Текст книги "Dead Man's Walk"

Автор книги: Larry McMurtry

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“Full moon,” Bigfoot said. “It’s what they call the Comanche moon. They like to raid into Mexico, down this old war trail, when the moon is full. They like that old Comanche moon.”

Major Chevallie knew he had only about an hour in which to decide on a course of action. Of course the old woman might be daft; there might be no plan to raid Chihuahua City and no great war party, hundreds of warriors strong, headed down from the Llano Estacado to terrorize the settlements in Mexico and Texas. It might all simply be the ravings of an old woman who was afraid of having her nose cut off.

But if what the old woman said was true, then the settlements needed to be warned. That many warriors moving south would threaten the whole frontier. All the farms west of the Austin-San Antonio line would be vulnerable—even half a dozen warriors split off from the main bunch could burn homesteads, steal children, and generally wreak havoc.

The devil of it was that they were just at the midpoint of theirexploration, as far from the settlements to the east as they were from the Pass of the North. Striking on west to El Paso might be the safest option for his troop—the war trail ran well east of El Paso. On the other hand, Buffalo Hump already knew they were there, and knew he was only up against a few men. If he had a large force at his disposal, he might pursue them simply for his pleasure. He no doubt knew that the two scalp hunters were with them. Scalping a scalp hunter was a pursuit that would interest any Indian, Comanche or Apache.

Turning east would mean the end of their mission—and they were only a week or two from completing it—and would also take them directly across the path of the raiders, if there were raiders. They would have to depend on speed and luck, if they turned east.

What was certain was that a decision had to be made, and made soon. He had no shackles on his men—Rangers mostly served because they wanted to; if they stopped wanting to, they might all do what Shadrach had just done. They might just ride off. The youngsters, Call and McCrae, would stay, of course. They were too green to strike out for themselves. But the more experienced men were unlikely to sit around and wait for his decision much past sunup. The sight of the buffalo lance sticking out of Augustus McCrae’s hip was vivid in their minds. They wouldn’t be inclined to play cards, or solicit Matilda, or shoot at cactus pods, not with a big war party swooping down the plains toward them.

The Major sighed. Going to jail in Baltimore was beginning to look like it might have some advantages. He walked over to Bigfoot —the tall scout was idly chewing on a chaparral twig.

“That old woman’s blind,” the Major said. “Do you think she was right about the raiding party? Maybe Shadrach misunderstood her about the figures. Maybe she was talking about some raid that took place thirty years ago.”

Bigfoot spat out the twig. “Maybe,” he said. “But maybe not.”

Bigfoot was thinking about how lucky the two young Rangers were—young Gus particularly. To walk right up on Buffalo Hump and live to tell about it was luck not many men could claim. Even to have seen the humpbacked chief was more than many experienced men could claim. He himself had glimpsed Buffalo Hump once, in a sleet storm near the Clear Fork of the Brazos, several years earlier. He had stepped out of a little post-oak thicket and looked up to see the humpbacked chief aiming an arrow at him. Just as Buffalo Hump loosed the arrow, Bigfoot stepped on an ice-glazed root and lost his footing. The arrow glanced off the bowie knife stuck in his belt. He rolled and brought his rifle up, but by the time he did, the Comanche was gone. That night, afraid to make a fire for fear Buffalo Hump would find him, he almost froze. The large feet that produced his nickname turned as numb as stone.

Now the Major was stumping about, trying to convince himself that Shadrach and the old Comanche woman were wrong about the raiding party. The men were scared, and with good reason; the Major had still not been able to think of an order to give.

“Damn it, I hate to double back,” the Major said. “I was aiming to wet my whistle in El Paso.”

He mounted and walked his sorrel slowly around the camp for a few minutes—the horse was likely to crow-hop on nippy mornings. Shadrach came back while he was riding slowly around. Settling his horse gave the Major time to think, and time, also, to ease his head a little. He was prone to violent headaches, and had suffered one most of the night. But the sun was just rising. It looked to be a fine morning; his spirits improved and he decided to go on west. Turning back didn’t jibe with his ambitions. If he found a clear route to El Paso, he might be made a colonel, or a general even.

“Let’s go, boys—it’s west,” he said, riding back to the campfire. “We were sent to find a road, so let’s go find it.”

