Dead Man's Walk Page 4

  "Yes, but she's old, Woodrow," Gus said. "I expect she's shriveled up." He had just consumed the last of his mescal, and was feeling gloomy at the thought of a long watch with no liquor. At least he had a serape, though.

  Call had no coat--he intended to purchase one with his first wages. He owned two shirts, and wore them both on frosty mornings, when the thorns of the chaparral bushes were rimmed with white.

  Just then a wolf howled far to the north, where they were looking. Another wolf joined the first one.

  Then, nearer by, there was the yip of a coyote.

  "They say an Indian can imitate any sound," Gus remarked. "They can fool you into thinking they're a wolf or a coyote or an owl or a cricket." "I doubt a Comanche would pretend to be a cricket," Call said.

  "Well, a locust then," Gus said.

  "Locusts buzz. You get a bunch of them buzzing and it's hard to hear." Again they heard the wolf, and again, the coyote.

  "It's Indians talking," Gus said.

  "They're talking in animal." "We don't know, though," Call said. "I seen a wolf just yesterday. There's plenty of coyotes, too. It could just be animals." "No, it ain't, it's Comanches," Gus said, standing up. "Let's go shoot one. I expect if we killed three or four the Major would raise our wages." Call thought it was bold thinking. They were already a good distance from camp--the campfire was only a faint flicker behind them. Clouds had begun to come in, hiding the stars. Suppose they went farther and got caught? All the tortures Bigfoot had described might be visited on them. Besides, their orders were to stand watch, not to go Indian hunting.

  "I ain't going," Call said. "That ain't what we were supposed to do." "I doubt that fat fool is a real major, anyway," Gus said. He was restless. Sitting half the night by a bush did not appeal to him much.

  It was undoubtedly a long way to a whorehouse from where they sat, but at least there might be Indians to fight. Better a fight than nothing; with no more mescal to drink, his prospects were meager.

  Call, though, had not responded to the call of adventure. He was still squatting by the chaparral bush.

  "Why, Gus, he is too a major," Call said. "You saw how the soldiers saluted him, back in San Antonio." "Even if he ain't a major, he gave us a job," he reminded his friend. "We're earning three dollars a month. Long Bill says we'll get all the Indian fighting we want before we get back to the settlements." "Bye, I'm going exploring," Gus said.

  "I've heard there's gold mines out in this part of the country." "Gold mines," Call said. "How would you notice a gold mine in the middle of the night, and what would you do with one if you did notice it? You ain't even got a spade." "No, but think of all the whores I could buy if I had a gold mine," Gus said. "I could even buy a whorehouse. I'd have twenty girls and they'd all be pretty. If I didn't feel like letting in no customers, I'd do the work myself." With that, he walked off a few steps.

  "Ain't you coming?" he asked, when he heard no footsteps behind him.

  "No, I was told to stand guard, not to go prospecting," Call said. "I aim to stand guard till it's my turn to sleep.

  "If you go off and get captured, the Major won't like it one bit, either," Call reminded him. "Neither will you. Remember how that Mexican screamed." Gus left. Woodrow Call was stubborn-- why waste a night arguing with a stubborn man?

  Gus walked rapidly through the cold night, toward where the wolf had howled. It irked him that his friend was so disposed to obey orders. The way he looked at it, being a Ranger meant you could range, which was what he intended to do.

  He thought best to cock his gun, though, in case he was taken by surprise. He had heard men scream while dentists were working on them, but in his experience no one undergoing dentistry had screamed half as loud as the captured Mexican.

  After strolling nearly twenty minutes through the sandy country, Gus decided to stop and take his bearings. He looked back to see if he could spot the campfire, but the long plain was dark.

  Thunder had begun to rumble, and in the west, there was a flicker of lightning.

  While he was stopped he thought he heard something behind him and whirled in time to spot a badger, not three feet away. The badger was bumbling along, not watching where it was going. Gus didn't shoot it, but he did kick at it. He was irritated at the animal for startling him so. It was the kind of thing that could affect a man's nerves, and it affected his. Because of the badger's intrusion Gus felt a strong urge to get back to his guard post. Walking around at night didn't accomplish much. It was annoying that Woodrow Call had been too dull to accompany him.

  On the walk back Gus tried to think of some adventure he could describe that would make his friend envious. The campfire had not yet come in sight.

  Probably the Rangers had been too lazy to gather sufficient firewood, and had let the fire burn down. Gus began to wonder if he was holding a true course. It was hard to see landmarks on a starless night, and there were precious few landmarks in that part of the country, anyway. Of course the river was in the direction he was walking, but the river twisted and curved; if he just depended on the river he might end up several miles from camp. He might even miss breakfast, or what passed for breakfast.

  While he was walking, the wolf howled again.

  Gus decided it was probably just a wolf after all. The boredom of guard duty had caused him to imagine it was a Comanche. He felt some irritation. The wolf had distracted him with its howling, and now he was beginning to get the feeling that he was lost. He had always believed that he had a perfect sense of direction. Even when he was put off on a mud bar in the middle of the Mississippi River, he didn't get lost.

