“I’ll go back and get him,” Long Bill said.
“I wouldn’t,” Bigfoot said. “You need all you’ve got, to make it yourself.”
“No, Johnny’s my compañero,” Long Bill said. “I reckon I’ll go back. If we die tonight, I expect I should be with Johnny.”
It took Gus and Matilda both to keep Call going. The sleet thickened on the ground, until it became too slippery for him to manage. Finally, the two of them carried him, his arms over their shoulders, his body warmed between their bodies.
As the darkness came on and the sleet blew down the wind like bird shot, doom was in the mind of every man. All of them, even Bigfoot Wallace, veteran of many storms, felt that it was likely that they would die during the night. Long Bill had gone loyally back into the teeth of the storm, to find his compañero, Johnny Carthage. Captain Salazar was slumped over the neck of his horse, unconscious. His neck wound had continued to bleed until he grew faint and passed out. The Mexican soldiers walked in a cluster, except for those who lagged. They had only one lantern; the light illumined only a few feet of the frigid darkness. As the darkness deepened, the cold increased, and the men began to give up. Texan and Mexican alike came to a moment of resignation—they ceased to be able to pick their feet up and inch forward over the slippery ground. They thought but to rest a moment, until their energies were restored; but the rest lengthened, and they did not get up. The sleet coated their clothes. At first they sat, their backs to the wind and the sleet. Then the will to struggle left them, and they lay down and let the sleet cover them.
It was Gus McCrae, with his keen vision, who first saw a tiny flicker of light, far ahead.
“Why, it’s a fire,” he said. “If it ain’t a fire, it’s some kind of light.”
“Where?” Matilda asked. “I can’t see nothing but sleet.”
“No, there’s a fire, I seen it,” Gus said. “I expect it’s that town.”
One of the Mexican soldiers heard him, and prodded his captain awake.
Salazar, too, felt that he would not survive the night. The wound Caleb Cobb had given him was worse than he had thought—he had bled all day, the blood freezing on his coat. Now a soldier had awakened him with some rumor of a light, although the sleet was blowing and he himself could not see past his horse’s head. There was no light, no town. The blood had dripped down to his pants, which were frozen to the saddle. Instead of delivering the invading Texans to El Paso and being promoted, at least to major for his valor in capturing them, his lot would be to die in a sleet storm on the frozen plain. He thought of shooting himself, but his hands were so cold he feared he would merely drop his pistol, if he tried to pull it out. The pistol, too, was coated in bloody ice—it might not even shoot.
Then Gus saw the light again, and yelled out, hoping somebody ahead would hear him.
“There’s the light—there it is, we’re close,” he said.
This time, Bigfoot saw it, too.
“By God, he’s right,” he said. “We’re coming to someplace with a fire.”
Then he heard something that sounded like the bleating of sheep—the men who heard it all perked up. If there were sheep, they might not starve. Captain Salazar suddenly felt better.
“I remember the stories,” he said. “There is a spring—an underground river. They raise sheep here—this must be San Saba. I thought it was just a lie—a traveler’s lie, about the sheep and the spring. Most travelers lie, and few sheep cross this desert. But maybe it is true.”
One by one, hopeful for the first time in days, the men plodded on toward the light. Now and then they lost it in the sleet, and their hopes sank, but Gus McCrae had taken a bead on the light, and, leaving Matilda to support Woodrow Call, led the troop into the little village of San Saba. There were not many adobe huts, but there were many, many sheep. The ones they heard bleating were in a little rail corral behind the jefe’s hut, and the jefe himself, an old man with a large belly, was helping a young ewe bring forth her first kid. The light they had seen was his light. At first, he was surprised and alarmed by the spectral appearance of the Texans, all of them white with the sleet that covered their clothes. The old man had no weapon—he could do nothing but stare; also, the ewe was at her crisis and he could not afford to worry about the men who appeared out of the night, until he had delivered the kid. Although he had many sheep, he also lost many—to the cold, to wolves and coyotes and cougars. He wanted to see that the kid was correctly delivered before he had to face the wild men who had come in on a stormy night into the village. He thought they might be ghosts—if they were ghosts, perhaps the wind would blow them on, out of the village, leaving him to attend to his flock.
