Текст книги "Dead Man's Walk"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“That bear done us a fine turn,” Bigfoot said. “They’d have marched us till our feet came off, if he hadn’t come along and scared this little army away.”

Call was remembering how easily the bear had lifted the horse and moved away with it. The black gelding had been heavy, too, yet the bear had made off with it as easily as a coyote would make off with a kitten.

The snow continued to fall—once they got behind the circle of firelight, it was very dark.

“The bear went toward the hills,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s leave the hills—maybe we can catch one or two of them mules, in the morning.

Gus reached down to adjust his leg iron, and for a second had the fear that he had lost his companions.

“Hold on, boys, don’t leave me,” he said.

“By God, this is a thick night if I ever saw one,” Bigfoot said. “We’d better hold on to one another’s belts, or we’ll all be traveling single, pretty soon.”

They huddled together, took their belts off, and strung them out—Bigfoot in the lead; Call at the rear.

“We don’t even know which way we’re walking,” Call said. “We could be walking right back to Santa Fe. They’ll just catch us again, if we’re not careful.”

“I know which way I’m walking,” Bigfoot said. “I’m walking dead away from a mad grizzly bear.”

“He won’t be so bad, once he eats that horse,” Gus said.

“It’s just one horse—he might not be satisfied,” Bigfoot said. “He might want a Tennessean or two, for dessert. I say we keep plodding—we can worry about the Mexicans tomorrow.” “That suits me,” Call said.

THE THREE RANGERS WALKED through the snow all night, clinging to one another’s belts. All of them thought of the bear. It had killed a large horse with one swipe of its paw. Call remembered the flash of its teeth as it whirled toward Salazar’s tent. Gus remembered seeing several men shoot at the bear—he didn’t suppose they had missed, at such short range, and yet the bear had given not the slightest indication that it felt the bullets.

“I hope we’re going away from it,” Gus said, several times. “I hope we ain’t going toward it.”

“It won’t matter which way we’re going, if it wants us,” Bigfoot informed him. “Bears can track you by smell. If it wanted us it could be ten feet behind us, right now. They move quiet, unless they’re mad, like that one was. I had a friend got killed by a bear out by Fort Worth—I found his remains myself, although I didn’t find the bear.”

Having delivered himself of that piece of information, Bigfoot said no more.“Well, what about it?” Gus asked, exasperated. “If you found him, what’s the story?”

“Oh, you’re talking about Willy, my friend that got kilt by the bear?” Bigfoot said. “It was on the Trinity River—I figured it out from the tracks. Willy was sitting there fishing, and the bear walked up behind him so quiet Willy never even had a notion a bear was anywhere around—that’s how quiet they are, when they’re stalking you.”

“So … tell us … was he torn up bad?” Call asked. He too was annoyed with Bigfoot’s habit of starting stories and failing to finish them.

“Yes, he was mostly et—the bear even et his belt buckle,” Bigfoot said. “He had a double eagle made into a belt buckle. I always admired that belt buckle and was planning to take it, since Willy was dead anyway and didn’t have no kinfolks that I knew of. But the dern bear ate it, along with most of Willy.”

“Maybe he fancied the taste of the belt,” Gus suggested. The notion that a bear could be ten feet behind him, stalking them, was a notion he couldn’t manage to get comfortable with. He turned around to look so many times, as they wffked, that by morning his neck was sore from all the twisting. The> night was so dark he couldn’t have seen the bear even if it had been close enough to bite him—but he couldn’t get Bigfoot’s story off his mind, and couldn’t keep himself from looking around.

The dawn was soupy and cold—the snow turned to a heavy drizzle, and the plains were foggy. They had nothing to eat and had had no luck pounding their chains off with the few rocks they could find. The rocks broke, but the chains held. Exasperated beyond restraint, Bigfoot Wallace tried to shoot his chain off, only to have the musket ball ricochet off the chain and pass through the lower part of his leg.

“Missed the bone, or I’d be done for,” Bigfoot remarked grimly, examining the wound he had foolishly given himself.

