by P. J. Keogh
“We know. Thank you, Marshal.” Scanlon turned the bay toward the structure the lawman had pointed out. It was a wooden building, no more than a shack. There was a sign nailed to its outside. The sign read;
‘BENJAMIN RYDER—DEALER IN STOCK’
This would be the man.
Scanlon dismounted. “You tend to the horses, Lije. I’ll talk to this second-hand cattle-thief.”
Fisher grinned. “How come you keep the dirty jobs for yourself, Major?”
“Burden of high rank.” Scanlon stepped onto the boardwalk, as Fisher walked his horse off, leading the rangy bay.
The major stepped inside the building. A man was seated behind a desk in the corner of the room. It seemed to be the only room the building had. Its floor was wooden, of uneven planks. Its deal walls were unpainted. The furnishing was sparse, and what there was of it had seen far better days. The place and nothing in it would be missed if left behind.
Scanlon guessed that Ryder was a man who travelled light, and likely one who travelled often. “Would you be Benjamin Ryder?” he asked.
“That’s kind of a direct question, Mister, comin’ from one who’s a stranger.” The man said this with prudence, his gaze not quite meeting the major’s own.
Scanlon had neither time nor patience to fool with this crook’s verbal skirmishing. “Be you Ryder or be you not, I’ve got two thousand head of beeves to sell. From the Sanchez grant.”
At mention of Sanchez, the man stood up, putting out his hand. “Ben Ryder,” he said.
“Scanlon.” The major gave the hand a brief, reluctant shake. “The herd’s this side of Raton Pass. Should be here by nightfall.”
The man called Ryder nodded. “Fine. There’s pasture to the south o’ town. I’ll ride out before sundown, take a look.”
He was a man of medium height, Ryder, and of medium build. His hair was a mousy shade of brown. His complexion was that of one who spent some time outdoors and some time in. His eyes were shifty and of indistinct color. He had the nondescript looks a man would choose if he were on the dodge, which almost surely Ryder was—from someplace and maybe more than one.
Scanlon turned to leave. “See you before sundown.”
“You will,” Ryder confirmed. “Maybe we’d have a drink, ’tween now and then?”
The major had no desire to socialise with this one. Still, his job was digging up dirt on this comanchero business, and Ryder had such dirt upon his hands. “I’ll be in the saloon up the street.” With that, Scanlon left the office, to set out in search of the livery-barn and Lije.
Fisher had put up the horses, and paid the ostler his due, when he came across Jube Matson.
The Negro did not know Jube, nor did he care to. But he knew Jube’s kind too well. Jube, like most men always and everywhere, was a creature of his time and place. His place was Texas. His time was when it was. Jube would have been hard-pressed to tell if his hatred of Yankees outweighed his disregard for Mexicans, or if either held sway over his contempt for Blacks. Indians and cattle-thieves were critters to whom he gave no mind at all, except as targets for his six-shot.
For his were Texican days and his ways were Texican ways.
Jube came face-to-face with Lije Fisher, on a narrow stretch of sidewalk by the Trinidad horse-barn. He halted, surprised. Where Jube came from, Darkies stepped aside for those of superior blood, not needing to be asked or told. This Darky did not do that. Jube guessed that this Black would be one of the new uppity-breed he had heard tell of, the breed that had become commonplace in the cotton-states, in the two years since the war. He had never met one such in the flesh, for West Texas would not tolerate the kind.
The two men halted, faced each other. Jube spoke first. “You’ve got a choice, Nigger. You walk backwards or you step aside.”
Lije grinned, as if in half-appreciation of a joke. “Now, Mister, why’d I want to do either of those things? I walk backwards, I can’t see where I’m goin’. I likely fall over on my ass. I step aside, I get mud on my boots for certain sure.”
Jube looked at the man. This Black was big, right enough. Then, many Darkies were. And he wore iron, tied down to the thigh of his Union Army pants. But that did not faze Jube Matson. Though an old grayback, Jube had not been at Milliken’s Bend or Battery Wagner either. Stories of Negro heroism were no more than Yankee bullshit, in Jube’s book. Likely, this big bastard had been an army-teamster or some such, and had grown a crop of fancy ideas.
