by P. J. Keogh
“I’ve come to get you out of here.” Carson’s coon-hound eyes had a look of remembered guilt about them, as he spoke.
Scanlon’s eyebrows rose. “How do you plan to go about that?”
“Money talks. Gold talks louder. I’ve brought sufficient dust to persuade el Commandante del Prision to hand you a parole.”
“I’m worth gold now?” Scanlon made a snorting sound. “Don’t times change? At my court-martial I didn’t rate so much as a testimonial.”
Carson’s shamefaced look grew more so at the barb. “That was General Carleton’s doing, not mine. And he had Washington riding on his back. Someone had to pay for San Alberto.”
“Is that the truth?” Scanlon’s tone dripped with bitter recollection.
“Goddamn it, Scanlon,” Carson bridled. “Women were killed at San Alberto.”
“Women were killed in the Mescalero villages,” Scanlon said. “And Navajo women died at Canyon de Chelly.”
Carson had never hated Indians. He had taken an Arapaho wife and had stayed faithful ’til her death. He had a half-breed daughter whom he openly acknowledged, and for whose upkeep he provided. Canyon de Chelly was still an open wound in his conscience, a fact that sounded in the petulance of his response. “Not by me. I never killed a woman.”
“Nor did I, at San Alberto,” Scanlon shot back.
“You were in command there.”
“So were you, along the Bonito, Carson, and in the Chuskas.”
“Those things were different.” Carson was putting up a defence, though not one that carried conviction, even to his own ears.
“The color of their skins was different, Carson. That and the fact the Indians couldn’t vote for Mr. Lincoln. Or against him.”
His argument lost, Carson walked to the window, looking out as some ragged, struggling wretch was dragged to the killing post. Sickened, he looked away. “It makes no difference now. It’s done.”
“Yes.” Scanlon nodded. “I guess it is. So, Carson, what do you want from me?”
“Things bein’ as they are, does it matter?”
Noise of gunfire was heard from the yard.
Scanlon laughed. If there was mirth in the sound, it was undetectable. “Things bein’ as they are, I don’t reckon it does.”
Chapter 2
The town of Mora, New Mexico, had been a hotbed of resistance to American rule, back in 1847. As such, it had taken a battering at the hands of Price’s Missouri Volunteers.
Now rebuilt, it boasted a US Post-Office, and Colonel Caleb Whitehorn was its Postmaster. The position was his as a sinecure, earned by service to his country, in forty years with the army’s Commissary Department, supplying the needs of those who made war upon Redskins, Latinos and Rebs.
Though glad of the job, Caleb would not have made Mora his first choice, since Mora was a Chicano town, and Caleb did not like Hispanics. These facts being so, his hackles rose at sight of the vaquero who faced him across his office counter. An uppity bastard, Caleb had this one down as, like the old man who owned the hacienda on the hill above and most of the land around. The whole damned Greaser tribe of them should have been run off, to Caleb’s mind. Else why had bluecoats, men just like himself, waged war on Mexico, twenty years before?
And why the Hell, now, would someone in the nation’s capital be sending mail to the sons-of-bitches?
To questions such as these, Caleb had no answers.
He offered no polite greeting to the vaquero, simply pushed across the counter-top the package for which the man had come. He shoved a receipt-ledger and steel-nibbed pen through also. "Make your mark on here,” he said.
* * * *
The provost-corporal walked toward the rock-pile in the Fort Worth punishment-stockade. The prisoners, ankles chained to render movement clumsy and escape impossible, were swinging pickaxe and hammer, sweating even in the morning chill of a Texican late winter. Enlisted men with rifles guarded them. The prisoner the two-stripe sought was not hard to pick out. He was not the only Blackman in the stockade’s rock-pile gang, but sure as Hell he was the biggest.
“You, Fisher!” the corporal called.
“That’s me.” The Black, straightening, looked the non-com in the eye. Even chained and unarmed, he was a sight to make the corporal grateful for the Colt’s pistol on his belt.
“Come with me,” the corporal ordered. “The commandant wants you.”
Lije Fisher put down his pick. “What’s he want me for?”