Gus had been about to try and shoot his chain in two, but changed his mind when he saw what happened to Bigfoot.

“We ought to stop and wait for clearer weather—we could be headed for Canada, I guess,” Bigfoot said. “There’s bad Indians up in Canada—the Sioux, they call themselves. I don’t want to go marching in that direction.“Nonetheless, they didn’t stop. Memory of captivity was fresh, and kept them moving. The need to stay warm was also a factor—they had nothing to eat, and no fire to sit by. Waiting would only have meant getting colder.

The fog gradually thinned—by noon, they could see the tops of the mountains again. In midafternoon the sky cleared and the Rangers saw to their relief that they had been moving south, as they had hoped. They were far out on the plain, not a tree or shrub in sight.

“I hope that bear don’t spot us,” Gus said.

Though the fog and drizzle had been depressing, at least they had given them a little sense of protection; now they felt exposed— Indians on the one side, a grizzly bear on the other.

“I see somebody,” Bigfoot said, pointing to two dots on the prairie, west, toward the mountains. “Maybe it’s trappers. If it is, we’re in luck.”

“Trappers always have grub,” he added.

The two dots, however, turned out to be two of the Mexican soldiers—two young boys, not more than fifteen, who had happened to flee the bear in the same directions the Texans had taken —they were cold, hungry, and lost. Neither of them were armed. When they saw the Texans marching up, well armed, they both held up their hands, expecting to be killed on the spot.

“What do we do, boys?” Bigfoot asked. “Shoot ‘em or take ‘em with us?”

“We don’t need to shoot them,” Call said. “They can’t hurt us. I expect they should just go home.”

The two boys were named Juan and Jose. One of them, Call remembered, had tended the nanny goats that supplied Captain Salazar his milk.

“You’re going in the wrong direction, boys,” Bigfoot told them. He pointed north, toward the village they had started from.

“Vamoose,” he said. “We ain’t got time for conversation.”

The two boys, though, refused to leave them. When the Rangers started south, they followed, though at a respectful distance.

“I expect they’re afraid of that bear,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t blame ‘em much. The bear’s in that direction.”

Call didn’t think the bear was following them—after all, it had a horse to eat, and an old man as well—but he admitted that it was hard to get the bear off his mind. He had supposed there could be nothing more fearsome in the West than the Comanches, but the great grizzly was a force even more formidable than Buffalo Hump. Even Buffalo Hump couldn’t kill a horse just by hitting it. He remembered how many times they had shot and stabbed the stubborn buffalo, before they got it to die. Yet, the grizzly was far stronger than the buffalo. What kind of gun,would it take to kill a grizzly? He knew that men had killed bears, even grizzly bears, but having seen the bear scatter the militia, and reduce even Salazar to terror, he wondered what it would take to bring the beast down.

In any case, it was another reason to stay alert. If a bear could sneak up on a man, as it had on Bigfoot’s friend Willy, it behooved them to be watchful.

Walking near dusk, they surprised six prairie chickens and managed to run them down. The heavy birds could only fly a little distance. The Rangers, with the help of the starving Mexican boys, managed to catch all of them. They crossed a little creek, just at dark, with a few trees around it, enough to enable them to have a good fire. They let Juan and Jose eat with them, and sleep near the fire—the boys just had thin clothes.

“That was luck,” Bigfoot said, as they finished the last of the birds. “Caleb can’t be too far, unless they’ve all been massacred. If we walk hard enough we ought to locate them tomorrow.”

Call thought that was probably only hopeful thinking. So far, nothing Bigfoot or any of the others had predicted had happened the way it was supposed to. The plain was a vast ocean of grass— Caleb could be anywhere on it. Even a troop of men could be easily lost in such a space.

This time, though, the scout’s prediction was accurate. All day they walked steadily south on the sunlit plain. Toward evening, they saw smoke in the distance, rising into the deepening blue of the sky. Like the smoke from the chimneys of the village where they had been captured, the smoke was farther away than it looked. It grew full dark as they walked toward it—now and then, from a roll of the prairie, they could see the flicker of the campfires.“But they might not be our campfires,” Call pointed out. “They could be Mexican campfires.”

