Dead Man's Walk

Call did have a good knife. Old Jesus had forged it for him, sharpened it carefully, and bound the handle with tight rawhide. Call dug hard—it was the only way he could keep his mind off what had happened to the two men. One of the burned wagons was still smouldering. It was only then, when he glanced up, that he noticed that the prairie around the wagon was white: the two mule skinners had been hauling flour, and the Indians had ripped up the sacks and scattered the flour on the grass.

“Lordy, these boys weren’t lucky,” Long Bill observed philosophically, walking around the scene of the torture.

“Nope, and they weren’t prepared, either,” Bigfoot said. “I guess that old shotgun was the only weapon they had with them.” He nodded toward the shotgun, which had been broken in two on a large rock that stuck up from the ground.

“I wouldn’t set off with a load of flour and nothing to defend myself with except a fowling piece—not in this country,” Blackie Slidell remarked.

“There’s empty sacks in that other wagon that ain’t too burned,” Bigfoot said. “Go get a few, Gus, and roll these men in them. We need to move out. I make it about nine Indians that cooked these men, and one of them was Buffalo Hump.”

“Did you see him?” Johnny Carthage asked, turning white. All the Rangers touched their weapons, to make sure they were still there.

“No, but he’s still riding that painted pony he rode that day he killed Josh and Zeke,” Bigfoot said. “I studied his track, in case I ever had to fight him again, and his track is all around these wagons.”

“Oh, Lord—I was afraid it was him,” Rip Green said. He was white and shaky.

Johnny Carthage knew a little cobbling. He had been offered a job making shoes in San Antonio. Looking at the two burned wagoneers, their bodies blackened and swollen, their teeth bared in terrible grimaces, he wondered why he hadn’t had the good sense to take the job. Cobbling down by the San Antonio River had a lot to recommend it. It wasn’t exciting, but neither would it expose you to the risk of being caught on the open prairie, roped to a wagon wheel, and burned to death. Of course, he could go back and take the job—the old cobbler liked him—but he was already a long ride out of San Antonio, and would run the very risk he wanted to avoid if he tried to go back alone.

“I wish there was more timber on this road,” Blackie Slidell said. “I don’t know if we could whip nine of those rascals if they came charging and we had nothing to hide behind.”

“Nine’s about the right size for a raiding party,” Bigfoot observed. He had about finished his digging. The grave wasn’t deep enough, but it would have to do.

“Why?” Call asked.

“Why what?” Bigfoot replied. The youngster was a good digger, and besides, he was steady. Of all the troop, he was the least affected by the sight of charred bodies. Of course, Long Bill wasn’t shaking or puking, but Long Bill was notorious for his bad eyesight. He probably hadn’t come close enough to take a good look.

“Why is nine a good size?” Call asked, as Gus handed him an armful of sacks. He spread one layer of sacking over each man, and then rolled the bodies over and tucked another layer of sacking over their backsides. It was curious how stiff bodies got—the dead men’s limbs were as stiff as wood.

“Nine’s about right,” Bigfoot said, impressed that young Call was eager to learn, even while performing an unpleasant task. “Nine men who know the country can slip between the settlements without being noticed. They can watch the settlers and figure out which farms to attack. If there’s a family with four or five big strapping boys who look like they can shoot, they’ll leave it and go on to one where there’s mostly womenfolk.”

Matilda Roberts stood looking at the corpses as Call and Gus finished covering them with sacking. She recognized one of the men; his name was Eli, and he had come to her more than once.

“That nearest one is Eli Baker,” she said. “He worked in the flour mill. I know him by his ear.”

“What about his ear?” Bigfoot asked.

“Look at it, before you rake the dirt over him,” Matilda said. “He got half his ear cut off when he was a boy—the bottom half. That’s Eh Baker for sure. We ought to try to get word to his family. I believe he had several young ‘uns.”

“And a wife?” Bigfoot asked.

“Well, he didn’t have the young ‘uns himself,” Matilda said. “I ain’t seen him in a year or two, but I know he’s Eli Baker.”

When the corpses were covered, everyone stood around awkwardly for a minute. The wide prairie was empty, though the tall grass sang from the breeze. The sun shone brilliantly. Bigfoot took the stock of the broken shotgun and tamped the dirt solidly over the grave of the two wagoneers.

“If anybody knows a good scripture, let them say it,” Bigfoot said. “We need to skedaddle. I’d rather not have to race no Comanches today—my horse is lame.”

“There’s that scripture about the green pastures,” Long Bill recalled. “It’s about the Lord being a shepherd.”

“So say it then, Bill,” Bigfoot said. He caught his horse and waited impatiently to mount.

Long Bill was silent.

“Well, there’s the green pastures,” he said. “That’s all I can recall. It’s been awhile since I had any dealings with scriptures.”

“Can anyone say it?” Bigfoot asked.

“Leadeth me beside the still waters,” Matilda said. “I think that’s the one Bill’s talking about.”

“Well, this is a green pasture, at least,” Bigfoot said. “It’ll be greener, if it keeps raining.”

“I wonder why people want to say scriptures when they’ve buried somebody?” Call reflected to Gus as they were trotting on toward Austin. “They’re dead—they can’t hear no holy talk.”

Gus had the scared feeling inside again. The Indian who had nearly brought him down with a lance was somewhere around. He might be tracking them, or watching them, even then. He might be anywhere, with his warriors. They were approaching a little copse of live-oak trees thick enough to conceal a party of Comanches. What if Buffalo Hump and his warriors suddenly burst out, yelling their terrible war cries? Would he be able to shoot straight? Would he have the guts to fire a bullet through his eyeball if the battle went against them? Would he end up burned, swollen, and stiff, like the two men they had just buried? Those were the important questions, when you were out on the prairie where the wild men lived. Why people said scriptures over the dead was not an issue he could concentrate his mind on, not when he had the scared feeling in hisstomach. Even if he could have had the pork chop his mouth had been watering for the night before, he had no confidence that he could have kept it down.

“It’s the custom,” he said, finally. “People get to thinking of heaven, when people die.”

Call didn’t answer. He was wondering what the mule skinners were thinking and feeling when the Comanches tied them to the wagon wheels and began to build fires under them. Were they thinking of angels, or just wishing they could be dead?

“As soon as we get to Austin, I want to buy a better gun,” he said. “I mean to practice, too. If we’re going on this expedition, we need to learn to shoot.”

Toward evening, the sky darkened again toward the southwest. Once again the sky turned coal black, with only a thin line of light at the horizon. The rolls of thunder were so loud that the Rangers had to give up conversation.

“It might be another cyclone,” Blackie yelled. “We need to look for a gully or a ditch.”

This time, though, no twisting snake cloud formed, though a violent thunderstorm slashed at them for some fifteen minutes, drenching them all. They expected a wet, cold night but by good fortune came upon a big live-oak tree that lightning had just struck. The tree had been split right in two. Part of the tree was still blazing, when the rain began to diminish. It made a good hot fire and enabled everybody to strip off and dry their clothes. Matilda, far from shy, stripped off first—Call was reluctant to take all his clothes off in her presence, but Gus wasn’t. He didn’t have a cent, but hoped the sight of him would incline Matilda to be friendly, or a little more than friendly, later in the evening—a hope that was disappointed. Bigfoot had Buffalo Hump on his mind: there was a time for sport, and a time to keep a close watch. None of the Rangers slept much —but the blazing fire was some comfort. By midnight, when it was Call’s turn to watch, the sky was cloudless and the stars shone bright.

CALEB COBB AND HIS sour captain, Billy Falconer, enlisted the six Rangers for the expedition against New Mexico immediately. The Rangers simply walked up to the hotel where the enlistments were being handled, and the matter was done.

Billy Falconer was a dark little snipe of a man, with quick eyes, but Caleb Cobb was large; to Call he appeared slow. He stood a good six foot five inches, and had long, flowing blond hair. On the table in front of him, when he cast his lazy gaze over the men who hoped to go with him on the expedition, were two Walker Colt pistols, the latest thing in weaponry. Call would have liked one of the Walkers—at least he would have liked to hold one and heft it, though of course he knew that such fine guns were far beyond his means.

“There’s no wages, this is volunteer soldiering,” Caleb Cobb pointed out at once. “All we furnish is ammunition and grub.”

“When possible, we expect you to rustle your own grub, at that,” Captain Falconer said.

Caleb Cobb had a deep voice—he kept a deck of cards in his hand, and shuffled them endlessly.

“This is a freeman’s army—only we won’t call it an army,” Caleb said.

“I wouldn’t call it an army anyway, if these fellows outside the hotel are specimens of the soldiers,” Bigfoot said.

Caleb Cobb smiled, or half smiled. Billy Falconer’s eyes darted everywhere, whereas Caleb scarcely opened his. He leaned back in a big. chair and watched the proceedings as if half asleep.

“Mainly we’re a trading expedition, Mr. Wallace,” Caleb Cobb said after a moment. “St. Louis has had the Santa Fe business long enough. Some of us down here in the Texas Republic think we ought to go up there and capture a bunch of it for ourselves.”

“That crowd outside is mostly bankers and barbers,” Bigfoot said. “If they want to trade, that’s fine, but what are we going to do for fighting men if the Mexicans decide they don’t like our looks?”

“That ain’t your worry, that’s ours,” Captain Falconer snapped.

“It’s mine if I’m taking my scalp over in that direction,” Bigfoot said.

“Why, we’ll gather up some fighters, here and there,” Caleb said. “Captain Billy Falconer’s such a firebrand I expect he could handle the Mexican army all by himself.”

“If he’s such a scrapper then let him go handle Buffalo Hump,” Bigfoot suggested. “He and his boys cooked two mule skinners yesterday, not thirty miles from this hotel.”

“Why, the ugly rascal,” Falconer said, grabbing one of the Walker Colts. “I’ll get up a party and go after him right now. You boys can come if you’re game.”

“Whoa, now, Billy,” Caleb Cobb said. “You can go chase violent Comanches if you want to, but you ain’t taking one of my new pistols. That humpback man might get the best of you, and then I’d be out a gun.”

“Oh—I thought one of these was mine,” Falconer said. He put the gun back on the table with a sheepish look.

“It ain’t,” Cobb said, sitting up a little straighter. Then he looked at Bigfoot again, and let his sleepy eyes drift over the troop. Call didn’t like the man’s manner—he considered it insolent. But he was conscious that he and Gus were the youngest men in the troop—it was not his place to speak.

“When are we leaving, then?” Bigfoot asked.

“Day after tomorrow, if General Lloyd gets here,” Caleb said. “The roads down Houston way are said to be muddy—they’re generally muddy. I guess the General may be stuck.”

“General Lloyd?” Bigfoot asked, a little surprised. “I scouted for the man a few years back. Why are we taking a general, if this is a trading expedition?”

“It never hurts to have a general in tow, especially if you’re dealing with Mexicans,” Cobb said. “They like to deal with the jefe, in my experience. If they get runctious we can hang a few medals on Phil Lloyd and send him in to parley with the governor of Santa Fe —it might spare us some hostilities.”

“I’d rather avoid hostilities, if we can,” Caleb added, shuffling his cards.

“I’d rather avoid them myself—we’ll be outnumbered fifty to one,” Bigfoot commented. “The reason General Lloyd ain’t here is because he got drunk and got lost. The man was dead drunk the whole time I scouted for him, and he got lost every time he stepped out of his tent to piss. He couldn’t find Mexico if you pointed him south and gave him a year, and what’s more, he can’t ride.”

Caleb Cobb chuckled. “Well, he can ride in a wagon, and if he can’t we’ll tie him in,” he said.

“Our mounts are a little on the feeble side,” Long Bill put in. “What do we do about horses?”

“You look like seasoned men,” Caleb said. “The Republic of Texas will furnish you a horse apiece—Billy, sign them some chits. Half the men in Austin are horse traders—I expect you can find good mounts.”

“What about guns? Mine’s a poor weapon,” Call asked. “I would like to replace it if possible, before we leave.”

“Guns are your lookout,” Captain Falconer snapped. “If you’re Rangers I guess you’re drawing Rangers’ pay. You can buy your own guns.”

“No, I think some new guns would be a sound investment, Billy,” Caleb said. “I expect the Mexicans will welcome us with open arms and probably cook a few goats and lay us out a feast. But folks are unpredictable. If the Mexicans get fractious it would be good if we’re well armed, so we can shoot the damn bastards. Tell the quartermaster to help these gentlemen arm themselves proper.”

“So what’s our route, Colonel?” Bigfoot inquired.

“You’re too full of questions—we ain’t figured out the route,” Falconer snapped. “We ain’t got all day to stand around talking, either.”

Caleb Cobb merely smiled.

Captain Falconer briskly wrote them out some chits for horses— good with any trader in Austin, he claimed—and then marched them over to a man named Brognoli, who was in charge of stores and armaments. Brognoli was in the process of buying livestock when they found him. Twenty beeves had been driven in—they were ambling around the town square, which, at that time, was a maelstrom of activity. A wagon master was hammering together a new wagon, several saddle makers were making repairs on saddles the volunteers had brought in, and a dentist was pulling a man’s tooth right in the middle of it all. The man yowled, but the dentist persisted and brought out a tooth with a long red root.

“I’ll be damned if I’d let a man stick pliers in my mouth and pull out my teeth,” Gus said, as they walked through the crowd. Horses, mules, sheep, pigs, and chickens crowded the square. Call had never been in the midst of so much activity before—he felt a little hemmed in. There was so much to see that it was more than a little confusing. So engrossed was the quartermaster Brognoli in purchasing livestock that it was half an hour before he could attend to their request for guns. When he did get time for them, he proved to be a friendly man.

“Muskets are what we’ve got—I’ve not been issued pistols,” he said. “The muskets will do for buffalo, or Indians, either.”

He took them into a storeroom behind a large general store— cases of muskets were stacked on top of one another. While Call and the others were hefting various rifles and looking at ammunition pouches, Gus happened to peek into the store itself—there was a girl standing there by a counter who was so lovely that Gus immediately forgot all about cap-and-ball muskets, ammunition pouches, and everything else. The girl seemed to work in the store—she was helping an old lady try on a sunbonnet. The girl was slim; she had the liveliest expression—also, she was alert. Gus had merely glanced at her, supposing that she was too busy to notice, but she caught his glance and looked at him so directly that it unnerved him. He would have retreated back to the muskets had she not immediately smiled at him in a quick, friendly way.

Emboldened by that smile, Gus abandoned his comrades and walked into the store. It was a big, high-ceilinged store filled with every kind of goods, from hammers and nails to fine headwear—he couldn’t resist trying on a new grey hat with a sweeping brim, though he knew he couldn’t afford it. He could hear the old lady chattering on—she was in no hurry to choose her sunbonnet. Twice Gus decided the young woman was so busy with the old harpy that he could risk another glance or two, but both times he risked it, the girl caught the glance, as if it were a ball he had tossed her. She didn’t allow his glances to distract her from her work, but she didn’t fail to notice them, either.

Gus proceeded to examine a case full of knives; he had always had a strong fondness for knives. Some of the ones in the case would have excited him a lot on any other day—they had gleaming blades, with handles of ivory or horn; but compared to the pretty girl selling sunbonnets, knives were of little interest.

When the old lady finally chose her sunbonnet and paid for it, Gus was trying to work up his nerve to say good morning to the girl, but before he had it worked up there was another interruption: a brusque little man in a black frock coat bustled in, and went straight to the cigars.

“Morning, Miss Forsythe,” the fellow said. “I’m here for my cigar.”

“Here it is, Dr. Morris,” the girl said. “We’ve already got it wrapped up. My father tended to it personally.”

“Yes, but he attended to it too well,” the little doctor said, quickly tearing the wrapping off the little package the girl handed him. He extracted a long cigar and pulled it slowly under his nose.

“Never buy a cigar without smelling it,” he advised the girl—then he tipped his hat and walked out, the cigar jutting out of his mouth.

“I guess that was good advice,” the young woman said, strolling over to Gus. “But I won’t take it.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you?” Gus asked, amazed that the young woman had simply walked over and addressed him.

“Because I don’t fancy cigars,” the girl said, with a smile.

Then she thrust the wadded-up paper from the doctor’s package into his hand.“Here, dispose of this, sir,” she said, with a fetching smile. ;

“Do what?” Gus asked, paralyzed with anxiety lest he do something wrong and scare the girl away—though, he had to admit, she didn’t look easily scared.

“Dispose of this paper—I can see that you’re tall, but I don’t know if you’re useful,” the girl said. “I’m Clara. Who are you?”

“Augustus McCrae,” Gus said. Though he rarely used his full name, he felt that on this occasion it would be proper.

“Augustus—did you hear that? He’s a Roman like you, Mr. Brognoli,” Clara said, addressing the quartermaster, who had stepped into the store for the moment to give her chits for the muskets.

“I don’t think so, Miss Forsythe,” Brognoli said, tipping his cap to the girl. “I think he’s just a young rascal from Tennessee.

“You better get your musket—you’ll need it where you’re going,” he added, looking at Gus. “What’s that in your hand? You ain’t been stealing from Miss Forsythe, have you?”

“Oh no—it’s just some wrapping I asked him to dispose of,” Clara said. “I like to find out quick if a man’s useful or not. So far he ain’t disposed of it. I guess that means he’s a laggard.”

“Oh, this—I aim to keep it forever,” Gus said, flushed with embarrassment. Brognoli had already turned and disappeared—he was alone with Clara Forsythe, who was watching him out of two keen eyes.

“Keep it forever, that scrap!” Clara said. “Why would you do such a foolish thing as that, Mr. McCrae? You have important soldiering to do—I expect you’ll need both hands.”

“I’ll keep it because you gave it to me,” Gus said.

Clara stopped smiling and looked at him calmly. The speech didn’t seem to surprise her, though it greatly surprised Gus. He had not meant to say anything of the sort. But such a feeling had risen in him, because of Clara Forsythe, that he couldn’t move his limbs or control his speech.

“Here, don’t you want to pick a gun?” Call asked, sticking his head in the store for a moment. He saw Gus standing by a girl and supposed he was trying to buy something he couldn’t afford and didn’t need—whereas he did need a gun.

“You pick one for me—I expect it will do,” Gus said, determined not to leave Miss Forsythe’s presence until he absolutely had to.“We’re going to buy horses—don’t you want to pick your own mount?” Call asked, a little puzzled by his friend’s behaviour.

He looked again at the young shop girl and saw that she was unusually pretty—perhaps that explained it. Still, they were about to set off on a long, dangerous expedition—choosing the right gun and the right mount could mean life or death, once they were out on the prairies. If he was that taken with the shop girl, he could come back later and chatter—though, for once, Gus wasn’t chattering. He was just standing there, as if planted to the floor, holding some scraps of paper in his hand. It was unusual behaviour. Call stepped into the store, thinking his friend might be sick. He tipped his straw hat to the pretty shop girl as he approached.

“Hello, are you a Roman too, sir?” Clara asked, with a smile.

Call was stumped—he didn’t understand the question. The young woman’s look was so direct that it startled him. What did it mean, to be a Roman, and why had she asked?

“No, this is Woodrow Call, he’s a plain Texan,” Gus said. “I don’t know how that fellow knew I was from Tennessee.”

In fact, Brognoli’s comment had irked him—what right had a quartermaster to be speculating with Miss Forsythe about where he was from?

“Why, Mr. Brognoli’s a traveled man,” Clara said. “He’s been telling me about Europe. I mean to go there someday, and see the sights.

“If it’s farther off than Santa Fe I doubt I’ll have time to go,” Call said. He found that he didn’t feel awkward talking to the shop girl —she was so friendly that talking was easy, even though he had no idea where Europe was or what sights might be there for a young lady to see.

Call was impatient, though—they had to outfit themselves for a great expedition, and they only had a day to do it. He glanced around the big store and saw that it contained goods of every description, many of which would probably be useful on their expedition—but their chits only covered guns and horses. It was pointless to waste time looking around a big store, when they had no money to spend at all. Yet Gus seemed reluctant to move.

“I’ll be along, Woodrow—I’ll be along,” Gus said. “Just grab me a musket as you leave.”

“Why, I believe I’ve smitten Mr. McCrae,” Clara said, with a laugh. “I doubt I could smite you, though, Mr. Call—not unless I had a club.”

With no more said, she turned and began to unpack a large box of dry goods.

Call turned and left, a little puzzled by the shop girl’s remark. Why would she want to smite him with a club? She seemed a friendly girl, though the meaning of her remark was hard to puzzle out.

