"How do Indians ever kill them?" Call asked, looking at the buffalo. It seemed to be merely resting, its head on its knees.

"Why, with arrows-how else?" Bigfoot asked.

Call said nothing, but once again he felt a sense of trespass. It had taken three men, with rifles, pistols, and knives, an hour to kill one beast; yet, Indians did it with arrows alone-he had watched them kill several on the floor of the Palo Duro Canyon.

"All buffalo ain't this hard," Bigfoot assured them. "I've never seen one this hard."

"Dern, I wish I could wash," Gus said.

BIGFOOT WALLACE TOOK ONLY the buffalo's tongue and liver. The tongue he put in his saddlebag, after sprinkling it with salt; the liver he sliced and ate raw, first dripping a drop or two of fluid from the buffalo's gallbladder on the slices of meat.

"A little gall makes it tasty," he said, offering the meat to Call and Gus.

Call ate three or four bites, Gus only one, which he soon quickly spat out.

"Can't we cook it?" he asked. "I'm hungry, but not hungry enough to digest raw meat."

"You'll be that hungry tomorrow, unless we're lucky," Bigfoot said.

"I'd just rather cook it," Gus said, again-it was clear from Bigfoot's manner that he regarded the request as absurdly fastidious.

"I guess if you want to burn your clothes you might get fire enough to singe a slice or two," Bigfoot said-he gestured toward the empty plain around them. Nowhere within the reach of their eyes was there a plant, a bush, a tree that would yield even a stick of firewood. The plain was not entirely level, but it was entirely bare.

"What a goddamn place this is," Gus said. "A man has to tote his own firewood, or else make do with raw meat."

"No, there's buffalo chips, if you want to hunt for them," Bigfoot said. "I've cooked many a liver over buffalo chips, but there ain't many buffalo out this way. I don't feel like walking ten miles to gather enough chips to keep you happy."

As they rode away from the dead buffalo, they saw two wolves trotting toward it. The wolves were a long way away, but the fact that there were two living creatures in sight on the plain was reassuring, particularly to Gus. He had been more comfortable in a troop of Rangers than he was with only Call and Bigfoot for company. They were just three human dots on the encircling plain.

Bigfoot watched the wolves with interest. Wolves had to have water, just as did men and women. The wolves didn't look lank, either-there must be water within a few miles, if only they knew which way to ride.

"Wolves and coyotes ain't far from being dogs," he observed. "You'll always get coyotes hanging around a camp-they like people -or at least they like to eat our leavings. The Colonel ought to catch him a coyote pup or two and raise them to hunt for him. It'd take the place of that big dog you dropped."

Call thought they were all likely to die of starvation. It was gallant of Bigfoot to speculate about the Colonel and his pets when they were in such a desperate situation. The Colonel was in the same situation, only worse-he had the whole troop to think of; he ought to be worrying about keeping the men from starving, not on replacing his big Irish dog.

They rode all night; they had no water at all. They didn't ride fast, but they rode steadily. When dawn flamed up, along the great horizon to the east, they stopped to rest. Bigfoot offered the two of them slices of buffalo tongue. Call ate several bites, but Gus declined, in favor of horse meat.

"I can't reconcile myself to eating a tongue," he said. "My ma would not approve. She raised me to be careful about what foods I stuff in my mouth."

Call wondered briefly what his own mother had been like-he had only one cloudy memory of her, sitting on the seat of a wagon;in fact, he was not even sure that the woman he remembered had been his mother. The woman might have been his aunt-in any case, his mother had given him no instruction in the matter of food.

During the day's long, slow ride, the pangs of hunger were soon rendered insignificant beside the pangs of thirst. They had had no water for a day and a half. Bigfoot told them that if they found no water by the next morning, they would have to kill a horse and drink what was in its bladder. He instructed them to cut small strips of leather from their saddle strings and chew on them, to produce saliva flow. It was a stratagem that worked for awhile. As they chewed the leather, they felt less thirsty. But the trick had a limit. By evening, their saliva had long since dried up. Their tongues were so swollen it had become hard to close their lips. One of the worst elements of the agony of thirst was the thought of all the water they had wasted during the days of rain and times of plenty.

