McKim told the whip man to lay on five lashes.
The leather sang through the air and a line of screaming pain streaked my back. I thought about killing McKim—that helped a bit. The whip bit again. The big man called Flanders was good at his job. No hurry, no wild slashes. Now the stripes of pain crossed and crisscrossed. “That’s five,” the whip man called out.
McKim was a real orator that morning. The sweat ran salty pain into the whip wounds while he talked.
“This man was going to set you free,” McKim sneered. “Now look at him—trussed up like a runaway nigger. This Carmody is the fastest, toughest gunslinger ever got in my way. Look at him and remember how he looks. Get it through your thick skulls that nobody’s going to help you. You’re slaves, fit for nothing better than being slaves, and slaves you’ll stay as long as you live. Get used to it —there’s no other way.”
“Another ten,” McKim ordered Flanders. “We don’t want the saddletramp to die just yet. Get finished, then put the Indians to work. Leave the saddletramp tied where he is. Kill the first one brings him water. Looks like it’s going to be a nice hot day.”
My head dropped into darkness before the whip-man finished the other ten lashes. Dreams came and went in my head. Some dreams, I was lying flat beside a cold mountain spring, the water so cold it chilled my teeth. Other dreams, I was drowning McKim in the same spring ...
The shadows were getting long when I lifted my head. The sun was weak in the sky, but the back was on fire. Flies still buzzed and bickered in the caked blood. My back felt like a harrow had been dragged across it. The pain was bad; the thirst was what they say hell is like.
The Mexican with the big spurs was sitting on a nail barrel, yawning in the late afternoon heat. He grinned at me. “Hey, Mr. McKim,” he called out. McKim came out of the house trailed by Jessup, and the smell of cooking that came out after them made me want to heave. Jessup always looked puffed-up when he was with the boss and the boss was pleased with his work.
“He’s awake,” the Mexican said.
McKim had a tall glass in his hand. Ice tinkled in it as he walked over to the flogging post.
“So he is,” McKim agreed. He stopped to drink a little from the glass.
He got close. “How’re you feeling, saddle-tramp?” he enquired. “I’d say you were ready for a cold drink right about now. Know what this is I’m drinking, saddletramp. Case you’re too ignorant and back country, let me explain. They call it a mint julep. You fill a tall glass with crushed ice, dump in whiskey according to taste, flavor with pinched mint—and you have yourself a mighty refreshing drink. What about it? You want to try one, saddletramp?”
I croaked something about his dead son.
I guess McKim didn’t hear what I said. “Be a good feller,” he told Jessup. “Fix the saddletramp a julep.”
Jessup was grinning like a dog with rabies. “Sorry, Mr. McKim,” he said. “You got the last one around.”
McKim rattled the ice in the glass. “Like to let you have it, saddletramp. Can’t do it, though. Call me greedy if you like. What do you think, Jessup? Can you see your way clear to fixing a julep for the saddletramp, say, this time tomorrow?”
Jessup shook his head and made a sad face. “Can’t be done, Mr. McKim. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Can’t give juleps to saddletramps on Sunday.”
“All right then, Jessup, what about a mug of clean clear water with a chunk of ice in it. I think the saddletramp would like that.”
Nothing they said about water and cooling drinks made any difference. Nothing was said that I wasn’t thinking myself. After most of ten hours hanging by my wrists in the sun, my tongue felt like a strip of stale cow liver fried black.
“Sorry again, Mr. McKim,” said Jessup, real doleful. “Water’s running low. Got just enough to wet down the dust in the yard. Like to help you, saddletramp, but the ranch comes first.”
They were going to much trouble to drive me crazy. McKim had the real hate; Jessup was paid to hate. It would be hard to say which was the more lovable feller.
McKim didn’t finish the tall drink. He held it close to my mouth, far enough away so I couldn’t get a drop, before he spilled it in the dust. The ice stayed solid for some seconds.
