The Deliverance

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “The gambucinos,” Childress said.

  “Slaves.”

  “Theoretically not slaves. No such thing in Mexico, they insist. Indentured workers on the books.”

  “Can they walk away?”

  Childress laughed.

  Below, a thin bent man stumbled on the second notch of a tall ladder and fell back, spilling his ore. Instantly, a crowd filled the basket again. The bent man shouldered it slowly, and stepped upward on trembling legs, one notch at a time. Skye thought that man was on his last legs, and wouldn’t last another week.

  “Skye, get on with it. The manager’s up ahead, there.”

  But Skye was in no hurry. He waited to see if the trembling slave would make it. He looked for water barrels to satiate the terrible thirst of these miserable slaves, and found none. He saw none of them resting or recouping. There was only the sight of shining, bent backs of coppery little men, yellow dust caking their bodies, and the big gray baskets made of reed or something similar, all of it lit by a low sun.

  “Skye, blast it.”

  “I am looking at hell. Nothing in the Royal Navy comes close, and believe me, I’m an expert on that.”

  “Well, that’s not important. Are we going to rescue the wretch or not?”

  Skye turned to see Standing Alone, who stared unblinking at the sight below her, the lines of her face taut. Victoria was holding her arm, cursing softly. All this was obviously beyond her most terrible imaginings. Skye could scarcely turn his gaze elsewhere, knowing that this awful pit probably claimed two or three lives each day, and what lay before him was an engine of death and pain.

  At last he reined the horses the last two hundred yards to the squat, sullen adobe building ahead, where a thin, hawk-faced man in a white suit awaited them, backed by two burly segundos.

  forty-six

  The man in the spotless white suit a size too large surveyed the occupants in the carriage as Skye halted the sweated trotters. He did not approach the carriage, but waited, leaning into a gold-knobbed malacca.

  “Ah, mi caballero,” rumbled Childress, grandly, flourishing his top hat.

  “Ah, the Right Honorable Lord Viceroy Sir Arthur Childress,” the mine operator replied in sandpapery English. “Welcome to the mine.”

  “Ah, a Mexican who speaks my tongue! You have found me out with a glance. Permit me to introduce their royal highnesses the queens of Madagascar and Tierra del Fuego.”

  “Yes, very colorful, an entertaining idea, heathen queens skittering around rural Mexico to titillate us. I am Hector Ramon Pedro Marcus O’Grady at your service. And these gentlemen are assistant superintendents of the mine, Jesus and Pedro.”

  Skye thought that the assistant superintendents looked more like jailers. English! The operator spoke English and had an Irish surname. Skye supposed he ought to be glad, but already Childress was in deep trouble, and this was turning sour right from the start.

  The mining man turned to him. “And you are a certain Mister Skye, the one who escaped execution by the wiles of that monkey. I was there, you know. Yes, the governor was curious whether you would all link up. It seems you have. Just what business you’re about eludes us, unless it’s the business of a Texas invasion after all. But I am not being hospitable. Do step down and have some tea. I saw you coming and have some Oolong steeping.”

  Skye’s stomach churned. Had they ridden straight into a trap?

  “Charmed, I’m sure, Sah,” said Childress. “Ladies?” he said, holding out a hand.

  “Sonofabitch,” Victoria muttered, stepping down. Standing Alone followed, nervous and uncertain. Little Moon sat, frightened.

  “You sit right there, young lady,” Childress said. He turned to O’Grady. “We have a servant girl, Sah.”

  “Yes, so it seems. The governor thought she might be found with you.”

  Skye sighed. So even that was no secret to this well-informed man. This was more than trouble; it was menace. He set the carriage weight on the ground, hooked the lines to it, and followed the rest into the rude adobe building. It was less rude within, and divided into several small warrens. But O’Grady led them into an office that resembled a parlor, and seated them upon stuffed chairs.

  He spoke swiftly to a woman servant, and smiled.

  “Ah, my Yankee friends, we shall have our tea in short order.”

  More trouble, Skye thought.

  “Sah, not one of us is a citizen of the United States. I am a peer of England.”

