Dead Man's Walk

“I think Colonel Cobb’s jaw is broken,” Salazar said; though the man’s face was very bloody, it seemed to him that his jaw had dropped at an odd angle.

Call wanted to kill Caleb Cobb, but he had no weapon—the few shards of glass around him were all too small to stab with, and before he could get a grip on Caleb’s bloody neck to strangle him, the Mexicans began to drag him off. It was not easy—Call was bent on killing the man, and he flailed so that the soldiers kept losing their grip. Finally, one looped a horsehide rope over one of Call’s legs and they pulled him off. A dozen men piled on him and finally held him steady enough that they could truss him hand and foot. Just before they pulled him off, Call pounded Caleb’s head against the edge of the wagon-wheel seat, opening a split in his forehead. He failed in his purpose, though. Caleb Cobb was damaged, but he was not injured fatally.

Through the legs of the men standing over him, many of them panting from the struggle, Call saw several Mexicans help Caleb Cobb to his feet. Caleb’s face and forehead were dripping blood, but once he cleared his head, he hobbled through the soldiers and broke into the circle where Call lay tied. Without a word he grabbed a musket from the nearest soldier and raised it high, to bayonet Call where he lay, but Captain Salazar was quicker. Before Caleb struck, he stepped in front of him and leveled a pistol at him.

“No, Colonel, put down the gun,” Salazar said. “I must remind you that this man is our prisoner, not yours.”

Call looked at Caleb calmly. He had done his best to kill the man, and was prepared to take the consequences. He knew that Caleb wanted his death—he could see the murderous urge in the man’s eyes.

With difficulty, Caleb mastered himself. He turned the musket over, as if he meant to hand it back to the soldier he had borrowed it from. But then, in a whipping motion too quick for anyone to stop, he struck with the stock of the musket across both of Call’s bound feet. The blow was so sudden and painful that Call cried out. Caleb immediately handed the musket back to the soldier he had borrowed it from, and hobbled back toward the buggy.

Call twisted in pain—through the legs of his captors he could see the buggy being righted. The horses, still jumpy, were being held by three men each. General Dimasio stood by the buggy, talking to Captain Salazar. Now and then, the General gestured toward Call. The company barber had been hastily summoned, to pick the glass out of Caleb’s face and neck. The barber wiped the blood away with a rag as best he could, but several cuts were still bleeding freely— he took the rag from the barber and dabbed at the cuts himself.

General Dimasio climbed back into the buggy, and Caleb after him. The canopy was sitting a little crookedly. The driver had survived; he turned the buggy, and the eight cavalrymen fell in behind it again, as it left the camp.

The buggy went at a good clip—soon the General and Caleb Cobb were nearly to the mountains.

Captain Salazar strolled over and stood looking down at Call, who was still surrounded by soldiers ready to bayonet him if he gave them an excuse.

“You are a brave young man, but foolish,” Salazar said. “Your Colonel had no choice but to surrender. His men had no food and no ammunition. If he hadn’t surrendered, we would have killed you all.”

“I despise him,” Call said. “At least he won’t look so pretty at his damn banquet.”

“You’re right about that,” Salazar said. “But the governor’s wife will enjoy him anyway. She likes adventurers.”

“I despise him,” Call said, again.

“I’m afraid you will not look so good either, once we have whipped you,” Salazar said. “The General admired your mettle so much that he ordered one hundred lashes for you—a great honor.”

Call looked at Captain Salazar, but said nothing. His feet still pained him badly. He had supposed there would be more punishment coming, too. After all, he had knocked the fat General out of his fancy buggy, turned the buggy over, caused the driver to get partly crushed by a wagon wheel, and bent the canopy of the buggy out of shape.

“Fifty lashes is usually enough to kill a man, Corporal,” Captain Salazar went on. “You will have to eat heartily before this punishment, if you hope to live.”

“Why would I need to eat, especially?” Call asked.

“Because you won’t have any flesh left on your ribs,” the Captain said. “The whip will take it off.”

Then he smiled at Call again, and turned away.

Gus WAS WALKING UP the little slope toward the Ranger troop when suddenly a cheer went up. He looked up to see that the men were all waving their guns and hooting. At first he thought they were merely welcoming him back—but when he looked more closely, he saw that they were looking beyond him, toward the Mexican camp.

He turned to see what the commotion was about and saw that the General’s buggy had been overturned, somehow—at first he supposed it was merely some accident with the horses. Good buggy horses were often too high strung to be reliable.

When he saw there was a melee, and that Call was in the middle of it, his stomach turned over. Call was in the overturned buggy, pounding at Caleb Cobb. Then he saw a soldier bayonet Call in the leg—several more soldiers had their bayonets up, ready to stab Call when they could. Gus didn’t want to watch, but was unable to turn away. He knew his friend-would be dead in a few seconds.

But then, to Gus’s surprise, Salazar stepped in and stopped the stabbing. He saw Caleb come over and strike at Call with the musket stock. Why he struck his feet, rather than his head, Gus couldn’t figure. He began to walk backward, up the ridge, so he could continue to watch the drama in the Mexican camp. Salazar came back and seemed to be having a talk with Call, while Call lay on the ground. Gus didn’t know what any of it meant. All he could be sure of was that Caleb Cobb then left the camp with General Dimasio. Call was tied up—no doubt he was in plenty of trouble for attacking the General’s buggy.

He soon gave up walking backward—the ground was too rough. The boys were close by, anyway—some were coming down the ridge to meet him. The Mexican infantry stood in a ring around them, just out of rifle range.

“So what’s the orders, why did Caleb leave?” Bigfoot asked, when Gus walked up to the troop.

“The orders are to surrender our weapons,” Gus said. “Call didn’t like them—I guess that’s why he knocked over that buggy.”

“Well, he was bold,” Bigfoot said. “I expect they’ll put him up against the wall of a church, like they did Bes.”

“They would have already, only there’s no church available,” Blackie Slidell said.

“Where did Caleb bounce off to, with that fat general?” Bigfoot asked.

Gus didn’t know the answer to that question, or to most of the questions he was asked. He couldn’t get his mind off the fact that Woodrow Call was probably going to be executed, and very soon. He had never had a friend as good as Woodrow Call—it was in his mind that he should have stayed and fought with him, and been killed too, side by side with his friend.

“Caleb is a damn skunk,” Long Bill Coleman said. “He had no right to surrender for us—what if we’d rather fight?”

“What happens if we do surrender?” Jimmy Tweed asked. “Will they put all of us up against a church?”

“Oh, they’d need two churches, at least, for all of us,” Bigfoot said. “That church where they shot Bes was no bigger than a hut. They’d have to shoot us in shifts, if they used a church that small.”

“Shut up about the churches, they ain’t going to shoot us,” Gus said. He was annoyed by Bigfoot’s habit of holding lengthy discus-sions of ways they might have to die. If he had to be dead, he wanted it to occur with less conversation from Bigfoot Wallace.

“We can have breakfast, as soon as we give up our guns,” he added.

To the hungry men, cold, wet, and discouraged, the notion of breakfast was a considerable inducement to compromise.

“I wonder if they’ve got bacon?” Jimmy Tweed asked. “I might surrender to the rascals if I could spend the morning eating bacon.”

“There’s no pigs over there,” Matilda observed. “I guess they could have brought bacon with them, though.”

“What do you think, Shad?” Bigfoot asked.

Shadrach had picked up a little, at the prospect of battle. There was a keen light in his eyes that had been missing since he got his cough and had begun to repeat himself in his conversations. He was walking back and forth in front of the troop, his long rifle in his hand. The fact that they were completely surrounded by Mexican infantry, with a substantial body of cavalry backing them up, was not lost on him, though. He kept looking across the plain and then to the mountains beyond. The plain offered no hope. It was entirely open; they would be cut down like rabbits. But the mountains were timbered. If they could make it to cover, they might survive.

The problem with that strategy was that the Mexican camp lay directly between them and the hills. They would have to fight their way through the infantry, then through the cavalry, then through the camp. Several men were sickly, and the ammunition was low. Much as he wanted to sight his long rifle time after time at Mexican breasts, he knew it would be a form of suicide. They were too few, with too little.

“We could run for them hills—shoot our way through,” he said. “I doubt more than five or six of us would make it. We’d give them a scrap, at least, if we done that.”

“Not a one of us would make it,” Bigfoot said. “Of course they might spare Matilda.”

“I don’t want to be spared, if Shad ain’t,” Matilda said.

“You’re a big target, Matty,” Bigfoot observed, in a kindly tone. “They might shoot you full of lead before they even realized you were female.”

“Why do we have to fight?” Gus asked. “They have us surroundedand we’re outnumbered ten to one—more than that, I guess. We can’t whip that many of them, even if they are Mexicans. If we surrender we won’t be hurt—Caleb said that himself. We’ll just be prisoners for awhile. And we can have breakfast.”

“I am damn hungry,” Blackie Slidell said. “A few tortillas wouldn’t hurt.”

“All right, boys—they’re too many,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s lay our guns down. Maybe they’ll just march us over to Santa Fe and introduce us to some pretty senoritas.”

“I think they’ll line us up and shoot us,” Johnny Carthage said. “I’m for the breakfast, though—I hope there’s a good cook.”

The Rangers carefully laid down their weapons, in full view of a captain of the infantry. They piled the guns in a heap, and raised their hands.

The captain who received their surrender was very young—about Gus’s age. Relief was in his face when he saw that the Rangers had decided not to fight.

“Gracias, Senores,” he said. “Now come with us and eat.”

“There’s one good thing about surrendering,” Gus said to Jimmy Tweed, as they were marching.

“What?” Jimmy asked. “Senoritas?”

“No, weapons—lots of guns, and they’ve got that cannon,” Gus said. “It ought to be enough to keep off the bears.”

“Oh, bears,” Jimmy said, casually.

“You ain’t even seen one,” Gus said. “You wouldn’t be so reckless if you had.”

“THE WHIP WAS MADE in Germany,” Captain Salazar said, as Call was being tied to the wheel of one of the supply wagons.

“I have never been in Germany,” he added. “But it seems they make the best whips.”

The whole Mexican force had been assembled, to watch Call’s punishment. The Texans were lined up just behind him. Many of them were in a very foul temper, since the promised breakfast had turned out to consist of flavourless tortillas and very weak coffee.

None of them had had a chance to talk to Call, who was under heavy guard. He was marched by armed men with bayonets fixed to the wagon, where he was tied. His shirt was removed, too. One of the muleteers was to do the whipping—a heavyset man with only one or two teeth in his mouth. The whip had several thongs, each with a knot or two in them. The thongs were tipped with metal.

“I guess I won’t be going to Germany, if they’re that fond of whips,” Long Bill said. “I wouldn’t want to be Woodrow. A hundred times is a lot of times to be hit with a whip like that.”

Matilda Roberts stood with the men, a look of baleful hatred in her eyes.

“If Call don’t live I’ll kill that snaggle-toothed bastard that’s doing the whipping,” she said.

Bigfoot Wallace was silent. He had seen men whipped before— black men, mostly—and it was a spectacle he didn’t enjoy. He didn’t like to see helpless men hurt—of course, young Call had knocked over the General’s buggy. Dignity required that he be punished, to some extent, but a hundred lashes with a metal-thonged whip was a considerable punishment. Men had died of less, as Captain Salazar was fond of reminding them.

“If you’d like to say a word to your friend Corporal McCrae, I’ll permit it,” Salazar said.

“No, I’ll talk to him later,” Call said. He didn’t like the tone of familiarity Salazar adopted with him. He did not intend to be friends with the man, and didn’t want to enter into conversation with him.

“Corporal, there may be no later,” Salazar said. “You may not survive this whipping. As I told you earlier, fifty lashes kills most men.”

“I expect to live,” Call said.

Mainly what he remembered of the whipping was the warmth of blood on his back, and the fact that the camp became very silent. The grunt of the muleteer who was whipping him was the only sound. After the first ten blows, he didn’t hear the whip strike.

Gus heard it, though. He watched his friend’s back become a red sheet. Soon Call’s pants, too, were blood soaked. The muleteer wore out on the sixtieth stroke and had to yield the bloody whip to a smaller man. Call was unconscious by then. All the Rangers assumed he was dead. Matilda was restrained, with difficulty, from attacking the whipper. Call hung by his bound wrists, presenting a low target. The second whipper had to bend low in order to hit his back.

When they untied Call and let him slide down beside the wagon wheel they thought they were untying a corpse, but Call turned over, groaning.“By God, he’s alive,” Bigfoot said.

“For now,” Salazar said. “It is remarkable. Few men survive a hundred lashes.”

“He’ll live to bury you,” Matilda said, giving Salazar a look of hatred.

“If I thought that were true, I would bury him right here and right now, alive or dead,” Salazar said.

“Now be fair, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “He’s had his punishment. Don’t go burying him yet.”

No one could stand to look at Call’s back except Matilda, who sat beside him that first night and kept the flies away. She had nothing to cover the wounds with—if too many of them festered, she knew the boy would die.

Gus McCrae had not been able to watch the whipping, beyond the first few strokes He sat with his back to the whipping ground, his head between his hands, grinding his teeth in agony. None of the Texans were tied, but a brigade of riflemen were stationed just beside them, with muskets ready. Their orders were to shoot any man who tried to interfere with the punishment. None did, but Gus fought with himself all through the whipping; he wanted to dash at the whipper. His friend was being whipped to death, and he could do nothing about it. He had not even been able to exchange a word with Call, before the whipping began. It was a terrible hour, during which he vowed over and over again to kill every Mexican soldier he could, to avenge his friend.

Now, though, with Call alive but still in mortal peril, he came and went. Every ten minutes he would walk over to Matilda and ask if Call was still breathing. Once Matilda told him Call was alive, he would go back to where the Texans sat, plop down for a minute, and then get up and walk around restlessly, until it was time to go check on Call again.

There was a small creek near the encampment. Matilda persuaded an old Mexican who tended the fires and helped with the cooking to loan her a bucket, so she could walk over to the creek and get water with which to wash Call’s wounds. He was already delirious with fever—the cold water was the only thing she had to treat him with, or clean his wounds. When she went to the creek, three soldiers went with her, a fact that annoyed her considerably.

She didn’t complain, though. They were captives—Call’s life, as well as others, depended on caution now.

Shadrach had spread his blanket near where Matilda sat with Call. He and Bigfoot were the only Rangers who had watched the whipping through. Before it was over most of the men, like Gus, had turned their backs. “Oh, Lord … oh, Lord,” Long Bill said many times, as he heard the blows strike.

“Was it me, I’d rather be put up against the wall,” Blackie Slidell said. “That way’s quick.”

Captain Salazar had been right in his assessment of the damage the whip could cause. In several places, the flesh had been torn off Call’s ribs. None of the Texans could stand to look at his back, except Bigfoot, who considered himself something of a student of wounds. He came over once or twice, to squat by Call and examine his injuries. Shadrach took no interest. He thought the boy might live—Call was a tough one. What vexed him most was that the Mexicans had taken his long rifle. He had carried the gun for twenty years—rare had been the night when his hand wasn’t on it. For most of that time, the gun had not been out of his sight. He felt incomplete without it. The Texans’ guns had all been piled in a wagon, a vehicle Shadrach kept his eye on. He meant to have his gun again. If that meant dying, then at least he would die with his gun in his hand.

Shadrach slept cold that night—Matilda stayed with Call, warming him with her body. He went from fever to chill, chill to fever. The old Mexican helped Matilda build a little fire. The old man seemed not to sleep. From time to time in the night, he came to tend the fire. Gus didn’t sleep. He was back and forth all night— Matilda got tired of his restless visits.

“You just as well sleep,” she said. “You can’t do nothing for him.”

“Can’t sleep,” Gus said. He couldn’t get the whipping out of his mind. Call’s pants legs were stiff with blood.

When dawn came Call was still alive, though in great pain. Captain Salazar came walking over, and examined the prisoner.

“Remarkable,” he said. “We’ll put him in the wagon. If he lives three days, I think he will survive and walk to the City of Mexico with us.”

“You don’t listen,” Matilda said, the hatred still in her eyes. “I told you yesterday that he’d bury you.“Salazar walked off without replying. Call was lifted into one of the supply wagons—Matilda was allowed to ride with him. The Texans all walked behind the wagon, under heavy guard. Johnny Carthage gave up his blanket, so that Call could be covered from the chill.

At midmorning the troop divided. Most of the cavalry went north, and most of the infantry, too. Twenty-five horsemen and about one hundred infantrymen stayed with the prisoners. Bigfoot watched this development with interest. The odds had dropped, and in their favor—though not enough. Captain Salazar stayed with the prisoners.

“I am to deliver you to El Paso,” he said. “Now we have to cross these mountains.”

All the Texans were suffering from hunger. The food had been scanty—just the same tortillas and weak coffee they had had for supper.

“I thought we were supposed to get fed, if we surrendered,” Bigfoot said, to Salazar.

All day the troop climbed upward, toward a pass in the thin range of mountains. The Texans had been used to walking on a level plain. Walking uphill didn’t suit them. There was much complaining, and much of it directed at Caleb Cobb, who had led them on a hard trip only to deliver them to the enemy in the end. There were Mexicans on every side, though—all they could do was walk uphill, upward, into the cloud that covered the tops of the mountains.

“The bears live up here,” Bigfoot mentioned, lest anyone be tempted to slip off while they were climbing into the cloud.

When Call first came back to consciousness, he thought he was dead. Matilda had left the wagon to answer a call of nature—they were in the thick of the cloud. All Call could see was white mist. The march had been halted for awhile and the men were silent, resting. Call saw nothing except the white mist, and he heard nothing, either. He could not even see his own hand—only the pain of his lacerated back reminded him that he still had a body. If he was dead, as for a moment he assumed, it was vexing to have to feel the pains he would feel if he were alive. If he was in heaven, then it was a disappointment, because the white mist was cold and uncomfortable.

Soon, though, he saw a form in the mist—a large form. Hethought perhaps it was the bear, though he had not heard that there were bears in heaven; of course, he might not be in heaven. The fact that he felt the pain might mean that he was in hell. He had supposed hell would be hot, but that might just be a mistake the preachers made. Hell might be cold, and it might have bears in it, too.

The large form was not a bear, though—it was Matilda Roberts. Call’s vision was blurry. At first he could only see Matilda’s face, hovering near him in the mist. It was very confusing; in his hours of fever he had had many visions in which people’s faces floated in and out of his dreams. Gus was in many of his dreams, but so was Buffalo Hump, and Buffalo Hump certainly did not belong in heaven.

“Could you eat?” Matilda asked.

Call knew then that he was alive, and that the pain he felt was not hellfire, but the pain from his whipping. He knew he had been whipped one hundred times, but he could not recall the whipping clearly. He had been too angry to feel the first few licks; then he had become numb and finally unconscious. The pain he felt lying in the wagon, in the cold mist, was far worse than what he had felt while the whipping was going on.

“Could you eat?” Matilda asked again. “Old Francisco gave me a little soup.”

“Not hungry,” Call said. “Where’s Gus?”

“I don’t know, it’s foggy, Woodrow,” Matilda said. “Shad’s coughing—he can’t take much fog.”

“But Gus is alive, ain’t he?” Call asked, for in one of his hallucinations Buffalo Hump had killed Gus and hanged him upside down from a post-oak tree.

