When Call first came back to consciousness, he thought he was dead. Matilda had left the wagon to answer a call of nature-they were in the thick of the cloud. All Call could see was white mist. The march had been halted for awhile and the men were silent, resting. Call saw nothing except the white mist, and he heard nothing, either. He could not even see his own hand-only the pain of his lacerated back reminded him that he still had a body. If he was dead, as for a moment he assumed, it was vexing to have to feel the pains he would feel if he were alive. If he was in heaven, then it was a disappointment, because the white mist was cold and uncomfortable.

Soon, though, he saw a form in the mist-a large form. Hethought perhaps it was the bear, though he had not heard that there were bears in heaven; of course, he might not be in heaven. The fact that he felt the pain might mean that he was in hell. He had supposed hell would be hot, but that might just be a mistake the preachers made. Hell might be cold, and it might have bears in it, too.

The large form was not a bear, though-it was Matilda Roberts. Call's vision was blurry. At first he could only see Matilda's face, hovering near him in the mist. It was very confusing; in his hours of fever he had had many visions in which people's faces floated in and out of his dreams. Gus was in many of his dreams, but so was Buffalo Hump, and Buffalo Hump certainly did not belong in heaven.

"Could you eat?" Matilda asked.

Call knew then that he was alive, and that the pain he felt was not hellfire, but the pain from his whipping. He knew he had been whipped one hundred times, but he could not recall the whipping clearly. He had been too angry to feel the first few licks; then he had become numb and finally unconscious. The pain he felt lying in the wagon, in the cold mist, was far worse than what he had felt while the whipping was going on.

"Could you eat?" Matilda asked again. "Old Francisco gave me a little soup."

"Not hungry," Call said. "Where's Gus?"

"I don't know, it's foggy, Woodrow," Matilda said. "Shad's coughing-he can't take much fog."

"But Gus is alive, ain't he?" Call asked, for in one of his hallucinations Buffalo Hump had killed Gus and hanged him upside down from a post-oak tree.

"I guess he's alive, he's been asking about you every five minutes," Matilda said. "He's been worried-we all have."

"I don't remember the whipping-I guess I passed out," Call said.

"Yes, up around sixty licks," Matilda said. "Salazar thought you'd die, but I knew better."

"I'll kill him someday," Call said. "I despise the man. I'll kill that mule skinner that whipped me, too."

"Oh, he left," Matilda said. "Most of the army went home."

"Well, if I can find him I'll kill him," Call said. "That is, if they don't execute me while I'm sick."

"No, we're to march to El Paso," Matilda said.

"We didn't make it when we tried to march to it from the other side," Call reminded her. Then a kind of red darkness swept over him, and he stopped talking. Again, the wild dreams swirled, dreams of Indians and bears.

When Call awoke the second time, they were farther down the slope. The sun was shining, and Gus was there. But Call was very tired. Opening his eyes and keeping them open seemed like a day's work. He wanted to talk to Gus, but he was so tired he couldn't make his lips move.

"Don't talk, Woodrow," Gus said. "Just rest. Matilda's got some soup for you."

Call took a little soup, but passed out while he was eating. For three days he was in and out of consciousness. Salazar came by regularly, checking to see if he was dead. Each time Matilda insulted him, but Salazar merely smiled.

On the fourth day after the whipping, Salazar insisted that Call walk. They were on the plain west of the mountains, and it had turned bitter cold. Call's fever was still high-even with Johnny Carthage's blanket, he was racked with a deep chill. For a whole night he could not keep still-he rolled one way, and then the other. Matilda's loyalties were torn. She didn't want Call to freeze to death, or Shadrach either. The old man's cough had gone deeper. It seemed to be coming from his bowels. Matilda was afraid, deeply afraid. She thought Shad was going, that any morning she would wake up and see his eyes wide, in the stare of death. Finally she lifted Call out of the wagon and took him to where Shadrach lay. She put herself between the two men and warmed them as best she could. It was a clear night. Their breath made a cloud above them. They had moved into desert country. There was little wood, and what there was the Mexicans used for their own fires. The Texans were forced to sleep cold.

