Dead Man's Walk

It was just after the sand that the lightning began to strike so close and so constantly that Gus developed a new fear, which was that his gun barrel would draw the lightning and he would be cooked on the spot. There had been some close lightning three days back, and the Rangers, Bigfoot particularly, had told several stories of men who had been cooked by lightning. Sometimes, according to Bigfoot, the lightning even cooked the horse underneath the man.

Gus would have been willing now to risk getting himself and his horse both cooked, if he could only have a horse underneath him, in order to move faster. Just as he was thinking that thought, a great lightning bolt struck not fifty yards away, and in that moment of white brightness Gus saw the somebody he had been fearing: the Indian with a great hump of muscle or gristle between his shoulders, a hump so heavy that the man’s head bent slightly forward as he sat, like a buffalo’s.

Buffalo Hump sat alone, on a robe of some kind—he looked at Gus, with his heavy head bent and his great hump wet from the rain, as if he had been expecting his arrival. He was not more than ten feet away, no farther than the badger had been, and his eyes were like stone.

Buffalo Hump looked at Gus, and then the plain went black. In the blackness Gus ran as he had never run before, right past where the Indian sat. Lightning streaked again but Gus didn’t turn for a second look: he ran. Something tore at his leg as he brushed a thornbush, but he didn’t slow his speed. In the line inside his eyes where the lightning stayed, there was the Comanche now, the great humpbacked Indian, the most feared man on the frontier. Gus had been so close that he could almost have jumped over the man. For all he knew, Buffalo Hump was following, bent on taking his hair. His only hope was speed. With such a hump to carry, the man might not be fast.

Gus forgot everything but ru

At the guard post behind the chaparral bush, Call alternated between being irritated and being worried. He was convinced his friend, who had no business leaving in the first place, was out on the plain somewhere, hopelessly lost. There was little hope of finding him before daylight, and then it was sure to be a humiliating business. Shadrach was an excellent tracker and could no doubt follow Gus’s trail, but it would cost the troop delay and aggravation.

Major Chevallie might fire Gus—even fire Call, too, for having allowed Gus to wander off. Major Chevallie expected orders to be obeyed, and Call didn’t blame him. He might tolerate some wandering on the part of the scouts—that was their job—but he wouldn’t necessarily tolerate it on the part of a private.

When the rain came there was not much Call could do but hunch over and get wet. The bush was too thorny to crawl under, and he had no coat. The lightning was bright and the thunder loud, but Call didn’t feel fearful, especially. The bright flashes at least allowed him to look around. In one of them he thought he saw a movement; he decided it was the wolf they had heard howling.

It was in another brilliant flash that he saw Gus ru

The light died so quickly that Call thought he might have imagined the Indian, too. In the light he had seen the great hump, a mass half as large as the weight of most men; and yet the man was ru

Call raised his rifle, determined to be ready when the next flash came and lit the prairie. But when the flash did come, the plain was empty. Buffalo Hump was gone. The hairs stood up on Call’s neck when he failed to see the humpbacked chief. The man had just vanished on an open plain. If he moved that fast he could be anywhere. Call backed into the chaparral, mindless of the thorns, and waited. No man, not even a Comanche, could get through a clump of chaparral and attack him from the rear—certainly no man who had such a hump to carry.

Then he remembered the lance in the air, splitting the rain. He didn’t know if it had hit home. If it had, his friend Gus McCrae might be dead. Buffalo Hump might even have run up on him and scalped him, or dragged him off for torture.

The last was such an awful thought that Call couldn’t stay crouched in the thornbush. He waited until the next flash—a fair wait, for the storm was passing on to the east, and the lightning was diminishing—and then headed for where he had last seen Gus. Once the thunder quieted a little more, he meant to fire his pistol. Maybe the Rangers would hear it, if Gus couldn’t. Maybe they would come to his aid in time to stop the humpbacked Comanche from killing Gus, or dragging him off.

Yet as he waited, Call had the feeling that help, if it came, would come too late. Probably Gus was already dead. Call had seen the lance in the air—Buffalo Hump didn’t look like a man who would let fly with a lance just to miss.

When the flash came, not as bright as before, Call saw that the plain was still empty. He began to walk toward the area where he had seen Gus—it was the direction of camp, anyway. He yelled Gus’s name twice, but there was no answer. Again the hair stood up on his neck. Buffalo Hump could be anywhere. He might be crouched behind any sage bush, any clump of chaparral, waiting in the dark for the next unwary Ranger to walk by.

Call didn’t intend to be an unwary Ranger—he meant to take every precaution, but what precaution could you take on an empty plain at night with a dangerous Indian somewhere close? He wishedthat he could have got more instruction from Shadrach or Bigfoot about the best procedure to follow in such situations. They had fought Indians for years—they would know. But so far neither of them had said more than two words to him, and those were mostly comments about horseshoeing or some other chore.

The lightning dimmed and dimmed, as the storm moved east. Call could see no trace of Gus, but of course, between the lightning flashes the plain was pitch dark. Gus could be dead and scalped behind any of the sage bushes or clumps of chaparral.

Call walked back and forth for awhile, hoping Gus would hear him and call out. He decided shooting was unwise—if he shot anymore, Major Chevallie might chide him for wasting the ammunition.

Heartsick, sure that his friend was dead, Call began to trudge back to camp. He felt it was mainly his fault that the tragedy had occurred. He should have fought Gus, if necessary, to keep him at his post. But he hadn’t; Gus had walked off, and now all was lost.

It seemed to Call, as he walked back in dejection, that Gus should just have left him in the blacksmith’s shop. He didn’t know enough to be a Ranger—neither had his friend, and now ignorance had got Gus killed. Call was certain he was dead, too. Gus had a loud voice, louder even than Black Sam’s. If he wasn’t dead, he would be making noise.