The Slavers

by Peter McCurtin

  “How soon you figure they’ll get here?” I asked Ganado.

  “Not tonight. Early tomorrow. Depends how early they start out.”

  We turned to look at the Zuni town, and that’s what we saw—the whole town and all the people in it. They stood silently, waiting for us to do something.

  Chapter Seven

  The top of the rock sloped back from the rim, and I let Ganado take the lead. This was his party. I knew a few firsthand things about the Apaches, the Comanches, the Kiowas, a few words in their languages, but everything I knew about the Zunis had come to me by word of mouth.

  The chief, a gent with long gray hair and a face wrinkled and colored like a dry apple, spoke to Ganado in a voice pitched high.

  Ganado translated: “We are welcome. Water, meat, women if we are hungry for women.”

  “I like these Zuni customs,” I said.

  More palaver followed.

  Ganado said: “The chief says we are tired after our long ride. Tell him we are tired and ask permission to rest here.”

  It was easy to tell the chief the truth.

  The chief nodded his understanding.

  “It’s all right to get down,” Ganado said. “Later we will explain to the chief and his young men.”

  We looked to our horses, and later the chief and his young men sat around in the chief’s house and watched us eat meat.

  I don’t mind rabbit and, when times are bad, I don’t mind dog, if it’s cooked right. The rabbit was stewed in a big pot; we finished with peaches held over from last year’s harvest. I drank a lot of precious Zuni water, sleeved rabbit grease off my chin, and rolled enough cigarettes to go ’round.

  The Zunis liked that.

  The Zunis live in better houses than many Mexicans, and they’re a lot cleaner than some places I’ve been south of the Rio Grande. Soon the inside of the low-roofed house was blue with smoke. Ganado began to talk. He took some time to say what I could have said in a few words, but Ganado knew what he was doing. From start to finish, no surprise, no fear, showed in their faces. The Zunis were naturally peace-loving Indians; they hadn’t been scared into it.

  Ganado translated the chief’s reply; the chief was in no hurry either. Ganado said: “The chief knows the slavers are operating again, for such bad news travels far across the desert. It makes him sad to hear of this, for it was hoped that such things were in the past. He does not doubt what we say, but would like to remind us that no one has troubled the Zuni for many years. They are isolated, as we see, and nothing here is worth stealing. Perhaps, he suggests with respect, we are mistaken. Would the slavers make such a difficult journey to make captives of a few poor Zunis?”

  Ganado showed me a bitter smile. “The chief is asking you, Carmody. The chief has much respect for the great knowledge of the white man.”

  It sure was a complicated palaver. Not a damned Zuni on that rock spoke a word of English, but I said my piece. “Tell the chief he’s got, say, fifty women and children and young people young enough to make good, useful slaves. There may be more than that, but we’ll say fifty. At four hundred dollars a head that makes twenty thousand dollars. The slavers would ride more miles for a lot less.”

  Ganado turned back to me. “The chief thinks killing these white men and Mexicans will make big trouble for the Zunis. It will bring the horse soldiers and who will believe the truth of what happened here? Why can we not use the dynamite to destroy the path from the bottom? It is the only way up here, but the Zunis will find another way down when the slavers have gone. We should leave when we have rested and destroy the path once we have reached the bottom.”

  Now I wasn’t talking to the chief. “Get this finished, for Christ’s sake. Those bastards haven’t come this far to say golly-gee and ride off again. They’ll just sit down there where the water is—and wait.”

  “Go easy,” Ganado said. “The chief knows that better than you do. Zuni or not, the young men here are still Indians. The chief wants to keep them peaceful no matter what. All this cautious talk is for their benefit. Next thing he’ll suggest letting the slavers take ten or twenty women and children. You shake your head and say something determined. After that he’ll back down and agree to everything.”

  “A real politician,” I said.

  There wasn’t much light left by the time we got it settled. The Zunis wouldn’t fight, but it was all right for us to fight, maybe get killed protecting their women and kids. Well, they have their ways and we have ours. Anyway, there wasn’t a lot they could do except maybe throw rocks if they did decide to help.