“I guess he’s alive, he’s been asking about you every five minutes,” Matilda said. “He’s been worried—we all have.”

“I don’t remember the whipping—I guess I passed out,” Call said.

“Yes, up around sixty licks,” Matilda said. “Salazar thought you’d die, but I knew better.”

“I’ll kill him someday,” Call said. “I despise the man. I’ll kill that mule skinner that whipped me, too.”

“Oh, he left,” Matilda said. “Most of the army went home.”

“Well, if I can find him I’ll kill him,” Call said. “That is, if they don’t execute me while I’m sick.”

“No, we’re to march to El Paso,” Matilda said.

“We didn’t make it when we tried to march to it from the other side,” Call reminded her. Then a kind of red darkness swept over him, and he stopped talking. Again, the wild dreams swirled, dreams of Indians and bears.

When Call awoke the second time, they were farther down the slope. The sun was shining, and Gus was there. But Call was very tired. Opening his eyes and keeping them open seemed like a day’s work. He wanted to talk to Gus, but he was so tired he couldn’t make his lips move.

“Don’t talk, Woodrow,” Gus said. “Just rest. Matilda’s got some soup for you.”

Call took a little soup, but passed out while he was eating. For three days he was in and out of consciousness. Salazar came by regularly, checking to see if he was dead. Each time Matilda insulted him, but Salazar merely smiled.

On the fourth day after the whipping, Salazar insisted that Call walk. They were on the plain west of the mountains, and it had turned bitter cold. Call’s fever was still high—even with Johnny Carthage’s blanket, he was racked with a deep chill. For a whole night he could not keep still—he rolled one way, and then the other. Matilda’s loyalties were torn. She didn’t want Call to freeze to death, or Shadrach either. The old man’s cough had gone deeper. It seemed to be coming from his bowels. Matilda was afraid, deeply afraid. She thought Shad was going, that any morning she would wake up and see his eyes wide, in the stare of death. Finally she lifted Call out of the wagon and took him to where Shadrach lay. She put herself between the two men and warmed them as best she could. It was a clear night. Their breath made a cloud above them. They had moved into desert country. There was little wood, and what there was the Mexicans used for their own fires. The Texans were forced to sleep cold.

The next morning, finding Call out of the wagon, Salazar decreed that he should walk. Call was semiconscious; he didn’t even hear the command, but Matilda heard it and was outraged.

“This boy can’t walk—I carried him out of the wagon and put him here to keep him warm,” she said. “This old man don’t need to be walking, either.”

She gestured at Shadrach, who was coughing.Salazar had come to like Matilda—she was the only one of the Texans he did like. But he immediately rejected her plea.

“If we were a hospital we would put the sick men in beds,” he said. “But we are not a hospital. Every man must walk now.”

“Why today?” Matilda asked. “Just let the boy ride one more day —with one more day’s rest, he might live.”

“To bury me?” Salazar asked. “Is that why you want him to live?” He was trying to make a small jest.

“I just want him to live,” Matilda said, ignoring the joke. “He’s suffered enough.”

“We have all suffered enough, but we are about to suffer more,” Salazar said. “It is not just you Texans who will suffer, either. For the next five days we will all suffer. Some of us may not live.”

“Why?” Gus asked. He walked up and stood listening to the conversation. “I don’t feel like dying, myself.”

Salazar gestured to the south. They were in a sparse desert as it was. They had seen no animals all the day before, and their water was low.

“There is the Jornada del Muerto,” he said. “The dead man’s walk.”

“What’s he talking about?” Johnny Carthage asked. Seeing that a parley was in progress, several of the Texans had wandered over, including Bigfoot Wallace.

“Oh, so this is where it is,” Bigfoot said. “The dead man’s walk. I’ve heard of it for years.”

“Now you will do more than hear of it, Senor Wallace,” Salazar said. “You will walk it. There is a village we must find, today or tomorrow. Perhaps they will give us some melons and some corn. After that, we will have no food and no water until we have walked the dead man’s walk.”

“How far across?” Long Bill asked. “I’m a slow walker, but if it’s that hard I’ll try not to lag.”

“Two hundred miles,” Salazar said. “Perhaps more. We will have to burn this wagon soon—maybe tonight. There is no wood in the place we are going.”

The voices had filtered through the red darkness in which Call lived. He opened his eyes, and saw all the Texans around him.

“What is it, boys?” he asked. “It’s frosty, ain’t it?”

“Woodrow, they want you to walk,” Gus said. “Do you think you can do it?”

“I’ll walk,” Call said. “I don’t like Mexican wagons anyway.”

“We’ll help you, Corporal,” Bigfoot said. “We can take turns toting you, if we have to.”

“It might warm my feet, to walk a ways,” Call said. “I can’t feel my toes.”

Cold feet was a common complaint among the Texans. At night the men wrapped their feet in anything they could find, but the fact was they couldn’t find much. Few of them slept more than an hour or two. It was better to sit talking over their adventures than to sleep cold. The exception was Bigfoot Wallace, who seemed unaffected by cold. He slept well, cold or hot.

“At least we’ve got the horses,” he remarked. “We can eat the horses, like we done before.”

“I expect the Mexicans will eat the horses,” Gus said. “They ain’t our horses.”

Call found hobbling on his frozen feet very difficult, yet he preferred it to lying in the wagon, where all he had to think about was the fire across his back. He could not keep up, though. Matilda and Gus offered to be his crutches, but even that was difficult. His wounds had scabbed and his muscles were tight—he groaned in deep pain when he tried to lift his arms across Gus’s shoulders.

“It’s no good, I’ll just hobble,” he said. “I expect I’ll get quicker once I warm up.”

Gus was nervous about bears—he kept looking behind the troop. He didn’t see any bears, but he did catch a glimpse of a cougar— just a glimpse, as the large brown cat slipped across a small gully.

Just then there was a shout from the column ahead. A cavalryman, one of the advance guard, was racing back toward the troop at top speed, his horse’s hooves kicking up little clouds of dust from the sandy ground.

“Now, what’s his big hurry?” Bigfoot asked. “You reckon he spotted a grizzly?”

“I hope not,” Gus said. “I’m in no mood for bears.”

Matilda and Shadrach were walking with the old Mexican, Francisco. They were well ahead of the other Texans. All the soldiers clustered around the rider, who held something in his hand.“What’s he got there, Matty?” Bigfoot asked, hurrying up. “The General’s hat,” Matilda said.

“That’s mighty odd,” Bigfoot said. “I’ve never knowed a general to lose his hat.”

Two MILES FARTHER ON they discovered that General Dimasio had lost more than his hat—he had lost his buggy, his driver, his cavalrymen, and his life. Four of the cavalrymen had been tied and piled in the buggy before the buggy was set on fire. The buggy had been reduced almost to ash—the corpses of the four cavalrymen were badly charred. The other cavalrymen had been mutilated but not scalped. General Dimasio had suffered the worst fate, a fate so terrible that everyone who looked at his corpse bent over and gagged. The General’s chest cavity had been opened and hot coals had been scooped into it. All around lay the garments and effects of the dead men. Both the fine buggy horses had been killed and butchered.

“Whoever done this got off with some tasty horse meat,” Bigfoot said.

Except for the burned cavalrymen, all the dead had several arrows in them.

“No scalps taken,” Bigfoot observed.“Apaches don’t scalp—ain’t interested,” Shadrach said. “They got better ways to kill you.”

“He is right,” Salazar said. “This is the work of Gomez. For awhile he was in Mexico, but now he is here. He has killed twenty travelers in the last month—now he has killed a great general.”

“He wasn’t great enough, I guess,” Bigfoot said. “I thought he rode off with a skimpy guard—I guess I was right.”

“Only Gomez would treat a general like this,” Salazar said. “Most Apaches would sell a general, if they caught one. But Gomez likes only to kill. He knows no law.”

Bigfoot considered that sloppy thinking.

“Well, he may know plenty of law,” he said. “But it ain’t his law and he don’t mind breaking it.”

Salazar received this comment irritably.

“You will wish he knew more law, if he catches you,” he said. “We are all in danger now.”

“I doubt he’d attack a party this big,” Bigfoot said. “Your general just had eleven men, counting himself.”

Salazar snapped his fingers; he had just noticed something.

“Speaking of counting,” he said. “Where is your Colonel? I don’t see his corpse.”

“By God, I don’t neither,” Bigfoot said. “Where is Caleb?”

“The coward, I expect he escaped,” Call said.

“More than that,” Gus said. “He probably made a deal with Gomez.”

“No,” Salazar said. “Gomez is Apache—he is not like us. He only kills.”

“He might have taken Caleb home with him, to play with,” Long Bill suggested. “I feel sorry for him if that’s so, even though he is a skunk.”

“I doubt Caleb Cobb would be taken alive,” Bigfoot said. “He ain’t the sort that likes to have coals shoveled into his belly.”

Before the burials were finished, one of the infantrymen found Caleb Cobb, naked, blind, and crippled, hobbling through the sandy desert, about a mile from where the Apaches had caught the Mexicans. Caleb’s legs and feet were filled with thorns—in his blindness he had wandered into prickly pear and other cactus.

“Oh, boys, you found me,” Caleb said hoarsely, as he was helped into camp. “They blinded me with thorns, the Apache devils.““They hamstrung him, too,” Bigfoot whispered. “I guess they figured he’d starve or freeze.”

“I expect that bear would have got him,” Gus said.

Even Call, beaten nearly to death himself, was moved to pity by the sight of Caleb Cobb, a man he thoroughly despised. To be blind, naked, and crippled in such a thorny wilderness, and in the cold, was a harder fate than even cowards deserved.

“How many were they, Colonel?” Salazar asked.

“Not many,” Caleb said, in his hoarse voice. “Maybe fifteen. But they were quick. They came at us at dawn, when we had the sun in our eyes. One of them clubbed me with a rifle stock before I even knew we were under attack.”

For a moment he lost his voice, and his ability to stand. He sagged in the arms of the two infantrymen who were supporting him. The leg that had been cut was twisted in an odd way.

“Fifteen ain’t many,” Gus said. He didn’t like seeing men who had been tortured, whether they were alive or dead. He couldn’t keep his mind off how it would feel to have the tortures happen to him. The sight of Caleb, with his leg jerking, his eyes ruined, and his body blue with cold, made him want to look away or go away— but of course he couldn’t go away without putting himself in peril of the Apaches and the bears.

“Fifteen was enough,” Bigfoot said. “I’ve heard they come at you at dawn.”

Captain Salazar was thinking of the journey they had to make. He kept looking south, toward the dead man’s walk. The quivering, ruined man on the ground before him was a handicap he knew he could not afford.

“Colonel, we have a hard march ahead,” the Captain said. “I’m afraid you are in no condition to make this march. The country ahead is terrible. Even healthy men may not survive it. I am afraid you have no chance.”

“Stick me in a wagon,” Caleb said. “If I can have a blanket, I’ll live.”

“Colonel, we cannot take the wagons across these sands,” Salazar said. “We will have to burn them for firewood, probably tonight. They have blinded you and crippled you.”

“I won’t be left,” Caleb said, interrupting the Captain. “All I need is a good doctor—he can fix this leg.““No, Colonel,” Salazar said. “No one can fix your leg, or your eyes. We can’t take you across the sands—we have to look to ourselves.”

“Then send me back,” Caleb said. “If I can be put on a horse, I reckon I can ride it to Santa Fe.”

There was anger in his voice. While they all watched, he managed to get to his feet. Even crippled he was taller than Salazar—and he was determined not to die. Call was surprised by the man’s determination.

“If he’d been that determined to fight, we wouldn’t be prisoners,” he whispered to Gus.

“He ain’t determined for us … he’s determined for himself,” Gus pointed out.

Salazar, though, was out of patience.

“I cannot take you, Colonel,” he said, “and I cannot send you back, either. If I sent you with a few men, Gomez would find you again, and this time he would do worse.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Caleb said.

“But I won’t take it, Colonel,” Salazar said, drawing his pistol. “You are a brave officer—it is time to finish yourself.”

The troops grew silent, when Salazar drew his pistol. Caleb Cobb was balanced on one leg; the other foot scarcely touched the ground. Call saw the anger rise in his face; for a second he expected Caleb to go for Salazar. But after a second, Caleb controlled himself.

“All right,” he said. “I never expected to die in a goddamn desert. I’m a seaman. I ought to be on my boat.”

“I know you were a great pirate,” Salazar said, relieved that the man was taking matters calmly. “You stole much treasure from the King of Spain.”

“I did, and lost it all at cards,” Caleb said. “I know you need to travel, Captain. Give me your pistol and I’ll finish it, and you can be on your way.”

“Would you like privacy?” Salazar asked—he still held the pistol.

“Why, no—not specially,” Caleb said, in a normal voice. “These wild Texas boys are all mad at me for surrendering. They’ll hang me, if they get the chance. It will amuse me to cheat ‘em, by shooting myself.”

“All right,” Salazar said.

“How was that you said I ought to do it, Wallace?” Caleb asked. “Are you here, Wallace? I know you think there’s a sure way—I want to take the sure way.”

“Through the eyeball,” Bigfoot said.

“It’ll have to be through the eye hole,” Caleb said. “I’m all out of eyeballs.”

“Well, that will do just as well, Colonel,” Bigfoot said.

“I’ll take the pistol now, if you please,” Caleb said, in a pleasant, normal voice.

“Adios, Colonel,” Salazar said, handing Caleb the pistol.

Caleb immediately turned the pistol on Salazar and shot him— the Captain fell backward, clutching his throat.

“Rush ‘em, boys—get their guns,” Caleb said. “I’ll take down a few.”

But in his blindness, Caleb Cobb fired toward the Texans, not the Mexicans. Two shots went wild, while the Texans ducked.

“Hell, he’s turned around, he’s shooting at us!” Long Bill said, as he ducked.

Before Caleb could fire a fourth time, the Mexican soldiers recovered from their shock and cut him down. As he fell, he fired a last shot—Shadrach, who had been standing calmly by Matilda, fell backwards, stiffly. He was dead before he had time to be surprised.

“Oh no! no! not my Shad,” Matilda cried, squatting down by Shadrach.

The Mexican soldiers continued to pour bullets into Caleb Cobb —the corpse had more than forty bullets in it, when it was buried. But the Texans had lost interest in Caleb—Bigfoot ripped open Shadrach’s shirt, hoping the old man was stunned but not dead. But the bullet had taken Shadrach exactly in the heart.

“What a pity,” Captain Salazar said. He was bleeding profusely from the wound in his throat—the wound, though, was only a crease.

“Shad, Shad!” Matilda said, trying to get the old man to answer —but Shadrach’s lips didn’t quiver.

“This man had walked the dead man’s walk,” Salazar said. “He might have guided us. Your Colonel was already dead when he shot him—I suppose his finger twitched. We are having no luck today.”

“Why, you’re having plenty of luck, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “If that bullet had hit your neck a fraction to the left, you’d be as dead as Shad.”

“True,” Salazar said. “I was very foolish to give Colonel Cobb my gun. He was a man like Gomez—he knew no law.”

When Matilda Roberts saw that Shadrach was dead, she began to wail. She wailed as loudly as her big voice would let her. Her cries echoed off a nearby butte—many men felt their hair stand up when the echo brought back the sound of a woman wailing in the desert. Many of the Mexican soldiers crossed themselves.

“Now, Matty,” Bigfoot said, kneeling beside and putting his big arm around her. “Now, Matty, he’s gone and that’s the sad fact.”

“I can’t bear it, he was all I had,” Matilda said, her big bosom, wet already with tears, heaving and heaving.

“It’s sad, but it might be providential,” Bigfoot said. “Shadrach wasn’t well, and we have to cross the Big Dry. I doubt Shad would have made it. He’d have died hard, like some of us will.”

“Don’t tell me that, I want him alive—I just want him alive,” Matilda said.

She cried on through the morning, as graves were dug. There were a dozen men to bury, and the ground was hard. Captain Salazar sat with his back to a wagon wheel as the men dug the graves. He was weak from loss of blood. He had reloaded his pistol, and kept it in his hand all day, afraid the brief commotion might encourage the Texans to rebel.

His caution was justified. Stirred by the shooting, several of the boys talked of making a fight. Blackie Slidell was for it, and also Jimmy Tweed—both men had had enough of Mexican rule.

Gus listened, but didn’t encourage the rebellion. His friend Call had collapsed, from being made to walk when he wasn’t able. He was weaker than Salazar, and more badly injured. Escape would mean leaving him behind—and Gus had no intention of leaving him behind. Besides, Matilda was incoherent with grief—four men had to pull her loose from Shadrach’s body, before it could be buried. The Mexican soldiers might mostly be boys, but they had had the presence of mind to kill Caleb Cobb—since they had all the guns, rebellion or escape seemed a long chance.

They had planned to shelter for the night in a village called SanSaba, but the burials and the weakness of Captain Salazar kept them in place until it was too late to travel more than a few miles.

That night a bitter wind came from the north, so cold that the men, Mexicans and Texans alike, couldn’t think of anything but warmth. The Texans even agreed to be tied, if they could only share the campfires. No one slept. The wind keened through the camp. Matilda, having no Shadrach to care for, covered Call with her body. Before dawn, they had burned both wagons.

“How far’s that village, Captain?” Bigfoot asked—dawn was grey, and the wind had not abated.

“Too far—twenty miles,” Captain Salazar said.

“We have to make it tomorrow, we’ve got nothing else to burn,” Bigfoot said.

“Call will die if he has to sleep in the open without no fire,” Matilda said.

“Let’s lope along, then, boys,” Bigfoot said.

“I’ll help you with Woodrow, Matty,” Gus said. “He looks poorly to me.”

“Not as poorly as my Shad,” Matilda said. Between them, they got Call to his feet.

ALL DAY CALL STRUGGLED through the barren country. The freezing wind seemed to slide through the slices in his back and sides; it seemed to blow right into him. He couldn’t feel his feet, they were so cold. Gus supported him some; Matilda supported him some; even Long Bill Coleman helped out.

“How’d it get so damn cold?” Jimmy Tweed muttered, several times. “I never been no place where it was this cold. Even that snow wasn’t this cold.”

“You ought to leave me,” Call said. “I’m slowing you down.” It grated on him, that he had to be helped along.

“Maybe there’ll be a bunch of goats in this village,” Gus said. He was very hungry. The wind in his belly made the wind from the north harder to bear. He had always had a fondness for goat meat—in his imagination, the village they were approaching was a wealthy center of goat husbandry, with herds in the hundreds of fat, tasty goats grazing in the desert scrub. He imagined afeast in which the goats they were about to eat were spitted over a good fire, dripping their juices into the flame. Yet, as he struggled on, it became harder to trust in his own imaginings, because there was no desert scrub. There was nothing but the rough earth, with only here and there a cactus or low thornbush. Even if there were goats, there would be no firewood, no fire to cook them over.

Captain Salazar rode in silence, in pain from his neck wound. Now and then the soldiers walking beside him would rub their hands against his horse, pressing their hands into the horsehair to gain a momentary warmth.

Except when she was helping Call, Matilda walked alone. She cried, and the tears froze on her cheeks and on her shirt. She wanted to go back and stay with Shadrach—she could sit by his grave until the wind froze her, or until the Indians came, or a bear. She wanted to be where he had died—and yet she could not abandon the boy, Woodrow Call, whose wounds were far from healed. He still might take a deep infection; even if he didn’t, he might freeze if she was not there to warm him.

