The Deliverance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “What about you, Mister Childress?”

  “I’ll go back to privateering.”

  Skye laughed quietly. “Whatever you are, and I haven’t the faintest idea, you were never a privateer.”

  “Then think of me as you will.”

  “Who are you, then?”

  “No one you’ve heard of.”

  “We’re talking in circles. What are you doing here? Are you an agent provacateur of the Republic of Texas?”

  “For a while. It was a useful thing to be.”

  Skye shook his head. “I suppose you’ll tell me if you want me to know.”

  “I’ll say only this: our meeting was most fortunate for me, and by teaming up with you, I accomplished what I set out to do.”

  “You mean picking up the girl and the boy?”

  “That, and letting me see how it all works.”

  Skye waited for more, but nothing more was forthcoming, so he smiled. “I don’t suppose I’ll ever know, then, mate.”

  “You’re right about me, you know. I am a Londoner.”

  Skye nodded. He had plainly given up, and turned to stare at the darkened slopes. “I’m in your hands, mate. You’re the only one among us speaks Spanish; you know what I don’t, and you’re not saying who you are. Keep us safe, put us on horse, give us a weapon or two and some food, a blanket apiece, and we’ll make it.”

  “Consider it done, Mister Skye.”

  The man who called himself Childress wished he could reveal more, but confidentiality was important, and he couldn’t break the seal.

  As the night-chill deepened, Skye rounded up Victoria and the two Indians. “Two or three hours to Santa Fe,” he said.

  They rode through a soft summer’s night without incident, and at midnight Skye steered the black calash through the narrow streets of the capital city until they were again at the plaza. He halted before Alvarez’s mercantile.

  “Wait here,” Childress said, and mounted the long stairway, one step at a time, until he reached the vestibule and knocked. It took a long while before a yawning Alvarez opened.

  “Childress? At this hour? Is there something wrong?”

  “A moment, Senor Alvarez. Can you spare it?”

  Alvarez studied Childress sharply, and waved him in.

  It took some negotiating. Alvarez agreed to supply horses, saddle, tack, blankets, food, clothing, and a rifle and powder and ball to Skye’s party. He would receive two matched trotters and a calash for it, and the only calash in New Mexico.

  “And what of you, Mister Childress?”

  “I have business here, some things to write and then I’ll see.”

  “Business?”

  The consul was fishing. Maybe, after Skye’s party got away, the man who called himself Childress would explain. But not now. There were things to do under the cloak of darkness, and Alvarez swiftly dressed, lit a lantern, headed downstairs to his shadowed store, and set to work.

  He opened the front door of his store, summoned Skye, and together they hauled the outfit to the calash.

  “There is a livery barn out Palace Street. I will come with you,” he said to Skye.

  The calash creaked through empty dark streets.

  The Mexican hostler sprang to life as soon as Alvarez awakened him, and by the wavering light of an oil lamp, he caught horses and saddled them. In time all was readied for Skye and his party: the weary trotters rested in a pen, four horses stood ready, and a burro was loaded with a packsaddle and the new outfit.

  “Well, Skye, this will see you through,” Childress said.

  “Some privateer you are, mate.”

  “I’m Her Majesty’s viceroy for Borneo and Tanganyika, Skye.”

  Skye didn’t laugh. “Whoever you are, sir, you’re a nobleman and a prince.”

  “No, Skye, I am addressing the true nobleman, the natural lord of the wilds, generous and true and honorable. And his wife, who is all of those things, herself a duchess of this great realm.”

  Victoria looked ready to swear, but her gaze was filled with tenderness.

  “Hurry, you’ll need to be well clear of Santa Fe when dawn breaks.”

  “Dawn has already come for these young people, Mr. Childress.”

  “May it come for all enslaved people, Mister Skye. Be gone before daylight!” he cried.

