The Slavers

by Peter McCurtin

  “Sit still,” I said.

  “Hold that thing real tight,” I told the concertina player. “Keep playing long and slow like your life depended on it. The rest of you stand up and ease out those guns.”

  They kept on staring at me. I guess I surely was a sight—face whiskered and blackened by sun and caked blood, croaking like a rasp bearing down on hard wood. Now the surprise was wearing off. The back door opened and Long John came in with a cocked gun and freshened it for them.

  “You forgot to stand up,” I said, “You, squeeze-box, climb down and don’t miss a note. Get the sleeper down.”

  “He’s drunk,” the musician said, drawing that fool instrument in and out like he knew how to play it.

  Long John held his gun on them while I poked at the man in the bunk. He mumbled and turned over on his side. I made sure he wouldn’t wake up; I cracked him on the top of the head hard enough to kill him.

  “Game’s over, boys,” I said. “You be good boys and Marshal Buckman will watch over you and turn you loose soon as McKim is where he should be. Be smart, boys—you’re working for wages.”

  Buckman nodded at me. I scooped up the best-looking gun I saw on the floor and stuck it in my trousers-band.

  Outside again, I listened for sounds from the big house. I didn’t hear a thing. I went along the side of the house, past the front door, around back to the back door. There were red flowers all around the house. I could still smell them when I was back of the house, in darkness, but I couldn’t see them.

  A murmur of voices drifted out when I opened the door. The door opened into a stone-floored kitchen and I didn’t see the Chinese cook sitting by himself at a table against the wall until I heard him swearing in sing-song Chinese. The Chinaman was smoking a brown-paper cigarette and he didn’t look one bit happy. A skinny Chinaman of any age past sixty and under a hundred, he looked at the gun in my hand. He was a smart Chinaman. He kept quiet.

  It was kind of foolish, the Chinaman looking at me with a cigarette in his hand—me looking at him, a gun in mine.

  I walked toward him and he smiled at me. I smiled back, first time for me to hold a gun on a Chinaman and smile while doing it and hope he wouldn’t screech before I got close enough to crack him. To make him feel better, I used up all my Chink words. “Chop suey,” I said.

  Maybe chop is Chinese and suey isn’t. No matter in the telling of it. The Chinaman bowed his head politely and I cracked it. I caught the cook under the chin and laid his head on the table and pushed the chair in real tight.

  The door from the kitchen went into a long hallway with cupboards on both sides. In there, the voices were stronger. Ear to the door, I heard McKim doing most of the talking. I heard my name mentioned. McKim didn’t sound too sober. He told Jessup to get him another drink.

  The door went the other way into a room I couldn’t see. Bottles rattled on a table and I knew Jessup was up fixing the drink. No way to know where McKim was sitting or standing. I got set to kick the door open and start shooting with both guns. Other guns went off outside and I kicked the door and went in.

  The shooting was close by. It had to be Long John and the six fellers in the bunkhouse. I went in with the two guns and by then McKim and Jessup had their guns out. The room was bright after the dim light of the hall. Pulling his gun so fast, dropping the bottle at the same time, Jessup spun and his hip knocked the table over. Bottles crashed and broke. Throwing himself out of a chair, McKim fired twice at me with the hammerless .38 Smith & Wesson. McKim didn’t hit me and then he was on the floor, turning for another shot. Jessup fired and I felt a run of fire along my ribs. I shot Jessup in the chest, and again, closer to the heart. Jessup went down but not fast. His back broke a chair and he fired again and missed. McKim fired three times fast with the .38. I knew one of the lead slugs had gone through me. McKim was rolling on the floor. I fired at his face and didn’t hit him. McKim rolled behind a couch just after my next bullet hit him in the leg. The whiskey had died in me, and I didn’t try to do anything but stand up straight and kill him. I could hear the Indian captives screaming. McKim was behind the couch. I fired through the couch, feeling the tremble in my hands, in my legs. The gun in my hand was empty. I let it drop and McKim showed his face. I had strength left for one shot. McKim showed his face and I shot him with the second gun. I guess he tried to bargain as the gun came up. I think he offered me money. He would have done better to take his face out of the way.

  I killed him with that one shot. The bullet hit him square in the left eye and knocked him back as far as he could go before the wall stopped him. Only five bullets were left in the second gun—and the shooting and yelling kept on outside—but I used another bullet to give McKim another blind eye.

  I grabbed Jessup’s gun and ran for the door. A rock hit me in the chest. Another rock broke window glass close to my face. An Indian boy ran at me with a piece of rusty iron and I had to stagger good to get out of the way. He wheeled and tried to get me again. I cracked him on the head. Then I heard Victoria Sandoval yelling and saw her pointing at me.

  In the space between the bunkhouse and the big house, a man was screaming. Indian women and girls piled on top of him, tearing with their nails. Another hardcase was trying to shake off four Indian boys. They went flying and I raised the gun to kill him, then they were on him again. This time three boys pinned him while the fourth caved in his skull with a rock.