The wild rage inside McKim was working its way through the vicious playacting. I could tell by the way his voice got shaky. But he forced himself to go on with the game.
“What about a mug of horse piss this time tomorrow? It isn’t what you’d call a cooling drink, but there is water in there with the stink.”
“Not tomorrow,” Jessup answered. “Busy all day tomorrow. The saddletramp’ll have to wait till day after. Even then I can only promise. You know how much these Indians here like horse piss. Could be they won’t leave enough for their good friend Carmody. But, damn me, if I won’t try to oblige.”
The talk game had gone sour for McKim. Abruptly, he told the foreman he didn’t need him any longer. Jessup didn’t want to leave the fun, but he did as he was ordered.
It was quiet, the only sounds coming from the two buildings where the Indians were locked in. Children cried and women tried to make them stop. No noise came from the men’s barracks. The red evening sun was close to gone, and the Mexican sat on the nail barrel, interested in McKim and me, but not too interested.
McKim pulled the hideaway gun and walked round the flogging post without saying a word. Fence riders came in, put up their animals, and clumped into the bunkhouse. Lights were lit in McKim’s big house, making the flowers along the front wall look redder, the whitewashed stones that spelled out McKim looked whiter.
McKim stopped where he could see my face in the light from the house. His voice shook so hard, I knew he wanted to kill me there and then. He had his face so close to mine I could smell the water-thinned whiskey from the julep.
“You helped a jailhouse lawyer try to destroy me, Carmody. That was all right—personal but not real personal. I had you in the fort and I should have killed you. I listened to Waycross and you walked away. You got off easy and next thing you killed my son. I didn’t believe Masters’ killer Indian when he said all those boys were dead out there. That boy dead in the rocks with a Sharps bullet through him was my son. My men came back with what was left of him yesterday. I don’t care about the other men you bushwhacked but—you son of a whore—that was my son.”
Sucking on my blackened tongue, I managed to say I was glad I had killed his son. This time, McKim didn’t hit me. He said: “I killed the Indian. I didn’t believe what he bragged about, not all of it. I had him killed because it was overdue. You were there when the Marshal found him in the street. You think what we did was something. It was nothing. The Indian was just an Indian. To hell with the Indian. You’re the one planned it, Carmody.”
Dropping his rough voice to a shaky whisper, McKim put his face so close I felt spit in my eyes. “For the other men you killed I’d let you off easy like the Indian.”
McKim was whispering now. It was easing toward the cool of evening but beads of sweat formed and ran down on McKim’s face.
“We did for the Indian in one night,” he said. “Not near long enough for you. Saddletramp, by the time you die, long before it, you’re going to wish to Jesus you never heard the name McKim. Every day you live on you’re going to lick boots for somebody to shoot you. You’ll hang here and the pain and thirst’ll make you think and hope you’re dying. You won’t die, not for a long time. Every time you’re close to dying I’ll give you water, food too. If you’re too close I’ll set you in a soft bed and have the women feed you broth and nourishing things. When you’re ready, when I’m ready, we’ll get you on your feet again. You’ll be alive, so called, but nothing like a whole man. You’ll eat your own cojones raw and swear you like it. You’ll walk around without eyes, later without feet or hands ...”
McKim’s voice dropped even lower. “You didn’t have to kill my son and the other boy, my son’s friend. You could have taken them.”
McKim
forgot about his son’s friend, the one his son left with his throat cut. “You must have known my son was just a boy when you went after him. Only a boy would have let himself be caught like that. Why did you kill him?”
“Nits grow into lice,” I mumbled.
McKim roared and grabbed me by the hair and smashed my head against the post.
I saw a big white flash of light like a rocket going up on the Fourth. It flared bright inside my skull for a small part of a second.
Then it went out.
Chapter Eleven
I gasped for air but no air came. At first, I didn’t know my eyes were open, that I wasn’t mired in another bad dream. It was dark enough to be any time between full dark and first light. The lights I could see were dim, but they blurred in my eyes. I fought again what was shutting off the air.