  The chief walked with us while we looked over the abandoned part of the village, the part you saw first when you climbed to the top of the mesa. The Zunis who had lived in these stone, mud-roofed houses were long gone to glory and, come morning, we planned to send as many slavers as we could to the same place.

  Ganado carried the dynamite, and I placed it, judging how the walls and roofs would fall when the charges were exploded with rifle bullets. I figured they wouldn’t bring their horses to the top; one or two men would stay with the horses while the others climbed the mesa. They wouldn’t be expecting an ambush, not from the Zunis, so they wouldn’t be too cautious. Not having them too cautious was a big part of the plan. The plan itself was pretty simple: most of the Zunis would move back to the far side of the village; those who stayed would be a few women and children. Their job was to lead the slavers into the trap.

  “Tell the chief the slavers won’t shoot when the women and children show themselves and run,” I said to Ganado. “They won’t, at four hundred a head. But the women and kids have to get out fast to the other side of these houses. There won’t be time to hold back with the dynamite once it gets started—they’ll die too.”

  Ganado said the chief understood.

  “You don’t think they’ll make better time than you figured?” I asked Ganado. “They could ride all night and come up before it’s light.”

  “I was thinking that,” Ganado agreed. “I will watch the path.”

  “Then you wake me,” I said.

  We were bunked in the chief’s house, and after Ganado took his rifle to the edge of the mesa, I drank from the bottle of mescal, a gift from the chief, and levered the shells out of the Winchester. Up there, it was cold, even with the smoky fire. A thin desert wind turned back most of the smoke. I cleaned the rifle and reloaded, making sure that every shell looked right.

  It got dark, and down on the flat the coyotes started talking to the moon. Coyote music is something you like or hate. If you like it you miss it when you’re in a big town and it isn’t there.

  I guess I liked it.

  The shells were out of the Colt and I was cleaning it when I heard a sound—feet slapping quietly on bare rock. I picked up the rifle and held it ready without working the lever.

  A face showed itself in the doorway. A girl’s face, and it wasn’t bad for a Zuni girl’s face. I guess she was about as pretty as a Zuni girl can get.

  She looked at the rifle and giggled; she looked at me and giggled. Most women giggle at times but Indian women, it has been my experience, are the shyest women and biggest gigglers of all.

  “Come right in, honey. My house is yours, as they say.” Ganado, the sour-faced bastard, wasn’t there to translate. It didn’t matter.

  Down with the rifle and up with the bottle. I shook the bottle and got ready to take advantage of that Indian maid. Hell! I was ready to take advantage of any woman showed her face. Hell! Here I was risking my red neck to save her kith and kin. Like those Charleston belles who gave their all to the brave boys on the eve of Fort Sumter—it was the least she could do.

  This one came into my lodgings giggling fit to bust a rib. I thought here was one Zuni maiden could go far if she ever took herself down and away from that dirt-colored rock. I don’t know if Zuni maidens are supposed to drink; this one did.

  I drank, too, and what with all that giggling it wasn’t so easy to get her duds off. Always
the Texas gent, I tried to get her to say her name. All she did was giggle some more.

  The girl gave all she had for Zuni Land—and I took it. The chief must have graded me high: the girl was a real silver-plated virgin. After we finished, it was nice having her there rubbing the stiffness out of my shoulders. Three days from Santa Fe, my belly still hurt—and she rubbed that, too. I let the rubbing and the rest of the bottle put me to sleep.

  “It’s time,” Ganado said a second time. “They’re coming.”

  Red light came in the window and streaked the stone floor. In the corners it was still dark. “You were supposed to wake me,” I said.

  “I wasn’t sleepy,” said Ganado. “They’re coming.” Ganado was still poker-faced, but I could feel the hunger to kill behind his dead eyes. Shivering, I pulled on my boots and strapped on the gunbelt.

  There was water in a gourd beside the window, and I drank some and splashed some in my face.

  “How soon?” I asked the Indian.