“I’m feelin’ generous today,” Jube told the Black. “So I’ll count to three.”
“You can count to three damned hunnert if you’ve a mind,” Lije said. “But do it some place else. Right now you’re standin’ in my way.”
Jube stared at this Negro, marvelled at his insubordination, then took note of the expression in his eyes. Fisher’s grin had gone. His lips had tightened. His eyes were cold, like chips of granite. Jube saw death in them, and suddenly became afraid.
“Step back, or step off,” Fisher said.
“Can’t do that,” Jube replied.
Fisher could see that the man had lost color beneath his weather-beat. He knew he had him scared. It had been a contest, and Lije had won, but Jube could not admit to that—not and go on living with his fellows or himself, from that day on.
There was only one way out of this, with honor, for both men.
Jube drew his pistol, but Fisher’s was already out. The Dragoon Colt’s barked once. Its heavy ball took Jube Matson in the breastbone, knocking him back against the strut of the sidewalk’s overhang. His body slid downwards, his back against the wood. He ended, sitting on the boardwalk, his front a bloody mess.
He looked up at his killer, a perverse kind of pride in his eyes. “You’ve done for me, Nigger. But you didn’t back me down.”
With the words, he toppled sideways, dead upon the boards.
Lije Fisher made a sad head-shaking motion. This boy had been a game one right enough. But game for what? For what purpose had he died?
Well, the answer to that was not hard to figure.
“Damn fool,” Lije said aloud. “I’d’ve made room for you to pass, if you’d asked polite.”
His Colt’s was in his hand, and he recharged it, as Sedgwick came up.
The marshal was walking none too fast, and showing little eagerness. Inwardly the lawman cursed. He had guessed this Blackman might be one to break the rhythm of his day. This one and the bitter-looking hombre who rode with him.
The cadaver on the sidewalk made it plain he had had it right.
Jube had drawn his own gun when he heard the shot, and it pointed the Darky’s way.
This gained him not a thing, since the Negro’s Colt was out, and pointed too.
“You can put the gun away, Marshal,” Fisher said. “This was an even break.”
Sedgwick looked down at the Texan’s corpse. Jube’s gun was drawn, unfired, by his side. This evidence said that the Black had spoken true. It had been a fair fight. But not one of a kind to which the marshal was accustomed. Darkies going head-to-head on equal terms with Whites were new things in a world but lately changed.
Sedgwick had lived in Kansas, had ridden with Doc Jenison’s Cavalry when the war was on. Their purpose—or so it was claimed—was to free the victims of the South’s peculiar institution. But Tobe Sedgwick, like most others, had not clearly thought this through. Now, when he saw where their crusade had led, he wondered.
A small crowd had begun to gather, and the lawman asked, “Did any of you see this? See what happened?”
A man spoke up. He was Tomas Franco, storekeeper and a man of standing in Trinidad. “I saw it, Tobe. It is as this man tells it. They both drew their guns. The dead one was just not fast enough.”
Sedgwick drew a deep breath of relief. There would be no need to go against this dangerous Darky, after all. Or against his hard-seeming saddle-mate, who had pushed his way through the knot of citizens, and was standing, saying nothing, by the Blackman’s side.
&n
bsp; Tobe put up his gun. “That’s all, folks. Party’s over. Anybody know this boy?” He pointed to Jube’s body, as he spoke.
The liveryman had come out to the street, and he answered the lawman’s question. “He’s a Texican, with Charlie Goodnight’s cattle-crew. They’re headed Denver way. This one’d dropped back, on account of a horse that’d gone lame.”
“Well then,” Sedgwick scratched his chin. “When they get back here, they can pay for the buryin’.” He turned to Fisher and Scanlon. “You men done your business? What you had to do with Ryder?”
“We’ll be through by sundown if things go to plan,” Scanlon told him.
“Good thing you’re not plannin’ to settle here,” the lawman said. “It ain’t just for my sake I’m sayin’ this, but for the good of all of us. Goodnight’s crew’s a sudden bunch. They won’t sit still for this. If you’re still here, when they come back through, they’ll get the hang-rope out. We’ll be outnumbered five-to-one at minimum. And my badge won’t cause ’em to back down.”
