Larry McMurtry - Dead Man's Walk

by Dead Man's Walk

  "She's brash, ain't she?" he said to Gus.

  "You don't need to wait for an opinion, if Clara's around. She'll get you an opinion before you can catch your breath." Clara was still unpacking goods, whistling as she worked. She had her sleeves rolled up, exposing her pretty wrists.

  "Well, I must go look at them horses," Gus said. "Many thanks for the visit." "Was it a visit?" Clara said, giving him one of her direct glances.

  "Seemed like one," Gus said. He felt the remark was inadequate, but couldn't think of another.

  "That door ain't locked. You can come back and pitch in with the unpacking, Mr. McCrae, if you have time," Clara said.

  Old man Forsythe chuckled.

  "If he doesn't have it, he'll make it," he said, putting his arm around his daughter's shoulder for a moment.

  Gus tipped his hat to both of them and walked out the front door, the scraps of wrapping paper still in his hand. Once out of Clara's sight he carefully folded the brown paper and put it in his breast pocket.

  Although he had left the general store and was back amid the throng of peddlers and merchants, all hoping to profit from the coming expedition, in his mind Gus still stood by the big box of dry goods, waiting for Clara Forsythe to hand him another swatch of cloth. Call, who was standing with Long Bill and Blackie Slidell not twenty yards away, had to yell at him three times to get his attention.

  "Here, I hope you're pleased with this musket," Call said, when Gus finally strolled over. "It's new and it's got a good heft. I don't know what we'll do about pistols. Mr.

  Brognoli says they're costly." "I don't want to go," Gus said flatly.

  "I wonder if that girl's pa would hire me to work in that store?" "What?" Call said, shocked. "You don't want to go on the expedition?" "No, I'd rather marry that girl," Gus said.

  Long Bill and Blackie Slidell thought it was the funniest joke of the year. They laughed so hard that the dentist, who was about to pull another tooth out of another customer, stopped his work for a moment in amazement.

  Call, however, was embarrassed for his friend. The expedition to Santa Fe was a serious matter.

  They were Rangers--they had to defend the Republic. Yet Gus had just walked into a store to select a musket, spotted a girl with a frank manner, and now wanted to quit rangering.

  "Marry her--you ain't got a cent," Call said. "Anyway, why would she have you? You ain't known her ten minutes." "Ten minutes is enough," Gus said. "I want to marry her, and I aim to." "He's a cutter, ain't he?" Long Bill commented. "Meets a girl and the next thing you know, he's off to hunt a preacher." "Well, you heard me," Gus said. "I aim to marry her, and that's that." "No, now you can't, that's desertion," Blackie pointed out. "You signed your mark this morning, right in front of Caleb Cobb. I expect he'd hang you on the spot if you tried to quit." The remark had a sobering effect. Gus had totally forgotten signing his mark and putting himself under military command. He had forgotten most of his life prior to meeting Clara. The fact that he could be executed for changing his mind had never occurred to him.

  "Why, that marking don't amount to much," Gus said. He didn't want to be hanged, but he also didn't want to leave Austin, now that he had found the woman he intended to marry.

  "You need to visit the whorehouse, it will clear your head," Long Bill said. "My head's cloudy, too. I say we all go, once we've picked our horses." "I don't want no whore," Call said--but in fact, once they picked their horses and bought a slicker apiece, they all went down by the river, where several whores were working out of a shanty.

  There were six stalls, with blankets hung between them. Gus chose a Mexican girl, and did his business quickly--once he was done, even as he was buckling his pants, he still thought of Clara Forsythe and her pretty wrists.

  Call chose a young white woman named Maggie, who took his coins and accepted him in silence. She had grey eyes--she seemed to be sad. The look in her eye, as he was pulling his pants up, made him a little uneasy--it was a sorrowful look. He felt he ought to say something, perhaps try to talk to the girl a little, but he didn't know how to talk to her, or even why he felt he should.

