Dead Man's Walk

Before they had been on the river half a day, Elihu Carson, the dentist, walked off to squat awhile, in the grip of a series of cramps, and had the bad luck to get bitten in the ass by a rattlesnake. Several men testified that they had heard the snake rattle, but Elihu Carson was a little deaf—he didn’t hear the warning.

“I think you’re cursed, Carson,” the Colonel said, when informed of the accident. “First you trip on your suitcase and get stickers in your face, and now you have fangs in your ass.”

“Sir, everything is sharp in this part of the country,” the dentist said.

Most of the men expected Carson to die of snakebite, and those he had extracted teeth from hoped that he would. But Elihu Carson confounded them. He showed only brief ill effects—four hours after the bite, he was pulling one of young Tommy Spencer’s teeth.The boy from Missouri had let a horse kick him right in the face, and had two broken front teeth to show for his carelessness.

Later that day, the mules pulling the main supply wagon spooked at a cougar that bounded out of a little clump of bushes right in front of them. Gus and several others blazed away at the cougar, but the cat got clean away. The mules fled down a gully, pulling the heavy wagon: it struck a rock, turned completely over in the air, and burst apart. One of the wheels came off its axle and rolled on down the gully out of sight. Caleb Cobb’s canoe, which had been on top of the load, smashed to bits. One mule broke its leg and had to be shot.

While Brognoli and several other Rangers were standing around the wreck, debating whether there was any hope of repairing the big wagon, Alchise, the half-breed scout, pointed to the north. All Call saw was an advancing cloud of dust—the troop took cover and prepared for battle, but the source of the dust turned out to be a herd of horses, about twenty in number, being driven by two white men and a Negro. One of the white men, a bulky fellow with a thick brown beard, was leading another horse, with two little girls on it. The little girls were about five or six; both were blond. They were a good deal scratched up, and looked scared. Neither of them spoke at all, though Sam and Brognoli tried to coax them down, and offered them biscuits. The three men looked as if they had been dipped in dust. They had clearly ridden fast and hard.

“Howdy, I’m Charlie Goodnight,” the large man said. “This is Bill and this is Bose.”

“Get down and take some coffee,” Caleb offered. “We’ve just had a wreck. My canoe is ruined and I don’t know what else.”

“No, we can’t pause,” Charles Goodnight said. “These girls were stolen two weeks ago, from down by Weatherford. Their parents will have no peace of mind until I return them.”

“They also ran off these horses,” the man said. “We had to race to catch up with the rascals.”

“At least you succeeded,” Caleb said. “Comanches took ‘em?”

“Yes, Kicking Wolf, he’s a clever thief,” Goodnight said. “What are you doing taking wagons across the baldies?”

“Why, ain’t you heard of us, Mr. Goodnight?” Caleb asked. By this time the whole troop had gathered around the travelers. “I’m Colonel Cobb. We’re the Texas-Santa Fe expedition, heading out towards New Mexico.”

“Why?” Goodnight asked bluntly. Call thought the man’s manner short to the point of rudeness. He wasn’t insolent, though—just blunt.

“Well, we mean to annex it,” Caleb said. “We may have to hang a few Mexicans in the process, but I expect we’ll soon whip ‘em back.”

“No, they’ll hang you—if you get there,” Goodnight said.

“Why wouldn’t we get there, sir?” Caleb asked, a little stung by the man’s brusque attitude.

“I doubt you know the way—that’s one reason,” Goodnight said. “There ain’t water enough between here and Santa Fe to keep this many horses alive. That’s two reasons.”

He rose in his saddle and pointed toward the escarpment, a thin line in the distance, with white clouds floating over it.

“That’s the caprock,” he said. “Once you’re on top of it there’s nothing.”

“Well, there has to be something,” Caleb said. “There’s grass, at least.”

“Yes sir, lots of grass,” Goodnight said. “I’ve rarely met the man who can live on grass, though, and I’ve rarely seen the horse that could travel five hundred miles without water.”

Caleb Cobb was stunned by the comment.

“Five hundred miles—are you sure?” he asked. “We thought it would be another hundred, at most.”

“That’s what I said to begin with,” Goodnight said. “You don’t know where you’re going.”

He turned and glanced at the three remaining wagons. The mules were exhausted from pulling the heavy wagons in and out of gullies —and Call could see that there seemed to be no end of gullies stretching west. Goodnight shook his head, and glanced back at the little girls, to see that they were all right.

“We would appreciate some biscuits,” he said. “These children ain’t eaten nothing but a few bites of rabbit, in the last day.”

“Give them what they need,” Caleb said. “Give them the biscuits and some bacon too.”

He looked back at the escarpment, clearly disturbed by Goodnight’s news.“I guess you don’t think much of our wagons, do you?” he asked.

“Them wagons would do fine to go to market in,” Goodnight said. “But you ain’t going to market. You’ll never get ‘em up the hill. You’ll have to take what you can carry and hope you find game.”

“Why, dammit, I was told there was a passage along the Red River,” Caleb said. “I was hoping we’d come to it tomorrow.”

Goodnight looked at him oddly, as if he were listening to a child.

“If you suppose you’re on the Red, then you’re worse lost than I thought,” Goodnight said. “This ain’t the Red, it’s the Big Wichita. The Red is a far piece ahead yet—I took back these horses just shy of the Red. You might make the Prairie Dog Fork of the Brazos, if you don’t jump no more cougars and lose no more mules.”

“You’re a wonder, sir—how did you know about the cougar?” Caleb asked.

“Tracks,” Goodnight said. “I ain’t blind. I’ve never met the mule yet that could tolerate cougars.”

Then he noticed Shadrach, standing by Matilda—Bigfoot was nearby.

“Why, Shad—are you a hundred yet?” he asked. “Hello, Miss Roberts.”

He tipped his hat, as did the cowboy named Bill and the Negro named Bose.

“I’m crowding it, Charlie,” Shadrach said.

“Hello, Wallace—why would you want to walk all the way to New Mexico to get hung?” Goodnight asked Bigfoot. “Ain’t there enough hang ropes in Texas for you?”

“I ain’t planning on no hanging, Charlie,” Bigfoot said. “I expect to fill my pockets with gold and silver and go back to Texas and buy a ranch.”

Goodnight nodded. “Oh, that’s it, is it?” he said. “You’re all out for booty, I guess. You’ve heard there are big chunks of gold and silver lying in the streets, I expect.”

“Well, we’ve heard minerals were plentiful,” Caleb said. Less and less did he like this blunt fellow, Charlie Goodnight—yet the man’s news, unwelcome as it was, was valuable, considering their situation. It was mortifying to be the leader of an expedition and discover that you were not even on the right river.

“There are minerals aplenty—in the governor’s vault,” Goodnight said. “He might open it for you and ask you to help yourselves,but I doubt it. That ain’t the way of governors—not the ones I’ve met.”

There was silence throughout the troop. Goodnight was not particularly likable, but few of the men could doubt that he knew what he was talking about. If he said they were putting themselves in danger of starvation only to run the risk of being hanged upon arrival, it well might be true.

“It’s a marvel that you rode off and got your horses back, Mr. Goodnight,” Caleb said. “We’ve not had much luck pursuing the red boys. If there’s a special method you use I’d appreciate it if you’d tell us what it is—it could be that we’ll lose stock, and we can’t afford to.”

“No, you can’t, you’ll have to eat most of these horses, I expect,” Goodnight said.

He looked at the solemn group of men, some of them with hopes still high for adventure and booty in New Mexico. Not for the first time, he was impressed by the folly of men.

“How’d you get ‘em back, sir?” Caleb asked again.

“Well, they were my horses,” Goodnight said. “I’ll be damned if I’ll give up twenty horses to Kicking Wolf, not without a chase.

“Pardon me for cussing, Miss Roberts,” he said, again tipping his hat.

“The only way to get horses back from Indians is to outrun them —it’s why I try to stay well mounted,” he went on. “We caught them near the Red. There were four warriors and these children. We killed two warriors, but Kicking Wolf and his brother got away.”

Sam handed him a little packet of biscuits, and some meat.

“Thank you,” Goodnight said. “These young ladies have been too scared to eat. But they ain’t hurt—I expect they’ll get hungry one of these days.”

“They’re pretty girls—I hope they eat,” Sam said. “I have a little jelly saved—plum jelly. Maybe it will tempt them.”

He handed Goodnight a small jar of jelly—Goodnight looked at it and put it in his saddlebag.

“If it don’t tempt the young ladies it will sure tempt me,” he said. Then he looked again at Caleb Cobb.

“If you make the Red and any of them wagons still have the wheels on them, stick to the river and follow it west. There’s a place called the Narrows, where you might get through.““Angosturas,” Alchise said, nodding.

“Yes, that’s what the Mexicans call it,” Goodnight said. “I call it the Narrows.”

Then he tipped his hat to Matilda a third time. *‘Let’s go, Bose,” he said.

Soon the cloud of dust from the twenty horses was floating over the gullies to the south. >

“Charlie Goodnight’s salty,” Bigfoot observed.

“I agree,” Caleb said.

CALEB COBB RODE ALONE most of that day, accompanied only by his Irish dog. If he was disturbed to discover that he was not on the river he thought he was on, he didn’t express it. Nonetheless, the troop was uneasy. There was little talk. Each man rode along, alone with his thoughts. Gus tried once or twice to discuss the situation with Call, but Call didn’t answer. He was trying to push down the feeling that the whole expedition was foolish. They didn’t even know which river they were on, and their commander’s estimation of the distance they had to travel was off by hundreds of miles. They had already lost several men and most of their wagons; they had killed and eaten the last of their beeves. If there was any game in the area, no one could spot it.

“I despise poor planning,” he said.

Gus, though, was feeling frisky. He could not stay in low spirits long, not when the day was fine and the country glorious.

“Why, you can see a hundred miles, if you stand up in your stirrups,” he said. “I prefer it to the trees, myself.

“For one thing, Indians can hide in the trees,” he added.

“They hid pretty well out beyond the Pecos, and there wasn’t no trees out there,” Call reminded him. “There could be a hundred of them watching us right now and you’ll never see them.”

“Oh, shut up, you always think the worst,” Gus said, annoyed by his friend’s pessimistic nature. All he wanted to do was enjoy a fine afternoon on the prairies. He did not want to have to consider that there might be a hundred Indians in hiding in the next gully, or any gully. All he wanted was to enjoy the gallop out to New Mexico—it took the pleasure out of adventure to always be worrying, as his friend did.

Call was not the only one in the company who was worried, though. That night Bes-Das and Alchise disappeared, taking six horses.

“I guess they didn’t want to be shot down like Falconer was,” Bigfoot said. “Caleb’s too quick to flare. It ain’t good leading to be shooting down people we might need.”

“I don’t guess we’re any worse off than we were,” Long Bill pointed out. “Those two were lost anyway. That fellow Goodnight is about the only man who knows his way around, out in these parts.”

Two more wagons were lost between the Prairie Dog Fork of the Brazos and the wide pans of the Red River. Caleb put all the ammunition in the one wagon and told the men to keep only such gear as they could carry on their horses. That night they ate catfish—the river was low and some of the fish were trapped in shallow ponds. The men sharpened willow sticks into crude spears. More than fifty sizable fish were taken, cooked, and devoured, and yet the men went to bed unsatisfied.

“Eating fish is like eating air,” Jimmy Tweed observed. “It goes in but it don’t fill you up.”

Once they passed through the Narrows the great plain spread west before them. Though they had been on the prairie for weeks, none of them were prepared for the way the sky and the earth seemed to widen, once they rose onto the Llano Estacado. After a day or two on the llano the meaning of distance seemed changed. The great plain, silent and endless, became the world. In relation to the plain, they felt like ants. The smaller world of towns andcreeks and clumps of forest seemed difficult to remember. At night on the llano, with the sky a star-strewn plain of darkness overhead, Gus tried to keep Clara in mind, but the thought that he had fallen in love with a girl, in a dusty little general store in Austin, had come to seem far away and insubstantial, like the dust motes that had floated down the sunbeams in the store. The girl and the store had been for the day—the great plain was forever.

The whole troop was dismayed by the stretch of empty land ahead. If the Indians fell upon them when they were on the llano, what chance could they have?

Bigfoot had been made chief of scouts. He took Gus and Call with him when he rode out every day. Gus he took mainly for his eyesight. It was generally acknowledged that Gus could see farther and more accurately than anyone in the troop. Call he took for his steadiness; Call didn’t flinch from trouble.

On their third day on the plain, they saw that there was a difference in the horizon ahead. None of them, though, could puzzle the difference out. The clouds seemed closer to the surface of the ground. Gus was the first to note something strange: not far ahead, a hawk had dived at a rabbit or a quail, and yet the hawk didn’t swoop on its prey and lift it. The hawk kept going, as if it had dived into a hole.

Ten minutes later they came to the lip of the Palo Duro Canyon, and the mystery was explained. The hawk hadn’t dived into a hole; it had dived into the canyon, which looked to be several miles across, and so many miles long that they couldn’t see the western end of it. Hundreds of feet below them buffalo were feeding in long grass.

“Hurrah, we found the bufs,” Gus said. “Let’s climb down and shoot some—maybe the Colonel will promote us.”

“He won’t, because you’ll break your neck going down, and even if you don’t you’ll never get back up, not carrying no buffalo meat,” Bigfoot said.

“I’ve heard about this canyon,” he said, a little later. “I just had no idea we were close by.”

He sent Call racing back to inform the company—he and Gus stayed, to explore the canyon wall and see if there was a way down. The sight of the grazing buffalo reminded him that he was hungryfor meat—mush and Red River catfish didn’t fill you like buffalo ribs.

While loping southeast toward the camp they had just left not long before, Call’s horse suddenly jumped sideways, so violently that Call lost his seat and was thrown high and hard. He managed to hang on to his bridle rein, but he landed on his head and shoulders so hard that his vision blurred for a moment. As it cleared he saw something white, nearby. In a moment, he realized that the white thing that had spooked his horse was the body of a man. At first he thought it might be one of the Rangers, out for a ride or a hunt. The man had been shot, scalped, stripped, and mutilated. Someone had hacked into his chest cavity and taken out his vitals. Call looked closely at the face, which was the face of a stranger. He didn’t think it belonged to anyone in the troop. The man had not a stitch of clothes on. There was no way to identify him. Call felt his neck, which was cold.

Even so, his killer or killers might be close by. Call drew his pistol, just in case, and mounted cautiously. Just as he did he saw movement out of the corner of his eye: three Comanches and their horses seemed to rise up, out of the bare earth, only a hundred yards away. Call spurred his horse, and bent low as she raced. He knew his only chance was to run. To his relief, Buffalo Hump was not one of his pursuers. The troop was probably not more than five miles back, and he was on Betsy, a fleet sorrel mare. Betsy was one of the fastest horses in camp, and her wind was excellent. Yet before he had been running a minute, Call realized that the Comanches were gaining. Their horses were no faster than Betsy, but they knew the land better—it was the same thing he had felt west of the Pecos. They took advantage of every roll and dip. The lead warrior had a bow and arrow, and he was closing. To his left Call spotted something he had seen on the way up: a large prairie-dog town. Without hesitation he pointed Betsy toward it. It was a risk—the mare might step in one of the holes, in which case it would all be over, but it was a risk for the Comanches, too. Maybe they would slow down —he himself had no intention of slowing. If luck was with him he might race through the town and gain a few yards. He had to try it.

At the approach of the racing mare, prairie dogs throughout the town whistled and darted into their holes. Betsy kicked up dust from the edge of more than one hole, but she wove through the town without slowing. Even so, Call didn’t gain much. The Comanches, too, avoided the holes. Just as he cleared the prairie-dog town, Call felt something nudge his arm and looked down to see an arrow sticking in his left arm, just above the elbow. He had not felt the arrow go in, and had no time to pay attention to it. He spurred Betsy, urging her to even more speed, and seemed, for the space of a mile, to gain a little on the Indians. No more arrows flew. Yet when he dared glance back, he saw that he wasn’t gaining. The Comanches were racing abreast, and they were still almost within arrow range.

Call turned and fired his pistol at them once, but the shot had no effect. Now he was racing along the edge of a little bluff some fifteen feet high—ahead, the bluff gradually sloped off, but Call couldn’t wait for the slope. He put Betsy over the edge; she just managed to keep her feet when she hit, and he just managed to keep his seat. At once he heard a buzzing. Betsy began to jump and dance. Call looked around, and saw rattlesnakes everywhere. He had jumped to the edge of a den. It seemed to him that at least a hundred snakes surrounded him—they had been sunning themselves on the rocky slope: the abrupt arrival of a horse and rider startled them. Now they were buzzing in chorus. A shot came from above, but it zinged off a rock. Call put spurs to Betsy again—he couldn’t worry about the snakes—he would be dead anyway, if he didn’t run.

Seeing the snakes, the Comanches chose to lose ground and not risk the jump. But they were racing along a short decline and would soon be trying to overtake him. When he ran over the next ridge Call saw the troop—there they were, but they still seemed miles away, and the Comanches had returned to the pursuit. They were a hundred yards back, but he knew they would close with him before he could make the troop, unless he was very lucky. They had fanned out now. Two were trying to flank him on his right, while the third was directly behind him. Betsy was running flat out: so far her wind had held. Call debated the wisdom of shooting off his pistol, in the hope that someone in the troop would hear it and rush to his aid. It was a point of tactics he had not thought out in advance. If he fired, he would soon have an empty pistol.

He kept the pistol ready, but didn’t fire. He thought he could kill one Indian, anyway, if there was a close fight. Perhaps he would wound another. If the third man got him, at least he would have made a strong struggle.

Then he heard rifle shots from just ahead of him, where two or three trees bordered a little stream. A doe came bounding through the trees, so close that Betsy almost collided with it. Call skirted the spring and saw Long Bill Coleman ahead—he had been chasing the doe. He had shot once and was just reloading. He was startled to see Call, but even more startled to see the Comanches. Although the odds had altered, the Comanches were still coming.

“Oh, boy, where’s that damn Blackie when we need him?” Long Bill said, wheeling his horse. “He rode out with me but he thought the doe was too puny to bother about.”

An arrow dropped between them, and then two gunshots came from behind, one of which nicked Call’s hat brim. They raced on, hoping someone in the troop would hear the shooting and respond—it was awhile before they realized the Comanches were no longer chasing them. When they pulled up and looked back, they saw that the three Comanches, having missed the scalps, had taken the small doe instead. One of them had just slung the carcass onto his horse.

“Oh boy, I’m winded,” Long Bill said. “I was just trying to kill a little meat. I sure wasn’t looking for no Indian fight.”

Call remembered that Gus and Bigfoot were alone, at the lip of the great canyon. The three men who chased them might have been part of a larger party. With so many buffalo grazing in the canyon, it was likely more Indians were about.

Caleb Cobb was enjoying a long cigar when Call raced up: he seemed more interested in Betsy than in the news.

“I come close to choosing that little mare for myself,” he said. “I expect it’s lucky for you that I didn’t. I think Mr. Bigfoot Wallace made a good point when he said it’s horseflesh that usually makes the difference in Indian fighting.”

“Colonel, there’s hundreds of buffalo down in that canyon,” Call said. “There might be more Indians, too.”

“All right, we’re off to the rescue,” Caleb said. “We’ll take about ten men. Me and Jeb will come too. It’s a fine morning for a fracas.”

Call had forgotten to mention the dead man. He had had only a moment to look at him, before the Comanches attacked. When he told the Colonel about it, the Colonel shrugged.“Likely just a traveler who took the long route,” he said. “Traveling alone in this part of the country is generally foolhardy.” “I wouldn’t do it for seventy dollars,” Long Bill observed. Shadrach had been napping when Call arrived. The change in the old mountain man surprised everyone: from being independent, stern, and a little frightening, even when he was in a good temper, he had become aged. Though Call had always known that Shadrach was old, he had not thought of him that way until they crossed the Brazos; now, though, it was impossible to think of him any other way. He had once wandered off alone for days; now, when he left camp to hunt, he was always back in a few hours. He sometimes dozed, even when on horseback. Unless directly addressed, he spoke only to Matilda.

The news that they were near the Palo Duro Canyon seemed to take years off Shadrach, though—at once he was mounted, his long rifle out of its scabbard.

