considerably.
She didn’t complain, though. They were captives?Call’s life, as well as others, depended on caution now.
Shadrach had spread his blanket near where Matilda sat with Call. He and Bigfoot were the only Rangers who had watched the whipping through. Before it was over most of the men, like Gus, had turned their backs. “Oh, Lord … oh, Lord,” Long Bill said many times, as he heard the blows strike.
“Was it me, I’d rather be put up against the wall,” Blackie Slidell said. “That way’s quick.”
Captain Salazar had been right in his assessment of the damage the whip could cause. In several places, the flesh had been torn off Call’s ribs. None of the Texans could stand to look at his back, except Bigfoot, who considered himself something of a student of wounds. He came over once or twice, to squat by Call and examine his injuries. Shadrach took no interest. He thought the boy might live?Call was a tough one. What vexed him most was that the Mexicans had taken his long rifle. He had carried the gun for twenty years?rare had been the night when his hand wasn’t on it. For most of that time, the gun had not been out of his sight. He felt incomplete without it. The Texans’ guns had all been piled in a wagon, a vehicle Shadrach kept his eye on. He meant to have his gun again. If that meant dying, then at least he would die with his gun in his hand.
Shadrach slept cold that night?Matilda stayed with Call, warming him with her body. He went from fever to chill, chill to fever. The old Mexican helped Matilda build a little fire. The old man seemed not to sleep. From time to time in the night, he came to tend the fire. Gus didn’t sleep. He was back and forth all night? Matilda got tired of his restless visits.
“You just as well sleep,” she said. “You can’t do nothing for him.”
“Can’t sleep,” Gus said. He couldn’t get the whipping out of his mind. Call’s pants legs were stiff with blood.
When dawn came Call was still alive, though in great pain. Captain Salazar came walking over, and examined the prisoner.
“Remarkable,” he said. “We’ll put him in the wagon. If he lives three days, I think he will survive and walk to the City of Mexico with us.”
“You don’t listen,” Matilda said, the hatred still in her eyes. “I told you yesterday that he’d bury you.“Salazar walked off without replying. Call was lifted into one of the supply wagons?Matilda was allowed to ride with him. The Texans all walked behind the wagon, under heavy guard. Johnny Carthage gave up his blanket, so that Call could be covered from the chill.
At midmorning the troop divided. Most of the cavalry went north, and most of the infantry, too. Twenty-five horsemen and about one hundred infantrymen stayed with the prisoners. Bigfoot watched this development with interest. The odds had dropped, and in their favor?though not enough. Captain Salazar stayed with the prisoners.
“I am to deliver you to El Paso,” he said. “Now we have to cross these mountains.”
All the Texans were suffering from hunger. The food had been scanty?just the same tortillas and weak coffee they had had for supper.
“I thought we were supposed to get fed, if we surrendered,” Bigfoot said, to Salazar.
All day the troop climbed upward, toward a pass in the thin range of mountains. The Texans had been used to walking on a level plain. Walking uphill didn’t suit them. There was much complaining, and much of it directed at Caleb Cobb, who had led them on a hard trip only to deliver them to the enemy in the end. There were Mexicans on every side, though?all they could do was walk uphill, upward, into the cloud that covered the tops of the mountains.
“The bears live up here,” Bigfoot mentioned, lest anyone be tempted to slip off while they were climbing into the cloud.
When Call first came back to consciousness, he thought he was dead. Matilda had left the wagon to answer a call of nature?they were in the thick of the cloud. All Call could see was white mist. The march had been halted for awhile and the men were silent, resting. Call saw nothing except the white mist, and he heard nothing, either. He could not even see his own hand?only the pain of his lacerated back reminded him that he still had a body. If he was dead, as for a moment he assumed, it was vexing to have to feel the pains he would feel if he were alive. If he was in heaven, then it was a disappointment, because the white mist was cold and uncomfortable.
