Dead Man's Walk

by Larry McMurtry

  Captain Salazar had taken a little of the bad water the day before; he arose so tired and weak that he could scarcely walk to the campfire. When a cramp took him he had to bend almost double to endure the pain.

  Bad as he was, his troop was worse.

  Several of his soldiers were too weak to rise. The fact that seven prisoners had escaped the night before didn't interest them--nor did it interest Salazar.

  "Their freedom will be temporary," he told Bigfoot.

  "How about our freedom, Captain?" Bigfoot asked. "Half your men are dying and half of ours too. What's the point of keeping us prisoners when we're all dying? Why can't you just turn us loose and let it be every man for himself?

  Maybe one or two of us will make it home, if we do it that way." Call and Gus were there--and Long Bill.

  Captain Salazar could barely stand on his feet.

  Even a march of one mile might be beyond him, and they had far more than a mile to go. Bigfoot's request seemed reasonable, to them. If they were let go they might wander off in twos and threes and find food of some sort and live, whereas if the whole troop had to stay together they would probably all starve.

  Salazar looked at his troops, many of them unable to rise. He still had at most eight soldiers who could be considered able--bodied men.

  The Texans had more, but not many more. The end of the dead man's walk was not in sight--it might be three days away, or four, or even five.

  He thought for a moment before answering Bigfoot's request.

  He took his pistol out of its holster, checked to see that it was fully loaded, and handed it butt first to Bigfoot Wallace.

  "If you want to be free, kill me," he said.

  Bigfoot looked at the sick, exhausted man in astonishment.

  "Captain, I must have misheard," he said.

  "No, you heard correctly," Salazar said.

  "I have decided that you can be free, if freedom is what you want most. But I am a Mexican officer, under orders to take you to El Paso.

  There is no one here to countermand my orders, and the General who gave them to me is dead. You saw what the Apaches did to him." "Well, Captain, I know that," Bigfoot said. "But if the General was here and saw how weak we all are, he might change his mind." "He might, but we cannot summon him up from hell and ask him," Salazar said. "My orders are still my orders. I cannot free you. But I will allow you the opportunity to free yourselves. All you have to do is shoot me." Bigfoot held the gun awkwardly, not sure what to make of the Captain's odd decision. He looked at Call, at Gus, at Long Bill Coleman, and at Matilda Roberts. Now and then, throughout their time as prisoners, any one of them would have been happy to have the opportunity to kill Captain Salazar. When Call was being whipped, when they were chained, when Jimmy Tweed was shot-- at such moments any of them might have killed him.

  But Salazar was no longer the cold Captain who chained them or tied them at his whim. He had suffered the same cold and the same hunger as they had, drunk the same bad water and been weakened by the same cramps. He was a weakened man, so weakened that he had calmly ordered his own death.

  "Captain, I don't want to shoot you," Bigfoot said. "At times I could have done it easy, I expect, but now you're worse off than we are. I've got no stomach for shooting you now." Salazar stood his ground. He looked the Texans over.

  "If not you, then another," he offered. "Perhaps Corporal Call would shoot me. He endured the lash, and life has not been easy for him since. Surely he would like revenge. His feet are giving him pain, and yet I have kept him walking. Give him the gun." "Caleb Cobb broke my feet," Call said. "You didn't. I'd shoot you if this was a fight, but I ain't gonna just take your damn gun and shoot you down." "Corporal McCrae?" Salazar said.

  "Surely you hate me enough to shoot me," Salazar said, with a small smile.

  "I used to, Captain, but I'm too cold and too tired to worry about shooting anybody," Gus said. "I'd just like to go home and get married quick." Call was annoyed that once again the subject of marriage had come up, and at a time when a man's life was in the balance. They had no prospect of even getting home--why was he so convinced the girl would marry him, even if they did?

  Salazar took his pistol back, and walked over to Matilda Roberts. He held the gun out to her.

  "Kill me, Se@norita," he said. "Then you will all be free." "Free to what?" Matilda asked.

  "It ain't you I need to be freed of--I ain't a prisoner, anyway. What I'd like to be free of is this damn desert, and shooting you won't accomplish that." "Then shoot me just for vengeance," Salazar said. "Shoot me to avenge your dead." "I won't--they all died from foolishness," Matilda said. "All except my Shad--my Shad died from being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Shooting you won't bring him back, or make me miss him no less." Captain Salazar took the pistol, and put it back in its holster.

  "Caleb Cobb would have shot you, if he was here," Bigfoot said, almost apologetically.

  He thought it bold of Salazar to take the risk he had just taken--any Texan, in the right mood, might have shot him. Of course, the Captain was as tired and hungry as the rest of them; his neck wound had never healed properly--there was pus on his collar. Perhaps he felt his end was coming, and wanted to hasten it. Still, it was bold. A man could perhaps and perhaps all day, and not find his way to the truth.

  "Yes--no doubt--he did shoot me," Salazar said. "But in that, too, he failed." Then he gingerly felt his neck--he looked, with a grimace, at the stain on his hand.

