The Slavers Page 4

  With the gun snapped shut, I put it on the desk in front of him. “Don’t be a fool, Elbert. Use it if you have to. See you in an hour.”

  Chapter Four

  When I got downstairs three cavalry troopers were passing a bottle around on the other side of the street. They were drunk or acting drunk, and it looked like they were waiting for me. The Mexicans had spotted them, too, but not all of them had run indoors. About ten of Elbert’s Mexicans stood around. Maybe they’d pitch in if the three soldiers started something.

  I rolled a cigarette and struck a match on a wall and then I started down Bedoya Street toward the plaza. They didn’t throw the empty bottle at my back, but, being tough soldier boys, they couldn’t just set it down easy. One of them threw the bottle and broke it against a wall. No doubt about it, they were coming after me. I took my time and so did they. When I reached the plaza and started across they were still behind.

  Whatever they were up to, they didn’t want to start trouble in the street. You know how that starts, first the badmouthing, then the shoving. Nothing like that happened, and I kept going. They were dead wrong if they thought the blue uniforms would keep me from shooting their kneecaps to bits if they tried to jump me.

  On the other side of the plaza there was a saloon and I went into it. I filled the glass again but left it on the bar. It was still early, not much action was taking place—a few drinkers at the bar, poker players at a table in the corner. Not much of a saloon for such a big town. Didn’t even have a piano player.

  One boot heel hooked over the brass rail, I waited for them to start. Most saloon brawlers pushing for a fight use much the same trouble-starters. If you’re from the South they go on about how General Lee was a cowardly son of a bitch, not to mention traitor. A Yankee gets called not just a Yankee but a no-good dollar-hungry carpet bagging bastard. Twenty years after the War these were the tried and true trouble starters. It would be a change, I thought, if these three fellers would try something new.

  They did—and it gave them away. Not that it mattered a damn. Quiet enough when they pulled chairs up to the table, they got started two drinks after the bottle was uncorked. Two were Yankees by the way they talked, the third man sounded like Alabama. The Alabaman wore sergeant’s chevrons, and that put him in charge. Long and wiry, a mean man not too bright, he looked like he’d be a pretty fair soldier when there was fighting to be done. Now he rolled whiskey around his mouth and gargled with it before he swallowed it. “Jee-suss! If that ain’t good stuff,” he declared.

  Slopping whiskey over the top of his glass, he raised it. “Here’s to Kit Carson, boys! A better man there never was at killing Indians.”

  They drank to that and I waited. One of the other troopers, a big dark-faced man with thick eyebrows that ran across his forehead without a break, poured more whiskey. “To Chivington and Custer!” he roared.

  The Alabaman looked at me. “You better have a good reason, mister. You saying General Custer ain’t worth a drink?”

  No matter what I said they wouldn’t let it pass. The only thing bothered me, they weren’t wearing guns. The two other soldiers got up, and I still didn’t get it. They knew who I was, so they had to know I could break their legs with bullets before they got halfway across the room.

  The Alabama sergeant grinned with crooked, horsy teeth. “No need to answer, mister. You’re going to drink, no mistake about it. You’re going to drink that whole bottle. Ain’t he, boys?”

  No need to draw on them, not yet. I told them what I would do to their kneecaps if they kept coming at me the way they were. I guess that bothered the other two soldiers but not the gangly Southerner. It was time to show them that the Colt .44 was a real gun.

  I didn’t expect trouble to come from the door. That’s why I wasn’t watching it. A hard voice from outside the door told me to drop the gun. I didn’t drop the gun. I looked at the door and saw two Winchesters and a double-action Army .45 pointing my way. The man with the .45 was a captain and the gun in his hand was cocked. There had been no sound of any guns being cocked or shells being levered, and that meant they’d been waiting out there in the dark.

  Even with the .45 looking at me, I think I could have dropped the captain—maybe all three of them. “Drop it,” the captain said. It was a hard decision to make but, finally, I put the gun on the bar.

  “Take it,” the captain ordered. One of the men with the captain got the .44 and the captain stuck it inside his belt. The captain snapped his fingers and a trooper clicked open a pair of manacles.

