Larry McMurtry - Dead Man's Walk

by Dead Man's Walk

  Then, with the shivering, terrified children tied on one horse, he struck east, taking only those children that were old enough to be useful slaves. The others he killed, along with their parents. At one hacienda he tied the whole family, threw them on their own haystack, and burned them. The Comanches rode on, striking hard and fast. Once they saw a little militia in the distance, perhaps twenty men. The young braves wanted to attack, but Buffalo Hump wouldn't let them. He told them they could come back and fight Mexican soldiers anytime.

  Now they were on a raid, and needed to concern themselves with captives and horses.

  They soon had ten children--four boys and six girls--none of them, older than eight or nine years. They also had twenty more horses, which they drove with them as they turned north. Buffalo Hump was satisfied. They had taken almost a hundred horses, and ten children who were strong enough not to die on the hard journey. Kicking Wolf had failed to appear. Some of the braves speculated that he had caught another white to torture.

  More than thirty Mexicans had been killed on the raid. Now the wind was growing colder-- Buffalo Hump wanted to go to the trading place, the Sorrows, to trade his captives for tobacco and blankets and ammunition. He himself had the fine gun the Texans had given him, but he didn't use it to kill Mexicans. The fine gun he kept for buffalo hunting. The Mexicans he merely struck with his lance, or put an arrow through. He wanted guns, though--not for himself but for his braves. There were more Texans than ever, moving west on the creeks and rivers, cutting trees and making little farms. They were easy to kill, the Texans, but there were many of them, and most of his warriors still only had bows and arrows. All the Texans had guns--some of them could shoot well. It would be better if his young men learned to use the gun. Otherwise, the Texans might come all the way into the Comancheria and start killing the buffalo.

  A day south of the Rio Grande, Buffalo Hump took a girl, a pretty Mexican girl who was caught while washing clothes on a rock in a little creek. There was a village not too far distant, but Buffalo Hump was on the girl so quickly that she did not have time to scream.

  He drew his knife to kill her, but in the brief struggle her young breasts spilled out of her tunic and he decided to keep her. He had had Mexican women before, but none so appealing as the slim girl he had just caught. He gagged her with a piece of rawhide, and put her over his horse.

  Later, when they were many miles north and not far from the river, one of the braves came and informed him that a foolish young warrior named Crow was missing.

  Buffalo Hump didn't wait. Probably Crow had gone into the outskirts of the village and attempted to steal a girl for himself--Crow had always been jealous of Buffalo Hump. Though only sixteen, he wanted everything the war chief had. The young braves became restive. They didn't want to leave Crow; he was known to be foolish. An old witch woman had told Crow that he would not die, and Crow believed her.

  Yet, he was brave in battle, and the young warriors didn't want to leave him. Buffalo Hump finally sent two of them to find their friend.

  They arrived back late at night with long faces and bad news. Crow had attacked the Mexican village single-handedly, convinced that he could scare away all the cowardly Mexicans and take what he wanted from the town. The braves who went back caught a boy and made him tell them what had happened, for they had not met Crow along the trail. The boy said Crow had ridden around the village, drinking and shooting off an old gun he had found. He did scare the Mexicans away for awhile, but he enjoyed frightening the village people so much that he grew careless. A vaquero roped him from a rooftop.

  While he was spinning in the air, the village men came back and hacked him to death with their machetes.

  Buffalo Hump took the Mexican girl, though she struggled violently. He decided to take her for a wife. It might be that when they got to the trading place one of the traders would offer him a very high price for the girl; unless it was very high he resolved to keep her, although he would have to be careful when he took her back to the tribe.

  His old wives were jealous and would beat the girl severely, with firewood or sticks, unless he made it clear to them that they would suffer from his hand if the girl was too much damaged.

  Crow's loss he did not lament. It was true that Crow had been brave, but he was not respectful. Several times already, Buffalo Hump had been tempted to put a lance through him, in response to an insolent look.

  The girl, Rosa, whimpered from cold and fright.

  Buffalo Hump went to her, and took her again.

  Then he stuffed the rawhide gag back in her mouth; he didn't like the sounds frightened women made.

