Read Dead Man's Walk Online

Authors: Larry McMurtry

Tags: #Texas Rangers, #Comanche Indians, #Action & Adventure, #Western Stories, #Westerns, #General, #Literary, #Historical, #McCrae; Augustus (Fictitious Character), #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage, #Texas, #Call; Woodrow (Fictitious Character)

Dead Man's Walk (15 page)

"Hello, are you a Roman too, sir?" Clara asked, with a smile.
Call was stumped--he didn't understand the question.
The young woman's look was so direct that it startled him. What did it mean, to be a Roman, and why had she asked?
"No, this is Woodrow Call, he's a plain Texan," Gus said. "I don't know how that fellow knew I was from Tennessee." In fact, Brognoli's comment had irked him --what right had a quartermaster to be speculating with Miss Forsythe about where he was from?
"Why, Mr. Brognoli's a traveled man," Clara said. "He's been telling me about Europe. I mean to go there someday, and see the sights." "If it's farther off than Santa Fe I doubt I'll have time to go," Call said. He found that he didn't feel awkward talking to the shop girl--she was so friendly that talking was easy, even though he had no idea where Europe was or what sights might be there for a young lady to see.
Call was impatient, though--they had to outfit themselves for a great expedition, and they only had a day to do it. He glanced around the big store and saw that it contained goods of every description, many of which would probably be useful on their expedition--but their chits only covered guns and horses. It was pointless to waste time looking around a big store, when they had no money to spend at all. Yet Gus seemed reluctant to move.
"I'll be along, Woodrow--I'll be along," Gus said. "Just grab me a musket as you leave." "Why, I believe I've smitten Mr.
McCrae," Clara said, with a laugh. "I doubt I could smite you, though, Mr. Call--not unless I had a club." With no more said, she turned and began to unpack a large box of dry goods.
Call turned and left, a little puzzled by the shop girl's remark. Why would she want to smite him with a club? She seemed a friendly girl, though the meaning of her remark was hard to puzzle out.
Clara whistled a tune as she unpacked the big box of dry goods. She glanced up after a bit and saw that Augustus McCrae, the young Tennessean, was still standing exactly where he had been when she last addressed him.
"Hey you, go along," she said. "Your friend Mr. Call is waiting." "No, he ain't waiting," Gus said. "He left with the boys." "Are you really a Texas Ranger?" Clara asked. "I've not met too many Texas Rangers. My father says they're rascals, mostly. Are you a rascal, Mr. McCrae?" Gus hardly knew how to respond to such a barrage of questions.
"I may have done a rascally thing or two," Gus said. Since Clara was so frank, he decided honesty might be the best policy. She was smiling when she looked at him, which was puzzling.
"Here, since you're still around, put this cotton over on that bench," she said. "It's got mussed up, somewhere along the way. I expect we'll have to wash it before we can sell it. Folks around here won't pay money for cotton goods that look mussed." Gus took the swatch of cotton cloth and put it where she had told him to. An old man in a brown coat came in while he was doing it.
The old man had on a grey hat and had a patch over one eye. He looked a little surprised to see a stranger carrying his dry goods around.
"Hi, Pa, this is Mr. Augustus McCrae of Tennessee," Clara said merrily.
"He's a Texas Ranger but he seems to have time to spare, so I put him right to work." "I see," Mr. Forsythe said. He shook Gus's hand and looked at Clara, his daughter, with great fondness.
"She's brash, ain't she?" he said to Gus.
"You don't need to wait for an opinion, if Clara's around. She'll get you an opinion before you can catch your breath." Clara was still unpacking goods, whistling as she worked. She had her sleeves rolled up, exposing her pretty wrists.
"Well, I must go look at them horses," Gus said. "Many thanks for the visit." "Was it a visit?" Clara said, giving him one of her direct glances.
"Seemed like one," Gus said. He felt the remark was inadequate, but couldn't think of another.
"That door ain't locked. You can come back and pitch in with the unpacking, Mr. McCrae, if you have time," Clara said.
Old man Forsythe chuckled.
"If he doesn't have it, he'll make it," he said, putting his arm around his daughter's shoulder for a moment.
Gus tipped his hat to both of them and walked out the front door, the scraps of wrapping paper still in his hand. Once out of Clara's sight he carefully folded the brown paper and put it in his breast pocket.
Although he had left the general store and was back amid the throng of peddlers and merchants, all hoping to profit from the coming expedition, in his mind Gus still stood by the big box of dry goods, waiting for Clara Forsythe to hand him another swatch of cloth. Call, who was standing with Long Bill and Blackie Slidell not twenty yards away, had to yell at him three times to get his attention.