Clara whistled a tune as she unpacked the big box of dry goods. She glanced up after a bit and saw that Augustus McCrae, the young Tennessean, was still standing exactly where he had been when she last addressed him.

“Hey you, go along,” she said. “Your friend Mr. Call is waiting.”

“No, he ain’t waiting,” Gus said. “He left with the boys.”

“Are you really a Texas Ranger?” Clara asked. “I’ve not met too many Texas Rangers. My father says they’re rascals, mostly. Are you a rascal, Mr. McCrae?”

Gus hardly knew how to respond to such a barrage of questions.

“I may have done a rascally thing or two,” Gus said. Since Clara was so frank, he decided honesty might be the best policy. She was smiling when she looked at him, which was puzzling.

“Here, since you’re still around, put this cotton over on that bench,” she said. “It’s got mussed up, somewhere along the way. I expect we’ll have to wash it before we can sell it. Folks around here won’t pay money for cotton goods that look mussed.”

Gus took the swatch of cotton cloth and put it where she had told him to. An old man in a brown coat came in while he was doing it. The old man had on a grey hat and had a patch over one eye. He looked a little surprised to see a stranger carrying his dry goods around.

“Hi, Pa, this is Mr. Augustus McCrae of Tennessee,” Clara said merrily. “He’s a Texas Ranger but he seems to have time to spare, so I put him right to work.”

“I see,” Mr. Forsythe said. He shook Gus’s hand and looked at Clara, his daughter, with great fondness.

“She’s brash, ain’t she?” he said to Gus. “You don’t need to wait for an opinion, if Clara’s around. She’ll get you an opinion before you can catch your breath.“Clara was still unpacking goods, whistling as she worked. She had her sleeves rolled up, exposing her pretty wrists.

“Well, I must go look at them horses,” Gus said. “Many thanks for the visit.”

“Was it a visit?” Clara said, giving him one of her direct glances.

“Seemed like one,” Gus said. He felt the remark was inadequate, but couldn’t think of another.

“That door ain’t locked. You can come back and pitch in with the unpacking, Mr. McCrae, if you have time,” Clara said.

Old man Forsythe chuckled.

“If he doesn’t have it, he’ll make it,” he said, putting his arm around his daughter’s shoulder for a moment.

Gus tipped his hat to both of them and walked out the front door, the scraps of wrapping paper still in his hand. Once out of Clara’s sight he carefully folded the brown paper and put it in his breast pocket.

Although he had left the general store and was back amid the throng of peddlers and merchants, all hoping to profit from the coming expedition, in his mind Gus still stood by the big box of dry goods, waiting for Clara Forsythe to hand him another swatch of cloth. Call, who was standing with Long Bill and Blackie Slidell not twenty yards away, had to yell at him three times to get his attention.

“Here, I hope you’re pleased with this musket,” Call said, when Gus finally strolled over. “It’s new and it’s got a good heft. I don’t know what we’ll do about pistols. Mr. Brognoli says they’re costly.”

“I don’t want to go,” Gus said flatly. “I wonder if that girl’s pa would hire me to work in that store?”

“What?” Call said, shocked. “You don’t want to go on the expedition?”

“No, I’d rather marry that girl,” Gus said.

Long Bill and Blackie Slidell thought it was the funniest joke of the year. They laughed so hard that the dentist, who was about to pull another tooth out of another customer, stopped his work for a moment in amazement.

Call, however, was embarrassed for his friend. The expedition to Santa Fe was a serious matter. They were Rangers—they had to defend the Republic. Yet Gus had just walked into a store to select a musket, spotted a girl with a frank manner, and now wanted to quit rangering.“Marry her—you ain’t got a cent,” Call said. “Anyway, why would she have you? You ain’t known her ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes is enough,” Gus said. “I want to marry her, and I aim to.”

“He’s a cutter, ain’t he?” Long Bill commented. “Meets a girl and the next thing you know, he’s off to hunt a preacher.”

“Well, you heard me,” Gus said. “I aim to marry her, and that’s that.”

“No, now you can’t, that’s desertion,” Blackie pointed out. “You signed your mark this morning, right in front of Caleb Cobb. I expect he’d hang you on the spot if you tried to quit.”

The remark had a sobering effect. Gus had totally forgotten signing his mark and putting himself under military command. He had forgotten most of his life prior to meeting Clara. The fact that he could be executed for changing his mind had never occurred to him.

“Why, that marking don’t amount to much,” Gus said. He didn’t want to be hanged, but he also didn’t want to leave Austin, now that he had found the woman he intended to marry.

“You need to visit the whorehouse, it will clear your head,” Long Bill said. “My head’s cloudy, too. I say we all go, once we’ve picked our horses.”

“I don’t want no whore,” Call said—but in fact, once they picked their horses and bought a slicker apiece, they all went down by the river, where several whores were working out of a shanty. There were six stalls, with blankets hung between them. Gus chose a Mexican girl, and did his business quickly—once he was done, even as he was buckling his pants, he still thought of Clara Forsythe and her pretty wrists.

Call chose a young white woman named Maggie, who took his coins and accepted him in silence. She had grey eyes—she seemed to be sad. The look in her eye, as he was pulling his pants up, made him a little uneasy—it was a sorrowful look. He felt he ought to say something, perhaps try to talk to the girl a little, but he didn’t know how to talk to her, or even why he felt he should.

“Thank you, good-bye,” he said, finally.

Maggie didn’t smile. She stood at the back of the stall, by the quilt she slept on and worked on, waiting for the next Ranger to come in.Johnny Carthage was waiting when Call came out. He had a policy of not buying Mexican women, the reason being that a Mexican whore had stabbed out his eye while trying to rob him.

“Well, what’s your opinion? Is she lively?” Johnny asked, as Call came out.

“I have no opinion,” Call said, still troubled by the sorrow in Maggie’s eyes.

Gus McCRAE MOPED ALL afternoon, and would do no work. Call, who had become an expert farrier, took it upon himself to shoe the Rangers’ new horses. He didn’t want one of them coming up lame, not on such a long, risky trip. Shadrach showed up while he was working—he was dusty and grizzled. When asked where he had been, Shadrach said he had been west, hunting cougars.

“Dern, when I hunt I want something that’s better eating than a cougar,” Bigfoot informed him.

“I just take the liver,” Shadrach said.

“Cougar liver?” Bigfoot asked in amazement. “I’ve heard the Comanches eat the liver out of cougars, but Comanches eat polecats, too. I ain’t yet et a polecat, and I hope I never have to eat the liver out of a mountain cat.”

“It’s medicine,” Shadrach said. “Good medicine. I’m likely to see some cougars, going across the plains.”

“Oh—I guess you’ve started thinking like an Indian, Shad,” Bigfoot said.

“The better to fight ‘em,” Shadrach said. He went over and dipped his head in a big water trough to get some of the dust out of his long, shaggy hair.

Gus finally agreed to help a little with the horseshoeing, but his mind wasn’t on his work. If Call asked for a rasp, Gus would likely hand him an awl, or even a nail. Twice he wandered off to visit the general store, but Clara was off on errands. Mr. Forsythe was pleasant to him, but vague about when his daughter might return.

“I can’t predict her,” he said. “She’s like the wind. Sometimes she’s quiet, and sometimes she’s not.”

Annoyed at the girl—why couldn’t she stay where he could find her?—Gus took the best alternative left to him, which was to get drunk. He bought a jug of liquor from a Mexican peddler and sat under a shed and drank it, while Call finished the horseshoeing. While he was working, a buggy drove by—an old man wearing a military coat was asleep in it. The old man had a red face, and was snoring so loudly they could hear him even after the buggy had passed.

“Well, that’s Phil Lloyd, the damned sot,” Bigfoot said. “He’s a general, but he ain’t a good one. I doubt we could get enough barrels of whiskey in a wagon to keep Phil Lloyd happy all the way to Santa Fe, unless we lope along quick.”

Call decided the military was peculiar—why make a general out of an old man who couldn’t even find his way around? He tried to interest Gus in the question, but Gus could not be bothered by such business.

“She wasn’t there,” he said several times, referring to Clara. “I went back twice to visit—she said I might—but she wasn’t there either time.”

“I expect she’ll be there in the morning,” Call said. “You can trot by and say adios. They say we’re leaving tomorrow.”

“You may be leaving, I ain’t,” Gus replied. “I ain’t leaving tomorrow, or any other time.”

Call knew his friend was too drunk to make sense—he didn’t press him.

“Let’s walk down by the river, I feel restless,” Gus said a little later. “That store’s closed by now—there’s no chance to visit until tomorrow.”

Call was happy to walk with him. It was a starry night, and theRangers had just made a good meal off some tamales Blackie Slidell had purchased from a Mexican woman. A little walk would be pleasant. He took his new musket, in case they encountered trouble. The Comanches had been known to come right into Austin and take children, or even young women. It wouldn’t hurt to be armed.

They walked a good distance on the bluffs over above the Colorado River—they could see a light out in the water. Somebody was out in a boat.

“Fishing, I expect,” Call said.

Gus was still fairly drunk.

“What kind of fool would fish at night? The fish wouldn’t be able to see the bait,” Gus said. Then, between one step and the next, he suddenly plunged into space. He was so drunk he wasn’t frightened; sometimes when very drunk he passed out—it felt a little like falling. He assumed, for a moment, that he must be in the process of passing out. The lantern light on the water was spinning, which went with being drunk, too.

He felt himself turn over, which was also a feeling he got when he was drunk; then he saw the river again, but it seemed to him that it was above him. He began to realize that he was falling, through a night so dark that he couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t even remember what he had been doing before he fell.

“A fish don’t need to see, it can smell,” Call said, just before noting, to his shock, that he was talking to nobody. Gus McCrae, at his elbow only the moment before, had disappeared. Call’s first thought was that an Indian had snatched Gus, though he didn’t see how, since he and Gus had only been a step apart. But Buffalo Hump had taken Josh Corn, and he hadn’t been far away, either.

Call whirled around, almost going off the bluff himself. He couldn’t see the edge, but he could see the river in the starlight. The river was a good distance down—he realized then that Gus must have fallen. He didn’t know what to do—probably it was too late to do anything. Gus might already be dead or dying. Call knew he had to get down to him, but he didn’t know how to go about it without falling himself. He had no rope, and it was so dark he feared to try and climb down.

Then he remembered that during the day he had seen an old man with a fishing pole making his way down a kind of trail. Therewas a way down, but he would need a light of some kind if he was going to find it.

Call began to run back toward town, staying well clear of the bluff; he was hoping to encounter someone with a light. But it was as if suddenly he were back on the long plain beyond the Pecos: he saw not a soul until he had run all the way back to where the Rangers were camped. When he got there he discovered that the only Ranger who wasn’t dead drunk was gimpy Johnny Carthage, the slowest man in camp. Blackie Slidell and Rip Green were so drunk they couldn’t even remember who Gus McCrae was. Johnny Carthage was willing, at least; he and Call found a lantern, and made their way back to the river. In time, they found a place where they could scramble down the cliff.

The problem then was that Call could not tell how far down the bluff they had walked before Gus fell. With the help of the lantern, though, he could see that the bluff wasn’t high enough for a fall to be fatal, unless Gus had been unlucky and broken his neck or his back.

Johnny Carthage was fairly stalwart while they were on the bluff. But once down by the river, with help far away, his fear of Indians grew to such proportions that he flinched at every shadow.

“Indians can swim,” he announced, looking out at the dark water.

“Who can?” Call asked. He wanted to call out to Gus, but of course if there were Indians near, the calling would give them away. He was afraid Johnny might panic, if the risks increased much.

“Indians,” Johnny said. “That big one with the hump could be right out there in the water.”

“Why would he be out there, this time of night?” Call asked. Mainly he was trying to distract Johnny from his fear by asking sensible questions.

“Well, he might,” Johnny said. He had a great urge to shoot his gun, although he couldn’t see a thing to shoot at. He just had the feeling that if he shot his gun, he might feel a little less scared.

To Call’s shock and surprise, Johnny suddenly shot his gun. Call assumed it meant he had seen Indians—perhaps Buffalo Hump was in the river. Johnny Carthage was ten years older than he was, and more experienced—he might have spotted an Indian in the water somehow.“Did you hit him?” Call asked.

“Hit who?” Johnny said.

“The Indian you shot at,” Call said.

Johnny was so scared he had already forgotten his own shot. He remembered wanting to shoot—he felt it would make him less nervous—but he had no memory of actually firing the gun.

Gus McCrae couldn’t get the stars above him to come into focus. He was lying on his back, a terrible pain in his left ankle, wondering if he was drunk or dead. Surely if he was dead, his ankle wouldn’t hurt so badly. But then, he wasn’t sure—perhaps the dead could still feel. He couldn’t be sure of anything, except that his left ankle hurt. He could hear the lap of water against the shore, which probably meant that he was still alive. He wasn’t wet, either—that was good. One of the things he disliked most about rangering was that it very often left him unprotected from the elements. On the first march to the Pecos, he had been drenched several times—once, crossing some insignificant little creek, his boots had filled with water. When he took them off to empty them, he noticed several of the older Rangers laughing, but it wasn’t until he tried to put his boots back on that he realized what they were laughing at. He couldn’t get his boots back on—his feet, which had just come out of those very boots, wouldn’t go back in. They didn’t go back in for almost two days, until the boots had thoroughly dried. Gus remembered the incident mainly because his ankle hurt so—he knew he could never force his foot into a boot, not with his ankle hurting so badly. He would just have to go bootless on that foot for awhile, until his ankle mended.

While he was thinking about the difficulties that arose when you got wet, a gun went off nearby. Gus’s thought was that it was an Indian—he tried to roll under a bush, but there were no bushes on the river shore. Even though he disliked being wet, he didn’t dislike it as much as he disliked the thought of being taken by an Indian. He started to roll into the water, thinking that he could swim out far enough that the Indians couldn’t find him, when he heard nearby the voices of Johnny Carthage and Woodrow Call, talking about the very subject he had just been thinking about: Indians.

“Here, boys—it’s me!” he cried out. “Come fast—I’m right by the bluff.”

A moment later Call and Johnny found him, to his great relief.“I was afraid it was that big one,” he said, when they came with the lantern. “He could poke that big lance right through me, if he came upon me laying down.”

Though glad to have found Gus alive, Call was still not sure exactly what the situation was. Neither was Johnny. The fact that the latter had fired his gun confused them both. Though not quite dead drunk, Johnny was actually less sober than Call had supposed him to be back at the camp. He had seemed sober in comparison with Blackie and Rip, but now whatever he had drunk seemed to have suddenly caught up with him. He couldn’t remember whether he had fired his gun because he had seen an Indian, or whether he had just shot to be shooting—it could even be that the gun had gone off entirely by accident.

Call was exasperated. He had never known a man to be so vague about his own behaviour.

“You shot the gun,” he reminded Johnny, for the third time. “What did you shoot it at—an Indian?”

“Matilda et that big turtle,” Johnny said—he was growing rapidly less in command of his faculties. All he could remember of his earlier life was that Matilda Roberts had cooked a snapping turtle in a Ranger camp on the Rio Grande.

“That wasn’t tonight, Johnny,” Call insisted. “That was a long time back, and I don’t know what it’s got to do with tonight. You didn’t shoot at a snapping turtle, did you?”

Johnny Carthage was silent, perplexed. Call couldn’t help but be annoyed. They were in a life-or-death situation—why couldn’t the man remember what he shot at?

“What did you shoot at tonight?” he asked again.

Gus was feeling more and more convinced that he was alive and well—except, of course, for a damaged ankle.

“I hope my ankle ain’t broke—it hurts,” he said. “You might as well let up on Johnny, though. He ain’t got no idea why he shot his gun.”

“I’d have to be hungry to eat a dern turtle,” Johnny Carthage said. It was his final comment of the evening. To Call’s intense annoyance he lapsed into a stupor, and was soon as prostrate as Gus.

“Now I’ve got two of you down,” Call said. “This is a damn nuisance.“Gus was too relieved to be alive, to worry very much about his friend’s distemper.

“I wonder if that girl will be in the store tomorrow? he asked, out loud. “I sure would like to see that girl again, although my ankle’s bad.” “Go see her, then,” Call said brusquely. “Maybe she’ll sell you a crutch.”

WHEN CALL HELPED Gus hobble back to camp—Johnny Carthage was no help, having passed out drunk near where Gus had fallen— Bigfoot happened to be there, drinking with Long Bill and Rip Green. After a certain amount of poking and prodding, during which Gus let out a yelp or two, Bigfoot pronounced his ankle sprained but not broken. Gus’s mood sank—he was afraid it meant that he would not be allowed to go on the expedition.

“But you wasn’t going anyway, you were aiming to stay and marry that girl,” Call reminded him.

“No—I aim to go,” Gus said. “If I could collect a little of that silver we could live rich, if I do marry her.”

In fact he was torn. He had a powerful desire to marry Clara; but at the same time, the thought of watching his companions ride off on their great adventure made him moody and sad.

“You reckon Colonel Cobb would leave me, because of this ankle?” he asked.

“Why no, there’s plenty of wagons you could ride in—a sprain’s usually better in a week,” Bigfoot said. “I guess they could put you in that buggy with old Phil Lloyd, unless they mean to transport him in a cart.” “Ride with a general?” Gus asked. “I wouldn’t know what to say to a general.”

“You won’t have to say a word to Phil Lloyd, he’ll be too drunk to talk,” Bigfoot assured him.

The next morning, the sprained ankle was so swollen Gus couldn’t put even a fraction of his weight on it. The matter chagrined him deeply—he had hoped to be at the general store at opening time, in order to help Miss Forsythe with her unpacking. Yet even standing up was painful—needles of pain shot through his ankle.

“I expect they have liniment in that store,” Call told him. “I guess I could walk up there and buy you some liniment.”

“Oh, you would!” Gus said, agitated at the thought that Call would get to see Clara before he did. “I suppose you’ll want to help her unpack dry goods, too.”

“What?” Call said, puzzled by Gus’s annoyance. “Why would I want to help her unpack? I don’t work in that store.” “Bear grease is best for sprains,” Long Bill informed him. “Well, do we have any?” Gus asked, eager to head off Call’s trip to the general store.

“Why no—I don’t keep any,” Long Bill said. “Maybe we can scrape a little up, next time we kill a bear.”

“I seen a bear once, eating a horse,” Gus remembered. “I didn’t kill him, though.”

Call grew tired of the aimless conversation and walked on up to the store. The girl was there, quick as ever. She wasn’t unpacking dry goods, though. She was stacking pennies on a counter, whistling while she did it.

“Be quiet, don’t interrupt me,” she said, throwing Call a merry glance. “I’ll have to do this all over if I lose my count.”

Call waited patiently until she had finished tallying up the pennies —she wrote the total on a little slip of paper.

“So it’s you and not Mr. McCrae,” she said when she was finished. “I rather expected Mr. McCrae. I guess he ain’t as smitten as I thought.”

“Oh, he’s mighty smitten,” Call assured her. “He meant to be here early, but he fell and hurt his ankle.”

“Just like a man—is it broke?” Clara asked. “I expect he done it dancing with a senorita. He looks to me like he’s the kind of Texas Ranger who visits the serioritas.”

“No, he fell off a bluff,” Call said. “I was with him at the time. He’s got a bad sprain and thought some liniment might help.”

“It might if I rubbed it on myself,” Clara said.

Call was plain embarrassed. He had never heard of a woman rubbing liniment on a man’s foot. It seemed improper to him, although he recognized that standards might be different in Austin.

“If I could buy some and take it to him, I expect he could just rub it on himself,” Call said.

“I see you know nothing of medicine, sir,” Clara said, thinking she had never met such a pompous young fool as Mr. Woodrow Call.

“Well, can I buy some?” Call asked. He found it tiring to do so much talking, particularly since the girl’s manner was so brash and her attitude so confusing.

“Yes, here—we have the best liniment of any establishment in town,” Clara said. “My father uses this one—I believe it’s made from roots.”

She handed Call a big jar of liniment, charging him twenty cents. Call was dismayed at the price—he hadn’t supposed liniment would cost more than a dime.

“Tell Mr. McCrae I consider it very careless of him, to go falling off a bluff without my permission,” Clara said, as she was wrapping the jar of liniment in brown paper. “He might have been useful to me today, if he hadn’t been so careless.”

“He had no notion that he was so close to the edge, Miss,” Call said, thinking that he ought to try and defend his friend.

