Текст книги "Dead Man's Walk"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

It was Gus McCrae, with his keen vision, who first saw a tiny flicker of light, far ahead.

“Why, it’s a fire,” he said. “If it ain’t a fire, it’s some kind of light.”

“Where?” Matilda asked. “I can’t see nothing but sleet.”

“No, there’s a fire, I seen it,” Gus said. “I expect it’s that town.” One of the Mexican soldiers heard him, and prodded his captain awake.

Salazar, too, felt that he would not survive the night. The wound Caleb Cobb had given him was worse than he had thought—he had bled all day, the blood freezing on his coat. Now a soldier had awakened him with some rumour of a light, although the sleet was blowing and he himself could not see past his horse’s head. There was no light, no town. The blood had dripped down to his pants, which were frozen to the saddle. Instead of delivering the invading Texans to El Paso and being promoted, at least to major for his valour in capturing them, his lot would be to die in a sleet storm on the frozen plain. He thought of shooting himself, but his hands were so cold he feared he would merely drop his pistol, if he tried to pull it out. The pistol, too, was coated in bloody ice—it might not even shoot.

Then Gus saw the light again, and yelled out, hoping somebody ahead would hear him.

“There’s the light—there it is, we’re close,” he said. This time, Bigfoot saw it, too.

“By God, he’s right,” he said. “We’re coming to someplace with a fire.”

Then he heard something that sounded like the bleating of sheep —the men who heard it all perked up. If there were sheep, they might not starve. Captain Salazar suddenly felt better.

“I remember the stories,” he said. “There is a spring—an underground river. They raise sheep here—this must be San Saba. I thought it was just a lie—a traveler’s lie, about the sheep and the spring. Most travelers lie, and few sheep cross this desert. But maybe it is true.”

One by one, hopeful for the first time in days, the men plodded on toward the light. Now and then they lost it in the sleet, and their hopes sank, but Gus McCrae had taken a bead on the light, and, leaving Matilda to support Woodrow Call, led the troop into the little village of San Saba. There were not many adobe huts, but there were many, many sheep. The ones they heard bleating were in a little rail corral behind the jefe’s hut, and the jefe himself, an old man with a large belly, was helping a young ewe bring forth her first kid. The light they had seen was his light. At first, he was surprised and alarmed by the spectral appearance of the Texans, all of them white with the sleet that covered their clothes. The old man had no weapon—he could do nothing but stare; also, the ewe was at her crisis and he could not afford to worry about the men who appeared out of the night, until he had delivered the kid. Although he had many sheep, he also lost many—to the cold, to wolves and coyotes and cougars. He wanted to see that the kid was correctly delivered before he had to face the wild men who had come in on a stormy night into the village. He thought they might be ghosts—if they were ghosts, perhaps the wind would blow them on, out of the village, leaving him to attend to his flock.

Captain Salazar, cheered by the knowledge that his troop was saved, became a captain again and soon had reassured the jefe that they were not ghosts, but a detachment of the Mexican army, on an important mission involving dangerous captives.

It was not hard to convince the jefe that the Texans were dangerous men—they looked as wild as Apaches, to the old man. Once the kid was delivered, the jefe immediately sprang to work and soon had the whole village up, building fires and preparing food for the starving men. Several sheep were slaughtered, while the women set about making coffee and tortillas.

Because it was Gus who had seen the light and saved the troop, Captain Salazar decreed that the Texans would not be bound. He was aware that he himself would have missed the light and probably the village, in which case all his men would have died. There would have been no medals, and no promotion. The Texans were put in a shed where the sheep were sheared, with a couple of good fires to warm them. Gus, sitting with Call, soon got to hear the very sound he had dreamt of: the sound of fat sizzling, as it dripped into a fire.

Some of the men were too tired even to wait for food. They took a little hot coffee, grew drowsy, and tipped over. The floor of the shed was covered with a coat of sheep’s wool, mixed with dirt. The wool made some of the men sneeze, but that was a minor irritation.

“I guess we lost Long Bill,” Bigfoot said.

“If we lost him, we lost Johnny too,” Gus said. “He should have waited until we found this town. Maybe one of the Mexicans would have gone back with us and we could have found Johnny.“Matilda was silent by the fire. All she could think about was that Shadrach was dead. He had wanted to take her west, to California. He had promised her; but now that prospect was lost.

