The Slavers

by Peter McCurtin

  “You sure the President will see you?” I asked. “It’s a long way to go on a hope. As they say, the President is a busy man.”

  “Grover Cleveland is a plain decent man,” Elbert answered. “He’ll see me. Even without Uncle Zack’s help, he’ll see me. Then you watch the fur fly down this way.”

  “Maybe you better stay in Washington when you get there,” I said. “Both newspapers suggested the same thing. You’re about as popular as Geronimo is in Arizona. I got to be moving on, you know that. Maybe I’m too late to get in on the gun work at Cripple Creek, but I guess I’ll light there for a while.”

  Elbert tightened the straps on the grip and looked around to see if he’d left out anything.

  “I’ll ride to the depot with you,” I said. The railroad passed sixteen miles south of Santa Fe, a place called Lamy.

  “No need,” Elbert said. “You’re heading north, the other way. They won’t try anything.”

  “Save your arguments for the President. I’ll go along with you for sixteen more miles, then you’re on your own.”

  Elbert had borrowed a horse from Olivera. It was downstairs, saddled and waiting. My horse was tied beside it. We rode out of Santa Fe and headed south on a good road built by the town to bring in the visitor trade.

  I sat and smoked while Elbert bought tickets. We were drinking coffee at one of those railroad eating places run by the Harvey Company when Jessup walked in. There was no sign of other McKim riders. Acting like he didn’t know we were there, Jessup paid for coffee and sat down at a table.

  I got up. “Don’t start trouble,” Elbert said. “It’s a free country.”

  “For some people,” I said, shaking loose Elbert’s hand.

  The Harvey House wasn’t too crowded, a few dudes and cattle dealers waiting for the train.

  “How’s the coffee?” I asked Jessup. “Must be good, to ride sixteen miles.”

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” Jessup said.

  “Not friendly, my friend? Fixing to take a little trip on the puffer?”

  I aimed to kill him if he tried to get aboard the same train as Elbert. A train trip, the same day, the same train was just too neat for me. Elbert might still have a long row to hoe, but I figured to see him off safe.

  Jessup was wearing a gun. I didn’t care if he was traveling bare-ass to Alaska. I would kill him if tried to get on that train. “You’re just here to pick up supplies, isn’t that right?”

  “That’s right,” Jessup sneered. “Mr. McKim don’t want any trouble. Only for that...”

  Why not? I thought. Why not kill the son of a bitch? I didn’t figure to have any business in New Mexico Territory for some time, maybe never. I let my hand hang close to my gun. “Don’t be like that. Your boss doesn’t have to know. I won’t tell him if you don’t.”

  The locomotive bell sounded down the line and the rails hummed outside. Jessup didn’t get up and he didn’t go for his gun. Standing there, I was in two minds about killing him. Elbert came over carrying the grip. “Drop it, Carmody,” he said.

  I dropped it. Jessup nearly made me pick it up again by saying, “Some other time, Carmody.”

  “Come on, will you,” Elbert hurried me.

  “All aboard,” the conductor called out. The air brakes hissed and Elbert was saying something from the moving train. All I wanted from Elbert was to see him gone from there. The big driving wheels on the locomotive moved faster and the string of cars pulled out of the depot.

  Jessup came out of the Harvey House and went around back of the station agent’s office where a spring wagon was hitched. I watched while he whipped up the horse and started back for Santa Fe at a smart clip. By then the train was out of sight.

  I mounted up and rode west along the right of way. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe runs east from Lamy to Las Vegas, about forty miles east of Santa Fe, then it goes northeast through Colorado into Kansas. My route was to follow the railroad as far as Las Vegas, after that to head north toward Cripple Creek. If there wasn’t anything doing at Cripple Creek there was sure to be some gun work in Leadville or Climax or Breckenridge. There was always some kind of mine trouble in Colorado. I had a Colt .44, a Winchester .44-40, a horse and saddle, five dollars—and the shotgun I’d bought for Elbert.

  I liked old Elbert, dirty socks and all, but I was glad to get shut of him. Too bad about the Sandoval women, but the way Elbert told it, they’d soon have the President looking out for them. I had other things to think about, to make a living, such as it was.

