It was just after the sand that the lightning began to strike so close and so constantly that Gus developed a new fear, which was that his gun barrel would draw the lightning and he would be cooked on the spot. There had been some close lightning three days back, and the Rangers, Bigfoot particularly, had told several stories of men who had been cooked by lightning. Sometimes, according to Bigfoot, the lightning even cooked the horse underneath the man.
Gus would have been willing now to risk getting himself and his horse both cooked, if he could only have a horse underneath him, in order to move faster. Just as he was thinking that thought, a great lightning bolt struck not fifty yards away, and in that moment of white brightness Gus saw the somebody he had been fearing: the Indian with a great hump of muscle or gristle between his shoulders, a hump so heavy that the man’s head bent slightly forward as he sat, like a buffalo’s.
Buffalo Hump sat alone, on a robe of some kind—he looked at Gus, with his heavy head bent and his great hump wet from the rain, as if he had been expecting his arrival. He was not more than ten feet away, no farther than the badger had been, and his eyes were like stone.
Buffalo Hump looked at Gus, and then the plain went black. In the blackness Gus ran as he had never run before, right past where the Indian sat. Lightning streaked again but Gus didn’t turn for a second look: he ran. Something tore at his leg as he brushed a thornbush, but he didn’t slow his speed. In the line inside his eyes where the lightning stayed, there was the Comanche now, the great humpbacked Indian, the most feared man on the frontier. Gus had been so close that he could almost have jumped over the man. For all he knew, Buffalo Hump was following, bent on taking his hair. His only hope was speed. With such a hump to carry, the man might not be fast.
Gus forgot everything but running. He wanted to get away from the man with the hump—if he could just run all night maybe the Rangers would wake up and come to his aid. He didn’t know whether he was running toward the river or away from it. He didn’t know if Buffalo Hump was following, or how close he might be. He just ran, afraid to stop, afraid to yell. He thought of throwing away his gun in order to get a little more speed, but he didn’t—he wanted something to shoot with, if he were cornered or brought down.
At the guard post behind the chaparral bush, Call alternated between being irritated and being worried. He was convinced his friend, who had no business leaving in the first place, was out on the plain somewhere, hopelessly lost. There was little hope of finding him before daylight, and then it was sure to be a humiliating business. Shadrach was an excellent tracker and could no doubt follow Gus’s trail, but it would cost the troop delay and aggravation.
Major Chevallie might fire Gus—even fire Call, too, for having allowed Gus to wander off. Major Chevallie expected orders to be obeyed, and Call didn’t blame him. He might tolerate some wandering on the part of the scouts—that was their job—but he wouldn’t necessarily tolerate it on the part of a private.
When the rain came there was not much Call could do but hunch over and get wet. The bush was too thorny to crawl under, and he had no coat. The lightning was bright and the thunder loud, but Call didn’t feel fearful, especially. The bright flashes at least allowed him to look around. In one of them he thought he saw a movement; he decided it was the wolf they had heard howling.
It was in another brilliant flash that he saw Gus running. The plain went black again, so black that Call wasn’t sure whether he had seen Gus or imagined him. Gus had been tearing along, running dead out. All Call could do was wait for the next flash—when it came he saw Gus again, closer, and in that flash Call saw something else: the Comanche.
The light died so quickly that Call thought he might have imagined the Indian, too. In the light he had seen the great hump, a mass half as large as the weight of most men; and yet the man was running fast after Gus, and had a lance in his hand. Call fired wildly, in the general direction of the Indian—it was dark again before his gun sounded. He thought the shot might at least distract the man with the hump. In the next flash, though, Buffalo Hump had stopped and thrown the lance—Call just saw it, splitting the rain, as it flew toward Gus, who was still running flat out—running for his life. Call fired again, with his pistol this time. Maybe Gus would hear it and take heart—although that was a faint hope. The thunderclaps were so continuous that he scarcely heard the shot himself.
Call raised his rifle, determined to be ready when the next flash came and lit the prairie. But when the flash did come, the plain was empty. Buffalo Hump was gone. The hairs stood up on Call’s neck when he failed to see the humpbacked chief. The man had just vanished on an open plain. If he moved that fast he could be anywhere. Call backed into the chaparral, mindless of the thorns, and waited. No man, not even a Comanche, could get through a clump of chaparral and attack him from the rear—certainly no man who had such a hump to carry.
