The Deliverance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Gentlemen,” he said, offering each a cigarro. “A little smoke and talk. I am curious about you. And you are curious about me and life in Mexico. I mean to inform you.” He poured ruby wine into cut-glass goblets and handed one to Skye and the Colonel.

  “But first a toast.” He lifted his glass. “To Mexico, forever, glorious and untrammeled, and to our Holy Faith.”

  The don’s gaze had settled upon Childress.

  “Hear, hear,” the Colonel said.

  Skye nodded and sipped. Skye looked odd without his battered top hat. He had washed himself, and slicked his hair, and scraped his face, so that he seemed almost civilized. But not entirely. Not ever civilized in any true sense of the word, yet not a ruffian either. The man was unlike any other.

  “You have seen,” Don Gabor continued, “that we maintain a certain gentility here, even in a place as remote from the heart of Mexico as this. We are a bastion of the border and the Faith; indeed, that was how this grant of a hundred square leagues came to me; anyone willing to anchor the north for the republic and the church might receive the land. So here I am, among pieces of furniture and linens and china and glass and books and arms brought by ox-team from the Sea of Cortez, or up the Rio Grande. Do you approve, Mister Childress, or do you think all this. should fall to, say, the United States?”

  “Sah, my esteem for your nation and its industries and arts is boundless.”

  Rakoczi cocked a brow and grinned, baring those white teeth again. He turned to Skye. “And you, sir. I understand you were with the Royal Navy, but I am not clear about the rest.”

  Skye settled into a stiff-backed chair that was plainly tormenting him. “I deserted, sir.”

  The candid response caught Rakoczi by surprise. “Really?”

  “I was pressed into the navy off the streets of East End, when I was a boy of twelve. That was the last I saw of my mother and father and sisters. My father had an import and export business and I was much around the Thames docks. They made me a powder monkey.

  “The harder I struggled to escape this—this involuntary servitude—the harder it went for me. Seven years, sir, was I held aboard ships of war, the hulls my prisons, rarely seeing land, my pittance fined away or stolen from me, my gruel stolen by older and harder men until I learned to defend myself, with the only thing I had, my fists and my rage. I came to love the sea, but I loved liberty more. I gained my freedom at Fort Vancouver in ’twenty-three, penetrated into the mountains, and have been a man without a country ever since.”

  “Many good men are grateful to serve the crown.”

  “I might have gladly, if I had not been kidnapped bodily. English are subjects, sir, not citizens, and subjects are still at the disposal of the throne in spite of the Magna Carta. I prefer the new world, and a republic, where a man is a citizen rather than a subject.”

  Rakoczi listened intently. The colonel was amused. At last, he had an inkling of what inspired Skye.

  “So we have a self-confessed privateer and a self-confessed deserter for guests,” the don said, fires building in his eyes. “And no man of honor.”

  Bear baiting, the Colonel thought.

  Smoothly, Rakoczi refilled Skye’s wineglass, and Skye downed the wine in one gulp. His face had darkened and he was about to explode, but Childress interrupted.

  “Sah, I am no man of honor whatsoever, and find the very word repugnant,” Childress said, cheerfully. “I come from a long line of brigands.”

  Skye had turned red. Obviously, the border ruffian didn’t know what the smooth-talking don was up to. If the powerful lord of this estate could provoke an explosion, they would all be shipped to Mexico City in chains.

  Somehow, Skye subsided. “Until you know what servitude is, sir, until you know endless months and years when your life is not your own, until you know what it is to be summoned only to obey, until you know a time when you cannot dream or hope, until you know what it is to walk the earth as a free man, you know nothing of my circumstance or of honor.”

  Skye was eloquent, Childress had to admit that of him.

  The hacendado didn’t seem very impressed, though. He chuckled politely. “I’m sure every prisoner in every jail thinks quite the same way, Skye.”

  “Mister Skye, sir. Mister.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, forgive me my lack of delicacy.” The hacendado was toying with Skye. He filled the glass again.