  He walked straight on to Dubuque. Of course, it was not hard to find Dubuque--it was there in plain sight, on its bluff. But there were willow thickets and some heavy underbrush between the river and the town. If he had been drunk he might well have gotten lost and ended up pointed toward St. Louis or somewhere. Instead he had strolled straight into Dubuque and had persuaded a bartender to draw him a mug of beer--it had been a thirsty trip, on the old boat. That Iowa beer had tasted good.

  Now, though, there was no Mississippi, and no bluff. He could walk for a month in any direction and not find a town the size of Dubuque, or a bartender willing to draw him a mug of beer just because he showed up and asked. He had only owned his weapons for three weeks and so far had not been able to hit anything he shot at, although he believed he might have winged a wild turkey, back along the Colorado River.

  He might walk around Texas until he starved, due to his inability to hit the kind of game they had in Texas. It was skittery game, for the most part--back in Tennessee the deer were almost as docile as cows, and almost as fat. He had killed two or three from the back porch of the old home place, whereas here in Texas, deer hardly let you get within a mile of them.

  Gus stopped and listened for a bit. Sometimes the Rangers sang at night--there had been plenty of whooping and dancing the night they drank the mescal. He felt if he listened he might hear Josh Corn's harmonica or some other music. Black Sam sometimes let loose with his darky hymns, when he was in low spirits; Sam had a full voice and could be heard a long way, even when he was singing low.

  But when Gus stopped to listen, the plain around him was absolutely silent--so silent that the silence itself rang in his ears; the night was as dark as it was silent, too. Gus could see nothing at all, except intermittently, when the lightning flickered. It was because of the lightning that he had spotted the offensive badger that had managed to affect his nerves.

  He took a few steps, and stopped. After all, it wouldn't be night forever, and he had not gone that far from camp. The simplest thing to do would be to wrap up good in his San Antonio serape and sleep for a few hours. With dawn at his back he could be in camp in a few minutes. If he kept walking he might veer off into the great emptiness and never find his way back. The sensible thing to do was wait. He could yell and hope Woodrow Call responded, but Woodrow had been too dull to move off his guard post; he might be too dull to yell
back.

  The lightning was coming closer, which offered a sort of solution. He could be patient, mark his course, and move from flash to flash. A few sprinkles of rain wet his face. He could tell from the way the sage smelled that a shower was coming--he could even hear the patter of rain not far to the west.

  For a moment he squatted, tucking his serape around him--if it was going to turn wet, he was ready.

  Then a bold streak of lightning split the sky.

  For a moment it lit the prairie, bright as day. And yet Gus saw nothing familiar--no river, no campfire, no chaparral bush, no Call.

  No sooner had he wrapped his serape around him and got ready for the rain squall than he was up and walking fast through the sage. He had meant to wait--it was sensible to wait, and yet a feeling had come over him that told him to move. The feeling told him to run, in fact--he was already moving at a rapid trot, though he stopped for a moment to lower the hammer of his pistol. He didn't intend to shoot off his thumb like young Rip Green.

  Then he trotted on, just short of a run.

  As he trotted, Gus began to realize that he was scared. The feeling that came over him, that brought him to his feet and started him trotting, was fear.

  It was such an unexpected and unfamiliar feeling that he had not been able to put a name to it, at first.

  Rarely since early childhood had he been afraid. Creaking boards in the old family barn made him think of ghosts, and he had avoided the barn, even to the point of being stropped for a failure to do the chores, when he was small. Since then, though, he had rarely seen anything that he feared. Once in Arkansas he had come across a bear eating a dead horse and had worried a bit; he was unarmed at the time, and was sensible enough to know that he was no match for a bear. But since he had got his growth, he had not encountered much that put real fear in him--just that Arkansas bear.

  What had him breathing short and stumbling now was a sense that somebody was near--somebody he couldn't see. When he suggested that the wolf might be an Indian, he had just been joshing Call. He had felt restless, and wanted to take a stroll. If he turned up a gold mine, so much the better.

  He didn't seriously expect to kill an Indian, though. He had no desire to stumble onto a Comanche Indian, or any other Indian, just at that time. It had merely been something to twit Call about. He had never seen a Comanche Indian and could not work up enough of a picture of one to know what to expect, but he didn't suppose that a Comanche could be as large as that bear, or as fierce, either.

  Now, though, he was driven to trot through the darkness by an overpowering sense that somebody was near, and who could it be but a Comanche Indian? It wasn't Call--being near Call wouldn't scare him. Yet he was near somebody--somebody he didn't want to be near--somebody who meant him harm. Shadrach and Bigfoot claimed to be able to smell Indians, and smell them from a considerable distance, but he didn't have that ability. All he could smell was the wet sage and the damp desert.

  It wasn't because he could smell that he knew somebody was near. It was a feeling, and a feeling that came from a part of him he didn't even know he had. What that part told him was run, move, get away, even though the night had now divided itself into two parts, the pitch black part and the brilliantly lit part. The brilliantly lit part, of course, was the lightning flashes, which came more frequently and turned the plain so bright that Gus had to blink his eyes. Even then the light stayed, like a line inside his eye, when the plain turned black again, so black that in his running he stumbled into chaparral and almost fell once when he struck a patch of deep sand.

