The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 33

  “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 th
e 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. He thought 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, Señor 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 t
he 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.”

  31.

  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 round lay the garments and effects of the dead men. Both the fine buggy horses had been killed and butchered.