  "Thank you, good-bye," he said, finally.

  Maggie didn't smile. She stood at the back of the stall, by the quilt she slept on and worked on, waiting for the next Ranger to come in.

  Johnny Carthage was waiting when Call came out. He had a policy of not buying Mexican women, the reason being that a Mexican whore had stabbed out his eye while trying to rob him.

  "Well, what's your opinion? Is she lively?" Johnny asked, as Call came out.

  "I have no opinion," Call said, still troubled by the sorrow in Maggie's eyes.

  Gus McCrae moped all afternoon, and would do no work. Call, who had become an expert farrier, took it upon himself to shoe the Rangers' new horses. He didn't want one of them coming up lame, not on such a long, risky trip.

  Shadrach showed up while he was working--he was dusty and grizzled. When asked where he had been, Shadrach said he had been west, hunting cougars.

  "Dern, when I hunt I want something that's better eating than a cougar," Bigfoot informed him.

  "I just take the liver," Shadrach said.

  "Cougar liver?" Bigfoot asked in amazement. "I've heard the Comanches eat the liver out of cougars, but Comanches eat polecats, too. I ain't yet et a polecat, and I hope I never have to eat the liver out of a mountain cat." "It's medicine," Shadrach said. "Good medicine. I'm likely to see some cougars, going across the plains." "Oh--I guess you've started thinking like an Indian, Shad," Bigfoot said.

  "The better to fight 'em," Shadrach said.

  He went over and dipped his head in a big water trough to get some of the dust out of his long, shaggy hair.

  Gus finally agreed to help a little with the horseshoeing, but his mind wasn't on his work. If Call asked for a rasp, Gus would likely hand him an awl, or even a nail. Twice he wandered off to visit the general store, but Clara was off on errands. Mr. Forsythe was pleasant to him, but vague about when his daughter might return.

  "I can't predict her," he said.

  "She's like the wind. Sometimes she's quiet, and sometimes she's not." Annoyed at the girl--why couldn't she stay where he could find her?--Gus took the best alternative left to him, which was to get drunk.

  He bought a jug of liquor from a Mexican peddler and sat under a shed and drank it, while Call finished the horseshoeing. While he was working, a buggy drove by--an old man wearing a military coat was asleep in it. The old man had a red face, and was snoring so loudly they could hear him even after the buggy had passed.

  "Well, that's Phil Lloyd, the damned sot," Bigfoot said. "He's a general, but he ain't a good one. I doubt we could get enough barrels of whiskey in a wagon to keep Phil Lloyd happy all the way to Santa Fe, unless we lope along quick." Call decided the military was peculiar--why make a general out of an old man who couldn't even find his way around? He tried to interest Gus in the question, but Gus could not be bothered by such business.

  "She wasn't there," he said several times, referring to Clara. "I went back twice to visit--she said I might--but she wasn't there either time." "I expect she'll be there in the morning," Call said. "You can trot by and say adios. They say we're leaving tomorrow." "You may be leaving, I ain't," Gus replied. "I ain't leaving tomorrow, or any other time." Call knew his friend was too drunk to make sense--he didn't press him.

  "Let's walk down by the river, I feel restless," Gus said a little later. "That store's closed by now--there's no chance to visit until tomorrow." Call was happy to walk with him. It was a starry night, and the Rangers had just made a good meal off some tamales Blackie Slidell had purchased from a Mexican woman. A little walk would be pleasant. He took his new musket, in case they encountered trouble. The Comanches had been known to come right into Austin and take children, or even young women. It wouldn't hurt to be armed.

  They walked a good distance on the bluffs over above the Colorado River--they could see a light out in the water. Somebody w
as out in a boat.

  "Fishing, I expect," Call said.

  Gus was still fairly drunk.

  "What kind of fool would fish at night? The fish wouldn't be able to see the bait," Gus said.

