Dead Man's Walk

by Larry McMurtry

MATILDA JANE ROBERTS WAS naked as the air. Known throughout south Texas as the Great Western, she came walking up from the muddy Rio Grande holding a big snapping turtle by the tail.

Buffalo Hump was the meanest Comanche anyone had ever heard of, and Gomez the meanest Apache.

none of them had ever seen a whore decapitate a snapping turtle before.

He waved at Major Chevallie, who strolled over, looking uncomfortable. He drew his pistol, a precaution the Major always took when he sensed controversy. With his pistol drawn, decisive judgment could be reached and reached quickly.

“These low dogs have been killing Mexicans, Major,” Bigfoot said.

Major Chevallie did look at Kirker hard. He knew he ought to shoot the two men and leave them to the flies. Shadrach’s opinion was no doubt accurate: the men had been killing Mexican children; Mexican children were a lot easier to hunt than Comanches.

Gus had never supposed he would run from any man, yet he felt as if he should still be running. He needed to get farther from Buffalo Hump than he was,

a party of fighting Comanches, riding at ease through the country that was theirs.

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.

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.

“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.

The urge to be adventuring was too strong to be resisted.

Call chose a young white woman named Maggie, who took his coins and accepted him in silence. She had gray eyes—she seemed to be sad. The look in her eye, as he was pulling his pants up, made him a little uneasy—it was a sorrowful look. He felt he ought to say something, perhaps try to talk to the girl a little, but he didn’t know how to talk to her, or even why he felt he should.

Call said. “This is a damn nuisance.”

They were scared: they had ridden out of Austin into a world where the rules were not white rules, where torture and mutilation awaited the weak and the unwary, the slow, the young.

Call stopped, puzzled—their looks suggested that he had neglected something. “Ain’t you going to scalp him?” Bigfoot asked. “You killed him. It’s your scalp.”

“He said you both belong to him,” he told them. “He says he will take you when he is ready—but not today.

But Woodrow Call had no interest in respect. He was swinging to kill.

Once they passed through the Narrows the great plain spread west before them. Though they had been on the prairie for weeks, none of them were prepared for the way the sky and the earth seemed to widen, once they rose onto the Llano Estacado. After a day or two on the llano the meaning of distance seemed changed. The great plain, silent

Palo Duro Canyon,

Yet before he had been running a minute, Call realized that the Comanches were gaining. Their horses were no faster than Betsy, but they knew the land better—it was the same thing he had felt west of the Pecos. They took advantage of every roll and dip.

But here was a woman howling like a she-wolf—what sense did that make? “Love’s a terrible price to pay for company, ain’t it, Matty?” Caleb said.

Call had a sense of trespass, as he rode. He felt that he was in a country that wasn’t his. He didn’t know where Texas stopped and New Mexico began, but it wasn’t the Texans or the New Mexicans whose country he was riding through: it was the Comanches he trespassed on. Watching them move across the face of the canyon, on a trail so narrow that he couldn’t see it, had shown him again that the Comanches were the masters of their country to a degree no Ranger could ever be.

Call said nothing, but once again he felt a sense of trespass.

“You could have let them feed us—they’ve got plenty.” “Our men ain’t got plenty,” Call reminded him,

They can survive in this country, because they know it. When we learn how to smell out roots, and which weeds to eat, maybe we can fight them on even terms.”

There were more Texans than ever, moving west on the creeks and rivers, cutting trees and making little farms. They were easy to kill, the Texans, but there were many of them, and most of his warriors still only had bows and arrows. All the Texans had guns—some of them could shoot well. It would be better if his young men learned to use the gun. Otherwise, the Texans might come all the way into the Comancheria and start killing the buffalo.