A voice hissed in my ear. “Stay still, you fool. Wake up and stay still.”
I felt like the world was tilted wrong. My arms were stretched above my shoulders. I was lying a different way. It came to me. I wasn’t hanging: I was on the ground.
A hand was clamped hard across my mouth. The same voice whispered: “You hear me, Carmody. Buckman. John Buckman. Can you walk?”
The hand clamped over my mouth didn’t relax its grip until I nodded my head.
“Water,” was what I croaked.
It wasn’t a trick. It was Long John Buckman bending his length over me. “No water,” he whispered, holding me down. “You want whiskey. Don’t say anything—nod.”
I nodded.
Buckman held a square pint bottle to my mouth. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Go easy.”
I went hard. The first swallow burned my mouth like turpentine. It came back up before it hit bottom. Long John stopped it with a leathery hand. “Swallow,” he whispered. “Then another one.”
The next drink went down easier. It went down easy and with no food, no water, in my belly it hit me like a jackhammer. Just for an instant, I wanted to tear the world apart, then I got sleepy. Buckman let me drink again.
Another drink cleared my head. Everything came to me clear and sharp. The lights were turned low in the McKim house, no light in the bunkhouse or the two Indian barracks. The man still bleeding from the broad slash under his chin wasn’t the Mexican who’d been guarding me all day.
Buckman shoved a gun in my hand, and because of the numbness it didn’t feel right. I tried to rub some feeling into my arms while Long John dragged the dead guard behind a pile of lumber.
“Hurry it up,” Long John whispered. “We got to get away before they miss the guard. I’ll explain later—if there is a later.”
“Not going,” I croaked. “Got to finish this now.”
“Get finished, you mean. Come on, man, you don’t stand a chance. Things are happening you don’t know about. The General shot himself tonight. Looks like McKim hasn’t heard. He’s still in the house. Lynching Masters set off a bigger stink than they figured. Came over the telegraph that Washington is sending General Miles to investigate. Seems Masters got his way after. The Indians’ll be all right. McKim can’t hold them once he hears.”
I was still croaking but the words came out easier and there was pain instead of numbness in my arms. The fingers of both hands trembled like aspen leaves, but I was too wild in the head to think about that.
“I’m telling you to move,” Long John rasped. “That means you move.”
“You go,” I told him. “McKim won’t turn the Indians loose. Can’t afford to. Got to kill them all and hide the bodies deep.”
Long John cursed me patiently. “Knew I should have sat this out. You got so much poison you don’t care you get yourself killed long as you get at McKim.”
I didn’t have to answer.
Long John made his decision. I could almost hear him arguing with himself inside his head. Finally, he said quietly: “Well, sir, it’s been a long life. Maybe this is better than ending as town hall handyman. We’ll do it together, cowboy. McKim’s in the big house. Jessup is there, too. Guess you were lucky picking Saturday night to get yourself flogged. About most of the hands are in town. That, with McKim and the foreman, leaves enough to finish us.”
“Let the Indians out,” I whispered. “The man you killed has the keys. Women and girls. Some of the boys are pretty grown. They can help or try to get away.”
While Buckman went back to the dead man to look for the keys, I went across the lighted yard and crouched under a bunkhouse window. Four men were playing cards at a table; two men lay in their bunks. One of the men in the bunks was paging through what looked like a mail-order catalogue; the other was asleep. I couldn’t tell if all the card players were wearing guns. Some of them were.
Long John was crouched beside the door to the women’s barracks. I ran back and he gave me the keys. I turned the first key quietly in the lock and the door opened into woman-smelling darkness. Long John came in after me and closed the door. Outside it was a cold clear night; inside the air was bad, and heavy with fear. I stumbled across somebody’s legs and the legs were drawn back.
