Dead Man's Walk

“Let’s throttle these two boys back here and grab the mules and go for it,” Gus suggested, more than once. The plain stretched before them, empty for fifty miles at least.

“There’s two mules and three of us,” Call pointed out. “They’re small mules, too. Before we could get out of rifle range, they’d shoot us fifty times.”

Bigfoot was as annoyed with the irons as Gus, but when he looked the situation over, he decided Call was right.

“Maybe that Apache boy will show up some night and help us slip off,” he said.

Call thought that Gus’s hope that Alchise would show up and free them a far-fetched one, at best. Alchise had never been particularly friendly. That very night, though, he fell into a shivery sleep and dreamed that one-eyed Johnny Carthage, the slowest member of the troop, slipped into camp and helped him ride off on Salazar’s black horse. The dream was so powerful that he awoke at four in the morning with his teeth chattering and could not at first convince himself that he was where he was, instead of on the black horse, speeding away. They had been given no posole that evening, just a few scraps of tortillas and a handful of hard corn. They had no blankets either; a frost crept down from the mountains and edged out onto the plain. Many of the Mexican soldiers were as tired and cold as the three prisoners. They huddled around small campfires, some dozing, some simply trying to keep warm. Several were barefooted, and few had any footgear except sandals. By morning, there were groans throughout the camp as men tried to hobble around on their cold feet. The Texans found to their surprise that they were better off than all but a few of their captors. Though their clothes were frayed and ragged, they were still warmer than what the Mexicans wore.

“Why, we won’t have to whip this army,” Bigfoot said. “Half of them will freeze before the fight starts, and the other half will be too sleepy to load their guns.”

Captain Salazar was the only member of the company to have a portable shelter with him. He owned a fine tent, made of canvas. A large mule carried it for him from camp to camp, and two soldiers were assigned to set it up at the end of each day. Besides the tent, there were a cot and several brightly colored blankets, to keep the Captain warm. In the morning Salazar came out, wrapped in oneof the blankets, and sat before a substantial fire that one of his soldiers tended. Salazar also had a personal cook, an old man named Manuel, who brewed his coffee and brought it to him in a large tin cup. Two nanny goats trailed the troop, in order to provide milk for the Captain’s coffee.

“He could offer us some of that coffee,” Gus said. “If I could get a few drops of something warm inside me, I might not be so cold.”

Bigfoot Wallace appeared not to be affected by the chill.

“You boys have lived too south a life,” he said. “Your blood gets thin, when you’re living south. This ain’t cold. If we’re still in these parts in a month or two you’ll see some weather that makes this seem like summer.”

Gus McCrae received that information with a grim expression. The morning had been so cold that he had found himself almost unable to urinate, a difficulty he had not experienced before.

“Hell, it’s so cold it took me ten minutes to piss,” he said. “I won’t be here two months from now, if you think it’ll be colder than this, not unless I have a buffalo hide to wrap up in or a big whore to sleep with.”

Mention of a big whore reminded them all of Matilda—it set them all to wondering about the fate of their companions, somewhere out on the long plain to the south.

“I wonder if they’re all still alive?” Gus said. “What if the hump man came after them with two hundred warriors? Every one of them might be dead, for all we know—these Mexicans can march us to China and we won’t find them, if that’s the case.”

“He wouldn’t have needed two hundred warriors,” Call said.

“Oh, they’re there somewhere,” Bigfoot said. “The Mexicans have had reports, I expect. They wouldn’t march these barefoot boys around the prairie unless they thought there was somebody to fight, somewhere.”

Captain Salazar waited until midmorning before setting the company in motion. Many of the men were so tired from the cold night that they merely stumbled along. Captain Salazar rode ahead, on his fine black gelding.

In the middle of the afternoon, a curl of dark clouds appeared over the mountains to the north. An hour before darkness, snow began to fall, blown on a cold north wind. Call had never seen snow to any extent—just a dusting now and then, in midwinter. Thoughit was not yet the end of October, snow was soon falling heavily, the white flakes swirling silently out of the dark sky. In half an hour, the whole plain was white.

“It’ll be a bad night for these barefoot boys,” Bigfoot said. “They ain’t dressed for such weather.”

“We ain’t, either,” Gus said. He was appalled at the uncomfortable state he found himself in. The irons were like ice bands around his ankles—soon he was having to drag his chains through the slushy snow.

Captain Salazar had formed the habit of dropping back every hour or so, to exchange a few words with his captives. He had enveloped himself in a warm poncho, and seemed to enjoy the sudden storm.

“This snow will refresh us for battle,” he said.

“I guess it might refresh the soldiers it don’t freeze,” Bigfoot said.

“My men are hardy, Senor,” Salazar said. “They won’t freeze.”

That night, at least, there was coffee for all the men, including the prisoners. Gus kept his hands cupped around his coffee cup as long as he could, for the warmth—he had always had trouble keeping his hands warm in chilly weather. The meal, again, was tortillas and hard corn. The snow swirled thickly in the dusk. Call and Gus and Bigfoot were sitting close together around a little fire when they suddenly heard a high terrified squealing from Captain Salazar’s horse. The nanny goats, tethered nearby, began to bleat frantically. The mules began to bray—they were tame mules and had not been hobbled. Soon they were racing away into the darkness. Captain Salazar began to fire his pistol at something Call couldn’t see. Then, a moment later, he saw a great shape lope into the center of the camp. Men were grabbing muskets and firing, but the great shape came on.

“Is it a buffalo?” Gus asked—then he saw the shape rear on its hind legs, something no buffalo would be likely to do.

“That ain’t no buf, that’s a grizzly,” Bigfoot said, springing to his feet. “Here’s our chance, boys—let’s go, while he’s got ‘em scattered.”

The great brown bear was angry—Call could see the flash of his teeth in the light of the many campfires. The bear came right into the center of the camp, roaring. Mexican soldiers fled in every direction; they left their food and their guns, their only thoughtescape. The bear roared again, and turned toward Captain Salazar’s tent—old Manuel had just served him a nice rib of venison in the snug tent. Salazar fired several times, but the bear seemed not to notice. Salazar fled, his gun empty. Old Manuel stepped out of the tent right into the path of the charging bear, who swiped the old man aside with a big paw and went right into the tent.

“Grab a gun and see if you can find a hammer, so we can knock these irons off,” Bigfoot said. “Hurry, we need to move while the bear’s eating the Captain’s supper.”