Call turned and fired his pistol at them once, but the shot had no effect. Now he was racing along the edge of a little bluff some fifteen feet high—ahead, the bluff gradually sloped off, but Call couldn’t wait for the slope. He put Betsy over the edge; she just managed to keep her feet when she hit, and he just managed to keep his seat. At once he heard a buzzing. Betsy began to jump and dance. Call looked around, and saw rattlesnakes everywhere. He had jumped to the edge of a den. It seemed to him that at least a hundred snakes surrounded him—they had been sunning themselves on the rocky slope: the abrupt arrival of a horse and rider startled them. Now they were buzzing in chorus. A shot came from above, but it zinged off a rock. Call put spurs to Betsy again—he couldn’t worry about the snakes—he would be dead anyway, if he didn’t run.
Seeing the snakes, the Comanches chose to lose ground and not risk the jump. But they were racing along a short decline and would soon be trying to overtake him. When he ran over the next ridge Call saw the troop—there they were, but they still seemed miles away, and the Comanches had returned to the pursuit. They were a hundred yards back, but he knew they would close with him before he could make the troop, unless he was very lucky. They had fanned out now. Two were trying to flank him on his right, while the third was directly behind him. Betsy was running flat out: so far her wind had held. Call debated the wisdom of shooting off his pistol, in the hope that someone in the troop would hear it and rush to his aid. It was a point of tactics he had not thought out in advance. If he fired, he would soon have an empty pistol.
He kept the pistol ready, but didn’t fire. He thought he could kill one Indian, anyway, if there was a close fight. Perhaps he would wound another. If the third man got him, at least he would have made a strong struggle.
Then he heard rifle shots from just ahead of him, where two or three trees bordered a little stream. A doe came bounding through the trees, so close that Betsy almost collided with it. Call skirted the spring and saw Long Bill Coleman ahead—he had been chasing the doe. He had shot once and was just reloading. He was startled to see Call, but even more startled to see the Comanches. Although the odds had altered, the Comanches were still coming.
“Oh, boy, where’s that damn Blackie when we need him?” Long Bill said, wheeling his horse. “He rode out with me but he thought the doe was too puny to bother about.”
An arrow dropped between them, and then two gunshots came from behind, one of which nicked Call’s hat brim. They raced on, hoping someone in the troop would hear the shooting and respond—it was awhile before they realized the Comanches were no longer chasing them. When they pulled up and looked back, they saw that the three Comanches, having missed the scalps, had taken the small doe instead. One of them had just slung the carcass onto his horse.
“Oh boy, I’m winded,” Long Bill said. “I was just trying to kill a little meat. I sure wasn’t looking for no Indian fight.”
Call remembered that Gus and Bigfoot were alone, at the lip of the great canyon. The three men who chased them might have been part of a larger party. With so many buffalo grazing in the canyon, it was likely more Indians were about.
Caleb Cobb was enjoying a long cigar when Call raced up: he seemed more interested in Betsy than in the news.
“I come close to choosing that little mare for myself,” he said. “I expect it’s lucky for you that I didn’t. I think Mr. Bigfoot Wallace made a good point when he said it’s horseflesh that usually makes the difference in Indian fighting.”
“Colonel, there’s hundreds of buffalo down in that canyon,” Call said. “There might be more Indians, too.”
“All right, we’re off to the rescue,” Caleb said. “We’ll take about ten men. Me and Jeb will come too. It’s a fine morning for a fracas.”
Call had forgotten to mention the dead man. He had had only a moment to look at him, before the Comanches attacked. When he told the Colonel about it, the Colonel shrugged.
“Likely just a traveler who took the long route,” he said. “Traveling alone in this part of the country is generally foolhardy.”
“I wouldn’t do it for seventy dollars,” Long Bill observed.
Shadrach had been napping when Call arrived. The change in the old mountain man surprised everyone: from being independent, stern, and a little frightening, even when he was in a good temper, he had become aged. Though Call had always known that Shadrach was old, he had not thought of him that way until they crossed the Brazos; now, though, it was impossible to think of him any other way. He had once wandered off alone for days; now, when he left camp to hunt, he was always back in a few hours. He sometimes dozed, even when on horseback. Unless directly addressed, he spoke only to Matilda.
