The Deliverance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Taos amazed him. Bursts of green, the leaves of towering cottonwoods, startled the pervasive earthen tones. Water spilled here and there, its sources unknown to him. The town looked somnolent, but when they reached the plaza and were caught in the middle of commerce, he knew that Taos was a lively place. Maybe someone could spare him a crust of bread.

  Not only hunger was tormenting him. He was appalled to be wearing the habit of a Franciscan, and didn’t want to be taken for one. Even worse was Childress, wearing the holy robes that concealed his vast torso, but also his broad-brimmed planter’s hat. This duplicitous dress concealed a pirate and opportunist, who even then was examining assets with a grasping gaze.

  They had argued all the way into town. Skye wanted to head straight for the alcalde, or whoever was in authority, and explain their circumstances. Skye hated false pretenses and deception. They would surely be found out soon enough; he couldn’t even speak Spanish, and knew nothing of the rites and customs of the Franciscans, and it would go badly for them to be exposed as impostors. But Childress had forcefully argued that the Mexicans were likely to throw them into jail if they told the truth; they never believed a story, even of hardship and loss, and their impulse was to throw irons on anyone arousing their suspicions.

  Slowly, the red cart negotiated the narrow alleys leading into the plaza, and then Childress drove around the perimeter of that heart of the city, his huge horse attracting a crowd. The monkey soon added to the mass of people pacing beside the cart, pointing to the skull and crossbones, and shouting questions at Childress, who smiled, lifted his Panama, and proceeded to show off. Victoria and Standing Alone gazed at this lively village from the bed, whispering to each other.

  They passed a vendor of some sort of Mexican treats, and that was when Shine abandoned the mane of the Clydesdale and leaped toward the vendor, his heart set on pilferage.

  People shouted, and then laughed. The monkey won himself some morsel Skye couldn’t identify, covered with a thin dough and contained in husks of corn. Shine returned to his perch on the horse in one bound, and began peeling off the husks and nipping at whatever lay within. Skye envied the little rascal.

  “Shine’s got a tamale. Here we are, Brother Skye. Food and succor everywhere. Just let Brother Childress collect some food.”

  Skye nodded sourly. He was too dizzy with hunger to resist. The women watched from the bed of the red cart, even as strangers gathered around it, pointing to the emblem on the side, and to the giant Clydesdale and the monkey. Shine soon abandoned his perch and was looting everyone in sight of food, springing hither and yon, sometimes even to the vigas, the projecting beams, of the buildings, where he chattered. The people of Taos gladly fed the little fellow, laughing at his thievery.

  They certainly were curious about this strange assemblage in a bright red cart, and whispered among themselves. Children studied them shyly, and then giggled at the monkey, who sat masticating his loot and scolding the crowd.

  “Ah, amigos, amigas,” Childress said, standing in his seat, sweeping that grand hat off his head. “Socorro, por favor. Donativos, help some poor brothers in distress, foster the faith, feed the hungry, share your food with those in holy servitude to God.”

  No one moved. No one believes him, Skye thought.

  But then the monkey began some gymnastic whirls, ending in the theft of a sweet from the vendor, accompanied by shouts and bawling, and suddenly the crowd laughed and dug into their purses for a coin or a bit of grubby paper. Childress passed his hat, which collected not only some coin, but also the corn husk-wrapped things Childress called tamales. The Colonel was not shy about thrusting his Panama toward anyone who looked like he might have a coin, and occasionally a brown hand would snake out and drop something into the hat, whether from charity or because of Shine, who was a born showman, Skye could not know.

  “Mil gracias, a thousand thanks for serving God and the brothers and sisters,” Childress cried. “You have fed two humble brothers, and their, ah, helpers.” He turned to Skye. “The women. What’ll I say?”

  Skye hadn’t any idea.

  “Ah, succor for the concubines,” Childress roared in English.

  Skye, already faint from hunger, suddenly got a lot fainter.

  His eye was upon various burly Mexican males standing quietly about who did not seem so amused and whose gazes were not friendly. The law? Store keeps? Politicians? Powerful ranchers? Skye could not know. He was in a foreign nation, broke, hungry, dizzy, and in bizarre company.