“I’ve heard of it all my life, now I aim to see it,” Shadrach said. Then he turned to Matilda.

“If it’s safe, then I’ll come and get you, Matty,” he said, before loping off.

Sam took a hasty look at Call’s arrow wound, broke off the arrow shaft and cut the arrow free. Call was impatient—he didn’t regard the wound as serious: he wanted to be off. But Sam made him wait while he dressed the wound correctly, and the Colonel, though mounted, waited with no show of impatience.

“I want Corporal Call to be well doctored,” he said. “We can’t afford to have him sick.”

Call led them to the dead man, whom Shadrach recognized. “It’s Roy Char—he was a mining man,” Shadrach said. “I don’t know what there could be to mine, out in this country,” Caleb said.

“Roy was after that old gold,” Shadrach said.

“What old gold?” Caleb asked. “If there’s a bunch of old gold around here we ought to find it and forget about New Mexico.”

“Some big Spaniard came marching through here in the old times,” Shadrach said. “They say he found a town that was made of gold. I guess Roy figured some of it might still be around here, somewhere.”

“Oh, Senor Coronado, you mean,” Caleb said. “He didn’t find no city of gold—all he found was a lot of poor Indians. Your friend Mr. Char lost his life for nothing. The gold ain’t here.”

The canyon was there, though. They buried Roy Char hastily, and rode along the rim of the canyon until they found Gus and Bigfoot, hiding in a small declivity behind some thorny bushes. Both had their rifles at the ready.

“What took you all day?” Gus asked—he was badly annoyed by the fact that he had had to cower behind a bush for an hour, while he waited for Call to bring up the troop.

“I got an arrow in my arm, but it wasn’t as bad as what happened to a man we just buried,” Call said.

“You could be burying us—and you would have if we hadn’t been quick to hide,” Bigfoot told them. “There’s fifty or sixty Indians down below us—I wish you’d brought the whole troop.”

“Well, we can fetch the troop,” Caleb said. “I doubt those Indians can ride up this cliff and scalp us all.”

“No, but it’s their canyon,” Bigfoot reminded him. “They might know a trail.”

Caleb walked out on a little promontory, and looked down. He saw a good number of Indians, butchering buffalo. Six buffalo were down, at least.

“If they know a trail I hope they show it to us,” Caleb said, coming back. “We’d ride down and harvest a few of them buffalo ourselves.”

“There could be a thousand Indians around here,” Bigfoot said. “I ain’t putting myself in no place where I have to climb to get away from Indians. They might be better climbers than I am.”

“You’re right, but I hate to pass up the meat,” Caleb said.

Nonetheless, they did pass it up. The troop was brought forward and proceeded west, along the edge of the canyon. They were never out of sight of buffalo—or Indians. Quartermaster Brognoli, who believed in numbers—so many boots, so many rifles, so many sacks of flour—counted over three hundred tribesmen in the canyon, most of them engaged in cutting up buffalo. Call and Gus both kept looking into the canyon—the distance was so vast that it drew the eye. Both strained their eyes to see if they could spot Buffalo Hump, but they didn’t see him.

“He’s there, though,” Gus said. “I feel him.”

“You can’t feel an Indian who’s miles away,” Call said.

“I can,” Gus affirmed, without explanation.

“He could be five hundred miles from here—:there are thousands of Indians,” Call reminded him.

“I can feel him,” Gus insisted. “I get hot under the ribs when he’s around. Don’t you ever get hot under the ribs?”

“Not unless I’ve eaten putrid beef,” Call said. Twice on the trip he had eaten putrid beef, and his system had revolted.

The night was moonless, which worried Caleb Cobb somewhat and worried Bigfoot more. The horses were kept within a corral of ropes, and guard was changed every hour. Caleb called the men together in the evening, and made a little speech.

“We’ve come too far to go back,” he said. “We’re bound for Santa Fe. But the Indians know we’re here, and they’re clever horse thieves. We have to watch close. We won’t get across this long prairie if we lose our horses—the red boys will tag after us and pick us off like chickens.”

Despite the speech and the intensified guard, the remuda was twenty horses short when dawn came. None of the guards had nodded or closed an eye, either. Caleb Cobb was fit to be tied.

“How could they get off with twenty horses and not one of us hear them?” he asked. Brognoli kept walking around the horse herd, counting and recounting. For awhile he was sure the count was wrong—it wasn’t easy to count horses when they were bunched together. He counted and recounted until Caleb lost his temper and ordered him to stop.

“The damn horses are gone!” he said. “They’re forty miles away by now, most likely. You can’t count them because they’re gone!”

“I expect it was Kicking Wolf,” Bigfoot said. “He could steal horses out of a store.”

“If I could catch the rascal I’d tie him to a horse’s tail and let the horse kick him to death,” Caleb said. “Since his name is Kicking Wolf it would be appropriate if the son of a bitch got kicked to death.”

With the night’s theft, the horse situation became critical. Three men were totally without mounts, and no man had more than one horse. To make matters worse, Tom, Matilda’s big grey, was one of the horses that had been stolen. She was now afoot. Matilda cried all morning. She had a fondness for Tom. The sight of Matilda crying unnerved the whole camp. Since taking up with Shadrachr

Matilda had raged less—everyone noted her mildness. But watching such a large woman cry was a trial to the spirit. It fretted Shadrach so that he grew restless and rode out of camp, over Matilda’s protests.

“Now he’ll go off and get killed,” Matilda said.

“Well, if you hush up that crying, maybe he’ll come back,” Long Bill said. He was one of the men who was afoot, and as a result, was in a sour mood. The prospect of walking to Santa Fe, across such a huge plain, did not appeal to him—but the thought of walking back to Austin didn’t appeal to him, either. He had seen what had just happened to the mining man, Roy Char. He was determined to stay with the troop, even if it meant blisters on his feet.

Call and Gus had both been on guard, in the darkest part of the night. Call felt shamed by the thought that he had not been keen enough to prevent the theft.

“Why, I wasn’t sleepy a bit,” Gus said. “It couldn’t have happened on our watch. I can hear a rat move, when I’m that wide awake.”

“You might could hear a rat, but you didn’t hear the Indians and you didn’t hear the horses leaving, either,” Call told him.

That night Call, Bigfoot, and a number of other guards periodically put their ear to the ground to listen. All they heard was the tramp of their own horses in the rope corral. In addition to the rope, most of the horses had been hobbled, so they couldn’t bolt. . Call and Gus had the watch just before sunrise. They moved in circles around the herd, meeting every five minutes. Call was certain no Indians were there. It was only when dawn came that he had a moment of uncertainty. He saw the beginnings of the sunrise—the light was yellow as flame. But the yellow light was in the west, and dawn didn’t come from the west.

A second later Bigfoot saw it too, and yelled loud enough to wake the whole camp.

“That ain’t the sunrise, boys!” he yelled.

Just as he said it, Call saw movement to the north. Two Indians had sneaked in and slipped the hobbles on several horses. Call threw off a shot, but it was still very dark—he could no longer see anything to the north.

“Damn it all, they got away again,” he said. “I don’t know how many horses they got away with, this time.““Don’t matter now, we’ve got to head back to that last creek,” Bigfoot said.

“Why?” Call asked, startled.

Bigfoot merely pointed west, where the whole horizon was yellow.

“That ain’t sunrise,” he said, in a jerky voice. “That’s fire.”

THE TROOP HAD NO sooner turned to head back south toward the little creek Bigfoot mentioned when they saw the same yellow glow on the prairie south of them. The flames to the west were already noticeably closer. Bigfoot wheeled his mount, and rode up to Caleb.

“They set it,” he said. “The Comanches. They waited till the wind was right. Now we have the canyon at our backs and prairie fires on two sides.”

“Three,” Caleb said, pointing west, where there was another fierce glow.

The whole troop immediately discerned the nature of their peril. Call looked at Gus, who tried to appear nonchalant.

“We’ll have to burn or we’ll have to jump,” Call said. “I hate the thought of burning most, I guess.”

Gus looked into the depths of the canyon—he was only twenty feet from its edge. The prairie now was a great ring of burning grass. Though he sat calmly on his horse, waiting for Bigfoot and the Colonel to decide what to do, inside he felt the same deep churning that he had felt beyond the Pecos. The Indians were superior to them in their planning. They would always lay some clever trap.

“Ride, boys,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s try the west—it’s our best chance.”

Soon the whole troop was fleeing, more than twenty of the men mounted double for lack of horses. Shadrach took Matilda on behind him—he rode right along the canyon edge, looking for a way down.

“I believe we could climb down afoot,” he told Caleb. “If we can get a little ways down, we won’t burn. There’s nothing to burn, on those cliffs.”

Caleb stopped a minute, to appraise the fire. The ring had now been closed. With every surge of wind the fire seemed to leap toward them, fifty yards at a leap. The prairie grass was tall—flames shot twenty and thirty feet in the air.

“The damn fiends,” Caleb said. “Maybe we can start a backfire, and get it stopped. I’ve heard that can be done.”

“No time, and the wind’s wrong,” Bigfoot said. “I think Shad’s right. We’re going to have to climb a ways down.”

Caleb hesitated. It might be the only good strategy, but it meant abandoning their mounts. There was no trail a horse could go down. They might survive the fire, but then what? They would be on the bald prairie—no horses, no supplies, no water. How long would it take the Comanches to pick them off?

The troop huddled around Bigfoot and their commander. All eyes were turned toward the fire, and all eyes were anxious. The flames were advancing almost at loping speed. They were only three hundred yards away. The men could hear the dry grass crackle as it took flame. When the wind surged there was a roar, as the flames were sucked into the sky.

Call felt bitter that their commander had had no more forethought than to bring them to such an exposed place. Nothing about the expedition had been well planned. Of course, no one would have imagined that the Indians could steal horses at will, frorn such a tight guard. But now they were caught: he imagined Buffalo Hump, somewhere on the other side of the flames, his lance in his hand, waiting to come in and take some scalps.

Caleb Cobb waited until the flames were one hundred yards away to make his decision. He waited, hoping to spot a break in the flames, something they might race through. But there was no break in the flames—the Indians who set the fire had done an expert job. The ring of flames grew tighter every minute. General Lloyd, drunk as usual, was shivering and shaking, although the heat from the great fire was already close enough to be felt.

“We’re done for now—we’ll cook,” he said.

“No, but we will have to climb down this damn cliff,” Caleb said, turning his horse toward the canyon’s edge. No sooner had he turned than he heard a gunshot—General Phil Lloyd had taken out his revolver and shot himself in the head. His body hung halfway off his horse, one foot caught in a stirrup.

The horses were beginning to be hard to restrain, jumping and pitching, their nostrils flaring. Two or three men were thrown— one horse raced straight into the flames.

“Let’s go boys—keep your guns and get over the edge, as best you can,” Caleb yelled.

To Gus’s relief the canyon walls were not as sheer as they had first looked. There were drop-offs of a hundred feet and more, but there were also humps and ledges, and inclines not too steep to negotiate. The Irish dog went down at a run, his tail straight in the air. Before the men had scrambled thirty feet down there was another tragedy: the horses were in panic now—some raced into the flames, but others raced straight off into the canyon. Some hit ledges, but most rolled once or twice and fell into the void. One of the leaping horses fell straight down now on Dakluskie, the leader of the Missourians. Several of the Rangers saw the horse falling, but Dakluskie didn’t. He was crushed before he could look up. The horse kept rolling, taking Dakluskie with it. General Lloyd’s horse made the longest leap of all—he flew over the group and fell out of sight, General Lloyd’s body still dangling from the stirrup.

“Oh God, look there!” Gus said, pointing across the canyon. “Look at them—where are they going?”

Not all of the men could afford to look—some of them clung to small bushes, or balanced on narrow ledges in terror. Over them the fire roared right to the edge of the canyon; the heat made all of them sweat, although they were cold with fear.

Call looked, though, and so did Caleb Cobb. At first Call thought it was goats, creeping along the face of the cliff across the canyon. Just as he looked, a ledge crumbled under Black Sam—Call saw a startled look on Sam’s face, as he fell. He did not cry out.

“My God, look at them!” Caleb said.

Across the canyon, on a trail so narrow that they had to proceed single file, a party of fifty Comanches were moving west. It seemed from across the great distance that the Comanches were walking on air.

In the lead was Buffalo Hump, with the lance Gus had imagined in his fear.

“Look at them!” Bigfoot said. “Are they flying?”

“No, it’s a trail,” Shadrach told him. He was on a tiny ledge of rock, with Matilda. He shushed her like a child, hoping to keep her from making a foolish movement.

“What if the fire don’t stop?” Matilda asked, looking upward. She had always been scared of fire; now she could not stop trembling. She expected flames to curl over the edge of the canyon and come down and burn her shirt. She had such a horror of her clothes being on fire that she began to take her shirt off.

“What … stop that!” Shadrach said, one eye on Matilda and the other eye on the Comanches.

“No, I have to get this shirt off, I don’t want to burn up in it,” Matilda said, and she half undressed on the small ledge.

Call could look up and see flames at the canyon’s edge, but he knew Matilda’s fear was unfounded. Ash from the burning prairie floated down on them, but the fire was not going to curl over. He kept watching the Indians across the Palo Duro. It did seem that their horses were walking delicately, on the air itself.

“Can you see a trail—you’ve got those keen eyes?” Call asked Gus.

Gus himself had to squint—smoke was floating over the canyon now, from the fire. But when he looked close he could see that the Indians weren’t flying. Buffalo Hump was picking his way slowly, a step at a time, along a small trail.

“He ain’t flying, there’s a trail,” he said. “But if any man could fly I expect it would be that rascal. It felt like he was flying that night he chased me.”

“I don’t care if they’re flying or walking,” Caleb said—he was clinging to a small bush. “I’d be happier if they were going in the other direction—it looks like they’re flanking us.”

Just then the dentist, Elihu Carson, lost his balance and began to roll downward.

“Grab his foot!” Call yelled to Long Bill, who was nearest the falling man. Long Bill grabbed but missed by an inch or less. His own situation was so precarious that he did not dare lean farther. The dentist bounced off a boulder and flew out of sight, screeching loudly as he vanished.

“We’ll have to take care, now, and not get no toothaches,” Bigfoot said, his eyes still on the file of Indians across the canyon, who seemed to be walking on air.

WHEN THE RANGERS CRAWLED back out of the canyon, the prairie was black and smouldering, as far as anyone could see. Here and there a little bush, a cactus or a pack rat’s den still showed a trace of flame. Several dead horses were in sight; the gear the men had dumped smouldered like the rats’ dens. Young Tommy Spencer was sobbing loudly. Dakluskie had been his only relative. Black Sam was gone, and the dentist—Brognoli had been kicked in the neck by a falling horse, and sat glassy eyed. His head was set at an odd angle; from time to time his head seemed to jerk, backward and forward, quickly. He couldn’t speak, though whether from fear or injury no one yet knew.

Much of the extra ammunition had exploded. This surprised everybne, because no one could remember having heard an explosion. By hasty count more than twenty men were missing, fallen unobserved. In view of the fact that at least fifty Indians were to the west of them, not to mention the armies of Santa Fe, the loss of the ammunition was a grave problem. Various of the men commented apprehensively on this fact, but Bigfoot Wallace merely smiled.

“I ain’t worried about bullets, yet,” he said. “We’re afoot, and there ain’t many water holes. We’ll probably starve before we can find anybody to shoot.”

Caleb Cobb’s Irish dog, Jeb, had gone so far down the cliff that he could not get back up. He was crouched more than a hundred feet below on a small ledge, in danger of falling off down a sheer cliff at any moment.

“I’ve either got to shoot him or rescue him,” Caleb said. “Any volunteers for a dog rescue?”

The troop was silent—the thought of going over the edge again, just to rescue a dog that no one but Caleb liked, did not appeal.

“I’ll make the man a sergeant who’ll rescue my damn dog,” Caleb said.

“I’ll do it,” Gus said, at once. He was thinking of Clara Forsythe when he said it. The dog’s dilemma had presented him with a golden opportunity to get ahead of Call. Once ahead, in the race for rank, he meant to stay ahead. Clara would probably hurry to kiss him, if he came back from the trip a sergeant. Corporal Call wouldn’t loom so large—not then.

Call was startled by his friend’s foolish offer. There was no footing around the dog at all—just a tiny ledge. There was not a bush or a tree within twenty feet of the dog—there was nothing to hold on to. Besides that, the dog was big.

“Gus, don’t do it,” Call said. “You’ll go on over, like the dentist.”

But Gus was in a reckless mood, emboldened by the thought of how proud Clara would be of him, when he returned a sergeant. It was a steep stretch between him and the dog, but he had been over the edge of the canyon once and had survived. No doubt he could survive again.

“Somebody tie a rope to me,” he said. “That’ll be safe enough— unless all the ropes burnt up.”

Call and Long Bill quickly poked through the smouldering baggage, using their rifle barrels to turn the hot rags and smoking blankets. They found three horsehide ropes that, though charred, were not burnt through. Call inspected them carefully, inch by inch, to see if there were any weak spots in the rawhide. He found none.

“I still think it’s foolish,” he said, as he carefully tied the ropestogether. Even with all three ropes knotted into one, it still looked short to him. Every time he looked over the edge of the canyon the dog seemed farther away. The dog had brayed himself out. He lay flat on the ledge now, his head on his paws. His tail stuck over the chasm.

Six Rangers, Call at the front, held the end of the rope and lowered Gus slowly over the canyon rim. In places there were bushes he could hold on to. Caleb Cobb stood at the edge of the canyon, supervising the operation.

“The point about heights is that you don’t want to look down, Corporal,” he said. “Just look at the dirt in front of you.”

Gus took the advice. He studiously kept his eyes on the cliff wall, reaching down carefully, a foot at a time. Though he didn’t look down, he did look up, and immediately felt a serious flutter in his stomach. The rim above him seemed halfway to the sky. He could not even see the men who were holding the rope. He knew they were trustworthy men, but it would have reassured him to see them.

Suddenly he remembered the Comanches, the ones who had seemed to walk on air. What if they crossed the canyon and attacked? The men would drop him for sure—they’d have to.

“Lower me faster,” he said. “I’m anxious to get back.”

When Gus was within fifteen yards of the dog, the dog began to whine and scratch. He knew Gus was coming to rescue him—but the rope didn’t quite reach, and the stretch between the dog and Gus was stony and steep. Gus began to feel fear rising. If the men lost their hold, or if he slipped trying to grab the dog, he would fall hundreds of feet and be dead. He wanted the promotion, and he wanted Clara’s love—yet his fear rose and swallowed the feelings that had caused him to volunteer.

A moment later, he came to the last foothold and saw that he was beaten: the rope was just too short.

“Colonel, can’t you call him?” Gus yelled—“I can’t go no lower —maybe he can come up a ways.”

Caleb Cobb gave a holler, and the dog began to scramble up.

“Ho, Jeb! Ho, Jeb!” Caleb yelled.

The dog made a frantic effort to scramble back up the cliff. He lunged upward just enough that Gus could grab its thick collar. But the weight of the dog was an immediate shock—the dog weighed as much as a small man. When Gus tried to lift the dog by its collar, Call was almost dragged over the edge—Bigfoot caught his belt, or he might have slipped off.

The weight of the dog cost Gus his narrow foothold. He swung free, into space, holding the dog’s collar with one hand. Then, to his horror, he began to swivel. The rope was tied to his belt—the weight of the dog caused him to turn in the air. In a moment his head was pointed down and his legs were waving above him.

“Pull, pull!” he yelled. When he opened his eyes, the world swirled. One moment he would be facing the cliff, the next he would be looking into space. Once, when he twisted, two buzzards flew right by him, so close he felt the beat of their wings in the air.

Then, in a moment, the dog dropped, gone so quickly that he didn’t even bark. Gus still had the collar in his hand—the dog’s skinny head had slipped out. Gus twisted and twisted, as the men pulled him up. He lost consciousness; when he came to he was flat on his back, looking up at the great sky. Call and Bigfoot and Long Bill stood over him—the dog’s collar was still tightly gripped in his hand. He reached up and handed it to Caleb Cobb, who took it, scowling.

“No promotion, Corporal,” Caleb said. “I wanted the dog, not the collar.”

Then he walked away.

“Just be glad you’re back on solid earth,” Bigfoot said.