Then he remembered the lance in the air, splitting the rain. He didn’t know if it had hit home. If it had, his friend Gus McCrae might be dead. Buffalo Hump might even have run up on him and scalped him, or dragged him off for torture.
The last was such an awful thought that Call couldn’t stay crouched in the thornbush. He waited until the next flash—a fair wait, for the storm was passing on to the east, and the lightning was diminishing—and then headed for where he had last seen Gus. Once the thunder quieted a little more, he meant to fire his pistol. Maybe the Rangers would hear it, if Gus couldn’t. Maybe they would come to his aid in time to stop the humpbacked Comanche from killing Gus, or dragging him off.
Yet as he waited, Call had the feeling that help, if it came, would come too late. Probably Gus was already dead. Call had seen the lance in the air—Buffalo Hump didn’t look like a man who would let fly with a lance just to miss.
When the flash came, not as bright as before, Call saw that the plain was still empty. He began to walk toward the area where he had seen Gus—it was the direction of camp, anyway. He yelled Gus’s name twice, but there was no answer. Again the hair stood up on his neck. Buffalo Hump could be anywhere. He might be crouched behind any sage bush, any clump of chaparral, waiting in the dark for the next unwary Ranger to walk by.
Call didn’t intend to be an unwary Ranger—he meant to take every precaution, but what precaution could you take on an empty plain at night with a dangerous Indian somewhere close? He wished that he could have got more instruction from Shadrach or Bigfoot about the best procedure to follow in such situations. They had fought Indians for years—they would know. But so far neither of them had said more than two words to him, and those were mostly comments about horseshoeing or some other chore.
The lightning dimmed and dimmed, as the storm moved east. Call could see no trace of Gus, but of course, between the lightning flashes the plain was pitch dark. Gus could be dead and scalped behind any of the sage bushes or clumps of chaparral.
Call walked back and forth for awhile, hoping Gus would hear him and call out. He decided shooting was unwise—if he shot anymore, Major Chevallie might chide him for wasting the ammunition.
Heartsick, sure that his friend was dead, Call began to trudge back to camp. He felt it was mainly his fault that the tragedy had occurred. He should have fought Gus, if necessary, to keep him at his post. But he hadn’t; Gus had walked off, and now all was lost.
It seemed to Call, as he walked back in dejection, that Gus should just have left him in the blacksmith’s shop. He didn’t know enough to be a Ranger—neither had his friend, and now ignorance had got Gus killed. Call was certain he was dead, too. Gus had a loud voice, louder even than Black Sam’s. If he wasn’t dead, he would be making noise.
Then, just as he was at the lowest ebb of dejection, Call heard the very voice he had supposed he would never hear again: Gus McCrae’s voice, yelling from the camp. Call ran as hard as he could toward the sound—he came running into camp so fast that Long Bill Coleman nearly shot him for a hostile.
Sure enough, though, there was Gus McCrae, al
ive and with his pants down. A Comanche lance protruded from his hip. The reason he was yelling was because Bigfoot and Shadrach were trying to pull it out.
4.
THE LANCE WAS STUCK so deep in Gus’s hip that Bigfoot and Shadrach together couldn’t pull it out. It was a long, heavy lance—how Gus had managed to run all that way with it dangling from his hip Call couldn’t imagine. Gus kept yelling, as the two men tugged at it. Rip Green tried to steady Gus as the two older men attempted to work the lance out. Rip alone wasn’t strong enough—Bob Bascom had to come and help hold Gus in place.
Shadrach soon grew annoyed with Gus’s yelling, which was loud.
“Shut off your goddamn bellowing,” Shadrach said. “You’re yelling loud enough to call every Indian between here and the Cimarron River.”
“There wasn’t but one Indian,” Call informed them. “He had a big hump on his back. I seen him.”
At that news, the whole camp came to attention. Bigfoot and Shadrach ceased their efforts to extract the lance. Major Chevallie had been peering into the darkness, but his head snapped around when Call mentioned the hump.
