Текст книги "Dead Man's Walk"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

He took a few steps, and stopped. After all, it wouldn’t be night forever, and he had not gone that far from camp. The simplest thing to do would be to wrap up good in his San Antonio scrape and sleep for a few hours. With dawn at his back he could be in camp in a few minutes. If he kept walking he might veer off into the great emptiness and never find his way back. The sensible thing to do was wait. He could yell and hope Woodrow Call responded, but Woodrow had been too dull to move off his guard post; he might be too dull to yell back.

The lightning was coming closer, which offered a sort of solution. He could be patient, mark his course, and move from flash to flash. A few sprinkles of rain wet his face. He could tell from the way the sage smelled that a shower was coming—he could even hear the patter of rain not far to the west. For a moment he squatted, tucking his scrape around him—if it was going to turn wet, he was ready. Then a bold streak of lightning split the sky. For a moment it lit the prairie, bright as day. And yet Gus saw nothing familiar—no river, no campfire, no chaparral bush, no Call.

No sooner had he wrapped his scrape around him and got ready for the rain squall than he was up and walking fast through the sage. He had meant to wait—it was sensible to wait, and yet a feeling had come over him that told him to move. The feeling told him to run, in fact—he was already moving at a rapid trot, thoughhe stopped for a moment to lower the hammer of his pistol. He didn’t intend to shoot off his thumb like young Rip Green. Then he trotted on, just short of a run.

As he trotted, Gus began to realize that he was scared. The feeling that came over him, that brought him to his feet and started him trotting, was fear. It was such an unexpected and unfamiliar feeling that he had not been able to put a name to it, at first. Rarely since early childhood had he been afraid. Creaking boards in the old family barn made him think of ghosts, and he had avoided the barn, even to the point of being stropped for a failure to do the chores, when he was small. Since then, though, he had rarely seen anything that he feared. Once in Arkansas he had come across a bear eating a dead horse and had worried a bit; he was unarmed at the time, and was sensible enough to know that he was no match for a bear. But since he had got his growth, he had not encountered much that put real fear in him—just that Arkansas bear.

What had him breathing short and stumbling now was a sense that somebody was near—somebody he couldn’t see. When he suggested that the wolf might be an Indian, he had just been joshing Call. He had felt restless, and wanted to take a stroll. If he turned up a gold mine, so much the better. He didn’t seriously expect to kill an Indian, though. He had no desire to stumble onto a Comanche Indian, or any other Indian, just at that time. It had merely been something to twit Call about. He had never seen a Comanche Indian and could not work up enough of a picture of one to know what to expect, but he didn’t suppose that a Comanche could be as large as that bear, or as fierce, either.

Now, though, he was driven to trot through the darkness by an overpowering sense that somebody was near, and who could it be but a Comanche Indian? It wasn’t Call—being near Call wouldn’t scare him. Yet he was near somebody—somebody he didn’t want to be near—somebody who meant him harm. Shadrach and Bigfoot claimed to be able to smell Indians, and smell them from a considerable distance, but he didn’t have that ability. All he could smell was the wet sage and the damp desert. It wasn’t because he could smell that he knew somebody was near. It was a feeling, and a feeling that came from a part of him he didn’t even know he had. What that part told him was run, move, get away, even though the night had now divided itself into two parts, the pitch black part and the brilliantly lit part. The brilliantly lit part, of course, was the lightning flashes, which came more frequently and turned the plain so bright that Gus had to blink his eyes. Even then the light stayed, like a line inside his eye, when the plain turned black again, so black that in his running he stumbled into chaparral and almost fell once when he struck a patch of deep sand.

It was just after the sand that the lightning began to strike so close and so constantly that Gus developed a new fear, which was that his gun barrel would draw the lightning and he would be cooked on the spot. There had been some close lightning three days back, and the Rangers, Bigfoot particularly, had told several stories of men who had been cooked by lightning. Sometimes, according to Bigfoot, the lightning even cooked the horse underneath the man.