“I’m glad, all right—real glad,” Gus said.

THE BURNED PRAIRIE RINGED the canyon for five miles — the Rangers had to huddle where they were all day, lest the burnt grass damage their boots.

“Some of our horses might have made it out,” Gus said. “I doubt they all burnt.”

“Buffalo Hump will have taken the ones that lived,” Bigfoot said. “We’ve got to depend on our own feet now. I’m lucky I got big ones.”

“I ain’t got big ones,” Johnny Carthage said, apprehensively. “I ain’t even got but one leg that’s like it ought to be. How far is it we got to walk before we find the Mexicans?”

No one answered his question, because no one knew.

“I expect it’s a far piece yet,” Long Bill said. “Long enough that we’ll get dern thirsty unless we find a creek.”

Most of the men squatted or sat, looking at the blackened plain. In the space of a morning they had been put in serious peril. The thought of water was on every man’s mind. Even with horses it had sometimes been hard to find waterholes. On foot they might stumble for days, or until they dropped, looking for water. Caleb Cobb was still very angry over the loss of his dog. He sat on the edge of the canyon, his legs dangling, saying nothing to nobody. The men were afraid to approach him, and yet they all knew that a decision had to be made soon. They couldn’t just sit where they were, with no food and almost no water—some of the men had canteens, but many didn’t. Many had relied on leather pouches, which had burnt or burst in the fire.

Finally, after three hours, Caleb stood up.

“Well, we’re no worse off than old Coronado,” he said, and started walking west. The men followed slowly, afraid of scorching themselves. The plain was dotted with wands of smoke, drifting upward from smouldering plants. Call was not far behind Caleb— he saw Caleb reach down and pick up a charred jackrabbit that had been crisped coming out of its hole. Caleb pulled a patch of burned skin off the rabbit and ate a few bites of rabbit meat, as he walked. Looking back, he noticed that Call was startled. “We’re going to have to eat anything we can scratch up now, Corporal,” he said. “You better be looking for a rabbit yourself.”

Not ten minutes later, Call saw another dead rabbit. He picked it up by its leg and carried it with him—he did not feel hungry enough to eat a scorched rabbit; not yet. Gus, still weak from his scare, saw him pick it up.

“What’s the jackrabbit for?” he asked.

“It’s to eat,” Call said. “The Colonel ate one. He says we have to eat anything we can find, now. It’s a long way to where we can get grub.”

“I mean to find something better than a damn rabbit,” Gus said. “I might find a deer or an antelope, if I look hard.”

“You better take what you can get!” Bigfoot advised. “I’m looking for a burnt polecat, myself. Polecat meat is tastier than rabbit.”

A little later he came upon five dead horses; evidently they had run into a wall of fire and died together. Call’s little bay was one of them—remembering how the horse had towed him across the Brazos made him sad; even sadder was the fact that the charred ground ended only a hundred yards from where the horses lay. A little more speed, or a shift in the wind, and they might have made it through.“Why are we walking off from this meat?” Shadrach asked. He wore moccasins—the passage through the hot plains had been an ordeal for him. Matilda Roberts half carried him, as it was. But Shadrach had kept his head—most of the men were so shocked by the loss of the horses and the terrible peril of the fire that they merely trudged along, heads down, unable to think ahead.

Caleb Cobb wheeled, and pulled out his big knife.

“You’re right,” he said. “We got horse meat, and it’s already cooked. That’s good, since we lost our cook.”

He looked at the weary troop and smiled.

“It’s every man for himself now, boys,” he said. “Carve off what you can carry, and let’s proceed.”

Call carved off a sizable chunk of haunch—not from his bay, but from another horse. Gus whittled a little on a gelding’s rump, but it was clear his heart was not in the enterprise.

“You better do what the Colonel said,” Call said. “You’ll be begging for mine, in a day or two.”

“I don’t expect I will,” Gus said. “I’ve still got my mind on a deer.”

“What makes you think you could hit a deer, if you saw one?” Call asked. “It’s open out here. A deer could see you before you got anywhere near gunshot range.”

“You worry too much,” Gus said. At the moment, meat was not what was on his mind. Caleb Cobb’s treachery in denying him the promotion was what was on his mind. He had gone over the edge of the canyon and taken the risk. Suppose his belt had slipped off, like the dog’s collar? He would be dead, and all for a dog’s sake. It was poor commanding, in Gus’s view. He had been the only man who volunteered—he ought to have been promoted on that score alone. He had been proud to be a corporal, for awhile, but now it seemed a petty title, considering the hardship that was involved.

While he was thinking of the hardship, an awful thought occurred to him. They were now on the open plain, walking through waist-high grass. The canyon was already several miles behind them.

But where the Comanches were, no one knew. The Indians could be drawing a circle around them, even as they walked. If they fired the grass again, there would be no canyon to hide them. They had no horses, and even horses had not been able to outrun the fire.

“What if they set another fire, Woodrow?” Gus asked. “We’d be fried like that jackrabbit you’re carrying.“Call walked on. What Gus had just said was obviously true. If the Indians fired the grass again they would all be killed. That was such a plain fact that he didn’t see any need to talk about it. Gus would do better to be thinking about grub, or waterholes, it seemed to him.

“Don’t it even worry you?” Gus asked.

“You think too much,” Call said. “You think about the wrong things, too. I thought you wanted to be a Ranger, until you met that girl. Now I guess you’d rather be in the dry goods business.”

Gus was irritated by his friend’s curious way of thinking.

“I wasn’t thinking about no girl,” he informed Call. “I was thinking about being burned up.”

“Rangering means you can die any day,” Call pointed out. “If you don’t want to risk it, you ought to quit.”

Just as he said it an antelope bounded up out of the tall grass, right in front of them. Gus had been carrying his rifle over one shoulder, barrel forward, stock back. By the time he got his gun to his shoulder, the antelope was an astonishing distance away. Gus shot, but the antelope kept running. Call raised his gun, only to find that Gus was right between him and the fleeing animal. By the time he stepped to the side and took aim the antelope was so far away that he didn’t shoot. Shadrach, who had seen the whole thing, was annoyed.

“You didn’t need to shoot it, you could have hit it over the head with your gun,” he said.

“Well, it moved quick,” Gus said, lamely. Who would expect an antelope to move slow? The whole troop was looking at him, as if it was entirely his fault that a tasty beast had escaped.

The incident brought Bigfoot to life, though—and Shadrach, too. The old man had entrusted his rifle to Matilda, but he got it back.

“That little buck was just half grown,” Bigfoot said. “I doubt it will run more than a mile. Maybe if we ease along we can kill it yet.” “Maybe,” Shadrach said. “Let’s go.”

The two scouts left together—Caleb Cobb had been walking so far ahead that he was unaware of the incident until he decided it was time to make a dry camp for the night. He had heard the shot and supposed someone had surprised some game. When he got back and discovered that both his scouts were gone in pursuit of an antelope, he was not pleased.

“Both of them went, after one little buck?” he asked. “Now, that was foolish, particularly when we got all this good horse meat to nibble on.”

Night fell and deepened, the sunset dying slowly along the wide western horizon. Matilda Roberts was pacing nervously. She blamed herself for not having tried harder to discourage Shadrach from going after the antelope. Bigfoot was younger—he could have tracked the antelope alone.

By midnight the whole camp had given up on the scouts. Matilda could not stop sobbing. Memory of Indians was on everybody’s mind. The two men could be enduring fierce tortures even then. Gus thought of the missed shot, time after time. If he only hadn’t had his rifle over his shoulder, he could have hit the antelope. But all his remembering didn’t help. The antelope was gone, and so were the scouts.

“Maybe they just camped and went to sleep,” Long Bill suggested. “It’s hard enough to find your way on this dern plain in the daylight. How could anyone do it at night?”

“Shadrach ain’t never been lost, night or day,” Matilda said. “He can find his way anywhere. He’d be here, if he wasn’t dead.”

Then she broke down again.

“He’s dead—he’s dead, I know it,” she said. “That goddamn hump man got him.”

“If he wasn’t dead, I’d shoot him, or Wallace one,” Caleb said. “I lost my dog and both my scouts in the same day. Why it would take two scouts to track one antelope buck is a conundrum.”

“Say that again—a what?” Long Bill asked. Brognoli sat beside him, his head still jerking, his look still glassy eyed. In the moments when his head stopped jerking, it was twisted at an odd angle on his neck.

“A conundrum,” Caleb repeated. “I visited Harvard College once and happened to learn the word.”

“What does it mean, sir?” Call asked.

‘ “I believe it’s Latin,” Gus said. One of his sisters had given him a Latin lesson, in the afternoon once, and he was anxious to impress Caleb Cobb with his mental powers—perhaps he’d make sergeant yet.

“Oh, are you a scholar, Mr. McCrae?” Caleb asked.

“No, but I still believe it’s Latin—I’ve had lessons,” Gus said. The lessons part was a lie. After one lesson of thirty minutes duration he had given up the Latin language forever.

“Well, I heard it in Boston, and Boston ain’t very Latin,” Caleb said. “Conundrum is a thing you can’t figure out. What I can’t figure out is why two scouts would go after one antelope.”

“Two’s better than one, out here,” Long Bill said. “I wouldn’t want to go walking off without somebody with me who knew the way back.”

“If Shad ain’t dead, he’s left,” Matilda said. “He was talking about leaving anyway.”

“Left to do what?” Caleb asked. “We’re on the Staked Plains. All there is to do is wander.”

“Left, just left,” Matilda said. “I guess he didn’t want to take me with him.”

Then Matilda broke down. She sobbed deeply for awhile, and then her sobs turned to howls. Her whole body shook and she howled and howled, as if she were trying to howl up her guts. In the emptiness of the prairies the howls seemed to hover in the air. They made the men uneasy—it was as if a great she-wolf were howling, only the she-wolf was in their midst. No one could understand it. Shadrach had gone off to kill an antelope buck, and Matilda was howling—a woman abandoned.

Many of the men shifted a little, wishing the woman would just be quiet. She was a whore. No one had asked her to form an attachment to old Shadrach anyway. He was a mountain man—mountain men were born to wander.

Several men had been hoping Matilda would become a whore again—they had a long walk ahead, and a little coupling would at least be a diversion. But hearing her howl, the same men, Long Bill among them, began to have second thoughts. The woman was howling like a beast, and a frightening beast at that. Coupling with her would be risky. Besides, old Shadrach might not be gone. He might return at an inconvenient time and take offense.

Caleb Cobb was unaffected by Matilda’s howling. He was eating a piece of horse meat—he glanced at Matilda from time to time. It amused him that the troop had become so uneasy, just because a woman was crying. Love, with all its mystery, had arrived in their midst, and they didn’t like it. A whore had fallen in love with an old man of the mountains. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it had.

The men were unnerved by it—such a thing was unnecessary, even unnatural. Even the Comanches, in a way, worried them less. Comanches did what they were expected to, which was kill whites. It might mean war to the death, but at least there was no uncertainty about what to expect. But here was a woman howling like a she-wolf—what sense did that make?

“Love’s a terrible price to pay for company, ain’t it, Matty?” Caleb said. “I won’t pay it, myself. I’d rather do without the company.”

One by one, the exhausted men fell asleep. Gus wanted to play cards; there was rarely a night when the urge for cardplaying didn’t come over him. But the men ignored him. They didn’t want to play cards when they had nothing to play for, and were thirsty anyway. It was pointless to play cards when Buffalo Hump and his warriors might be about to hurl down on them, and Johnny Carthage said as much.

“Well, they ain’t here now, why can’t we play a few hands?” Gus asked, annoyed that his friends were such sleepyheads.

The men didn’t even answer. They just ignored him. For awhile, once Matty’s howls subsided, the only sound in camp was the sound of shuffling cards—Gus shuffled and shuffled the deck, to keep his hands busy.

Call took the guard—he went away from camp a little ways to stand it. He preferred to be apart at night, to think over the day’s action—if there was action. It might be that he would command a troop someday. He wanted to learn; and yet he had no teachers. He was on his second expedition as a Ranger and nothing on either expedition had been well planned. In all their encounters with the Indians, the Indians had outplanned them and outfought them, by such a margin that it was partly luck that any of them survived.

Call couldn’t understand it. Caleb Cobb had spoken of Harvard College, and Major Chevallie had been at West Point—Call knew little about Harvard College, but he did know that West Point was where generals and colonels were trained. If these men had such good schooling, why didn’t they plan better? It was worrisome. Now they were out in the middle of a big plain, and no one seemed to know much about where they were going or how to survive until they got there. No one knew how to find water reliably, or what plants they could eat, if they had to eat plants. It was fine to rely on game, if there was game, but what if there wasn’t? Even old Jesus,the Mexican blacksmith in San Antonio, knew more about plants than any one of the Rangers—though maybe not more than Sam had known.

It was obviously wrong to allow only one or two men in a troop to be keepers of all the knowledge that the troop needed for survival. Sam had known how to doctor, but he had fallen over a cliff and no one had bothered to get instructions from him about how to treat various wounds. Call had been made a little uneasy by Matilda’s howling, but he was not as affected by it as most of the other men. Probably she would stop crying when she wore out; probably she would get up and be herself again, the next day. Call liked Matilda: she had been helpful to him on more than one occasion. The fact that she had fastened on Shadrach to love was a matter beyond his scope. People could love whom they pleased, he supposed. That was excusable—what wasn’t excusable, in his view, was setting off on a long, dangerous expedition without adequate preparation. He resolved that if he ever got to lead Rangers, he would see that each man under his command received clear training and sound instruction, so they would have a chance to survive, if the commander was lost.

Call enjoyed his guard time. Now that there were no horses to steal, the Indians would not need to come around, unless it was to murder them. He could see no reason for them to risk a direct attack. The Rangers had no water and little food. It was hundreds of miles to where they were going, and no one knew the way. The Comanches didn’t need to put themselves at risk, just to destroy the Rangers; the country would do the job for them.

He liked sitting apart from the camp, listening to the night sounds from the prairie. Coyotes howled, and other coyotes answered them. Occasionally, he would hear the scratchings of small animals. Hunting birds, hawks or owls, passed overhead. Sometimes Call wished that he could be an Indian for a few days, or at least find a friendly Indian who could train him in their skills. The Comanches, on two nights, had stolen thirty horses from a well-guarded place. He would have liked to go along with the horse thieves on such a raid, to see how they did it. He wanted to know how they could creep into a horse herd without disturbing it. He wanted to know how they could take the horses out without being seen, or heard.

He knew, though, that no Indian was likely to come along and offer to instruct him; he would just have to watch and learn. It annoyed him that Gus McCrae had so little interest in the skills needed for rangering. All Gus thought of was whores, cards, and the girl in the general store in Austin. If Gus had been carrying his rifle correctly, he could have killed the buck antelope and the troop would not have lost its scouts.

Just before dawn, with the night peaceful, Call relaxed and dozed for a minute. Though it seemed only minutes that he dozed, his awakening was rude. Someone yanked his head back by the hair, and drew a finger across his throat.

“They say you don’t feel the knife that cuts your throat,” Bigfoot said. “If I had been a Comanche, you’d be dead.”

Call was badly embarrassed. He had been caught asleep. It was only just beginning to be light. He saw Shadrach, a little distance behind Bigfoot. The old man was leading three horses.

“Yep, we found three nags,” Bigfoot said. “I guess they were lucky and found a thin patch of fire.”

“We thought you were dead,” Call told them. “Matty was upset about Shad.”

“Shad’s fine—he wants to go look for more horses,” Bigfoot said. “Three nags won’t carry this troop to New Mexico.”

Caleb Cobb gave the returning scouts a stony welcome. A rattlesnake had crawled across him during the night and disturbed his sleep. His temper was foul, and he didn’t bother to conceal the fact.

“Nobody told you to go chasing antelope,” he said. “But since you went, where’s the meat? If I still had chains I’d put them on you.”

The carcass of the little antelope was slung across one of the recaptured horses. Shadrach pulled it off, and pitched it at Caleb’s feet. He was angry, but Bigfoot Wallace was angrier. Few of the men had seen Bigfoot’s temper rise, but those who had knew to lean far back from it. His face had grown red and his eyes menacing, as he stood before Caleb Cobb.

“You wouldn’t put no damn chains on me, I guess,” he said. “I won’t be chained—not by you and not by any man.

“You ain’t no colonel!” he added. “You’re nothing but a land pirate. They run you off the seas, so now you’re out here trying to pirate Santa Fe. I’ve took” my last orders from you, Mr. Cobb, and Shadrach feels the same.”

Caleb calmly stood up and drew his big knife. “Let’s fight,” he said. “We’ll see how hard you are to chain once I cut your goddamn throat.”

In an instant, Bigfoot’s knife was out; he was ready to start slashing at Caleb Cobb, but before the fight started old Shadrach slipped between them. He grabbed two pistols from Gus, and pointed one at each combatant.

“No cutting,” he said. The pistols were pointed at each man’s chest. Shadrach’s action was so unexpected that it chilled the fury in Caleb and Bigfoot.

“You goddamn fools!” Shadrach said. “We need every man we can get—I’ll do the killing, if there’s killing to be done.”

Caleb and Bigfoot lowered their knives—both looked a little sheepish, but the menace was not entirely gone.

“We best save up to fight the Comanches,” Shadrach said, handing Gus back his guns.

“All right,” Caleb said. “But I don’t tolerate mutiny. I still give the orders, Wallace.”

“Give better ones, then,” Bigfoot said. “I wouldn’t waste a fart on your damn orders.”

Most of the Rangers were black to the waist, from tramping through five miles of sooty grass. They had used up all the water in their canteens and were already feeling thirsty, although it was early morning and still cool. Bigfoot and Shadrach had seen no water while tracking the antelope. Old Shadrach’s beard had red smudges on it. He had cut the little antelope’s throat and drunk some of its blood.

“I wonder who gets to ride the horses?” Gus asked. “I guess we ought to let Johnny ride one—he’s so gimpy he can’t keep up.”

Indeed, the walk across the hot grass had been an ordeal for Johnny Carthage. In the course of the march he had fallen almost an hour behind the troop. He knew that he would have been easy prey for a Comanche. He struggled so, to keep up, that he exhausted himself and simply lay down and went sound asleep once he finally struggled to the outskirts of camp. Call had heard his wheezy snores as he stood guard.

“There’s probably more horses that didn’t get scorched,” Gus said.

Call didn’t answer. One or two more horses would not solve their problems. The sun had come up, lighting the plain far to the west and north. On the farthest edge little white clouds lined the horizon. The plain was absolutely empty. Call saw no animals, no birds, no trees, no river courses, no Indians—nothing.

“Who do you think would have won, if Caleb and Bigfoot had fought?” Gus asked.

“Shadrach would have won,” Call said. “He would have killed them both.”

“That wasn’t what I meant,” Gus said, but Call had turned away. Long Bill was cooking the antelope, and the meat smelled good. He wanted a slice, before the meat was all gone. One little antelope wouldn’t go far, not with so many hungry men.

“Carry your gun right today,” Call told Gus, when the march started. “We might see another antelope, and we can’t afford another miss.”

“I won’t miss, next time,” Gus said.

THE NEXT DAY THEY found four more horses. Two had serious burns, but two were healthy. Caleb killed the two burned horses, and dried their meat. In the afternoon they found a tiny, muddy depression on the plain, with a little scummy water in it. The depression was full of frogs and tadpoles—though the water was greenish, the Rangers drank it anyway. Some of the men immediately vomited it back up. They were thirsty, and yet could not keep the water down.

The next morning, Caleb decided to divide the troop.

“Corporal Call and Corporal McCrae can go with you, Wallace,” Caleb said. “Take three horses and try to reach the settlements. Ride night and day, but rest your mounts every three hours. Look for a village called Anton Chico. You ought to strike it first.”

“Who gets the other horses?” Long Bill asked.

“I’ll take one, and Shadrach can take the other,” Caleb said. “We’ll travel parallel to one another, as best we can. Some of us ought to strike water.”

“What if we don’t?” Johnny asked.

“I guess we can pray,” Caleb replied. “God might send a rainstorm.”

