Caleb put all the ammunition in the one wagon and told the men to keep only such gear as they could carry on their horses. That night they ate catfish?the river was low and some of the fish were trapped in shallow ponds. The men sharpened willow sticks into crude spears. More than fifty sizable fish were taken, cooked, and devoured, and yet the men went to bed unsatisfied.
“Eating fish is like eating air,” Jimmy Tweed observed. “It goes in but it don’t fill you up.”
Once they passed through the Narrows the great plain spread west before them. Though they had been on the prairie for weeks, none of them were prepared for the way the sky and the earth seemed to widen, once they rose onto the Llano Estacado. After a day or two on the llano the meaning of distance seemed changed. The great plain, silent and endless, became the world. In relation to the plain, they felt like ants. The smaller world of towns andcreeks and clumps of forest seemed difficult to remember. At night on the llano, with the sky a star-strewn plain of darkness overhead, Gus tried to keep Clara in mind, but the thought that he had fallen in love with a girl, in a dusty little general store in Austin, had come to seem far away and insubstantial, like the dust motes that had floated down the sunbeams in the store. The girl and the store had been for the day?the great plain was forever.
The whole troop was dismayed by the stretch of empty land ahead. If the Indians fell upon them when they were on the llano, what chance could they have?
Bigfoot had been made chief of scouts. He took Gus and Call with him when he rode out every day. Gus he took mainly for his eyesight. It was generally acknowledged that Gus could see farther and more accurately than anyone in the troop. Call he took for his steadiness; Call didn’t flinch from trouble.
On their third day on the plain, they saw that there was a difference in the horizon ahead. None of them, though, could puzzle the difference out. The clouds seemed closer to the surface of the ground. Gus was the first to note something strange: not far ahead, a hawk had dived at a rabbit or a quail, and yet the hawk didn’t swoop on its prey and lift it. The hawk kept going, as if it had dived into a hole.
Ten minutes later they came to the lip of the Palo Duro Canyon, and the mystery was explained. The hawk hadn’t dived into a hole; it had dived into the canyon, which looked to be several miles across, and so many miles long that they couldn’t see the western end of it. Hundreds of feet below them buffalo were feeding in long grass.
“Hurrah, we found the bufs,” Gus said. “Let’s climb down and shoot some?maybe the Colonel will promote us.”
“He won’t, because you’ll break your neck going down, and even if you don’t you’ll never get back up, not carrying no buffalo meat,” Bigfoot said.
“I’ve heard about this canyon,” he said, a little later. “I just had no idea we were close by.”
He sent Call racing back to inform the company?he and Gus stayed, to explore the canyon wall and see if there was a way down. The sight of the grazing buffalo reminded him that he was hungryfor meat?mush and Red River catfish didn’t fill you like buffalo ribs.
While loping southeast toward the camp they had just left not long before, Call’s horse suddenly jumped sideways, so violently that Call lost his seat and was thrown high and hard. He managed to hang on to his bridle rein, but he landed on his head and shoulders so hard that his vision blurred for a moment. As it cleared he saw something white, nearby. In a moment, he realized that the white thing that had spooked his horse was the body of a man. At first he thought it might be one of the Rangers, out for a ride or a hunt. The man had been shot, scalped, stripped, and mutilated. Someone had hacked into his chest cavity and taken out his vitals. Call looked closely at the face, which was the face of a stranger. He didn’t think it belonged to anyone in the troop. The man had not a stitch of clothes on. There was no way to identify him. Call felt his neck, which was cold.
Even so, his killer or killers might be close by. Call drew his pistol, just in case, and mounted cautiously. Just as he did he saw movement out of the corner of his eye: three Comanches and their horses seemed to rise up, out of the bare earth, only a hundred yards away. Call spurred his horse, and bent low as she raced. He knew his only chance was to run. To his relief, Buffalo Hump was not one of his pursuers. The troop was probably not more than five miles back, and he was on Betsy, a fleet sorrel mare. Betsy was one of the fastest horses in camp, and her wind was excellent. Yet before he had been running a minute, Call realized that the Comanches were gaining. Their horses were no faster than Betsy, but they knew the land better?it was the same thing he had felt west of the Pecos. They took advantage of every roll and dip. The lead warrior had a bow and arrow, and he was closing. To his left Call spotted something he had seen on the way up: a large prairie-dog town. Without hesitation he pointed Betsy toward it. It was a risk?the mare might step in one of the holes, in which case it would all be over, but it was a risk for the Comanches, too. Maybe they would slow down ?he himself had no intention of slowing. If luck was with him he might race through the town and gain a few yards. He had to try it.