  But Childress was not idle. Nimbly, he handed a corn-wrapped tamale to the women, and another to Skye, who didn’t bother to be polite. He wolfed the food, and found it filling.

  “Ah, Brother Skye, a delectable repast, a faith offering from the humble to the exalted brothers of Saint Francis,” Childress said. “You see? In Mexico, religion gets you everywhere. Now, brother Skye, make the sign of the cross.”

  “I will not commit sacrilege,” Skye replied. “We’re impostors, that’s what, not friars.”

  Childress beamed, faced the cheerful multitude, and made an elaborate sign for all to see.

  “There now. I’ve turned us both into holy men, Skye. Consider me a master of the revels.”

  Skye’s stomach howled for more, but Childress had distributed every scrap of food that had fallen into his hat. There remained in the Panama some sort of specie, both paper and silver, and Skye eyed it eagerly. His scruples had all but vanished in the face of rank desperation, and he even felt a glow of thanksgiving. The pirate and his little simian had put a little food in his belly.

  “Where do they hide the slaves?” Victoria whispered. “I don’t see none.”

  Skye didn’t either, and wondered whether these smiling people had been maligned by Yanks and Texans with avarice in their craniums. Many of the spectators in that clay plaza looked as though they might be part-Indian, but that was the essence of Mexico, that admixture of bloods. Standing Alone slowly unfolded, slipped off the end of the cart, the thin covering of her dress barely concealing her form, and catching fevered glances from warm-eyed males, and then began quietly walking through this cheerful multitude. Skye knew she was looking. She would never stop looking for the boy and the girl ripped from her so suddenly, long ago.

  A frowning rail-thin Anglo man in a black suit approached from the door of a mercantile, and stood staring.

  “Who are you? You’re no more friars than I’m a Chinaman,” he said in English. “If you’re trying to pull the wool over the eyes of these people, you’re making fools of yourselves. You’re already in trouble.”

  “I am Barnaby Skye, and this is Mr. Childress, a trader,” Skye said before Childress could stop him.

  “And what brings you here in monks’ habits? With two Indian women, the first Clydesdale ever seen here, a monkey, and a red cart?”

  “We can discuss that later, in private. With whom do I speak?”

  Skye’s old English reserve and correctness was asserting itself. Childress glared. It was apparent to everyone watching the exchange that Skye was speaking English to this merchant. Childress’s game was up.

  The merchant curtly motioned Skye off the cart. Skye slid to earth, feeling the weight of that unfamiliar habit slow him.

  “William Larrimer,” the man said in a low voice that didn’t carry more than a yard. “Merchant here. Now tell me what you’re doing, and be fast about it. Your time is running out.”

  Skye glanced at Childress, who was studiously ignoring all this.

  “He’s a trader. I’m with the two Indian women. We’re looking for the children of one. We think they’re here, in trouble.”

  “What? Say that again? No, don’t. Godalmighty. Why are you wearing disguises that any half-baked idiot can see through?”

  Skye choked back his temper. “We had trouble with the Jicarillas thirty or forty miles north of here. They left us with nothing but the cart. Naked. Not a stitch of clothing, not a scrap of food, not a riding horse or saddle, not a knif
e or weapon or a pot. Childress’s horse escaped, and that saved our lives. We got the habits in Arroyo Hondo.”

  “Let me get this straight. Childress is a trader with a monkey, a red cart, and a goddamned Clydesdale and you’re along for the ride.”

  Skye nodded.

  The man’s skepticism oozed out of his corded face and fired his sapphire eyes. “This doesn’t add up. Now I want the truth, Skye, and fast, because if you’re not telling it true, you’ll endanger every Yank trading here. Childress knows better than to wander in here and trade without a license from Santa Fe. Especially in some damned Franciscan habit. This isn’t the United States. What did you say his company is?”

  “Childress and McIntyre. They’ve put up a store north of here, on the Yank side of the Arkansas.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “Galveston Bay, he says.”

  “A Texan?” Larrimer’s face turned hard.

