Dead Man's Walk

“It could hurt if the Comanches that got that Mexican caught you,” Josh Corn remarked.

“Why, those boys are halfway to the Brazos, by now,” Bigfoot said, just as Matilda returned to the campfire. She squatted down by the turtle and watched it wiggle, a happy expression on her broad face. She had a hatchet in one hand and a small bowie knife in the other.

“Them turtles don’t turn loose of you till it thunders, once they got aholt of you,” Ezekiel said. Matilda Roberts ignored this hackneyed opinion. She caught the turtle right by the head, held its jaws shut, and slashed at its neck with the little bowie knife. The whole company watched, even Call. Several of the men had traveled the Western frontier all their lives. They considered themselves to be experienced men, but none of them had ever seen a whore decapitate a snapping turtle before.

Blackie Slidell watched Matilda slash at the turtle’s neck with a glazed expression. The mescal had caused him to lose his vision entirely, for several hours—in fact, it was still somewhat wobbly. Blackie had an unusual birthmark—his right ear was coal black, thus his name. Although he couldn’t see very well, Blackie was not a little disturbed by Bigfoot’s chance remark about the chewing propensities of Comanche squaws. He had long heard of such things, of course, but had considered them to be unfounded rumour. Bigfoot Wallace, though, was the authority on Indian customs. His comment could not be ignored, even if everybody else was watching Matilda cut the head off her turtle.

“Hell, if we see Indians, let’s kill all the squaws,” Blackie said, indignantly. “They got no call to be behaving like that.”

“Oh, there’s worse than that happens,” Bigfoot remarked casually, noting that the turtle’s blood seemed to be green—if it had blood. A kind of green ooze dripped out of the wound Matilda had made. She herself was finding the turtle’s neck a difficult cut. She gave the turtle’s head two or three twists, hoping it would snap off like a chicken’s would have, but the turtle’s neck merely kinked, like a thick black rope.

“What’s worse than having your pecker chewed off?” Blackie inquired.

“Oh, having them pull out the end of your gut and tie it to a dog,” Bigfoot said, pouring himself more chickory. “Then they chase the dog around camp for awhile, until about fifty feet of your gut is strung out in front of you, for brats to eat.”

“To eat?” Long Bill asked.

“Why yes,” Bigfoot said. “Comanche brats eat gut like ours eat candy.”

“Whew, I’m glad I wasn’t especially hungry this morning,” Major Chevallie commented. “Talk like this would unsettle a delicate stomach.”

“Or they might run a stick up your fundament and set it on fire —that way your guts would done be cooked when they pull them out,” Bigfoot explained.

“What’s a fundament?” Call asked. He had had only one year of schooling, and had not encountered the word in his speller. He kept the speller with him in his saddlebag, and referred to it now and then when in doubt about a letter or a word.Bob Bascom snorted, amused by the youngster’s ignorance.

“It’s a hole in your body and it ain’t your nose or your mouth or your goddamn ear,” Bob said. “I’d have that little mare broke by now, if it was me doing it.”

Call smarted at the rebuke—he knew they had been lax with the mare, who had now effectively snubbed herself to the little tree. She was trembling, but she couldn’t move far, so he quickly swung the saddle in place and held it there while she crow-hopped a time or two.

Matilda Roberts sweated over her task, but she didn’t give up. The first gusts of the norther scattered the ashes of the campfire. Major Chevallie had just squatted to refill his cup—his coffee soon had a goodly sprinkling of sand. When the turtle’s head finally came off, Matilda casually pitched it in the direction of Long Bill, who jumped up as if she’d thrown him a live rattler.

The turtle’s angry eyes were still open, and its jaws continued to snap with a sharp click.

“It ain’t even dead with its head off,” Long Bill said, a

Shadrach, the oldest Ranger, a tall, grizzled specimen with a cloudy past, walked over to the turtle’s head and squatted down to study it. Shadrach rarely spoke, but he was by far the most accurate rifle shot in the troop. He owned a fine Kentucky rifle, with a cherry-wood stock, and was contemptuous of the bulky carbines most of the troop had adopted.

Shadrach found a little mesquite stick and held it in front of the turtle’s head. The turtle’s beak immediately snapped onto the stick, but the stick didn’t break. Shadrach picked up the little stick with the turtle’s head attached to it and dropped it in the pocket of his old black coat.

Josh Corn was astonished.

“Why would you keep a thing like that?” he asked Shadrach, but the old man took no interest in the question.

“Why would he keep a smelly old turtle’s head?” Josh asked Bigfoot Wallace.

“Why would Gomez raid with Buffalo Hump?” Bigfoot asked. “That’s a better question.”

Matilda, by this time, had hacked through the turtle shell with her hatchet and was cutting the turtle meat into strips. Watching her slice the green meat caused Long Bill Coleman to get the queasy feeling again. Young Call, though nicked by a rear hoof, had succeeded in cinching the saddle onto the Mexican mare.

Major Chevallie was sipping his ashy coffee. Already the new wind from the north had begun to cut. He hadn’t been paying much attention to the half-drunken campfire palaver, but between one sip of coffee and the next, Bigfoot’s question brought him out of his reverie.

“What did you say about Buffalo Hump?” he asked. “I wouldn’t suppose that scoundrel is anywhere around.”

“Well, he might be,” Bigfoot said.

“But what was that you said, just now?” the Major asked. “It’s hard to concentrate, with Matilda cutting up this ugly turtle.”

“I had a dern dream,” Bigfoot admitted. “In my dream Gomez was raiding with Buffalo Hump.”

“Nonsense, Gomez is Apache,” the Major said.

Bigfoot didn’t answer. He knew that Gomez was Apache, and that Apache didn’t ride with Comanche—that was not the normal order of things. Still, he had dreamed what he dreamed. If Major Chevallie didn’t enjoy hearing about it, he could sip his coffee and keep quiet.

The whole troop fell silent for a moment. Just hearing the names of the two terrible warriors was enough to make the Rangers reflect on the uncertainties of their calling, which were considerable.

“I don’t like that part about the guts,” Long Bill said. “I aim to keep my own guts inside me, if nobody minds.”

Shadrach was saddling his horse—he felt free to leave the troop at will, and his absences were apt to last a day or two.

“Shad, are you leaving?” Bigfoot asked.

“We’re all leaving,” Shadrach said. “There’s Indians to the north. I smell ‘em.”

“I thought I still gave the orders around here,” Major Chevallie said. “I don’t know why you would have such a dream, Wallace. Why would those two devils raid together?”

“I’ve dreamt prophecy before,” Bigfoot said. “Shad’s right about the Indians. I smell ‘em too.”

“What’s this—where are they?” Major Chevallie asked, just as the norther hit with its full force. There was a general scramble for guns and cover. Long Bill Coleman found the anxiety too much for his overburdened stomach. He grabbed his rifle, but then had to bend and puke before he could seek cover.

The cold wind swirled white dust through the camp. Most of the Rangers had taken cover behind little hummocks of sand, or chaparral bushes. Only Matilda was unaffected; she continued to lay strips of greenish turtle meat onto the campfire. The first cuts were already dripping and crackling.

Old Shadrach mounted and went galloping north, his long rifle across his saddle. Bigfoot Wallace grabbed a rifle and vanished into the sage.