Mcmurtry Larry - Dead Man's Walk стр 12.

Now, though, there was no Mississippi, and no bluff. He could walk for a month in any direction and not find a town the size of Dubuque, or a bartender willing to draw him a mug of beer just because he showed up and asked. He had only owned his weapons for three weeks and so far had not been able to hit anything he shot at, although he believed he might have winged a wild turkey, back along the Colorado River. He might walk around Texas until he starved, due to his inability to hit the kind of game they had in Texas. It was skittery game, for the most part—back in Tennessee the deer were almost as docile as cows, and almost as fat. He had killed two or three from the back porch of the old home place, whereas here in Texas, deer hardly let you get within a mile of them.

Gus stopped and listened for a bit. Sometimes the Rangers sang at night—there had been plenty of whooping and dancing the night they drank the mescal. He felt if he listened he might hear Josh Corns harmonica or some other music. Black Sam sometimes let loose with his darky hymns, when he was in low spirits; Sam had a full voice and could be heard a long way, even when he was singing low.

But when Gus stopped to listen, the plain around him was absolutely silent—so silent that the silence itself rang in his ears; the night was as dark as it was silent, too. Gus could see nothing at all, except intermittently, when the lightning flickered. It was because of the lightning that he had spotted the offensive badger that had managed to affect his nerves.

He took a few steps, and stopped. After all, it wouldnt be night forever, and he had not gone that far from camp. The simplest thing to do would be to wrap up good in his San Antonio scrape and sleep for a few hours. With dawn at his back he could be in camp in a few minutes. If he kept walking he might veer off into the great emptiness and never find his way back. The sensible thing to do was wait. He could yell and hope Woodrow Call responded, but Woodrow had been too dull to move off his guard post; he might be too dull to yell back.

The lightning was coming closer, which offered a sort of solution. He could be patient, mark his course, and move from

flash to flash. A few sprinkles of rain wet his face. He could tell from the way the sage smelled that a shower was coming—he could even hear the patter of rain not far to the west. For a moment he squatted, tucking his scrape around him—if it was going to turn wet, he was ready. Then a bold streak of lightning split the sky. For a moment it lit the prairie, bright as day. And yet Gus saw nothing familiar—no river, no campfire, no chaparral bush, no Call.

No sooner had he wrapped his scrape around him and got ready for the rain squall than he was up and walking fast through the sage. He had meant to wait—it was sensible to wait, and yet a feeling had come over him that told him to move. The feeling told him to run, in fact—he was already moving at a rapid trot, thoughhe stopped for a moment to lower the hammer of his pistol. He didnt intend to shoot off his thumb like young Rip Green. Then he trotted on, just short of a run.

As he trotted, Gus began to realize that he was scared. The feeling that came over him, that brought him to his feet and started him trotting, was fear. It was such an unexpected and unfamiliar feeling that he had not been able to put a name to it, at first. Rarely since early childhood had he been afraid. Creaking boards in the old family barn made him think of ghosts, and he had avoided the barn, even to the point of being stropped for a failure to do the chores, when he was small. Since then, though, he had rarely seen anything that he feared. Once in Arkansas he had come across a bear eating a dead horse and had worried a bit; he was unarmed at the time, and was sensible enough to know that he was no match for a bear. But since he had got his growth, he had not encountered much that put real fear in him—just that Arkansas bear.

What had him breathing short and stumbling now was a sense that somebody was near—somebody he couldnt see. When he suggested that the wolf might be an Indian, he had just been joshing Call. He had felt restless, and wanted to take a stroll. If he turned up a gold mine, so much the better. He didnt seriously expect to kill an Indian, though. He had no desire to stumble onto a Comanche Indian, or any other Indian, just at that time. It had merely been something to twit Call about. He had never seen a Comanche Indian and could not work up enough of a picture of one to know what to expect, but he didnt suppose that a Comanche could be as large as that bear, or as fierce, either.

Now, though, he was driven to trot through the darkness by an overpowering sense that somebody was near, and who could it be but a Comanche Indian? It wasnt Call—being near Call wouldnt scare him. Yet he was near somebody—somebody he didnt want to be near—somebody who meant him harm. Shadrach and Bigfoot claimed to be able to smell Indians, and smell them from a considerable distance, but he didnt have that ability. All he could smell was the wet sage and the damp desert. It wasnt because he could smell that he knew somebody was near. It was a feeling, and a feeling that came from a part of him he didnt even know he had. What that part told him was run, move, get away, even though the night had now divided itself into two parts, the pitch black part and the brilliantly lit part. The brilliantly lit part, of course, was the lightning flashes, which came more frequently and turned the plain so bright that Gus had to blink his eyes. Even then the light stayed, like a line inside his eye, when the plain turned black again, so black that in his running he stumbled into chaparral and almost fell once when he struck a patch of deep sand.