The news that they were near the Palo Duro Canyon seemed to take years off Shadrach, though—at once he was mounted, his long rifle out of its scabbard.
“I’ve heard of it all my life, now I aim to see it,” Shadrach said.
Then he turned to Matilda.
“If it’s safe, then I’ll come and get you, Matty,” he said, before loping off.
Sam took a hasty look at Call’s arrow wound, broke off the arrow shaft and cut the arrow free. Call was impatient—he didn’t regard the wound as serious: he wanted to be off. But Sam made him wait while he dressed the wound correctly, and the Colonel, though mounted, waited with no show of impatience.
“I want Corporal Call to be well doctored,” he said. “We can’t afford to have him sick.”
Call led them to the dead man, whom Shadrach recognized.
“It’s Roy Char—he was a mining man,” Shadrach said.
“I don’t know what there could be to mine, out in this country,” Caleb said.
“Roy was after that old gold,” Shadrach said.
“What old gold?” Caleb asked. “If there’s a bunch of old gold around here we ought to find it and forget about New Mexico.”
“Some big Spaniard came marching through here in the old times,” Shadrach said. “They say he found a town that was made of gold. I guess Roy figured some of it might still be around here, somewhere.”
“Oh, Señor Coronado, you mean,” Caleb said. “He didn’t find no city of gold—all he found was a lot of poor Indians. Your friend Mr. Char lost his life for nothing. The gold ain’t here.”
The canyon was there, though. They buried Roy Char hastily, and rode along the rim of the canyon until they found Gus and Bigfoot, hiding in a small declivity behind some thorny bushes. Both had their rifles at the ready.
“What took you all day?” Gus asked—he was badly annoyed by the fact that he had had to cower behind a bush for an hour, while he waited for Call to bring up the troop.
“I got an arrow in my arm, but it wasn’t as bad as what happened to a man we just buried,” Call said.
“You could be burying us—and you would have if we hadn’t been quick to hide,” Bigfoot told them. “There’s fifty or sixty Indians down below us—I wish you’d brought the whole troop.”
“Well, we can fetch the troop,” Caleb said. “I doubt those Indians can ride up this cliff and scalp us all.”
“No, but it’s their canyon,” Bigfoot reminded him. “They might know a trail.”
Caleb walked out on a little promontory, and looked down. He saw a good number of Indians, butchering buffalo. Six buffalo were down, at least.
“If they know a trail I hope they show it to us,” Caleb said, coming back. “We’d ride down and harvest a few of them buffalo ourselves.”
“There could be a thousand Indians around here,” Bigfoot said. “I ain’t putting myself in no place where I have to climb to get away from Indians. They might be better climbers than I am.”
“You’re right, but I hate to pass up the meat,” Caleb said.
Nonetheless, they did pass it up. The troop was brought forward and proceeded west, along the edge of the canyon. They were never out of sight of buffalo—or Indians. Quartermaster Brognoli, who believed in numbers—so many boots, so many rifles,
so many sacks of flour—counted over three hundred tribesmen in the canyon, most of them engaged in cutting up buffalo. Call and Gus both kept looking into the canyon—the distance was so vast that it drew the eye. Both strained their eyes to see if they could spot Buffalo Hump, but they didn’t see him.
“He’s there, though,” Gus said. “I feel him.”
“You can’t feel an Indian who’s miles away,” Call said.
“I can,” Gus affirmed, without explanation.
“He could be five hundred miles from here—there are thousands of Indians,” Call reminded him.
“I can feel him,” Gus insisted. “I get hot under the ribs when he’s around. Don’t you ever get hot under the ribs?”
“Not unless I’ve eaten putrid beef,” Call said. Twice on the trip he had eaten putrid beef, and his system had revolted.
The night was moonless, which worried Caleb Cobb somewhat and worried Bigfoot more. The horses were kept within a corral of ropes, and guard was changed every hour. Caleb called the men together in the evening, and made a little speech.
