Shayne’s Reviews > Dead Man's Walk > Status Update

Call is made a Corporal for his bravery during the river attack. The crew is stopped dead in their tracks as they see Comanches in the distance. Cobb suggests a parley and appoints Gus and Call to approach them.

The rangers cross the Brazos River, losing five companions to Buffalo Hump and the Comanches in the process. Call is attacked by a young boy who he shoots point blank in a startled reaction. Despite much pressure from the troop, he refuses to scalp the child and says he deserves a proper burial. Shadrach scalps him and throws him into the current anyway.

Cobb calls the expedition to order on an early rainy morning long before dawn. Gus, drunk pays a visit to Clara before departing and vows to marry her.

Call goes to the store and buys some liniment from Clara for Gus. Afterwards, she comes out and rubs it on his foot, promising to return the next morning if he is still there. The rangers get informed that Buffalo Hump has raided a nearby town and decide to follow the trail of destruction, leaving Gus and Johnny behind with the expectation of returning the next day.

While Call is hard at work and after Shadraxh returns from a hunt, Gus gets drunk after not being able to see Clara for the rest of the day. They go on a walk and Gus falls off a cliff. Call runs for help and finds the rest of the rangers drunk, but gets the help of Johnny, who seems least inebriated. At the scene, Johnny inexplicably fires his gun shortly before Gus is found with only and ankle injury.

The rangers arrive in Austin and sign up for the expedition under Caleb Cobb. While peddling in a general store for muskets, Gus meets and immediately falls head over heels in love with Clara, whose father owns the store.

The troop buries the burned bodies of the mule skinners.

A few weeks after the return to San Antonio, the troop, minus the Major who who had died of a fever, decides to join the expedition to capture Santa Fe under the command of Caleb Cobb.

The troop veers off the trail after what they believe are goats on top of a nearby mountain. While trying to find a way up, Buffalo Hump silently kills Josh Corn and then he and his cronies parade his body just out of range of the Rangers’ firearms. Zeke Moody goes after the Comanche and gets himself scalped alive. The “goats” turn out to be Comanches who ambush the troop, who, after the attack, turn back east.

After much bellowing, the troop is able to get the lance out of Gus’s hip. Shadrach is finally able to communicate with the old woman who warns that a battalion of Comanches is headed their direction to raid Chihuahua City. The major makes the decision to pack up camp and head west at sunup.