  “Galveston Bay, I hear, is only a mile from London. Did you not engage in privateering on the Thames?”

  Skye squirmed. All of Childress’s wild stories were coming home to roost.

  “And what are you viceroy of? Zanzibar? Van Dieman’s Land, Bermuda, Ceylon? Yes, and these charmers are, ah, queens of, ah …”

  Childress laughed expansively. “You’ve found me out, Sah!”

  Skye itched. He studied the thugs hovering about behind O’Grady, and thought he could take one, maybe both. He’d learned a few tricks in the mountains. Maybe he and the women could run for it … for a while. But not for long. This was looking more and more like a one-way trip in irons to the City of Mexico.

  The superintendent’s bright blue eyes locked upon Skye. “And you, Mister Skye, what brings the legend of the fur trade to Mexico, might I ask? You, at least, are an Englishman by birth. Have you been bought by Texas? Should you have been shot after all?”

  Skye saw the question as his opportunity. “I am here on a peaceful mission, Mr. O’Grady.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “We are looking for Cheyenne children who were abducted by Utes years ago and sold into slavery here.”

  “There is no slavery in Mexico, Mister Skye.”

  Skye didn’t want to argue. Let them call it whatever they wanted, indenture, peonage. “We have reason to believe a Cheyenne boy works here. This is his mother, Standing Alone, of the Cheyenne people.”

  “Ah, yes, this woman is a legend. I know of her. The traders who pass Bent’s Fort told us of her and her heartrending vigil. They speak of her with utmost respect.”

  “As long as you seem to know my purpose, and her purpose, then perhaps you’ll help us.”

  O’Grady stared at Skye from rheumy eyes that revealed only clockwork.

  Childress intervened. Ah! Señor O‘Grady, my friend Skye here is straying far from our actual purposes,” Childress said.”I’m looking for mining properties, something that will make me lasciviously rich, eh? I am the fiduciary guardian of the estates of these noble ladies, eh? Gold comes to mind: lustrous, soft, pure, delicious, glittering, heavy gold, to burthen the pocket, stuff the purse, suckle the loosest dreams … Señor O’Grady, Sah, you might join us in a great pecuniary adventure.”

  “The monkey is shaking its head and tugging at the leg of your trousers.”

  “Ah, wretched little ape. Simian Judas, scavenger, mountebank, obscene little animal! Never trust a monkey, Sah.”

  Skye had enough. If they were to leave this place alive and with Little Moon and his women, there would have to be absolute truth.

  “Mr. O’Grady,” he snapped in a way that subdued Childress. “Have you any Cheyenne working here?”

  “Cheyenne? Mister Skye, what is your interest again?”

  “Charity, sir.”

  “Charity, is it?”

  Skye was boiling. “Is that something you don’t grasp?”

  “You puzzle me. But no, no Cheyenne. We employ Mexican nationals. We are forbidden to employ others.”

  Skye stared at the man, who smiled, nodded toward the steaming teapot.

  “Tarahumaras, Jicarillas, Jumanos, Suma …” He shrugged. “They work well and hard for a while and then grow lazy, like so many of their coppery brethren.”

  “Does the other mine here employ Cheyenne?”

  “Ah! You are behind the time. It is closed. It exhausted itself, and this mine alone survives.”

  “You speak English.”


  “My father, sir, was from Killarney. My mother is the Dona Olivera, of Chihuahua.”

  “My fine friend, do you want to dicker?” Childress asked, rubbing pudgy fingers together. “What’s it worth, eh? I just might plunge.”

  “To a foreigner, nothing. It is forbidden.”

  “Well, there are always ways around that. Here, have a cigar.”

  “Yes, I believe I shall. It’s just the sort enjoyed by the governor.”

  O’Grady plucked the cigar out of Childress’s hand, but did not light it. The cigar vanished into a drawer.

  “Well, delighted we have the same tastes!” Childress boomed.

  The jails of Mexico City yawned wide, always assuming they made it that far before succumbing to whatever cruelties the federal troops might dream up along the way.

