Dead Man's Walk (30 page)

Comanches did what they were expected to, which was kill whites. It might mean war to the death, but at least there was no uncertainty about what to expect. But here was a woman howling like a she-wolf--what sense did that make?
"Love's a terrible price to pay for company, ain't it, Matty?" Caleb said. "I won't pay it, myself. I'd rather do without the company." One by one, the exhausted men fell asleep.
Gus wanted to play cards; there was rarely a night when the urge for cardplaying didn't come over him. But the men ignored him. They didn't want to play cards when they had nothing to play for, and were thirsty anyway. It was pointless to play cards when Buffalo Hump and his warriors might be about to hurl down on them, and Johnny Carthage said as much.
"Well, they ain't here now, why can't we play a few hands?" Gus asked, annoyed that his friends were such sleepyheads.
The men didn't even answer. They just ignored him. For awhile, once Matty's howls subsided, the only sound in camp was the sound of shuffling cards--Gus shuffled and shuffled the deck, to keep his hands busy.
Call took the guard--he went away from camp a little ways to stand it. He preferred to be apart at night, to think over the day's action--if there was action. It might be that he would command a troop someday. He wanted to learn; and yet he had no teachers. He was on his second expedition as a Ranger and nothing on either expedition had been well planned. In all their encounters with the Indians, the Indians had outplanned them and outfought them, by such a margin that it was partly luck that any of them survived.
Call couldn't understand it. Caleb Cobb had spoken of Harvard College, and Major Chevallie had been at West Point--Call knew little about Harvard College, but he did know that West Point was where generals and colonels were trained. If these men had such good schooling, why didn't they plan better? It was worrisome.
Now they were out in the middle of a big plain, and no one seemed to know much about where they were going or how to survive until they got there. No one knew how to find water reliably, or what plants they could eat, if they had to eat plants. It was fine to rely on game, if there was game, but what if there wasn't? Even old Jesus, the Mexican blacksmith in San Antonio, knew more about plants than any one of the Rangers--though maybe not more than Sam had known.
It was obviously wrong to allow only one or two men in a troop to be keepers of all the knowledge that the troop needed for survival. Sam had known how to doctor, but he had fallen over a cliff and no one had bothered to get instructions from him about how to treat various wounds. Call had been made a little uneasy by Matilda's howling, but he was not as affected by it as most of the other men. Probably she would stop crying when she wore out; probably she would get up and be herself again, the next day.
Call liked Matilda: she had been helpful to him on more than one occasion. The fact that she had fastened on Shadrach to love was a matter beyond his scope. People could love whom they pleased, he supposed. That was excusable--what wasn't excusable, in his view, was setting off on a long, dangerous expedition without adequate preparation. He resolved that if he ever got to lead Rangers, he would see that each man under his command received clear training and sound instruction, so they would have a chance to survive, if the commander was lost.
Call enjoyed his guard time. Now that there were no horses to steal, the Indians would not need to come around, unless it was to murder them. He could see no reason for them to risk a direct attack. The Rangers had no water and little food. It was hundreds of miles to where they were going, and no one knew the way. The Comanches didn't need to put themselves at risk, just to destroy the Rangers; the country would do the job for them.
He liked sitting apart from the camp, listening to the night sounds from the prairie. Coyotes howled, and other coyotes answered them.
Occasionally, he would hear the scratchings of small animals. Hunting birds, hawks or owls, passed overhead. Sometimes Call wished that he could be an Indian for a few days, or at least find a friendly Indian who could train him in their skills. The Comanches, on two nights, had stolen thirty horses from a well-guarded place. He would have liked to go along with the horse thieves on such a raid, to see how they did it.
He wanted to know how they could creep into a horse herd without disturbing it. He wanted to know how they could take the horses out without being seen, or heard.
He knew, though, that no Indian was likely to come along and offer to instruct him; he would just have to watch and learn. It annoyed him that Gus McCrae had so little interest in the skills needed for rangering. All Gus thought of was whores, cards, and the girl in the general store in Austin.
If Gus had been carrying his rifle correctly, he could have killed the buck antelope and the troop would not have lost its scouts.
Just before dawn, with the night peaceful, Call relaxed and dozed for a minute. Though it seemed only minutes that he dozed, his awakening was rude. Someone yanked his head back by the hair, and drew a finger across his throat.