Neither Call nor Gus had expected to be separated from the troop. Both had become good friends with Jimmy Tweed, who had managed to keep a lively attitude, despite all that had happened. When Long Bill and Blackie Slidell sang at night, Jimmy would always join in. Tommy Spencer, the youngster from Missouri, sat and listened. Johnny Carthage bemoaned the fact that he had no way to get drunk. He suffered from fearsome nightmares, and liked to dull himself with liquor before they began. The boys were a group within the larger group, and it was hard to leave them. Gus was wishing Matilda would come with their party—sometimes she mothered him, when he was feeling sorry for himself. He didn’t see why old Shadrach should get all the mothering.

“If you’re captured by the Mexicans, keep quiet,” Caleb said, as they were leaving.

“Keep quiet about what?” Bigfoot asked.

“Don’t tell them our numbers,” Caleb said. “Let them think there’s a thousand of us out here.”

Bigfoot looked around at the blackened, exhausted men, many of them already so thirsty that their tongues were thick in their mouths.

“I ain’t gonna be bragging about no mighty army,” Bigfoot said. “Half of you may be dead before we find anybody to report to.”

He rode a few steps west, and then turned his horse.

“Getting captured may be the only way any of you will stay alive,” he said. “If I could get you captured, I’d do it right now.”

Then he turned, and loped off to the northwest. Gus and Call waved at Long Bill and the others, and’loped after him. As they rode, the space ahead of them seemed to get wider and emptier. Gus looked back after a few minutes of riding for one last look at the troop, and found that it had vanished. The big plain had engulfed them. Though it looked level, there were many shallow dips and gentle rolls. Gus made sure he kept up. He didn’t want to lag and get lost. The sky was so deep and so vast that it took away his sense of direction. Even when he was looking directly at the sun, he had no confidence that he really knew whjch way he was going.They rode six hours without seeing a moving object, other than the waving grass, and one or two jackrabbits. Call had a sense of trespass, as he rode. He felt that he was in a country that wasn’t his. He didn’t know where Texas stopped and New Mexico began, but it wasn’t the Texans or the New Mexicans whose country he was riding through: it was the Comanches he trespassed on. Watching them move across the face of the canyon, on a trail so narrow that he couldn’t see it, had shown him again that the Comanches were the masters of their country to a degree no Ranger could ever be. Not one horse or one Comanche had fallen, or even stumbled, as they walked across the cliff face—the Rangers had been on foot and had plenty of handholds when they went over the edge, and yet several had fallen to their deaths. The Indians could do things white men couldn’t do.

He mentioned as much to Bigfoot, who shrugged.

“We’ll be beyond them, pretty soon,” he said. “We’ll be moving into the Apache country—we may be in it already. They ain’t no better, but they don’t have so many horses, so they’re slower. Most Apaches are foot Indians.”

“Oh well, I expect I could outrun them, then,” Gus said. “I could if I see them before they stab me or something. I’ve always been fleet.”

“You won’t see them before they stab you, though,” Bigfoot said. “The Apaches hide better than the Comanches—and that’s saying something. An Apache could hide under a cow turd, if that’s all there was.”

A minute or two later, they saw a dot on the horizon. The dot didn’t seem to be moving. Bigfoot thought it might be a wagon. Call couldn’t see it at all, and grew annoyed with his own eyes. Why wouldn’t they look as far as other men’s eyes?

Gus, whose eyesight was the pride of the troop, ruled out the possibility that the dot was a wagon. When he looked hard, the dot seemed to dance in his vision. At times it became two or three dots, but it never became a wagon.

“No, if it was a wagon there’d be mules or horses,” Gus said. “Or there’d be people. But there ain’t no mules or horses, and I don’t see the people.”

“It could just be a lump of dirt,” Bigfoot said. “I’ve heard that outin New Mexico you’ll find piles of dirt sticking up. I expect that’s one of them.”

But when they were a mile or two closer, Gus saw the dot move. A lump of dirt might stick up, but it shouldn’t move. He galloped ahead, anxious to be the one to identify whatever they were seeing, and he did identify it: it was a solitary buffalo bull.

“Well, there’s meat, let’s kill it,” Bigfoot said, pulling his rifle.

Almost as he said it, the buffalo saw them coming and began a lumbering retreat. It seemed to be moving so slowly that Call was confident they would come up on it in a minute or two, but again appearances deceived him. The buffalo looked slow, but the horses they were riding were no faster. They had had thin grazing, and were gaunt and tired. Even at a dead run, they scarcely gained on the buffalo. They had to run the animal almost three miles to close within rifle range, and then it was a long rifle range. At thirty yards they all began to fire, and to reload and fire again, and yet again. But the buffalo didn’t fall, stop, or even stagger. It just kept running at the same lumbering pace, on and on over the empty plain.

Three times the Rangers closed with the buffalo, whipping their tired horses to within twenty feet of it. They emptied their rifles at almost point-blank range several times, and they didn’t miss. Gus could see the tufts of brown hair fly off when the heavy bullets hit. Yet the buffalo didn’t fall, or even flinch. It just kept running, at the same steady pace.

“Boys, we better stop,” Bigfoot said, after the third charge. “We’re running our horses to death for nothing. That buffalo’s got fifteen bullets in him, and he ain’t even slowed down.”

“Why won’t the goddamn animal fall?” Gus said, highly upset. He was angered by the perversity of the lone buffalo. By every law of the hunt, it should have fallen. Fifteen bullets ought to be enough to kill anything—even an elephant, even a whale. The buffalo wasn’t very large. It ought to fall, and yet, perversely, it wouldn’t. It seemed to him that everything in Texas was that way. Indians popped out of bare ground, or from the sides of hills, disguised as mountain goats. Snakes crawled in people’s bedrolls, and thorns in the brush country were as poisonous as snakebites, once they got in you. It was all an aggravation, in his view. Back in Tennessee, beast and man were much better behaved.

But they weren’t in Tennessee. They were on an empty plain, chasing a slow brown animal that should long since have been dead. Determined to kill it once and for all, Gus spurred his tired horse into a frantic burst of speed, and ran right up beside the buffalo. He fired, with his rifle barrel no more than a foot from the buffalo’s heaving ribs, and yet the animal ran on. Gus drew rein—his horse was staggering—and fired again; the buffalo kept running.

“Whoa, now, whoa!” Bigfoot cautioned. “We better give up—else we’ll kill all our horses.”

Call tried a long shot, and thought he hit the buffalo right where its heart should be, but the buffalo merely lost a step or two and then resumed its heavy run.

“I expect it’s a witch buf,” Bigfoot said, dismounting to rest his tired horse.

“A what?” Gus asked. He had never heard of a witch buf.

“I expect the hump man put a spell on it,” Bigfoot said. “It’s got twenty-five bullets in it now—maybe thirty. If it wasn’t a witch buf, we’d be eating its liver already.

“Indians can make spells,” he added. “They’re a lot better at it than white folks. Buffalo Hump is a war chief, but he’s got some powerful medicine men in the tribe. I expect he sent this buffalo out here to make us use up all our ammunition.”

“Why, how would he do that?” Gus asked, startled by the concept.

“Praying and dancing,” Bigfoot said. “That’s how they do it.”

“I don’t believe it,” Call said. “We just ain’t hit it good.”

“Hit it good, we shot it thirty times,” Gus said.

“That don’t mean we hit it good,” Call said.

Just as he said it, Gus’s horse collapsed. He sank to the ground and rolled his eyes, his limbs trembling.

“Get him up! Get him up!” Bigfoot instructed. “Get him up! If we don’t, he’ll die.”

Gus began to jerk on the bridle rein, but the horse merely let him pull its head up.

Call grabbed its tail, and Bigfoot began to kick it and yell at it, butit did no good. The horse made no effort to regain its feet, and the three of them together could not lift it. When they tried, expending all their strength, the horse’s legs splayed out beneath it—the moment they loosened their hold, the horse fell heavily.

“Let it go, it ain’t gonna live,” Bigfoot said. “We should have reined up sooner. We’ll be lucky if we all three don’t die.”

The buffalo had run on for another five hundred yards or so, and stopped. It had not fallen, but at least it had stopped. Gus felt a fury building; now, thanks to the aggravating buffalo, his horse was dying. He would have to walk to Santa Fe.

“I’ll kill it if I have to beat it to death,” he said, grabbing his rifle and his bullet pouch.

“If it’s a witch buf, you won’t kill it—it will kill you,” Bigfoot said. “Best thing to do with a witch buffalo is leave it alone.”

“He don’t listen when he’s mad,” Call said. He unstrapped Gus’s bedroll from the dying horse, and brought it with him. Gus was striding on ahead, determined to walk straight up to the wounded buffalo and blow its brains out. He didn’t believe an Indian could pray and dance and keep a buffalo from dying. Bigfoot could believe such foolery if he wanted to.

Yet, when he approached the buffalo, the animal turned and snorted. It lowered its head and pawed the ground. There was a bloody froth running out of its nose, but otherwise there was no evidence that the thirty bullets had weakened it seriously. It not only wasn’t dead, it was showing fight.

Gus knelt and carefully put a bullet right where he thought the buffalo’s heart would be. He was only twenty yards away. He couldn’t miss from such a distance. He fired again, a little higher, but with the same lack of result.

“Leave it be—we’ve wasted enough ammunition,” Bigfoot said. “We need to save some of it for the Mexicans.”

“At this rate we’ll never see a Mexican,” Call remarked.

He was losing his belief in their ability to find their way across the plain. It was too vast, and they had no map. Bigfoot admitted that he really didn’t know where the New Mexican settlements were, or how far ahead they might be.

Before Call could say more, Gus threw his rifle down and pulled his knife.

“It’s a weak gun—the bullets must not be going in far enough,” Gus said. “I’ll kill the goddamn thing with this knife, if that’s all that will do it.”

When he rushed the buffalo and began to stab it in the side, the beast made no attempt to run or fight. It merely stood there, its head down, blowing the bloody froth out of its nostrils.

“By God, he’s going to finish it, let’s help him,” Bigfoot said, drawing his own knife. Soon he had joined Gus, and was stabbing at the buffalo’s throat. Call thought their behaviour was crazy. There were only three of them; they couldn’t eat that much of the buffalo even if they killed it. But for Bigfoot and Gus, the animal had become a kind of test. The two men could think of nothing but killing the one animal. Unless they could kill it, they wouldn’t be able to go on. The settlements would never be reached unless they could kill the buffalo.

Call drew his knife and approached the animal from the other side. It had a short, thick neck, but he knew the big vein had to be somewhere in it; if he could cut the big vein the buffalo would eventually die, no matter how much praying and dancing the Comanches had done over it.

He stabbed and drew blood and so did Gus and Bigfoot—they stabbed until their arms were tired of lifting their knives, until they were all three covered with blood. Finally, red and panting from their efforts, they all three gave up. They stood a foot from the buffalo, completely exhausted, unable to kill it.

As a last effort, Call drew his pistol, stuck it against the buffalo’s head just below the ear, and fired. The buffalo took one step forward and sank to its knees. All three men stepped back, thinking the animal would roll over, but it didn’t. Its head sank and it died, still on its knees.

“If only there was a creek—I’d like to wash,” Gus said. He had never liked the smell of blood and was shocked to find himself covered with it, in a place where there was no possibility of washing.

They all sank down on the prairie grass and rested, too tired to cut up their trophy.

“How do Indians ever kill them?” Call asked, looking at the buffalo. It seemed to be merely resting, its head on its knees.

“Why, with arrows—how else?” Bigfoot asked.

Call said nothing, but once again he felt a sense of trespass. It had taken three men, with rifles, pistols, and knives, an hour to kill one beast; yet, Indians did it with arrows alone—he had watched them kill several on the floor of the Palo Duro Canyon.

“All buffalo ain’t this hard,” Bigfoot assured them. “I’ve never seen one this hard.”

“Dern, I wish I could wash,” Gus said.

BIGFOOT WALLACE TOOK ONLY the buffalo’s tongue and liver. The tongue he put in his saddlebag, after sprinkling it with salt; the liver he sliced and ate raw, first dripping a drop or two of fluid from the buffalo’s gallbladder on the slices of meat.

“A little gall makes it tasty,” he said, offering the meat to Call and Gus.

Call ate three or four bites, Gus only one, which he soon quickly spat out.

“Can’t we cook it?” he asked. “I’m hungry, but not hungry enough to digest raw meat.”

“You’ll be that hungry tomorrow, unless we’re lucky,” Bigfoot said.

“I’d just rather cook it,” Gus said, again—it was clear from Bigfoot’s manner that he regarded the request as absurdly fastidious.

“I guess if you want to burn your clothes you might get fire enough to singe a slice or two,” Bigfoot said—he gestured toward the empty plain around them. Nowhere within the reach of their eyes was there a plant, a bush, a tree that would yield even a stick of firewood. The plain was not entirely level, but it was entirely bare.

“What a goddamn place this is,” Gus said. “A man has to tote his own firewood, or else make do with raw meat.”

“No, there’s buffalo chips, if you want to hunt for them,” Bigfoot said. “I’ve cooked many a liver over buffalo chips, but there ain’t many buffalo out this way. I don’t feel like walking ten miles to gather enough chips to keep you happy.”

As they rode away from the dead buffalo, they saw two wolves trotting toward it. The wolves were a long way away, but the fact that there were two living creatures in sight on the plain was reassuring, particularly to Gus. He had been more comfortable in a troop of Rangers than he was with only Call and Bigfoot for company. They were just three human dots on the encircling plain.

Bigfoot watched the wolves with interest. Wolves had to have water, just as did men and women. The wolves didn’t look lank, either—there must be water within a few miles, if only they knew which way to ride.

“Wolves and coyotes ain’t far from being dogs,” he observed. “You’ll always get coyotes hanging around a camp—they like people —or at least they like to eat our leavings. The Colonel ought to catch him a coyote pup or two and raise them to hunt for him. It’d take the place of that big dog you dropped.”

Call thought they were all likely to die of starvation. It was gallant of Bigfoot to speculate about the Colonel and his pets when they were in such a desperate situation. The Colonel was in the same situation, only worse—he had the whole troop to think of; he ought to be worrying about keeping the men from starving, not on replacing his big Irish dog.

They rode all night; they had no water at all. They didn’t ride fast, but they rode steadily. When dawn flamed up, along the great horizon to the east, they stopped to rest. Bigfoot offered the two of them slices of buffalo tongue. Call ate several bites, but Gus declined, in favor of horse meat.

“I can’t reconcile myself to eating a tongue,” he said. “My ma would not approve. She raised me to be careful about what foods I stuff in my mouth.”

Call wondered briefly what his own mother had been like—he had only one cloudy memory of her, sitting on the seat of a wagon;in fact, he was not even sure that the woman he remembered had been his mother. The woman might have been his aunt—in any case, his mother had given him no instruction in the matter of food.

During the day’s long, slow ride, the pangs of hunger were soon rendered insignificant beside the pangs of thirst. They had had no water for a day and a half. Bigfoot told them that if they found no water by the next morning, they would have to kill a horse and drink what was in its bladder. He instructed them to cut small strips of leather from their saddle strings and chew on them, to produce saliva flow. It was a stratagem that worked for awhile. As they chewed the leather, they felt less thirsty. But the trick had a limit. By evening, their saliva had long since dried up. Their tongues were so swollen it had become hard to close their lips. One of the worst elements of the agony of thirst was the thought of all the water they had wasted during the days of rain and times of plenty.

“I’d give three months wages to be crossing the Brazos right now,” Gus said. “I expect I could drink about half of it.”

“Would you give up the gal in the general store for a drink?” Bigfoot asked. “Now that’s the test.”

He winked at Call when he said it.

“I could drink half a river,” Gus repeated. He thought the question about Clara impertinent under the circumstances, and did not intend to answer it. If he starved to death he intended, at least, to spend his last thoughts on Clara.

The next morning, the sorrel horse that Gus and Call had both been riding refused to move. The sorrel’s eyes were wide and strange, and he did not respond either to blows or to commands.

“No use to kick him or yell at him, he’s done for,” Bigfoot said, walking up to the horse. Before Gus or Call could so much as blink, he drew his pistol and shot the horse. The sorrel dropped, and before he had stopped twitching Bigfoot had his knife out, working to remove the bladder. He worked carefully, so as not to nick it, and soon lifted it out, a pale sac with a little liquid in it.

“I won’t drink that,” Gus said, at once. The mere sight of the pale, slimy bladder caused his stomach to feel uneasy.

“It’s the only liquid we got,” Bigfoot reminded him. “We’ll all die if we don’t drink it.”

He lifted up the bladder carefully, and drank from it as he would from a wineskin. Call took it next, hesitating a moment beforeputting it to his mouth. He knew he wouldn’t survive another waterless day. His swollen tongue was raw, from scraping against his teeth. Quickly he shut his eyes, and swallowed a few mouthfuls. The urine had more smell than taste. Once he judged he had had his share, he handed the bladder to Gus.

Gus took it, but, after a moment, shook his head.

“You have to drink it,” Call told him. “Just drink three swallows —that might be enough to save you. If you die I can’t bury you— I’m too weak.”

Gus shook his head again. Then, abruptly, his need for moisture overcame his revulsion, and he drank three swallows. He did not want to be left unburied on such a prairie. The coyotes and buzzards would be along, not to mention badgers and other varmints. Thinking about it proved worse than doing it. Soon they went on, Bigfoot astride the one remaining horse.

That afternoon they came to a tiny waterhole, so small that Bigfoot could have stepped across it, or could have had there not been a dead mule in the puddle. They all recognized the mule, too. Black Sam had had an affection for it—in the early days of the expedition, he had sometimes fed it carrots. It had been stolen by the Comanches, the night of the first raid.

“Why, that’s John,” Gus said. “Wasn’t that what Black Sam called him?”

John had two arrows in him—both were feathered with prairie-chicken feathers, the arrows of Buffalo Hump.

“He led it here and killed it,” Bigfoot said. “He didn’t want us to drink this muddy water.”

“He didn’t want us to drink at all,” Call said, looking at the arrows.

“I’ll drink this water anyway,” Gus said, but Bigfoot held him back.

“Don’t,” he said. “That horse piss was clean, compared to this water. Let’s go.”

That night, they had no appetite—even a bite was more than any of them could choke down. Gus pulled out some rancid horse meat, looked at it, and threw it away, an action Bigfoot was quick to criticize.

“Go pick it up,” he said. “It might rain tonight—I’ve been smelling moisture and my smeller don’t often fail me. If we could get a little liquid in us, that horse meat might taste mighty good.“About midnight they heard thunder, and began to see flashes of lightning, far to the west. Gus was immediately joyful—he saw the drought had broken. Call was more careful. It wasn’t raining, and the thunder was miles away. It might rain somewhere on the plain —but would it rain where they were? And would any water pool up, so they could drink it?

“Boys, we’re saved,” Bigfoot said, watching the distant lightning.

“I may be saved, but I’m still thirsty,” Gus said. “I can’t drink rain that’s raining miles away.”

“It’s coming our direction, boys,” Bigfoot said—he was wildly excited. Privately, he had given the three of them up for lost, though he hadn’t said as much to the young Rangers.

“If the rain don’t come to us, I’ll go to the rain,” Call said.

Soon they could smell the rain. It began to cool the hot air. They were so thirsty it was all they could do to keep from racing to meet the storm, although they had nothing to race on except one tired horse and their feet.

Bigfoot had been right: the rain came. The only thing they had to catch it in was their hats—the hats weren’t fully watertight, but they caught enough rainwater to allow the starving men to quench their thirst.

“Just wet your lips, don’t gulp it—you’ll get sick if you do,” Bigfoot said.

The lightning began to come closer. Soon it was striking within a hundred yards of where they were huddled; then fifty yards. Call had never been much afraid of lightning, but as bolt after bolt split the sky he began to wonder if he was too exposed.

“Let’s get under the saddle,” Gus said. Lightning spooked him. He had heard that a lightning bolt had split a man in two and cooked both parts before the body even fell to the ground. He did not want to get split in two, or cooked either. But he was not sure how to avoid it, out on the bare plain. He sat very still, hoping the lightning would move on and not scorch anybody.

Then a bolt seemed to hit almost right on Bigfoot. He wasn’t hit, but he screamed anyway—screamed, and clasped his hands over his eyes.

“Oh, Lord,” he yelled, into the darkness. “I looked at it from too close. It burnt my eyes, and now I’m blind.