  Then, between one step and the next, he suddenly plunged into space. He was so drunk he wasn't frightened; sometimes when very drunk he passed out--it felt a little like falling. He assumed, for a moment, that he must be in the process of passing out. The lantern light on the water was spinning, which went with being drunk, too.

  He felt himself turn over, which was also a feeling he got when he was drunk; then he saw the river again, but it seemed to him that it was above him.

  He began to realize that he was falling, through a night so dark that he couldn't see anything. He couldn't even remember what he had been doing before he fell.

  "A fish don't need to see, it can smell," Call said, just before noting, to his shock, that he was talking to nobody. Gus McCrae, at his elbow only the moment before, had disappeared.

  Call's first thought was that an Indian had snatched Gus, though he didn't see how, since he and Gus had only been a step apart. But Buffalo Hump had taken Josh Corn, and he hadn't been far away, either.

  Call whirled around, almost going off the bluff himself. He couldn't see the edge, but he could see the river in the starlight. The river was a good distance down--he realized then that Gus must have fallen.

  He didn't know what to do--probably it was too late to do anything. Gus might already be dead or dying. Call knew he had to get down to him, but he didn't know how to go about it without falling himself.

  He had no rope, and it was so dark he feared to try and climb down.

  Then he remembered that during the day he had seen an old man with a fishing pole making his way down a kind of trail. There was a way down, but he would need a light of some kind if he was going to find it.

  Call began to run back toward town, staying well clear of the bluff; he was hoping to encounter someone with a light. But it was as if suddenly he were back on the long plain beyond the Pecos: he saw not a soul until he had run all the way back to where the Rangers were camped. When he got there he discovered that the only Ranger who wasn't dead drunk was gimpy Johnny Carthage, the slowest man in camp. Blackie Slidell and Rip Green were so drunk they couldn't even remember who Gus McCrae was. Johnny Carthage was willing, at least; he and Call found a lantern, and made their way back to the river. In time, they found a place where they could scramble down the cliff.

  The problem then was that Call could not tell how far down the bluff they had walked before Gus fell. With the help of the lantern, though, he could see that the bluff wasn't high enough for a fall to be fatal, unless Gus had been unlucky and broken his neck or his back.

  Johnny Carthage was fairly stalwart while they were on the bluff. But once down by the river, with help far away, his fear of Indians grew to such proportions that he flinched at every shadow.

  "Indians can swim," he announced, looking out at the dark water.

  "Who can?" Call asked. He wanted to call out to Gus, but of course if there were Indians near, the calling would give them away. He was afraid Johnny might panic, if the risks increased much.

  "Indians," Johnny said. "That big one with the hump could be right out there in the water." "Why would he be out there, this time of night?" Call asked. Mainly he was trying to distract Johnny from his fear by asking sensible questions.

  "Well, he might," Johnny said. He had a great urge to shoot his gun, although he couldn't see a thing to shoot at. He just had the feeling that if he shot his gun, he might feel a little less scared.

  To Call's shock and surprise, Johnny suddenly shot his gun. Call assumed it meant he had seen Indians--perhaps Buffalo Hump was in the river. Johnny Carthage was ten years older than he was, and more experienced--he might have spotted an Indian in the water somehow.

  "Did you hit him?" Call asked.

  "Hit who?" Johnny said.

  "The Indian you shot at," Call said.

  Johnny was so scared he had already forgotten his own shot. He remembered wanting to shoot--he felt it would make him less nervous--but he had no memory of actually firing the gun.

  Gus McCrae couldn't get the stars above him to come into focus. He was lying on his back, a terrible pain in his left ankle, wondering if he was drunk or dead. Surely if he was dead, his ankle wouldn't hurt so badly. But then, he wasn't sure--perhaps the dead could still feel. He couldn't be sure of anything, except that his left ankle hurt. He could hear the lap of water against the shore, which probably meant that he was still alive. He wasn't wet, either--that was good. One of the things he disliked most about rangering was that it very often left him unprotected from the elements. On the first march to the Pecos, he had been drenched several times-- once, crossing some insignificant little creek, his boots had filled with water. When he took them off to empty them, he noticed several of the older Rangers laughing, but it wasn't until he tried to put his boots back on that he realized what they were laughing at. He couldn't get his boots back on--his feet, which had just come out of those very boots, wouldn't go back in.