“No excuses, tell him I’m very put out,” Clara demanded. “Once I smite a man, I expect more cautious behaviour.”

When Call reported the conversation to Gus, Gus blamed it all on him.

“I suppose you informed her that I was drunk—you aim to marry her yourself, I expect,” Gus said, in a temper.

Call was astonished by his friend’s irrationality.

“I don’t even know the woman’s name,” he told his friend.

“Pshaw, it don’t take long to learn a name,” Gus said. “You mean to marry her, don’t you?”

“You must have broke your brain, when you took that fall,” Call said. “I don’t intend to marry nobody. I’m off to Santa Fe.”

“Well, I am too—I wish I’d never let you go up to that store,” Gus said. He was tormented by the thought that Clara Forsythe might have taken a liking to Call. She might have decided she preferred his friend, a thought so tormenting that he got up and tried to hobble to the store. But he could put no weight on the wounded ankle at all—it meant hopping on one leg, and he soon realized that he couldn’t hop that far. Even if he had, what would Clara think of a man who came hopping in on one leg?

He was forced to lie in camp all day, sulking, while the other Rangers went about their business. Long Bill Coleman grew careless with the jug of whiskey he had procured the night before. While he was trying to repair a cracked stirrup, Gus crawled over to Bill’s little stack of bedding, uncorked the jug, and drank a good portion of it. Then he crawled back to his own spot, drunk.

Brognoli, the quartermaster, showed up about that time, looking for men to load the ammunition wagons. Call and Rip Green were recruited. Gus was fearful Brognoli would remove him from the troop once he found out about the ankle, but Brognoli scarcely gave him a glance.

“You’ll be running buffalo in a few days, Mr. McCrae,” Brognoli said. “I’ll warn you though: be careful of your parts, once we’re traveling. Colonel Cobb won’t tolerate stragglers. If you can’t make the pull, he’ll leave you, and you’ll have to come back as best you can.

Gus managed to sneak several more pulls on Long Bill’s jug, and was deeply drunk when he woke from a light snooze to see a girl coming toward the camp. To his horror, he realized it was Clara Forsythe. It was a calamity—not only was he drunk and too crippled to attend himself, he was also filthy from having accidentally rolled into a mud puddle during the night.

He looked about to see if there was a wagon he could hide under, but there was no wagon. Johnny Carthage was snoring, his head on his saddle, and no one else was in camp at all.

“There you are—I had hoped you would show up early and help me unpack those heavy dry goods,” Clara said. “I see you’re unreliable—I might have suspected it.” She was smiling as she chided him, but Gus was so sensitive to the fact that he was drunk and filthy that he hardly knew what to do.

“Let’s see your foot,” Clara said, kneeling down beside him.

Gus was startled. Although Call had informed him that Clara intended to rub liniment on his foot herself, Gus had given the report no credit. It was some lie Call had thought up, to make him feel worse than he felt. No fine girl of the class of Miss Forsythe would be likely to want to rub liniment on his filthy ankle.

“What?” he asked—he was so drunk that he could hardly stammer. He wished now that he had not been such a fool as to drain Long Bill’s jug—but then, how could he possibly have expected a visit from Miss Forsythe? Only whores prowled around in the rough Ranger camps, and Clara was clearly not a whore.

“I said, let’s see your foot,” Clara said. “Did the fall deafen you, too?”

“No, I can hear,” Gus said. “What would you want with my foot?” he asked.

“I need to know if I think you’re going to recover, Mr. McCrae,” Clara said, with a challenging smile. “If you do recover, I might have plans for you, but if you’re a goner, then I won’t waste my time.

“What kind of plans?” Gus asked.

“Well, there’s a lot of unpacking that needs to get done around the store,” Clara said. “You could be my assistant, if you behave.”

Gus surrendered the wounded foot, which was bare, and none too clean. Clara touched it gently, cupping Gus’s heel in one hand.

“The thing is, I’m a Ranger,” Gus reminded her. “I signed up for the expedition to Santa Fe. If I try to back out now, the Colonel might call it desertion and have me hung.”

“Fiddle,” Clara said, feeling the swollen ankle. She lowered his foot to the ground, noticed the jar of liniment sitting on a rock nearby, and removed the top.

“Well, they can hang you for desertion, if they take a notion to,” Gus said.

“I know that, shut up,” Clara said, scooping a bit of liniment into her hand. She began to massage it into the swollen ankle, a dab at a time.“My pa thinks this expedition is all foolery,” Clara went on. “He says you’ll all starve, once you get out on the plains. He says you’ll be back in a month. I guess I can wait a month.”

“I hope so,” Gus said. “I wouldn’t want no one else to get the job.”

Clara looked at him, but said nothing. She continued to dab liniment on his ankle and gently rub it in.

“That liniment stinks,” Gus informed her. “It smells like sheepdip.

“I thought I told you to shut up,” Clara reminded him. “If you weren’t crippled we could have a picnic, couldn’t we?”

Gus decided to ignore the comment—he was crippled, and wasn’t quite sure what a picnic was, anyway. He thought it was something that had to do with churchgoing, but he wasn’t a churchgoer and didn’t want to embarrass himself by revealing his ignorance.

“What if we’re out two months?” he asked. “You wouldn’t give that job to nobody else, would you?”

Clara considered for a moment—she was smiling, but not at him, exactly. She seemed to be smiling mostly to herself.

“Well, there are other applicants,” she admitted.

“Yes, that damn Woodrow Call, I imagine,” Gus said. “I never told him to go up there and buy this liniment. He just did it himself.”

“Oh no, not Corporal Call,” Clara said at once. “I don’t think I fancy Corporal Call as an unpacker. He’s a little too solemn for my taste. I expect he would be too slow to make a fool of himself.”

“That’s right, he ain’t foolish,” Gus said. He thought it was rather a peculiar standard Clara was suggesting, but he was not about to argue with her.

“I like men who are apt to make fools of themselves immediately,” Clara said. “Like yourself, Mr. McCrae. Why, you don’t hesitate a second when it comes to making a fool of yourself.”

Gus decided not to comment. He had never encountered anyone as puzzling as the young woman kneeling in front of him, with his foot almost on her lap. She didn’t seem to give a fig for the fact that his foot was dirty, and he himself none too clean.

“Are you drunk, sir?” she asked bluntly. “I think I smell whiskey on your breath.” ‘“Well, Long Bill had a little whiskey,” Gus admitted. “I took it for medicine.”

Clara didn’t dignify that lie with a look, or a retort.

“What were you thinking of when you walked off that cliff, Mr. McCrae?” Clara asked. “Do you remember?”

In fact, Gus didn’t remember. The main thing he remembered about the whole previous day was standing near Clara in the general store, watching her unpack dry goods. He remembered her graceful wrists, and how dust motes stirred in a shaft of sunlight from the big front window. He remembered thinking that Clara was the most beautiful woman he had ever encountered, and that he wanted to be with her—beyond being with her, he could conceive of no plans; he had no memory of falling off the cliff at all, and no notion of what he and Woodrow Call might have been discussing. He remembered a gunshot and Call and Johnny finding him at the base of the bluff. But what had gone on before, or been said up on the path, he couldn’t recall.

“I guess I was worrying about Indians,” he said, since Clara was still looking at him in a manner that suggested she wanted an answer.

“Shucks, I thought you might have been thinking of me,” Clara said. “I had the notion I’d smitten you, but I guess I was wrong. I haven’t smitten Corporal Call, that’s for sure.”

“He ain’t a corporal, he’s just a Ranger,” Gus said, annoyed that she was still talking about Call. He didn’t trust the man, not where Clara was concerned, at least.

“Why, that’s better, perhaps I have smitten you.”

She closed the jar of liniment, eased his foot to the ground, and stood up.

“It does smell a little like sheepdip—that’s accurate,” she said. “What do you gentlemen use to wash with around this camp?”

“Nothing, nobody washes,” Gus admitted. “Sometimes we wash in a creek, if we’re traveling, but otherwise we just stay dirty.”

Clara picked up a shirt someone had thrown down, and carefully wiped her fingers on it.

“I hope the owner won’t mind a little sheepdip on his shirt,” she said.

“That’s Call’s extra shirt, he won’t mind,” Gus assured her.

“Oh, Corporal Call—where is he, by the way?” Clara asked.

“He ain’t a corporal, I told you that,” Gus said. He found her use of the term very irritating; that she felt the need to refer to Call at all was more than a little annoying.

“Nonetheless I intend to call him Corporal Call, and it’s not one bit of your business what I call him,” Clara said pertly. “I’m free to choose names for my admirers, I suppose.”

Gus was so annoyed that he didn’t know what to say. He sulked for a bit, thinking that if Call were there, he’d give him a punching, sore ankle or no sore ankle.

“Well, good-bye, Mr. McCrae,” Clara said. “I hope your ankle improves. If you’re still in camp tomorrow, I’ll come back and give it another treatment. I don’t want a crippled assistant, not with all the unpacking there is to do.”

To his surprise, she reached down and gave him a handshake— her fingers smelled of the liniment she had just rubbed on him.

“We’re supposed to pull out tomorrow—I hope we don’t, though,” Gus said.

“You know where the store is,” Clara said. “I certainly expect a visit, before you depart.”

She started to leave, and then turned and looked at him again. “Give my respects to Corporal Call,” she said. “It’s a pity he’s not more of a fool.”

“If he’s a corporal, I ought to be a corporal too,” Gus said, bitterly annoyed by the girl’s manner.

“Corporal McCrae—no, that don’t sound right,” Clara said. “Corporal Call—somehow that has a solid ring.” Then, with a wave, she walked off.

When Call came back to camp in the evening, sweaty from having loaded ammunition all day, he found Gus drunk and boiling. He was so mad his face turned red, and a big vein popped out on his nose.

“She calls you a corporal, you rascal!” Gus said in a furious voice. “I told you to stay clear of that store—if you don’t, when I get well, I’ll give you a whipping you’ll never forget.”

Call was taken completely by surprise, and Long Bill, Rip Green, and a new recruit named Jimmy Tweed, a tall boy from Arkansas, were all startled by Gus’s belligerence. Jimmy Tweed had not yet met Gus, and was shocked to find him so quarrelsome.

Call didn’t know what reply to make, and so said nothing. He had known that sometimes people took fevers and went out of their heads; he supposed that was what was the matter with Gus. He walked closer, to see if his friend was delirious, and was rewarded for his concern with a hard kick in the shin. Gus, though in a prone position, had still managed to get off the kick.

“Why, he’s unruly, ain’t he?” Jimmy Tweed said. “I expect if he wasn’t crippled we’d have to chain him down.”

“I don’t know you, stay out of it!” Gus warned. “I’d do worse than kick him, if I could.”

“I expect it’s fever,” Call said, at a loss to explain Gus’s behaviour any other way.

Before the dispute could proceed any further, Bigfoot came loping up on a big grey horse he had just procured.

“Buffalo Hump struck a farm off toward Bastrop,” he said. “An old man got away and spread the news. We’re getting up a troop, to go after the Indians. You’re all invited, except Gus and Johnny. Hurry up. We need to ride while the trail’s fresh.”

“Why ain’t I invited?” Johnny Carthage asked. He had just limped into camp.

“Because you got to do the packing,” Bigfoot said. “The expedition’s leaving early. I doubt we’ll be back. You got to get all this gear together and pack Gus into a cart or a wagon or something. We’ll meet you on the trail—if we survive.”

“This is a passel of stuff for one fellow to pack,” Johnny observed bleakly. “Gus won’t be no help, either—he’s poorly.”

“Not poorly enough—he just kicked my leg half off,” Call said. The more he thought about the incident, the more aggrieved he felt. All he had done all day was load ammunition—why did he have to be kicked because of some joke a girl made?

Shadrach came trotting up, his long rifle across his saddle. He didn’t say anything, but it was clear that he was impatient.

“Let’s go, boys—Buffalo Hump will be halfway to the Brazos by now,” Bigfoot said.

Call had been assigned a new mount that day. As yet he had barely touched him, but in a minute he was in the saddle. The little horse, a bay, jumped straight up, nearly throwing him; after that one jump, he didn’t buck again. Call only had time to grab his rifle and ammunition pouch. Shadrach had already left. Long Bill, RipGreen, and Jimmy Tweed were scrambling to get mounted. Bigfoot was the only calm man in camp. He reached down without dismounting and grabbed a piece of bacon someone had brought in, stuffing it quickly into his saddlebag.

“It’s a passel of stuff to pack up,” Johnny Carthage said again, looking at the litter of blankets, cook pots, and miscellaneous gear scattered around him.

“Oh, hush your yapping,” Bigfoot said.

Blackie Slidell came racing up—he had had his shirt off, helping to load a wagon, and was so fearful of being left that he had put it back on, wrong side out, as he rode.

Call looked down at Gus—he was still prone, but not so angry.

“I have no idea what you’re riled about,” he said. “I guess I’ll see you up the trail.”

“Good-bye,” Gus said, suddenly sorry for his angry behaviour. Before he could say more, Bigfoot wheeled his horse and loped off after Shadrach; the Rangers, still assembling themselves, followed as closely as they could.

Gus felt a sudden longing to be with them, though he knew it was impossible. Tears came to his eyes, as he watched his companions lope away. It would be lonely with no one but the cranky Johnny Carthage to talk to all night.

In a minute or two, though, he felt better. His ankle still felt full of needles, but Clara Forsythe had said she would come and rub more liniment on his sore ankle, if the expedition didn’t depart too early. All he had to do was get through the night, and he would see her again.

What made him feel even better was that this time he would have Clara all to himself. Call was gone. The thought cheered him so that within ten minutes he was pestering Johnny to go buy them a fresh jug of whiskey from the Mexican peddler.

“I can’t be getting too drunk, I got all this packing to do,” Johnny protested, but Gus shrugged his protest off.

“You just buy the whiskey,” he instructed. “I’ll do the getting drunk.”

A STORM BLEW UP during the night, with slashing rain and wind and thunder. Shadrach and Bigfoot paid the weather no attention— they set a fast pace, and didn’t stop. In the dark, Call grew fearful of falling behind and being lost. They cut through several clumps of live oak and scrub—he was afraid he and his little bay would fight themselves out of a thicket, only to find themselves alone. He stayed as close to the rump of the horse in front of him as he could. He didn’t want to get lost on his first Indian chase. The party consisted of fifteen men, many of whom he didn’t know. Call would have thought it would be easy to keep fifteen riders in sight, but he hadn’t counted on the difficulties posed by rain and darkness. At times, he couldn’t see his own horse’s head—he had to proceed on sense, like a night-hunting animal.

It was a relief, when the smoky, foggy dawn came, to see that he was still with the troop. All the men were soaked, streams of water running from their hats or their hair. There was no stopping for breakfast. Shadrach peeled off, and ranged to the north of the troop. He was lost to sight for an hour or more, but when they came to the burned-out farm he was there, examining tracks.

At first, Call saw no victims—he supposed the family had escaped. The cabin had been burned; though a few of the logs still smouldered. The area around the cabin was a litter, most of it muddy now. There were clothes and kitchen goods, broken chairs, a muddy Bible, a few bottles. The corn-shuck mattresses had been ripped open, and the corn shucks scattered in the mud.

Bigfoot dismounted, and stepped inside the shell of the cabin for a moment—then he stepped out.

“Where are they?” he asked Shadrach, who looked up briefly and pointed to the nearby cornfield.

“Call, gather up them wet sheets,” Bigfoot said. Several muddy sheets were amid the litter.

“Why?” Call asked, puzzled.

“To wrap them in—why else?” Bigfoot said, swinging back on his horse.

The woman lay between two corn rows, six arrows in her chest, her belly ripped up. The man had been hacked down near a little rock fence—when they ripped his scalp off, a long tear of skin had come loose with the scalp, running down the man’s back. A boy of about ten had three arrows in him, and had had his head smashed in with a large rock. A younger boy, six or seven maybe, had a big wound in his back.

“Lanced him,” Bigfoot said. “I thought there was a young girl here.”

“They took her,” Shadrach informed him. “They took the mule, too. I expect that’s what she’s riding.”

Call felt trembly, but he didn’t throw up. He noticed Bigfoot and Shadrach watching him, from the edge of the cornfield. Though they had all expected carnage, most of them had not been prepared for the swollen, ripped-open bodies—the smashed head, the torn stomach.

“Roll them in the sheets, best you can,” Bigfoot told him. “When you get to the woman, just break them arrows off. They’re in too deep to pull out.”

Shadrach walked over and squatted by the dead woman for a moment—he seemed to be studying the arrows. Then he tugged gently at an arrow in the center of the woman’s breastbone.

“This one’s gone clean through, into the ground,” he said. “This is Buffalo Hump’s arrow.”

“How do you know that?” Call asked.

Shadrach showed him the feathers at the end of the arrow.

“Them’s from a prairie chicken,” he said. “He always feathers his arrows with prairie chicken. He stood over her and shot that arrow clean through her breastbone.”

Bigfoot came over and looked at the arrow, too. The woman’s body didn’t budge. It was as if it were nailed to the ground. It was a small, skinny arrow, the shaft a little bent. Call tried to imagine the force it would take to send a thin piece of wood through a woman’s body and into the dirt. Several of the new men came over and stood in silence near the body of the woman. One or two of them glanced at the body briefly, then walked away. Several of them gripped their weapons so hard their knuckles were white. Call remembered that it had been that way beyond the Pecos—men squeezing their guns so hard their knuckles turned white. They were scared: they had ridden out of Austin into a world where the rules were not white rules, where torture and mutilation awaited the weak and the unwary, the slow, the young.

Bigfoot rode off with Shadrach to study the trail, leaving Call to wrap the four bodies in the muddy sheets. From the center of the cornfield the little cabin, now just a shell, its logs still smouldering, seemed small and sad to Call. The little family had built it, with much labor, in the clearing, sheltered in it, worked and planted their crops. Then, in an hour or less, it was all destroyed: four of them dead, one girl captured, the cabin burnt. Even the milk cow was dead, shot full of arrows. The cow was bloated now, its legs sticking up in the air.

Call did his best with the bodies, but when it came to the woman, he had to ask Blackie Slidell for help. Blackie had to take her feet and Call her arms before they could pull her free, so deep was Buffalo Hump’s arrow in the ground. Call had butchered several goats and a sheep or two, when he worked for Jesus—the woman he was trying to wrap in a wet, mouldy sheet had been butchered, just like a sheep.

“Lord, I hope we can whip ‘em if we catch up to them,” Blackie said, in a shaky voice. “I don’t want one of them devils catching me.”

Long Bill came over and helped Call with the graves. “I’ll help— I’d rather be working than thinking,” he said.

They scooped out four shallow graves, rolled the bodies in them, and covered them with rocks from the little rock fence the family had been building.

“They won’t need no fence now,” Rip Green observed. “All that work, and now they’re dead.”

Before they had quite finished the burying, Bigfoot and Shadrach came loping back. Bigfoot had the body of a dead girl across his horse.

“Here’s the last one—bury her,” Bigfoot said, easing the body down to Call. “The mule went lame a few miles from here. I guess they didn’t have no horse to spare for this girl. They brained her and shot the mule.”

A little later, as the troop was riding north, they passed the dead mule. A big piece had been cut out of its haunch.

“Shadrach done that,” Bigfoot said. “He says the game’s poorly this year, and it was a fat mule.”

They rode north all day, into a broken country of limestone hills. It rained intermittently, the clouds low. In the distance, some of the clouds rested on the low hills, like caps. Now and again Shadrach or Bigfoot rode off in one direction or another, but never for long. In the afternoon, they stopped and cooked the mule meat. Shadrach cut the haunch into little strips and gave each man one, to cook as preferred. Call stuck his on a stick and held it over the fire until it was black. He had never planned to eat mule and didn’t expect to like the taste, but to his surprise the meat was succulent—it tasted fine.

“When will we catch ‘em?” he asked Bigfoot at one point. They had not seen a trace of the Comanches—yet for all he knew, they were close, in one of the rocky valleys between the hills. Several times, as they rode north, he kept his eyes to the ground, trying to make out the track that the troop was following. But all he saw was the ground. He would have liked to know what clues the two scouts picked up to guide the chase, but no one offered to inform him. He was reluctant to ask—it made him seem too ignorant. But in fact he was ignorant, and not happy about it. At least Shadrach had taught him how to identify Buffalo Hump’s arrow—he thought he could recognize the feathers again, if he saw them. That was the only piece of instruction to come his way, though.

