Dead Man's Walk (17 page)

"Well, they can hang you for desertion, if they take a notion to," Gus said.
"I know that, shut up," Clara said, scooping a bit of liniment into her hand. She began to massage it into the swollen ankle, a dab at a time.
"My pa thinks this expedition is all foolery," Clara went on. "He says you'll all starve, once you get out on the plains. He says you'll be back in a month. I guess I can wait a month." "I hope so," Gus said. "I wouldn't want no one else to get the job." Clara looked at him, but said nothing. She continued to dab liniment on his ankle and gently rub it in.
"That liniment stinks," Gus informed her. "It smells like sheep-dip." "I thought I told you to shut up," Clara reminded him. "If you weren't crippled we could have a picnic, couldn't we?" Gus decided to ignore the comment--he was crippled, and wasn't quite sure what a picnic was, anyway. He thought it was something that had to do with churchgoing, but he wasn't a churchgoer and didn't want to embarrass himself by revealing his ignorance.
"What if we're out two months?" he asked. "You wouldn't give that job to nobody else, would you?" Clara considered for a moment--she was smiling, but not at him, exactly. She seemed to be smiling mostly to herself.
"Well, there are other applicants," she admitted.
"Yes, that damn Woodrow Call, I imagine," Gus said. "I never told him to go up there and buy this liniment. He just did it himself." "Oh no, not Corporal Call," Clara said at once. "I don't think I fancy Corporal Call as an unpacker. He's a little too solemn for my taste. I expect he would be too slow to make a fool of himself." "That's right, he ain't foolish," Gus said.
He thought it was rather a peculiar standard Clara was suggesting, but he was not about to argue with her.
"I like men who are apt to make fools of themselves immediately," Clara said. "Like yourself, Mr.
McCrae. Why, you don't hesitate a second when it comes to making a fool of yourself." Gus decided not to comment. He had never encountered anyone as puzzling as the young woman kneeling in front of him, with his foot almost on her lap. She didn't seem to give a fig for the fact that his foot was dirty, and he himself none too clean.
"Are you drunk, sir?" she asked bluntly.
"I think I smell whiskey on your breath." "Well, Long Bill had a little whiskey," Gus admitted. "I took it for medicine." Clara didn't dignify that lie with a look, or a retort.
"What were you thinking of when you walked off that cliff, Mr. McCrae?" Clara asked. "Do you remember?" In fact, Gus didn't remember. The main thing he remembered about the whole previous day was standing near Clara in the general store, watching her unpack dry goods. He remembered her graceful wrists, and how dust motes stirred in a shaft of sunlight from the big front window.
He remembered thinking that Clara was the most beautiful woman he had ever encountered, and that he wanted to be with her--beyond being with her, he could conceive of no plans; he had no memory of falling off the cliff at all, and no notion of what he and Woodrow Call might have been discussing. He remembered a gunshot and Call and Johnny finding him at the base of the bluff. But what had gone on before, or been said up on the path, he couldn't recall.
"I guess I was worrying about Indians," he said, since Clara was still looking at him in a manner that suggested she wanted an answer.
"Shucks, I thought you might have been thinking of me," Clara said. "I had the notion I'd smitten you, but I guess I was wrong. I haven't smitten Corporal Call, that's for sure." "He ain't a corporal, he's just a Ranger," Gus said, annoyed that she was still talking about Call. He didn't trust the man, not where Clara was concerned, at least.
"Why, that's better, perhaps I have smitten you." She closed the jar of liniment, eased his foot to the ground, and stood up.
"It does smell a little like sheep-dip--that's accurate," she said. "What do you gentlemen use to wash with around this camp?" "Nothing, nobody washes," Gus admitted.
"Sometimes we wash in a creek, if we're traveling, but otherwise we just stay dirty." Clara picked up a shirt someone had thrown down, and carefully wiped her fingers on it.
"I hope the owner won't mind a little sheep-dip on his shirt," she said.
"That's Call's extra shirt, he won't mind," Gus assured her.
"Oh, Corporal Call--where is he, by the way?" Clara asked.
"He ain't a corporal, I told you that," Gus said. He found her use of the term very irritating; that she felt the need to refer to Call at all was more than a little annoying.
"Nonetheless I intend to call him Corporal Call, and it's not one bit of your business what I call him," Clara said pertly. "I'm free to choose names for my admirers, I suppose." Gus was so annoyed that he didn't know what to say. He sulked for a bit, thinking that if Call were there, he'd give him a punching, sore ankle or no sore ankle.