The next morning, finding Call out of the wagon, Salazar decreed that he should walk. Call was semiconscious; he didn't even hear the command, but Matilda heard it and was outraged.

"This boy can't walk-I carried him out of the wagon and put him here to keep him warm," she said. "This old man don't need to be walking, either."

She gestured at Shadrach, who was coughing.Salazar had come to like Matilda-she was the only one of the Texans he did like. But he immediately rejected her plea.

"If we were a hospital we would put the sick men in beds," he said. "But we are not a hospital. Every man must walk now."

"Why today?" Matilda asked. "Just let the boy ride one more day -with one more day's rest, he might live."

"To bury me?" Salazar asked. "Is that why you want him to live?" He was trying to make a small jest.

"I just want him to live," Matilda said, ignoring the joke. "He's suffered enough."

"We have all suffered enough, but we are about to suffer more," Salazar said. "It is not just you Texans who will suffer, either. For the next five days we will all suffer. Some of us may not live."

"Why?" Gus asked. He walked up and stood listening to the conversation. "I don't feel like dying, myself."

Salazar gestured to the south. They were in a sparse desert as it was. They had seen no animals all the day before, and their water was low.

"There is the Jornada del Muerto," he said. "The dead man's walk."

"What's he talking about?" Johnny Carthage asked. Seeing that a parley was in progress, several of the Texans had wandered over, including Bigfoot Wallace.

"Oh, so this is where it is," Bigfoot said. "The dead man's walk. I've heard of it for years."

"Now you will do more than hear of it, Senor Wallace," Salazar said. "You will walk it. There is a village we must find, today or tomorrow. Perhaps they will give us some melons and some corn. After that, we will have no food and no water until we have walked the dead man's walk."

"How far across?" Long Bill asked. "I'm a slow walker, but if it's that hard I'll try not to lag."

"Two hundred miles," Salazar said. "Perhaps more. We will have to burn this wagon soon-maybe tonight. There is no wood in the place we are going."

The voices had filtered through the red darkness in which Call lived. He opened his eyes, and saw all the Texans around him.

"What is it, boys?" he asked. "It's frosty, ain't it?"

"Woodrow, they want you to walk," Gus said. "Do you think you can do it?"

"I'll walk," Call said. "I don't like Mexican wagons anyway."

"We'll help you, Corporal," Bigfoot said. "We can take turns toting you, if we have to."

"It might warm my feet, to walk a ways," Call said. "I can't feel my toes."

Cold feet was a common complaint among the Texans. At night the men wrapped their feet in anything they could find, but the fact was they couldn't find much. Few of them slept more than an hour or two. It was better to sit talking over their adventures than to sleep cold. The exception was Bigfoot Wallace, who seemed unaffected by cold. He slept well, cold or hot.

"At least we've got the horses," he remarked. "We can eat the horses, like we done before."

"I expect the Mexicans will eat the horses," Gus said. "They ain't our horses."

Call found hobbling on his frozen feet very difficult, yet he preferred it to lying in the wagon, where all he had to think about was the fire across his back. He could not keep up, though. Matilda and Gus offered to be his crutches, but even that was difficult. His wounds had scabbed and his muscles were tight-he groaned in deep pain when he tried to lift his arms across Gus's shoulders.

"It's no good, I'll just hobble," he said. "I expect I'll get quicker once I warm up."

Gus was nervous about bears-he kept looking behind the troop. He didn't see any bears, but he did catch a glimpse of a cougar- just a glimpse, as the large brown cat slipped across a small gully.

Just then there was a shout from the column ahead. A cavalryman, one of the advance guard, was racing back toward the troop at top speed, his horse's hooves kicking up little clouds of dust from the sandy ground.