  Skye nodded.

  “One damned mess,” the merchant said. “You’re trouble and you’ll be lucky to walk away.”

  twenty-two

  Skye watched an odd-looking priest start across the plaza with a lumbering gait.

  “You’re too late,” Larrimer said. “That’s the Calf.”

  “The what?”

  “Padre Martinez. His head, see it? They call him the Calf. He hates Yanks.”

  “I’m not a Yank.”

  “Lot of good that’ll do you. I shouldn’t even be seen with you.”

  “Mr. Larrimer, we’re destitute and we need help. Anything you can do—”

  “What you’ve done, Skye, if that’s your name, is start trouble for every citizen of the United States living here.”

  Colonel Childress, who had been bantering with the people of Taos, paused as he watched the ponderous progress of the priest, who parted the frightened peons as if he were Moses.

  “Why does he worry you?” Skye asked Larrimer.

  “He’s more powerful than the alcalde, and an alcalde is not just a mayor; he’s police chief and judge, too. The Calf’s agitating to put all us heathen out of the territory, or march us off to the City of Mexico. The Calf’s a law unto himself. Not even the governor rules this priest.”

  The Calf was indeed a strange-looking priest, his huge walleyed head perched heavily on a stocky frame covered with a dusty black cassock.

  At last the priest stopped before them, as the crowd fell back. He peered at each man from bright and penetrating brown eyes, then the cart, monkey, and Indian women, and finally at Larrimer.

  “Que pasa?” he asked Larrimer.

  But Childress replied in a burst of Spanish that Skye couldn’t follow. The fat privateer gesticulated grandly, foam at the lips, pointed at his empty cart and the two women, at himself, and at Skye.

  “What’s he saying?” Skye whispered.

  “That you’re a pair of Franciscans from St. Louis that got robbed by the Jicarillas.”

  Skye barely contained his rage. This was worse trouble because it was a lie, and preposterous.

  The Calf peered, skeptically, as if nearsighted, wetting his lips and pondering. He turned to Larrimer, and said something.

  “I’m translating. Who are you; what are you doing here?”

  Skye was damned if he would lie. “I’m a man without a country, Barnaby Skye, and I’m helping this grieving Cheyenne woman find her son and daughter. We think they were brought here by the Utes. We came to obtain their liberty.”

  “Are you a friar?” Larrimer translated.

  “No, I am in the fur trade, working for Bent, St. Vrain. We were left without clothing, or a weapon or a pot thirty miles north by marauding Jicarillas. A merciful woman in Arroyo Hondo lent us these garments, fed us, and sent us on our way. She took us to the church there, put these habits over our nakedness, and urged us to leave swiftly.”

  “A likely story. Where are you from?” Larrimer translated.

  “London.”

  “Where’s the fat one from?”

  “He says Galveston Bay.”

  “Tejas! Who owns that monkey?”

  Skye gestured toward Childress.

  “What is his name? The Texas one. What is he doing here?”

  “Jean Lafitte Childress. He started with a wagon of trading goods. We lost them all to the Apaches, and our horses except for this. We came with him, with our own horses and gear.”

  The Calf stared at the Clydesdale. “The great horse looks like the Calf,” he said, and Larrimer translated. “Why are these symbols of piracy and death painted on the side of this cart?”

  Skye shook his head. There were facets of Childress that were beyond fathoming.

  “He wants to know who she is,” Larrimer said, pointing at Victoria.

  “She is my Crow wife, Victoria.”

  The Calf laughed heartily. “Concubina,” he said.

  Skye didn’t need the translation. “Wife,” he said, heat building in him.

  The Calf chuckled nastily, and spoke again.

  “You will be of great interest to the authorities,” Larrimer translated. “One says he’s a monk from St. Louis. The other says he’s a man from London looking for Cheyenne children. Monks with two sluts, a bloodred wagon, and a monkey.” He beckoned. Skye thought the priest’s finger was an inch in diameter.

  “Do we have to go with him?”

  “Skye, if you don’t, you’re likely to get yourself killed. See that?”

