“You can lecture me about Charlie some other time,” Jim said. “Skedaddle.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll just follow along and keep out of sight,” Jim said. “Tom and Pomp can talk to the Mexicans—maybe some Indians ran off some horses and they’re out looking for them. I imagine they’ll just lead the folks to Santa Fe and demand a ransom—that’s what usually happens.”
“I hope Charlie Bent don’t sass me,” Kit repeated. He began to lead his horse along the rocky gully. When he looked back Jim Snow was gone.
43
. . . a serious disability . . .
JIM SNOW had never been able to imitate bird-songs—a serious disability in the situation he found himself in. Pomp Charbonneau could reproduce almost flawlessly more than a dozen birdcalls, and Jim Bridger was almost as proficient. Pomp would hear a birdcall and mimic it immediately. Jim Bridger, a little jealous of Pomp’s ability, attributed it to the fact that Pomp was half Indian. Jim Snow had no opinion on that question. All he knew was that Pomp’s bird calling was so good it fooled the birds themselves.
Now, with what seemed to be a patrol of Mexican soldiers proceeding across flat country, Jim knew he had to move quickly if he didn’t want to be arrested with the rest. For the moment he was safely concealed in the gully. His first problem was to get rid of the horse. Most of the soldiers would just be young Mexican boys, very unskilled in pursuit. Even on the flat prairie Jim felt confident that he could hide successfully, but he couldn’t conceal the horse. Pomp was standing with Tasmin, not far from the gully. It was morning—there was little wind. Jim tried the one birdcall he was good at, a quail call—then he repeated it three times. Jim’s imitation was so bad that Pomp immediately looked toward the gully.
“Your husband’s trying to sound like a quail,” Pomp told Tasmin. He had just seen the dust cloud to the east—he too supposed it was soldiers. Pomp turned toward the gully—as soon as he did, Jim popped the horse on the rump, sending it over to Pomp, who at once caught it and mounted. He saw Jim Snow in the gully—Jim made a quick sign and then crept away.
Tasmin was puzzled—where was Jimmy, and what was going on?
“I think there’s a company of soldiers coming this way,” Pomp told her. “I suppose we’ll be arrested—it’s mostly just a formality. Jimmy probably thinks he can be more useful if he’s not arrested.”
Tasmin just saw a dust cloud—if there were soldiers in it, she couldn’t yet see them. She looked around for Kit and didn’t see him, either. After promising her he wouldn’t run off, Kit had done exactly that.
“Kit may have headed for the Bents’,” Pomp said. “They’ll soon send someone to help us out with the authorities.”
“But isn’t this America?” Tasmin asked. “Don’t we have a right to be here?”
“It’s subject to interpretation,” Pomp told her. “No boundaries have been drawn yet. We think it’s America but they think it’s Mexico. There’s a contest going on.”
� peculiar contest, if you ask me,” Tasmin said. “There’s nothing here to want. What are we being arrested for? We’re merely wandering.”
“Spies—they think all Americans are spies,” Pomp explained. “The Mexicans think the Americans mean to drive them out and take their land. I suppose they’re right. The Americans probably will drive them out, eventually.”
To Tasmin it seemed absurd. They were a hunting party, exhausted, scratched, sunburned—they had little to eat and were just stumbling along behind their one ox. What threat could they pose?
Her father was talking with Tom Fitzpatrick, who found this new challenge annoying.
“Damn it, we’d have been at the Bents’ in two more days,” the Broken Hand said. “They could have arranged matters for us.”
“Oh, I suspect this will just come down to bribery,” Lord Berrybender said. “I suppose we’ll have to chivvy up—won’t mind so much if I can get a change of clothes.”
“That’s right, we’re in rags and I’m hungry,” Tasmin remarked. “Will our captors feed us, at least?”
“Frijoles, maybe. Beans,” Pomp told her.
Tom Fitzpatrick, watching the riders approach, had stopped looking indignant. His look had become somber. Pomp too stiffened.
“They ain’t soldiers—Jim and Kit made a mistake,” Tom said. “They ain’t soldiers—or am I wrong, Pomp?”