“Don’t worry, Marshal,” Scanlon said. “Once our beeves are sold, we’ll have no reason to stay around.”
“Good.” The lawman walked away. For him, the episode was over.
As promised to Ryder, Scanlon went to the saloon, to await the middle-man. Fisher accompanied him. This time they found no expressed disinclination to serve a man of Lije’s color.
Scanlon ordered two beers, with a whisky chaser for Lije. Having killed men himself, he was well aware that the nerves require some steadying, after the blood cools down, even in a seasoned fighting man.
He knew no detail of what the shooting-scrape had been about, but he could guess.
“He gave you no choice, I suppose.” The major passed the drinks across the table to where the buffalo soldier sat.
“None. Leastways, none I could have taken.” Fisher breathed deeply. “Damn fool.” He could have been talking about the Texas boy. He could have been talking about himself. Likely, he was talking about them both.
“These things happen,” Scanlon said.
Fisher nodded.
Neither spoke of the shooting again.
Ryder showed up at the saloon, as he’d said he would. But, seen from Scanlon’s standpoint, the meeting served no useful purpose. The stock-trader proved as close-mouthed as he was unobtrusive.
Still and all, the major thought, there was not a great deal more Ryder could have revealed about this Indian-dealing business. The stolen herds moved north into the mining boomtowns, Hell-on-wheels railroad-camps and stops along the wagon-trails. In such places, beef was beef, and no one cared much whence it came or how it travelled, so long as the meat was red and the price was right.
Scanlon and Fisher rode out of Trinidad an hour before sundown. Ryder accompanied them, mounted on an unremarkable chestnut. The commonplace was a creed with him, it seemed.
Tobias Sedgwick watched them go. He touched his hatbrim in salute, and hoped to God he had seen these strangers’ backs, for good.
The Cheyenne stock was in pasture on a stretch of grass across the river from where Trinidad stood. Pedro’s vaqueros had made camp. Two riders were walking their horses on herd duty around the steers, when Scanlon and his companions showed up.
Ryder cast his eye across the herd. He agreed the book count at two thousand head, paid up for the cattle in Yankee dollars, took the bill of sale that Scanlon gave him, and the transaction was at an end. Ryder would send men out for the beef next day, he said. He turned his mount and rode back to town.
Scanlon and Fisher put their horses up, and spread their blankets by the vaqueros’ fire.
Young Pedro favored Scanlon with a grin. “?A la manana, la trabaja sera finito, Commandante?”
Scanlon nodded. “Por el presente.” The boy’s relief was justified. Tomorrow the work would be done with—for now.
Scanlon and Lije had eaten in Trinidad, so had no need of food. However, they bent to the fire, to fill their mugs with hot black coffee.
As the major came upright, he heard the rattling sound. A snake had moved into the campground, attracted by the fire’s heat. It was level with the spot where Pedro lounged. The rattler’s head arched back in the first swift motion of a strike.
Scanlon’s coffee-mug was in his left hand. His right came up—faster than the rattler’s reflex. His Colt’s fired true. The snake’s head shattered under the impact of the heavy bullet. Shards of reptilian flesh scattered over the rock from beneath which the diamondback had come.
“!Madre de Dios!” one of the vaqueros exclaimed. The crew all looked Scanlon’s way, amazed. He had drawn, fired, and killed the snake, while their brains still were taking in the meaning of the creature’s sound.
“Hell’s fire, Major!” Fisher was as transfixed as the rest. “That was some damn gunplay.”
Pedro, shaken, was up on his feet. He had come so close to death that even his reckless nerve was ruffled. He thrust out his hand. “Muchisimas gracias, Commandante.” His gratitude lent vibrato to his tone.
“Por nada.” The major attempted to pass the action off.
“?Nada?” Pedro’s eyes were alive with their intensity. “Usted ha salvado mi vida. No es nada.”
“Verdad.” Scanlon had no choice but to agree. “Su vida no es nada.”
“Amigo.” The boy gripped his saviour’s hand.
Fisher was already leading the vaqueros on a snake hunt. The main nest was beneath a flat rock on the edge of the camp-circle. They killed six of the slitherers before the Negro pronounced the campsite safe.
The incident had set Scanlon to pondering.
