Deadville

by Robert F. Jones

  “I told them that if they ran, the Blackfeet would shoot them in their backs and kill more than if we went over the wall and charged them. I led the way with nothing but my battle-ax and scalp knife. Soon they were fleeing the fort, where the rest of our people were waiting. We killed those Blackfeet to the last man.”

  “All well and good with Blackfeet,” I said. “But these are white men. What if they don’t run?”

  “Then I’ll be dead, and you shortly after me. But if they run, which I’m sure they will, you’ll be there to pick them off on the back side of the compound, with Pine Leaf, Plover, and Jaime covering the front.

  “After we’ve whipped them, you can go into the mine and fetch out your daughter.”

  It was, I realized, our only hope, and a forlorn one at best.

  DURING THE HOUR or so that remained before moonset, Jim familiarized Plover with the Colt eight-shot rifle. He had her shoot it, at both the windows of the stamp mill and the front gate of the compound, then reload it until she could do it in the dark. I went over to the fire. Esme was bundled up in a blanket, asleep, with Owen’s dog curled up beside her. Jaime lay under a buffalo robe, his head propped against a saddle. His eyes were open. He was awake, and coming out of the haze imposed by the laudanum. I could see the pain in his eyes.

  “How is it?”

  “I can take it,” he said.

  “Do you think you’re steady enough to shoot a revolver?”

  “Damn right,” he said. I handed him the Walker Colt. He’d shot it frequently back home in Santa Fe and could hit well from a rest at fifty yards. I told him our plans. He and his mother would have to shoot straight and fast when Dade’s boys broke from the compound.

  “Count on it,” he said. “Now, could you give me some jerky and maybe a cup of coffee? I’m still kind of weak.”

  I fetched them from near the fire. We sat in the glow of it, drinking the brew Plover had boiled earlier. It was bitter black, strong, hot, and my son’s face regained some of its color.

  THE SPECTER OF death haunts every battleground, and the longer the participants have to wait for the action to be joined, the more insidiously it works its ways on their souls. We all knew we were in a tight comer here. We all knew someone would die. We hoped it would be Lafcadio Dade, and perhaps even Old Smoke, but we all knew that one or more of us, perhaps all, would probably be dead before sundown. Men in battle are not fools, though often they behave that way. The eve of battle is a time to set hearts in order. I had to get something clear with Jim Beckwourth, and took him aside so the others would not hear.

  “Don’t take this wrong,” I said. “You’ve been like a father to me for many years now; you’re my dearest friend; you’ve bled for me and risked your life for my family. We may both die today, Jim, and I have to know. You’ve always acted and spoken like a man who believes that race, color, religion, none of those superficial trappings of existence amount to a hill of beans when it comes to evaluating a man’s true worth. But then why have you always so angrily denied being, well… black? Do you think it makes any difference to me?”

  He looked at me, deep and hard, for a long minute. Then he said, “You cannot know the rage that comes with not owning your very own soul, miserable as it might be. Yes, I guess I am ‘black’ by the legal definition of the term in the Benighted States of America. My father was, as I’ve told you, a white man, a Virginian, and there it was I was born. But my mother, whom I scarcely knew, was a household slave on my father’s plantation. She died when I was still an infant, and I was raised as my father’s son. He was a good man despite the fact that he owned slaves. He educated me, saw to it that I learned a trade—blacksmithing—which would support me long after he was gone. But I always feared that, sooner or later, the law would descend upon me and return me to the condition of my birth. So I ran from it. I went west, and made myself the Enemy of Horses, the Bloody Arm, the Medicine Calf of the Sparrowhawks.”

  He sighed and stared out the window. The moon hovered on the brink of the western hills.

  “Now civilization has come to the mountains, Dill. It’s come even to New Mexico, the Land of Poco Tiempo. Sooner or later slavery will come trailing along after it, unless a great war is fought to eradicate it, a holy war like the one Spy talks about all the time. Men like Dade are working to make slavery the law of the territory. Look what he’s done with his Mexican and indio prisoners! And if slavery does come to New Mexico, I will continue to deny I am black. I will make them prove it, and if they do so in their corrupt courts of law, which I’m certain they will, I will kill the first man—constable, sheriff, or marshal—who comes for me with chains. And I will kill all of them who come for me afterwards. I will make them kill me, before I submit to my mother’s condition.”

