The Deliverance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Some of the Apaches began opening the packs and extracted various items: cookpots, knives, a powderhorn, spare clothes. Others gathered around the red cart, yanked the canvas off, and plunged into the heaps of trade items and robes and pelts in it.

  “Bloody thieves. I’ll flay the hide off your backs,” Childress proclaimed from under the cart, rising up in wrath. A foot on his chest flattened him. One young warrior discovered the skeins of blue beads, and exclaimed. He held one up and howled. In moments, the beads were parceled out, along with awls, flints and steels, knives, ladles, cookpots, sacks of sugar, jugs of molasses, bolts of calico, bed ticking, and two pairs of four-point blankets.

  Skye observed Standing Alone, imprisoned between two of the Jicarillas and not resisting. She looked grimly at Skye and the trader, but said nothing. She looked disheveled.

  Skye dared to hope. This was a looting party, but maybe not a murderous one—at least so far. But he knew the reputation of all Apaches and knew how lucky he would be to see the sun set on this day, or a sunrise tomorrow. He did not know whether these were the ones who had ridden parallel all the previous day, but it seemed likely.

  The Apaches seemed to be looking for spirits. They opened the molasses and sampled it. But as far as Skye knew, Childress wasn’t carrying any ardent spirits, and that was a stroke of luck. They’d all die, and fast, once the Apaches began working on some Indian whiskey.

  It was not yet dawn. He adjudged their number at thirty. They had the horses in hand, bridled and saddled, except for the Clydesdale. Shine, ever helpful, snatched the halter rope of the big animal, and led it to the rest of the horses, while the Apaches watched, amazed. Then with one graceful bound, Shine leaped up to the Clydesdale’s neck; halter rope in hand, and sat there over the mane, chattering and babbling.

  Most of these Apaches were on foot. Maybe they had a horse-holder down the creek somewhere, or maybe not. The Apaches wouldn’t have many horses. These would be enormously valuable to them.

  “I think if we’re quiet, they might leave us,” Skye said softly to Victoria.

  The older Apache, probably a war leader, kicked him and waved his knife. The meaning was not lost on Skye.

  Skye made the sign for water, but the chieftain just stared. So far, they hadn’t even let Skye or Victoria stand up, and Childress was a captive under his cart.

  As the day quickened, one of the younger Apaches discovered the skull and crossbones enameled on Childress’s cart, and drew the rest to it. This occasioned much talk among them. They fingered it, examined the identical insignia on the other side, and studied Childress.

  Skye tried a finger message: “Big man makes death.”

  The chieftain muttered something, and some of the warriors prodded Childress to his feet. They marveled at his girth, poking fingers into him to see what all that fat felt like. The Texan fetched his straw hat, stood quietly while they absorbed his stature, and then he launched into a soft, conversational, almost delicate address:

  “I’ve thrown better men than you to the sharks,” he said blandly. “I’ve strung up your kind by your thumbs and delivered a hundred lashes, and I’ll do the same to you. Let me have that whip, the one you have in hand there, you miserable cur, and I’ll flail your skin right off your back and take your nose off and snap your eyes out for good measure, and while you’re poking arrows into me I’ll cut your chief over there to pieces and feed him to the wolves. Then I’ll pull out your arrows and stuff them down your gullets, you bloody buggers.”

  All this Childress delivered with such aplomb that Skye marveled. Had the privateer no fear? Skye’s own fear caught the spittle in his throat and silenced him and set his heart to racing, but here was the fat man blaspheming everything about the Apaches. The mad Texan was about to get them all massacred.

  “You miserable dogs, you curs who sniff your own vomit, give me that whip and I’ll show you a thing or two,” he said, never raising his voice, and yet the power of his words reached every one of the Jicarillas.

  Childress walked slowly with his hand outstretched toward the Apache boy with the whip in hand, and surprisingly, the boy surrendered it. Childress plucked it up, and suddenly the whip turned into a live, whirring thing, rattle-snaking here and there, snapping and popping, while the Apaches stood spellbound.