Long after most of the Texans had eaten a good hunk of mutton and gone to sleep, there was a shout from the Mexicans. Long Bill Coleman, his clothes a suit of ice, came walking slowly into the circle of fires, carrying Johnny Carthage in his arms. Johnny, too, seemed to be sheathed in ice—at first, no one could say whether Johnny Carthage was alive or dead.

He laid his friend down by the warmest campfire and himself stood practically in the flames, shaking and trembling from cold and from exertion. He held out his hands to the fire; he was so close that ice began to melt off his clothes.

“If that’s mutton, I’ll have some,” he said. “I swear, it’s been a cold walk.”

FOR THREE DAYS THE Texans, under guard again, never left their sheep shed, except to answer calls of nature. Captain Salazar’s escort had been reduced by more than twenty men, lost and presumed frozen back along the sleety trail—six Texans failed to make the village. The weather stayed so cold that most of the men were glad of the confinement. They were allowed ample firewood, and plenty to eat. Blackie Slidell had to have two frostbitten toes removed—Bigfoot Wallace performed the operation with a sharp bowie knife—but no one else required amputations.

Once the people of the village realized that the Texans were not spectres, they were friendly. The old jefe, still much occupied with his lambing in the terrible weather, saw that they had ample food. The men could drink coffee all day—poor coffee, but warming. Noticing that Call was injured, one old woman asked to look at his back; when she saw the blackened scabs, she drew in her breath and hurried away. A few minutes later the woman returned, another woman at her side. The other woman was so short she scarcely came to Bigfoot’s waist. She had with her a little pot—she went quickly to Call, but instead of lifting his shirt as the first woman had, she put her thin face close to his back and sniffed.

“Hell, she’s smelling you,” Bigfoot said. “I wonder if you smell like venison.”

Bigfoot’s remarks were sometimes so foolish that Call was irritated by them. Why would he smell like venison? And why was the wizened little Mexican woman smelling him, anyway? He was passive, though—he didn’t answer Bigfoot, and he didn’t move away from the woman. The village women had been unexpectedly kind—the food they brought was warm and tasty; one woman had even given him an old serape to cover himself with. It had holes in it, but it was thickly woven and kept out the chill. He thought perhaps the tiny woman who was sniffing him was some kind of healer; he knew he was in no position to reject help. He was still very weak, often feverish, and always in pain. He could survive while in the warmth of the sheep shed, but if he were forced to march and was caught in another sleet storm, he might not live. He could not ask Gus or Matilda to carry him again, as they had the first time.

The little woman sniffed him thoroughly, as a dog might, and then set her pot in the edge of the nearest campfire. She squatted by it, muttering words no one could understand. When she judged the medicine to be ready, she gestured for Call to remove his shirt; she then spent more than two hours rubbing the hot ointment into his back. She carefully kneaded his muscles and spread the ointment gently along the line of every scar. At first the ointment burned so badly that Call thought he would not be able to stand the pain. The burning was far worse than what he could remember of the whipping itself. For several minutes, Gus and Matilda had to talk to him, in an effort to distract him from the burning; at one point, they thought they might have to restrain him, but Call gritted his teeth and let the little woman do her work. In time a warmth spread through his body and he slept soundlessly, without moaning, for the first time since the whipping.

The next day, through a crack in the wall, Gus saw the same woman applying ointment to Captain Salazar’s neck. The Captain looked weak. He had taken a fever, which soared so high that he was sometimes incoherent; the jefe took him into his house and the little woman tended him until the fever dropped. Even so, the Captain was at first too weak to walk in a straight line. He wanted to stay and rest in San Saba, but when the weather warmed a little, he decided he had better take advantage of it and press on. He came to the Texans’ shed, to inform them of his decision.

“Enjoy a warm night,” he told them. “We leave tomorrow.”

“How many days before we get across this dead man’s walk?” Long Bill asked.

“Senor, we have not yet come to the Jornada,” Salazar said. “The land here is fertile because of the underground water. Once we get beyond where the sheep are, we will start the dead man’s walk.”

The Texans were silent. They had all convinced themselves that the day of the sleet would be their worst day. They had forgotten that Salazar said the dead man’s walk was two hundred miles across. They had grown used to the coziness of the shed, and the warmth of the campfires. Each of them could remember the bitter cold, the pain of marching on frozen feet, the sleet, and the hopeless sense that they would die if they didn’t find warmth.