  “Just a Goddamn minute,” I said, knowing the whole thing was arranged. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Provost Marshal’s Office,” the captain said. “And you? You’re under arrest for threatening to murder United States soldiers. Don’t argue with me, mister. I heard you do it myself.”

  The Alabama sergeant chimed in. “That’s the truth, so help me, sir. Me and Clancy and Zimmerman was having ourself a drink when this gunman here starts badmouthing the Army. First we don’t take no notice, thinking he’s drunk. Then we ask him to leave us be—we ain’t armed—he threatens to gun us down.”

  “Ain’t that the way it happened, boys?” The Alabama sergeant was asking the other drinkers how it was. Nobody spoke up for me. I knew damn well nobody would. The bartender was more afraid of the Army than he was of me.

  “That’s right, Captain,” he said.

  Boots sounded on the sidewalk and Long John Buckman came in. The Marshal looked peeved and tired, and his eyes narrowed when he saw me.

  “You again,” he said mournfully. “What is it this time?”

  The captain told his lying story, not all that eager to be doing what he was doing, I could tell. But he was doing it.

  Long John stepped up in front of me and talked over his shoulder to the captain. “The man’s a civilian,” he said. “I’ll take him. You’re under arrest, cowboy,” he said to me. “You should have listened to me about Colorado.”

  I guess the captain hadn’t expected Long John to show up. He hesitated before he spoke. “This man is in military custody, Marshal. I’m taking him to the fort.”

  Only Long John’s eyes showed surprise. “But the man’s a civilian. The Army has no jurisdiction. This man is my ...”

  General Waycross—or somebody—had given the captain pretty ironclad orders. “I won’t argue with you, Marshal. The prisoner will remain in military custody until further notice.”

  Long John looked at me and that made him look at the floor. They were putting the manacles on me when he went out without saying another word. It looked like Long John was sliding close to the bottom.

  They marched me out of there, the two soldiers helping me along with the muzzles of their Winchesters. The new army post was built close to town and I didn’t get more than thirty or forty raps in the small of the back before we got there.

  “What happens next?” I asked the captain. We were getting close to the gate of the fort. “You shoot me inside or outside? Escaping prisoner— what else could you do?”

  This stiff-necked stuffy bluecoat officer didn’t seem like the sort of man to murder an unarmed prisoner. Something like that was in my mind when I gave up my gun. Every step closer to that gate made me wonder if I’d done a fool thing.

  “Hold your tongue, mister,” said the captain of soldier police. “Nobody’s going to shoot you if you mind your manners.”

  “You mean you’d shoot me for bad manners?”

  One of the troopers snickered and the other belted me across the kidneys with the barrel of his rifle. “The Army will teach you manners,” the captain advised me. I had no doubt that the Army would try.

  The sentry passed us through the gate. I figured the guardhouse would be the next stop. Instead, they marched me over to a new two-story frame building with a gallery running around the second floor. A sign said it was where the Provost Marshal hung out. I didn’t get to meet the great man himself and it could be that he didn’t even know I was
alive.

  “In here,” the captain said pointing to a door with his name on it. Captain J. T. Pendergast. It was the office of a man who likes to give and take orders. A clean bare stiff-necked office, like the captain himself, and it smelled of new lumber and yellow soap.

  The only chair was behind Pendergast’s desk and he sat in it. “You stand there,” he told me. He put my gun into a desk drawer, locked it and put the key in his pocket. This Captain Pendergast was just about the neatest officer I ever saw. His silver captain’s bars glittered in the lamplight. When he took off his hat I wasn’t surprised to see the graying reddish hair cropped short in the new Prussian cut favored by some officers.

  The two soldiers were behind me, on both sides of the door. Pendergast let me stand there while he got a printed form from the desk and wrote something in the blank spaces. When he finished he looked up as if having me there came as a surprise.

  Tapping the paper with the blunt end of the pen, he said, “These are serious charges, mister. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “You didn’t ask me who I was.”