The cold had had a bad effect on Johnny Carthage’s sore leg. He struggled mightily to keep up, and yet as the day went on he fell farther and farther behind. Most of the Mexican soldiers were freezing, too. They had no interest in the lame Texan, who dropped back into their ranks, and then behind their ranks.

“I’ll catch you, I’ll catch you,” Johnny said, over and over, though the Mexicans weren’t listening.

By midafternoon some of the other Texans had begun to lag, and many of the Mexican infantrymen as well. The marchers were strung out over a mile—then, over two. Bigfoot went ahead, hoping for a glimpse of the village they were seeking—but he saw nothing, just the level desert plain. Behind them there was a low bank of dark clouds—perhaps it meant more snow. He felt confident that he himself could weather the night, even without fire, but he knew that many of the men wouldn’t—they would freeze, unless they reached shelter.

“I wonder if we even know where we’re going—we might be missing that town,” Bigfoot said, to Gus. “If we miss it we’re in for frosty sleeping.““I don’t want to miss it—I hope they have goats,” Gus said. He was half carrying Call at the time.

Bigfoot dropped back to speak with Salazar—the Captain was plodding on, but he was glassy eyed from pain and fatigue.

“Captain, I’m fearful,” Bigfoot said. “Have you been to this place —what’s it called?”

“San Saba,” Salazar said. “No, I have not been to it.”

“I hope it’s there,” Bigfoot said. “We’ve got some folks that won’t make it through the night unless we find shelter. Some of them are my boys, but quite a few of them are yours.”

“I know that, but I am not a magician,” Salazar said. “I cannot make houses where there are no houses, or trees where there are no trees.”

“Why don’t you let us go, Captain?” Bigfoot asked. “We ain’t all going to survive this. Why risk your boys just to take us south? Caleb Cobb was the man who thought up this expedition, and he’s dead.”

Captain Salazar rode on, still glassy eyed, for some time before answering. When he did speak, his voice was cracked and hoarse.

“I cannot let you go, Mr. Wallace,” he said. “I’m a military man, and I have my orders.”

“Dumb orders, I’d say,” Bigfoot said. “We ain’t worth freezing to death for. We haven’t killed a single one of your people. All we’ve done is march fifteen hundred miles to make fools of ourselves, and now we’re in a situation where half of us won’t live even if you do let us go. What’s the point?”

Salazar managed a smile, though the effort made his face twist in pain.

“I didn’t say my orders were intelligent, merely that they were mine,” he said. “I’ve been a military man for twenty years, and most of my orders have been foolish. I could have been killed many times, because of foolish orders. Now I have been given an order so foolish that I would laugh and cry if I weren’t so cold and in such pain.”

Bigfoot said nothing. He just watched Salazar.

“Of course, you are right,” Salazar went on. “You marched a long way to make fools of yourselves and you have done no harm to my people. If you had, by the way, you would have been shot— then all of us would have been spared this wind. But my orders are still mine. I have to take you to El Paso, or die trying.”

. “It might be the latter, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t like that cloud.”

Soon, a driving sleet peppered the men’s backs. As dusk fell, it became harder to see—the sleet coated the ground and made each step agony for those with cold feet.

“I fear we’ve lost Johnny,” Bigfoot said. “He’s back there somewhere, but I can’t see him. He might be a mile back—or he might be froze already.”

“I’ll go back and get him,” Long Bill said.

“I wouldn’t,” Bigfoot said. “You need all you’ve got, to make it yourself.”

“No, Johnny’s my companero” Long Bill said. “I reckon I’ll go back. If we die tonight, I expect I should be with Johnny.”

It took Gus and Matilda both to keep Call going. The sleet thickened on the ground, until it became too slippery for him to manage. Finally, the two of them carried him, his arms over their shoulders, his body warmed between their bodies.

As the darkness came on and the sleet blew down the wind like bird shot, doom was in the mind of every man. All of them, even Bigfoot Wallace, veteran of many storms, felt that it was likely that they would die during the night. Long Bill had gone loyally back into the teeth of the storm, to find his companero, Johnny Carthage. Captain Salazar was slumped over the neck of his horse, unconscious. His neck wound had continued to bleed until he grew faint and passed out. The Mexican soldiers walked in a cluster, except for those who lagged. They had only one lantern; the light illumined only a few feet of the frigid darkness. As the darkness deepened, the cold increased, and the men began to give up. Texan and Mexican alike came to a moment of resignation—they ceased to be able to pick their feet up and inch forward over the slippery ground. They thought but to rest a moment, until their energies were restored; but the rest lengthened, and they did not get up. The sleet coated their clothes. At first they sat, their backs to the wind and the sleet. Then the will to struggle left them, and they lay down and let the sleet cover them.

It was Gus McCrae, with his keen vision, who first saw a tiny flicker of light, far ahead.

“Why, it’s a fire,” he said. “If it ain’t a fire, it’s some kind of light.”

“Where?” Matilda asked. “I can’t see nothing but sleet.”

“No, there’s a fire, I seen it,” Gus said. “I expect it’s that town.” One of the Mexican soldiers heard him, and prodded his captain awake.

Salazar, too, felt that he would not survive the night. The wound Caleb Cobb had given him was worse than he had thought—he had bled all day, the blood freezing on his coat. Now a soldier had awakened him with some rumour of a light, although the sleet was blowing and he himself could not see past his horse’s head. There was no light, no town. The blood had dripped down to his pants, which were frozen to the saddle. Instead of delivering the invading Texans to El Paso and being promoted, at least to major for his valour in capturing them, his lot would be to die in a sleet storm on the frozen plain. He thought of shooting himself, but his hands were so cold he feared he would merely drop his pistol, if he tried to pull it out. The pistol, too, was coated in bloody ice—it might not even shoot.

Then Gus saw the light again, and yelled out, hoping somebody ahead would hear him.

“There’s the light—there it is, we’re close,” he said. This time, Bigfoot saw it, too.

“By God, he’s right,” he said. “We’re coming to someplace with a fire.”

Then he heard something that sounded like the bleating of sheep —the men who heard it all perked up. If there were sheep, they might not starve. Captain Salazar suddenly felt better.

“I remember the stories,” he said. “There is a spring—an underground river. They raise sheep here—this must be San Saba. I thought it was just a lie—a traveler’s lie, about the sheep and the spring. Most travelers lie, and few sheep cross this desert. But maybe it is true.”

One by one, hopeful for the first time in days, the men plodded on toward the light. Now and then they lost it in the sleet, and their hopes sank, but Gus McCrae had taken a bead on the light, and, leaving Matilda to support Woodrow Call, led the troop into the little village of San Saba. There were not many adobe huts, but there were many, many sheep. The ones they heard bleating were in a little rail corral behind the jefe’s hut, and the jefe himself, an old man with a large belly, was helping a young ewe bring forth her first kid. The light they had seen was his light. At first, he was surprised and alarmed by the spectral appearance of the Texans, all of them white with the sleet that covered their clothes. The old man had no weapon—he could do nothing but stare; also, the ewe was at her crisis and he could not afford to worry about the men who appeared out of the night, until he had delivered the kid. Although he had many sheep, he also lost many—to the cold, to wolves and coyotes and cougars. He wanted to see that the kid was correctly delivered before he had to face the wild men who had come in on a stormy night into the village. He thought they might be ghosts—if they were ghosts, perhaps the wind would blow them on, out of the village, leaving him to attend to his flock.

Captain Salazar, cheered by the knowledge that his troop was saved, became a captain again and soon had reassured the jefe that they were not ghosts, but a detachment of the Mexican army, on an important mission involving dangerous captives.

It was not hard to convince the jefe that the Texans were dangerous men—they looked as wild as Apaches, to the old man. Once the kid was delivered, the jefe immediately sprang to work and soon had the whole village up, building fires and preparing food for the starving men. Several sheep were slaughtered, while the women set about making coffee and tortillas.

Because it was Gus who had seen the light and saved the troop, Captain Salazar decreed that the Texans would not be bound. He was aware that he himself would have missed the light and probably the village, in which case all his men would have died. There would have been no medals, and no promotion. The Texans were put in a shed where the sheep were sheared, with a couple of good fires to warm them. Gus, sitting with Call, soon got to hear the very sound he had dreamt of: the sound of fat sizzling, as it dripped into a fire.

Some of the men were too tired even to wait for food. They took a little hot coffee, grew drowsy, and tipped over. The floor of the shed was covered with a coat of sheep’s wool, mixed with dirt. The wool made some of the men sneeze, but that was a minor irritation.

“I guess we lost Long Bill,” Bigfoot said.

“If we lost him, we lost Johnny too,” Gus said. “He should have waited until we found this town. Maybe one of the Mexicans would have gone back with us and we could have found Johnny.“Matilda was silent by the fire. All she could think about was that Shadrach was dead. He had wanted to take her west, to California. He had promised her; but now that prospect was lost.

Long after most of the Texans had eaten a good hunk of mutton and gone to sleep, there was a shout from the Mexicans. Long Bill Coleman, his clothes a suit of ice, came walking slowly into the circle of fires, carrying Johnny Carthage in his arms. Johnny, too, seemed to be sheathed in ice—at first, no one could say whether Johnny Carthage was alive or dead.

He laid his friend down by the warmest campfire and himself stood practically in the flames, shaking and trembling from cold and from exertion. He held out his hands to the fire; he was so close that ice began to melt off his clothes.

“If that’s mutton, I’ll have some,” he said. “I swear, it’s been a cold walk.”

FOR THREE DAYS THE Texans, under guard again, never left their sheep shed, except to answer calls of nature. Captain Salazar’s escort had been reduced by more than twenty men, lost and presumed frozen back along the sleety trail—six Texans failed to make the village. The weather stayed so cold that most of the men were glad of the confinement. They were allowed ample firewood, and plenty to eat. Blackie Slidell had to have two frostbitten toes removed—Bigfoot Wallace performed the operation with a sharp bowie knife—but no one else required amputations.

Once the people of the village realized that the Texans were not spectres, they were friendly. The old jefe, still much occupied with his lambing in the terrible weather, saw that they had ample food. The men could drink coffee all day—poor coffee, but warming. Noticing that Call was injured, one old woman asked to look at his back; when she saw the blackened scabs, she drew in her breath and hurried away. A few minutes later the woman returned, another woman at her side. The other woman was so short she scarcely came to Bigfoot’s waist. She had with her a little pot—she went quickly to Call, but instead of lifting his shirt as the first woman had, she put her thin face close to his back and sniffed.

“Hell, she’s smelling you,” Bigfoot said. “I wonder if you smell like venison.”

Bigfoot’s remarks were sometimes so foolish that Call was irritated by them. Why would he smell like venison? And why was the wizened little Mexican woman smelling him, anyway? He was passive, though—he didn’t answer Bigfoot, and he didn’t move away from the woman. The village women had been unexpectedly kind—the food they brought was warm and tasty; one woman had even given him an old serape to cover himself with. It had holes in it, but it was thickly woven and kept out the chill. He thought perhaps the tiny woman who was sniffing him was some kind of healer; he knew he was in no position to reject help. He was still very weak, often feverish, and always in pain. He could survive while in the warmth of the sheep shed, but if he were forced to march and was caught in another sleet storm, he might not live. He could not ask Gus or Matilda to carry him again, as they had the first time.

The little woman sniffed him thoroughly, as a dog might, and then set her pot in the edge of the nearest campfire. She squatted by it, muttering words no one could understand. When she judged the medicine to be ready, she gestured for Call to remove his shirt; she then spent more than two hours rubbing the hot ointment into his back. She carefully kneaded his muscles and spread the ointment gently along the line of every scar. At first the ointment burned so badly that Call thought he would not be able to stand the pain. The burning was far worse than what he could remember of the whipping itself. For several minutes, Gus and Matilda had to talk to him, in an effort to distract him from the burning; at one point, they thought they might have to restrain him, but Call gritted his teeth and let the little woman do her work. In time a warmth spread through his body and he slept soundlessly, without moaning, for the first time since the whipping.

The next day, through a crack in the wall, Gus saw the same woman applying ointment to Captain Salazar’s neck. The Captain looked weak. He had taken a fever, which soared so high that he was sometimes incoherent; the jefe took him into his house and the little woman tended him until the fever dropped. Even so, the Captain was at first too weak to walk in a straight line. He wanted to stay and rest in San Saba, but when the weather warmed a little, he decided he had better take advantage of it and press on. He came to the Texans’ shed, to inform them of his decision.

“Enjoy a warm night,” he told them. “We leave tomorrow.”

“How many days before we get across this dead man’s walk?” Long Bill asked.

“Senor, we have not yet come to the Jornada,” Salazar said. “The land here is fertile because of the underground water. Once we get beyond where the sheep are, we will start the dead man’s walk.”

The Texans were silent. They had all convinced themselves that the day of the sleet would be their worst day. They had forgotten that Salazar said the dead man’s walk was two hundred miles across. They had grown used to the coziness of the shed, and the warmth of the campfires. Each of them could remember the bitter cold, the pain of marching on frozen feet, the sleet, and the hopeless sense that they would die if they didn’t find warmth.

They had found warmth; but Salazar had just reminded them that the hardest part of the journey had not even begun. Some of the men hunched closer to the campfires, holding out their hands to the warmth—they wanted to hug the warmth, keep it as long as they could. Few of them slept—they wanted to sit close to the fires and enjoy every bit of warmth left to them. They wanted the warmth to last forever, or at least until summertime. Johnny Carthage, terrified that he would fall so far behind that Long Bill Coleman couldn’t find him and rescue him, asked over and over again, through the night, how long it would be until morning.

Informed by the old jefe that there was neither food nor water enough for many horses in the barren region that awaited them, Salazar kept only one horse—his own—and traded several for two donkeys and as much provender as the donkeys could carry. On the morning of departure, abruptly, he decided to reduce the force to twenty-five men. He reasoned that twenty-five could probably hold off the Apaches, if they attacked—more than twenty-five would be impossible to provision on such a journey. The Texans alone would account for most of the provisions the donkeys could carry.What that meant was that the Texans would slightly outnumber his own force; and the Texans, man for man, were stronger than his troops.

“Senores, you will have to be tied,” he informed the Texans, when they were led out into the cold air. “I regret it, but it is necessary. I can afford no risks on this journey—crossing the dead man’s walk is risk enough.”

Bigfoot swelled up at this news—Gus thought he was going to make a fight. But he held on to his temper and let his wrists be bound with rawhide thongs, when his turn came. The other men did the same. Even Call was tied, though Matilda lodged a strong protest.

“This boy’s hurt—he can’t do nothing—why tie him?” she asked.

“Because he has fury in him,” Captain Salazar said. “I saw it myself. He almost killed Colonel Cobb while he was riding in our General’s buggy. If I had to choose only one of you to tie, I would tie Corporal Call.”

“I suppose that’s a compliment, ain’t it?” Gus said.

“I don’t care what it is,” Call said. Since the old woman had treated him with her ointment he could at least stretch his muscles without groaning in pain. He glared at the young Mexican who tied him, although he knew the boy was simply doing his job.

Many of the women of San Saba broke into tears when they saw the Texans being tied. Some of them had formed motherly attachments to one prisoner or another. Some pressed additional food, tortillas or pieces of jerky into the men’s hands as they were marched through the street, out of the village.

The fertile country lasted only three miles. By the fourth mile, only the smallest scrub grew. Soon even that disappeared—before them, as far ahead as they could see, was a land where nothing grew.

“This is the dead man’s walk,” Captain Salazar said. “Now we will see who wants to live and who wants to die.”

“I intend to live,” Gus said, at once.

Call said nothing.

“Even the Apaches won’t cross it,” Salazar said.

One-eyed Johnny Carthage looked at the emptiness before them, and was filled with dread.

“What’s the matter, Johnny?” Long Bill said, noting his friend’shaggard look. “It’s warmer now, and we got food. We’ll get across this like we got across the plains.”

Johnny Carthage heard what Long Bill said, but didn’t believe him. He looked at the great space before them and shivered_not from cold, but from fear.

He felt that he was looking at his death.

ON THE FOURTH NIGHT out from San Saba, a warm night that left the men encouraged, Captain Salazar’s horse and both donkeys disappeared. Some of their provisions were still on the donkeys— they had traveled late and had only unpacked what they needed for the evening meal, corn mostly, with a little dried mutton.

Captain Salazar had tethered his horse so close to his pallet that the lead rope was in reach of his hand as he slept. He had only to turn over to reassure himself that his horse was there. But when he did turn over, in the grey dawn, all he had left was the end of the lead rope, which had been cut. The horse was gone.

“I thought you said Indians didn’t come here,” Bigfoot said, annoyed. He had wondered at the laxness of the Mexicans, in setting no guard. The foot soldiers had simply lain down and slept where they stopped, with no thought of anything but rest. The Texans did the same, but the Texans were tied—guard duty was not their responsibility.

Captain Salazar was silent, shocked by what had happened andwhat it meant. He stared for a long time across the dry plain, as if hoping to see his horse and the donkeys, grazing peacefully. But all he saw was the barren earth, with an edge of sun poking above it to the east.

Bigfoot had to repeat his statement.

“I guess those Indians that don’t come here took your horse,” he said.

“Gomez took my horse,” Salazar said. “Gomez is not like the rest. He has no fear of this country. No one else would be so bold.”

“That rope he cut was about three feet from your throat,” Bigfoot remarked. “He could have cut your throat if he’d wanted to.”

Captain Salazar was looking at the cut end of the lead rope. A scalpel could not have cut it more cleanly. Bigfoot was right: Gomez could easily have cut his throat.

“He could have, but there would have been little sport,” he said. “We must walk.”

By midmorning all the men felt the air, which had been warm, turn chill. The north wind picked up.

“Oh God, I don’t want it to get cold,” Johnny Carthage said. “I wouldn’t mind to die if I could just do it warm.” The great dread had not left him.

“Shut up your complaining, it’s just a breeze so far,” Long Bill said. “I carried you once and I’ll carry you again, if it comes to that.”

“No you won’t, Bill—you can’t carry me no hundred miles,” Johnny said, but the wind was already howling at their backs, and no one heard him.

Call walked between Matilda and Gus—he was still unsteady on his feet and was swept, at times, by waves of fever that made his vision swirl. Matilda was the only one of the Texans who had not been tied. Captain Salazar had come to like her—from time to time, she consented to play cards with him. He would not fraternize to that extent with the prisoners, and his own men were mostly too young to be good cardplayers. An old bear hunter had taught him rummy—it was mostly rummy that he played with Matilda Jane.

As they were stumbling along, pushed by the cold north wind, Gus happened to look back, a habit he got into after his encounter with the grizzly bear. He could not get Bigfoot’s story about thet man who had been stalked while fishing out of his mind. It was worrisome that bears could be so stealthy.

When he glanced over his shoulder he got a bad start, for something large and brown was hurtling down toward them. Whatever it was was still far away—he could only see a shape, but it was a brown shape, the very color of a bear.

“Captain, get the rifles!” he yelled, in consternation. “There’s a bear after us.”

For a moment, the whole troop believed him—no one could clearly determine what was moving toward them, but something was, and fast. Salazar lined his men up and had them ready, their guns primed.

“I wish you’d let me shoot, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “Your boys are so scared I expect half of them will miss.”

