Gomez knew that the large woman had been the woman of Tail-Of-The-Bear, and Tail-Of-The-Bear had been a great man, perhaps a shaman. Gomez turned away from the camp at once; he did not want the witch to find out that he was near. If she knew, she might summon the owl again—the buu—and to hear the call of the buu twice meant death.

Gomez skirted the camp and walked several miles, to where he had left his two sons. One of them had found a wolf den that day—they had made a little fire and were cooking the wolf pups they had caught. Gomez wanted to eat one of the young wolves—it would give him cunning, and protect him from the buu and the witch, the large woman who had traveled with Tail-Of-The-Bear.

LONG BILL COLEMAN WAS frantic, when he discovered that Johnny Carthage had left him in the night. He felt guilty for not having watched his friend more closely.

“I expect he just went for a walk, to keep warm,” he said. “I ought to have kept him warmer, but it was hard, without no fire.”

Bigfoot did not suppose that Johnny Carthage had merely walked into the night to keep his feet warm; nor did Captain Salazar believe it. A few hundred yards to the east, they saw four buzzards circling.

“Bill, he went off to die—got tired of this shivering,” Matilda said, before Gus or anyone could comment on the buzzards. It was colder that day than it had been the day before. The whole troop was shivering.

Salazar allowed the Texans to burn their few pitiful sticks, but the blaze was not even sufficient to boil coffee. It died, and the only warmth they had was the warmth of their own breath—they all stood around blowing on their hands. When Long Bill saw the buzzards and realized what they meant, he had to be restrained from running to bury his friend.

“Bill, the buzzards have been at him,” Bigfoot said. “Anyway, we got nothing to bury him with. Gus and me will go and take a look, just to be sure it wasn’t some varmint that froze to death.”

“Yes, go look,” Salazar said. “But hurry. We can’t wait.” When Gus saw the torn, white body of Johnny Carthage he immediately turned his back. Bigfoot, though, shooed the buzzards away and took a closer look. What he saw didn’t please him. Johnny’s throat had been slashed, and his privates cut off. The buzzards hadn’t cut his throat, nor had they castrated him. Bigfoot circled the body, hoping to see a man track—something that would allow him to gauge the strength of their opponents. If several Apaches had been there, that would be one thing. It would mean that none of them could sleep safe until they moved beyond the Apache country. But if Gomez was so confident that he would come to the camp alone, take a horse, kill a man—or several men —then they were up against someone as formidable as Buffalo Hump—someone they probably could not beat.

As Gus stood with his back turned, trying to keep his heaving stomach under control, Bigfoot remembered the dream he had had back on the Pecos, the dream in which Buffalo Hump and Gomez were riding together, to make war on anyone in their path, Mexican or white. Now, in a way, that dream had come true, even though the two Indians might be hundreds of miles apart, and might have never met. Buffalo Hump had almost killed them on the prairie, and now Gomez was cutting them down in the New Mexican desert. If the two men, Comanche and Apache, ever did join forces, the little troop standing around in the cold would have no chance. Texans and Mexicans alike would be drained of blood like poor one-eyed Johnny Carthage, their throats cut, and their balls thrown to the varmints.

He looked across the long, barren plain, hoping to see some sign —a wolf, a bird, a fleeing antelope, anything at all that would tell him where the Apaches were. But the plain was completely empty

—only the grey clouds moved at all. Gus McCrae had dropped to his knees—despite himself, his stomach turned over; he retched and retched and retched. Bigfoot waited for him to finish, and then led him back to camp. He didn’t tell Gus what he knew, or what he feared. The troop was close to panic anyway—panic and despair, from the cold and hunger and the knowledge that they were on a journey that many of them would not live to finish.

“Did he freeze?” Long Bill asked, grief stricken, when Bigfoot came back.

“Well, he’s froze now, yes,” Bigfoot said. “We should get to walking.

Call’s hurt feet were paining him even more than they had been. He had wobbled the day before, coming over a ridge; he hit his foot on a rock, and since then, had had a sharp pain in his right foot, as if a bone thin as a needle was poking him every time he put his foot down.

All that day he struggled to keep up, helped by Matilda and Gus. He noticed that Bigfoot kept looking back, turning every few minutes to survey the desert behind them. It became so noticeable that Call finally asked Gus about it.

“Did Johnny just freeze?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Gus said. “All I seen was his body,” Gus said. “The buzzards had been at him.”

“I know the buzzards had been at him, but were the buzzards all that had been at him?” Call asked.

“He means did an Indian kill him,” Matilda asked. She too had noticed Bigfoot’s nervousness.

Gus had not even thought about Indians—he supposed that Johnny had just gone off to walk himself warm, but had failed at it and frozen. He had only glimpsed the body from a distance—it was blood splotched, like the body of Josh Corn had been, but he had supposed the buzzards had accounted for the blood. Now, though, once he tried to recall what he had seen, he wasn’t sure. The thought that an Indian had found Johnny and killed him was too disturbing to consider.

“I expect he just died,” Gus said.

The answer didn’t satisfy Call—Johnny Carthage had survived several bitter nights. Why would he suddenly die, on a night that was no colder than the others? But Call saw that Gus was going to be of no help. Gus didn’t like to look at dead bodies. He could not be relied on to report accurately.

Bigfoot was tempted to tell Captain Salazar what had happened to Johnny Carthage. He had a hard time keeping secrets. The daywas bitter cold. The Texans were still bound at the wrists, and their hands began to freeze, from lack of circulation. As dusk came, Bigfoot felt his anger rising. Very likely, they were going to die on the dead man’s walk—he reflected ruefully that the sandy stretch of country was accurately named. Why tie the hands of men who were all but dead anyway? His anger rose, and he strode up to Salazar and fell in beside him. “Captain, Johnny Carthage didn’t freeze to death,” he said. “He was kilt.”

Salazar was almost at the end of his strength—the pace he set was not a military pace, but the pace of a man unused to walking. His family had a small hacienda—all his life he had ridden. Without his horse, he felt weak. Also, he liked to eat—the cold, the wound on his neck, and the lack of food had weakened him. Now, just as they faced another day with little food and another night without fire, the big Texan came to him with unwelcome news. “How was he killed?” he asked.

“Throat cut,” Bigfoot said. “He was castrated, too, but I expect he was past feeling, when that happened.”

“Why did you wait so long to tell me this, Serior Wallace?” Salazar asked. He kept walking, slowly; he had not looked at Bigfoot.

“Because this whole bunch is about to give up,” Bigfoot said. “They’ll panic and start deserting. Whoever killed Johnny will pick them off, one by one.”

“Gomez,” Captain Salazar said. “He’s toying with us.”

“Untie us, Captain,” Bigfoot said. “Our hands will freeze this way. We’ll fight with you, against the Apache—but we can’t fight if our hands are frozen off. I couldn’t hold a rifle steady now. My hands are too cold.”

Salazar looked back at the stumbling Texans. They were weak and cold, but they still looked stronger than his own men. He knew that Bigfoot Wallace was right. His men wouldn’t go much farther, unless they found food. They would flee toward the mountains, or else simply sit down and die. Gomez was the wolf who would finish them, in his own way.