  The next day, one warrior short, the Comanches crossed the Rio Grande. That day they caught two whites, an old man and an old woman, traveling west in a little wagon. They were people of God--they prayed loudly to their Jesus, but Buffalo Hump burned them anyway, in their own wagon. They screamed more loudly than they prayed. As the Comanches were riding off, a cougar jumped out of a little spur of rocks and raced away. Several of the young braves gave chase--it would be a great thing, if one of them could kill a cougar. But Buffalo Hump let them go--he had once longed to kill a cougar or a bear himself, and finally had killed a bear, near the headwaters of the Cimarron. But it had only been an old she-bear with a wounded paw; he could not claim much credit for having killed it. Once he had put his lance in a male grizzly, but the grizzly had treated the lance like a burr, and had chased Buffalo Hump for a mile. If he had not been on his best horse that day, the bear would have killed him.

  Of course, the young braves did not manage to catch the cougar. Their horses were a little tired, from the swift raid. The cougar outran them easily.

  Later that day, Kicking Wolf appeared.

  Buffalo Hump was angry with him, for missing the raid, but they had taken so many horses and so many captives that he didn't bother complaining. Kicking Wolf was a very contrary man-- he did as he pleased. He told Buffalo Hump he had decided to wait for them on the trail, because he was enjoying the feeling he had after torturing Kirker to death.

  It was a feeling of great power and calm, Kicking Wolf said. He didn't want to lose it just to catch a few Mexican children and run off a few horses. He explained that he had tortured Kirker for another day, after they hung him over the fire. After Kirker died, Kicking Wolf cut off all of his fingers--he meant to take them to the main camp and make them into a necklace. The fingers of the scalp hunter should not be wasted.

  When Kicking Wolf saw Rosa, the Mexican girl, he became immediately jealous.

  He began to wish he had taken time to go on part of the raid. His only wife was old and smelly-- Buffalo Hump had three young wives already, too many, in Kicking Wolf's view. He was a lu/l man and could only watch enviously when Buffalo Hump went to the girl and took her.

  He ought to have gone to Mexico and taken a girl himself--it was only that he had been patiently torturing Kirker and didn't want to lose the feeling of great peace that came to him when the scalp hunter died.

  "It's a lurchy way to travel, if you ask me," Call said. "It's still a long way to Galveston and we ain't near through the Comanche country, yet. Why is she stopping, just to paint a hill?" "You can't rush a lady like her, Woodrow," Gus said. He, too, thought it was eccentric of Lady Carey to stop the trip for a whole day, just so she could paint the colours of a desert sunset as they appeared on the line of bluffs to the north.

  They had happened to be traveling below a kind of rim-rock the day before, and had camped just at sunset. Lady Carey had not been able to get her easel and her paint-brushes out in time to capture the colours of rose and gold that the sun threw on the cliffs.

  "Why, there's nothing like it in the world," she said. "I must paint--Willy, you might try, too. We'll wait until tomorrow and both have a go at it." "That's a good plan--I'm tired of my pony," Willy said.

  Gus had managed to shoot an antelope that afternoon; he was immensely proud of himself.

  Emerald, the Negress, walked
out and butchered the animal, very precisely and in half the time it would have taken Gus. Before they could even set Lady Carey's tent up properly, Emerald returned with the best cuts of antelope. That night she cooked what she referred to as the saddle, with some corn and a few chilies they had brought from El Paso. Gus thought it was the best meal he had ever eaten; Call had to admit it was mighty tasty. Emerald had struck up a friendship with Matilda Roberts--she showed Matilda some of the finer points of cooking game.

  Lady Carey had a little chest containing nothing but salts and peppers, spices, and herbs. While Emerald cooked, Lady Carey sang, plucking her mandolin. That evening the great boa, Elphinstone, was let out of its basket. It curled around Lady Carey's shoulders, as she sang.

  Call thought Lady Carey fearless to the point of folly. She ordered no guard, but he and Gus and Long Bill stood one anyway, taking turns through the chilly nights. Wesley Buttons was exempt from guard duty--it was well known that he could not stay awake even ten minutes, unless someone was talking to him, and Wesley's conversation was so dull that no one wanted to attempt to talk to him through the night.