At the approach of the racing mare, prairie dogs throughout the town whistled and darted into their holes. Betsy kicked up dust from the edge of more than one hole, but she wove through the town without slowing. Even so, Call didn’t gain much. The Comanches, too, avoided the holes. Just as he cleared the prairie-dog town, Call felt something nudge his arm and looked down to see an arrow sticking in his left arm, just above the elbow. He had not felt the arrow go in, and had no time to pay attention to it. He spurred Betsy, urging her to even more speed, and seemed, for the space of a mile, to gain a little on the Indians. No more arrows flew. Yet when he dared glance back, he saw that he wasn’t gaining. The Comanches were racing abreast, and they were still almost within arrow range.
Call turned and fired his pistol at them once, but the shot had no effect. Now he was racing along the edge of a little bluff some fifteen feet high?ahead, the bluff gradually sloped off, but Call couldn’t wait for the slope. He put Betsy over the edge; she just managed to keep her feet when she hit, and he just managed to keep his seat. At once he heard a buzzing. Betsy began to jump and dance. Call looked around, and saw rattlesnakes everywhere. He had jumped to the edge of a den. It seemed to him that at least a hundred snakes surrounded him?they had been sunning themselves on the rocky slope: the abrupt arrival of a horse and rider startled them. Now they were buzzing in chorus. A shot came from above, but it zinged off a rock. Call put spurs to Betsy again?he couldn’t worry about the snakes?he would be dead anyway, if he didn’t run.
Seeing the snakes, the Comanches chose to lose ground and not risk the jump. But they were racing along a short decline and would soon be trying to overtake him. When he ran over the next ridge Call saw the troop?there they were, but they still seemed miles away, and the Comanches had returned to the pursuit. They were a hundred yards back, but he knew they would close with him before he could make the troop, unless he was very lucky. They had fanned out now. Two were trying to flank him on his right, while the third was directly behind him. Betsy was running flat out: so far her wind had held. Call debated the wisdom of shooting off his pistol, in the hope that someone in the troop would hear it and rush to his aid. It was a point of tactics he had not thought out in advance. If he fired, he would soon have an empty pistol.
He kept the pistol ready, but didn’t fire. He thought he could kill one Indian, anyway, if there was a close fight. Perhaps he would wound another. If the third man got him, at least he would have made a strong struggle.
Then he heard rifle shots from just ahead of him, where two or three trees bordered a little stream. A doe came bounding through the trees, so close that Betsy almost collided with it. Call skirted the spring and saw Long Bill Coleman ahead?he had been chasing the doe. He had shot once and was just reloading. He was startled to see Call, but even more startled to see the Comanches. Although the odds had altered, the Comanches were still coming.
“Oh, boy, where’s that damn Blackie when we need him?” Long Bill said, wheeling his horse. “He rode out with me but he thought the doe was too puny to bother about.”
An arrow dropped between them, and then two gunshots came from behind, one of which nicked Call’s hat brim. They raced on, hoping someone in the troop would hear the shooting and respond?it was awhile before they realized the Comanches were no longer chasing them. When they pulled up and looked back, they saw that the three Comanches, having missed the scalps, had taken the small doe instead. One of them had just slung the carcass onto his horse.
“Oh boy, I’m winded,” Long Bill said. “I was just trying to kill a little meat. I sure wasn’t looking for no Indian fight.”
Call remembered that Gus and Bigfoot were alone, at the lip of the great canyon. The three men who chased them might have been part of a larger party. With so many buffalo grazing in the canyon, it was likely more Indians were about.