They stumbled on, the Mexican boys following apprehensively. Another hour passed before the fires were really close. No horses neighed, as they approached the fires. Gus began to feel fearful. He decided Call was right—it was probably Mexicans sitting around the fires, not Texans.

“We could just squat and wait for morning,” he whispered. “Then we can see who it is—if it’s Indians, we’d still have a chance to get away.”

“Shut up, they can hear you,” Call said.

“I was whispering,” Gus told him.

“Well, you whisper loud enough to wake the dead,” Call said.

“Hold on—who’s there?” a voice said, and at once relief swept over the Rangers, for the voice that challenged them was none other than Long Bill Coleman’s.

“Billy, it’s us—don’t shoot!” Bigfoot called.

There was silence for a moment, as Long Bill absorbed what he had heard.

“Boys, is that you?” he asked.

“It’s us, Bill,” Gus said, so relieved he couldn’t wait to speak.

“Why, that sounds like Gus McCrae,” Bill Coleman said.

“It’s us, Bill—it’s us,” Gus said, again.

Long Bill Coleman peered into the darkness as hard as he could, but he couldn’t see a thing. Despite the fact that the voices had sounded as if they were the voices of Bigfoot Wallace and Gus McCrae, he remained apprehensive. It was an odd time of night for folks to be showing up. He had heard somewhere that Indians could do perfect imitations of white men’s voices, much as they could imitate birdcalls and coyote howls.

He wanted to believe that the voices he was hearing were the voices of his friends—it was just that all the stories of Comanches imitating white men’s voices weighed in his mind.

“If it’s you, who’s with you, then?” he called out, wondering if he was inviting a scalping. He cocked his gun, just to be on the safe side.

“Gus and Call and two prisoners,” Bigfoot said. “Don’t you know us?” Just at that moment Long Bill caught a glimpse of Bigfoot, and realized he had been too suspicious. “Nerves, I’m jumpy,” Long Bill said. “Come on in, boys.” “It’s just us, Bill,” Gus said, to reassure the man that no ambush was imminent. “It’s just us. We’re back.”

THE ARRIVAL OF THE three Rangers, in leg irons, trailed by two shivering Mexican boys, aroused the whole camp. The blacksmith soon had the chains knocked off. There were some who favored chaining Jose and Juan, but Bigfoot wouldn’t hear of it. The sight of so many Texans, all armed to the teeth, set both boys to quaking as if their last hour had come, and it would have come had some of the harsher spirits had their way. None were quite thirsty enough for Mexican blood to buck Bigfoot, though.

“Those boys don’t want to fight,” Bigfoot said. “They’re too starved to fight, and so are we. What’s to eat?”

Caleb Cobb looked rueful.

“I’d like to lay out a banquet for you and the corporals, Mr. Wallace,” Caleb said. “I’m sure you deserve one, for making your way back to us under hazardous conditions.”

“Hazardous is right, a damn bear nearly killed us all,” Gus piped up.

“If one of you had had the foresight to shoot the bear, then we could lay out a banquet,” Caleb said. “As it is, we can’t. We ran out of food yesterday. We don’t have a goddamn thing to eat.”

“Nothing?” Gus asked, surprised.

“Not unless you can eat firewood,” LŤong Bill said. “We’re all hungry.”

Quartermaster Brognoli sat by one of the fires. His condition had not improved. He still looked glassy eyed, and his head still shook.

“Hell, we would have done better to stay prisoners,” Bigfoot said. “At least the Mexicans fed us corn. We even had soup when we were still in that little town.”

“We’re close to the mountains—there’ll be deer, I expect,” Caleb said. “With a little luck we’ll all have meat tomorrow.”