  It was just after the sand that the lightning began to strike so close and so constantly that Gus developed a new fear, which was that his gun barrel would draw the lightning and he would be cooked on the spot. There had been some close lightning three days back, and the Rangers, Bigfoot particularly, had told several stories of men who had been cooked by lightning. Sometimes, according to Bigfoot, the lightning even cooked the horse underneath the man.

  Gus would have been willing now to risk getting himself and his horse both cooked, if he could only have a horse underneath him, in order to move faster.

  Just as he was thinking that thought, a great lightning bolt struck not fifty yards away, and in that moment of white brightness Gus saw the somebody he had been fearing: the Indian with a great hump of muscle or gristle between his shoulders, a hump so heavy that the man's head bent slightly forward as he sat, like a buffalo's.

  Buffalo Hump sat alone, on a robe of some kind--he looked at Gus, with his heavy head bent and his great hump wet from the rain, as if he had been expecting his arrival. He was not more than ten feet away, no farther than the badger had been, and his eyes were like stone.

  Buffalo Hump looked at Gus, and then the plain went black. In the blackness Gus ran as he had never run before, right past where the Indian sat. Lightning streaked again but Gus didn't turn for a second look: he ran. Something tore at his leg as he brushed a thornbush, but he didn't slow his speed. In the line inside his eyes where the lightning stayed, there was the Comanche now, the great humpbacked Indian, the most feared man on the frontier. Gus had been so close that he could almost have jumped over the man. For all he knew, Buffalo Hump was following, bent on taking his hair. His only hope was speed.

  With such a hump to carry, the man might not be fast.

  Gus forgot everything but running. He wanted to get away from the man with the hump--if he could just run all night maybe the Rangers would wake up and come to his aid. He didn't know whether he was running toward the river or away from it.

  He didn't know if Buffalo Hump was following, or how close he might be. He just ran, afraid to stop, afraid to yell. He thought of throwing away his gun in order to get a little more speed, but he didn't--he wanted something to shoot with, if he were cornered or brought down.

  At the guard post behind the chaparral bush, Call alternated between being irritated and being worried. He was convinced his friend, who had no business leaving in the first place, was out on the plain somewhere, hopelessly lost. There was little hope of finding him before daylight, and then it was sure to be a humiliating business. Shadrach was an excellent tracker and could no doubt follow Gus's trail, but it would cost the troop delay and aggravation.

  Major Chevallie might fire Gus--even fire Call, too, for having allowed Gus to wander off. Major Chevallie expected orders to be obeyed, and Call didn't blame him. He might tolerate some wandering on the part of the scouts--that was their job--but he wouldn't necessarily tolerate it on the part of a private.

  When the rain came there was not much Call could do but hunch over and get wet. The bush was too thorny to crawl under, and he had no coat. The lightning was bright and the thunder loud, but Call didn't feel fearful, especially. The bright flashes at least allowed him to look around. In one of them he thought he saw a movement; he decided it was the wolf they had heard howling.

  It was in another brilliant flash that he saw Gus running. The plain went black again, so black that Call wasn't sure whether he had seen Gus or imagined him. Gus had been tearing along, running dead out. All Call could do was wait for the next flash--when it came he saw Gus again, closer, and in that flash Call saw something else: the Comanche.

  The light died so quickly that Call thought he might have imagined the Indian, too. In the light he had seen the great hump, a mass half as large as the weight of most men; and yet the man was running fast after Gus, and had a lance in his hand.

  Call fired wildly, in the general direction of the Indian--it was dark again before his gun sounded.

  He thought the shot might at least distract the man with the hump. In the next flash, though, Buffalo Hump had stopped and thrown the lance--Call just saw it, splitting the rain, as it flew toward Gus, who was still running flat out--running for his life. Call fired again, with his pistol this time.

  Maybe Gus would hear it and take heart--although that was a faint hope. The thunderclaps were so continuous that he scarcely heard the sho
t himself.

  Call raised his rifle, determined to be ready when the next flash came and fit the prairie. But when the flash did come, the plain was empty. Buffalo Hump was gone. The hairs stood up on Call's neck when he failed to see the humpbacked chief. The man had just vanished on an open plain. If he moved that fast he could be anywhere. Call backed into the chaparral, mindless of the thorns, and waited. No man, not even a Comanche, could get through a clump of chaparral and attack him from the rear--certainly no man who had such a hump to carry.

  Then he remembered the lance in the air, splitting the rain. He didn't know if it had hit home. If it had, his friend Gus McCrae might be dead. Buffalo Hump might even have run up on him and scalped him, or dragged him off for torture.

  The last was such an awful thought that Call couldn't stay crouched in the thornbush. He waited until the next flash--a fair wait, for the storm was passing on to the east, and the lightning was diminishing--and then headed for where he had last seen Gus. Once the thunder quieted a little more, he meant to fire his pistol. Maybe the Rangers would hear it, if Gus couldn't. Maybe they would come to his aid in time to stop the humpbacked Comanche from killing Gus, or dragging him off.