Dead Man's Walk (24 page)

"I won't give it up," he said bluntly.
"Give the man a musket. It's more than he deserves." "I'll decide what he deserves, Captain," Caleb Cobb said. He had been sitting, but he rose; when he did, Buffalo Hump rose, too.
"I won't do it, Colonel--I'll resign first," Captain Falconer said.
In a motion no one saw clearly, Caleb Cobb drew his pistol and fired point-blank at Captain Falconer. The bullet took him in the forehead, directly above his nose.
"You're resigned, Captain," Caleb said.
He walked over to the baggage wagon containing the officer's baggage and came back with the cherry wood case containing the dead man's Holland and Holland rifle. The body of Billy Falconer lay not two feet from the edge of Buffalo Hump's robe. Neither the war chief nor his women gave any sign that they had noticed the killing.
Caleb Cobb opened the gun case and handed it to Buffalo Hump. The rifle was disassembled, its barrel in one velvet groove, the stock and trigger in another. Caleb set the case down, lifted the two parts out, and quickly fitted them together. Then he handed the gun to Buffalo Hump, who hefted it once and then, without another word, took the rifle and walked over to his horse.
He mounted and gestured to his wives to bring the blanket and the cherry wood case. He didn't thank Caleb, but he looked once more at Matilda, and bent a moment, to speak to Shadrach.
"If I don't take yours first," Shadrach said, quietly.
Then Buffalo Hump rode off, followed by his wives. The sun was just setting.
The strange silence that had seized the troop continued, even though the Comanches were soon well out of hearing.
Captain Falconer's wound scarcely bled-- only a thin line of blood curled down his ear.
"Bury this skunk, I won't have mutiny," Caleb said. He glanced at the troop, to see if anyone was disposed to challenge his action. The men all stood around like statues, all except Sam. He was expected to do the burying, as well as the cooking. He picked up a spade.
"You can have that pacing black--I intend to make you a scout," Caleb said, to Call.
"Sir, Captain Falconer made me a corporal," Gus McCrae said. He knew it was bold to speak, so soon after a captain of the Rangers had been executed for mutiny, but the fact was, he had been awarded the rank and he meant to have it. He had been made a corporal legally, he believed, and he wanted Clara Forsythe to know that Woodrow Call was not the only one to earn a quick promotion.
Caleb Cobb was a little surprised, but more amused. The young Tennessee boy had gumption, at least, to insist on his promotion at such a time.
"Well, let's have your report--what did you do to earn this honor?" Caleb asked.
"I whacked John Kirker on the head with my pistol," Gus said. "He followed us when he wasn't told to, and he wouldn't go back when we asked." "You whacked Johnny?" Caleb asked, in surprise. "How hard did you whack him?" "He knocked him off his horse and split his forehead open," Bigfoot said. "I seen it.
Kirker was mean spoken--I had a notion to whack him myself." "Scalp hunters are apt to be a little short on manners," Caleb said. "John Kirker's the sort of fellow who will kill you for picking your teeth, if you happen to do it at a time when he ain't in the mood to see no teeth picked. If you laid him out, then Falconer was wrong just to make you a corporal--he ought to have made you a general." He paused, and smiled.
"However, since I didn't witness the action and don't know all the circumstances, I'll just let the rank of corporal stand. What became of Kirker after you whacked him?" "We don't know," Call said. "He left." Caleb nodded. "If I were you I'd watch my flank for a few days, Corporal McCrae," he said. "John Kirker ain't one to forget a whacking." Then he turned, and went into his tent.
Soon the company found its legs and drifted back to normal pursuits: cooking, drinking, standing guard, making fires. Call and Gus, feeling a kinship with Sam because they were all from San Antonio, took shovels and picks and helped him dig Falconer's grave.
General Phil Lloyd stood by Caleb Cobb's tent, feeling forgotten. Falconer, too, was well on his way to being forgotten, though he had only been dead ten minutes. The difference was that Falconer was actually dead, whereas General Lloyd merely felt he might as well be. He had put on his cleanest blue coat, in preparation for Buffalo Hump's visit. He had even had Peedee, his man, hang all his twelve medals on it.
Once he had had as many as eighteen medals--he was pretty sure the correct figure was eighteen--but six of them had been lost, in various drunken outings, in various muddy towns.