The Rangers had survived a terrifying night. As soon as they mounted, warmed by the sun, many of them got sleepy and nodded in their saddles. Gus’s wounded hip was paining him. Walking wasn’t easy, but riding was hard, too. His black nag had a stiff trot. He kept glancing across the sage flats, expecting to see Buffalo Hump rise up from behind a sage bush.

The scalp hunters, Kirker and Glanton, rode half a mile with the troop, and then turned their horses.

“Ain’t you coming, boys?” Long Bill asked.

The scalp hunters didn’t answer. Once the pack mules passed, they rode toward Mexico.

“THERE AIN’T MANY SOLDIERS that know what they’re doing, are there, Shad?” Bigfoot asked. “This major sure don’t.”

“I doubt he’s a major, or even a soldier,” Shadrach said. “I expect he just stole a uniform.”

They were riding west through an area so dry that even the sage had almost played out.

Bigfoot suspected Shadrach was right. Probably Major Chevallie had just stolen a uniform. Texas was the sort of place where people could simply name themselves something and then start being whatever they happened to name. Then they could start acquiring the skills of their new profession—or not acquiring them, as the case might be.

“Well, I ain’t a soldier boy, neither,” Shadrach said.

“Was you ever a soldier?” Bigfoot asked. He was looking up at a crag, or a little hump of mountain, a few miles to the north. In the clear, dry air, he thought he saw a spot of white on the mountain,which was puzzling. What could be white on a mountain far west of the Pecos?

Shadrach ignored Bigfoot’s question—he didn’t answer questions about his past.

“See that white speck, up on that hill?” Bigfoot asked.

Shadrach looked, but saw nothing. Bigfoot was singular for the force of his vision, which was one reason he was sought after as a scout. He was not careful or meticulous—not by Shadrach’s standards—but there was no denying that he could see a long way.

“I swear, I think it’s mountain goat,” Bigfoot said. “I never heard of mountain goat in Texas, but there it is, and it’s white.”

He immediately forgot his vexation with the Major in his excitement at spotting what he was now sure must be a mountain goat— a creature he had heard of but never previously seen.

After a little more looking he thought he spotted a second goat, not far from the first one.

“Look, boys, it’s mountain goats,” he informed the startled Rangers, most of whom were straggling along, half asleep.

At Bigfoot’s cry, excitement instantly flashed through the troop. Rangers with weak visions, such as one-eyed Johnny Carthage or little Rip Green, could barely see the mountain, much less the goats, but that didn’t weaken their excitement. Within a minute the whole troop was racing toward the humpy mountain, where the two goats, invisible to everyone but Bigfoot, were thought to be grazing. Only Matilda and Black Sam resisted the impulse to race wildly off. They continued at a steady pace. The old Comanche woman and the tongueless boy followed on a pack mule.

Gus and Call were racing along with the rest of the troop, their horses running flat out through the thin sage. Gus forgot the throb of his wounded hip in the excitement of the race.

“What do they think they’re going to do, Sam, fly up that mountain?” Matilda asked. From the level plain the sides of the mountain where the goats were seemed far too steep for horses to climb.

Sam was wishing Texas wasn’t so big and open—you could look and look, as far as you could see, and there would be nothing to give’you encouragement. He had been in jail for dropping a watermelon, when Bigfoot happened to get locked up. He had picked a watermelon off a stall and thumped it, to see if it was ripe; but then he dropped it and it burst on the cobblestones. The merchant demanded ten cents for his burst melon, but Sam had only three cents. He offered to work off the difference, but the merchant had him arrested instead. The cook in the San Antonio jail got so drunk that he let a wagon run over his foot and crush it, making him too sick to cook. Sam was offered his job and took it— he had known how to cook since he was six. Bigfoot liked the grub so much that he suggested Sam to Major Chevallie, who promptly paid the debt of seven cents and took Sam with him.

Now here he was, in the biggest country he had ever seen, with a horizon so distant that his eyes didn’t want to seek it, and a sun so bright that he could only tolerate it by pulling the brim of his old cap down over his eyes; he was riding along with a whore after a bunch of irritable white men who had decided to chase goats. At least the whore was friendly, even if she did eat snapping turtle for breakfast.

The Rangers, young Gus in the lead, had raced to the foot of the mountain, only to discover at close range what Matilda had discerned at a distance: the little mountain was much too steep for horses, and perhaps even too steep for men. Now that they were directly underneath the crag they couldn’t see the goats, either; they were hidden by rocks and boulders, somewhere above them. Also, their horses were winded from the chase; the mountain that in the clear air had looked so close had actually been several miles away. Many of the horses—skinny nags, mostly—were stumbling and shaking by the time the Rangers dismounted.

