Dead Man's Walk

In the carriage was a fat man in the most elaborate uniform they had yet seen, and four women. Cavalrymen with drawn sabres flanked the carriage, and Major Laroche motioned an orderly to help the alcalde out.

Several comfortable chairs were placed in the courtyard—the alcalde and his women sat in them, and infantrymen opened large parasols and held them over the alcalde and his ladies, to protect them from the sun.

The barbers, made nervous by the presence of the alcalde and under orders to hurry, did hastier work with the second group of Texans. Both Bigfoot and Long Bill suffered small nicks as the result of this haste; but it was not the hasty barbering that worried the Texans—it was what was going to happen to them next. The ceremony that Major Laroche had mentioned to them several times was about to happen. The fat alcalde and four women, all dressed in gay clothes, had come to watch it; and yet, the Texans had no idea what the ceremony might consist of.

Call noticed, though, that ten Mexican soldiers with muskets had lined up in front of a wall, in one corner of the courtyard. They stood there in the sun, holding their muskets. Near them stood a priest in a brown habit.

“They’re gonna shoot us,” Call said. “There’s the firing squad. We should have run with the boys, when they charged up the river.”

Bigfoot looked at the soldiers, and drew the same conclusion.

“If we wasn’t chained up at the ankles we might jump the wall— one or two of us might make it out, but I figure they’d run us down in a day or two. Or them dogs would eat us.”

“Me, I’d just as soon be shot as to be eaten by a damn bunch of curs,” Long Bill said.

“Oh, they ain’t going to shoot us—we’re supposed to be marched to Mexico City,” Gus said. ‘This here’s just a show of some kind, for that big Mexican.”

Call was skeptical.

“They don’t need a priest and a firing squad if it’s just a show,” he said. -

When the last Texan was barbered, they were lined up behind the tables where the basins sat. Then the stools were removed, and all but one of the tables.

Major Laroche stepped crisply toward them, carrying an earthen jar. He sat the jar on the table. It had a cloth over it, which he did not at first remove.

“At last we come to the moment of our ceremony,” he said. “You are all guilty of attempting to overthrow the lawful government of New Mexico. By the normal laws of war you would all be shot. But the authorities have decided to be merciful.”

“Merciful how?” Bigfoot asked.

“Some will live and some will die,” the Major said. “There are ten of you, not counting the woman. The woman we will spare. But the ten of you are soldiers and must take the consequences of your actions.”

“Most of us already have,” Call said. They were going to shoot them all—he was sure of that. He saw no reason to stand there and listen to a French soldier make fancy speeches at them, for the benefit of a fat Mexican.

The Major paused, and looked at him.

“We started from Texas with nearly two hundred men,” Call said. “Now we’re down to ten. I’d call that punishment—I don’t know what you’d call it.”

“That is but the fortunes of war, Monsieur,” Major Laroche said. “Here is how our ceremony will work. In the jar I have placed before you are ten beans. Five of them are white, and five are black. Each of you will be blindfolded. You will come to the bowl and draw a bean. The five who draw white beans will live. The five who draw black beans will die. We have a priest, as you can see. And we have a firing squad. So, gentlemen, who would like to be the first to draw a bean?”

There was a pause—Gus and Long Bill glanced at Bigfoot Wallace, but Bigfoot had his eyes fixed on the nearest soldier with a musket. He was not thinking about white beans or black—not yet.He was thinking that he might try to grab a musket, shoot the Major or the fat alcalde, and try to get over the wall with a few of the boys. The leg irons were the deuce to cope with, but if a few of them could get over the wall with a musket or two, at least they would have a chance to die fighting. He didn’t trust the Mexicans, in the matter of the beans. It might be that all the beans in the bowl were black—it was probably just a ruse to give them hope, when there was no hope.

Call didn’t trust the beans either, but he didn’t intend to stay like a coward and wait for someone to move—so he stepped forward, in front of the table that held the bowl. A soldier with a black bandana in his hand stood near the table.

“Ah, good—our first volunteer,” the Major said.

He looked for a moment at the soldier with the bandana.

“Be sure that you blindfold him well,” the Major said.

The bowl with the beans in it had a white cloth over it. The soldier came up behind Call and put the bandana over his eyes; he pulled it tight and knotted it quickly in place. The soldier knew his job—Call couldn’t see a thing. The bandana let through no light at all.

The blindfold alone did not satisfy Major Laroche. He picked up the jar of beans, took the cloth off it, and walked around behind Call.

“A blindfold can slip,” he said. “I am going to hold the jar behind you, just below your left hand. When you are ready, reach in and pick your bean.”

Call felt his hand bump the side of the jar. He didn’t know what to expect, but he put his hand in the bowl anyway. It occurred to him that it was just a trick of some kind. There could be spiders or scorpions in the bowl—even a small snake. Bigfoot had pointed out to him that the smallest rattlesnakes were often the deadliest. Perhaps the firing squad was just for show.

Immediately, though, he realized that his suspicions were foolish. In the bottom of the bowl were a few beans. There was no way to choose between them so he took one, and pulled his hand out of the bowl. The soldier immediately began to untie the blindfold.

“You were brave enough to start, Monsieur, and your courage has been rewarded,” Major Laroche said.

Call looked in his palm, and saw that the bean was white.

“You will live,” the Major said. “Step to the side, please. We need another volunteer.”

Bigfoot Wallace immediately stepped forward. Call’s luck had persuaded him that there really were beans in the brown jar. He abandoned his plan to try and steal a musket and leap the wall. Mostly, through the years, in situations that were life and death, his luck had held. Call had drawn a white bean; he might also. There was no point in flinching from the gamble.

Bigfoot had a head to match his more famous appendages. The blindfold, which had been easy to knot around Call’s head, would barely go around Bigfoot’s. By pulling hard, the soldier assigned to do the blindfolding could just get the ends of the bandana to meet, but he could not pull it tight enough to knot it.

“We should have cut your hair, Monsieur Wallace,” the Major said. “The blindfold won’t fit you.”

“I can just squinch up my eyes,” Bigfoot said. “The beans are behind me, anyway. I can’t see behind myself.”

“Maybe not, but rules are rules,” the Major said. “You must be blindfolded.”

He motioned to another soldier, who held the other end of the bandana—the two soldiers pressed the blindfold tightly against Bigfoot’s eyes.

“I couldn’t see a bolt of lightning if one was to strike right in front of me,” Bigfoot said.

“The bowl is below your left hand,” Major Laroche said. “Please draw your bean.”

Bigfoot took out a bean, and held it in his palm. Even before the soldier dropped his blindfold he heard a cry from one of the ladies who sat with the alcalde. When he looked in his palm, he saw that the bean was black.

“The count is one and one,” Major Laroche said.

One of the ladies sitting with the alcalde had fainted at the sight of the black bean. Two of the other women were fanning her. The alcalde paid no attention to the women. He did not seem very interested in the Texans, or in the drama of life and death that was unfolding in front of him. A boil on his hand seemed to interest him more. He picked at it with a tiny knife, and then wiped it with a fine white handkerchief.

Bigfoot looked at the bean in his hand, and then put it in his pocket. Two soldiers moved him a short distance, in the direction of the wall where the firing squad waited. Bigfoot glanced back at his comrades, the Texans still waiting to draw.

“Good-bye, boys—I guess I’ll be the first to be shot,” he said.

As he waited, he pulled the black bean out of his pocket several times and looked at it. In his years on the frontier he had been in threat of his life many times, from bullets, tomahawks, arrows, lances, knives, horses, bears, Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, Sioux, Pawnee—yet his life had finally been lost to an unlucky choice of beans, in the courtyard of a leper colony in El Paso.

The Rangers still waiting were stunned. Bigfoot, more than any other man, had led them to safety across the prairies. He had outlasted their commanders, and taught them the tricks of survival. He had helped them find food, and had located rivers and waterholes for them. Yet now he was doomed.

“Bye, Matty,” Bigfoot said, waving to Matilda. Then he had a thought.

“Will you sing over me, Matty?” he asked. He remembered that his aunts had sung beautifully, back in old Kentucky, long ago.

“I’ll sing a song for you—I’ll try to remember one,” Matilda said. “I’ll do it—you were a true friend to my Shad.”

Don Shane stepped up next, and drew a black bean. Silent as usual, Don didn’t speak or change expression. Quartermaster Brognoli, who was still glassy eyed and whose head still jerked, stood at attention while being blindfolded; he drew a white bean. Joe Turner, a stocky fellow from Houston who spoke with a slow stutter, came next and drew a black bean. He and Don were marched over to stand with Bigfoot. Brognoli moved over and stood with Call.

Gus stood by Long Bill Coleman. Wesley Buttons stood with two cousins named Pete and Roy—no one could remember their last names. Neither Wesley, nor Pete, nor Roy, seemed inclined to advance to the table where the jar waited. Long Bill turned, and looked at Gus.

“Well, do you want to go and draw?” he asked. He himself was not anxious to step forward and be blindfolded, but the Texans’ ranks were thinning. A turn could not be avoided much longer.

Gus knew he ought to take a bold approach to the gamble ahead —the sort of approach he had always taken at cards or dice. But this was not cards or dice—this was life or death, and he did not feel bold. He looked at Matty, who was crying. He looked at Major Laroche, and at the fat alcalde, who was still picking at his boil.

“Woodrow went first, maybe I’ll be the last,” Gus said.

“I expect you’re hoping somebody will use up all them black beans before you get there,.” Long Bill said. “The way I count it there’s two of them damn black ones left.”

Gus didn’t answer. He felt very frightened, and a good deal annoyed with Woodrow Call, for being so quick to volunteer. If he himself had been given a moment to steady his nerves, he might have gone first and drawn the same white bean that Woodrow drew. Woodrow Call was too impatient—everyone agreed with that.

Wesley Buttons went next, while Long Bill was thinking about it; he drew a white bean—Gus and Long Bill were both chagrined that they had not stepped forward more quickly. Now Wesley was safe, but they weren’t.

Long Bill felt a terrible anxiety growing in him; he could not stand the worrying any longer. He bolted forward so quickly that he almost overturned the table where the jar with the beans sat.

“Calm, Monsieur, calm,” the Major said. “There is no need to bump our table.”

“Well, but I’m mighty ready now,” Long Bill said. “I want to take my turn.”

“Of course, you shall take your turn,” the Major said.

The blindfold was tied in place, and the bowl moved below Long Bill’s left hand. He quickly thrust his hand into the bowl and felt the beans. Before he could choose one, though, an anxiety seized him—it gripped him so suddenly and so strongly that he could not make his fingers pick out a bean. He froze for several seconds, his hand deep in the jar. He wondered if black beans felt rougher than white beans—or whether it might be the other way around.

Major Laroche waited a bit, then cleared his throat.

“Monsieur, “you must choose,” he said. “Come. Be brave, like your comrades. Choose a bean.”

Desperately, Long Bill did as he was told—he forced his trembling fingers to clutch a bean, but no sooner had he lifted it free of the pot than he dropped it. The soldier with the bandana bent to pick it up. Then he took the blindfold off, and handed the bean to Long Bill—the bean was white.

Pete went next; he turned his blindfolded face up to the sky as if seeking instruction, before he drew. He didn’t seem to be praying, but he held his face up for a moment, to the warm sun. Then he drew a black bean.

That left two men: Gus, and the skinny fellow named Roy.

At the thought that he might be the last to draw, which would condemn him for sure if Roy was lucky enough to draw a white bean, Gus jumped forward almost as quickly as Long Bill had. When he put his hand in the jar he realized that the Mexicans had not been lying about the number of beans. There were only two beans left—one for him, and one for Roy. One had to be white, the other black. He pushed first one bean and then the other with his finger, remembering all the times he had thrown the dice. He always threw quickly—it didn’t help his luck to cling to the dice.

He took a bean and pulled his hand out, but when the soldier removed the blindfold, he could not immediately bring himself to open his eyes. He held out his hand, with the bean in his palm— everyone saw that it was white before he did.

Roy went pale, when he saw the white bean in Gus’s palm.

“I guess that does it for me,” he said quietly, as if speaking to himself. But he went through the blindfolding calmly, and drew the last black bean; then he walked with a steady step over to join the men who were to die.

Gus stepped the other direction, and stood by Call.

“You shouldn’t have waited so long,” Call told him.

“Well, you went first, and nobody told you to,” Gus said, still annoyed. “There were five black beans in there, when you went, and there wasn’t but one when I went. I figure I helped my chances.”

“If I had had a weapon I wouldn’t have stood for it,” Call said— their five comrades were even then being marched toward the wall where the firing squad waited.

As he watched, the same soldier who had blindfolded them as they drew the beans went over with five bandanas and soon had the unlucky Texans blindfolded—all, that is, except Bigfoot Wallace, whose head, once again, was too large for the blindfold that had been provided.

Major Laroche, annoyed by the irregularity, yelled at one of the soldiers behind the alcalde, who hurried into the building, followed by one of the shrouded figures. A moment later the soldier came back with part of a sheet, which had been cut up to make a blindfold.

“Monsieur Wallace, I am sorry,” the Major said. “A man doesn’t like to wait, at such a time.”

“Why, Major, it’s not much of a thing to worry about,” Bigfoot said. “I’ve seen many a man die with his eyes wide open. I guess I could manage it too, if I had to.”

The men who were to live were marched over and offered the chance to exchange last words with those who were to die—but in fact, few words were exchanged. Bigfoot handed Brognoli a little tobacco, which he had accepted from one of the men in the oxcart. Joe Turner was shaky—he gripped Call’s hand hard, when Call reached out to exchange a last shake.

“Matty, have you picked a song?” Bigfoot asked. “I expect a hymn would be the thing—I don’t know none myself, but my ma and her sisters knew plenty.”

Matilda was too choked up—she couldn’t reply. Now five of the ten boys were to be shot—soon there would be no one left at all, of all the gallant boys she had set out from Austin with.

