The Slavers

by Peter McCurtin

  But I had to admit that Santa Fe looked nice in the morning sun, the old Spanish houses bunched up together, the look of having been there forever. Some of the old houses had been knocked down to make way for newer frame buildings, and they didn’t look nearly as good. The streets off the plaza were narrow and cooking smells came out through the open doors. There were more Mexicans than Americans on that side of the plaza, and they seemed to think Elbert Masters was a dandy feller.

  One old woman, mostly Indian, ran over to kiss Elbert’s hand and, I’ll give him credit—he did look embarrassed.

  “Can they vote?” I asked him. “You ought to run for something, Don Elberto.”

  “In here,” Masters said.

  We climbed the stone stairs to the second floor where the office was. It was no kind of commercial building, not with those brown-faced kids yelling on the stairs, not with the smell of frijoles strong in the halls. The door wasn’t locked. When we went inside I saw that Elbert slept, cooked, ate and manhandled the law all in one dirty little room. There were many books, law books, stuck into cheap pine bookcases. More books on a desk that was too big for such a small room. Books in the window recess and on the bed and on the floor beside the bed. I would swear that the blankets on the bed hadn’t been washed for a year, and an iron pot half filled with beans bubbled on a kerosene stove turned low.

  I decided that Long John Buckman was right. Masters was a fool. I didn’t see that this room was any better than his old iron room at the territorial prison. But, again, the room and the way he lived his life was his business.

  The office—Masters called it that—did have some comforts. Rooting in the bottom drawer of the desk, Masters produced a bottle of rum with most of the rum still in it. “Sorry no tequila, Carmody. If rum won’t do, just holler.”

  Rum would be fine, I said.

  Masters’ drinking cup was on the desk. It took him a while to find another for me. There was only one chair, behind the desk, and Masters sat in it. I sat on the smelly bed and drank my drink. From where I sat, Cripple Creek looked better every minute. The way Masters talked and acted—I didn’t think there was much I could do to help him, nothing definite, like shooting somebody. For old times’ sake, I thought about doing that to this big rancher named Thatcher McKim, but then McKim was just one man, and Masters seemed to have the money part of the town, the American part, the only part that mattered, against him.

  Masters looked into his tin cup, then he looked at me. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he declared. “Maybe the Marshal is right. Maybe I am a fool. You’re a fool if you stay. I was mad when I braced you about owing the Sandovals. Drink your rum, Carmody, and then get out. Nothing you can do for me. Nothing for yourself. You see where this business has got me.”

  Well, what could I say? I shrugged. “We all make our own way, Elbert,” I said. “I guess I could be rich by now, all the money I took, but I’m not. There’s a reason for that.”

  After he filled my cup again Masters filled his own. “No need to talk like a country philosopher, Carmody. Not to me.”

  “Won’t happen again, Elbert.”

  “I did five years. No complaints, you understand. I could have done ten, and maybe I should have done twenty. But I know what it’s like to be locked up with no hope. Maybe that’s why I took up for the Indians. You don’t like Indians much, do you?”

  I began to wish I’d walked out of the hotel an hour earlier that morning. “I don’t kill them if they don’t try to kill me.” That was true. I didn’t like Indians much. I didn’t like anybody much. I was getting tired of Elbert and his questions and explanations. If he didn’t want my help—to hell with him, too.

  “You sure you want to stay?” he asked me.

  “Sure as I can be,” I lied.

  “Got any money?”

  “Seven dollars, Elbert.”

  “Seven dollars more than me,” my lawyer friend said. “You can bunk here if you like, Carmody.”

  I got up off the bed and opened the window. Putting all my weight behind the shove, I got it open. “You’re a real pig, Elbert—you know that? Bunk here is fine with me, after we get the place cleaned up and aired out. Be good for you, burn off some of that lard.”

  With the high mountain air coming through the window, Elbert’s rat hole smelled better. I felt like a fool tidying up that dirty little room—Elbert’s so-called office. In my time, I’ve seen better looking rooms in third-rate Mexican whorehouses. I swear there wasn’t a man in the world I would have helped to clean house except Elbert Masters.

