Dead Man's Walk

He mentioned as much to Bigfoot, who shrugged.

“We’ll be beyond them, pretty soon,” he said. “We’ll be moving into the Apache country—we may be in it already. They ain’t no better, but they don’t have so many horses, so they’re slower. Most Apaches are foot Indians.”

“Oh well, I expect I could outrun them, then,” Gus said. “I could if I see them before they stab me or something. I’ve always been fleet.”

“You won’t see them before they stab you, though,” Bigfoot said. “The Apaches hide better than the Comanches—and that’s saying something. An Apache could hide under a cow turd, if that’s all there was.”

A minute or two later, they saw a dot on the horizon. The dot didn’t seem to be moving. Bigfoot thought it might be a wagon. Call couldn’t see it at all, and grew annoyed with his own eyes. Why wouldn’t they look as far as other men’s eyes?

Gus, whose eyesight was the pride of the troop, ruled out the possibility that the dot was a wagon. When he looked hard, the dot seemed to dance in his vision. At times it became two or three dots, but it never became a wagon.

“No, if it was a wagon there’d be mules or horses,” Gus said. “Or there’d be people. But there ain’t no mules or horses, and I don’t see the people.”

“It could just be a lump of dirt,” Bigfoot said. “I’ve heard that outin New Mexico you’ll find piles of dirt sticking up. I expect that’s one of them.”

But when they were a mile or two closer, Gus saw the dot move. A lump of dirt might stick up, but it shouldn’t move. He galloped ahead, anxious to be the one to identify whatever they were seeing, and he did identify it: it was a solitary buffalo bull.

“Well, there’s meat, let’s kill it,” Bigfoot said, pulling his rifle.

Almost as he said it, the buffalo saw them coming and began a lumbering retreat. It seemed to be moving so slowly that Call was confident they would come up on it in a minute or two, but again appearances deceived him. The buffalo looked slow, but the horses they were riding were no faster. They had had thin grazing, and were gaunt and tired. Even at a dead run, they scarcely gained on the buffalo. They had to run the animal almost three miles to close within rifle range, and then it was a long rifle range. At thirty yards they all began to fire, and to reload and fire again, and yet again. But the buffalo didn’t fall, stop, or even stagger. It just kept running at the same lumbering pace, on and on over the empty plain.

Three times the Rangers closed with the buffalo, whipping their tired horses to within twenty feet of it. They emptied their rifles at almost point-blank range several times, and they didn’t miss. Gus could see the tufts of brown hair fly off when the heavy bullets hit. Yet the buffalo didn’t fall, or even flinch. It just kept running, at the same steady pace.

“Boys, we better stop,” Bigfoot said, after the third charge. “We’re running our horses to death for nothing. That buffalo’s got fifteen bullets in him, and he ain’t even slowed down.”

“Why won’t the goddamn animal fall?” Gus said, highly upset. He was angered by the perversity of the lone buffalo. By every law of the hunt, it should have fallen. Fifteen bullets ought to be enough to kill anything—even an elephant, even a whale. The buffalo wasn’t very large. It ought to fall, and yet, perversely, it wouldn’t. It seemed to him that everything in Texas was that way. Indians popped out of bare ground, or from the sides of hills, disguised as mountain goats. Snakes crawled in people’s bedrolls, and thorns in the brush country were as poisonous as snakebites, once they got in you. It was all an aggravation, in his view. Back in Tennessee, beast and man were much better behaved.

But they weren’t in Tennessee. They were on an empty plain, chasing a slow brown animal that should long since have been dead. Determined to kill it once and for all, Gus spurred his tired horse into a frantic burst of speed, and ran right up beside the buffalo. He fired, with his rifle barrel no more than a foot from the buffalo’s heaving ribs, and yet the animal ran on. Gus drew rein—his horse was staggering—and fired again; the buffalo kept running.

“Whoa, now, whoa!” Bigfoot cautioned. “We better give up—else we’ll kill all our horses.”

Call tried a long shot, and thought he hit the buffalo right where its heart should be, but the buffalo merely lost a step or two and then resumed its heavy run.

“I expect it’s a witch buf,” Bigfoot said, dismounting to rest his tired horse.

“A what?” Gus asked. He had never heard of a witch buf.

“I expect the hump man put a spell on it,” Bigfoot said. “It’s got twenty-five bullets in it now—maybe thirty. If it wasn’t a witch buf, we’d be eating its liver already.

“Indians can make spells,” he added. “They’re a lot better at it than white folks. Buffalo Hump is a war chief, but he’s got some powerful medicine men in the tribe. I expect he sent this buffalo out here to make us use up all our ammunition.”

“Why, how would he do that?” Gus asked, startled by the concept.

“Praying and dancing,” Bigfoot said. “That’s how they do it.”

“I don’t believe it,” Call said. “We just ain’t hit it good.”

“Hit it good, we shot it thirty times,” Gus said.

“That don’t mean we hit it good,” Call said.

Just as he said it, Gus’s horse collapsed. He sank to the ground and rolled his eyes, his limbs trembling.

“Get him up! Get him up!” Bigfoot instructed. “Get him up! If we don’t, he’ll die.”

Gus began to jerk on the bridle rein, but the horse merely let him pull its head up.

Call grabbed its tail, and Bigfoot began to kick it and yell at it, butit did no good. The horse made no effort to regain its feet, and the three of them together could not lift it. When they tried, expending all their strength, the horse’s legs splayed out beneath it—the moment they loosened their hold, the horse fell heavily.

“Let it go, it ain’t gonna live,” Bigfoot said. “We should have reined up sooner. We’ll be lucky if we all three don’t die.”

The buffalo had run on for another five hundred yards or so, and stopped. It had not fallen, but at least it had stopped. Gus felt a fury building; now, thanks to the aggravating buffalo, his horse was dying. He would have to walk to Santa Fe.

“I’ll kill it if I have to beat it to death,” he said, grabbing his rifle and his bullet pouch.

“If it’s a witch buf, you won’t kill it—it will kill you,” Bigfoot said. “Best thing to do with a witch buffalo is leave it alone.”

“He don’t listen when he’s mad,” Call said. He unstrapped Gus’s bedroll from the dying horse, and brought it with him. Gus was striding on ahead, determined to walk straight up to the wounded buffalo and blow its brains out. He didn’t believe an Indian could pray and dance and keep a buffalo from dying. Bigfoot could believe such foolery if he wanted to.