Free Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry Page B

could tell from looking at the cliff that he was too weak to make it up very far. Unless he was lucky, someone else would have to shoot the goats.

Josh had just reached over to strip a few sage leaves to wipe himself with when he saw a movement in the sage some fifteen yards away. All he could see was the back of an animal; he thought it must be a pig, moving through the thickest part of the little patch of sage and chaparral. Josh reached for his pistol. The pig would come in sight in just a moment, and he meant to empty his pistol into it.

The other Rangers could go scampering up the mountain to shoot at goats if they wanted to--he would be the one bringing home meat: pig meat. They had feasted on several javelinas on the trip from San Antonio. Some had been tough, others succulent. When there was time Sam liked to bury the whole pig, head, hide, and all, overnight, with coals heaped on it. By morning the pig would be plenty tender; Sam would dig it up and the Rangers would enjoy a fine meal.

Buffalo Hump had been watching the boy.

When the young Ranger started to reach for his pistol, Buffalo Hump rose to his knees and fired an arrow just above the tops of the sage: Josh Corn saw him only for a split second before the arrow cut through his throat and severed his windpipe.

Josh dropped his pistol and managed to get a hand on the arrow, but he fell sideways as he grasped it and didn't feel the knife that finished cutting his throat. Buffalo Hump dragged the quivering body behind him as he retreated through the sage. Kicking Wolf had just shot the Major's horse; all the Rangers were looking across the plain. They had forgotten the boy who was emptying his bowels amid the sage.

Buffalo Hump had his horse staked in a shallow gully. As soon as he got the dead boy into the gully he stripped him, cut off his privates, and threw him on the back of his horse. A curtain of blood from the cut throat covered the boy's torso. Buffalo Hump mounted, but kept low. He held the streaming corpse across the horse's rump with one hand. He waited, looking to see if the Rangers were inclined to mount and go investigate the sudden death of the Major's horse. He had watched the Rangers closely the day of the sandstorm and felt he knew what the capability of the little force was. The only man he had to watch was old Shadrach, known to the Comanches as Tail-of-the-Bear. The long rifle of Tail-of-the-Bear had to be respected. The old man seldom missed. Bigfoot Wallace was quick and strong, but no shot; Buffalo Hump regretted not having killed him the day of the great ice storm on the Clear Fork of the Brazos. The fat Major was a good shot with a pistol, but seldom used the rifle.

Buffalo Hump waited, while the blood from Josh Corn's corpse ran down his horse's rear legs and soaked his flanks. In their haste to kill mountain goats--in fact, two Comanche boys with goat skins over their shoulders--the Rangers had foolishly run their horses down. In their eagerness the Rangers had also outrun the old woman and the tongueless boy.

He himself had already caught the old woman and notched her nose, to pay back the insult she had given his father. The tongueless boy he had given to Kicking Wolf, who would sell him as a slave. There had been much ammunition on the pack mule, too--the Rangers would soon be out of bullets, if they started shooting. He had slipped into the gully merely to watch the white men at close range, but then the careless young Ranger walked into the sage to empty his bowels. Taking him had been easier than snaring a prairie dog, or killing a turkey.

Once he was satisfied that the whites were not going as a troop to find the killer of the Major's horse, Buffalo Hump burst out of the gully.

He yelled his war cry as loudly as he could and raced directly in front of the whites, still holding the bloody corpse across the rump of his horse. He saw a bullet kick the dust, well short of where he rode. Old Tail-of-the-Bear was shooting