"Well, good-bye, Mr. McCrae," Clara said. "I hope your ankle improves.
If you're still in camp tomorrow, I'll come back and give it another treatment. I don't want a crippled assistant, not with all the unpacking there is to do." To his surprise, she reached down and gave him a handshake--her fingers smelled of the liniment she had just rubbed on him.
"We're supposed to pull out tomorrow--I hope we don't, though," Gus said.
"You know where the store is," Clara said. "I certainly expect a visit, before you depart." She started to leave, and then turned and looked at him again.
"Give my respects to Corporal Call," she said. "It's a pity he's not more of a fool." "If he's a corporal, I ought to be a corporal too," Gus said, bitterly annoyed by the girl's manner.
"Corporal McCrae--no, that don't sound right," Clara said. "Corporal Call--somehow that has a solid ring." Then, with a wave, she walked off.
When Call came back to camp in the evening, sweaty from having loaded ammunition all day, he found Gus drunk and boiling. He was so mad his face turned red, and a big vein popped out on his nose.
"She calls you a corporal, you rascal!" Gus said in a furious voice. "I told you to stay clear of that store--if you don't, when I get well, I'll give you a whipping you'll never forget." Call was taken completely by surprise, and Long Bill, Rip Green, and a new recruit named Jimmy Tweed, a tall boy from Arkansas, were all startled by Gus's belligerence. Jimmy Tweed had not yet met Gus, and was shocked to find him so quarrelsome.
Call didn't know what reply to make, and so said nothing. He had known that sometimes people took fevers and went out of their heads; he supposed that was what was the matter with Gus. He walked closer, to see if his friend was delirious, and was rewarded for his concern with a hard kick in the shin. Gus, though in a prone position, had still managed to get off the kick.
"Why, he's unruly, ain't he?" Jimmy Tweed said. "I expect if he wasn't crippled we'd have to chain him down." "I don't know you, stay out of it!" Gus warned. "I'd do worse than kick him, if I could." "I expect it's fever," Call said, at a loss to explain Gus's behaviour any other way.
Before the dispute could proceed any further, Bigfoot came loping up on a big grey horse he had just procured.
"Buffalo Hump struck a farm off toward Bastrop," he said. "An old man got away and spread the news. We're getting up a troop, to go after the Indians. You're all invited, except Gus and Johnny. Hurry up. We need to ride while the trail's fresh." "Why ain't I invited?" Johnny Carthage asked. He had just limped into camp.
"Because you got to do the packing," Bigfoot said.
"The expedition's leaving early. I doubt we'll be back. You got to get all this gear together and pack Gus into a cart or a wagon or something.
We'll meet you on the trail--if we survive." "This is a passel of stuff for one fellow to pack," Johnny observed bleakly. "Gus won't be no help, either--he's poorly." "Not poorly enough--he just kicked my leg half off," Call said. The more he thought about the incident, the more aggrieved he felt. All he had done all day was load ammunition--why did he have to be kicked because of some joke a girl made?
Shadrach came trotting up, his long rifle across his saddle. He didn't say anything, but it was clear that he was impatient.
"Let's go, boys--Buffalo Hump will be halfway to the Brazos by now," Bigfoot said.
Call had been assigned a new mount that day.
As yet he had barely touched him, but in a minute he was in the saddle. The little horse, a bay, jumped straight up, nearly throwing him; after that one jump, he didn't buck again. Call only had time to grab his rifle and ammunition pouch. Shadrach had already left. Long Bill, Rip Green, and Jimmy Tweed were scrambling to get mounted. Bigfoot was the only calm man in camp. He reached down without dismounting and grabbed a piece of bacon someone had brought in, stuffing it quickly into his saddlebag.
"It's a passel of stuff to pack up," Johnny Carthage said again, looking at the litter of blankets, cook pots, and miscellaneous gear scattered around him.
"Oh, hush your yapping," Bigfoot said.
Blackie Slidell came racing up--he had had his shirt off, helping to load a wagon, and was so fearful of being left that he had put it back on, wrong side out, as he rode.
Call looked down at Gus--he was still prone, but not so angry.
"I have no idea what you're riled about," he said. "I guess I'll see you up the trail." "Good-bye," Gus said, suddenly sorry for his angry behaviour. Before he could say more, Bigfoot wheeled his horse and loped off after Shadrach; the Rangers, still assembling themselves, followed as closely as they could.
Gus felt a sudden longing to be with them, though he knew it was impossible. Tears came to his eyes, as he watched his companions lope away.