They had found warmth; but Salazar had just reminded them that the hardest part of the journey had not even begun. Some of the men hunched closer to the campfires, holding out their hands to the warmth—they wanted to hug the warmth, keep it as long as they could. Few of them slept—they wanted to sit close to the fires and enjoy every bit of warmth left to them. They wanted the warmth to last forever, or at least until summertime. Johnny Carthage, terrified that he would fall so far behind that Long Bill Coleman couldn’t find him and rescue him, asked over and over again, through the night, how long it would be until morning.

Informed by the old jefe that there was neither food nor water enough for many horses in the barren region that awaited them, Salazar kept only one horse—his own—and traded several for two donkeys and as much provender as the donkeys could carry. On the morning of departure, abruptly, he decided to reduce the force to twenty-five men. He reasoned that twenty-five could probably hold off the Apaches, if they attacked—more than twenty-five would be impossible to provision on such a journey. The Texans alone would account for most of the provisions the donkeys could carry.What that meant was that the Texans would slightly outnumber his own force; and the Texans, man for man, were stronger than his troops.

“Senores, you will have to be tied,” he informed the Texans, when they were led out into the cold air. “I regret it, but it is necessary. I can afford no risks on this journey—crossing the dead man’s walk is risk enough.”

Bigfoot swelled up at this news—Gus thought he was going to make a fight. But he held on to his temper and let his wrists be bound with rawhide thongs, when his turn came. The other men did the same. Even Call was tied, though Matilda lodged a strong protest.

“This boy’s hurt—he can’t do nothing—why tie him?” she asked.

“Because he has fury in him,” Captain Salazar said. “I saw it myself. He almost killed Colonel Cobb while he was riding in our General’s buggy. If I had to choose only one of you to tie, I would tie Corporal Call.”

“I suppose that’s a compliment, ain’t it?” Gus said.

“I don’t care what it is,” Call said. Since the old woman had treated him with her ointment he could at least stretch his muscles without groaning in pain. He glared at the young Mexican who tied him, although he knew the boy was simply doing his job.

Many of the women of San Saba broke into tears when they saw the Texans being tied. Some of them had formed motherly attachments to one prisoner or another. Some pressed additional food, tortillas or pieces of jerky into the men’s hands as they were marched through the street, out of the village.

The fertile country lasted only three miles. By the fourth mile, only the smallest scrub grew. Soon even that disappeared—before them, as far ahead as they could see, was a land where nothing grew.

“This is the dead man’s walk,” Captain Salazar said. “Now we will see who wants to live and who wants to die.”

“I intend to live,” Gus said, at once.

Call said nothing.

“Even the Apaches won’t cross it,” Salazar said.

One-eyed Johnny Carthage looked at the emptiness before them, and was filled with dread.

“What’s the matter, Johnny?” Long Bill said, noting his friend’shaggard look. “It’s warmer now, and we got food. We’ll get across this like we got across the plains.”

Johnny Carthage heard what Long Bill said, but didn’t believe him. He looked at the great space before them and shivered_not from cold, but from fear.

He felt that he was looking at his death.

ON THE FOURTH NIGHT out from San Saba, a warm night that left the men encouraged, Captain Salazar’s horse and both donkeys disappeared. Some of their provisions were still on the donkeys— they had traveled late and had only unpacked what they needed for the evening meal, corn mostly, with a little dried mutton.

Captain Salazar had tethered his horse so close to his pallet that the lead rope was in reach of his hand as he slept. He had only to turn over to reassure himself that his horse was there. But when he did turn over, in the grey dawn, all he had left was the end of the lead rope, which had been cut. The horse was gone.

“I thought you said Indians didn’t come here,” Bigfoot said, annoyed. He had wondered at the laxness of the Mexicans, in setting no guard. The foot soldiers had simply lain down and slept where they stopped, with no thought of anything but rest. The Texans did the same, but the Texans were tied—guard duty was not their responsibility.

Captain Salazar was silent, shocked by what had happened andwhat it meant. He stared for a long time across the dry plain, as if hoping to see his horse and the donkeys, grazing peacefully. But all he saw was the barren earth, with an edge of sun poking above it to the east.

Bigfoot had to repeat his statement.

“I guess those Indians that don’t come here took your horse,” he said.

“Gomez took my horse,” Salazar said. “Gomez is not like the rest. He has no fear of this country. No one else would be so bold.”

“That rope he cut was about three feet from your throat,” Bigfoot remarked. “He could have cut your throat if he’d wanted to.”