  Pendergast ignored that. A nod from him got me a crack from one of the guards and both men brought up their rifles when I turned on them. “Face front, prisoner,” Pendergast roared. “Once more, do you have anything to say?”

  The back of my skull hurting like that, I had plenty to say. Not about the charges—about Captain Pendergast. White faced, Pendergast told the guards, “Use your fists.”

  To make it easy for them, he unholstered his .45 and cocked it. “Stand still,” he said. “Here’s where you learn manners.”

  Well, it wasn’t such a bad beating. They didn’t try to knock my teeth out through my jaw, or gouge out my eyes. Pendergast’s two sluggers were right good at their job. Usually two men beating on a man tend to get in each other’s way, but not these two jokers. For me, it was like a very rough waltz. It wasn’t easy for me to remember that Pendergast’s .45 was ready to blow a hole in my belly. But I managed. Mostly they stayed away from my face, except when they got carried away by the joy of it all. Mostly they hit me in the gut. Then I guess one of them got tired, because he got behind me and pinned my arms while the other soldier went to work on my belly and ribs.

  I was on the floor and they were taking shots at my kidneys. Pendergast said something but they kept on using the boots. Those two boys surely loved their work. Pendergast slapped the top of the desk and roared at them to leave off. The two soldiers were panting like winded horses. And me—I just lay there.

  Now there was a hard man, Captain Pendergast. The least he could do, after me taking such a thumping, was to let me rest up for a while. But no such thing. He slapped the top of the desk and roared at me. “On your feet, mister. That’s an order.”

  Doubled up with pain, I managed to call him a silly son of a bitch.

  The two soldiers had paid me in advance for any insults I might throw at their captain. Pendergast didn’t order any more rough stuff. “Put him in the chair,” he ordered his two sluggers.

  It was nice of the captain to give up his chair. At the time there was one thought in my mind—to repay the kindness at some future date. A date not too far in the future. Even a man with silver bars has to crawl when you shoot the legs from under him.

  They picked me up and threw me in the chair so fast it nearly went over. Pendergast caught and steadied it. “Whiskey in the closet,” he told one of the soldiers.

  “How’re you feeling, mister?” he asked me.

  I said fine.

  Pendergast was exasperated with me. No other word for the way he sounded. Not riled—exasperated. I was beyond both words.

  “Still the hard man, eh Carmody? Don’t know when you’ve had enough? You want some more?”

  I straightened myself not without pain. I know when a man is talking tougher than he feels. “Sure,” I said. “This time you join in.”

  Pendergast didn’t answer. One of the troopers came back with a bottle and glass. Now that the man-beating session was past, you couldn’t have asked for two more considerate private soldiers. One held the glass and the other poured. He filled the glass right to the top. I drank half, paused, and drank the other half. The one who poured was more sympathetic than his partner. “Feeling better, mister?” he asked.

  “Shut up, Mulligan,” Pendergast roared.

  “How do you feel, mister?” Pendergast asked.

  The question didn’t come right away, and by the time it did come the Army whiskey was working on me. “Better than you will,” I said.

  Pendergast picked up the charge sheet and waved it like a flag. Medicine men wave magic bones; officers wave papers with charges listed on them. “This can get you five years, maybe ten, Carmody. You don’t know how serious this is. I know. It can get you twenty years.”

  I raised my head. “Then do it, you lousy tin soldier. See how far you get.”

  No need to tell Pendergast that he couldn’t— legally—get me thirty days.

  He jumped the gun. “You may be a jailhouse lawyer, mister. Out here that doesn’t mean much. I say you’re a gunman and a trouble maker. You want to know how you can save yourself?”

  “Jesus saves,” I said.

  Pendergast looked hard at me. “Not in Santa Fe, mister. Here I save. I asked you if you wanted to save yourself. You’re too dumb to listen. Now listen. The Army doesn’t want you around ...”

  “Meaning General Waycross,” I sneered.

  Pendergast held himself back from hitting me. My, but the ass-kissing son of a hypocrite was pompous. “I think you’re a fool, mister. I can wreck you, but I’m willing to give you a chance. General Waycross wouldn’t use you to polish his boots. You’re here on a serious criminal charge. You don’t know how serious. Mister, I shouldn’t do this but I’m doing it because you’re a fool.”

