Dead Man's Walk (18 page)

Bigfoot rode off with Shadrach to study the trail, leaving Call to wrap the four bodies in the muddy sheets. From the center of the cornfield the little cabin, now just a shell, its logs still smouldering, seemed small and sad to Call. The little family had built it, with much labor, in the clearing, sheltered in it, worked and planted their crops. Then, in an hour or less, it was all destroyed: four of them dead, one girl captured, the cabin burnt. Even the milk cow was dead, shot full of arrows. The cow was bloated now, its legs sticking up in the air.
Call did his best with the bodies, but when it came to the woman, he had to ask Blackie Slidell for help. Blackie had to take her feet and Call her arms before they could pull her free, so deep was Buffalo Hump's arrow in the ground. Call had butchered several goats and a sheep or two, when he worked for Jesus--the woman he was trying to wrap in a wet, mouldy sheet had been butchered, just like a sheep.
"Lord, I hope we can whip 'em if we catch up to them," Blackie said, in a shaky voice. "I don't want one of them devils catching me." Long Bill came over and helped Call with the graves. "I'll help--I'd rather be working than thinking," he said.
They scooped out four shallow graves, rolled the bodies in them, and covered them with rocks from the little rock fence the family had been building.
"They won't need no fence now," Rip Green observed. "All that work, and now they're dead." Before they had quite finished the burying, Bigfoot and Shadrach came loping back. Bigfoot had the body of a dead girl across his horse.
"Here's the last one--bury her," Bigfoot said, easing the body down to Call. "The mule went lame a few miles from here. I guess they didn't have no horse to spare for this girl. They brained her and shot the mule." A little later, as the troop was riding north, they passed the dead mule. A big piece had been cut out of its haunch.
"Shadrach done that," Bigfoot said. "He says the game's poorly this year, and it was a fat mule." They rode north all day, into a broken country of limestone hills. It rained intermittently, the clouds low. In the distance, some of the clouds rested on the low hills, like caps.
Now and again Shadrach or Bigfoot rode off in one direction or another, but never for long. In the afternoon, they stopped and cooked the mule meat.
Shadrach cut the haunch into little strips and gave each man one, to cook as preferred. Call stuck his on a stick and held it over the fire until it was black. He had never planned to eat mule and didn't expect to like the taste, but to his surprise the meat was succulent--it tasted fine.
"When will we catch 'em?" he asked Bigfoot at one point. They had not seen a trace of the Comanches--yet for all he knew, they were close, in one of the rocky valleys between the hills. Several times, as they rode north, he kept his eyes to the ground, trying to make out the track that the troop was following. But all he saw was the ground. He would have liked to know what clues the two scouts picked up to guide the chase, but no one offered to inform him. He was reluctant to ask--it made him seem too ignorant. But in fact he was ignorant, and not happy about it. At least Shadrach had taught him how to identify Buffalo Hump's arrow--he thought he could recognize the feathers again, if he saw them. That was the only piece of instruction to come his way, though.
When he asked Bigfoot when he thought they would catch up with the Comanches, Bigfoot looked thoughtful for a moment.
"We won't catch them," he said.
Call was puzzled. If the Rangers weren't going to catch the enemy, why were they pursuing them at all?
Bigfoot's manner did not invite more questions.
He had been eager, back on the Rio Grande, to talk about the finer points of suicide, but when it came to their pursuit of the Comanche raiding party, he was not forthcoming. Call rode on in silence for a few miles, and then tried again.
"If we ain't going to catch them, why are we chasing them?" he asked.
"Oh, I just meant we can't outrun them," Bigfoot said. "They can travel faster than we can. But we might catch 'em anyway." "How?" Call asked, confused.
"There's only one way to catch an Indian, which is to wait for him to stop," Bigfoot said. "Once they get across the Brazos they'll feel a little safer. They might stop." "And then we'll kill them?" Call said--he thought he understood now.
"Then we'll try," Bigfoot said.
To Gus's dismay, the order to move out of Austin came at three in the morning. Captain Falconer rode through the camps on a snorting, prancing horse, telling the men to get their gear.
"Colonel Cobb's ready," he informed them.
"No lingering. We'll be leaving town at dawn." "Dern, it's the middle of the night," Johnny Carthage said. Though he had been provided with two mules and a heavy cart, he had as yet totally neglected his instructions in regard to packing. Instead, he and Gus had got drunk.
