The Slavers

by Peter McCurtin

  Two other men were in the big room; one stood, one sat. The man standing had his back to the fire. I could see no Santa Fe tailor made the fine suit of gray broadcloth he wore. I looked at him—he was the one to look at. The General, all gold braid and blue cloth, was as grand as a new riverboat on launching day, but I knew the man in front of the fire, the gray-clad civilian, was the real general.

  The other civilian, the one sitting in a leather chair with whiskey in his hand, wore jeans and a lined canvas coat. His boots and gun rig cost a lot of money.

  The General told me to sit down. Bottles and glasses stood on a polished table, but Waycross wasn’t prepared to be that polite.

  It hurt to sit down and some of it showed. General Waycross put his fat behind in another chair. It was a good strong chair, but it creaked. “You are in pain, Mr. Carmody?” Waycross inquired.

  “You should know,” I said, thinking: you lardy hypocrite.

  Waycross was calm as fat men often are. The tall drink he’d been sipping stood near him on another table. It was near, but the fat man had to wheeze to get it. “Ah,” he said, sipping it again.

  Waycross had quick alert eyes. “I know you’re in serious trouble, Mr. Carmody. Very serious.”

  Elbert had said the General came originally from the poor end of Illinois. He didn’t sound like it. Somewhere along the line the ex-sergeant major had picked up the whys and hows of fancy talk. But talking for any length of time came hard to Brigadier General Brewster C. Waycross. He spoke and then he rested for a spell.

  The man sitting down seemed to be enjoying himself. I don’t know why I knew he was Jessup, McKim’s slave-whipping foreman. And I don’t know why I knew the man in gray broadcloth was Thatcher McKim. But it figured that’s who he was. McKim had a thin brown face like a hatchet. About fifty, with blond hair turning silver; everything but that thin hard face pegged him for what they call a gentleman.

  The General droned on about how serious the charges were against me. McKim was no more than two inches down on a thin cigar when it snapped between his fingers, and he threw it in the fire. McKim was getting impatient, but he kept quiet. Naturally, so did the foreman.

  Suddenly, Waycross stopped droning and came to the point. “You are a reckless young man, Mr. Carmody, but we were all young once, and I am prepared to be lenient. Get out of Santa Fe, get out of New Mexico, and we will say no more about it. You have been associating with troublemakers who have set you on a wrong course. Take it from me, you cannot hope to understand local conditions.”

  “No,” I said, fairly sure that Waycross was picking up the bluff I’d heard earlier from Captain Pendergast. Fairly sure they couldn’t try me for what I was supposed to have done.

  “You had me brought here,” I said. “Now you kill me, or let me go.”

  “You stupid saddle tramp,” McKim said.

  General Waycross puckered up his baby’s mouth, frowned a bit, and McKim shut up.

  General Waycross arrived at another point. Now it was out in the open. “How long have you known Mr. Masters, Mr. Carmody? All right, I suppose you’re friends of some sort—but is it worth it? The man is a fool. A jailbird who wants to be a martyr. Free the poor Indians, he says. Free them from what? Useful work? Good food? Sanitary living conditions? A chance to learn the white man’s ways?”

  “From good wages?” McKim said. McKim’s voice was as hard as his hatchet face.

  “The world is the way it is, Mr. Carmody,” the General declared. “All working for the common good in our own way. Now why are you interfering where you cannot do any good? What’s the real reason?”

  Why not tell? I told him about the Sandoval family, leaving out the part about Elbert and me being on the run at the time. I said I was sick and the Sandovals helped me. “But you wouldn’t understand about things like that,” I finished.

  “Watch your mouth,” McKim warned.

  Jessup fetched the General another drink. “But I do, Mr. Carmody,” Waycross said. “I do and I respect you for it.” The General drank and rested while McKim fired up another cigar but didn’t seem to enjoy it much.

  Waycross said: “There are no Indian captives in these parts that we know of, Mr. Carmody. Mr. Masters to the contrary, the Indians here are free agents to come and go as they please.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “But say and just suppose there are a few Indians being held by ignorant, isolated farmers. Is that possible, Mr. McKim?” Waycross asked.

