Dead Man's Walk

Just before dawn, with the night peaceful, Call relaxed and dozed for a minute. Though it seemed only minutes that he dozed, his awakening was rude. Someone yanked his head back by the hair, and drew a finger across his throat.

“They say you don’t feel the knife that cuts your throat,” Bigfoot said. “If I had been a Comanche, you’d be dead.”

Call was badly embarrassed. He had been caught asleep. It was only just beginning to be light. He saw Shadrach, a little distance behind Bigfoot. The old man was leading three horses.

“Yep, we found three nags,” Bigfoot said. “I guess they were lucky and found a thin patch of fire.”

“We thought you were dead,” Call told them. “Matty was upset about Shad.”

“Shad’s fine—he wants to go look for more horses,” Bigfoot said. “Three nags won’t carry this troop to New Mexico.”

Caleb Cobb gave the returning scouts a stony welcome. A rattlesnake had crawled across him during the night and disturbed his sleep. His temper was foul, and he didn’t bother to conceal the fact.

“Nobody told you to go chasing antelope,” he said. “But since you went, where’s the meat? If I still had chains I’d put them on you.”

The carcass of the little antelope was slung across one of the recaptured horses. Shadrach pulled it off, and pitched it at Caleb’s feet. He was angry, but Bigfoot Wallace was angrier. Few of the men had seen Bigfoot’s temper rise, but those who had knew to lean far back from it. His face had grown red and his eyes menacing, as he stood before Caleb Cobb.

“You wouldn’t put no damn chains on me, I guess,” he said. “I won’t be chained—not by you and not by any man.

“You ain’t no colonel!” he added. “You’re nothing but a land pirate. They run you off the seas, so now you’re out here trying to pirate Santa Fe. I’ve took” my last orders from you, Mr. Cobb, and Shadrach feels the same.”

Caleb calmly stood up and drew his big knife. “Let’s fight,” he said. “We’ll see how hard you are to chain once I cut your goddamn throat.”

In an instant, Bigfoot’s knife was out; he was ready to start slashing at Caleb Cobb, but before the fight started old Shadrach slipped between them. He grabbed two pistols from Gus, and pointed one at each combatant.

“No cutting,” he said. The pistols were pointed at each man’s chest. Shadrach’s action was so unexpected that it chilled the fury in Caleb and Bigfoot.

“You goddamn fools!” Shadrach said. “We need every man we can get—I’ll do the killing, if there’s killing to be done.”

Caleb and Bigfoot lowered their knives—both looked a little sheepish, but the menace was not entirely gone.

“We best save up to fight the Comanches,” Shadrach said, handing Gus back his guns.

“All right,” Caleb said. “But I don’t tolerate mutiny. I still give the orders, Wallace.”

“Give better ones, then,” Bigfoot said. “I wouldn’t waste a fart on your damn orders.”

Most of the Rangers were black to the waist, from tramping through five miles of sooty grass. They had used up all the water in their canteens and were already feeling thirsty, although it was early morning and still cool. Bigfoot and Shadrach had seen no water while tracking the antelope. Old Shadrach’s beard had red smudges on it. He had cut the little antelope’s throat and drunk some of its blood.

“I wonder who gets to ride the horses?” Gus asked. “I guess we ought to let Johnny ride one—he’s so gimpy he can’t keep up.”

Indeed, the walk across the hot grass had been an ordeal for Johnny Carthage. In the course of the march he had fallen almost an hour behind the troop. He knew that he would have been easy prey for a Comanche. He struggled so, to keep up, that he exhausted himself and simply lay down and went sound asleep once he finally struggled to the outskirts of camp. Call had heard his wheezy snores as he stood guard.

“There’s probably more horses that didn’t get scorched,” Gus said.

Call didn’t answer. One or two more horses would not solve their problems. The sun had come up, lighting the plain far to the west and north. On the farthest edge little white clouds lined the horizon. The plain was absolutely empty. Call saw no animals, no birds, no trees, no river courses, no Indians—nothing.