  Skye shook hands, and the mountaineer’s grip was warm and firm, and he shook hands with the consul too, and then they mounted. Childress watched Skye, Victoria, and the savage boy and the girl ride softly into the soft night, and then they vanished from his sight, and he knew he would never see them again.

  fifty

  In the Moon When the Cherries are Ripe, Skye found Black Dog’s Cheyenne camped in a cottonwood bottom on Big Sandy Creek, enjoying the sweet harvest of late summer. He rode past buffalo hides staked to the earth to be fleshed, woven baskets burdened with hackberries, heaps of roots and wild onions, and racks where strips of buffalo were drying for future use as pemmican and jerky. The buffalo were thick, the berries ripe, and the People were happy.

  When Skye and Victoria rode into the village along with Little Moon and Ouo, escorted by the ever-vigilant Dog Soldiers, women and children alike crowded about them, whispering furiously. Most of the men were off hunting. Little Moon cried out her greetings as she recognized childhood friends, kin, and Chief Black Dog himself, who stood waiting before his lodge as the visitors approached, lean, coppery, wearing only a plain loincloth.

  Little Moon! This was news!

  Even as these people welcomed the long-lost Little Moon with sharp cries, they studied the Arapaho boy, wondering about him. He came from an allied tribe, and their gazes were friendly. There were questions on their faces and Skye hoped to answer them all, despite the ever-present barriers of tongue.

  These Cheyenne were friends of William Bent, and some would know a little English. But many more would understand Arapaho, and between them, Ouo and Little Moon could tell their stories. They dismounted from their weary horses under the watchful eyes of the Dog Soldiers, no friends of Skye or the Crow woman Victoria, but it didn’t much matter.

  Black Dog made them welcome, and heard their stories, one by one, while the Cheyennes crowded close.

  Even as Little Moon was speaking, her father appeared, and there was a long, choked moment as they stared at each other, and his troubled gaze surveyed her strange cloth clothing and bare feet. The father, whose name Skye remembered as Cloud Watcher, was a graying warrior, flanked by younger wives, who eyed Skye and Victoria with frank dislike. He wore a necklace of human fingers and the ensign of the Dog Soldiers, a quilled dog rope looped over his shoulder, the warrior society eternally hostile to all who were not of the People.

  But that changed, even as Little Moon poured forth the story of her capture by the hated Utes, life in Santa Fe as a drudge for the chief of chiefs, release from captivity by Standing Alone and Skye and Victoria and a certain fat man. She spoke of all that happened afterward, including the trip to the mountain place were yellow metal was clawed from the earth, and the amazing, beautiful sacrifice of Standing Alone for the liberty and life of this Arapaho boy, Ouo, whose name Skye learned was Raven.

  The villagers listened in hushed silence, and when they learned of Standing Alone’s self-chosen fate, they cried out in anguish. For now this little bronzed boy, standing uneasily before them, was vested with great medicine and sacredness by a woman of the People who had surrendered her freedom, indeed her life, for him.

  Skye wished he could understand the tongue of these people, because some of what was unfolding eluded him. But more and more, the chief, Black Dog, eyed him and Victoria, and when at last the stories were told and retold, he motioned them to be seated in a circle, and an honored boy presented the chief with a sacred pipe of this band. Black Dog ritually pointed the pipe stem to the sky, the earth, and the four winds: “Spirit above, smoke. Earth, smoke. East, West, North, South, smoke.” And they smoked quietly, each filling his lungs in turn.
It was a peace offering and a bonding of them all.

  Now a translator appeared, a youth who had tarried at Bent’s Fort, and he explained, in halting English, that these people would rejoice for four days the return of their young woman.

  “She make be purified,” he said. “In a bower she be cleansed with smoke of sweetgrass, welcomed, and returned to lodge of her father. And much more happen, for the bravery and beauty of Standing Alone be honored. No greater woman ever live among our people.”

  “I agree, mate. She will always live on in my mind, and in Victoria’s mind too.”

  “She make a damn good Absaroka,” said Victoria, paying the ultimate homage.