  Suddenly, it was over. Two shots came from the bunkhouse. A body hit the floor and boots, going slow, made for the front door. I felt the trickle of blood along my ribs. It didn’t feel like much of a wound; on top of all the other punishment, it was enough. My legs started to wobble and setting the gun for a last kill was like trying to hold a sledgehammer at arm’s length.

  A lanky frame showed in the door. It was Long John holding a cocked six-shooter beside his leg and looking as tired as I felt. The old lawman leaned against the door and—now there’s a thing —he was grinning. There were no holes in him that I could see. After he rested a minute or so, he set down the hammer and holstered the gun.

  Long John stepped down from the porch. “Sorry I couldn’t hold those boys till you got set, Carmody. The concertina player had a derringer, and that started it. I got three out of six; the others got out. Guess they didn’t get far. How’d you make out?”

  Long John was an old man, but a lot of the killer was there in his raspy voice. The yellow-tooth grin was a killer’s grin. For a while, the old John Buckman was alive again.

  I told him.

  “We did fine.” he said. “Better look at that wound.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Get the Sandoval woman.”

  Victoria Sandoval came close; the girl came too.

  “Tell the Indians to get away from here,” I told her. “Tell them to make their way home the best they can. They killed white men tonight and ...”

  Buckman and Victoria Sandoval caught me before I fell. Then, when the world sat up straight again, I was on a bed in McKim’s house. Long John was holding a bottle to my mouth and the Indian woman was washing the blood away with a hot cloth. I drank whiskey and Buckman held me up while the woman wrapped bandages around my body.

  “A clean wound,” Victoria Sandoval said. “No bones broken.”

  “You better get started,” I told her.

  “That’s right,” Long John agreed. “Go find a wagon and take this feller with you. Find a wagon, load a mattress, and off you roll. Do what I tell you, woman.”

  “Look for a wagon,” I said.

  Victoria Sandoval went out, the girl behind her.

  Long John held the bottle again. “Sorry to rush you, Carmody, being wounded and all. I don’t want you here when that general from Washington gets here. If that general digs as deep as he’s supposed to, he’ll just naturally want to know who you are. If you’re gone it won’t matter much what he finds.”

  “Been checking on me, have you?” I asked.

  “Sure thing. Took a while
. You’re not wanted in Santa Fe, not yet, but I got some mighty interesting papers back on you.”

  “I’m going,” I said. “But what about the rest of it? How you knew I’d be here? You didn’t have to mix in.”

  Long John drank some whiskey himself and wiped off his droopy mustache. “That was my thinking right up to when they lynched Masters. I was town marshal and this Indian business was Army business. Waycross wasn’t doing his job, but, strictly speaking, that wasn’t my business either. Yeah, I know. That wasn’t the real reason.”

  “Then why?”

  Long John grinned. “Like they say, there comes a time when a man, even an old man tired of guns, has to clean the dirt out of his craw—or choke on it. When word came about Masters I did some checking back. Heard about that little set-to you had with Jessup at the depot. Station agent there recalled a man looked like you rode north along the right of way after the train pulled out. You mentioned going to Colorado some time back. The way you went was how I’d go. That meant you’d find Masters still hanging if somebody didn’t cut him down. I didn’t think they would—too scared of the lynchers. Then I figured what you must have figured—that Jessup doubled back to send a telegraph ahead of the train. He did—the telegrapher knew Jessup. The message said Uncle would be on that train. Nothing that would count in front of a jury.”

  “How’d you know I’d be back?”

  “Two reasons, Carmody. One, because you stuck by Masters all along. Two, because one of McKim’s men saw you ride through Pecos. Same man sent another telegraph back to Jessup. Said Uncle’s friend would likely be coming back. Smart feller— that’s exactly what you did. And they were waiting for you. I got hold of the second message, too. So I made it my business, fool that I am. But I don’t mind telling you it’ll be easier to sleep nights after this. A good night’s sleep in a quiet town is all I want. I figure that’s how it’ll be once this general gets finished.”

  “The town won’t like you after this, the white part,” I said, letting Long John help me sit up. There was more weakness than pain. The pain would start later.

  “Town doesn’t have to, Carmody. After what happened here tonight I’ll have a whole new career, as the feller said. Not as famous as the O.K. Corral, but it’ll do.”

  Victoria Sandoval came in with the girl. The girl was something all right. Better than getting slapped with a wet beaver would be having the Sandoval girl spooning rabbit stew into my battered face.

  “The wagon is ready, the mattress and blankets,” Victoria Sandoval said.

  The two women helped me to the wagon and put me to bed. Long John followed with canned goods from the kitchen. He went back to fetch guns and whiskey. He lit a cigar and stuck it in my mouth. “Best get moving now,” he told the women. “I got my work cut out for me.”

  Long John stood there while the wagon pulled away.

  “Take care of that feller,” he called after us.

  CARMODY 1: THE SLAVERS

  By Peter McCurtin

  First Published by Leisure Books

  Copyright © 1971, 2014 by Peter McCurtin

  Published by Piccadilly Publishing at Smashwords: December 2014

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

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  Series Editor: Ben Bridges

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.

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