  “Soon. They started early,” Ganado said.

  We went outside and the chief was there with the human decoys. The pockets of my shirt dragged under the weight of rifle shells. Every loop in the gunbelt was filled; extra shells in my pants pockets. But I was depending on the rifles to start and finish the job. If it came to using handguns, we were in sorry trouble.

  “Tell him again,” I told Ganado. “The slavers get to the top of the mesa where they can see the village. The women and children show themselves when they hear the slavers coming, then they run back into the houses. They don’t run around in there—they get out the far side.”

  “They understand,” Ganado said.

  Ganado talked the chief away from the ambush. Our horses were saddled and ready to travel. In the abandoned houses the women started fires to cook real food. I wanted Black Mesa to look and smell right.

  Ganado nodded and we took up positions left and right. I was saving two of Elbert’s cigars for this very special occasion. I gave one to Ganado. Both of us had three sticks of dynamite with short fuses. Ganado had never thrown dynamite before. “Don’t show yourself—just throw it,” I said.

  Ganado was flat on a mud roof and I was behind a cluster of rocks with an opening in the middle. While we waited the sun eased up big and red and, slowly, higher in the sky, it turned from red to a blazing ball of white.

  The cigar tasted good in the warmed-up morning air. In the houses, the women were keeping quieter than they were supposed to, but the children were laughing. No sound came from the face of the cliff. I couldn’t hear them coming. The cigar was burning down and still there wasn’t a sound.

  The Winchester was ready to kill. From where I was, I could see the place where the path came out on top of the mesa. A head popped up and a rifle came up after the head. I didn’t know the face, but I know a Mexican hardcase even when he’s swapped his sombrero for a flat-crowned hat.

  The Mexican stood up and waved the others to come up. The Mexican wasn’t so brave, even on a Zuni mesa, and he stayed where he was until the rest of them—I counted twelve—climbed to the top. I kind of expected to see McKim’s foreman in that bunch of boys. But Jessup wasn’t there. Likely enough, he was busy in a more comfortable part of the Territory. I didn’t know the white man in charge. A whip was coiled under his armpit and around his shoulder, and he wore matched, brown-handled Colts on a fancy gun rig around his thick middle. His face would have looked fetching to the ladies if his mouth and nose weren’t so far apart.

  There were eight white men, three Mexicans— and the Indian translator Ganado said would be along to preach slavery to the Zunis. The head slaver whispered to the mean-looking Mexican in the American hat. The Mexican flashed his teeth— most of them were gold—and spoke in Apache to the Indian. The Mexican fired a shot from the rifle; the others, white and near white, began to yell something awful.

  They stopped yelling and the Mexican loosed another bullet. Now it was the Apache’s turn to yell. The renegade son of a bitch was telling the citizens of Black Mesa to come out and learn to be slaves.

  Those Zuni women were game; the children didn’t know enough to be scared. The women came out and screamed and ran back, shooing the children in front of them. The slavers hollered long and loud, having themselves a good time so early in the morning.

  They went after the women and kids, screaming like banshees. I looked over at Ganado and saw the three sticks of dynamite beside him on the roof, the half cigar burning between his teeth.

  The slavers ran into the snarl of doorways and alleys. I let them go in. They all went in except the head slaver. Usually, I don’t shoot for a man’s head, but this gent was standing still, holding a rifle, and grinning. No chance—I couldn’t miss. I aimed for the bridge of his nose, and the bullet hit him exactly where it was supposed to hit. I guess he was pretty surprised to have that happen so early in the morning.

  Ganado’s rifle cracked and the first charge went off. Tons of dry, packed mud caved in and men began to scream. I swung the Winchester away from the dead man and blew up the second charge, and the third. We weren’t shooting in competition. Ganado shot for his dynamite sticks and I shot for mine.

  My hat was off and a hot blast of wind stirred my hair. Ganado exploded another stick. A man trying to hold in his guts with both hands staggered from one of the houses. I shot him in the chest. Ganado killed the man missing an arm who came out behind him. It was easy for me to shoot a Mexican with a bloody face who tried to crawl out a window. He hung there, bleeding from the face, half in, half out the window. I put him out of his misery not because I was concerned about his misery. Had I the time I would have added to his pain.