  "Perhaps I am wrong," he said. "Perhaps he didn't fail. Perhaps he merely wanted me to walk two hundred hard miles before I died." "He was blind at the time, Captain," Bigfoot said. "He just made a lucky shot-- I expect he would have been happy to kill you where you stood." Captain Salazar sighed--he looked for a moment at his weary troops.

  "All right," he said. "Unfortunately you did not accept my terms, so you are still my prisoners. If you had killed me, I would have been a martyour--now I will only be disgraced." "Not in my eyes--not if you're talking about military work," Bigfoot said. "You done your best and you're still doing it. You took on a hard job. I doubt Caleb Cobb would have even got us this far." "I agree with that," Salazar said. "I have done my best, and Colonel Cobb would not have got you this far. He would have left, to banquet with the generals and perhaps seduce their wives." He gestured for his soldiers to get up. Two or three merely stared at him, but most of them began to struggle to their feet.

  "Unfortunately, you are not a Mexican officer, Se@nor Wallace," Salazar said.

  "You are not one of the men who will judge me. I lost most of my men and many of my prisoners. That is what the generals will notice, when I deliver you to El Paso. Where are the rest, they will ask." "Captain, I've got some advice," Bigfoot said. "Let's get to El Paso and then worry about the generals." Salazar smiled.

  "It's time to march," he said.

  Toward noon that day, as the company--strung out for almost two miles--struggled south, they came upon three dead cows, starved within a mile of one another. The buzzards were on the carcasses, but they hadn't been on them long; all the carcasses were stiff from the night's frost. Although all three cows were mostly just skin and bones, to the weary troop, at the point of starvation itself, their discovery seemed like a miracle. The men who lagged caught up--all the men were soon tearing at the thin carcasses with their knives, trying to scrape a few bites of meat off the cold bones.

  Captain Salazar, with difficulty, restored order. He fired his pistol twice, to get the hungry men to back off. While they were making a fire and preparing to roast the bones and what little flesh remained, Bigfoot saw several specks rise into the air, from far to the south.

  "I think them was ducks," he said. "If there's ducks there must be water. We can have us a fine soup, if that's the case." "Well, we got the soup bones, at least," Gus said. He ran south with Bigfoot and sure enough found a creek, mostly dry but with several small scattered pools of water.

  The troop camped for two days, until every bo
ne of the three animals had been boiled for soup. Most of the bones were then split for their marrow. The food was welcome, and also the rest.

  Through the two days and night, the prairie scavengers, who had been deprived of their chances at the carcasses, prowled around the camp.

  Coyotes and wolves stood watching during the day. Two ventured too close, a coyote and a wolf. Bigfoot shot them both, and added their meat to the soup.

  "I don't know about eating wolf," Gus said.

  "A wolf will eat anything. This one might have poison in its belly, you don't know." "Don't eat it then, if you're scared," Bigfoot said. "There'll be more for the rest of us." Call ate the wolf and coyote soup without protest. His bad foot, though still painful, was better for the rest. Near the little creek there were some dead trees--Matilda chopped off a limb with a fork in it, and made Call a rude crutch. She knew how much he hated having to be helped along by her and by Gus. He accepted it, because his only other option was death; but he accepted it stiffly.

  The look in his eyes was the look of a man whose pride was wounded.

  "I thank you," he said, in a formal tone, when she presented him with the rude crutch. But the look in his eyes was not formal--it was a look of gratitude. Gus saw how fond Matty had become of Call, despite his rudeness--he felt very jealous. He himself had been cheerful and friendly, and had courted Matty as much as she would allow, and yet--since the death of Shadrach--she had fastened her attentions on his surly friend. It annoyed him so much that he mentioned it to Bigfoot.

  Call and Matty were sitting together, eating soup.

  Neither Call nor Matilda was saying anything, but still, they sat together, sipping wolf soup that a young Mexican soldier had just dished out of the pot.

  "Now what's the point of spending all that time with Call?" Gus asked. "Call don't care for women. It's rare that I could get him to go with a whore." Bigfoot studied the couple for a minute, the large woman and the short youth.

  "Matty's got her motherly side," he said.

  "Most cows will take a calf, if one comes up that needs her." "Why, I need her, I guess," Gus said --now that his belly didn't growl quite so loudly, his envy had returned.

  "I'm as much a calf as he is--we're the same age," Gus said.

  "Yeah, but you're easy to get along with, and Woodrow ain't," Bigfoot said.

  "Well, then, she ought to be sitting with me, not with that hardheaded fool," Gus said.

  "He ain't saying a word to her--I can outtalk him any day." "Maybe it ain't talk she's after," Bigfoot suggested.

  Long Bill Coleman had been stretched out on the ground, resting on his elbow, as he listened to the little debate.

  "Why are you griping, Gussie?" he asked.

  "She ain't sitting with me, either, but you don't hear me complaining." "Shut up, Bill--what do you know about women?" Gus asked, testily.

  "Well, I know they don't always cotton to the easy fellows," Long Bill said. "If they did, I'd have been married long ago. But I ain't married, and it's going to be another cold night." "Why, he's right," Bigfoot said. "Matty likes Woodrow because he's hardheaded." "Oh, I suppose you two know everything," Gus said. He went over to where the two sat, and plopped himself down on the other side of Matilda.