Gus, likewise, was tongue tied. He looked at Roy, at Joe, at Don Shane, at Pete, and couldn’t manage a word. He shook their hands —since they were in leg irons already, Major Laroche had decided that their hands did not need to be tied. The five who were to live waited a moment in front of the five who were condemned, thinking they might want to send messages to their loved ones, or exchange a few last words, but the five blindfolded men merely stood there, silent. Pete turned his face to the sky, as he had just before drawing the black bean.

“So long, boys,” Bigfoot said. “Don’t waste your water on the trip home—it’s dry country out there.”

The five who had drawn white beans were then moved back. The fat alcalde got out of his chair and made a speech. It was a long speech, in Spanish—none of the Texans could follow it. None even tried. Their friends stood with their backs against the wall, blindfolded. When the alcalde finished his speech, Major Laroche spoke to the firing squad—their muskets were raised.

Major Laroche nodded: the soldiers fired. The bodies of the Texans slid down the wall. Bigfoot Wallace stayed erect the longest, but he, too, soon slid down, tilting as he did. He lay with his head—the head that had been too big for the blindfold—across stuttering Joe Turner’s leg.

Call felt black hatred for the Mexicans, who had marched many of his friends to death, and now had shot five of them down right in front of them. Gus felt relieved—if he hadn’t marched forward and drawn the bean when he did, he was sure he would now be with the dead. Brognoli, his head still jerking, chewed a little of Bigfoot’s tobacco. When he saw the men fall he felt a jerking inside him, like the movement of his head. He had no voice; he could not comment on the death of men, which, after all, was an everyday thing.

The Mexicans brought the same oxcart, with the same black ox, into the courtyard and were about to begin loading the Texans’ bodies in it when, to everyone’s surprise, a voice was raised in song, from the balcony above the courtyard. It was a high voice, sweet and clear, yet not weak—it carried well beyond the courtyard, strong enough to be heard all the way to the Rio Grande, Gus thought.

Everyone in the courtyard was stilled by the singing. The alcalde had been about to get in his carriage, but he stopped. Major Laroche looked up, as did the other soldiers. There were no words with the sound, merely notes, high and vibrant. Matilda stopped crying—she had been trying to think of a song to sing for Bigfoot Wallace, but a woman was already singing, for Bigfoot and the others—a woman with a voice far richer than their own. The sound came from the balcony, where the woman in black stood. It was she who sang for the dead men; she sang and sang, with such authority and such passion that even the alcalde dared not move until she finished. The sound rose and swooped, like a flying bird; some of the tones brought a sadness to the listeners, a sadness so deep that Call cried freely and even Major Laroche had to wipe away tears.

Gus was transfixed; he liked singing, himself, and could bawl out a tune with the best of them when he was drunk; but what he heard that day, as the bodies of his comrades were waiting to be loaded into an oxcart, was like no singing he had ever heard, like none he would ever hear again. The lady in black gripped the railing of the balcony as she sang. As she was finishing her song, the notes dipped down low—they carried a sadness that was more than a sadness at the death of men; rather it was a sadness at the lives of men, and of women. It reminded those who heard the rising, dipping notes, of notes of hopes that had been born, and, yet, died; of promise, and the failure of promise. Gus began to cry; he didn’t know why, but he couldn’t stop, not while the song continued.

Then, after one long, low tone that seemed to hang soft as the daylight, the lady in black ended her requiem. She stood for a moment, gripping the railing of the balcony; then she turned, and disappeared.

The alcalde, as if released from a trance, got into his carriage with his ladies; the carriage slowly turned, and went out the gate.

“My Lord, did you hear that?” Gus asked Call.

“I heard it,” Call said.

The soldiers, too, had come to life. They had begun to load the bodies in the oxcart. Matilda came over to where the five survivors stood.

“We ought to go with them, boys,” she said. “They’re our people. I want to see that they’re laid out proper, in their graves.”

“Go ask the Major if we can help with the burying,” Call said, to Gus. “I expect if you ask him he’ll let us. He likes you.”

“Come with me, Matty,” Gus said. “We’ll both ask.”

The alcalde had stopped a moment, to have a word with Major Laroche, who stood by the gate. Through the gate Gus could see the long, dusty plain to the north. The Major saluted the alcalde and bowed to his women—the carriage passed out. The oxcart, with the bodies of the Texans in it, was creaking across the courtyard, toward the same gate.

“We’d like to help with the burying, Major,” Gus said. “They was our friends. We can’t do much for them now, but we’d like to be there.”

“If you like, Monsieur,” the Major said. “The graveyard is just outside the wall. Follow the cart and return when the work is finished.”

Gus was a little startled that the Major meant to send no guard.

“I suggest you hurry back,” the Major said, with a look of amusement. “The dogs here are very bad—I don’t think you can outrun them, with those chains. You saw a few of them last night, but there are many more. If you try to escape you will soon meet with the dogs.”

Matilda could not get the singing out of her mind. She wishedBigfoot could know what wonderful singing there had been, after his death and the deaths of the others. She had tried to get a good look at the woman in black, but the veils were too thick and the distance too great.

“I never heard singing like that, Major,” Matilda said. “Who is that woman?”

“That is Lady Carey,” the Major said. “She is English. You will meet her soon.”

“What’s an English lady doing in a place like this?” Gus asked. “She’s farther off from home than we are.”

Major Laroche turned, as if tired of the conversation, and motioned for one of the soldiers to bring his horse.

“Yes, and so am I,” Major Laroche said, as he prepared to mount. “But I am a soldier and this is where I was sent. Lady Carey is here because she is a prisoner of war, like yourselves. I will tell my men to let you help with the burial. I suggest you pile on many, many rocks. As I said, the dogs here are very bad, and they don’t have much to eat.”

Gus motioned to the others—they all filed out, behind the oxcart. As soon as they were out the gate, Major Laroche and his ten cavalrymen galloped out and were soon enveloped in the dust their horses’ hooves threw up.

“I asked about that woman who done the singing,” Gus told Call. “The Major says she’s a prisoner of war, like us.”

Call didn’t answer—he was looking at the bodies of his dead comrades. Blood leaked out the bottom of the crude oxcart, leaving a red line that was quickly covered by blowing sand.

“Lord, it’s windy here, ain’t it?” Wesley Buttons said.

THE MEXICAN SOLDIERS WERE glad to allow the Texans to bury their comrades. One of the soldiers had a bottle of white liquor, which he handed around among his friends. Soon the Mexicans were so drunk that all but one of them passed out in the oxcart. None of them had weapons, so it made little sense to think of overpowering them and attempting to escape, though Woodrow Call considered it.

Gus saw what direction his friend’s thoughts were taking, and quickly pointed out what the Major had said about the dogs.

“He said they’ll eat us, if we try to run with these chains on,” Gus said.

“I don’t expect to be eaten by no cur,” Call said—but he knew the Major was probably right. Packs of wild dogs could bring down any animal less fierce than a grizzly bear.

Matilda Roberts had saved a broken piece of tortoiseshell comb through the long journey—she was attempting to comb the dead men’s hair, while the Mexican soldiers finished the bottle of liquor.

The Texans were laid in one grave, by the walls of San Lazaro.

A dust storm had blown up. When they began the burial they could see the river, but the river was soon lost from view. Once the graves were covered the Texans stumbled around, gathering rocks. Several dogs had already gathered—Gus and Wesley threw rocks at them, but the dogs only retreated a few yards, snarling.

While they worked, another smaller cart, drawn by an old mule, made its way around the wall. It, too, was a vehicle of burial—on it were the bodies of two lepers, wrapped tightly in white shrouds. The cart passed close to where the Texans were working; the person driving the cart was also shrouded.

“Look, it’s that one without no meat on his fingers,” Gus said— all that was visible of the driver was the same two bony hands that had given Bigfoot his boots, only a few hours earlier. The leper did not look their way; nor did he make any pretenses. He merely tipped them out of the cart, and turned the cart back toward the gate. Soon the dogs were tearing at the shrouds. The sight saddened Matilda even more. She didn’t imagine that they could find enough rocks to make the bodies of Bigfoot and the others safe for very long.

Call led the ox back into San Lazaro. Most of the Mexican soldiers were sleeping in the oxcart; one would have thought them as dead as the Texans, but for the snores. The two soldiers who could still walk kept close to the Texans, for fear of the dogs.

Once inside the gates the Texans, though still chained, were allowed the freedom of the courtyard. They were served a simple meal of beans and posole, on the table where the jar they had drawn from had been set.

An old man and an old woman served them—both were lepers, yet neither was shrouded, and the dark spots on their cheeks and arms looked no worse to the Texans than bad bruises. Both seemed to be kindly people; they smiled at the Texans, and brought them more food when they emptied their dishes. The only soldiers left in San Lazaro were the drunks in the oxcart. In midafternoon, they began to awake. When they did, they picked up their weapons and drove the oxcart out of the walls. All of them looked frightened.

“They’re scared of them dogs,” Gus said. “Why don’t the Major get up a dog hunt and kill the damn curs?”

“There’d just be more,” Call said. “You can’t kill all the dogs.”

He watched the lepers, as they came and went at their tasks. All of them kept themselves covered, but now and then a wind would riffle a cloak, or blow a shawl, so that he could glimpse the people under the wraps. Some were bad: no chins, cheeks that were black, noses half eaten away. Some limped, from deformities of their feet. One old man used a crutch—he had only one foot. There were a few children playing in the courtyard; all of them seemed normal to Call. There was even a little blond boy, about ten, who showed no sign of the disease. Some of the adults appeared to be not much worse than the old man and the old woman who served them. Some had dark spots on their cheeks and foreheads, or on their hands.

Once the soldiers were gone, San Lazaro did not seem a bad place. Many of the lepers looked at the Texans in a friendly way. Some smiled. Others, whose mouths were affected, covered themselves, but nodded when they passed.

Overhead, the dust swirled so high they could barely see the mountain that loomed over the convent.

Gus felt such relief at being alive, that his appetite for gambling began to return. He had ceased to mind the lepers much—at night they might be scary, but in the daylight the place they were in looked not much worse than any hospital. He began to wish he had a pack of cards, or at least some dice, though of course he had not one cent to gamble with.

“I wonder how long the Mexicans mean to leave us here?” he asked.

Brognoli’s head was going back and forth, like the pendulum of a clock, as it had ever since his fright in the canyon. He watched the lepers with dispassion, and the little blond boy with curiosity. Once, he looked up at the balcony where the lady in black had been and saw a short stout woman standing there. She spoke, and the little blond boy reluctantly left his play and ran upstairs.

Call was thinking about a way to rid them of the leg irons. If he had a hammer and a chisel of some sort, he felt certain he could break the chains himself. The Major had said nothing about coming back, and the last of the soldiers had gone. They were alone with the lepers—the only impediments to their escape were the chains and the dog packs. If he could get the chains off, there would be a way to brave the dogs.

Wesley Buttons, though he had held up bravely during the long march and the drawing of the beans, was feeling keenly the loss of his two brothers, and of the rest of the troop.“I remember when we left—I got to drive the wagon with old General Lloyd in it,” he said. “We had an army. There was enough of us to hold off the Indians and whip the Mexicans. Now look— there’s just us, and we’re way out here in the desert, locked in with these sick ‘uns.”

“It’s a long way home, I reckon,” he added. “Ma’s going to be sad, when she hears about the boys.”

Brognoli’s head swung back and forth, back and forth. “I barely know which way is home,” Long Bill said. “It’s so dusty it’s all I can do to keep my directions. I guess I could go downriver, but it would be a pretty long walk.”

Gus remembered that it was the same river they had camped on when Matilda caught the big green snapping turtle.

“Why, if it’s the Rio Grande, we could just stroll along it easy,” he said. “Matty could catch us turtles, when we get hungry.”

Matilda shook her head—she didn’t welcome the prospect of another long walk.

“It’s just the six of us got across New Mexico,” she pointed out. “If we have to walk the rest of the way, I doubt any of us will make it. That big Indian knows that river—he might get us yet.”

“We’d have to have weapons,” Call said. “None of us would make it, without weapons.”

“I don’t see what the hurry is,” Gus said. “We’ve had a long hike, as it is. I’d like to laze around here and rest up, myself. These lepers ain’t bothering us. All you got to do is not look at them too close.”

He had been inclined to try escape, until Matilda had mentioned Buffalo Hump. Memory of the fierce Comanche put a different slant on such a trip. Better to stay inside the walls of San Lazaro and rest with the lepers, than to expose themselves to Buffalo Hump again—especially since they only had five men.

“I want to leave, if we can get these chains off,” Call said. “What if the Major comes back and has us draw some more beans?”

He was tired, though, and didn’t urge escape immediately. When the wind was high, his back still sometimes throbbed, and his sore foot pained him. A day or two’s rest wouldn’t hurt—at least it wouldn’t if the Mexicans didn’t decide to eliminate them all.

As the evening wore on, the Texans rested and napped—they had been assigned the little room where they had spent the night’ before, but no one really wanted to go into such a dark hole. The courtyard was sunny; those who didn’t want sun could rest under the long barricades.

Gus was determined to gamble—he had asked several of the Mexicans who worked in the convent if they had any cards; one woman with only three teeth took a shine to him and managed to find an incomplete deck. It was missing about twenty cards, but Gus and Long Bill soon devised a game. They broke a few straws off a broom to use for money.

While they were making up rules for a card game involving only thirty-three cards, a black woman taller than Gus came across the courtyard. She didn’t seem to be a leper—her face and hands were normal. She approached them in such a dignified manner that the men straightened up a little. Gus hid the cards.

“Gentlemen, I have an invitation for you,” the Negress said, in English better than their own. “Lady Carey would like to ask you to tea.”

“Ask us to what?” Gus asked. He was taken by surprise. Although he had just shaved the day before, the dignity and elegance of the black woman made him feel scruffy.

“Tea, gentlemen,” the Negress said. “Lady Carey is English, and in England they have tea. It’s like a little meal. Lady Carey’s son, the viscount Mountstuart, will be taking it with us. I’m sure you’ve seen him playing with the Mexican children. He’s the one who’s blond.”

