Larry McMurtry - Dead Man's Walk

by Dead Man's Walk

  "I'd give three months wages to be crossing the Brazos right now," Gus said. "I expect I could drink about half of it." "Would you give up the gal in the general store for a drink?" Bigfoot asked. "Now that's the test." He winked at Call when he said it.

  "I could drink half a river," Gus repeated. He thought the question about Clara impertinent under the circumstances, and did not intend to answer it. If he starved to death he intended, at least, to spend his last thoughts on Clara.

  The next morning, the sorrel horse that Gus and Call had both been riding refused to move.

  The sorrel's eyes were wide and strange, and he did not respond either to blows or to commands.

  "No use to kick him or yell at him, he's done for," Bigfoot said, walking up to the horse. Before Gus or Call could so much as blink, he drew his pistol and shot the horse.

  The sorrel dropped, and before he had stopped twitching Bigfoot had his knife out, working to remove the bladder. He worked carefully, so as not to nick it, and soon lifted it out, a pale sac with a little liquid in it.

  "I won't drink that," Gus said, at once.

  The mere sight of the pale, slimy bladder caused his stomach to feel uneasy.

  "It's the only liquid we got," Bigfoot reminded him. "We'll all die if we don't drink it." He lifted up the bladder carefully, and drank from it as he would from a wineskin. Call took it next, hesitating a moment before putting it to his mouth. He knew he wouldn't survive another waterless day. His swollen tongue was raw, from scraping against his teeth. Quickly he shut his eyes, and swallowed a few mouthfuls. The urine had more smell than taste. Once he judged he had had his share, he handed the bladder to Gus.

  Gus took it, but, after a moment, shook his head.

  "You have to drink it," Call told him. "Just drink three swallows--that might be enough to save you.

  If you die I can't bury you--I'm too weak." Gus shook his head again. Then, abruptly, his need for moisture overcame his revulsion, and he drank three swallows. He did not want to be left unburied on such a prairie. The coyotes and buzzards would be along, not to mention badgers and other varmints. Thinking about it proved worse than doing it. Soon they went on, Bigfoot astride the one remaining horse.

  That afternoon they came to a tiny water-hole, so small that Bigfoot could have stepped across it, or could have had there not been a dead mule in the puddle.

  They all recognized the mule, too. Black Sam had had an affection for it--in the early days of the expedition, he had sometimes fed it carrots. It had been stolen by the Comanches, the night of the first raid.

  "Why, that's John," Gus said. "Wasn't that what Black Sam called him?" John had two arrows in him--both were feathered with prairie-chicken feathers, the arrows of Buffalo Hump.

  "He led it here and killed it," Bigfoot said. "He didn't want us to drink this muddy water." "He didn't want us to drink at all," Call said, looking at the arrows.

  "I'll drink this water anyway," Gus said, but Bigfoot held him back.

  "Don't," he said. "That horse piss was clean, compared to this water. Let's go." That night, they had no appetite--even a bite was more than any of them could choke down.

  Gus pulled out some rancid horse meat, looked at it, and threw it away, an action Bigfoot was quick to criticize.

  "Go pick it up," he said. "It might rain tonight--I've been smelling moisture and my smeller don't often fail me. If we could get a little liquid in us, that horse meat might taste mighty good." About midnight they heard thunder, and began to see flashes of lightning, far to the west. Gus was immediately joyful--he saw the drought had broken.

  Call was more careful. It wasn't raining, and the thunder was miles away. It might rain somewhere on the plain--but would it rain where they were? And would any water pool up, so they could drink it?

  "Boys, we're saved," Bigfoot said, watching the distant lightning.

  "I may be saved, but I'm still thirsty," Gus said. "I can't drink rain that's raining miles away." "It's coming our direction, boys," Bigfoot said--he was wildly excited. Privately, he had given the three of them up for lost, though he hadn't said as much to the young Rangers.

  "If the rain don't come to us, I'll go to the rain," Call said.

  Soon they could smell the rain. It began to cool the hot air. They were so thirsty it was all they could do to keep from racing to meet the storm, although they had nothing to race on except one tired horse and their feet.

  Bigfoot had been right: the rain came. The only thing they had to catch it in was their hats--the hats weren't fully watertight, but they caught enough rainwater to allow the starving men to quench their thirst.

  "Just wet your lips, don't gulp it--you'll get sick if you do," Bigfoot said.

  The lightning began to come closer. Soon it was striking within a hundred yards of where they were huddled; then fifty yards. Call had never been much afraid of lightning, but as bolt after bolt split the sky he began to wonder if he was too exposed.

  "Let's get under the saddle," Gus said.

  Lightning spooked him. He had heard that a lightning bolt had split a man in two and cooked both parts before the body even fell to the ground. He did not want to get split in two, or cooked either. But he was not sure how to avoid it, out on the bare plain. He sat very still, hoping the lightning would move on and not scorch anybody.

  Then a bolt seemed to hit almost right on Bigfoot. He wasn't hit, but he screamed anyway--screamed, and clasped his hands over his eyes.

  "Oh, Lord," he yelled, into the darkness. "I looked at it from too close. It burnt my eyes, and now I'm blind.

