Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry Page A

young Rangers had ever seen. They were wild men, and yet skilled. Buffalo Hump had held a corpse on the back of his racing pony with one hand. He had scalped Zeke Moody without even getting off his horse. They were wild Indians, and it was their land they were riding through. Their rules were not white rules, and their thinking was not white thinking. Just watching them ride away affected young Gus and young Call powerfully.

Neither of them spoke until the Comanches were almost out of sight.

"I'm glad there was just a few of them," Gus said, finally. "I doubt we could whip 'em if there were many more." "We can't whip 'em," Call said.

Just as he said it, Buffalo Hump stopped, raised the two scalps high once again, and yelled his war cry, which echoed off the hill behind the Rangers.

Gus, Call, and most of the Rangers raised their guns, and some fired, although the Comanche chief was far out of range.

"If we was in a fight and it was live or die, I expect we could whip 'em," Gus said. "If it was live or die I wouldn't be for dying." "If it was live or die, we'd die," Call said. What he had seen that morning had stripped him of any confidence he had once had in the Rangers as a fighting force. Perhaps their troop could fight well enough against Mexicans or against white men. But what he had seen of Comanche warfare--and all he had seen, other than the scalping of Zeke Moody, was a brief, lightning-lit glimpse of Buffalo Hump throwing his lance--convinced him not merely in his head but in his gut and even in his bones that they would not have survived a real attack. Bigfoot and Shadrach might have been plainsmen enough to escape, but the rest of them would have died.

"Any three of them could finish us," Call said. "That one with the hump could probably do it all by himself, if he had taken a notion to." Gus McCrae didn't answer. He was scared, and didn't like the fact one bit. It wasn't just that he was scared at the moment, it was that he didn't know that he would ever be anything but scared again. He felt the need to move his bowels --he had been feeling the need for some time--but he was afraid to go. He didn't want to move more than two or three steps from Call. Josh Corn had just gone a few steps--very few--and now Buffalo Hump was waving his scalp in the air.

He was waving Ezekiel's too, and all Zeke had done was ride a short distance out of camp.

Gus was standing almost where Josh had been taken, too. Looking around, he couldn't see how even a lizard could hide, much less an Indian, and yet Buffalo Hump had hidden there.

Gus suddenly realized, to his embarrassment, that his knees were knocking. He heard an unusual sound and took a moment or two to figure out that it was the sound of his own knees knocking together. His knees had never done that in his life--they had never even come close. He looked around, hoping no one had noticed, and no one had. The men were all still watching the Comanches.

The men were all scared: he could see it.

Maybe old Shadrach wasn't, and maybe Bigfoot wasn't, but the rest of them were mostly as shaky as he was. Matilda wasn't, either-- she was walking back, the body of Josh Corn in her arms.

Gus looked at Call, a man his own age.

Call should be shaking, just as he was, but Call was just watching the Indians. He may not have been happy with the situation, but he wasn't shaking. He was looking at the Comanches steadily. He had his gun ready, but mainly he just seemed to be studying the Indians.

"I don't like 'em," Gus said, vehemently.

He didn't like it that there were men who could scare him so badly that he was even afraid to take a shit.

"I wish we had a cannon," he said. "I guess they'd leave us alone if we was better armed." "We are better armed than they are," Call said. "He killed Josh with an arrow and scalped Zeke with a knife. They shot arrows down on us from that hill. If they'd shot rifles I guess they would have killed most of us." "They have at least one gun, though,"