  I lit and threw a stick and when the wall of that house came down, three men were in there buried to their chests by rock and mud. By then another stick was sizzling in my hand. Long before the smoke cleared they weren’t begging any more.

  Two men, the first in, came out the other side— the Mexican with the gold teeth, the talky Apache. The Apache didn’t have a gun, so I killed him. The Mexican was quick with the rifle. A bullet came close to my head but nowhere close to killing me. Ganado shot the Mexican and I shot him again for good luck. The last man to come out of the slaughter was a white man. Dynamite is funny—there wasn’t a mark on him. This white man wasn’t young any more, just fat and greedy and getting old, and it must have been awful for him getting caught in an ambush while he was putting money away for his old age.

  We killed him together.

  It was a real neat piece of back shooting. Suddenly there was nothing to shoot at any more. They weren’t all dead in there; they soon would be. I had one stick left and I threw it where the screaming was worse.

  Ganado had his pick of places to throw. One, two, three! He lobbed the sticks, the short fuses burning.

  They landed one after the other. Now it was quiet; nothing left to kill except the men at the bottom of the mesa with the horses. The chief came on the run with our horses. I mounted for the short ride to the top of the cliff. “If the Zunis want to go on living the peaceful life, they better see those bodies in there don’t ever get found.”

  People in the Territory wouldn’t blink an eye over the dead Mexicans, but any time an Indian killed a white man, or helped to do it, the Indian was in the wrong. And there were men who’d rather fight Indians than work a ranch. I guess I would, too.

  “Everything will disappear, the bodies, the houses—everything,” Ganado said. “Where this happened will be nothing but a bare place on the rock. They’ll eat the horses.”

  The chief handed over two bottles of mescal, and that was thanks enough for me. We started down the rocky path. The two men who’d been guarding the slavers’ horses were riding hard away from Black Mesa, leaving behind the animals. They had a fair start on us—there was no way to hurry the descent—but our animals were in better shape with more than half a day’s rest and plenty of hay and water. My guess was that our two slaver friends would try to outrun us,
then make a stab at an ambush. After what had happened to the rest of the bunch, they wouldn’t be likely to give up. If they did give up they wouldn’t live longer than it took to squeeze off two bullets.

  They were up the long slope that faced the Zuni mesa and through the break in the rocks on top by the time we got to the bottom. We didn’t go straight up that slope. They could be waiting for us to do exactly that, and it would be a cursed shame to get ourselves killed by hidden rifles after we had done such a neat job on their sidekicks.

  We split up at the bottom of the slope, rode different ways along the bottom, and then started up. Nothing fired at us by the time we reached the spine of jagged rocks atop the ridge. We started to come in from two sides, rifles ready.

  Ganado went first when we got to the break in the rocks. That was all right with me. I figured I had squared the murder of Diego Sandoval, but Ganado was still taking it very personal.

  The dust was still floating when we rode through. That meant no ambush right then. Going up the slope so cautious had taken time, and when we were through the rocks, out in the sun again, the two slavers had gained some distance. Me, I would have made a fight of it on that ridge, but I guess the two slavers weren’t all that organized when they started off. Now they would have to look hard to find a better spot for an ambush. Soon they’d be traveling across that flat rocky stretch of country, the only rocks in sight too small to hide more than a rabbit. After that came the dry lake— and that was worse.

  They were pushing their animals hard. You could do that in better country and hope to get away with it; in this desert it was downright foolish. Riding hard, they put more distance between us. The gap widened but we could still see their dust, and if nothing slowed us up it would stay that way all the way back to Los Alamos.

  Some hours later, watering the animals, we could see the ball of dust where the slavers were—and the long thin trail of dust behind. We mounted up and started after them again. An hour later there was no dust—they had reached the rocky stretch. Most of an hour later the trail of dust began again.