Pomp studied the approaching riders with more care. A few of them seemed to be in military coats, and carried military muskets, with bayonets. The sun glinted off the bayonets, and off the brass buttons on the coats. But they were not riding in a military formation. He had supposed they were going to be faced with the inconvenience of a polite arrest. But now he wasn’t so sure.
“But gentlemen, if they aren’t soldiers, who are they?” Lord Berrybender asked.
“Renegades!” Zeke Williams suddenly announced, peering at the company with his hard, blue stare. “They’re slavers, I expect. I know that big fellow on the black mule. That’s Obregon.”
“You know him?” Pomp asked, surprised.
“It’s Obregon,” Zeke repeated. “He came trading for slaves when the Pawnees had me. Didn’t want me, though. Wanted women, when he could get them. Or boys, if he couldn’t get women.”
Tasmin’s mild apprehension turned to a chill of fear. Here was the threat that all the women had talked about when they were still safe on the steamer Rocky Mount: abduction, rape, slavery. Even Jim Snow, in the first days of their acquaintance, had warned her about slavers. Now the frightening prospect, which they had once talked about in the safety of their staterooms, had become real.
“I count fourteen of them,” Tom told Pomp.
“That’s what I make it,” Pomp said. “We need the two Jimmys back—with them I think we could put up a good fight.”
“I’m sure if they hear shooting they’ll come running—Jim Snow’s just back in the gully,” Tom said.
“Maybe I should try to parley with them,” Pomp told the group.
“No parleys!” old Zeke piped up. “Parleys don’t interest Obregon—not when he figures he has the advantage. He’s gonna see all these pretty women, and he’ll be thinking of all the money he could get for them down in Chihuahua.”
Pomp considered the advice but felt inclined to disregard it.
“I’ll be watchful,” he said. “It’d be best if all the women hunker down behind the wagon. We don’t want to whet Seftor Obregon’s appetite.”
When Tasmin saw that Pomp meant to ride out and talk to the slavers, she walked over and grabbed his rein, a thing she would not have done had she not felt such deep apprehension.
“Mr. Williams knows these men—why won’t you listen to him?” she asked. “They might just shoot you down and overrun us.”
“Here, signor, hand me my fine Belgian gun,” Lord Berrybender said. ‘At least we have time to prepare for this fight—not like those impetuous Pawnees.”
High Shoulders, alerted to the danger, came running to the wagon with his lance, ready for battle. Just as he arrived, Pomp saw Jim Bridger returning to camp at a casual pace. He carried a prairie chicken and a jackrabbit. Though Jim had clearly seen the advancing party he showed no particular concern—in fact, he was whistling, a practice he was much prone to.
Jim Snow, too, was walking back toward the group. It had not taken him long to revise his first estimate of the situation.
When he arrived Pomp dismounted.
“That changes the odds, pretty considerably,” he said. “We’ll let them send someone to parley if they want to talk. Maybe Kit will come back, too.”
“Nope, Kit’s bound for the Bents’—I sent him,” Jim Snow told Pomp. “If those fellows aren’t soldiers, who are they?”
“Slavers, Zeke says,” Tom Fitzpatrick told him. “Ever hear of a fellow named Obregon?”
Jim shook his head.
