Dead Man's Walk (35 page)

"There's two mules and three of us," Call pointed out. "They're small mules, too. Before we could get out of rifle range, they'd shoot us fifty times." Bigfoot was as annoyed with the irons as Gus, but when he looked the situation over, he decided Call was right.
"Maybe that Apache boy will show up some night and help us slip off," he said.
Call thought that Gus's hope that Alchise would show up and free them a far-fetched one, at best.
Alchise had never been particularly friendly. That very night, though, he fell into a shivery sleep and dreamed that one-eyed Johnny Carthage, the slowest member of the troop, slipped into camp and helped him ride off on Salazar's black horse. The dream was so powerful that he awoke at four in the morning with his teeth chattering and could not at first convince himself that he was where he was, instead of on the black horse, speeding away. They had been given no posole that evening, just a few scraps of tortillas and a handful of hard corn.
They had no blankets either; a frost crept down from the mountains and edged out onto the plain.
Many of the Mexican soldiers were as tired and cold as the three prisoners. They huddled around small campfires, some dozing, some simply trying to keep warm. Several were barefooted, and few had any footgear except sandals.
By morning, there were groans throughout the camp as men tried to hobble around on their cold feet. The Texans found to their surprise that they were better off than all but a few of their captors. Though their clothes were frayed and ragged, they were still warmer than what the Mexicans wore.
"Why, we won't have to whip this army," Bigfoot said. "Half of them will freeze before the fight starts, and the other half will be too sleepy to load their guns." Captain Salazar was the only member of the company to have a portable shelter with him.
He owned a fine tent, made of canvas. A large mule carried it for him from camp to camp, and two soldiers were assigned to set it up at the end of each day. Besides the tent, there were a cot and several brightly colored blankets, to keep the Captain warm. In the morning Salazar came out, wrapped in one of the blankets, and sat before a substantial fire that one of his soldiers tended.
Salazar also had a personal cook, an old man named Manuel, who brewed his coffee and brought it to him in a large tin cup. Two nanny goats trailed the troop, in order to provide milk for the Captain's coffee.
"He could offer us some of that coffee," Gus said. "If I could get a few drops of something warm inside me, I might not be so cold." Bigfoot Wallace appeared not to be affected by the chill.
"You boys have lived too south a life," he said. "Your blood gets thin, when you're living south. This ain't cold. If we're still in these parts in a month or two you'll see some weather that makes this seem like summer." Gus McCrae received that information with a grim expression. The morning had been so cold that he had found himself almost unable to urinate, a difficulty he had not experienced before.
"Hell, it's so cold it took me ten minutes to piss," he said. "I won't be here two months from now, if you think it'll be colder than this, not unless I have a buffalo hide to wrap up in or a big whore to sleep with." Mention of a big whore reminded them all of Matilda--it set them all to wondering about the fate of their companions, somewhere out on the long plain to the south.
"I wonder if they're all still alive?" Gus said. "What if the hump man came after them with two hundred warriors? Every one of them might be dead, for all we know--these Mexicans can march us to China and we won't find them, if that's the case." "He wouldn't have needed two hundred warriors," Call said.
"Oh, they're there somewhere," Bigfoot said.
"The Mexicans have had reports, I expect.
They wouldn't march these barefoot boys around the prairie unless they thought there was somebody to fight, somewhere." Captain Salazar waited until midmorning before setting the company in motion. Many of the men were so tired from the cold night that they merely stumbled along. Captain Salazar rode ahead, on his fine black gelding.
In the middle of the afternoon, a curl of dark clouds appeared over the mountains to the north. An hour before darkness, snow began to fall, blown on a cold north wind. Call had never seen snow to any extent--just a dusting now and then, in midwinter. Though it was not yet the end of October, snow was soon falling heavily, the white flakes swirling silently out of the dark sky. In half an hour, the whole plain was white.
"It'll be a bad night for these barefoot boys," Bigfoot said. "They ain't dressed for such weather." "We ain't, either," Gus said. He was appalled at the uncomfortable state he found himself in. The irons were like ice bands around his ankles --soon he was having to drag his chains through the slushy snow.
Captain Salazar had formed the habit of dropping back every hour or so, to exchange a few words with his captives. He had enveloped himself in a warm poncho, and seemed to enjoy the sudden storm.