“I expect it, too,” Salazar said. He walked over to the nearest soldier and took his musket. He walked over to Bigfoot, untied his hands, and handed him the musket.

“The last time I handed a Texan a gun, he shot me,” Salazar reminded him. “Please be honorable, Mr. Wallace. Shoot the bear. If we kill it we will have meat enough to make it across the dead man’s walk.”

Just then, Gus saw something that was even more unnerving: the bear leapt high in the air. It seemed to fly for several yards, before coming back to earth.

“Good Lord, it’s flying,” he said.

As he said it, the shape flew again—the whole troop was transfixed, even Bigfoot. He had heard many bear stories, but no one had ever told him that grizzly bears could fly. He squatted and leveled his musket, though the bear—if it was a bear—was still far away.

Some of the young Mexican soldiers became so nervous that they ‘ began firing when the hurtling brown object was still two hundred yards away. Salazar was irritated. The wind whirled dust from the plain high, so that it was hard to see anything clearly.

“Don’t fire until I say fire,” he said. “If you all fire now you will be out of bullets when the bear gets here, and he will eat us all.”

“I’m saving my bullet,” Bigfoot said. “I intend to shoot him right between the eyes—that’s the only sure way to stop a bear.”

Just then, the hurtling brown object collided with a hump of rocks and flew high in the air, above the dust. For the first time Bigfoot saw it clearly and he immediately lowered his rifle. “Boys, old Gomez has got us rattled,” he said. “That ain’t a bear—that’s a tumbleweed.”

Salazar looked disgusted.

“Seven of you shot, and the tumbleweed is still coming,” he said.

“Why, it’s the size of a house,” Gus said. He had never imagined a weed could grow so big. It hurtled by the company, rolling over and over, as fast as a man could run. From time to time it hit a bump or a small rock and sailed into the air. Soon it was a hundred yards to the south, and then it vanished, obscured by the blowing dust.

“Let us have no more talk of bears,” Salazar said, looking at Gus.

They marched late into the night, with only a few bites of food. In San Saba the men had been given gourds, to use as water carriers —some of them had already drunk the last of their water, while others still had a little. The temperature had dropped and all the men longed for a fire, but there was nothing to burn, except the branches of a few thin bushes. The Texans gathered enough sticks to make a small blaze and were about to light it when Salazar stopped them.

“No fires tonight,” he said.

“Why not?” Gus asked. “I’d like to warm my toes.”

“Gomez will see it if he is still following us,” Salazar said.

“Why would he follow us—he’s done got our donkeys and most of our food,” Bigfoot asked.

“He might follow us to kill us,” Salazar replied.

“He could have killed you last night and he didn’t,” Bigfoot said. “Why would he walk another day just to do what he could already have done?”

“Because he is an Apache, Serior,” Salazar said. “He is not like us. He may have gone home—I don’t know. But I want no fires tonight.”

By midnight, the cold had become so intense that the men were forced to huddle together for warmth. Even huddled, they were so cold that several of them ceased to be able to feel their feet. Johnny Carthage could not overcome his dread. He tried to think of the sunlight of south Texas, but all he could think of was the terrible white sleet that had nearly taken his life a few days before. He was squeezed up against Long Bill—he could feel his friend shivering. Long Bill shivered violently, but slept, his mouth open, his breath a cloud of white in the cold night. Johnny began to wish that Bill would wake up. Bill had been his pard—his companero. Bill had risked his life to locate him and bring him out of the terrible sleet storm. Now the dread of the cold was overwhelming him—he wanted Long Bill to sense it and wake up, to talk him out of what he meant to do with the small knife he had just taken out of his pocket. He wanted his oldest and best friend to help him through the night. Johnny Carthage began to tremble even more violently than the man he was huddled against. He trembled so that he could scarcely hold the knife, or raise the blade. He didn’t want to drop the knife. If he did, he might not have the strength to find it in the freezing night. He didn’t want to wake his friend, so tired from the long day’s march; yet, he needed his help and began to cry quietly, in despair. He didn’t want to live, his hope was broken; no more did he want to die, without his friend to help him. There was no sound on all the plain except the breathing of the exhausted men around him. The darkness was spotted with little clouds—the white breath of his companeros. Johnny’s gimpy leg was aching terribly from the cold; his foot twitched, twitched, twitched; though he could not feel his foot he felt the twitching, regular as the ticking of a clock.

“Dern this leg,” he whispered. “Dern this leg.”

Then he opened the knife, and put the blade against his throat— but the blade was so cold that he withdrew it. He began to sob, at the knowledge that he hadn’t the strength to push the cold knife blade into his throat and cut. It meant he would freeze, but he could not do it amid the Rangers, because they would insist on making him go on. They would not accept the fact that he didn’t want to live anymore.

Johnny put the knife to his throat again, but again he withdrew it. The tip made a tiny cut in his neck and the cold seared the cut, like a brand. Johnny quietly moved an inch away from Long Bill, and then another. Slowly, waking no one, he eased out from the midst of the Rangers, a foot at a time. Even when he had slipped beyond the sound of their breathing, he merely scooted over the cold ground, a foot at a time.

Of all the Texans, only Matilda Roberts was awake. At night she had taken to sleeping between the two boys, making Call turn historn back to her so she could warm it. Gus slept on the other side, squeezed up against her as close as he could get. Both boys slept, but Matilda didn’t. She saw Johnny Carthage—he crawled right by her. As he was about to go into the night he felt her gaze, and turned to look at her for a moment. He could only see her outline, not her face; nor could she see him clearly, yet she knew who he was and where he was going. Johnny paused in his crawl. The two of them looked at one another, through the darkness. Matilda opened her mouth, but closed it again, without speaking. Johnny Carthage was beyond her words—but she did reach out and squeeze his arm. She heard him sob; he touched her arm for a moment, before he crawled away. “Oh, Johnny,” she whispered, but she didn’t try to stop him. Since Shadrach’s death she had used her strength for the boys, Gus and Call—one was hurt, and the other was foolish. It would take all her strength, and perhaps more than her strength, to get them across the desert. She could not save them and Johnny Carthage, too—nor could Long Bill save his friend without losing his own chance to live. If the cold didn’t take Johnny, the stony ground would grind at him until it broke him. If he wanted to make his own end, she felt it was wrong to stop him. His chances were slight at best; there was no point in his suffering beyond his strength.

Even so, it was hard to listen to the scraping of his poor leg, as he dragged himself over the hard ground, into the icy night. But the scraping grew faint, and then very faint. Soon she could hear nothing but the breathing of the two boys who slept beside her. Since the day when Caleb Cobb had struck his foot with the rifle barrel, Call had limped almost as badly as Johnny. Probably there were broken bones, somewhere in his foot—but he was young. The broken bones would heal.

Johnny Carthage crawled on until he figured he was almost two hundred yards from camp. He had worn one of his pants legs through and scraped one of his knees on the icy ground. Bigfoot had once told him that freezing men felt a warmth come over them, near the end; when he judged that he was far enough from camp not to be found, even if Long Bill should wake and miss him and come looking, he stopped and sat, shivering violently. He waited for the warmth in which he could sleep and die—he had been cold long enough; he was ready for the warmth, but the warmth didn’t come—only a deeper cold, a cold that seeped inside him and chilled his lungs, his liver, even his heart.

Desperate for the warmth, he opened his little knife again and clutched it tightly, meaning to plunge it into his neck, where the great vein was. But before he could grasp the knife tightly enough in his shivering hands, he looked up and saw a shadow between himself and the starlight. Someone was there, a presence he felt but could not see. Before he could think more about it, Gomez struck. Johnny Carthage finally felt the longed-for warmth—a warm flood, flowing down his chest and onto his freezing hands. For a moment, he was grateful: whoever was there, between him and the cold stars, had taken a hard task off his hands. Then he slipped down and the shadow was astride him, opening his pants. Before Gomez struck again, one-eyed Johnny Carthage had ceased to mind the cold, or to feel the pain of the knife that had severed his privates. Oh, Bill, he thought—then all thoughts ceased.

Gomez wiped his knife on Johnny Carthage’s pants leg, and moved quietly toward the Mexican camp. Long before he got there, he heard the snores of several sleeping men. He had planned to kill the shivering Mexican sentries and take their guns, but when he realized that the large woman was awake, he changed his mind. He did not want the large woman to know he was there. The night before, in the little cave where he rested, he had seen a snake, though it was much too cold for snakes to be moving about; worse, late in the night, he had heard the call of an owl, though he was far out on the malpais, where no owls flew. He knew it must be the large woman who summoned the snake and the old owl to places where they should never be. He knew the large woman must be a witch, for only a witch would be traveling through the malpais with so many men.

Gomez knew that the large woman had been the woman of Tail-Of-The-Bear, and Tail-Of-The-Bear had been a great man, perhaps a shaman. Gomez turned away from the camp at once; he did not want the witch to find out that he was near. If she knew, she might summon the owl again—the buu—and to hear the call of the buu twice meant death.

Gomez skirted the camp and walked several miles, to where he had left his two sons. One of them had found a wolf den that day—they had made a little fire and were cooking the wolf pups they had caught. Gomez wanted to eat one of the young wolves—it would give him cunning, and protect him from the buu and the witch, the large woman who had traveled with Tail-Of-The-Bear.

LONG BILL COLEMAN WAS frantic, when he discovered that Johnny Carthage had left him in the night. He felt guilty for not having watched his friend more closely.

“I expect he just went for a walk, to keep warm,” he said. “I ought to have kept him warmer, but it was hard, without no fire.”

Bigfoot did not suppose that Johnny Carthage had merely walked into the night to keep his feet warm; nor did Captain Salazar believe it. A few hundred yards to the east, they saw four buzzards circling.

“Bill, he went off to die—got tired of this shivering,” Matilda said, before Gus or anyone could comment on the buzzards. It was colder that day than it had been the day before. The whole troop was shivering.

Salazar allowed the Texans to burn their few pitiful sticks, but the blaze was not even sufficient to boil coffee. It died, and the only warmth they had was the warmth of their own breath—they all stood around blowing on their hands. When Long Bill saw the buzzards and realized what they meant, he had to be restrained from running to bury his friend.

“Bill, the buzzards have been at him,” Bigfoot said. “Anyway, we got nothing to bury him with. Gus and me will go and take a look, just to be sure it wasn’t some varmint that froze to death.”

“Yes, go look,” Salazar said. “But hurry. We can’t wait.” When Gus saw the torn, white body of Johnny Carthage he immediately turned his back. Bigfoot, though, shooed the buzzards away and took a closer look. What he saw didn’t please him. Johnny’s throat had been slashed, and his privates cut off. The buzzards hadn’t cut his throat, nor had they castrated him. Bigfoot circled the body, hoping to see a man track—something that would allow him to gauge the strength of their opponents. If several Apaches had been there, that would be one thing. It would mean that none of them could sleep safe until they moved beyond the Apache country. But if Gomez was so confident that he would come to the camp alone, take a horse, kill a man—or several men —then they were up against someone as formidable as Buffalo Hump—someone they probably could not beat.

As Gus stood with his back turned, trying to keep his heaving stomach under control, Bigfoot remembered the dream he had had back on the Pecos, the dream in which Buffalo Hump and Gomez were riding together, to make war on anyone in their path, Mexican or white. Now, in a way, that dream had come true, even though the two Indians might be hundreds of miles apart, and might have never met. Buffalo Hump had almost killed them on the prairie, and now Gomez was cutting them down in the New Mexican desert. If the two men, Comanche and Apache, ever did join forces, the little troop standing around in the cold would have no chance. Texans and Mexicans alike would be drained of blood like poor one-eyed Johnny Carthage, their throats cut, and their balls thrown to the varmints.

He looked across the long, barren plain, hoping to see some sign —a wolf, a bird, a fleeing antelope, anything at all that would tell him where the Apaches were. But the plain was completely empty

—only the grey clouds moved at all. Gus McCrae had dropped to his knees—despite himself, his stomach turned over; he retched and retched and retched. Bigfoot waited for him to finish, and then led him back to camp. He didn’t tell Gus what he knew, or what he feared. The troop was close to panic anyway—panic and despair, from the cold and hunger and the knowledge that they were on a journey that many of them would not live to finish.

“Did he freeze?” Long Bill asked, grief stricken, when Bigfoot came back.

“Well, he’s froze now, yes,” Bigfoot said. “We should get to walking.

Call’s hurt feet were paining him even more than they had been. He had wobbled the day before, coming over a ridge; he hit his foot on a rock, and since then, had had a sharp pain in his right foot, as if a bone thin as a needle was poking him every time he put his foot down.

All that day he struggled to keep up, helped by Matilda and Gus. He noticed that Bigfoot kept looking back, turning every few minutes to survey the desert behind them. It became so noticeable that Call finally asked Gus about it.

“Did Johnny just freeze?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Gus said. “All I seen was his body,” Gus said. “The buzzards had been at him.”

“I know the buzzards had been at him, but were the buzzards all that had been at him?” Call asked.

“He means did an Indian kill him,” Matilda asked. She too had noticed Bigfoot’s nervousness.

Gus had not even thought about Indians—he supposed that Johnny had just gone off to walk himself warm, but had failed at it and frozen. He had only glimpsed the body from a distance—it was blood splotched, like the body of Josh Corn had been, but he had supposed the buzzards had accounted for the blood. Now, though, once he tried to recall what he had seen, he wasn’t sure. The thought that an Indian had found Johnny and killed him was too disturbing to consider.

“I expect he just died,” Gus said.

The answer didn’t satisfy Call—Johnny Carthage had survived several bitter nights. Why would he suddenly die, on a night that was no colder than the others? But Call saw that Gus was going to be of no help. Gus didn’t like to look at dead bodies. He could not be relied on to report accurately.

Bigfoot was tempted to tell Captain Salazar what had happened to Johnny Carthage. He had a hard time keeping secrets. The daywas bitter cold. The Texans were still bound at the wrists, and their hands began to freeze, from lack of circulation. As dusk came, Bigfoot felt his anger rising. Very likely, they were going to die on the dead man’s walk—he reflected ruefully that the sandy stretch of country was accurately named. Why tie the hands of men who were all but dead anyway? His anger rose, and he strode up to Salazar and fell in beside him. “Captain, Johnny Carthage didn’t freeze to death,” he said. “He was kilt.”

Salazar was almost at the end of his strength—the pace he set was not a military pace, but the pace of a man unused to walking. His family had a small hacienda—all his life he had ridden. Without his horse, he felt weak. Also, he liked to eat—the cold, the wound on his neck, and the lack of food had weakened him. Now, just as they faced another day with little food and another night without fire, the big Texan came to him with unwelcome news. “How was he killed?” he asked.

“Throat cut,” Bigfoot said. “He was castrated, too, but I expect he was past feeling, when that happened.”

“Why did you wait so long to tell me this, Serior Wallace?” Salazar asked. He kept walking, slowly; he had not looked at Bigfoot.

“Because this whole bunch is about to give up,” Bigfoot said. “They’ll panic and start deserting. Whoever killed Johnny will pick them off, one by one.”

“Gomez,” Captain Salazar said. “He’s toying with us.”

“Untie us, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “Our hands will freeze this way. We’ll fight with you, against the Apache—but we can’t fight if our hands are frozen off. I couldn’t hold a rifle steady now. My hands are too cold.”

Salazar looked back at the stumbling Texans. They were weak and cold, but they still looked stronger than his own men. He knew that Bigfoot Wallace was right. His men wouldn’t go much farther, unless they found food. They would flee toward the mountains, or else simply sit down and die. Gomez was the wolf who would finish them, in his own way.

He knew that if he freed the Texans, and they saw a chance, they would overpower his men, kill them, or else take their guns and leave them to their fate. To free them was to accept a large risk.Yet, at least if it came to battle, the Texans would shoot—they wouldn’t cut and run.

“No white man has ever seen Gomez,” he told Bigfoot. “No Mexican, either. We caught his wife and killed her. We have killed two of his sons. But Gomez we have never seen. He cut my rope, not a yard from my head. And yet I have never seen him.”

“I don’t want to see the fellow,” Bigfoot said. “If I can just avoid him, I’ll be better off.”

“Any Apache can be Gomez,” Salazar said. “He might be dead. His sons might be killing for him now—we only killed two, and he has many. It is hard to fight a man you never see.”

“I’ve seen him,” Bigfoot said.

Salazar was startled. “You’ve seen him?” he asked.

“I dreamed him,” Bigfoot said. “We was on the Rio Grande, trying to lay out the road to El Paso. I was with Major Chevallie— he’s dead now. In my dream I seen Gomez and Buffalo Hump riding together. They were going to attack Chihuahua City and make all your people slaves—the ones they didn’t kill.”

Salazar kept walking.

“I’m glad it was only in Chihuahua City,” he said.

“Why?” Bigfoot asked.

“Because I don’t live in Chihuahua City,” Salazar said. “If they had tried to take Santa Fe they would have done better than you Texans did.”

“I expect so,” Bigfoot said. “Will you untie us, Captain? We won’t fight you. We might help save you.”

“Why is this land without wood?” Salazar asked. “If we had wood and could make fires and be warm, we might survive.”

“Just untie us, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “We wouldn’t be killing these boys of yours. Most of them ain’t but half grown. We don’t kill pups.”

Salazar walked back through the Texans; he saw that they were suffering much, from their bound hands.

“Untie them,” he told his men. “But be watchful. I want the best marksmen to stand guard at night and to flank these men during the day. Shoot them if they try to flee.”

That night, again, there was no fire. All day they had looked for wood, without seeing even a stick. Six riflemen guarded the Texans,with their muskets ready. Late in the night, while Texans and Mexicans alike shivered in their sleep, two of the guards walked off a little ways, to piss.

In the morning their bodies, cut as Johnny Carthage’s had been cut, were found less than fifty yards from camp.

This time there was no hiding the truth, from Gus McCrae or anyone.

“He’s stalking us,” Bigfoot said. “Ain’t that right, Captain?

“It is time to march,” Salazar said.

FOR THREE DAYS CALL could not put his right foot to the ground. Matilda and Gus took turns supporting him, alternating throughout the day. On the second day the whole company, Mexicans and Texans alike, were so weak they were barely able to stumble along. They made less than ten miles.

“If we can’t make no better time than this, we might as well sit down and die,” Bigfoot said. He himself could have made better time than that, but he did not want to desert his companions—not yet—not until he had to save himself.

In the afternoon of the second day, Jimmy Tweed, the gangly boy, gave up. He had turned his ankle the day before, crossing a shallow gully; now the ankle was so swollen that he could scarcely put his foot to the ground.

Salazar saw Jimmy Tweed sink down, and went over to him at once. He knew that the whole troop was ready to do what Jimmy Tweed had just done—sit down and wait to die. It was an option he could not allow his men, or the Texans, who, though no longer tied, were his captives. If the Texans began to give up, his own men might follow suit, and soon the whole party would be lost.

“Get up, Serior,” Salazar said. “We will make camp soon. You can rest your ankle then.”

“Nope, I’m staying, Captain,” Jimmy Tweed said. “I’d just as soon stop here as a mile or two from here.”

“Senor, I cannot permit it,” Salazar said. “We would all like to stop—but you are a prisoner under guard, and I make the decisions about where we stop.”

Jimmy Tweed just smiled. His lips were blue from the cold. He stared through Salazar, as if the man were not there.