Call, too, was startled by the black woman’s courtesy and poise. He had never seen a Negress so tall, much less one so well spoken. Few black women in Texas would dare to speak to a group of white men so boldly, and yet the woman had not been rude in any way. She had an invitation to deliver, and she had delivered it. Like Gus, he felt that the few Rangers left were a rugged lot, hardly fit to take food with an English lady.

While he and Gus and Wesley and Long Bill were looking at one another, a little uncertain as to how to respond, the black woman turned to Matilda Roberts and smiled.

“Miss Roberts, Lady Carey knows you’ve traveled a long way across a dusty land,” the Negress said. “She was thinking you might appreciate a bath and a change of clothes.“Matilda was surprised by the woman’s serenity.

“I would … I would … mainly I’ve just had a wash in the river, when we were by the river,” Matilda said.

“That river comes out of the mountains,” the woman said. “I expect it’s cold.”

“Ice cold,” Matilda confirmed.

“Then come along with me,” the Negress said. “Lady Carey has a tub, and the water is hot. These gentlemen can wait a few minutes —tea will be served in about half an hour.”

Matilda looked a little uncertain, but she followed the black woman across the courtyard and up the stairs.

“I wonder what kind of meal it will be,” Wesley Buttons said. “I hope it’s beefsteak. I ain’t had no beefsteak in a good long while.”

“For it to be beefsteak there’d have to be cattle,” Gus remarked. “I ain’t seen no cattle around here, and I don’t know how a cow would live if there was one. It would have to eat sand, or else cactus, and if it wasn’t quick the dern dogs would get it.”

A problem they considered as they waited for it to be time to go to Lady Carey’s was that Brognoli’s condition seemed to be getting worse. He turned his head more and more rapidly, back and forth, back and forth, and he had begun to drool; now and then he emitted a low, thin sound, a sound such as a rabbit might make as it was dying.

A little later, the black woman appeared on the balcony above them and motioned for them to come. Gus had doubts about taking Brognoli, but it seemed unfair to leave him, since food was being offered. It was true that the Mexicans who ran San Lazaro had been generous with soup and tortillas, but Wesley Buttons had put the notion of beefsteak in their minds. It seemed wrong to exclude Brognoli from what might be a feast.

“Come on, Brog,” Gus said. “That lady that did that singing over Bigfoot and the boys is up there waiting to give us grub.”

Brognoli got up and came with them, walking slowly and still swinging his head.

None of them knew what to expect, as they went up the stairs and along the narrow balcony that led to Lady Carey’s quarters. Gus kept brushing at his hair with his hands—he had meant to ask Matty for her broken comb, but forgot it. Of course, he had not expected Matilda to be led away by a tall black woman who spoke better english than any of them.

Suddenly, the little blond boy jumped out of the shadows, pointing a hammerless old horse pistol at them.

“Are you Texans? I am a Scot,” the boy said.

“Why, I’m part Scot myself,” Gus said. “That’s what my ma claimed. You’re as far away from home as I am.”

“But that’s why my mother wants to see you,” the boy said. “She wants you to take us home. She told me we could leave tomorrow, if you would like to take us.”

Call and Gus exchanged looks. The little boy was handsome and frank. Perhaps he was merely fibbing, as children will, but there was also the chance that his mother, Lady Carey, had told him some such thing. Call didn’t mean to stay a prisoner of the Mexicans long, but neither had he expected to leave in a day.

“If we were to take you home, what would we ride?” he asked. “Our horses got stolen a long time back.”

“Oh, my mother has horses,” the boy said. “There’s a stable in the back of the leprosarium.”

“In the back of the what?” Gus asked.

“The leprosarium—aren’t you lepers?” the little boy asked, “My mother’s a leper, that’s why I never get to see her face. But her hands are not affected yet—she can still play the violin quite well, and she’s teaching me.”

“When we get home I shall have the finest teacher in Europe,” he added. “Someday I may play before the Queen. My mother knows the Queen, but I haven’t met her yet. I’m still too young to be presented at court.”

“Well, I’m not as young as you—I’d like to meet a queen,” Gus said. “Especially if she was a pretty queen.”

“No, the Queen is fat,” the little boy said. “My mother was beautiful, though, until she became a leper. She was even painted by Mr. Gainsborough, and he’s a very famous painter.”

Just then a door opened, and the tall Negress stepped out.

“Now, Willy, I hope you haven’t been pointing that gun at these gentlemen,” the woman said. “It’s very impolite to point guns at people—particularly people who might become your friends.”

“Well, I did point it, but it was just in fun,” the boy said. “I couldn’t really shoot them because I have no bullets.”

“That doesn’t make it less impolite,” the woman said.

Then she looked at the group.“Of course I’ve been impolite, too,” she said. “I failed to introduce myself. I’m Emerald.”

“She’s from Africa and her father was a king,” the boy said. “She’s been with us ever so long, though. She’s been with us even longer than Mrs. Chubb.”

“Now, Willy, don’t bore the gentlemen,” Emerald said. “Tea is almost ready. You may want to come in and wash your hands.”

“We washed once, when they barbered us,” Gus pointed out. “It’s been quite a few months since we washed twice in one day.”

“Yes, but you are now under the protection of Lady Carey,” Emerald said. “You may wash as often as you want.”

“Ma’am, if there’s grub, I’m for eating first and washing later,” Wesley Buttons said. “I’ve not had a beefsteak for awhile—I feel like I could eat most of a cow.”

“Goodness, you don’t serve beefsteak at tea,” Emerald said. “Beefsteak belongs with dinner, never with tea. Lady Carey is quite unconventional, but not that unconventional, I’m afraid.”

The Texans were led into a room where there were five washbasins; the water in the basins was so hot that five columns of steam rose into the room. There were also five towels, and more extraordinary still, five hairbrushes and five combs. The brushes were edged in silver, and the combs seemed to be ivory. At a slight remove was another table, with another washbasin, a towel, and another silver-edged brush and ivory comb.

“That’s the hottest water I’ve seen since we left San Antonio,” Gus remarked. “We’ll all scald ourselves, if we ain’t careful.”

The sixth washbasin was for Willy, the young viscount. The Texans were left to scrub themselves after their own inclinations, but while they were watching the water steam in the washbasins, a short, fat woman in grey clothes burst through a door and grabbed Willy before he could elude her.

“No, no, Mrs. Chubb,” Willy said, trying to squirm out of her grip; but his squirming was in vain. In a second, Mrs. Chubb had Willy bent over his own washbasin; she gave his face a vigorous scrubbing, ignoring his protests about the scalding water.

“Now, Willy, try not to howl, you’ll upset our guests,” Mrs. Chubb said. She didn’t take her eye, or her hands, off her young charge until she considered him sufficiently washed; once her task was done to her satisfaction, the young boy’s face was red from scrubbing and his hair shining from a skillful application of comb and brush. Then the plump woman surveyed the Texans with a lively blue eye.

“Here, gentlemen, your water’s cooling—plunge in,” she said. “Lady Carey has a glorious appetite, and your Miss Roberts is eating as if she’s been starved for a month.”

“Two months,” Long Bill said. “Matty ain’t had a good meal since we crossed the Brazos.”

“Well, she’s having a splendid high tea, right now,” Mrs. Chubb said. “If you gentlemen want anything to eat between now and dinner, I suggest you wash up quickly. Otherwise there won’t be a scone left, or a sandwich, either.”

Willy rushed through the door Mrs. Chubb had just emerged from.

“Mamma, I must have a scone,” he said. “Do wait—I’m coming.”

The Texans, under the urging of Mrs. Chubb, hastily splashed themselves with the hot water and rubbed themselves with the towels. Though they had shaved and washed just that morning, the towels were brown with dust when they finished their rubbing. Gus took a swipe or two at his hair with the silver brush—the rest of the Texans felt awkward even picking up such unfamiliar instruments, and left themselves uncombed.

Mrs. Chubb, unfazed, shooed them toward the door, much as a hen might shoo her chickens.

When the Texans entered Lady Carey’s room they were shocked to see Matilda Roberts, pink-faced, and with wet hair, in a clean white smock, sitting on a stool eating biscuits.

Beside her, in a chair, was the lady in black, the one who had sung so movingly over their fallen friends. Gus had hoped to get a glimpse of her face, but he was disappointed: Lady Carey was triply veiled, and the veils were black. Nothing showed at all, not her hair, not her face, not her feet, which were in sharp-toed black boots. Call supposed the woman’s face must be badly eaten up, else why would she cover herself so completely? He could get no hint even of the color of her eyes. Yet she was eating when they came in, eating a small thing that seemed to be mostly bread. When Lady Carey wanted to eat, she tilted her head forward slightly, and slipped the little bite of bread under the three veils—just for a second he saw a flash of white teeth, and a bit of chin, which seemed unblemished.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Lady Carey said, in a low, friendly voice. “When I’m hungry I have no manners—and I always seem to be hungry, in San Lazaro. I expect it’s the wind. When I’m eating, I don’t mind it quite so much.”

“It blows, don’t it?” Long Bill said—he was surprised that he had been able to utter a word, to such a great lady. They were in a large room whose walls had been hung with patterned cloth. The two windows were tightly shuttered. In one corner was a large, four-poster bed with a little dog sitting on it; beside it was a smaller bed where Willy slept.

“Certainly does—it blows,” Lady Carey said. “Eat, gentlemen. Don’t be shy. I expect it’s been awhile since you’ve sat down to a tea such as this.”

Lady Carey’s hands, too, were gloved in black—she reached down with two gloved fingers, took another small piece of the bread, and popped it under the veils and into her mouth.

Gus felt that it was his turn to speak—he had been about to address Lady Carey when Long Bill rudely jumped in ahead of him, and only to make a pointless comment about the wind. Before them on the table was an array of food, and all of it was rather small food, it seemed to him: there were little pieces of bread, cut quite square, with what seemed like slices of cucumber stuck between the squares of bread. Then there were biscuits and muffins, and larger, harder muffins with raisins stuck in them: he thought those might be the things called scones that Willy had referred to. Besides the various muffins and biscuits there were little ears of corn, with a saucer of butter and salt to dip them in; there were tomatoes and apricots and figs, and a plate of tiny fish that proved very salty to the taste. Gus had every intention of saying something complimentary about the food, but something about Lady Carey intimidated him, preventing him from getting even a word out of his mouth. He looked at her and opened his mouth, but then instead of speaking, put a bit of biscuit in his mouth and ate it.

The Texans were shy in the beginning—most of the foods they were being offered were foods they had never tasted. They stuck, at first, to what was safest, which were the biscuits—but, in part because they stuck to them so strictly, the biscuits were soon gone. Then the muffins went, then the scones, then the corn, and, finally, the various fruits. All the Texans, though, avoided the cucumber sandwiches, even preferring the salty fish. All the while, Mrs. Chubb supplied them with large cups of hot, sweet tea; the tea was sweet because Mrs. Chubb dropped square lumps of sugar into it with a pair of silver tongs.

“Lord, that’s sweet,” Gus said. None of the Texans had ever tasted pure sugar before. They were amazed by the sweetness it imparted to the tea.

“Oh well … that’s the nature of sugar,” Lady Carey said. She, too, was having tea, but instead of drinking it from a cup, she was sipping it through a hollow reed of some kind, which she delicately inserted under her veils.

“This was refined by my chemist, the learned Doctor Gilley,” Lady Carey said. “It came from sugarcane grown on my plantation, in the islands. I do think it’s very good sugar.”

“That’s where Mamma caught leprosy,” Willy said. “On our plantation. I didn’t catch it and neither did Emerald and neither did Mrs. Chubb.”

“Poor luck, I was the only one afflicted,” Lady Carey said.

“Well, Papa might have had it, but we don’t know, because the Mexicans shot him first,” Willy said. “That’s when we were made prisoners of war—when they shot Papa.”

“Now, Willy—these gentlemen have traveled a long way and lost many friends themselves,” Lady Carey said. “We needn’t burden them with our misfortunes.”

“I lost my Shad,” Matilda said. “It was a stray bullet, too. If he’d been sitting anywhere else I expect he’d still be alive.”

“Well, Matty, that’s not for sure,” Gus said. “We walked a far piece, after that, through all that cold weather.”

“Cold wouldn’t have kilt my Shad,” Matilda said. “I would have hugged him and kept him warm.”

“It is cold in our castle,” Willy said. “There aren’t many fires. But we have cannons and someday I will shoot them. When will we go back to our castle, Mamma?”

“That depends on these gentlemen,” Lady Carey said. “We’ll discuss it as soon as they’ve finished their tea. It’s very impolite to discuss business while one’s guests are enjoying their food.”

“We can talk now, I guess,” Call said. “If you’ve a plan for leaving here, I’m for talking now.”

“Fine, there’s nothing left but the cucumber sandwiches anyway,” Lady Carey said. “I suppose cucumbers are not much valued in Texas, but we Scots have a fine appetite for them. Come help me, Willy, and you too, Mrs. Chubb. Let’s finish off the sandwiches and plan our expedition.”

Call was enjoying the breads and muffins and fruit. Everything he put in his mouth was tasty, particularly the small, buttery ears of corn. After the cold, dry trip they had made, across the prairies and the desert, it seemed a miracle that they had come through safe and were eating such food in the company of an English lady, her servants, and her little boy. He was startled, though, when she mentioned an expedition. The country around El Paso was as harsh as any he had seen. Five Rangers, four women, and a boy wouldn’t stand much chance, not unless the Mexican army was planning to go with them.

“First, we need proper introductions,” Lady Carey said. “I’m Lucinda Carey, this is Mrs. Chubb, this is Emerald, and this is Willy. You know our names, but we don’t know yours. Could you tell us your names, please?”

Gus immediately told the lady that his name was Augustus McCrae. He was determined that Long Bill Coleman not be the first to speak to the fine lady who had fed them such delicious food.

“Why, Willy, he’s Scot, like us,” Lady Carey said. “I expect we’re cousins, twenty times removed, Mr. McCrae.”