He had saved Pedro’s life. And what they had agreed was true. That was not nothing. The boy had called him friend. Yet his plan was to bring down Don Leopoldo, the brother of Pedro’s mother.
With every day that passed, the ex-major liked this mission less and less.
The Sun was low. It was time for sleep. “We’ll be gone come sun-up,” Scanlon said.
Chapter 12
Pueblo is the Spanish word for people. It also is the Spanish word for town.
The Pueblo Indians were so named by the conquistadores who laid Iberian claim to the Upper Rio because, unlike the Athapaskan-speaking Navajo and Apache bands, they were tribes who lived in towns—though not the horizontal ones favored by Anglos and Hispanics. The Pueblos favored vertical structures, several storeys high, dug into mountainsides or built of adobe, for defense against marauders. This form of abode suited these Indians’ way of life, they being crop-growers who stayed in place, not hunters who followed the grazing patterns of their game.
Taos, the Pueblo peoples’ biggest town, was, some said, the oldest-settled habitation on the North American continent. Scanlon, who had been to school in the nearby Spanish settlement of San Fernando de Taos, believed this to be true, though rival claims were laid by Hopi towns, further west.
Taos held memories for Scanlon, good and bad, and recollections of both kinds were in his mind when he dismounted the roan outside the convento where Sanchez’s daughter had been sent to receive her schooling.
A door was set into the building’s outer wall. It had a bell-rope overhanging it that the major pulled upon.
A nun from the novitiate answered the ring. She was a Spanish-speaking girl of seventeen or so, Scanlon guessed, and, judged by what her habit allowed him to see of her, would be wasted on a life of chastity.
He explained his business, and the novice conducted him to the study of the convento’s Madre Reverenda.
La Madre was a woman of late middle-years, hawk-faced, with a ruddiness of complexion not usually found in New Mexico. Her name was Madre Patricia, she said when she shook Scanlon’s hand in greeting. She read the letter of introduction that Sanchez had given the major as credential. Looking up from this, she said, “Major Scanlon-Castro de Baja?” She made a question of the title.
“That’s Don Leopoldo’s name for me.” Scanlon shrugged a dismissal of Sanchez’s floridity. “Mo
stly, I make do with Scanlon.”
“I knew some Scanlons, back home in Galway,” la Madre said. “Would you be kin to them?” Her voice was rich and deep and Irish, with inflections that said that English was not the first language she had learned to speak.
“My father came from Galway,” Scanlon told her, and she smiled at this.
“Then, you’d be Captain Patrick Scanlon’s son. He was a benefactor to this convento. A good man, I believe. That was before my time here. But still we remember him in our prayers.”
Scanlon’s expression was thoughtful, as he acknowledged this. Captain Pat had indeed been generous to the San Fernando convento, in the days when his mine was producing well, benevolent, too, to the monasterio in the town, the place where Scanlon’s own schooldays had been passed. Scanlon was surprised though that these long-ago kindnesses were still recalled.
He was just eighteen when his father died, killed by a rockfall at the mine. The widowed Margarita went, heartbroken, to her reward soon afterward.
A sisterless only son, Scanlon made his own way in the world from then. His father’s mine played out, he prospected for his own, finding some silver, though not much. Later he rode shotgun on the stage-line, for a spell, then worked a while for a newspaper in Santa Fe.
Then had come the war.
Mention of his father’s death caused him to wonder, not for the first time, how his own life would have differed had Patrick’s run its natural course.
The Reverend Mother spoke again. “You are the officer the army cashiered, because of San Alberto.”
San Alberto! A name Scanlon wished he could forget of a place he regretted having ever heard about. The nun’s statement was the truth, however, and he found his mind casting back to those blood-stained days of war.
1864 was the year of San Alberto.
Gettysburg lost, Vicksburg fallen, their outgunned armies in retreat, the Rebs were growing desperate, that summer. Plans were laid to bring on copperhead risings in Cincinnatti and Chicago, cause mass breakouts from Union prison-camps, hi-jack northern ships on the Great Lakes, plant fire-bombs in New York City—those and other crazy schemes. All were aimed at weakening further the near bled-out northern war resolve, and at strengthening the hand of Peace Democrats in the election planned for that year’s fall.