Captain Salazar, cheered by the knowledge that his troop was saved, became a captain again and soon had reassured the jefe that they were not ghosts, but a detachment of the Mexican army, on an important mission involving dangerous captives.
It was not hard to convince the jefe that the Texans were dangerous men—they looked as wild as Apaches, to the old man. Once the kid was delivered, the jefe immediately sprang to work and soon had the whole village up, building fires and preparing food for the starving men. Several sheep were slaughtered, while the women set about making coffee and tortillas.
Because it was Gus who had seen the light and saved the troop, Captain Salazar decreed that the Texans would not be bound. He was aware that he himself would have missed the light and probably the village, in which case all his men would have died. There would have been no medals, and no promotion. The Texans were put in a shed where the sheep were sheared, with a couple of good fires to warm them. Gus, sitting with Call, soon got to hear the very sound he had dreamt of: the sound of fat sizzling, as it dripped into a fire.
Some of the men were too tired even to wait for food. They took a little hot coffee, grew drowsy, and tipped over. The floor of the shed was covered with a coat of sheep’s wool, mixed with dirt. The wool made some of the men sneeze, but that was a minor irritation.
“I guess we lost Long Bill,” Bigfoot said.
“If we lost him, we lost Johnny too,” Gus said. “He should have waited until we found this town. Maybe one of the Mexicans would have gone back with us and we could have found Johnny.”
Matilda was silent by the fire. All she could think about was that Shadrach was dead. He had wanted to take her west, to California. He had promised her; but now that prospect was lost.
Long after most of the Texans had eaten a good hunk of mutton and gone to sleep, there was a shout from the Mexicans. Long Bill Coleman, his clothes a suit of ice, came walking slowly into the circle of fires, carrying Johnny Carthage in his arms. Johnny, too, seemed to be sheathed in ice—at first, no one could say whether Johnny Carthage was alive or dead.
He laid his friend down by the warmest campfire and himself stood practically in the flames, shaking and trembling from cold and from exertion. He held out his hands to the fire; he was so close that ice began to melt off his clothes.
“If that’s mutton, I’ll have some,” he said. “I swear, it’s been a cold walk.”
33.
FOR THREE DAYS THE Texans, under guard again, never left their sheep shed, except to answer calls of nature. Captain Salazar’s escort had been reduced by more than twenty men, lost and presumed frozen back along the sleety trail—six Texans failed to make the village. The weather stayed so cold that most of the men were glad of the confinement. They were allowed ample firewood, and plenty to eat. Blackie Slidell had to have two frostbitten toes removed—Bigfoot Wallace performed the operation with a sharp bowie knife—but no one else required amputations.
Once the people of the village realized that the Texans were not specters, they were friendly. The old jefe, still much occupied with his lambing in the terrible weather, saw that they had ample food. The men could drink coffee all day—poor coffee, but warming. Noticing that Call was injured, one old woman asked to look at his back; when she saw the blackened scabs, she drew in her breath and h
urried away.
A few minutes later the woman returned, another woman at her side. The other woman was so short she scarcely came to Bigfoot’s waist. She had with her a little pot—she went quickly to Call, but instead of lifting his shirt as the first woman had, she put her thin face close to his back and sniffed.
“Hell, she’s smelling you,” Bigfoot said. “I wonder if you smell like venison.”
Bigfoot’s remarks were sometimes so foolish that Call was irritated by them. Why would he smell like venison? And why was the wizened little Mexican woman smelling him, anyway? He was passive, though—he didn’t answer Bigfoot, and he didn’t move away from the woman. The village women had been unexpectedly kind—the food they brought was warm and tasty; one woman had even given him an old serape to cover himself with. It had holes in it, but it was thickly woven and kept out the chill. He thought perhaps the tiny woman who was sniffing him was some kind of healer; he knew he was in no position to reject help. He was still very weak, often feverish, and always in pain. He could survive while in the warmth of the sheep shed, but if he were forced to march and was caught in another sleet storm, he might not live. He could not ask Gus or Matilda to carry him again, as they had the first time.