Salazar saw that all his soldiers were watching him. Jimmy Tweed made no effort to stand up and walk. Most of the Texans were some ways ahead; they were not paying attention; each man had his own problems—none had noticed that Jimmy Tweed had stopped. Wearily, Salazar drew his pistol and cocked it. “Senor, I will ask you courteously to get up and walk a little farther,” he said. “I would rather not shoot you—but I will shoot you if you do not obey me.”

Jimrny Tweed looked at him—for a moment, he seemed to consider obeying the order. He put his hands on the ground, as if he meant to push himself up. But after a moment, he ceased all effort. “Too tired, Captain,” he said. “I reckon I’m just too tired.” “I see,” Salazar said. He walked around behind Jimmy and shot him in the head.

At the shot, all the Texans turned. Jimmy Tweed had pitched forward on his face, dead.

Salazar walked quickly back to where the group waited, staring at the dead body of their comrade, Jimmy Tweed.

“His sufferings are over, Senores,” Salazar said, the pistol still in his hand. “Let’s march.”

The Mexican soldiers made a show of raising their guns, in case the Texans chose to revolt—but in fact, none revolted. Bigfoot coloured, as if he were about to be seized with one of his great fits of rage, but he held himself in check. Several of the other Texans looked back at the body, sprawled on the dull sand, but in the main they were too numb to care. Several, whose feet were frozen stumps, felt a moment of envy, mixed with sadness. It was hard to dispute Captain Salazar’s words. Jimmy’s sufferings were over; theirs were not.

“That’s two of us that ain’t been buried proper,” Blackie Slidell said. “I have always supposed I’d be buried proper, but maybe I won’t. There’s no time for funerals, out here on the baldies.”

“Proper—they weren’t buried at all,” Bigfoot said. “Johnny and Jimmy both got left to the varmints.”

Gus had the conviction that they were all going to die. As far as he could see—ahead, behind, or to the side—there was nothing. Just sky and sand. The dead man’s walk was a hell of emptiness. His lips were blue from the cold, and his tongue swollen from thirst. Woodrow Call groaned whenever his broken foot touched the ground—even Matilda Roberts, the strongest spirit in the troop, except for Bigfoot, merely trudged along silently. She had not spoken all day.

Matilda had not looked back, when Jimmy Tweed was shot. She didn’t want to think about Jimmy Tweed, a boy who had been sweet to her on more than one occasion, bringing her coffee from the campfire, helping her saddle Tom, when she still had Tom. Once he had asked her for her favors, but she had bound herself to Shadrach by then, and had turned him down. He pouted like a little boy at being refused, but got over it in an hour and continued to do her little favors. Now she regretted rebuffing him—Shadrach had been asleep and would never have known. Sweet boys rarely knew how little time they had; now Jimmy’s had run out. Matilda put one foot in front of the other, helped Call as much as she could, and trudged on.

That night, Blackie Slidell and six of his chums disappeared. Blackie was of the opinion that there were villages to the west— often he pointed to columns of smoke that no one else could see.

“It’s chimney smoke,” Blackie said, several times; he was hoping to get the company to swing west.

“It ain’t chimney smoke—it ain’t smoke at all—it’s just you hoping,” Bigfoot said. “Gus McCrae has better eyesight than you, and he can’t see no smoke over in that direction.”

“It might be a piece of a cloud,” Gus said. He liked Blackie and didn’t want to flatly contradict him, if he could help it.

Blackie saw that he wasn’t going to be able to convince Bigfoot orSalazar that there were villages to the west. But he had become friendly with six boys from Arkansas, and he had better luck with them.

“Hell, I’d like to live to eat one more catfish from the old Arkansas River,” one of them, a thin youth named Cotton Lovett, said.

“Or maybe one more possum,” Blackie said. He had been down the Arkansas on occasion and remembered that the possums there were fat and easy to catch. The meat of the Arkansas possums was a trifle greasy—several of the Arkansas boys agreed to that—but they were all so hungry that the prospect of grease only made the venture more attractive.

That night, worried about Gomez, Salazar put all his men in a tight circle, facing out, their guns ready. They had crossed a flat lake that afternoon, mainly dry but with just enough smelly puddles to allow the men enough water to boil coffee. Several of the men were already cramping from the effects of the bad water. The Texans had drunk too, and were suffering. Blackie Slidell tried to interest several other men in escaping. He was sure the villages were there. But he found no takers and slipped off about midnight, with the six boys. Call and Gus watched them go—for a moment, Gus felt inclined to go with them, but Call talked him out of it.

“We don’t know much about this country, but we do know the Apaches are that way,” Call reminded him. “That’s one good reason to stay with the troop.”

“I would strike out with the boys, but I’m too cold,” Gus said. “Anyway, I have to get you home. Clara will think poorly of me, if I don’t.”

Call didn’t answer, but he was surprised—not by his friend’s loyalty, but that cold, hungry, lost, and a prisoner, he was still hoping to gain the good opinion of a girl in a general store in Austin. He started to point out what seemed obvious: that the girl had probably forgotten them both, by this time. For all they knew, she could have married. Gus’s hopes of winning her were as far-fetched as Blackie Slidell’s hopes of finding a friendly village somewhere to the west.

He didn’t say that, though; recent experience had shown him that men had to use what hope they could muster, to stay alive.

They sat together through the night, one on either side of Matilda Roberts. For several days the weather had been overcast, but when the dawn came, it was clear. Just seeing the bright sunlight made them feel better, although it was still cold and the prospects still bleak.

Captain Salazar had taken a little of the bad water the day before; he arose so tired and weak that he could scarcely walk to the campfire. When a cramp took him he had to bend almost double to endure the pain.

Bad as he was, his troop was worse. Several of his soldiers were too weak to rise. The fact that seven prisoners had escaped the night before didn’t interest them—nor did it interest Salazar.

“Their freedom will be temporary,” he told Bigfoot.

“How about our freedom, Captain?” Bigfoot asked. “Half your men are dying and half of ours too. What’s the point of keeping us prisoners when we’re all dying? Why can’t you just turn us loose and let it be every man for himself? Maybe one or two of us will make it home, if we do it that way.”

Call and Gus were there—and Long Bill. Captain Salazar could barely stand on his feet. Even a march of one mile might be beyond him, and they had far more than a mile to go. Bigfoot’s request seemed reasonable, to them. If they were let go they might wander off in twos and threes and find food of some sort and live, whereas if the whole troop had to stay together they would probably all starve.

Salazar looked at his troops, many of them unable to rise. He still had at most eight soldiers who could be considered able-bodied men. The Texans had more, but not many more. The end of the dead man’s walk was not in sight—it might be three days away, or four, or even five. He thought for a moment before answering Bigfoot’s request.

He took his pistol out of its holster, checked to see that it was fully loaded, and handed it butt first to Bigfoot Wallace.

“If you want to be free, kill me,” he said.

Bigfoot looked at the sick, exhausted man in astonishment.

“Captain, I must have misheard,” he said.

“No, you heard correctly,” Salazar said. “I have decided that you can be free, if freedom is what you want most. But I am a Mexican officer, under orders to take you to El Paso. There is no one here to countermand my orders, and the General who gave them to me is dead. You saw what the Apaches did to him.”

“Well, Captain, I know that,” Bigfoot said. “But if the General was here and saw how weak we all are, he might change his mind.”

“He might, but we cannot summon him up from hell and ask him,” Salazar said. “My orders are still my orders. I cannot free you. But I will allow you the opportunity to free yourselves. All you have to do is shoot me.”

Bigfoot held the gun awkwardly, not sure what to make of the Captain’s odd decision. He looked at Call, at Gus, at Long Bill Coleman, and at Matilda Roberts. Now and then, throughout their time as prisoners, any one of them would have been happy to have the opportunity to kill Captain Salazar. When Call was being whipped, when they were chained, when Jimmy Tweed was shot— at such moments any of them might have killed him. But Salazar was no longer the cold Captain who chained them or tied them at his whim. He had suffered the same cold and the same hunger as they had, drunk the same bad water and been weakened by the same cramps. He was a weakened man, so weakened that he had calmly ordered his own death.

“Captain, I don’t want to shoot you,” Bigfoot said. “At times I could have done it easy, I expect, but now you’re worse off than we are. I’ve got no stomach for shooting you now.”

Salazar stood his ground. He looked the Texans over. “If not you, then another,” he offered. “Perhaps Corporal Call would shoot me. He endured the lash, and life has not been easy for him since. Surely he would like revenge. His feet are giving him pain, and yet I have kept him walking. Give him the gun.”

“Caleb Cobb broke my feet,” Call said. “You didn’t. I’d shoot you if this was a fight, but I ain’t gonna just take your damn gun and shoot you down.”

“Corporal McCrae?” Salazar said. “Surely you hate me enough to shoot me,” Salazar said, with a small smile.

“I used to, Captain, but I’m too cold and too tired to worry about shooting anybody,” Gus said. “I’d just like to go home and get married quick.”

Call was annoyed that once again the subject of marriage had come up, and at a time when a man’s life was in the balance. They had no prospect of even getting home—why was he so convinced the girl would marry him, even if they did? Salazar took his pistol back, and walked over to Matilda Roberts. He held the gun out to her.

“Kill me, Senorita,” he said. “Then you will all be free.”

“Free to what?” Matilda asked. “It ain’t you I need to be freed of —I ain’t a prisoner, anyway. What I’d like to be free of is this damn desert, and shooting you won’t accomplish that.”

“Then shoot me just for vengeance,” Salazar said. “Shoot me to avenge your dead.”

“I won’t—they all died from foolishness,” Matilda said. “All except my Shad—my Shad died from being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Shooting you won’t bring him back, or make me miss him no less.”

Captain Salazar took the pistol, and put it back in its holster.

“Caleb Cobb would have shot you, if he was here,” Bigfoot said, almost apologetically. He thought it bold of Salazar to take the risk he had just taken—any Texan, in the right mood, might have shot him. Of course, the Captain was as tired and hungry as the rest of them; his neck wound had never healed properly—there was pus on his collar. Perhaps he felt his end was coming, and wanted to hasten it. Still, it was bold. A man could perhaps and perhaps all day, and not find his way to the truth.

“Yes—no doubt—he did shoot me,” Salazar said. “But in that, too, he failed.”

Then he gingerly felt his neck—he looked, with a grimace, at the stain on his hand.

“Perhaps I am wrong,” he said. “Perhaps he didn’t fail. Perhaps he merely wanted me to walk two hundred hard miles before I died.”

“He was blind at the time, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “He just made a lucky shot—I expect he would have been happy to kill you where you stood.”

Captain Salazar sighed—he looked for a moment at his weary troops.

“All right,” he said. “Unfortunately you did not accept my terms, so you are still my prisoners. If you had killed me, I would have been a martyr—now I will only be disgraced.”

“Not in my eyes—not if you’re talking about military work,” Bigfoot said. “You done your best and you’re still doing it. You took on a hard job. I doubt Caleb Cobb would have even got us this far.”

“I agree with that,” Salazar said. “I have done my best, and Colonel Cobb would not have got you this far. He would have left, to banquet with the generals and perhaps seduce their wives.”

He gestured for his soldiers to get up. Two or three merely stared at him, but most of them began to struggle to their feet.

“Unfortunately, you are not a Mexican officer, Serior Wallace,” Salazar said. “You are not one of the men who will judge me. I lost most of my men and many of my prisoners. That is what the generals will notice, when I deliver you to El Paso. Where are the rest, they will ask.”

“Captain, I’ve got some advice,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s get to El Paso and then worry about the generals.”

Salazar smiled.

“It’s time to march,” he said.

TOWARD NOON THAT DAY, as the company—strung out for almost two miles—struggled south, they came upon three dead cows, starved within a mile of one another. The buzzards were on the carcasses, but they hadn’t been on them long; all the carcasses were stiff from the night’s frost. Although all three cows were mostly just skin and bones, to the weary troop, at the point of starvation itself, their discovery seemed like a miracle. The men who lagged caught up—all the men were soon tearing at the thin carcasses with their knives, trying to scrape a few bites of meat off the cold bones.

Captain Salazar, with difficulty, restored order. He fired his pistol twice, to get the hungry men to back off. While they were making a fire and preparing to roast the bones and what little flesh remained, Bigfoot saw several specks rise into the air, from far to the south.

“I think them was ducks,” he said. “If there’s ducks there must be water. We can have us a fine soup, if that’s the case.““Well, we got the soup bones, at least,” Gus said. He ran south with Bigfoot and sure enough found a creek, mostly dry but with several small scattered pools of water.

The troop camped for two days, until every bone of the three animals had been boiled for soup. Most of the bones were then split for their marrow. The food was welcome, and also the rest. Through the two days and night, the prairie scavengers, who had been deprived of their chances at the carcasses, prowled around the camp. Coyotes and wolves stood watching during the day. Two ventured too close, a coyote and a wolf. Bigfoot shot them both, and added their meat to the soup.

“I don’t know about eating wolf,” Gus said. “A wolf will eat anything. This one might have poison in its belly, you don’t know.”

“Don’t eat it then, if you’re scared,” Bigfoot said. “There’ll be more for the rest of us.”

Call ate the wolf and coyote soup without protest. His bad foot, though still painful, was better for the rest. Near the little creek there were some dead trees—Matilda chopped off a limb with a fork in it, and made Call a rude crutch. She knew how much he hated having to be helped along by her and by Gus. He accepted it, because his only other option was death; but he accepted it stiffly. The look in his eyes was the look of a man whose pride was wounded.

“I thank you,” he said, in a formal tone, when she presented him with the rude crutch. But the look in his eyes was not formal—it was a look of gratitude. Gus saw how fond Matty had become of Call, despite his rudeness—he felt very jealous. He himself had been cheerful and friendly, and had courted Matty as much as she would allow, and yet—since the death of Shadrach—she had fastened her attentions on his surly friend. It annoyed him so much that he mentioned it to Bigfoot. Call and Matty’were sitting together, eating soup.

Neither Call nor Matilda was saying anything, but still, they sat together, sipping wolf soup that a young Mexican soldier had just dished out of the pot.

“Now what’s the point of spending all that time with Call?” Gus asked. “Call don’t care for women. It’s rare that I could get him to go with a whore.“Bigfoot studied the couple for a minute, the large woman and the short youth.

“Matty’s got her motherly side,” he said. “Most cows will take a calf, if one comes up that needs her.”

“Why, I need her, I guess,” Gus said—now that his belly didn’t growl quite so loudly, his envy had returned.

“I’m as much a calf as he is—we’re the same age,” Gus said.

“Yeah, but you’re easy to get along with, and Woodrow ain’t,” Bigfoot said.

“Well, then, she ought to be sitting with me, not with that hardheaded fool,” Gus said. “He ain’t saying a word to her—I can out-talk him any day.”

“Maybe it ain’t talk she’s after,” Bigfoot suggested.

Long Bill Coleman had been stretched out on the ground, resting on his elbow, as he listened to the little debate.

“Why are you griping, Gussie?” he asked. “She ain’t sitting with me, either, but you don’t hear me complaining.”

“Shut up, Bill—what do you know about women?” Gus asked, testily.

“Well, I know they don’t always cotton to the easy fellows,” Long Bill said. “If they did, I’d have been married long ago. But I ain’t married, and it’s going to be another cold night.”

“Why, he’s right,” Bigfoot said. “Matty likes Woodrow because he’s hardheaded.”

“Oh, I suppose you two know everything,” Gus said. He went over to where the two sat, and plopped himself down on the other side of Matilda.

“Matty and her boys,” Bigfoot said, smiling at Long Bill. “I doubt she expected to be the mother of two pups when she headed west with this outfit.”

Long Bill wished the subject of mothers had never come up. His own had died of a fever when he was ten—he had missed her ever since.

“If Ma was alive, I expect I would have stayed with farming,” he said, with a mournful look. “She cooked cobbler for us, when she was well. I ain’t et cobbler since that was half as good.”

“I hope this starving is over,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t want to think about cobbler or taters until we get back to where folks eat regular.“The carcasses had been consumed completely—when the troop left, on the morning of the third day, they had no food at all. They were cheerful, though. The fact that they had seen ducks convinced many of the men that they were almost out of the desert. The Texans began to talk of catfish and venison, pig meat and chickens, as if they would be sitting down to lavish meals within the next few days.

Salazar listened to the talk with a grim expression.

“Senores, this is still the dead man’s walk,” he said. “We have far to go before we come to Las Cruces. Once we make it there, no one will starve.”

They marched three days without seeing a single animal; they had water, but no food. On the second evening, they used the last of their coffee. The brew was so thin it was almost colorless.

“I could read a newspaper through this coffee, if I had a newspaper,” Long Bill said, squinting into his cup.

“I didn’t know you could read, Bill,” Bigfoot said.

Long Bill looked embarrassed; the fact was, he couldn’t read. Usually, if he were lucky enough to come by a newspaper, he had a whore read it to him.

Call was as hungry as the rest of the troop, but because of his crutch, he was in better spirits, even though the crutch was rough and soon rubbed his underarm raw. He had nothing to pad the crutch with, though. Matilda offered to tear off a piece of her shirt and pad the crutch for him, but he refused her. By the end of the third day, his shoulder was paining him almost as much as his foot had. Matilda, tired of his stubbornness, ripped off a piece of her shirt and padded the crutch anyway, while Call slept.

Even so, Call lagged behind the rest of the Texans. He was not quite at the rear of the column, though; three of the weakest of the young Mexican soldiers lagged far behind him. Though Call could not speak their language, he had ceased to regard the young soldiers as enemies. They had starved and frozen, just like the Texans; he didn’t think they would shoot him, even if he hobbled right past them and tried to escape.

From time to time he glanced back, to see that the boys were still following him. He was afraid they might collapse and die, and he knew that if the company was too far in advance of them when they collapsed, Salazar would not go back for them. The Apaches had not bothered them for four nights; the assumption around the campfire was that they had given up, or decided the pursuit of such a miserable band wasn’t worth it. There were no horses to take, only a few weapons.

Captain Salazar was not convinced. He didn’t share the Texans’ optimism, in regard to Gomez.

“If he stopped, it is because he has other business,” he told Bigfoot. “If he has no other business, he will follow us and try to kill us all. I don’t think he will attack—he will wait and take us, one by one.”

He posted as strong a guard as he could muster, knowing, even so, that half his soldiers would fall asleep on duty. But four nights passed, and no corpses were found in the morning.

“He wouldn’t wait four nights, if he was still after us,” Bigfoot said.

“He would wait forty nights,” Salazar told him. “He is Gomez.”

The wrapping on Call’s crutch had come loose—he stopped to rewrap it and, when he did, glanced back at the young Mexicans. It was then that he saw the Apache, a short, stumpy-legged man, with a bow in his hand, about to release an arrow. Before he could move, the arrow hit him in the right side. Call had no weapon—all he could do was yell, but he yelled loudly and the troop turned. Call gripped his crutch, prepared to defend himself if the Apache came closer, but the Apache had vanished, and so had the three Mexican soldiers who had been trailing behind. The plain to the north was completely empty.

Bigfoot came running up, and looked at the arrow in Call’s right side.

“Why, he nearly missed you,” he said. “The arrow’s barely hanging in you.”

Before Call could even look down, Bigfoot had ripped the arrow out—it had only creased his ribs. Blood flowed down his leg, but he didn’t feel it. The shock of seeing the Apache, only fifty yards behind him, left him dizzy for a minute.