The news perked Gus up immediately. The other Rangers introduced themselves—Woodrow Call was last. Long Bill took it upon himself to introduce Brognoli, whose head was still swinging back and forth, regular as the ticking of the clock. None of them knew how to behave to a lady—Long Bill attempted a little bow, but Lady Carey didn’t appear to notice. She divided the cucumber sandwiches between herself, Mrs. Chubb, and Willy, who ate them avidly.

All the while Emerald, the tall Negress, stood watching, near the bed. The little dog had gone to sleep and was snoring loudly.

“Throw a pillow at him, Willy—why must we hear those snores?” Lady Carey said, when the last cucumber sandwich was gone. Willy immediately grabbed three pillows off a red settee and threw them at the sleeping dog, which whuffed, woke up, shook itself, and ran off the bed into Lady Carey’s arms.

“This is George—he’s a smelly beast,” Lady Carey said. The little dog was frantically attempting to lick her, but the best he could do was lick her black gloves.

Call was watching the tall Negress, Emerald. She stood by the four-poster bed, keeping her eye on the company. She wasn’t unfriendly, but she wasn’t familiar, either. She was wrapped in a long, blue cloak. Call wondered if she had a gun under the cloak, or at least a knife. He could see that she was protective of Lady Carey and the little boy; he would not have wanted to be the one who attacked them, not with Emerald there.

While he was sipping the last of his tea, he happened to look up and see the head of a large snake, raised over the canopy of the four-poster bed. In a second the snake’s long body followed—it was far and away the largest snake Call had ever seen. He looked around the table, hoping to see a knife he could kill it with, but there was no knife, except the little one they had used to spread butter. He grabbed one of the little stools and was about to run over and try to smash the big snake with it when the Negress calmly stretched out a long black arm and let the big snake slide along it. All the Rangers gave a start, when they saw the snake slide onto Emerald’s arm. Soon it was draped over her shoulders, its head stretching out toward the table where the tea had been.

“No cause for alarm, gentlemen,” Lady Carey said. “That’s Elphinstone—he’s Willy’s boa.”

“Only he’s too big for me,” Willy said. “Mamma and Emerald play with him now. Mrs. Chubb doesn’t care for snakes. She hides her eyes when Elphinstone eats his rats.”

Emerald walked over and handed the boa to Lady Carey, who let it slither over her lap and off under the table.

“I think he wants George,” Lady Carey said. “Cake crumbs don’t satisfy a boa, but I expect a smelly little beast such as George would be a treat.”

“But Mamma, he can’t have George!” Willy insisted. “He finds quite a lot of rats—I shouldn’t think he’d need to eat our dog.”

“Who knows what a boa needs, Willy?” Lady Carey said. “I’m afraid we’ve let all these beasts distract us. Willy and I want to go home, gentlemen, and the Mexican government has agreed to release us. What they won’t do is provide us with an escort, and we’re rather a long way from a seaport.”

“I’ll say,” Long Bill said. “It’s so far I wouldn’t even know which one to head for.”

“Galveston is the most feasible, I believe,” Lady Carey said. “I’d rather try for Galveston than Veracruz. If we travel through Mexico the greedy generals might decide they want more ransom—my father has already paid them a handsome sum. He didn’t pay it for me, of course—father wouldn’t waste a shilling on a leprous daughter. He paid it for the young viscount here. Willy’s the one he needs—Willy’s the heir.”

The Rangers listened silently to what Lady Carey said. Call looked at Gus, who looked at Long Bill. Brognoli continued to swing his head, and Wesley Buttons, who was a slow eater, was still consuming the last crumbs of one of the big scones with raisins in it. The others had accepted that the big snake was a pet, but Wesley didn’t trust snakes, particularly not snakes that were longer than he was tall. This one had slithered off somewhere, but it could always slither back and take a bite out of him. He was careful to keep both feet on the rungs of his stool, and did not pay much attention to the talk of ransoms and seaports. He would go where the boys went—he was happy to let them decide.

“Ma’am, we’ll be pleased to take you to Galveston,” Call said. “If we can find the way. It’s a far piece, though, and we’ve got no mounts and no gear. Our horses got stolen, and the Mexicans took our guns.”

“Fortunately, we aren’t poor yet, we Careys,” Lady Carey said. “I didn’t expect you to walk across Texas barefoot, in leg irons. We have our own mounts, and we’ll soon find some for you. You look like honest men—I’ll send you to town with enough gold to equip us properly. Don’t skimp, either. Buy yourselves reliable weapons and warm clothes and trustworthy mounts. We have a tent large enough for ourselves and Miss Roberts—but I’m afraid you men will have to sleep out, if it’s not too inconvenient.”

“We don’t know how to sleep no way but out,” Gus said. “If we can get some slickers and some blankets we’ll be cozy, I guess.”

Just then, the snake emerged and began to glide up one of the bedposts. Soon it disappeared, back onto the canopy over the big bed. Wesley Buttons cautiously put his feet back on the ground., “I expect it’s a little too late to send you to town today,” Lady Carey said. “Emerald, tell Manuel to get the irons off these men. I want them to get into town early tomorrow. I want to leave San Lazaro quickly—these greedy Mexicans might change their minds.”

“Come,” Emerald said. “We’ve fixed a room for you. The mattresses are just corn shuck, but it will be more comfortable than the place the Mexicans put you.”

When they left the room, Willy had seated himself next to his mother and was helping her select from a bunch of storybooks, piled beside the low settee where Lady Carey sat. She raised her head to them, as they left the room, but all they could see were her veils.

“I wonder how bad she is, with the leprosy?” Gus asked, as the Texans were following Emerald along the balcony to their quarters. “Wouldn’t it be awful if she didn’t have no nose?”

“Yes, it would be awful, but I like her anyway,” Call said. “She’s going to get us out of here. I never supposed we’d be this lucky.”

Gus thought of the long miles they had to travel, over the dry, windy country, to get even as far back as the settlements around Austin. It was a long way, even to the mountains where Josh Corn and Zeke Moody had been killed. And if they got that far, they would be in the land of Buffalo Hump.

“We don’t know yet if we’re lucky,” he said. “We got to go right across where that Comanche is.”

“It still beats being a prisoner arid wearing these damn chains,” Call said.

BUFFALO HUMP CAUGHT KIRKER, the scalp hunter, in a rocky gully just east of the Rio Pecos. Kirker had forty scalps with him at the time. Buffalo Hump judged the scalps to be mostly Mexican scalps, but he tortured Kirker to death anyway. The man had not been easy to take. He had managed to get in amid some rocks and delayed them a whole day, an annoying thing to the war chief. The Comanche moon was full—he wanted to follow the old trail, down into Mexico, and bring back captives, children they could use as slaves, or sell to the half-breed traders, in the trading place called the Sorrows, near the dripping springs where travelers on the llano stopped to rest and water their animals.

Buffalo Hump did not like having to slow his raid to catch one scalp hunter, a man so weak that he only killed Mexicans and rarely even attempted to take an Apache scalp, or a Comanche. At first he considered leaving three men, to hide and wait. When Kirker thought he was safe and came out of his hiding place in the rocks, the men could kill him and then follow the raiding party south.Kicking Wolf, though, protested so vigorously that Buffalo Hump gave in. Kirker had killed two of Kicking Wolfs wives, and one of his sons; he had taken their scalps and sold them. Kicking Wolf was not a man who forgave or forgot; he wanted to take part in Kirker’s death. The Comanche moon had only just turned full—they could easily sweep on into Mexico and take their captives. Kicking Wolf even had an idea that would help drive Kirker out of his hole in the rocks, and he put it into practice at night, just before moonrise. He had his young warriors catch several snakes and tie their tails together so tightly that they couldn’t rattle well. Of course the rattlers’ heads had to be held down with a stick—they grew angry at the mistreatment they received. There were seven snakes in all. Once the seven were bound together by their tails, a young brave named Fast Boy climbed up on the rocks above Kirker and threw the bundle of snakes down on top of him. Kirker screamed when the first snake bit him—when he screamed, revealing his position, Buffalo Hump himself jumped down on him and knocked his gun away before he could kill himself. Fortunately, the snake had only bitten Kirker in the leg; the wound would not kill him, or weaken him enough to spoil the torture. Even before they got Kirker back to camp, Kicking Wolf, who could not be restrained when he was angry, poked a sharp stick in Kirker’s ear, destroying his eardrum and causing much blood to run out of his head. Kirker snarled and howled, like a tied wolf. He spat at the Comanches so many times that Buffalo Hump took a needle and a thread and sewed his lips together; after that he could not scream loudly, though he rolled and writhed and made gurgling sounds as he was being burnt and cut by Kicking Wolf, who insisted on doing most of the torturing himself. Some of the braves were in favor of saving Kirker; they wanted to send him back to the main camp, so the squaws could torture him. One squaw named Three Seed was better at torture than any man. She could bite off a man’s fingers or toes as neatly as if she were merely biting a willow twig.

Buffalo Hump, though, was impatient. It was true that Kirker was a bad man who deserved to be tortured by the squaws, but the squaws were four days’ ride to the north, and the raiders’ business lay to the south. Kicking Wolf might not be as expert at torture as Three Seed, but he was good enough to make Kirker writhe and gurgle through a whole afternoon. He had been burned and cut and blinded when they took him to a small tree near the Pecos and tied him upside down. They built a small fire beneath his dangling head, and prepared to ride off; the greasewood would burn all night. Long before the sun rose, Kirker’s head would be cooked.

Even so, when Buffalo Hump mounted and indicated that it was time to take advantage of the Comanche moon and get on with the serious business of the raid, Kicking Wolf refused to leave. He was determined to enjoy Kirker’s torture to the end. He jabbed a thorny stick into Kirker’s other ear, and let blood from his head drip into the fire.

Buffalo Hump was irritated, but Kicking Wolf, as a warrior, could do as he pleased, up to a point. The man knew the way to Mexico as well as anyone. It was not likely that Kirker would last until the morning—Kicking Wolf would follow and catch up the next day.

Still, before he left, Buffalo Hump made sure Kicking Wolf knew he was expected in Mexico soon. Kicking Wolf was the best horse thief in the tribe, and also the best stealer of children. He moved without making any sound at all. Once or twice he had reached through a window and taken a child while its parents were right in the room, eating or quarreling. Buffalo Hump did not want Kicking Wolf lingering too long, just to torture one scalp hunter. The man was already too weak to respond strongly to torture, anyway. He only jerked a little, and made a weak sound behind his sewn lips when the flames touched his head.

Kicking Wolf paid little attention to Buffalo Hump and the other warriors, as they rode off to the south. He was glad the war chief was gone—Buffalo Hump was a great fighter, but he was too impatient for the slow business of torture. For the same reason, Buffalo Hump was not an especially good hunter—he often jumped too soon. Torture took patience, and Buffalo Hump didn’t have it. Before the warriors were even out of sight, Kicking Wolf took a stick or two off the fire and touched them to Kirker here and there, causing the man to jerk like a speared fish. The jerking made Kicking Wolf happy. It was good to be rid of the impatient war chief, good to be alone to hurt the man who had scalped his wives and his little son. In a little while, he cut the bloody threads that Buffalo Hump had used to sew Kirker’s lips together. Then he stoked the fire a little and grabbed Kirker by the hair, so he could hold the man’s face right over the flames. He wanted to hear the man scream.

After the first screams were over, Kicking Wolf scattered the fire a little and let Kirker’s head hang down again. He got up and walked a short distance to a pile of rocks, carrying one of the burning sticks, to give him a little light. He wanted to find some little scorpions and put them on the white man. The scorpions would hurt him but would not kill him, and the torture could go on.

CALL WAS SURPRISED BY Lady Carey’s riding. She rode sidesaddle, of course, but handled her black gelding as expertly as any man. She could even make the horse jump, putting him over little gullies and small bushes while at a gallop. Call thought that was foolish, but he had to admit it was skillful, and pretty to watch. Willy tried to get his pony to jump like his mother’s gelding, but of course the pony wouldn’t. Mrs. Chubb rode a donkey, and protested constantly about its behaviour, though Gus pointed out to her that her donkey behaved no worse than most donkeys.

“In England they behave better, sir,” Mrs. Chubb insisted. “This one tried to bite my toe.”

Emerald, the tall Negress, rode a large white mule; she astonished Gus when she told him that the mule had sailed over from Ireland, along with Willy’s pony and Lady Carey’s black gelding.

“I doubt I could get fond enough of a mule to bring one on a ship,” Gus said. He himself was riding a lively bay, procured in El Paso. In fact, thanks to Lady Carey’s largesse, they were all better mounted than they had been at any time during their journeying. Each man had two horses, and there were four pack mules. One carried Lady Carey’s canvas tent; the others carried provisions, including plenty of ammunition. They all had first-rate weapons, too —brand-new rifles and pistols, and a pretty shotgun for shooting fowl. Gus was eager to try the shotgun on prairie chickens—he had acquired a taste for the birds, but traveling east out of El Paso, they saw no prairie chickens, only desert. Gus did manage to bring down a lean jackrabbit with the shotgun, but upon inspecting the rabbit, Emerald declined to cook it.

“Lady Carey doesn’t care for hares, unless they’re jugged,” she said. Lady Carey had raced far ahead. She was still completely veiled, so veiled that Call didn’t know how she could see prairie-dog holes and other dangers of the trail. But she rode fast, her veils flying, and the black gelding rarely stumbled.

At four, to the Rangers’ astonishment, the party stopped so that tea could be served. A small table was set up, covered with a white damask cloth. A fire was made; while Emerald sliced a small ham and made little sandwiches, Mrs. Chubb brewed the tea. The sugar bowl was brought out and sugar tonged into the cups. All the Rangers liked the tea and drank several cups; they decided they approved of English customs. Call, though he enjoyed the tea, thought it was foolish to waste an hour of daylight sitting around a table in the desert. The boys could drink all the tea they wanted at night—why waste the daylight? But he had to admit that otherwise Lady Carey’s arrangements had been excellent. The saddles were the best that could be located in El Paso; also, mindful that winter was approaching, Lady Carey had insisted that they buy slickers, warm coats, and plenty of blankets. If Caleb Cobb’s expedition had been half so well equipped, it might have succeeded, at least in Call’s view. With proper equipment, it would have had a chance.