Call noticed at once that the company didn’t seem as large as it had been when they left it, less than a week earlier. He missed a number of faces, though, in many cases, the faces were not those to which he could put a name. There just didn’t seem to be as many men as there had been when they left. Jimmy Tweed was still there, tall and gangly, and Johnny Carthage, and Shadrach and Matilda, huddled around a fire to themselves. But the troop seemed diminished, and Bigfoot said as much to Caleb Cobb.

“Yes, several fools headed off on their own,” Caleb admitted. “I expect they’re all dead by now, from one cause or another. I didn’t have enough ammunition to shoot them all, so I let them go. We’re down to forty men.”

“Forty-three, now that you men are back,” he added, a moment later.

“Forty-three, that’s all?” Bigfoot asked. “You had nearly two hundred when we left Austin.”

“The damn Missouri boys left first—I expect they’ll all starve,” Long Bill Coleman said. “Then a bunch went back to try and strike a river.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if they starve, too.”

“I don’t care who starves and who don’t,” Bigfoot said. “The Mexicans are bringing a thousand men against us. Salazar told me that. Even if they’re mostly boys, like Juan and Jose, we’ll have to shoot mighty good to whip a thousand men.”

Caleb Cobb looked undisturbed.

“I expect the figure’s high,” he said. “I’ll worry about a thousand Mexicans when I see them.”

“The man who took us prisoner said a general was coming,” Call said—Salazar had dropped the remark while they were on the march.

“Well, there’s generals and generals,” Caleb said. “Maybe their general will be a drunk, like old Phil Lloyd.”

“Caleb, there’s too many of them,” Bigfoot said. “They’re raising the whole country against us. If you don’t have enough bullets to shoot a few deserters, how are we going to whip a thousand men?”

“You damn scouts are too pessimistic,” Caleb said. “Let’s go to sleep. Maybe we can wipe out a battalion and steal their ammunition.”

He walked off and settled himself by his own campfire, leaving the men apprehensive. Seeing the leg irons on the three Rangers had put the camp in a dour mood.

“We ought to turn back,” Johnny Carthage said. “I can barely walk as it is. If they catch me and put me in leg irons I’ll be lucky to keep up.”

“This is like it was the first time we went out,” Call said. “Nobody knows what to do. We’re worse off than we were with Major Chevallie. We’ve got no food and no bullets, either. We can’t whip the Mexicans and we can’t get home, either. We’ll starve if we turn back, and they’ll catch us all, if we don’t.”

Gus had no rejoinder. The fact that there was no food in camp had left him in soggy spirits. All during the long, cold walk, through the snow and drizzle, he consoled himself with the prospect of hardy eating once they got back to their companions. Maybe someone would have killed a buffalo—he had visions of fat buffalo ribs, dripping over a fire.

But there were no buffalo ribs—there was not even corn mush. He* had eaten nothing since the prairie chickens—he felt he might become too weak to move, if he didn’t get food soon.

“At least the Mexicans fed us,” he said, echoing Bigfoot’s remark. “I’d rather be taken prisoner than starve to death.”

Caleb Cobb’s indifference to their plight annoyed Call. The man had led them so far out on the plain that they couldn’t get back— and yet the company was so weakened and so badly supplied that they couldn’t expect to defeat a Mexican army, either. He wondered if he would live long enough to serve under a military leader who really knew what he was doing. So far, he had not found one who could survive the country itself, much less one who could beat the country and the enemy. Buffalo Hump, with only nine men, had nearly destroyed Major Chevallie’s command, and now Caleb Cobb’s force of two hundred men had dwindled to forty before it even got to its destination.

There was nothing to do but keep the campfires going and wait for morning. They made a fire not far from where Shadrach lay with Matilda. The old man was coughing constantly. Matilda came over briefly, to welcome them back. She looked dispirited, though.

“This bad weather’s bad for Shad,” she said. “I’m afraid if it don’t dry up he’ll die. I do my best to keep him warm, but he’s getting worse, despite me.”