  After the books were piled up and the greasy dishes put together, it still wasn’t clean. I asked Elbert if he owned a broom. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t think so.

  “Go borrow one, Counselor,” I ordered. “Ask Mrs. Chavez on the third floor.”

  There was a grin on Elbert Masters’ face. “How did you know Mrs. Chavez lived on the third floor?”

  I was throwing some moldy biscuits out the windows. “There’s always a Mrs. Chavez on the third floor,” I said. “Hurry, Elbert, the ladies will be along any minute.”

  Elbert did what he was told. But he paused at the door, saying: “You’re worse than an old woman, Carmody.”

  Suddenly Elbert was light of heart, as they say in the poetry column of the Denver Post. Not me. I still thought Long John Buckman was right. Elbert was going to get himself killed. With me around they might hold off for a week or two weeks or a month, but once I was gone they would close in again. It could be that they would come after both of us. There would be other Billy Dancers.

  Elbert came back with the broom, not a store broom, a broom made by tying wire grass around the end of a stick. Lord, I thought, if some of the boys in El Paso could see me now. Elbert was sweeping the dirt this way and that, and I hoped he was a better lawyer than he was a housekeeper. The floor was littered with crumpled sheets of paper, well chewed cigar stubs, matches, dead bugs. I watched Elbert for a while. He was something to watch.

  “For Christ sake, let me do it,” I said. “The idea is to get rid of this trash, not just move it around.”

  After I got the dirt in one pile I scraped it onto a piece of cardboard and threw the whole thing out the window. In that part of town they threw a lot worse than sweepings out the windows.

  Somebody knocked on the door. Elbert shook his head at me when I dropped the broom and put my hand on the butt of the .44. A big Indian about forty years of age came into the room. He looked like one tough Indian to me, light on his feet for such a big man, and the deep scar on his face had done something to the muscles around his right eye. Both eyes were all right, but they didn’t seem to look at you as a team. The old army blouse he wore was red with dust, and he looked like a man who hadn’t slept inside a house for some time.

  “It’s all right, Ganado,” Elbert said. The big man was staring at me. “Carmody is a friend. An old friend. What did you find out?”

  The Indian spoke good English. “After I got finished at Anton Chico I went to the reservation at Bosque Redondo. The talk there is that the slavers are making raids all over the territory. Not big raids—a few families at a time. They say the price for a captive has gone up to five hundred dollars. Even the Indians at Bosque Redondo are afraid. They do not believe the army will protect them if the slavers come. It won’t take much more to make them break out. You know what that means.”

  Masters threw a cigar stub on the nice clean floor. “Just what the slavers are counting on. The first few ranchers get killed—it’ll be open season on all the Indians. They can hunt them down like dogs and get rich while they’re doing it. Nobody’s going to try too hard to stop it, certainly not General Brewster C. Waycross. What about Waycross and McKim?”

  I thought it was kind of wild, trying to tie a brigadier general directly to the slave trade. But you never knew. Bigger men than brigadiers have been caught doing dirty things. Waycross and McKim were still just names to me, and I knew I couldn’t even come up wit
h an opinion until I had a look at these two gents.

  “They both have captives working for them,” Ganado said. “Half the ranchers in the Rio Grande Valley are holding captives. Many of the old ones wouldn’t leave if they could. You know how the ranchers work. Most of them have papers proving they pay the Indians wages.”

  Masters said, “Those papers wouldn’t hold up in court.”

  The big Indian looked even meaner when he smiled.

  “All right, Ganado,” Masters said. “I know what you think of the courts. What about new captives? Goddamn it, man, you were the best scout General Crook ever had. The people they took at Anton Chico, did they take them south?”

  The Indian was patient with Elbert. “I have been to many places,” he said. “Los Alamos, Espanola, Bernalillo, Las Vegas, Pecos. Nowhere did I hear of any large party traveling south.”

  “Sorry I went at you like that,” Masters apologized. “You want some beans.”

  Ganado nodded.

  “How close did you get to McKim’s place?” Masters asked.

