“Fifty lashes is usually enough to kill a man, Corporal,” Captain Salazar went on. “You will have to eat heartily before this punishment, if you hope to live.”

“Why would I need to eat, especially?” Call asked.

“Because you won’t have any flesh left on your ribs,” the Captain said. “The whip will take it off.”

Then he smiled at Call again, and turned away.

Gus WAS WALKING UP the little slope toward the Ranger troop when suddenly a cheer went up. He looked up to see that the men were all waving their guns and hooting. At first he thought they were merely welcoming him back—but when he looked more closely, he saw that they were looking beyond him, toward the Mexican camp.

He turned to see what the commotion was about and saw that the General’s buggy had been overturned, somehow—at first he supposed it was merely some accident with the horses. Good buggy horses were often too high strung to be reliable.

When he saw there was a melee, and that Call was in the middle of it, his stomach turned over. Call was in the overturned buggy, pounding at Caleb Cobb. Then he saw a soldier bayonet Call in the leg—several more soldiers had their bayonets up, ready to stab Call when they could. Gus didn’t want to watch, but was unable to turn away. He knew his friend-would be dead in a few seconds.

But then, to Gus’s surprise, Salazar stepped in and stopped the stabbing. He saw Caleb come over and strike at Call with the musket stock. Why he struck his feet, rather than his head, Gus couldn’t figure. He began to walk backward, up the ridge, so he could continue to watch the drama in the Mexican camp. Salazar came back and seemed to be having a talk with Call, while Call lay on the ground. Gus didn’t know what any of it meant. All he could be sure of was that Caleb Cobb then left the camp with General Dimasio. Call was tied up—no doubt he was in plenty of trouble for attacking the General’s buggy.

He soon gave up walking backward—the ground was too rough. The boys were close by, anyway—some were coming down the ridge to meet him. The Mexican infantry stood in a ring around them, just out of rifle range.

“So what’s the orders, why did Caleb leave?” Bigfoot asked, when Gus walked up to the troop.

“The orders are to surrender our weapons,” Gus said. “Call didn’t like them—I guess that’s why he knocked over that buggy.”

“Well, he was bold,” Bigfoot said. “I expect they’ll put him up against the wall of a church, like they did Bes.”

“They would have already, only there’s no church available,” Blackie Slidell said.

“Where did Caleb bounce off to, with that fat general?” Bigfoot asked.

Gus didn’t know the answer to that question, or to most of the questions he was asked. He couldn’t get his mind off the fact that Woodrow Call was probably going to be executed, and very soon. He had never had a friend as good as Woodrow Call—it was in his mind that he should have stayed and fought with him, and been killed too, side by side with his friend.

“Caleb is a damn skunk,” Long Bill Coleman said. “He had no right to surrender for us—what if we’d rather fight?”

“What happens if we do surrender?” Jimmy Tweed asked. “Will they put all of us up against a church?”

“Oh, they’d need two churches, at least, for all of us,” Bigfoot said. “That church where they shot Bes was no bigger than a hut. They’d have to shoot us in shifts, if they used a church that small.”

“Shut up about the churches, they ain’t going to shoot us,” Gus said. He was annoyed by Bigfoot’s habit of holding lengthy discus-sions of ways they might have to die. If he had to be dead, he wanted it to occur with less conversation from Bigfoot Wallace.

“We can have breakfast, as soon as we give up our guns,” he added.

To the hungry men, cold, wet, and discouraged, the notion of breakfast was a considerable inducement to compromise.

“I wonder if they’ve got bacon?” Jimmy Tweed asked. “I might surrender to the rascals if I could spend the morning eating bacon.”

“There’s no pigs over there,” Matilda observed. “I guess they could have brought bacon with them, though.”

“What do you think, Shad?” Bigfoot asked.

Shadrach had picked up a little, at the prospect of battle. There was a keen light in his eyes that had been missing since he got his cough and had begun to repeat himself in his conversations. He was walking back and forth in front of the troop, his long rifle in his hand. The fact that they were completely surrounded by Mexican infantry, with a substantial body of cavalry backing them up, was not lost on him, though. He kept looking across the plain and then to the mountains beyond. The plain offered no hope. It was entirely open; they would be cut down like rabbits. But the mountains were timbered. If they could make it to cover, they might survive.

The problem with that strategy was that the Mexican camp lay directly between them and the hills. They would have to fight their way through the infantry, then through the cavalry, then through the camp. Several men were sickly, and the ammunition was low. Much as he wanted to sight his long rifle time after time at Mexican breasts, he knew it would be a form of suicide. They were too few, with too little.

“We could run for them hills—shoot our way through,” he said. “I doubt more than five or six of us would make it. We’d give them a scrap, at least, if we done that.”

“Not a one of us would make it,” Bigfoot said. “Of course they might spare Matilda.”

“I don’t want to be spared, if Shad ain’t,” Matilda said.

“You’re a big target, Matty,” Bigfoot observed, in a kindly tone. “They might shoot you full of lead before they even realized you were female.”

“Why do we have to fight?” Gus asked. “They have us surroundedand we’re outnumbered ten to one—more than that, I guess. We can’t whip that many of them, even if they are Mexicans. If we surrender we won’t be hurt—Caleb said that himself. We’ll just be prisoners for awhile. And we can have breakfast.”

“I am damn hungry,” Blackie Slidell said. “A few tortillas wouldn’t hurt.”

“All right, boys—they’re too many,” Bigfoot said. “Let’s lay our guns down. Maybe they’ll just march us over to Santa Fe and introduce us to some pretty senoritas.”

“I think they’ll line us up and shoot us,” Johnny Carthage said. “I’m for the breakfast, though—I hope there’s a good cook.”

The Rangers carefully laid down their weapons, in full view of a captain of the infantry. They piled the guns in a heap, and raised their hands.

The captain who received their surrender was very young—about Gus’s age. Relief was in his face when he saw that the Rangers had decided not to fight.

“Gracias, Senores,” he said. “Now come with us and eat.”

“There’s one good thing about surrendering,” Gus said to Jimmy Tweed, as they were marching.

“What?” Jimmy asked. “Senoritas?”

“No, weapons—lots of guns, and they’ve got that cannon,” Gus said. “It ought to be enough to keep off the bears.”

“Oh, bears,” Jimmy said, casually.

“You ain’t even seen one,” Gus said. “You wouldn’t be so reckless if you had.”

“THE WHIP WAS MADE in Germany,” Captain Salazar said, as Call was being tied to the wheel of one of the supply wagons.

“I have never been in Germany,” he added. “But it seems they make the best whips.”

The whole Mexican force had been assembled, to watch Call’s punishment. The Texans were lined up just behind him. Many of them were in a very foul temper, since the promised breakfast had turned out to consist of flavourless tortillas and very weak coffee.

None of them had had a chance to talk to Call, who was under heavy guard. He was marched by armed men with bayonets fixed to the wagon, where he was tied. His shirt was removed, too. One of the muleteers was to do the whipping—a heavyset man with only one or two teeth in his mouth. The whip had several thongs, each with a knot or two in them. The thongs were tipped with metal.