“Oh Lord, blind, my eyes are scorched,” Bigfoot screamed. Call and Gus waited for another lightning bolt to show them Bigfoot. When it came, they just glimpsed it—he was wandering on the prairie, holding both hands over his eyes. Again, as darkness came back, he screamed like an animal.

“Keep your eyes shut—don’t look at the lightning,” Call said. “Bigfoot’s blind—that’s trouble enough.”

“Maybe he won’t be blind too long,” Gus said. With their scout blinded, what chance did they have of finding their way to someplace in New Mexico where there were people? He thoroughly regretted his impulsive decision to leave with the expedition. Why hadn’t he just stayed with Clara Forsythe and worked in the general store?

Bigfoot screamed again—he was getting farther and farther away. Dark as it was, once the storm passed, they would have no way to follow him, except by his screams. Call thought of yelling at him, to tell him to sit down and wait for them, but if the man’s eyes were scorched, he wouldn’t listen.

“At least it’s washing this dern blood off me,” Gus said. Having to wear clothes encrusted with buffalo blood had been a heavy ordeal.

For a few minutes, the lightning seemed to grow even more intense. Call and Gus sat still, with their eyes tight shut, waiting for the storm to diminish. Some flashes were so strong and so close that the brightness shone through their clamped eyelids, like a lantern through a thin cloth.

Even after the storm moved east and the lightning and thunder diminished, Call and Gus didn’t move for awhile. The sound had been as heavy as the lightning had been bright. Call felt stunned— he knew he ought to be looking for Bigfoot, but he wasn’t quick to move.

“I wonder where the horse went?” Gus asked. “He was right here when all this started, but now I don’t see him.”

“Of course you don’t see him; it’s dark,” Call reminded him. “I expect we can locate him in the morning. We’ll need him for Bigfoot, if he’s still blind.”

Call yelled three or four times, hoping to get a sense of Bigfoot’s position, but the scout didn’t answer.

“You try, you’ve got a louder voice,” Call said. Gus’s ability to make himself heard over any din was well known among the Rangers.

But Gus’s loudest yell brought the same result: silence.

“Can you die from getting your eyes scorched?” Gus asked.

The same thought had occurred to Call. The lightning storm had been beyond anything in his experience. The shocks of thunder and lightning had seemed to shake the earth. Once or twice, he thought his heart might stop, just from the shock of the storm. What if it had happened to Bigfoot? He might be lying dead, somewhere on the plain.

“I hope he ain’t dead,” Gus said. “If he’s dead, we’re in a pickle.”

“He could have just kept walking,” Call said. “We know the settlements are north and west. If we keep going, we’re bound to find the Mexicans sometime.”

“They’ll probably just shoot us,” Gus said.

“Why would they, if it’s just the two of us?” Call asked. “We ain’t an army. We’re nearly out of bullets anyway.”

“They shot a bunch of Texans during the war,” Gus recalled. “Just lined them up and shot them. I heard they made them dig their own graves.”

“I wish we could just go back to Austin,” he added. “Why can’t we? The Colonel don’t even know where we are. He’s probably given up and gone back himself, by now.”

“We’ve only got one horse and a few bullets,” Call reminded him. “We’d never make it back across this plain.”

Gus realized that what Call said was true. He wished Bigfoot was there—not much fazed Bigfoot. He missed the big scout.

“Maybe Bigfoot ain’t dead,” he said.

“I hope he ain’t,” Call said.

BIGFOOT WASN’T DEAD. As the storm was playing out, he lay down and pressed his face into the grass, to protect his eyes. The grass was wet—its coolness on his eyelids was some relief. While cooling his eyelids, he went to sleep. In the night he rolled over—the first sunlight on his eyelids brought a searing pain.

Gus and Call were sleeping when they heard loud moans. Bigfoot had wandered about a half a mile from them before lying down.

When they approached him he had his head down, his eyes pressed against his arms.

“It’s like snow blindness, only worse,” he told them. “I been snow blind—it’ll go away, in time. Maybe this will, too.”

“I expect it will,” Call said. Bigfoot was so sensitive to light that he had to keep his eyes completely covered.

“You need to make me blinders,” Bigfoot said. “Blinders—and the thicker the better. Then put me on the horse.”

Until that moment Call and Gus had both forgotten the horse, which was nowhere in sight.I

“I don’t see that horse,” Gus said. “We might have lost him.”

“One of you go find him,” Bigfoot said. “Otherwise you’ll have to lead me.”

“You go find him,” Call said, to Gus. “I’ll stay with Bigfoot.”

“What if I find the horse and can’t find you two?” Gus asked. The plain was featureless. He knew it to be full of dips and rolls, but once he got a certain distance away, one dip and roll was much like another. He might not be able to find his way back to Call and Bigfoot.

“I’ll go, then,” Call said. “You stay.”

“He won’t be far,” Bigfoot said. “He was too tired to run far.”

That assessment proved correct. Call found the horse only about a mile away, grazing. Call had been painstakingly trying to keep his directions—he didn’t want to lose his companions—and was relieved when he saw the horse so close.

By the time he got back, Gus had made Bigfoot a blindfold out of an old shirt. It took some adjusting—the slightest ray of light on his eyelids made Bigfoot moan. They ate the last of their horse meat, and drank often during the day’s march from the puddles here and there on the prairie. Toward the end of the day, Call shot a goose, floating alone in one such small puddle.

“A goose that’s by itself is probably sick,” Bigfoot said, but they ate the goose anyway. They came to a creek with a few bushes and some small trees around it and were able to make a fire. The smell of the cooking goose made them all so hungry they could not sit still—they wanted to rip the goose off its spit before it was ready, and yet they also had a great desire to eat cooked food. Bigfoot, who couldn’t see but could certainly smell, asked Gus and Call several times if the bird was almost ready. It was still half raw when they ate it, and yet, to all of them, it tasted better than any bird they had ever eaten. Bigfoot even cracked the bones, to get at the marrow.

“It’s mountain man’s butter,” he said. “Once you get a taste for it you don’t see why people bother to churn. It’s better just to crack a bone.”

“Yeah, but you might not have a bone,” Gus said. “The bone might still be in the animal.”

Bigfoot kept his eyes tightly bandaged, but he no longer moaned so much.

“What will you do if you’re blind from now on, Big?” Gus asked.Call felt curious about the same thing, but did not feel it was appropriate to ask. Bigfoot Wallace had roamed the wilderness all his life; his survival had often depended on keenness of eye. A blind man would not last long, in the wilderness. Bigfoot could scout no more —he would have to leave off scouting the troops. It would be a sad change, if it happened.

“Oh, I expect I’ll get over being scorched,” Bigfoot said.

Gus said no more, but the question still hung in the air.

Bigfoot reflected for several minutes, before commenting further.

“If I’m blind, it will be good-bye to the prairies,” he said. “I expect I’d have to move to town and run a whorehouse.”

“Why a whorehouse?” Gus asked.

“Well, I couldn’t see the merchandise, but I could feel it,” Bigfoot said. “Feel it and smell it and poke it.”

“I been in whorehouses when I was too drunk to see much, anyway,” he added. “You don’t have to look to enjoy whores.”

“Speaking of whores, I wonder what they’re like in Santa Fe?” Gus asked. Eating the goose had raised his spirits considerably. He felt sure that the worst was over. He had even argued to Call that the reason the goose had been so easy to shoot was that it was a tame goose that had run off from a nearby farm.

“No, it was a sick goose,” Call insisted. “There wouldn’t be a farm around here. It’s too dry.”

Despite his friend’s skepticism, Gus had begun to look forward to the delights of Santa Fe, one of which would undoubtedly be whores.

“You can’t afford no whore, even if we get there alive,” Bigfoot reminded him.

“I guess I could get a job, until the Colonel shows up,” Gus said. “Then we can rob the Mexicans and have plenty of money.”

“I don’t know if the Colonel will make it,” Bigfoot said. “I expect he’ll starve, or else turn back.”

That night, their horse was stolen. They were such a pitiful trio that no one had thought to stand guard. Eating the goose had put them all in a relaxed mood. The horse, in any case, was a poor one. It had never recovered fully from the wild chase after the buffalo. Its wind was broken; it plodded slowly along, carrying Bigfoot. Still, it had been their only mount—their only resource in more ways than one. They all knew that they might need to eat it, if they didn’t make the settlements soon now. The goose had been a stroke of luck—there might not be another.

Call had hobbled the horse, to make sure it didn’t graze so far that he would have to risk getting lost by going to look for it in the morning. They called the horse Moonlight, because of his light coat. Before Call slept he heard Moonlight grazing, not far away. It was a reassuring sound; but then he slept. When he woke, the hobbles had been cut and there was no sign of Moonlight. The three of them were alone on the prairie.

“We’ll track ‘em, they probably ain’t far,” Bigfoot said, before he remembered that he was blind. His eyes were paining him less, but he still didn’t dare remove his blinders.

“If he was close enough to steal Moonlight, he could have killed me,” Call said. The stealth Indians possessed continued to surprise him. He was a light sleeper; the least thing woke him. But the horse thief had repeatedly come within a few steps of him, yet he had had no inkling that anyone was near.

“Dern, it’s a pity you boys don’t know how to track,” Bigfoot said. “I expect it was Kicking Wolf. That old hump man wouldn’t follow us this far, not for one horse. Kicking Wolf is more persistent.”

“Too damn persistent,” Gus said. He was affronted. Time and again, the red man had bested them.

“All they’ve done is beat us,” he added. “It’s time we beat them at something.”

“Well, we can beat them at starving to death,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t know much else we can beat them at.”

“Why didn’t they kill us?” Call asked.

“I doubt there was more than one of them—I expect it was just Kicking Wolf,” Bigfoot said. “Stealing horses is quiet work, but killing men ain’t. He might have woke one of us up and one of us might have got him.”

“It’s a long way to come for one damn horse,” Gus commented. He still stung, from the embarrassment of being so easily robbed.

“Kicking Wolf is horse crazy, like you’re whore crazy. You’d go anywhere for a whore, and he’d go anywhere for a horse.”

“I don’t know if I’d go halfway across a damn desert, for a whore,” Gus said. “I sure wouldn’t for a worn-out horse like Moonlight. Kicking Wolf is crazier than me.

“Bigfoot looked amused. “There’s no law saying an Indian can’t be crazier than a white man,” he said.

All that day, and for the next two, Call and Gus took turns leading Bigfoot. It was tiring work. Bigfoot had a long stride, longer even than Gus’s—the two of them had almost to trot, to keep ahead of him. Then, too, the prairie was full of cracks and little gullies. They had to be alert to keep him on level ground—it annoyed him to stumble. It stormed again the second night, though with less lightning. Water puddled here and there; they were not thirsty, but once they finished the last few bites of horse meat, they had no food. Call was afraid to roam too far to hunt, for fear of losing Gus and Bigfoot. In any case they saw no game, except a solitary antelope. The antelope was in sight for several hours—Gus thought it was only about three miles away, but Call thought it might be farther. In the thin air, distances were hard to judge.

Bigfoot considered it peculiar that the antelope stayed in sight so long. Not to be able to use his own eyes was frustrating.

“If I could just have one look, I could give an opinion,” he said. “It might not even be an antelope—remember them mountain goats that turned into Comanches?”

Reminded, Gus and Call gave the distant animal their best scrutiny. Gus was of the opinion that the animal might be a Comanche, but Call was convinced it was just a plain antelope.

“Go stalk it, then,” Bigfoot said. “We’ll sit down and wait. A little antelope rump would be mighty tasty.”

“Let Gus stalk it,” Call said. “He’s got better eyes. I’ll wait with you.”

Gus didn’t relish the assignment. If the antelope turned out to be a Comanche, he would be in trouble. He was hungry, though, and so were the others.

“Don’t shoot until you’ve got a close shot,” Bigfoot said. “If you can’t hit the heart, shoot for the shoulder. That’ll slow him down enough that we can catch him.”

Gus stalked the antelope for three hours. The last three hundred yards, he edged on his belly. The antelope lifted its head from time to time, but mostly kept grazing. Gus got closer and closer—he remembered that he had missed the first antelope, at almost point-blank range. He wanted to get very close—it would do his pride good to bring home some meat, and his belly would appreciate it, too.

He got to within two hundred yards, but decided to edge a little closer. He thought he might hit it at one hundred and fifty yards. He kept his head down, so as not to show the animal his face. Bigfoot had informed him that prairie animals were particularly alarmed by white faces. Indians could get close enough to kill them because their faces weren’t white. He kept his hat low, and his face low, too. When he judged he was within about the right distance, he risked a peek and to his dismay saw no antelope. He looked—then stood up and looked—but the antelope was gone. Gus ran toward where it had been standing, thinking the animal would have lain down—then he glimpsed it running, far to the north, farther than it had been when they first noticed it. Following it would be pointless; for a moment, stumbling around after the antelope, he felt a panic take him. He could not be sure which direction he had come from. He might not even be able to find Bigfoot and Call. Then he remembered a rock that stuck up a little from the ground. He had passed it in his crawl. He walked in a half circle until he saw the rock and was soon back on the right course.

Even so, he was disgusted when he got back to his companions.

“I wasted all that time,” he said. “He took off and ran. Let’s just hurry up and get to New Mexico.”

“Oh, we’re in New Mexico,” Bigfoot said. “We just ain’t in the right part of it, yet. My eyes are improving, at least. Pretty soon I won’t have to be led.”

Bigfoot’s eyes did improve, even as their bellies grew emptier. On the third day after the storm, he was able to take his blinders off in the late afternoon. Soon afterward, he found a small patch of wild onions and dug out enough for them to have a few each to nibble. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

The next morning, waking early, Gus saw the mountains. At first, he thought the shapes far to the north might be clouds—storm clouds. Once the sun was well up, he saw that the shapes were mountains. Call saw them, too. Bigfoot still had to be careful of his eyes in full light—he wanted to look, but had to give up.

“If it’s the mountains, then we’re saved, boys,” he said. “There’s got to be people between here and the hills.“They walked all day, though, without food—the mountains seemed none the less distant.

“What if we ain’t saved?” Gus whispered to Call. “I’m hungry enough to eat tongue, or bugs, or anything I can catch. Them mountains could be fifty miles away, for all we know. I ain’t gonna last no fifty miles—not unless I get food.”

“I guess you’ll last if you have to,” Call told him. “Bigfoot says we’ll come to villages before we get to the hills. Maybe it will only be twenty miles—or thirty.”

“I could eat my belt,” Gus said. He actually cut a small slice off his belt and ate it, or at least chewed it and swallowed it. The result didn’t please him, though. The little slice of leather did nothing to relieve his hunger pangs.

They walked steadily all day, toward the high mountains. They ignored their stomachs as best they could—but there were moments when Call thought Gus might be right. They might starve before they reached the villages. Bigfoot had taken a fever somehow— most of the day he stumbled along, delirious; he seemed to think he was talking to James Bowie, the gallant fighter who had died at the Alamo.

“We ain’t him, we’re just us,” Gus told him several times, but Bigfoot kept on talking to James Bowie.

Toward the evening of that day, as the shadows from the mountains stretched across the plain, Gus thought he saw something encouraging—a thin column of smoke, rising into the shadows. He looked again, and again he saw smoke.

“It’s from a chimney,” he said. “There’s a house with a chimney up there somewhere.”

Gus saw the smoke, too, and Bigfoot claimed he smelled it.

“That’s wood smoke, all right,” he said. “I reckon it’s pinon. They use pinon for fires, out here in New Mexico.”

They hurried for three miles and still weren’t to the village. Just as they were about to get discouraged again, they came over a little rise in the ground and saw forty or fifty sheep, grazing on the plain ahead. A dog began to bark—two sheepherders, just making their campfire, looked up and saw them. The sheepherders were unarmed and took fright at the sight of the three Rangers.

“I expect they think we’re devils,” Bigfoot said, as the two sheepherders hurried off toward a village, a mile or two away. The sheep they left in care of the two large dogs, both of whom were barking and snarling at the Texans.

“They didn’t need to run—I’m just glad to be here,” Gus said. In fact, he was so moved by the sight of the distant houses that he felt he might weep. Crossing the prairie he had often wondered if he would ever see a house again, or sleep in one, or ever be among people again at all. The empty spaces had given him a longing for normal things—women cooking, children chasing one another, blacksmiths shoeing horses, men drinking in bars. Several times on the journey, he had thought such things were lost forever—that he would never get across the plain to sit at a woman’s table again. But now he had.

Call was glad to come to the village, too. He had been hearing about New Mexico for months, and yet, until they spotted the sheepherders, had not seen a single Mexican. He had begun to doubt that there were towns in New Mexico at all.

“I wouldn’t mind stopping and cooking one of them sheep right now,” Bigfoot said. “I guess that wouldn’t be friendly, though. Maybe they’ll cook one for us, once they see we ain’t devils.”

“They may think we’re devils, even if we’re friendly,” Gus said. “I could use a barbering, and so could the rest of you.”

Call knew he was right. They were filthy and shaggy. They had only their guns and the clothes they had on. And they were afoot. Who but devils would emerge from the great plain afoot?

They gave the sheep a wide berth—the big dogs acted as if they might charge at the slightest provocation; none of them felt in the mood for a dogfight.

“I have always wondered why people keep dogs,” Bigfoot said. “Now, the Indians, they eat puppies, and a puppy might be tasty. But a big dog is only a step from being a wolf, and it’s foolish to get too close to wolves.”

The village consisted of about twenty houses, all of them made of brown adobe. Long before the three of them arrived, the whole village had gathered to watch their approach. The men, the women, and the children stood in one group, clearly apprehensive. One or two of the men had old guns.

“By God, I guess Caleb could conquer this state, if he gets here,” Bigfoot said. “They don’t even have a gun apiece, and I doubt they know how to shoot, anyway.”

“Don’t be talking of conquering them,” Gus said. The mention of mutton had made him realize how hungry he was. He didn’t want to lose his chance for a good meal because of any foolish talk about military matters. Let the conquering wait until they had eaten their fill.

“Wave at them, let them know we’re friendly,” Bigfoot said. “They don’t look hostile, but there might be a show-off who wants to impress a gal. That’s usually what starts a fight, in situations like this.”

They walked into the village slowly, giving evident signs that their intentions were friendly. Some of the little children hid their faces in their mothers’ skirts. Most of the women kept their faces down— only a few bold little girls stared at the strangers. The men stood still as statues.

“This is when I wish I was better at the Spanish lingo,” Bigfoot said. “I know some words, but I can’t seem to get my tongue around them right.”

“Just name off some grub,” Gus advised. “Frijoles or tortillas or cabrito or something. I’m mostly interested in getting a meal and getting it soon.”

They walked on, smiling at the assembled people, until they were at the center of the little village, near the common well. A bucket of water had just been brought up—Bigfoot looked around and smiled, before asking if they might drink.

“Agua?” he asked. He addressed the question to an old man standing near the well. The old man looked embarrassed—he didn’t raise his eyes.

“Certainly—you may drink your fill—it’s a very long walk from Texas,” a forceful voice said, from behind them.

They turned to see ten muskets pointed at them. A little group of militia had been hiding behind one of the adobe houses. The man who spoke stood somewhat to the side. He wore a military cap, and had a thin mustache.

“What’s this? We just want a drink,” Bigfoot said. He looked chagrined. Once again, they had been easily ambushed.

“You can have the drink, but I must ask you to lay down your arms, first,” the large man said, firmly.

“Who are you?” Bigfoot asked. “We just walked in. We’re friendly. Why point a bunch of guns at us?““I am Captain Salazar,” the man said. “Lay down your weapons, and you will come to no harm.”

Bigfoot hesitated a moment—so did Gus and Call. Although ten rifles were pointed at them, at a distance of no more than thirty feet, they didn’t want to lay down their arms.

There was dead silence in the village for several moments, while the Rangers considered the order. Captain Salazar waited—he was smiling, but it was not a friendly smile. The soldiers had their rifles ready to fire.

“Now, this is a fine welcome,” Bigfoot said, hoping to get the man into a conversation. If they talked a minute, he might ease off.

“Serior, it is not a welcome,” Captain Salazar said. “It is an arrest. Please lay down your arms.”

Bigfoot saw it was hopeless.

“If that’s your opinion, I guess it wins the day,” he said. He laid down his guns.

