Dead Man's Walk (27 page)

On their third day on the plain, they saw that there was a difference in the horizon ahead. None of them, though, could puzzle the difference out. The clouds seemed closer to the surface of the ground.
Gus was the first to note something strange: not far ahead, a hawk had dived at a rabbit or a quail, and yet the hawk didn't swoop on its prey and lift it. The hawk kept going, as if it had dived into a hole.
Ten minutes later they came to the lip of the Palo Duro Canyon, and the mystery was explained. The hawk hadn't dived into a hole; it had dived into the canyon, which looked to be several miles across, and so many miles long that they couldn't see the western end of it. Hundreds of feet below them buffalo were feeding in long grass.
"Hurrah, we found the bufs," Gus said.
"Let's climb down and shoot some--maybe the Colonel will promote us." "He won't, because you'll break your neck going down, and even if you don't you'll never get back up, not carrying no buffalo meat," Bigfoot said.
"I've heard about this canyon," he said, a little later. "I just had no idea we were close by." He sent Call racing back to inform the company --he and Gus stayed, to explore the canyon wall and see if there was a way down. The sight of the grazing buffalo reminded him that he was hungry for meat--mush and Red River catfish didn't fill you like buffalo ribs.
While loping southeast toward the camp they had just left not long before, Call's horse suddenly jumped sideways, so violently that Call lost his seat and was thrown high and hard. He managed to hang on to his bridle rein, but he landed on his head and shoulders so hard that his vision blurred for a moment. As it cleared he saw something white, nearby. In a moment, he realized that the white thing that had spooked his horse was the body of a man. At first he thought it might be one of the Rangers, out for a ride or a hunt. The man had been shot, scalped, stripped, and mutilated. Someone had hacked into his chest cavity and taken out his vitals. Call looked closely at the face, which was the face of a stranger. He didn't think it belonged to anyone in the troop. The man had not a stitch of clothes on. There was no way to identify him. Call felt his neck, which was cold.
Even so, his killer or killers might be close by. Call drew his pistol, just in case, and mounted cautiously. Just as he did he saw movement out of the corner of his eye: three Comanches and their horses seemed to rise up, out of the bare earth, only a hundred yards away.
Call spurred his horse, and bent low as she raced. He knew his only chance was to run.
To his relief, Buffalo Hump was not one of his pursuers. The troop was probably not more than five miles back, and he was on Betsy, a fleet sorrel mare. Betsy was one of the fastest horses in camp, and her wind was excellent.
Yet before he had been running a minute, Call realized that the Comanches were gaining. Their horses were no faster than Betsy, but they knew the land better--it was the same thing he had felt west of the Pecos. They took advantage of every roll and dip. The lead warrior had a bow and arrow, and he was closing. To his left Call spotted something he had seen on the way up: a large prairie-dog town. Without hesitation he pointed Betsy toward it. It was a risk--the mare might step in one of the holes, in which case it would all be over, but it was a risk for the Comanches, too.
Maybe they would slow down--he himself had no intention of slowing. If luck was with him he might race through the town and gain a few yards. He had to try it.
At the approach of the racing mare, prairie dogs throughout the town whistled and darted into their holes. Betsy kicked up dust from the edge of more than one hole, but she wove through the town without slowing. Even so, Call didn't gain much. The Comanches, too, avoided the holes. Just as he cleared the prairie-dog town, Call felt something nudge his arm and looked down to see an arrow sticking in his left arm, just above the elbow.
He had not felt the arrow go in, and had no time to pay attention to it. He spurred Betsy, urging her to even more speed, and seemed, for the space of a mile, to gain a little on the Indians. No more arrows flew. Yet when he dared glance back, he saw that he wasn't gaining. The Comanches were racing abreast, and they were still almost within arrow range.
Call turned and fired his pistol at them once, but the shot had no effect. Now he was racing along the edge of a little bluff some fifteen feet high--ahead, the bluff gradually sloped off, but Call couldn't wait for the slope. He put Betsy over the edge; she just managed to keep her feet when she hit, and he just managed to keep his seat. At once he heard a buzzing.