Gus would have been willing now to risk getting himself and his horse both cooked, if he could only have a horse underneath him, in order to move faster. Just as he was thinking that thought, a great lightning bolt struck not fifty yards away, and in that moment of white brightness Gus saw the somebody he had been fearing: the Indian with a great hump of muscle or gristle between his shoulders, a hump so heavy that the man’s head bent slightly forward as he sat, like a buffalo’s.

Buffalo Hump sat alone, on a robe of some kind—he looked at Gus, with his heavy head bent and his great hump wet from the rain, as if he had been expecting his arrival. He was not more than ten feet away, no farther than the badger had been, and his eyes were like stone.

Buffalo Hump looked at Gus, and then the plain went black. In the blackness Gus ran as he had never run before, right past where the Indian sat. Lightning streaked again but Gus didn’t turn for a second look: he ran. Something tore at his leg as he brushed a thornbush, but he didn’t slow his speed. In the line inside his eyes where the lightning stayed, there was the Comanche now, the great humpbacked Indian, the most feared man on the frontier. Gus had been so close that he could almost have jumped over the man. For all he knew, Buffalo Hump was following, bent on taking his hair. His only hope was speed. With such a hump to carry, the man might not be fast.

Gus forgot everything but running. He wanted to get away from the man with the hump—if he could just run all night maybe theRangers would wake up and come to his aid. He didn’t know whether he was running toward the river or away from it. He didn’t know if Buffalo Hump was following, or how close he might be. He just ran, afraid to stop, afraid to yell. He thought of throwing away his gun in order to get a little more speed, but he didn’t—he wanted something to shoot with, if he were cornered or brought down.

At the guard post behind the chaparral bush, Call alternated between being irritated and being worried. He was convinced his friend, who had no business leaving in the first place, was out on the plain somewhere, hopelessly lost. There was little hope of finding him before daylight, and then it was sure to be a humiliating business. Shadrach was an excellent tracker and could no doubt follow Gus’s trail, but it would cost the troop delay and aggravation.

Major Chevallie might fire Gus—even fire Call, too, for having allowed Gus to wander off. Major Chevallie expected orders to be obeyed, and Call didn’t blame him. He might tolerate some wandering on the part of the scouts—that was their job—but he wouldn’t necessarily tolerate it on the part of a private.

When the rain came there was not much Call could do but hunch over and get wet. The bush was too thorny to crawl under, and he had no coat. The lightning was bright and the thunder loud, but Call didn’t feel fearful, especially. The bright flashes at least allowed him to look around. In one of them he thought he saw a movement; he decided it was the wolf they had heard howling.

It was in another brilliant flash that he saw Gus running. The plain went black again, so black that Call wasn’t sure whether he had seen Gus or imagined him. Gus had been tearing along, running dead out. All Call could do was wait for the next flash—when it came he saw Gus again, closer, and in that flash Call saw something else: the Comanche.

The light died so quickly that Call thought he might have imagined the Indian, too. In the light he had seen the great hump, a mass half as large as the weight of most men; and yet the man was running fast after Gus, and had a lance in his hand. Call fired wildly, in the general direction of the Indian—it was dark again before his gun sounded. He thought the shot might at least distract the man with the hump. In the next flash, though, Buffalo Hump had stopped and thrown the lance—Call just saw it, splitting the rain, as it flew toward Gus, who was still running flat out—running for his life. Call fired again, with his pistol this time. Maybe Gus would hear it and take heart—although that was a faint hope. The thunderclaps were so continuous that he scarcely heard the shot himself.

Call raised his rifle, determined to be ready when the next flash came and lit the prairie. But when the flash did come, the plain was empty. Buffalo Hump was gone. The hairs stood up on Call’s neck when he failed to see the humpbacked chief. The man had just vanished on an open plain. If he moved that fast he could be anywhere. Call backed into the chaparral, mindless of the thorns, and waited. No man, not even a Comanche, could get through a clump of chaparral and attack him from the rear—certainly no man who had such a hump to carry.