"Here, I hope you're pleased with this musket," Call said, when Gus finally strolled over. "It's new and it's got a good heft. I don't know what we'll do about pistols. Mr.
Brognoli says they're costly." "I don't want to go," Gus said flatly.
"I wonder if that girl's pa would hire me to work in that store?" "What?" Call said, shocked. "You don't want to go on the expedition?" "No, I'd rather marry that girl," Gus said.
Long Bill and Blackie Slidell thought it was the funniest joke of the year. They laughed so hard that the dentist, who was about to pull another tooth out of another customer, stopped his work for a moment in amazement.
Call, however, was embarrassed for his friend. The expedition to Santa Fe was a serious matter.
They were Rangers--they had to defend the Republic. Yet Gus had just walked into a store to select a musket, spotted a girl with a frank manner, and now wanted to quit rangering.
"Marry her--you ain't got a cent," Call said. "Anyway, why would she have you? You ain't known her ten minutes." "Ten minutes is enough," Gus said. "I want to marry her, and I aim to." "He's a cutter, ain't he?" Long Bill commented. "Meets a girl and the next thing you know, he's off to hunt a preacher." "Well, you heard me," Gus said. "I aim to marry her, and that's that." "No, now you can't, that's desertion," Blackie pointed out. "You signed your mark this morning, right in front of Caleb Cobb. I expect he'd hang you on the spot if you tried to quit." The remark had a sobering effect. Gus had totally forgotten signing his mark and putting himself under military command. He had forgotten most of his life prior to meeting Clara. The fact that he could be executed for changing his mind had never occurred to him.
"Why, that marking don't amount to much," Gus said. He didn't want to be hanged, but he also didn't want to leave Austin, now that he had found the woman he intended to marry.
"You need to visit the whorehouse, it will clear your head," Long Bill said. "My head's cloudy, too. I say we all go, once we've picked our horses." "I don't want no whore," Call said--but in fact, once they picked their horses and bought a slicker apiece, they all went down by the river, where several whores were working out of a shanty.
There were six stalls, with blankets hung between them. Gus chose a Mexican girl, and did his business quickly--once he was done, even as he was buckling his pants, he still thought of Clara Forsythe and her pretty wrists.
Call chose a young white woman named Maggie, who took his coins and accepted him in silence. She had grey eyes--she seemed to be sad. The look in her eye, as he was pulling his pants up, made him a little uneasy--it was a sorrowful look. He felt he ought to say something, perhaps try to talk to the girl a little, but he didn't know how to talk to her, or even why he felt he should.
"Thank you, good-bye," he said, finally.
Maggie didn't smile. She stood at the back of the stall, by the quilt she slept on and worked on, waiting for the next Ranger to come in.
Johnny Carthage was waiting when Call came out. He had a policy of not buying Mexican women, the reason being that a Mexican whore had stabbed out his eye while trying to rob him.
"Well, what's your opinion? Is she lively?" Johnny asked, as Call came out.
"I have no opinion," Call said, still troubled by the sorrow in Maggie's eyes.
Gus McCrae moped all afternoon, and would do no work. Call, who had become an expert farrier, took it upon himself to shoe the Rangers' new horses. He didn't want one of them coming up lame, not on such a long, risky trip.
Shadrach showed up while he was working--he was dusty and grizzled. When asked where he had been, Shadrach said he had been west, hunting cougars.
"Dern, when I hunt I want something that's better eating than a cougar," Bigfoot informed him.
"I just take the liver," Shadrach said.
"Cougar liver?" Bigfoot asked in amazement. "I've heard the Comanches eat the liver out of cougars, but Comanches eat polecats, too. I ain't yet et a polecat, and I hope I never have to eat the liver out of a mountain cat." "It's medicine," Shadrach said. "Good medicine. I'm likely to see some cougars, going across the plains." "Oh--I guess you've started thinking like an Indian, Shad," Bigfoot said.
"The better to fight 'em," Shadrach said.
He went over and dipped his head in a big water trough to get some of the dust out of his long, shaggy hair.
Gus finally agreed to help a little with the horseshoeing, but his mind wasn't on his work. If Call asked for a rasp, Gus would likely hand him an awl, or even a nail. Twice he wandered off to visit the general store, but Clara was off on errands. Mr. Forsythe was pleasant to him, but vague about when his daughter might return.