Betsy began to jump and dance. Call looked around, and saw rattlesnakes everywhere. He had jumped to the edge of a den. It seemed to him that at least a hundred snakes surrounded him--they had been sunning themselves on the rocky slope: the abrupt arrival of a horse and rider startled them. Now they were buzzing in chorus. A shot came from above, but it zinged off a rock. Call put spurs to Betsy again--he couldn't worry about the snakes--he would be dead anyway, if he didn't run.
Seeing the snakes, the Comanches chose to lose ground and not risk the jump. But they were racing along a short decline and would soon be trying to overtake him. When he ran over the next ridge Call saw the troop--there they were, but they still seemed miles away, and the Comanches had returned to the pursuit. They were a hundred yards back, but he knew they would close with him before he could make the troop, unless he was very lucky. They had fanned out now. Two were trying to flank him on his right, while the third was directly behind him. Betsy was running flat out: so far her wind had held. Call debated the wisdom of shooting off his pistol, in the hope that someone in the troop would hear it and rush to his aid. It was a point of tactics he had not thought out in advance. If he fired, he would soon have an empty pistol.
He kept the pistol ready, but didn't fire. He thought he could kill one Indian, anyway, if there was a close fight. Perhaps he would wound another. If the third man got him, at least he would have made a strong struggle.
Then he heard rifle shots from just ahead of him, where two or three trees bordered a little stream. A doe came bounding through the trees, so close that Betsy almost collided with it. Call skirted the spring and saw Long Bill Coleman ahead--he had been chasing the doe. He had shot once and was just reloading.
He was startled to see Call, but even more startled to see the Comanches. Although the odds had altered, the Comanches were still coming.
"Oh, boy, where's that damn Blackie when we need him?" Long Bill said, wheeling his horse. "He rode out with me but he thought the doe was too puny to bother about." An arrow dropped between them, and then two gunshots came from behind, one of which nicked Call's hat brim. They raced on, hoping someone in the troop would hear the shooting and respond--it was awhile before they realized the Comanches were no longer chasing them. When they pulled up and looked back, they saw that the three Comanches, having missed the scalps, had taken the small doe instead. One of them had just slung the carcass onto his horse.
"Oh boy, I'm winded," Long Bill said.
"I was just trying to kill a little meat. I sure wasn't looking for no Indian fight." Call remembered that Gus and Bigfoot were alone, at the lip of the great canyon. The three men who chased them might have been part of a larger party. With so many buffalo grazing in the canyon, it was likely more Indians were about.
Caleb Cobb was enjoying a long cigar when Call raced up: he seemed more interested in Betsy than in the news.
"I come close to choosing that little mare for myself," he said. "I expect it's lucky for you that I didn't. I think Mr. Bigfoot Wallace made a good point when he said it's horseflesh that usually makes the difference in Indian fighting." "Colonel, there's hundreds of buffalo down in that canyon," Call said. "There might be more Indians, too." "All right, we're off to the rescue," Caleb said. "We'll take about ten men. Me and Jeb will come too. It's a fine morning for a fracas." Call had forgotten to mention the dead man. He had had only a moment to look at him, before the Comanches attacked. When he told the Colonel about it, the Colonel shrugged.
"Likely just a traveler who took the long route," he said. "Traveling alone in this part of the country is generally foolhardy." "I wouldn't do it for seventy dollars," Long Bill observed.
Shadrach had been napping when Call arrived.
The change in the old mountain man surprised everyone: from being independent, stern, and a little frightening, even when he was in a good temper, he had become aged. Though Call had always known that Shadrach was old, he had not thought of him that way until they crossed the Brazos; now, though, it was impossible to think of him any other way. He had once wandered off alone for days; now, when he left camp to hunt, he was always back in a few hours. He sometimes dozed, even when on horseback. Unless directly addressed, he spoke only to Matilda.
The news that they were near the Palo Duro Canyon seemed to take years off Shadrach, though--at once he was mounted, his long rifle out of its scabbard.
"I've heard of it all my life, now I aim to see it," Shadrach said.
Then he turned to Matilda.
"If it's safe, then I'll come and get you, Matty," he said, before loping off.
Sam took a hasty look at Call's arrow wound, broke off the arrow shaft and cut the arrow free. Call was impatient--he didn't regard the wound as serious: he wanted to be off.
But Sam made him wait while he dressed the wound correctly, and the Colonel, though mounted, waited with no show of impatience.
"I want Corporal Call to be well doctored," he said. "We can't afford to have him sick." Call led them to the dead man, whom Shadrach recognized.
