Dead Man's Walk Read Free

remarked.

"Why, those boys are halfway to the Brazos, by now," Bigfoot said, just as Matilda returned to the campfire. She squatted down by the turtle and watched it wiggle, a happy expression on her broad face. She had a hatchet in one hand and a small bowie knife in the other.

"Them turtles don't turn loose of you till it thunders, once they got aholt of you," Ezekiel said. Matilda Roberts ignored this hackneyed opinion. She caught the turtle right by the head, held its jaws shut, and slashed at its neck with the little bowie knife. The whole company watched, even Call. Several of the men had traveled the Western frontier all their lives. They considered themselves to be experienced men, but none of them had ever seen a whore decapitate a snapping turtle before.

Blackie Slidell watched Matilda slash at the turtle's neck with a glazed expression. The mescal had caused him to lose his vision entirely, for several hours--in fact, it was still somewhat wobbly. Blackie had an unusual birthmark--his right ear was coal black, thus his name. Although he couldn't see very well, Blackie was not a little disturbed by Bigfoot's chance remark about the chewing propensities of Comanche squaws. He had long heard of such things, of course, but had considered them to be unfounded rumour. Bigfoot Wallace, though, was the authority on Indian customs. His comment could not be ignored, even if everybody else was watching Matilda cut the head off her turtle.

"Hell, if we see Indians, let's kill all the squaws," Blackie said, indignantly. "They got no call to be behaving like that." "Oh, there's worse than that happens," Bigfoot remarked casually, noting that the turtle's blood seemed to be green--if it had blood. A kind of green ooze dripped out of the wound Matilda had made. She herself was finding the turtle's neck a difficult cut.

She gave the turtle's head two or three twists, hoping it would snap off like a chicken's would have, but the turtle's neck merely kinked, like a thick black rope.

"What's worse than having your pecker chewed off?" Blackie inquired.

"Oh, having them pull out the end of your gut and tie it to a dog," Bigfoot said, pouring himself more chickory. "Then they chase the dog around camp for awhile, until about fifty feet of your gut is strung out in front of you, for brats to eat." "To eat?" Long Bill asked.

"Why yes," Bigfoot said. "Comanche brats eat gut like ours eat candy." "Whew, I'm glad I wasn't especially hungry this morning," Major Chevallie commented. "Talk like this would unsettle a delicate stomach." "Or they might run a stick up your fundament and set it on fire--that way your guts would done be cooked when they pull them out," Bigfoot explained.

"What's a fundament?" Call asked. He had had only one year of schooling, and had not encountered the word in his speller. He kept the speller with him in his saddlebag, and referred to it now and then when in doubt about a letter or a word.

Bob Bascom snorted, amused by the youngster's ignorance.

"It's a hole in your body and it ain't your nose or your mouth or your goddamn ear," Bob said. "I'd have that little mare broke by now, if it was me doing it." Call smarted at the rebuke--he knew they had been lax with the mare, who had now effectively snubbed herself to the little tree. She was trembling, but she couldn't move far, so he quickly swung the saddle in place and held it there while she crow-hopped a time or two.

Matilda Roberts sweated over her task, but she didn't give up. The first gusts of the norther scattered the ashes of the campfire.

Major Chevallie had just squatted to refill his cup--his coffee soon had a goodly sprinkling of sand. When the turtle's head finally came off, Matilda casually pitched it in the direction of Long Bill, who jumped up as if she'd thrown him a live rattler.

The turtle's angry eyes were still open, and its jaws continued to snap with a sharp click.

"It ain't even dead with its head off," Long Bill said,