Call had never seen a mountain before, although of course he was familiar with hills. This mountain went straight up—if you could get on top of it, you wouldn’t be very far from the sky. But they weren’t at the top of it; they were at the bottom, near several good-sized boulders that had toppled off at some point and rolled out onto the plain.

Major Chevallie, like most of his men, had enjoyed the wild race immensely. After all the worry and indecision it was a relief just to race a horse at top speed over the plain. Besides, if they could bring down a mountain goat or two there would be meat for the pot. He had often hunted in Virginia—deer mostly, bear occasionally, and of course turkeys and geese—but he had never been in sight of a Western mountain goat and was anxious to get in a shot before someone beat him to the game. Several of the men had already grabbed their rifles and were ready to shoot.

Josh Corn got off his horse and vomited, to the general amusement. Josh had a delicate constitution; he could never ride fast for any length of time without losing his breakfast—it was an impediment to what he hoped would be a fine career in the Rangers.

“Boys, let’s climb,” Bigfoot said. “These goats ain’t likely to fall off the hill.”

Long Bill Coleman was the pessimist in the crowd. He was too nearsighted to have seen the goats—in fact, he could not see far up the mountain at all. His horse was in better shape than most because of his lack of confidence in the hunt. He had held the pony to a lope while the others were running flat out. Unlike the rest of the command, Long Bill had not forgotten that there were Comanches in the area. He was more interested in seeing that he had a mount fresh enough to carry him away from Comanches than he was in shooting goats. The latter, in his experience, were hard to chew anyway—worse than hard, if the goat happened to be an old billy.

Matilda and Black Sam came trotting up to the base of the cliff, where the hunting party was assembling itself. The only one to venture up the cliff was young McCrae, who had climbed some thirty yards up when his wounded leg gave out suddenly.

“Look out, he’s falling,” Bob Bascom said.

Call felt embarrassed, for indeed his friend was falling, or rather rolling, down the steep slope he had just climbed up. Gus tried to grab for a little bush to check his descent, but he missed and rolled all the way down, ending up beneath Major Chevallie’s horse, which abruptly began to pitch. The Major had dropped his reins in order to adjust the sights on his rifle. To his intense annoyance, the horse suddenly bolted and went dashing across the plain to the west.

“Now look, you young fool, who told you to climb?” the Major exploded. “Now you’ve run off my horse!”

Gus McCrae was so embarrassed he couldn’t speak. One minute he had been climbing fine, the next minute he was rolling. Call was just as embarrassed. The Major was red in the face with anger. In all likelihood he was about to fire Gus on the spot.

There was a funny side to the spectacle, though—the sight ofGus rolling over and over set many of the Rangers to slapping their thighs and laughing. Matilda was cackling, and even Sam chuckled. Call was on the point of laughing too, but restrained himself out of consideration for his friend. Matilda laughed so loudly that Tom, her horse, usually a stolid animal, began to hop around and act as if he might throw her.

“Dern,” Gus said, so stricken with embarrassment that he could not think of another word to say. Though he had rolled all the way down the hill, his rifle had only rolled partway. It was lodged against a rock, twenty yards above them.

“Get mounted, you damn scamp, and go bring my horse back, before he runs himself out of sight,” the Major commanded. “You can get that rifle when you come back.”

Several Rangers, Ezekiel Moody among them, were watching the horse run off—all of them were in a high state of hilarity. Rip Green was laughing so hard he could scarcely stand up. Everyone except the Major and Gus were enjoying the little moment of comic relief when, suddenly, they saw the Major’s horse go down.

“Prairie-dog hole. I hope his leg’s not broken,” Johnny Carthage said. Before he could even finish saying it the sound of a shot echoed off the mountain behind them.

“No prairie-dog hole, that horse was shot,” Bigfoot said.

Shadrach immediately led his horse behind one of the larger boulders.

“My God, now what?” the Major said. All he had taken off his saddle was the rifle itself—his ammunition and all his kit were with the fallen horse.

No one said a word. The plain before them looked as empty as it had when they had all come racing across it. There was no sign of anyone. Two hawks circled in the sky. The fallen horse did not rise again.