“Who do you think would have won, if Caleb and Bigfoot had fought?” Gus asked.

“Shadrach would have won,” Call said. “He would have killed them both.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Gus said, but Call had turned away. Long Bill was cooking the antelope, and the meat smelled good. He wanted a slice, before the meat was all gone. One little antelope wouldn’t go far, not with so many hungry men.

“Carry your gun right today,” Call told Gus, when the march started. “We might see another antelope, and we can’t afford another miss.”

“I won’t miss, next time,” Gus said.

THE NEXT DAY THEY found four more horses. Two had serious burns, but two were healthy. Caleb killed the two burned horses, and dried their meat. In the afternoon they found a tiny, muddy depression on the plain, with a little scummy water in it. The depression was full of frogs and tadpoles—though the water was greenish, the Rangers drank it anyway. Some of the men immediately vomited it back up. They were thirsty, and yet could not keep the water down.

The next morning, Caleb decided to divide the troop.

“Corporal Call and Corporal McCrae can go with you, Wallace,” Caleb said. “Take three horses and try to reach the settlements. Ride night and day, but rest your mounts every three hours. Look for a village called Anton Chico. You ought to strike it first.”

“Who gets the other horses?” Long Bill asked.

“I’ll take one, and Shadrach can take the other,” Caleb said. “We’ll travel parallel to one another, as best we can. Some of us ought to strike water.”

“What if we don’t?” Johnny asked.

“I guess we can pray,” Caleb replied. “God might send a rainstorm.”

Neither Call nor Gus had expected to be separated from the troop. Both had become good friends with Jimmy Tweed, who had managed to keep a lively attitude, despite all that had happened. When Long Bill and Blackie Slidell sang at night, Jimmy would always join in. Tommy Spencer, the youngster from Missouri, sat and listened. Johnny Carthage bemoaned the fact that he had no way to get drunk. He suffered from fearsome nightmares, and liked to dull himself with liquor before they began. The boys were a group within the larger group, and it was hard to leave them. Gus was wishing Matilda would come with their party—sometimes she mothered him, when he was feeling sorry for himself. He didn’t see why old Shadrach should get all the mothering.

“If you’re captured by the Mexicans, keep quiet,” Caleb said, as they were leaving.

“Keep quiet about what?” Bigfoot asked.

“Don’t tell them our numbers,” Caleb said. “Let them think there’s a thousand of us out here.”

Bigfoot looked around at the blackened, exhausted men, many of them already so thirsty that their tongues were thick in their mouths.

“I ain’t gonna be bragging about no mighty army,” Bigfoot said. “Half of you may be dead before we find anybody to report to.”

He rode a few steps west, and then turned his horse.

“Getting captured may be the only way any of you will stay alive,” he said. “If I could get you captured, I’d do it right now.”

Then he turned, and loped off to the northwest. Gus and Call waved at Long Bill and the others, and’loped after him. As they rode, the space ahead of them seemed to get wider and emptier. Gus looked back after a few minutes of riding for one last look at the troop, and found that it had vanished. The big plain had engulfed them. Though it looked level, there were many shallow dips and gentle rolls. Gus made sure he kept up. He didn’t want to lag and get lost. The sky was so deep and so vast that it took away his sense of direction. Even when he was looking directly at the sun, he had no confidence that he really knew whjch way he was going.They rode six hours without seeing a moving object, other than the waving grass, and one or two jackrabbits. Call had a sense of trespass, as he rode. He felt that he was in a country that wasn’t his. He didn’t know where Texas stopped and New Mexico began, but it wasn’t the Texans or the New Mexicans whose country he was riding through: it was the Comanches he trespassed on. Watching them move across the face of the canyon, on a trail so narrow that he couldn’t see it, had shown him again that the Comanches were the masters of their country to a degree no Ranger could ever be. Not one horse or one Comanche had fallen, or even stumbled, as they walked across the cliff face—the Rangers had been on foot and had plenty of handholds when they went over the edge, and yet several had fallen to their deaths. The Indians could do things white men couldn’t do.