“How the hell would I know? Officers don’t let me in on their secrets.”
The Negro shrugged. “I guess they don’t at that.” He scrambled from the pile, and, with a short-stepping, chain-restricted gait, followed the non-com toward the clump of buildings that overlooked the prison compound, one of which housed the man who ran the place.
Cyrus Jones was a thirty-year soldier. A cracker from the Florida swamplands, he had signed up for one of the Seminole wars, and stayed. When the nation broke apart, he chose Union over state and, by the end of ’64, was a sergeant-major in Sykes’ regular division of the Army of the Potomac.
What with Bobby Lee’s boys fighting like cornered bobcats, bounty-men weakening the blue-clad fiber, desertions high and casualties climbing, Union platoon commanders fell like leaves in fall, that year. So, by default, Jones found himself with 2nd. lieutenant’s bars, unsought for and unvalued, but his own for all that.
From the top rung of one military ladder he had jumped to the bottom of the one above.
Which was why, despite all those West-Point sons-of-bitches from whom it could have chosen, the army had picked him for this stockade command. If there was a meaner job in the service, Cyrus had not come across it, and did not envy the shoulder-strap who held it down.
Cyrus was not bitter though. Three decades in dirty-shirt blue had made him philosophical.
A knock came at his office-door. “Come in!” Jones called.
The Provost-Corporal entered, his shackled charge in tow. The two-stripe came to attention. “Provost-Corporal Scowcroft reporting with prisoner as ordered, Sir.” He threw up a salute, as he chanted the words, and Jones returned this, without rising from his chair.
“That will be all, Corporal.”
The non-com hesitated. An eye on the prisoner he had brought, he commenced a protest of a kind. “You’re sure, Sir...?”
Blue-uniform or no, Cyrus was too much a Southerner to admit to any fear of Blacks, even of Blacks this inmate Fisher’s size. Besides, he had a heavy-caliber Colt’s in the top drawer of his desk, from where he could pull it quickly, should the need arise. Sharply he cut the non-com short. “I’m sure, Corporal. Dismissed.”
The corporal saluted again, turned, and marched out from the room.
Cyrus eyed the prisoner. The steady way in which the Negro returned his gaze needled him. Head-hanging submission, Cyrus would have preferred. Surface defiance, hiding fear, he had come to expect. This man showed neither. He simply met Jones’ eye as one equal will meet another’s.
Lije Fisher was a buffalo soldier, and they were something new in the army. Northern Blacks, many of them, and freeborn. The rest, like this one, Southerners who had risked life and limb, to break out of slavery. Most had seen service with wartime volunteers. All had chosen army life over waiting table or pushing broom. They were a gutsy bunch, and Fisher was known to be the gutsiest among them.
Jones, though he felt his hackles rise when he encountered their insolence, was dogface enough to acknowledge the buffalo soldiers’ military qualities, their discipline in the field, and the fact that they could fight.
“Brigadier-General Carson has authorised your release for special duty. And these are your orders,” Jones told Fisher. “You will report to the post smithy and have those chains struck off. You will be issued, by the quartermaster, with suitable clothing, and, by the paymaster, with one hundred dollars for expenses. You will draw from the armoury a revolving pistol and one hundred rounds of ammunition, a Spencer rep
eating carbine and twelve tubes. You will take from the horse herd a mount of your choice. You will report to Albuquerque, New Mexico Territory, where you will be met by Major Jose Scanlon. He will give you further orders. Questions, Fisher?”
The Negro’s eyebrows had risen in surprise when the officer first spoke, and had continued climbing, as the diatribe went on. He was in the early days of the sentence imposed by the Fort Chadbourn court-martial, and, when the provost-corporal came for him, had considered many possibilities, a flogging, a stretch in the hole, a transfer to Leavenworth maybe. He had not expected this.
Nor had he thought to see Scanlon again.
He said, “Questions, Sir? I’ve got lots of ’em. Point is, would you have the answers?”
Jones smiled despite himself. “You know the army.”
