Dead Man's Walk

“Why won’t you go get warm?” Matilda asked. He was a tense boy, Woodrow Call. All that was easy for Gus McCrae was hard for him. He didn’t mix well with people—any people. Though he had come to depend on her help, he was wary, even with her.

“I’m warm enough,” Call said.

“You ain’t, Woodrow—you’re shivering,” Matilda said. “What’s the harm in sitting by a fire on a cold night?”

“You ain’t sitting by it,” Call pointed out.

“Well, but I’m fleshy,” Matilda said. “I can warm myself. You’re just a ski

“I don’t like being a prisoner,” Call said, finally. “I might have to fight those old men. I might have to kill some of them. I’d just as soon not get friendly.”

“Woodrow, those men ain’t bad,” Matilda said. “They sent their women to feed us—we ain’t been fed as well since we left the last village. Why would you want to kill them?”

“I might have to escape,” Call said. “I ain’t going to be a prisoner much longer. If I can’t be free I don’t mind being dead.”

“What about Salazar?” Matilda said. “He’s the one keeping you prisoner. We walked all this way with him. He ain’t so bad, if you ask me. I’ve met plenty of worse Mexicans—and worse whites, too.”

Call didn’t answer. He didn’t welcome the kind of questions Matilda asked. Thinking about such things was foolish. He could think about them all through the night, and be no less a prisoner when the sun came up. It was true that the old men of Las Palomas had been kindly, and that the women were generous with food. He didn’t wish them ill—but he didn’t intend to remain a prisoner much longer, either. If he saw a chance to escape, he meant to take it, and he didn’t mean to fail. Anyone who stood in his way would have to take the consequences; he didn’t want to feel friendly toward people he might have to fight.

Later, when the chill deepened, the women brought blankets to the church. Call wrapped up in his as tightly as he could. But he didn’t sleep. Out the church door he could see Gus McCrae, yarning with Long Bill Coleman and Bigfoot Wallace. No doubt, now that he was warm and full, Gus had gone back to telling lies about his adventures on the riverboat; or else he was telling them how he was going to marry the Forsythe girl, as soon as he got back to Austin. Matilda had gone to sleep, with her head bent forward on her chest. Call felt that he had been rude, a little, in not being able to answer her questions any better than he had. He didn’t understand why women had such a need to question. He himself preferred just to let life happen, and act when opportunity arose.

Finally, though, as Matilda slept, he did get up and go out of the church, not so much to warm himself—the old men kept the fire blazing—as to hear what lies Gus McCrae was telling. Long Bill was pretending his hands were a harmonica again; he was whistling through them. Bigfoot Wallace had gone to sleep, his back against the wall of the church. Several of the old men were watching Gus, as if he were a new kind of human, a kind their experience had not prepared them for. A few of the village women, wrapped in heavy shawls, stood back a little from the fire.

“Hello, Woodrow—did you freeze out, or did you want to listen to Long Bill whistle on his fingers?” Gus asked.

“I came out to whip you, if you don’t shut up,” Call said. “You’re talking so loud it’s keeping this whole town awake.”

“Why, stop your ears, if you think I’m loud,” Gus said. But he made way for his friend, and Call sat down. The blaze felt good on his sore feet. Soon he bent forward, and napped a little. Gus McCrae was still talking, and the yarn had something to do with a riverboat.

IN THE MORNING, WITH frost on the cornfields and on the needles of the chaparral, Salazar provisioned his few troops for the march south. There were no horses in the village, but there were two mules, one of which Salazar requisitioned to carry their provisions. The Texans emerged from the church blinking in the strong sunlight. They had been given coffee, and a little cheese made from goat’s milk, and were ready to march.

“I’m in a hurry to see El Paso,” Bigfoot said. “We couldn’t get to it coming the other way, but maybe we’ll make it coming from the north.”

“Yes, you will make it,” Salazar said. “Then, I expect, they will send you on to the City of Mexico. There is a lake with many islands, and all the fruit is sweet—that is what I have been told.”

The people of Las Palomas were anxious to see that none of the troop—Texans or Mexicans—went hungry on the march south to El Paso. Though they knew that the party would be following the river, where there were several villages that could supply them, theypiled so many provisions on the mule that the animal was scarcely visible, under the many sacks and bags. Several of the Texans even had blankets pressed on them, as protection against the chill nights.

Captain Salazar was just turning to lead the party out of the village, when they heard the sound of horses—the sound came from the south.

“Reckon it’s Indians?” Gus asked. Even though he was feeling more confident of his survival, thanks to a good meal and a night beside a warm fire, he knew that they were not yet beyond the Apache country. What the villagers had had to say about their stolen children was fresh in his mind.

Captain Salazar listened for a moment.

“No, it is not Indians,” he said. “It’s cavalry.”

“Lots of cavalry,” Bigfoot said. “Maybe it’s the American army, coming to rescue us.”

“I’m afraid not, Senor,” Salazar said. “It’s the Mexican army, coming to march you to El Paso.”

All the villagers were apprehensive—they were not used to being visited by soldiers, twice in two days. Some of the women crept back inside their little houses. The men, most of them elderly, stood where they were.

In a few minutes, the horses they had been hearing clipped into town, forty in all. The soldiers riding them were wearing clean uniforms; and all were armed with sabres, as well as rifles and pistols. At their head rode a small man in a smart uniform, with many ribbons on his breast.

The sun glinted on the forty sabres in their sheaths.

Beside the cavalry were several men on foot, so dark that Call couldn’t tell whether they were Mexican or Indian. They trotted beside the horses—none of them looked tired.

The Mexican soldiers who stood with Salazar looked embarrassed. Their own uniforms were torn and dirty—some had no coats at all, only the blankets that had been given them by the people of Las Palomas. Some of them remembered that when they had started out from Santa Fe to catch the Texans they had been as smartly dressed as the approaching cavalry. Now, in comparison to the soldiers from the south, they looked like beggars, and they knew it.

The small man with the ribbons rode right up to Captain Salazarand stopped. He had a thin mustache that curled at the ends to a fine point.

“You are Captain Salazar?” he asked.

“Yes, Major,” the Captain said. .

“I am Major Laroche,” the small man said. “Why are these men not tied?”

The Major looked at the Texans with cold contempt—the tone of his voice alone made Call bristle.

The thing that surprised Gus was that the Major was white. He did not look Mexican at all.

Captain Salazar looked discouraged.

“I have walked a long way with these men, Major,” he said. “Together we walked the dead man’s walk. The reason they are not tied is because they know I will shoot them if they try to escape.”

Major Laroche did not change expression.

“Perhaps you would shoot at them, but would you hit them?” he asked. “I think it would be easier to hit them if they were tied—but that is not my point.”

Captain Salazar looked up, waiting for the Major’s point. He did not have to wait very long.

“They are prisoners,” the Major said. “Prisoners should be tied. Then they should be put up against a wall and shot. That is what we would do with such men in France, if we caught them.”