  He was put in charge of the saddling and packing instead; Call and Gus usually helped him take down Lady Carey's tent.

  During the day of rest, while they waited for the sunset colours to come, Lady Carey amused herself by sketching the Rangers. She drew quickly, and made such good likenesses of the men that it startled all of them. None of them felt that his own sketch was quite accurate, but contended that Lady Carey had captured the other men perfectly.

  Toward evening, as the sun sank, the cliffs to the north reddened. Lady Carey prepared her colours and began to paint. Willy, the young viscount, had a small easel; his attempts at capturing the sunset were done in watercolour. Matilda stood beside Lady Carey, watching. Seeing the red cliffs form on the canvas fascinated her, much as the stories had.

  She had never known anyone who could do such things.

  Lady Carey painted until nightfall, but Willy tired of art and walked off with Gus, in search of game. He had a small fowling piece, and would pop away at anything that moved; this evening, though, nothing moved. Willy wanted to keep looking, but as the shadows lengthened, Gus grew apprehensive and insisted that they return to camp. They had seen nothing to provoke unease, but Gus knew how quickly that could change, in such a wild place.

  "There could be an Indian not fifty feet from us," he told Willy.

  "But if there's an Indian I want to see him," Willy said. "Why can't you find him and show him to me?" "If I found an Indian I wouldn't have to show him to you," Gus told him. "He'd be shooting arrows at us quicker than you can think. If I didn't kill the Indian, he'd kill us." "Of course, you would kill him, I'm sure," Willy said, moving a little closer to Gus as they walked toward camp.

  Call was prepared for an early start, and was up before sunrise--but to his surprise, Lady Carey had risen ahead of him. She was standing beside her easel, waiting for the first light from the east.

  "I know you're restless, Corporal Call," she said. "I painted the sunset--now I want to paint the dawn. Go and ask Emerald to cook the bacon." It was almost midday before Lady Carey was content to pack up her easel and her oils and mount the black gelding.

  For three days more they moved eastward, past the line of the rim-rock but not beyond the desert or the mountains. On the afternoon of the third day, Call, Gus, and Long Bill all began to feel uneasy. There was no reason for their unease, yet they had it. Call debated scouting ahead, to see if he could detect any sign of Indians; in the end he decided against it. There were only the four of them to fight, in case of attack, and Wesley Buttons was a notably unreliable shot, at that. It was probably better to stay together, in case of trouble.

  Toward evening, they passed a solitary mountain--a lump of rock, mainly.

  Lady Carey rode off toward the mountain, to have a closer look. Despite many warnings about the Indians, she still darted off at will, now ahead and now behind. She took a keen interest in the desert plants and would sometimes dismount, with her sketch pad, and draw a cactus or a sage bush.

  Once or twice, she had galloped so far away that Call had ridden out, protectively, to be in a position to help if he needed to help.

  Lady Carey, though, made it clear that she did not welcome even the best-intentioned supervision.

  "I'm not a chicken, Corporal Call," she said to him once. "You needn't act like a hen." Gus felt a deep disquiet, not about Lady Carey but about the place. Looking at the high, rocky hump he suddenly realized that he had looked at it before--only before, he had been racing toward it from the east, in the hope of killing mountain sheep. Now they were coming toward it from the west--the sloping ridge the Comanches had hidden themselves behind was just ahead of them.

  Call had the same recognition, at the same time. They had gone east from El Paso, and come back to the bluff where Josh Corn and Zeke Moody had been killed.

  "I hope there ain't no mountain sheep up there," Gus said. "If there are, we'll know they're Comanches and that big one is somewhere around." "Maybe he's still north," Call said, remembering the day when the Comanches had walked their horses along the face of the Palo Duro Canyon.

  "No, he ain't north--I feel him," Gus said.

  "Now, that's mush," Call said. "You didn't feel him the first time, and he was closer to us than I am to Willy." "I don't say he's close, but he's somewhere around," Gus said. "I feel funny in my stomach." "At least Major Chevallie would be proud of us if he could see us now," Call said.