Captain Salazar came running back to Call.

“Where did he go?” he asked.

Call, still dizzy, couldn’t tell him. He pointed to the spot where the short Indian had been, but when Bigfoot and Salazar and a few of the Mexican troops ran in that direction, they found no Indians.The three Mexican soldiers who had trailed Call were dead, each with two arrows in them. They lay face down, fully clothed.

“At least they didn’t get cut,” Long Bill said.

“No, he was in a hurry,” Salazar said. “He wanted Corporal Call —and he almost had him. You are a very lucky man, Corporal. I think it was Gomez, and Gomez rarely misses.”

“I saw him,” Call said. “He would have been on me in another few steps, if I hadn’t turned. I expect he would have put an arrow right through me.”

“If it was Gomez and you saw him, then you are the first white to see him and live,” Salazar said.

“He won’t like that,” Bigfoot said. “We’d best watch you close.”

“You don’t have to—I’ll watch myself,” Call said.

“Don’t be feisty, Woodrow,” Bigfoot said. “That old Apache might come back and try to finish the job.”

“I hate New Mexico,” Gus said. “If it ain’t bears, it’s Indians.”

That night Call was placed in the center of the company, for his own safety; even so, he slept badly, and was troubled by dreams in which Gomez was carrying Buffalo Hump’s great hump. One moment the Apache chief would be aiming an arrow at him, so real and so close that he would awaken. Then, the minute he dozed off again, it would be the Comanche chief that was aiming the arrow.

In the grey morning, cold but glad to be alive, Call remembered that a long time back Bigfoot had had a dream in which Buffalo Hump and Gomez rode together into Mexico, to take captives.

“Didn’t you dream about Buffalo Hump and Gomez fighting together?” he asked.

“Yes, I hope it don’t never come true,” Bigfoot said. “One of them at a time’s plenty to have to whip.”

“We ain’t whipping them,” Call pointed out. “We ain’t killed but two of them, and they’ve accounted for most of our troop.”

“I admit they’re wild,” Bigfoot said. “But they’re just men. If you put a bullet in them in the right place, they’ll die, just like you or me. Their skins ain’t the same colour as ours, but their blood’s just as red.”

Call knew that what Bigfoot said was true. The Indians were men; bullets could kill them. He himself had fired a bullet into Buffalo Hump’s son and the son had died, just as dead as the three Mexican boys who had fallen to Apache arrows.

“It’s hitting them that’s hard,” he said. “They’re too smart about the country.”

So far the Indians had won every encounter, and not because bullets couldn’t hurt them: they won because they were too quick, and too skilled. They moved fast, and silently. Both Kicking Wolf and Gomez had taken horses, night after night—horses that were within feet of the best guards they could post.

“The Corporal is right,” Salazar said. “We are strangers in this country, compared to them. We know a little about the animals, that’s all. The Apaches know which weeds to eat—they can smell out roots and dig them up and eat them. They can survive in this country, because they know it. When we learn how to smell out roots, and which weeds to eat, maybe we can fight them on even terms.”

“I doubt I’ll ever be in the mood to study up on weeds,” Gus said.

“This is gloomy talk, I guess I’ll walk by myself awhile, unless Matty wants to walk with me,” Bigfoot said. He didn’t like to hear Indians overpraised, just because the Rangers found them hard to kill. There were exceptional Indians, of course, but there were also plenty who were unexceptional, and no harder to kill than anyone else. He himself would have welcomed an encounter with Gomez, whom Call described as short and bowlegged.

“I expect I can outfight most bowlegged men,” he remarked to Long Bill Coleman, who found the remark eccentric.

“I wish I still had my harmonica,” Long Bill said. “It’s dreary at night, without no tunes.”

THE NEXT DAY THEY saw a distant outline to the west—the outline of mountains. Captain Salazar’s spirits improved at once.

“Those are the Caballo Mountains,” he said. “Once we cross them we will soon arrive at a place where there is food. Las Cruces is not far.”

“Not far?” Gus said. Even with his eyesight the distant mountains made only the faintest outline, and his stomach was growling from hunger.

“What does he think far is?” he asked Call. “We might walk another week before we come to them hills.”

Call’s shoulder had become so sensitive from the rough crutch that he had to grit his teeth every time he put his weight on it. His foot was better—he could put a little weight on it, if he moved cautiously—but he was afraid to discard the crutch entirely. The mountains might be another seventy-five miles away, and even then, they would have to be crossed.

That day, despite Captain Salazar’s optimism, the Mexican troops began to desert. They were hungry and weak. At noon the Captain called a rest, and when it was time to resume the march, six of the Mexican soldiers simply didn’t get up. Their eyes were dull, from too much suffering.

“You fools, you are in sight of safety,” Salazar said. “If you don’t keep walking, Gomez will come. He will kill you all, and you may not be so lucky as the three he killed with arrows. He may make sport of you—and Apache sport is not nice.”

None of the men changed expression, as he talked. After a glance, they did not look up.

“They’re finished,” Bigfoot said. “We’ve all got a finishing point. These boys have just come to theirs. The Captain can rant and rave all he wants to—they’re done.”

Captain Salazar quickly came to the same conclusion. He looked at the six men sternly, but gave up his efforts at persuasion. He took three of their muskets and turned away.

“I am leaving you your ammunition,” he said. “Three of you have rifles. Shoot at the Apaches with the rifles. If you do not win, drive them back, then use the pistols on yourselves. Adios.”

Leaving the six men was hard—harder than any of the Texans had expected it to be. In the time of their captivity, they had come to know most of the Mexicans by their first names—they had exchanged bits of language, sitting around the fires. Bigfoot learned to say his own name, in Spanish. Several of the Mexican boys had started calling him “Beegfeet,” in English. Gus had taught two of the boys to play mumblety-peg. Matilda and Long Bill had taught them simple card games. On some of the coldest nights they had all huddled together, moving cards around with their cold hands. As the weary miles passed, they had stopped feeling hostile to one another—they were all in the same desperate position. One of the Mexicans, who had some skill with woodwork had, the very night before, smoothed the crack in Woodrow Call’s crutch, so that it would not rub his underarm quite so badly.

Now they were leaving them—Salazar and the other Mexicans were already a hundred yards away, plodding on toward the far distant mountains.

“I’m much obliged,” Call said, to the boy who had smoothed his crutch.

Several of the Texans mumbled brief good-byes, but Matilda didn’t—she felt she couldn’t stand it: boys dying, day after day, one by one. She turned her back and walked away, crying.

“Oh Lord, I wish we’d get somewhere,” Long Bill said. “All this walking on an empty belly’s wore me just about out.”

That afternoon the company—what was left of it—stumbled on a patch of gourds. There were dozens of gourds, their vines curling over the sand.

“Can we eat these, Captain?” Bigfoot asked.

“They’re gourds,” Salazar said. “You can eat them if you want to eat gourds.”

“Captain, there’s nothing else,” Bigfoot pointed out. “Them mountains don’t look no closer. We better gather up a few and try them.”

“Do as you like,” Salazar said. “I will have to be hungrier than this before I eat gourds.”

That night, though, he was hungrier than he had been in the afternoon, and he ate a gourd. They made a little fire and put the gourds in it, as if they were potatoes. The gourds shriveled up, and the men nibbled at their ashy skins.

“Mine just tastes like ashes,” Gus said, in disappointment.

“It might taste better if it were served on a plate,” Long Bill said, a remark that amused Bigfoot considerably. Though he had strongly recommended gathering the gourds—after all, there was nothing else to gather—he had not yet got around to tasting one.

Several of the men were so hungry they ate the scorched gourds without hesitation.

“Tastes bitter as sin,” Gus observed, after chewing a bite.

“I wouldn’t know what you mean,” Bigfoot said. “I’m a stranger to sin.”

Matilda stuck a knife into her gourd, and a puff-of hot air came out. She sniffed at the gourd, and immediately started sneezing. Annoyed, she flipped the gourd away.

“If it makes me sneeze, it’s bad,” she said.

Later, though, she found the gourd and ate it. ‘

One of the Mexican soldiers had gathered up the gourd vines, as well as the gourds. He scorched a vine and ate it; others soon followed suit. Even Salazar nibbled at a vine.

“When will we hit the mountains, Captain?” Bigfoot asked. “There might be game, up there where it’s high.” Salazar sighed—his mood had darkened as the day wore on. He had scarcely any of his company left, and only a few of his prisoners. It would not sit well with his superiors.

“The Apaches may not let us cross,” he said. “There are many Apaches here. If there are too many, none of us will get through.”

“Now, Captain, don’t be worrying,” Bigfoot said. “We’ve walked too far to be stopped now.”

“You’ll be stopped if enough arrows hit you,” Salazar said.

The night was clear, with very bright stars. Salazar could not see the distant mountains, but he knew they were there, the last barrier they would have to cross before they reached the Rio Grande and safety. He knew he had done a hard thing—he had crossed the Jornada del Muerto with his prisoners. He had lost many soldiers and many prisoners, but he was across. In two days they could be eating goat, and corn, and perhaps the sweet melons that grew along the Rio Grande. None of his superiors could have done what he did, and yet he knew he would not be greeted as a hero, or even as a professional. He would be greeted as a failure. For that reason, he thought of Gomez—it would be worth dying, with what men he had left, if he could only kill the great Apache. Then, at least, he would die heroically, as befitted a soldier.

“I think the Captain’s lost his spunk,” Gus said, observing how silent and melancholy the man had been around the campfire. Even the amusing sight of his whole company attempting to eat the bitter gourds had not caused him to smile.

“It ain’t that,” Bigfoot said—then he fell silent. He had been around defeated officers before, in his years of scouting for the military. Some had met defeat unfairly, through caprice or bad luck; others had been beaten by such overwhelming numbers that survival itself would have brought them glory. And yet to military men, circumstances didn’t seem to matter—if they didn’t win, they lost, and no amount of reflection could take away the sting.

“It ain’t that,” he said, again. The young Rangers waited for him to explain, but Bigfoot didn’t explain. He drew circles in the ashes of the campfire with a stick.

The next morning the mountains looked closer, though not by much. The men were weak—some of them looked at the mountains and quailed. The thought that there was food on the other side of the mountains brought them no energy. They didn’t think they could cross such hills, even if the whole plain on the other side was covered with food. They marched on, dully and slowly, not thinking, just walking.

When the mountains were closer, no more than a few miles away, Call saw something white on the prairie ahead. At first he thought it was just another patch of sand—but then he looked closer, and saw that it was an antelope. He grabbed Gus’s arm and pointed.

“Tell the Captain,” he said. “Maybe Bigfoot can shoot it.”

When the antelope was pointed out to Captain Salazar, he immediately gave Bigfoot his rifle. Bigfoot was watching the antelope closely. He cautioned the troop to be quiet and still.

“That buck’s nervous,” he said. “We better just sit real still, for awhile. Maybe he’ll mistake us for a sage bush.”

All the men could see that the antelope was nervous, and a minute later they saw why: a brown form came streaking out of a patch of sage bush and leapt on the antelope’s neck, knocking it down.

“What’s that?” Gus said, startled. He had never seen an animal run so fast. All he could see was a ball of brown fur, curled over the antelope’s neck.

“That’s a lion,” Bigfoot said, standing up. “We’re in luck, boys. I doubt I could have got close enough to that buck to put a bullet in him. The cougar done my work for me.”

He started walking toward the spot where the cougar was finishing his kill. The rest of the troop didn’t move.

“He’s bold, ain’t he—that lion might get him next,” Gus said.

Before Bigfoot had gone more than a few yards, the cougar looked up and saw him. For a second the animal froze; then he bounded away. Bigfoot raised his rifle, as if to shoot, but then he lowered it. Soon they saw the spot of brown moving up the shoulder of the nearest mountain.

“Why didn’t you shoot it?” Call asked, when he came up to Bigfoot. He would have liked a closer look at the cougar.

“Because I might need the bullet for an Apache,” Bigfoot said. “We got a dead antelope—that’s better eating than a lion. When there’s food waiting to be et it’s foolish to be wasting bullets on cats you can’t hit anyway.”

They skinned the antelope, and soon had a fire going and meat cooking. The smell of the meat soon revived the men who had been ready to die. Next day, they jerkied the meat they hadn’t eaten,lingering in camp between the mountain and the plain. The more they ate the better their spirits rose; only Captain Salazar remained despondent. He ate only a little of the antelope meat, silent. Bigfoot, confident that what remained of the troop would now survive, tried to draw Salazar out about the future, but the Captain answered him only briefly.

“El Paso is not far,” Salazar said. “We are all about to end our journey.”

He said no more.

Bigfoot was allowed to leave and seek the best route through the mountains—in four hours he was back, having located an excellent low pass, not ten miles to the south. The troop marched all afternoon and camped in the deep shadow of the mountains, just at the lip of the pass.

That night, everybody felt restless. Long Bill Coleman, unable to abide the lack of tunes, cupped his hands and pretended he was playing the harmonica. Gus kept looking at the mountains—their looming presence made him a little apprehensive.

“Don’t bears live in mountains—I’ve heard they sleep in caves.”

“Why, bears live wherever they want to,” Bigfoot told him. “They go where they please.”

“I think most of them live in mountains,” Gus said. “I’d hate to be eaten by a damn bear when we’re so close to all them watermelons.”

No one slept much that night. Matilda rubbed Call’s sore foot with a little antelope fat she had saved. Call was walking better— his stride was almost normal again. He hadn’t abandoned the crutch, but mainly carried it in his hand, like a rifle.

A blue cloud, with a rainbow arched across it, was over them when the troop started through the pass. It snowed for an hour, when they were near the top, but the light flakes didn’t stick. Ahead, as they approached the crest, they could see brilliant sunlight, to the west beneath the clouds.

By noon the cloud was gone, and the bright sunlight shone on the mountains. The troop walked through a winding canyon for three hours and began to descend the west side of the mountains. Below them, they saw trees, on both sides of the river. To the south, Gus once again saw smoke, and this time he was not merely wishing. There was a village beside the river—they saw a little cornfield, and some goats.“Hurrah, boys—we’re safe,” Bigfoot said.

Everyone stopped, to survey the fertile valley below them. Some of the Mexican soldiers wept. There was even a little church in the village.

“Well, we made it, Matty,” Bigfoot said. “Maybe we’ll see a stagecoach, heading for California. Maybe you’ll get there yet.”

He had continued to carry Captain Salazar’s rifle, in case he encountered game. When they started down the hill, toward the Rio Grande, Captain Salazar quietly took it from him.

“Why, that’s right, Captain—it’s yours,” Bigfoot said.

The Captain didn’t speak. He looked back once, toward the Jornada del Muerto, and walked on down the hill.

WHEN THE TIRED TROOP made its way into the village of Las Palomas, the doves for which the village was named were whirling over the drying corn, its shuck now brittle from the frost. An old man milking a goat at the edge of the village jumped up when he saw the strangers coming. A priest came out of the little church, and immediately went back in. In a moment, a bell began to ring, not from the church, but from the center of the village, near the well. Some families came out of the little houses; men and women stopped what they were doing to watch the dirty, weary strangers walk into their village. To the village people they looked like ghosts —men so strange and haggard that at first no one dared approach them. The Mexicans’ uniforms were so dirty and torn that they scarcely seemed like uniforms.

Captain Salazar walked up to the old man who had been milking the goats, and bowed to him politely. “I am Captain Salazar,” he said. “Are you the jefe here?” The old man shook his head—he looked around the village, tosee if anyone would help him with the stranger. In all his years he had never left the village of Las Palomas, and he did not know how to speak properly to people who came from other places.

“We have no jefe,” he said, after awhile. “The Apaches came while he was in the cornfield.”

“Our jefe is dead,” one of the older women repeated.

The old man looked at her with mild reproach.

“We don’t know that he is dead,” he said. “We only know that the Apaches took him.”

“Well, if they took him, he’d be luckier to be dead,” Bigfoot said. “I wonder if it was Gomez?”

“It was Apaches,” the old man repeated. “We only found his hoe.”

“I see,” the Captain said. “You’re lucky they didn’t take the whole village.”

“They only take the young, Captain,” the bold old woman said. “They take the young to make them slaves and sell them.”

“That is why we are all old,” the old man with the goat said. “There are no young people in our village. When they are old enough to be slaves, the Apaches take them and sell them.”

“But there are soldiers in El Paso,” Salazar said. “You could go to the soldiers—they would fight the Apaches for you. That is their job.”

The old man shook his head.

“No soldiers ever come here,” he said. “Once when our jefe was alive he went to El Paso to see the soldiers and asked them to come, but they only laughed at him. They said they could not bother to come so far for such a poor village. They said we should learn to shoot guns so we could fight the Apache ourselves.”

“If the soldiers won’t help you, then I think you had better do what they suggested,” Captain Salazar said. “But we can talk of this later. We are tired and hungry. Have your women make us food.”

“We have many goats—we will make you food,” the old man said. “And you can stay in my house, if you like. It is small, but I have a warm fire.”

“Call the priest,” Salazar said. “These men are Texans—they are prisoners. I want the priest to lock them in the church tonight. They look tired, but they fight like savages when they fight.”

“Are we to give them food?” the old man asked.

“Yes, feed them,” Salazar said. “Do you have men who can shoot?”

“I can shoot,” the old man said. “Tomas can shoot. Who do you want us to shoot, Captain?”

“Anyone who tries to leave the village,” Salazar said.

Then he turned, and went into the little house the old man had offered him.

Despite Salazar’s warning, the people of Las Palomas had little fear of the Texans. They looked too tired and hungry to be the savage fighters the Captain claimed they were. Even as they were walking to the church, the women of the village began to press food on them—tortillas, mostly. The little church was cold, but not as cold as the great plain they had crossed. Several old men with muskets stood outside, as guards. When the night grew chill, they built a fire and stood around it, talking. Long Bill walked out to warm his hands, and the old men made way for him. Bigfoot joined him, and then a few others. Gus went out a few times, but Call did not. The women brought food—posole and goat meat, and a little corn. Call ate with the rest, but he didn’t mix with the crowd around the fire. He sat with Matilda, looking out of one of the small windows at the high stars.

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

“I’m warm enough,” Call said.

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

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

“Well, but I’m fleshy,” Matilda said. “I can warm myself. You’re just a skinny stick. Answer my question.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Captain Salazar listened for a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

The sun glinted on the forty sabres in their sheaths.

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

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

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

“You are Captain Salazar?” he asked.

“Yes, Major,” the Captain said. .

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

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

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

Captain Salazar looked discouraged.

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

Major Laroche did not change expression.

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

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

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

The Major looked at the dark men who trotted beside the horses. He said something to them—one of the dark men immediately went to the pack mule and came back with a handful of rawhide thongs.

“Tie him first,” the Major said, pointing at Bigfoot. “Then tie the one who turned over the General’s buggy. Which is he?”

Salazar gestured toward Call. In a moment, two of the dark men were beside him with the thongs.

Bigfoot had already held out his hands so that the men could tie them, but Call had not. He tensed, ready to fight the dark men, but before his rage broke Bigfoot and Salazar both spoke to him.

“Let it be, Woodrow,” Bigfoot said. “The Major here’s ready to shoot you, and it’s too nice a morning to get shot.”

“He is right,” Salazar said.