Nothing was packed, and it was raining and pitch dark.
Gus's preparations for the grand expedition to Santa Fe consisted in dragging himself, his guns, and a blanket into the heavy cart. Then he huddled in the cart, so drunk that he was not much bothered by the fact that Johnny Carthage was pitching every object he could get his hands on in on top of him. The cooking pots, the extra saddlery, blankets and guns, ropes and boxes of medicines, were all heaped in the cart, with little care taken as to placement.
"Why do we have to leave in the middle of the night?" Gus asked, several times--but Johnny Carthage was muttering and coughing; he made no reply. He had an old lantern, and was searching all around the large area of the camp, well aware that he would be blamed if he left anything behind.
But with only one eye and a gimpy leg, and with Gus too crippled and too drunk to help, gathering up the belongings of the whole troop on a dark, rainy night was chancy work.
At some point well before dawn, Quartermaster Brognoli made a tour of the area, to see that the fifteen or twenty different groups of free-ranging adventurers, many of them merchants or would-be merchants, were making adequate progress toward departure. Gus stuck his head out from under a dripping blanket long enough to talk to him a minute.
"Why leave when it's dark?" he asked. "Why not wait for sunup?" Brognoli had taken a liking to the tall boy from Tennessee. He was green but friendly, and he moved quick. Years of trying to get soldiers on the move had given Brognoli a distaste for slow people.
"Colonel Cobb don't care for light nor dark," he informed Gus. "He don't care for the time of day or the month or the year. When he decides to go, we go." "But three in the morning's an odd time to start an expedition," Gus pointed out.
"No, it's regular enough," Brognoli said.
"If we start pushing out about three the stragglers will clear Austin by six or seven. Colonel Cobb left an hour ago. We're going to stop at Bushy Creek for breakfast, so we better get moving. If we ain't there when the Colonel expects us, there won't be no breakfast." The mules were hitched, and the cart with all the Rangers' possessions in it was moving through the center of Austin when Gus McCrae suddenly remembered Clara Forsythe. More than thirty wagons, small herds of sheep and beef cattle, and over a hundred horsemen of all ages and degrees of ability were jostling for position in the crowded streets. Some of the mule skinners had lanterns, but most didn't. There were several collisions and much cursing. Once or twice, guns were fired. Occasional lightning lit the western sky--the faint grey of a cloudy dawn was just visible to the east.
The reason Gus remembered Clara was that the little cart, driven by a wet, tired, apprehensive Johnny Carthage, happened to pass right in front of the general store. Gus suddenly recalled that the pretty young woman he had such a desire to marry had been meaning to come and rub liniment on his wounded ankle sometime during the day that was just dawning. He had been drinking for quite a few hours--most of the hours since he fell off the bluff, in fact--and had reached such a depth of drunkness that he had temporarily forgotten the most important fact of all: Clara, his future wife.
"Stop, I got to see her!" he told Johnny, who was urging the mules through a sizable patch of mud, while at the same time trying to avoid colliding with the wagon containing the comatose General Lloyd. He knew it was General Lloyd's wagon because a kind of small tent had been erected in it so the General could be protected from the elements while he drank and snoozed.
"What?" Johnny Carthage asked.
"Stop, goddamn you--stop!" Gus demanded.
"I've got business in the general store." "But it ain't open," Johnny protested.
"If I stop now we'll never get out of this mud." "Stop or I'll strangle you, damn you!" Gus said. It was not a threat he had ever made before, but he was so desperate to see Clara that he felt he could carry it out. Johnny Carthage didn't hear it, though--one of the mules began to bray, just at that moment, and a rooster that had managed to get in General Lloyd's wagon was crowing loudly, too.
The mud was thick--the cart was barely inching forward anyway, so Gus decided to just flop out of it. In his eagerness to get to Clara he forgot about his sore ankle, though only until the foot attached to it hit the ground. The pain that surged through him was so intense that he tried to flop forward, back into the cart, but the cart lurched ahead just as he did it, and he went facedown into the slick mud. The patch of mud was deep, too--Gus was up to his elbows in it, trying to struggle up onto his one good foot, when he thought he heard a peal of girlish laughter somewhere above him.
"Look, Pa, it's Mr. McCrae--come to propose to me, I expect," Clara said.