  “It’s possible,” McKim said.

  “Why is he here?” I asked. “I’m here on charges.”

  Waycross said Mr. McKim was a leading citizen and an old friend. The General turned to McKim. “Your men go many places, hear many things. Do you think you could help Mr. Carmody to find his Indian friends, the Sandovals?”

  “Likely enough, General,” McKim answered.

  “There, you see,” the General announced, pleased as piss with himself.

  They were trying to make a deal; Elbert’s prodding was getting under their skins, after all.

  Waycross spoke to McKim. “I wouldn’t want to raise Mr. Carmody’s hopes. You really think his Indian friends can be found?”

  “Just about guarantee it,” McKim answered.

  “More than that I cannot do, Mr. Carmody,” the General said. “We will find your friends and you ride off with them. You’ll want to help them get back on their feet.”

  “Not Diego Sandoval,” I said. “He’s off his feet for good.”

  Waycross tapped the arm of his chair with the bottom of the whiskey glass, but he didn’t try to push me too hard. “You want to help your friends, this is your chance. They helped you in a time of great need. Now we’re making it possible for you to return the favor. The point is, Mr. Carmody, there probably won’t be another opportunity. Mr. McKim is a very busy man.”

  Well, there it was. McKim, or somebody he knew, was holding the Sandoval women, mother and daughter. They were going to a lot of trouble to buy me off. Left to McKim and his foreman, I could expect nothing but a bullet in the back of the head; running me out had to be the General’s idea. Behind all the bullshit, the fat man was running scared. A tougher man would have had me shot and buried under a rock fall at the end of some box canyon. Maybe it would still come to that.

  Waycross stopped the Goddamned tapping. I guess he was thinking of the fine ranch he owned and would retire to when he had sucked up enough dirty money. Jessup was still enjoying himself. McKim was having a hard time keeping his temper. He looked like a man who blew wild twenty times a day.

  Waycross added another little prod to the first one. “Your friends, these Indians, need never be bothered again, if that’s what you’re thinking. I am a man of no small influence, in the Territory and beyond it. Were I to take a personal interest in your friends, let it be known that I was keeping an eye on them, so to speak, no one would bother them again.”

  I damned Elbert to hellfire for getting me mixed up in this. One way, Waycross was talking a good deal. I wanted to do right by the Sandoval women, and then I never wanted to hear of them again. But Elbert was there, in trouble of his own making, and I couldn’t walk out on him.

  “No deal, General,” I said slowly. Slowly, because I hated to say it at all.

  McKim boiled over so fast he threw his cigar on the General’s beautiful Persian rug and let it burn. Very fast, his right hand ducked under his arm and came out holding a hammerless short-barrel Smith & Wesson .38. That kind of double-action gun can’t be cocked by hand. You have to squeeze the trigger to make it fire. They call it the “Squeezer”— and McKim was part of an inch from squeezing it at me.

  Waycross nearly wrecked himself getting out of the chair, saying “God Almighty, Thatcher—put it away! In the middle of the fort! Put it away, I tell you!”

  Jessup was out of his chair. The gun stayed in his holster; a nod from McKim would bring it out. McKim didn’t nod or say anything; I guess he wanted to finish me himself. The rancher�
�s hatchet face was dark with rage, so mad he was ready to shoot the General too. McKim had a real bad mouth and he called me everything from a sheep-lover to a spittoon-sucker without once repeating himself.

  “No, Thatcher,” the General said in a shaky voice. Maybe Waycross didn’t know what a chance he was taking, putting himself between me and McKim’s hideaway gun. The fat man’s hand shook as he reached out and turned the Smith & Wesson to one side. “You want to ruin everything?”

  The blood drained slowly from the rancher’s face. Jessup was like a man watching a play, or an actor in a play waiting to say his lines. “Your way for now,” McKim decided. McKim slid the .38 into the shoulder holster and patted his coat. “But this drifter goes with us. None of your business. He rides out with us and that’s all you need to know.

  This problem, then the other problem. I’ll handle it. You just hide your head.”

