Jimmy Tweed had reached into the river and grabbed Call’s shirt collar, which he gripped tightly. Call managed to get a hand into the black mare’s mane, after which he felt a little more secure.

“Watch out for dead mules—there’s apt to be Comanches with ‘em,” Call informed him. Jimmy Tweed seemed as calm as if he were sitting in church.

“I seen you shoot that one,” Jimmy said. “Hit him in the neck. I’d say it was a fine shot, being as you was in the water and about to drown.”

Just then something hit the water, not far from Call’s shoulder, with a sound like spitting. They were not far from the east bank, then—Call looked and saw puffs of smoke from a stand of trees just above the river.

“They’re shooting!” he said—another bullet had sliced the water nearby. “You oughtn’t to be sitting up so tall in the saddle—you make too good a target.”

“I guess I’d rather be shot than drownt,” Jimmy Tweed said. “If there’s one thing I’ve never liked it’s getting water up my nose.”

In another moment, Call felt his feet touch bottom. The water was still up to his chin, but he felt a little more confident and told Jimmy that he could let go his grip. Just as Jimmy let go, Call saw a Ranger fall. One of the new men had just made it to shore and was wading through the mud when a bullet knocked him backwards.

“Why, tiiat be Bert,” Jimmy Tweed said, in mild surprise. “He sure didn’t pick much of a place to land.”

“We can’t land here, they’ll shoot us like squirrels,” Call said. “Slide off now, and turn the horse.”

“I expect Bert is dead,” Jimmy said calmly—the fact was confirmed a moment later when two Comanches ran down the muddy riverbank and quickly took his scalp.

Call managed to point the black horse downstream—he was able to feel his way behind him, clinging to saddle strings and then to the horse’s tail, until he had the black horse between him and the riverbank. With only a bit of his head showing, he didn’t figure a Comanche marksman would be very likely to hit him. Jimmy Tweed, though, flatly refused to slide off into the water.

“Nope, I prefer to risk it in the saddle,” he said, though he did consent to lean low over the black horse’s neck.

They heard fire from the near bank and saw that Shadrach, Bigfoot, and Blackie Slidell had made it across and taken cover behind a jumble of driftwood. Call looked up and saw what looked like a muskrat in the water, not far from where the Rangers were forting up. On closer inspection the muskrat turned out to be the fur cap procured by Long Bill Coleman before he left San Antonio. Long Bill was underneath the cap. He was walking slowly out of the river, though the water was still up to his Adam’s apple. There was no sign of the horse he had tried to cross the Brazos River on.

By the time Call and Jimmy Tweed struggled out of the water and took cover behind the driftwood, the firing had stopped. Bigfoot had walked downstream a few yards, in order to pull a body out of the water. Call supposed a Ranger had been shot but was surprised to see that the body Bigfoot pulled out of the Brazos was the Comanche boy he himself had shot. Several more Rangers began to struggle out of the flood, some of them clinging to the bridle reins or tails of their mounts. Others were without horses, having lost hold of their mounts during the swim.

“Well, you got him,” Bigfoot said, looking at Call. “I forgot to tell you to look out for dead animals—Comanches will use them for floats.“Call was surprised at how young the boy looked. He could have been no more than twelve.

“You’re lucky your gun fired,” Shadrach said. “Them old muskets will usually just snap on you, once they get wet.”

Call didn’t say anything. He knew he had been lucky—another second and the dead boy would have had a knife in him. He could remember the boy’s eyes, staring at him from between the legs of the dead mule.

He didn’t want to look at the corpse, though—he turned to walk away and noticed that both Shadrach and Bigfoot were looking at him curiously. 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.”

Call was startled. It had never occurred to him to scalp the Comanche boy. He was a young boy. Although he was glad that he had escaped death himself, he felt no pride in the act he had just committed—the boy had been daring, in his view, to float down a swollen river, armed only with a knife, clinging to a dead mule in hopes of surprising and killing an armed Ranger. The reward for his bravery had been a bullet wound that nearly tore his head off. He would never ride the prairies again, or raid farms. Although he had had to kill him, Call thought the boy’s bravery deserved better than what it had got him. There would be no time to bury the boy, anyway—the thought of cutting his hair off did not appeal.

“No, I don’t want to scalp him,” Call said.

“He would have scalped you, if he could have,” Bigfoot said.

“I don’t doubt it,” Call said. “Scalping’s the Indian way. It ain’t my way.”

“It’ll be your way when you’re a year or two older, boy—if you survive,” Shadrach said. Then he casually knelt by the Comanche boy and took his scalp. When he finished, he pulled the boy well back into the current and let him float away.

“I should have buried him—I killed him,” Call said.

“No, you don’t bury Indians,” Bigfoot informed him. “They gather up their own dead, when they can. I guess Shad wants to make them work at it, this time.”

Shadrach had just turned and started back toward the shore, when they heard a scream from far down the river.

“Oh Lord, it’s Rip—he went downstream too far,” Long Bill said. “I believe he’s bogged.”

“Puny horse,” Bigfoot commented, raising his rifle. Rip’s horse seemed to be bogged, some twenty yards out into the stream. Five Comanches, screaming their wild cries, raced out of the scrub oak toward the river. Bigfoot shot and so did Shadrach, but the range was long and both missed. Just then a rain squall passed over them, making it hard to see well enough to shoot accurately at such distances. Rip screamed again and flailed at his horse, but his horse was too weak from his long swim to pull out of the thick river mud. The first Comanche had already splashed into the edge of the river. Call had reloaded his musket—he took careful aim and thought he hit the first Comanche, but the hit was not solid enough to slow the man. They saw Rip raise his rifle and fire point-blank at the first Comanche, but the gun misfired and in a second the Indians swarmed over him. His final scream was cut short. Before Call could get off another shot, Rip Green was hacked to death and scalped. His body was soon floating down the same river as that of the Indian boy.

Several Rangers shot at the Indians who killed Rip, but none of the shots had any effect. Bigfoot and Shadrach, concluding that the range was hopeless, didn’t shoot.

“It don’t pay to be a poor judge of horseflesh, not in this country,” Bigfoot observed. “He ought never to have tried the river on that nag, not with the river running this high.”

“What could he do? He couldn’t just sit over there and watch,” Call said. Rip Green had gone into the water just as he did—it was just Rip’s bad luck to float downstream, out of the range of help.

“Well, he could have let the horse go and swum out, like me,” Long Bill said. “I reckon I’m a better swimmer than I thought I was. My pony gave out when we was right in the middle, but here I am.

“If you don’t hunker down you won’t need to swim no more rivers—you’ll be floating down this one, dead,” Bigfoot said. Bullets began to hit the water all around them—the Rangers were forced to huddle together in the shelter of a small patch of driftwood. No men were hit, though—probably the driving rain threw off the Comanche marksmen. Call watched the trees above them as closely as he could, but he was unable to glimpse a single Indian—just puffs of smoke from their guns. The shots were coming from a semicircle of woods above them.