After a moment, Call and Gus did the same. A soldier ran over and took the weapons.

“Help yourselves to the water,” Captain Salazar said.

“IF THAT’S THE SHOW, we might as well drink, at least,” Bigfoot said. There were two stone dippers in the water bucket. He filled one, and offered the other to Gus. Call waited until they drank. The ten soldiers had not lowered their muskets. Though he was thirsty, he found it unpleasant to drink with guns pointed at him. While Gus and Bigfoot drank, he inspected the Mexican militia. They were a mixed lot—several were boys not older than twelve or thirteen, but two were old men who looked to be seventy, at least. None of them had the appearance of being formidable fighters—any three Rangers could have scattered them easily, had it not been for the awkward fact that they had the drop. Also, Captain Salazar knew his job and his men. Call knew they would have fired together, had he given the order.

“I am surprised you chose to make such a long walk, Senores,” Captain Salazar said. “Very few people have walked across the llano. You may be the first, in which case you deserve congratulations.”

He gestured to a blacksmith, who stood in front of one of the little shacks. The blacksmith had an anvil and a pile of chains.

“Put the leg irons on them,” he said.

“Leg irons,” Gus said. “I thought you said we deserve congratulations. Leg irons ain’t my notion of congratulations.”

“Which of us gets what he deserves in life?” Salazar said, smiling his unfriendly smile again. “I deserve to be a general but am only a captain, sent to this wretched village to catch invaders.”

“Shoot them if they resist,” he added, turning to the militia.

Call looked at Bigfoot, who was standing calmly by the well. He had mastered his anger and looked as calm as if he had been listening to a sermon.

“Do we have to do it?” Call asked. “I hate like hell to be chained.”

“No, you don’t have to do it,” Bigfoot said. “But it’s be chained or be shot. I’ll be chained myself. I’ve been chained before. It ain’t a permanent condition, like being dead.”

“Your commander is wise,” Salazar said. “I would rather feed you than shoot you, but I will shoot you if you don’t obey.”

“I’ll go first, I’ve had more experience with chaining,” Bigfoot said. He walked over, smiled at the blacksmith, and put one of his big feet on the anvil.

“Hammer careful,” he said. “I’d hate it if you smashed my toes.”

The blacksmith was a young man. He was very, very careful in his work and soon had leg irons on Bigfoot.

Captain Salazar came over and gave the irons a close inspection. It was obvious to Call that the man had made himself feared in the village. Though Bigfoot was calm during the chaining, the young blacksmith wasn’t.

“These are important prisoners,” Salazar said. “You must do your work well. If one of them escapes while they are in this village, I will hang you.”

Call felt a rage building in him, as the young blacksmith tightened the iron around his ankle. He regretted laying down his gun. He felt it would have been better to die fighting than to submit to the indignity of chains.

None of the people in the village so much as moved during the whole procedure. The sheepherders did not go back to their sheep. Two old men with hoes stood where they were. The women of the village, many of whom were plump, kept their eyes downcast—yet once or twice, Call thought he saw looks of sympathy in the eyes of the women. One girl not more than twelve looked at him several times. She didn’t dare smile, but she looked. She was a pretty thing, but the sight of a pretty girl could not distract him from the fact that the young blacksmith had just hammered an iron band around his leg.

“I guess this town ain’t got no jail,” Gus said, to Captain Salazar. “If it had one, I guess you’d just stick us in it.”

“No, it is a poor village,” Salazar said. “If it had a jail I would put you in it for tonight. But the leg irons are for your march.”

“What march? We’re just about marched out.”

“Don’t worry—we don’t start until tomorrow,” Captain Salazar said. “The women will give you lots of posole and you will have all night to rest.”

“Oh, then we’re off to Santa Fe?” Bigfoot asked. “At least we’ll get to see the town.”

“No, you are off to El Paso,” Salazar said. “El Paso is in the south. You will never see Santa Fe, I am afraid.”

“Well, that’s a pity—I’ve heard it’s a fine town,” Bigfoot said. He was being very friendly—too friendly, Call thought. He didn’t intend to be at all friendly to the man—it was clear to him that Salazar would kill them all in an instant if it suited his whim.

Gus amused himself, during his chaining, by looking over the women of the village. Several seemed disposed to be sympathetic, though none would raise their eyes for more than a second. Two or three of them resumed their cooking, which they did outdoors in round ovens. They were cooking corn tortillas. The smell was a torment to one as hungry as he was, but he tried not to show it.

Salazar turned to the militia, and pointed to a small adobe house.

“Put them in there,” he said. “Lock the door and four of you stand watch—these are dangerous men. If you let them get away, I will tie your hang ropes with my own hand.”

The little house they were shoved into had a door so low that Gus and Bigfoot had to bend almost to their knees to get through it. It was a single room with a mud floor and a small window with bars in it. There was nothing in the room—no pitcher, no bed, nothing. Neither Gus nor Bigfoot could stand erect. Call could, but when he did his hat touched the ceiling.

“They’re a small people, ain’t they?” Bigfoot said, settling himself in a corner. “I expect we could whip a passel of them, if we hadn’t walked into a dern ambush.”

“Salazar ain’t timid,” Call remarked. “He’s got all these people scared.”

“Well, all he talks about is hanging people,” Gus said. He settled in another corner. They had been allowed a jug of well water; Gus remembered that posole had been mentioned, but two hours passed and no people arrived. The four guards were standing right outside the little window. They had lowered their muskets and were talking to three girls from the village. One of the girls was the pretty one Call had noticed while he was being chained. Though she chatted with the soldiers, the girl kept looking toward the hut where they were being held.

Gus, too starved to worry about being shot or hanged, finally lost his temper and yelled at the guards.

“We’re Texas Rangers, we need to be fed!” he yelled. “Your own captain said to give us posole, so go get it.”

“They don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bigfoot pointed out. “They don’t know the English language.”

“They know what posole is,” Gus declared. “That’s not English, that’s Mexican.”

One of the soldiers went to a house not far away, and said something to an old woman. Soon, the old woman and another came and handed in three hot bowls of posole. When the Rangers emptied them, which they quickly did, the old women brought second helpings.

“See, it don’t hurt to ask, even if you’re in jail,” Gus said. “They ain’t allowed to just let prisoners starve.”

“How do you know their rules—you ain’t Mexican,” Call said.

THOUGH Gus AND BIGFOOT had been in jail often, Call had never been locked up before—much less locked up and shackled. He found both experiences humiliating. More and more, he regretted laying down his arms. None of the Mexicans looked like good shots. The range was close, of course, but the more he thought over their surrender, the more he wished he had fought.

“I expect we’d have got at least half of them,” he said.

“It don’t matter if you got nine out of ten, if the tenth one killed you,” Gus pointed out. “That was good posole. This ain’t the worst jail I’ve ever been in. They don’t feed you nothing half that good in the San Antonio jail.”

“It’ll take more than them ten Mexicans to round up Caleb Cobb,” Bigfoot said. “I expect he’ll show Captain Salazar a trick or two, if the boys ain’t too starved to fight when the fight starts.”

“This is just a mud building,” Call sdd. “I imagine we could dig out, if we tried.”

“Dig out and go where?” Gus asked. “We nearly starved getting this far. Besides, we’re chained.”

“I know enough blacksmithing to get these chains off in two minutes,” Call reminded him. “I think we ought to try and escape. Somebody needs to warn the boys.”

“I ain’t going—let Caleb fight his own fights,” Bigfoot said. “Those old women seem friendly. I’m tired from that long walk. I say we lay around here and eat soup for a day or two before we do anything frisky.”

“There’s a pretty girl or two in this village,” Gus said. “Some of them might take pity on us and let us out.”

“No, Salazar’s got ‘em buffaloed,” Bigfoot said. A minute later, he fell asleep and snored loudly.

Call still smarted from the humiliation of being caught so easily. They had escaped some very skillful Indians, only to be captured by a motley crew of Mexicans with rusty muskets. He was annoyed with himself, because he had been resolved to practice careful planning and avoid traps, yet he had let the fatigue of their journey wear him down. Anyone ought to have known there might be soldiers in the town—yet, once again, he had failed in alertness.

“So far we’ve been a disgrace in every encounter,” he told Gus, but Gus was not in the mood for gloomy military critiques.

“Well, but we ain’t dead,” Gus said. “We still have time to learn. I guess this ain’t the part of New Mexico that’s filled with gold and silver.”

“I told you not to expect gold and silver,” Call said.

Soon Gus, too, fell asleep, but Call couldn’t. He stood by the little window most of the night, looking out. There was a high moon over the prairies. Now and then, the sheepdogs barked when a coyote came too close to the flock. The soldiers who were guarding them, all of them just boys, were playing cards by the light of a little oil lantern. They didn’t look capable of killing anyone, unless by accident.

Toward morning the old woman came back, bringing them coffee. Call saw the pretty girl come out of a little hut with her water jar and go toward the well. Although he was in no position to say much to her, he had the urge to exchange a good morning, at least. He regretted that he didn’t know more Spanish, though, of course, working for old Jesus, he had picked up a phrase or two. As the sunrose, he could see how small the village was—just a few low houses on the edge of the great wide plain.

Bigfoot woke and drank his coffee, but Gus McCrae slept on, stretched comfortably across half the length of the floor.

“I guess he’d sleep like that if they were about to hang him,” Call said.

“Well, if they were about to hang him, he might as well snooze,” Bigfoot said. “He could go from one nap right into the old nap you don’t wake up from.”

When the sun was well up the old woman came back, bringing them hot tortillas. The smell woke Gus; he sat up, looking half asleep, but he ate as if he were wide awake.

A little later, Captain Salazar rode along the one street, mounted on a fine black horse. His militia seemed to have increased during the night—some twenty-five soldiers stood at attention, awaiting his order.

Salazar rode over to their little window, and bent in the saddle to look in.

“Good morning, Senores,” he said. “I hope you are all refreshed. We have a long way to travel.”

“Well, we’re getting a late start,” Bigfoot said. “The sun’s been up an hour. What’s the delay?”

“You will see—I had to conduct a trial,” Salazar said. “They’re bringing the scoundrel now—as soon as we shoot him we’ll be on our way.”

“I ain’t in the mood to see nobody shot. I think I’ll just snooze some more,” Gus said when Salazar passed on up the street. “I wonder what the fellow did.”

Before Gus could stretch out, six soldiers came; one unlocked the door to their little prison. Again, Gus and Bigfoot had to bend nearly double to get out. Once in the street, Call saw that the whole town had turned out for the event that was about to take place. Salazar had ridden up to a little church and was waiting impatiently, now and then popping his quirt against his leg. The church was not much larger than some of the houses but it had a little bell on top and its walls had been whitewashed. Four soldiers came out, dragging a blindfolded man.

“Why, it’s Bes—I wonder how they caught him?” Bigfoot said, recognizing the Pawnee scout.

Indeed, it was Bes-Das: barefoot, blindfolded, and with blood on his shirt.

“The skunks, they’ve been beating on him,” Gus said.

“He’s a skunk himself—he deserted us,” Call reminded them— and yet he, too, felt sorry for the man. The whole village fell silent as he was hustled across the little plaza and placed in front of the white wall of the church. Bes-Das limped as he walked to the wall.

Salazar rode over to his militia and pointed six times, at six of the young soldiers. An old priest, barefoot like the prisoner, came out of the little church and watched—he did not approach the prisoner. The six soldiers lined up in front of Bes-Das and leveled their muskets. Gus felt his stomach quiver—he did not want to see Bes-Das shot down, but he could not seem to turn his face away. Salazar motioned to the firing squad, and all the soldiers fired—one shot came a moment later than the others. Bes-Das slammed back against the church, and then fell forward on his face. Salazar rode over, drew his pistol, and handed it to one of the young soldiers, who quickly stepped across the body and fired one shot into Bes-Das’s head.

“I think that was a wasted bullet,” Bigfoot said. “I think old Bes was dead.”

Salazar reached down for his pistol, looking over at Bigfoot as he took it.

“Men have survived six bullets before,” he remarked. “The pistol was to make sure.”

“What did he do?” Call asked, looking at the body of the scout. Some of the young soldiers on the firing squad had not liked their task—one or two were trembling.

“He was a thief,” Salazar said. “All Indians are thieves. This one stole a ring from the governor’s wife.”

He reached into the pocket of his blue tunic and pulled out a large silver ring.

“This ring,” he said.

The ring he had was large, with a green stone of some kind set in it. Salazar rode over to where the Texans stood and showed them the ring, one by one.

“The finest silver,” he said. “Silver from our own mines, the ones you Texans hope to steal from us. This is why you made your long walk, isn’t it—to steal our silver and gold?”

“Captain, we ain’t miners,” Bigfoot said. “We come for the scenery, mostly—and for the adventure.”

“Oh,” Salazar said. “Of course the scenery is free. We have no objection to your looking at it, if you do it with respect. As for the adventure …”

He stopped, and looked over his shoulder at the body of the man he had just executed. Two old men were digging a grave behind the church.

“As you see, some adventures end badly,” he went on. “This man paid his debt. Now we must hurry to meet your friends.”

The little militia assembled itself and followed Salazar southwest, onto the plain but in the direction of the line of mountains. The three Texans marched at the rear, guarded by two soldiers on mules. Three soldiers flanked them on either side.

As they passed out of town the two old men were carrying Bes-Das, the crooked-toothed Pawnee, toward the little grave behind the whitewashed church. “He got killed for a ring,” Call observed.

“It looked like pure silver, to me,” Gus said. “I guess he just thought he’d grab it and go.”

“He didn’t go fast enough, then,” Bigfoot said. “I wonder what happened to that Apache boy he left with. If he’s loose around here somewhere I’d like to know. Apaches are slick when it comes to escapes.”

“They don’t mean for us to escape,” Call said, looking at the three armed soldiers who were marching one on each side of them. Salazar, riding at the head of the little column, frequently turned his horse and sometimes rode all the way back and walked his mount behind the prisoners for a few steps, to remind them of his vigilance.

“They don’t mean for us to, but they could get fooled,” Bigfoot said.

“That ring was pure silver,” Gus said. “I told you there was silver out here.”

“You didn’t mention the firing squad, though,” Call said.

BEFORE THE RANGERS HAD walked a mile they had learned to their vexation the difficulties of walking while chained. The irons soon chafed their ankles raw—they were forced to tear off pieces of their shirts to wrap their ankles with, as some protection from the rough iron.

“Dern, I’ll be scraped to the bone before we get ten miles/’ Gus said. “They ought to unchain us during the march—they could always hammer the chains back on at night.”

The scraping, though, was only a part of the vexation. The chains dragged on the ground and caught on small protuberances—rocks, cactus, small bushes. Call, though the shortest man, had been given the longest chain. He found that he could hitch his chain to his belt and proceed at a normal stride, but that was not the case with Gus McCrae or Bigfoot Wallace, both of whom had to adjust their long strides to the length of the chains. Both men soon grew so annoyed at having to hobble mile after mile that they conceived a murderous hatred for Captain Salazar and for all Mexicans.

“Let’s throttle these two boys back here and grab the mules and go for it,” Gus suggested, more than once. The plain stretched before them, empty for fifty miles at least.

“There’s two mules and three of us,” Call pointed out. “They’re small mules, too. Before we could get out of rifle range, they’d shoot us fifty times.”

Bigfoot was as annoyed with the irons as Gus, but when he looked the situation over, he decided Call was right.

“Maybe that Apache boy will show up some night and help us slip off,” he said.

Call thought that Gus’s hope that Alchise would show up and free them a far-fetched one, at best. Alchise had never been particularly friendly. That very night, though, he fell into a shivery sleep and dreamed that one-eyed Johnny Carthage, the slowest member of the troop, slipped into camp and helped him ride off on Salazar’s black horse. The dream was so powerful that he awoke at four in the morning with his teeth chattering and could not at first convince himself that he was where he was, instead of on the black horse, speeding away. They had been given no posole that evening, just a few scraps of tortillas and a handful of hard corn. They had no blankets either; a frost crept down from the mountains and edged out onto the plain. Many of the Mexican soldiers were as tired and cold as the three prisoners. They huddled around small campfires, some dozing, some simply trying to keep warm. Several were barefooted, and few had any footgear except sandals. By morning, there were groans throughout the camp as men tried to hobble around on their cold feet. The Texans found to their surprise that they were better off than all but a few of their captors. Though their clothes were frayed and ragged, they were still warmer than what the Mexicans wore.

“Why, we won’t have to whip this army,” Bigfoot said. “Half of them will freeze before the fight starts, and the other half will be too sleepy to load their guns.”

Captain Salazar was the only member of the company to have a portable shelter with him. He owned a fine tent, made of canvas. A large mule carried it for him from camp to camp, and two soldiers were assigned to set it up at the end of each day. Besides the tent, there were a cot and several brightly colored blankets, to keep the Captain warm. In the morning Salazar came out, wrapped in oneof the blankets, and sat before a substantial fire that one of his soldiers tended. Salazar also had a personal cook, an old man named Manuel, who brewed his coffee and brought it to him in a large tin cup. Two nanny goats trailed the troop, in order to provide milk for the Captain’s coffee.

“He could offer us some of that coffee,” Gus said. “If I could get a few drops of something warm inside me, I might not be so cold.”

Bigfoot Wallace appeared not to be affected by the chill.

“You boys have lived too south a life,” he said. “Your blood gets thin, when you’re living south. This ain’t cold. If we’re still in these parts in a month or two you’ll see some weather that makes this seem like summer.”

Gus McCrae received that information with a grim expression. The morning had been so cold that he had found himself almost unable to urinate, a difficulty he had not experienced before.

“Hell, it’s so cold it took me ten minutes to piss,” he said. “I won’t be here two months from now, if you think it’ll be colder than this, not unless I have a buffalo hide to wrap up in or a big whore to sleep with.”

Mention of a big whore reminded them all of Matilda—it set them all to wondering about the fate of their companions, somewhere out on the long plain to the south.

“I wonder if they’re all still alive?” Gus said. “What if the hump man came after them with two hundred warriors? Every one of them might be dead, for all we know—these Mexicans can march us to China and we won’t find them, if that’s the case.”

“He wouldn’t have needed two hundred warriors,” Call said.

“Oh, they’re there somewhere,” Bigfoot said. “The Mexicans have had reports, I expect. They wouldn’t march these barefoot boys around the prairie unless they thought there was somebody to fight, somewhere.”

Captain Salazar waited until midmorning before setting the company in motion. Many of the men were so tired from the cold night that they merely stumbled along. Captain Salazar rode ahead, on his fine black gelding.

In the middle of the afternoon, a curl of dark clouds appeared over the mountains to the north. An hour before darkness, snow began to fall, blown on a cold north wind. Call had never seen snow to any extent—just a dusting now and then, in midwinter. Thoughit was not yet the end of October, snow was soon falling heavily, the white flakes swirling silently out of the dark sky. In half an hour, the whole plain was white.

“It’ll be a bad night for these barefoot boys,” Bigfoot said. “They ain’t dressed for such weather.”

“We ain’t, either,” Gus said. He was appalled at the uncomfortable state he found himself in. The irons were like ice bands around his ankles—soon he was having to drag his chains through the slushy snow.

Captain Salazar had formed the habit of dropping back every hour or so, to exchange a few words with his captives. He had enveloped himself in a warm poncho, and seemed to enjoy the sudden storm.

“This snow will refresh us for battle,” he said.

“I guess it might refresh the soldiers it don’t freeze,” Bigfoot said.

“My men are hardy, Senor,” Salazar said. “They won’t freeze.”

That night, at least, there was coffee for all the men, including the prisoners. Gus kept his hands cupped around his coffee cup as long as he could, for the warmth—he had always had trouble keeping his hands warm in chilly weather. The meal, again, was tortillas and hard corn. The snow swirled thickly in the dusk. Call and Gus and Bigfoot were sitting close together around a little fire when they suddenly heard a high terrified squealing from Captain Salazar’s horse. The nanny goats, tethered nearby, began to bleat frantically. The mules began to bray—they were tame mules and had not been hobbled. Soon they were racing away into the darkness. Captain Salazar began to fire his pistol at something Call couldn’t see. Then, a moment later, he saw a great shape lope into the center of the camp. Men were grabbing muskets and firing, but the great shape came on.