  “The Arapaho boy, he be gone into the lodge of his new father, Cloud-Watcher, and there he learn our ways. But in honor the wishes of Standing Alone, he be offered his liberty soon, few moons. But we hope he stay, and be a son, and replace the one who died.”

  Grasshopper, whose name would never again be spoken here, but who was missed and grieved by everyone in the band.

  Skye dug under his buckskins and pulled out the sacred bundle that Standing Alone had given him. Slowly he lifted it over his head, and handed it to Black Dog.

  He turned to the translator. “Tell the chief that I am returning the sacred bundle of his people. I have done what I was required to do.”

  Black Dog took it, nodded solemnly, and pressed a hand upon Skye’s shoulder.

  “You carried its power; you have honored it,” the chief said.

  The Cheyenne people stared at medicine bundle, which had inspired the man who wore it, and Skye sensed a gladness in them.

  And so these people made Skye and Victoria welcome. They fattened Skye’s rawboned horses, housed Skye and Victoria in a small medicine lodge heaped with velvet-soft robes, served them the most succulent ribs of the buffalo cow, while the Cheyenne women swiftly sewed a complete fringed and quilled doeskin dress for Victoria, and a suit of skins for Skye, dyed across the chest and back in strong red and black colors, and added exquisitely quilled moccasins for them both. Skye at once put away his cloth clothes and wore the new ones, tying back his long hair with a yellow ribbon.

  On the eve of the second day, Cloud-Watcher invited Skye and Victoria to his lodge, and there at twilight, before the whole band, he adopted Skye as his son and Victoria as his daughter, clasping a hand to the shoulder of each, thus paying great honor to them both. And Little Moon proclaimed them her brother and sister. Even the shy Arapaho boy, Ouo, Raven, had a gift for them: a little medicine bundle he made for each, which he hung on a thong over Victoria’s breast and the other over Skye’s. The crowd admired that, and patted the boy happily.

  Victoria had sighed as the boy honored her, and Skye knew how much she would have liked a son of her own, but her womb had always been empty. Now, at last, she had a son in this boy, and she smiled at him, and pressed his hands between hers, and found in him that which she had always yearned to have.

  Skye noted that several of the young Cheyenne boys were paying court to Little Moon, though most stayed away. It was plain that most of the boys wanted nothing to do with her; she had in their eyes been somehow demeaned by her servitude among the Mexicans. But one youth in particular, who had a mind of his own and whose war honors included an eagle feather, was playing the flute outside her lodge, and Skye sensed that soon Cloud-Watcher would acquire a son-in-law, and Little Moon, a sweet sixteen, would begin her new life in joy, living freely within the traditions of her people.

  On the fourth day Black Dog himself held a ceremonial feast, at which he made Skye and Victoria members of the tribe and of his people, with much oratory, strokes of vermilion on the cheek, and fragrant smoke of tobacco mixed with red willow bark. Victoria, of the Crows, endured this with dignity, setting aside her own passions to permit this great honor.

  “Almost like Absaroka!” she exclaimed.

  “For you both have brought one of ours to us, and you both helped our beloved Standing Alone to fulfil her life,” intoned the youthful translator. “And so you shall always be honored among us, and wherever the People gather, your names will be spoken of with respect.”

  Skye thanked them simply. He was glad.

  The next morning he and Victoria loaded up their burro with its pack, saddled their horses, and headed away, escorted for half a day by an honor guard of the Dog Soldiers.

  But at last they rode alone, ever north, through the tall tan grasses bobbing in the breeze, toward the land of her people, the Crow.

  fifty-one

  Santa Fe

  Province of New Mexico

  Mexico

  17 August 1841

  Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart.

  Castle Hedingham

  Essex, England

  Sir Thomas:

  I am pleased to report that I have concluded operations in the Republic of Texas, United States Indian Territory, and the northernmost province of Mexico, on behalf of the British and Foreign Anti-slavery Society. A detailed report will follow in a fortnight but I will write briefly at once and entrust this to merchants en route to St. Louis over the Santa Fe Trail.