At night, with Long Bill’s help and Gus’s, Emerald set up Lady Carey’s tent. While the tent was being anchored, Lady Carey sat by the campfire and read Willy stories from one of the storybooks they had with them. Some of the Rangers, unused to having a lady handy who would read, listened to the stories and enjoyed them as much as Willy. Matilda Roberts, for her part, enjoyed them more than Willy—the young viscount, after all, had had the stories read to him many times. But Matilda had never heard of Little Red Riding Hood, or Jack and the Beanstalk. She sat entranced, letting her tea grow cold, as Lady Carey read.

Even more entrancing than the stories was Lady Carey’s singing. Mostly she sang light tunes, “Annie Laurie,” “Barbara Allen,” and the like—the light tunes suited the men best. But now and then, as if bored with the sentimental tunes, Lady Carey would suddenly let her voice grow and grow, until it seemed to fill the vastness of the desert. She sang in a tongue none of them knew—none, that is, except Quartermaster Brognoli, who suddenly stood up and attempted to sing with her. He had not emitted an intelligible sound in so long that his voice was hoarse and raspy, but he was trying to sing and there was life in his eyes again. A vein stood out on his forehead as he attempted to sing with Lady Carey.

“Why, he’s Italian and he knows his operas,” Lady Carey said. “Now that he’s found his voice again, I expect he’ll be singing arias in a day or two.”

That prediction proved wrong, for Quartermaster Brognoli died that night. Call looked at him in the morning, and saw at once that he was dead. His head was twisted far around on his back and neck.

“I guess that jerking finally killed him,” Gus said, when the sad news was reported.

“No, it was the opera,” Lady Carey said. “Or perhaps it was just hearing his native tongue.”

Quartermaster Brognoli was buried in the hard ground—the four remaining Rangers took turns digging. Lady Carey sang the same piece she had sung when the Mexican firing squad cut down Bigfoot and the others. All the men cried, although Wesley Buttons had never been fond of Brognoli. Still, they had traveled a long way together, and now the man was dead. In the vastness of the desert, each reduction of the group made them realize how small they were, how puny, in relation to the space they were traveling through.

“We’re back where it’s wild again,” Call said.

Lady Carey happened to overhear the remark—she drew rein for a moment, looking toward a faint outline of mountains in the east.

“Yes, it’s wild, isn’t it,” she said. “It’s like a smell. I smelled it in Africa and now I smell it here.”

“It means we have to be careful,” Call said.

Lady Carey looked again at the distant mountains.“Quite the contrary, Corporal Call,” she said. “It means we have to be wild, like the wild men.”

She turned her head toward him, and sat watching him for a moment. Call couldn’t see her eyes, through the several dark veils, but he knew she was watching him. One of her shirtsleeves had ridden up a bit—he could see just a bit of her wrist, between the shirtsleeve and her black gloves. He and Gus had speculated a little, about how affected Lady Carey was by the leprosy. She had no trouble handling her horse, and she was dexterous with her hands, when it came to pouring tea, or buttering muffins. The wrist he saw was a creamy white—much whiter than Matilda’s. Matty was brown from the sun.

Although she had been always polite, Call felt nervous, knowing that her hidden eyes were fixed on him.

“Are you wild enough, Corporal Call?” Lady Carey asked. “I have a feeling you are.”

“I guess we’ll see,” Call said.

THE COMANCHES STRUCK DEEP into Mexico, under the bright moon. In Chihuahua Buffalo Hump struck a ranch, killed the rancher and his wife and all the vaqueros, and took three children and seventy horses. He ordered three young braves, led by Fast Boy, back up the war trail with the horses. He wanted the horses safely back in the main camp, in the Palo Duro Canyon, before the worst of the winter ice storms came. They could eat the horses, if buffalo proved scarce.

Then, with the shivering, terrified children tied on one horse, he struck east, taking only those children that were old enough to be useful slaves. The others he killed, along with their parents. At one hacienda he tied the whole family, threw them on their own haystack, and burned them. The Comanches rode on, striking hard and fast. Once they saw a little militia in the distance, perhaps twenty men. The young braves wanted to attack, but Buffalo Hump wouldn’t let them. He told them they could come back and fight Mexican soldiers anytime. Now they were on a raid, and needed to concern themselves with captives and horses.

They soon had ten children—four boys and six girls—none of them older than eight or nine years. They also had twenty more horses, which they drove with them as they turned north. Buffalo Hump was satisfied. They had taken almost a hundred horses, and ten children who were strong enough not to die on the hard journey. Kicking Wolf had failed to appear. Some of the braves speculated that he had caught another white to torture.

More than thirty Mexicans had been killed on the raid. Now the wind was growing colder—Buffalo Hump wanted to go to the trading place, the Sorrows, to trade his captives for tobacco and blankets and ammunition. He himself had the fine gun the Texans had given him, but he didn’t use it to kill Mexicans. The fine gun he kept for buffalo hunting. The Mexicans he merely struck with his lance, or put an arrow through. He wanted guns, though—not for himself but for his braves. There were more Texans than ever, moving west on the creeks and rivers, cutting trees and making little farms. They were easy to kill, the Texans, but there were many of them, and most of his warriors still only had bows and arrows. All the Texans had guns—some of them could shoot well. It would be better if his young men learned to use the gun. Otherwise, the Texans might come all the way into the Comancheria and start killing the buffalo.

A day south of the Rio Grande, Buffalo Hump took a girl, a pretty Mexican girl who was caught while washing clothes on a rock in a little creek. There was a village not too far distant, but Buffalo Hump was on the girl so quickly that she did not have time to scream. He drew his knife to kill her, but in the brief struggle her young breasts spilled out of her tunic and he decided to keep her. He had had Mexican women before, but none so appealing as the slim girl he had just caught. He gagged her with a piece of rawhide, and put her over his horse.

Later, when they were many miles north and not far from the river, one of the braves came and informed him that a foolish young warrior named Crow was missing. Buffalo Hump didn’t wait. Probably Crow had gone into the outskirts of the village and attempted to steal a girl for himself—Crow had always been jealous of Buffalo Hump. Though only sixteen, he wanted everything the war chief had. The young braves became restive. They didn’t want to leave Crow; he was known to be foolish. An old witch woman had told Crow that he would not die, and Crow believed her. Yet, he was brave in battle, and the young warriors didn’t want to leave him. Buffalo Hump finally sent two of them to find their friend. They arrived back late at night with long faces and bad news. Crow had attacked the Mexican village single-handedly, convinced that he could scare away all the cowardly Mexicans and take what he wanted from the town. The braves who went back caught a boy and made him tell them what had happened, for they had not met Crow along the trail. The boy said Crow had ridden around the village, drinking and shooting off an old gun he had found. He did scare the Mexicans away for awhile, but he enjoyed frightening the village people so much that he grew careless. A vaquero roped him from a rooftop. While he was spinning in the air, the village men came back and hacked him to death with their machetes.

Buffalo Hump took the Mexican girl, though she struggled violently. He decided to take her for a wife. It might be that when they got to the trading place one of the traders would offer him a very high price for the girl; unless it was very high he resolved to keep her, although he would have to be careful when he took her back to the tribe. His old wives were jealous and would beat the girl severely, with firewood or sticks, unless he made it clear to them that they would suffer from his hand if the girl was too much damaged.

Crow’s loss he did not lament. It was true that Crow had been brave, but he was not respectful. Several times already, Buffalo Hump had been tempted to put a lance through him, in response to an insolent look.

The girl, Rosa, whimpered from cold and fright. Buffalo Hump went to her, and took her again. Then he stuffed the rawhide gag back in her mouth; he didn’t like the sounds frightened women made.

The next day, one warrior short, the Comanches crossed the Rio Grande. That day they caught two whites, an old man and an old woman, traveling west in a little wagon. They were people of God —they prayed loudly to their Jesus, but Buffalo Hump burned them anyway, in their own wagon. They screamed more loudly than they prayed. As the Comanches were riding off, a cougar jumped out of a little spur of rocks and raced away. Several of the young braves gave chase—it would be a great thing, if one of them could kill a cougar. But Buffalo Hump let them go—he had once longed to kill a cougar or a bear himself, and finally had killed a bear, near the headwaters of the Cimarron. But it had only been an old she-bear with a wounded paw; he could not claim much credit for having killed it. Once he had put his lance in a male grizzly, but the grizzly had treated the lance like a burr, and had chased Buffalo Hump for a mile. If he had not been on his best horse that day, the bear would have killed him.

Of course, the young braves did not manage to catch the cougar. Their horses were a little tired, from the swift raid. The cougar outran them easily.

Later that day, Kicking Wolf appeared. Buffalo Hump was angry with him, for missing the raid, but they had taken so many horses and so many captives that he didn’t bother complaining. Kicking Wolf was a very contrary man—he did as he pleased. He told Buffalo Hump he had decided to wait for them on the trail, because he was enjoying the feeling he had after torturing Kirker to death.

It was a feeling of great power and calm, Kicking Wolf said. He didn’t want to lose it just to catch a few Mexican children and run off a few horses. He explained that he had tortured Kirker for another day, after they hung him over the fire. After Kirker died, Kicking Wolf cut off all of his fingers—he meant to take them to the main camp and make them into a necklace. The fingers of the scalp hunter should not be wasted.

When Kicking Wolf saw Rosa, the Mexican girl, he became immediately jealous. He began to wish he had taken time to go on part of the raid. His only wife was old and smelly—Buffalo Hump had three young wives already, too many, in Kicking Wolf’s view. He was a lustful man and could only watch enviously when Buffalo Hump went to the girl and took her. He ought to have gone to Mexico and taken a girl himself—it was only that he had been patiently torturing Kirker and didn’t want to lose the feeling of great peace that came to him when the scalp hunter died.

“It’s A LURCHY WAY to travel, if you ask me,” Call said. “It’s still a long way to Galveston and we ain’t near through the Comanche country, yet. Why is she stopping, just to paint a hill?”

“You can’t rush a lady like her, Woodrow,” Gus said. He, too, thought it was eccentric of Lady Carey to stop the trip for a whole day, just so she could paint the colours of a desert sunset as they appeared on the line of bluffs to the north. They had happened to be traveling below a kind of rim-rock the day before, and had camped just at sunset. Lady Carey had not been able to get her easel and her paint-brushes out in time to capture the colours of rose and gold that the sun threw on the cliffs.

“Why, there’s nothing like it in the world,” she said. “I must paint —Willy, you might try, too. We’ll wait until tomorrow and both have a go at it.”

“That’s a good plan—I’m tired of my pony,” Willy said.

Gus had managed to shoot an antelope that afternoon; he was immensely proud of himself. Emerald, the Negress, walked out and butchered the animal, very precisely and in half the time it would have taken Gus. Before they could even set Lady Carey’s tent up properly, Emerald returned with the best cuts of antelope. That night she cooked what she referred to as the saddle, with some corn and a few chilies they had brought from El Paso. Gus thought it was the best meal he had ever eaten; Call had to admit it was mighty tasty. Emerald had struck up a friendship with Matilda Roberts— she showed Matilda some of the finer points of cooking game. Lady Carey had a little chest containing nothing but salts and peppers, spices, and herbs. While Emerald cooked, Lady Carey sang, plucking her mandolin. That evening the great boa, Elphinstone, was let out of its basket. It curled around Lady Carey’s shoulders, as she sang.

Call thought Lady Carey fearless to the point of folly. She ordered no guard, but he and Gus and Long Bill stood one anyway, taking turns through the chilly nights. Wesley Buttons was exempt from guard duty—it was well known that he could not stay awake even ten minutes, unless someone was talking to him, and Wesley’s conversation was so dull that no one wanted to attempt to talk to him through the night. He was put in charge of the saddling and packing instead; Call and Gus usually helped him take down Lady Carey’s tent.

During the day of rest, while they waited for the sunset colours to come, Lady Carey amused herself by sketching the Rangers. She drew quickly, and made such good likenesses of the men that it startled all of them. None of them felt that his own sketch was quite accurate, but contended that Lady Carey had captured the other men perfectly.

Toward evening, as the sun sank, the cliffs to the north reddened. Lady Carey prepared her colours and began to paint. Willy, the young viscount, had a small easel; his attempts at capturing the sunset were done in watercolour. Matilda stood beside Lady Carey, watching. Seeing the red cliffs form on the canvas fascinated her, much as the stories had. She had never known anyone who could do such things.

Lady Carey painted until nightfall, but Willy tired of art and walked off with Gus, in search of game. He had a small fowling piece, and would pop away at anything that moved; this evening, though, nothing moved. Willy wanted to keep looking, but as theshadows lengthened, Gus grew apprehensive and insisted that they return to camp. They had seen nothing to provoke unease, but Gus knew how quickly that could change, in such a wild place.

“There could be an Indian not fifty feet from us,” he told Willy.

“But if there’s an Indian I want to see him,” Willy said. “Why can’t you find him and show him to me?”

“If I found an Indian I wouldn’t have to show him to you,” Gus told him. “He’d be shooting arrows at us quicker than you can think. If I didn’t kill the Indian, he’d kill us.”

“Of course, you would kill him, I’m sure,” Willy said, moving a little closer to Gus as they walked toward camp.

Call was prepared for an early start, and was up before sunrise— but to his surprise, Lady Carey had risen ahead of him. She was standing beside her easel, waiting for the first light from the east.

“I know you’re restless, Corporal Call,” she said. “I painted the sunset—now I want to paint the dawn. Go and ask Emerald to cook the bacon.”

It was almost midday before Lady Carey was content to pack up her easel and her oils and mount the black gelding.

For three days more they moved eastward, past the line of the rim-rock but not beyond the desert or the mountains. On the afternoon of the third day, Call, Gus, and Long Bill all began to feel uneasy. There was no reason for their unease, yet they had it. Call debated scouting ahead, to see if he could detect any sign of Indians; in the end he decided against it. There were only the four of them to fight, in case of attack, and Wesley Buttons was a notably unreliable shot, at that. It was probably better to stay together, in case of trouble.