“You saw Buffalo Hump?” he said.
“He was the man who threw that lance,” Call said. “I saw him in the lightning flash. That was when he threw the lance. I thought he missed.”
“Nope, he didn’t miss,” Bigfoot said. “This is his buffalo lance. I’m surprised he wasted it on a boy.”
“I wish he hadn’t,” Gus said, his voice shaking. “I guess it’s stuck in my hipbone.”
“No, it’s nowhere near your damn hipbone,” Shadrach said. He squatted to take a better look at the lance head—then he waved Bigfoot away, twisted the lance a little, and with a hard yank, pulled it out. Gus fainted—Rip and Bob had loosened their hold for a moment; before they could recover, Gus fell forward on his face. Bob Bascom had looked aside, in order to spit tobacco. He kept so much tobacco in his mouth that he was prone to choking fits in time of action. Rip Green had just glanced at his bedroll; he was suspicious by nature and was always glancing at his bedroll to make sure no one was stealing anything from it. Both Rip and Bob were startled when Gus fell on his face—Call was, too. He had not supposed Gus McCrae would be the type to faint.
But blood was pouring out of Gus’s hip, and there seemed to be blood farther down his leg.
“Here, Sam,” Major Chevallie said, motioning to his cook. “You’re the doctor—tend to this man before he bleeds to death.”
“Need to get him closer to the fire so I can sew him up,” Sam said. He was a small man, about the size of Rip Green; his curly hair was white. Call was uncomfortable with him—he had had little experience of darkies, but he had to admit that the man cooked excellent grub and seemed to be expert in treating boils and other small ailments.
Sam quickly scooped some ash out of the campfire and used it to staunch the flow of blood. He patted ash into the wound until the bleeding stopped; while waiting for it to stop, he threaded a big darning needle.
Matilda walked up about that time, dragging her pallet. Gus’s yells had awakened her, and her mood was shaky. She kicked sand at Long Bill Coleman for no reason at all. The Mexican boy was asleep, but the old woman still sat by the fire, silent and unmoving.
“Sew that boy up before he gets conscious and starts bellowing again,” Shadrach said. “If there’s Indians around, they know where we are. This pup makes too much noise.”
“Why, they can mark our position by the fire—they wouldn’t need the yelling,” Bigfoot said. Gus soon proved to be awake enough to be sensitive to the darning needle. It took Matilda and Bigfoot and Bob Bascom to hold him steady enough that Sam could sew up his long wound.
“Why’d you kick that sand on me?” Long Bill asked Matilda while the sewing was in progress. He was a little hurt by Matilda’s evident scorn.
“Because I felt like kicking sand on a son of a bitch,” Matilda said. “You were the closest.”
“This boy’s lucky,” Sam said. “The lance missed the bone.”
“He might be lucky, but we ain’t,” Major Chevallie said. He was pacing around nervously.
“What I can’t figure out is why Buffalo Hump would be sitting out there by himself,” he added.
“He was sitting on a blanket,” Gus said. Sam had finally quit poking him with the big needle—that and the fact that he was alive made him feel a little better. Besides that, he was back in camp. He felt sure he was going to survive, and wanted to be helpful if he could.
“I ran right past him, that’s why he took after me,” Gus said. “He had a terrible big hump.”
Gus felt that he might want to relax and snooze, but that plan was interrupted by the old Comanche woman, who suddenly began to wail. The sound of her high wailing gave everybody a start.
“What’s wrong with her—now she’s howling,” Long Bill asked.
Shadrach went over to the old woman and spoke with her in Comanche, but she continued to wail. Shadrach waited patiently until she stopped.
“She’s a vision woman,” Shadrach said. “My grandma was a vision woman too. She would let out wails when she had some bad vision, just like this poor old soul.”
Call wanted the old woman to quiet down—her wailing had a bad effect on the whole camp. Her wails were as sad as the sound of the wind as it sighed over the empty flats. He didn’t want to hear such disturbing sounds, and none of the other Rangers did, either.
Shadrach still squatted by the old woman, talking to her in her own tongue. The wind blew swirls of fine sand around them.