Indeed, the old mountain man coughed all night—long, heaving coughs. Gus finally got warm enough to stretch out and sleep, but Call was awake all night. He didn’t leave the fire and walk, as he often did, but he didn’t sleep, either. Both the Mexican boys came and sat with him. They were fearful of all Texans, except the three they knew.

Finally, just as grey light was edging across the long plain, Call slept a little, but the sleep produced a nightmare in which the great bear and Buffalo Hump both attacked the troop. Men were falling and running, and he had become separated from his weapons and could not defend himself. He saw arrows going into Long Bill Coleman; the great bear had knocked Gus down and was snarling over him. Call wanted to attack the bear, but he had nothing but his hands. Then he saw Buffalo Hump catch Bigfoot and slash at his head with a knife. Bigfoot’s head came off, and the huge Comanche held it up and cried a terrible war cry.

“Wake up … Woodrow … you’ve skeert the camp!” Matilda said, shaking him out of his dream. Juan and Jose were staring at him as if he had gone mad. Gus still slept, but men from the other campfires were rousing themselves and looking at Call, who felt deeply embarrassed by the scrutiny.

“I didn’t mean to scare folks,” he said, his hands shaking. “I was just dreaming about that bear.”

THE TROOP, HUNGRY, COLD, and discouraged, had marched only five miles when they topped a rise and saw the Mexican army camped on the plain before them. The encampment seemed to cover the whole plain; it stretched far back toward the mountains.

Bigfoot saw the camp first and motioned for the troop to hold up, but the signal came too late. Two Indian scouts on fast horses were already speeding back toward the Mexican camp.

Caleb Cobb was the only man on horseback. He rode to the crest of the ridge and surveyed the encampment, silently.

“I told you they’d raise the whole country,” Bigfoot said.

“Shut up, I’m counting,” Caleb said. He had his spyglass out and was looking the Mexicans over—if he was alarmed he didn’t show it.

Bigfoot, though, immediately saw something he didn’t like.

“Colonel, they have cavalry,” he said. “I’d make it at least a hundred horses.““More than a hundred,” Caleb said, without removing his spyglass from his eye. “That’s what I’m counting. I make it a hundred and fifty horses.”

Then he took the spyglass out of his eye and looked around at the men. He was astride the only horse.

“That beats us by one hundred and forty-nine horses, I guess,” he said.

“Hell, they’ve even got a cannon,” Bigfoot said. “They drug a cannon all this way, thinking we was an army.”

“We are an army, Mr. Wallace,” Caleb said. “We’re just a small army. It looks like we’re up against superior numbers.”

“Not all armies can fight,” Shadrach said. “Maybe they’re an army of boys, like these two here. We’re an army of men.”

Call and Gus stood looking at the assembled Mexicans, wondering what would happen.

“I guess we need a herd of bears,” Call said. “Ten or twelve big bears could probably scatter them like that one bear scattered that first bunch.”

Long Bill Coleman began to look around for cover—only there was no cover, only rolling prairie. Shadrach was still coughing, but he had his long rifle in his hand and seemed invigorated by the prospect of battle. Matilda had even acquired a rifle from someone —she planted herself by Shadrach.

The troop stood together, and watched the two scouts race toward the Mexican camp.

“Them scouts were Mescalero Apache,” Bigfoot said. “Those hills are their country. The Mexicans must have paid them big, because Apaches don’t usually work for Mexicans.”

The arrival of the Texans, in plain view on the ridge, put the whole Mexican encampment into a ferment of activity. The cavalrymen raced to saddle their mounts, many of which were skittish and resistant. Everywhere men were loading guns and making ready for war. In the center of the encampment was a huge white tent.

“I expect that’s where the general sleeps,” Caleb said. “I regret losing my canoe.”

“Why?” Bigfoot asked. “We’re on dry land.”

“I know, but if I had my canoe I’d hurry back with it to the nearest river, and I’d paddle down whatever stream it was untilI came to the Arkansas, and then I’d paddle down the Arkansas until I came to the Mississippi, and then I’d paddle right on down Old Miss until I struck New Orleans.”

He stopped and smiled at Brognoli, who stared back, glassy eyed.