Captain Salazar was looking at the cut end of the lead rope. A scalpel could not have cut it more cleanly. Bigfoot was right: Gomez could easily have cut his throat.

“He could have, but there would have been little sport,” he said. “We must walk.”

By midmorning all the men felt the air, which had been warm, turn chill. The north wind picked up.

“Oh God, I don’t want it to get cold,” Johnny Carthage said. “I wouldn’t mind to die if I could just do it warm.” The great dread had not left him.

“Shut up your complaining, it’s just a breeze so far,” Long Bill said. “I carried you once and I’ll carry you again, if it comes to that.”

“No you won’t, Bill—you can’t carry me no hundred miles,” Johnny said, but the wind was already howling at their backs, and no one heard him.

Call walked between Matilda and Gus—he was still unsteady on his feet and was swept, at times, by waves of fever that made his vision swirl. Matilda was the only one of the Texans who had not been tied. Captain Salazar had come to like her—from time to time, she consented to play cards with him. He would not fraternize to that extent with the prisoners, and his own men were mostly too young to be good cardplayers. An old bear hunter had taught him rummy—it was mostly rummy that he played with Matilda Jane.

As they were stumbling along, pushed by the cold north wind, Gus happened to look back, a habit he got into after his encounter with the grizzly bear. He could not get Bigfoot’s story about thet man who had been stalked while fishing out of his mind. It was worrisome that bears could be so stealthy.

When he glanced over his shoulder he got a bad start, for something large and brown was hurtling down toward them. Whatever it was was still far away—he could only see a shape, but it was a brown shape, the very color of a bear.

“Captain, get the rifles!” he yelled, in consternation. “There’s a bear after us.”

For a moment, the whole troop believed him—no one could clearly determine what was moving toward them, but something was, and fast. Salazar lined his men up and had them ready, their guns primed.

“I wish you’d let me shoot, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “Your boys are so scared I expect half of them will miss.”

“I expect it, too,” Salazar said. He walked over to the nearest soldier and took his musket. He walked over to Bigfoot, untied his hands, and handed him the musket.

“The last time I handed a Texan a gun, he shot me,” Salazar reminded him. “Please be honorable, Mr. Wallace. Shoot the bear. If we kill it we will have meat enough to make it across the dead man’s walk.”

Just then, Gus saw something that was even more unnerving: the bear leapt high in the air. It seemed to fly for several yards, before coming back to earth.

“Good Lord, it’s flying,” he said.

As he said it, the shape flew again—the whole troop was transfixed, even Bigfoot. He had heard many bear stories, but no one had ever told him that grizzly bears could fly. He squatted and leveled his musket, though the bear—if it was a bear—was still far away.

Some of the young Mexican soldiers became so nervous that they ‘ began firing when the hurtling brown object was still two hundred yards away. Salazar was irritated. The wind whirled dust from the plain high, so that it was hard to see anything clearly.

“Don’t fire until I say fire,” he said. “If you all fire now you will be out of bullets when the bear gets here, and he will eat us all.”

“I’m saving my bullet,” Bigfoot said. “I intend to shoot him right between the eyes—that’s the only sure way to stop a bear.”

Just then, the hurtling brown object collided with a hump of rocks and flew high in the air, above the dust. For the first time Bigfoot saw it clearly and he immediately lowered his rifle. “Boys, old Gomez has got us rattled,” he said. “That ain’t a bear—that’s a tumbleweed.”

Salazar looked disgusted.

“Seven of you shot, and the tumbleweed is still coming,” he said.

“Why, it’s the size of a house,” Gus said. He had never imagined a weed could grow so big. It hurtled by the company, rolling over and over, as fast as a man could run. From time to time it hit a bump or a small rock and sailed into the air. Soon it was a hundred yards to the south, and then it vanished, obscured by the blowing dust.

“Let us have no more talk of bears,” Salazar said, looking at Gus.

They marched late into the night, with only a few bites of food. In San Saba the men had been given gourds, to use as water carriers —some of them had already drunk the last of their water, while others still had a little. The temperature had dropped and all the men longed for a fire, but there was nothing to burn, except the branches of a few thin bushes. The Texans gathered enough sticks to make a small blaze and were about to light it when Salazar stopped them.

“No fires tonight,” he said.

“Why not?” Gus asked. “I’d like to warm my toes.”

“Gomez will see it if he is still following us,” Salazar said.