  “Put everything back in that cart or I’ll cut your heart out,” he said, never raising his voice. But he did point at the cart, and at the loot the warriors had lifted. Some of it now adorned them.

  Skye had never seen anything like it. Not in all his years in the Royal Navy, or all his years in the mountains, had he seen a man as vulnerable as Childress rake a hostile crowd with sheer force of will. The stern commands issued out of him with the precision of a metronome, and the plaited whip whirred and cracked, but no one moved.

  It was not enough. The chieftain said something.

  Half a dozen warriors circled Childress just outside of whip range, then rushed in and subdued him. Only one felt the lash. At another wave of the hand, other warriors caught Skye and Victoria and Standing Alone, and began stripping away their clothing, relentlessly, methodically, until they had it all.

  Victoria snarled but she was helpless against such brute force, and so was Standing Alone. Childress had been reduced to the buff, and then it was Skye’s turn. By the time the Apaches were done, Skye’s party didn’t own a stitch of clothing except for Childress’s hat. For some reason, they awarded him his hat, which perched on his head majestically, as he stood in huge white array. His gargantuan white belly and piano legs rose like a mountain under his Panama.

  Skye could not even describe his feelings, standing there before them all with every last shred yanked off of him, and now adorning the Apaches. The chieftain had commandeered his black top hat along with his rifle, powderhorn, and knives. A subchief had his bear-claw necklace. But they did not take his medicine bundle. Victoria cringed and covered herself, but Standing Alone seemed resigned to her fate, and stood calmly, her slim beauty astonishing. Then, with innate Cheyenne modesty, she turned her back upon them, and stood quietly, all the more galvanizing for having turned her back to them.

  At a word from the chieftain, the Apaches swiftly loaded their booty onto the backs of the horses and their own backs, and vanished as silently as they had come, padding out of the secluded bottoms. Skye watched his horses head downriver, along with the Clydesdale with the monkey riding the mane.

  Dawn had scarcely penetrated this canyon on the west slope of the Sangre de Cristos. Skye watched the Apaches vanish around a bend in the creek, and waited a moment more for surprises, but nothing else happened. He felt helpless, more so than ever in his life because he was naked.

  He turned, wanting to inventory what was left, and found that nothing was left. Only the cart, and the useless harness for the Clydesdale, which was lying beyond the cart. The cart was empty. Every bit of merchandise and every pelt was gone. The canvas that covered it was gone.

  The Colonel approached. His Panama stayed proudly atop his vast acreage of flesh.

  “We’ve walked the plank, and now we’re bobbing in the sea,” said Childress. “A plague on their bloody bodies. Where’s Shine?”

  “He rode the Clydesdale.”

  Something vital seemed to bleed from the Colonel. “Lost him, too, then.”

  “The Clydesdale was last; he can’t keep up with those lighter horses.”

  “Then the Apaches’ll kill him. They won’t let him return here.”

  “You got any ideas?”

  The Colonel brightened. “I will perform my ablutions and then we can sit down under the cart and wait. None of us can walk more than a hundred yards in this cactus.”

  Skye thought it would be a long wait.

  eighteen

  Nothing for food. Nothing to keep the sun from frying them or the wind from chafing them or the chill of night from numbing them. Nothing for their feet. Nothing to hunt with, or to defend themselves with.

  Skye w
ell knew what the odds were. The Colonel was right: they had walked the plank and now bobbed in the empty ocean. It was only a matter of time. Yet he had been in tight corners before and he was not a man to surrender.

  “Let’s look around,” he said to Victoria.

  She nodded. Slowly they patrolled the area looking for anything useful. A forgotten knife, edible roots, a rag. The others were doing the same. But the Jicarillas had been thorough, and had left nothing.

  “We’ll find someone on the Taos road,” Skye said.

  “That’s a half mile of cactus, Skye,” the Colonel said.

  “I’ll get you there without stepping on one cactus,” Skye replied.

  He motioned to Victoria to bring along Standing Alone.

  “Let her walk behind us,” he said, respecting her needs.

  “Skye, I’m staying right here under the cart,” Childress said. “I’ve water and shade, and I’ll wait for help.”

