that’s the case.““Well, we got the soup bones, at least,” Gus said. He ran south with Bigfoot and sure enough found a creek, mostly dry but with several small scattered pools of water.
The troop camped for two days, until every bone of the three animals had been boiled for soup. Most of the bones were then split for their marrow. The food was welcome, and also the rest. Through the two days and night, the prairie scavengers, who had been deprived of their chances at the carcasses, prowled around the camp. Coyotes and wolves stood watching during the day. Two ventured too close, a coyote and a wolf. Bigfoot shot them both, and added their meat to the soup.
“I don’t know about eating wolf,” Gus said. “A wolf will eat anything. This one might have poison in its belly, you don’t know.”
“Don’t eat it then, if you’re scared,” Bigfoot said. “There’ll be more for the rest of us.”
Call ate the wolf and coyote soup without protest. His bad foot, though still painful, was better for the rest. Near the little creek there were some dead trees?Matilda chopped off a limb with a fork in it, and made Call a rude crutch. She knew how much he hated having to be helped along by her and by Gus. He accepted it, because his only other option was death; but he accepted it stiffly. The look in his eyes was the look of a man whose pride was wounded.
“I thank you,” he said, in a formal tone, when she presented him with the rude crutch. But the look in his eyes was not formal?it was a look of gratitude. Gus saw how fond Matty had become of Call, despite his rudeness?he felt very jealous. He himself had been cheerful and friendly, and had courted Matty as much as she would allow, and yet?since the death of Shadrach?she had fastened her attentions on his surly friend. It annoyed him so much that he mentioned it to Bigfoot. Call and Matty’were sitting together, eating soup.
Neither Call nor Matilda was saying anything, but still, they sat together, sipping wolf soup that a young Mexican soldier had just dished out of the pot.
“Now what’s the point of spending all that time with Call?” Gus asked. “Call don’t care for women. It’s rare that I could get him to go with a whore.“Bigfoot studied the couple for a minute, the large woman and the short youth.
“Matty’s got her motherly side,” he said. “Most cows will take a calf, if one comes up that needs her.”
“Why, I need her, I guess,” Gus said?now that his belly didn’t growl quite so loudly, his envy had returned.
“I’m as much a calf as he is?we’re the same age,” Gus said.
“Yeah, but you’re easy to get along with, and Woodrow ain’t,” Bigfoot said.
“Well, then, she ought to be sitting with me, not with that hardheaded fool,” Gus said. “He ain’t saying a word to her?I can out-talk him any day.”
“Maybe it ain’t talk she’s after,” Bigfoot suggested.
Long Bill Coleman had been stretched out on the ground, resting on his elbow, as he listened to the little debate.
“Why are you griping, Gussie?” he asked. “She ain’t sitting with me, either, but you don’t hear me complaining.”
“Shut up, Bill?what do you know about women?” Gus asked, testily.
“Well, I know they don’t always cotton to the easy fellows,” Long Bill said. “If they did, I’d have been married long ago. But I ain’t married, and it’s going to be another cold night.”
“Why, he’s right,” Bigfoot said. “Matty likes Woodrow because he’s hardheaded.”
“Oh, I suppose you two know everything,” Gus said. He went over to where the two sat, and plopped himself down on the other side of Matilda.
“Matty and her boys,” Bigfoot said, smiling at Long Bill. “I doubt she expected to be the mother of two pups when she headed west with this outfit.”
Long Bill wished the subject of mothers had never come up. His own had died of a fever when he was ten?he had missed her ever since.
“If Ma was alive, I expect I would have stayed with farming,” he said, with a mournful look. “She cooked cobbler for us, when she was well. I ain’t et cobbler since that was half as good.”
“I hope this starving is over,” Bigfoot said. “I don’t want to think about cobbler or taters until we get back to where folks eat regular.“The carcasses had been consumed completely?when the troop left, on the morning of the third day, they had no food at all. They were cheerful, though. The fact that they had seen ducks convinced many of the men that they were almost out of the desert. The Texans began to talk of catfish and venison, pig meat and chickens, as if they would be sitting down to lavish meals within the next few days.
Salazar listened to the talk with a grim expression.
“Senores, this is still the dead man’s walk,” he said. “We have far to go before we come to Las Cruces. Once we make it there, no one will starve.”
They marched three days without seeing a single animal; they had water, but no food. On the second evening, they used the last of their coffee. The brew was so thin it was almost colorless.
“I could read a newspaper through this coffee, if I had a newspaper,” Long Bill said, squinting into his cup.
“I didn’t know you could read, Bill,” Bigfoot said.
Long Bill looked embarrassed; the fact was, he couldn’t read. Usually, if he were lucky enough to come by a newspaper, he had a whore read it to him.
Call was as hungry as the rest of the troop, but because of his crutch, he was in better spirits, even though the crutch was rough and soon rubbed his underarm raw. He had nothing to pad the crutch with, though. Matilda offered to tear off a piece of her shirt and pad the crutch for him, but he refused her. By the end of the third day, his shoulder was paining him almost as much as his foot had. Matilda, tired of his stubbornness, ripped off a piece of her shirt and padded the crutch anyway, while Call slept.
Even so, Call lagged behind the rest of the Texans. He was not quite at the rear of the column, though; three of the weakest of the young Mexican soldiers lagged far behind him. Though Call could not speak their language, he had ceased to regard the young soldiers as enemies. They had starved and frozen, just like the Texans; he didn’t think they would shoot him, even if he hobbled right past them and tried to escape.
From time to time he glanced back, to see that the boys were still following him. He was afraid they might collapse and die, and he knew that if the company was too far in advance of them when they collapsed, Salazar would not go back for them. The Apaches had not bothered them for four nights; the assumption around the campfire was that they had given up, or decided the pursuit of such a miserable band wasn’t worth it. There were no horses to take, only a few weapons.
Captain Salazar was not convinced. He didn’t share the Texans’ optimism, in regard to Gomez.
“If he stopped, it is because he has other business,” he told Bigfoot. “If he has no other business, he will follow us and try to kill us all. I don’t think he will attack?he will wait and take us, one by one.”
He posted as strong a guard as he could muster, knowing, even so, that half his soldiers would fall asleep on duty. But four nights passed, and no corpses were found in the morning.
“He wouldn’t wait four nights, if he was still after us,” Bigfoot said.
“He would wait forty nights,” Salazar told him. “He is Gomez.”
The wrapping on Call’s crutch had come loose?he stopped to rewrap it and, when he did, glanced back at the young Mexicans. It was then that he saw the Apache, a short, stumpy-legged man, with a bow in his hand, about to release an arrow. Before he could move, the arrow hit him in the right side. Call had no weapon?all he could do was yell, but he yelled loudly and the troop turned. Call gripped his crutch, prepared to defend himself if the Apache came closer, but the Apache had vanished, and so had the three Mexican soldiers who had been trailing behind. The plain to the north was completely empty.
Bigfoot came running up, and looked at the arrow in Call’s right side.
“Why, he nearly missed you,” he said. “The arrow’s barely hanging in you.”
Before Call could even look down, Bigfoot had ripped the arrow out?it had only creased his ribs. Blood flowed down his leg, but he didn’t feel it. The shock of seeing the Apache, only fifty yards behind him, left him dizzy for a minute.
Captain Salazar came running back to Call.
“Where did he go?” he asked.
Call, still dizzy, couldn’t tell him. He pointed to the spot where the short Indian had been, but when Bigfoot