"This snow will refresh us for battle," he said.
"I guess it might refresh the soldiers it don't freeze," Bigfoot said.
"My men are hardy, Se@nor," Salazar said. "They won't freeze." That night, at least, there was coffee for all the men, including the prisoners. Gus kept his hands cupped around his coffee cup as long as he could, for the warmth--he had always had trouble keeping his hands warm in chilly weather. The meal, again, was tortillas and hard corn. The snow swirled thickly in the dusk. Call and Gus and Bigfoot were sitting close together around a little fire when they suddenly heard a high terrified squealing from Captain Salazar's horse. The nanny goats, tethered nearby, began to bleat frantically. The mules began to bray--they were tame mules and had not been hobbled. Soon they were racing away into the darkness. Captain Salazar began to fire his pistol at something Call couldn't see. Then, a moment later, he saw a great shape lope into the center of the camp. Men were grabbing muskets and firing, but the great shape came on.
"Is it a buffalo?" Gus asked--then he saw the shape rear on its hind legs, something no buffalo would be likely to do.
"That ain't no buf, that's a grizzly," Bigfoot said, springing to his feet. "Here's our chance, boys--let's go, while he's got 'em scattered." The great brown bear was angry--Call could see the flash of his teeth in the light of the many campfires. The bear came right into the center of the camp, roaring. Mexican soldiers fled in every direction; they left their food and their guns, their only thought escape. The bear roared again, and turned toward Captain Salazar's tent--old Manuel had just served him a nice rib of venison in the snug tent. Salazar fired several times, but the bear seemed not to notice.
Salazar fled, his gun empty. Old Manuel stepped out of the tent right into the path of the charging bear, who swiped the old man aside with a big paw and went right into the tent.
"Grab a gun and see if you can find a hammer, so we can knock these irons off," Bigfoot said. "Hurry, we need to move while the bear's eating the Captain's supper." Call and Gus found guns aplenty--each took two muskets and grabbed some bullet pouches. While Call was looking for a hammer, the bear came ripping through the side of Salazar's tent. The black horse was twisting wildly at the end of the rawhide rope it had been tethered with.
As the Texans watched, the bear swiped at the horse, as it had at Manuel. The black gelding fell as if shot, the grizzly on top of it.
"Let's go, while it eats that horse," Bigfoot said. He had a pistol and a rifle.
"I didn't know a bear could knock down a horse," Gus said. "I'm glad to be leaving, myself." "A bear can knock down anything," Bigfoot said. "It could knock down an elephant if it met one--it et the Captain's supper and now it's carrying off his horse." As they watched, the great bear sank its teeth into the neck of the dead gelding, lifted it, and moved with it into the darkness. It dragged the horse over the top of the old cook, Manuel, as it moved away from the camp that was no longer a camp, just a few sputtering campfires with gear piled around them. Not a single Mexican was visible as the Texans left.
"That bear done us a fine turn," Bigfoot said. "They'd have marched us till our feet came off, if he hadn't come along and scared this little army away." Call was remembering how easily the bear had lifted the horse and moved away with it. The black gelding had been heavy, too, yet the bear had made off with it as easily as a coyote would make off with a kitten.
The snow continued to fall--once they got behind the circle of firelight, it was very dark.
"The bear went toward the hills," Bigfoot said. "Let's leave the hills--maybe we can catch one or two of them mules, in the morning." Gus reached down to adjust his leg iron, and for a second had the fear that he had lost his companions.
"Hold on, boys, don't leave me," he said.
"By God, this is a thick night if I ever saw one," Bigfoot said. "We'd better hold on to one another's belts, or we'll all be traveling single, pretty soon." They huddled together, took their belts off, and strung them out--Bigfoot in the lead; Call at the rear.
"We don't even know which way we're walking," Call said. "We could be walking right back to Santa Fe. They'll just catch us again, if we're not careful." "I know which way I'm walking," Bigfoot said. "I'm walking dead away from a mad grizzly bear." "He won't be so bad, once he eats that horse," Gus said.
"It's just one horse--he might not be satisfied," Bigfoot said. "He might want a Tennessean or two, for dessert. I say we keep plodding--we can worry about the Mexicans tomorrow." "That suits me," Call said.
The three Rangers walked through the snow all night, clinging to one another's belts.