  “Colonel, you’ll have water and some shade with me. We’ll walk the creek.”

  “I’m staying.”

  The Colonel sat down under his cart.

  The man was determined not to move, so Skye didn’t argue. “We’ll send help if we can,” he said.

  “Skye, Sah—good to know you.”

  “And you, Colonel.” He turned to the women. “All right, then. The sooner we reach the Taos road, the better chance we have.”

  He stepped into the creek and found the water numbing, the rocks slippery, and the footing treacherous. He lurched forward, tumbled, and landed splat in the icewater.

  He roared, bolted to his feet, and began shivering. But there wasn’t so much as a rag to dry himself.

  Victoria laughed.

  He turned to roar at her, but she just stood there up to her calves in water, grinning at him.

  They started down the creek, one miserable step at a time, often in rocks, sometimes in sand, occasionally in muck. Skye stubbed his toes and wondered whether this was any better than walking the faint trail beside the creek. He wanted sunshine but there wasn’t any; the sun lay low behind the towering Sangre de Cristos in the east.

  Still … they walked, step by step by step, for a half hour before Skye called a halt. His feet were numb and bruised. Instantly Standing Alone turned her back to them. He sat down and rubbed his legs, which had turned blue. Victoria was cold, too, and working on her slim brown legs.

  Then they started again, hiking down the river, plunging into hidden holes, teetering along until Skye’s feet gave out and they rested again, this time beside sedges.

  That’s when Stands Alone began waving frantically, uttering sharp cries, pointing.

  They looked.

  The Clydesdale was progressing toward them. No Apache was driving it.

  “Bloody horse,” Skye said.

  “Monkeee,” Standing Alone said.

  She was right. Shine was patiently leading the horse by its halter rope.

  Victoria scowled. “Little Person,” she snapped.

  Skye stepped to land, stubbed his toe, but eventually reached the horse. The women followed.

  The monkey chittered, danced, and leaped up on the back of the big brown horse.

  “We’ve been rescued. Don’t know how he did it,” Skye said. “You ladies ride it back, harness him to the cart, put the Colonel in, and return. I’ll wait.”

  Victoria grinned malevolently. She helped Standing Alone clamber onto that big animal, and Skye helped her, and then he watched the Clydesdale trot smartly upstream.

  Skye sat in the bullrushes, wanting some clothing and some moccasins and feeling vulnerable. Hunger caught him, too. They had eaten nothing. The sun was burning in, and he lowered himself into the shade of the bankside brush, fighting off insects. Adam and Eve, he thought, could not have enjoyed Eden.

  It took an hour, but Skye barely noticed. His feet still hurt. But at last, midday, he heard the clopping of the draft horse, stood, and beheld the horse and red cart approaching swiftly, driven by that great white whale, Colonel Childress, still wearing his Panama. Shine had resumed his usual perch on the Clydesdale.

  “Sorry, Skye, I’m out of fig leafs,” Childress said as he pulled up.

  The women, both of them sprawled in the bed of the cart, grinned at him. With what little dignity he could muster, Skye clambered in, and immediately the Colonel snapped the lines over the croup of the draft horse and took off at a swift trot.

  “Colonel, how far to Taos?” Skye asked.

  “I reckon forty or fifty miles—three days.”

  “We’ll be burnt. Maybe we should travel at night.”

  “Well, aren’t you the modest one. Once you’re in the drink, Skye, you have to swim for the nearest shore.”

  “Maybe we should pull up some grasses to cover ourselves.”

  “Skye, you’re naked as Adam. Enjoy it. Admire the scenery. What you need is a good Mexican cigarro.”

  “Are there any villages closer?”

  “Maybe some ranchos.”

  “What’ll we tell people?”

  “Why, Skye, that we’re a pack of libertines and lechers en route to scandalize the pueblo.”

  “What is this word, lecher?” Victoria asked, anticipation in her voice.

  Skye grunted. It was all he could do to sit naked in a bouncing cart with two bouncing naked women, both beautiful.

  Victoria was enjoying it. Standing Alone mostly turned her back, but once she flashed her warm, knowing smile at Skye. Then, unaccountably, the two Indian women began giggling.