  “Close enough,” Ganado said, spooning beans onto a dirty plate. “McKim has hired more guards. That could mean he had increased the number of captives. From where I watched I saw men building what looked like a barracks. The windows that were finished had bars on them. I saw McKim’s foreman, too—Jessup—beating an Indian boy with a whip. I could have killed him easily from where I was . . .” Ganado shrugged. “But I did not. Maybe someday I will.”

  Listening to Ganado, I was pretty sure this feller Jessup, whoever he was, was as good as dead. But Masters didn’t like that kind of talk. “Look,” he said, “you even try something like that you’re finished with me. Goddamn it, you went to a mission school. You can read and write. Killing Jessup would only make it worse for all the Indians. You’d be no good dangling from a tree.”

  The Indian stated one fact that Masters had overlooked: “They would have to catch me first.”

  Ganado finished the plate of beans and stood up. Masters was still red in the face. “Where are you going? You just got back.”

  The Indian’s answer was flat and positive. “I am going to get drunk. Very drunk. When I wake up I will start searching again.”

  Masters yelled after him. “When will you be back?”

  Without turning his head, Ganado said: “When I have something to tell you.”

  “Goddamned Indian,” Masters growled.

  Enough rum was left in the bottle to make two small drinks. “That’s no way to talk about your red brother,” I reminded him. “Let’s talk straight for a while, Elbert. You really think you can stop the taking of Indians. Your friend Ganado says McKim works slaves, General Waycross works slaves, everybody works slaves around here.”

  “Not everybody. But if it isn’t stopped it could get worse.”

  “You say the Army knows, but the Army in these parts is Brewster C. Waycross. What about the Governor?”

  Masters looked glum. “The Governor is in Mexico City attending a conference. More trouble on the border. I made a report to the Acting-Governor. He tells me he can’t do anything until the Governor gets back. Lately he doesn’t tell me anything. He won’t see me.”

  Now it was my turn to look glum. The bottle was empty and between us we had seven dollars with which to fight the most powerful men in the Rio Grande Valley. “You really got them cornered, haven’t you, Elbert?”

  Outside, it was getting dark and Masters put a match to the twin-globed lamp on his desk. “Maybe I do, at that,” he said. “I may not look or talk like a lawyer, but I know the law pretty good. Under the anti-Peonage Law of 1868, I think I can force Judge Gratz to direct the Governor to take action against the slaveholders.”

  “When he gets back,” I said.

  Masters said he had waited a long time. He could wait another few weeks.

  “You may not have a few weeks,” I reminded him. “Can’t you do something now?”

  Masters said that Judge Gratz was holding court down in Alamogordo. “I think Gratz is stalling around,” Masters said. “If he refuses to issue the court order—the law is clear, no argument about that—I’ll start action to have him removed from the bench. If that doesn’t work I’ll go to Washington again with what evidence I have. Uncle Zack wasn’t there the last time. Now he is. He doesn’t agree with me on this, but he might help.”

  Masters started messing up the place again, pulling down law books while he talked to himself. The steel pen in his knobby hand scratched across yellow legal paper. When what he wrote didn’t please him he tore it up and started again.

  I said I’d go out and get myself a glass of beer. Masters looked up saying, “Who? What?”

  “A glass of beer,” I said again.

  “No beer here, Carmody. Down the street. Try to hold back some of that seven dollars. See you later.”

  On the way out, I rattled the door handle. “You got a key for this? Some kind of bolt could be put on.”

  “No key, no need for one. They wouldn’t try anything this end of town.”

  I guess Masters had more faith in his Mexican and Indian friends than I had. He could swear by Sam Houston that he was safe in Spanish Town, but I aimed to bring back a couple of dead-bolts and a shotgun, just in case. The seven dollars would buy the bolts, liquor, something better to chew on than beans. That wouldn’t leave enough for the shotgun, and we’d still have to eat three days from now. Besides, they have some fine women in Santa Fe, and the finer they are the more money they cost.

  It was cool and dark down in Bedoya Street, Noisy in a quiet way—the usual fool Mexican scarring his fingertips on guitar strings, the old women cooking inside the houses, the young ones outside shaking their behinds at Jose, Pedro and Refugio. They all recognized me as the good friend of Senor Masters and I guess I could have had myself a time with one or two of the girls. Maybe later, I thought, but the first order of business was to give my bankroll a boost.