  O’Grady stood suddenly, his gaunt frame scarcely filling his white suit, which flowed over and around his body as he moved. “This mine barely earns a profit. By the time I acquire, feed, house, and clothe my gambucinos, the cost of extracting the dust from this gravel nearly equals the value of the gold. You see how it is.”

  “No. How is it?” Skye asked.

  “Come look. But sip your tea first, and rest. You’ve had a long ride.”

  Victoria listened silently, grasping most of it. Standing Alone sat mutely.

  “Tell the Cheyenne woman her son died two years ago,” O’Grady said.

  “What?” The bluntness startled Skye.

  “He is dead. Most die soon. I have never understood it. Sickness. A weakness in savages. The will of God.” O’Grady shrugged.

  Skye stood abruptly. “Dead? How do you know it was her son?”

  “Four years past he was brought to me by the traders of Taos. About ten years old, big enough. Armijo took the girl, the one out there. I bought the boy. He didn’t last. Pity, isn’t it?”

  Skye nodded to Victoria, who began translating into the argot she shared with Standing Alone. The Cheyenne woman trembled once, but she said nothing.

  “Come,” said O’Grady. They followed mutely out the door and down a path to a lip of a hill overlooking the mine, and just a few yards from the series of precarious ladders leading to the stockpiled ore.

  “Let the Cheyenne woman see for herself who walks up those ladders,” O’Grady said. “All do. They take turns, every last one.”

  “Why are you bothering?” Skye asked.

  “So that you will see I tell you the truth. You and I talk truly, even if this Right Honorable Viceroy Sir Arthur Childress fails the test. In Mexico, honor counts. It is the honorable life and honorable death we seek.”

  “And what else?”

  O’Grady smiled. “Eldorado.”

  And so they stood at the pit, lit now by a low sun, watching each bent-over, twisted Indian struggle up the ladders with his basket of gold-bearing gravel. Standing Alone stood closest, her back arched, her body pressed against a rail, her black hair fluttering in the hot breezes. As each one approached, she cried out a word. Skye didn’t know the word, but surely it was Cheyenne, and surely not the dead boy’s name. But none of these twisted, ruined, ribby, gaunt slaves so much as glanced her way.

  Her voice shrilled into the wind like the cry of a raven, harsh, painful, sibilant, tender, and the wind only blew the word back upon her. And yet she persisted, watching wretch after wretch wrestle his basket to the pile of ore.

  “Come,” said O’Grady, and he led them to a different area, where squatting naked Indians, older and more adept, swirled the gravel around inside of crude wooden bowls, using tiny infusions of water to spin the gravel away from the heavier metal. A dozen of these worked ceaselessly; all were gaunt. Standing Alone held her hat to her head, and said nothing.

  “Come,” said O’Grady, and he escorted them, past a compound where miners lived, to a dirt-strewn field lumped with unmarked graves. One open one yawned, and as they approached a pestilence of crawling and flying things and a foul stench shot toward them, nauseating Skye. Redheaded black vultures flapped upward.

  “They do not last long,” O’Grady said. “A weakness of those people.”

  forty-seven

  Somewhere in this foul field lay the bones of her son. Standing Alone was careful not to say his name, or even think it, lest she disturb his spirit. The one who was once her son had not lasted long here, in this place of pestilence and starvation. They had worked him, starved him, beat him, and he had died.

  Now she knew. But somehow she had known long ago, for the medicine seers of her people had seen this in the sweetgrass smoke and had told her. But she had kept her vigil at Bent’s Fort anyway, for the daughter lived and might return.

  The sun’s light slanted across this place, but she saw the darkness of this land, as if no sun shone here. This boneyard held the remains of many of the Peoples, the ones who roamed this country before the white men came. She was familiar with torture, with slavery, with captivity, for her people had engaged in all of these things against enemies. But the slaves of her people, women and children taken in war, were usually treated well, soon intermarried, and became part of the band. Sometimes her people tortured enemies too. But this was different. This was endless women’s work, this grubbing the soil and washing the metal from it. But she saw no women doing it; only men, who should be hunting or warring or protecting their People instead of this shameful labor.