"I can't predict her," he said.
"She's like the wind. Sometimes she's quiet, and sometimes she's not." Annoyed at the girl--why couldn't she stay where he could find her?--Gus took the best alternative left to him, which was to get drunk.
He bought a jug of liquor from a Mexican peddler and sat under a shed and drank it, while Call finished the horseshoeing. While he was working, a buggy drove by--an old man wearing a military coat was asleep in it. The old man had a red face, and was snoring so loudly they could hear him even after the buggy had passed.
"Well, that's Phil Lloyd, the damned sot," Bigfoot said. "He's a general, but he ain't a good one. I doubt we could get enough barrels of whiskey in a wagon to keep Phil Lloyd happy all the way to Santa Fe, unless we lope along quick." Call decided the military was peculiar--why make a general out of an old man who couldn't even find his way around? He tried to interest Gus in the question, but Gus could not be bothered by such business.
"She wasn't there," he said several times, referring to Clara. "I went back twice to visit--she said I might--but she wasn't there either time." "I expect she'll be there in the morning," Call said. "You can trot by and say adios. They say we're leaving tomorrow." "You may be leaving, I ain't," Gus replied. "I ain't leaving tomorrow, or any other time." Call knew his friend was too drunk to make sense--he didn't press him.
"Let's walk down by the river, I feel restless," Gus said a little later. "That store's closed by now--there's no chance to visit until tomorrow." Call was happy to walk with him. It was a starry night, and the Rangers had just made a good meal off some tamales Blackie Slidell had purchased from a Mexican woman. A little walk would be pleasant. He took his new musket, in case they encountered trouble. The Comanches had been known to come right into Austin and take children, or even young women. It wouldn't hurt to be armed.
They walked a good distance on the bluffs over above the Colorado River--they could see a light out in the water. Somebody was out in a boat.
"Fishing, I expect," Call said.
Gus was still fairly drunk.
"What kind of fool would fish at night? The fish wouldn't be able to see the bait," Gus said.
Then, between one step and the next, he suddenly plunged into space. He was so drunk he wasn't frightened; sometimes when very drunk he passed out--it felt a little like falling. He assumed, for a moment, that he must be in the process of passing out. The lantern light on the water was spinning, which went with being drunk, too.
He felt himself turn over, which was also a feeling he got when he was drunk; then he saw the river again, but it seemed to him that it was above him.
He began to realize that he was falling, through a night so dark that he couldn't see anything. He couldn't even remember what he had been doing before he fell.
"A fish don't need to see, it can smell," Call said, just before noting, to his shock, that he was talking to nobody. Gus McCrae, at his elbow only the moment before, had disappeared.
Call's first thought was that an Indian had snatched Gus, though he didn't see how, since he and Gus had only been a step apart. But Buffalo Hump had taken Josh Corn, and he hadn't been far away, either.
Call whirled around, almost going off the bluff himself. He couldn't see the edge, but he could see the river in the starlight. The river was a good distance down--he realized then that Gus must have fallen.
He didn't know what to do--probably it was too late to do anything. Gus might already be dead or dying. Call knew he had to get down to him, but he didn't know how to go about it without falling himself.
He had no rope, and it was so dark he feared to try and climb down.
Then he remembered that during the day he had seen an old man with a fishing pole making his way down a kind of trail. There was a way down, but he would need a light of some kind if he was going to find it.
Call began to run back toward town, staying well clear of the bluff; he was hoping to encounter someone with a light. But it was as if suddenly he were back on the long plain beyond the Pecos: he saw not a soul until he had run all the way back to where the Rangers were camped. When he got there he discovered that the only Ranger who wasn't dead drunk was gimpy Johnny Carthage, the slowest man in camp. Blackie Slidell and Rip Green were so drunk they couldn't even remember who Gus McCrae was. Johnny Carthage was willing, at least; he and Call found a lantern, and made their way back to the river. In time, they found a place where they could scramble down the cliff.
The problem then was that Call could not tell how far down the bluff they had walked before Gus fell. With the help of the lantern, though, he could see that the bluff wasn't high enough for a fall to be fatal, unless Gus had been unlucky and broken his neck or his back.
Johnny Carthage was fairly stalwart while they were on the bluff. But once down by the river, with help far away, his fear of Indians grew to such proportions that he flinched at every shadow.
"Indians can swim," he announced, looking out at the dark water.

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