The little woman sniffed him thoroughly, as a dog might, and then set her pot in the edge of the nearest campfire. She squatted by it, muttering words no one could understand. When she judged the medicine to be ready, she gestured for Call to remove his shirt; she then spent more than two hours rubbing the hot ointment into his back. She carefully kneaded his muscles and spread the ointment gently along the line of every scar. At first the ointment burned so badly that Call thought he would not be able to stand the pain. The burning was far worse than what he could remember of the whipping itself. For several minutes, Gus and Matilda had to talk to him, in an effort to distract him from the burning; at one point, they thought they might have to restrain him, but Call gritted his teeth and let the little woman do her work. In time a warmth spread through his body and he slept soundlessly, without moaning, for the first time since the whipping.
The next day, through a crack in the wall, Gus saw the same woman applying ointment to Captain Salazar’s neck. The Captain looked weak. He had taken a fever, which soared so high that he was sometimes incoherent; the jefe took him into his house and the little woman tended him until the fever dropped. Even so, the Captain was at first too weak to walk in a straight line. He wanted to stay and rest in San Saba, but when the weather warmed a little, he decided he had better take advantage of it and press on. He came to the Texans’ shed, to inform them of his decision.
“Enjoy a warm night,” he told them. “We leave tomorrow.”
“How many days before we get across this dead man’s walk?” Long Bill asked.
“Señor, we have not yet come to the Jornada,” Salazar said. “The land here is fertile because of the underground water. Once we get beyond where the sheep are, we will start the dead man’s walk.”
The Texans were silent. They had all convinced themselves that the day of the sleet would be their worst day. They had forgotten that Salazar said the dead man’s walk was two hundred miles across. They had grown used to the coziness of the shed, and the warmth of the campfires. Each of them could remember the bitter cold, the pain of marching on frozen feet, the sleet, and the hopeless sense that they would die if they didn’t find warmth.
They had found warmth; but Salazar had just reminded them that the hardest part of the journey had not even begun. Some of the men hunched closer to the campfires, holding out their hands to the warmth—they wanted to hug the warmth, keep it as long as they could. Few of them slept—they wanted to sit close to the fires and enjoy every bit of warmth left to them. They wanted the warmth to last forever, or at least until summertime. Johnny Carthage, terrified that he would fall so far behind that Long Bill Coleman couldn’t find him and rescue him, asked over and over again, through the night, how long it would be until morning.
Informed by the old jefe that there was neither food nor water enough for many horses in the barren region that awaited them, Salazar kept only one horse—his own—and traded several for two donkeys and as much provender as the donkeys could carry. On the morning of departure, abruptly, he decided to reduce the force to twenty-five men. He reasoned that twenty-five could probably hold off the Apaches, if they attacked—more than twenty-five would be impossible to provision on such a journey. The Texans alone would account for most of the provisions the donkeys could carry.
What that meant was that the Texans would slightly outnumber his own force; and the Texans, man for man, were stronger than his troops.
“Señores, you will have to be tied,” he informed the Texans, when they were led out into the cold air. “I regret it, but it is necessary. I can afford no risks on this journey—crossing the dead man’s walk is risk enough.”
Bigfoot swelled up at this news—Gus thought he was going to make a fight. But he held on to his temper and let his wrists be bound with rawhide thongs, when his turn came. The other men did the same. Even Call was tied, though Matilda lodged a strong protest.
“This boy’s hurt—he can’t do nothing—why tie him?” she asked.
“Because he has fury in him,” Captain Salazar said. “I saw it myself. He almost killed Colonel Cobb while he was riding in our General’s buggy. If I had to choose only one of you to tie, I would tie Corporal Call.”
