Dead Man's Walk

When Lady Carey had disrobed she mounted the black gelding, settled herself firmly in the sidesaddle, and reached for her snake.

“All right now, keep in line,” she said. “You too, Willy—keep in line. I want you Texans in the middle, right behind Willy. Matilda, Mrs. Chubb, and Emerald will bring up the rear. Emerald, if you don’t mind, I think you might want to carry my husband’s sword.

Unsheath it, and hold the blade high—remember, it’s sharp. Don’t cut yourself.” The Negress smiled, at the thought that she might cut herself.

Call had often noticed a fine sword in the baggage, but had not known that it was Lady Carey’s husband’s. Emerald took it and unsheathed it. She went to the rear, and waited.

“All right now, front march,” Lady Carey said. “I am going to sing very loudly—after all, I’m one voice against twenty. Willy, you might want to stop your ears.”

“Oh no, Mamma,” Willy said. “You can sing loud—I won’t mind.”

Lady Carey, on the fine black gelding, started up the long ridge toward the Comanches, the boa draped over her shoulders. She was still singing her scales, but before she had gone more than a few feet she stopped the scales and began to sing, high and loud, in the Italian tongue—the tongue that had caused Quartermaster Brognoli to rouse himself briefly, and then die.

The line of Comanches was still some two hundred yards away. Lucinda Carey, watching from behind her three veils, rode toward them slowly, singing her aria. When she had closed the distance to within one hundred yards, she stretched her arms wide; Elphinstone liked to twine himself along them. She felt in good voice. The aria she was singing came from Signer Verdi’s new opera Nabucco —he had taught her the aria himself, two years ago in Milan, not long before she and her husband, Lord Carey, sailed together for Mexico.

Ahead, the line of Comanches waited. Lady Carey glanced back. Her son, the four Rangers, and the three women all walked obediently behind her. Emerald, the tall Negress, at the end of the line, had undraped one breast—she held aloft Lord Carey’s fine sword— the keen blade flashed in the early sunlight. Emerald paused, on impulse, and shrugged off her white cloak. Soon she, too, was walking naked toward the line of warriors.

As she came nearer, close enough to see the Comanche war chief’s great hump and the ochre lines of paint on hi-s face and chest, Lucinda, Lady Carey, opened her throat and sang her aria with the full power of her lungs—she let her voice rise high, and then higher still. She pretended for a moment that she was at LaScala, where she had had the honor.of meeting Signor Verdi. She filled her lungs, breathing as Signor Verdi had taught her in the few lessons she had begged of him—her high, ripe notes rang clearly in the dry Texas air. Ahead, the war chief waited, his long lance in his right hand.

KICKING WOLF GREW TIRED of listening to the war songs. He ran ahead, meaning to make the first kill. He would leave Buffalo Hump the Texan called Gun-In-The-Water, since Gun-In-The-Water had killed his son; it would not do to cheat the war chief of his vengeance. The man Kicking Wolf meant to kill was the tall one who always walked beside Gun-In-The-Water. Kicking Wolf was short; he would kill the tall one; Buffalo Hump, who was tall, could kill the short one.

So Kicking Wolf ran ahead, and squatted beside a small clump of chaparral—he had an arrow in his bow, ready to shoot. He heard a death song coming from the Texans, but because he wanted to surprise them, he did not look up once he was in his ambush place behind the chaparral. Of course, it was appropriate for the whites to sing a death song—they would all be dead very soon, unless one or two could be caught for torture. But it was a little surprising; Kicking Wolf could not remember any instances in which whites sang death songs. Once in awhile, when there was cavalry, a manmight blow a short horn, to make the soldiers fight; he had actually killed such a person once, near the San Saba, and had taken the horn home with him. But it was not a good horn; when he tried to play it, it only made a squawking sound, like a buffalo farting. He eventually threw it away.

Then Kicking Wolf realized that he was hearing no ordinary death song—the voice that he heard lifted higher toward the sky than any Comanche voice could go. The notes rose so high and were so loud that, as the singer came near him, the song seemed to fill the whole air, and even to turn off the far cliffs and come back. Astonished at the power of the death song, Kicking Wolf stood up, ready to kill the person who was singing it.

His arrow was in his bow; he could tell from the power of the song that the person was near—but what Kicking Wolf saw when he rose from his ambush place chilled his heart, and filled him with terror: there, on a black horse, was a woman with a hidden face, black breasts, and shoulders that were only yellowing flesh and white bone. Worse, this woman who poured a song from beneath the cloth that hid her face had twined around her naked arms a great snake—a snake far larger than any Kicking Wolf had ever seen. The head of the snake was extended along the horse’s neck. Its tongue flickered out, and it seemed to be looking right at Kicking Wolf.

So frightened was Kicking Wolf, that he would have immediately sung his own death song had his throat not been frozen with fear. The woman on the black horse was Death Woman, come with her black flesh and her great serpent, to kill him and his people.

Kicking Wolf let the arrow fall from his bow—then he dropped the bow itself, and turned and ran as fast as his short legs could carry him, toward the war chief. Behind him he heard the high, ringing voice of Death Woman, and could imagine the head of the great serpent coming closer and ever closer to him. In his panic, he stepped on a bad cactus; thorns went through his foot, but he did not stop ru

When the Comanches sitting with Buffalo Hump saw Kicking Wolf ru

Buffalo Hump had been listening to the death song with admiration—he had never heard one so loud before. The song came back off the distant hills, as if the singer’s ghost were already there, calling for the singer to come. But something was wrong—Kicking Wolf was terrified, and the ringing, echoing death song was causing panic among his warriors. Then Buffalo Hump saw Death Woman, with her rotting black body; he saw the great snake, twisting its head above her horse’s neck. He was so startled that he lifted his lance, but didn’t throw it. Behind Death Woman, at the far back, was a naked black woman with a lifted sword; the black woman led a white mule.

At the sight of Death Woman, with her great serpent, the Comanche warriors broke, but Buffalo Hump held his ground. Worse even than the snake twisted around the shoulders of Death Woman was the white mule that followed the tall black woman with the sword. Long ago his old grandmother, who was a spirit woman, had told him to flee from a woman with a white mule; for the coming of the white mule would mean catastrophe for the Comanche people. The great snake he didn’t fear; he could kill any snake. But there before him was the white mule of his grandmother’s spirit prophecy: he could not kill a prophecy.