  Skye downed the entire glass of wine, and rocked gently in his torture-backed chair. “There are various species of slavery, sir, but they all involve the capture of another mortal and ownership of his services. In the American South is a terrible form of it, in which a mortal is pure property, the same as a cow or a dog; in which a slave has no rights, can be tortured or even killed for any infraction.

  “The Indians of the plains have a gentle form of it. They acquire slaves mostly in war raids, and these are usually women and children, and often they become members of the tribe in time, and marry into it … . And then there’s your country’s system of slavery, sir, called peonage.”

  Skye was heated now by wine and anger, and the more Skye’s face reddened, the more the don was amused. But he shouldn’t be, Childress thought. Skye was a brawler, and the don would find his teeth stuffed down his throat before he knew what hit him.

  “We have no slavery in Mexico, Skye. The peons are Mexican citizens, with rights guaranteed by the constitution. We take care of them because they can’t take care of themselves. These walls offer protection against the savages. My fields offer them employment. My wealth supplies them with all they need, even when they are old or sick and have no economic value to me. The church would condemn us if we treated them badly. We have an excellent system, humane and productive. Did even one of my peons voice one word of sorrow? Would one leave, even if he could?”

  “Slaves,” Skye said, his voice half strangled with his own heat. “The Indians are slaves. I know their story. They live short and brutal lives in the mines, where they starve on gruel and suffer exhaustion and injury and disease, and not much better lives in the fields, where they hoe until they drop. They last five years or ten and then they die, all used up. They aren’t paid and they aren’t free, and if they try to escape, they are whipped to death. But we’ll find two of them—if they live.”

  Rakoczi finally realized the sort of man he was dealing with, and moved quickly backward.

  “I think, my friend Skye, it’s time for us to retire,” Childress said, fearing mayhem and City of Mexico dungeons. “We’ll leave honor to our host.”

  Slowly, almost as if he were returning from another planet, Skye quieted.

  Don Gabor Rakoczi, whose hand had been in a desk drawer, slowly withdrew it. A ball would not even have slowed down Barnaby Skye. At last Colonel Childress knew, as epiphany, the sort of man he traveled with.

  sixteen

  Far to the west, a half dozen riders were tracking Skye’s little caravan, ghosts lost in haze. He saw and noted them, though no one else did. He would have missed them but for the sheer beauty of Mexico, the etched blue ridges, the blinding sun-bleached flats, the mysterious brooding silence, all under a cobalt heaven such as Skye had never before seen. He had never penetrated a land of such aching beauty and mystery, and felt this strange sweetness of the countryside in his bones.

  The riders were not angling closer, but neither did they depart. They were stalking.

  Skye kept an eye on them, and an eye on natural defenses, but there wasn’t much he could do. His mind was on other matters. Colonel Childress’s conduct at the Hacienda de Las Delicias had all but clamped irons on their ankles and chains on their legs. The man had made a great point of announcing he was a rebel and a pirate and a scoundrel. And all this he had proclaimed to an autocrat of the wilderness who had the men and arms to throw Childress and Skye into an eternal hell. Just why the hacendado had seen them off the following morning with a white-toothed smile and a languid wave of his arm was more than Skye could understand. But they
were free and had been for two silent days.

  Skye intended to do something about it before he and his wife and Standing Alone were enmeshed in even greater peril. Just what, he wasn’t sure. He had spent the quiet hours of travel pondering it.

  This silent morning, he had made up his mind: he and the crazy Childress were about to part company. The only question was whether to wait until they reached Taos, or whether it would be right now, period.

  Victoria, who knew his moods, had fathomed what he was thinking. “He’s no damn good,” she had said, out of the blue.

  Childress rolled along in his carmine cart with the Jolly Roger emblazoned on its flanks, his draft horse clopping its way to Santa Fe, his face shaded by his straw planter’s hat, and his gaze restless, his attention flicking from person to person.

  All that day the riders far off to the west tracked them, but never approached. Skye guessed they would attempt something at night if they were not friendly, and as the day waned he began looking for a place to fort up, maybe even a dry camp.