Then he remembered the lance in the air, splitting the rain. He didn’t know if it had hit home. If it had, his friend Gus McCrae might be dead. Buffalo Hump might even have run up on him and scalped him, or dragged him off for torture.

The last was such an awful thought that Call couldn’t stay crouched in the thornbush. He waited until the next flash—a fair wait, for the storm was passing on to the east, and the lightning was diminishing—and then headed for where he had last seen Gus. Once the thunder quieted a little more, he meant to fire his pistol. Maybe the Rangers would hear it, if Gus couldn’t. Maybe they would come to his aid in time to stop the humpbacked Comanche from killing Gus, or dragging him off.

Yet as he waited, Call had the feeling that help, if it came, would come too late. Probably Gus was already dead. Call had seen the lance in the air—Buffalo Hump didn’t look like a man who would let fly with a lance just to miss.

When the flash came, not as bright as before, Call saw that the plain was still empty. He began to walk toward the area where he had seen Gus—it was the direction of camp, anyway. He yelled Gus’s name twice, but there was no answer. Again the hair stood up on his neck. Buffalo Hump could be anywhere. He might be crouched behind any sage bush, any clump of chaparral, waiting in the dark for the next unwary Ranger to walk by.

Call didn’t intend to be an unwary Ranger—he meant to take every precaution, but what precaution could you take on an empty plain at night with a dangerous Indian somewhere close? He wishedthat he could have got more instruction from Shadrach or Bigfoot about the best procedure to follow in such situations. They had fought Indians for years—they would know. But so far neither of them had said more than two words to him, and those were mostly comments about horseshoeing or some other chore.

The lightning dimmed and dimmed, as the storm moved east. Call could see no trace of Gus, but of course, between the lightning flashes the plain was pitch dark. Gus could be dead and scalped behind any of the sage bushes or clumps of chaparral.

Call walked back and forth for awhile, hoping Gus would hear him and call out. He decided shooting was unwise—if he shot anymore, Major Chevallie might chide him for wasting the ammunition.

Heartsick, sure that his friend was dead, Call began to trudge back to camp. He felt it was mainly his fault that the tragedy had occurred. He should have fought Gus, if necessary, to keep him at his post. But he hadn’t; Gus had walked off, and now all was lost.

It seemed to Call, as he walked back in dejection, that Gus should just have left him in the blacksmith’s shop. He didn’t know enough to be a Ranger—neither had his friend, and now ignorance had got Gus killed. Call was certain he was dead, too. Gus had a loud voice, louder even than Black Sam’s. If he wasn’t dead, he would be making noise.

Then, just as he was at the lowest ebb of dejection, Call heard the very voice he had supposed he would never hear again: Gus McCrae’s voice, yelling from the camp. Call ran as hard as he could toward the sound—he came running into camp so fast that Long Bill Coleman nearly shot him for a hostile.

Sure enough, though, there was Gus McCrae, alive and with his pants down. A Comanche lance protruded from his hip. The reason he was yelling was because Bigfoot and Shadrach were trying to pull it out.

THE LANCE WAS STUCK so deep in Gus’s hip that Bigfoot and Shadrach together couldn’t pull it out. It was a long, heavy lance—how Gus had managed to run all that way with it dangling from his hip Call couldn’t imagine. Gus kept yelling, as the two men tugged at it. Rip Green tried to steady Gus as the two older men attempted to work the lance out. Rip alone wasn’t strong enough—Bob Bascom had to come and help hold Gus in place.

Shadrach soon grew annoyed with Gus’s yelling, which was loud.

“Shut off your goddamn bellowing,” Shadrach said. “You’re yelling loud enough to call every Indian between here and the Cimarron River.”

