The Deliverance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  The dogs vanished down Ute gullets, and Skye saw Childress watching. But the Colonel asked for nothing, and contented himself with some tea, which he brewed in a small kettle all by himself. That in itself seemed to be a mystery: a fat man who didn’t need food. Shine had no trouble at all stealing a meal. In time, Tamuche’s wives presented Skye and his women with a half a dozen fat roasted lizards, glistening and yellow, with black collars, on a slab of bark. Some piñon nuts, Ute emergency food, completed the repast. Skye ate. He had learned to eat when he could and what he could, because the natural world provided nothing else. The whole meal consisted of a few smoky, stringy bites, and some starchy nuts.

  Victoria laughed. She preferred the cuisine of the plains tribes.

  The Bear Dance began in the velvet quiet of the evening, softly at first, each portion of it varying from the next. Skye listened to the metronomic drumming, the low gutterals, the honoring of all bears, the pantomimic capture and killing of a bear, the portioning of its spirit to the bear dancers, and then he nodded.

  He awakened with a start as silence enveloped the encampment. A chill spring wind cut through the uplands, scattering orange sparks. Skye worried about his horses, which were being herded with all the rest. He worried about the Utes’ famous propensity to lift whatever they could lift. The women were slipping into their blankets. Childress was snoring under his cart. Skye had never found raw ground comfortable to sleep on, and knew that few mountaineers did either, though they bragged about their toughness. This ground was hard as stone and he could not shape it. The night would be long and wakeful. But all things considered, maybe that was good, not bad.

  But it was Standing Alone who filled his mind that night. Among these Utes, she was a different and forbidding woman.

  twelve

  Skye awakened at the earliest gray light of dawn thinking something was wrong. But nothing seemed wrong. The Utes slept. Childress’s red cart, perched on its wheels and its shafts, still sheltered the trader. The draft horse grazed nearby, its halter rope trailing. No one stirred. No cook fires burned. None of these people had erected a lodge, but lay on the cold ground, grouped as families or clans.

  He felt about for his rifle and powderhorn, and found them beside his robes. Victoria’s quiver and bow lay beside her. Standing Alone’s few things, captured in a parfleche, lay at her blankets. The Skye provisions, heaped where they had been lifted off the horses, had not been touched. Nothing stolen. It was not going to storm. No hostile warriors were filtering through the slumbering encampment. There were fewer dogs this morning than last night, and those that survived the cookpots were not roaming. Nothing was wrong.

  He turned and found Victoria staring at him silently.

  “What?” he muttered.

  “I don’t know, dammit,” she replied.

  They began a systematic search as they often had done when they sensed danger. Stare at each twenty degrees of the compass, wait for movement, wait for whatever it was they were waiting for.

  Skye ran his hands over the stubble of his jaws, and down his chest, finding the bear-claw necklace, a treasure any Ute warrior would have coveted. He picked up his short-barreled mountain rifle, which felt sweet and heavy in his chapped hands. There was nothing to shoot at.

  The light improved perceptibly, and the first hints of color began to tint the grayness. Skye could not shake the feeling that something was amiss. The one thing he could not see from where he lay was the horse herd. But no alarm had sounded and he had no reason to suppose that this Capote band had lost their four-foots to marauders.

  Then, as the light quickened, Victoria pointed. On a distant knoll, ghostly in the murk, stood Standing Alone, her arms stretched upward, her back arched, her fingers reaching for something that lay in the beyond.

  “Praying, big damn bad medicine, makes the world ache,” Victoria whispered.

  Skye nodded. He could not fathom this mystery. The woman’s morning prayer was infecting this place, making him jumpy, as if she had called down pox and plague upon these Utes and demons were cursing the land under him.

  “Maybe she wants these here damn Utes to get scabs, starve, sicken, and die,” Victoria muttered.

  Whatever it was, the Cheyenne woman had wrought an uncanny malaise upon this place, and it resonated in his bones.