Still, twelve medals was no small number of medals; it was an even dozen, in fact. An even dozen medals was a solid number, yet out on the Brazos, with the sky getting cloudy and a gloomy dusk coming on, a dozen medals seemed to count for nothing. Buffalo Hump hadn't even glanced at him, or his medals, though in his experience, red Indians were usually attracted to military decorations.
Not only that: Caleb Cobb had not bothered to introduce him; nor had he asked him to sit.
The buffalo liver had smelled mighty appetizing, but Caleb Cobb hadn't offered him any.
The two young Rangers, Corporal Call and Corporal McCrae, came over and rolled Captain Falconer's body onto a wagon sheet. General Lloyd walked over and watched them tie the body into its rough shroud. He had once been the hero of the Battle of New Orleans--Andrew Jackson had made a speech about him. It seemed to him that the two youngsters, just getting their start in military life, might appreciate his history. They might want to hear how it had been, fighting the British --far different, certainly, from fighting savages such as Buffalo Hump. They might want to look at his medals and ask him what this one was for, or what exploit that one celebrated.
"It will be fine to be in Santa Fe--that high air is too good for your lungs," he said, to put the young men at ease.
"Yes sir," Gus said. He was wondering whether a salute was necessary, with darkness nearly on them.
Before Call could speak--he had only been planning to say something simple, as Gus had-- General Lloyd decided he didn't want to be around a corpse wrapped in a wagon sheet. He couldn't get a bad notion out of his head, the notion being that he was really the one who was dead and wrapped in a wagon sheet.
The notion disturbed General Lloyd so much that he turned and stumbled away, to look for his wagon, his servant Peedee, and his bottle. He thought he might send Peedee after a whore.
In New Orleans, in the old days, there had been winsome and willing Creole girls--his hope was that there might be something of the sort in Santa Fe. Santa Fe was high, he knew that much; high air was thought to be good for women's complexions. In Santa Fe he might find a young beauty to marry him; if he could, then it wouldn't matter so much about lost medals, or the fact no one took much notice of him at parleys.
At present, though, they had only advanced to the Brazos and the only women around were rough camp whores. He thought he might send Peedee to look for one, though. It might help him sleep.
Gus and Call were trying to keep their minds off Falconer's abrupt execution. Neither of them had supposed that the military life involved such extreme risks. They were so disturbed by what they had seen that they were having an awkward time getting Falconer's body wrapped in its rough shroud; neither of them had had much training at burials.
When Gus saw General Lloyd stumble away, he grew apprehensive. If the penalty for failing to give a fine rifle to an Indian was instant death, what might the penalty be for failing to salute a general?
"We didn't salute him. What if he has us hung?" Gus asked. He was troubled by the thought that he might have made a serious breach of military etiquette only a few minutes after having been promoted to corporal.
Call was still trying to puzzle out the logic of Falconer's execution. Caleb Cobb had brooked almost no argument. Without warning, he had merely yanked out his pistol and shot the Captain dead. Of course, Falconer had balked at an order, but he was a captain. He could hardly have suspected that his refusal to hand over his prized rifle would mean instant execution. If Caleb had put it to him that he viewed the matter as serious--that it meant life or death--no doubt Captain Falconer would have given up the gun.
But Caleb hadn't given a chance to argue.
Call would have thought there would have to be some kind of trial, before a captain in the Rangers could be executed. He meant to ask Bigfoot about the matter the next time he saw him.
"I think we could have saluted," Gus said again.
With darkness coming, and a dead man to bury, the omission of the salute loomed large in his mind.
"Hush about it," Call said. "I don't even know how to salute. Help me tie this end of the wagon sheet. He's going to slip out if you don't."
Rain began at midnight and continued until dawn and then on through the day. Call and Gus crawled under one of the wagons, hoping for a little sleep, but the water soon puddled around them and they slept little. Gus kept remembering the puzzled look on Falconer's face, when Caleb Cobb raised his gun to kill him. He mentioned it to Call so often that Call finally told him to shut up about it.
"I guess he was puzzled," he said. "We were all puzzled. You don't expect to see a man shot down like that, just to please an Indian." "I doubt Bigfoot was puzzled," Gus said. "It takes a lot to puzzle Bigfoot." Call was glad when it became their turn to stand guard. Standing guard beat trying to sleep in a puddle.