All of them thought of the bear. It had killed a large horse with one swipe of its paw. Call remembered the flash of its teeth as it whirled toward Salazar's tent. Gus remembered seeing several men shoot at the bear--he didn't suppose they had missed, at such short range, and yet the bear had given not the slightest indication that it felt the bullets.
"I hope we're going away from it," Gus said, several times. "I hope we ain't going toward it." "It won't matter which way we're going, if it wants us," Bigfoot informed him. "Bears can track you by smell. If it wanted us it could be ten feet behind us, right now. They move quiet, unless they're mad, like that one was. I had a friend got killed by a bear out by Fort Worth--I found his remains myself, although I didn't find the bear." Having delivered himself of that piece of information, Bigfoot said no more.
"Well, what about it?" Gus asked, exasperated. "If you found him, what's the story?" "Oh, you're talking about Willy, my friend that got kilt by the bear?" Bigfoot said. "It was on the Trinity River--I figured it out from the tracks. Willy was sitting there fishing, and the bear walked up behind him so quiet Willy never even had a notion a bear was anywhere around--that's how quiet they are, when they're stalking you." "So ... tell us ... was he torn up bad?" Call asked. He too was annoyed with Bigfoot's habit of starting stories and failing to finish them.
"Yes, he was mostly et--the bear even et his belt buckle," Bigfoot said. "He had a double eagle made into a belt buckle. I always admired that belt buckle and was planning to take it, since Willy was dead anyway and didn't have no kinfolks that I knew of. But the dern bear ate it, along with most of Willy." "Maybe he fancied the taste of the belt," Gus suggested. The notion that a bear could be ten feet behind him, stalking them, was a notion he couldn't manage to get comfortable with. He turned around to look so many times, as they walked, that by morning his neck was sore from all the twisting. The night was so dark he couldn't have seen the bear even if it had been close enough to bite him--but he couldn't get Bigfoot's story off his mind, and couldn't keep himself from looking around.
The dawn was soupy and cold--the snow turned to a heavy drizzle, and the plains were foggy. They had nothing to eat and had had no luck pounding their chains off with the few rocks they could find. The rocks broke, but the chains held. Exasperated beyond restraint, Bigfoot Wallace tried to shoot his chain off, only to have the musket ball ricochet off the chain and pass through the lower part of his leg.
"Missed the bone, or I'd be done for," Bigfoot remarked grimly, examining the wound he had foolishly given himself.
Gus had been about to try and shoot his chain in two, but changed his mind when he saw what happened to Bigfoot.
"We ought to stop and wait for clearer weather--we could be headed for Canada, I guess," Bigfoot said. "There's bad Indians up in Canada--the Sioux, they call themselves. I don't want to go marching in that direction." Nonetheless, they didn't stop. Memory of captivity was fresh, and kept them moving. The need to stay warm was also a factor--they had nothing to eat, and no fire to sit by. Waiting would only have meant getting colder.
The fog gradually thinned--by noon, they could see the tops of the mountains again. In midafternoon the sky cleared and the Rangers saw to their relief that they had been moving south, as they had hoped. They were far out on the plain, not a tree or shrub in sight.
"I hope that bear don't spot us," Gus said.
Though the fog and drizzle had been depressing, at least they had given them a little sense of protection; now they felt exposed-- Indians on the one side, a grizzly bear on the other.
"I see somebody," Bigfoot said, pointing to two dots on the prairie, west, toward the mountains. "Maybe it's trappers. If it is, we're in luck." "Trappers always have grub," he added.
The two dots, however, turned out to be two of the Mexican soldiers--two young boys, not more than fifteen, who had happened to flee the bear in the same directions the Texans had taken--they were cold, hungry, and lost. Neither of them were armed. When they saw the Texans marching up, well armed, they both held up their hands, expecting to be killed on the spot.
"What do we do, boys?" Bigfoot asked.
"Shoot 'em or take 'em with us?" "We don't need to shoot them," Call said.
"They can't hurt us. I expect they should just go home." The two boys were named Juan and Jos`e.
One of them, Call remembered, had tended the nanny goats that supplied Captain Salazar his milk.
"You're going in the wrong direction, boys," Bigfoot told them. He pointed north, toward the village they had started from.
"Vamoose," he said. "We ain't got time for conversation." The two boys, though, refused to leave them.