  And this toil was destroying them, just as it had destroyed the beloved one whose name must never again pass her lips. She stared bleakly at this witch-man in white, the mine chieftain who did not know Heammawihio, the Wise One Above. She saw a horseman patrolling the perimeter of this place, and knew why none of these gambucinos ran away. She stared, and wondered if she and Skye and Victoria and the fat one called Childress and her daughter would all be put to work here too, and soon die.

  Aiee, this was something to think about.

  She meandered past this place of bones, toward some open-sided buildings with thatched roofs, and here she discovered a kitchen of sorts and pots of thin soup hanging on tripods over fires. Was that all those people would eat, this watery soup steaming in iron kettles? Some stocky bronzed women of the Peoples were cutting thick roots and throwing them into the pots. Where was meat, which made men strong? This was not enough in such a meal to feed an infant.

  She watched, learning much of this place. She could not grasp the tongue, except a few words. She did not know any of the tongues of the coppery slaves who starved and toiled here until they died, so she could speak to no one. She wanted to ask questions.

  At this kitchen place sat two boys, huddled on the earth, neither of them at manhood yet. Maybe ten or eleven winters. Newcomers. Not yet worn down. Not yet twisted. Aiee! She knew their moccasins. Yellow dyed, like most Arapaho leather. Arapaho boys. Her people knew the Arapaho well, sometimes to fight beside them against the Comanches and Kiowas. Arapahos were friends, and spoke a tongue the Cheyennes could easily learn. These boys were newcomers, brought to this place this very day by slave traders, and soon to die like the one whose name could not be uttered, who had issued from her womb.

  Yellow moccasins. Arapaho boys! Sturdy, not yet ruined. Even as she studied them, an idea formed. She would snatch them from here, take them to her people and make them Cheyenne boys. The death of her son would be made right: the People would have two new boys for the one lost. Aiee! But how? She could not ask the fat one, or Mister Skye, for the want of their words. But she could talk to the Crow woman with signs and words they knew. Ah, she would do that, swiftly, for those boys might soon vanish into the pit and be lost to her forever.

  They stared at her, not knowing whether she was a friend.

  A fierce intention spread through her. She did not know what medicine might help her or what the augurs were. She eyed the boys again. They sat quietly, awaiting their fate, suspicious of her because she wore the clothing of white people.

  But they might know the finger signs, or even some of her words. She drifted toward
them, and now they studied her. They were stocky boys, still in flesh, their gazes wary. Had they been stolen by the Utes? Sold here? She made the sign for her people, the Cheyenne, and they stared at her, surprised. She saw light bloom in their eyes. She made other signs: Wait! Be ready. Friend. Run.

  They stared, perturbed and silent. They were brave boys, scornful of their fate, but they had yet to lift a basket of rock, or stagger up one of those log ladders or feel the whip. How swiftly they would change under the lash of the man in white.

  She did not waste more time on them. They had been informed.

  The man in white was amiably escorting Skye, Victoria, and the fat one through the works, past the older ones swirling the rock in bowls, past the places were people slept. He looked like a hawk with a rabbit in its talons, enjoying the moment before he snapped his curved beak over the neck of the rabbit. Yes, that one, O’Grady, was a hunter.

  What sort of man was he, who put so many men to this task? Did he care about any of them or only for the yellow metal? Did he free any? Was the only escape from this place the foul pit where sharp-toothed creatures ripped away flesh from bone? Did he have a wife and children who lived handsomely because of these men staggering up the ladders? Aiee, what a one was that man in the white suit, exuding darkness just the way this earth, here, radiated darkness and pain, so much so that it made her body ache and her own bones hurt.

  She caught up with them, and motioned to Victoria, her fingers flying:

  “Two Arapaho boys, friends my people. Just brought here,” she said, making words the Crow woman would grasp.

  Victoria glanced sharply at the boys huddled in the shade of the open-sided building.

  “We must take them away,” Standing Alone said.

  Victoria stared at her and at the boys, understanding the urgency in Standing Alone’s plans. The Crow woman would not have to be told that these would be a gift to the Cheyenne People, two boys to breed into fine warriors.