“Well, what now? What’s she saying?” Major Chevallie asked.
“She says Buffalo Hump is going to cut off her nose,” Shadrach said. “She was one of his father’s wives—I guess she didn’t behave none too well. Her people put her out to die, and Buffalo Hump heard about it. Now he wants to find her and cut off her nose.”
“I’d think he had better things to do,” the Major said. “She’s old, she’ll die. Why bother with her nose?”
“Because she behaved bad to his father,” Shadrach said, a little impatiently. Major Chevallie’s ignorance of Indian habits often annoyed him.
“I don’t like it that he’s out there,” Long Bill said. “Once he cuts this old woman’s nose off he might keep cutting. He might cut a piece or two off all of us, before he stops.”
“Why, if you’re worried, just go kill him, Bill,” Bigfoot said.
“He’s a swift runner, even with that hump,” Gus informed them. “He almost caught me, and I’m fleet.”
Major Chevallie kept pacing back and forth, his pistol cocked.
“Let’s mount up and go,” he said abruptly. “We’re not in a secure position here—I believe it would be best to ride.”
“Now, hold still,” Shadrach insisted. “This is a vision woman talking. Let’s see what else she has to say.”
He went to the fire, poured some coffee in a tin cup, and handed it to the old woman. The Major didn’t like it that Shadrach had ignored his order—but he took it. He sat down by Matilda, who was still in a heavy mood.
“I still don’t see why he would go to so much trouble just to cut off an old woman’s nose,” he muttered, mainly to himself. Bigfoot Wallace heard him, though.
“You ain’t a Comanche,” Bigfoot said. “Comanches expect their wives to stay in the right tent.”
Major Chevallie thought of his own dear wife, Jane. If it had not been for the scrape in Baltimore, he could be home with her right then; they might be nestled together, in a nice feather bed. How long would it be before he could return to their snug stone house in Loudon County? Would he ever return to it, or to his ardent Jane? He felt low, very low. It was too dusty in Texas. Every bite of food he had attempted to eat, all day, had been covered with grit. The large whore beside him was rough; she would never smell as good as his Jane. But Matilda was there, and Jane wasn’t. Matilda was likable, despite being rough; the Major was feeling desperate. The Comanche war chief wa
s within earshot of his camp. A minute’s relief with Matilda would be helpful, but of course it was not a time to suggest to the troop that he was unmilitary. It was clear already that Bigfoot and Shadrach had a low opinion of his leadership. Chevallie was an old name, much respected in the Tidewater, but it meant nothing west of the Pecos. Ability was all that counted, in the West, in such a country, among such men—out West the ability to waltz gracefully did not help a man keep his scalp.
The fact was, he himself had no great opinion of his own military skills. His three weeks at the Point had involved little study, and none that touched on the fine points of warfare with Comanche Indians.
Call went over and sat down by Gus—his friend seemed relaxed, if a little gaunt.
“I seen you in the lightning,” Call said. “I seen he was after you. I shot, but I doubt I hit him. He was after you hard.”
“Yes, and he nearly got me,” Gus said.
“I told you to stay put,” Call reminded him, but in a low voice. He didn’t want the Major to know that Gus had wandered off from his post, although if he hadn’t they might never have known that Buffalo Hump was nearby.
“I didn’t find no gold mine, just a badger and that big Indian,” Gus admitted. “He was just sitting there on a blanket. What was he doing just sitting there with all that lightning striking?”
When Shadrach finished talking to the old Comanche woman, he seemed a little agitated.
“What’s the news, Shad?” Bigfoot asked. He could tell there was some news. Shadrach had his rifle in his hand and he was looking north.
“Bad news,” Shadrach said. “We need to watch our hair for the next few days. If we don’t, we won’t be wearing it.”
“Why, Shad, I always watch my hair,” Bob Bascom said. Ezekiel whooped when he said it, and Josh Corn smiled. The reason for their merriment was that Bob Bascom had almost no hair to watch. He was bald, except for a few sprigs above his ears. Blackie Slidell was almost as bald—he had been heard to remark that any Indian scalping him would be mainly wasting his time.
The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4) Page 5