  Slavery in the Republic of Texas is a variant of the sort in the United States South. The black is not a citizen of the republic, has virtually no rights, and serves entirely at the whim of the master, without hope of liberty. We should call attention to this in parliament; United States abolitionists can do little about it, operating from a foreign nation, as it were.

  In the unsettled portions of United States territory, the Ute Indians, in particular, abduct children and sell them in Mexico, where there are traffickers of human flesh peddling wares to ranchers and mine owners. In this they are very like black African slavers. But the other tribes are not free from the taint of slavery, though it is milder, built around war captives, and usually results in adoption into the tribe.

  A much more subtle variety of bondage finds form in Mexico, where slavery is theoretically forbidden by state and church. There are several types, ranging from the cruel and murderous servitude imposed on captive native peoples, often in the mines, to more benign versions of slavery, such as the peon system which binds the peon to his master through perpetual debt. Other forms of indenture operate in Mexico as well.

  I will recount my adventures when I return to London. Suffice it to say that I employed my usual stratagems, being highly visible, even gaudy, to conceal my true purposes. I had the good fortune to obtain a commission from Texas President Lamar, which enabled me to study the new republic without hindrance, and even better fortune later on, when I encountered a famed border man looking for enslaved Indian children in Mexico. Both situations enabled me to discover everything the anti-slavery society wishes to know, while my true purposes remained undetected.

  I shall drop the nom de guerre Childress, which is now worthless, and will let you know by coded letter what new one I shall next adapt to my purposes. I leave shortly for the Mexican province of California, to examine, as you wish, servitude of the local Indians at missions and ranchos, with a special emphasis on their diminishing numbers, and after that I will take ship to Australia to see about forced labor in the penal colonies, especially as it involves spouses of convicts, freed women and children, and ticket-of-leave men unable to return to England.

  A full report follows. I trust the work of the society proceeds well. Garrison and others in the States are furiously arousing sentiment against the southern system, which debases masters as much as slaves, but can do nothing about Texas or Mexico. We can do much.

  I will sign myself simply,

  W

  By Richard S. Wheeler from Tom Doherty Associates

  SKYE’S WEST

  Sun River

  Bannack

  The Far Tribes

  Yellowstone

  Bitterroot

  Sundance

  Wind River

  Santa Fe

  Rendezvous

  Dark Passage

  Going Home

 
Downriver

  The Deliverance

  The Fire Arrow

  The Canyon of Bones

  Virgin River

  Aftershocks

  Badlands

  The Buffalo Commons

  Cashbox

  Eclipse

  The Fields of Eden

  Fool’s Coach

  Goldfield

  Masterson

  Montana Hitch

  An Obituary for Major Reno

  Second Lives

  Sierra

  Sun Mountain: A Comstock Novel

  Where the River Runs

  SAM FLINT

  Flint’s Gift

  Flint’s Truth

  Flint’s Honor

  FRONT SALES FOR THE DELIVERANCE

  “Skye is one of the most memorable figures in Western fiction since Max Brand’s Destry.”

  —Tulsa World

  “Wheeler’s westerns just keep getting better and better.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Well-loved western writer Wheeler takes a big grip on afflictions of the heart in each outing …”

  —Kirkus Reviews on Downriver

  Author’s Note

  This novel, like others in the series, is pure fiction, but is grounded in historical reality. The Ute Indians did abduct the children of neighboring tribes and sell them in Mexico, where the captives usually lived a short, brutal life. It is recorded that Kit Carson once took pity on a Paiute boy held captive by the Utes, and purchased his freedom for forty dollars, a large sum in those days.

  William Wilberforce and others in Parliament worked diligently through the early part of the nineteenth century to eradicate slavery throughout the British Empire, as well as worldwide. His successor, Thomas Fowell Buxton, who was made a baronet in 1840, worked tirelessly to abolish slavery, and while some of his efforts came a-cropper, he exerted incalculable moral force against the institution.