  He stood; Victoria did, too. It felt good to escape the cast-iron hardpan that had formed his bed. His body ached as it often did when sleeping in the wilds. Life lived in nature was no lark: bitter cold, fierce heat, mosquitos, horseflies, hornets, hunger, thirst, bad water, rain, hail, snow, frozen toes, chafing wind, and solid rock for a bed.

  The Utes would probably not sleep late into the morning; they would leave for the plains in a rush to find buffalo for their bellies, their sleeping robes, their lodges, their war shields. Buffalo weren’t easy to find and were hard to kill. Butchering them was brutal work. Tanning their hides was just as toilsome.

  He glanced around sharply, still ill at ease, stretching the ache out of his muscles. Now he could see the horses scattered on a grassy slope just beyond. They looked unattended, but he knew Ute boys had been entrusted with the task of keeping them close and chasing off predators.

  The camp stirred. An old man padded to the edge of camp and made water. A woman stood, wrapped a blanket about herself, and walked toward some brush. Off in the distance, Standing Alone finished her incantations and walked slowly toward the encampment. Skye sensed a strange force radiating from her.

  There was indeed one unaccounted for, and that was Shine. Where was the little pirate? A dread crept through Skye. He could think of scores of reasons why these people might want to kidnap Childress’s monkey, maybe even to worship a creature that so resembled human beings. Whoever possessed Shine would possess great medicine. Worried, Skye edged toward the trader’s cart looking for the spider monkey, and found him curled up under it, next to his master. Or was the monkey the master? The monkey was safe with Childress, and Skye felt sheepish about his strange foreboding.

  By the time the sun’s orange light was lancing the treetops, the Utes were up and preparing to move. Skye saw no cookfires this morning. There was little to do at this impromptu camp but load the travois and packhorses and start. One by one, the men headed into the herd and caught horses for the women. They were good horsemen and able to drop a braided leather loop over a horse’s neck without stirring the herd. They had probably learned equestrian skills from the Spanish.

  Skye and Victoria caught their horses, bridled them, and led them back to the encampment.

  He found Childress up and brewing tea at a tiny fire, the only one in the camp. Shine had vanished.

  “How are you and the monkey this morning, Colonel?”

  “We’re fine; Shine’s hungry. He’s fetching himself a meal.”

  “And you?”

  “I live on my padding, Sah. It is a great asset at times, on the road.”

  “You know the Utes. Would this be a good time to ask about the missing children?”

  “There is never a good time for that, Mister Skye,” Childress said, pouring steaming tea from a tin pot into a battered cup.

  “Would you ask Tamuche?”

  Childress turned silent and stared at the ground. Finally, he nodded. “It is a great and just and noble cause we pursue, my friend Mister Skye. I’ll commence a powwow with the devil.”

  “How would you approach the chief?”

  “You brought something to give him?”

  “Blue beads, a few tools and knives.”

  “He might prefer food. This band is down to pine nuts.”

  “I have a little.”

  “There’s no time like the present, Mister Skye.”

  The heavy man rose nimbly to his feet while Skye extracted some gifts from his meager supplies: beads, a knife, a pound of sugar in a cotton sack. Most Indians loved sugar and he suspected Tamuche would too.

  They walked to the chief’s bedground and stood at the edge, awaiting a
n invitation. The wiry man was watching his wives toil.

  Eventually the chief nodded, and Childress began a colloquy with him in the Ute tongue, finally turning to Skye.

  “He says not now; no talk. They are going to find buffalo. Their stomachs are empty. They are in a hurry.”

  “Tell him I have a gift if he would answer some questions about missing children. A pound of sugar. A knife.”

  This was conveyed to Tamuche, who shook his head.

  “They cannot delay,” Childress said.

  Skye set the gifts before Tamuche and added an awl to the knife and sugar sack and skein of beads. “A pound of sugar, an awl, a knife, and a string of blue beads for his women. Very quickly. A few questions. All for some knowledge he might possess.”

  Tamuche replied with a question: About what?