  They didn't go back in for almost two days, until the boots had thoroughly dried. Gus remembered the incident mainly because his ankle hurt so--he knew he could never force his foot into a boot, not with his ankle hurting so badly.

  He would just have to go bootless on that foot for awhile, until his ankle mended.

  While he was thinking about the difficulties that arose when you got wet, a gun went off nearby.

  Gus's thought was that it was an Indian--he tried to roll under a bush, but there were no bushes on the river shore. Even though he disliked being wet, he didn't dislike it as much as he disliked the thought of being taken by an Indian. He started to roll into the water, thinking that he could swim out far enough that the Indians couldn't find him, when he heard nearby the voices of Johnny Carthage and Woodrow Call, talking about the very subject he had just been thinking about: Indians.

  "Here, boys--it's me!" he cried out. "Come fast--I'm right by the bluff." A moment later Call and Johnny found him, to his great relief.

  "I was afraid it was that big one," he said, when they came with the lantern. "He could poke that big lance right through me, if he came upon me laying down." Though glad to have found Gus alive, Call was still not sure exactly what the situation was.

  Neither was Johnny. The fact that the latter had fired his gun confused them both. Though not quite dead drunk, Johnny was actually less sober than Call had supposed him to be back at the camp. He had seemed sober in comparison with Blackie and Rip, but now whatever he had drunk seemed to have suddenly caught up with him.

  He couldn't remember whether he had fired his gun because he had seen an Indian, or whether he had just shot to be shooting--it could even be that the gun had gone off entirely by accident.

  Call was exasperated. He had never known a man to be so vague about his own behaviour.

  "You shot the gun," he reminded Johnny, for the third time. "What did you shoot it at--an Indian?" "Matilda et that big turtle," Johnny said--he was growing rapidly less in command of his faculties. All he could remember of his earlier life was that Matilda Roberts had cooked a snapping turtle in a Ranger camp on the Rio Grande.

  "That wasn't tonight, Johnny," Call insisted. "That was a long time back, and I don't know what it's got to do with tonight. You didn't shoot at a snapping turtle, did you?" Johnny Carthage was silent, perplexed.

  Call couldn't help but be annoyed. They were in a life-or-death situation--why couldn't the man remember what he shot at?

  "What did you shoot at tonight?" he asked again.

  Gus was feeling more and more convinced that he was alive and well--except, of course, for a damaged ankle.

  "I hope my ankle ain't broke--it hurts," he said. "You might as well let up on Johnny, though. He ain't got no idea why he shot his gun." "I'd have to be hungry to eat a dern turtle," Johnny Carthage said. It was his f
inal comment of the evening. To Call's intense annoyance he lapsed into a stupor, and was soon as prostrate as Gus.

  "Now I've got two of you down," Call said. "This is a damn nuisance." Gus was too relieved to be alive, to worry very much about his friend's distemper.

  "I wonder if that girl will be in the store tomorrow?" he asked, out loud. "I sure would like to see that girl again, although my ankle's bad." "Go see her, then," Call said brusquely.

  "Maybe she'll sell you a crutch."

  When Call helped Gus hobble back to camp --Johnny Carthage was no help, having passed out drunk near where Gus had fallen-- Bigfoot happened to be there, drinking with Long Bill and Rip Green. After a certain amount of poking and prodding, during which Gus let out a yelp or two, Bigfoot pronounced his ankle sprained but not broken. Gus's mood sank--he was afraid it meant that he would not be allowed to go on the expedition.