By midmorning the Brazos was impassable--the rains fell for three days, and then the river only fell enough for a general crossing to be feasible after three more days, by which time morale in the expeditionary party had sunk very low.
In the wake of Falconer's death, men began to remember other tales they had heard, or thought they had heard, about Caleb Cobb's violent behaviour as a commander. Long Bill Coleman recalled that someone had told him Caleb had once hanged six men at sea, in his pirating days. The men's crime, as Long Bill remembered it, was to get into the grog and turn up drunk.
"I heard it was four," Blackie Slidell said.
"Well, that's still a passel of men to hang because they were drunk," Long Bill argued.
During the day, hunting parties scoured the south bank of the Brazos, sure that some of the thousands of buffalo they had seen must still be on the south side of the river; their hopes were disappointed. Not a single buffalo could be located, nor were deer or wild pigs easy to find. Caleb ordered the killing of three beeves--but the meat was stringy, and the men's discontent increased.
"We could have been eating buffalo liver every night," Johnny Carthage complained. "I've heard the hump is good, too." "No, the hump is fatty," Bigfoot said.
"I generally take the liver and the tongue." That was the first Gus McCrae had heard about people eating tongue.
"Tongue?" he said. "I won't be eating no tongues--I don't care if they do come from a buffalo." "I'll take yours, then," Bigfoot said.
"Buffalo tongue beats polecat by a long shot, although polecat ain't bad if you salt it heavy." "What happens in an army if the colonel goes crazy?" Call asked. It seemed to him that Caleb Cobb might be insane. His own promotion, for doing nothing more than defending himself from sure death, had been a whimsy on Caleb's part--as much a whimsy as Falconer's execution.
During the long rainy nights, huddled around campfires, their pants soaked, the men speculated and speculated about Caleb Cobb's surprising action.
"He had to make a show for Buffalo Hump," Bigfoot contended. "He wanted him to know he had sand. Once an Indian thinks you don't have sand, he don't show no mercy." "That one don't show no mercy, sand or not," Long Bill said. "Zeke Moody had plenty of sand, and so did Josh." "Maybe Falconer tried to steal his girl, or beat him at cards or something," Blackie suggested. "Caleb might have had a grudge." Call couldn't see that it mattered why--not now.
In his view, the killing had not been done properly, but he was young and he didn't voice his opinion. Captain Falconer had been an officer. If there were charges against him he should have been informed of them, at least. But the only message he got was the bullet that killed him.
Probably Caleb Cobb would have been just as quick to kill any man who happened to be standing there at that time. Probably Bigfoot was right: Caleb had just wanted to show Buffalo Hump that a colonel in the Rangers could be as cruel as any warchief, dealing out death as he chose.
Call resolved to do his duties as best he could, but he meant to avoid Caleb Cobb whenever possible. He thought the man was insane, though Gus disagreed.
"Killing somebody don't mean you're insane," he argued.
"I think he's insane, you can think what you like," Call told him. "It was Falconer made you a corporal, remember. The Colonel might decide he don't like you, for no better reason than that." Gus thought the matter over, and decided there could be some truth in it. Yet, unlike Call, he was drawn to Caleb Cobb. It interested him that a pirate had got to be commander of an army.
Whenever he happened to be around the Colonel, he listened carefully.
On the sixth day, the Colonel decided to cross the river, though it was still dangerously high. Every night his forces diminished--men slipped off, back toward Austin. They decided they had no stomach for prairie travel, and they left.
Caleb didn't have them pursued--half the troop had no idea why they were bound for Santa Fe, anyway; most of them would have been useless in a fight and a burden, had supplies run low, as they were likely to do, on the high plains. Yet, by the sixth day, discontent was so rife that he decided to ford the river despite the risk.
Another day or two of waiting and the whole Texas-Santa Fe expedition might simply melt into the Brazos mud. In retrospect, he regretted not letting the men chase the buffalo --it would have given them some sporting exploits to talk about around the campfires. His reasoning in holding them back had been sound, but the weather confounded his reason, as it was apt to.
Both Bes-Das and Alchise were against the crossing. The Brazos was still too high.
Shadrach was against it, and Bigfoot too, although Bigfoot agreed with the Colonel that if they didn't cross soon the expedition would quietly disband. All the scouts remembered the fate of Captain Falconer, though. They offered little advice, knowing that the wrong piece of advice might get them shot.