“There wasn’t but one Indian,” Call informed them. “He had a big hump on his back. I seen him.”

At that news, the whole camp came to attention. Bigfoot and Shadrach ceased their efforts to extract the lance. Major Chevallie had been peering into the darkness, but his head snapped around when Call mentioned the hump.“You saw Buffalo Hump?” he said.

“He was the man who threw that lance,” Call said. “I saw him in the lightning flash. That was when he threw the lance. I thought he missed.”

“Nope, he didn’t miss,” Bigfoot said. “This is his buffalo lance. I’m surprised he wasted it on a boy.”

“I wish he hadn’t,” Gus said, his voice shaking. “I guess it’s stuck in my hipbone.”

“No, it’s nowhere near your damn hipbone,” Shadrach said. He squatted to take a better look at the lance head—then he waved Bigfoot away, twisted the lance a little, and with a hard yank, pulled it out. Gus fainted—Rip and Bob had loosened their hold for a moment; before they could recover, Gus fell forward on his face. Bob Bascom had looked aside, in order to spit tobacco. He kept so much tobacco in his mouth that he was prone to choking fits in time of action. Rip Green had just glanced at his bedroll; he was suspicious by nature and was always glancing at his bedroll to make sure no one was stealing anything from it. Both Rip and Bob were startled when Gus fell on his face—Call was, too. He had not supposed Gus McCrae would be the type to faint.

But blood was pouring out of Gus’s hip, and there seemed to be blood farther down his leg.

“Here, Sam,” Major Chevallie said, motioning to his cook. “You’re the doctor—tend to this man before he bleeds to death.”

“Need to get him closer to the fire so I can sew him up,” Sam said. He was a small man, about the size of Rip Green; his curly hair was white. Call was uncomfortable with him—he had had little experience of darkies, but he had to admit that the man cooked excellent grub and seemed to be expert in treating boils and other small ailments.

Sam quickly scooped some ash out of the campfire and used it to staunch the flow of blood. He patted ash into the wound until the bleeding stopped; while waiting for it to stop, he threaded a big darning needle.

Matilda walked up about that time, dragging her pallet. Gus’s yells had awakened her, and her mood was shaky. She kicked sand at Long Bill Coleman for no reason at all. The Mexican boy was asleep, but the old woman still sat by the fire, silent and unmoving.

“Sew that boy up before he gets conscious and starts bellowing again,” Shadrach said. “If there’s Indians around, they know where we are. This pup makes too much noise.”

“Why, they can mark our position by the fire—they wouldn’t need the yelling,” Bigfoot said. Gus soon proved to be awake enough to be sensitive to the darning needle. It took Matilda and Bigfoot and Bob Bascom to hold him steady enough that Sam could sew up his long wound.

“Why’d you kick that sand on me?” Long Bill asked Matilda while the sewing was in progress. He was a little hurt by Matilda’s evident scorn.

“Because I felt like kicking sand on a son of a bitch,” Matilda said. “You were the closest.”

“This boy’s lucky,” Sam said. “The lance missed the bone.”

“He might be lucky, but we ain’t,” Major Chevallie said. He was pacing around nervously.

“What I can’t figure out is why Buffalo Hump would be sitting out there by himself,” he added.

“He was sitting on a blanket,” Gus said. Sam had finally quit poking him with the big needle—that and the fact that he was alive made him feel a little better. Besides that, he was back in camp. He felt sure he was going to survive, and wanted to be helpful if he could.

“I ran right past him, that’s why he took after me,” Gus said. “He had a terrible big hump.”

Gus felt that he might want to relax and snooze, but that plan was interrupted by the old Comanche woman, who suddenly began to wail. The sound of her high wailing gave everybody a start.

“What’s wrong with her—now she’s howling,” Long Bill asked.

Shadrach went over to the old woman and spoke with her in Comanche, but she continued to wail. Shadrach waited patiently until she stopped.