The Rangers, all of them ready to pop off a few shots at some mountain goats, were caught in disarray. Young Josh Corn, having just emptied his stomach, found that he needed to empty his bowels too, and walked down the slope some thirty yards to a little bunch of sage bushes; most of the Rangers had no qualms about answering calls of nature in full view of a crowd, but Josh liked a little privacy. He had just undone his britches when Gus rolled down the hill. But his call was urgent; he was squatting down amid the sage bushes when the Major’s horse bolted. He heard the shot that killed the horse, but supposed it was only some Ranger, popping off a long shot at one of the goats. For a moment his cramping bowels occupied all his attention. Ever since gulping a bellyful of Pecos water he had been afflicted with cramps of such severity that from time to time he was forced to dismount and pour out fluids so alkaline that they turned white in the sun.

Josh kept squatting, emptying himself of more Pecos salts. He was in no rush to get back to the crowd—the cramps were still bad, so bad that he could only have walked bending over, which would have made him an object of derision to his fellows. Besides, he could tell from looking at the cliff that he was too weak to make it up very far. Unless he was lucky, someone else would have to shoot the goats.

Josh had just reached over to strip a few sage leaves to wipe himself with when he saw a movement in the sage some fifteen yards away. All he could see was the back of an animal; he thought it must be a pig, moving through the thickest part of the little patch of sage and chaparral. Josh reached for his pistol. The pig would come in sight in just a moment, and he meant to empty his pistol into it. The other Rangers could go scampering up the mountain to shoot at goats if they wanted to—he would be the one bringing home meat: pig meat. They had feasted on several javelinas on the trip from San Antonio. Some had been tough, others succulent. When there was time Sam liked to bury the whole pig, head, hide, and all, overnight, with coals heaped on it. By morning the pig would be plenty tender; Sam would dig it up and the Rangers would enjoy a fine meal.

Buffalo Hump had been watching the boy. When the young Ranger started to reach for his pistol, Buffalo Hump rose to his knees and fired an arrow just above the tops of the sage: Josh Corn saw him only for a split second before the arrow cut through his throat and severed his windpipe. Josh dropped his pistol and managed to get a hand on the arrow, but he fell sideways as he grasped it and didn’t feel the knife that finished cutting his throat. Buffalo Hump dragged the quivering body behind him as he retreated through the sage. Kicking Wolf had just shot the Major’s horse; all the Rangers were looking across the plain. They had forgotten the boy who was emptying his bowels amid the sage.Buffalo Hump had his horse staked in a shallow gully. As soon as he got the dead boy into the gully he stripped him, cut off his privates, and threw him on the back of his horse. A curtain of blood from the cut throat covered the boy’s torso. Buffalo Hump mounted, but kept low. He held the streaming corpse across the horse’s rump with one hand. He waited, looking to see if the Rangers were inclined to mount and go investigate the sudden death of the Major’s horse. He had watched the Rangers closely the day of the sandstorm and felt he knew what the capability of the little force was. The only man he had to watch was old Shadrach, known to the Comanches as Tail-of-the-Bear. The long rifle of Tail-of-the-Bear had to be respected. The old man seldom missed. Bigfoot Wallace was quick and strong, but no shot; Buffalo Hump regretted not having killed him the day of the great ice storm on the Clear Fork of the Brazos. The fat Major was a good shot with a pistol, but seldom used the rifle.

Buffalo Hump waited, while the blood from Josh Corn’s corpse ran down his horse’s rear legs and soaked his flanks. In their haste to kill mountain goats—in fact, two Comanche boys with goat skins over their shoulders—the Rangers had foolishly run their horses down. In their eagerness the Rangers had also outrun the old woman and the tongueless boy. He himself had already caught the old woman and notched her nose, to pay back the insult she had given his father. The tongueless boy he had given to Kicking Wolf, who would sell him as a slave. There had been much ammunition on the pack mule, too—the Rangers would soon be out of bullets, if they started shooting. He had slipped into the gully merely to watch the white men at close range, but then the careless young Ranger walked into the sage to empty his bowels. Taking him had been easier than snaring a prairie dog, or killing a turkey.