It would be lonely with no one but the cranky Johnny Carthage to talk to all night.
In a minute or two, though, he felt better. His ankle still felt full of needles, but Clara Forsythe had said she would come and rub more liniment on his sore ankle, if the expedition didn't depart too early. All he had to do was get through the night, and he would see her again.
What made him feel even better was that this time he would have Clara all to himself. Call was gone.
The thought cheered him so that within ten minutes he was pestering Johnny to go buy them a fresh jug of whiskey from the Mexican peddler.
"I can't be getting too drunk, I got all this packing to do," Johnny protested, but Gus shrugged his protest off.
"You just buy the whiskey," he instructed.
"I'll do the getting drunk."
A storm blew up during the night, with slashing rain and wind and thunder. Shadrach and Bigfoot paid the weather no attention--they set a fast pace, and didn't stop. In the dark, Call grew fearful of falling behind and being lost. They cut through several clumps of live oak and scrub--he was afraid he and his little bay would fight themselves out of a thicket, only to find themselves alone. He stayed as close to the rump of the horse in front of him as he could. He didn't want to get lost on his first Indian chase. The party consisted of fifteen men, many of whom he didn't know. Call would have thought it would be easy to keep fifteen riders in sight, but he hadn't counted on the difficulties posed by rain and darkness. At times, he couldn't see his own horse's head--he had to proceed on sense, like a night-hunting animal.
It was a relief, when the smoky, foggy dawn came, to see that he was still with the troop. All the men were soaked, streams of water running from their hats or their hair. There was no stopping for breakfast. Shadrach peeled off, and ranged to the north of the troop. He was lost to sight for an hour or more, but when they came to the burned-out farm he was there, examining tracks.
At first, Call saw no victims--he supposed the family had escaped. The cabin had been burned; though a few of the logs still smouldered. The area around the cabin was a litter, most of it muddy now. There were clothes and kitchen goods, broken chairs, a muddy Bible, a few bottles. The corn-shuck mattresses had been ripped open, and the corn shucks scattered in the mud.
Bigfoot dismounted, and stepped inside the shell of the cabin for a moment--then he stepped out.
"Where are they?" he asked Shadrach, who looked up briefly and pointed to the nearby cornfield.
"Call, gather up them wet sheets," Bigfoot said. Several muddy sheets were amid the litter.
"Why?" Call asked, puzzled.
"To wrap them in--why else?" Bigfoot said, swinging back on his horse.
The woman lay between two corn rows, six arrows in her chest, her belly ripped up. The man had been hacked down near a little rock fence --when they ripped his scalp off, a long tear of skin had come loose with the scalp, running down the man's back. A boy of about ten had three arrows in him, and had had his head smashed in with a large rock. A younger boy, six or seven maybe, had a big wound in his back.
"Lanced him," Bigfoot said. "I thought there was a young girl here." "They took her," Shadrach informed him. "They took the mule, too. I expect that's what she's riding." Call felt trembly, but he didn't throw up. He noticed Bigfoot and Shadrach watching him, from the edge of the cornfield. Though they had all expected carnage, most of them had not been prepared for the swollen, ripped-open bodies--the smashed head, the torn stomach.
"Roll them in the sheets, best you can," Bigfoot told him. "When you get to the woman, just break them arrows off. They're in too deep to pull out." Shadrach walked over and squatted by the dead woman for a moment--he seemed to be studying the arrows. Then he tugged gently at an arrow in the center of the woman's breastbone.
"This one's gone clean through, into the ground," he said. "This is Buffalo Hump's arrow." "How do you know that?" Call asked.
Shadrach showed him the feathers at the end of the arrow.
"Them's from a prairie chicken," he said.
"He always feathers his arrows with prairie chicken.
He stood over her and shot that arrow clean through her breastbone." Bigfoot came over and looked at the arrow, too. The woman's body didn't budge. It was as if it were nailed to the ground. It was a small, skinny arrow, the shaft a little bent.
Call tried to imagine the force it would take to send a thin piece of wood through a woman's body and into the dirt. Several of the new men came over and stood in silence near the body of the woman. One or two of them glanced at the body briefly, then walked away. Several of them gripped their weapons so hard their knuckles were white. Call remembered that it had been that way beyond the Pecos--men squeezing their guns so hard their knuckles turned white. They were scared: they had ridden out of Austin into a world where the rules were not white rules, where torture and mutilation awaited the weak and the unwary, the slow, the young.