Dead Man's Walk (21 page)

"If I don't, then one will kill me and that will be the end of things," Gus said, still feeling weak.
"I just hope I don't get scalped while I'm alive, like Ezekiel done." "Why, you won't get killed," Call said, alarmed at his friend's sudden despondency. Gus possessed plenty of fight, but somehow that willful girl in the general store had deprived him of it.
All he could think about was that girl--it was not good.
You couldn't be thinking about girls in general stores, when you were out in Indian country and needed to be alert.
With Call's help, Gus at least managed to get saddled and mounted on the shorter of the two horses that had been assigned him. The two young Rangers rode side by side all day, at a lazy pace, while the wagons and oxcarts toiled up the low hills and across the valleys.
Call told the story of the chase, and the fight by the river, but he couldn't tell that his friend was particularly interested.
He held his tongue, though. At least Gus was in the saddle. Once they got across the Brazos, farther from the girl, he might eventually forget her and enjoy the rangering more.
In the afternoon of the third day they glimpsed a fold of the Brazos, curving between two hills, to the west. The falling sun brightened the brown water. To the east they couldn't see the river at all, but gradually the Rangers at the head of the expedition, who included Gus and Call, heard a sound they couldn't identify. It was akin to the sound a cow might make, splashing through a river, only multiplied thousands of times, as if someone were churning the river with a giant churn.
Captain Falconer was at the very front of the troop, on his pacing black. When he heard the sound like water churning, he drew rein. Just as he did the Colonel's big Irish dog shot past him, braying. His ears were laid back--in a second he was out of sight in the scrubby valley, but not out of earshot.
"It's buf," Shadrach said, pulling his rifle from its long sheath.
Just then, two riders came racing from the east. One of the rider's horses almost jumped the Irish dog, which was racing in sight again. Then it raced away, braying loudly.
"Bes-Das has seen 'em," Shadrach said.
Bes-Das was a Pawnee scout--he ranged so far ahead that many of the Rangers had scarcely seen him. The other rider was Alchise, a Mexican who was thought to be half Apache.
Both were highly excited by what they had seen behind the eastern hills. Colonel Cobb came galloping up to meet the two scouts; soon the three wheeled their horses and went flying after the dog. The horses threw up their heads and snorted. The excitement that had taken the troop when they thought they were racing to kill mountain goats seized them again--soon forty riders were flying after the Colonel, the Irish dog, and the two scouts.
As the horses fled down the hill, Gus clung tightly to his saddle horn. He could put a little weight on his wounded ankle, but not enough to secure a stirrup when racing downhill over such rocky terrain at such a pace. He knew that if he fell and injured himself further he would be sent home to Austin--all hope of securing promotion and matching his friend Call would be lost.
The sight they saw when they topped the next hill and drew rein with the troop was one neither Call nor Gus would ever forget. Neither of them, until that moment, had ever seen a buffalo, though on the march to the Pecos they had seen the bones of several, and the skulls of one or two. There below them, where the Brazos cut a wide valley, was a column of buffalo that seemed to Gus and Call to be at least a mile wide. To the south, approaching the river, there seemed to be an endless herd of buffalo moving through the hills and valleys. Thousands had already crossed the river and were plodding on to the north, through a little pass in the hills. So thick were the buffalo bunched, as they crossed the river, that it would have been possible to use them as a bridge.
"Look at them!" Gus said. "Look at them buffalo! How many are there, do you reckon?" "I could never reckon no number that high," Call admitted. "It's more than I could count if I counted for a year." "This is the southern herd," Captain Falconer commented--even he was too awed by the sight of the thousands of buffalo, browner than the brown water, to condescend to the young Rangers. "I expect it's at least a million. They say it takes two days to ride past the herd, even if you trot." Bes-Das came trotting back to where Captain Falconer sat. He said something Call couldn't hear, and pointed, not at the buffalo, but at a ridge across the valley some two miles away.
"It's him!" Gus said with a gasp, grabbing his pistol. "It's Buffalo Hump. He's got three scalps on his lance." Call looked and saw a party of Indians on the far ridge, eight in all. He could see Buffalo Hump's spotted pony and tell that the man was large, but he could not see scalps on his lance. He felt a little envious of his friend's eyesight, which was clearly keener than his.
"Are those the bucks that whipped you?" Caleb Cobb asked, loping up to Bigfoot.
Bes-Das, a short man with greasy hair and broken teeth, began to talk to the Colonel in Pawnee. Cobb listened and shook his head.
