“I wasn’t talking about Josh when I said it was foolish,” the Major said. He had been talking about himself. One glimpse of a mountain goat—Bigfoot’s glimpse at that—had encouraged them to make a wild charge and exhaust their horses. The thought of a hunt had been something to break the monotony of plodding on west. Well, there was no monotony now: the Comanches had really broken it.

Now they were backed against a cliff, his horse was dead, and possibly a boy, too.

“I think that was Josh he pitched up in the air,” Bigfoot said. “I think that sneaking devil caught him.”

“No, it can’t be Josh!” Zeke said, suddenly very distraught. “Josh just went over in them bushes to take a shit.”

“I think he caught him, Zeke,” Bigfoot said, in a kindly tone. He knew the boys were friends.

“Oh no, all that blood,” Zeke said. Before anyone could stop him he jumped on his horse and went riding off toward the spot where Buffalo Hump had thrown the body.

“Hell, where’s that pup going?” Shadrach said. He came walking up, disgusted with himself for having been tricked into such a situation. He hadn’t expected to hit Buffalo Hump when he shot, unless he was lucky, and he didn’t intend to waste any more bullets in the hope of being lucky. He might need every bullet—likely would.

Just as he was walking up to the group, he thought he saw movement—the movement had been an arrow, which thudded into Bigfoot’s horse. The horse squealed and reared. The arrow had come from above—from the mountain.

“They’re above us!” Shadrach yelled. “Get them horses out of range!”

“Oh, damn it, it wasn’t goats, it was Comanches!” Bigfoot said, mortified that he had been so easily taken in. He began to drag his wounded horse farther from the hill. Arrows began to fly off the mountain, though no one could spot the Indians who were shooting them. Several Rangers shot at the mountain, to no effect. Three horses were hit, and one-eyed Johnny Carthage got an arrow in his upper leg. Call had an arrow just glance off his elbow—he knew he was lucky. The horses were in a panic—he had no time to think about anything except hanging on to his mount.The Rangers all retreated toward the patch of sage bush where Josh Corn had been taken. It was Call, dragging his rearing horse by the bridle, who spotted the bloody patch of ground where Josh had been killed. Call knew it must be Josh’s blood because the shit on the ground was white—his own had mostly been white, since crossing the Pecos.

“Look,” he said to Gus, who was just behind him.

At the sight of all the fresh blood, the strength suddenly drained out of Gus. He dropped to his knees and began to vomit, letting go of his horse’s reins in the process. The horse had an arrow sticking out of its haunch and was jumpy; Call just managed to catch a rein and keep the horse from bolting. Long Bill and Rip Green were shooting at the Comanches on the hill, although they couldn’t see their targets.

“Hold off shooting, you idiots,” Bigfoot yelled. “You ain’t going to hit an Indian a thousand feet up a mountain!”

Bigfoot felt very chagrined. He knew he ought to have been able to tell a goatskin with a Comanche boy under it from a living goat, and he could have if he had just had the patience to ride a little closer and observe the goats as they grazed. His lack of patience had led the Rangers into a trap. Of course, he hadn’t expected the pell-mell rush to shoot goats, but he should have expected it: most Rangers would ride half a day to shoot any game, much less unusual game such as mountain goats.

Now one man was dead, several horses were hurt, a Ranger had an arrow in his leg, Zeke Moody had just foolishly ridden off, and no one had any idea how many Indians they faced. There were several on the mountain and at least two on the plain, one of them Buffalo Hump, no mean opponent. But there could be forty, or even more than forty. In his hurry to get to the mountain he had paid no attention to signs. At least Matilda and Sam had not been cut off. The fact that they had survived probably meant they weren’t dealing with a large party. The loss of the ammunition that was on the other pack mule was a grievous loss, though.

The next worry was Ezekiel Moody, who was still loping off to locate the body of his friend. Bigfoot knew that Zeke would soon be dead or captured, unless he was very lucky.

“Damn that boy, they’ll take him for sure,” the Major said. All the Rangers, plus Matilda and Sam, were huddled in the little patch of sage. Shadrach saw the gully where Buffalo Hump had tethered his horse and found the bloody trail he had made when he dragged Josh Corn’s body. Gus McCrae had the dry heaves. He could not stop retching. The sight of the Indian with the great hump reminded him of his own terrified flight; the smell of Josh Corn’s blood caused his stomach to turn over and over, like a churn. Gus knew that Buffalo Hump had almost caught him—the sight of Josh’s blood-streaked body showed him clearly what his fate would have been had the lance that struck his hip been thrown a little more accurately. A yard or so difference in the footrace, and he would have been as dead as Josh.

Gus finally got to his feet and stumbled a little distance from the blood; he needed to steady himself so he could shoot if the Comanches launched an attack.

Major Chevallie felt that he had decided foolishly—he should have followed his first instinct and headed east. More and more he regretted not taking his chances with the Baltimore judge.

Now he was caught in an exposed place, with only a shallow gully for cover and an unknown number of savages in opposition. Their best hope lay in the skills of the two scouts. Shadrach was calm, if annoyed, and Bigfoot was flustered, no doubt because he knew he was responsible for getting them into such a fix. His superior eyesight had not been superior enough to detect the trick and prevent the race.

The chaos involved in fighting such Indians bothered Randall Chevallie more than anything. In Virginia or even Pennsylvania, if quarrels arose, a man usually knew who he was fighting and how to proceed. But in the West, with a few puny men caught between vast horizons, it was different. The Indians always knew the country better than the white men; they knew how to use it, to hide in it, to survive in it in places where a white man would have no chance. No man in Virginia would ride around with a naked, bloody corpse bouncing around on the rump of his horse. No one in Virginia or Pennsylvania would yell as Buffalo Hump had yelled.

There was another shot from the hidden rifleman on the plain, and Zeke Moody’s horse went down.

“I feared it, they’ll get him now, the young fool,” Bigfoot said.

Zeke was not hurt—he had heard no shot, and supposed his horse had merely stumbled. But the horse didn’t get up—in a moment Zeke realized that the horse was dead. At once he turned, and began to run toward the mountain and the Rangers. But Zeke had scarcely run ten yards before Buffalo Hump loomed behind him, riding a horse whose sides were bloody with Josh Corn’s blood.

“We better go help him,” Call said, but old Shadrach grabbed his arm before he could move.

“All this damn helping’s got to stop,” Shadrach said. “We don’t know how many of them are out there. If we don’t stay together there won’t be a man of us left.”

“There’s no chance for that boy anyway,” the Major said grimly. “I should have shot his horse myself, before he got out of range. That way we could have saved the boy.”

All the Rangers watched the desperate race helplessly. They saw that what the Major said was true. Ezekiel Moody had no chance. Old Shadrach raised his long rifle in case Buffalo Hump strayed in range, but he didn’t expect it, and he didn’t fire.

“I hope he remembers what I told him about killing himself,” Bigfoot said. “He’d be better off to stop running and kill himself. It’d be the easiest thing.”