"They say you don't feel the knife that cuts your throat," Bigfoot said. "If I had been a Comanche, you'd be dead." Call was badly embarrassed. He had been caught asleep. It was only just beginning to be light. He saw Shadrach, a little distance behind Bigfoot. The old man was leading three horses.
"Yep, we found three nags," Bigfoot said. "I guess they were lucky and found a thin patch of fire." "We thought you were dead," Call told them.
"Matty was upset about Shad." "Shad's fine--he wants to go look for more horses," Bigfoot said. "Three nags won't carry this troop to New Mexico." Caleb Cobb gave the returning scouts a stony welcome. A rattlesnake had crawled across him during the night and disturbed his sleep.
His temper was foul, and he didn't bother to conceal the fact.
"Nobody told you to go chasing antelope," he said. "But since you went, where's the meat? If I still had chains I'd put them on you." The carcass of the little antelope was slung across one of the recaptured horses. Shadrach pulled it off, and pitched it at Caleb's feet. He was angry, but Bigfoot Wallace was angrier.
Few of the men had seen Bigfoot's temper rise, but those who had knew to lean far back from it. His face had grown red and his eyes menacing, as he stood before Caleb Cobb.
"You wouldn't put no damn chains on me, I guess," he said. "I won't be chained--not by you and not by any man.
"You ain't no colonel!" he added.
"You're nothing but a land pirate. They run you off the seas, so now you're out here trying to pirate Santa Fe. I've took my last orders from you, Mr. Cobb, and Shadrach feels the same." Caleb calmly stood up and drew his big knife. "Let's fight," he said. "We'll see how hard you are to chain once I cut your goddamn throat." In an instant, Bigfoot's knife was out; he was ready to start slashing at Caleb Cobb, but before the fight started old Shadrach slipped between them. He grabbed two pistols from Gus, and pointed one at each combatant.
"No cutting," he said. The pistols were pointed at each man's chest. Shadrach's action was so unexpected that it chilled the fury in Caleb and Bigfoot.
"You goddamn fools!" Shadrach said. "We need every man we can get--I'll do the killing, if there's killing to be done." Caleb and Bigfoot lowered their knives-- both looked a little sheepish, but the menace was not entirely gone.
"We best save up to fight the Comanches," Shadrach said, handing Gus back his guns.
"All right," Caleb said. "But I don't tolerate mutiny. I still give the orders, Wallace." "Give better ones, then," Bigfoot said.
"I wouldn't waste a fart on your damn orders." Most of the Rangers were black to the waist, from tramping through five miles of sooty grass.
They had used up all the water in their canteens and were already feeling thirsty, although it was early morning and still cool. Bigfoot and Shadrach had seen no water while tracking the antelope.
Old Shadrach's beard had red smudges on it. He had cut the little antelope's throat and drunk some of its blood.
"I wonder who gets to ride the horses?" Gus asked. "I guess we ought to let Johnny ride one--he's so gimpy he can't keep up." Indeed, the walk across the hot grass had been an ordeal for Johnny Carthage. In the course of the march he had fallen almost an hour behind the troop. He knew that he would have been easy prey for a Comanche. He struggled so, to keep up, that he exhausted himself and simply lay down and went sound asleep once he finally struggled to the outskirts of camp. Call had heard his wheezy snores as he stood guard.
"There's probably more horses that didn't get scorched," Gus said.
Call didn't answer. One or two more horses would not solve their problems. The sun had come up, lighting the plain far to the west and north.
On the farthest edge little white clouds lined the horizon. The plain was absolutely empty.
Call saw no animals, no birds, no trees, no river courses, no Indians-- nothing.
"Who do you think would have won, if Caleb and Bigfoot had fought?" Gus asked.
"Shadrach would have won," Call said. "He would have killed them both." "That wasn't what I meant," Gus said, but Call had turned away. Long Bill was cooking the antelope, and the meat smelled good.
He wanted a slice, before the meat was all gone.
One little antelope wouldn't go far, not with so many hungry men.
"Carry your gun right today," Call told Gus, when the march started. "We might see another antelope, and we can't afford another miss." "I won't miss, next time," Gus said.