Once he was satisfied that the whites were not going as a troop to find the killer of the Major’s horse, Buffalo Hump burst out of the gully. He yelled his war cry as loudly as he could and raced directly in front of the whites, still holding the bloody corpse across the rump of his horse. He saw a bullet kick the dust, well short of where he rode. Old Tail-of-the-Bear was shooting low. Even so, Buffalo Hump slid to the offside of his mount, one hand gripping the mane, one leg hooked over the horse. The old man would keep shooting and he might not always shoot low.Then, in plain sight of the Rangers, Buffalo Hump regained his seat, took the corpse of Josh Corn by one foot, and flung it high in the air. Then he whirled to face the whites for a few seconds, screaming his defiance. When he saw bullets kicking dust at his horse’s feet, he turned and rode slowly out of range.

At the base of the steep mountain, the Rangers were stunned, and in disarray.

“Where’s that old woman?” the Major asked. He remembered suddenly that in their haste to get to the mountain they had run off and left the pack mule that was carrying the old woman and the boy; he remembered, too, that most of their ammunition was on that mule.

The Major looked around and saw that no one had even heard his question. All the Rangers had scrambled to take cover behind the few boulders or the scarce bushes. Gus and Call were huddled behind a rock, but it wasn’t really a boulder and didn’t hide them very well. Both of them looked around for a bigger rock, but all the bigger rocks had Rangers huddled behind them.

The Major himself got behind the other pack mule, the only cover available.

The cry that Buffalo Hump yelled as he raced across the desert was far worse, in Call’s view, than the wailing of the old Comanche woman. Buffalo Hump’s war cry throbbed with hatred, terrible hatred. When the Comanche whirled to face them and flung a naked white body streaked with blood up in the air, both boys were shocked.

“Why, he’s kilt somebody,” Gus said in a shaking tone.

Call was more shocked by how bloody the corpse was. Whoever it was—and he could see that it was a white man—had poured out a terrible lot of blood.

“Where’s young Josh?” Bigfoot asked—he had a bad feeling, suddenly. “I don’t see young Josh anywhere.”

Ezekiel Moody gave a start—he and Josh Corn were best friends. They had joined up with the Rangers on a whim. Zeke looked around at the various Rangers, crouched behind such cover as they could get. He saw no sign of his friend.

“Why, he was right here,” Zeke said, standing up. “I think he just walked off to take a shit—he’s been having the runs.”

“Foolish,” the Major said. He couldn’t spot the boy, either, and got a weak feeling suddenly in his gut.“He’s been poorly in his belly since he drank that alky water,” Zeke protested. He was sure Josh wasn’t doing anything wrong.

“I wasn’t talking about Josh when I said it was foolish,” the Major said. He had been talking about himself. One glimpse of a mountain goat—Bigfoot’s glimpse at that—had encouraged them to make a wild charge and exhaust their horses. The thought of a hunt had been something to break the monotony of plodding on west. Well, there was no monotony now: the Comanches had really broken it.

Now they were backed against a cliff, his horse was dead, and possibly a boy, too.

“I think that was Josh he pitched up in the air,” Bigfoot said. “I think that sneaking devil caught him.”

“No, it can’t be Josh!” Zeke said, suddenly very distraught. “Josh just went over in them bushes to take a shit.”

“I think he caught him, Zeke,” Bigfoot said, in a kindly tone. He knew the boys were friends.

“Oh no, all that blood,” Zeke said. Before anyone could stop him he jumped on his horse and went riding off toward the spot where Buffalo Hump had thrown the body.

“Hell, where’s that pup going?” Shadrach said. He came walking up, disgusted with himself for having been tricked into such a situation. He hadn’t expected to hit Buffalo Hump when he shot, unless he was lucky, and he didn’t intend to waste any more bullets in the hope of being lucky. He might need every bullet—likely would.

Just as he was walking up to the group, he thought he saw movement—the movement had been an arrow, which thudded into Bigfoot’s horse. The horse squealed and reared. The arrow had come from above—from the mountain.

“They’re above us!” Shadrach yelled. “Get them horses out of range!”

“Oh, damn it, it wasn’t goats, it was Comanches!” Bigfoot said, mortified that he had been so easily taken in. He began to drag his wounded horse farther from the hill. Arrows began to fly off the mountain, though no one could spot the Indians who were shooting them. Several Rangers shot at the mountain, to no effect. Three horses were hit, and one-eyed Johnny Carthage got an arrow in his upper leg. Call had an arrow just glance off his elbow—he knew he was lucky. The horses were in a panic—he had no time to think about anything except hanging on to his mount.The Rangers all retreated toward the patch of sage bush where Josh Corn had been taken. It was Call, dragging his rearing horse by the bridle, who spotted the bloody patch of ground where Josh had been killed. Call knew it must be Josh’s blood because the shit on the ground was white—his own had mostly been white, since crossing the Pecos.