Toward evening, they passed a solitary mountain—a lump of rock, mainly. Lady Carey rode off toward the mountain, to have a closer look. Despite many warnings about the Indians, she still darted off at will, now ahead and now behind. She took a keen interest in the desert plants and would sometimes dismount, with her sketch pad, and draw a cactus or a sage bush. Once or twice, she had galloped so far away that Call had ridden out, protectively, to be in a position to help if he needed to help. Lady Carey, though, made it clear that she did not welcome even the best-intentioned supervision.

“I’m not a chicken, Corporal Call,” she said to him once. “You needn’t act like a hen.“Gus felt a deep disquiet, not about Lady Carey but about the place. Looking at the high, rocky hump he suddenly realized that he had looked at it before—only before, he had been racing toward it from the east, in the hope of killing mountain sheep. Now they were coming toward it from the west—the sloping ridge the Comanches had hidden themselves behind was just ahead of them.

Call had the same recognition, at the same time. They had gone east from El Paso, and come back to the bluff where Josh Corn and Zeke Moody had been killed.

“I hope there ain’t no mountain sheep up there,” Gus said. “If there are, we’ll know they’re Comanches and that big one is somewhere around.”

“Maybe he’s still north,” Call said, remembering the day when the Comanches had walked their horses along the face of the Palo Duro Canyon.

“No, he ain’t north—I feel him,” Gus said.

“Now, that’s mush,” Call said. “You didn’t feel him the first time, and he was closer to us than I am to Willy.”

“I don’t say he’s close, but he’s somewhere around,” Gus said. “I feel funny in my stomach.”

“At least Major Chevallie would be proud of us if he could see us now,” Call said.

“Why would he?” Gus asked. “He never even made us corporals.”

“No, but now we’ve found the road to El Paso,” Call said. “It’s south of them high bluffs. If he was alive, he could start up a stagecoach line.”

Gus was still thinking about Buffalo Hump—how quickly he could strike. Lady Carey was almost out of sight, at the base of the mountain. If Buffalo Hump was close, even the fast gelding wouldn’t save her.

“Look at her,” Gus said, to Call. “If he was here, he’d get her.”

“Not just her,” Call said. “He’d get us all, if he was here.”

WHEN BUFFALO HUMP RODE into the trading place, the valley called the Sorrows, with his captives and the last group of Mexican horses, the old slaver, Joe Nibbs, was there waiting, with Sam Douglas and two wagons full of goods. A band of Kiowa had been there the day before, but they had only raided one settlement: the only captives they had to offer were a nine-year-old girl, and a little Negro boy. Joe Nibbs wouldn’t take the girl—she had a sickly look; very likely she would be dead within the month. Joe Nibbs had come west with the first trappers to leave St. Louis—he was too experienced a slaver to be wasting trade goods on a sickly girl.

Joe had been coming to the Sorrows for ten years; he had seen mothers kill themselves because he sold their children away; more than one husband had tried to kill him, because he had sold a wife. But Joe was a decisive man—he kept a hammer stuck in his belt and used it to dispatch troublesome captives quickly, silently, and cheaply. He knew where the human skull was weakest—he rarely had to strike twice, when he pulled his hammer. Bullets he normally saved for buffalo, or other game too big and too swift to be dispatched with a hammer. When the Kiowa arrived, with one sickly girl, Joe Nibbs upbraided them for laziness. The Texas settlements were creeping westward, up the Brazos and the Trinity. If the Kiowa didn’t want to make the long ride into Mexico for captives, they could at least be a little more active around the new settlements. Most of them weren’t really settlements anyway, just groups of scattered farms, always poorly defended. They ought to yield more than a sick girl and a small Negro boy.

In the wagons were blankets and beads, knives, mirrors, a few guns, and some harmless potions and powders that Joe passed off as medicine. He did not trade liquor. Life was risky enough on the Comancheria without pouring liquor into wild men skilled at every form of killing.

He traveled in the Indian lands with Sam Douglas, a youth of twenty-two, reedy but strong. He kept the wagons repaired and the captives secured. Sam had come from a whaling family, back in Massachusetts—he was so skilled with knots that in the three years he had been helping Joe Nibbs, not a single captive, male or female, had escaped. Sometimes, if the Comanche seemed restive, Sam would entertain them by tying intricate knots. Kicking Wolf was particularly fascinated by this skill—he would sit by Sam and encourage him to run through his whole repertory of knots; then he would want Sam to untie all his knots and tie them again, over and over.

Sam Douglas had grown up by the sea; he was used to cool, moist air. He had hated the West, with its sand and its dust, and had no fondness at all for Joe Nibbs, a greedy, profane, violent old man with black teeth, and a blacker heart. More than twenty times Sam had seen Joe Nibbs fly into a rage, yank out his hammer, and crack the skull of some man or woman who could perfectly well have been sold for a fine profit, if only Joe had been able to hold his temper. But Sam stayed with the old slaver because he was handicapped by a clubfoot and a harelip, both impediments to the satisfying of his considerable lust. In the settlements women shied from him, but traveling with a slaver solved that problem; there were always budding girls amid the captives, and sometimes grown women, too. Since it was Sam’s job to tie the women and to guard them, he had access to many females he could not have approached or succeeded with, had he met them in Massachusetts. Many of them writhed and squirmed, or begged and wept, or cursed and spat, while Sam was enjoying his access; but he paid no attention. They were slaves, and he was their slaver; they had to submit and most did, without him having to whack them or whip them or tie their legs to opposite sides of the wagon bed. Even if he had to beat the women a little, he was still kinder to them than Joe Nibbs. Joe was apt to whip them for no reason, or torment them with the handle of his hammer, or to tie them over a wagon wheel and rut at them from behind, like the rough old billy that he was.

The moment Buffalo Hump and Kicking Wolf rode into the Sorrows with their bunch of Mexican children, Sam noticed the girl, Rosa. Joe Nibbs noticed her, too. She had a beauty not often seen in captives.

“Why, he’s caught a pretty one,” Joe Nibbs said. “Them lazy Kiowas could ride for a year and not catch a girl that rare.”

“Let’s buy her, Joe,” Sam Douglas said. “Maybe the Apaches would buy her. They’d give us silver for her. They take lots of silver off them Mexicans they kill.”

What Sam was really thinking was that they would get to keep the girl for awhile. Old Joe could go first and rut at her from the back, if he wanted to. Then it would be Sam’s turn, and he might take it two or three times a night, under the pretense of seeing that the girl was properly bound.

“Ssh … hush about the Apaches,” Joe instructed. “Buffalo Hump hates everybody but his own tribe, and he don’t like too many of them. We don’t need to let on what we aim to do with this gal.”

They watched closely as the Comanche raiders rode down into the shallow valley—just a cleft between two ridges, really. In the distance, they could see a curve of the Rio Rojo. The wind was blowing hard from the north; spumes of sand curled over the lip of the ridge to the north and blew into the eyes of the Mexican captives. The Mexican children appeared to be well fed, Sam noted. Some of them were as plump as the little Negro boy who was tied in the first wagon. Several of the Mexican girls looked to be eight or nine years old—they could be used, if there was no one better, but Sam Douglas didn’t figure on having to drop that low, not if the wily Joe Nibbs could talk Buffalo Hump out of the young woman. Joe had bought captives from most of the major chiefs, north of the Santa Fe trail and south. He knew a route through the Carlsbad Mountains that allowed him to slip back and forth between Comanche and Apache, desert and plain. He was the oldest slaver on the plains, good at figuring out what a given Indian would take for a prize captive. The girl who rode behind Buffalo Hump, her wrists tied with a rawhide thong, was the prettiest woman to come up the Comanche war trail since Sam had been driving a wagon for Joe.

Joe Nibbs was rarely nervous, when among the red men. He cheated white men freely, but he didn’t cheat Comanches or Apaches, or Kiowa or Pawnee or Sioux. A trader who cheated Indians might survive a year, or even two — but Joe Nibbs had survived almost twenty, by saving his tricks for the whites. Even an Indian who didn’t speak a word of the white man’s tongue would know when he was being cheated — it was a practice that didn’t pay.

Buffalo Hump, though, was one Indian who made Joe Nibbs nervous. He dealt with the humpback because Buffalo Hump raided deepest into Mexico and brought back the most captives. But with Buffalo Hump, Joe was always careful, always aware that he was doing something not quite safe, not quite within the normal range of hazards that went with the slaving trade on the wild Texas prairies. Joe Nibbs was always aware that the day might come when Buffalo Hump would rather kill than trade. In his dealing with the humpback, he had only once looked the war chief in the eye. What an eye! What he saw then unnerved him so that he immediately gave the war chief a brand-new rifle and several fine blankets. As soon as the Comanches had gone, he warned Sam Douglas to keep his eyes to himself, when dealing with the big Comanche. No wise man met the eye of a mad dog or a wolf, a bear or a panther. The animal might come out, and blood be spilled, over nothing more than a glance.

“Hell, I won’t look at him at all,” Sam said. “That damn hump is an ugly thing, anyway.”

Buffalo Hump saw immediately that the slavers wanted Rosa, the Mexican girl. He had once come upon the slavers while the old one was tormenting a dead missionary’s wife. He had watched from a distance as Joe Nibbs beat the woman with the handle of his hammer — beat her and did more. That night the woman died from the beating and abuse — she had not been young., What he mainly wanted from the slaver was knives and needles. It would soon be time for the fall hunt—they needed to kill many buffalo before the winter came. Often ice storms came, coating the plain for several days at a time, making hunting difficult. The white men made good knives, far better than the stone knives his people had had to use when he was a boy. After the hunt, there would be much cutting—the women would need knives, and also needles, for sewing leggins from deerskin, and stitching buffalo robes. The white man’s blankets Buffalo Hump mostly scorned—buffalo robes were warmer. But he liked the yellow cloth that shed the rain and allowed his braves to hunt on wet days and yet be dry like ducks. The rifles he was offered were cheap, and his young braves were rough with guns: soon half would be broken, and the ammunition used up. It was not worth giving up good captives for weapons that would be broken in a month. He himself had the fine gun the white chief Caleb Cobb had given him. He was careful with the gun—no one in the tribe was allowed to touch it. Kicking Wolf was bitterly jealous that Buffalo Hump had such a gun, but he knew better than to disobey the edict. Buffalo Hump only rarely shot the gun; he had not even taken it with him on the raid, preferring to depend on his bow and his lance. But once he had shot it at an antelope, a very great distance away, and the antelope fell.

But if the old trader, Joe Nibbs, thought he could trade a few cheap weapons for the Mexican girl, he would have to think again. Buffalo Hump was willing to give him several of the Mexican children for a box full of good, sharp knives. The girl he meant to keep. It might be a cold winter—a fresh young wife to lay with would be good to have on days when the ice covered the plains.

“Now, don’t be mentioning that girl—don’t even look at her,” Joe Nibbs warned Sam Douglas. “I’ll trade for the brats first. And remember what I said. Don’t look him in the eye.”

“Why would I want to—he’s a goddamn stinking Indian,” Sam said.

Kicking Wolf at once wanted the Negro boy. When the boy was brought out of the wagon, naked, and saw Buffalo Hump, he was so frightened that he tried to run away, speeding on his little legs toward the ridge the sand spumed over. The Comanche braves followed, curious; Kicking Wolf and the others had seen few blacks. They thought the boy might be some kind of small black animal—perhaps he could be trained to gather firewood, or just be kept as a pet, like a bear cub. Just as the little black boy was about to get to the ridge, Kicking Wolf picked him up, screaming, and brought him back to the wagons.

“That’s my brat, give him back,” Joe Nibbs said. Kicking Wolf, too, was a man to be wary of—everyone on the plains knew what a good thief he was. Joe and Sam had two extra donkeys with them, besides the horses that pulled the wagons. He meant to see that the donkeys were close hobbled that night, else Kicking Wolf would come back and take them.

Kicking Wolf motioned toward two of the captives, indicating that he would trade them for the black boy. Before Joe Nibbs could even walk over and inspect the children, to be sure that they were healthy, Buffalo Hump lowered his lance and put it in front of the children. Kicking Wolf had not set foot in Mexico. Who was he to be offering the captives in trade? While they had been raiding he had lingered near the Pecos, torturing one scalp hunter to death. Of course, Kicking Wolf had made many raids and taken many children—he would have to be allowed some booty. But he could not simply trade away children that were not his. Fast Boy had taken the two children in question—if anyone had the right to dispose of them, it should be he.

Kicking Wolf was very annoyed by Buffalo Hump’s intervention. He himself, not Buffalo Hump, was the great child thief. He had taken more than fifty children from their homes, and brought them north. It was because of his skill as a child thief that the tribe had had plenty of knives the last few winters. Who was Buffalo Hump to deny him two children, when all he wanted in exchange was the small black animal?

“Even swap—even swap,” Joe Nibbs said, pointing at a Mexican boy who was about the same size as the little Negro. He didn’t like trading blacks, not on the plains. He had only given a packet of needles and a small blanket for the black boy. In the south it was profitable to trade little blacks, but not on the plains, and even less so west of the Carlsbad Mountains. The Apaches had superstitions about blacks—they usually killed them.

Buffalo Hump allowed the trade—one Mexican child for the black cub Kicking Wolf held. He had merely lowered his lance to remind Kicking Wolf that he was not the war chief. Of course,Kicking Wolf was an unusually good raider; the need to torture Kirker had distracted him; but his pride had to be considered. He could have the black cub.

Joe Nibbs produced tobacco, and the trading went quickly. Buffalo Hump kept four captives, including the girl, Rosa. The other three were Mexican boys old enough to be useful slaves. The others he traded for three boxes of knives, many needles, some mirrors, a box of fishhooks, and four rifles. Several of his younger braves considered themselves to be great marksmen. It was well enough to take a few guns for them to break.

“He don’t like guns much,” Sam said, to Joe. “He only took four. How are we going to get this girl if he won’t take guns?”

