had four tykes, some chickens, and a couple of shoats. In those circumstances she would have no need to accept whatever smelly ruffian came along with a dollar or two and a stiffness in his pants.

The little children, none of them yet five according to their mother, were curled up like little possums, asleep on a quilt that had escaped wetting. Long Bill Coleman brought out his harmonica —he never trusted it to his saddlebags but kept it about his person, and played a tune called “Barbara Allen.” Call liked to listen to Long Bill play the harmonica. The old tune, clear and plaintive, made a sadness come in him. He didn’t know why the music made him sad—or even what the sadness was for. After all, as the young woman said, they were all still alive, and not much worse off than they had been before the cyclone struck. The loss of the horses was a nuisance, of course, but it wasn’t because of the horses that he felt sad. He felt sad for all of them: the Rangers, Matilda, the little family that had lost its roof. They were small, and the world was large and violent. They were alive and, for the moment, well enough fed; but the very next day another storm might come, or an Indian party, and then they wouldn’t be.

“Well, I can’t dance to that old song,” Gus informed Long Bill. “I prefer tunes that I can dance to.”

“Why then, here’s ‘Buffalo Gals,’ ” Long Bill said—he was soon playing a livelier melody. Gus got up and jigged around, hoping to impress Melly with his dancing. Rip Green joined him for a bit, but the others refused to dance.

“I’ll be damned if I’ll dance on the night my roof blew off,” Roy said.

A little later Roy took his lantern and rummaged around until he found his whiskey jug, which he passed around freely. Long Bill Coleman soon put away his harmonica in order to drink, which annoyed Gus a little, because he wasn’t through dancing. He was even more convinced that he would make a good husband for Melly —certainly a better husband than the surly Roy.

When dawn came, Roy found most of his roof at the edge of a little live-oak thicket, over a hundred yards from where the cabin stood. Long Bill was right about the horses—they were all found within half a mile of the buffalo wallow. There was no more bacon, but Melly made them a breakfast of corn cakes and chickory coffee.

Roy, realizing that he had an excellent labor force at hand, tried to persuade the Rangers to stay and help him rebuild his cabin. Gus McCrae wouldn’t have minded. Melly had a peaches-and-cream complexion. She looked even prettier in the morning than she had in the dim dusk. But the other Rangers pleaded urgent business in Austin—they were soon mounted and ready to go.

“We’re off to take Santa Fe,” Blackie Slidell informed the homesteaders. “Caleb Cobb’s our leader.”

“Santa Fe?” Roy asked. “You mean Santa Fe, out in New Mexico?”

“That’s the town—what of it?” Rip Green said, noticing that Roy wore a somewhat skeptical expression.

“Why, it’s over a thousand miles from here,” Roy said. “You could get there quicker if you started from St. Louis. There’s a good trail from St. Louis. My pa was a trader on the Santa Fe trail, until he got murdered by a damn quick Mexican.”

“Why’d he get murdered?” Johnny Carthage asked.

“No reason, much—the quick Mexican got the drop on him and shot him dead,” Roy said. “I went to Santa Fe three times when I was growing up.”

“Oh now, tell us about it,” Gus said. “I hear there’s gold and silver laying around for the taking.”

“You heard an idiot, then,” Roy said. “There’s no gold, and you have to bargain hard for what silver you get. My pa did better with furs. The mountain men show up pretty regular with furs, or they used to. I got married to Melly and quit the trading life.”

“Furs?” Gus said. “You mean like Long Bill’s cap?”

“Oh, that’s just a rabbit skin—I wouldn’t call that a fur,” Roy said. “I mean beaver, mainly. There’s no beaver down here—you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Anyway, once we get there, we mean to annex New Mexico, I believe,” Blackie Slidell said. “I expect the populace will be mighty glad to see us.”

“The hell they will; they hate Texans—don’t any of you boys have any experience at all?” Roy asked.

“Well, we ain’t been to Santa Fe, if that’s what you mean,” Long Bill admitted. “I guess Caleb Cobb wouldn’t be leading an expedition all the way to Santa Fe unless he had his facts down.”

Roy looked at his wife in amusement. The little girl who had been frightened by the cyclone was still chewing on the hem of her dress. Two of the little boys were throwing rocks at one of the shoats, and the black rooster was still complaining.

“These men have been deceived,” Roy said to Melly. “They think the Mexicans are just going to walk up and start piling gold and silver in their wagons, once they get to Santa Fe—if they get to Santa Fe. Caleb Cobb is a reckless rum-running scoundrel. What he’ll do is get you all killed or captured, I expect.