  ‘I’ll be there at your side,” I said. For myself, I couldn’t envision African slavery ever taking hold in New Mexico, yet less than ten years later, in 1857, the pro-Southern territorial legislature legitimized it and at the same time banned and annulled marriages between whites and blacks or even mulattoes, required all Negroes to carry passports when away from the homes of their masters, forbade the sale of firearms to African slaves, and at the same time made it illegal for free Negroes to remain within the boundaries of the territory for more than thirty days, any violation to be punished with fines and hard labor at the territorial penitentiary.

  And it did take a holy war to eliminate that evil.

  THE MOON WAS almost down. Pine Leaf stripped for action. For the first time, Owen saw what had happened to her breasts. She watched his eyes for a reaction. He stared at the scars for a moment, then went over and embraced her. “Do you have a strong heart for this bomb business?” he asked.

  “Feel it,” she said.

  He placed his hand over the massive scar on her chest.

  “Muy fuerte,” he said. And kissed her.

  “Ready?” Jim asked from across the room.

  “Yes,” she said. She carried only her lance and knife.

  “Do you want one of the handguns?” Owen asked.

  “No need to waste bullets on mere Cheyennes,” she said. “But give me a cigarro to light the fuses.” He lit one for her. She took it between her teeth, wrapped her gray blanket tight around her, and slipped out the back door.

  Jim had peeled down to a loincloth and moccasins. He fetched pots of vermilion and ocher from his war bag and painted his face like the Bloody Arm of old: battle-ax in hand, the white-handled knife tucked in his belt. I kissed Plover good-bye. She sat by the front window, the eight-shot rifle at the ready. “Kill some for me/’ I said. “And you the same/’ she answered.

  Jim, Owen, and I followed the way Pine Leaf had gone.

  IT WAS DEAD dark now. Just a fading afterglow of moonlight edged the mountains to the west. We crept unseen to the causeway, then through the mud of the late alder brake to the walls of the prison compound, moving from boulder to boulder as silent as snakes. The mud was cold. Near the gate we paused and listened. Dade’s voice rasped through the dark.

  “About ten or twenty minutes to first light,” he was saying. “As soon as we can see our foresights, I’ll give the word and we charge the house. Keep low and run a zigzag, fast. You men with fukes, load with buckshot. Stick your muzzles through the window and let fly. Old Uncle Richochet will take care of the rest. Ings, do you have that torch ready? When you get up to the house, light it and chuck it through the first window you come to. Let’s get this damn business over once and for all. And try to capture that damn rapparee, the nigger Beckwourth. I want to put him to work in the mines, the arrogant bastard. If you can’t take him alive, bring me his head. Otherwise, take no prisoners, do you hear me—I’ll have no survivors to tell this tale.” Jim grabbed my shoulder. “Do you see what I mean?” he whispered. He shoved me toward the back of the wall. Owen followed. Jim found a spot where a boulder would give him a leg up to the top of the six-foot wall. He gave us a wink. “Kill ’em dead.”

  A moment la
ter we heard Pine Leaf’s first bomb explode. Then the hollow crash of the drop hammer falling from its precarious lodgement near the roof of the mill. Screams of rage and fright followed … Cheyenne curses.

  Owen and I ran to the rear of the wall. As I turned the corner, I glanced back in time to see Jim light his bomb, hurl it, then, with the roar of the blast still echoing off the mountains, leap like a great dark panther to the lip of the wall. He vaulted inside, ax in hand. A war yell rang through the dawn. The Bloody Arm at play.

  All hell broke loose… .

  Gunfire exploded from every direction. Screams and grunts of rage. I heard Plover’s rifle bang, then bang again, and again. The sharper crack of Jaime’s revolver followed.

  Another bomb blast from the mill… .

  Three men broke through the back gate of the compound, running fast for the bull boats. Owen dropped two of them in their tracks with a quick right and left from Manton. I caught the third through the small of the back and quickly reloaded the Hawken. Somebody poked his head out and stared in our direction. Owen popped him.