The Black nodded. “I surely do. And I know General Carson also. Know him well enough to know he ain’t gettin’ me turned loose from here, to go on no hayride. And since Scanlon’s in on this, it’s clear that Uncle Sam needs me for somethin’ bloody. So I’d like some notion o’ what’s in it for my side.”
This was a soldier’s fair question, one to which Jones had an answer, or part of one at least. “I am permitted to tell you that the mission is a confidential one. Upon its successful completion, you will have the option of reinstatement to your regiment, with no loss of rank, or of honorable discharge from the United States Army. In either case, you will be due full back pay and allowances, to time of such reinstatement or discharge.” He said all this in the way his army years had taught him, rapidly, in a monotone, as if he were reading from a list.
“Hell!” the prisoner said, “Now I know for sure this ain’t gonna be no hayride.”
“Any further questions?”
“Nossir.”
“In that case, you’re dismissed.”
The Black, dragging his irons, turned clumsily toward the door.
“One thing more,” Jones called after him. “You’ll be officially listed as a break-out. So keep clear of military posts.”
The liberated Fisher half-turned back. He gave a grunted chuckle, then went out the door.
Chapter 3
Jose Scanlon had been out of the Queretara prision for better than four weeks. In that time, he had travelled north, been briefed on the job Carson had for him, then, demanding Fisher’s services, had talked the Negro’s way out of the stockade. Also he had been kitted out with new clothes, acquired a pair of late model Colt’s Army pistols, and had twisted Carson’s arm for a new Spencer .56 caliber repeating rifle, one the Fort Stanton armourer had been mad as hell at parting with. He had requisitioned a horse too, a mount that Stanton’s sergeant-farrier was less than eager to let go. It was a big, rangy bay gelding, not yet US Army-branded, the kind with all-day staying power. Scanlon had had a haircut from the post barber, and had found time to shave each day. His jailhouse grime cast off, he looked every inch the ready-for-anything traveller it was his aim to be taken for, as he rode into the stable-yard in Albuquerque.
The ostler stepped from a rough-built lean-to by the stable. An Anglo of maybe forty years, he showed surprised pleasure at sight of Scanlon. “Major,” he greeted.
“Been a while since you called me that, Forrest,” Scanlon replied.
The ostler shrugged. “Old habits. Even though I’m a civilian now.”
“I can see that. Then, the war has been over best part of two years.”
Forrest made a dismissive, sniffing sound. “Yeah. Not that we saw much of it. After Glorieta Pass was done, it was no more’n a big Indian fight. Didn’t see a Goddamn reb, once Sibley high-tailed south.”
“Apart from San Alberto,” Scanlon reminded him.
Forrest’s expression became disgruntled. “Huh! San Alberto! Damned nest of copperheads. They gave you a raw deal there, Major. The court-martial an’ all.”
“Two women were killed when we hit the place. Someone’s head had to roll.”
“Hell, Major.” Forrest was still aggrieved. “How many women died when Grant and Porter bombarded Vicksburg? Likewise Sherman at Atlanta?”
Scanlon smiled his side-mouthed smile. “Full-blown Rebs didn’t have the vote. Just like the Navajo didn’t, and the Apache.”
The Ostler saw the truth in this. “Had they moved San Alberto east-a-ways, it’d have been in Texas, and they’d have given us medals. ’Stead o’ which, the outfit was put down as woman-killers.”
Scanlon’s half-smile came again. “That’s how it goes, Forrest. Fortunes of war.”
Forrest nodded. “I guess so. How have you been, Major? Ain’t heard much of you for a time.”
“I’ve kept busy.” Scanlon dismounted, and shook Forrest’s hand.. “You have room for my horse?”
“For your horse, Major, I’d make room.” Forrest unbarred the stable-door, swinging it open to allow Scanlon to lead the bay inside.
From one of the stalls came a whickering sound. Scanlon looked in the direction of the noise. A big strawberry-roan mare stared back at him over the stall-gate. She could be heard to stamp a forehoof in welcome.
Scanlon walked to the stall. He reached to stroke the muzzle of the roan. She whickered again with pleasure at his touch. “Who brought this one in?” Scanlon asked.
