Dead Man's Walk

by Larry McMurtry

  "How'd it get so damn cold?" Jimmy Tweed muttered, several times. "I never been no place where it was this cold. Even that snow wasn't this cold." "You ought to leave me," Call said. "I'm slowing you down." It grated on him, that he had to be helped along.

  "Maybe there'll be a bunch of goats in this village," Gus said. He was very hungry. The wind in his belly made the wind from the north harder to bear. He had always had a fondness for goat meat--in his imagination, the village they were approaching was a wealthy center of goat husbandry, with herds in the hundreds of fat, tasty goats grazing in the desert scrub. He imagined a feast in which the goats they were about to eat were spitted over a good fire, dripping their juices into the flame. Yet, as he struggled on, it became harder to trust in his own imaginings, because there was no desert scrub. There was nothing but the rough earth, with only here and there a cactus or low thornbush. Even if there were goats, there would be no firewood, no fire to cook them over.

  Captain Salazar rode in silence, in pain from his neck wound. Now and then the soldiers walking beside him would rub their hands against his horse, pressing their hands into the horsehair to gain a momentary warmth.

  Except when she was helping Call, Matilda walked alone. She cried, and the tears froze on her cheeks and on her shirt. She wanted to go back and stay with Shadrach--she could sit by his grave until the wind froze her, or until the Indians came, or a bear. She wanted to be where he had died--and yet she could not abandon the boy, Woodrow Call, whose wounds were far from healed. He still might take a deep infection; even if he didn't, he might freeze if she was not there to warm him.

  The cold had had a bad effect on Johnny Carthage's sore leg. He struggled mightily to keep up, and yet as the day went on he fell farther and farther behind. Most of the Mexican soldiers were freezing, too. They had no interest in the lame Texan, who dropped back into their ranks, and then behind their ranks.

  "I'll catch you, I'll catch you," Johnny said, over and over, though the Mexicans weren't listening.

  By midafternoon some of the other Texans had begun to lag, and many of the Mexican infantrymen as well. The marchers were strung out over a mile-- then, over two. Bigfoot went ahead, hoping for a glimpse of the village they were seeking--but he saw nothing, just the level desert plain. Behind them there was a low bank of dark clouds--perhaps it meant more snow. He felt confident that he himself could weather the night, even without fire, but he knew that many of the men wouldn't--they would freeze, unless they reached shelter.

  "I wonder if we even know where we're going --we might be missing that town," Bigfoot said, to Gus. "If we miss it we're in for frosty sleeping." "I don't want to miss it--I hope they have goats," Gus said. He was half carrying Call at the time.

  Bigfoot dropped back to speak with Salazar --the Captain was plodding on, but he was glassy eyed from pain and fatigue.

  "Captain, I'm fearful," Bigfoot said.

  "Have you been to this place--what's it called?" "San Saba," Salazar said. "No, I have not been to it." "I hope it's there," Bigfoot said.

  "We've got some folks that won't make it through the night unless we find shelter. Some of them are my boys, but quite a few of them are yours." "I know that, but I am not a magician," Salazar said. "I cannot make houses where there are no houses, or trees where there are no trees." "Why don't you let us go, Captain?" Bigfoot asked. "We ain't all going to survive this. Why risk your boys just to take us south? Caleb Cobb was the man who thought up this expedition, and he's dead." Captain Salazar rode on, still glassy eyed, for some time before answering. When he did speak, his voice was cracked and hoarse.

  "I cannot let you go, Mr. Wallace," he said. "I'm a military man, and I have my orders." "Dumb orders, I'd say," Bigfoot said. "We ain't worth freezing to death for. We haven't killed a single one of your people. All we've done is march fifteen hundred miles to make fools of ourselves, and now we're in a situation where half of us won't live even if you do let us go. What's the point?" Salazar managed a smile, though the effort made his face twist in pain.

  "I didn't say my orders were intelligent, merely that they were mine," he said. "I've been a military man for twenty years, and most of my orders have been foolish. I could have been killed many times, because of foolish orders. Now I have been given an order so foolish that I would laugh and cry if I weren't so cold and in such pain." Bigfoot said nothing. He just watched Salazar.

  "Of course, you are right," Salazar went on.

  "You marched a long way to make fools of yourselves and you have done no harm to my people. If you had, by the way, you would have been shot--then all of us would have been spared this wind. But my orders are still mine.

  I have to take you to El Paso, or die trying." "It might be the latter, Captain," Bigfoot said. "I don't like that cloud." Soon, a driving sleet peppered the men's backs. As dusk fell, it became harder to see --the sleet coated the ground and made each step agony for those with cold feet.

  "I fear we've lost Johnny," Bigfoot said. "He's back there somewhere, but I can't see him. He might be a mile back--or he might be froze already." "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 compa@nero," 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 compa@nero, 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 rumour 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 valour 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."

  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 spectres, 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 hurried 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.

  "Se@nor, 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.