  Inside the compound I could hear the clang of Jim’s ax on the steel of a gun barrel. A fuke bellowed. Somebody screamed, once, twice, then silence.

  Another bomb blew over in the mill, and through the echo I could hear horse hooves splashing across Garnet Creek, then rattling on the rocks as they faded to the south. The Cheyennes, those that were left of them, had decamped.

  Then we caught a glimpse of a man running from the front gate of the compound toward the mine entrance.

  “It’s Dade,” Owen said, snapping off a shot. The figure stumbled, then ran on. “I think I nicked him.”

  Suddenly I noticed the dog standing at Owen’s side. She must have leaped from the window and tracked him after hearing the first burst of gunfire.

  “Thump,” Owen said, bending over to scratch her ears. “You’ll find him for me, won’t you, from the blood trail.”

  “To hell with Dade,” I said. “We have to get Gwen out safely first.”

  Someone came toward us from the compound’s ruined interior. I cocked the Hawken. It was Jim, limping from a bullet through his thigh. His right arm, his ax arm, was covered in blood to his elbow: the blood of his enemies. “I’m all right,” he said. “They aren’t. Dade went into the mine. Go get him, boys.”

  CHAPTER XII

  INSIDE THE MINE shaft it was black as tarmacadam. Yet Owen had eyes that could see through the rocks themselves. Or so it seemed. The dog trailed Dade’s blood spoor back through a maze of tunnels and side tunnels, deep, deep into the earth. It was hot down there, airless. I felt myself choking. But still I followed. Then we stopped.

  Owen seemed to be pondering. A sideshaft led off to our right; the main tunnel continued straight. The dog ran a short way into the sideshaft, then returned and forged ahead, down the main tunnel.

  “Chambers and Spy went down that way,” Owen said. I saw his arm point to the right. Then he gestured ahead. “Dade’s in there, where Thump went, not far ahead. He’s bleeding bad.”

  “Let him bleed out,” I said. “We’ve got to get Gwen.”

  “No,” he said, and there was the edge of madness to his voice. “I must be sure of Dade. You go after her. I’ll meet you back here later.”

  Later?

  If there was one.

  He and the dog disappeared into the blackness.

  I WALKED SLOWLY down the side tunnel. Ahead I could hear what sounded like heavy breathing. A liquid, raspy cough. I felt my way along the wall. The breathing got louder. I raised the Hawken to my hip, muzzle aimed into the dark.

  The breathing was right in front of me.

  Then I remembered the lighter that the cibolero woman had given me, what seemed like months ago now. I struck a spark to the cotton cord and blew it into flame. I looked down.

  It was Spy.

  I knelt beside him. He was bleeding from a wound in his chest. He felt my hand on him, and his head came up. A knifepoint touched my throat.

  “Easy,” I said. “You’ll be all right when I get you out of here. Where’s Chambers and Gwen?”

  “Straight ahead,” he said. “Down there somewhere. Not far, I reckon. I put the knife into him an hour or so ago. Stuck him good. But he stuck me, too. ... I think he’s got her tied up back there. He gagged her so she couldn’t attract our attention. Yeah ... I think I stuck him pretty good. He may be dead, maybe not. Be careful. ...”

  He passed out again. I ripped a sleeve from his shirt and stuffed a wad of it in the slash I could feel below his collarbone. I felt around for more wounds but found none. He’d have to hold on now as best he could.

  To hell with caution. I leaned the rifle against the wall next to Spybuck and drew my knife. With the lighter in one hand, the blade in the other, I trotted down the stone passageway calling Gwen’s name. No answer. Panic grabbed my heart. I ran; the flame guttered, nearly died. I bounced off a wall, got up, and ran some more. …

  Then I heard her, a muffled scream through the gag.

  As I felt my way around a comer a rifle exploded; the bullet smacked stone chips from the rock beside my head. … The long tongue of flame illumined the scene momentarily: Gwen huddled against a wall, a bandanna tied across her mouth; Chambers behind her with the rifle. The blast deafened me for an instant. Chambers was reloading, fast: powder first, then he spit a ball down the barrel, snapped on a cap. I rushed him. He fired again, from the hip, and

  next thing I knew I was flat on my back, stunned, numb from the waist down. The lighter lay burning weakly not far from my left hand. Chambers staggered to his feet, rising from a black pool of blood which had soaked his abdomen and his buckskin trousers. He threw Gwen aside and clubbed the rifle.

