conversation from Bigfoot Wallace.
“We can have breakfast, as soon as we give up our guns,” he added.
To the hungry men, cold, wet, and discouraged, the notion of breakfast was a considerable inducement to compromise.
“I wonder if they’ve got bacon?” Jimmy Tweed asked. “I might surrender to the rascals if I could spend the morning eating bacon.”
“There’s no pigs over there,” Matilda observed. “I guess they could have brought bacon with them, though.”
“What do you think, Shad?” Bigfoot asked.
Shadrach had picked up a little, at the prospect of battle. There was a keen light in his eyes that had been missing since he got his cough and had begun to repeat himself in his conversations. He was walking back and forth in front of the troop, his long rifle in his hand. The fact that they were completely surrounded by Mexican infantry, with a substantial body of cavalry backing them up, was not lost on him, though. He kept looking across the plain and then to the mountains beyond. The plain offered no hope. It was entirely open; they would be cut down like rabbits. But the mountains were timbered. If they could make it to cover, they might survive.
The problem with that strategy was that the Mexican camp lay directly between them and the hills. They would have to fight their way through the infantry, then through the cavalry, then through the camp. Several men were sickly, and the ammunition was low. Much as he wanted to sight his long rifle time after time at Mexican breasts, he knew it would be a form of suicide. They were too few, with too little.
“We could run for them hills?shoot our way through,” he said. “I doubt more than five or six of us would make it. We’d give them a scrap, at least, if we done that.”
“Not a one of us would make it,” Bigfoot said. “Of course they might spare Matilda.”
“I don’t want to be spared, if Shad ain’t,” Matilda said.
“You’re a big target, Matty,” Bigfoot observed, in a kindly tone. “They might shoot you full of lead before they even realized you were female.”
“Why do we have to fight?” Gus asked. “They have us surroundedand we’re outnumbered ten to one?more than that, I guess. We can’t whip that many of them, even if they are Mexicans. If we surrender we won’t be hurt?Caleb said that himself. We’ll just be prisoners for awhile. And we can have breakfast.”
“I am damn hungry,” Blackie Slidell said. “A few tortillas wouldn’t hurt.”
“All right, boys?they’re too many,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s lay our guns down. Maybe they’ll just march us over to Santa Fe and introduce us to some pretty senoritas.”
“I think they’ll line us up and shoot us,” Johnny Carthage said. “I’m for the breakfast, though?I hope there’s a good cook.”
The Rangers carefully laid down their weapons, in full view of a captain of the infantry. They piled the guns in a heap, and raised their hands.
The captain who received their surrender was very young?about Gus’s age. Relief was in his face when he saw that the Rangers had decided not to fight.
“Gracias, Senores,” he said. “Now come with us and eat.”
“There’s one good thing about surrendering,” Gus said to Jimmy Tweed, as they were marching.
“What?” Jimmy asked. “Senoritas?”
“No, weapons?lots of guns, and they’ve got that cannon,” Gus said. “It ought to be enough to keep off the bears.”
“Oh, bears,” Jimmy said, casually.
“You ain’t even seen one,” Gus said. “You wouldn’t be so reckless if you had.”
“THE WHIP WAS MADE in Germany,” Captain Salazar said, as Call was being tied to the wheel of one of the supply wagons.
“I have never been in Germany,” he added. “But it seems they make the best whips.”
The whole Mexican force had been assembled, to watch Call’s punishment. The Texans were lined up just behind him. Many of them were in a very foul temper, since the promised breakfast had turned out to consist of flavourless tortillas and very weak coffee.
None of them had had a chance to talk to Call, who was under heavy guard. He was marched by armed men with bayonets fixed to the wagon, where he was tied. His shirt was removed, too. One of the muleteers was to do the whipping?a heavyset man with only one or two teeth in his mouth. The whip had several thongs, each with a knot or two in them. The thongs were tipped with metal.
“I guess I won’t be going to Germany, if they’re that fond of whips,” Long Bill said. “I wouldn’t want to be Woodrow. A hundred times is a lot of times to be hit with a whip like that.”
Matilda Roberts stood with the men, a look of baleful hatred in her eyes.
“If Call don’t live I’ll kill that snaggle-toothed bastard that’s doing the whipping,” she said.
Bigfoot Wallace was silent. He had seen men whipped before? black men, mostly?and it was a spectacle he didn’t enjoy. He didn’t like to see helpless men hurt?of course, young Call had knocked over the General’s buggy. Dignity required that he be punished, to some extent, but a hundred lashes with a metal-thonged whip was a considerable punishment. Men had died of less, as Captain Salazar was fond of reminding them.
“If you’d like to say a word to your friend Corporal McCrae, I’ll permit it,” Salazar said.
“No, I’ll talk to him later,” Call said. He didn’t like the tone of familiarity Salazar adopted with him. He did not intend to be friends with the man, and didn’t want to enter into conversation with him.
“Corporal, there may be no later,” Salazar said. “You may not survive this whipping. As I told you earlier, fifty lashes kills most men.”
“I expect to live,” Call said.
Mainly what he remembered of the whipping was the warmth of blood on his back, and the fact that the camp became very silent. The grunt of the muleteer who was whipping him was the only sound. After the first ten blows, he didn’t hear the whip strike.
Gus heard it, though. He watched his friend’s back become a red sheet. Soon Call’s pants, too, were blood soaked. The muleteer wore out on the sixtieth stroke and had to yield the bloody whip to a smaller man. Call was unconscious by then. All the Rangers assumed he was dead. Matilda was restrained, with difficulty, from attacking the whipper. Call hung by his bound wrists, presenting a low target. The second whipper had to bend low in order to hit his back.
When they untied Call and let him slide down beside the wagon wheel they thought they were untying a corpse, but Call turned over, groaning.“By God, he’s alive,” Bigfoot said.
“For now,” Salazar said. “It is remarkable. Few men survive a hundred lashes.”
“He’ll live to bury you,” Matilda said, giving Salazar a look of hatred.
“If I thought that were true, I would bury him right here and right now, alive or dead,” Salazar said.
“Now be fair, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “He’s had his punishment. Don’t go burying him yet.”
No one could stand to look at Call’s back except Matilda, who sat beside him that first night and kept the flies away. She had nothing to cover the wounds with?if too many of them festered, she knew the boy would die.
Gus McCrae had not been able to watch the whipping, beyond the first few strokes He sat with his back to the whipping ground, his head between his hands, grinding his teeth in agony. None of the Texans were tied, but a brigade of riflemen were stationed just beside them, with muskets ready. Their orders were to shoot any man who tried to interfere with the punishment. None did, but Gus fought with himself all through the whipping; he wanted to dash at the whipper. His friend was being whipped to death, and he could do nothing about it. He had not even been able to exchange a word with Call, before the whipping began. It was a terrible hour, during which he vowed over and over again to kill every Mexican soldier he could, to avenge his friend.
Now, though, with Call alive but still in mortal peril, he came and went. Every ten minutes he would walk over to Matilda and ask if Call was still breathing. Once Matilda told him Call was alive, he would go back to where the Texans sat, plop down for a minute, and then get up and walk around restlessly, until it was time to go check on Call again.
There was a small creek near the encampment. Matilda persuaded an old Mexican who tended the fires and helped with the cooking to loan her a bucket, so she could walk over to the creek and get water with which to wash Call’s wounds. He was already delirious with fever?the cold water was the only thing she had to treat him with, or clean his wounds. When she went to the creek, three soldiers went with her, a fact that annoyed her
