“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