  Lawyer Masters sure as hell would disapprove of my emergency plan, which was to tap some prosperous citizen on the head and share the insides of his wallet, and, truth to tell, I wasn’t much in favor of it myself. It was a come-down for me, but I always do what I have to do.

  I walked around getting the feel of the place. The citizen I tapped would have to be an American. Nobody else in that end of town had any money. Then I found what I was looking for—a fancy looking bawdy house a few narrow streets over from Bedoya Street. The house was old adobe, newly whitewashed, with flowers in window boxes, and there was a bar and dancing to piano and fiddle on the first floor. Upstairs the dancing was done lying down and one dance must have been pretty funny, because some whore laughed and laughed. It was the kind of house the Mexicans keep for Americans with money to spend. From where I was, I could see the house gunman, a young Mexican with crossed gunbelts, standing with his back to the bar. He looked comfortable, so I figured I wouldn’t have to take him on if I transacted my business in a hurry.

  I looked for the alley behind the house. A lantern hung from a hook over the door, and I turned it down just enough to give myself a better edge. There was no need for any citizen to come out the back door after he’d come in the front, but that’s how some citizens are, the respectable ones, the pillars of church and community. Once the whoop-dee-do is over and they climb down off a woman, they dodge out the back way.

  Hunkered down behind a barrel full of something smelly, I waited for my money to appear. And who says Luck and the Lord wasn’t with a man fighting for a just cause? I’d been waiting only five minutes when my prayers were answered in the form of an elderly gent in frock coat and nankeen trousers. Definitely a cattle buyer or land speculator. The belly he carried in front of him must have cost at least five thousand in good grub and smooth whiskey. He closed the door and stood for a while by the lantern looking to see that all his buttons were buttoned.

  If he saw me I’d have to kill him. I’d have to do that, if I wanted to stay in Santa Fe. But it was easy.
The alley was packed dirt, and I got behind him without making a sound. My hand clamped across his mouth and my gun barrel put him to sleep. Catching him under the arms, I dragged him behind the barrel and fished the wallet out of his inside pocket. No way I could have been nicer to the old gent. A few seconds later when I ducked out of that alley the wallet was back in his pocket, the hat was set squarely in his head; and I had what looked like most of a hundred dollars. The old boy might or might not start yelling for the law. Ten to one, he would do nothing more than drag himself home and put a cake of ice on his head.

  Going the other way from the cathouse, then along a dark street lined on both sides with freight sheds, I got back to the plaza. It was a nice sharp night—most nights are in Santa Fe—and the plaza was busy with loungers and strollers.

  It took a while to find a general store that stayed open that late. The man complained that he was just closing up, but he smiled when I said I wanted a lot more than a spool of thread. What I wanted, I said, was a sack of Arbuckle’s coffee, iron pot, skillet, bacon, canned tomatoes, and I don’t recall what else. The bolts for the door and the shotgun came last. I looked over the guns and paid $10.40 for a double barrel Thomas Barker breechloader, a 10-gauge with 32-inch barrels.

  On the way back to Bedoya Street I went into a saloon and bought enough rum and tequila to last us a week ... if we lasted that long...

  “What the hell!” Masters said when he saw all the stuff I brought in.

  “Not what you think, Elbert,” I lied. “Sold my watch to a man wanted one just like it. Gave me a good price, too. Lord, I hated to give up that watch.”

  “What watch?” Masters said. “You don’t have a watch.”

  “Not now,” I answered. “My Daddy’s Waltham watch.”

  I sat down on Masters’ rickety bed. “You want coffee? A drink?”

  Masters kept on scratching with that pen. He shook his head without looking up. “Don’t talk, Carmody. Get some sleep, go out and walk around —I’m busy.”

  “How in hell can I sleep with you mumbling and scratching. There’s the rum and that other thing is a double barrel shotgun.” I got up, broke the gun and thumbed in two shells. “It’s for you, Elbert—a present.”