"No, we'd have to ford this damn buffalo herd to go after them," he said. "I doubt many of these boys could resist shooting buffalo instead of Comanches. By the time we got to the Indians we'd be out of ammunition and we'd probably get slaughtered. Anyway, I doubt they'd sit there and wait for us to arrive, slow as we are." "Can't we shoot some buffalo, Colonel?" Falconer asked. "We'd have meat for awhile." "No, wait till we cross this river," Caleb said. "Half these wagons will probably sink, anyway--if we load them with buffalo roasts we'll just end up feeding buffalo roasts to the turtles." Call was surprised at the Indians. Why did they just sit there, with a force more than one hundred strong advancing toward them? The scalps on the lance were probably those of Rip Green, Longen, and the man called Bert. Did the red men think so little of the whites' fighting ability that they didn't feel they had to retreat, even when outnumbered by a huge margin?
Slowly, more and more of the riders and wagoneers came up to the ridge and sat watching the buffalo herd. A few of the young men wanted to charge down and start killing buffalo, but Colonel Cobb issued a sharp command and they all stayed where they were.
Shadrach and Bigfoot stood apart, talking to the scouts Bes-Das and Alchise. They were watching the Comanches, who sat on the opposite hill as the great brown herd surged across the Brazos. Below them the Irish dog was barking and leaping at the buffalo, but the buffalo paid him no attention. Now and then he could see the dog nip at the heels of a straggling cow, but the cow would merely kick at him or make a short feint before trotting on with the herd.
"It's way too many buffalo for old Jeb," Caleb said, smiling at the sight of his dog's frustration. "One at a time he can get their attention, but right now they don't think no more of him than a gnat." Then he pulled a spyglass out of his saddlebag and put it to his eye. He studied the Comanches for awhile, and something that he saw gave him a start.
"Kicking Wolf is there," he said, turning to Falconer as if he were delivering an important piece of news. Call remembered that he had heard the name before--someone, Bigfoot maybe, had suspected that it was Kicking Wolf who had shot the Major's runaway horse, on the first march west.
"Sorry, I ain't heard the name," Captain Falconer said. Though watchful of the Indians, he was more interested in the buffalo, a species of game he had never killed, though hunting was his passion. Now as many as a million animals were right in front of him, but the Colonel had ordered him to hold off until they crossed the river. In his baggage he had a fine sporting rifle, made by Holland and Holland in London--it was all he could do to keep from racing back to his baggage wagon to get it.
"Buffalo Hump is the killer, Kicking Wolf is the thief," the Colonel said.
"He's the best horse thief on the plains.
He'll have every horse and mule we've got before we cross the Red River, unless we watch close." He paused and extracted a cigar from his shirt pocket, as he studied the situation.
"If I had to choose who I'd have to harass me I might pick Buffalo Hump," the Colonel said. "If I couldn't whip him, he'd just kill me. It might be bloody, but it would be final. If I went up against Kicking Wolf, the first time I took a nap I'd be afoot.
"There's places off north of here where I'd rather be dead than be afoot," he added. "Ever drunk horse piss?" He looked at Call and Gus, when he asked the question.
"No sir," Gus said. "I never have and I don't plan to, either." "I drunk it once--I was traveling with Zeb Pike," the Colonel said. "We kept a horse alive just so we could drink its piss.
I was so goddamn thirsty it tasted like peach nectar. When we finally came to water we ate the horse." To Call's embarrassment his horse stretched itself and began to piss, just as the Colonel spoke.
The yellow stream that splashed on the ground didn't smell much like peach nectar, though.
"What will we do about our red neighbors, Billy?" Caleb asked. "Here we are and there they are, with a lot of goddamn buffalo in between." "Why sir, I expect they'll leave," Falconer said. "I can pursue them, if you prefer." "No, I don't want you to pursue them," the Colonel said. "My thinking was different. It's almost time to make camp and prepare the grub.
Maybe we ought to trot over and invite them to dinner." "Sir?" Captain Falconer said, not sure that he had heard the Colonel correctly.
"Invite them to dinner--I'd enjoy it," the Colonel said. "A little parley might not hurt." "Well, but who would ask them?" Captain Falconer asked.
"How about Corporal Call and his compa@nero?" the Colonel said. "It would give the Corporal a chance to live up to his promotion. Just tear up a sheet and wrap it around a rifle barrel. Comanches respect the white flag, I guess. Send Bes-Das with them, to make the introductions. I expect they know Bes-Das." Gus felt his legs begin to quiver, as they had that day near the western mountains, when he stood near the patch of ground soaked with Josh Corn's blood. The Colonel had looked right at him, when he gave the duty of Call and his compa@nero.