"It's Roy Char--he was a mining man," Shadrach said.
"I don't know what there could be to mine, out in this country," Caleb said.
"Roy was after that old gold," Shadrach said.
"What old gold?" Caleb asked. "If there's a bunch of old gold around here we ought to find it and forget about New Mexico." "Some big Spaniard came marching through here in the old times," Shadrach said. "They say he found a town that was made of gold. I guess Roy figured some of it might still be around here, somewhere." "Oh, Se@nor Coronado, you mean," Caleb said. "He didn't find no city of gold--all he found was a lot of poor Indians. Your friend Mr. Char lost his life for nothing. The gold ain't here." The canyon was there, though. They buried Roy Char hastily, and rode along the rim of the canyon until they found Gus and Bigfoot, hiding in a small declivity behind some thorny bushes. Both had their rifles at the ready.
"What took you all day?" Gus asked--he was badly annoyed by the fact that he had had to cower behind a bush for an hour, while he waited for Call to bring up the troop.
"I got an arrow in my arm, but it wasn't as bad as what happened to a man we just buried," Call said.
"You could be burying us--and you would have if we hadn't been quick to hide," Bigfoot told them.
"There's fifty or sixty Indians down below us--I wish you'd brought the whole troop." "Well, we can fetch the troop," Caleb said. "I doubt those Indians can ride up this cliff and scalp us all." "No, but it's their canyon," Bigfoot reminded him. "They might know a trail." Caleb walked out on a little promontory, and looked down. He saw a good number of Indians, butchering buffalo. Six buffalo were down, at least.
"If they know a trail I hope they show it to us," Caleb said, coming back. "We'd ride down and harvest a few of them buffalo ourselves." "There could be a thousand Indians around here," Bigfoot said. "I ain't putting myself in no place where I have to climb to get away from Indians. They might be better climbers than I am." "You're right, but I hate to pass up the meat," Caleb said.
Nonetheless, they did pass it up. The troop was brought forward and proceeded west, along the edge of the canyon. They were never out of sight of buffalo --or Indians. Quartermaster Brognoli, who believed in numbers--so many boots, so many rifles, so many sacks of flour--counted over three hundred tribesmen in the canyon, most of them engaged in cutting up buffalo. Call and Gus both kept looking into the canyon--the distance was so vast that it drew the eye. Both strained their eyes to see if they could spot Buffalo Hump, but they didn't see him.
"He's there, though," Gus said. "I feel him." "You can't feel an Indian who's miles away," Call said.
"I can," Gus affirmed, without explanation.
"He could be five hundred miles from here--there are thousands of Indians," Call reminded him.
"I can feel him," Gus insisted. "I get hot under the ribs when he's around. Don't you ever get hot under the ribs?" "Not unless I've eaten putrid beef," Call said. Twice on the trip he had eaten putrid beef, and his system had revolted.
The night was moonless, which worried Caleb Cobb somewhat and worried Bigfoot more. The horses were kept within a corral of ropes, and guard was changed every hour. Caleb called the men together in the evening, and made a little speech.
"We've come too far to go back," he said.
"We're bound for Santa Fe. But the Indians know we're here, and they're clever horse thieves. We have to watch close. We won't get across this long prairie if we lose our horses--the red boys will tag after us and pick us off like chickens." Despite the speech and the intensified guard, the remuda was twenty horses short when dawn came. None of the guards had nodded or closed an eye, either. Caleb Cobb was fit to be tied.
"How could they get off with twenty horses and not one of us hear them?" he asked. Brognoli kept walking around the horse herd, counting and recounting. For awhile he was sure the count was wrong--it wasn't easy to count horses when they were bunched together. He counted and recounted until Caleb lost his temper and ordered him to stop.
"The damn horses are gone!" he said.
"They're forty miles away by now, most likely. You can't count them because they're gone!" "I expect it was Kicking Wolf," Bigfoot said. "He could steal horses out of a store." "If I could catch the rascal I'd tie him to a horse's tail and let the horse kick him to death," Caleb said. "Since his name is Kicking Wolf it would be appropriate if the son of a bitch got kicked to death." With the night's theft, the horse situation became critical. Three men were totally without mounts, and no man had more than one horse. To make matters worse, Tom, Matilda's big grey, was one of the horses that had been stolen.