Dead Man's Walk (50 page)

"Welcome to the Pass of the North, Messieurs," he said. "I have brought you to the Convent of San Lazaro. In the morning the alcalde of El Paso will be here, with his staff, to watch the little ceremony we have planned. We have a warm room waiting for you, and you will be well fed." "When do we get to know what this ceremony is all about?" Bigfoot asked. "It might be one of those things I'd rather sleep through." "You will not sleep through this one, Monsieur Wallace," the Major said. "This is what you have walked across Texas and New Mexico for. I assure you--you would not want to miss it." Then the Major was gone, and the light with him. A gate creaked open--several figures stood beside it in the darkness, but the sand swirled through as the cart passed inside the walls. Call couldn't see well enough to tell whether the figures were men or women.
The cart they had been traveling in was so cramped that several of the Texans had to stretch their legs slowly before they could walk. When they were all mobile they were marched across a dusty, windy courtyard by the shadowy figures who had opened the gate. A few of the cavalrymen, with their lanterns, came into the courtyard with the Texans, but they stayed close to the men and avoided the dim figures who led them. All the people inside the walls were wrapped in heavy cloaks; they led the Texans across the courtyard silently. All of the figures had the cloaks wrapped closely around their faces.
Bigfoot Wallace had so much sand in his boots that he found it difficult to walk. Big as his feet were, he considered them to be appendages to be cared for correctly; they had taken him across Texas and New Mexico successfully, and now they yet might have to take him farther, to Mexico City, it was rumoured. Sand often contained sand-burrs; he had once got a badly infected toe because he had neglected the prick of a sand-burr. The others marched into the room they were shown to, but Bigfoot calmly sat down and emptied his boots, one by one. He wanted to do it outside, rather than risk emptying burrs into the quarters they were being shown into. Some of the boys were nearly barefoot, as it was--he didn't want to bring burrs inside, where one of them could get stepped on and infect someone else.
As he sat, one of the dim figures, with a very small light, a candle whose flame flicked in the wind, came and stood beside him. Bigfoot was grateful for the light, small though it was.
Sand-burrs were small, and not easy to see. He didn't want to miss any. He wiped off the soles of his feet carefully and prepared to pull his boots back on when he happened to glance toward the small, flickering light of the candle.
Whoever was holding the candle cupped a hand around it, to shield the flame from the puffs of wind. That, too, was considerate, but what caught Bigfoot's eye was the hand itself--the hand was the hand of a skeleton, just bone, with a few pieces of loose, blackened flesh hanging from one of the fingers.
In all his years on the frontier, Bigfoot Wallace had never had such a shock. He had seen many startling sights, but never a skeleton holding a candle. He was so shocked that he dropped the boot he had been about to put on. His hands, steady through many fierce battles, began to shake and tremble--he could not even locate the boot he had just dropped.
The presence holding the candle--Bigfoot was not sure he could call it a person--bent, in an effort to be helpful, and held the candle closer to the ground, so that Bigfoot could pick up his boot. When he fumbled, the presence bent even closer with the candle; Bigfoot looked up, hoping to see a human face, and received an even greater shock, for the person holding the candle had no nose --just a dark hole. Where he had expected to see eyes, he could see nothing. A hand that was mostly bone held the candle, and the form the hand belonged to had no nose. Then the wind rose higher, and the candle flickered.
Bigfoot was so shaken that he forgot the sand-burrs--he even forgot his boots. He stood up and walked barefoot straight through the doorway, into the room where his companions were.
He almost ran through the door, running into Matilda Roberts and knocking her into Gus.
There was no light at all in the room. The wind whooshed past the door, and the sand blew in--then someone outside closed the door, and a key grated in the lock.
When Matty knocked Gus down, Gus fell into Long Bill--no one knew what was happening, in the pitch-dark room.
"Woodrow, where are you?" Gus cried-- "Someone knocked Matty down." "It was nobody but me," Bigfoot said.
He realized at that moment that he had forgotten his boots and he turned to go back for them, only to find the door locked. He didn't know whether to be relieved or frightened that he was inside. It was so dark he could see no one--he had only known he shoved Matilda Roberts because none of the Rangers were that large.
"Oh Lord, Matty," he said. "Oh Lord.