When he asked Bigfoot when he thought they would catch up with the Comanches, Bigfoot looked thoughtful for a moment.

“We won’t catch them,” he said.

Call was puzzled. If the Rangers weren’t going to catch the enemy, why were they pursuing them at all?

Bigfoot’s manner did not invite more questions. He had been eager, back on the Rio Grande, to talk about the finer points of suicide, but when it came to their pursuit of the Comanche raiding party, he was not forthcoming. Call rode on in silence for a few miles, and then tried again.

“If we ain’t going to catch them, why are we chasing them?” he asked.

“Oh, I just meant we can’t outrun them,” Bigfoot said. “They can travel faster than we can. But we might catch ‘em anyway.”

“How?” Call asked, confused.

“There’s only one way to catch an Indian, which is to wait for him to stop,” Bigfoot said. “Once they get across the Brazos they’ll feel a little safer. They might stop.”

“And then we’ll kill them?” Call said—he thought he understood now.

“Then we’ll try,” Bigfoot said.

To Gus’s DISMAY, THE order to move out of Austin came at three in the morning. Captain Falconer rode through the camps on a snorting, prancing horse, telling the men to get their gear.

“Colonel Cobb’s ready,” he informed them. “No lingering. We’ll be leaving town at dawn.”

“Dern, it’s the middle of the night,” Johnny Carthage said. Though he had been provided with two mules and a heavy cart, he had as yet totally neglected his instructions in regard to packing. Instead, he and Gus had got drunk. Nothing was packed, and it was raining and pitch dark.

Gus’s preparations for the grand expedition to Santa Fe consisted in dragging himself, his guns, and a blanket into the heavy cart. Then he huddled in the cart, so drunk that he was not much bothered by the fact that Johnny Carthage was pitching every object he could get his hands on in on top of him. The cooking pots, the extra saddlery, blankets and guns, ropes and boxes of medicines, were all heaped in the cart, with little care taken as to placement.

“Why do we have to leave in the middle of the night?” Gus asked, several times—but Johnny Carthage was muttering and coughing; he made no reply. He had an old lantern, and was searching all around the large area of the camp, well aware that he would be blamed if he left anything behind. But with only one eye and a gimpy leg, and with Gus too crippled and too drunk to help, gathering up the belongings of the whole troop on a dark, rainy night was chancy work.

At some point well before dawn, Quartermaster Brognoli made a tour of the area, to see that the fifteen or twenty different groups of free-ranging adventurers, many of them merchants or would-be merchants, were making adequate progress toward departure. Gus stuck his head out from under a dripping blanket long enough to talk to him a minute.

“Why leave when it’s dark?” he asked. “Why not wait for sunup?”

Brognoli had taken a liking to the tall boy from Tennessee. He was green but friendly, and he moved quick. Years of trying to get soldiers on the move had given Brognoli a distaste for slow people.

“Colonel Cobb don’t care for light nor dark,” he informed Gus. “He don’t care for the time of day or the month or the year. When he decides to go, we go.”

“But three in the morning’s an odd time to start an expedition,” Gus pointed out.

“No, it’s regular enough,” Brognoli said. “If we start pushing out about three the stragglers will clear Austin by six or seven. Colonel Cobb left an hour ago. We’re going to stop at Bushy Creek for breakfast, so we better get moving. If we ain’t there when the Colonel expects us, there won’t be no breakfast.”

The mules were hitched, and the cart with all the Rangers’ possessions in it was moving through the center of Austin when Gus McCrae suddenly remembered Clara Forsythe. More than thirty wagons, small herds of sheep and beef cattle, and over a hundred horsemen of all ages and degrees of ability were jostling for position in the crowded streets. Some of the mule skinners had lanterns, but most didn’t. There were several collisions and much cursing. Once or twice, guns were fired. Occasional lightning lit the western sky— the faint grey of a cloudy dawn was just visible to the east.

The reason Gus remembered Clara was that the little cart, driven by a wet, tired, apprehensive Johnny Carthage, happened to passright in front of the general store. Gus suddenly recalled that the pretty young woman he had such a desire to marry had been meaning to come and rub liniment on his wounded ankle sometime during the day that was just dawning. He had been drinking for quite a few hours—most of the hours since he fell off the bluff, in fact—and had reached such a depth of drunkness that he had temporarily forgotten the most important fact of all: Clara, his future wife.

“Stop, I got to see her!” he told Johnny, who was urging the mules through a sizable patch of mud, while at the same time trying to avoid colliding with the wagon containing the comatose General Lloyd. He knew it was General Lloyd’s wagon because a kind of small tent had been erected in it so the General could be protected from the elements while he drank and snoozed.

“What?” Johnny Carthage asked.

“Stop, goddamn you—stop!” Gus demanded. “I’ve got business in the general store.”

“But it ain’t open,” Johnny protested. “If I stop now we’ll never get out of this mud.”

“Stop or I’ll strangle you, damn you!” Gus said. It was not a threat he had ever made before, but he was so desperate to see Clara that he felt he could carry it out. Johnny Carthage didn’t hear it, though —one of the mules began to bray, just at that moment, and a rooster that had managed to get in General Lloyd’s wagon was crowing loudly, too.

The mud was thick—the cart was barely inching forward anyway, so Gus decided to just flop out of it. In his eagerness to get to Clara he forgot about his sore ankle, though only until the foot attached to it hit the ground. The pain that surged through him was so intense that he tried to flop forward, back into the cart, but the cart lurched ahead just as he did it, and he went facedown into the slick mud. The patch of mud was deep, too—Gus was up to his elbows in it, trying to struggle up onto his one good foot, when he thought he heard a peal of girlish laughter somewhere above him.

“Look, Pa, it’s Mr. McCrae—come to propose to me, I expect,” Clara said.

Gus looked up to see a white figure, standing at a window above the street. Although he knew he was muddy, his heart lifted at the thought that at least he had not missed Clara. It was her. She was laughing at him, but what did that matter? He looked up, wishing the sun would come out so he could see her better. But he knew it was her, from the sound of her voice and the fact that she was at a window above the store. The thought of her father seeing him in such a state was embarrassing—but in fact, there was no sign of the old man. Perhaps she was just joshing him—she did seem to love to josh.

“Ain’t you coming down?” he asked. “I’ve still got this sore foot.”

“Shucks, what kind of a Romeo would fall off a bluff and hurt his foot just when it’s time to propose to Juliet?” Clara asked. “You’re supposed to sing me a song or two and then climb up here and beg me to marry you.”

“What?” Gus asked. He had no idea what the woman was talking about. Why would he try to climb up the side of the general store when all she would have to do was come down the stairs? He had seen the stairs himself, when he was in the store helping her unpack.

“What, you ain’t read Shakespeare—what was wrong with your schooling?” Clara asked.

Gus’s head had cleared a little. He had been so drunk that his vision swam when he got to his feet—or foot. He still held his sore ankle just above the mud. Now that he was upright he remembered that his sisters had been great admirers of the writer Shakespeare, though exactly what had occurred between Romeo and Juliet he could not remember.

“I can’t climb—won’t you come down?” he said. Why would Clara think a man standing on one foot in a mud puddle could climb a wall, and why was she going on about Shakespeare when he was about to leave on a long expedition? He felt very nearly exasperated—besides that, he couldn’t stand on one foot forever.

“Well, I guess I might come down, though it is early,” Clara said. “We generally don’t welcome customers this early.”

“I ain’t a customer—I want to marry you, but I’ve got to leave,” he said. “Won’t you come? Johnny won’t wait much longer.”

In fact, Johnny was having a hard time waiting at all. The expedition was flowing in full force through the streets of Austin; there was the creak of harness, and the swish of wagon wheels. Johnny had tried to edge to the side, but there wasn’t much space—a fat mule skinner cursed him for the delay he had caused already.

“Won’t you come?—I have to go,” Gus said. “We’re hurrying to meet Colonel Cobb—he don’t like to wait.”

Clara didn’t answer, but she disappeared from the window, and a moment later, opened the door of the general store. She had wrapped a robe around her and came right down the steps of the store, barefoot, into the muck of the street.

“Goodness, you’ll get muddy,” Gus said—he had not supposed she would be so reckless as to walk barefoot into the mud.

Clara ignored the remark—young Mr. McCrae was muddy to the elbows and to the knees. She could tell that he was drunk—but he had not forgotten to call on her. Men were not perfect, she knew; even her father, kindly as he was, flew into a temper at least once a month, usually while doing the accounts.

“I don’t see Corporal Call—what’s become of him?” she asked.

“Oh now … you would ask, “Gus complained. “He’s off chasing Indians. He ain’t no corporal, either—I’ve told you that.”

“Well, in my fancy he is,” Clara retorted. “Don’t you be brash with me.”

“I don’t want him anywhere in your damn fancy!” Gus said. “For all we know he’s dead and scalped, by now.”

Then he realized that he didn’t want that, either. Annoying as Call was, he was still a Ranger and a friend. Clara’s quick tongue had provoked him—she would mention Call, even in the street at dawn, with the expedition leaving.

“Now, don’t be uncharitable to your friend,” Clara chided. “As I told you before, he would never do for me—too solemn! You ain’t solemn, at least—you might do, once you’ve acquired a little polish and can remember who Romeo is and what he’s supposed to do.”

“I ain’t got the time—will you marry me once I get back?” he asked.

“Why, I don’t know,” Clara said. “How should I know who’ll walk into my store, while you’re out wandering on the plains? I might meet a gentleman who could recite Shakespeare to me for hours— or even Milton.”

“That ain’t the point—I love you,” Gus said. “I won’t be happy a minute, unless I know you’ll marry me once I get back.”

“I m afraid I can’t say for sure, not right this minute,” Clara said. “But I will kiss you—would that help?”

Gus was so startled he couldn’t answer. Before he could move she came closer, put her hands on his muddy arms, reached up her face, and kissed him. He wanted to hug her tight, but didn’t—he felt he was all mud. But Gus kissed back, for all he was worth. It was only for a second. Then Clara, smiling, scampered back to the porch of the general store, her feet and ankles black with mud.

“Good-bye, Mr. McCrae, don’t get scalped if you can help it,” she said. “I’ll struggle on with my unpacking as best I can, while you travel the prairies.”

Gus was too choked with feeling to answer. He merely looked at her. Johnny Carthage was yelling at him, threatening to leave him. Gus began to hobble toward the cart, still looking at Clara. The sun had peeked through the clouds. Clara waved, smiling. In waving back, Gus almost slipped. He would have gone down again in the mud, had not a strong hand caught his arm. Matilda Jane Roberts, the Great Western, plodding by on Tom, her large grey, saw his plight just in time and caught his arm.

“Here, hold the saddle strings—just hold them and hop, I’ll get you to Johnny,” she said.

Gus did as he was told. He looked back, anxiously, wondering what the young woman who had just kissed him would think, seeing a whore help him out, so soon after their kiss.

But the porch of the general store was empty—Clara Forsythe had gone inside.

WHEN THE TROOP OF Rangers reached the Brazos River, the wide brown stream was in flood. The churning water came streaming down from the north, through the cut in the low hills where the Rangers struck the river.

The hills across the river were thick with post oak and elm. Call remembered how completely the Comanches had managed to hide themselves on the open plain. Finding them in thickets such as those across the river would be impossible.

Long Bill looked apprehensive, when he saw that the Brazos was in flood.

“If half of us don’t get drowned going over, we’ll get drowned coming back,” he observed. “I can’t swim no long distance. About ten yards is my limit.”

“Hang on to your horse, then,” Bigfoot advised. “Slide off and grab his tail. Don’t lose your holt of it, either. A horse will paw you down if he can see you in the water.”

Call’s little bay was trembling at the sight of the water. Shadrach had ridden straight into the river and was already halfway across. He clung to his saddle strings with one hand, and kept the long rifle above the flood with the other. Bigfoot took the water next; his big bay swam easily. The rest of the Rangers lingered, apprehension in their eyes.

“This is a mighty wide river,” Blackie Slidell said. “Damn the Comanches! They would beat us across.”

Call thumped the little grey’s sides with his rifle, trying to get him to jump in. It was time to go—he wanted to go. The horse made a great leap into the water and went under briefly, Call with him. But once in, the little horse swam strongly. Call managed to catch his tail—holding the rifle up was tiring. When, now and then, he caught a glimpse of the far shore, it seemed so far away that he didn’t know if a horse could swim that far. Curls of reddish water kept breaking over his head. In only a minute or two, he lost sight of all the other Rangers. He might have been in the river alone, for all he could tell. But he was in it: there was nothing to do but cling to the horse’s tail and try to keep from drowning.

When Call was halfway across, he caught a glimpse of something coming toward him, on the reddish, foaming flood. It seemed to be a horse, floating on its side. Just at that time he went under—when his head broke the surface again he saw that it was actually a dead mule, all bloated up, floating right down at him. The little bay horse was swimming as hard as he could—it looked, for a moment, as if the dead mule was going to surge right into them. Call thought his best bet might be to poke the mule aside with his rifle barrel; and he twisted a little and brought the rifle into position, meaning to shove the mule away. Just as he twisted he saw two eyes that weren’t dead and weren’t mule’s eyes, staring at him from between the stiff legs of the dead mule. The mule and the Indian boy floating down with him were only five feet away when Call fired. The boy had just raised his hand, with a knife in it, when the bullet took him in the throat. Then the mule and the body of the dying boy crashed into Call, carrying him under and loosening his grip on the bay gelding’s tail. Call went under, entangled with the corpse of the Comanche boy he had just killed. The red current rolled them over and over— all Call knew was that he mustn’t lose his musket. He clung to the gun even though he knew he might be drowning. He was so confused for a moment that he didn’t know the difference between upand down. It seemed to him he was getting deeper into the water; it was all just a red murk, with sticks and bits of bushes floating in it, but then he felt himself being lifted and was able to draw his breath.

The clouds had broken, while Call was struggling under water— the sunlight when he broke the surface, bright sunlight on the foam-flecked water, with the deep blue sky above, was the most welcome sight he had ever seen.

“Don’t try to swim, just let me drag you,” a voice said. “I believe I can get you to the shallows if you’ll just keep still, but if you struggle we’ll likely both go under.”

Call was able to determine that his rescuer was the tall boy from Arkansas, Jimmy Tweed. Unlike the rest of the Rangers, Jimmy had declined to dismount and cross the river holding on to his horse’s tail. He was still in the saddle, which was mostly submerged. But his horse was a stout black mare, and she kept swimming, even though not much more than her nose and her ears were above the stream.

Jimmy Tweed had reached into the river and grabbed Call’s shirt collar, which he gripped tightly. Call managed to get a hand into the black mare’s mane, after which he felt a little more secure.

“Watch out for dead mules—there’s apt to be Comanches with ‘em,” Call informed him. Jimmy Tweed seemed as calm as if he were sitting in church.

“I seen you shoot that one,” Jimmy said. “Hit him in the neck. I’d say it was a fine shot, being as you was in the water and about to drown.”

Just then something hit the water, not far from Call’s shoulder, with a sound like spitting. They were not far from the east bank, then—Call looked and saw puffs of smoke from a stand of trees just above the river.

“They’re shooting!” he said—another bullet had sliced the water nearby. “You oughtn’t to be sitting up so tall in the saddle—you make too good a target.”

“I guess I’d rather be shot than drownt,” Jimmy Tweed said. “If there’s one thing I’ve never liked it’s getting water up my nose.”

In another moment, Call felt his feet touch bottom. The water was still up to his chin, but he felt a little more confident and told Jimmy that he could let go his grip. Just as Jimmy let go, Call saw a Ranger fall. One of the new men had just made it to shore and was wading through the mud when a bullet knocked him backwards.

“Why, tiiat be Bert,” Jimmy Tweed said, in mild surprise. “He sure didn’t pick much of a place to land.”

“We can’t land here, they’ll shoot us like squirrels,” Call said. “Slide off now, and turn the horse.”

“I expect Bert is dead,” Jimmy said calmly—the fact was confirmed a moment later when two Comanches ran down the muddy riverbank and quickly took his scalp.

Call managed to point the black horse downstream—he was able to feel his way behind him, clinging to saddle strings and then to the horse’s tail, until he had the black horse between him and the riverbank. With only a bit of his head showing, he didn’t figure a Comanche marksman would be very likely to hit him. Jimmy Tweed, though, flatly refused to slide off into the water.

“Nope, I prefer to risk it in the saddle,” he said, though he did consent to lean low over the black horse’s neck.

They heard fire from the near bank and saw that Shadrach, Bigfoot, and Blackie Slidell had made it across and taken cover behind a jumble of driftwood. Call looked up and saw what looked like a muskrat in the water, not far from where the Rangers were forting up. On closer inspection the muskrat turned out to be the fur cap procured by Long Bill Coleman before he left San Antonio. Long Bill was underneath the cap. He was walking slowly out of the river, though the water was still up to his Adam’s apple. There was no sign of the horse he had tried to cross the Brazos River on.

By the time Call and Jimmy Tweed struggled out of the water and took cover behind the driftwood, the firing had stopped. Bigfoot had walked downstream a few yards, in order to pull a body out of the water. Call supposed a Ranger had been shot but was surprised to see that the body Bigfoot pulled out of the Brazos was the Comanche boy he himself had shot. Several more Rangers began to struggle out of the flood, some of them clinging to the bridle reins or tails of their mounts. Others were without horses, having lost hold of their mounts during the swim.

“Well, you got him,” Bigfoot said, looking at Call. “I forgot to tell you to look out for dead animals—Comanches will use them for floats.“Call was surprised at how young the boy looked. He could have been no more than twelve.

“You’re lucky your gun fired,” Shadrach said. “Them old muskets will usually just snap on you, once they get wet.”

Call didn’t say anything. He knew he had been lucky—another second and the dead boy would have had a knife in him. He could remember the boy’s eyes, staring at him from between the legs of the dead mule.

He didn’t want to look at the corpse, though—he turned to walk away and noticed that both Shadrach and Bigfoot were looking at him curiously. Call stopped, puzzled—their looks suggested that he had neglected something.

“Ain’t you going to scalp him?” Bigfoot asked. “You killed him. It’s your scalp.”

Call was startled. It had never occurred to him to scalp the Comanche boy. He was a young boy. Although he was glad that he had escaped death himself, he felt no pride in the act he had just committed—the boy had been daring, in his view, to float down a swollen river, armed only with a knife, clinging to a dead mule in hopes of surprising and killing an armed Ranger. The reward for his bravery had been a bullet wound that nearly tore his head off. He would never ride the prairies again, or raid farms. Although he had had to kill him, Call thought the boy’s bravery deserved better than what it had got him. There would be no time to bury the boy, anyway—the thought of cutting his hair off did not appeal.

“No, I don’t want to scalp him,” Call said.

“He would have scalped you, if he could have,” Bigfoot said.

“I don’t doubt it,” Call said. “Scalping’s the Indian way. It ain’t my way.”

“It’ll be your way when you’re a year or two older, boy—if you survive,” Shadrach said. Then he casually knelt by the Comanche boy and took his scalp. When he finished, he pulled the boy well back into the current and let him float away.

“I should have buried him—I killed him,” Call said.

“No, you don’t bury Indians,” Bigfoot informed him. “They gather up their own dead, when they can. I guess Shad wants to make them work at it, this time.”

Shadrach had just turned and started back toward the shore, when they heard a scream from far down the river.

“Oh Lord, it’s Rip—he went downstream too far,” Long Bill said. “I believe he’s bogged.”

“Puny horse,” Bigfoot commented, raising his rifle. Rip’s horse seemed to be bogged, some twenty yards out into the stream. Five Comanches, screaming their wild cries, raced out of the scrub oak toward the river. Bigfoot shot and so did Shadrach, but the range was long and both missed. Just then a rain squall passed over them, making it hard to see well enough to shoot accurately at such distances. Rip screamed again and flailed at his horse, but his horse was too weak from his long swim to pull out of the thick river mud. The first Comanche had already splashed into the edge of the river. Call had reloaded his musket—he took careful aim and thought he hit the first Comanche, but the hit was not solid enough to slow the man. They saw Rip raise his rifle and fire point-blank at the first Comanche, but the gun misfired and in a second the Indians swarmed over him. His final scream was cut short. Before Call could get off another shot, Rip Green was hacked to death and scalped. His body was soon floating down the same river as that of the Indian boy.

