Dead Man's Walk

“Shoot them if they resist,” he added, turning to the militia.

Call looked at Bigfoot, who was standing calmly by the well. He had mastered his anger and looked as calm as if he had been listening to a sermon.

“Do we have to do it?” Call asked. “I hate like hell to be chained.”

“No, you don’t have to do it,” Bigfoot said. “But it’s be chained or be shot. I’ll be chained myself. I’ve been chained before. It ain’t a permanent condition, like being dead.”

“Your commander is wise,” Salazar said. “I would rather feed you than shoot you, but I will shoot you if you don’t obey.”

“I’ll go first, I’ve had more experience with chaining,” Bigfoot said. He walked over, smiled at the blacksmith, and put one of his big feet on the anvil.

“Hammer careful,” he said. “I’d hate it if you smashed my toes.”

The blacksmith was a young man. He was very, very careful in his work and soon had leg irons on Bigfoot.

Captain Salazar came over and gave the irons a close inspection. It was obvious to Call that the man had made himself feared in the village. Though Bigfoot was calm during the chaining, the young blacksmith wasn’t.

“These are important prisoners,” Salazar said. “You must do your work well. If one of them escapes while they are in this village, I will hang you.”

Call felt a rage building in him, as the young blacksmith tightened the iron around his ankle. He regretted laying down his gun. He felt it would have been better to die fighting than to submit to the indignity of chains.

None of the people in the village so much as moved during the whole procedure. The sheepherders did not go back to their sheep. Two old men with hoes stood where they were. The women of the village, many of whom were plump, kept their eyes downcast—yet once or twice, Call thought he saw looks of sympathy in the eyes of the women. One girl not more than twelve looked at him several times. She didn’t dare smile, but she looked. She was a pretty thing, but the sight of a pretty girl could not distract him from the fact that the young blacksmith had just hammered an iron band around his leg.

“I guess this town ain’t got no jail,” Gus said, to Captain Salazar. “If it had one, I guess you’d just stick us in it.”

“No, it is a poor village,” Salazar said. “If it had a jail I would put you in it for tonight. But the leg irons are for your march.”

“What march? We’re just about marched out.”

“Don’t worry—we don’t start until tomorrow,” Captain Salazar said. “The women will give you lots of posole and you will have all night to rest.”

“Oh, then we’re off to Santa Fe?” Bigfoot asked. “At least we’ll get to see the town.”

“No, you are off to El Paso,” Salazar said. “El Paso is in the south. You will never see Santa Fe, I am afraid.”

“Well, that’s a pity—I’ve heard it’s a fine town,” Bigfoot said. He was being very friendly—too friendly, Call thought. He didn’t intend to be at all friendly to the man—it was clear to him that Salazar would kill them all in an instant if it suited his whim.

Gus amused himself, during his chaining, by looking over the women of the village. Several seemed disposed to be sympathetic, though none would raise their eyes for more than a second. Two or three of them resumed their cooking, which they did outdoors in round ovens. They were cooking corn tortillas. The smell was a torment to one as hungry as he was, but he tried not to show it.

Salazar turned to the militia, and pointed to a small adobe house.

“Put them in there,” he said. “Lock the door and four of you stand watch—these are dangerous men. If you let them get away, I will tie your hang ropes with my own hand.”

The little house they were shoved into had a door so low that Gus and Bigfoot had to bend almost to their knees to get through it. It was a single room with a mud floor and a small window with bars in it. There was nothing in the room—no pitcher, no bed, nothing. Neither Gus nor Bigfoot could stand erect. Call could, but when he did his hat touched the ceiling.

“They’re a small people, ain’t they?” Bigfoot said, settling himself in a corner. “I expect we could whip a passel of them, if we hadn’t walked into a dern ambush.”

“Salazar ain’t timid,” Call remarked. “He’s got all these people scared.”

“Well, all he talks about is hanging people,” Gus said. He settled in another corner. They had been allowed a jug of well water; Gus remembered that posole had been mentioned, but two hours passed and no people arrived. The four guards were standing right outside the little window. They had lowered their muskets and were talking to three girls from the village. One of the girls was the pretty one Call had noticed while he was being chained. Though she chatted with the soldiers, the girl kept looking toward the hut where they were being held.

Gus, too starved to worry about being shot or hanged, finally lost his temper and yelled at the guards.

“We’re Texas Rangers, we need to be fed!” he yelled. “Your own captain said to give us posole, so go get it.”

“They don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bigfoot pointed out. “They don’t know the English language.”

“They know what posole is,” Gus declared. “That’s not English, that’s Mexican.”

One of the soldiers went to a house not far away, and said something to an old woman. Soon, the old woman and another came and handed in three hot bowls of posole. When the Rangers emptied them, which they quickly did, the old women brought second helpings.

“See, it don’t hurt to ask, even if you’re in jail,” Gus said. “They ain’t allowed to just let prisoners starve.”

“How do you know their rules—you ain’t Mexican,” Call said.

THOUGH Gus AND BIGFOOT had been in jail often, Call had never been locked up before—much less locked up and shackled. He found both experiences humiliating. More and more, he regretted laying down his arms. None of the Mexicans looked like good shots. The range was close, of course, but the more he thought over their surrender, the more he wished he had fought.

“I expect we’d have got at least half of them,” he said.

“It don’t matter if you got nine out of ten, if the tenth one killed you,” Gus pointed out. “That was good posole. This ain’t the worst jail I’ve ever been in. They don’t feed you nothing half that good in the San Antonio jail.”

“It’ll take more than them ten Mexicans to round up Caleb Cobb,” Bigfoot said. “I expect he’ll show Captain Salazar a trick or two, if the boys ain’t too starved to fight when the fight starts.”

“This is just a mud building,” Call sdd. “I imagine we could dig out, if we tried.”

“Dig out and go where?” Gus asked. “We nearly starved getting this far. Besides, we’re chained.”

“I know enough blacksmithing to get these chains off in two minutes,” Call reminded him. “I think we ought to try and escape. Somebody needs to warn the boys.”

“I ain’t going—let Caleb fight his own fights,” Bigfoot said. “Those old women seem friendly. I’m tired from that long walk. I say we lay around here and eat soup for a day or two before we do anything frisky.”

“There’s a pretty girl or two in this village,” Gus said. “Some of them might take pity on us and let us out.”

“No, Salazar’s got ‘em buffaloed,” Bigfoot said. A minute later, he fell asleep and snored loudly.

Call still smarted from the humiliation of being caught so easily. They had escaped some very skillful Indians, only to be captured by a motley crew of Mexicans with rusty muskets. He was annoyed with himself, because he had been resolved to practice careful planning and avoid traps, yet he had let the fatigue of their journey wear him down. Anyone ought to have known there might be soldiers in the town—yet, once again, he had failed in alertness.