  Waycross didn’t think that was a way for anybody, even McKim, to address a brigadier general. The fat man was afraid of McKim, but he was still the head bluecoat in the Territory. Just then my guess was that General Waycross was wishing he’d stayed honest. In a way, it was funny, a general shying away from the murder of only one man.

  The General started to bluster, and that came easy to him; he was all belly and hot air. Not sounding anything like tough, he reminded McKim that he, General Brewster C. Waycross, was still in charge.

  A fancy table lamp with a frosted globe was the first thing I meant to throw if Waycross knuckled under to McKim. I might as well die where I was, and maybe I could set McKim on fire before I went shouting home to heaven.

  The way McKim looked at Waycross was a slap in the face. “No more talk,” he said. “The drifter goes with us. Now call your man and tell him to pass us through.”

  The General was beginning to waver, but his quick little eyes darted about while his fat brain tried to find an answer. I guess he didn’t find it. But he said, “There must be another way.”

  McKim said: “You know what could happen if we wait. Is that what you want? Then you handle it on your own. On your own is where you’ll be. Don’t come crying to me.”

  Hearing that made Waycross as nervous as a sticky-fingered teller with a bank examiner on his back. “Wait,” he said. “My God, let me think. If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” McKim said.

  He told me to get up. I got up and got ready to grab for the lamp.

  The doorbell jangled and Waycross twitched as much as a fat man can twitch. There was a pause and the bell sounded again.

  “Never mind that,” McKim said. “We’ll go out the back way. Move, tramp.”

  A minute before Waycross had been ready to hand me over to McKim and his killer foreman. He was scared then; he was more scared now. The bell had him rattled all the way. I don’t know who he thought was out there—General Sherman come out of retirement to head a firing squad?

  Just for a second, Waycross was a general again. His voice was sharp and he almost stood up straight. “See who’s there,” he ordered Jessup. “Do it now.”

  McKim, dark-faced, nodded at his foreman. He turned his back on Waycross and stared into the fire.

  Jessup came back with Dayner, the sentry. I guess the General was glad to see somebody he could rip into. “You God blasted fool,” he roared. “Didn’t I tell you.”

  Dayner wilted a bit under the string of hot curses Waycross threw his way. “Begging your pardon, General,” he yelped. “That’s what I told Captain Pendergast. Sir, Captain Pendergast said you’d want to know. It wasn’t my idea, sir.”

  “Know what?”

  “Beg pardon, sir, there’s a civilian, Elbert Masters, at the main gate requesting—demanding, sir —permission to see the General. Captain Pendergast said that, sir.”

  General Waycross didn’t look a bit well. So not well, in fact, that he suddenly needed a full glass of whiskey. He shook his fat fist at the sentry. “Out! Get out, you fool! Tell Captain Pendergast no— absolutely not! I will not see that man. Didn’t you hear me? I said get out.”

  “Let him in,” McKim said.

  The General’s mouth hung open. “What? What was that?”

  “That’s right,” McKim said. “Let the son of a bitch in. Let’s hear what the Indian lover has to say.”

  “All right, Dayner.” The General about faced. “Tell the Captain to bring him here.”

  The situation was getting more interesting by the minute. Maybe Elbert had happened along right in the nick, or maybe neither of us would come out of this alive. I sure hoped the General would stay rattled.

  Captain Pendergast tried to show Masters in, but he already was in, bellowing with rage, showing no respect at all for General Waycross’ gorgeous uniform. Hairy faced, growling, bulky as hell, he looked more like a maddened grizzly than a lawyer, than a man.

  “You went too far this time, Waycross, you sack of guts. What’s the idea of holding this man? By what right?”

  Masters stopped yelling to ask me how I was.

  I grinned and that hurt, too. “Lousy, Elbert,” I said. “The General’s bully boys have been using me to break in their new boots.”

  I don’t know why Waycross looked at me as if I’d let out a secret meant only for the two of us. Windy protests wheezed from his fat face. “Don’t try your lawyer’s tricks in here, Mr. Masters,” he blustered. “This gunman here threatened to kill some of my men. As military commander I have every right.”

  Captain Pendergast hadn’t been dismissed and he stood there listening.

  McKim broke in with, “Maybe the Captain has other duties, sir?”