“Is it a buffalo?” Gus asked—then he saw the shape rear on its hind legs, something no buffalo would be likely to do.

“That ain’t no buf, that’s a grizzly,” Bigfoot said, springing to his feet. “Here’s our chance, boys—let’s go, while he’s got ‘em scattered.”

The great brown bear was angry—Call could see the flash of his teeth in the light of the many campfires. The bear came right into the center of the camp, roaring. Mexican soldiers fled in every direction; they left their food and their guns, their only thoughtescape. The bear roared again, and turned toward Captain Salazar’s tent—old Manuel had just served him a nice rib of venison in the snug tent. Salazar fired several times, but the bear seemed not to notice. Salazar fled, his gun empty. Old Manuel stepped out of the tent right into the path of the charging bear, who swiped the old man aside with a big paw and went right into the tent.

“Grab a gun and see if you can find a hammer, so we can knock these irons off,” Bigfoot said. “Hurry, we need to move while the bear’s eating the Captain’s supper.”

Call and Gus found guns aplenty—each took two muskets and grabbed some bullet pouches. While Call was looking for a hammer, the bear came ripping through the side of Salazar’s tent. The black horse was twisting wildly at the end of the rawhide rope it had been tethered with. As the Texans watched, the bear swiped at the horse, as it had at Manuel. The black gelding fell as if shot, the grizzly on top of it.

“Let’s go, while it eats that horse,” Bigfoot said. He had a pistol and a rifle.

“I didn’t know a bear could knock down a horse,” Gus said. “I’m glad to be leaving, myself.”

“A bear can knock down anything,” Bigfoot said. “It could knock down an elephant if it met one—it et the Captain’s supper and now it’s carrying off his horse.”

As they watched, the great bear sank its teeth into the neck of the dead gelding, lifted it, and moved with it into the darkness. It dragged the horse over the top of the old cook, Manuel, as it moved away from the camp that was no longer a camp, just a few sputtering campfires with gear piled around them. Not a single Mexican was visible as the Texans left.

“That bear done us a fine turn,” Bigfoot said. “They’d have marched us till our feet came off, if he hadn’t come along and scared this little army away.”

Call was remembering how easily the bear had lifted the horse and moved away with it. The black gelding had been heavy, too, yet the bear had made off with it as easily as a coyote would make off with a kitten.

The snow continued to fall—once they got behind the circle of firelight, it was very dark.

“The bear went toward the hills,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s leave the hills—maybe we can catch one or two of them mules, in the morning.

Gus reached down to adjust his leg iron, and for a second had the fear that he had lost his companions.

“Hold on, boys, don’t leave me,” he said.

“By God, this is a thick night if I ever saw one,” Bigfoot said. “We’d better hold on to one another’s belts, or we’ll all be traveling single, pretty soon.”

They huddled together, took their belts off, and strung them out—Bigfoot in the lead; Call at the rear.

“We don’t even know which way we’re walking,” Call said. “We could be walking right back to Santa Fe. They’ll just catch us again, if we’re not careful.”

“I know which way I’m walking,” Bigfoot said. “I’m walking dead away from a mad grizzly bear.”

“He won’t be so bad, once he eats that horse,” Gus said.

“It’s just one horse—he might not be satisfied,” Bigfoot said. “He might want a Tennessean or two, for dessert. I say we keep plodding—we can worry about the Mexicans tomorrow.” “That suits me,” Call said.

THE THREE RANGERS WALKED through the snow all night, clinging to one another’s belts. All of them thought of the bear. It had killed a large horse with one swipe of its paw. Call remembered the flash of its teeth as it whirled toward Salazar’s tent. Gus remembered seeing several men shoot at the bear—he didn’t suppose they had missed, at such short range, and yet the bear had given not the slightest indication that it felt the bullets.

“I hope we’re going away from it,” Gus said, several times. “I hope we ain’t going toward it.”

“It won’t matter which way we’re going, if it wants us,” Bigfoot informed him. “Bears can track you by smell. If it wanted us it could be ten feet behind us, right now. They move quiet, unless they’re mad, like that one was. I had a friend got killed by a bear out by Fort Worth—I found his remains myself, although I didn’t find the bear.”

Having delivered himself of that piece of information, Bigfoot said no more.“Well, what about it?” Gus asked, exasperated. “If you found him, what’s the story?”

“Oh, you’re talking about Willy, my friend that got kilt by the bear?” Bigfoot said. “It was on the Trinity River—I figured it out from the tracks. Willy was sitting there fishing, and the bear walked up behind him so quiet Willy never even had a notion a bear was anywhere around—that’s how quiet they are, when they’re stalking you.”

“So … tell us … was he torn up bad?” Call asked. He too was annoyed with Bigfoot’s habit of starting stories and failing to finish them.

“Yes, he was mostly et—the bear even et his belt buckle,” Bigfoot said. “He had a double eagle made into a belt buckle. I always admired that belt buckle and was planning to take it, since Willy was dead anyway and didn’t have no kinfolks that I knew of. But the dern bear ate it, along with most of Willy.”

“Maybe he fancied the taste of the belt,” Gus suggested. The notion that a bear could be ten feet behind him, stalking them, was a notion he couldn’t manage to get comfortable with. He turned around to look so many times, as they wffked, that by morning his neck was sore from all the twisting. The> night was so dark he couldn’t have seen the bear even if it had been close enough to bite him—but he couldn’t get Bigfoot’s story off his mind, and couldn’t keep himself from looking around.

The dawn was soupy and cold—the snow turned to a heavy drizzle, and the plains were foggy. They had nothing to eat and had had no luck pounding their chains off with the few rocks they could find. The rocks broke, but the chains held. Exasperated beyond restraint, Bigfoot Wallace tried to shoot his chain off, only to have the musket ball ricochet off the chain and pass through the lower part of his leg.

“Missed the bone, or I’d be done for,” Bigfoot remarked grimly, examining the wound he had foolishly given himself.

Gus had been about to try and shoot his chain in two, but changed his mind when he saw what happened to Bigfoot.

“We ought to stop and wait for clearer weather—we could be headed for Canada, I guess,” Bigfoot said. “There’s bad Indians up in Canada—the Sioux, they call themselves. I don’t want to go marching in that direction.“Nonetheless, they didn’t stop. Memory of captivity was fresh, and kept them moving. The need to stay warm was also a factor—they had nothing to eat, and no fire to sit by. Waiting would only have meant getting colder.

The fog gradually thinned—by noon, they could see the tops of the mountains again. In midafternoon the sky cleared and the Rangers saw to their relief that they had been moving south, as they had hoped. They were far out on the plain, not a tree or shrub in sight.

“I hope that bear don’t spot us,” Gus said.

Though the fog and drizzle had been depressing, at least they had given them a little sense of protection; now they felt exposed— Indians on the one side, a grizzly bear on the other.

“I see somebody,” Bigfoot said, pointing to two dots on the prairie, west, toward the mountains. “Maybe it’s trappers. If it is, we’re in luck.”

“Trappers always have grub,” he added.

The two dots, however, turned out to be two of the Mexican soldiers—two young boys, not more than fifteen, who had happened to flee the bear in the same directions the Texans had taken —they were cold, hungry, and lost. Neither of them were armed. When they saw the Texans marching up, well armed, they both held up their hands, expecting to be killed on the spot.

“What do we do, boys?” Bigfoot asked. “Shoot ‘em or take ‘em with us?”

“We don’t need to shoot them,” Call said. “They can’t hurt us. I expect they should just go home.”

The two boys were named Juan and Jose. One of them, Call remembered, had tended the nanny goats that supplied Captain Salazar his milk.

“You’re going in the wrong direction, boys,” Bigfoot told them. He pointed north, toward the village they had started from.

“Vamoose,” he said. “We ain’t got time for conversation.”

The two boys, though, refused to leave them. When the Rangers started south, they followed, though at a respectful distance.

“I expect they’re afraid of that bear,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t blame ‘em much. The bear’s in that direction.”

Call didn’t think the bear was following them—after all, it had a horse to eat, and an old man as well—but he admitted that it was hard to get the bear off his mind. He had supposed there could be nothing more fearsome in the West than the Comanches, but the great grizzly was a force even more formidable than Buffalo Hump. Even Buffalo Hump couldn’t kill a horse just by hitting it. He remembered how many times they had shot and stabbed the stubborn buffalo, before they got it to die. Yet, the grizzly was far stronger than the buffalo. What kind of gun,would it take to kill a grizzly? He knew that men had killed bears, even grizzly bears, but having seen the bear scatter the militia, and reduce even Salazar to terror, he wondered what it would take to bring the beast down.

In any case, it was another reason to stay alert. If a bear could sneak up on a man, as it had on Bigfoot’s friend Willy, it behooved them to be watchful.

Walking near dusk, they surprised six prairie chickens and managed to run them down. The heavy birds could only fly a little distance. The Rangers, with the help of the starving Mexican boys, managed to catch all of them. They crossed a little creek, just at dark, with a few trees around it, enough to enable them to have a good fire. They let Juan and Jose eat with them, and sleep near the fire—the boys just had thin clothes.

“That was luck,” Bigfoot said, as they finished the last of the birds. “Caleb can’t be too far, unless they’ve all been massacred. If we walk hard enough we ought to locate them tomorrow.”

Call thought that was probably only hopeful thinking. So far, nothing Bigfoot or any of the others had predicted had happened the way it was supposed to. The plain was a vast ocean of grass— Caleb could be anywhere on it. Even a troop of men could be easily lost in such a space.

This time, though, the scout’s prediction was accurate. All day they walked steadily south on the sunlit plain. Toward evening, they saw smoke in the distance, rising into the deepening blue of the sky. Like the smoke from the chimneys of the village where they had been captured, the smoke was farther away than it looked. It grew full dark as they walked toward it—now and then, from a roll of the prairie, they could see the flicker of the campfires.“But they might not be our campfires,” Call pointed out. “They could be Mexican campfires.”

They stumbled on, the Mexican boys following apprehensively. Another hour passed before the fires were really close. No horses neighed, as they approached the fires. Gus began to feel fearful. He decided Call was right—it was probably Mexicans sitting around the fires, not Texans.

“We could just squat and wait for morning,” he whispered. “Then we can see who it is—if it’s Indians, we’d still have a chance to get away.”

“Shut up, they can hear you,” Call said.

“I was whispering,” Gus told him.

“Well, you whisper loud enough to wake the dead,” Call said.

“Hold on—who’s there?” a voice said, and at once relief swept over the Rangers, for the voice that challenged them was none other than Long Bill Coleman’s.

“Billy, it’s us—don’t shoot!” Bigfoot called.

There was silence for a moment, as Long Bill absorbed what he had heard.

“Boys, is that you?” he asked.

“It’s us, Bill,” Gus said, so relieved he couldn’t wait to speak.

“Why, that sounds like Gus McCrae,” Bill Coleman said.

“It’s us, Bill—it’s us,” Gus said, again.

Long Bill Coleman peered into the darkness as hard as he could, but he couldn’t see a thing. Despite the fact that the voices had sounded as if they were the voices of Bigfoot Wallace and Gus McCrae, he remained apprehensive. It was an odd time of night for folks to be showing up. He had heard somewhere that Indians could do perfect imitations of white men’s voices, much as they could imitate birdcalls and coyote howls.

He wanted to believe that the voices he was hearing were the voices of his friends—it was just that all the stories of Comanches imitating white men’s voices weighed in his mind.

“If it’s you, who’s with you, then?” he called out, wondering if he was inviting a scalping. He cocked his gun, just to be on the safe side.

“Gus and Call and two prisoners,” Bigfoot said. “Don’t you know us?” Just at that moment Long Bill caught a glimpse of Bigfoot, and realized he had been too suspicious. “Nerves, I’m jumpy,” Long Bill said. “Come on in, boys.” “It’s just us, Bill,” Gus said, to reassure the man that no ambush was imminent. “It’s just us. We’re back.”

THE ARRIVAL OF THE three Rangers, in leg irons, trailed by two shivering Mexican boys, aroused the whole camp. The blacksmith soon had the chains knocked off. There were some who favored chaining Jose and Juan, but Bigfoot wouldn’t hear of it. The sight of so many Texans, all armed to the teeth, set both boys to quaking as if their last hour had come, and it would have come had some of the harsher spirits had their way. None were quite thirsty enough for Mexican blood to buck Bigfoot, though.

“Those boys don’t want to fight,” Bigfoot said. “They’re too starved to fight, and so are we. What’s to eat?”

Caleb Cobb looked rueful.

“I’d like to lay out a banquet for you and the corporals, Mr. Wallace,” Caleb said. “I’m sure you deserve one, for making your way back to us under hazardous conditions.”

“Hazardous is right, a damn bear nearly killed us all,” Gus piped up.

“If one of you had had the foresight to shoot the bear, then we could lay out a banquet,” Caleb said. “As it is, we can’t. We ran out of food yesterday. We don’t have a goddamn thing to eat.”

“Nothing?” Gus asked, surprised.

“Not unless you can eat firewood,” LŤong Bill said. “We’re all hungry.”

Quartermaster Brognoli sat by one of the fires. His condition had not improved. He still looked glassy eyed, and his head still shook.

“Hell, we would have done better to stay prisoners,” Bigfoot said. “At least the Mexicans fed us corn. We even had soup when we were still in that little town.”

“We’re close to the mountains—there’ll be deer, I expect,” Caleb said. “With a little luck we’ll all have meat tomorrow.”

Call noticed at once that the company didn’t seem as large as it had been when they left it, less than a week earlier. He missed a number of faces, though, in many cases, the faces were not those to which he could put a name. There just didn’t seem to be as many men as there had been when they left. Jimmy Tweed was still there, tall and gangly, and Johnny Carthage, and Shadrach and Matilda, huddled around a fire to themselves. But the troop seemed diminished, and Bigfoot said as much to Caleb Cobb.

“Yes, several fools headed off on their own,” Caleb admitted. “I expect they’re all dead by now, from one cause or another. I didn’t have enough ammunition to shoot them all, so I let them go. We’re down to forty men.”

“Forty-three, now that you men are back,” he added, a moment later.

“Forty-three, that’s all?” Bigfoot asked. “You had nearly two hundred when we left Austin.”

“The damn Missouri boys left first—I expect they’ll all starve,” Long Bill Coleman said. “Then a bunch went back to try and strike a river.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if they starve, too.”

“I don’t care who starves and who don’t,” Bigfoot said. “The Mexicans are bringing a thousand men against us. Salazar told me that. Even if they’re mostly boys, like Juan and Jose, we’ll have to shoot mighty good to whip a thousand men.”

Caleb Cobb looked undisturbed.

“I expect the figure’s high,” he said. “I’ll worry about a thousand Mexicans when I see them.”

“The man who took us prisoner said a general was coming,” Call said—Salazar had dropped the remark while they were on the march.

“Well, there’s generals and generals,” Caleb said. “Maybe their general will be a drunk, like old Phil Lloyd.”

“Caleb, there’s too many of them,” Bigfoot said. “They’re raising the whole country against us. If you don’t have enough bullets to shoot a few deserters, how are we going to whip a thousand men?”

“You damn scouts are too pessimistic,” Caleb said. “Let’s go to sleep. Maybe we can wipe out a battalion and steal their ammunition.”

He walked off and settled himself by his own campfire, leaving the men apprehensive. Seeing the leg irons on the three Rangers had put the camp in a dour mood.

“We ought to turn back,” Johnny Carthage said. “I can barely walk as it is. If they catch me and put me in leg irons I’ll be lucky to keep up.”

“This is like it was the first time we went out,” Call said. “Nobody knows what to do. We’re worse off than we were with Major Chevallie. We’ve got no food and no bullets, either. We can’t whip the Mexicans and we can’t get home, either. We’ll starve if we turn back, and they’ll catch us all, if we don’t.”

Gus had no rejoinder. The fact that there was no food in camp had left him in soggy spirits. All during the long, cold walk, through the snow and drizzle, he consoled himself with the prospect of hardy eating once they got back to their companions. Maybe someone would have killed a buffalo—he had visions of fat buffalo ribs, dripping over a fire.

But there were no buffalo ribs—there was not even corn mush. He* had eaten nothing since the prairie chickens—he felt he might become too weak to move, if he didn’t get food soon.

“At least the Mexicans fed us,” he said, echoing Bigfoot’s remark. “I’d rather be taken prisoner than starve to death.”

Caleb Cobb’s indifference to their plight annoyed Call. The man had led them so far out on the plain that they couldn’t get back— and yet the company was so weakened and so badly supplied that they couldn’t expect to defeat a Mexican army, either. He wondered if he would live long enough to serve under a military leader who really knew what he was doing. So far, he had not found one who could survive the country itself, much less one who could beat the country and the enemy. Buffalo Hump, with only nine men, had nearly destroyed Major Chevallie’s command, and now Caleb Cobb’s force of two hundred men had dwindled to forty before it even got to its destination.

There was nothing to do but keep the campfires going and wait for morning. They made a fire not far from where Shadrach lay with Matilda. The old man was coughing constantly. Matilda came over briefly, to welcome them back. She looked dispirited, though.

“This bad weather’s bad for Shad,” she said. “I’m afraid if it don’t dry up he’ll die. I do my best to keep him warm, but he’s getting worse, despite me.”

Indeed, the old mountain man coughed all night—long, heaving coughs. Gus finally got warm enough to stretch out and sleep, but Call was awake all night. He didn’t leave the fire and walk, as he often did, but he didn’t sleep, either. Both the Mexican boys came and sat with him. They were fearful of all Texans, except the three they knew.

Finally, just as grey light was edging across the long plain, Call slept a little, but the sleep produced a nightmare in which the great bear and Buffalo Hump both attacked the troop. Men were falling and running, and he had become separated from his weapons and could not defend himself. He saw arrows going into Long Bill Coleman; the great bear had knocked Gus down and was snarling over him. Call wanted to attack the bear, but he had nothing but his hands. Then he saw Buffalo Hump catch Bigfoot and slash at his head with a knife. Bigfoot’s head came off, and the huge Comanche held it up and cried a terrible war cry.

“Wake up … Woodrow … you’ve skeert the camp!” Matilda said, shaking him out of his dream. Juan and Jose were staring at him as if he had gone mad. Gus still slept, but men from the other campfires were rousing themselves and looking at Call, who felt deeply embarrassed by the scrutiny.

“I didn’t mean to scare folks,” he said, his hands shaking. “I was just dreaming about that bear.”

THE TROOP, HUNGRY, COLD, and discouraged, had marched only five miles when they topped a rise and saw the Mexican army camped on the plain before them. The encampment seemed to cover the whole plain; it stretched far back toward the mountains.

Bigfoot saw the camp first and motioned for the troop to hold up, but the signal came too late. Two Indian scouts on fast horses were already speeding back toward the Mexican camp.

Caleb Cobb was the only man on horseback. He rode to the crest of the ridge and surveyed the encampment, silently.

“I told you they’d raise the whole country,” Bigfoot said.

“Shut up, I’m counting,” Caleb said. He had his spyglass out and was looking the Mexicans over—if he was alarmed he didn’t show it.

Bigfoot, though, immediately saw something he didn’t like.

“Colonel, they have cavalry,” he said. “I’d make it at least a hundred horses.““More than a hundred,” Caleb said, without removing his spyglass from his eye. “That’s what I’m counting. I make it a hundred and fifty horses.”

Then he took the spyglass out of his eye and looked around at the men. He was astride the only horse.

“That beats us by one hundred and forty-nine horses, I guess,” he said.

“Hell, they’ve even got a cannon,” Bigfoot said. “They drug a cannon all this way, thinking we was an army.”

“We are an army, Mr. Wallace,” Caleb said. “We’re just a small army. It looks like we’re up against superior numbers.”

“Not all armies can fight,” Shadrach said. “Maybe they’re an army of boys, like these two here. We’re an army of men.”

Call and Gus stood looking at the assembled Mexicans, wondering what would happen.

“I guess we need a herd of bears,” Call said. “Ten or twelve big bears could probably scatter them like that one bear scattered that first bunch.”

Long Bill Coleman began to look around for cover—only there was no cover, only rolling prairie. Shadrach was still coughing, but he had his long rifle in his hand and seemed invigorated by the prospect of battle. Matilda had even acquired a rifle from someone —she planted herself by Shadrach.

