Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry Page B

Gus then pointed out. "They shot them horses." "It wouldn't matter if we had ten cannons," Call said. "We couldn't even see 'em--how could we hit them? I doubt they'd just stand there watching while we loaded up a cannon and shot at them. They could be halfway to Mexico while we were doing that." The Comanches were just specks in the distance by then.

"I have never seen no people like them," Call said.

"I didn't know what wild Indians were like.

"Those are Comanches," he added.

Gus didn't know what his friend meant. Of course they were Comanches. He didn't know what answer to make, so he said nothing.

Once Buffalo Hump and his men were out of sight, the troop relaxed a little--just as they did, a gun went off.

"Oh God, he done for himself!" Rip Green said.

Zeke Moody had managed to slip Rip's pistol out of its holster--then he shot himself. The shot splattered Rip's pants leg with blood.

"Oh God, now look," Rip said. He stooped and tried to wipe the blood off his pants leg with a handful of sand.

Major Chevallie felt relieved. Travel with the scalped boy would have been slow, and in all likelihood he would have died of infection anyway. Johnny Carthage would be lucky to escape infection himself--Sam had had to cut clean to the bone to get the arrow out.

Johnny had yelped loudly while Sam was doing the cutting, but Sam bound the wound well and now Johnny was helping Long Bill scoop out a shallow grave for young Josh.

"Now you'll have to dig another," the Major informed them.

"Why, they were friends--let 'em bunk together in the hereafter," Bigfoot said. "It's too rocky out here to be digging many graves." "It's not many--just two," the Major said, and he stuck to his point. The least a fallen warrior deserved, in his view, was a grave to himself.

When Matilda saw what Zeke had done, she cried. She almost dropped Josh's body, her big shoulders shook so.

"Matty's stout," Shadrach said, in admiration. "She carried that body nearly five hundred yards." Matilda sobbed throughout the burying and the little ceremony, which consisted of the Major reciting the Lord's Prayer. Both boys had visited her several times--she remembered them kindly, for there was a sweetness in boys that didn't last long, once they became men. Both of them, in her view, deserved better than a shallow grave by a hill beyond the Pecos, a grave that the varmints would not long respect.

"Do you think Buffalo Hump left?" the Major asked Bigfoot. "Or is he just toying with us?" "They're gone for now," Bigfoot said. "I don't expect they'll interfere with us again, not unless we're foolish." "Maybe the scalp hunters will kill them," Long Bill suggested. "Killing Indians is scalp hunters' work. Kirker and Glanton ought to get busy and do it." "I expect we'd best turn back," the Major said. "We've lost two men, two horses, and that mule." "And the ammunition," Shadrach reminded him.

"Yes, I ought to have transferred it," the Major admitted.

He sighed, looking west. "I guess we'll have to mark this road another time," he said, in a tone of regret.

The scouts did not comment.

"Hurrah, we're going back," Gus said to Call once the news was announced.

"If they let us, we are," Call said. He was looking across the plain where the Comanches had gone, thinking about Buffalo Hump.

The land before him, which looked so empty, wasn't. A people were there who knew the emptiness better than he did; they knew it even better than Bigfoot or Shadrach. They knew it and they claimed it. They were the people of the emptiness.

"I'm glad I seen them," Call said.

"I ain't," Gus said. "Zeke and Josh are dead, and I nearly was." "I'm still glad I seen them," Call said.

That day at dusk, as the troop was making a wary passage eastward, they found the old Comanche woman, wandering in the sage. A notch had been cut in her right nostril.

Of the tongueless boy there was no sign. When they asked the old woman what became of him she wailed and pointed north, toward the