Several Rangers shot at the Indians who killed Rip, but none of the shots had any effect. Bigfoot and Shadrach, concluding that the range was hopeless, didn’t shoot.

“It don’t pay to be a poor judge of horseflesh, not in this country,” Bigfoot observed. “He ought never to have tried the river on that nag, not with the river running this high.”

“What could he do? He couldn’t just sit over there and watch,” Call said. Rip Green had gone into the water just as he did—it was just Rip’s bad luck to float downstream, out of the range of help.

“Well, he could have let the horse go and swum out, like me,” Long Bill said. “I reckon I’m a better swimmer than I thought I was. My pony gave out when we was right in the middle, but here I am.

“If you don’t hunker down you won’t need to swim no more rivers—you’ll be floating down this one, dead,” Bigfoot said. Bullets began to hit the water all around them—the Rangers were forced to huddle together in the shelter of a small patch of driftwood. No men were hit, though—probably the driving rain threw off the Comanche marksmen. Call watched the trees above them as closely as he could, but he was unable to glimpse a single Indian—just puffs of smoke from their guns. The shots were coming from a semicircle of woods above them.

“There’s too many of them, Shad,” Bigfoot concluded. “They had a party waiting, I expect.”

Call tried to get a sense of how many Indians they faced by counting the shots—but he knew the method wasn’t accurate. After all, the Indians were hidden. They could move around at will, shooting from one part of the woods and then another.

When the Rangers counted heads they discovered that they were down to eleven men, four less than they had started across the river with. Rip was dead, and so was the man named Bert—the whereabouts of the other two could not be ascertained.

“Probably drowned—I nearly did,” Long Bill said.

“No, probably deserted,” Shadrach said. “One is that fellow from Cincinnati. I don’t think he had much stomach.”

All that could be remembered about the other missing man was that he had ridden a roan horse. No roan horses were visible among the horses, though Long Bill’s horse and two others were also unaccounted for.

Call supposed the Comanches would charge any minute. He kept his gun as dry as he could and got ready to shoot accurately, when the charge came. Once again he found himself questioning the competence of the Rangers—here they were, huddled behind a few trees, four men and three horses short of what they had started out with, facing a Comanche force that had so far been invisible, commanding the woods above them. Behind them was the churning, flooding Brazos River. Their retreat would be watery, if they had to make one. Only those whose horses were good swimmers would have much of a chance.

But the day passed with no charge. From time to time the skies cleared and the sun shone; then clouds would pour over the western hills, and squalls would wet them once again, just when they had begun to hope of being dry. Shadrach and Bigfoot had long since decided that a retreat back across the river was their best chance— Shadrach thought there might be as many as thirty warriors opposing them, more than they could reasonably hope to whip.

A retreat in daylight, though, would be suicidal. The minute the Comanches saw them turn into the river, they would swarm down the shore like hornets and pick them off.

“We’ll wait,” Bigfoot said. “That’s the hard part of Indian fighting. Waiting. You never know what those red boys are doing. They may be up there cooking a coon or a possum, or they may be sneaking up. Try not to let your eyes get tired. It’s when your eyes get tired that your scalp’s in the worst danger.”

Call didn’t know how you were supposed to avoid the danger of tired eyes, when the Comanches were so clever at hiding. Who would think to look for an Indian boy between the legs of a floating mule?

The day passed very slowly. Though several Rangers speculated that the river would soon begin to fall, it didn’t. Clouds continued to roll through—Call thought the muddy flood looked higher, not lower. He was dreading the crossing—it had been bad in daylight, and would be even worse in darkness. He was not the only one worrying, either. Long Bill, despite his successful swim that morning, was once again doubtful that he could survive in the water if he had to navigate more than ten yards.

While the dusk gathered and the tops of the hills darkened, the Rangers debated whether it was better to hold the horse’s mane or the horse’s tail, the saddle strings, a stirrup, or even a saddle horn. Call didn’t enter the debate—his concern was to keep his musket in firing order—but he thought that if he clung to a stirrup he might be better able to keep his gun across the saddle, where it ought to stay fairly dry…

In the midst of the talk, with Shadrach and Bigfoot squatting at the edge of the driftwood, watching the woods, a man standing just beside Call—he was one of the new men—suddenly jerked, lurched forward, and fell facedown in the water, an arrow right between his shoulders. Call brought his gun up and whirled to face the darkening water. He saw a floating log, and just above it, for a second, the curve of a great wet hump; it might have been a huge fish diving, but Call knew it was Buffalo Hump behind the log. He fired immediately, and a chip of wood flew off the log; then several of the Rangers fired, but to no avail. The current swept the log downstream into the deep dusk, and there was no more sign of the Comanche chief.

Longen, the man who had fallen, was not yet dead—he was jerking and flapping in the water, like a fish that had been speared but not killed.

Bigfoot, annoyed to have been slipped up on so easily, waded several steps into the river, as if he meant to swim after the log and engage the Comanche, but Shadrach yelled at him to come back. “Come back here,” he said. “Don’t be trying no ignorant fighting.

Bigfoot hesitated a minute—he wanted to go—but the floating log was barely visible, in the dusk. If he tried to swim for it, Buffalo Hump might slip into the shallows and fill him with arrows while he swam. He knew it was folly to try it, but his fighting blood was up— it was all he could do to check himself; but he did check himself. Crouching low, he waded back to the little group of Rangers by the stand of driftwood.

“Dern, I hate to let him come at us like that,” he said. “The goddamn devil! He took Josh and took Zeke and now he’s taken this tall fellow here.”

All the Rangers stood around uneasily as the tall man named Longen continued to jerk and flop. They pulled him up on the muddy, darkening shore, but no one had any remedy for the fact that the man had an arrow lodged in his backbone. He flopped and jerked, but made no sound at all. Shadrach made one attempt to pull the arrow out, but couldn’t budge it.

“I guess we could tie him on a horse,” Bigfoot speculated. “Maybe if we can get him across the river he’ll live till we can get him to a doc.”

“No, let him die,” Shadrach said. “His lights are nearly out.”

A moment later the man named Longen—no one could remember his first name—ceased to flop. Shadrach felt his neck, and pronounced him dead.

“Get his possibles, boys,” Shadrach said, addressing Call.

Call had no idea what the old mountain man was talking about. What were possibles?

“He means empty his pockets—take his gun and his ammunition,” Bigfoot informed him. “Don’t leave a thing on him that might help the red boys. They don’t need no help—they got five of us with no assistance, it looks like.”

The last light faded soon after that. Now and again the clouds would break, bringing a glimpse of faint stars, or a thin moon. Call got every item of use off the dead man: his guns, his bullets, tobacco, a knife, a few coins. The knife was a good one—Call meant to keep it for Gus, who had no knife, and had long envied him the one old Jesus had made him.

“It’s dark enough—I expect it’s time to swim,” Bigfoot said.

“Dern it, I hope there ain’t no red boys out there, floating around on logs or dead mules,” Long Bill said. “My eyesight’s poorly, in this kind of weather.”

Call wedged Longen’s gun beneath his girth, and led the little bay back into the river. The horse had more confidence crossing back. He took the water easily and swam well. Bigfoot and Shadrach were ahead. Jimmy Tweed, true to his convictions, refused to leave the saddle. Long Bill and Blackie Slidell were right behind Call. Blackie Slidell’s horse proved to be a frantic swimmer. He swam past Call, so close that Call’s bay was pushed off course and floundered for a moment. Call was irritated, but it was so dark he couldn’t even see Blackie. When he opened his mouth to say something he got water in it and nearly choked. He tried to keep an eye out for floating logs or floating mules, but it was so dark he couldn’t see upriver at all. He concentrated on keeping his musket securely across his saddle. When his feet finally touched bottom and he and the little bay struggled out of the water, a lucky feeling came over him. The river hadn’t killed him, and neither had the Comanches. He was tired, and supposed they would be stopping, but he was wrong. Shadrach and Bigfoot led them through the hills all night, toward the big encampment on Bushy Creek.

AN HOUR AFTER HE arrived in the big camp, to his surprise and embarrassment, Woodrow Call was made a corporal in the Texas Rangers. The Ranger troop rode in, five men short, and Bigfoot made a hasty report to Colonel Cobb, who sat outside his tent, smoking a big cigar and scratching the head of a large Irish dog who accompanied him everywhere. The dog was old. His long tongue lolled out, and he panted loudly.

“Yep, this youngster killed his first Comanche,” Bigfoot said. “The Comanche was floating down the Brazos holding on to a dead mule. Young Call shot him point-blank.”

Caleb Cobb let his sleepy eyes shift to Call for a moment; then he looked back at the Irish dog.

“That’s alert behaviour, Mr. Call,” he said. “I’ll make you a corporal on the spot—we ain’t got many corporals in this troop, and I expect we’ll need a few.”

“I say it’s hasty, it could have been luck,” Captain Falconer said, annoyed. He thought young Call far too green for such distinction.

The Captain was wearing a black coat, and his mood seemed as dark as his garment. He was sharpening a knife on a large whetstone.

Caleb Cobb smiled.

“Now, Billy,” he said, “let me decide on the promotions. If a Comanche was to swim up on you, in the middle of a big river, underneath a dead mule, you might be scalped before you noticed the mule.”

“I have always been wary of dead animals when I cross rivers,” Captain Falconer said, stiffly. It was clear that he did not appreciate the Colonel’s remark.

“Would you go grind that knife out of my hearing?” Caleb asked. “It’s hard to think with you grinding that knife, and I need to think.”

Without a word, Falconer got up and walked away from the tent.

“Billy’s too well educated,” Caleb Cobb remarked. “He thinks he knows something. How many Comanches did the rest of you kill?”

“None,” Bigfoot admitted. “We might have winged one or two, but I doubt it. They was in good cover.”

The Colonel did not change expression, but the tone of his voice got lower.

“You lost five men and this cub’s the only one of you who was able to kill an Indian?” he asked.

“The weather was goddamn dim,” Bigfoot reminded him.

“It was just as dim for Buffalo Hump and his warriors,” Caleb said. “I won’t be sending out any more punishment squads, if this is the best we can do. I can’t afford to lose five men to get one Indian. From now on we’ll let them come to us. Maybe if we bunch up and look like an army we can get across the plains and still have a few men left to fight the Mexicans with, if we have to fight them.”

“Colonel, we didn’t have good horses,” Bigfoot said. “A few of us did, but the rest were poorly mounted. It cost three men their lives.”

“What happened to the other two—I thought you lost five,” Caleb asked. The big Irish dog had yellow eyes—Call had heard it said that the dog could run down deer, hamstring them, and rip out their throats. Certainly the dog was big enough—he was waist high to Bigfoot, and Bigfoot was not short.

“The other two weren’t lucky,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t know for sure that one of them is dead—but there’s no sign of him, so I suspect it.”

“If poor horseflesh is the reason you lost a third of your troop, go complain to the quartermaster,” the Colonel said. “I ain’t the wrangler. I will admit there’s a lot of puny horses in this part of Texas.”

“Thank you for the promotion,” Call said, though he didn’t know what it meant, to be a corporal. Probably there were increased duties—he meant to ask Brognoli, when he saw him next. But curiosity got the better of him, and he asked Bigfoot first.

“It just means you make a dollar more a month,” Bigfoot said. “Life’s just as dangerous, whether you’re a corporal or a private.”

“With a whole extra dollar you can buy more liquor and more whores,” Bigfoot added. “At least you can if you don’t let Gus McCrae cheat you out of your money.”

The company, in all its muddle and variety, was unlimbering itself for the day’s advance. Wagons and oxcarts were snaking through the rocky hills and bumping through the little scrubby valleys. Several of the more indolent merchants were already showing the effects of prairie travel—the dentist who had decided to emigrate to Santa Fe in hopes of doing a lucrative business with the Mexican grandees had tripped over his own baggage and fallen headfirst into a prickly-pear patch. A sandy-haired fellow with a pair of blacksmith’s pinchers was pulling prickly-pear thorns out of the dentist’s face and neck when Call strode by. The dentist groaned, but the groans, on the whole, were milder than the howls of his patients.

When Call located Gus McCrae and Johnny Carthage he was happy to see that Gus was his feisty self again, his ankle much improved. He was just hobbling back from visiting a young whore named Ginny—Caleb Cobb had permitted a few inexpensive women to travel with the company as far as the Brazos, after which, they had been informed, they would have to return to Austin, the expectation being that enough of the merchants would have given up by that point that the whores would have ample transport. Whether the Great Western would be an exception to this rule was a subject of much debate among the men, many of whom were reluctant to commit themselves to long-distance journeying without the availability of at least one accomplished whore.

“I wouldn’t call Matilda accomplished,” Johnny Carthage argued. “Half the time she ain’t even friendly. A woman that catches snapping turtles for breakfast is a woman to avoid, if you ask me.”

He was uncomfortably aware that he had only been partially successful at avoiding Matilda himself—in general, though, he preferred younger and smaller women, Mexican if possible.

Gus had picked up a spade somewhere and was using it intermittently as a crutch. His injured ankle would bear his weight for short distances, but occasionally, he was forced to give it a rest.

Gus had taken to wearing both his pistols in his belt, as if he expected attack at any moment.

“Howdy, did you get wet?” he asked, very glad to see Woodrow Call. Although Woodrow was contrary, he was the best friend Gus had. The thought that he might be killed, and not reappear at all, had given Gus two uneasy nights. Buffalo Hump had risen in his dreams, holding bloody scalps.

“I came near to drowning in the Brazos River, but I didn’t lose my gun,” Call said. He was especially proud of the fact that he hadn’t lost his gun, though no one else seemed to consider it much of an accomplishment.

“The river was up,” he added. “Most of the Comanches got away.”

“Did you see that big one?” Gus asked.

“I seen his hump,” Call said. “He floated down behind a log and put an arrow in a man standing right by me—split his backbone.”

The sun had broken through the last of the clouds—bright sunlight gleamed on the wet grass in the valleys and on the hills.

“I wish I could have gone—we would have killed several if we’d worked together,” Gus said.

Long Bill Coleman walked up about that time, in a joshing mood.

“Have you saluted him yet?” he asked Gus, to Call’s deep embarrassment.

“Why would I salute him, he’s my pard,” Gus said.

“He may be your pard but he’s a corporal now—he killed a red boy and the Colonel promoted him,” Long Bill said.

Gus could not have been more taken aback if Call had come back scalpless. The very thing that Clara teased him about had actually happened. Woodrow was Corporal Call now. No doubt Clara would hurry to court him, once they all got back.

“So that’s the news, is it?” Gus said, feeling slightly weak all of a sudden. He had not forgotten Clara and her kiss. Young Ginny had been pleasant, but Clara’s kiss was of another realm.

“Yes, he done it just now,” Call admitted, well aware that his friend would be at least a little discommoded by the news.

“You kilt one—what was it like?” Gus asked, trying to act normal and not reveal his acute discomfort at the fact of his friend’s sudden success.

“He was almost on me—I shot just in time,” Call said. “As soon as your ankle heals proper I expect we’ll have another engagement. Once you kill a Comanche the Colonel will promote you, too, and we can be corporals together.”

He wanted to do what he could to lighten the blow to his friend.

“If I don’t, then one will kill me and that will be the end of things,” Gus said, still feeling weak. “I just hope I don’t get scalped while I’m alive, like Ezekiel done.”

“Why, you won’t get killed,” Call said, alarmed at his friend’s sudden despondency. Gus possessed plenty of fight, but somehow that willful girl in the general store had deprived him of it. All he could think about was that girl—it was not good. You couldn’t be thinking about girls in general stores, when you were out in Indian country and needed to be alert.

With Call’s help, Gus at least managed to get saddled and mounted on the shorter of the two horses that had been assigned him. The two young Rangers rode side by side all day, at a lazy pace, while the wagons and oxcarts toiled up the low hills and across the valleys. Call told the story of the chase, and the fight by the river, but he couldn’t tell that his friend was particularly interested.

He held his tongue, though. At least Gus was in the saddle. Once they got across the Brazos, farther from the girl, he might eventually forget her and enjoy the rangering more.

In the afternoon of the third day they glimpsed a fold of the Brazos, curving between two hills, to the west. The falling sun brightened the brown water. To the east they couldn’t see the river at all, but gradually the Rangers at the head of the expedition, who included Gus and Call, heard a sound they couldn’t identify. It wasakin to the sound a cow might make, splashing through a river, only multiplied thousands of times, as if someone were churning the river with a giant churn.

Captain Falconer was at the very front of the troop, on his pacing black. When he heard the sound like water churning, he drew rein. Just as he did the Colonel’s big Irish dog shot past him, braying. His ears were laid back—in a second he was out of sight in the scrubby valley, but not out of earshot.

“It’s buf,” Shadrach said, pulling his rifle from its long sheath.

Just then, two riders came racing from the east. One of the rider’s horses almost jumped the Irish dog, which was racing in sight again. Then it raced away, braying loudly.

“Bes-Das has seen ‘em,” Shadrach said.

Bes-Das was a Pawnee scout—he ranged so far ahead that many of the Rangers had scarcely seen him. The other rider was Alchise, a Mexican who was thought to be half Apache. Both were highly excited by what they had seen behind the eastern hills. Colonel Cobb came galloping up to meet the two scouts; soon the three wheeled their horses and went flying after the dog. The horses threw up their heads and snorted. The excitement that had taken the troop when they thought they were racing to kill mountain goats seized them again—soon forty riders were flying after the Colonel, the Irish dog, and the two scouts.

As the horses fled down the hill, Gus clung tightly to his saddle horn. He could put a little weight on his wounded ankle, but not enough to secure a stirrup when racing downhill over such rocky terrain at such a pace. He knew that if he fell and injured himself further he would be sent home to Austin—all hope of securing promotion and matching his friend Call would be lost.

The sight they saw when they topped the next hill and drew rein with the troop was one neither Call nor Gus would ever forget. Neither of them, until that moment, had ever seen a buffalo, though on the march to the Pecos they had seen the bones of several, and the skulls of one or two. There below them, where the Brazos cut a wide valley, was a column of buffalo that seemed to Gus and Call to be at least a mile wide. To the south, approaching the river, there seemed to be an endless herd of buffalo moving through the hills and valleys. Thousands had already crossed the river and were plodding on to the north, through a little pass in the hills. So thick were the buffalo bunched, as they crossed the river, that it would have been possible to use them as a bridge.

“Look at them!” Gus said. “Look at them buffalo! How many are there, do you reckon?”

“I could never reckon no number that high,” Call admitted. “It’s more than I could count if I counted for a year.”

“This is the southern herd,” Captain Falconer commented— even he was too awed by the sight of the thousands of buffalo, browner than the brown water, to condescend to the young Rangers. “I expect it’s at least a million. They say it takes two days to ride past the herd, even if you trot.”

Bes-Das came trotting back to where Captain Falconer sat. He said something Call couldn’t hear, and pointed, not at the buffalo, but at a ridge across the valley some two miles away.

“It’s him!” Gus said with a gasp, grabbing his pistol. “It’s Buffalo Hump. He’s got three scalps on his lance.”

Call looked and saw a party of Indians on the far ridge, eight in all. He could see Buffalo Hump’s spotted pony and tell that the man was large, but he could not see scalps on his lance. He felt a little envious of his friend’s eyesight, which was clearly keener than his.

“Are those the bucks that whipped you?” Caleb Cobb asked, loping up to Bigfoot.

Bes-Das, a short man with greasy hair and broken teeth, began to talk to the Colonel in Pawnee. Cobb listened and shook his head.

“No, we’d have to ford this damn buffalo herd to go after them,” he said. “I doubt many of these boys could resist shooting buffalo instead of Comanches. By the time we got to the Indians we’d be out of ammunition and we’d probably get slaughtered. Anyway, I doubt they’d sit there and wait for us to arrive, slow as we are.”

“Can’t we shoot some buffalo, Colonel?” Falconer asked. “We’d have meat for awhile.”

“No, wait till we cross this river,” Caleb said. “Half these wagons will probably sink, anyway—if we load them with buffalo roasts we’ll just end up feeding buffalo roasts to the turtles.”

Call was surprised at the Indians. Why did they just sit there, with a force more than one hundred strong advancing toward them? The scalps on the lance were probably those of Rip Green, Longen, and the man called Bert. Did the red men think so little of the whites’fighting ability that they didn’t feel they had to retreat, even when outnumbered by a huge margin?

Slowly, more and more of the riders and wagoneers came up to the ridge and sat watching the buffalo herd. A few of the young men wanted to charge down and start killing buffalo, but Colonel Cobb issued a sharp command and they all stayed where they were.