“Look,” he said to Gus, who was just behind him.

At the sight of all the fresh blood, the strength suddenly drained out of Gus. He dropped to his knees and began to vomit, letting go of his horse’s reins in the process. The horse had an arrow sticking out of its haunch and was jumpy; Call just managed to catch a rein and keep the horse from bolting. Long Bill and Rip Green were shooting at the Comanches on the hill, although they couldn’t see their targets.

“Hold off shooting, you idiots,” Bigfoot yelled. “You ain’t going to hit an Indian a thousand feet up a mountain!”

Bigfoot felt very chagrined. He knew he ought to have been able to tell a goatskin with a Comanche boy under it from a living goat, and he could have if he had just had the patience to ride a little closer and observe the goats as they grazed. His lack of patience had led the Rangers into a trap. Of course, he hadn’t expected the pell-mell rush to shoot goats, but he should have expected it: most Rangers would ride half a day to shoot any game, much less unusual game such as mountain goats.

Now one man was dead, several horses were hurt, a Ranger had an arrow in his leg, Zeke Moody had just foolishly ridden off, and no one had any idea how many Indians they faced. There were several on the mountain and at least two on the plain, one of them Buffalo Hump, no mean opponent. But there could be forty, or even more than forty. In his hurry to get to the mountain he had paid no attention to signs. At least Matilda and Sam had not been cut off. The fact that they had survived probably meant they weren’t dealing with a large party. The loss of the ammunition that was on the other pack mule was a grievous loss, though.

The next worry was Ezekiel Moody, who was still loping off to locate the body of his friend. Bigfoot knew that Zeke would soon be dead or captured, unless he was very lucky.

“Damn that boy, they’ll take him for sure,” the Major said. All the Rangers, plus Matilda and Sam, were huddled in the little patch of sage. Shadrach saw the gully where Buffalo Hump had tethered his horse and found the bloody trail he had made when he dragged Josh Corn’s body. Gus McCrae had the dry heaves. He could not stop retching. The sight of the Indian with the great hump reminded him of his own terrified flight; the smell of Josh Corn’s blood caused his stomach to turn over and over, like a churn. Gus knew that Buffalo Hump had almost caught him—the sight of Josh’s blood-streaked body showed him clearly what his fate would have been had the lance that struck his hip been thrown a little more accurately. A yard or so difference in the footrace, and he would have been as dead as Josh.

Gus finally got to his feet and stumbled a little distance from the blood; he needed to steady himself so he could shoot if the Comanches launched an attack.

Major Chevallie felt that he had decided foolishly—he should have followed his first instinct and headed east. More and more he regretted not taking his chances with the Baltimore judge.

Now he was caught in an exposed place, with only a shallow gully for cover and an unknown number of savages in opposition. Their best hope lay in the skills of the two scouts. Shadrach was calm, if annoyed, and Bigfoot was flustered, no doubt because he knew he was responsible for getting them into such a fix. His superior eyesight had not been superior enough to detect the trick and prevent the race.

The chaos involved in fighting such Indians bothered Randall Chevallie more than anything. In Virginia or even Pennsylvania, if quarrels arose, a man usually knew who he was fighting and how to proceed. But in the West, with a few puny men caught between vast horizons, it was different. The Indians always knew the country better than the white men; they knew how to use it, to hide in it, to survive in it in places where a white man would have no chance. No man in Virginia would ride around with a naked, bloody corpse bouncing around on the rump of his horse. No one in Virginia or Pennsylvania would yell as Buffalo Hump had yelled.

There was another shot from the hidden rifleman on the plain, and Zeke Moody’s horse went down.

“I feared it, they’ll get him now, the young fool,” Bigfoot said.

Zeke was not hurt—he had heard no shot, and supposed his horse had merely stumbled. But the horse didn’t get up—in a moment Zeke realized that the horse was dead. At once he turned, and began to run toward the mountain and the Rangers. But Zeke had scarcely run ten yards before Buffalo Hump loomed behind him, riding a horse whose sides were bloody with Josh Corn’s blood.

“We better go help him,” Call said, but old Shadrach grabbed his arm before he could move.

“All this damn helping’s got to stop,” Shadrach said. “We don’t know how many of them are out there. If we don’t stay together there won’t be a man of us left.”