  I followed the railroad into a miserable town called Pecos, and out the other side. The right of way made a big curve after that. It would take Elbert about a week to get to Washington, a few days more than that for me to get to middle Colorado.

  Late the same day, some miles east of Pecos, I was thinking about making camp when I saw something a long way down track. The light was getting thick, the rails shining in the red sun, the line of telegraph poles following the curve of the track. I knew it was a man hanging by the neck long before my eyes were sure that’s what it was.

  I didn’t hurry the horse, not in bad light. When I got there, it was just light enough to see Elbert, dark in the face, purple-tongued and dead, turning slowly at the end of a rope slung over the T-bar that carries the wires. A cardboard sign was tied around his neck with a piece of string. The sign said Elbert was a troublemaker. The sign was right: Elbert was a troublemaker.

  “Well, now you know, Elbert,” I said.

  I stood up in the stirrups and cut the rope and Elbert fell like a sack of rocks. There was no way to bury him. The best I could do was to drag the body away from the track to where loose rock was scattered. It was full dark by the time I finished piling him under.

  Then I made camp close by, close enough for the fire to throw shadows on Elbert’s pile of rocks.

  During the night a locomotive pulling a string of freight cars woke me up. Sometime later I shot a coyote that came nosing around. Nothing else happened.

  In the morning, I piled on more rocks and headed back toward Pecos. They had stopped the train and lynched Elbert—McKim and Jessup would have to die for it. That was why Jessup was at the Lamy depot, to watch Elbert board by himself, then double back to send a telegraph message ahead of the train. There was no hard proof except maybe a copy of Jessup’s message at the telegrapher’s office at Lamy. But proof was for lawyers and lawmen—and I was neither.

  I could have pushed the horse and reached Lamy before it got dark. Instead, I rode easy, thinking to bypass Lamy in the dark and make cold camp some distance from McKim’s ranch. The ranch, the best I knew, was southwest of Santa Fe, between Lamy and the next town. It wouldn’t be hard to find because McKim owned the biggest spread in the Rio Grande Valley north of Albuquerque.

  The only road to the ranch branched off from the road between Santa Fe and Lamy. Going that way was a quick way to get spotted; a man with as much to hide as McKim would most likely have lookouts on that road night and day. What I was doing wasn’t completely bright, going up against McKim and his boys, but I was gut-sick of the whole business. I wanted to kill McKim and Jessup, and get away north to what was more my business. General Waycross didn’t press too heavy on my thoughts. I was pretty sure the scared fat man wasn’t in on the lynching. But if he happened to be there when the killing started, there was no sound reason why I shouldn’t kill him, too.

  Chapter Ten

  It was still dark when I crawled out of my blanket and gave the horse some water. I had camped on the south side of a ripple of low hills, in a cottonwood grove. Unless I was way off in my figuring, McKim’s south boundary line ran along the far side of those hills. According to Ganado, the first time he came back from scouting the property, the whole ranch was fenced in by barbed wire, and the fence was patrolled twenty-four hours by McKim’s riders.

  The best time to scout a place you don’t know is early in the morning with the sun just showing itself. At night guards get edgy, along with hors
es and dogs. At first light the people up all night are thinking of nothing but breakfast and bunk. The others, the ones pulling on their boots in the face of another hard day, are stale-headed with sleep and thinking of supper and bunk.

  I left the horse tied where it was, stuck the Winchester through my belt and carried the double-barrel. There would be some waiting unless I got lucky; I took one canteen. The hill I climbed was bare and rocky, no trees. The other hills were the same, not a bit of cover to hide a man. Only one real thing I had in my favor—they weren’t expecting me. Or if they did expect me, likely it wouldn’t be till news of the lynching got into the newspapers. Maybe they didn’t ever expect to hear from me.

  Atop the last slope before McKim’s ranch, flat on my belly, I took a look. There was the barbed wire fence just like Ganado described it. The wire was high, strung close together, not just an everyday fence to keep in cattle. That fence was more like the fence you see in pictures of Andersonville Prison. It wasn’t as high as the Andersonville fence, and no guards with rifles prowled in lookout towers, but the feeling was the same.

