somewhere to the west.
He didn’t say that, though; recent experience had shown him that men had to use what hope they could muster, to stay alive.
They sat together through the night, one on either side of Matilda Roberts. For several days the weather had been overcast, but when the dawn came, it was clear. Just seeing the bright sunlight made them feel better, although it was still cold and the prospects still bleak.
Captain Salazar had taken a little of the bad water the day before; he arose so tired and weak that he could scarcely walk to the campfire. When a cramp took him he had to bend almost double to endure the pain.
Bad as he was, his troop was worse. Several of his soldiers were too weak to rise. The fact that seven prisoners had escaped the night before didn’t interest them?nor did it interest Salazar.
“Their freedom will be temporary,” he told Bigfoot.
“How about our freedom, Captain?” Bigfoot asked. “Half your men are dying and half of ours too. What’s the point of keeping us prisoners when we’re all dying? Why can’t you just turn us loose and let it be every man for himself? Maybe one or two of us will make it home, if we do it that way.”
Call and Gus were there?and Long Bill. Captain Salazar could barely stand on his feet. Even a march of one mile might be beyond him, and they had far more than a mile to go. Bigfoot’s request seemed reasonable, to them. If they were let go they might wander off in twos and threes and find food of some sort and live, whereas if the whole troop had to stay together they would probably all starve.
Salazar looked at his troops, many of them unable to rise. He still had at most eight soldiers who could be considered able-bodied men. The Texans had more, but not many more. The end of the dead man’s walk was not in sight?it might be three days away, or four, or even five. He thought for a moment before answering Bigfoot’s request.
He took his pistol out of its holster, checked to see that it was fully loaded, and handed it butt first to Bigfoot Wallace.
“If you want to be free, kill me,” he said.
Bigfoot looked at the sick, exhausted man in astonishment.
“Captain, I must have misheard,” he said.
“No, you heard correctly,” Salazar said. “I have decided that you can be free, if freedom is what you want most. But I am a Mexican officer, under orders to take you to El Paso. There is no one here to countermand my orders, and the General who gave them to me is dead. You saw what the Apaches did to him.”
“Well, Captain, I know that,” Bigfoot said. “But if the General was here and saw how weak we all are, he might change his mind.”
“He might, but we cannot summon him up from hell and ask him,” Salazar said. “My orders are still my orders. I cannot free you. But I will allow you the opportunity to free yourselves. All you have to do is shoot me.”
Bigfoot held the gun awkwardly, not sure what to make of the Captain’s odd decision. He looked at Call, at Gus, at Long Bill Coleman, and at Matilda Roberts. Now and then, throughout their time as prisoners, any one of them would have been happy to have the opportunity to kill Captain Salazar. When Call was being whipped, when they were chained, when Jimmy Tweed was shot? at such moments any of them might have killed him. But Salazar was no longer the cold Captain who chained them or tied them at his whim. He had suffered the same cold and the same hunger as they had, drunk the same bad water and been weakened by the same cramps. He was a weakened man, so weakened that he had calmly ordered his own death.
“Captain, I don’t want to shoot you,” Bigfoot said. “At times I could have done it easy, I expect, but now you’re worse off than we are. I’ve got no stomach for shooting you now.”
Salazar stood his ground. He looked the Texans over. “If not you, then another,” he offered. “Perhaps Corporal Call would shoot me. He endured the lash, and life has not been easy for him since. Surely he would like revenge. His feet are giving him pain, and yet I have kept him walking. Give him the gun.”
“Caleb Cobb broke my feet,” Call said. “You didn’t. I’d shoot you if this was a fight, but I ain’t gonna just take your damn gun and shoot you down.”
“Corporal McCrae?” Salazar said. “Surely you hate me enough to shoot me,” Salazar said, with a small smile.
“I used to, Captain, but I’m too cold and too tired to worry about shooting anybody,” Gus said. “I’d just like to go home and get married quick.”
Call was annoyed that once again the subject of marriage had come up, and at a time when a man’s life was in the balance. They had no prospect of even getting home?why was he so convinced the girl would marry him, even if they did? Salazar took his pistol back, and walked over to Matilda Roberts. He held the gun out to her.
“Kill me, Senorita,” he said. “Then you will all be free.”
“Free to what?” Matilda asked. “It ain’t you I need to be freed of ?I ain’t a prisoner, anyway. What I’d like to be free of is this damn desert, and shooting you won’t accomplish that.”
“Then shoot me just for vengeance,” Salazar said. “Shoot me to avenge your dead.”
“I won’t?they all died from foolishness,” Matilda said. “All except my Shad?my Shad died from being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Shooting you won’t bring him back, or make me miss him no less.”
Captain Salazar took the pistol, and put it back in its holster.
“Caleb Cobb would have shot you, if he was here,” Bigfoot said, almost apologetically. He thought it bold of Salazar to take the risk he had just taken?any Texan, in the right mood, might have shot him. Of course, the Captain was as tired and hungry as the rest of them; his neck wound had never healed properly?there was pus on his collar. Perhaps he felt his end was coming, and wanted to hasten it. Still, it was bold. A man could perhaps and perhaps all day, and not find his way to the truth.
“Yes?no doubt?he did shoot me,” Salazar said. “But in that, too, he failed.”
Then he gingerly felt his neck?he looked, with a grimace, at the stain on his hand.
“Perhaps I am wrong,” he said. “Perhaps he didn’t fail. Perhaps he merely wanted me to walk two hundred hard miles before I died.”
“He was blind at the time, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “He just made a lucky shot?I expect he would have been happy to kill you where you stood.”
Captain Salazar sighed?he looked for a moment at his weary troops.
“All right,” he said. “Unfortunately you did not accept my terms, so you are still my prisoners. If you had killed me, I would have been a martyr?now I will only be disgraced.”
“Not in my eyes?not if you’re talking about military work,” Bigfoot said. “You done your best and you’re still doing it. You took on a hard job. I doubt Caleb Cobb would have even got us this far.”
“I agree with that,” Salazar said. “I have done my best, and Colonel Cobb would not have got you this far. He would have left, to banquet with the generals and perhaps seduce their wives.”
He gestured for his soldiers to get up. Two or three merely stared at him, but most of them began to struggle to their feet.
“Unfortunately, you are not a Mexican officer, Serior Wallace,” Salazar said. “You are not one of the men who will judge me. I lost most of my men and many of my prisoners. That is what the generals will notice, when I deliver you to El Paso. Where are the rest, they will ask.”
“Captain, I’ve got some advice,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s get to El Paso and then worry about the generals.”
Salazar smiled.
“It’s time to march,” he said.
TOWARD NOON THAT DAY, as the company?strung out for almost two miles?struggled south, they came upon three dead cows, starved within a mile of one another. The buzzards were on the carcasses, but they hadn’t been on them long; all the carcasses were stiff from the night’s frost. Although all three cows were mostly just skin and bones, to the weary troop, at the point of starvation itself, their discovery seemed like a miracle. The men who lagged caught up?all the men were soon tearing at the thin carcasses with their knives, trying to scrape a few bites of meat off the cold bones.
Captain Salazar, with difficulty, restored order. He fired his pistol twice, to get the hungry men to back off. While they were making a fire and preparing to roast the bones and what little flesh remained, Bigfoot saw several specks rise into the air, from far to the south.
“I think them was ducks,” he said. “If there’s ducks there must be water. We can have us a fine soup, if
