They shot arrows down on us from that hill. If they’d shot rifles I guess they would have killed most of us.”
“They have at least one gun, though,” Gus then pointed out. “They shot them horses.”
“It wouldn’t matter if we had ten cannons,” Call said. “We couldn’t even see ‘em?how could we hit them? I doubt they’d just stand there watching while we loaded up a cannon and shot at them. They could be halfway to Mexico while we were doing that.”
The Comanches were just specks in the distance by then.
“I have never seen no people like them,” Call said. “I didn’t know what wild Indians were like.
“Those are Comanches,” he added.
Gus didn’t know what his friend meant. Of course they were Comanches. He didn’t know what answer to make, so he said nothing.
Once Buffalo Hump and his men were out of sight, the troop relaxed a little?just as they did, a gun went off.
“Oh God, he done for himself!” Rip Green said.
Zeke Moody had managed to slip Rip’s pistol out of its holster? then he shot himself. The shot splattered Rip’s pants leg with blood.
“Oh God, now look,” Rip said. He stooped and tried to wipe the blood off his pants leg with a handful of sand.
Major Chevallie felt relieved. Travel with the scalped boy would have been slow, and in all likelihood he would have died of infection anyway. Johnny Carthage would be lucky to escape infection himself?Sam had had to cut clean to the bone to get the arrow out. Johnny had yelped loudly while Sam was doing the cutting, but Sam bound the wound well and now Johnny was helping Long Bill scoop out a shallow grave for young Josh.
“Now you’ll have to dig another,” the Major informed them.
“Why, they were friends?let ‘em bunk together in the hereafter,” Bigfoot said. “It’s too rocky out here to be digging many graves.”
“It’s not many?just two,” the Major said, and he stuck to his point. The least a fallen warrior deserved, in his view, was a grave to himself.
When Matilda saw what Zeke had done, she cried. She almost dropped Josh’s body, her big shoulders shook so.
“Matty’s stout,” Shadrach said, in admiration. “She carried that body nearly five hundred yards.”
Matilda sobbed throughout the burying and the little ceremony, which consisted of the Major reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Both boys had visited her several times?she remembered them kindly, for there was a sweetness in boys that didn’t last long, once they became men. Both of them, in her view, deserved better than a shallow grave by a hill beyond the Pecos, a grave that the varmints would not long respect.
“Do you think Buffalo Hump left?” the Major asked Bigfoot. “Or is he just toying with us?”
“They’re gone for now,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t expect they’ll interfere with us again, not unless we’re foolish.”
“Maybe the scalp hunters will kill them,” Long Bill suggested. “Killing Indians is scalp hunters’ work. Kirker and Glanton ought to get busy and do it.”
“I expect we’d best turn back,” the Major said. “We’ve lost two men, two horses, and that mule.”
“And the ammunition,” Shadrach reminded him.
“Yes, I ought to have transferred it,” the Major admitted.
He sighed, looking west. “I guess we’ll have to mark this road another time,” he said, in a tone of regret.
The scouts did not comment.
“Hurrah, we’re going back,” Gus said to Call once the news was announced.
“If they let us, we are,” Call said. He was looking across the plain where the Comanches had gone, thinking about Buffalo Hump.
The land before him, which looked so empty, wasn’t. A people were there who knew the emptiness better than he did; they knew it even better than Bigfoot or Shadrach. They knew it and they claimed it. They were the people of the emptiness.
“I’m glad I seen them,” Call said.
“I ain’t,” Gus said. “Zeke and Josh are dead, and I nearly was.”
“I’m still glad I seen them,” Call said.That day at dusk, as the troop was making a wary passage eastward, they found the old Comanche woman, wandering in the sage. A notch had been cut in her right nostril.
Of the tongueless boy there was no sign. When they asked the old woman what became of him she wailed and pointed north, toward the llano. Black Sam helped her up behind him on his mule, and they rode on, slowly, toward the Pecos.
“WHERE is SANTA FE?” Call asked, when he first heard that an expedition was being got up to capture it. Gus McCrae had just heard the news, and had come running as fast as he could to inform Call so the two of them could be among the first to join.
“They say Caleb Cobb’s leading the troop,” Gus said.
Call was as vague about the name as he had been about the place. Several times, it seemed to him, he had heard people mention a place called Santa Fe, but so far as he could recall, he had not until that moment heard the name Caleb Cobb.
Gus, who had been painting a saloon when the news reached him, was highly excited, but short on particulars.
“Why, everybody’s heard of Caleb Cobb,” he said, though in fact the name was new to him as well.
“No, everybody ain’t, because I ain’t,” Call informed him. “Is he a soldier, or what? I ain’t joining up if I have to work for a soldier again.”
“I think Caleb Cobb was the man who captured old Santa Anna,“Gus said. “I guess sometimes he soldiers and sometimes he don’t. I’ve heard that he fought Indians with Sam Houston himself.”
The last assertion was a pure lie, but it was a lie with a serious purpose, and the purpose was to overcome Woodrow Call’s stubborn skepticism and get him in the mood to join the expedition that would soon set out to capture Santa Fe.
Call had four mules yet to shoe and was not eager for a long palaver. There had been no rangering since the little troop had returned to San Antonio, though he and Gus were still drawing their pay.
Idleness didn’t suit him; from time to time he still lent old Jesus a hand with the horseshoeing. Gus McCrae rarely did anything except solicit whores; in all likelihood it was a pimp named Redmond Dale, owner of San Antonio’s newest saloon, who had talked Gus into doing the painting?no doubt he had offered free services as an inducement. What time Gus didn’t spend in the whorehouses he usually spent in jail. With no work to do he had developed a tendency to drink liquor, and drinking liquor made him argumentative. The day seldom passed without Gus getting into a fight, the usual result being that he would whip three or four sober citizens and be hauled off to jail. Even when he didn’t actually fight, he yelled or shot off his pistol or generally disturbed the peace.
“Anyway, we need to join up as soon as we can,” Gus said. “I think we have to go up to Austin to enlist. I sure don’t want to miss this expedition. Would you take them damn horseshoe nails out of your mouth and talk to me?”
Call had four horseshoe nails in his mouth at the time. To humour his friend he took them out and eased the mule’s hoof back on the ground for a minute.
“I still don’t know where Santa Fe is,” Call said. “I don’t want to join an expedition unless I know where it’s going.”
“I don’t see why not,” Gus said, irked by his friend’s habit of asking too many questions.
“All the Rangers are going,” Gus added. “Long Bill has already left to sign up, and Bob Bascom’s about to leave. Johnny Carthage wants to go bad, but he’s gimpy now?I doubt they’ll take him.”
The wound from the Comanche arrow had not healed well. One-eyed Johnny could still walk, but he was not speedy and would be at a severe disadvantage if he had to run.“I think Santa Fe’s out where we were the first time, only farther,” Call remarked.
“Well, it could be out that way,” Gus allowed. He was embarrassed to admit that he didn’t know much about the place the great expedition was being got up to capture.
“Gus, if it’s farther than we went the first time, we’ll never get there,” Call said. “Even if we do get there,