  Lying there, my hat off, showing no more than my eyes and the top of my head, I waited. Not much later two riders carrying rifles, and coming from different directions along the fence, met right below where I was. They didn’t have anything to say so early in the morning. They rode back along their own stretch of fence. I waited where I was till they came back, it looked like each man patrolled a ten-minute stretch of fence.

  I left the shotgun on the back slope of the hill and got down to the fence. The bottom wire was strung close to the ground. The men who strung that fence had done a right good job of it. There wasn’t half an inch of give in that wire no matter how hard I pulled. Maybe I had six minutes before they came back.

  Stooped low, I ran along the fence looking for a place where the bottom wire passed over loose rock. I found rock a distance down, but, damn, it wasn’t so loose. The first rock, and the second, came free with a lot of pulling. There was no way around it: I would have to take some punishment.

  I did fine till the wire reached my shoulders. Now it was less than six minutes, or more like half that. The barbs dug into my shoulders, but I dragged them through. Under the fence, I pulled off the pieces of bloody cloth that were snagged on the barbs. Then I grabbed the Winchester and ran for cover behind some rocks. I waited for the two fence riders to come back.

  I raised my head and saw them riding away from the fence. Two other riders came from where I figured the ranch buildings to be. They passed close to where I was hiding and started the long day of guarding the shiny wire.

  I ran up a long slope with trees starting halfway to the top. Not much blood came from my torn shoulders and backside. But it hurt like hell. I was able to move fast with the trees for cover. Under the trees the shadows were still long. The morning light was getting strong. I kept moving till I heard sounds. The cook beating the triangle, doors slamming. Soon I was close enough to smell hot grub.

  McKim had picked himself a nice place to center his ranch. The main house was long and low, adobe and stone. Bright red flowers grew along the side of the house and out in front round rocks were set together to spell McKim. The rocks were whitewashed. Cottonwoods grew close to the main house and a red windmill, pumping water, turned silently in the morning wind.

  McKim’s house was a nice house. The bunkhouse was just a bunkhouse. A Chinese cook came out and beat the triangle again. He cursed safely in Chinese the way all Chinese cooks do. Men straggling out of the bunkhouse cursed back at him. It was like a hundred mornings on any ranch—except for the two new buildings with bars on the narrow windows. Except for the young Indian hanging by his wrists from a flogging post in front of them.

  I didn’t see McKim and I didn’t see Jessup. A big man came out of the bunkhouse, walking like he owned the world, a bullwhip coiled in his hand. He had to pass the whipping post to get to the two new buildings with the barred windows. Just to keep in practice, I guess, he shook out the whip and ripped a few patches of skin from the tied-up Indian’s back. The Indian didn’t move.

  The man with the whip unlocked the first door and bellowed like a cow giving birth. The first building was where the Indian women were kept. They stumbled out, trying to keep away from the whip. The big man must have been in good humor that morning. He cracked the whip and laughed a lot, but he didn’t use the whip on any of the women and girls.

  With the Indian boys in the second building it was different. None was grown to manhood, but there were some big ones, and the big man raised a nice sweat before his arm got tired. My guess was that McKim didn’t keep so many Indian captives just to work his ranch. There was more money to be made selling them to ranchers in the Territory. The man with the whip was their trainer.

  One of the girls just had to be looked at—eighteen or nineteen, long black hair, gold-colored skin. a defiant, pretty face. They had taken away her Indian clothes and decked her out, like the other women and girls, in a cheap cotton dress that dropped close to the ankle. A modest dress, you could say, the kind of rag missionaries use to let the Indians know how sinful they are.

  She moved away from the whip, but she didn’t run like the others. A fat Indian woman spoke to her. The fat woman hadn’t changed much. The fat woman was Diego Sandoval’s wife.

  A voice behind me said, “Don’t even breathe, Carmody. Both barrels in the back if you move.”

  The voice belonged to Jessup and I did what I was told. “Take the guns,” Jessup told somebody, “Face in the dirt, Carmody.”

  A man with jingling Mexican spurs came around and pulled the Winchester away, muzzle first. Before he took the Colt he kicked me hard in the upper arm. Then he took the Bowie knife from the sheath on the other hip.

