“Why, it’s the size of a house,” Gus said. He had never imagined a weed could grow so big. It hurtled by the company, rolling over and over, as fast as a man could run. From time to time it hit a bump or a small rock and sailed into the air. Soon it was a hundred yards to the south, and then it vanished, obscured by the blowing dust.

“Let us have no more talk of bears,” Salazar said, looking at Gus.

They marched late into the night, with only a few bites of food. In San Saba the men had been given gourds, to use as water carriers —some of them had already drunk the last of their water, while others still had a little. The temperature had dropped and all the men longed for a fire, but there was nothing to burn, except the branches of a few thin bushes. The Texans gathered enough sticks to make a small blaze and were about to light it when Salazar stopped them.

“No fires tonight,” he said.

“Why not?” Gus asked. “I’d like to warm my toes.”

“Gomez will see it if he is still following us,” Salazar said.

“Why would he follow us—he’s done got our donkeys and most of our food,” Bigfoot asked.

“He might follow us to kill us,” Salazar replied.

“He could have killed you last night and he didn’t,” Bigfoot said. “Why would he walk another day just to do what he could already have done?”

“Because he is an Apache, Serior,” Salazar said. “He is not like us. He may have gone home—I don’t know. But I want no fires tonight.”

By midnight, the cold had become so intense that the men were forced to huddle together for warmth. Even huddled, they were so cold that several of them ceased to be able to feel their feet. Johnny Carthage could not overcome his dread. He tried to think of the sunlight of south Texas, but all he could think of was the terrible white sleet that had nearly taken his life a few days before. He was squeezed up against Long Bill—he could feel his friend shivering. Long Bill shivered violently, but slept, his mouth open, his breath a cloud of white in the cold night. Johnny began to wish that Bill would wake up. Bill had been his pard—his companero. Bill had risked his life to locate him and bring him out of the terrible sleet storm. Now the dread of the cold was overwhelming him—he wanted Long Bill to sense it and wake up, to talk him out of what he meant to do with the small knife he had just taken out of his pocket. He wanted his oldest and best friend to help him through the night. Johnny Carthage began to tremble even more violently than the man he was huddled against. He trembled so that he could scarcely hold the knife, or raise the blade. He didn’t want to drop the knife. If he did, he might not have the strength to find it in the freezing night. He didn’t want to wake his friend, so tired from the long day’s march; yet, he needed his help and began to cry quietly, in despair. He didn’t want to live, his hope was broken; no more did he want to die, without his friend to help him. There was no sound on all the plain except the breathing of the exhausted men around him. The darkness was spotted with little clouds—the white breath of his companeros. Johnny’s gimpy leg was aching terribly from the cold; his foot twitched, twitched, twitched; though he could not feel his foot he felt the twitching, regular as the ticking of a clock.

“Dern this leg,” he whispered. “Dern this leg.”

Then he opened the knife, and put the blade against his throat— but the blade was so cold that he withdrew it. He began to sob, at the knowledge that he hadn’t the strength to push the cold knife blade into his throat and cut. It meant he would freeze, but he could not do it amid the Rangers, because they would insist on making him go on. They would not accept the fact that he didn’t want to live anymore.

Johnny put the knife to his throat again, but again he withdrew it. The tip made a tiny cut in his neck and the cold seared the cut, like a brand. Johnny quietly moved an inch away from Long Bill, and then another. Slowly, waking no one, he eased out from the midst of the Rangers, a foot at a time. Even when he had slipped beyond the sound of their breathing, he merely scooted over the cold ground, a foot at a time.

Of all the Texans, only Matilda Roberts was awake. At night she had taken to sleeping between the two boys, making Call turn historn back to her so she could warm it. Gus slept on the other side, squeezed up against her as close as he could get. Both boys slept, but Matilda didn’t. She saw Johnny Carthage—he crawled right by her. As he was about to go into the night he felt her gaze, and turned to look at her for a moment. He could only see her outline, not her face; nor could she see him clearly, yet she knew who he was and where he was going. Johnny paused in his crawl. The two of them looked at one another, through the darkness. Matilda opened her mouth, but closed it again, without speaking. Johnny Carthage was beyond her words—but she did reach out and squeeze his arm. She heard him sob; he touched her arm for a moment, before he crawled away. “Oh, Johnny,” she whispered, but she didn’t try to stop him. Since Shadrach’s death she had used her strength for the boys, Gus and Call—one was hurt, and the other was foolish. It would take all her strength, and perhaps more than her strength, to get them across the desert. She could not save them and Johnny Carthage, too—nor could Long Bill save his friend without losing his own chance to live. If the cold didn’t take Johnny, the stony ground would grind at him until it broke him. If he wanted to make his own end, she felt it was wrong to stop him. His chances were slight at best; there was no point in his suffering beyond his strength.

Even so, it was hard to listen to the scraping of his poor leg, as he dragged himself over the hard ground, into the icy night. But the scraping grew faint, and then very faint. Soon she could hear nothing but the breathing of the two boys who slept beside her. Since the day when Caleb Cobb had struck his foot with the rifle barrel, Call had limped almost as badly as Johnny. Probably there were broken bones, somewhere in his foot—but he was young. The broken bones would heal.

Johnny Carthage crawled on until he figured he was almost two hundred yards from camp. He had worn one of his pants legs through and scraped one of his knees on the icy ground. Bigfoot had once told him that freezing men felt a warmth come over them, near the end; when he judged that he was far enough from camp not to be found, even if Long Bill should wake and miss him and come looking, he stopped and sat, shivering violently. He waited for the warmth in which he could sleep and die—he had been cold long enough; he was ready for the warmth, but the warmth didn’t come—only a deeper cold, a cold that seeped inside him and chilled his lungs, his liver, even his heart.

Desperate for the warmth, he opened his little knife again and clutched it tightly, meaning to plunge it into his neck, where the great vein was. But before he could grasp the knife tightly enough in his shivering hands, he looked up and saw a shadow between himself and the starlight. Someone was there, a presence he felt but could not see. Before he could think more about it, Gomez struck. Johnny Carthage finally felt the longed-for warmth—a warm flood, flowing down his chest and onto his freezing hands. For a moment, he was grateful: whoever was there, between him and the cold stars, had taken a hard task off his hands. Then he slipped down and the shadow was astride him, opening his pants. Before Gomez struck again, one-eyed Johnny Carthage had ceased to mind the cold, or to feel the pain of the knife that had severed his privates. Oh, Bill, he thought—then all thoughts ceased.

Gomez wiped his knife on Johnny Carthage’s pants leg, and moved quietly toward the Mexican camp. Long before he got there, he heard the snores of several sleeping men. He had planned to kill the shivering Mexican sentries and take their guns, but when he realized that the large woman was awake, he changed his mind. He did not want the large woman to know he was there. The night before, in the little cave where he rested, he had seen a snake, though it was much too cold for snakes to be moving about; worse, late in the night, he had heard the call of an owl, though he was far out on the malpais, where no owls flew. He knew it must be the large woman who summoned the snake and the old owl to places where they should never be. He knew the large woman must be a witch, for only a witch would be traveling through the malpais with so many men.