I seen something bad." "What?" Matty asked. "I didn't see nothing but folks wrapped in serapes." "It was so bad I don't want to tell it," Bigfoot said.
"Well, tell it," Matilda insisted.
"I seen a skeleton holding a candle," Bigfoot said. "I guess they've put us in here with the dead."
All night the Rangers huddled in pitch darkness, not knowing what to expect. Bigfoot, when questioned, would only say that he had seen a skeleton holding a candle, and that when he looked up he had seen a face with no nose.
"But how would you breathe, with no nose?" Long Bill said.
"You wouldn't need to breathe," Gus said. "If it was just a big hole there, the air would go right into your head." "You don't need it in your head, Gus--you need it in your lungs." "What about eyes?" Long Bill asked.
"That's right, didn't it have eyes?" Don Shane asked. The mere sound of Don Shane's deep voice startled everyone almost as much as Bigfoot's troubling report. Don Shane, a thin man with a black beard, was the most silent man in the Ranger troop. He had walked all the way across Texas and Mexico, enduring hunger and cold, without saying more than six words.
But the thought of a person with no nose brought him out of his silence. He felt he would like to know about the eyes. After all, Comanches sometimes cut the noses off their women. A barber in Shreveport had once slashed Don's own nose badly. The barber had been drunk. But a person without eyes would be harder to tolerate, at least in Don Shane's view.
"I didn't see eyes," Bigfoot said.
"But it had a sheet wrapped over its head. There could have been eyes, under that sheet." "If there weren't no eyes, that's bad," Long Bill said.
"It's bad anyway," Gus said. "Why would a skeleton be wanting to hold a candle?" No one had an answer to that question. Call was in a corner--he took no part in the discussion. He thought Bigfoot was probably just imagining things.
Gus's question was a good one. A skeleton would have no reason to light their way to their prison cell.
Perhaps Bigfoot had gone to sleep in the oxcart, and had a dream he hadn't quite waked out of--skeletons were more likely in dreams than in Mexican prisons. It was true that the Mexican soldiers had seemed a little nervous when they brought them into the prison, but that could well have been because the wild dogs had attacked them.
Wild dogs ran in packs; they were known to be worse killers than wolves. They sometimes killed cattle, and even horses. The fact was they were locked in until morning and wouldn't find out the truth about the skeleton until the sun came up.
There was no window in the room they had been put in. When the sun did come up, they only knew it because of a thin line of light under the door.
When the door opened Major Laroche stood there, in a fancier uniform than he had worn during the journey from Las Palomas. His mustache was curled at the ends, and he wore a different sabre, one with a gold handle, in a scabbard plated with gold.
Through the door they could see a line of chairs, and five men with towels and razors waiting behind the chairs. In front of the chairs were small tables with washbasins on them.
"Good morning, Messieurs," the Major said. "You all look weary. Perhaps it would refresh you to have a nice shave. We want you to look your best for our little ceremony." The Rangers came out, blinking, into the bright sunlight. The wind had died in the night; the day was clear, and no dust blew. Bigfoot stepped out cautiously. He had almost convinced himself that the skeleton with the candle had been a dream. When he sat down to get the sand-burrs out of his boots he might have nodded for a moment, and dreamed the skeletal hand.
"I guess a shave would be enjoyable," he said, but before the words were out of his mouth a shrouded figure walked up and held out the boots he had left in the courtyard last night.
This time the whole company, Matilda included, saw what he had seen in the courtyard. The hand that held the boots was almost skeletal, with just a little loose flesh hanging from one or two fingers. Such flesh as there was, was black. The figure turned quickly and the hood was wrapped closely around it--no one could see whether it had eyes or a nose, but all had seen the bony hand, and it was enough to stop them in their tracks. They looked, and around the edge of the large courtyard, back under the balconies, there were more figures, all of them wrapped in white sheets or white cloaks.
The Texans looked at the barbers standing behind the five chairs, with their towels and razors. They looked like normal men, but the white figures under the balconies made the Texans feel uneasy. Long Bill did a hasty count of people in sheets, and came up with twenty-six.
"Go on, gentlemen--you'll feel better once you've been shaved and barbered," the Major said.