Gus looked up to see a white figure, standing at a window above the street. Although he knew he was muddy, his heart lifted at the thought that at least he had not missed Clara. It was her.
She was laughing at him, but what did that matter?
He looked up, wishing the sun would come out so he could see her better. But he knew it was her, from the sound of her voice and the fact that she was at a window above the store. The thought of her father seeing him in such a state was embarrassing--but in fact, there was no sign of the old man. Perhaps she was just joshing him--she did seem to love to josh.
"Ain't you coming down?" he asked. "I've still got this sore foot." "Shucks, what kind of a Romeo would fall off a bluff and hurt his foot just when it's time to propose to Juliet?" Clara asked.
"You're supposed to sing me a song or two and then climb up here and beg me to marry you." "What?" Gus asked. He had no idea what the woman was talking about. Why would he try to climb up the side of the general store when all she would have to do was come down the stairs? He had seen the stairs himself, when he was in the store helping her unpack.
"What, you ain't read Shakespeare--what was wrong with your schooling?" Clara asked.
Gus's head had cleared a little. He had been so drunk that his vision swam when he got to his feet--or foot. He still held his sore ankle just above the mud. Now that he was upright he remembered that his sisters had been great admirers of the writer Shakespeare, though exactly what had occurred between Romeo and Juliet he could not remember.
"I can't climb--won't you come down?" he said. Why would Clara think a man standing on one foot in a mud puddle could climb a wall, and why was she going on about Shakespeare when he was about to leave on a long expedition? He felt very nearly exasperated--besides that, he couldn't stand on one foot forever.
"Well, I guess I might come down, though it is early," Clara said. "We generally don't welcome customers this early." "I ain't a customer--I want to marry you, but I've got to leave," he said. "Won't you come? Johnny won't wait much longer." In fact, Johnny was having a hard time waiting at all. The expedition was flowing in full force through the streets of Austin; there was the creak of harness, and the swish of wagon wheels. Johnny had tried to edge to the side, but there wasn't much space--a fat mule skinner cursed him for the delay he had caused already.
"Won't you come?--I have to go," Gus said.
"We're hurrying to meet Colonel Cobb-- he don't like to wait." Clara didn't answer, but she disappeared from the window, and a moment later, opened the door of the general store. She had wrapped a robe around her and came right down the steps of the store, barefoot, into the muck of the street.
"Goodness, you'll get muddy," Gus said--he had not supposed she would be so reckless as to walk barefoot into the mud.
Clara ignored the remark--young Mr.
McCrae was muddy to the elbows and to the knees.
She could tell that he was drunk--but he had not forgotten to call on her. Men were not perfect, she knew; even her father, kindly as he was, flew into a temper at least once a month, usually while doing the accounts.
"I don't see Corporal Call--what's become of him?" she asked.
"Oh now ... you would ask," Gus complained.
"He's off chasing Indians. He ain't no corporal, either--I've told you that." "Well, in my fancy he is," Clara retorted. "Don't you be brash with me." "I don't want him anywhere in your damn fancy!" Gus said. "For all we know he's dead and scalped, by now." Then he realized that he didn't want that, either. Annoying as Call was, he was still a Ranger and a friend. Clara's quick tongue had provoked him--she would mention Call, even in the street at dawn, with the expedition leaving.
"Now, don't be uncharitable to your friend," Clara chided. "As I told you before, he would never do for me--too solemn! You ain't solemn, at least--you might do, once you've acquired a little polish and can remember who Romeo is and what he's supposed to do." "I ain't got the time--will you marry me once I get back?" he asked.
"Why, I don't know," Clara said. "How should I know who'll walk into my store, while you're out wandering on the plains? I might meet a gentleman who could recite Shakespeare to me for hours--or even Milton." "That ain't the point--I love you," Gus said. "I won't be happy a minute, unless I know you'll marry me once I get back." "I'm afraid I can't say for sure, not right this minute," Clara said. "But I will kiss you--would that help?" Gus was so startled he couldn't answer. Before he could move she came closer, put her hands on his muddy arms, reached up her face, and kissed him. He wanted to hug her tight, but didn't--he felt he was all mud. But Gus kissed back, for all he was worth. It was only for a second. Then Clara, smiling, scampered back to the porch of the general store, her feet and ankles black with mud.