  Waycross was saying nothing important. “Oh, yes,” he said now. “Carry on, Captain. I will see you later.”

  The General’s try at talking tough to Pendergast didn’t mean a thing to Elbert Masters. Among other things he mentioned the President, the Secretary of War, Senator Beveridge. “Before I’m through they’ll have to do something,” Masters roared. “And when I’m through you’re through, Waycross. I don’t care what you try to do to me. When you frame my friends—well, sir, that’s different. Now you’re in for a real fight, you and your slave-trading friend.”

  I expected McKim to blow wild again. He didn’t —and that told me something. “Shut up, Elbert,” I said.

  “That’s right, Masters.” McKim was sneering. “You talk a lot but nothing comes out. It takes more than five years in a cell with hand-me-down law books to make a lawyer. One of these days you’ll be back at your old trade—robbing storekeepers.”

  “Shut up, Elbert,” I said again.

  Masters wasn’t listening to me. Shaking his fist, he started to crowd McKim; the rancher’s hand went inside his coat and stayed there. “You listen good, McKim, you too, Waycross,” Masters roared.

  “I’m going to wreck you, but not like you, not with a gun. By the ever-loving Jesus, you’ll know what kind of lawyer I am as soon as Judge Gratz gets back. And it won’t stop with him.”

  “Let’s go, Elbert,” I said.

  “Who said you could go, either of you tramps?” McKim wanted to know.

  We were back to that old business again. Waycross didn’t know what Masters meant; it worried him.

  “We’re leaving, General,” I said quickly. “Now it isn’t just me. Masters knew I was here. The man who told him knows, too. Other people know. Pendergast knows. Mulligan, those other fellers know. A lot of witnesses, or am I wrong? You listen to McKim, we disappear—but do we?”

  “Sure you do,” McKim said.

  Waycross had sweat on his fat white face.

  I bored in, talking for my life. “Pendergast looks ambitious and Mulligan drinks. Only way you can be sure is kill every man had anything to do with this.”

  General Waycross looked at me. “Get out. Both of you get out. I’m going to bed.”

  Jessup looked at McKim for orders and didn’t get any. He had to do something after all that watching. The son of a bitch swung at me without warning and
I was too sore-bodied to get out of the way. The punch laid my lower lip back on the teeth, and I felt the blood coming. It was a hard swing and it carried Jessup forward. Masters didn’t use his fists. He ducked his bullet head and butted Jessup square in the face. A crunching sound came from Jessup’s face and then he was on the floor holding back the rush of blood from his broken nose with one hand and clawing for his gun with the other. It was goodbye for both of us if McKim, going against his own bad nature, hadn’t put his boot on Jessup’s wrist.

  Not wanting to look, not wanting to hear, Brigadier General Brewster Waycross was heading for the stairs.

  I had to take hold of both arms to make Elbert walk out of there. We got to the front door without any lead in our backs. Elbert was still cursing all the way across the square to the gate. The man on duty, a harmless looking youngster, said something. Elbert told him to do something dirty to his mother.

  We went out the gate, me pushing and Elbert threatening to go back and tear the fort down with his bare hands. Then Elbert was quiet again, the rage gone like a flash flood in the mountains. “You’re the one needs the bolts and the shotgun, Carmody.”

  “Nice to see you again, Elbert,” I said.

  Chapter Six

  We got back to Bedoya Street and climbed the stone stairs. Some of the Mexicans were still standing around; most of them were more Indian than Spanish, and that figured.

  Elbert waved and told them to go to bed. One mean-looking Mex with a gold tooth that would have paid to fix all the other rotten ones had a guitar in his hand and a knife in his trousers band. “Later, Senor Masters,” this amateur bandido said. “We will stay and sing you to sleep with some of the old songs.”

  Elbert had an easy way with Mexicans. “You know you can’t play that thing, Cayetano—but thanks.”

  Upstairs, I handed Elbert a cup of rum and filled another cup just as full of tequila. “You can’t count on these Mexicans, you know that. Maybe they’re tough as fried goat meat on Bedoya Street. Push comes to shove, they’ll leave you on the limb.”