Shadrach and Bigfoot stood apart, talking to the scouts Bes-Das and Alchise. They were watching the Comanches, who sat on the opposite hill as the great brown herd surged across the Brazos. Below them the Irish dog was barking and leaping at the buffalo, but the buffalo paid him no attention. Now and then he could see the dog nip at the heels of a straggling cow, but the cow would merely kick at him or make a short feint before trotting on with the herd.

“It’s way too many buffalo for old Jeb,” Caleb said, smiling at the sight of his dog’s frustration. “One at a time he can get their attention, but right now they don’t think no more of him than a gnat.”

Then he pulled a spyglass out of his saddlebag and put it to his eye. He studied the Comanches for awhile, and something that he saw gave him a start.

“Kicking Wolf is there,” he said, turning to Falconer as if he were delivering an important piece of news. Call remembered that he had heard the name before—someone, Bigfoot maybe, had suspected that it was Kicking Wolf who had shot the Major’s runaway horse, on the first march west.

“Sorry, I ain’t heard the name,” Captain Falconer said. Though watchful of the Indians, he was more interested in the buffalo, a species of game he had never killed, though hunting was his passion. Now as many as a million animals were right in front of him, but the Colonel had ordered him to hold off until they crossed the river. In his baggage he had a fine sporting rifle, made by Holland and Holland in London—it was all he could do to keep from racing back to his baggage wagon to get it.

“Buffalo Hump is the killer, Kicking Wolf is the thief,” the Colonel said. “He’s the best horse thief on the plains. He’ll have every horse and mule we’ve got before we cross the Red River, unless we watch close.” He paused and extracted a cigar from his shirt pocket, as he studied the situation.

“If I had to choose who I’d have to harass me I might pick Buffalo Hump,” the Colonel said. “If I couldn’t whip him, he’d just kill me. It might be bloody, but it would be final. If I went up against Kicking Wolf, the first time I took a nap I’d be afoot.

“There’s places off north of here where I’d rather be dead than be afoot,” he added. “Ever drunk horse piss?”

He looked at Call and Gus, when he asked the question.

“No sir,” Gus said. “I never have and I don’t plan to, either.”

“I drunk it once—I was traveling with Zeb Pike,” the Colonel said. “We kept a horse alive just so we could drink its piss. I was so goddamn thirsty it tasted like peach nectar. When we finally came to water we ate the horse.”

To Call’s embarrassment his horse stretched itself and began to piss, just as the Colonel spoke. The yellow stream that splashed on the ground didn’t smell much like peach nectar, though.

“What will we do about our red neighbors, Billy?” Caleb asked. “Here we are and there they are, with a lot of goddamn buffalo in between.”

“Why sir, I expect they’ll leave,” Falconer said. “I can pursue them, if you prefer.”

“No, I don’t want you to pursue them,” the Colonel said. “My thinking was different. It’s almost time to make camp and prepare the grub. Maybe we ought to trot over and invite them to dinner.”

“Sir?” Captain Falconer said, not sure that he had heard the Colonel correctly.

“Invite them to dinner—I’d enjoy it,” the Colonel said. “A little parley might not hurt.”

“Well, but who would ask them?” Captain Falconer asked.

“How about Corporal Call and his companero?” the Colonel said. “It would give the Corporal a chance to live up to his promotion. Just tear up a sheet and wrap it around a rifle barrel. Comanches respect the white flag, I guess. Send Bes-Das with them, to make the introductions. I expect they know Bes-Das.”

Gus felt his legs begin to quiver, as they had that day near the western mountains, when he stood near the patch of ground soaked with Josh Corn’s blood. The Colonel had looked right at him, when he gave the duty of Call and his companero.Captain Falconer had gone back to the wagons to find a sheet. The Indians were still sitting on the opposite hill. The long ridge where the Rangers sat soon filled up with men—the whole expedition arranged itself along the ridge to watch the great spectacle below. There was no end to the column of buffalo, either north or south. They moved toward the river and curled out of it like the body of a great snake whose head and tail were hidden. Among the crowd of Rangers, merchants, blacksmiths, whores, and adventurers Call suddenly noticed John Kirker, the scalp hunter who had left them on the Rio Grande. His large colleague, Glanton, was not with him. Kirker had a rifle across the cantle of his saddle—while everyone else watched the buffalo, he watched the Indians.

“You mean we’re supposed to just ride over and talk to them?” Gus asked. It was a shock to him to realize that he had been ordered to approach the Comanches. He felt that he had been foolish to hop out of the sick wagon so soon. He should have nursed his sore ankle another week at least, but some of the Rangers had been chiding him for malingering and he had started traveling horseback sooner than he should have.

“That’s what Colonel Cobb said,” Call answered. “I don’t know how we’re going to get through them buffalo, though. They’re thick.”

“I don’t want to go through them,” Gus said. “I don’t want to go. Buffalo Hump stuck a lance in me once, he might poke it clear through me this time.”

“No, we’ll be under a flag of truce,” Call reminded him. “He won’t bother you.”

“He ain’t holding up no white sheet,” Gus said. “Why would a white sheet matter to a Comanche?”

“If you’re scared you should just go on back and marry that girl,” Call said. “Unpack dry goods all your life. I aim to stay with rangering and be a captain myself, someday.”

“I aim to be a captain too, unless it means drinking horse piss,” Gus said. “I don’t intend to get caught in no place so dry that I’d need to drink horse piss.”

“Well, you might—the Colonel did,” Call said. “That damn Kirker is here—did you notice?”

“He slipped in while you were off on the chase,” Gus said. “I understand he’s a friend of Colonel Cobb.”

“I deplore traveling with a man who hunts scalps,” Call said. “I don’t know why the Colonel would be his pard.”

“Comanche Indians hunt scalps,” Gus pointed out.

“No, they take them in war,” Call said. “Kirker hunts them for money. I think Bes-Das is ready. Let’s go.”

WATCHED BY THE WHOLE expedition, Call and Gus followed Bes-Das down the ridge toward the buffalo herd. Bigfoot came behind. No one had ordered Bigfoot to come, or not to come—he joined the parley because he wanted a closer look at the Comanches than he had been able to get during the rainy day on the Brazos. Bes-Das held his rifle high, the white sheet fluttering in the wind.

Across the valley, the eight Comanches waited. They had become as still as statues. The only movement was the fluttering of the three scalps on Buffalo Hump’s lance.

As the four horses approached the great moving mass of buffalo, they began, to show some anxiety. Their nostrils flared and they tried to turn back—it was with difficulty that Call kept his little bay in check. Gus was having trouble too, made worse by the fact of his sore ankle. Bes-Das, the broken-toothed Pawnee, whacked his mount with a rifle twice and the horse settled down. Bigfoot kept a tight rein on his grey mount—the smell of the thousands of animals affected men and horses alike; the dust they raised was as thick as any sandstorm.

“We’ll never get through them—they’re too thick,” Gus said. “They’ll trample us for sure.”

“Go quick,” Bes-Das said, turning his horse parallel to the herd. “Go with the buffalo.”

As Call and Gus kept close, the Pawnee slipped into the buffalo herd, moving in only a few feet and letting the horse turn in the same direction as the herd was going. Moving steadily over, giving ground and turning toward the river if there was no room between animals, Bes-Das was soon halfway across the herd.

“That’s the way, just keep a strong rein and ease on through,” Bigfoot said. Soon he was in the thick of the herd—Bes-Das was almost to the other side.

“Go on, you’re next,” Call said to Gus.

“I ain’t next, you go,” Gus said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Nope,” Call said. “I’m the corporal and I’m telling you to go. If I leave you behind you might claim your ankle’s hurt and get shot for desertion.”

“Why, hell … you don’t trust your own partner,” Gus said, so irritated that he immediately kicked his horse and slipped into the buffalo. In fact he had thought of finding an excuse to wait; he didn’t want to ride into the herd, and even more, he didn’t want to ride up to Buffalo Hump’s war party. But he was not going to let Woodrow Call slight his courage, either. He had always supposed he had as much guts as the next man; but his nerves had been somewhat affected by the bloody events of the first march, and were still not under perfect control. He felt sure, though, that he could match Woodrow Call ability for ability, and beat him at most contests. He could see farther, for one thing, though being in the middle of a buffalo herd didn’t give him much opportunity to test his vision. All he could see was the brown animals all around him. None of them seemed too interested in him or his horse, and he soon found that he could use the Bes-Das technique as well as Bigfoot or the Pawnee scout. Once he let his horse step too close to the horns of a young bull, but the horse turned just in time. In ten minutes he was almost across the herd—Bes-Das and Bigfoot were there waiting. He didn’t know where Woodrow Call was—slipping through the buffalo required all his attention. He was only twenty yards from being free of the herd when suddenly buffalo all around him began to swerve and jump. Gus’s horse jumped too, almost unseating him. All the buffalo on the far side of the herd were lowering their heads and acting as if they wanted to butt. Gus was thrown over the saddle horn, onto the horse’s neck, but just managed to hang on and regain his seat. He saw Bes-Das and Bigfoot laughing and felt rather annoyed—what was so funny about his nearly getting thrown and trampled?

He spurred through the last few animals and turned to see what had caused the commotion—all he could see was a large badger, snapping at a buffalo cow. The badger was so angry he had foam on his mouth—the buffalo were giving ground, too. Woodrow Call’s horse was pitching with him, agitated by the snorting buffalo cow that was faced off with the badger. Woodrow hung on and made it through.

“Why would anything as big as a buffalo shy at a badger?” Gus asked, when he rode up to Bigfoot. “A buffalo could kick a badger halfway to China.”

“That badger bluffed ‘em,” Bigfoot said. “He’s so mad he’s got ‘em convinced he’s as big as they are, and twice as mean.”

“I wonder if they’re mad?” Call said, looking at the Comanches, who sat without moving on the hill above them.

“If they are we’d be easy pickings,” Bigfoot said. “We’d never get back through them buffalo quick enough to get away, and the troop couldn’t get through quick enough to save us, either.”

Call looked up at the Indians and back across the valley, at the body of the expedition. He wished Bigfoot had not made the last comment. The buffalo herd they had just slipped through was like a moving wall, separating them from the safety of the troop. All the Cornanches would have to do would be to trot down the hill and kill them with lances or arrows. The thought made him feel wavy, and without strength.

Neither Bigfoot nor Bes-Das seemed concerned, though. They walked their horses slowly toward the hill, Bes-Das holding up the rifle with the white sheet on it. Call and Gus fell in behind.

“What if they don’t pay no attention to the sheet?” Call asked. He wanted to know what the procedure would be, if they had to fight.“If they come for us put as many bullets into the big one as you can,” Bigfoot said. “Always kill the biggest bull first—then kill the littlest.”

“Why the littlest?” Gus asked.

“Because the littlest is apt to be the meanest, like the badger,” Bigfoot said. “That one standing off to the right is Kicking Wolf— he’s the littlest and the meanest. You don’t want to let your horse graze off nowhere, with Kicking Wolf around. He’s so slick he can steal a horse with a man sitting on it.”

“He’s stumpy, ain’t he?” Gus said.

“Kicking Wolf always rides to the outside,” Bigfoot said. “Buffalo Hump is the hammer, but Kicking Wolf is the nail. He don’t like to be in a crowd. He’s the best shot with a rifle in the whole Comanche nation. If they go out and they’ve only got one rifle between them, they give it to him. Buffalo Hump’s old-fashioned. He still prefers the bow.”

With the Pawnee scout, Bes-Das, slightly in the lead, the party moved slowly up the hill toward the waiting Indians. Call glanced at the short, stumpy Indian on the right edge of the group and saw that he was the only Indian armed with a rifle. All the rest carried bows or lances. When they were halfway up the hill Buffalo Hump touched his mount with his heels and came down to meet them. When he was still some fifty yards away Call looked at Gus, to see if he was firm. To his surprise Gus looked nonchalant, as if he were merely riding out for a little sport with his pals.

“Here he comes, I hope he’s friendly,” Gus said. “I never expected to have to go and palaver with him, not after he stuck me with that lance.”

“Shut up—Bes-Das will do the palavering,” Bigfoot instructed. “You young boys keep your damn traps shut. It don’t take much to rub a Comanche the wrong way.”

As Buffalo Hump approached, holding his spotted pony to a slow walk, Call felt the air change. The Comanche’s body shone with grease; a necklace made of claws hung on his bare chest. Call looked at Gus, to see if he felt the change, and Gus nodded. They had entered the air of the wild men—even the smell of the Indian horses was different.

Bes-Das stopped, waiting. Buffalo Hump came on until the nose of his spotted pony was only a few feet from the nose of the Paw-nee’s black mare. Then Buffalo Hump lifted his lance and pointed first at Gus, and then at Call. Though he sat erect on his horse, the great hump was visible, rising from between his shoulders behind his neck. When he spoke his voice was so wild and angry that it was all Call could do to keep from grabbing his gun. Call met the man’s eyes for a moment—the Comanche’s eyes were like stone. Buffalo Hump lowered his lance, glanced at Bigfoot dismissively for a second, and then waited for Bes-Das to speak. Bigfoot seemed not to interest him. Bigfoot returned the favor by looking pointedly up the hill, at Kicking Wolf.

Bes-Das spoke briefly, in Comanche. Buffalo Hump raised his arm and the other Comanches trotted down the hill, to join him. He turned and spoke to his warriors for several minutes. Kicking Wolf grunted something and rode away, back to his position at the side.

“I hope he ain’t getting ready to shoot,” Gus said.

“I told you to keep your goddamn mouth shut,” Bigfoot said. “We’ll get out of this with our hair if you’ll just keep quiet.”

Bes-Das listened to Buffalo Hump, who made a long speech in his thick, angry voice. Call decided then that he would do what he could to learn the Comanche language. It seemed foolish to parley with wild red men if you did not know what was being said in the discussion. He could be talking of ways to kill them, for all he knew.

When Buffalo Hump finished, Bes-Das said a few words and immediately turned his horse and began to walk him back toward the buffalo herd. Bigfoot waited a moment, as if absent-mindedly, and then turned his horse, too. Call and Gus fell in behind. Call felt so much danger in the air that it took all his self-control not to look back. A lance like the one that had pierced Gus’s hip could be singing toward them. He glanced at Gus and saw that his friend seemed perfectly firm—something had happened to toughen his attitude since they left the camp and slipped through the buffalo herd.

The recrossing of the herd went quickly—they had learned the edging technique on the first crossing and were soon almost through. Once the buffalo herd was between them and the Indians, Call felt free to look back. The air had changed again—they were in the air of safety, not the air where the quick death was.“I guess you grew your backbone again,” Call said, noting that Gus looked so cheerful that he was almost whistling.

“Yes, I ain’t scared of him now,” Gus said. “Clara wouldn’t want no coward. I kept my mind on her. We’ll be married once we get back to Austin.”

Indeed, he felt cheered by the encounter. He had looked Buffalo Hump in the eye and lived—it made him feel lucky again. He was curious, though, about one aspect of the parley.

“I wonder why he pointed that lance at us, when he first rode up?” Gus asked.

Bes-Das turned briefly, and laughed his broken-toothed laugh.

“He said you both belong to him,” he told them. “He says he will take you when he is ready—but not today. He is coming to eat supper with the Colonel, and he will bring his wives.”

“Why do we belong to him and not you and Bigfoot?” Gus asked.

“You cheated his lance,” Bes-Das told him. “He says his lance is hungry for your liver.”

“It can just stay hungry,” Gus said boldly, though the threat did make his stomach feel wavy for a moment.

“Why me, then?” Call asked. “I didn’t cheat his damn lance.”

Bes-Das laughed again.

“No, with you it’s different,” he said, smiling at Call.

“Why would it be different?” Call asked, wishing he could have understood the Indian’s talk.

“Different because you killed his son,” the Pawnee said.

CALL WAS MORE SOBERED than Gus by the news Bes-Das had delivered. He had killed the war chief’s son. Buffalo Hump might forget that he had missed Gus with his lance, but he would not forget the loss of a son. As long as the humpbacked Comanche was alive, Call knew he would have an enemy. Anytime he traveled in Comanche country, his life would depend on keeping alert. , He was silent as they rode back to camp, thinking of all the years of vigilance ahead.

Gus McCrae, though, was in high spirits. Now that he had survived, he was glad he had gone to the parley. Not only had he threaded his way through the great buffalo herd, he had faced the Comanche killer at close range and ridden away unharmed. Now he was safely back with the big troop. Buffalo Hump could threaten all he wanted to—his lance would have to go hungry. Once Clara Forsythe heard what he had done she would know she had kissed a brave man, a Ranger on whom her affections would not be wasted.

It wouldn’t be long before the news reached her, either—several of the merchants and most of the whores would soon be going back. In a town as small as Austin the news that he had been selected for a dangerous mission would soon reach the young lady in the general store.

There was a crowd around Caleb Cobb when they rode up to report. The big Irish dog was back—it sat panting at Caleb’s feet, its long tongue hanging out. John Kirker was there, sitting on a stump, his big scalping knife at his belt. Shadrach stood to one side, looking disgruntled. He had not liked the order forbidding him to shoot buffalo until they were across the Brazos. When he looked at Caleb Cobb, he glowered his displeasure.

Matilda Roberts stood with him. Lately, the old mountain man and the large whore seemed to have formed an attachment. Often, when Shadrach was out scouting, the two would be seen riding together. At night they sometimes sat together, around a little campfire of their own. No one had heard them exchange a word, and yet they were together, united in their silence. Some of the younger men had become afraid to approach Matilda—they didn’t want to risk stirring the old mountain man’s wrath. He was said to be terrible in his angers, though no one there could actually remember an occasion when Shadrach had lost his temper.

“Well, are we to have guests for supper?” Caleb Cobb asked. “Does the chief prefer to eat with a fork or with a scalping knife?”

“He will come in one hour,” Bes-Das said. “He wants to eat quick. He will leave the camp at sundown. He will bring three wives with him but no braves.”

“Well, that’s rare,” Caleb said. “Does he have any other requests, this chief?”

“Yes,” Bes-Das said. “He wants you to give him a rifle.”.

Caleb chuckled. “A rifle to kill us with,” he said. “I sure hope he likes the cooking, when he tastes it—if he don’t find it tasty he might scalp Sam.”

Black Sam had become Caleb Cobb’s personal cook. The Colonel was so partial to rabbit that Sam had stuffed a cage of fat rabbits into one of the supply wagons. The Colonel didn’t like large game— Sam trapped quail for him, and kept him fed with small, succulent bunnies.

“Well, if he’s coming so soon, the chef will have to hurry,” Caleb said. “Falconer, you like to shoot. Lope down and kill a couple of buffalo calves. Take the liver and sweetmeats and leave the rest. Call and McCrae will escort you—their horses are already used to thebufs.”

Falconer started for the wagon, to get his fine gun, but the Colonel stopped him with an impatient wave.

“You don’t need that damn English gun just to shoot two calves,” he said. “Shoot ‘em with your pistol, or let Corporal Call do it.”

Call was disconcerted, as they rode down to the herd, to see John Kirker following, only a few yards to the rear. Call rode on for a bit and then decided he couldn’t tolerate the man’s presence. He nodded at Gus, and the two of them turned to face the scalp hunter.

“You weren’t told to come,” Call informed Kirker. “I’d prefer it if you’d go back.”

“I don’t work for no army and I won’t be told what to do by no one,” Kirker said. “Caleb Cobb can pretend he’s a colonel if he wants to. He don’t tell me what to do and neither do you, you damn pups.”

“You weren’t told to come,” Call repeated. He was trying to be calm, though he felt his anger rising.

“There’s Indians around buffalo,” Kirker said. “They crawl in with them and shoot from under their bellies. I got business to tend to—I don’t care if that murdering humpback is coming to eat. Get out of my way.”

“Tell him, Captain,” Call said, turning to Falconer, but Falconer ignored the request.

“Last time you rode with us you scalped some Mexicans,” Gus remarked.

Kirker brought the rifle up and looked at them coolly, his thin lip twisted in a kind of sneer.

“I despise young fools,” he said. “If you don’t like my trade have at me and do it now. I might get a scalp before sundown if I’m active.”

Kirker spoke with the same insolence with which he had confronted Bigfoot and Shadrach, back on the Rio Grande.