  Jessup said, “You can get up now. Do me a favor, saddletramp, try to start something. Be a sport—you’re a dead man either way.”

  “McKim wouldn’t like it,” I said. I didn’t try to turn around. The Mexican with the spiked rowels was in front of me.

  “How come I didn’t hear you?” I asked the Mexican.

  “I carried my boots, senor,” the Mexican said.

  “Shut up,” Jessup said. “You’re right about Mr. McKim, saddletramp. Two loads of buckshot in the back of the head would be too easy. You’d never know what was happening. We want you to know. One of those boys you killed out there was Mr. McKim’s son. Now you move on down easy like—or you lose both legs.”

  We moved down from the trees, the Mexican holding my own Winchester on me from the side, Jessup poking me along with Elbert’s shotgun. McKim came out of the house with four men carrying rifles and sawed-offs. His face was sick with hate and I hoped he would forget his plans for me—and do it quick with the .38 Smith & Wesson in his hand.

  I tried to hurry my death because McKim’s other plans would be a lot worse than a clean bullet through the skull. “Heard you’re short a son,” I said.

  That nearly did it. The gun came up and held steady, McKim’s trigger finger starting the squeeze.

  “That’s what he wants,” Jessup said.

  McKim’s eyeballs were streaked with red and the stink of whiskey came to me. “Yeah,” McKim said. It was all he said right then. The short .38 swung back. I could have ducked the blow if Jessup hadn’t upended the shotgun and hit me low in the back with the stock. McKim’s first swing opened my face between cheekbone and ear. He backhanded the .38 and aimed for the other side of my face. The barrel clunked against the skull above the ear and I could feel the trickle of blood through the hair.

  The Indians and the man with the whip were standing as still as a group of people having their picture taken. McKim swung again and I jumped at him, reaching for his throat. I nearly made it but something hit me at the base of the skull and I went down still clawing.

  I wasn’t unconscious. I was, face in the dirt, in that funny place between sleep and waking. I could hear McKim shouting orders. A bucket of water splashed over my head. Cigar
smoke came close, then a Godawful red pain flared in my head. Some son of a bitch was trying to douse a cigar in my ear.

  “Lift him,” I heard McKim say. Two men put me on my feet and held me there. Another bucket of water hit me full in the face. Before I stopped choking McKim was slapping me again, this time without the gun. The way I was, it didn’t hurt much. It was like McKim couldn’t do enough for me. My head jerked and rolled under his hard, stiff-fingered slaps. By the time he wore himself out his hand was sticky with blood and sweat.

  I knew what was happening, but it was hard to think. Wanting to kill McKim was clear enough in my soggy brain. You could hardly call that thinking. I tried to fall, but the two men held me up. McKim said, “Get the Indian out of there. It’s the saddletramp’s turn to feel the whip.”

  Not the pain of the whip but the thought of being whipped drove me wild. Putting together all the strength I had left, I jerked my arms loose and kicked one of the men holding me between the legs. He screamed like a stuck pig. I kicked at the other man and didn’t do any damage. “Take him,” McKim roared. They all piled on together, all but McKim. We rolled in the dirt and when somebody got his finger in my mouth I bit most of the way through the joint. That brought more screaming and if McKim didn’t wade in and pull them off me, they would have kicked me to death.

  “Tie him tight,” McKim ordered. “You, Flanders, bring the whip.”

  My wrists were tied with leather straps to a metal ring set high in the post. An odd thing, I found myself staring at the Sandoval girl. The mother stood beside her, no expression on her wide face. The man with the whip stepped up behind me, took a grip on my shirt collar, and ripped the shirt from neck to belt.

  I heard the whip snaking out full length for the first cut.

  “Wait a minute, Flanders,” McKim said. “I got something to say. All you Indians understand English listen good, then tell the rest. One way or another, some of you might have heard about this man Carmody tied up here. You savages always got ways of knowing things. Some of you know about Carmody’s friend, the lawyer Masters. Masters the Indian lover. So you hear talk that Masters, a white man and a lawyer, is on your side. That makes you restless, makes you not want to obey orders. Well, listen now good—Masters is dead and there won’t be any more talk about lawyers and courts. You better get used to it. God made you to be slaves.”