Soon, though, he saw a form in the mist?a large form. Hethought perhaps it was the bear, though he had not heard that there were bears in heaven; of course, he might not be in heaven. The fact that he felt the pain might mean that he was in hell. He had supposed hell would be hot, but that might just be a mistake the preachers made. Hell might be cold, and it might have bears in it, too.
The large form was not a bear, though?it was Matilda Roberts. Call’s vision was blurry. At first he could only see Matilda’s face, hovering near him in the mist. It was very confusing; in his hours of fever he had had many visions in which people’s faces floated in and out of his dreams. Gus was in many of his dreams, but so was Buffalo Hump, and Buffalo Hump certainly did not belong in heaven.
“Could you eat?” Matilda asked.
Call knew then that he was alive, and that the pain he felt was not hellfire, but the pain from his whipping. He knew he had been whipped one hundred times, but he could not recall the whipping clearly. He had been too angry to feel the first few licks; then he had become numb and finally unconscious. The pain he felt lying in the wagon, in the cold mist, was far worse than what he had felt while the whipping was going on.
“Could you eat?” Matilda asked again. “Old Francisco gave me a little soup.”
“Not hungry,” Call said. “Where’s Gus?”
“I don’t know, it’s foggy, Woodrow,” Matilda said. “Shad’s coughing?he can’t take much fog.”
“But Gus is alive, ain’t he?” Call asked, for in one of his hallucinations Buffalo Hump had killed Gus and hanged him upside down from a post-oak tree.
“I guess he’s alive, he’s been asking about you every five minutes,” Matilda said. “He’s been worried?we all have.”
“I don’t remember the whipping?I guess I passed out,” Call said.
“Yes, up around sixty licks,” Matilda said. “Salazar thought you’d die, but I knew better.”
“I’ll kill him someday,” Call said. “I despise the man. I’ll kill that mule skinner that whipped me, too.”
“Oh, he left,” Matilda said. “Most of the army went home.”
“Well, if I can find him I’ll kill him,” Call said. “That is, if they don’t execute me while I’m sick.”
“No, we’re to march to El Paso,” Matilda said.
“We didn’t make it when we tried to march to it from the other side,” Call reminded her. Then a kind of red darkness swept over him, and he stopped talking. Again, the wild dreams swirled, dreams of Indians and bears.
When Call awoke the second time, they were farther down the slope. The sun was shining, and Gus was there. But Call was very tired. Opening his eyes and keeping them open seemed like a day’s work. He wanted to talk to Gus, but he was so tired he couldn’t make his lips move.
“Don’t talk, Woodrow,” Gus said. “Just rest. Matilda’s got some soup for you.”
Call took a little soup, but passed out while he was eating. For three days he was in and out of consciousness. Salazar came by regularly, checking to see if he was dead. Each time Matilda insulted him, but Salazar merely smiled.
On the fourth day after the whipping, Salazar insisted that Call walk. They were on the plain west of the mountains, and it had turned bitter cold. Call’s fever was still high?even with Johnny Carthage’s blanket, he was racked with a deep chill. For a whole night he could not keep still?he rolled one way, and then the other. Matilda’s loyalties were torn. She didn’t want Call to freeze to death, or Shadrach either. The old man’s cough had gone deeper. It seemed to be coming from his bowels. Matilda was afraid, deeply afraid. She thought Shad was going, that any morning she would wake up and see his eyes wide, in the stare of death. Finally she lifted Call out of the wagon and took him to where Shadrach lay. She put herself between the two men and warmed them as best she could. It was a clear night. Their breath made a cloud above them. They had moved into desert country. There was little wood, and what there was the Mexicans used for their own fires. The Texans were forced to sleep cold.
The next morning, finding Call out of the wagon, Salazar decreed that he should walk. Call was semiconscious; he didn’t even hear the command, but Matilda heard it and was outraged.
“This boy can’t walk?I carried him out of the wagon and put him here to keep him warm,” she said. “This old man don’t need to be walking, either.”