  "Matty and her boys," Bigfoot said, smiling at Long Bill. "I doubt she expected to be the mother of two pups when she headed west with this outfit." Long Bill wished the subject of mothers had never come up. His own had died of a fever when he was ten--he had missed her ever since.

  "If Ma was alive, I expect I would have stayed with farming," he said, with a mournful look.

  "She cooked cobbler for us, when she was well. I ain't et cobbler since that was half as good." "I hope this starving is over," Bigfoot said. "I don't want to think about cobbler or taters, until we get back to where folks eat regular." The carcasses had been consumed completely-- when the troop left, on the morning of the third day, they had no food at all. They were cheerful, though. The fact that they had seen ducks convinced many of the men that they were almost out of the desert. The Texans began to talk of catfish and venison, pig meat and chickens, as if they would be sitting down to lavish meals within the next few days.

  Salazar listened to the talk with a grim expression.

  "Se@nores, this is still the dead man's walk," he said. "We have far to go before we come to Las Cruces. Once we make it there, no one will starve." They marched three days without seeing a single animal; they had water, but no food. On the second evening, they used the last of their coffee.

  The brew was so thin it was almost colorless.

  "I could read a newspaper through this coffee, if I had a newspaper," Long Bill said, squinting into his cup.

  "I didn't know you could read, Bill," Bigfoot said.

  Long Bill looked embarrassed; the fact was, he couldn't read. Usually, if he were lucky enough to come by a newspaper, he had a whore read it to him.

  Call was as hungry as the rest of the troop, but because of his crutch, he was in better spirits, even though the crutch was rough and soon rubbed his underarm raw. He had nothing to pad the crutch with, though.

  Matilda offered to tear off a piece of her shirt and pad the crutch for him, but he refused her. By the end of the third day, his shoulder was paining him almost as much as his foot had. Matilda, tired of his stubbornness, ripped off a piece of her shirt and padded the crutch anyway, while Call slept.

  Even so, Call lagged behind the rest of the Texans. He was not quite at the rear of the column, though; three of the weakest of the young Mexican soldiers lagged far behind him. Though Call could not speak their language, he had ceased to regard the young soldiers as enemies. They had starved and frozen, just like the Texans; he didn't think they would shoot him, even if he hobbled right past them and tried to escape.

  From time to time he glanced back, to see that the boys were still following him. He was afraid they might collapse and die, and he knew that if the company was too far in advance of them when they collapsed, Salazar would not go back for them. The Apaches had not bothered them for four nights; the assumption around the campfire was that they had given up, or decided the pursuit of such a miserable band wasn't worth it. There were no horses to take, only a few weapons.

  Captain Salazar was not convinced. He didn't share the Texans' optimism, in regard to Gomez.

  "If he stopped, it is because he has other business," he told Bigfoot. "If he has no other business, he will follow us and try to kill us all. I don't think he will attack--he will wait and take us, one by one." He posted as strong a guard as he could muster, knowing, even so, that half his soldiers would fall asleep on duty. But four nights passed, and no corpses were found in the morning.

  "He wouldn't wait four nights, if he was still after us," Bigfoot said.

  "He would wait forty nights," Salazar told him. "He is Gomez." The wrapping on Call's crutch had come loose--he stopped to rewrap it and, when he did, glanced back at the young Mexicans. It was then that he saw the Apache, a short, stumpy-legged man, with a bow in his hand, about to release an arrow. Before he could move, the arrow hit him in the right side. Call had no weapon --all he could do was yell, but he yelled loudly and the troop turned. Call gripped his crutch, prepared to defend himself if the Apache came closer, but the Apache had vanished, and so had the three Mexican soldiers who had been trailing behind. The plain to the north was completely empty.

  Bigfoot came running up, and looked at the arrow in Call's right side.

  "Why, he nearly missed you," he said. "The arrow's barely hanging in you." Before Call could even look down, Bigfoot had ripped the arrow out--it had only creased his ribs. Blood flowed down his leg, but he didn't feel it. The shock of seeing the Apache, only fifty yards behind him, left him dizzy for a minute.

  Captain Salazar came running back to Call.

  "Where did he go?" he asked.

  Call, still dizzy, couldn't tell him. He pointed to the spot where the short Indian had been, but when Bigfoot and
Salazar and a few of the Mexican troops ran in that direction, they found no Indians. The three Mexican soldiers who had trailed Call were dead, each with two arrows in them. They lay face down, fully clothed.

  "At least they didn't get cut," Long Bill said.

  "No, he was in a hurry," Salazar said.

  "He wanted Corporal Call--and he almost had him. You are a very lucky man, Corporal. I think it was Gomez, and Gomez rarely misses." "I saw him," Call said. "He would have been on me in another few steps, if I hadn't turned. I expect he would have put an arrow right through me." "If it was Gomez and you saw him, then you are the first white to see him and live," Salazar said.

  "He won't like that," Bigfoot said. "We'd best watch you close." "You don't have to--I'll watch myself," Call said.

  "Don't be feisty, Woodrow," Bigfoot said. "That old Apache might come back and try to finish the job." "I hate New Mexico," Gus said.