“Once I got to New Orleans I’d stop and buy me a whore,” Caleb went on. “Once I had my fill of whores I’d go back to the pirate life, on the good old gulf, and rob all the ships leaving Mexico. That would be the easy way to get the Spanish silver. They ship most of it to Spain, anyway. It would sure beat traipsing across these goddamn plains.”

“I think we should count the ammunition, Colonel,” Bigfoot said. “We don’t have any to waste.”

Caleb ignored this sensible suggestion.

He sat on his horse, watching the flurry of preparations in the Mexican camp.

“The truth is, I ain’t felt the same about this enterprise since Corporal McCrae let my dog, Jeb, fall to his death,” Caleb said. “I think I’ll just ride over and have a parley with this army. Do we still have the flag?”

They had brought along the flag of the Republic of Texas, but no one had seen it in awhile.

“Why would you need a flag?” Bigfoot asked.

“Well, we brought the damn rag, why not use it?” Caleb said. “It might impress that general, if there is a general.”

The flag was finally located, in Johnny Carthage’s kit. At some point he had become the keeper of the flag, but life had been so strenuous that he had forgotten the fact.

Caleb tied the flag to his rifle barrel, and prepared to leave. The troop was apprehensive, not sure what his intentions were. Half of the men were disposed to run, though running across the prairies on foot, with their stomachs empty, offered a poor prospect, considering that the Mexicans, by Caleb’s count, had one hundred and fifty cavalrymen.

At the last minute, Caleb looked at Call and nodded.

“Come with me, Corporal—I need attendants,” he said. “You too, McCrae. Let’s march over there and test this general’s manners. If he’s got any, he’ll ask us to breakfast.”

“If he does, snatch us some bacon,” Long Bill Coleman said. “I sure would like to have a nice bite of bacon.““Can we take our guns?” Gus asked. He did not want to go among so many Mexicans without his guns.

“You’re my escort—take your guns,” Caleb said. “An escort’s supposed to march in front. I wish we had a drummer, but we don’t. Let’s get going.”

Gus and Call started marching straight for the Mexican camp. Caleb paused long enough to light a cigar—he had carefully preserved and rationed his cigars—before coming along behind them.

“Good Lord, look at them,” Gus said, pointing toward the Mexican camp. “We ought to have brought the whole troop as an escort.”

“I don’t think they’ll shoot us—this is a parley,” Call said, though he wasn’t fully confident on that score. Across the plain the whole Mexican army stood in battle readiness, waiting for them. The one hundred and fifty cavalrymen were mounted—the infantry, hundreds strong, had been assembled in lines by several captains and lieutenants, who rode back and forth yelling instructions. There were men standing by the cannon. An imposing man in a white uniform stood outside the tent, surrounded by aides.

For once, the law of distance that seemed to govern their travels on the prairies was reversed. Instead of the Mexican army being farther away than it seemed—half a day away would have been fine with Gus—it proved to be closer than it seemed. In no time, Call and Gus were looking right down into the barrel of the cannon—or so it seemed. The first line of soldiers was only a hundred yards away.

“They won’t kill us,” Call said. “It wouldn’t be worth their while. There’s only three of us, and look at them. They’d be behaving like cowards if they took advantage of us.”

“But maybe they are cowards,” Gus suggested. “If they shoot off that cannon it will blow us to bits.”

Now and then they looked back at their commander, Caleb Cobb —he seemed undisturbed, keeping his horse to a walk and smoking his long cigar.

“Just ignore the army,” he told them. “Head right for that tent. The only person we need to talk to is the jefe.”

The young Rangers did as instructed, passing between the lines of infantry and the massed cavalry. Both of them looked straight ahead, trying to ignore the fact that hundreds of men around them were all primed to kill them.On the ridge behind them, Matilda Roberts gave way to a fit of crying.

“They’re lost—they’re just boys,” she said. “They’re lost—they’ll kill them for sure.”