“A Mexican guy. There were two of ’em. Mean lookin’ bastards. One tall and skinny, the other short and fat. The tall one had the roan. The other was on the chestnut there.” Forrest’s expression was quizzical. “Why?”
“This mare here,” Scanlon told him. “She’s mine.”
* * * *
Scanlon sat in the cantina. A bowl that had held chilli was on the table in front of him. His stomach was filled, and he was washing the food down with cervesa from the big vaso he held in his left hand. He was in the Mexican quarter of town, where, by Forrest’s account, the horse-boarding pair had headed.
Scanlon’s eyes narrowed, as the two men walked in from off the street. Neither was the man he most wanted, but they were the ones Forrest had described, and both were men he knew.
It was afternoon, the siesta hour. Apart from the newcomers, Scanlon was the only customer in the place. Seated where he was, in shadow, his back to a wall, he passed unnoticed by the two at first. He put down the vaso, pushed back his chair, and stood up. The sounds he made in doing these things caused the men to look around.
“That mare of mine’s got a nice easy gait, hey, Lorca?” Scanlon said.
The Mexicans had the light behind them, and the taller one peered into the gloom of Scanlon’s corner. “Scanlon?” It might have been a question, was more likely an exclamation of surprise.
“That’s right.” Scanlon had the edge by virtue of the light, and where he was standing. But there were two of them, each as tricky as a side-winder, Scanlon knew, so he was tensed for a fast move, edge or no.
“How come you’re...?” It was the other man who spoke.
Scanlon had used North-American hablar, and the Mexican replied in the same. Julio was a short, stubby man, where Lorca was long, with a consumptive look. With height and build the dissimilarities ended. Both were bearded. Both wore dusty trail-clothes. Both carried six-guns. Both were treacherous as high plains twisters.
“Still alive, hey Julio?” Scanlon completed what the Mexican had set out to say. “Next time Armandez wants someone killed, he’d best try for it, himself. That Commandante del Prision in Queretara isn’t a man to be relied upon.”
“Armandez’ll catch up with you, Scanlon, one of these days.” It was Lorca, the skinny one, who spoke.
“I’m not the one who’s running,” Scanlon said. “And, right now, I’ve got business with you, Lorca. How come you rode in on my mare?”
Lorca grinned. It was not a grin a man would offer to a friend. “Like you said, Scanlon, she’s got a nice easy gait.”
Scanlon had his mare back, but knew there was only one way he would get to keep her, and that was the way he took. His right hand Colt’s came up, as Lorca made his draw.
Julio was pulling iron too, but Scanlon had made the most of his edge, and was a shade sooner with the gun. His first bullet took Lorca through the ribcage. It was a .44 caliber round pushed by forty grains of black powder, and it lifted the skinny man off his feet, dumping him prostrate on the dusty floor. Scanlon single-actioned his second ball Julio’s way. The short man got off a shot, but it buried itself in the ceiling, as Scanlon’s bullet spoiled his aim for good and all.
The cashiered major stepped across the room, to stand over the bodies of his six-gun’s victims. He cursed. Neither one would point him Armandez’s way now. His aim had been too good. On the bright side though, Lorca had stolen his last horse, Julio the same.
The bartender was a Spanish-speaker, but he understood sufficient Yankee to have made sense of the happening. “?Ladrones de caballo, huh?” he said.
“Ladrones is right,” Scanlon told him. “Caballo or any other damned thing that’s not piping-hot or nailed down.”
Chapter 4
Royden Chambers did the badge-wearing in Albuquerque, and he took pride in the office he held. At the sound of Scanlon’s fire, he had headed for the cantina, at a trot.
Scanlon, having come quietly, now stood in the jailhouse, saying nothing, as the lawman eyed him with distaste.
Chambers had come to the South-West as an army regular, therefore had not much time for New Mexico Vols and even less for drummed-out New Mexico Vols. He would have liked nothing better than to throw Scanlon into the calabozo, as preamble to a hanging. But he knew that he would never make a charge of murder stick. It had been an even break—worse than even from where Scanlon stood, with two on the other side. And no frontier court would convict a man in a case like that.