Gus found the man’s insolence intolerable. To Call’s surprise, he yanked one of the big pistols out of his belt and whacked Kirker right across the forehead with it. The lick made a dull sound—a mule kicking a post made such a sound. Kirker was knocked backward, off his horse. He lay still for a moment, curled on the ground, but his eyes were open.

Call leapt down and took Kirker’s pistol, as the man struggled to his feet. Kirker reached for his big knife, but before he could pull it Call clubbed his arm with his musket—then he clubbed him twice more.

“Whoa, Woodrow,” Gus said, alarmed by the look in Call’s eye and the savage force of his clubbing. He himself had been angry enough to knock Kirker off his horse with a pistol, but the one hard lick satisfied him. The man’s forehead was split open—he was streaming blood. It was enough, at least, to teach him respect. But Woodrow Call had no interest in respect. He was swinging to kill.

“He’s a friend of the Colonel’s—we don’t need to kill him,” Gus said, leaping down, as did black Sam, who had come along to select the cuts. Call swung a third time, at the man’s Adam’s apple—only the fact that Sam grabbed at the barrel and partially broke the force of the swing saved Kirker—even so the man went down again, rolling and clawing at his throat, trying to get air through his windpipe. Gus and Sam together managed to hold Call and keep him from smashing the man’s head with the musket.

Falconer, who didn’t like the scalp hunter either, turned for a moment, to look at the fallen man.

“Disarm him,” he said. “He’s got guns in his boots. If we leave him anything to shoot he’ll try to kill us all, once he gets his wind.”

Call was remembering the filthy, fly-bitten scalps, hanging from the man’s saddle; he also remembered Bigfoot’s contention that some of them were the scalps of Mexican children.

“Don’t be beating nobody to death—not here,” Sam said. “Colonel Cobb, he’ll hang you. He hangs folks all the time.”

With difficulty, Call made himself mount and ride on to the herd. When they left, Kirker was on his knees, spitting blood.

“You yanked that pistol quick,” Falconer said, to Gus. “I think I’ll make you my corporal. You could make a fine pistolero.”

“Thank you, the fellow was rude,” Gus said. “Do you think the Colonel will let me be a corporal?”

Though he didn’t much like Falconer, the man’s words filled him with relief. He felt he had caught up with Call again, in terms of rank. He also felt that he was staunch again, and could fight when a fight was required. The weak feeling that had troubled him since his first glimpse of Buffalo Hump wasn’t there anymore—or at least, not there steadily. He might die, but at least he could fight first, and not simply pass his days shaking at the expectation of slaughter.

They rode on to the herd, quickly shot two fat calves, and took their livers and sweetmeats, as instructed. Sam was deft at the cutting. He had brought a sack to put the meat on, and knotted it deftly once he was finished.

“I’ll kill some big meat tomorrow,” Falconer said, as they rode back toward camp. “Once we get across the river the Colonel won’t mind.”

“These buffalo be gone tomorrow,” Sam said.

“Gone—what do you mean—there’s thousands of them,” Falconer said, in surprise.

“They be gone tomorrow,” Sam said—he did not elaborate.

When they passed the spot where the fight with Kirker had occurred there was no trace of the man, though the grass was spotted with blood from his broken forehead.

“I hope I broke his damn arm, at least,” Call said.

Nobody else said anything for a bit. They rode up to the troop in silence, Sam carefully holding his sack of meat.

“Sam knows where to cut into a buffalo calf,” Gus remarked. “You might give us lessons, next time we have an opportunity. I could slide around on one for an.hour and not know when I had come to the liver.”

“Just watch me, next time,” Sam said. “Buffalo liver tastes mighty good.”

GENERAL PHIL LLOYD, IN his youth one of the heroes of the Battle of New Orleans, was so impressed by the news that Buffalo Hump was coming to supper that he made his manservant, Peedee, scratch around amid his gear until he found a clean coat. It was wrinkled, true, but it wasn’t spotted and stained with tobacco juice, or beef juice, or any of the other substances General Lloyd was apt to dribble on himself in the course of a day’s libations.

“I might be getting dressed up for nothing,” he informed Caleb Cobb. “There’s a hundred men, at least, right here in this camp, who would like to shoot that rascal’s lights out. Why would he come?”

“Oh, he’ll come, Phil,” Caleb Cobb said. “He wants to show off his wives.”

Looking around the camp, Call decided that he agreed with the General. Most of the Rangers, and not a few of the merchants and common travelers, had lost friends or family members to the Comanches; some of the lost ones had died by Buffalo Hump’s own hand. There were mutterings and curses as the time for his arrival approached. Several of the more radical characters were for hanging Caleb Cobb—he ought never to have issued the invitation, many Rangers felt. Sam had to hurry his cooking, but when the smell of the sizzling liver wafted through the camp it added to the general discontent. Why should a killer get to dine on such delicacies, while most of them were making do with tough beef?

“He’ll come,” Gus said. “It would take more than this crowd to scare him away.”

Like Call, he had begun to doubt the competence of the military leadership. General Lloyd, who had been drunk the whole trip and unconscious for most of it, had his servant pin more than a dozen medals on the front of his blue coat.

“He must have won them medals for drinking, he don’t do nothing else,” Gus observed.

While the liver was sizzling and the sweetbreads simmering in a small pot with some onions and a little wild barley Sam had managed to locate, Caleb Cobb, noting the mood of surliness among the men, told Falconer to round up the malcontents and assemble them. Falconer liked nothing better than ordering men to do things they didn’t want to do—he had a little black quirt that he popped against his leg; he circled the camp, popping the quirt against his leg and forcing the men to stroll over to Caleb Cobb’s tent.

Cobb was large; he enjoyed imposing himself. When the men were assembled he stretched himself and pointed toward the hill to the east. Four horses were moving across the ridge—Buffalo Hump was coming with his wives.

“Here he comes, right on time,” Caleb said. “I’ll make a short speech. He’s a murdering devil but I invited him to supper and I won’t have no guest of mine interfered with.”

“Does that mean we ain’t to spit while he’s in camp?” Shadrach asked. He had no great respect for Caleb Cobb, who, in his view, was just a pirate who had decided to come ashore. Cobb had caught several Mexican ships, so it was said, and had made off with the gold and silver, and the women. That was the rumour in the Galveston waters, anyway. Shadrach suspected that the main reason for the Texas-Santa Fe expedition was that Cobb wanted to get the gold and silver at its source. None of that gave Cobb license to instruct him in behaviour, and Shadrach wanted him to know it.“You can spit, but not in his direction/’ Caleb said. He was well aware that the mountain man didn’t like him.

“Why are you having him, Colonel, if he’s such a killer?” the dentist, Elihu Carson, asked. He had heard that the Comanches sometimes removed the jawbones of their captives with the teeth intact; as a professional he would have liked to question Buffalo Hump about the technique involved, but he knew that at such an important parley he was unlikely to get the chance.

“Curiosity,” Caleb replied. “I’ve never met him, and I’d like to. If you want to know the mettle of your opponent, it don’t hurt to look him in the eye. Besides, he knows the country—he might loan us a scout.”

“He won’t loan you no scout, he’ll kill the ones we got,” Bigfoot said.

“Mr. Wallace, it won’t hurt to try,” Caleb said. “I brought you all here to make a simple point: Buffalo Hump’s my guest at dinner. I will promptly hang any ill-tempered son of a bitch who interferes with him.”

The men stared back at him, unawed and unpersuaded.

“If we kill him, the Comanche and the Kiowa will rise up and wipe out every damn farm between the Brazos and the Nueces,” Caleb said. “We have to cross his country to reach Santa Fe, and we don’t know much about it. If it turns out that we have to fight him, we’ll fight him, but right now I’d like to see some manners in this camp.”

The men were silent, watching the horses approach. They gave ground a few steps, so that the Comanches could ride up to Caleb’s tent, but their mood was dark. While not eager to be hanged, they all knew that hanging was gentle compared to what would happen to them if Buffalo Hump caught them. Those who had lost sons in the Comanche wars, or had daughters stolen, thought that a hanging would be a cheap price to pay for the opportunity to put a bullet in the big war chief. Yet they held back—bound, if uneasily, by the rules their commander had laid down.

Buffalo Hump still had the three scalps tied to his lance when he rode into camp. He had on leggins but no shirt—he had coated his face and body with red clay and had painted yellow lines across his cheeks and forehead. The three women riding behind him were all young and plump. If frightened at riding into the white man’s camp,they didn’t show it. They rode a short distance behind Buffalo Hump, and kept their eyes on the ground.

Call thought it remarkably bold of the war chief to ride into such a camp alone. Gus agreed. He tried to imagine himself riding into a Comanche camp with no one beside him but a whore or two, but remembering the tortures Bigfoot had described, he thought he would decline the invitation, if one ever came.

“He ain’t afraid of us—and every man in camp wants to kill him,” Call said. “He don’t think much of Rangers, I guess.”

When Buffalo Hump dismounted, his wives did, too—they quickly spread a robe for him outside the Colonel’s tent. Caleb Cobb offered tobacco. One of the wives took it and gave it to Buffalo Hump, who smelled it briefly and gave it back. Call knew the man had to be powerful just to carry his own hump, a mass of gristle as broad as his back—it rose as high as his ears.

Yet, Buffalo Hump wasn’t stooped. He didn’t so much as glance at the massed Rangers, but he did take note of Caleb Cobb’s Irish dog, who was watching him alertly. The dog wasn’t growling, but his hair bristled.

“Tell him he’s welcome and put in some guff about what a great chief he is,” Caleb instructed Bes-Das.

Bes-Das turned to Buffalo Hump and spoke five or six words. Buffalo Hump was watching the dog; he didn’t answer.

“That was too short a compliment,” Caleb said. “Tell him he’s stronger than the buffalo and wiser than the bear. Tell him his name is enough to freeze Mexican blood. We need some wind here —they expect it.”

Bes-Das tried again, but Buffalo Hump didn’t appear to pay his words the slightest attention. He gestured toward the food, which Sam had waiting, but he made no gesture at all toward Caleb Cobb. Two of the plump young women took wooden bowls and went over to Sam, who ladled up his sweetbreads and filled the other bowl with large slices of liver. Gus thought the red clay and the yellow paint made the Comanche look even more terrible. Call watched closely, wondering why the air itself seemed to change when a wild Indian came around. He decided it was because no one but the Indian knew the rules that determined actions—if there were rules.

For a moment it seemed that Buffalo Hump was simply going to eat his food standing up, ignoring Caleb Cobb. Caleb himself was worried—with all his men watching, it would only do to let himself be insulted up to a point. But after he had sniffed the dishes, Buffalo Hump gestured again to the young women, who took two more bowls and filled them; these they brought to Caleb.

Buffalo Hump looked at Caleb for the first time, lifting the bowls. Then he took a place on the robe and handed the bowls to his young wives, who then began to take turns feeding him with their fingers.

“If I could find a woman to hand-feed me sweetbreads, I expect I’d get married too,” Caleb said. “Tell that to the rascal.”

At the word “rascal,” Buffalo Hump lifted his head slightly. It occurred to Caleb too late that perhaps the Comanche had picked up a few words of English—after all, he had taken many captives who spoke it.

Bes-Das spoke at length, in Comanche, but if his words made any impression on the chief, Buffalo Hump didn’t show it. His young wives continued to feed him buffalo liver and sweetbread stew. The camp had become completely silent. The men who had been cursing Buffalo Hump merely stood looking at him. Several who had proposed to risk hanging by attempting to kill him offered no threat. Call and Gus stood stock-still, watching, while Buffalo Hump ate. Caleb Cobb took a bite or two of liver himself, but seemed to have lost his usual vigorous appetite.

Buffalo Hump paid little attention to the company, at least until he noticed Matilda Roberts, standing with Shadrach. Once he noticed, he gave Matilda a long look; then he turned to Bes-Das and spoke what seemed like a long speech. Bes-Das glanced at Matilda and shook his head, but Buffalo Hump repeated what he had said.

“Taken a fancy to Matty, has he?” Caleb asked.

“Yes, he wants her for a wife,” Bes-Das said. “He has seen her before. He calls her Turtle Catching Woman.”

“First he wants a rifle and now he wants a wife,” Caleb said. “What is it they call Shadrach, in Comanche?”

“They call him Tail-Of-The-Bear,” Bes-Das said.

“Tell the great chief that Matilda is the wife of Tail-Of-The-Bear,” Caleb said. “She ain’t available for marriage unless she gets divorced.”

Bes-Das spoke to Buffalo Hump, who seemed amused by what was said. He replied at length, in a tone of derision; the reply made Bes-Das rather uncomfortable, Call thought.

“Well, what’s the report?” Caleb asked, impatiently.

“He says Tail-Of-The-Bear is too old for such a large woman,” Bes-Das said. “He says he will give him a young horse, in exchange.”

Neither Matilda nor Shadrach moved, or changed expression.

“Tell him we can’t accept—it is not our custom to trade people for horses,” Caleb said. “Falconer, go get your fancy rifle.”

Captain Falconer was startled.

“What for?” he asked.

Ignoring this exchange, Buffalo Hump suddenly spoke again. This time he spoke at more length, looking at Shadrach as he talked. When he stopped he reached for the pot that had the sweetbread stew in it, and drained it.

“What was that last?” Caleb said. “It had a hostile kind of sound.”

“He says he will take the scalp of Tail-Of-The-Bear if he crosses the Canadian River,” Bes-Das said. “Then he will take the woman and keep the horse.”

“Go get the rifle, Billy—supper’s about over,” Caleb said, though in a mild tone.

“Why, it’s my rifle?” Captain Falconer said.

“Go get it, Billy—we need a good present and it’s the only gun in camp fine enough to offer the chief,” Caleb said. “Hurry. I’ll buy you one just as good as soon as we get to Santa Fe.”

Captain Falconer balked. The Holland and Holland sporting rifle was the finest thing he owned. He had ordered it special, from London, and had waited two years for it to come. The case he kept it in was made of cherry wood. One of his reasons for signing on with the expedition was an eagerness to try his rifle on the game of the prairies—buffalo, elk, antelope, maybe even a grizzly bear. The rifle had cost him six months’ wages—he intended to treasure it throughout his life. The thought of having to hand it over to a murdering savage with yellow paint on his face was more than he could tolerate, and he said so.

“I won’t give it up,” he said bluntly. “Give the man a musket. It’s more than he deserves.”

“I’ll decide what he deserves, Captain,” Caleb Cobb said. He had been sitting, but he rose; when he did, Buffalo Hump rose, too.

“I won’t do it, Colonel—I’ll resign first,” Captain Falconer said.

In a motion no one saw clearly, Caleb Cobb drew his pistol and fired point-blank at Captain Falconer. The bullet took him in the forehead, directly above his nose.

“You’re resigned, Captain,” Caleb said. He walked over to the baggage wagon containing the officer’s baggage and came back with the cherry wood case containing the dead man’s Holland and Holland rifle. The body of Billy Falconer lay not two feet from the edge of Buffalo Hump’s robe. Neither the war chief nor his women gave any sign that they had noticed the killing.

Caleb Cobb opened the gun case and handed it to Buffalo Hump. The rifle was disassembled, its barrel in one velvet groove, the stock and trigger in another. Caleb set the case down, lifted the two parts out, and quickly fitted them together. Then he handed the gun to Buffalo Hump, who hefted it once and then, without another word, took the rifle and walked over to his horse. He mounted and gestured to his wives to bring the blanket and the cherry wood case. He didn’t thank Caleb, but he looked once more at Matilda, and bent a moment, to speak to Shadrach.

“If I don’t take yours first,” Shadrach said, quietly.

Then Buffalo Hump rode off, followed by his wives. The sun was just setting.

The strange silence that had seized the troop continued, even though the Comanches were soon well out of hearing.

Captain Falconer’s wound scarcely bled—only a thin line of blood curled down his ear.

“Bury this skunk, I won’t have mutiny,” Caleb said. He glanced at the troop, to see if anyone was disposed to challenge his action. The men all stood around like statues, all except Sam. He was expected to do the burying, as well as the cooking. He picked up a spade.

“You can have that pacing black—I intend to make you a scout,” Caleb said, to Call.

“Sir, Captain Falconer made me a corporal,” Gus McCrae said. He knew it was bold to speak, so soon after a captain of the Rangers had been executed for mutiny, but the fact was, he had been awarded the rank and he meant to have it. He had been made a corporal legally, he believed, and he wanted Clara Forsythe to know that Woodrow Call was not the only one to earn a quick promotion.

Caleb Cobb was a little surprised, but more amused. The young Tennessee boy had gumption, at least, to insist on his promotion at such a time.

“Well, let’s have your report—what did you do to earn this honor?” Caleb asked.

“I whacked John Kirker on the head with my pistol,” Gus said. “He followed us when he wasn’t told to, and he wouldn’t go back when we asked.”

“You whacked Johnny?” Caleb asked, in surprise. “How hard did you whack him?”

“He knocked him off his horse and split his forehead open,” Bigfoot said. “I seen it. Kirker was mean spoken—I had a notion to whack him myself.”

“Scalp hunters are apt to be a little short on manners,” Caleb said. “John Kirker’s the sort of fellow who will kill you for picking your teeth, if you happen to do it at a time when he ain’t in the mood to see no teeth picked. If you laid him out, then Falconer was wrong just to make you a corporal—he ought to have made you a general.”

He paused, and smiled.

“However, since I didn’t witness the action and don’t know all the circumstances, I’ll just let the rank of corporal stand. What became of Kirker after you whacked him?”

“We don’t know,” Call said. “He left.”

Caleb nodded. “If I were you I’d watch my flank for a few days, Corporal McCrae,” he said. “John Kirker ain’t one to forget a whacking.”

Then he turned, and went into his tent.

Soon the company found its legs and drifted back to normal pursuits: cooking, drinking, standing guard, making fires. Call and Gus, feeling a kinship with Sam because they were all from San Antonio, took shovels arid picks and helped him dig Falconer’s grave.

General Phil Lloyd stood by Caleb Cobb’s tent, feeling forgotten. Falconer, too, was well on his way to being forgotten, though he had only been dead ten minutes. The difference was that Falconer was actually dead, whereas General Lloyd merely felt he might as well be. He had put on his cleanest blue coat, in preparation for Buffalo Hump’s visit. He had even had Peedee, his man, hang all his twelve medals on it. Once he had had as many as eighteen medals—he was pretty sure the correct figure was eighteen—but six of them had been lost, in various drunken outings, in various muddy towns.

Still, twelve medals was no small number of medals; it was an even dozen, in fact. An even dozen medals was a solid number, yet out on the Brazos, with the sky getting cloudy and a gloomy dusk coming on, a dozen medals seemed to count for nothing. Buffalo Hump hadn’t even glanced at him, or his medals, though in his experience, red Indians were usually attracted to military decorations.

Not only that: Caleb Cobb had not bothered to introduce him; nor had he asked him to sit. The buffalo liver had smelled mighty appetizing, but Caleb Cobb hadn’t offered him any.

The two young Rangers, Corporal Call and Corporal McCrae, came over and rolled Captain Falconer’s body onto a wagon sheet. General Lloyd walked over and watched them tie the body into its rough shroud. He had once been the hero of the Battle of New Orleans—Andrew Jackson had made a speech about him. It seemed to him that the two youngsters, just getting their start in military life, might appreciate his history. They might want to hear how it had been, fighting the British—far different, certainly, from fighting savages such as Buffalo Hump. They might want to look at his medals and ask him what this one was for, or what exploit that one celebrated.

“It will be fine to be in Santa Fe—that high air is too good for your lungs,” he said, to put the young men at ease.

“Yes sir,” Gus said. He was wondering whether a salute was necessary, with darkness nearly on them.

Before Call could speak—he had only been planning to say something simple, as Gus had—General Lloyd decided he didn’t want to be around a corpse wrapped in a wagon sheet. He couldn’t get a bad notion out of his head, the notion being that he was really the one who was dead and wrapped in a wagon sheet.

The notion disturbed General Lloyd so much that he turned and stumbled away, to look for his wagon, his servant Peedee, and his bottle. He thought he might send Peedee after a whore.

In New Orleans, in the old days, there had been winsome and willing Creole girls—his hope was that there might be something of the sort in Santa Fe. Santa Fe was high, he knew that much; high air was thought to be good for women’s complexions. In Santa Fe he might find a young beauty to marry him; if he could, then it wouldn’t matter so much about lost medals, or the fact no one took much notice of him at parleys.

At present, though, they had only advanced to the Brazos and the only women around were rough camp whores. He thought he might send Peedee to look for one, though. It might help him sleep.