  Standing on the periphery of this crowd stood three young men bearing lances. Skye thought all of Taos had collected there, twenty deep. These were no longer warm and friendly faces.

  “What’s going to happen to us?”

  “I don’t second-guess Mexican officials. But the last few illegal traders or … filibusters, is that it, Skye? … got sent off to Mexico City in chains, and the few that survived the long walk in irons are still there and won’t be leaving there. Not unless they leave feet first.”

  All this Colonel Childress absorbed angrily, glaring at Skye as if his truth-telling were a criminal act in its own right. Skye didn’t care. Childress’s lies had gotten them into this.

  Skye saw that they had little choice. He nodded to Larrimer. Did he see some pity in the man’s corded face? Then the huge, ominous crowd began to seethe along, carrying Skye, Childress, Victoria, and Standing Alone with it. Shine leaped up to Childress’s thick shoulder, and even he looked subdued and afraid. Someone was leading away the Clydesdale and the wagon, and Skye doubted he would ever see the rig again.

  Skye glanced at Standing Alone, who bore all this with her innate dignity, enduring the stares, keeping her thoughts private. Victoria, always the observant one, was studying the clothing and weapons of these people, looking at faces one by one, as she was harried along with the throng. Where were they going? Did this earthen village have a jail?

  They were escorted across the dusty plaza and through an alley to a massive building with walls as blank as the future, and there pushed through the thick doors and into the sharp coolness within. Skye had no inkling of the purpose of this structure; only that it contained chairs of rawhide, benches, and a beehive fireplace in a corner. The sole window could swiftly be shuttered; the heavy slab-wood door could be barred. As a jail it would do just fine. The women in their thin shifts would soon be chilled in such a place.

  This was some private residence. The massive door creaked shut behind them, and Skye felt the claustrophobia he had experienced deep in the bowels of men-o’-war. The room wasn’t large. Skye headed for the high window, and could see one of the men with a lance standing beside it.

  “Skye, why didn’t you keep your trap shut?” Childress asked. “I could’ve talked my way out of it.”

  “Lied your way out of it,” Skye retorted.

  The monkey abandoned the Colonel’s shoulders and explored the room with swift bounds, hunting food but settling at last in the patch of sun on the sill of the high window.

  “Skye, get this straight. I’m a pri
vateer. I will do what I will do.”

  There was no sense arguing with the man. Skye turned his back on him and looked to see how Victoria and Standing Alone were faring. The Cheyenne woman had settled into a chair.

  “Victoria, tell her we came here without the permission of the governor—the chief. I’ll get her out some way, but I don’t know when or how.”

  Childress started laughing. “That’s what they all think before they walk the plank.”

  Skye boiled. He started toward that fat pirate, but the door opened again, shooting bright sunlight, into the room and half blinding him. Shine started chittering.

  This time a hawkish black-bearded man appeared and surveyed them all with imperious eyes. Four soldiers backed him, this time armed with broadswords.

  “I am prefect, Juan Andres Archuleta. I make a, a … disposition of your case,” he said. “I speak little English.”

  “We’re hungry,” Skye said.

  “That is of no consequence. We are much entertained by your party, but we have learned many lessons from our past.”

  He nodded, and two of the guards caught the women by the arm and escorted them out. The last view Skye got of Victoria, she was being dragged into the sunlight but she was looking back to him, and her eyes told him of love, and desperation and determination. Standing Alone didn’t require dragging. She walked willingly, but paused at the bright door frame, looked back at Skye with sorrow. Then they were gone.

  “We’ll deal with your concubines separately.”

  “My wife is not a concubine!” Skye snapped.

  “She is what I choose to call her, a puta.”

  Skye lurched at him, only to be constrained by Childress, who clamped an arm over him. The grip was hard. Bright steel blades gleamed just ahead of him.

  “Very gallant, Americano.”

  “I’m not an American. And that was my wife.”

  “Si, si, you have say that. You’re a man without a nation, and therefore, all the easier for us to deal with.” He turned to Childress. “A Tejano rebel. A privateer. Maybe a spy. Maybe doing some little task for el Presidente Lamar.”