Rosa, still tied, sat by a little bush near Buffalo Hump’s horse. She had seen the two traders looking at her—she felt no hope. Either the white men or the Comanches would use her and kill her. She watched the sand spuming over the ridge as the wind gusted. She wished she could simply lie down and be covered with sand; be dead; be at peace. She watched the sand come, and tried not to think.

Joe Nibbs was wondering the same thing as Sam—what could he offer Buffalo Hump that might make him part with the girl?

“I’ve got that old Gypsy glass,” he said. Some months before he had found a wagon and a dead man, an old Gypsy, on the Kansas plain near Fort Lawrence. Probably the old man had been killed by Pawnees, who had ripped up his body and his wagons, taken his whiskey, and left. Joe had happened to notice something shining through a crack in the wagon bed, and had discovered a ball of glass, or crystal, hidden so well that the Pawnees had not noticed it.

“He might want that glass,” he said, going to his wagon and taking the glass from a blanket he had wrapped it in. It was the size of a small melon. When you looked into it, it made your face elongated.

“It’s Gypsy glass—take it to your medicine man, he can use it for prophesying,” Joe said, offering the ball of glass to Buffalo Hump.

All the warriors crowded around, exclaiming at the way the glass made their faces long. Buffalo Hump thought the glass a very odd thing—he turned it over and over, and let his young braves handle it. It was clearly a thing of power, but he was not convinced that it could be used for prophesying.

“Yes, it’s a prophecy glass, that’s what it is,” Joe insisted. “Take it to your medicine man. It’ll tell him where the buffalo are, and when’s the best time to hunt. It’ll tell you when to go to war, and when to stay home.”

Buffalo Hump was not convinced, but as the afternoon waned, he began to want the glass. He wanted to take it home to his main camp and study it. Perhaps he would come to understand its power. His mother was old, and knew much. Perhaps she would understand why the glass made faces long.

He decided, though, to kill the traders, the old one and the young one, too. He meant to take all the knives; there were several more boxes in the wagons. With so many knives they would not need the traders for several winters; he did not want Joe Nibbs coming into his country with such a thing as the glass. If it was a prophecy glass, then it could do much evil. Some of his people grew sick and died, just from meeting with the whites. With such a glass the old trader might cause many deaths. The glass might be a trick, to spread death among the Comanches, to get their robes and their horses and their hunting lands. The whites were always coming, up the rivers and creeks, always north and west, toward the Comancheria. Buffalo Hump thought the glass was a bad sign. He would take it to the main camp and let the old ones see it—perhaps one of them would know what to do.

Buffalo Hump left them the Mexican girl and took his braves over the ridge, where the sand spumed. Then he told his braves that he had decided to kill the traders, take back the captives, and get all the knives. Kicking Wolf wanted to go back with him and catch the white men and torture them, but Buffalo Hump wouldn’t let him. Instead, he gave him the glass that might be evil, and rode back alone. When he crossed the ridge of blowing sand, the old white man had already tied the girl to a wagon wheel and was abusing her. The young white man sat on the tailgate of the wagon and waited his turn. Buffalo Hump walked quietly, over the soft sand. He had his lance, and a knife.

Sam Douglas sat on the wagon, trying to decide whether to take one of the nine-year-old Mexican girls, or wait for night, when old Joe would be sleeping. Then he could do what he pleased with Rosa. He had meant to leave the nine-year-olds alone, but after all, why should he? They were slaves. They were there. Old Joe was tiresome, when he had a new slave to abuse. He might keep Rosa tied to the wagon wheel for hours.

Then, before he knew it, Sam Douglas found himself doing the one thing he had vowed not to do: he looked straight into Buffalo Hump’s eyes.

It was a mistake: he knew it. He had thought the big Indian was gone. But there he was: the animal, the panther, the bear.

The next second, Buffalo Hump drove his knife straight down through Sam Douglas’s skull. One of the Mexican captives screamed. The old trader, Joe Nibbs, had his hammer in his hand. When he turned, Buffalo Hump threw the lance—the distance was short. Half the lance came out the other side of Joe Nibbs’s body and stuck in the ground, so that his torso was tilted slightly back. He was still alive; he dropped his hammer. Buffalo Hump picked it up and hit him at the base of the neck. Joe Nibbs’s head flopped back, like a chicken’s.

Then the warriors came back; they took the captives, the knives, the donkeys. They decided to burn the wagons and camp for the night; they could eat all the white men’s food.

Buffalo Hump could not get his knife out of Sam Douglas’s skull. It was stuck so deep that not even his strength was enough to pull it out. The braves laughed. Their own war chief had stuck a perfectly good knife into a white man’s skull so deeply that he could not get it out. Finally, Buffalo Hump smashed the skull with the old slaver’s hammer and freed his knife.

Rosa, the young captive, could not stop weeping. She hurt from what the man with the hammer had done to her. She wanted to be with her mother, her brother, and little sisters; but she knew she could not go home. She had been with the Comanche; the people of her village would consider her disgraced, if she went home. She wept, and listened to the sand; she wished that she could sleep beneath the sand, breathe it into her, and die. But she could not; she could only weep, and be cold, and wait for the big Comanche who sat nearby, holding the rawhide string that bound her wrists.

Later, not long before dawn, one of the donkeys began to whinny. The wind had shifted; now it blew from the west, and the donkey had smelled something. The horses pointed their ears to the west, but did not whinny. The braves around the campfire thought it wasan animal. Donkeys were cowards—they would whinny at a coyote, or even a badger. Fast Boy, who slept little, decided that the animal was probably a cougar. Perhaps the cougar they had seen earlier was following them, hoping to eat a donkey. The other braves laughed at Fast Boy, and laughed even more when he mounted his horse and loped off to look for the cougar. They thought it was ridiculous for Fast Boy to suppose he could find a cougar in the darkness.

When Fast Boy returned, running his horse, the sun was just rising. The wind was high; the sun was ringed with a haze of sand. Buffalo Hump was annoyed, when Fast Boy raced into camp. He did not approve of such behaviour. They were cooking horse meat from one of the old slaver’s horses. Fast Boy’s horse kicked dust on the meat, which was gritty enough, anyway.

But Buffalo Hump forgot his irritation when Fast Boy told him that a party of whites was camped only three miles to the west. It was a small party, mostly women, Fast Boy said. There were only four men and a boy, besides the women. But the news that made Buffalo Hump forgive the reckless riding and the gritty meat was that one of the men was Gun-In-The-Water, the young Ranger who had killed his son. When Buffalo Hump heard that, he began to put on his war paint—most of the other warriors put on their war paint, too. Kicking Wolf declined to bother—he did not like to paint himself. He made the point to Buffalo Hump that he himself could sneak over the hill and kill Gun-In-The-Water and all the whites in less time than it would take for Buffalo Hump and the other braves to paint themselves. Buffalo Hump ignored Kicking Wolf. Kicking Wolf had always thought his way of doing things was best. Buffalo Hump didn’t care what Kicking Wolf thought. He intended to paint himself properly. Then he would ride to where the whites were and do to Gun-In-The-Water what he had done to the old slaver: throw his lance so hard that it would go through him without killing him at once. Then, before he died, Buffalo Hump intended to scalp him and cut him. The scalp he would take home to his son’s mother, so she would know the boy had been correctly avenged.

When Buffalo Hump mounted, he made a speech in which he warned all the braves to leave Gun-In-The-Water alone. He himself would kill Gun-In-The-Water.

Kicking Wolf didn’t like the speech much. He rode off in the middle of it, in a hurry to have a look at the women. Perhaps one of them would be as pretty as the Mexican girl, or even prettier. He wanted to be the first to see the women, so he would get the best. Maybe he would find one who smelled better than his wife.

THE HORSES SMELLED THE Indians first. Call was about to throw the sidesaddle on Lady Carey’s black gelding, when the gelding began to nicker and jump around. Gus’s bay did the same, and even the mules acted nervous. Lady Carey’s tent had been folded and packed —they were all about ready to start the day’s ride. Emerald was brushing her white mule; she brushed the mule faithfully, every morning.

Call scanned the horizon to the east, but saw nothing unusual— just the bright edge of the rising sun. Lady Carey still had a teacup in her hand. Willy was eating bacon. Mrs. Chubb was trying to wash his ears, pouring water out of a little canteen onto a sponge that she kept with her, just for the purpose of washing Willy. Wesley Buttons had his boots off—he was prone to cramps in his feet, and liked to rub his toes for awhile in the morning, before he put his boots on. If he took a bad cramp with the boot on, he would have to hop around in pain until the cramp eased.

Matilda Roberts walked her mare around in circles. The mare was skittish in the mornings, with a tendency to crow-hop. Matilda was no bronc rider; she liked to walk off as much of the mare’s nervousness as she could. Twice already, the mare had thrown her; once she had narrowly missed landing on a barrel cactus, which was all the more reason to walk the mare for awhile.

Gus McCrae and Long Bill had walked off from camp a little ways, meaning to relieve themselves. Long Bill was much troubled by constipation, whereas Gus’s bowels tended to run too freely. They had formed the habit of answering nature’s call together— they could converse about various things, while they were at it. One of the things Gus had on his mind was whores; now that he was eating better and not having to walk until he dropped, his sap had risen. A subject of intense speculation between himself and Long Bill was whether Matilda Roberts intended to take up her old profession, now that they were back in Texas—and if so, when? Gus was hoping she would resume it sooner, rather than later. He was of the opinion that anytime would be a good time for Matilda to start being a whore again, even if he and Long Bill were her only customers.

“Well, but Lady Carey might not approve,” Long Bill speculated, as he squatted. “Matty might want to wait until we’re shut of all these English folks.”

“But that won’t be till Galveston,” Gus said. “Galveston’s a far piece yet. I would like a whore a lot sooner than Galveston.”

Long Bill had no comment—he noticed, as he squatted, that there was commotion back at the camp. Woodrow Call and Lady Carey were standing together, looking to the east. Long Bill could see that Call had his rifle. Matty had come back to stand near the others. Long Bill felt a strong nervousness take him—the nervousness clamped his troubled bowels even tighter.

“Something’s happening,” he said, abruptly pulling his pants up. “This ain’t no time for us to be taking a long squat.”

The two hurried back to camp, guns in their hands. It seemed a peaceful morning, but maybe it wasn’t going to be as peaceful as it looked.

“Here’s Gus, he’s got the best eyes,” Call said.

Lady Carey went to her saddlebag, and pulled out a small brass spyglass.“Help me look, Corporal McCrae,” she said. “Corporal Call thinks there’s trouble ahead, and so does my horse.”

Lady Carey looked through her telescope, and Gus did his best to scan the horizons carefully with his eyes, but all he saw was a solitary coyote, trotting south through the thin sage. He, too, had begun to feel nervous—he didn’t fully trust his own eyes. He remembered, again, how completely the Comanches had concealed themselves the day they killed Josh and Zeke.

Emerald walked over, leading her white mule.

“The wild men are here, my lady,” she said, calmly.

“Yes, I believe they are,” Lady Carey said. “I believe I smell them. Only they’re so wild I can’t see them.”

Then they all heard a sound—a high sound of singing. Buffalo Hump, in no hurry, walking his horse, appeared on the distant ridge, the sun just risen above him. He was singing his war song. As the little group watched, the whole raiding party slowly came into view. All the braves were singing their war songs, high pitched and repetitive. Gus counted twenty warriors—then he saw the twenty-first, Kicking Wolf, somewhat to the side. Kicking Wolf was on foot, and he was not singing. His silence seemed more menacing than the war songs of the other braves.

Call looked around for a gully or a ridge that might provide them some cover, but there was nothing—only the few sage bushes. They had camped on the open plain. The Comanches held the high ground, and had the sun behind them, to boot. They were four fighting men against twenty-one, and Wesley Buttons couldn’t shoot. Even if he had been a reliable shot, the Comanches could in any case easily overrun them, if they chose to charge. Four men, four women, and a boy would not look like much opposition to a raiding party, singing for death and torture. Call wondered if the English party knew what Comanches did to captives; he wondered if he ought to tell Lady Carey, and Emerald, and Mrs. Chubb how to shoot themselves fatally, if worse came to worst. Bigfoot’s instructions about putting the pistol to the eyeball came back to him as he watched the Comanches. No doubt Bigfoot had known exactly what he was talking about, but would the English lady, the nanny, and the Negress be capable of performing such an act? Would Matilda Roberts, for that matter?, Lady Carey stood watching the Indians calmly. As always, she was dressed only in black, and wore her three veils. She did not seem frightened, or even disturbed.

“What do you think, Corporal Call?” she asked. “Can we whip them?”

“Likely not, ma’am,” Call said. “They beat us when we had nearly two hundred men. I don’t know why they wouldn’t beat us now that we’ve only got four.”

“It’s interesting singing, isn’t it?” Lady Carey said. “Not so fine as opera, but interesting, nonetheless. I wonder what it means, that singing?”

“It means death to the whites,” Gus said. “It means they want our hair.”

“Well, they may want it, but they can’t have it,” young Willy said.

“I need my hair, don’t I, Mamma?”

“Of course you do, Willy,” Lady Carey said. “And you shall keep it, too—Mamma will see to that. Corporal Call, will you saddle my horse?”

“I will, but I don’t think we can outrun them, ma’am,” Call said.

“No, we won’t be running,” Lady Carey said. “I think the best thing would be for me to try my singing. I will be leading us through these Comanches, gentlemen. I’ll be mounted, but I want the rest of you to walk and lead your mounts. Saddle my horse, Corporal Call—and don’t look at me. None of you must look at me now, until I say you may.”

“Well, but why not, ma’am?” Gus asked—he was puzzled by the whole proceedings.

“Because I intend to disrobe,” Lady Carey said. “I shall disrobe, and I shall sing my best arias—besides that, I shall need my fine snake, Elphinstone. Emerald, could you bring him?”

Calmly, not hurrying, Lady Carey began to sing scales, as she undressed. She let her voice rise higher and higher, moving up an octave and then another, until her high notes were higher than any that came from the Comanches. Emerald took the boa from its basket on the mule, and let it drape about her shoulders as Lady Carey undressed.

