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. “
