Get away from him, said Glanton.
McGill turned to look at Glanton and as he did so Glanton leveled his pistol and shot him through the head. He reholstered the gun and stood his empty rifle upright against the saddle and held it with his knee while he measured powder down the barrels. Someone shouted to him. The horse trembled and stepped back and Glanton spoke to it softly and patched two balls and drove them home. He was watching a rise to the north where a band of mounted Apaches were grouped against the sky.
They were perhaps a quarter mile distant, five, six of them, their cries thin and lost. Glanton brought the rifle to the crook of his arm and capped one drum and rotated the barrels and capped the other. He did not take his eyes from the Apaches. Webster stepped from his horse and drew his rifle and slid the ramrod from the thimbles and went to one knee, the ramrod upright in the sand, resting the rifle’s forestock upon the fist with which he held it. The rifle had set triggers and he cocked the rear one and laid his face against the cheekpiece. He reckoned the drift of the wind and he reckoned against the sun on the side of the silver foresight and he held high and touched off the piece. Glanton sat immobile. The shot was flat and dead in the emptiness and the gray smoke drifted away. The leader of the group on the rise sat his horse. Then he slowly pitched sideways and fell to the ground.
Glanton gave a whoop and surged forward. Four men followed. The warriors on the rise had dismounted and were lifting up the fallen man. Glanton turned in the saddle without taking his eyes from the indians and held out his rifle to the nearest man. This man was Sam Tate and he took the rifle and reined his horse so short he nearly threw it. Glanton and three rode on and Tate drew the ramrod for a rest and crouched and fired. The horse that carried the wounded chief faltered, ran on. He swiveled the barrels and fired the second charge and it plowed to the ground. The Apaches reined with shrill cries. Glanton leaned forward and spoke into his horse’s ear. The indians raised up their leader to a new mount and riding double they flailed at their horses and set out again. Glanton had drawn his pistol and he gestured with it to the men behind and one pulled up his horse and leaped to the ground and went flat on his belly and drew and cocked his own pistol and pulled down the loading lever and stuck it in the sand and holding the gun in both hands with his chin buried in the ground he sighted along the barrel. The horses were two hundred yards out and moving fast. With the second shot the pony that bore the leader bucked and a rider alongside reached and took the reins. They were attempting to take the leader off the wounded animal in midstride when the animal collapsed.
Glanton was first to reach the dying man and he knelt with that alien and barbarous head cradled between his thighs like some reeking outland nurse and dared off the savages with his revolver. They circled on the plain and shook their bows and lofted a few arrows at him and then turned and rode on. Blood bubbled from the man’s chest and he turned his lost eyes upward, already glazed, the capillaries breaking up. In those dark pools there sat each a small and perfect sun.
He rode back to the camp at the fore of his small column with the chief’s head hanging by its hair from his belt. The men were stringing up scalps on strips of leather whang and some of the dead lay with broad slices of hide cut from their backs to be used for the making of belts and harness. The dead Mexican McGill had been scalped and the bloody skulls were already blackening in the sun. Most of the wickiups were burned to the ground and because some gold coins had been found a few of the men were kicking through the smoldering ashes. Glanton cursed them on, taking up a lance and mounting the head upon it where it bobbed and leered like a carnival head and riding up and back, calling to them to round up the caballado and move out. When he turned his horse he saw the judge sitting on the ground. The judge had taken off his hat and was drinking water from a leather bottle. He looked up at Glanton.
It’s not him.
What’s not?
The judge nodded. That.
Glanton turned the shaft. The head with its long dark locks swung about to face him.
Who do you think it is if it aint him?
The judge shook his head. It’s not Gómez. He nodded toward the thing. That gentleman is sangre puro. Gómez is Mexican.
He aint all Mexican.
You cant be all Mexican. It’s like being all mongrel. But that’s not Gómez because I’ve seen Gómez and it’s not him.
Will it pass for him?
No.
Glanton looked toward the north. He looked down at the judge. You aint seen my dog have ye? he said.
The judge shook his head. Do you intend to drive that stock?
Until I’m made to quit.
That might be soon.
That might be.
How long do you think it will take these yahoos to regroup?
Glanton spat. It wasnt a question and he didnt answer it. Where’s your horse? he said
Gone.
Well if you aim to ride with us you better be for gettin you another one. He looked at the head on the pole. You was some kind of goddamned chief, he said. He nudged the horse forward with his heels and rode out along the water’s edge. The Delawares were wading about in the lake feeling for sunken bodies with their feet. He sat there a moment and then he turned the horse and rode up through the sacked encampment. He rode warily, his pistol across his thigh. He followed the tracks coming down from the desert where they’d ridden in. When he returned he had with him the scalp of the old man who had first stood up out of the bushes at dawn.
Within the hour they were mounted and riding south leaving behind them on the scourged shore of the lake a shambles of blood and salt and ashes and driving before them a half a thousand horses and mules. The judge rode at the head of the column bearing on the saddle before him a strange dark child covered with ash. Part of its hair was burned away and it rode mute and stoic watching the land advance before it with huge black eyes like some changeling. The men as they rode turned black in the sun from the blood on their clothes and their faces and then paled slowly in the rising dust until they assumed once more the color of the land through which they passed.
They rode all day with Glanton bringing up the rear of the column. Toward noon the dog caught them up. His chest was dark with blood and Glanton carried him on the pommel of the saddle until he could recruit himself. In the long afternoon he trotted in the shadow of the horse and in the twilight he trotted far out on the plain where the tall shapes of the horses skated over the chaparral on spider legs.
By now there was a thin line of dust to the north and they rode on into dark and the Delawares dismounted and lay with their ears to the ground and then they mounted up and all rode on again.
When they halted Glanton ordered fires built and the wounded seen to. One of the mares had foaled in the desert and this frail form soon hung skewered on a paloverde pole over the raked coals while the Delawares passed among themselves a gourd containing the curdled milk taken from its stomach. From a slight rise to the west of the camp the fires of the enemy were visible ten miles to the north. The company squatted in their bloodstiffened hides and counted the scalps and strung them on poles, the blueblack hair dull and clotted with blood. David Brown went among these haggard butchers as they crouched before the flames but he could find him no surgeon. He carried an arrow in his thigh, fletching and all, and none would touch it. Least of all would Doc Irving, for Brown called him a mortician and a barber and they kept their distance one from the other.
Boys, said Brown, I’d doctorfy it myself but I caint get no straight grip.