“She’s a vision woman,” Shadrach said. “My grandma was a vision woman too. She would let out wails when she had some bad vision, just like this poor old soul.”

Call wanted the old woman to quiet down—her wailing had a bad effect on the whole camp. Her wails were as sad as the sound of the wind as it sighed over the empty flats. He didn’t want to hear such disturbing sounds, and none of the other Rangers did, either.Shadrach still squatted by the old woman, talking to her in her own tongue. The wind blew swirls of fine sand around them.

“Well, what now? What’s she saying?” Major Chevallie asked.

“She says Buffalo Hump is going to cut off her nose,” Shadrach said. “She was one of his father’s wives—I guess she didn’t behave none too well. Her people put her out to die, and Buffalo Hump heard about it. Now he wants to find her and cut off her nose.”

“I’d think he had better things to do,” the Major said. “She’s old, she’ll die. Why bother with her nose?”

“Because she behaved bad to his father,” Shadrach said, a little impatiently. Major Chevallie’s ignorance of Indian habits often annoyed him.

“I don’t like it that he’s out there,” Long Bill said. “Once he cuts this old woman’s nose off he might keep cutting. He might cut a piece or two off all of us, before he stops.”

“Why, if you’re worried, just go kill him, Bill,” Bigfoot said.

“He’s a swift runner, even with that hump,” Gus informed them. “He almost caught me, and I’m fleet.”

Major Chevallie kept pacing back and forth, his pistol cocked.

“Let’s mount up and go,” he said abruptly. “We’re not in a secure position here—I believe it would be best to ride.”

“Now, hold still,” Shadrach insisted. “This is a vision woman talking. Let’s see what else she has to say.”

He went to the fire, poured some coffee in a tin cup, and handed it to the old woman. The Major didn’t like it that Shadrach had ignored his order—but he took it. He sat down by Matilda, who was still in a heavy mood.

“I still don’t see why he would go to so much trouble just to cut off an old woman’s nose,” he muttered, mainly to himself. Bigfoot Wallace heard him, though.

“You ain’t a Comanche,” Bigfoot said. “Comanches expect their wives to stay in the right tent.”

Major Chevallie thought of his own dear wife, Jane. If it had not been for the scrape in Baltimore, he could be home with her right then; they might be nestled together, in a nice feather bed. How long would it be before he could return to their snug stone house in London County? Would he ever return to it, or to his ardent Jane? He felt low, very low. It was too dusty in Texas. Every bite of food he had attempted to eat, all day, had been covered with grit. The large whore beside him was rough; she would never smell as good as his Jane. But Matilda was there, and Jane wasn’t. Matilda was likable, despite being rough; the Major was feeling desperate. The Comanche war chief was within earshot of his camp. A minute’s relief with Matilda would be helpful, but of course it was not a time to suggest to the troop that he was unmilitary. It was clear already that Bigfoot and Shadrach had a low opinion of his leadership. Chevallie was an old name, much respected in the Tidewater, but it meant nothing west of the Pecos. Ability was all that counted, in the West, in such a country, among such men—out West the ability to waltz gracefully did not help a man keep his scalp.

The fact was, he himself had no great opinion of his own military skills. His three weeks at the Point had involved little study, and none that touched on the fine points of warfare with Comanche Indians.

Call went over and sat down by Gus—his friend seemed relaxed, if a little gaunt.

“I seen you in the lightning,” Call said. “I seen he was after you. I shot, but I doubt I hit him. He was after you hard.”

“Yes, and he nearly got me,” Gus said.

“I told you to stay put,” Call reminded him, but in a low voice. He didn’t want the Major to know that Gus had wandered off from his post, although if he hadn’t they might never have known that Buffalo Hump was nearby.

“I didn’t find no gold mine, just a badger and that big Indian,” Gus admitted. “He was just sitting there on a blanket. What was he doing just sitting there with all that lightning striking?”