"I'd give three months wages to be crossing the Brazos right now," Gus said. "I expect I could drink about half of it."

"Would you give up the gal in the general store for a drink?" Bigfoot asked. "Now that's the test."

He winked at Call when he said it.

"I could drink half a river," Gus repeated. He thought the question about Clara impertinent under the circumstances, and did not intend to answer it. If he starved to death he intended, at least, to spend his last thoughts on Clara.

The next morning, the sorrel horse that Gus and Call had both been riding refused to move. The sorrel's eyes were wide and strange, and he did not respond either to blows or to commands.

"No use to kick him or yell at him, he's done for," Bigfoot said, walking up to the horse. Before Gus or Call could so much as blink, he drew his pistol and shot the horse. The sorrel dropped, and before he had stopped twitching Bigfoot had his knife out, working to remove the bladder. He worked carefully, so as not to nick it, and soon lifted it out, a pale sac with a little liquid in it.

"I won't drink that," Gus said, at once. The mere sight of the pale, slimy bladder caused his stomach to feel uneasy.

"It's the only liquid we got," Bigfoot reminded him. "We'll all die if we don't drink it."

He lifted up the bladder carefully, and drank from it as he would from a wineskin. Call took it next, hesitating a moment beforeputting it to his mouth. He knew he wouldn't survive another waterless day. His swollen tongue was raw, from scraping against his teeth. Quickly he shut his eyes, and swallowed a few mouthfuls. The urine had more smell than taste. Once he judged he had had his share, he handed the bladder to Gus.

Gus took it, but, after a moment, shook his head.

"You have to drink it," Call told him. "Just drink three swallows -that might be enough to save you. If you die I can't bury you- I'm too weak."

Gus shook his head again. Then, abruptly, his need for moisture overcame his revulsion, and he drank three swallows. He did not want to be left unburied on such a prairie. The coyotes and buzzards would be along, not to mention badgers and other varmints. Thinking about it proved worse than doing it. Soon they went on, Bigfoot astride the one remaining horse.

That afternoon they came to a tiny water-hole, so small that Bigfoot could have stepped across it, or could have had there not been a dead mule in the puddle. They all recognized the mule, too. Black Sam had had an affection for it-in the early days of the expedition, he had sometimes fed it carrots. It had been stolen by the Comanches, the night of the first raid.

"Why, that's John," Gus said. "Wasn't that what Black Sam called him?"

John had two arrows in him-both were feathered with prairie-chicken feathers, the arrows of Buffalo Hump.

"He led it here and killed it," Bigfoot said. "He didn't want us to drink this muddy water."

"He didn't want us to drink at all," Call said, looking at the arrows.

"I'll drink this water anyway," Gus said, but Bigfoot held him back.

"Don't," he said. "That horse piss was clean, compared to this water. Let's go."

That night, they had no appetite-even a bite was more than any of them could choke down. Gus pulled out some rancid horse meat, looked at it, and threw it away, an action Bigfoot was quick to criticize.

"Go pick it up," he said. "It might rain tonight-I've been smelling moisture and my smeller don't often fail me. If we could get a little liquid in us, that horse meat might taste mighty good."About midnight they heard thunder, and began to see flashes of lightning, far to the west. Gus was immediately joyful-he saw the drought had broken. Call was more careful. It wasn't raining, and the thunder was miles away. It might rain somewhere on the plain -but would it rain where they were? And would any water pool up, so they could drink it?

"Boys, we're saved," Bigfoot said, watching the distant lightning.

"I may be saved, but I'm still thirsty," Gus said. "I can't drink rain that's raining miles away."

"It's coming our direction, boys," Bigfoot said-he was wildly excited. Privately, he had given the three of them up for lost, though he hadn't said as much to the young Rangers.

"If the rain don't come to us, I'll go to the rain," Call said.

Soon they could smell the rain. It began to cool the hot air. They were so thirsty it was all they could do to keep from racing to meet the storm, although they had nothing to race on except one tired horse and their feet.

Bigfoot had been right: the rain came. The only thing they had to catch it in was their hats-the hats weren't fully watertight, but they caught enough rainwater to allow the starving men to quench their thirst.

"Just wet your lips, don't gulp it-you'll get sick if you do," Big-foot said.