Call mastered himself with difficulty. He held out his hands, and one of the dark men bound him tightly at the wrists with the rawhide thongs. In a few minutes, all the Texans were similarly bound.“Perhaps you should chain them, too,” Salazar said, with a touch of sarcasm. “As you know, Texans are very wild.”

Major Laroche ignored the remark.

“Where is the rest of your troop, Captain?” he asked.

“Dead,” Salazar said. “The Apaches followed us into the Jornada del Muerto. They killed some. A bear killed two. Six starved to death.”

“But you had horses, when you left Santa Fe,” the Major said. “Where are your horses?”

“Some are dead and some were stolen,” Salazar admitted. He spoke in a dull tone, not looking at the Major, who sat ramrod stiff on his horse.

When all the prisoners were bound, the Major turned his horse. He looked down once more at Captain Salazar.

“I suggest you go home, Captain,” he said. “Your commanding officer will want to know why you lost half your men and all your horses. I am told that you were well provisioned. No one should have starved.”

“Gomez killed General Dimasio, Major,” Salazar said. “He killed Colonel Cobb, the man who led these Texans. He is the reason I lost the men and the horses.”

Major Laroche curled the ends of his mustache once more.

“No officer in the Mexican army should be beaten by a savage,” he said. “One day perhaps they will let me go after this Gomez. When I catch him I will put a hook through his neck and hang him in the plaza in Santa Fe.”

“You won’t catch him,” Call said.

Major Laroche looked briefly at Call.

“Is there a blacksmith in this village?” he asked.

No one spoke. The men of the village had all lowered their eyes.

“Very well,” the Major said. “If there were a blacksmith I would chain this man now. But we cannot wait. I assure you when we reach Las Cruces I will see that you are fitted with some very proper irons.”

Salazar had not moved.

“Major, I have no horses,” he said. “Am I to walk to Santa Fe? I am a captain in the army.”

“A disgraced captain,” Major Laroche said. “You walked here. Walk back.”

“Alone?” Salazar asked.

“No, you can take your soldiers,” Major Laroche said. “I don’t want them—they stink. If I were you I would take them to the river and bathe them before you leave.”

“We have little ammunition,” Salazar said. “If we leave here without horses or bullets, Gomez will kill us all.”

The priest had come out of the little church. He stood with his hands folded into his habit, watching.

“Ask that priest to say a prayer for you,” Major Laroche said. “If he is a good priest his prayers might be better than bullets or horses.”

“Perhaps, but I would rather have bullets and horses,” Salazar said.

Major Laroche didn’t answer. He had already turned his horse.

The Texans were placed in the center of the column of cavalry— the cavalrymen behind them drew their sabres and held them ready, across their saddles. Captain Salazar and his ragged troop stood in the street and watched the party depart.

“Good-bye, Captain—if I was you I’d travel at night,” Bigfoot said. “If you stick to the river and travel at night you might make it.”

The Texans looked once more at the Captain who had captured them, and the few men they had traveled so far with. There was no time for farewells. The cavalrymen with drawn sabres pressed close behind them.

Matilda Roberts had not been tied. She passed close to Captain Salazar as she walked out of the village of Las Palomas.

“Adios, Captain,” she said. “You ain’t a bad fellow. I hope you get home alive.”

Salazar nodded, but didn’t answer. He and his men stood watching as the Texans were marched south, out of the village of Las Palomas.

MAJOR LAROCHE MADE NO allowance for weariness. By noon, the Texans were having a hard time keeping up with the pace he set. The pause for rest was only ten minutes; the meal just a handful of corn. The mule that the villagers had so carefully provisioned had become the property of the Major’s cavalry. The Texans hardly had time to sit, before the march was resumed. While they ate their hard corn, they watched the Mexican cavalrymen eat the cheese the women of Las Palomas had provided for them.

Gus was puzzled by the fact that a Frenchman was leading a company of Mexican cavalry.

“Why would a Frenchie fight with the Mexicans?” he asked. “I know there’s lots of Frenchies down in New Orleans, but I never knew they went as far as Mexico.”

“Money, I expect,” Bigfoot said. “I never made much money fighting—I’ve mostly done it for the sport, but plenty do it for the pay.““I wouldn’t,” Call said. “I’d take the pay, but I’ve got other reasons for fighting.”

“What other reasons?” Gus asked.

Call didn’t answer. He had not meant to provoke a question from his companion, and was sorry he had spoken at all.

“Can’t you hear? I asked you what other reasons?” Gus said.

“Woodrow don’t know why he likes to fight,” Matilda said. “He don’t know why he turned that buggy over and got himself whipped raw. My Shad didn’t know why he wandered—he was just a wandering man. Woodrow, he’s a fighter.”

“It’s all right to fight,” Bigfoot said. “But there’s a time to fight, and a time to let be. Right now we’re hog-tied, and we ain’t got no guns. This ain’t the time to fight.”

They marched all afternoon and deep into the night, which was cold. Call kept up, though his foot was throbbing again. Major Laroche sent the dark men ahead to scout. He himself never looked back at the prisoners. From time to time they could see him raise his hand, to curl his mustache.

In the morning, there was thin ice on the little puddles by the river. The men were given coffee; while they were drinking it Major Laroche lined his men up at rigid attention, and rode down their ranks, inspecting them. Now and then, he pointed at something that displeased him—a girth strap not correctly secured, or a uniform not fully buttoned, or a sabre sheath not shined. The men who had been careless were made to fall out immediately; the Major watched while they corrected the problem.

When he was finished with his own troops, the Major rode over and inspected the Texans. They knew they were ragged and filthy, but when the Frenchman looked down at them with pitiless eyes they felt even dirtier and more ragged. The Major saw Long Bill Coleman scratching himself—most of the men had long been troubled by lice.

“Gentlemen, you need a bath,” he said. “We have a fine ceremony planned for you, in El Paso. We will be there in four days. I am going to untie you now, so that you can bathe. We have a fine river here—why waste it? Perhaps if you bathe in it every day until we reach our destination, you will be presentable when we hold the ceremony.”

“What kind of ceremony would that be, Major?” Bigfoot asked.

“I will let that be a surprise,” Major Laroche said, not smiling.

Gus had taken a strong dislike to Major Laroche’s manner of speaking—his talk was too crisp, to Gus’s ear. He didn’t see why a Frenchman, or anyone, needed to be that sharp in speech. Talk that was slower and not so crisp would be a lot easier to tolerate, particularly on a cold morning when he had enough to do just keeping warm.

“I’m going to release you now, for your bath,” the Major said. “I want you to take off those filthy clothes—we’re going to burn them.”

“Burn ‘em?” Bigfoot said. “Major, we’ve got no other clothes to put on. I admit these are dirty and smelly, but if you burn them we won’t have a rag to put on.”

“You have blankets,” the Major pointed out. “You can wrap those around you, today. Tomorrow we will reach Las Cruces—when we get there we will dress you properly, so that you won’t disgrace yourselves when we hold the ceremony.”

He nodded to the dark men, who began to cut the rawhide thongs that bound the Texans.

With the cavalry behind them, the Texans were marched to the Rio Grande. They were all apprehensive—none of them trusted the French Major. Besides that, they were cold, and the green river looked colder. The frost had not yet melted from the thorn bushes.

“Strip, gentlemen—your bath awaits,” Major Laroche said.

The Texans hesitated—no one wanted to start undressing. But Major Laroche was looking at them impatiently, and the cavalry was lined up behind him.

“I guess you boys think you’re gents,” Matilda said. “I’m tired of stinking, so I’ll be first, if nobody cares.”

There was a titter from the cavalry, when Matilda began to shed her clothes, but Major Laroche whirled on his men angrily and the titter died. Then he turned back, and watched Matilda walk into the water.

“Hurry, gentlemen,” the Major said. “The lady has set you an example. Hurry—we have a march to make.”

Reluctantly, the Texans began to strip, while the Mexican cavalry watched Matilda Roberts splash in the Rio Grande.“I reckon it won’t hurt us to get clean’ Bigfoot said. “I’d prefer a big brass tub, but I guess this old river will do.”

He undressed; so, finally, did the rest of the men. They were encouraged slightly by the fact that Matilda, skinnier than she had been when she lifted the snapping turtle out of the Rio Grande, but still a large woman, splashed herself over and over, rubbing her arms and breasts with sand scooped from the shallows where she stood.

“It might hurt us if we freeze,” Gus said.

“Oh, now, it’s just water,” Long Bill said. “If it ain’t froze Matty, I guess I can tolerate it.”

The water, when Call stepped in, was so cold he felt as if he had been burned. It sent a pain so deep into his sore foot that he thought for a moment the foot might have died. Gradually, though, wading up to his knees, he came to tolerate the water a little better, and began to follow Matilda’s example, scooping sand from the shallow riverbed and rubbing himself. He was surprised at how white the bodies of the men were—their faces were dark from the sun, but their bodies were white as fish bellies.

While the Texans splashed, Major Laroche decided to drill his troops a little. He put them through a sabre drill, and then had them present muskets and advance as if into battle.

Wesley Buttons, the youngest and most excitable of the three Buttons brothers, happened to glance ashore just as the cavalry was advancing with their muskets ready. Seeing the advancing Mexicans convinced Wesley that massacre was imminent. They had been expecting death for weeks—from Indians, from bears, from Mexicans, from the weather—and now here it came.

“Run, boys, they mean to shoot us all!” he yelled, grabbing his two brothers, Jackie and Charlie, by the arms.

Within a second, panic spread among the Texans, though Bigfoot Wallace at once saw that the Mexicans were merely drilling. He yelled out as loudly as he could, but his cry was lost—half the Texans were already splashing deeper into the river, desperate suddenly to get across.

The Mexican cavalry, and even Major Laroche, were startled by the sudden panic which had seized the naked men. For a moment the Major hesitated, and in that moment Bigfoot ran toward the shore, meaning to run to where the Major sat on his horse and explain that the men had merely taken a fright.

Call, Gus, and Matilda were downriver slightly, near the bank where the Mexicans were assembled. Gus had cut his foot on a mussel shell. Call and Matilda were helping him out of the water when the panic started. Long Bill Coleman had already had enough of the freezing water. He had walked back toward the pile of clothes, hoping to find a clean shirt or pants leg to dry himself with.

“Boys, come back—come back!” Bigfoot yelled, turning to look as he splashed ashore; but only the five or six men nearest him understood the command. One of the dark men had been attempting to burn the Texans’ clothes—he was holding a stick of firewood to a shirt, hoping the filthy garment would ignite.

At that moment Major Laroche saw Bigfoot coming, and realized the Texans were merely scared.

He motioned his cavalry forward, disgusted at the delay this foolish act of ignorance would cause him—then, a second later, the cavalry, primed to shoot, and excited by the fact that half the prisoners seemed to be escaping, rushed past the Major before he could stop them, firing at the fleeing men.

“No! no! you stupids! Don’t kill them—don’t kill them!” he yelled.

But his words were lost in the rush of hooves, and the blast of muskets. He sat, helpless and in a cold fury, as his men spurred their horses into the river, some trying to reload their muskets, others slashing at the fleeing Texans with their sabres.

Bigfoot, Call, Matilda, Gus, Long Bill and a few others struggled back to where the Major sat, hoping he could call off his troops. The dark men at once covered them with their guns. None of them —Texans, the Major, the dark men—could do anything but watch. Both Bigfoot and the Major were yelling, trying to call off the cavalry before all the fleeing Texans were shot or cut down.

Bigfoot, holding up his hands to show that he meant no harm, walked as close to Major Laroche as the dark men would let him get.

“Major, ain’t there no way to stop this?” he asked. “Don’t you have a bugler, at least?”

Major Laroche had taken out a spyglass, and put it to his eye. Some of the naked men had made it across the narrow river, but many of the cavalrymen had crossed it, too, and were pursuing the running Texans through the cactus and scrub, slashing and shooting.

Major Laroche lowered the spyglass, and shook his head.

“I have no bugler, Monsieur,” he said. “I had one, but he became familiar with the alcalde’s wife, and the alcalde shot him. It was a great annoyance, of course.”

When Gus looked back toward the river, all he could see were horses splashing and men trying to wade or swim, trying to escape the Mexican cavalry anyway they could. But there was no way. As he watched, Jackie Buttons tried to dive under the belly of a horse —but the river was too shallow. Jackie came up, his face covered with mud, only to have a cavalryman shoot him down at point-blank range.

“Oh God, they’re killing the boys—they’re killing them all!” Matilda yelled.

Quartermaster Brognoli stood beside her, uncomprehending, his head jerking slightly, as it had jerked the whole of the long trek from the Palo Duro. Sometimes Matilda led him, but mostly Brognoli walked alone—now, naked, he watched the destruction of the troop without seeming to understand it.

Call watched too, silent. The men had been fools to run, when the cavalry had only been practicing; but it was a folly that could not be corrected now. Charlie Buttons crawled out on the opposite shore, and was at once hacked down by two soldiers. He fell back in the river and the river carried him downstream, spilling blood into the water like a speared fish.

“Major, can’t you stop them?” Bigfoot yelled again. “There won’t be a man of them left.”

“I am afraid you are right,” Major Laroche said. “It will mean a much smaller ceremony, when we reach El Paso. I expect the alcalde will be disappointed, and General Medino too.”

“Ceremony! ceremony! Those men weren’t nothing but scared,” Bigfoot said. There were floating bodies and swirls of blood all over the surface of the green water. John Green, a short Ranger from Missouri, managed to wrest a sabre from one of the cavalrymen, but when he tried to stab the soldier he missed, and stabbed the horse in the belly. The horse reared and fell, smashing John Green-and the soldier he had tried to stab; the horse continued to flounder, but neither John nor the soldier rose again.

“Monsieur, I have no bugler, as I said,” Major Laroche remarked, watching them coolly. “My men are soldiers and they smell blood. It would take a cannon shot to stop them now, and I was not provided with a cannon.”

Across the river, Call and Gus could see men running. Some of them had managed to get a hundred yards or more from the river, but there were several cavalrymen for every Texan and none escaped. Guns fired, and sabres flashed in the bright sunlight. The few Texans on the east bank of the river watched the final stages of the massacre silently. Gus felt weak in the stomach—Call felt numb. Matilda Roberts had gone blank. She stared across the river, but her gaze was fixed on nothing. Long Bill Coleman stopped looking. He sat down and heaped sand on his naked legs, as a child might. Major Laroche smoked.

Finally, when all the Texans were dead, the Mexican troops began to return. Some had gone almost a mile west of the river, in their pursuit of the Texans. Some were still in the water, stabbing or shooting at any white body that seemed to have life in it. Major Laroche looked at the sun, and finally rode his horse down to the river. He didn’t yell or gesture; he merely sat there, but one by one, his men noticed him. Slowly, they came to themselves. One or two looked embarrassed. They looked to the east bank, and saw that only a few Texans were left alive. A young soldier had just thrust his sabre into one of the floating bodies—Call knew the man only as Bob. The sabre stuck in Bob’s breastbone, and the young cavalryman was unable to pull it out. He yanked harder and harder, lifting Bob’s body completely out of the water at one point. But the sabre was stuck—he could not pull it free, and he was aware that the Major was watching him critically as he smoked.

“Poor Bob, he’s gone, and that boy can’t get him off his sword,” Bigfoot said. He walked down to the water, and motioned for the soldier to pull the body to shore. Nervously, the young cavalryman did as Bigfoot asked. The body trailed a ribbon of blood, which was quickly carried downstream.

When the soldier drew the body to shore, Bigfoot took it and carried it a few yards up the bank. He motioned for Call and Gus to come help him, and they did. The young Rangers held the cold body of the dead man steady—Bigfoot carefully put his foot on the dead man’s chest and, with a great heave, pulled the sabre out.

“Why, that wasn’t near as hard as getting that Comanche lance out of your hip,” Bigfoot observed. He handed the sabre to the young soldier, who took it with a hangdog look.

Major Laroche slowly rode his horse across the river, looking upstream and down, as he counted the corpses. Then he rode up on the west bank and began to bring back his soldiers. As they rode back across the river, they swished their bloody sabres in the water before shoving them back in their scabbards. While they were crossing, the horse with the sabre stuck in its belly floundered out of the river and stumbled past Call and Gus. Call made a lucky grab, and pulled the sabre free. For a moment, looking at the bodies of his friends dead on the far bank or in the river, he felt a rage building. Four Mexican soldiers were in the river, coming right toward him; Call looked at them, the sabre in his hand. The soldiers saw the look and were startled. One of them raised his musket.

“Don’t, Woodrow,” Gus said, as another of the soldiers lifted his gun. “They won’t just whip you this time. They’ll kill you.”

“Not before I kill a few of them,” Call said.

But he knew his friend was right. The Mexican cavalry, led by the stern Major, was coming back across the Rio Grande. He could not fight a whole cavalry without giving up his life. The rage was in him, but he did not want to give up his life. When the Major rode up, Call held the sabre out to him; the Major took it without comment.

Gus was looking across the river. The Mexicans had made no effort to bring back the bodies of the dead Texans—some of those killed in the river had floated downstream, almost out of sight. Jackie Buttons’s body was stuck on a snag, near the far bank. Jackie floated on his back, the green water washing over his face.

“I’ll miss Jackie,” Gus said, to Matilda. “He was slow at cards— maybe that’s why I liked him so.”

Matilda was still naked, mud on her legs. “I wish I’d never looked, when the killing started,” she said. “I don’t like to look at killings, not when it’s boys I know.”

“Matty, I don’t either,” Gus said. He was wishing that the body of Jackie Buttons would come loose from its snag and float on down the river. He had often cheated Jackie at cards—-not for much cash, but steadily, over the months of their travels—now, he regretted it. He knew Jackie Buttons was a little slow minded—it would have been better just to deal the cards fairly. Perhaps, now and again, Jackie would have won a hand or two.

But he had not dealt the cards fairly, and in all their playing, Jackie Buttons had not won a single hand. Now he never would, because he was floating on his back in a river, water coursing over his dead eyes and through his open mouth.

“Oh, dern,” he said, and began to cry. He cried so hard he knelt down, covering his face with his arm. He was hoping that when he looked up again the body of the comrade he had cheated would be gone.

Matilda came out of her trance, and put her hand on Gus’s shoulder.

“Are you crying for one of them, or for all of them?” she asked.

“Just for Jackie,” Gus said, when he was calmer. “I cheated him at cards. He wasn’t no cardplayer, but every single time I played him I cheated.”

“Well, Jackie won’t mind now,” Matilda said. “But you ought to stop dealing them cards so sly, Augustus. Someday you’ll meet somebody who’ll be as quick with a gun as you are with an ace.”

“No, I won’t,” Gus said. “I’m always slyer than anybody, when it comes to cards.”

Matilda looked over at Call—he had given up his sabre, but not his rage. He looked as he had looked the day he turned the General’s buggy over, in order to get at Caleb Cobb.

“I’ll be glad to get you boys home,” she said. “Woodrow’s a fighter and you’re a cheat. If I can just get you home, I don’t want to hear of you joining no expeditions.”

Gus sat down by the water’s edge—he suddenly felt very tired.

“All right, Matty,“he said.

“Get up, let’s go—the Major’s waiting,” Matilda said. The Mexican cavalry passed so close that water from the horses’ legs splashed on them.

Gus didn’t think he could get up; his legs had simply given out. But Matilda Roberts offered her strong hand—Gus took it, and got to his feet. Call was still standing as if frozen, looking at the corpses in the river.