  “About two Cheyenne children, a boy and a girl, who disappeared from Bent’s Fort four winters ago. Their mother is with us. We want to find them.”

  Tamuche listened and fell into silence. Skye noticed that two headmen had gathered also and were monitoring this exchange. He saw no change of expression among the Utes, yet something had changed.

  Childress spoke, and there was a vast silence, broken only by the soughing of the zephyrs through pine boughs.

  Tamuche spoke sharply, and Skye thought all was lost, but Childress conveyed an unexpected message. “We will smoke,” he said.

  That was good news. The great ritual of negotiation would begin. So time didn’t matter. Reaching the buffalo didn’t either. A smoke could last half a day.

  A brief word to one of his wives brought Tamuche a long-stemmed pipe with a red pipestone bowl, an alien pipe for this country, along with a beaded leather pouch of loose tobacco. He signaled that all should be seated.

  A Ute boy appeared with a glowing coal from Childress’s fire, borne on a green leaf. Tamuche accepted the coal, used it to fire the pipe, then offered the smoke to the four winds, and passed it in the small circle. By now, a dozen Ute headmen had gathered around and stood watching. The camp itself was largely ready to travel. Time had stopped; this was ritual, and no white man’s clock governed it.

  But at last, after the pipe had circled the seated Utes and white men, Tamuche began with a question, translated by Childress.

  “Is the Cheyenne woman with you the one we hear of, who huddles at the gate and awaits her children? We have heard of this woman. We admire her, and believe she is following her own bright pathway, and all the Utes talk well of her.”

  Childress answered without waiting for Skye, saying yes, this is the very woman. Indeed, Standing Alone was standing apart, outside the circle, a strange bleak aura separating her from other mortals.

  “But she is young; the one we know of is very old.”

  “It is the same woman, Standing Alone, of the Cheyenne. She has washed her hair, put on a new dress, and wears spirit moccasins that take her where she must go. And so her years fall away. Her spirit helpers have told her the time has come to go find her children, and now she has enlisted us.” All this Childress explained, this time fingering the sacred medicine bundle.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Tamuche, studying the bundle. “Why does this Cheyenne woman think I might know such a thing? The Utes are accused of many bad things. Many lies! We have many enemies, and they tell lies about us. We are nothing but a poor band of mountain people who cannot find enough food and must get horses and food any way we can.”

  When this was translated, Skye thought it amounted to an admission that the Utes did indeed traffic in children.

  In any case, Childress was earnestly conversing and all Skye could do was sit there and wait, and interpret the occasional gestures that accompanied their talk.

  “He says the gifts are not enough.”

  “Tell him maybe his information isn’t enough.”

  Tamuche’s face registered nothing upon hearing that. He was a master of diplomacy in his own way, Skye thought.

  “Enough of this, he says. He will go to the buffalo lands now and kill the hairy ones and fill their empty bellies. He says, Have we not been good hosts, fed you from our poor stores? Have we not given you enough? We go in peace. You have not given us enough, but we will accept it anyway.”

  Skye nodded, but Tamuche was talking again.

  “He says, go to the Weeminuche and talk to White Coyote,” Childress said.

  A thread of something.

  Skye nodded. “We thank the chief of the Utes, and wish him great success.”

  Within minutes, the Utes headed east, and Skye and his women, Childress and his monkey, and all their horses and equipment headed west, down the long grade into the San Luis valley.

  thirteen

  The farther Skye pierced into Mexico, the more he felt its brooding silences. For days after they had descended into the San Luis Valley, Skye and his entourage had progressed southward through a moody and austere land. Scarcely a breeze stirred the air. The skies were a transparent indigo that he had never before seen in all his wanderings, and he found this heaven utterly strange and marvelous, as if God had fashioned a different firmament for a different nation.

  But most of all, Skye felt the fearsome silence. Mexico was a land of such deep silences that the slightest noise was startling, like a lamentation in heaven. They rode their docile mounts along a dry trail toward the village of San Luis, northernmost of Nuevo Mexico’s settlements, or so Childress said.