“We’ve come too far to go back,” he said. “We’re bound for Santa Fe. But the Indians know we’re here, and they’re clever horsethieves. We have to watch close. We won’t get across this long prairie if we lose our horses—the red boys will tag after us and pick us off like chickens.”
Despite the speech and the intensified guard, the remuda was twenty horses short when dawn came. None of the guards had nodded or closed an eye, either. Caleb Cobb was fit to be tied.
“How could they get off with twenty horses and not one of us hear them?” he asked. Brognoli kept walking around the horse herd, counting and recounting. For awhile he was sure the count was wrong—it wasn’t easy to count horses when they were bunched together. He counted and recounted until Caleb lost his temper and ordered him to stop.
“The damn horses are gone!” he said. “They’re forty miles away by now, most likely. You can’t count them because they’re gone!”
“I expect it was Kicking Wolf,” Bigfoot said. “He could steal horses out of a store.”
“If I could catch the rascal I’d tie him to a horse’s tail and let the horse kick him to death,” Caleb said. “Since his name is Kicking Wolf it would be appropriate if the son of a bitch got kicked to death.”
With the night’s theft, the horse situation became critical. Three men were totally without mounts, and no man had more than one horse. To make matters worse, Tom, Matilda’s big gray, was one of the horses that had been stolen. She was now afoot. Matilda cried all morning. She had a fondness for Tom. The sight of Matilda crying unnerved the whole camp. Since taking up with Shadrach Matilda had raged less—everyone noted her mildness. But watching such a large woman cry was a trial to the spirit. It fretted Shadrach so that he grew restless and rode out of camp, over Matilda’s protests.
“Now he’ll go off and get killed,” Matilda said.
“Well, if you hush up that crying, maybe he’ll come back,” Long Bill said. He was one of the men who was afoot, and as a result, was in a sour mood. The prospect of walking to Santa Fe, across such a huge plain, did not appeal to him—but the thought of walking back to Austin didn’t appeal to him, either. He had seen what had just happened to the mining man, Roy Char. He was determined to stay with the troop, even if it meant blisters on his feet.
Call and Gus had both been on guard, in the darkest part of the night. Call felt shamed by the thought that he had not been keen enough to prevent the theft.
“Why, I wasn’t sleepy a bit,” Gus said. “It couldn’t have happened on our watch. I can hear a rat move, when I’m that wide awake.”
“You might could hear a rat, but you didn’t hear the Indians and you didn’t hear the horses leaving, either,” Call told him.
That night Call, Bigfoot, and a number of other guards periodically put their ear to the ground to listen. All they heard was the tramp of their own horses in the rope corral. In addition to the rope, most of the horses had been hobbled, so they couldn’t bolt. Call and Gus had the watch just before sunrise. They moved in circles around the herd, meeting every five minutes. Call was certain no Indians were there. It was only when dawn came that he had a moment of uncertainty. He saw the beginnings of the sunrise—the light was yellow as flame. But the yellow light was in the west, and dawn didn’t come from the west.
A second later Bigfoot saw it too, and yelled loud enough to wake the whole camp.
“That ain’t the sunrise, boys!” he yelled.
Just as he said it, Call saw movement to the north. Two Indians had sneaked in and slipped the hobbles on several horses. Call threw off a shot, but it was still very dark—he could no longer see anything to the north.
“Damn it all, they got away again,” he said. “I don’t know how many horses they got away with, this time.”
“Don’t matter now, we’ve got to head back to that last creek,” Bigfoot said.
“Why?” Call asked, startled.
Bigfoot merely pointed west, where the whole horizon was yellow.
“That ain’t sunrise,” he said, in a jerky voice. “That’s fire.”
17.
THE TROOP HAD NO sooner turned to head back south toward the little creek Bigfoot mentioned when they saw the same yellow glow on the prairie south of them. The flames to the west were already noticeably closer. Bigfoot wheeled his mount, and rode up to Caleb.
“They set it,” he said. “The Comanches. They waited till the wind was right. Now we have the canyon at our backs and prairie fires on two sides.”