  Late that soft spring day they struck a creek burbling out of the Sangre de Cristos, and a much-used campsite. The creek rolled out of a canyon half a mile east, and Skye decided to retreat there.

  He pointed.

  “Camp in there tonight,” he said.

  “But Mister Skye, Sah, that’s a piece, and there’s no road.”

  “In there.”

  Victoria nodded, and steered her horse and packhorses eastward. Standing Alone followed. Childress looked like he might not, but surrendered with an angry shrug and steered his cart overland.

  A while later they were unpacking in a secluded flat hidden from the great plain they had been traversing.

  “At least the grass is good,” Childress muttered, as he slipped to earth and unharnessed the Clydesdale. For a fat man, he was nimble.

  It was a good place. The grass rose lush and tender. The fragrance of piñon pine drifted across the creek-carved hollow, a demiparadise of live oak, juniper, and pines. Skye thought they could risk a cook fire, but not after dark. He hadn’t seen the stalkers for some while but he was ready for them, and this was a place with a narrow mouth that could be watched.

  The monkey watered the Clydesdale, and then, as usual, began gathering dry wood, upon Childress’s command. But the monkey and his master would have to go, Skye thought.

  They had nothing but parched corn to eat, so the women started water heating. With a little salt, the mush wasn’t bad, and it put energy into a man. In Taos, they would replenish.

  Skye scarcely knew how to do what he had to do, but he was a man and he would do it, and that would end his alliance with this bizarre fool from Texas.

  He waited until they had all scooped the mush into their mouths, including Shine, whose portion was tenderly dished out by Childress. While the women were scouring the blackened cookpot, Skye studied the canyon where the creek burst out of the foothills. He saw nothing in the violet twilight.

  “Mr. Childress,” he said harshly. “In Taos we’ll go our separate ways.”

  The fat Texan looked surprised. He lifted his fine planter’s hat, and pursed his lips. “It’s a mistake,” he said.

  “No, it’s what I want. It’s necessary. Sorry.”

  Childress sighed. “I feared it would come to this, and I know why you’re doing it.”

  “Then I don’t have to say any more.”

  Childress laughed softly. “No, but I will. You’re a man of honor, pursuing an honorable cause that rests heavily upon you. You’ve allied yourself with a privateer and God only knows what else.” He was enjoying himself. “Scoundrel, reckless fool who endangered the whole party at Las Delicias calling himself a rebel and adventurer and privateer and pirate. Yes, Sah, and a man who’s got the Jolly Roger painted on his cart for good measure.” He chuckled softly, enjoying himself. “I knew it would come to this, Sah.”

  “Then that’s how it’ll be.”

  “I trust you’ll pay me for my horses.”

  “Take them. We’ll walk if we have to.”

  “Over a thousand miles of northern Mexico.”

  “Yes, ten thousand miles if that’s what it takes.”

  The Colonel sighed. “Admire your determination, Skye.”

  “It’s—”

  “Yes, yes, yes, and with good reason. You’d make a fine Texan, Sah.”

  “We’ve had company all day,” Skye said.

  The trader’s gaze steadied on Skye.

  “That’s why we’re here. Good concealment, and we can defend.”

  “Who?”

  “Half dozen riders far west, tracking us.”

  “Rakoczi’s?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Utes, Apaches, Federales, Rakoczi.”

  Skye nodded.

  “My friend Skye, you’re a man of honor, and you make uneasy alliance with a man like me. I know that. But I beg to advise you that the problem isn’t me, it’s you. The Mexicans enjoy a scoundrel, in particular, a fat scoundrel with a spider monkey. I’m the sideshow, Sah. I’m your diversion, and you proceed unmolested.”

  He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “It would not be like that if you proceed without me. They fear an earnest man pursuing a good cause. It upsets them. Don Gabor Rakoczi, for instance. You he baited, me he ignored. You he drove to the brink, not me. And it was a deliberate act, I assure you. I know the Mexicans. Their entire way of life rests on the backs of peons, cheap labor, slaves in all but name, indebted and forced to stay on the land for protection. In a trice, they could turn you into a peon, my friend.”