"I guess I wouldn't mind a shave," Bigfoot said. "What worries me is these skeletons--one of them just brought me my boots." Major Laroche curled the ends of his mustache. For the first time that any of the Texans could remember, he looked amused.
"They aren't skeletons, Monsieur Wallace," he said. "They are lepers. This is San Lazaro--the leper colony." "Oh Lord," Long Bill said. "So that's it.
I seen a leper once--it was in New Orleans. The one I seen didn't have no hands at all." "What about eyes?" Gus asked. "Can they see?" Major Laroche had already walked off, leaving Long Bill to deal with the technical questions about lepers.
"It was awhile ago--I think it could see," Long Bill said.
"These can see," Bigfoot said. "It seen my boots and brought them to me." "Yeah, but what if the leprosy is in your boots now?" Bill asked. "If you put them boots on, your foot might rot off." Bigfoot had just started to pull on his right boot--he immediately abandoned that effort, and the boots, too.
"I'll just stay barefoot for awhile," he said. "I'd rather get a few sand-burrs in my feet than to turn into a dern skeleton." Gus was more disturbed than the rest of the troop by the white figures standing around the courtyard. They had a ghostly appearance, to him.
"Well, but what are lepers, Bill?" Gus asked. "Are they dead or alive?" "The one I seen looked kind of in-between," Long Bill said. "It was moving, so I guess it wasn't full dead. But it didn't have no hands--it was like part of it had died and part of it hadn't." Major Laroche had been giving his troops a brief inspection. He turned back impatiently, and gestured for the Texans to hurry on out to the row of barbers.
"Come, your shaves," he said. "The alcalde will not like it if he comes here and finds you looking like shaggy beasts." "Major, we're a little nervous about them lepers," Bigfoot admitted. "Bill here's the only one of us who has ever seen one." "The lepers are patients here," the Major said. "They will not hurt you. Those of you who stay here will soon get used to them." "I hope I ain't staying here, if it means living around people without no skin on their bones," Gus said.
The Major looked at him with amusement.
"Who stays will depend on the beans," the Major said. Then, without explaining, he walked away.
Call studied the lepers as best he could. In the night the notion of dead people walking had been fearful, but in the daylight the lepers, seen at a distance, were not so frightening. One leper noticed that Call was looking at him, or her, and seemed to shrink back deeper into the shadows under the balconies. Some were very short--perhaps they were the ones without feet.
Half the Texans sat down in the barber chairs to be shaved, while the others stood watching. The warm sun felt good--so, in time, did the warm water the barbers used. While Call, who was in the first group, was being wiped clean, he happened to look up, to the walkway that ran around the second story of the convent. There he saw several figures, draped in white, grouped around a smaller figure: the smaller figure was dressed entirely in black. The black figure was not draped, as the others were. She was veiled and gloved. Call saw gloved hands gripping the railing of the walkway. They were small hands--he supposed the black figure must be a woman, but as he was getting up from the barber chair, the great gates to San Lazaro swung open and a large, fancy carriage swept in, preceded and followed by cavalrymen on freshly brushed horses.
Major Laroche rushed over and spoke rapidly to the barbers, instructing them to hurry with the second group of Texans. Matilda had been given a wash-basin and warm water; she washed her face and arms while the Texans were being shaved.
In the carriage was a fat man in the most elaborate uniform they had yet seen, and four women. Cavalrymen with drawn sabres flanked the carriage, and Major Laroche motioned an orderly to help the alcalde out.
Several comfortable chairs were placed in the courtyard--the alcalde and his women sat in them, and infantrymen opened large parasols and held them over the alcalde and his ladies, to protect them from the sun.
The barbers, made nervous by the presence of the alcalde and under orders to hurry, did hastier work with the second group of Texans.
Both Bigfoot and Long Bill suffered small nicks as the result of this haste; but it was not the hasty barbering that worried the Texans--it was what was going to happen to them next. The ceremony that Major Laroche had mentioned to them several times was about to happen. The fat alcalde and four women, all dressed in gay clothes, had come to watch it; and yet, the Texans had no idea what the ceremony might consist of.
Call noticed, though, that ten Mexican soldiers with muskets had lined up in front of a wall, in one corner of the courtyard. They stood there in the sun, holding their muskets. Near them stood a priest in a brown habit.
"They're gonna shoot us," Call said.