“Why would he follow us—he’s done got our donkeys and most of our food,” Bigfoot asked.

“He might follow us to kill us,” Salazar replied.

“He could have killed you last night and he didn’t,” Bigfoot said. “Why would he walk another day just to do what he could already have done?”

“Because he is an Apache, Serior,” Salazar said. “He is not like us. He may have gone home—I don’t know. But I want no fires tonight.”

By midnight, the cold had become so intense that the men were forced to huddle together for warmth. Even huddled, they were so cold that several of them ceased to be able to feel their feet. Johnny Carthage could not overcome his dread. He tried to think of the sunlight of south Texas, but all he could think of was the terrible white sleet that had nearly taken his life a few days before. He was squeezed up against Long Bill—he could feel his friend shivering. Long Bill shivered violently, but slept, his mouth open, his breath a cloud of white in the cold night. Johnny began to wish that Bill would wake up. Bill had been his pard—his companero. Bill had risked his life to locate him and bring him out of the terrible sleet storm. Now the dread of the cold was overwhelming him—he wanted Long Bill to sense it and wake up, to talk him out of what he meant to do with the small knife he had just taken out of his pocket. He wanted his oldest and best friend to help him through the night. Johnny Carthage began to tremble even more violently than the man he was huddled against. He trembled so that he could scarcely hold the knife, or raise the blade. He didn’t want to drop the knife. If he did, he might not have the strength to find it in the freezing night. He didn’t want to wake his friend, so tired from the long day’s march; yet, he needed his help and began to cry quietly, in despair. He didn’t want to live, his hope was broken; no more did he want to die, without his friend to help him. There was no sound on all the plain except the breathing of the exhausted men around him. The darkness was spotted with little clouds—the white breath of his companeros. Johnny’s gimpy leg was aching terribly from the cold; his foot twitched, twitched, twitched; though he could not feel his foot he felt the twitching, regular as the ticking of a clock.

“Dern this leg,” he whispered. “Dern this leg.”

Then he opened the knife, and put the blade against his throat— but the blade was so cold that he withdrew it. He began to sob, at the knowledge that he hadn’t the strength to push the cold knife blade into his throat and cut. It meant he would freeze, but he could not do it amid the Rangers, because they would insist on making him go on. They would not accept the fact that he didn’t want to live anymore.

Johnny put the knife to his throat again, but again he withdrew it. The tip made a tiny cut in his neck and the cold seared the cut, like a brand. Johnny quietly moved an inch away from Long Bill, and then another. Slowly, waking no one, he eased out from the midst of the Rangers, a foot at a time. Even when he had slipped beyond the sound of their breathing, he merely scooted over the cold ground, a foot at a time.

Of all the Texans, only Matilda Roberts was awake. At night she had taken to sleeping between the two boys, making Call turn historn back to her so she could warm it. Gus slept on the other side, squeezed up against her as close as he could get. Both boys slept, but Matilda didn’t. She saw Johnny Carthage—he crawled right by her. As he was about to go into the night he felt her gaze, and turned to look at her for a moment. He could only see her outline, not her face; nor could she see him clearly, yet she knew who he was and where he was going. Johnny paused in his crawl. The two of them looked at one another, through the darkness. Matilda opened her mouth, but closed it again, without speaking. Johnny Carthage was beyond her words—but she did reach out and squeeze his arm. She heard him sob; he touched her arm for a moment, before he crawled away. “Oh, Johnny,” she whispered, but she didn’t try to stop him. Since Shadrach’s death she had used her strength for the boys, Gus and Call—one was hurt, and the other was foolish. It would take all her strength, and perhaps more than her strength, to get them across the desert. She could not save them and Johnny Carthage, too—nor could Long Bill save his friend without losing his own chance to live. If the cold didn’t take Johnny, the stony ground would grind at him until it broke him. If he wanted to make his own end, she felt it was wrong to stop him. His chances were slight at best; there was no point in his suffering beyond his strength.

Even so, it was hard to listen to the scraping of his poor leg, as he dragged himself over the hard ground, into the icy night. But the scraping grew faint, and then very faint. Soon she could hear nothing but the breathing of the two boys who slept beside her. Since the day when Caleb Cobb had struck his foot with the rifle barrel, Call had limped almost as badly as Johnny. Probably there were broken bones, somewhere in his foot—but he was young. The broken bones would heal.

