Dead Man's Walk

For no reason, just as Gus was feeling as if he might have to dry heave a little bit more, he remembered the conversation Shadrach had had with the Major about the hundreds of Indians that might be coming down to attack Mexico. The thought of hundreds of Comanches, now that he had seen firsthand what one or two could do, was hard to get comfortable with. Their little troop was already down to ten men, assuming that Zeke died of the scalping. It wouldn’t take hundreds of Indians to wipe them out completely. It would only take three or four Indians—maybe less. Buffalo Hump might accomplish it by himself, if he kept at it.

“How many of them do you think are out there?” he asked Call, who was squeezing the barrel of his rifle so tightly it seemed as if he might be going to squeeze the barrel shut.

Call was having the same thoughts as his friend. If there were many Comanches out there, they would be lucky if any of the Rangers survived.

“I ain’t seen but one—him,” Call said. “There must be more, though. Somebody shot those horses.”

“That ain’t hard shooting,” Gus said. “Anybody can hit a horse.”

“They shot them while they were ru

“I expect there’s a passel of killers up on that mountain,” Gus said. “They shot a lot of arrows down on us. You’d think they’d have shot at Matilda. She’s the biggest target.”

To Call’s mind the remark was an example of his friend’s impractical thinking. Matilda Roberts wasn’t even armed. A sensible fighter would try to disable the armed men first, and then worry about the whores.

“The ones they ought to try for are Shadrach and Bigfoot,” Call said. “They’re the best fighters.”

“I aim to give them a good fight, if I can ever spot them,” Gus said, wondering if he could make true on his remark. His stomach was still pretty unsteady.

“I doubt there’s more than five or six of them out there,” he added, mostly in order to be talking. When he stopped talking he soon fell prey to unpleasant thoughts, such as how it would feel to be scalped, like Zeke was.

“How would you know there’s only five or six?” Call asked. “There could be a bunch of them down in some gully, and we’d never see them.”

“If there was a big bunch I expect they’d just come on and kill us,” Gus said.

“Matilda’s about got Zeke,” Call said.

When Matilda finally reached the injured boy, he had dropped to his knees and was scrabbling around in the dust, trying to locate his dropped pistol.

“Here, Zeke—I’m here,” Matilda said. “I’ve come to take you back to camp.”

“No, I have to find my gun,” Zeke said—he was startled that Matilda had come for him.

“I got to find it because that big one might come back,” he added. “I’ve got to do what Bigfoot said—poke the gun in my eyeball and shoot, before he comes back.”

“He won’t come back, Zeke,” Matilda said, trying to lift the wounded boy to his feet. “He’d have taken you with him, if he wanted you.” The sight of the boy’s head made her gag for a moment. She had seen several men shot or knifed in fights, but she had never had to look at a wound as bad as Zeke Moody’s head. His face seemed to have dropped, too—his scalp must have been what held it up.

“Come on, let’s go,” Matilda said, trying again to lift him up.

“Let me be, just help me find my pistol,” Zeke said. “I oughtn’t to have run. I ought to have just killed myself, like Bigfoot said. I ought to have just stopped and done it.”

Matilda caught Zeke under the arms and pulled him up. Once she had him on his feet, he walked fairly well.

“There ain’t no pistol, Zeke,” she said. “We’ll just get back with the boys. You ain’t dying, either. You just got your head ski

“No, I can’t stand it, Matty,” Zeke said. “It’s like my head’s on fire. Just shoot me, Matty. Just shoot me.”

Matilda ignored the boy’s whimperings and pleadings and half walked, half dragged him back toward the troop. When they were about fifty yards from camp young Call came out to help her. He was a willing worker, who had several times helped her with small chores. When he saw Ezekiel Moody’s head, he went white. Gus McCrae came up to assist, and just as he arrived, Zeke passed out, from pain and shock. Bringing him in went easier once they didn’t have to listen to his moans and sobs. All three of them were soon covered with his blood, but they got him into camp and laid him down near Sam, who would have to do whatever doctoring could be done.

“God amighty!” Long Bill said, when he saw the red smear of Ezekiel’s head.

Joh

Bigfoot and Shadrach exchanged looks. They both wished the boy had gone on and killed himself. If any of them were to survive, they would need to move fast and move quietly, hard things to manage if you were packing a scalped man.

Sam squatted down by the boy and swabbed a little of the blood away with a piece of sacking. They had no water to spare—it would take a bucketful to wash such a wound effectively, and they didn’t have a bucketful to spare.

“We need to give him a hat,” Sam said. “Otherwise the flies will be gettin’ on this wound.”

“How long will it take him to scab over?” the Major asked.

Sam looked at the wound again and swabbed off a little more blood.

“Four or five days—he may die first,” Sam said.

Shadrach looked across the desert, trying to get some sense of where the Comanches were, and how many they faced. He thought there were three on the mountain, and probably at least three somewhere on the plain. He didn’t think the same warrior killed both horses. He knew there could well be more Indians, though. A little spur of the mountain jutted out to the south, high enough to conceal a considerable party. If they were lucky, there were no more than seven or eight warriors—about the normal size for a Comanche raiding party. If there were many more than that, the Comanches would probably have overrun them when they were strung out in their race to the mountain. At that point they could have been easily divided and picked off.

“I doubt there’s more than ten,” Bigfoot said. “If there was a big bunch of them our horses would smell their horses—they’d be kicking up dust and snorting.”

“They don’t need more than ten,” Shadrach said. “That humpback’s with ‘em.”

Bigfoot didn’t answer. He felt he could survive in the wilds as well as the next man, and there was no man he feared; but there were quite a few he respected enough to be cautious of, and Buffalo Hump was certainly one of those. He considered himself a superior plainsman; there wasn’t much country between the Sabine and the Pecos that he didn’t know well, and he had roved north as far as the Arkansas. He thought he knew country well, and yet he hadn’t spotted the gully where Buffalo Hump hid his horse, before he killed Josh Corn. Nor had he ever seen, or expected to see, a man scalped while he was still alive, though he had heard of one or two incidents of men who had been scalped and lived to tell the tale. In the wilds there were always surprises, always things to learn that you didn’t know.

Major Chevallie was nervously watching the scouts. He himself had a pounding headache, and a fever to boot. The army life disagreed with his constitution, and being harassed by Comanche Indians disagreed with it even more. Half his troop were either puking or walking unsteady on their feet, whether from fear or bad water he didn’t know. While he was pondering his next move he saw Matilda walking back out into the sage bushes, as unconcerned as if she were walking a street in San Antonio.

“Here, Matilda, you can’t just wander off—we’re not on a boulevard,” he said.

“I’m going to get Josh,” Matilda said. “I don’t intend to just leave him there, for the varmints to eat. If somebody will dig a grave while I’m gone I’ll bring Josh back and put him in it.”