When Shadrach finished talking to the old Comanche woman, he seemed a little agitated.

“What’s the news, Shad?” Bigfoot asked. He could tell there was some news. Shadrach had his rifle in his hand and he was looking north.

“Bad news,” Shadrach said. “We need to watch our hair for the next few days. If we don’t, we won’t be wearing it.”

“Why, Shad, I always watch my hair,” Bob Bascom said. Ezekiel whooped when he said it, and Josh Corn smiled. The reason for their merriment was that Bob Bascom had almost no hair to watch.He was bald, except for a few sprigs above his ears. Blackie Slidell was almost as bald—he had been heard to remark that any Indian scalping him would be mainly wasting his time.

“Old Buffalo Hump would need a magnifying glass if he was to attempt to scalp either one of us, Bob,” Blackie observed dryly.

“That old woman says a war’s coming,” Shadrach said.

“Well, maybe she is a vision woman,” the Major said. “General Scott has been talking about taking Mexico, I hear.”

“No, not that war,” Shadrach said. “She ain’t talking about no white war. She says the Comanches mean to attack someplace down in Mexico—I guess that would be Chihuahua City.”

“Chihuahua City? Indians?” the Major exclaimed. “It would take a good number of braves to attack a city that size.”

“It might not take that many,” Bigfoot said.

“Why not?” the Major asked.

“Comanches are scary,” Bigfoot said. “One Comanche brave on a lean horse can scare all the white people out of several counties. Fifty Comanches could probably take Mexico City, if they made a good run at it.”

“That old woman ain’t talking about fifty, neither,” Shadrach said. “She’s talking about a passel—hundreds, I reckon.”

“Hundreds?” the Major said, startled. Nobody, as far as he knew, had ever faced a force of hundreds of Comanches. Looking around at his troop—twelve men and one whore—he saw that most of the men were white knuckled with fear as they gripped their rifles. The thought of hundreds of Comanches riding as one force was nothing any commander would care to contemplate.

“That humpbacked man was there alone,” Call said. He rarely spoke unless asked, but this time he thought he ought to remind the Major of what he had seen.

“It felt like fifty or a hundred, though, while he was after me,” Gus said, sitting up.

“You said he was just sitting on a blanket?” Bigfoot asked.

“Yes, just sitting,” Gus said. “He was on a little hill—I guess it was mostly just a hump of sand.”

“Maybe he was waiting for Gomez,” Bigfoot said. “That would explain my dream.”

“No, that’s wild,” Shadrach said. “If he’s got hundreds of warriors coming he wouldn’t need to wait for no Apache.““I’ve dreamt prophecy before,” Bigfoot insisted. “I think he was waiting for Gomez. I expect they mean to take Chihuahua City together and divide up the captives.”

“My Lord, if there’s hundreds of them coming, they’ll hunt us up and hack us all down,” Long Bill said. He had been nursing a sense of grievance. After all, he had ridden off from San Antonio to help find a good road west, not to be hacked to pieces by Comanche Indians.

“There wouldn’t need to be hundreds to take us,” Bigfoot corrected. “Twenty-five would be plenty, and ten or fifteen could probably do the job.”

“Now, that’s a useless comment,” Bob Bascom said, hurt by Bigfoot’s low estimation of the troop’s fighting ability.

“I expect we could handle fifteen,” he added.

“Not unless lightning struck half of them,” Bigfoot said. “I was watching you youngsters take target practice yesterday. Half of you couldn’t hit your foot if your gun barrel was resting on it.”

Shadrach conversed a little more with the old woman. When he finished, she began to wail again. The sound was so irritating that Call felt like putting cotton in his ears, but he had no cotton.

“She don’t know nothing about Gomez,” Shadrach said. “I think your dern dream was off.”

“We’ll see,” Bigfoot said. He didn’t press the issue, not with Shadrach, a man who trusted no opinions except his own.