  "Oh Lord, blind, my eyes are scorched," Bigfoot screamed. Call and Gus waited for another lightning bolt to show them Bigfoot. When it came, they just glimpsed it--he was wandering on the prairie, holding both hands over his eyes.

  Again, as darkness came back, he screamed like an animal.

  "Keep your eyes shut--don't look at the lightning," Call said. "Bigfoot's blind--that's trouble enough." "Maybe he won't be blind too long," Gus said. With their scout blinded, what chance did they have of finding their way to someplace in New Mexico where there were people? He thoroughly regretted his impulsive decision to leave with the expedition. Why hadn't he just stayed with Clara Forsythe and worked in the general store?

  Bigfoot screamed again--he was getting farther and farther away. Dark as it was, once the storm passed, they would have no way to follow him, except by his screams. Call thought of yelling at him, to tell him to sit down and wait for them, but if the man's eyes were scorched, he wouldn't listen.

  "At least it's washing this dern blood off me," Gus said. Having to wear clothes encrusted with buffalo blood had been a heavy ordeal.

  For a few minutes, the lightning seemed to grow even more intense. Call and Gus sat still, with their eyes tight shut, waiting for the storm to diminish.

  Some flashes were so strong and so close that the brightness shone through their clamped eyelids, like a lantern through a thin cloth.

  Even after the storm moved east and the lightning and thunder diminished, Call and Gus didn't move for awhile. The sound had been as heavy as the lightning had been bright. Call felt stunned--he knew he ought to be looking for Bigfoot, but he wasn't quick to move.

  "I wonder where the horse went?" Gus asked. "He was right here when all this started, but now I don't see him." "Of course you don't see him; it's dark," Call reminded him. "I expect we can locate him in the morning. We'll need him for Bigfoot, if he's still blind." Call yelled three or four times, hoping to get a sense of Bigfoot's position, but the scout didn't answer.

  "You try, you've got a louder voice," Call said. Gus's ability to make himself heard over any din was well known among the Rangers.

  But Gus's loudest yell brought the same result: silence.

  "Can you die from getting your eyes scorched?" Gus asked.

  The same thought had occurred to Call. The lightning storm had been beyond anything in his experience. The shocks of thunder and lightning had seem
ed to shake the earth. Once or twice, he thought his heart might stop, just from the shock of the storm. What if it had happened to Bigfoot?

  He might be lying dead, somewhere on the plain.

  "I hope he ain't dead," Gus said. "If he's dead, we're in a pickle." "He could have just kept walking," Call said.

  "We know the settlements are north and west. If we keep going, we're bound to find the Mexicans sometime." "They'll probably just shoot us," Gus said.

  "Why would they, if it's just the two of us?" Call asked. "We ain't an army. We're nearly out of bullets anyway." "They shot a bunch of Texans during the war," Gus recalled. "Just lined them up and shot them. I heard they made them dig their own graves." "I wish we could just go back to Austin," he added. "Why can't we? The Colonel don't even know where we are. He's probably given up and gone back himself, by now." "We've only got one horse and a few bullets," Call reminded him. "We'd never make it back across this plain." Gus realized that what Call said was true. He wished Bigfoot was there--not much fazed Bigfoot. He missed the big scout.

  "Maybe Bigfoot ain't dead," he said.

  "I hope he ain't," Call said.

  Bigfoot wasn't dead. As the storm was playing out, he lay down and pressed his face into the grass, to protect his eyes. The grass was wet--its coolness on his eyelids was some relief. While cooling his eyelids, he went to sleep. In the night he rolled over--the first sunlight on his eyelids brought a searing pain.

  Gus and Call were sleeping when they heard loud moans. Bigfoot had wandered about a half a mile from them before lying down.

  When they approached him he had his head down, his eyes pressed against his arms.

  "It's like snow blindness, only worse," he told them. "I been snow blind--it'll go away, in time. Maybe this will, too." "I expect it will," Call said. Bigfoot was so sensitive to light that he had to keep his eyes completely covered.

  "You need to make me blinders," Bigfoot said. "Blinders--and the thicker the better. Then put me on the horse." Until that moment Call and Gus had both forgotten the horse, which was nowhere in sight.

  "I don't see that horse," Gus said.

  "We might have lost him." "One of you go find him," Bigfoot said.

  "Otherwise you'll have to lead me." "You go find him," Call said, to Gus.

  "I'll stay with Bigfoot." "What if I find the horse and can't find you two?" Gus asked. The plain was featureless.

  He knew it to be full of dips and rolls, but once he got a certain distance away, one dip and roll was much like another. He might not be able to find his way back to Call and Bigfoot.

  "I'll go, then," Call said. "You stay." "He won't be far," Bigfoot said. "He was too tired to run far." That assessment proved correct. Call found the horse only about a mile away, grazing.

  Call had been painstakingly trying to keep his directions--he didn't want to lose his companions--and was relieved when he saw the horse so close.

  By the time he got back, Gus had made Bigfoot a blindfold out of an old shirt. It took some adjusting--the slightest ray of light on his eyelids made Bigfoot moan. They ate the last of their horse meat, and drank often during the day's march from the puddles here and there on the prairie. Toward the end of the day, Call shot a goose, floating alone in one such small puddle.