Gus and Call were trying to keep their minds off Falconer’s abrupt execution. Neither of them had supposed that the military life involved such extreme risks. They were so disturbed by what they had seen that they were having an awkward time getting Falconer’s body wrapped in its rough shroud; neither of them had had much training at burials. When Gus saw General Lloyd stumble away, he grew apprehensive. If the penalty for failing to give a fine rifle to an Indian was instant death, what might the penalty be for failing to salute a general?

“We didn’t salute him. What if he has us hung?” Gus asked. He was troubled by the thought that he might have made a serious breach of military etiquette only a few minutes after having been promoted to corporal.

Call was still trying to puzzle out the logic of Falconer’s execution. Caleb Cobb had brooked almost no argument. Without warning, he had merely yanked out his pistol and shot the Captain dead. Of course, Falconer had balked at an order, but he was a captain. He could hardly have suspected that his refusal to hand over his prized rifle would mean instant execution. If Caleb had put it to him that he viewed the matter as serious—that it meant life or death—no doubt Captain Falconer would have given up the gun. But Caleb hadn’t given a chance to argue. Call would have thought there would have to be some kind of trial, before a captain in the Rangers could be executed. He meant to ask Bigfoot about the matter the next time he saw him.

“I think we could have saluted,” Gus said again. With darkness coming, and a dead man to bury, the omission of the salute loomed large in his mind.

“Hush about it,” Call said. “I don’t even know how to salute. Help me tie this end of the wagon sheet. He’s going to slip out if you don’t.”

RAIN BEGAN AT MIDNIGHT and continued until dawn and then on through the day. Call and Gus crawled under one of the wagons, hoping for a little sleep, but the water soon puddled around them and they slept little. Gus kept remembering the puzzled look on Falconer’s face, when Caleb Cobb raised his gun to kill him. He mentioned it to Call so often that Call finally told him to shut up about it.

“I guess he was puzzled,” he said. “We were all puzzled. You don’t expect to see a man shot down like that, just to please an Indian.”

“I doubt Bigfoot was puzzled,” Gus said. “It takes a lot to puzzle Bigfoot.”

Call was glad when it became their turn to stand guard. Standing guard beat trying to sleep in a puddle.

By midmorning the Brazos was impassable—the rains fell for three days, and then the river only fell enough for a general crossing to be feasible after three more days, by which time morale in the expeditionary party had sunk very low.In the wake of Falconer’s death, men began to remember other tales they had heard, or thought they had heard, about Caleb Cobb’s violent behaviour as a commander. Long Bill Coleman recalled that someone had told him Caleb had once hanged six men at sea, in his pirating days. The men’s crime, as Long Bill remembered it, was to get into the grog and turn up drunk.

“I heard it was four,” Blackie Slidell said.

“Well, that’s still a passel of men to hang because they were drunk,” Long Bill argued.

During the day, hunting parties scoured the south bank of the Brazos, sure that some of the thousands of buffalo they had seen must still be on the south side of the river; their hopes were disappointed. Not a single buffalo could be located, nor were deer or wild pigs easy to find. Caleb ordered the killing of three beeves— but the meat was stringy, and the men’s discontent increased.

“We could have been eating buffalo liver every night,” Johnny Carthage complained. “I’ve heard the hump is good, too.”

“No, the hump is fatty,” Bigfoot said. “I generally take the liver and the tongue.”

That was the first Gus McCrae had heard about people eating tongue.

“Tongue?” he said. “I won’t be eating no tongues—I don’t care if they do come from a buffalo.”

“I’ll take yours, then,” Bigfoot said. “Buffalo tongue beats polecat by a long shot, although polecat ain’t bad if you salt it heavy.”

“What happens in an army if the colonel goes crazy?” Call asked. It seemed to him that Caleb Cobb might be insane. His own promotion, for doing nothing more than defending himself from sure death, had been a whimsy on Caleb’s part—as much a whimsy as Falconer’s execution. During the long rainy nights, huddled around campfires, their pants soaked, the men speculated and speculated about Caleb Cobb’s surprising action.

“He had to make a show for Buffalo Hump,” Bigfoot contended. “He wanted him to know he had sand. Once an Indian thinks you don’t have sand, he don’t show no mercy.”

“That one don’t show no mercy, sand or not,” Long Bill said. “Zeke Moody had plenty of sand, and so did Josh.”

“Maybe Falconer tried to steal his girl, or beat him at cards or something,” Blackie suggested. “Caleb might have had a grudge.“Call couldn’t see that it mattered why—not now. In his view, the killing had not been done properly, but he was young and he didn’t voice his opinion. Captain Falconer had been an officer. If there were charges against him he should have been informed of them, at least. But the only message he got was the bullet that killed him. Probably Caleb Cobb would have been just as quick to kill any man who happened to be standing there at that time. Probably Bigfoot was right: Caleb had just wanted to show Buffalo Hump that a colonel in the Rangers could be as cruel as any warchief, dealing out death as he chose.

Call resolved to do his duties as best he could, but he meant to avoid Caleb Cobb whenever possible. He thought the man was insane, though Gus disagreed.

“Killing somebody don’t mean you’re insane,” he argued.

“I think he’s insane, you can think what you like,” Call told him. “It was Falconer made you a corporal, remember. The Colonel might decide he don’t like you, for no better reason than that.”

Gus thought the matter over, and decided there could be some truth in it. Yet, unlike Call, he was drawn to Caleb Cobb. It interested him that a pirate had got to be commander of an army. Whenever he happened to be around the Colonel, he listened carefully.

On the sixth day, the Colonel decided to cross the river, though it was still dangerously high. Every night his forces diminished— men slipped off, back toward Austin. They decided they had no stomach for prairie travel, and they left. Caleb didn’t have them pursued—half the troop had no idea why they were bound for Santa Fe, anyway; most of them would have been useless in a fight and a burden, had supplies run low, as they were likely to do, on the high plains. Yet, by the sixth day, discontent was so rife that he decided to ford the river despite the risk. Another day or two of waiting and the whole Texas-Santa Fe expedition might simply melt into the Brazos mud. In retrospect, he regretted not letting the men chase the buffalo—it would have given them some sporting exploits to talk about around the campfires. His reasoning in holding them back had been sound, but the weather confounded his reason, as it was apt to.

Both Bes-Das and Alchise were against the crossing. The Brazos was still too high. Shadrach was against it, and Bigfoot too, although Bigfoot agreed with the Colonel that if they didn’t cross soon the expedition would quietly disband. All the scouts remembered the fate of Captain Falconer, though. They offered little advice, knowing that the wrong piece of advice might get them shot.

Gus had not been along for the earlier river crossing, but he had crossed the Mississippi and had no fear of the Brazos.

“Why, this is just a creek,” he said. “I could swim it on my back.”

“I couldn’t,” Call told him. “I swum it twice and it was all I could do, even with a horse pulling me.”

There was no agreement as to the swimming capacity of sheep, so the twenty sheep were tied and tossed in the sturdiest of the wagons. Then, for no reason that anyone could determine, the wagon with the sheep in it capsized in midstream, drowning the driver—he got a foot tangled in the harness—two of the horses, and all twenty sheep. Three of the beeves wandered into quicksand on the south bank—they were mired so deep that Caleb ordered them shot. Sam waded in mud to his thighs, with his butcher knife, to take what meat he could from the three muddy carcasses. Six merchants and four whores decided the Brazos was their limit, and turned back for the settlements. Brognoli was the only man to swim he river without a horse. It was rumoured that Brognoli could swim five miles or more, though there was no body of water large enough to allow the claim to be tested. Caleb Cobb crossed in a canoe he had brought along in one of the wagons for that purpose. The wagon they had been hauling the canoe in was hit by some heavy driftwood; it broke up just shy of the north bank. Only four wagons survived the crossing, but they were the ones containing the ammunition and supplies. The expeditionary force, though a little leaner, was still mostly intact. The four wagons had all they could haul as it was, but Caleb Cobb proceeded to hoist his canoe on top of the largest wagon, despite his scouts’ insistence that he wouldn’t need it.

“Colonel, most of the rivers between here and the Arkansas is just creeks,” Bigfoot said. “That canoe’s wider than some of them. You could turn it upside down and use it as a bridge.”

“Fine, that’s better than traveling wet,” Caleb said. “I despise traveling wet.”

The fourth day north of the Brazos the post oak and elm petered out, and the troop began to move across an open, rolling prairie. There were still plenty of trees along the many creeks, so the troopdidn’t lack for firewood, but the traveling was easier, and the men’s mood improved. Little seeping springs dotted the prairie, producing water that was clearer and more tasteful than that of the muddy Brazos. Deer were plentiful though small, but the men could scarcely raise an interest in venison. They expected to come on the great buffalo herd any day. They had all smelled the buffalo liver Sam had cooked for the Comanches, and were determined to try it for themselves.

Call and Gus had been made scouts, assigned to range ahead with Bes-Das and Alchise. Bigfoot the Colonel kept close at hand— though he valued Bigfoot’s advice, he mainly wanted him handy because he was amused by his conversation. Shadrach had taken a cough, and roamed little. He rode beside Matilda Roberts, his long rifle always across his saddle.

They crossed the Trinity River on a sunny day with no loss of life other than one brown dog, a mongrel who had hung around the camp since the troop’s departure. Sam liked the little dog and fed him scraps. The dog was swimming by a big bay gelding, when the horse panicked and pawed the dog down. Sam was gloomy that night, so gloomy that he failed to salt the beans.

The stars were very bright over the prairie, so bright that Call had trouble sleeping. The only Indians they had seen were a small, destitute band of Kickapoos, who seemed to be living off roots and prairie dogs. When asked if the buffalo herd were near, they shook their heads and looked blank. “No buffalo,” one old man said.

None of the men could figure out what had become of the buffalo —hundreds of thousands of them had crossed the Brazos less than a week before, and yet they had not seen one buffalo, or even a track. Call asked Bigfoot about it, and Bigfoot shrugged.

“When we got across the river, we turned west,” he said. “I reckon them buffalo turned east.”

Even so, the men rode out every day, expecting to see the herd. At night they talked of buffalo, anticipating how good the meat would taste when they finally made their kills. In Austin, they had talked of women, or of notable card games they had been in; on the prairie, they talked of meat. Sam promised to instruct them all in buffalo anatomy—show them where the liver was, and how best to extract the tongue. After weeks in the trees, the breadth and silence of the prairie unnerved some of the men.

“Dern, I can’t get cozy out here,” Johnny Carthage observed. “There’s nothing to stop the damn wind.”

“Why would you want to stop it—just let it blow,” Gus said. “It’s just air that’s on the move.”

“It rings in my ears, though,” Johnny said. “I’d rather bunk up behind a bush.”

“I wonder how far it is, across this prairie?” Jimmy Tweed asked.

“Well, it’s far,” Blackie Slidell said. “They say you can walk all the way to Canada on it.”

“I have no interest in hearing about Canada,” Jimmy Tweed said. “I’d rather locate Santa Fe and get me a shave.”

There was a whole group of men just come from Missouri, especially to join the expedition. They were a sour lot, in Gus’s view, seldom exchanging more than a word or two with the Texans, and not many among themselves. They camped a little apart, and were led by a short, red-bearded man named Dakluskie. Gus tried to make friends with one or two of the Missourians, meaning to draw them into a card game, but they rebuffed him. The only one he developed a liking for was a boy named Tommy Spencer, no more than fourteen years old. Dakluskie was his uncle and had brought him along to do camp chores. Tommy Spencer thought Texas Rangers were all fine fellows. When he could, he sneaked over to sit at the campfire with them, listening to them yarn. He had a martial spirit, and carried an old pistol that was his pride.

“I wish I was from Texas,” he told Gus. “There ain’t no fighting much left, back in Missouri.”

The second day north of the Trinity, Gus and Call had ridden out with Bes-Das to scout for easy fords across the many creeks, when they came over a ridge and saw a running buffalo coming right toward them. The buffalo was a cow, and had been running awhile—her tongue hung out, and her gait was unsteady. Some thirty yards behind her an Indian was in pursuit, with a second Indian still farther back. The buffalo and her two pursuers appeared so suddenly that no one thought to shoot either the beast or the Comanches. The first Indian had a lance in his hand, the second one a bow. They rode right by Call, not thirty yards away, but seemed not to notice him at all, so focused were they on the buffalo they wanted to kill.

Bes-Das looked amused—he flashed a crooked-toothed smile, and turned his mount to lope back and watch the chase. Gus and Call turned, too—the encampment was only one or two miles back: the Comanches were chasing the exhausted buffalo right toward a hundred Texans and a few Missourians.

It was a warm, pretty morning. Most of the men were feeling lazy, hoping the Colonel would content himself with a short march for the day. They were lying on their saddles or saddle blankets, playing cards, discoursing about this and that, when suddenly the buffalo and the two Comanches ran right into camp, with Bes-Das, Call, and Gus loping along slightly to the rear. The spectacle was so strange and so unexpected that several of the men decided they must be dreaming. They lay or stood where they were, amazed. Caleb Cobb had just stepped out of his tent and stood dumbfounded, as a buffalo and two Comanches ran right in front of him, scarcely twenty feet away. The Irish dog had gone hunting, and missed the scene. Neither of the Comanches seemed to notice that they were right in the middle of a Ranger encampment, so intent were they on not letting their tired prey escape. They had passed almost through camp, from north to south, when a shot rang out and the buffalo cow fell dead, turning a somersault as she fell. Old Shadrach, shooting across his saddle, had fired the shot.

When the buffalo fell, the two Comanches stopped and simply sat on their horses, both of which were quivering with fatigue. The skinny warriors had a glazed look; they were too exhausted to get down and cut up the meat they had wanted so badly. Around the encampment, Rangers began to stand up and look to their guns. The Comanches came to with a start and flailed their horses before anyone could fire.

“Hell, shoot ‘em—shoot ‘em!” Shadrach yelled. His ammunition was over by Matilda’s saddle—he could not get it and reload in time to shoot the Comanches himself.

The Rangers got off a few shots, but by then, the Comanches had made it into a little copse of post oak; the bullets only clipped leaves.

“Well, this is a record, I guess,” Caleb said. “Two red Indians rode all the way through camp, chasing a tired buffalo, and nobody shot em.”

“It’s worse than that,” Call said. “We rode along with them for two miles, and didn’t shoot ‘em.”

“They were after the buffalo,” Gus said. “They didn’t even notice us.”

“No, they were too hungry, I expect,” Bigfoot said. He had witnessed the event with solemn amazement. It seemed to him the Indians must have been taking some kind of powders, to miss the fact that they were riding through a Ranger camp.

“Yes, I expect so,” Caleb said. “They wanted that buffalo bad.”

“Should we go get them, sir?” Long Bill asked. “Their horses are about worn out.”

“No, let them go, maybe they’ll starve,” Caleb said. “If I send a troop after them, they’ll just kill half of it and steal themselves fresh horses.”

Shadrach was annoyed all day because no one had shot the Comanches.

“Bes-Das should have shot them, he seen them first,” he said. “Bigfoot must have been drunk, else he would have shot ‘em.”

Shadrach had begun to repeat himself—it worried Matilda Roberts.

“You say the same things, over and over, Shad,” she told him, but Shadrach went right on repeating himself. Over and over he told her the story of how he saved himself in a terrible blizzard on the Platte: he killed a large buffalo cow, cut her open, and crawled inside; the cow’s body stayed warm long enough to keep him alive.

Matilda didn’t want to think of Shadrach inside a buffalo cow. Sam butchered the one the two Comanches had chased into camp; he made blood sausage of the buffalo blood, but Matilda didn’t eat any. Shad’s story was too much on her mind.

That night, lying with the old man as he smoked his long pipe, Matilda held his rough hand. The plains scared her—she wanted to be close to Shadrach. Since crossing the Brazos, she had begun to realize that she was tired of being a whore. She was tired of having to walk off in the bushes with her quilt because some Ranger had a momentary lust. Besides, there were no bushes anymore. Whoring on the prairies meant going over a hill or a ridge, and there could always be a Comanche over the hill or the ridge.

Besides, she had come to have such a fondness for Shadrach that she had no interest in going with other men, and in fact didn’t like it. Shad’s joints ached at times, from too many blizzards on the Platte and too many nights sleeping wet. He groaned and moaned in his sleep. Matilda knew he needed her warmth, to ease his joints.

Shadrach had become so stiff that he could not reach down to pull his boots on and pull them off. Matilda faithfully pulled them off for him. No woman had been so kind before, and it touched him. He had begun to get surly when a Ranger with an interest in being a customer approached Matilda now.

“Would you ever get hitched, Shad?” Matilda asked, the night after the buffalo ran through camp.

“It would depend on the gal,” Shadrach said.

“What if I was the gal?” Matilda asked. It was a bold question, but she needed to know.

Shadrach smiled. He knew of Matilda’s fondness for him, and was flattered by it. After all, he was old and woolly, and the camp was full of young scamps, some of them barely old enough to have hair on their balls.

“You—what would you want with me?” he asked, to tease her. “I’m an old berry. My pod’s about dry.”

“I’d get hitched with you anyway, Shad,” Matilda said.

Shadrach had been married once, to a Cree beauty on the Red River of the north. She had been killed in a raid by the Sioux, some forty years back. All he remembered about her was that she made the tastiest pemmican on the Northern plains.

“Why, Matty, I thought you had the notion to go to California,” Shadrach said. “I’ve not got that much traveling in me, I don’t expect. I’ve done been west to the Gila and that’s far enough west for me.”

“They’ll have a train to California someday,” Matilda said. “I’ll wait, and we’ll take the train. Until then I guess New Mexico will do, if it ain’t too sandy.”

“I’d get hitched with you—sure,” Shadrach said. “Maybe we’ll run into a preacher, somewhere up the trail.”

“If we don’t, we could ask the Colonel to hitch us,” Matilda said.

A little later, when the old man was sleeping, Matilda got up and sneaked two extra blankets out of the baggage wagon. The dews had been exceptionally heavy at night. She didn’t want her husband-to-be getting wet on the dewy ground.

Black Sam saw her take the blankets. He used a chunk of firewood for a pillow, himself. Sometimes, when the fire burned low, he would turn over and burn his pillow.

“I need those blankets, Sam-don’t tell,” Matilda said. She was fond of Sam too, though in a different way.

“I won’t, Miss Matty,” Sam said.

IN TWO WEEKS THE beeves were gone, and the troop was living on mush. The expedition had pointed to the northwest, and came to a long stretch of rough, bald country that led upward to a long escarpment. Though the escarpment was still fifty miles away, they could see it.

“What’s up there?” Gus asked Bigfoot. “Comanches,” Bigfoot said. “Them and the Kiowa.” The tall boy, Jimmy Tweed, had begun to bunk with Call and Gus. Jimmy and Gus were soon joshing each other and trying to outdo each other in pranks or card tricks. They would have tried to beat each other at whoring, but all the whores except Matilda had turned back at the Brazos, and Matilda had retired. So desperate was the situation that a youth from Navasota named John Baca was caught having congress with his mare. The troop laughed about it for days; Johnny Baca blushed every time anyone looked at him. But many of the men, in the privacy of their thoughts, wondered if Johnny Baca had not made a sensible move. Brognoli, the quartermaster, merely shrugged tolerantly at the notion of a boy having congress with a mare.

“Why not?” he asked. “The mare don’t care.”

“She may not care, but I’ll be damned if I’ll go with a horse,” Gus said.

“Besides, I don’t own a mare,” he added, a little later.

The complete disappearance of the great buffalo herd continued to puzzle everyone. Call, Gus, and Bes-Das scouted as much as thirty miles ahead, and yet not an animal could be found.

“No wonder them Comanches run that one cow right into camp,” Gus said on the third evening, when they sat down to a supper of mush. “It was that or starve, I guess.”

“It’s a big prairie,” Bigfoot reminded him. “Those buffalo could be three or four hundred miles north, by now.”

Not long before they spotted the escarpment they came upon a stream that Bes-Das thought was the Red, the river they counted on to take them west to New Mexico. Bes-Das was the scout who was supposed to be most familiar with the Comanche country— everyone felt relieved when they struck the river. It seemed they were practically to New Mexico. The water was bad, though—not as bad as the Pecos, in Call’s view, but bad enough that most of the troop was soon bothered with cramps and retchings. The area proved to be unusually snaky, too. The low, shaley hills were so flush with snakes that Call could sometimes hear three or four rattling at the same time.