“I don’t expect there’ll be no burying,” Bigfoot said, as Gus and Matilda came up.

His guess was right—there was no burying.

Woodrow Call stood where he was, looking at the blood-streaked river, until the dark men came to tie his wrists and lead him away.

MAJOR LAROCHE WAS A believer in cold-water bathing. He himself bathed every morning at dawn, in the Rio Grande. Three cavalrymen were required to shield him with a ring of sheets, while he sat in the icy river, breathing deeply. When he finished he insisted that each horse be led into the river, where they could be brushed until their coats shone. Often, while the horses were being brushed, the Major would mount and practice with his own fine sabre, slashing at cactus apples while racing at full speed.

The Texans were allowed blankets and a good fire, but they still had no clothes. Though Call despised Major Laroche, he could not help being impressed by the Major’s skill with the sabre. Sometimes he would have his men throw gourds in the air, for him to slash as he raced. His horsemanship was also a thing of skill—the Major could turn his mount in midstride, if one of the gourds was thrown too far to the right or the left. His saddle was polished to a high gleam—he seemed to enjoy this morning practice more than therest of his duties. All day he rode at the head of his column of cavalry, seldom looking back.

Once, as they were nearing Las Cruces, a jackrabbit sped beneath the Major’s horse—in a second the Major was after the rabbit. He overtook the jack within fifty yards, and with one stroke severed its head. Then he handed the sabre to his orderly to clean, and resumed his ride at the head of the column.

“I don’t like them dandified little saddles,” Gus remarked.

“Why not?” Call asked. “That Frenchie sits his like he was glued to it.”

“He won’t be glued to it if Buffalo Hump gets after him,” Gus said. He knew that they were close to El Paso—beyond it was the wilderness where Buffalo Hump had killed Josh Corn and Zeke Moody. Lately, the thought of the big Comanche had been often in his mind.

Call didn’t answer—he had not been listening very closely. He thought himself to be an adequate rider, but he knew he could not control a horse as well as the little French Major—nor as well as the humpbacked Comanche, who had raced across the desert holding a human body across his horse while he rode bareback. The Frenchman, running at full speed, had sliced the jackrabbit’s head off as neatly as if he were sitting at a table, cutting an onion. The Comanche had scalped Ezekiel Moody, while racing just as fast.

No Ranger that Call had yet seen could ride as well as either the Comanche or the Frenchman. Gus McCrae was a better rider than he was, but Gus would be no match for either the Major or Buffalo Hump, in a fight. Call resolved that if he survived, he would learn as much as he could about correct horsemanship.

“The Major’s better mounted,” Call said. The Major rode a bay thoroughbred, deep chested and fast.

“Buffalo Hump would get him with that lance,” Gus said. “He nearly got me with that lance, remember?”

“I didn’t say he couldn’t,” Call said.

But the next day, he watched the Major as he put his horse through his morning paces. Gus was annoyed that Call would bother watching such a man exercise his horse.

“I don’t like the way he curls his damn mustache,” Gus said. “If I had a mustache I’d just let it grow wild.”

“Let it grow anyway you want,” Call said. “I got no opinion.“At the village of Mesilla, just south of Las Cruces, the surviving Texans—there were only ten, not counting Matilda_were finally given clothes: shirts that fell to their knees, and pants that were baggy and rough.

Then, as Major Laroche watched, an old blacksmith put the ten Texans in leg irons. The leg irons were heavier than the ones they had worn in Anton Chico, and the chains were too short for any of the men to take a full stride.

“Major, I could crawl to El Paso faster than I can walk in these dern ankle bracelets,” Bigfoot said.

“You won’t have to walk, Monsieur,” the Major said. “We have a fine wagon for you to ride in. We want you to be rested for our little ceremony.”

The fine wagon turned out to be an oxcart, drawn by an old black ox. The ten men fit in the wagon, but Matilda didn’t. Gus offered to give her his place, but Matilda shook her head.

“I’ve walked this far,” she said. “I reckon I can walk on into town.”

Ahead, northeast of the river, they could see a grey mountain looming. Although the men were chained, and the oxcart bumped along at a slow pace, the cavalrymen kept pace around it with their sabres drawn. After two hours of bumping along, Gus’s bladder began to trouble him—but when he started to slide out of the wagon to take a piss, the soldiers leveled their sabres at him.

“All right then, if that’s the rule, I’ll just piss over the side,” Gus said, standing up. “I don’t want to wet my new pants.”

He stood up and peed off the end of the oxcart, watched by the soldiers with the sabres. In time, several of the Texans did the same.

It was dusk when the cart bumped into the outskirts of El Paso. A strong wind was blowing, whirling dust into their faces. They could not see the mountain ahead or the river to the west. As night came, the wind rose higher and the dust obscured everything. Now and then, they passed little huts—dogs barked, and a few people came out to look at the soldiers. Matilda kept her hand on the side of the oxcart; the dust was blowing so thickly that she was afraid she might lose her way and be without her companions.

In the cart, the men hid their heads and waited for the journey to be over. Now and then, Call looked out for a minute. He saw a few more buildings.“I guess they call it the Pass of the North because all this dern wind out of New Mexico blows through it,” Bigfoot said. “If it gets much stronger, it’ll be blowing pigs at us.”

As he said it, they heard over the keening wind a faint sound that they could not identify.

“What’s that?” Bigfoot asked.

Call, whose hearing was as keen as Gus McCrae’s sight, was the first to identify the sound.

“It’s a bugle,” he said. “I guess they’re sending the army now.”

Ahead, through the dust, they saw what seemed to be moving lights; soon a line of infantrymen with lanterns, led by a captain and a bugler, met the cavalrymen. The bugler continued to blow his horn, although the wind snatched the sound away almost before the notes were sounded. The soldiers with the lanterns formed a line beside the oxcart as it bumped along toward the town. One soldier, startled by the sudden appearance of a large woman at his side, dropped his lantern, which smashed on a rock. The infantry captain yelled at the soldier; then he in turn was startled as Matilda Roberts appeared, almost at his elbow. Then they heard shouts and the sound of snarling dogs—there was a shot, and several of the cavalrymen galloped ahead. The snarling got louder, there were more shots, and then a squeal from one of the dogs. A minute later Major Laroche, his sabre drawn, rode close to the oxcart and peered in at the Texans.

“The dogs here are hungry,” he said. “Stay in your wagon, and you will be safe.”

Then Matilda yelled.

“There’s a dog got me—there’s dogs all in with these horses,” she cried.

Major Laroche turned, and disappeared. Bigfoot, Gus, and Long Bill Coleman managed to pull Matilda into the wagon.

“One of them dogs bit my leg,” Matilda said, gasping. “I’m bloody.”

Just as she said it the black ox turned, and the cart almost tipped. Three wild dogs jumped in it, snarling and biting.

“Why, this is dog town, I guess,” Bigfoot said—he managed to heave one of the dogs out of the cart. The other two, after snarling and snapping at the men, leaped out themselves.

Matilda Roberts sobbed and clung to Gus—the dogs had rushed out at her so quickly that it unnerved her.

Through it all, the bugler continued to play, although the snatches of sound came from farther away.

“I think that bugler’s lost,” Gus said. “He’ll be lucky if them dogs don’t get him.”

The wind rose higher—lanterns only a few feet from the wagons were hard to see. Now and then, a horse neighed. So much sand had blown into the oxcart that the men were sitting in it. Sand had sifted down the men’s loose clothes—it coated their hair.

Then, abruptly, the wind stopped—the cart had turned a corner near a high wall. The sand still swirled above the wall, but for a moment the men were protected. When they lifted their heads, sand from their hair and their collars fell inside their shirts.

Through the dusty air they saw a nimbus of light approaching— it was Major Laroche, with a soldier beside him carrying a large lantern. The Major was wrapped in a great grey cloak, with a hood that came over his head. His mustache was still neatly curled—he seemed not at all affected by the storm.

“Welcome to the Pass of the North, Messieurs,” he said. “I have brought you to the Convent of San Lazaro. In the morning the alcalde of El Paso will be here, with his staff, to watch the little ceremony we have planned. We have a warm room waiting for you, and you will be well fed.”

“When do we get to know what this ceremony is all about?” Bigfoot asked. “It might be one of those things I’d rather sleep through.”

“You will not sleep through this one, Monsieur Wallace,” the Major said. “This is what you have walked across Texas and New Mexico for. I assure you—you would not want to miss it.”

Then the Major was gone, and the light with him. A gate creaked open—several figures stood beside it in the darkness, but the sand swirled through as the cart passed inside the walls. Call couldn’t see well enough to tell whether the figures were men or women.

The cart they had been traveling in was so cramped that several of the Texans had to stretch their legs slowly before they could walk. When they were all mobile they were marched across a dusty, windy courtyard by the shadowy figures who had opened the gate.A few of the cavalrymen, with their lanterns, came into the courtyard with the Texans, but they stayed close to the men and avoided the dim figures who led them. All the people inside the walls were wrapped in heavy cloaks; they led the Texans across the courtyard silently. All of the figures had the cloaks wrapped closely around their faces.

Bigfoot Wallace had so much sand in his boots that he found it difficult to walk. Big as his feet were, he considered them to be appendages to be cared for correctly; they had taken him across Texas and New Mexico successfully, and now they yet might have to take him farther, to Mexico City, it was rumoured. Sand often contained sand-burrs; he had once got a badly infected toe because he had neglected the prick of a sand-burr. The others marched into the room they were shown to, but Bigfoot calmly sat down and emptied his boots, one by one. He wanted to do it outside, rather than risk emptying burrs into the quarters they were being shown into. Some of the boys were nearly barefoot, as it was—he didn’t want to bring burrs inside, where one of them could get stepped on and infect someone else.

As he sat, one of the dim figures, with a very small light, a candle whose flame flicked in the wind, came and stood beside him. Bigfoot was grateful for the light, small though it was. Sand-burrs were small, and not easy to see. He didn’t want to miss any. He wiped off the soles of his feet carefully and prepared to pull his boots back on when he happened to glance toward the small, flickering light of the candle. Whoever was holding the candle cupped a hand around it, to shield the flame from the puffs of wind. That, too, was considerate, but what caught Bigfoot’s eye was the hand itself—the hand was the hand of a skeleton, just bone, with a few pieces of loose, blackened flesh hanging from one of the fingers.

In all his years on the frontier, Bigfoot Wallace had never had such a shock. He had seen many startling sights, but never a skeleton holding a candle. He was so shocked that he dropped the boot he had been about to put on. His hands, steady through many fierce battles, began to shake and tremble—he could not even locate the boot he had just dropped.

The presence holding the candle—Bigfoot was not sure he could call it a person—bent, in an effort to be helpful, and held the candle closer to the ground, so that Bigfoot could pick up his boot. When he fumbled, the presence bent even closer with the candle; Bigfoot looked up, hoping to see a human face, and received an even greater shock, for the person holding the candle had no nose—just a dark hole. Where he had expected to see eyes, he could see nothing. A hand that was mostly bone held the candle, and the form the hand belonged to had no nose. Then the wind rose higher, and the candle flickered.

Bigfoot was so shaken that he forgot the sand-burrs—he even forgot his boots. He stood up and walked barefoot straight through the doorway, into the room where his companions were. He almost ran through the door, running into Matilda Roberts and knocking her into Gus. There was no light at all in the room. The wind whooshed past the door, and the sand blew in—then someone outside closed the door, and a key grated in the lock.

When Matty knocked Gus down, Gus fell into Long Bill—no one knew what was happening, in the pitch-dark room.

“Woodrow, where are you?” Gus cried—“Someone knocked Matty down.”

“It was nobody but me,” Bigfoot said.

He realized at that moment that he had forgotten his boots and he turned to go back for them, only to find the door locked. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened that he was inside. It was so dark he could see no one—he had only known he shoved Matilda Roberts because none of the Rangers were that large.

“Oh Lord, Matty,” he said. “Oh Lord. I seen something bad.”

“What?” Matty asked. “I didn’t see nothing but folks wrapped in serapes.”

“It was so bad I don’t want to tell it,” Bigfoot said.

“Well, tell it,” Matilda insisted.

“I seen a skeleton holding a candle,” Bigfoot said. “I guess they’ve put us in here with the dead.”

ALL NIGHT THE RANGERS huddled in pitch darkness, not knowing what to expect. Bigfoot, when questioned, would only say that he had seen a skeleton holding a candle, and that when he looked up he had seen a face with no nose.

“But how would you breathe, with no nose?” Long Bill said.

“You wouldn’t need to breathe,” Gus said. “If it was just a big hole there, the air would go right into your head.”

“You don’t need it in your head, Gus—you need it in your lungs.”

“What about eyes?” Long Bill asked.

“That’s right, didn’t it have eyes?” Don Shane asked. The mere sound of Don Shane’s deep voice startled everyone almost as much as Bigfoot’s troubling report. Don Shane, a thin man with a black beard, was the most silent man in the Ranger troop. He had walked all the way across Texas and Mexico, enduring hunger and cold, without saying more than six words. But the thought of a person with no nose brought him out of his silence. He felt he would like to know about the eyes. After all, Comanches sometimes cut the noses off their women. A barber in Shreveport had once slashed Don’s own nose badly. The barber had been drunk. But a person without eyes would be harder to tolerate, at least in Don Shane’s view.

“I didn’t see eyes,” Bigfoot said. “But it had a sheet wrapped over its head. There could have been eyes, under that sheet.”

“If there weren’t no eyes, that’s bad,” Long Bill said.

“It’s bad anyway,” Gus said. “Why would a skeleton be wanting to hold a candle?”

No one had an answer to that question. Call was in a corner—he took no part in the discussion. He thought Bigfoot was probably just imagining things. Gus’s question was a good one. A skeleton would have no reason to light their way to their prison cell. Perhaps Bigfoot had gone to sleep in the oxcart, and had a dream he hadn’t quite waked out of—skeletons were more likely in dreams than in Mexican prisons. It was true that the Mexican soldiers had seemed a little nervous when they brought them into the prison, but that could well have been because the wild dogs had attacked them. Wild dogs ran in packs; they were known to be worse killers than wolves. They sometimes killed cattle, and even horses. The fact was they were locked in until morning and wouldn’t find out the truth about the skeleton until the sun came up.

There was no window in the room they had been put in. When the sun did come up, they only knew it because of a thin line of light under the door.

When the door opened Major Laroche stood there, in a fancier uniform than he had worn during the journey from Las Palomas. His mustache was curled at the ends, and he wore a different sabre, one with a gold handle, in a scabbard plated with gold.

Through the door they could see a line of chairs, and five men with towels and razors waiting behind the chairs. In front of the chairs were small tables with washbasins on them.

“Good morning, Messieurs,” the Major said. “You all look weary. Perhaps it would refresh you to have a nice shave. We want you to look your best for our little ceremony.”

The Rangers came out, blinking, into the bright sunlight. The wind had died in the night; the day was clear, and no dust blew. Bigfoot stepped out cautiously. He had almost convinced himself that the skeleton with the candle had been a dream. When he sat down to get the sand-burrs out of his boots he might have nodded for a moment, and dreamed the skeletal hand.

“I guess a shave would be enjoyable,” he said, but before the words were out of his mouth a shrouded figure walked up and held out the boots he had left in the courtyard last night.

This time the whole company, Matilda included, saw what he had seen in the courtyard. The hand that held the boots was almost skeletal, with just a little loose flesh hanging from one or two fingers. Such flesh as there was, was black. The figure turned quickly and the hood was wrapped closely around it—no one could see whether it had eyes or a nose, but all had seen the bony hand, and it was enough to stop them in their tracks. They looked, and around the edge of the large courtyard, back under the balconies, there were more figures, all of them wrapped in white sheets or white cloaks.

The Texans looked at the barbers standing behind the five chairs, with their towels and razors. They looked like normal men, but the white figures under the balconies made the Texans feel uneasy. Long Bill did a hasty count of people in sheets, and came up with twenty-six.

“Go on, gentlemen—you’ll feel better once you’ve been shaved and barbered,” the Major said.

“I guess I wouldn’t mind a shave,” Bigfoot said. “What worries me is these skeletons—one of them just brought me my boots.”

Major Laroche curled the ends of his mustache. For the first time that any of the Texans could remember, he looked amused.

“They aren’t skeletons, Monsieur Wallace,” he said. “They are lepers. This is San Lazaro—the leper colony.”

“Oh Lord,” Long Bill said. “So that’s it. I seen a leper once—it was in New Orleans. The one I seen didn’t have no hands at all.”

“What about eyes?” Gus asked. “Can they see?”

Major Laroche had already walked off, leaving Long Bill to deal with the technical questions about lepers.

“It was awhile ago—I think it could see,” Long Bill said.

“These can see,” Bigfoot said. “It seen my boots and brought them to me.”

“Yeah, but what if the leprosy is in your boots now?” Bill asked. “If you put them boots on, your foot might rot off.”

Bigfoot had just started to pull on his right boot—he immediately abandoned that effort, and the boots, too.“I’ll just stay barefoot for awhile,” he said. “I’d rather get a few sand-burrs in my feet than to turn into a dern skeleton.”

Gus was more disturbed than the rest of the troop by the white figures standing around the courtyard. They had a ghostly appearance, to him.

“Well, but what are lepers, Bill?” Gus asked. “Are they dead or alive?”

“The one I seen looked kind of in-between,” Long Bill said. “It was moving, so I guess it wasn’t full dead. But it didn’t have no hands—it was like part of it had died and part of it hadn’t.”

Major Laroche had been giving his troops a brief inspection. He turned back impatiently, and gestured for the Texans to hurry on out to the row of barbers.

“Come, your shaves,” he said. “The alcalde will not like it if he comes here and finds you looking like shaggy beasts.”

“Major, we’re a little nervous about them lepers,” Bigfoot admitted. “Bill here’s the only one of us who has ever seen one.”

“The lepers are patients here,” the Major said. “They will not hurt you. Those of you who stay here will soon get used to them.”

“I hope I ain’t staying here, if it means living around people without no skin on their bones,” Gus said.

The Major looked at him with amusement.

“Who stays will depend on the beans,” the Major said. Then, without explaining, he walked away.

Call studied the lepers as best he could. In the night the notion of dead people walking had been fearful, but in the daylight the lepers, seen at a distance, were not so frightening. One leper noticed that Call was looking at him, or her, and seemed to shrink back deeper into the shadows under the balconies. Some were very short—perhaps they were the ones without feet.

Half the Texans sat down in the barber chairs to be shaved, while the others stood watching. The warm sun felt good—so, in time, did the warm water the barbers used. While Call, who was in the first group, was being wiped clean, he happened to look up, to the walkway that ran around the second story of the convent. There he saw several figures, draped in white, grouped around a smaller figure: the smaller figure was dressed entirely in black. The black figure was not draped, as the others were. She was veiled and gloved. Call saw gloved hands gripping the railing of the walkway.They were small hands—he supposed the black figure must be a woman, but as he was getting up from the barber chair, the great gates to San Lazaro swung open and a large, fancy carriage swept in, preceded and followed by cavalrymen on freshly brushed horses.

Major Laroche rushed over and spoke rapidly to the barbers, instructing them to hurry with the second group of Texans. Matilda had been given a washbasin and warm water; she washed her face and arms while the Texans were being shaved.