  "A goose that's by itself is probably sick," Bigfoot said, but they ate the goose anyway.

  They came to a creek with a few bushes and some small trees around it and were able to make a fire.

  The smell of the cooking goose made them all so hungry they could not sit still--they wanted to rip the goose off its spit before it was ready, and yet they also had a great desire to eat cooked food.

  Bigfoot, who couldn't see but could certainly smell, asked Gus and Call several times if the bird was almost ready. It was still half raw when they ate it, and yet, to all of them, it tasted better than any bird they had ever eaten.

  Bigfoot even cracked the bones, to get at the marrow.

  "It's mountain man's butter," he said.

  "Once you get a taste for it you don't see why people bother to churn. It's better just to crack a bone." "Yeah, but you might not have a bone," Gus said.

  "The bone might still be in the animal." Bigfoot kept his eyes tightly bandaged, but he no longer moaned so much.

  "What will you do if you're blind from now on, Big?" Gus asked. Call felt curious about the same thing, but did not feel it was appropriate to ask. Bigfoot Wallace had roamed the wilderness all his life; his survival had often depended on keenness of eye. A blind man would not last long, in the wilderness.

  Bigfoot could scout no more--he would have to leave off scouting the troops. It would be a sad change, if it happened.

  "Oh, I expect I'll get over being scorched," Bigfoot said.

  Gus said no more, but the question still hung in the air.

  Bigfoot reflected for several minutes, before commenting further.

  "If I'm blind, it will be good-bye to the prairies," he said. "I expect I'd have to move to town and run a whorehouse." "Why a whorehouse?" Gus asked.

  "Well, I couldn't see the merchandise, but I could feel it," Bigfoot said. "Feel it and smell it and poke it." "I been in whorehouses when I was too drunk to see much, anyway," he added. "You don't have to look to enjoy whores." "Speaking of whores, I wonder what they're like in Santa Fe?" Gus asked. Eating the goose had raised his spirits considerably. He felt sure that the worst was over. He had even argued to Call that the reason the goose had been so easy to shoot was that it was a tame goose that had run off from a nearby farm.

  "No, it was a sick goose," Call insisted. "There wouldn't be a farm around here. It's too dry." Despite his friend's skepticism, Gus had begun to look forward to the delights of Santa Fe, one of which would undoubtedly be whores.

  "You can't afford no whore, even if we get there alive," Bigfoot reminded him.

  "I guess I could get a job, until the Colonel shows up," Gus said. "Then we can rob the Mexicans and have plenty of money." "I don't know if the Colonel will make it," Bigfoot said. "I expect he'll starve, or else turn back." That night, their horse was stolen. They were such a pitiful trio that no one had thought to stand guard.

  Eating the goose had put them all in a relaxed mood. The horse, in any case, was a poor one. It had never recovered fully from the wild chase after the buffalo. Its wind was broken; it plodded slowly along, carrying Bigfoot. Still, it had been their only mount--their only resource in more ways than one. They all knew that they might need to eat it, if they didn't make the settlements soon now. The goose had been a stroke of luck--there might not be another.

  Call had hobbled the horse, to make sure it didn't graze so far that he would have to risk getting lost by going to look for it in the morning.

  They called the horse Moonlight, because of his light coat. Before Call slept he heard Moonlight grazing, not far away. It was a reassuring sound; but then he slept. When he woke, the hobbles had been cut and there was no sign of Moonlight. The three of them were alone on the prairie.

  "We'll track 'em, they probably ain't far," Bigfoot said, before he remembered that he was blind. His eyes were paining him less, but he still didn't dare remove his blinders.

  "If he was close enough to steal Moonlight, he could have killed me," Call said. The stealth Indians possessed continued to surprise him.

  He was a light sleeper; the least thing woke him.

  But the horse thief had repeatedly come within a few steps of him, yet he had had no inkling that anyone was near.

  "Dern, it's a pity you boys don't know how to track," Bigfoot said. "I expect it was Kicking Wolf. That old hump man wouldn't follow us this far, not for one horse. Kicking Wolf is more persistent." "Too damn persistent," Gus said. He was affronted. Time and again, the red man had bested them.

  "All they've done is beat us," he added.

  "It's time we beat them at something." "Well, we can beat them at starving to death," Bigfoot said. "I don't know much else we can beat them at." "Why
didn't they kill us?" Call asked.

  "I doubt there was more than one of them--I expect it was just Kicking Wolf," Bigfoot said. "Stealing horses is quiet work, but killing men ain't. He might have woke one of us up and one of us might have got him." "It's a long way to come for one damn horse," Gus commented. He still stung, from the embarrassment of being so easily robbed.

  "Kicking Wolf is horse crazy, like you're whore crazy. You'd go anywhere for a whore, and he'd go anywhere for a horse." "I don't know if I'd go halfway across a damn desert, for a whore," Gus said. "I sure wouldn't for a worn-out horse, like Moonlight. Kicking Wolf is crazier than me." Bigfoot looked amused. "There's no law saying an Indian can't be crazier than a white man," he said.