The troop stood together, and watched the two scouts race toward the Mexican camp.

“Them scouts were Mescalero Apache,” Bigfoot said. “Those hills are their country. The Mexicans must have paid them big, because Apaches don’t usually work for Mexicans.”

The arrival of the Texans, in plain view on the ridge, put the whole Mexican encampment into a ferment of activity. The cavalrymen raced to saddle their mounts, many of which were skittish and resistant. Everywhere men were loading guns and making ready for war. In the center of the encampment was a huge white tent.

“I expect that’s where the general sleeps,” Caleb said. “I regret losing my canoe.”

“Why?” Bigfoot asked. “We’re on dry land.”

“I know, but if I had my canoe I’d hurry back with it to the nearest river, and I’d paddle down whatever stream it was untilI came to the Arkansas, and then I’d paddle down the Arkansas until I came to the Mississippi, and then I’d paddle right on down Old Miss until I struck New Orleans.”

He stopped and smiled at Brognoli, who stared back, glassy eyed.

“Once I got to New Orleans I’d stop and buy me a whore,” Caleb went on. “Once I had my fill of whores I’d go back to the pirate life, on the good old gulf, and rob all the ships leaving Mexico. That would be the easy way to get the Spanish silver. They ship most of it to Spain, anyway. It would sure beat traipsing across these goddamn plains.”

“I think we should count the ammunition, Colonel,” Bigfoot said. “We don’t have any to waste.”

Caleb ignored this sensible suggestion.

He sat on his horse, watching the flurry of preparations in the Mexican camp.

“The truth is, I ain’t felt the same about this enterprise since Corporal McCrae let my dog, Jeb, fall to his death,” Caleb said. “I think I’ll just ride over and have a parley with this army. Do we still have the flag?”

They had brought along the flag of the Republic of Texas, but no one had seen it in awhile.

“Why would you need a flag?” Bigfoot asked.

“Well, we brought the damn rag, why not use it?” Caleb said. “It might impress that general, if there is a general.”

The flag was finally located, in Johnny Carthage’s kit. At some point he had become the keeper of the flag, but life had been so strenuous that he had forgotten the fact.

Caleb tied the flag to his rifle barrel, and prepared to leave. The troop was apprehensive, not sure what his intentions were. Half of the men were disposed to run, though running across the prairies on foot, with their stomachs empty, offered a poor prospect, considering that the Mexicans, by Caleb’s count, had one hundred and fifty cavalrymen.

At the last minute, Caleb looked at Call and nodded.

“Come with me, Corporal—I need attendants,” he said. “You too, McCrae. Let’s march over there and test this general’s manners. If he’s got any, he’ll ask us to breakfast.”

“If he does, snatch us some bacon,” Long Bill Coleman said. “I sure would like to have a nice bite of bacon.““Can we take our guns?” Gus asked. He did not want to go among so many Mexicans without his guns.

“You’re my escort—take your guns,” Caleb said. “An escort’s supposed to march in front. I wish we had a drummer, but we don’t. Let’s get going.”

Gus and Call started marching straight for the Mexican camp. Caleb paused long enough to light a cigar—he had carefully preserved and rationed his cigars—before coming along behind them.

“Good Lord, look at them,” Gus said, pointing toward the Mexican camp. “We ought to have brought the whole troop as an escort.”

“I don’t think they’ll shoot us—this is a parley,” Call said, though he wasn’t fully confident on that score. Across the plain the whole Mexican army stood in battle readiness, waiting for them. The one hundred and fifty cavalrymen were mounted—the infantry, hundreds strong, had been assembled in lines by several captains and lieutenants, who rode back and forth yelling instructions. There were men standing by the cannon. An imposing man in a white uniform stood outside the tent, surrounded by aides.

For once, the law of distance that seemed to govern their travels on the prairies was reversed. Instead of the Mexican army being farther away than it seemed—half a day away would have been fine with Gus—it proved to be closer than it seemed. In no time, Call and Gus were looking right down into the barrel of the cannon—or so it seemed. The first line of soldiers was only a hundred yards away.

“They won’t kill us,” Call said. “It wouldn’t be worth their while. There’s only three of us, and look at them. They’d be behaving like cowards if they took advantage of us.”

“But maybe they are cowards,” Gus suggested. “If they shoot off that cannon it will blow us to bits.”

Now and then they looked back at their commander, Caleb Cobb —he seemed undisturbed, keeping his horse to a walk and smoking his long cigar.

“Just ignore the army,” he told them. “Head right for that tent. The only person we need to talk to is the jefe.”

The young Rangers did as instructed, passing between the lines of infantry and the massed cavalry. Both of them looked straight ahead, trying to ignore the fact that hundreds of men around them were all primed to kill them.On the ridge behind them, Matilda Roberts gave way to a fit of crying.

“They’re lost—they’re just boys,” she said. “They’re lost—they’ll kill them for sure.”

“Now, Matty—it’s just a parley,” Bigfoot said, but Matilda would riot be comforted. Her worries overcame her. She put her face in her hands and sobbed.

Gus was disconcerted, as they approached the General’s tent, to see Captain Salazar standing amid the Mexican officers.

“I was hoping the bear got him,” Gus said.

“Well, the bear didn’t,” Call said.

Seven officers stood around the General, a heavy man with much gold braid on his uniform. He had a curling mustache and held a silver flask in his hand, from which he drank occasionally. Several of the officers surrounding him had sabres strapped to their legs— they looked at the young Rangers sternly, as they continued toward the tent. The only one, in fact, who seemed well disposed toward them was Captain Salazar himself. He stepped forward to greet them, and actually saluted.

“Congratulations, gentlemen,” he said. “You escaped the bear. Ordinarily, of course, I would shoot you for escaping, but no one could be blamed for running from a grizzly bear. That bear killed my horse and my cook. I have another horse, but I miss the cook.”

“I guess you soldiers are acquainted,” Caleb said. He dismounted and handed his reins to a Mexican orderly, who took them with a look of surprise.

“Yes, we traveled together, Colonel,” Captain Salazar said. “Unfortunately our travels were interrupted, as you may have heard.”

“Oh, the bear, yes,” Caleb said. “You’re Captain Salazar?”

“At your service,” the Captain said, saluting again. “Allow me to introduce you to General Dimasio.”

The large General did not salute—he nodded casually, and gestured toward his tent.

“We hope you will join us for coffee,” Salazar said, to Caleb. “It is fortunate that we found one another so quickly. General Dimasio does not like to travel on the llano. The fact that you came to greet us will save him much trouble.”

“Why, that’s lucky, then,” Caleb said. Without a word to Gus or Call, he bent and went into the tent.As soon as Caleb Cobb disappeared into the General’s tent, the two Mexican soldiers closed the flaps and stood in front of it, muskets held across their chests. Call and Gus were alone amid hundreds of enemy soldiers, most of whom clearly registered hostility. No guns were pointed at them, and no sabres drawn, but the moment was awkward. Across the plain, on the neighboring ridge, the little knot of Rangers stood watching. To Call’s mind, they looked forlorn. The Mexicans mostly wore clean uniforms; cooking pots simmered on many campfires. The army they were in the midst of was well equipped and well trained, a far cry from the frightened village militia they had encountered in Anton Chico.

“Well, here we are,” Gus said. He found the silence uncomfortable.

“Yes, for now,” Captain Salazar said. He was the only Mexican whose manner was friendly.

“Would you like breakfast?” he asked. “As you can see, we have plenty to eat. We even have eggs.”

Gus was about to accept, happily—he felt he could eat thirty or forty eggs, if he were offered that many—but Call immediately rejected Salazar’s offer.

“No sir, much obliged,” Call said. “We’ve et.”

“In that case, at least let me offer you coffee,” Salazar said.

“I’ll have some coffee, thanks,” Gus said at once, fearing that his friend would decline even that.

Salazar motioned to an orderly, who soon brought each of them coffee in small cups.

“Why did you say we et?—you know we ain’t et since we killed those prairie chickens,” Gus said. “You could have let them feed us —they’ve got plenty.”

“Our men ain’t got plenty,” Call reminded him, glancing toward the little group on the distant ridge. “I won’t sit down and stuff myself with these enemies when our men are about ready to eat their belts.”

“It ain’t our fault they didn’t get to be escorts,” Gus said. “Escorting’s hard work—here we are with a thousand men ready to kill us. Maybe they will kill us. If I have to die I’d just as soon do it with something in my stomach.”

“No,” Call said. “Just shut up and wait. Maybe Colonel Cobb will buy food for the troop and then we can all eat.“Caleb Cobb was in the General’s tent for over an hour. Not a sound came through the canvas. Gus and Call had nothing to do but wait. Captain Salazar soon went off to attend to some duty, leaving the two of them standing there amid their foes. The cups of coffee had been tiny; no one else offered them anything.

While they stood and waited, though, the Mexican cavalry divided itself into two groups, and moved out. One wing went south of the group of Rangers; the other wing flanked the Rangers to the north.

Then the massed infantry began the same maneuver. Several hundred men marched north of the Rangers—another several hundred marched south. The Rangers stood as they were, watching these developments helplessly.

“I wish our boys would take cover—only where’s the cover to take?” Gus asked. “Pretty soon they’ll be surrounded.”

“You’re right about the cover,” Call said. “There ain’t none to take.”

“I wish the Colonel would come out—I’d like to know he’s still alive,” Gus said. The fact that no sound had come from the General’s tent had begun to worry him.

“I expect he’s alive—we’d have heard it if they shot him,” Call said.

“Well, they might have cut his throat,” Gus said. “Mexicans are handy with knives.”

He had scarcely said it before the flaps of the tent opened and Caleb Cobb stepped out, wearing the same pleasant expression he had worn when he went in.

“Corporal McCrae, did they feed you?” he asked.

“They offered,” Gus said. “Corporal Call declined.”

“Oh, why’s that? I had an excellent breakfast myself. The eggs were real tasty.”

“I won’t eat with skunks when my friends are starving,” Call said.

“I see—that’s the noble point of view,” Caleb said. “I’m better at the selfish point of view, myself. You’ll seldom see me neglect my own belly. My friends’ bellies are their lookout.”

“I’d just as soon leave,” Call said. “I’ve been stared at long enough by people I’d just as soon shoot.”

“That’s brash, under the circumstances,” Caleb said. “You can’t go, though.”

“Why not?” Call asked.

“Because I just surrendered,” Caleb said. “I’ve a promise that if we lay down our arms not a man will be killed. I’ve done laid down mine—handed them to the General’s orderly.”

Gus was startled, Call angry. It was infuriating to have their own leader simply walk into a fancy tent with a fat general and surrender, without giving any of his men a chance to have their say.

“I expect to keep my weapons, unless I’m killed,” Call said, in a tight voice.

“You can’t keep them, Corporal—you have to give them up,” Caleb said, with a menacing glance. “When I give an order I expect to have it obeyed. You’re a young man. I won’t have you dying over this foolishness.”

“I’d rather die right now, fighting, than to be put in irons again,” Call said. “I won’t be put in irons.”

“Why, no—there’ll be no fetters this time,” Caleb said. “This is a peaceable surrender the General and I have worked out. Nobody on either side needs to get hurt. As soon as the boys over there on the ridge have given up their weapons, we can all sit down and have breakfast like friends.”

“You mean we can just go home, as long as we ain’t armed?” Gus asked.

“No, not home—not right away,” Caleb said. “You’ll all be visiting Mexico, for a spell.”

“We’ll be prisoners, you mean?” Call asked. “You mean we’ve marched all this way just to be prisoners?”

Caleb Cobb turned to one of the Mexican officers, and said a few words in Spanish. The officer, a young skinny fellow, looked startled, but he immediately took his sidearm and handed it to Caleb, who leveled it at Call.

“Corporal, if you’re determined to be dead I’ll oblige you myself,” he said. “I shot Captain Falconer for disobedience and I’ll shoot you for the same reason.”

He cocked the pistol.

“Woodrow, give up your guns,” Gus said, putting a hand on Call’s arm. He could see that his friend was tight as a spring. He had never intervened in Woodrow Call’s conflicts before, but he felt that if he didn’t try this time, his only true friend would be shot before his eyes. Caleb Cobb was not a man to make idle threats.

Call shook off Gus’s hand. He was ready to leap at Caleb, even if it meant his death.

Gus quickly stepped between the two men, handing over his pistol and rifle as he did. The nearest Mexican officer took them.

“Give it up, Woodrow,” he repeated.

“Corporal McCrae, you’re more sensible than your pal,” Caleb said. “Corporal Call ain’t sensible, but if he’ll take your advice and hand over them weapons, we’ll all get out of this without loss of life.”

Call saw, with bitter anger, that his situation was hopeless. Even if he sprang at Caleb and knocked the pistol aside, a hundred Mexicans would shoot him before he could flee.

“I despise you for a coward,” he said to Caleb; but he handed over his guns.

Caleb shrugged, and turned to Captain Salazar, who had come out of the tent in time to witness the little standoff.

“Captain, would you oblige me and put this man under heavy guard until he cools off?” Caleb asked. “He’s too brash for his own damn good.”

“Certainly, Colonel,” Salazar said. “I’ll assign six men.”

Caleb looked at Call again—the young Ranger was quivering, and the look in his eyes was a look of hatred.

“Assign ten, Captain,” Caleb said. “Six men might could handle him, if he decides to break out. But this is the man who shot Buffalo Hump’s son—he’ll fight, if he sees any room.”

“I don’t care if you do call yourself colonel,” Call said. “You had no right to surrender us.”

Caleb Cobb ignored him—he gave the skinny young officer the sidearm he had just borrowed.

“Gracias,” he said. “Corporal McCrae, I want you to walk back over to that ridge where the troop is and tell them to give up their guns. Tell them they won’t be hurt, and tell them they’ll be fed as soon as they surrender.”

“I’ll go, Colonel, but they may not like the news,” Gus said.

Caleb gestured toward the Mexican army, which had quickly surrounded the little group on the ridge. The infantry had formed a tight ring, with the cavalry massed in two lines outside it.

“We’re not having an Alamo or a Goliad, not here,” Caleb said.“Colonel Travis was a fool, though a brave fool. At least he had a church to fight in—we don’t even have a tree to hide behind. This little war is over.”

“Go along—tell them that,” he added. “The sooner you go, the sooner they’ll get breakfast.”

“Woodrow, hold steady,” Gus said, before leaving. “It won’t help nobody for you to get killed.”

Caleb Cobb went back into the General’s tent. Nearby, three soldiers were hitching a team of sorrel mares to a fine buggy with a canvas canopy over it.

Gus gave Call’s arm a squeeze, and started walking back toward the ridge where the troop waited. He had assumed a few Mexicans would go along to keep an eye on him, but none did. He walked out of the Mexican camp alone, through the blowing grass.

A group of ten soldiers, led by Captain Salazar, surrounded Call and marched him about a hundred yards from the General’s tent.

“Sit, Corporal—rest yourself,” Salazar said. “You have a very long walk ahead. Perhaps now that this foolish invasion is over, you would care to eat.”

Call shook his head—he was still very angry.

“I’ll eat when my friends can eat,” he said. “What’s this about a long walk? Colonel Cobb just said we’d be going to Mexico—ain’t we in Mexico?”

“New Mexico, yes,” Salazar said. “But there is another Mexico, and that is where you are going—to the City of Mexico, in fact.”

“That’s where the trial will be held,” he went on. “Or it will be, if any of you survive the long march.”

“How far is the City of Mexico?” Call asked.

“I don’t know, Serior,” Salazar admitted. “I have never had the pleasure of going there.”

“Well, is it a hundred miles?” Call asked. “That’s a long enough walk if we’re just going to be shot at the end of it.”

Salazar looked at him in surprise.

“I see you know little geography,” he said. “The City of Mexico is more than a thousand miles away. It may be two thousand—as I said, I have never been there. But it is a long walk.”

“Hell, that’s too far,” Call said. “I don’t care to walk my feet off, just to get someplace where I’ll be put up against a wall and shot. I’ve done walked a far piece, getting here from Texas. I don’t care to walk another thousand miles, and the boys won’t care to, either.”

“You may not care to, but you will go,” Salazar said. “You will go, and you will be tried properly. We are not barbarians—we do not condemn men without a fair trial.”

Call accepted another cup of coffee, but he didn’t eat, nor did he encourage any more conversations with Captain Salazar, or anyone. Across the plain, he could see Gus walking—he had not even reached the company yet, to inform them of Caleb’s treachery. Call wished he could be walking with him, so he could encourage the Rangers to fight, even if to the death. It would be better to die than to submit to captivity again. But Gus was gone, and he was guarded too closely to attempt to follow. He was being watched, not only by the ten soldiers who had been assigned to him but by most of the soldiers still in camp. In the darkness he would have tried it, but the clouds were thinning; it was bright daylight. Patches of sunlight struck the prairie through the thinning clouds. Gus was walking in a patch of light, toward the ridge.

As Call sat surrounded, trying to control his bitter anger, General Dimasio came out of the white tent, with Caleb Cobb just behind him. The two men, accompanied by the General’s orderlies, walked to the fancy buggy and got in. Call had supposed the General was about to leave—why else hitch the buggy?—but he was shocked when Caleb got in the buggy with the General. The General was drinking liquor, not from a flask but from a heavy glass jar, as they waited for the soldier who was to drive the buggy. Caleb had no jar, but as Call watched, he extracted another cigar from his shirt pocket and carefully readied it for lighting. The soldier who was to drive the team hopped up in his seat, and the buggy swung around to the west. Eight cavalrymen fell in behind it.

As the General and his guest started out of camp, the General stopped the buggy for a moment, in order to say something to Captain Salazar. Call was sitting only a few yards from where the buggy stopped. The sight of Caleb, his own commander, sitting at ease with the Mexican general, caused his anger to rise even higher. Call got to his feet, watching. Captain Salazar sent a soldier running back to the tent—the General had forgotten his fur lap robe. In a moment the soldier came out of the tent with it, being careful to keep the end of the robe from dragging on the wet ground. The robe was almost as heavy as the soldier who was carrying it.

Before anyone could stop him, Call stepped closer to the buggy.

“Where are you running to?” he asked Caleb.

There was such anger in his voice that the ten soldiers who were guarding him all flinched. Caleb Cobb himself looked surprised and annoyed—he had already consigned Call to the past, and did not appreciate being approached so boldly.

“Why, to Santa Fe, Corporal,” Caleb said. “General Dimasio says the governor wants to meet me. I think he plans to give me a little banquet.”

Call decided it would be worth dying just to strike the coward once—at least his body decided it. In a second, he was charging through the startled soldiers—he even managed to snatch a musket as he ran past, but he didn’t get a good grip on it and the musket fell to the ground. He kept running. His wild charge spooked the high-strung buggy horses, both of whom leaped into the air, jerking the driver off the buggy, right under the horse’s feet. It was a light buggy, and Call hit it while it was slightly tipped from the team’s leap. Caleb and the General lurched forward on the buggy seat. Call leapt for Caleb and hit him once. Then, as the buggy was tipping, he grabbed the heavy glass jar the General had been drinking from and smashed Caleb with it, flattening his nose and also his fresh cigar. The jar broke in Caleb’s face—blood and whiskey poured down his chest. Soon four men were squirming in the overturned buggy, which the frantic horses were dragging slowly forward on its side. The driver was caught under one of the wheels and groaned loudly every time ‘the horses moved.

For a second, the whole Mexican camp was paralyzed. They all stood stunned while one Texan caused their General’s buggy to tip over. General Dimasio was near the bottom of the pile, and Call was still pounding at Caleb with his bloody fist. After the first shock, though, the Mexicans regained their power of motion—soon fifty rifles were leveled at Call.

“Don’t shoot!” Captain Salazar yelled, in Spanish. “You’ll hit the General. Use your bayonets—stick this man, stick him!”

The nearest soldier did manage to bayonet Call in the calf, but before anyone else could stab him, General Dimasio struggled to his feet and ordered them to stop.“El Fiero!” he said, looking at Call, whose hands were bleeding as badly as Caleb Cobb’s face.

Several soldiers, all with their bayonets raised to deal the Texan a fatal wound, were startled by the General’s order, but all obeyed it. The first blow with the whiskey bottle had rendered Caleb unconscious, but Call was still trying to strike him.