  "Why would he?" Gus asked. "He never even made us corporals." "No, but now we've found the road to El Paso," Call said. "It's south of them high bluffs. If he was alive, he could start up a stagecoach line." Gus was still thinking about Buffalo Hump--how quickly he could strike. Lady Carey was almost out of sight, at the base of the mountain. If Buffalo Hump was close, even the fast gelding wouldn't save her.

  "Look at her," Gus said, to Call. "If he was here, he'd get her." "Not just her," Call said. "He'd get us all, if he was here."

  When Buffalo Hump rode into the trading place, the valley called the Sorrows, with his captives and the last group of Mexican horses, the old slaver, Joe Nibbs, was there waiting, with Sam Douglas and two wagons full of goods. A band of Kiowa had been there the day before, but they had only raided one settlement: the only captives they had to offer were a nine-year-old girl, and a little Negro boy.

  Joe Nibbs wouldn't take the girl--she had a sickly look; very likely she would be dead within the month. Joe Nibbs had come west with the first trappers to leave St. Louis--he was too experienced a slaver to be wasting trade goods on a sickly girl.

  Joe had been coming to the Sorrows for ten years; he had seen mothers kill themselves because he sold their children away; more than one husband had tried to kill him, because he had sold a wife. But Joe was a decisive man--he kept a hammer stuck in his belt and used it to dispatch troublesome captives quickly, silently, and cheaply. He knew where the human skull was weakest--he rarely had to strike twice, when he pulled his hammer.

  Bullets he normally saved for buffalo, or other game too big and too swift to be dispatched with a hammer. When the Kiowa arrived, with one sickly girl, Joe Nibbs upbraided them for laziness. The Texas settlements were creeping westward, up the Brazos and the Trinity. If the Kiowa didn't want to make the long ride into Mexico for captives, they could at least be a little more active around the new settlements. Most of them weren't really settlements anyway, just groups of scattered farms, always poorly defended. They ought to yield more than a sick girl and a small Negro boy.

  In the wagons were blankets and beads, knives, mirrors, a few guns, and some harmless potions and powders that Joe passed off as medicine. He did not trade liquor.

  Life was risky enough on the Comancheria without pouring liquor into wild men skilled at every form of killing.

  He traveled in the Indian lands with Sam Douglas, a youth of twenty-two, reedy but strong. He kept the wagons repaired a
nd the captives secured. Sam had come from a whaling family, back in Massachusetts--he was so skilled with knots that in the three years he had been helping Joe Nibbs, not a single captive, male or female, had escaped.

  Sometimes, if the Comanche seemed restive, Sam would entertain them by tying intricate knots.

  Kicking Wolf was particularly fascinated by this skill--he would sit by Sam and encourage him to run through his whole repertory of knots; then he would want Sam to untie all his knots and tie them again, over and over.

  Sam Douglas had grown up by the sea; he was used to cool, moist air. He had hated the West, with its sand and its dust, and had no fondness at all for Joe Nibbs, a greedy, profane, violent old man with black teeth, and a blacker heart. More than twenty times Sam had seen Joe Nibbs fly into a rage, yank out his hammer, and crack the skull of some man or woman who could perfectly well have been sold for a fine profit, if only Joe had been able to hold his temper. But Sam stayed with the old slaver because he was handicapped by a clubfoot and a harelip, both impediments to the satisfying of his considerable lust. In the settlements women shied from him, but traveling with a slaver solved that problem; there were always budding girls amid the captives, and sometimes grown women, too. Since it was Sam's job to tie the women and to guard them, he had access to many females he could not have approached or succeeded with, had he met them in Massachusetts. Many of them writhed and squirmed, or begged and wept, or cursed and spat, while Sam was enjoying his access; but he paid no attention. They were slaves, and he was their slaver; they had to submit and most did, without him having to whack them or whip them or tie their legs to opposite sides of the wagon bed. Even if he had to beat the women a little, he was still kinder to them than Joe Nibbs. Joe was apt to whip them for no reason, or torment them with the handle of his hammer, or to tie them over a wagon wheel and rut at them from behind, like the rough old billy that he was.