Johnny Carthage crawled on until he figured he was almost two hundred yards from camp. He had worn one of his pants legs through and scraped one of his knees on the icy ground. Bigfoot had once told him that freezing men felt a warmth come over them, near the end; when he judged that he was far enough from camp not to be found, even if Long Bill should wake and miss him and come looking, he stopped and sat, shivering violently. He waited for the warmth in which he could sleep and die—he had been cold long enough; he was ready for the warmth, but the warmth didn’t come—only a deeper cold, a cold that seeped inside him and chilled his lungs, his liver, even his heart.

Desperate for the warmth, he opened his little knife again and clutched it tightly, meaning to plunge it into his neck, where the great vein was. But before he could grasp the knife tightly enough in his shivering hands, he looked up and saw a shadow between himself and the starlight. Someone was there, a presence he felt but could not see. Before he could think more about it, Gomez struck. Johnny Carthage finally felt the longed-for warmth—a warm flood, flowing down his chest and onto his freezing hands. For a moment, he was grateful: whoever was there, between him and the cold stars, had taken a hard task off his hands. Then he slipped down and the shadow was astride him, opening his pants. Before Gomez struck again, one-eyed Johnny Carthage had ceased to mind the cold, or to feel the pain of the knife that had severed his privates. Oh, Bill, he thought—then all thoughts ceased.

Gomez wiped his knife on Johnny Carthage’s pants leg, and moved quietly toward the Mexican camp. Long before he got there, he heard the snores of several sleeping men. He had planned to kill the shivering Mexican sentries and take their guns, but when he realized that the large woman was awake, he changed his mind. He did not want the large woman to know he was there. The night before, in the little cave where he rested, he had seen a snake, though it was much too cold for snakes to be moving about; worse, late in the night, he had heard the call of an owl, though he was far out on the malpais, where no owls flew. He knew it must be the large woman who summoned the snake and the old owl to places where they should never be. He knew the large woman must be a witch, for only a witch would be traveling through the malpais with so many men.

Gomez knew that the large woman had been the woman of Tail-Of-The-Bear, and Tail-Of-The-Bear had been a great man, perhaps a shaman. Gomez turned away from the camp at once; he did not want the witch to find out that he was near. If she knew, she might summon the owl again—the buu—and to hear the call of the buu twice meant death.

Gomez skirted the camp and walked several miles, to where he had left his two sons. One of them had found a wolf den that day—they had made a little fire and were cooking the wolf pups they had caught. Gomez wanted to eat one of the young wolves—it would give him cunning, and protect him from the buu and the witch, the large woman who had traveled with Tail-Of-The-Bear.

LONG BILL COLEMAN WAS frantic, when he discovered that Johnny Carthage had left him in the night. He felt guilty for not having watched his friend more closely.

“I expect he just went for a walk, to keep warm,” he said. “I ought to have kept him warmer, but it was hard, without no fire.”

Bigfoot did not suppose that Johnny Carthage had merely walked into the night to keep his feet warm; nor did Captain Salazar believe it. A few hundred yards to the east, they saw four buzzards circling.

“Bill, he went off to die—got tired of this shivering,” Matilda said, before Gus or anyone could comment on the buzzards. It was colder that day than it had been the day before. The whole troop was shivering.

Salazar allowed the Texans to burn their few pitiful sticks, but the blaze was not even sufficient to boil coffee. It died, and the only warmth they had was the warmth of their own breath—they all stood around blowing on their hands. When Long Bill saw the buzzards and realized what they meant, he had to be restrained from running to bury his friend.

“Bill, the buzzards have been at him,” Bigfoot said. “Anyway, we got nothing to bury him with. Gus and me will go and take a look, just to be sure it wasn’t some varmint that froze to death.”

“Yes, go look,” Salazar said. “But hurry. We can’t wait.” When Gus saw the torn, white body of Johnny Carthage he immediately turned his back. Bigfoot, though, shooed the buzzards away and took a closer look. What he saw didn’t please him. Johnny’s throat had been slashed, and his privates cut off. The buzzards hadn’t cut his throat, nor had they castrated him. Bigfoot circled the body, hoping to see a man track—something that would allow him to gauge the strength of their opponents. If several Apaches had been there, that would be one thing. It would mean that none of them could sleep safe until they moved beyond the Apache country. But if Gomez was so confident that he would come to the camp alone, take a horse, kill a man—or several men —then they were up against someone as formidable as Buffalo Hump—someone they probably could not beat.