Dead Man's Walk

As the darkness came on and the sleet blew down the wind like bird shot, doom was in the mind of every man. All of them, even Bigfoot Wallace, veteran of many storms, felt that it was likely that they would die during the night. Long Bill had gone loyally back into the teeth of the storm, to find his companero, Johnny Carthage. Captain Salazar was slumped over the neck of his horse, unconscious. His neck wound had continued to bleed until he grew faint and passed out. The Mexican soldiers walked in a cluster, except for those who lagged. They had only one lantern; the light illumined only a few feet of the frigid darkness. As the darkness deepened, the cold increased, and the men began to give up. Texan and Mexican alike came to a moment of resignation—they ceased to be able to pick their feet up and inch forward over the slippery ground. They thought but to rest a moment, until their energies were restored; but the rest lengthened, and they did not get up. The sleet coated their clothes. At first they sat, their backs to the wind and the sleet. Then the will to struggle left them, and they lay down and let the sleet cover them.

It was Gus McCrae, with his keen vision, who first saw a tiny flicker of light, far ahead.

“Why, it’s a fire,” he said. “If it ain’t a fire, it’s some kind of light.”

“Where?” Matilda asked. “I can’t see nothing but sleet.”

“No, there’s a fire, I seen it,” Gus said. “I expect it’s that town.” One of the Mexican soldiers heard him, and prodded his captain awake.

Salazar, too, felt that he would not survive the night. The wound Caleb Cobb had given him was worse than he had thought—he had bled all day, the blood freezing on his coat. Now a soldier had awakened him with some rumour of a light, although the sleet was blowing and he himself could not see past his horse’s head. There was no light, no town. The blood had dripped down to his pants, which were frozen to the saddle. Instead of delivering the invading Texans to El Paso and being promoted, at least to major for his valour in capturing them, his lot would be to die in a sleet storm on the frozen plain. He thought of shooting himself, but his hands were so cold he feared he would merely drop his pistol, if he tried to pull it out. The pistol, too, was coated in bloody ice—it might not even shoot.

Then Gus saw the light again, and yelled out, hoping somebody ahead would hear him.

“There’s the light—there it is, we’re close,” he said. This time, Bigfoot saw it, too.

“By God, he’s right,” he said. “We’re coming to someplace with a fire.”

Then he heard something that sounded like the bleating of sheep —the men who heard it all perked up. If there were sheep, they might not starve. Captain Salazar suddenly felt better.

“I remember the stories,” he said. “There is a spring—an underground river. They raise sheep here—this must be San Saba. I thought it was just a lie—a traveler’s lie, about the sheep and the spring. Most travelers lie, and few sheep cross this desert. But maybe it is true.”

One by one, hopeful for the first time in days, the men plodded on toward the light. Now and then they lost it in the sleet, and their hopes sank, but Gus McCrae had taken a bead on the light, and, leaving Matilda to support Woodrow Call, led the troop into the little village of San Saba. There were not many adobe huts, but there were many, many sheep. The ones they heard bleating were in a little rail corral behind the jefe’s hut, and the jefe himself, an old man with a large belly, was helping a young ewe bring forth her first kid. The light they had seen was his light. At first, he was surprised and alarmed by the spectral appearance of the Texans, all of them white with the sleet that covered their clothes. The old man had no weapon—he could do nothing but stare; also, the ewe was at her crisis and he could not afford to worry about the men who appeared out of the night, until he had delivered the kid. Although he had many sheep, he also lost many—to the cold, to wolves and coyotes and cougars. He wanted to see that the kid was correctly delivered before he had to face the wild men who had come in on a stormy night into the village. He thought they might be ghosts—if they were ghosts, perhaps the wind would blow them on, out of the village, leaving him to attend to his flock.

Captain Salazar, cheered by the knowledge that his troop was saved, became a captain again and soon had reassured the jefe that they were not ghosts, but a detachment of the Mexican army, on an important mission involving dangerous captives.

It was not hard to convince the jefe that the Texans were dangerous men—they looked as wild as Apaches, to the old man. Once the kid was delivered, the jefe immediately sprang to work and soon had the whole village up, building fires and preparing food for the starving men. Several sheep were slaughtered, while the women set about making coffee and tortillas.

Because it was Gus who had seen the light and saved the troop, Captain Salazar decreed that the Texans would not be bound. He was aware that he himself would have missed the light and probably the village, in which case all his men would have died. There would have been no medals, and no promotion. The Texans were put in a shed where the sheep were sheared, with a couple of good fires to warm them. Gus, sitting with Call, soon got to hear the very sound he had dreamt of: the sound of fat sizzling, as it dripped into a fire.

Some of the men were too tired even to wait for food. They took a little hot coffee, grew drowsy, and tipped over. The floor of the shed was covered with a coat of sheep’s wool, mixed with dirt. The wool made some of the men sneeze, but that was a minor irritation.

“I guess we lost Long Bill,” Bigfoot said.

“If we lost him, we lost Johnny too,” Gus said. “He should have waited until we found this town. Maybe one of the Mexicans would have gone back with us and we could have found Johnny.“Matilda was silent by the fire. All she could think about was that Shadrach was dead. He had wanted to take her west, to California. He had promised her; but now that prospect was lost.

Long after most of the Texans had eaten a good hunk of mutton and gone to sleep, there was a shout from the Mexicans. Long Bill Coleman, his clothes a suit of ice, came walking slowly into the circle of fires, carrying Johnny Carthage in his arms. Johnny, too, seemed to be sheathed in ice—at first, no one could say whether Johnny Carthage was alive or dead.

He laid his friend down by the warmest campfire and himself stood practically in the flames, shaking and trembling from cold and from exertion. He held out his hands to the fire; he was so close that ice began to melt off his clothes.

“If that’s mutton, I’ll have some,” he said. “I swear, it’s been a cold walk.”

FOR THREE DAYS THE Texans, under guard again, never left their sheep shed, except to answer calls of nature. Captain Salazar’s escort had been reduced by more than twenty men, lost and presumed frozen back along the sleety trail—six Texans failed to make the village. The weather stayed so cold that most of the men were glad of the confinement. They were allowed ample firewood, and plenty to eat. Blackie Slidell had to have two frostbitten toes removed—Bigfoot Wallace performed the operation with a sharp bowie knife—but no one else required amputations.

Once the people of the village realized that the Texans were not spectres, they were friendly. The old jefe, still much occupied with his lambing in the terrible weather, saw that they had ample food. The men could drink coffee all day—poor coffee, but warming. Noticing that Call was injured, one old woman asked to look at his back; when she saw the blackened scabs, she drew in her breath and hurried away. A few minutes later the woman returned, another woman at her side. The other woman was so short she scarcely came to Bigfoot’s waist. She had with her a little pot—she went quickly to Call, but instead of lifting his shirt as the first woman had, she put her thin face close to his back and sniffed.