  So transparent was the air that Skye was sure he could see peaks a hundred miles distant, brooding and mysterious, harboring secrets. Crystal air, deep silences, and forbidding ranches in hidden havens.

  Where would the children be? This country was so vast that a glance could sweep hundreds of square miles and yield nothing. Yet it was an illusion. They had passed hidden valleys verdant with foliage, which were invisible from the plain. Ranchos could be tucked into any of them. How would they search? Who would guide them? The sheer grandeur of the country they were slowly penetrating humbled Skye.

  Somewhere off to the west the Rio Grande tumbled through a gorge, according to Childress, and in various places its bottoms were farmed and settled. Yet none of that was visible from the trail to Taos. They saw only vast and mysterious reaches of the earth’s surface, endless flats, distant mountains rising in air so clear they seemed sharp-edged and near.

  They reached a watered basin filled with thick grasses that didn’t bend to any wind, and beheld skinny longhorned cattle there, some of them herded by children.

  “Approaching San Luis,” Childress said from his seat on the cart. “Nothing here. Half a dozen adobe jacals, and a defense tower. You won’t find the missing ones. These peasants couldn’t afford to buy a slave, much less feed and clothe one.”

  “We’ll look anyway,” Skye said, determined to miss nothing. “Where’d you learn about Mexican slavery?”

  “Mister Skye, you’ll spend a lifetime looking for the Cheyenne children, and get nowhere doing it that way. What you want is information. We’ll get that in Taos, if it is to be gotten anywhere, Sah. We’ll buy it or steal it, but we’ll fetch it some fashion or other, and thereby find the string that will lead us to the children.”

  Skye knew it was so, and yet wanted to ride to every rancho for a look. Childress’s strange enthusiasm piqued him.

  They reached San Luis late in the afternoon of another quiet day, and their arrival drew everyone in the village into a rude plaza. They knew this trader and his monkey, and jabbered about him, with bright smiles. Skye rode through clay streets between brown buildings while a small crowd followed the horses and cart. Skye could scarcely see a difference between these dark, wiry people and the Indians, except for the dress. Older women wore black rebozos; younger ones wore lighter cottons, and most of the men wore only pantalones. All were barefoot.

  Childress began to banter with them in Spanish, and again Skye could fathom none of it.

  “I’m going to look at that tower,” the Colonel said, sliding off his car
t. “Always interested in blood and death.” Several young men eagerly escorted him to the two-story adobe structure.

  The monkey stayed on the cart, entertaining the Mexicans, who laughed at him much as the Utes had. Shine shook hands, pilfered anything he could, and chittered at them.

  Skye watched the trader vanish into the shadowed interior of the tower, curious as to why the man chose to see that rather than to trade. But maybe these people had no coin, nothing to trade. Still, they would have grains, and that would be worth some dickering. The travelers had fed themselves almost entirely on the few provisions Skye had brought along.

  As usual, Standing Alone was surveying the young people in the village, and finding no sign of her own.

  When the colonel returned, he pulled back the canvas covering his wares, and set a few out. The women crowded about, but the men held back.

  “Won’t sell a dime’s worth,” Childress said. “They’ve nothing to trade.”

  “We could use some wheat or maize,” Skye said.

  “Well, I won’t trade for that. Mister Skye, that tower’s never been used. Built to defend against Utes and Apaches, but it never was put to a test. There’s only two escopetas in town anyway. That’s blunderbuses, if you don’t know the word. And no powder for the lot. All the tower’s good for is to store grains.”

  Skye dismounted, dug into his packs, and found a couple of knives he had been given for trade.

  “Tell ’em I’ll trade knives for grain,” he said.

  “But, Sah, why?”

  “Because we’re about starved.”

  A few minutes later, Skye had surrendered two knives but had a sack of rough-ground flour that Skye knew would have sand and bits of husk in it. He’d eaten plenty in his day.

  They trotted out of San Luis in midafternoon heat, but suddenly Childress seemed to be in a hurry and snapped a whip over his Clydesdale.