“I think, Willy, you should mount your pony,” Lady Carey said. “The rest of you walk. Matilda, would you take my clothes and carry them for me? I shall want them, of course, once we have dispersed these savages. You haven’t saddled my horse yet, Corporal Call. Please cinch him carefully, so he won’t jump—I’ve got to be a regular Lady Godiva this morning, and I don’t want any trouble from this black beast.”

Call saddled the horse and handed the reins to Matilda, along with his pistol. He had no belief that anything they could do would get them through the Comanches. Lady Carey could undress if she wanted—Buffalo Hump would kill them anyway.

He kept his eyes down, as Lady Carey undressed—so did Long Bill, and Wesley Buttons. They had come to like Lady Carey—to revere her, almost—and were determined not to offend her modesty, though they were much confused by the undressing.

Gus, though, could not resist a peep. So normal did she seem that he had almost forgotten that she was a leper, until he caught the first glimpse of black, eroded flesh as she turned to hand a garment to Matilda. Her neck and breasts were black; bags of yellowing skin hung from her shoulders. Gus was so startled that he almost lost his breakfast. He didn’t look at Lady Carey again, though he did notice that her legs, which were very white, did not seem to be affected by the disease, except for a single dark spot on one calf.

“Oh Lord,” he said—but no one else was looking, and no one heard him.

Lady Carey kept on her hat, and the three veils that hid her face. She also kept on her fine black boots. Matilda looked at Lady Carey’s body, and felt bad—the English lady had been nicer to her even than her own mother. To see her young body blackened and yellowish from disease made Matilda feel helpless. Yet, she took the garments, one by one, as Lady Carey handed them to her, and folded them carefully. Mrs. Chubb was calm, as was Emerald— neither of them had seen what Comanches could do, Matilda reflected.

When Lady Carey had disrobed she mounted the black gelding, settled herself firmly in the sidesaddle, and reached for her snake.

“All right now, keep in line,” she said. “You too, Willy—keep in line. I want you Texans in the middle, right behind Willy. Matilda, Mrs. Chubb, and Emerald will bring up the rear. Emerald, if you don’t mind, I think you might want to carry my husband’s sword.

Unsheath it, and hold the blade high—remember, it’s sharp. Don’t cut yourself.” The Negress smiled, at the thought that she might cut herself.

Call had often noticed a fine sword in the baggage, but had not known that it was Lady Carey’s husband’s. Emerald took it and unsheathed it. She went to the rear, and waited.

“All right now, front march,” Lady Carey said. “I am going to sing very loudly—after all, I’m one voice against twenty. Willy, you might want to stop your ears.”

“Oh no, Mamma,” Willy said. “You can sing loud—I won’t mind.”

Lady Carey, on the fine black gelding, started up the long ridge toward the Comanches, the boa draped over her shoulders. She was still singing her scales, but before she had gone more than a few feet she stopped the scales and began to sing, high and loud, in the Italian tongue—the tongue that had caused Quartermaster Brognoli to rouse himself briefly, and then die.

The line of Comanches was still some two hundred yards away. Lucinda Carey, watching from behind her three veils, rode toward them slowly, singing her aria. When she had closed the distance to within one hundred yards, she stretched her arms wide; Elphinstone liked to twine himself along them. She felt in good voice. The aria she was singing came from Signer Verdi’s new opera Nabucco —he had taught her the aria himself, two years ago in Milan, not long before she and her husband, Lord Carey, sailed together for Mexico.

Ahead, the line of Comanches waited. Lady Carey glanced back. Her son, the four Rangers, and the three women all walked obediently behind her. Emerald, the tall Negress, at the end of the line, had undraped one breast—she held aloft Lord Carey’s fine sword— the keen blade flashed in the early sunlight. Emerald paused, on impulse, and shrugged off her white cloak. Soon she, too, was walking naked toward the line of warriors.

As she came nearer, close enough to see the Comanche war chief’s great hump and the ochre lines of paint on hi-s face and chest, Lucinda, Lady Carey, opened her throat and sang her aria with the full power of her lungs—she let her voice rise high, and then higher still. She pretended for a moment that she was at LaScala, where she had had the honor.of meeting Signor Verdi. She filled her lungs, breathing as Signor Verdi had taught her in the few lessons she had begged of him—her high, ripe notes rang clearly in the dry Texas air. Ahead, the war chief waited, his long lance in his right hand.

KICKING WOLF GREW TIRED of listening to the war songs. He ran ahead, meaning to make the first kill. He would leave Buffalo Hump the Texan called Gun-In-The-Water, since Gun-In-The-Water had killed his son; it would not do to cheat the war chief of his vengeance. The man Kicking Wolf meant to kill was the tall one who always walked beside Gun-In-The-Water. Kicking Wolf was short; he would kill the tall one; Buffalo Hump, who was tall, could kill the short one.

So Kicking Wolf ran ahead, and squatted beside a small clump of chaparral—he had an arrow in his bow, ready to shoot. He heard a death song coming from the Texans, but because he wanted to surprise them, he did not look up once he was in his ambush place behind the chaparral. Of course, it was appropriate for the whites to sing a death song—they would all be dead very soon, unless one or two could be caught for torture. But it was a little surprising; Kicking Wolf could not remember any instances in which whites sang death songs. Once in awhile, when there was cavalry, a manmight blow a short horn, to make the soldiers fight; he had actually killed such a person once, near the San Saba, and had taken the horn home with him. But it was not a good horn; when he tried to play it, it only made a squawking sound, like a buffalo farting. He eventually threw it away.

Then Kicking Wolf realized that he was hearing no ordinary death song—the voice that he heard lifted higher toward the sky than any Comanche voice could go. The notes rose so high and were so loud that, as the singer came near him, the song seemed to fill the whole air, and even to turn off the far cliffs and come back. Astonished at the power of the death song, Kicking Wolf stood up, ready to kill the person who was singing it.

His arrow was in his bow; he could tell from the power of the song that the person was near—but what Kicking Wolf saw when he rose from his ambush place chilled his heart, and filled him with terror: there, on a black horse, was a woman with a hidden face, black breasts, and shoulders that were only yellowing flesh and white bone. Worse, this woman who poured a song from beneath the cloth that hid her face had twined around her naked arms a great snake—a snake far larger than any Kicking Wolf had ever seen. The head of the snake was extended along the horse’s neck. Its tongue flickered out, and it seemed to be looking right at Kicking Wolf.

So frightened was Kicking Wolf, that he would have immediately sung his own death song had his throat not been frozen with fear. The woman on the black horse was Death Woman, come with her black flesh and her great serpent, to kill him and his people.

Kicking Wolf let the arrow fall from his bow—then he dropped the bow itself, and turned and ran as fast as his short legs could carry him, toward the war chief. Behind him he heard the high, ringing voice of Death Woman, and could imagine the head of the great serpent coming closer and ever closer to him. In his panic, he stepped on a bad cactus; thorns went through his foot, but he did not stop running. He knew that if he slowed the slightest bit, the great snake of Death Woman would get him.

When the Comanches sitting with Buffalo Hump saw Kicking Wolf running toward them they thought it was just some clever plan the stumpy little man had thought up, to lure the whites closer to their arrows and their lances. But the strange, high song seemed to come with Kicking Wolf, to ring in the air like an old witch woman’s curse. Some of the Comanches began to be a little apprehensive—they looked to their war chief, who sat as he was. It was only when Kicking Wolf ran up and Buffalo Hump saw the terror in his face, that he knew it was not a ruse. Kicking Wolf was fearless in battle—he would attack anyone, and had once killed six Pawnees in a single battle. Yet, now he was so frightened that he had cactus thorns sticking through his foot and blood on his moccasins, and he was still running. He ran right past Buffalo Hump without stopping—also, Buffalo Hump saw that Kicking Wolf had even dropped his bow; not since Kicking Wolf was a boy had he seen him without his bow in his hand.

Buffalo Hump had been listening to the death song with admiration—he had never heard one so loud before. The song came back off the distant hills, as if the singer’s ghost were already there, calling for the singer to come. But something was wrong—Kicking Wolf was terrified, and the ringing, echoing death song was causing panic among his warriors. Then Buffalo Hump saw Death Woman, with her rotting black body; he saw the great snake, twisting its head above her horse’s neck. He was so startled that he lifted his lance, but didn’t throw it. Behind Death Woman, at the far back, was a naked black woman with a lifted sword; the black woman led a white mule.

At the sight of Death Woman, with her great serpent, the Comanche warriors broke, but Buffalo Hump held his ground. Worse even than the snake twisted around the shoulders of Death Woman was the white mule that followed the tall black woman with the sword. Long ago his old grandmother, who was a spirit woman, had told him to flee from a woman with a white mule; for the coming of the white mule would mean catastrophe for the Comanche people. The great snake he didn’t fear; he could kill any snake. But there before him was the white mule of his grandmother’s spirit prophecy: he could not kill a prophecy.

It was doom, he knew. His warriors were fleeing; Kicking Wolf had fled. Buffalo Hump lowered his lance, but he did not flee. He could not kill the Texans, not even Gun-In-The-Water, not then; they were under the protection of Death Woman. But they would not escape him; he would kill them later, when Death Woman was sleeping and when the white mule was gone.He rode a little higher on the hill and waited. If Death Woman tried to come at him, he would fight, and if he could keep his face toward her he might win, for there was a prophecy, too, that he could only be killed by a lance that pierced him through his hump. He must not let the woman with the white mule and the flashing sword get behind him. As long as his hump was protected, even Death Woman could not kill him.

“Don’t look at him,” Call said, as he and Gus walked slowly past. “She’s spooked most of them, but she ain’t spooked him. Just don’t look at him. If he comes at us, the rest of them might come back, and we ain’t no match for twenty Comanches, even if they’re scared.”

Slowly, not looking up, the Texans and the women passed the ridge where Buffalo Hump sat. Lady Carey sang even louder as they passed almost beneath the great humpbacked Comanche. Her voice rose so high, it was as if she were trying to cast it into the clouds. She draped her reins over her horse’s neck, and spread her arms as she sang.

Buffalo Hump sat above them, immobile, the desert wind blowing the feathers he had tied to his lance. Call did not look up, but he felt the war chiefs hatred, as he passed below him. He tensed himself, in case the lance came flying as it had at Gus, on a stormy night not far to the south.

When they had passed the ridge and deemed it safe to stop, Lady Carey dismounted. Matilda brought her clothes. The men dropped their eyes, while she dressed. The boa, Elphinstone, was returned to its basket on the donkey. Emerald put her cloak back on, and returned Lord Carey’s sword to its fine sheath. During the excitement the donkey had managed to pull Mrs. Chubb’s straw bonnet out of the baggage pack, and had eaten half of it.

“There, who says opera isn’t useful?” Lady Carey asked, when she remounted. “I shall have to write Signor Verdi and tell him his arias were not appreciated by the wild Comanche.”

When they resumed their journey they saw a strange thing: Buffalo Hump was backing his horse, step by step, across the desert toward the north. His warriors were nowhere in sight, but he had not turned his horse to go and find them. His face was still toward the Texans—step by step, he backed his horse.

“We didn’t kill him,” Call said. “We should have.”

“That’s right,” Gus said. “We should have. He’s still out there—I reckon he’ll be back.”

“If he does come back, he won’t find me,” Long Bill said. “If I ever get to a town, I aim to take up carpentry and sleep someplace where I can lock my doors. I’ve had enough of this sleeping outside.”

“I wonder why he’s backing his horse?” Call said. “We got no gun that could shoot that far. We couldn’t hit him if we tried.”

“Go ask him, Woodrow, if you’re that curious,” Gus said.

WHEN THEY RODE IN at dusk to San Antonio, two barefoot friars were bringing a little herd of goats within the walls of the old mission by the river. Somewhere within the walls, another priest was singing.

“Why, it’s vespers,” Lady Carey said. “Isn’t it lovely, Mrs. Chubb? It rather reminds me of Rome.”

“A plain English hymn will do for me,” Mrs. Chubb said.

“A plain English hymn and no donkeys,” she added, a bit later. “I’m afraid I will never be reconciled to donkeys.”

Ten days later, on a pier in Galveston, Mrs. Chubb was still complaining of donkeys, to any sailor who would listen.

“Not only did it bite my toe, it ate my best bonnet,” she said, but no one listened.

Lady Carey paid the Texans one hundred dollars each, a sum so large that none of the four could quite grasp that they had it. She gave Matilda two hundred dollars, a sum that made Gus jealous— after all, what had Matilda done that he hadn’t? Then, as Call and Gus, Matilda, Wesley, and Long Bill stood on the pier in the warm salty breeze, the English party boarded a boat whose mast was taller than most trees. Young Willy waved, and Lady Carey, still triply veiled, waved her hand. Mrs. Chubb was gone, still complaining, and Emerald, the tall Negress, looked at the shore but did not wave.

The Texans stood watching as the boat pulled away and began its journey across the great grey plain of the sea. Gus was talking of whores again, as the boat pulled away, but Call was silenced by the immense sweep of the water. He had not expected the sea to be so large: soon the boat containing Lady Carey and her party began to disappear, as a wagon might as it made its way across a sea of grass.

Woodrow Call could be subdued by the ocean if he wanted to— Gus McCrae, for his part, had never felt happier: he was rich, he was safe, and the port of Galveston virtually teemed with whores. He had already visited five.

“I guess this is where I quit the rangering, boys,” Long Bill said, with a sigh. “It’s rare sport, but it ain’t quite safe.”

Woodrow Call said nothing; the little ship had vanished. He was watching the sea.

Wesley Buttons knew that he could no longer avoid going home and telling his mother that his two brothers were dead, killed by Mexican soldiers in New Mexico.

Matilda Roberts was thinking that she was farther from California than ever—but at least she had money in her pocket.

“Now, Woodrow, come on,” Gus said, taking his friend’s arm. “Let’s whore a little, and then lope up to Austin.”

“Austin—why?” Call asked.

“So I can see if that girl in the general store still wants to marry me,” Gus said.

End

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