  Captain J. T. Pendergast took a breath, knowing what he was and probably not liking it. “Get out of Santa Fe, out of New Mexico Territory—and I’ll drop the charges against you. Yes or no, mister?”

  Feeling the way I did, it was easy to say no.

  “You’re in trouble, Pendergast,” I said. “You better kill me now, or you’re in trouble. Kill me—you may still be in trouble. Your bluff, your frame-up, didn’t work. Maybe you didn’t plan it—you were most of it. You took me here, but a saloon full of people saw you. You can kill me to cover up—say you let me go out of the goodness of your stinking heart, and I rode off. But what about these two jokers? What about them? They’ll know and they’ll talk, not right away but they’ll get drunk and then they’ll talk. Maybe they’ll talk to you and ask favors.”

  “Your last chance,” Pendergast warned me. I wasn’t warned. I said: “Let me go now or kill me. This is your last chance.”

  Pendergast walked to the door and opened it. “Keep him here,” he said. “Kill him if he moves.”

  Pendergast went out. I asked the trooper called Mulligan about another drink. The other trooper frowned but didn’t open his mouth.

  “Shut up,” Mulligan growled at his partner. “Drink, don’t drink—nobody cares.”

  Mulligan didn’t use the glass this time. Tilting the bottle, he let me drink, and then he drank.

  “Don’t kill it,” his partner said.

  Mulligan hadn’t reached thirty, but there wasn’t a tooth in his mouth. Having no teeth didn’t stop him from smiling with his gums. Mulligan passed the bottle to the other man. Mulligan called him Weirima, which sounded Navajo to me.

  “You Finn bastard,” Mulligan said. “You love booze worse than an Irishman.”

  Captain Pendergast had used the cold night air to put his dignity back, and I guess he didn’t want to lose it again. “Take the prisoner to General Waycross’ house,” he ordered Mulligan and the Finn. “I’m going to my quarters.”

  Mulligan and Weirima gave salutes that were somewhat less than completely respectful, and Captain J. T. Pendergast—the follow-orders son of a bitch—went out. I hated C
aptain Pendergast more than I did a while back when Mulligan and the Finn were trying to kick loose my lower guts. Now, though, the hate was more distant. The booze and General Brewster Waycross were responsible for that.

  The Irishman and the Finn were still soldiers used to obeying orders. “Step off, mister,” the Finn said.

  The pain in my gut kept trying to make me fold over like a jackknife. Now that I was being passed on to the General, the two troopers didn’t so much as push me on the way across the square. “Tell the General hello for me, will you, Carmody,” Mulligan said.

  “Better not walk down any dark streets after this,” was all I had to say.

  Mulligan couldn’t do much about it; we were coming to the General’s house. It was a pretty plain building to house a general, even a brigadier: a two-story frame house painted white; bright lights showed upstairs and down; a bluecoat with a Springfield rifle stood on the porch.

  The sentry yanked on the bell-pull. I stood waiting, the two soldiers behind me.

  Chapter Five

  Nobody opened the door but General Brewster C. Waycross himself. That was a surprise for me: I didn’t think real live generals did ordinary things like opening doors. The light was behind the General and his huge bulk blocked off most of it. “No one else comes in, you understand, Dayner?” the General told the sentry.

  “This way, Mr. Carmody,” he told me.

  Now it was Mister! It was better than getting kicked in the belly, but I had twenty-three different kinds of pain to put up with, and I wasn’t about to slobber on his boots because he called me Mister.

  “This way,” Waycross repeated. I didn’t get a good look at him until we were inside the main room of the house. I had seen fat men before but no fat man I knew was as fat as the General. Usually a man as large-framed as the General can carry a lot of extra weight, but this particular general officer wheezed with every foot of floor he crossed. On the other side of sixty, Waycross still had a fine head of silky white hair; his face, once wide and tough, now drooped with dewlaps and wattles. In that big white face the puckered baby’s mouth looked odd.