“I suppose that’s a compliment, ain’t it?” Gus said.
“I don’t care what it is,” Call said. Since the old woman had treated him with her ointment he could at least stretch his muscles without groaning in pain. He glared at the young Mexican who tied him, although he knew the boy was simply doing his job.
Many of the women of San Saba broke into tears when they saw the Texans being tied. Some of them had formed motherly attachments to one prisoner or another. Some pressed additional food, tortillas or pieces of jerky into the men’s hands as they were marched through the street, out of the village.
The fertile country lasted only three miles. By the fourth mile, only the smallest scrub grew. Soon even that disappeared—before them, as far ahead as they could see, was a land where nothing grew.
“This is the dead man’s walk,” Captain Salazar said. “Now we will see who wants to live and who wants to die.”
“I intend to live,” Gus said, at once.
Call said nothing.
“Even the Apaches won’t cross it,” Salazar said.
One-eyed Johnny Carthage looked at the emptiness before them, and was filled with dread.
“What’s the matter, Johnny?” Long Bill said, noting his friend’s haggard look. “It’s warmer now, and we got food. We’ll get across this like we got across the plains.”
Johnny Carthage heard what Long Bill said, but didn’t believe him. He looked at the great space before them and shivered—not from cold, but from fear.
He felt that he was looking at his death.
Part III
1.
ON THE FOURTH NIGHT out from San Saba, a warm night that left the men encouraged, Captain Salazar’s horse and both donkeys disappeared. Some of their provisions were still on the donkeys—they had traveled late and had only unpacked what they needed for the evening meal, corn mostly, with a little dried mutton.
Captain Salazar had tethered his horse so close to his pallet that the lead rope was in reach of his hand as he slept. He had only to turn over to reassure himself that his horse was there. But when he did turn over, in the gray dawn, all he had left was the end of the lead rope, which had been cut. The horse was gone.
“I thought you said Indians didn’t come here,” Bigfoot said, annoyed. He had wondered at the laxness of the Mexicans, in setting no guard. The foot soldiers had simply lain down and slept where they stopped, with no thought of anything but rest. The Texans did the same, but the Texans were tied—guard duty was not their responsibility.
Captain Salazar was silent,
shocked by what had happened and what it meant. He stared for a long time across the dry plain, as if hoping to see his horse and the donkeys, grazing peacefully. But all he saw was the barren earth, with an edge of sun poking above it to the east.
Bigfoot had to repeat his statement.
“I guess those Indians that don’t come here took your horse,” he said.
“Gomez took my horse,” Salazar said. “Gomez is not like the rest. He has no fear of this country. No one else would be so bold.”
“That rope he cut was about three feet from your throat,” Bigfoot remarked. “He could have cut your throat if he’d wanted to.”
Captain Salazar was looking at the cut end of the lead rope. A scalpel could not have cut it more cleanly. Bigfoot was right: Gomez could easily have cut his throat.
“He could have, but there would have been little sport,” he said. “We must walk.”
By midmorning all the men felt the air, which had been warm, turn chill. The north wind picked up.
“Oh God, I don’t want it to get cold,” Johnny Carthage said. “I wouldn’t mind to die if I could just do it warm.” The great dread had not left him.
“Shut up your complaining, it’s just a breeze so far,” Long Bill said. “I carried you once and I’ll carry you again, if it comes to that.”
“No you won’t, Bill—you can’t carry me no hundred miles,” Johnny said, but the wind was already howling at their backs, and no one heard him.
Call walked between Matilda and Gus—he was still unsteady on his feet and was swept, at times, by waves of fever that made his vision swirl. Matilda was the only one of the Texans who had not been tied. Captain Salazar had come to like her—from time to time, she consented to play cards with him. He would not fraternize to that extent with the prisoners, and his own men were mostly too young to be good cardplayers. An old bear hunter had taught him rummy—it was mostly rummy that he played with Matilda Jane.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 35