“Three,” Caleb said, pointing west, where there was another fierce glow.
The whole troop immediately discerned the nature of their peril. Call looked at Gus, who tried to appear nonchalant.
“We’ll have to burn or we’ll have to jump,” Call said. “I hate the thought of burning most, I guess.”
Gus looked into the depths of the canyon—he was only twenty feet from its edge. The prairie now was a great ring of burning grass. Though he sat calmly on his horse, waiting for Bigfoot and the Colonel to decide what to do, inside he felt the same deep churning that he had felt beyond the Pecos. The Indians were superior to them in their planning. They would always lay some clever trap.
“Ride, boys,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s try the west—it’s our best chance.”
Soon the whole troop was fleeing, more than twenty of the men mounted double for lack of horses. Shadrach took Matilda on behind him—he rode right along the canyon edge, looking for a way down.
“I believe we could climb down afoot,” he told Caleb. “If we can get a little ways down, we won’t burn. There’s nothing to burn, on those cliffs.”
Caleb stopped a minute, to appraise the fire. The ring had now been closed. With every surge of wind the fire seemed to leap toward them, fifty yards at a leap. The prairie grass was tall—flames shot twenty and thirty feet in the air.
“The damn fiends,” Caleb said. “Maybe we can start a backfire, and get it stopped. I’ve heard that can be done.”
“No time, and the wind’s wrong,” Bigfoot said. “I think Shad’s right. We’re going to have to climb a ways down.”
Caleb hesitated. It might be the only good strategy, but it meant abandoning their mounts. There was no trail a horse could go down. They might survive the fire, but then what? They would be on the bald prairie—no horses, no supplies, no water. How long would it take the Comanches to pick them off?
The troop huddled around Bigfoot and their commander. All eyes were turned toward the fire, and all eyes were anxious. The flames were advancing almost at loping speed. They were only three hundred yards away. The men could hear the dry grass crackle as it took flame. When the wind surged there was a roar, as the flames were sucked into the sky.
Call felt bitter that their commander had had no more forethought than to bring them to such an exposed place. Nothing about the expedition had been well planned. Of course, no one would have imagined th
at the Indians could steal horses at will, from such a tight guard. But now they were caught: he imagined Buffalo Hump, somewhere on the other side of the flames, his lance in his hand, waiting to come in and take some scalps.
Caleb Cobb waited until the flames were one hundred yards away to make his decision. He waited, hoping to spot a break in the flames, something they might race through. But there was no break in the flames—the Indians who set the fire had done an expert job. The ring of flames grew tighter every minute. General Lloyd, drunk as usual, was shivering and shaking, although the heat from the great fire was already close enough to be felt.
“We’re done for now—we’ll cook,” he said.
“No, but we will have to climb down this damn cliff,” Caleb said, turning his horse toward the canyon’s edge. No sooner had he turned than he heard a gunshot—General Phil Lloyd had taken out his revolver and shot himself in the head. His body hung halfway off his horse, one foot caught in a stirrup.
The horses were beginning to be hard to restrain, jumping and pitching, their nostrils flaring. Two or three men were thrown—one horse raced straight into the flames.
“Let’s go, boys—keep your guns and get over the edge, as best you can,” Caleb yelled.
To Gus’s relief the canyon walls were not as sheer as they had first looked. There were drop-offs of a hundred feet and more, but there were also humps and ledges, and inclines not too steep to negotiate. The Irish dog went down at a run, his tail straight in the air. Before the men had scrambled thirty feet down there was another tragedy: the horses were in panic now—some raced into the flames, but others raced straight off into the canyon. Some hit ledges, but most rolled once or twice and fell into the void. One of the leaping horses fell straight down now on Dakluskie, the leader of the Missourians. Several of the Rangers saw the horse falling, but Dakluskie didn’t. He was crushed before he could look up. The horse kept rolling, taking Dakluskie with it. General Lloyd’s horse made the longest leap of all—he flew over the group and fell out of sight, General Lloyd’s body still dangling from the stirrup.
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