  “Look for food,” Skye grumbled.

  They reached the Taos Camino and paused there for one last drink from the creek before turning south. The sun had climbed well into the firmament and soon would be scorching their flesh.

  Skye, disturbed by his proximity to the women, offered to drive the cart, but the Colonel declined, perhaps for the same reason. The trail traversed an empty waste, and they saw nothing. Thirst built again in Skye, along with hunger and the sensation that the sun was going to destroy him.

  “We’d better hole up if you can find shade,” he said.

  “Mister Skye, Sah, tell me where that might be.”

  Skye examined a bright arid plain devoid of trees. But there was brush, and an occasional arroyo.

  “Find an arroyo, Colonel. We’ll perish in this sun, if we haven’t already.” At least the two white men would, he thought.

  “The sooner we reach succor, the sooner we will be preserved, Sah. The shore is still beyond sight, but we’ll make landfall soon.”

  There was no stopping the man. Beyond the turning wheels of the cart lay white clay, dust, small waxy plants that could endure in such a climate, rock, and boundless blue skies.

  Skye turned himself on the cart bed, figuring to roast all sides evenly, but he knew he would be in trouble by nightfall.

  Skye’s world reduced to the walls of the cart, and he closed his eyes. There was little he could do. The heat built, sucking moisture out of him. His stomach rumbled. He felt the first pangs of dehydration; a dry mouth, a fearsome thirst.

  “You all right?” he asked Victoria.

  “Damn hot,” she said.

  The women were doing better than he was. He closed his eyes against the midday glare.

  Some while later, the Colonel whooped.

  “Succor, assistance, help,” he bawled, and the passengers peered out to see a carreta coming their way, far ahead, with three people walking beside it.

  Skye squinted at the apparition. It was a rude cart with stakes holding a tottering load of crooked firewood on it, drawn by a gaunt burro. Three young men in peasant cottons and sandals walked beside it, axes over their shoulders. They were so swart they could have been Indians themselves.

  “Ah, amigos!” bawled Colonel Childress, waving a white arm at them as the parties closed.

  They stared.

  The Colonel rattled on in Spanish, and all Skye fathomed was that he was talking about the Jicarilla Apaches. The
young men’s gaze roved between Childress, huge and white and naked, and the occupants of the cart, resting at last on the women. They gaped, unable to look elsewhere. Standing Alone turned from their stare.

  “Agua, agua,” Childress was saying.

  The young men conferred and then produced a goatskin water bag that had been hanging from the back of their cart, which they handed to Childress, who lifted it and ran a trickle down his gullet while Skye watched enviously, afraid the fat man would drink it all. But Childress took only a swallow and handed it to Skye, who handed it to the women. There was enough for them all to get a few swallows. Childress handed it to the monkey, who drank expertly while the woodcutters stared dumbfounded.

  But they had no food and no clothing to spare; not even a rag. Childress talked with them while Skye and the women waited.

  At last the Colonel turned to his passengers. “Arroyo Hondo, a village, is an hour or two ahead. We are saved!”

  Just barely, Skye thought.

  nineteen

  Arroyo Hondo lay before them, a scatter of adobes nestled in a steep-walled canyon cut by a creek. The man styled Jean Lafitte Childress saw his salvation, but knew it would come only at the price of his mortification. He sat nakedly upon the cart, with a cargo of naked people. It would not be easy.

  He spotted an adobe church or chapel, and two hundred yards behind it, through trees, a black-clad crowd that plainly was burying someone. Probably most of this rural village was there.

  “We’re close,” he said to those huddled miserably behind him. “A long plunge downslope first.”

  He steered his Clydesdale down a steep incline, trusting the heavy horse to brake the cart, and when the land leveled he found himself among cultivated fields. And coming toward him was a bent old woman in black, supporting herself with a staff.

  He wished he had encountered a male, but there was no help for it. He slid his Panama off and onto his lap, not that it would help much.

  She tottered forward, paused at the amazing sight of the red cart driven by a naked man, and waited.