The next day they found four more horses. Two had serious burns, but two were healthy. Caleb killed the two burned horses, and dried their meat. In the afternoon they found a tiny, muddy depression on the plain, with a little scummy water in it. The depression was full of frogs and tadpoles--though the water was greenish, the Rangers drank it anyway. Some of the men immediately vomited it back up. They were thirsty, and yet could not keep the water down.
The next morning, Caleb decided to divide the troop.
"Corporal Call and Corporal McCrae can go with you, Wallace," Caleb said. "Take three horses and try to reach the settlements. Ride night and day, but rest your mounts every three hours. Look for a village called Anton Chico. You ought to strike it first." "Who gets the other horses?" Long Bill asked.
"I'll take one, and Shadrach can take the other," Caleb said. "We'll travel parallel to one another, as best we can. Some of us ought to strike water." "What if we don't?" Johnny asked.
"I guess we can pray," Caleb replied.
"God might send a rainstorm." Neither Call nor Gus had expected to be separated from the troop. Both had become good friends with Jimmy Tweed, who had managed to keep a lively attitude, despite all that had happened. When Long Bill and Blackie Slidell sang at night, Jimmy would always join in. Tommy Spencer, the youngster from Missouri, sat and listened. Johnny Carthage bemoaned the fact that he had no way to get drunk. He suffered from fearsome nightmares, and liked to dull himself with liquor before they began. The boys were a group within the larger group, and it was hard to leave them. Gus was wishing Matilda would come with their party--sometimes she mothered him, when he was feeling sorry for himself. He didn't see why old Shadrach should get all the mothering.
"If you're captured by the Mexicans, keep quiet," Caleb said, as they were leaving.
"Keep quiet about what?" Bigfoot asked.
"Don't tell them our numbers," Caleb said. "Let them think there's a thousand of us out here." Bigfoot looked around at the blackened, exhausted men, many of them already so thirsty that their tongues were thick in their mouths.
"I ain't gonna be bragging about no mighty army," Bigfoot said. "Half of you may be dead before we find anybody to report to." He rode a few steps west, and then turned his horse.
"Getting captured may be the only way any of you will stay alive," he said. "If I could get you captured, I'd do it right now." Then he turned, and loped off to the northwest.
Gus and Call waved at Long Bill and the others, and loped after him. As they rode, the space ahead of them seemed to get wider and emptier. Gus looked back after a few minutes of riding for one last look at the troop, and found that it had vanished. The big plain had engulfed them. Though it looked level, there were many shallow dips and gentle rolls. Gus made sure he kept up. He didn't want to lag and get lost. The sky was so deep and so vast that it took away his sense of direction. Even when he was looking directly at the sun, he had no confidence that he really knew which way he was going.
They rode six hours without seeing a moving object, other than the waving grass, and one or two jackrabbits. Call had a sense of trespass, as he rode. He felt that he was in a country that wasn't his. He didn't know where Texas stopped and New Mexico began, but it wasn't the Texans or the New Mexicans whose country he was riding through: it was the Comanches he trespassed on. Watching them move across the face of the canyon, on a trail so narrow that he couldn't see it, had shown him again that the Comanches were the masters of their country to a degree no Ranger could ever be. Not one horse or one Comanche had fallen, or even stumbled, as they walked across the cliff face--the Rangers had been on foot and had plenty of handholds when they went over the edge, and yet several had fallen to their deaths. The Indians could do things white men couldn't do.
He mentioned as much to Bigfoot, who shrugged.
"We'll be beyond them, pretty soon," he said. "We'll be moving into the Apache country-- we may be in it already. They ain't no better, but they don't have so many horses, so they're slower.
Most Apaches are foot Indians." "Oh well, I expect I could outrun them, then," Gus said. "I could if I see them before they stab me or something. I've always been fleet." "You won't see them before they stab you, though," Bigfoot said. "The Apaches hide better than the Comanches--and that's saying something. An Apache could hide under a cow turd, if that's all there was." A minute or two later, they saw a dot on the horizon. The dot didn't seem to be moving. Bigfoot thought it might be a wagon.
Call couldn't see it at all, and grew annoyed with his own eyes. Why wouldn't they look as far as other men's eyes?
Gus, whose eyesight was the pride of the troop, ruled out the possibility that the dot was a wagon. When he looked hard, the dot seemed to dance in his vision. At times it became two or three dots, but it never became a wagon.