“Victoria Sandoval,” I whispered. “The wife of Diego Sandoval who helped me a long time ago on Persimmon Creek. You helped two men—Masters and Carmody. This is Carmody. I was the man they flogged today. I am here now with Marshal John Buckman. We are going to let you out.”
Nobody said anything for a while. Then a woman’s voice said: “I remember you, Carmody. I knew you today. What will happen now?”
“Tell them we will let them out,” I said. “There are six men in the bunkhouse, other men in the big house, more men riding the fences. The south fence is close to the house and those men will come first when the shooting starts. We will have to face ten men, more if others are on their way back. Will you help us? All you will have is your hands or whatever you can find to throw or use as a club. I do not mean to bully you, but the Marshal of Santa Fe tells me that McKim plans to kill all of you before the night is over. A general is coming from Washington to help you. A week from now will be too late. It must be tonight.”
There was the quiet sound of the Sandoval woman translating what I had said.
“Tell us what we must do, Carmody,” she said when she finished.
“Tell the others to stay where they are,” I said. “You come with me and talk to the boys. Tell the women they must stay here and be quiet until the shooting begins. When it does, they are to come out of here making all the noise they can. The same for the boys. Some of you will die unless we are very lucky. There is no other way.”
Five minutes later, the Sandoval woman came out of the boys’ barracks and nodded. The door of the bunkhouse slammed open and a man came out and pissed in the dust. There was a whiskey slant in his walk and he didn’t even look at the Indian’s barracks. We were flat in the dirt, guns ready. The man yawned and rubbed his chin and looked up at the sky. I hoped he wasn’t one of those book-reading ranch hands who liked to look up at the stars and wonder how they came to be there.
He wasn’t. He did up his buttons and went back inside. The gun on his hip told me three out of four card players were wearing guns. Maybe they all were. Maybe it was a rule of the ranch.
“Four men at a table—cards. Two bunked in—one sleeping,” I told Long John. “We get the drop on them. You hold them and I take McKim and Jessup. If we don’t start neat in the bunkhouse, then it starts there. What do you think?”
“You’re the fool,” John Buckman rasped. “I’m just the assistant fool. I say, Yes. Maybe I should be head fool. Goddamn—an old man and a man can’t use his hands right.”
“But think of the glory,” I whispered.
We went across the yard toward the bunkhouse, quiet but not sneaking. Sneaking is all right for a time and then you get sick of it and want to stand up and walk like a man. Halfway across, we stopped and Long John passed me the bottle. I drank and passed it back. Long John finished it and set it down in the dirt.
The bunkhouse had two doors, one front, one in bac
k. Long John took the back door. Both doors were closed and we had to count on the cards and whiskey to give us a small edge. If we’d been military men we would have gone after McKim and Jessup—knocking out the small force of two before we took on the larger force of six—but not being military men we knew McKim and the hardcase foreman were more dangerous than the six men in the bunkhouse. I knew McKim would go for his hideaway gun no matter how big a drop I got on him.
I checked the window and inside it was the same as before, except that now the man reading the catalogue had put it away and was dragging a concertina out of a sack. There was a squawk of concertina notes as the damn thing came free.
The concertina player was one of those down home musicians who can’t play a note without sticking out his tongue through the corner of his mouth, like a boy tackling some awful problem in long division at the school blackboard. Tongue stuck out stiff, he began to drag his way through “A Camp Meeting in Georgia.”
The card player who objected had a point. A lanky gent about forty—the same one pissed in the yard—he complained that how that piece was being played would bog a butterfly. That started an argument and all the while the concertina player kept on dragging the bellows back and forth.
I eased the door open and stepped in, that end of the bunkhouse in shadow. There was still some tremble in my gun hand, not as much as before. I liked having the pain in both shoulders. The pain and Long John’s whiskey had put me in a fine friendly mood.
They didn’t do a thing when they saw me. This was one time when men stared at a man instead of at the gun in his hand. Well, I was a sight, probably the last man walking behind a gun they expected to see.
The Slavers Page 11