  “No, they couldn’t. Because no one will ever take my liberty from me again.”

  It was the way he said it that made Childress blanch. A breeze tucked sparks into the sky. Skye motioned to Victoria, who brought a leather camp bucket and doused the fire. It hissed, and sour smoke stained the air. But then the velvet purple twilight settled over their camp. Standing Alone headed downstream, toward some brush. She was largely left out of these conversations because of the barriers of tongue and tradition.

  Skye wasn’t done.

  “Colonel, who are you?” he asked. “And why are you here?”

  “A filibuster, Skye, a man looking for pots of gold at the end of rainbows.”

  “Neither of us will leave this camp until you tell me the entire truth.”

  “Why, Sah, what more is there to say?”

  “There’s plenty more.”

  “You’ve gone sour on me, I’m afraid. Can’t be helped. Some men don’t take to society.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. This outfit doesn’t move until you do. And that goes for you and your cart.”

  “I’ve responded to the best of my ability, and I’m sorely tested and offended, Mister Skye.”

  “We’re not moving.”

  “I’m exactly what I say I am.”

  “And what else?”

  “Sah, if you could only know how much I am a sucker for good causes. Your quest to free two hapless Cheyenne touched my very heart, my core, my soul, the center of my bosom. You have the whole of me there. Give me a great cause, liberty, justice, honor, the relief of oppression—save for religion, Sah, I don’t get fired up for the Faith, but all else, I am a guerrilla and a reformer, ready to walk beside you to the southern tip of Mexico to find these children and restore them to their blessed mother. I’d have run the guillotine in France. I’d be dumping tea into Boston Harbor. I’d have fired one of those shots heard round the world at Concord. I’d be following Simón Bolivar across South America, holding his flag. And that, Sah, is how I swear and uphold the holy and unpolluted truth, my conscience, my heart, so help me God.”

  Skye grinned. “Guess we’ll just stay here until you’re ready to level with us,” he said.

  The fat man peered off into the gloom, fidgeted, leaned forward, and whispered: “I’m doing advance reconnaissance for President Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. He has it in his thick head, affixed somew
here just behind his receding forehead, that the Republic of Texas ought to reach to the Western Sea, and he set me onto it like a fat dawg sniffing trees. And you, poor old Skye, are an unwitting conspirator.”

  Skye hiccuped, fell to the grasses laughing, roared like a lunatic grizzly, and Victoria wanted to know what was so damned funny; all white men were crazy.

  seventeen

  The chittering of the monkey awakened Skye but it was already too late. Above him, as he peered into the gray predawn, were half a dozen skeletal faces. These materialized into Indians standing over him, one with a nocked bow but the others were simply watching. Skye felt for his rifle and found that it was gone.

  He scarcely dared move. Victoria was stirring beside him, and then he heard her soft cussing in the quietness.

  “We’ve been had,” said Childress from under his cart.

  Very carefully, Skye sat up. The Indians let him. They wore loincloths and little else. Some had shirts, many wore a red bandanna or headband that pinned their black straight hair, most had light moccasins. Skye didn’t have the faintest idea who they might be or what they intended to do.

  “Jicarilla Apaches,” Childress muttered. “Not tame, no Sah.”

  The monkey leaped about, mesmerizing the Apaches.

  Off in the gloom, Skye saw a dozen others collecting the horses. They had been hobbled except for the Clydesdale, which had grazed freely, as usual, dragging a halter rope with him. Maybe this was only a horse raid. Maybe he would live a few more minutes. Maybe not.

  Slowly Skye lifted his hands, showing that they contained no weapon, and then signed, Friend.

  An older Apache laughed.

  That was a good joke. Skye eyed the steel arrowhead aimed straight at his chest and subsided into utter quietness. But his gaze searched restlessly for anything, any clue as to what might happen, any means of escape. He saw nothing. These could be his last moments, then. He helped Victoria sit up and held her hand.

  The monkey mesmerized the Apaches. They tried to grab the little creature but he was much too agile for them. A young warrior raised his bow but an older one stayed him with a guttural bark.