'I ain't the snake,' Jimmy Cumsa said.
'You're the one they call The-Snake-You-Do-Not-See. Only old Call seen you. He didn't get much of a shot, but he still killed you.' 'I ain't dead, I'm just shot, goddamn you!' Mox Mox said, again. 'Make me a damn fire or leave me the matches, if you're in such a goddamn hurry. I'll make my own fire.' 'I am in a hurry,' Jimmy said. 'I want to be a long way from here when the sun comes up, Mox. That old man might still be coming. He killed seven of the eight of us, unless Black Tooth got away, which I doubt.' 'He ain't coming, he's got those children,' Mox Mox said.
'Well, I don't believe I'll take the chance,' Jimmy Cumsa said. 'If he does come, he'll find you frozen, or else bled out.
I never thought a man that old could beat you, Mox, but I guess I was wrong.' Mox Mox knew that his only chance was to rush Jimmy Cumsa, grab his gun or grab the reins of one of the other horses--grab anything that might help him survive. There must be brush in the gully that he could find and make enough of a fire to keep himself alive, even if he had to crawl.
He staggered up and tried to make a run at the horses. If he could just get one fresh horse, he might make it. But the needles in his lungs were sharper than ever, and he couldn't control his legs. He ran a few steps, but fell before he got near a horse. When he finally did get to a horse, it was the one Jimmy Cumsa had just run for twenty miles. It was as useless as his own.
Mox Mox had a small knife in his belt, the one he used to cut meat. It was his only weapon. He managed to get it out; with luck, he might stick Jimmy and cut him badly enough that he would fall off his mount. But when he lunged with his knife at where he thought the Cherokee was, Jimmy Cumsa wasn't there. He had taken the reins of the extra horses and ridden out of the gully. Mox Mox wanted to slash him to death for his treachery, but there was no one to slash. He could hear the clatter of the horses as Jimmy Cumsa loped away. But in a moment the sound grew faint, and in a few more minutes there was no sound at all, except his own breathing. In the sudden stillness, the sound of his own breathing shocked him.
His breath bubbled, as a cow or a sheep or a buffalo bubbled with its last breath.
Mox Mox felt a bitter rage.
An old man had come out of nowhere and shot him and all his men, except Jimmy Cumsa, and now Jimmy had deserted him, left him to bleed to death or freeze in a gully. How dare the old fool! If he'd only had a moment to turn and fight, he could have rallied the men and caught Woodrow Call and burned him. He could have shot him or stabbed him or quirted him to death.
Old Call had just been lucky to get in such a shot. It was Jimmy Cumsa's fault for messing with the horses when he should have been standing guard. None of the men, in fact, had been alert.
It served them right that they were all dead--all except Jimmy, the one who had ridden off and left him to die.
Mox Mox crawled to where his horse stood, caught the stirrup in his hand, and pulled himself to his feet. His only chance was to mount and make the horse keep going. Maybe there was a house somewhere that he could get to, someplace where there were matches, so he could build a fire. A fire would save him. He had built wonderful fires over the years, fires hot enough to warm him on the coldest nights, hot enough to burn anyone he had on hand to burn. If he could just get to a place where he could make a fire, a wonderful warm fire, the bubbling in his breath might stop and he would get better and live.
He pulled himself up slowly and managed with great difficulty to get himself into the saddle. But when he tried to spur his horse out of the gully, the horse refused to move. He jerked when he was spurred, but only took a step or two, and then stood there quivering again.
Mox Mox wouldn't stand for it; even his horse wouldn't obey him. He still had the small knife in his hand. In his rage, he began to stab the horse as hard as he could. He stabbed him in the neck and slashed at his shoulders. Then he stabbed him in the flank--he would make the animal go where he wanted it to go! He slashed at the horse's flank until the animal finally bolted and tried to flounder up the sides of the gully. But the sides of the gully were too steep.
In the dark the horse lost its footing and fell, rolling over Mox Mox as it slid back to the bottom of the gully. Mox Mox slid after it, and as he did, the horse kicked at him, catching him hard in the leg. When Mox Mox tried to stand, he heard his leg crack. He tried to stand up, but the leg wouldn't support him.
In his bitterness and rage at Call's good luck and his own defeat, Mox Mox hadn't fully felt the cold. But with his leg cracked and his breath bubbling, he could scarcely move.
Soon, the savage wind began to bite. Mox Mox began to think of cutting himself in order to feel the warmth of his own blood. But when he put the knife down for a moment and tried to ease himself into a more comfortable sitting position, the knife slid down the slope, out of his reach. He eased down a little ways himself, but he couldn't find the knife.
The blood seeping out of his chest began to freeze on his shirt. When he put his hand on his side, his blood was cold. He wanted a fire, but there was no fire and no way to make one. The coyotes began to yip in the cold distance. Mox Mox listened. He thought he heard horses coming from far away. He listened as hard as he could. Maybe Quick Jimmy had been teasing him; he was known to be a teaser. Maybe Jimmy would come back and build him a good crackling fire. Even if the horseman was old Call come to get him, the man might at least build him a fire and keep him alive through the night.
Mox Mox listened hard. Once or twice, he thought he heard the horses in the cold distance.
But mainly it was just the coyotes yipping. The wind died; it was cloudless and very cold. Mox Mox reached again for the knife. Better to cut himself than to freeze to death. But he still couldn't find the knife, and when he reached for it, he began to slide and then to roll over. He rolled to the bottom of the gully. There was not even a bush to crawl behind. The two exhausted horses had walked away. It might have been his own horse whose hoofbeats he had heard. There was no warmth anywhere--only the yipping of the coyotes and the yellow of the shining stars.
Mexico was colder on the second trip than it had been on the first, Brookshire thought, and it had been sufficiently cold the first time.
Every night he felt nervous about shutting his eyes, for fear that he'd freeze in his sleep.
They made roaring fires--he soon used the last of his ledger books, even burning the covers getting the fires started--but the fires didn't warm the ground, and the ground was where he had to lay himself down to sleep.