Tasmin walked off—she wanted to be alone. Now that her husband was back she had lost her fear. Jim
would see that they weren’t harmed—and yet she was shaking because it had been such a close thing with Pomp. If she hadn’t grabbed his rein she felt sure he would have loped off and been killed. In her mind she saw the bullet strike him, saw him fall off his horse and lie dead. And yet Pomp must have engaged in many such parleys—why was she so fearful on his behalf? He was a grown man, a famous guide, skilled, alert—she could not say why she harbored such a deep fear of his death. She still believed she would lose him if she didn’t watch him close. It wasn’t that he was weak— Pomp wasn’t weak—and yet neither was he hard, as Jim Snow was hard. Even her selfish old father was harder in some essential way. Was it that Pomp didn’t seem particularly interested in preserving himself? In the tent, after he was wounded, when she was trying so hard to keep him alive, she felt that he wouldn’t have minded dying then—he even seemed a little resentful that she wouldn’t let him. She had forced him to live, when his own inclination was for the shade. Pomp had grace, he had sweetness—yet the harsh plains they were crossing hardly rewarded either virtue. It was not for grace and sweetness that she looked to Jim Snow. Jim could be sweet, he could be amused—but by nature he was suspicious. Before he rode off to parley he would have made very sure of the field, the odds, his chances. When Jim left her, as he had several times, she didn’t worry about him in the way she worried about Pomp. Her mind made no pictures of Jim Snow lying dead. Jim might exasperate her; he often did. He might pester her into lovemaking when she was only half inclined; he did that too. But she didn’t worry about him and at times felt so distant from him that their union seemed very odd. Why had she married this man whom she didn’t know, except physically? She sometimes found herself forgetting him, even when he was around—but she never forgot Pomp.
As usual Tasmin’s perplexity of spirit was missed by everyone but Mary.
“So is our lot to be slavery?” Mary asked.
“Of course not—both Jims came back—there’s now not much likelihood of an attack,” Tasmin said. “Won’t you just go away? Why must I always have to deal with you when I’m upset about something?”
“Because I know what you’re upset about,” Mary said, although she abandoned her superior tone. “It’s Pomp—you’re too in love with him.”
Tasmin didn’t answer.
“I believe you’d make a great fool of yourself, if Pomp would cooperate,” Mary continued. “But I don’t think he will cooperate—he’s only a bit in love, not wild with it, like you, Tassie.”
“Mary if there was a slaver here right now I’d sell you to him,” Tasmin said.
“Of course—you don’t like to hear the truth,” Mary said. “You don’t respect it, either. I expect you’d ruin us all, if it meant you could have Pomp.”
Mary gave her a pat on the shoulder and went back to her Piet.
44
In the dark, with his thin knife . . .
“IT’S those English people who were on the steamboat that got stuck in the ice,” Malgres explained to Obregon. “The old man is very rich.”
Malgres thought that was the kind of news that might stir Obregon to action. The English party was only two hundred yards away—instead of charging, as Malgres had urged, Obregon had stopped the column. Now he sat on his large black mule, musing about what he wanted to do next.
“I see some white women,” Obregon said. “But I see some trappers too—you know how those trappers fight.”
Malgres had to admit that Obregon had a point. In the dark, with his thin knife, he thought he could kill any of the trappers—but it was not dark, and except for himself, the men with Obregon were just a ragtag bunch of renegades. The mountain men were formidable; if there was a battle, few of the renegades would survive. Obregon hadn’t survived as a slaver for twenty years by rashly pitting himself against well-armed and determined opposition. It was beginning to look as if there would be no battle.
“I’m afraid of the Sin Killer,” Obregon admitted casually. He was prone to making frank admissions of that sort, admissions that did nothing to boost the morale of the bandits who were supposed to do the fighting.
“If I were small, like you, I wouldn’t be such a good target,” Obregon said. “But I’m a very big target, and the Sin Killer is supposed to be good at shooting arrows. Since I’m the biggest target he might shoot some into me. I had two arrows stuck in me by the Sioux and I didn’t like it. I’m not a man who likes to be punctured.”
Ramon, the tall, skinny pistolero, cackled at this remark. If one worked with Obregon it helped to have a sense of humor. Obregon wasn’t merely afraid of having arrows stuck in him, he was afraid of everything: lightning, grizzly bears, Sioux Indians, snakes that lived in water, scorpions—the list was long. He was even afraid of women with sharp fingernails—a captive girl from one of the pueblos whom he had been raping jabbed her fingernail into his eye. Now the eye, his left eye, refused to look straight ahead, as an eye should—his left eye looked off at an angle, a disconcerting thing. Eyes should be set straight ahead, not angled off to the left.
The injury had much reduced Obregon’s appetite for rape, too. He didn’t rape girls anymore unless they were securely held down by at least four men—if a girl managed to get a hand free, he might suffer damage to his good eye, which would mean that his career as a slaver was over.
