Dead Man's Walk

“All right,” he said. “I never expected to die in a goddamn desert. I’m a seaman. I ought to be on my boat.”

“I know you were a great pirate,” Salazar said, relieved that the man was taking matters calmly. “You stole much treasure from the King of Spain.”

“I did, and lost it all at cards,” Caleb said. “I know you need to travel, Captain. Give me your pistol and I’ll finish it, and you can be on your way.”

“Would you like privacy?” Salazar asked—he still held the pistol.

“Why, no—not specially,” Caleb said, in a normal voice. “These wild Texas boys are all mad at me for surrendering. They’ll hang me, if they get the chance. It will amuse me to cheat ‘em, by shooting myself.”

“All right,” Salazar said.

“How was that you said I ought to do it, Wallace?” Caleb asked. “Are you here, Wallace? I know you think there’s a sure way—I want to take the sure way.”

“Through the eyeball,” Bigfoot said.

“It’ll have to be through the eye hole,” Caleb said. “I’m all out of eyeballs.”

“Well, that will do just as well, Colonel,” Bigfoot said.

“I’ll take the pistol now, if you please,” Caleb said, in a pleasant, normal voice.

“Adios, Colonel,” Salazar said, handing Caleb the pistol.

Caleb immediately turned the pistol on Salazar and shot him— the Captain fell backward, clutching his throat.

“Rush ‘em, boys—get their guns,” Caleb said. “I’ll take down a few.”

But in his blindness, Caleb Cobb fired toward the Texans, not the Mexicans. Two shots went wild, while the Texans ducked.

“Hell, he’s turned around, he’s shooting at us!” Long Bill said, as he ducked.

Before Caleb could fire a fourth time, the Mexican soldiers recovered from their shock and cut him down. As he fell, he fired a last shot—Shadrach, who had been standing calmly by Matilda, fell backwards, stiffly. He was dead before he had time to be surprised.

“Oh no! no! not my Shad,” Matilda cried, squatting down by Shadrach.

The Mexican soldiers continued to pour bullets into Caleb Cobb —the corpse had more than forty bullets in it, when it was buried. But the Texans had lost interest in Caleb—Bigfoot ripped open Shadrach’s shirt, hoping the old man was stu

“What a pity,” Captain Salazar said. He was bleeding profusely from the wound in his throat—the wound, though, was only a crease.

“Shad, Shad!” Matilda said, trying to get the old man to answer —but Shadrach’s lips didn’t quiver.

“This man had walked the dead man’s walk,” Salazar said. “He might have guided us. Your Colonel was already dead when he shot him—I suppose his finger twitched. We are having no luck today.”

“Why, you’re having plenty of luck, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “If that bullet had hit your neck a fraction to the left, you’d be as dead as Shad.”

“True,” Salazar said. “I was very foolish to give Colonel Cobb my gun. He was a man like Gomez—he knew no law.”

When Matilda Roberts saw that Shadrach was dead, she began to wail. She wailed as loudly as her big voice would let her. Her cries echoed off a nearby butte—many men felt their hair stand up when the echo brought back the sound of a woman wailing in the desert. Many of the Mexican soldiers crossed themselves.

“Now, Matty,” Bigfoot said, kneeling beside and putting his big arm around her. “Now, Matty, he’s gone and that’s the sad fact.”

“I can’t bear it, he was all I had,” Matilda said, her big bosom, wet already with tears, heaving and heaving.

“It’s sad, but it might be providential,” Bigfoot said. “Shadrach wasn’t well, and we have to cross the Big Dry. I doubt Shad would have made it. He’d have died hard, like some of us will.”

“Don’t tell me that, I want him alive—I just want him alive,” Matilda said.

She cried on through the morning, as graves were dug. There were a dozen men to bury, and the ground was hard. Captain Salazar sat with his back to a wagon wheel as the men dug the graves. He was weak from loss of blood. He had reloaded his pistol, and kept it in his hand all day, afraid the brief commotion might encourage the Texans to rebel.

His caution was justified. Stirred by the shooting, several of the boys talked of making a fight. Blackie Slidell was for it, and also Jimmy Tweed—both men had had enough of Mexican rule.

Gus listened, but didn’t encourage the rebellion. His friend Call had collapsed, from being made to walk when he wasn’t able. He was weaker than Salazar, and more badly injured. Escape would mean leaving him behind—and Gus had no intention of leaving him behind. Besides, Matilda was incoherent with grief—four men had to pull her loose from Shadrach’s body, before it could be buried. The Mexican soldiers might mostly be boys, but they had had the presence of mind to kill Caleb Cobb—since they had all the guns, rebellion or escape seemed a long chance.

They had pla

That night a bitter wind came from the north, so cold that the men, Mexicans and Texans alike, couldn’t think of anything but warmth. The Texans even agreed to be tied, if they could only share the campfires. No one slept. The wind keened through the camp. Matilda, having no Shadrach to care for, covered Call with her body. Before dawn, they had burned both wagons.

“How far’s that village, Captain?” Bigfoot asked—dawn was grey, and the wind had not abated.

“Too far—twenty miles,” Captain Salazar said.

“We have to make it tomorrow, we’ve got nothing else to burn,” Bigfoot said.

“Call will die if he has to sleep in the open without no fire,” Matilda said.

“Let’s lope along, then, boys,” Bigfoot said.

“I’ll help you with Woodrow, Matty,” Gus said. “He looks poorly to me.”

“Not as poorly as my Shad,” Matilda said. Between them, they got Call to his feet.

ALL DAY CALL STRUGGLED through the barren country. The freezing wind seemed to slide through the slices in his back and sides; it seemed to blow right into him. He couldn’t feel his feet, they were so cold. Gus supported him some; Matilda supported him some; even Long Bill Coleman helped out.

“How’d it get so damn cold?” Jimmy Tweed muttered, several times. “I never been no place where it was this cold. Even that snow wasn’t this cold.”

“You ought to leave me,” Call said. “I’m slowing you down.” It grated on him, that he had to be helped along.

“Maybe there’ll be a bunch of goats in this village,” Gus said. He was very hungry. The wind in his belly made the wind from the north harder to bear. He had always had a fondness for goat meat—in his imagination, the village they were approaching was a wealthy center of goat husbandry, with herds in the hundreds of fat, tasty goats grazing in the desert scrub. He imagined afeast in which the goats they were about to eat were spitted over a good fire, dripping their juices into the flame. Yet, as he struggled on, it became harder to trust in his own imaginings, because there was no desert scrub. There was nothing but the rough earth, with only here and there a cactus or low thornbush. Even if there were goats, there would be no firewood, no fire to cook them over.

Captain Salazar rode in silence, in pain from his neck wound. Now and then the soldiers walking beside him would rub their hands against his horse, pressing their hands into the horsehair to gain a momentary warmth.

Except when she was helping Call, Matilda walked alone. She cried, and the tears froze on her cheeks and on her shirt. She wanted to go back and stay with Shadrach—she could sit by his grave until the wind froze her, or until the Indians came, or a bear. She wanted to be where he had died—and yet she could not abandon the boy, Woodrow Call, whose wounds were far from healed. He still might take a deep infection; even if he didn’t, he might freeze if she was not there to warm him.