Gus McCrae got to his feet. He wanted to test his leg, in case he had to run again. He walked slowly over and picked up his rifle. His hip didn’t hurt much, but he felt uneasy in his stomach. When the lance stuck in his hip he saw it rather than felt it. He was even able to hold the shaft of the lance off the ground as he ran. Now, even in the midst of his fellow Rangers, the fear he felt then wouldn’t leave him. He had the urge to hide someplace. Gus had never supposed he would run from any man, yet he felt as if he should still be running. He needed to get farther from Buffalo Hump than he was, and as fast as he could. He just didn’t know where to run.

Matilda thought the tall Tennessee boy looked a little green around the gills. Though she was stiff with Gus when he importuned her, she liked the boy, and winced when the lance was being pulled out. He was a lively boy, brash but not really bad. Once or twice she had even extended him credit—he seemed to need it so,and a minute or less did for him, usually. She could occasionally spare a minute for a brash boy with a line of gab.

“Sit down, Gussie,” she said. “You oughtn’t to be exercising too much just yet.”

“Let him exercise, it might keep that leg from stiffening up,” the Major said. “It’s a good thing that wound bled like it did.”

“Yes, good,” Sam said. “Otherwise he be dying soon.”

“Comanches dip their lances in dog shit,” Bigfoot informed them. “You don’t want to get that much dog inside you, if you can help it. Better to bleed it out. “

“Sit down, Gussie,” Matilda said again. “Sit down by me, unless you don’t like me anymore.”

Gus hobbled over and sat down by Matilda. He was a little surprised that she had been so inviting. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her anymore, it was that he liked her too much; for a moment he had an urge to throw himself into Matilda’s lap and cry. Of course, such an action would be the ruin of him, among the hardened Rangers. Rather than cry, he scooted as close to Matilda’s comforting bulk as he could get without actually sitting in her lap. He gulped a time or two, but managed not to break down and sob. He saw old Shadrach mount his horse and ride off into the darkness. Shadrach said not a word, and no one tried to stop him or ask him where he was going.

“Doesn’t he know that big Comanche with the hump is still out there?” Gus asked. He thought the old man must be completely daft, to ride into the darkness with such an Indian near.

Call, too, was shocked by Shadrach’s departure. Buffalo Hump was out there, and even Shadrach would be no match for him. No one Call knew would be a match for him — not alone; Call felt sure of that, although he had only seen the man for a second, in the flash of a lightning strike.

But Shadrach left, with no one offering him a word of caution. Bigfoot didn’t seem to give Shadrach’s departure a se’cond thought, and Major Chevallie merely frowned a little when he saw the mountain man ride away.

“What now, Major?” Ezekiel Moody asked. It was a question everyone would have liked an answer to, but Major Chevallie ignored the question. He said nothing.

Ezekiel looked at Josh Corn, and Josh Corn looked at Rip Green.Long Bill looked at Bob Bascom, who looked at one-eyed Johnny Carthage.

“Now where would Shad be going, this time of night?” Johnny asked. “It’s no time to be exercising your mount—not if it means leaving the troop, not if you ask me.”

“I didn’t hear Shad ask you, Johnny,” Bigfoot said.

“That’s twice today he’s left, though,” the Major said. “It’s vexing.

Bigfoot walked over to the edge of the camp, lay flat down, and pressed his ear to the ground.

“Is he listening for worms—does he mean to fish?” Gus asked Call, perplexed by Bigfoot’s behaviour.

“No, he’s listening for horses—Comanche horses,” Matilda said. “Shut up and let him listen.”

Bigfoot soon stood up and came back to the fire.

“Nobody’s coming right this minute,” he said. “If there were hundreds of horses on the move, I’d hear them.”

“That don’t mean they won’t show up tomorrow, though,” he added.

“Why tomorrow?” several men asked at once. Tomorrow was only an hour or two away.