It was a wonder to Ramon, and to Malgres also, that a man as cowardly as Obregon had managed to prosper in the dangerous business of slave trading. Obregon didn’t even pretend to bravado, yet he had a sure touch with the Indians, who were so amused by his ineptness that they were eager to sell him captives.
To the Indians Obregon was a great clown, a man who sometimes simply rolled off his horse because he had neglected to pull his girths tight enough. When Obregon arrived in a village or intercepted a hunting band, the Indians got ready to laugh, and sometimes they laughed so much that they practically gave their captives away. Obregon succeeded in a hard business by being foolish, cowardly, and clumsy. Other slavers were bitterly jealous of Obregon’s absurd success. They knew that if they made the kind of mistakes Obregon made, they would be killed immediately— some did make such mistakes and were killed. Yet Obregon slouched on, riding his old black mules, tolerated and even welcomed by his prairie customers.
Sometimes, cautiously, the pistoleros argued about Obregon. Some maintained that he just put on a good act to disarm his customers. Nobody could really be that clumsy, that stupid, that cowardly and survive in such a hard place. Ramon argued the other position. Ramon believed that Obregon really was that cowardly, really was that clumsy. But some of the men remained unconvinced.
“So what are we going to do?” Malgres asked sullenly. He had only joined Obregon’s renegades after the death of John Skraeling, the trader he had worked with for some months. In Malgres’s opinion they should have charged the English group before the trappers had time to get organized. They might have lost a pistolero or two but they might have been able to carry off two or three white girls, captives who would bring huge prices in Mexico, where there were many rich hidalgos. But instead of charging, Obregon had allowed himself to start thinking about how much he disliked having arrows stuck in his fat body; instead of charging, he stopped. The trappers, who had been scattered and disorganized at first, were now concealed, concentrated, and ready for battle. A big profit had been there for the taking, but Obregon had been too cowardly to seize it.
“Hombres, go around that way and stay out of range,” Obregon ordered, sweeping his arm toward the east. “Get across that gully and wait for me.”
“Wait for you—where are you going?” Malgres asked.
“To talk to the English—why not?” Obregon said. “You can come if you like—Ramon can stay with the hombres.”
Then Obregon waved his hands, to indicate to the English that no hostilities were intended. He clucked at his mule and proceeded at a slow walk toward the English group. Malgres hesitated for a moment, and then joined him.
“We can
get a good, close look at the women,” Obregon said. “It doesn’t hurt to have a count. We might meet these English again someday, when they don’t have so many good shots to help them. Then we can catch a few women and have ourselves a little fiesta.”
When they were halfway to the English company, Malgres suddenly changed his mind. He remembered that he had killed the old Mandan chieftain Big White, who had been with the English for a time. Big White had left the steamer and was on his way home when Malgres and two Poncas ran into him. The old chief spoke rudely to them and a fight ensued. Big White killed one Ponca with his great war club, but before he could catch the other Ponca, Malgres slipped in and stabbed him in the liver with his thin knife. The old man cursed him and died.
That had occurred the previous winter—few knew that he had killed Big White, but the Sin Killer might know it, or one of the other trappers. One or two of them might have been friends of Big White; the sight of Malgres might provoke them to seek revenge.
“I’ll go with Ramon—you count those women yourself,” Malgres said, turning toward the gully.
“Suit yourself, amigo,” Obregon said.
45
When the fat man, still smiling . . .
WHEN Malgres turned away from Obregon and loped over to join the other renegades, Jim Snow was more than a little suspicious. The renegades disappeared into the gully where he and Kit had hidden— Jim thought they might be planning to race through the gully and make a flanking attack.
“That was Malgres—he killed Big White,” Jim told them. “Be watchful.”
Even as he said it, the ragtag group of slavers trotted up the east side of the gully and stopped. They did not look in the mood to charge. They merely sat on their horses, waiting for their jefe to return.
“Hello, my friends, don’t shoot!” Obregon yelled, as he plodded toward the waiting company.
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