Dead Man's Walk

When dawn came, Roy found most of his roof at the edge of a little live-oak thicket, over a hundred yards from where the cabin stood. Long Bill was right about the horses—they were all found within half a mile of the buffalo wallow. There was no more bacon, but Melly made them a breakfast of corn cakes and chickory coffee.

Roy, realizing that he had an excellent labor force at hand, tried to persuade the Rangers to stay and help him rebuild his cabin. Gus McCrae wouldn’t have minded. Melly had a peaches-and-cream complexion. She looked even prettier in the morning than she had in the dim dusk. But the other Rangers pleaded urgent business in Austin—they were soon mounted and ready to go.

“We’re off to take Santa Fe,” Blackie Slidell informed the homesteaders. “Caleb Cobb’s our leader.”

“Santa Fe?” Roy asked. “You mean Santa Fe, out in New Mexico?”

“That’s the town—what of it?” Rip Green said, noticing that Roy wore a somewhat skeptical expression.

“Why, it’s over a thousand miles from here,” Roy said. “You could get there quicker if you started from St. Louis. There’s a good trail from St. Louis. My pa was a trader on the Santa Fe trail, until he got murdered by a damn quick Mexican.”

“Why’d he get murdered?” Joh

“No reason, much—the quick Mexican got the drop on him and shot him dead,” Roy said. “I went to Santa Fe three times when I was growing up.”

“Oh now, tell us about it,” Gus said. “I hear there’s gold and silver laying around for the taking.”

“You heard an idiot, then,” Roy said. “There’s no gold, and you have to bargain hard for what silver you get. My pa did better with furs. The mountain men show up pretty regular with furs, or they used to. I got married to Melly and quit the trading life.”

“Furs?” Gus said. “You mean like Long Bill’s cap?”

“Oh, that’s just a rabbit skin—I wouldn’t call that a fur,” Roy said. “I mean beaver, mainly. There’s no beaver down here—you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Anyway, once we get there, we mean to a

“The hell they will; they hate Texans—don’t any of you boys have any experience at all?” Roy asked.

“Well, we ain’t been to Santa Fe, if that’s what you mean,” Long Bill admitted. “I guess Caleb Cobb wouldn’t be leading an expedition all the way to Santa Fe unless he had his facts down.”

Roy looked at his wife in amusement. The little girl who had been frightened by the cyclone was still chewing on the hem of her dress. Two of the little boys were throwing rocks at one of the shoats, and the black rooster was still complaining.

“These men have been deceived,” Roy said to Melly. “They think the Mexicans are just going to walk up and start piling gold and silver in their wagons, once they get to Santa Fe—if they get to Santa Fe. Caleb Cobb is a reckless rum-ru

“Of course, I doubt he can even find Santa Fe—maybe all that will happen is that you’ll get lost,” Roy went on. “Look for the Arkansas River, if you get lost up on the prairies. Once you find the Arkansas, you’ll be all right.“The Rangers rode off, leaving the little family to sort through their soaked possessions. The troop’s mood was somewhat dampened by Roy’s pessimism.

“I expect it was a lie,” Gus said. “The man’s a farmer. He probably never set foot in Santa Fe.”

“He sounded like he knew what he was talking about to me,” Call said.

“No, you can’t trust people from Missouri,” Rip Green said.

“Why can’t you? I’m from Missouri,” Joh

“Why would the man lie?” Call asked. “He’s never seen us before.”

Matilda Roberts let out a hoot. “Gus wouldn’t think that’s a reason not to lie,” she said. “Gus lies all the time to people he’s never seen before—gals, mostly.”

The remark caused Gus to blush—he had been thinking the same thing himself, though of course he would never have said it. One of the main troubles with women was that they were always saying things that ought not to be said. Of course he lied freely to impress the girls, but what business was that of Matilda’s?

“Look yonder, ain’t that Bigfoot’s horse?” Blackie Slidell said. “That’s his big sorrel, I believe.”

The mood of the whole troop lifted at the thought of joining up again with Bigfoot Wallace. Shadrach was a commendable scout, more experienced than Bigfoot in the ways of the wilderness, but Shadrach was ill tempered, with a tendency to growl and snarl if approached when he wasn’t in the mood for conversation. He didn’t like to talk and had no interest in sharing his information with men who lacked his experience. He might help, if the mood struck him, or he might just ride away.

Bigfoot Wallace, on the other hand, loved to talk. He was a gifted explainer—once when a little drunk he had spent an hour lecturing Call and Gus on three sets of horse tracks they had come across. He told them everything he knew about the tracks—why he knew they were Mexican horses, how heavy the riders were, when the tracks had been made, and what, in his judgment, the condition of the animals was who had made the tracks. The two of them had gone off and located another set of tracks; they tried to apply a few of the things Bigfoot had taught them, but with poor success. About all they knew about their set of tracks was that they were horse tracks—as to the weight or nationality or general health of the men riding their horses, they could only speculate. In fact, they were so green when it came to tracking, that they couldn’t even be sure anyone was riding the horses. They might merely have been horses grazing along. Of course, they both did know that the horses were unshod, but that was as far as their training took them.

“Maybe he’s killed a wild pig,” Gus said. “We could eat it.” Bigfoot’s horse was still quite a distance away—there was as yet no sign of the tall man himself.

“I’d rather he killed a fat doe, myself,” Rip Green said. “I’d a bunch rather eat some tender venison than that old tough pig meat.”

“Them corn cakes don’t stick to the ribs,” Gus said. “Melly’s pretty, though.”

“Yes, you were ready to run off with her, I noticed,” Matilda said. Even though it had been dark, Gus’s response to the young woman had not escaped her attention.

“Maybe that cyclone caught Bigfoot,” Long Bill said. “That may just be his nag. He may have got blown away.”

“Not likely,” Gus said. “I imagine he got down in a buffalo wallow, like we did.”

“There might not have been no buffalo wallow handy,” Joh

The relief everybody in the troop had felt at the thought that they would soon have a reliable guide to lead them over the prairies to Austin went away, to be replaced by dread. The experience beyond the Pecos had left its mark on all of them—even in the comparatively settled country between San Antonio and Austin, the Comanche and Kiowa lurked, ru

“Dern, it’s just his horse,” Rip Green said. “I bet that storm spooked his sorrel, like it did our nags. Bigfoot’s probably on foot, looking for his horse right now.”

They loped on across the wide prairie, which wasn’t as flat as it looked. It rolled a little, and dipped. When they were a hundred yards from the sorrel horse they looked down into a little dip and saw the man they had been talking about: Bigfoot Wallace. He was kneeling by two blackened wagons, digging in the dirt with a large bowie knife.