Dead Man's Walk

“I expect they’re afraid of that bear,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t blame ‘em much. The bear’s in that direction.”

Call didn’t think the bear was following them—after all, it had a horse to eat, and an old man as well—but he admitted that it was hard to get the bear off his mind. He had supposed there could be nothing more fearsome in the West than the Comanches, but the great grizzly was a force even more formidable than Buffalo Hump. Even Buffalo Hump couldn’t kill a horse just by hitting it. He remembered how many times they had shot and stabbed the stubborn buffalo, before they got it to die. Yet, the grizzly was far stronger than the buffalo. What kind of gun,would it take to kill a grizzly? He knew that men had killed bears, even grizzly bears, but having seen the bear scatter the militia, and reduce even Salazar to terror, he wondered what it would take to bring the beast down.

In any case, it was another reason to stay alert. If a bear could sneak up on a man, as it had on Bigfoot’s friend Willy, it behooved them to be watchful.

Walking near dusk, they surprised six prairie chickens and managed to run them down. The heavy birds could only fly a little distance. The Rangers, with the help of the starving Mexican boys, managed to catch all of them. They crossed a little creek, just at dark, with a few trees around it, enough to enable them to have a good fire. They let Juan and Jose eat with them, and sleep near the fire—the boys just had thin clothes.

“That was luck,” Bigfoot said, as they finished the last of the birds. “Caleb can’t be too far, unless they’ve all been massacred. If we walk hard enough we ought to locate them tomorrow.”

Call thought that was probably only hopeful thinking. So far, nothing Bigfoot or any of the others had predicted had happened the way it was supposed to. The plain was a vast ocean of grass— Caleb could be anywhere on it. Even a troop of men could be easily lost in such a space.

This time, though, the scout’s prediction was accurate. All day they walked steadily south on the sunlit plain. Toward evening, they saw smoke in the distance, rising into the deepening blue of the sky. Like the smoke from the chimneys of the village where they had been captured, the smoke was farther away than it looked. It grew full dark as they walked toward it—now and then, from a roll of the prairie, they could see the flicker of the campfires.“But they might not be our campfires,” Call pointed out. “They could be Mexican campfires.”

They stumbled on, the Mexican boys following apprehensively. Another hour passed before the fires were really close. No horses neighed, as they approached the fires. Gus began to feel fearful. He decided Call was right—it was probably Mexicans sitting around the fires, not Texans.

“We could just squat and wait for morning,” he whispered. “Then we can see who it is—if it’s Indians, we’d still have a chance to get away.”

“Shut up, they can hear you,” Call said.

“I was whispering,” Gus told him.

“Well, you whisper loud enough to wake the dead,” Call said.

“Hold on—who’s there?” a voice said, and at once relief swept over the Rangers, for the voice that challenged them was none other than Long Bill Coleman’s.

“Billy, it’s us—don’t shoot!” Bigfoot called.

There was silence for a moment, as Long Bill absorbed what he had heard.

“Boys, is that you?” he asked.

“It’s us, Bill,” Gus said, so relieved he couldn’t wait to speak.

“Why, that sounds like Gus McCrae,” Bill Coleman said.

“It’s us, Bill—it’s us,” Gus said, again.

Long Bill Coleman peered into the darkness as hard as he could, but he couldn’t see a thing. Despite the fact that the voices had sounded as if they were the voices of Bigfoot Wallace and Gus McCrae, he remained apprehensive. It was an odd time of night for folks to be showing up. He had heard somewhere that Indians could do perfect imitations of white men’s voices, much as they could imitate birdcalls and coyote howls.

He wanted to believe that the voices he was hearing were the voices of his friends—it was just that all the stories of Comanches imitating white men’s voices weighed in his mind.

“If it’s you, who’s with you, then?” he called out, wondering if he was inviting a scalping. He cocked his gun, just to be on the safe side.

“Gus and Call and two prisoners,” Bigfoot said. “Don’t you know us?” Just at that moment Long Bill caught a glimpse of Bigfoot, and realized he had been too suspicious. “Nerves, I’m jumpy,” Long Bill said. “Come on in, boys.” “It’s just us, Bill,” Gus said, to reassure the man that no ambush was imminent. “It’s just us. We’re back.”

THE ARRIVAL OF THE three Rangers, in leg irons, trailed by two shivering Mexican boys, aroused the whole camp. The blacksmith soon had the chains knocked off. There were some who favored chaining Jose and Juan, but Bigfoot wouldn’t hear of it. The sight of so many Texans, all armed to the teeth, set both boys to quaking as if their last hour had come, and it would have come had some of the harsher spirits had their way. None were quite thirsty enough for Mexican blood to buck Bigfoot, though.

“Those boys don’t want to fight,” Bigfoot said. “They’re too starved to fight, and so are we. What’s to eat?”

Caleb Cobb looked rueful.

“I’d like to lay out a banquet for you and the corporals, Mr. Wallace,” Caleb said. “I’m sure you deserve one, for making your way back to us under hazardous conditions.”

“Hazardous is right, a damn bear nearly killed us all,” Gus piped up.

“If one of you had had the foresight to shoot the bear, then we could lay out a banquet,” Caleb said. “As it is, we can’t. We ran out of food yesterday. We don’t have a goddamn thing to eat.”

“Nothing?” Gus asked, surprised.

“Not unless you can eat firewood,” LŤong Bill said. “We’re all hungry.”

Quartermaster Brognoli sat by one of the fires. His condition had not improved. He still looked glassy eyed, and his head still shook.

“Hell, we would have done better to stay prisoners,” Bigfoot said. “At least the Mexicans fed us corn. We even had soup when we were still in that little town.”

“We’re close to the mountains—there’ll be deer, I expect,” Caleb said. “With a little luck we’ll all have meat tomorrow.”

Call noticed at once that the company didn’t seem as large as it had been when they left it, less than a week earlier. He missed a number of faces, though, in many cases, the faces were not those to which he could put a name. There just didn’t seem to be as many men as there had been when they left. Jimmy Tweed was still there, tall and gangly, and Johnny Carthage, and Shadrach and Matilda, huddled around a fire to themselves. But the troop seemed diminished, and Bigfoot said as much to Caleb Cobb.

“Yes, several fools headed off on their own,” Caleb admitted. “I expect they’re all dead by now, from one cause or another. I didn’t have enough ammunition to shoot them all, so I let them go. We’re down to forty men.”

“Forty-three, now that you men are back,” he added, a moment later.

“Forty-three, that’s all?” Bigfoot asked. “You had nearly two hundred when we left Austin.”

“The damn Missouri boys left first—I expect they’ll all starve,” Long Bill Coleman said. “Then a bunch went back to try and strike a river.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if they starve, too.”

“I don’t care who starves and who don’t,” Bigfoot said. “The Mexicans are bringing a thousand men against us. Salazar told me that. Even if they’re mostly boys, like Juan and Jose, we’ll have to shoot mighty good to whip a thousand men.”

Caleb Cobb looked undisturbed.

“I expect the figure’s high,” he said. “I’ll worry about a thousand Mexicans when I see them.”