“Now, Matty—it’s just a parley,” Bigfoot said, but Matilda would riot be comforted. Her worries overcame her. She put her face in her hands and sobbed.

Gus was disconcerted, as they approached the General’s tent, to see Captain Salazar standing amid the Mexican officers.

“I was hoping the bear got him,” Gus said.

“Well, the bear didn’t,” Call said.

Seven officers stood around the General, a heavy man with much gold braid on his uniform. He had a curling mustache and held a silver flask in his hand, from which he drank occasionally. Several of the officers surrounding him had sabres strapped to their legs— they looked at the young Rangers sternly, as they continued toward the tent. The only one, in fact, who seemed well disposed toward them was Captain Salazar himself. He stepped forward to greet them, and actually saluted.

“Congratulations, gentlemen,” he said. “You escaped the bear. Ordinarily, of course, I would shoot you for escaping, but no one could be blamed for running from a grizzly bear. That bear killed my horse and my cook. I have another horse, but I miss the cook.”

“I guess you soldiers are acquainted,” Caleb said. He dismounted and handed his reins to a Mexican orderly, who took them with a look of surprise.

“Yes, we traveled together, Colonel,” Captain Salazar said. “Unfortunately our travels were interrupted, as you may have heard.”

“Oh, the bear, yes,” Caleb said. “You’re Captain Salazar?”

“At your service,” the Captain said, saluting again. “Allow me to introduce you to General Dimasio.”

The large General did not salute—he nodded casually, and gestured toward his tent.

“We hope you will join us for coffee,” Salazar said, to Caleb. “It is fortunate that we found one another so quickly. General Dimasio does not like to travel on the llano. The fact that you came to greet us will save him much trouble.”

“Why, that’s lucky, then,” Caleb said. Without a word to Gus or Call, he bent and went into the tent.As soon as Caleb Cobb disappeared into the General’s tent, the two Mexican soldiers closed the flaps and stood in front of it, muskets held across their chests. Call and Gus were alone amid hundreds of enemy soldiers, most of whom clearly registered hostility. No guns were pointed at them, and no sabres drawn, but the moment was awkward. Across the plain, on the neighboring ridge, the little knot of Rangers stood watching. To Call’s mind, they looked forlorn. The Mexicans mostly wore clean uniforms; cooking pots simmered on many campfires. The army they were in the midst of was well equipped and well trained, a far cry from the frightened village militia they had encountered in Anton Chico.

“Well, here we are,” Gus said. He found the silence uncomfortable.

“Yes, for now,” Captain Salazar said. He was the only Mexican whose manner was friendly.

“Would you like breakfast?” he asked. “As you can see, we have plenty to eat. We even have eggs.”

Gus was about to accept, happily—he felt he could eat thirty or forty eggs, if he were offered that many—but Call immediately rejected Salazar’s offer.

“No sir, much obliged,” Call said. “We’ve et.”

“In that case, at least let me offer you coffee,” Salazar said.

“I’ll have some coffee, thanks,” Gus said at once, fearing that his friend would decline even that.

Salazar motioned to an orderly, who soon brought each of them coffee in small cups.

“Why did you say we et?—you know we ain’t et since we killed those prairie chickens,” Gus said. “You could have let them feed us —they’ve got plenty.”

“Our men ain’t got plenty,” Call reminded him, glancing toward the little group on the distant ridge. “I won’t sit down and stuff myself with these enemies when our men are about ready to eat their belts.”

“It ain’t our fault they didn’t get to be escorts,” Gus said. “Escorting’s hard work—here we are with a thousand men ready to kill us. Maybe they will kill us. If I have to die I’d just as soon do it with something in my stomach.”

“No,” Call said. “Just shut up and wait. Maybe Colonel Cobb will buy food for the troop and then we can all eat.“Caleb Cobb was in the General’s tent for over an hour. Not a sound came through the canvas. Gus and Call had nothing to do but wait. Captain Salazar soon went off to attend to some duty, leaving the two of them standing there amid their foes. The cups of coffee had been tiny; no one else offered them anything.