  Swung…

  I tossed the lighter into his face and he tripped, lost his balance, and tripped over my legs. I struck hard with the knife, felt it enter the side of his thick neck, just under his ear. He kicked once, spasmodically, and died. Then I must have passed out for a moment.

  I AWOKE TO hear Gwen sobbing beside me in the dark. I reached for her, cut her bonds, and removed the gag from her mouth.

  “Dad,” she said.

  “Listen, Gwen,” I told her. “He shot me, down low I think. Gutshot. May have nicked my spine. I can’t move my legs. Fm going to have to crawl out of here. Maybe you can help me some. And listen. … Spy’s lying wounded, cut bad. He’s back there the way I came, in the shaft about fifty yards from the entrance. You’ll maybe have to help him, too. Can you do it?”

  “Yes,” she said, still weeping a little.

  “Good girl. Let’s get going.”

  Spy was conscious when we got back to him. He was strong enough still to crawl, even helped to drag me along. By the time we reached the main tunnel some of the feeling was coming back into my legs.

  “Do you see that dim light off there to the left?” I asked Gwen.

  “I can see it.”

  “Good. That’s the main entrance. I want you and Spy to get out of here now, go back to your mother and Captain Beckwourth. Tell them I’m going in to help my brother.”

  “Christ, Dill,” Spybuck said. “You can hardly move.”

  “No, no, it’s going to be all right. I think the bullet just grazed my backbone, stunned it like, numbed my legs. But the feeling’s coming back now.”

  “You’re gutshot.”

  “It’ll keep,” I said. “What does Old Gabe say? ‘Meat don’t spile in the mountains’? Listen; give me one of your pistols. Owen’s going to need all the firepower he can get.”

  They moved off toward the light. I checked the loads in Spy’s Whitneyville. Then I staggered to my feet and edged my way down the main tunnel, leaning on the wall for support. Now the pain was working in there, sick and heavy, surging from sometimes to near-screeching intensity. I tried to put it out of my mind. It wouldn’t go. Then it eased off some. …

  Two shots came echoing up toward me, then a third.

  “Owen!” I
yelled. My voice bounced off rock down into the darkness.

  “Get out of here, Dill!” came back his echoing answer. “This is my affair.”

  I heard Dade laugh, down there in the black. “Come on ahead, Dillon Griffith. Join the party.”

  I went toward the sound, feeling my way along the wall. …

  Another shot, loud as a cannon this time, and Dade’s pistol ball came up the passage, clipping from wall to wall. It whistled past my ear. He couldn’t be more than twenty yards ahead of me now.

  A hand grabbed my leg and Owen pulled me down beside him. He was lying behind what felt like a big, empty hogshead. The little terrier was crouched by his side. She growled low in her throat, then licked my hand.

  “I told you to get out of here,” Owen said.

  “And I never much liked obeying your goddamned orders.”

  Silence for a moment.

  Then he said, “Listen, Brother. I’m hit. Hard hit. Feel…” He pulled my hand over his chest. It came away hot and wet, sticky with blood. “He’s killed me. Now I’m going to kill him.”

  Dade fired again, the bullet wailing away up the passage. I fired back, toward where I’d seen the flame of his pistol. He grunted at the crash. Then he fired again.

  “I think I hit him,” I said.

  “I’ve hit him twice at least,” Owney said. He laughed, then coughed—a wet, thick cough, with blood in it. “He doesn’t die.”

  We could hear Dade reloading, a Navy Colt it was: the chink of a powder flask against the mouthed chambers of the pistol, the squeak of the hinged rod tamping the ball and powder charges home. The click of caps snapped onto the cylinders.

  Owen was fumbling in his pocket for something. I caught the glint of a fire steel.

  “But he will die when I set off the powder train.” Now I saw the fuse cord, too, strung pale against the wall. “You've got to get out of here. I’m going to blow this infernal place.”

  “We’ll never get out in time once you strike the spark.”