Captain Falconer had gone back to the wagons to find a sheet. The Indians were still sitting on the opposite hill. The long ridge where the Rangers sat soon filled up with men--the whole expedition arranged itself along the ridge to watch the great spectacle below. There was no end to the column of buffalo, either north or south.
They moved toward the river and curled out of it like the body of a great snake whose head and tail were hidden. Among the crowd of Rangers, merchants, blacksmiths, whores, and adventurers Call suddenly noticed John Kirker, the scalp hunter who had left them on the Rio Grande.
His large colleague, Glanton, was not with him.
Kirker had a rifle across the cantle of his saddle--while everyone else watched the buffalo, he watched the Indians.
"You mean we're supposed to just ride over and talk to them?" Gus asked. It was a shock to him to realize that he had been ordered to approach the Comanches. He felt that he had been foolish to hop out of the sick wagon so soon. He should have nursed his sore ankle another week at least, but some of the Rangers had been chiding him for malingering and he had started traveling horseback sooner than he should have.
"That's what Colonel Cobb said," Call answered. "I don't know how we're going to get through them buffalo, though. They're thick." "I don't want to go through them," Gus said.
"I don't want to go. Buffalo Hump stuck a lance in me once, he might poke it clear through me this time." "No, we'll be under a flag of truce," Call reminded him. "He won't bother you." "He ain't holding up no white sheet," Gus said. "Why would a white sheet matter to a Comanche?" "If you're scared you should just go on back and marry that girl," Call said. "Unpack dry goods all your life. I aim to stay with rangering and be a captain myself, someday." "I aim to be a captain too, unless it means drinking horse piss," Gus said. "I don't intend to get caught in no place so dry that I'd need to drink horse piss." "Well, you might--the Colonel did," Call said. "That damn Kirker is here--did you notice?" "He slipped in while you were off on the chase," Gus said. "I understand he's a friend of Colonel Cobb." "I deplore traveling with a man who hunts scalps," Call said. "I don't know why the Colonel would be his pard." "Comanche Indians hunt scalps," Gus pointed out.
"No, they take them in war," Call said.
"Kirker hunts them for money. I think Bes-Das is ready. Let's go."
Watched by the whole expedition, Call and Gus followed Bes-Das down the ridge toward the buffalo herd. Bigfoot came behind. No one had ordered Bigfoot to come, or not to come--he joined the parley because he wanted a closer look at the Comanches than he had been able to get during the rainy day on the Brazos. Bes-Das held his rifle high, the white sheet fluttering in the wind.
Across the valley, the eight Comanches waited.
They had become as still as statues. The only movement was the fluttering of the three scalps on Buffalo Hump's lance.
As the four horses approached the great moving mass of buffalo, they began to show some anxiety.
Their nostrils flared and they tried to turn back --it was with difficulty that Call kept his little bay in check. Gus was having trouble too, made worse by the fact of his sore ankle.
Bes-Das, the broken-toothed Pawnee, whacked his mount with a rifle twice and the horse settled down. Bigfoot kept a tight rein on his grey mount--the smell of the thousands of animals affected men and horses alike; the dust they raised was as thick as any sandstorm.
"We'll never get through them--they're too thick," Gus said. "They'll trample us for sure." "Go quick," Bes-Das said, turning his horse parallel to the herd. "Go with the buffalo." As Call and Gus kept close, the Pawnee slipped into the buffalo herd, moving in only a few feet and letting the horse turn in the same direction as the herd was going. Moving steadily over, giving ground and turning toward the river if there was no room between animals, Bes-Das was soon halfway across the herd.
"That's the way, just keep a strong rein and ease on through," Bigfoot said. Soon he was in the thick of the herd--Bes-Das was almost to the other side.
"Go on, you're next," Call said to Gus.
"I ain't next, you go," Gus said. "I'll be right behind you." "Nope," Call said. "I'm the corporal and I'm telling you to go. If I leave you behind you might claim your ankle's hurt and get shot for desertion." "Why, hell ... you don't trust your own partner," Gus said, so irritated that he immediately kicked his horse and slipped into the buffalo. In fact he had thought of finding an excuse to wait; he didn't want to ride into the herd, and even more, he didn't want to ride up to Buffalo Hump's war party. But he was not going to let Woodrow Call slight his courage, either.