army was consumed with conquering faraway California, this was the time to strike.
“But to assure our victory over the Americans,” Big Nigger explained to those ringleaders planning the revolt, “you must chop off the head of the beast.”
“The head?”
As he had gazed around the dimly lit adobe room, Big Nigger’s eyes narrowed into the slits of a copperhead. “We must kill Governor Bent.”
“Bent is down in Santa Fe,” protested Tomas, one of those who had taken up the rebellion’s cause once their Mexican leaders had fled south months ago. “He has some soldiers around him down there, far out of reach.”
Big Nigger had smiled cruelly, seeing this as a beautiful opportunity not only to strike a blow for his wife’s people but to rid himself of one of the great American oppressors with the same bold stroke. “He married a Mexican. A Taos family. Surely the governor comes home to visit his wife and children.”
“Yes, he does!”
“Then we lay our preparations, have everything ready for a time Bent returns to visit Taos,” Big Nigger coached them. “And when he does, we strike!”
“Kill the Americans!” the room roared.
“Kill all of them!” Big Nigger led them in the oath. “Man, woman, and child! Not one left breathing!”
Like a ram blindly leading his pack to the slaughter, Bent had returned to Taos for an unexpected visit.
The breathless runner had carried that electrifying news from town early that afternoon. The Pueblo was instantly abuzz with preparations. Men came and went. Arms were gathered—such as they were—knives and pikes, axes and a few old fusils too. They would not need many firearms, Big Nigger realized. They had the strength of hundreds … while the Americans, while the foreigners, while all their wives and children polluted with the strangers’ blood, were pitifully few in number.
The killing they had to do would not be conducted at the long-distance range of a rifle. Nor even the short distance of a belt pistol. No, this revolution Big Nigger would lead them on would be one of close-up, face-to-face killing. An occasion to see the fear in the white man’s eyes as his heart turned to water and he pissed all over himself knowing he was about to die like a cowardly pig. It was the finest sort of killing, this done face-to-face.
To be able to cut a man to pieces, bit by bit by bit, a little at a time while your enemy was still alive.
If Big Nigger had learned anything from his Delaware people back in the eastern woodlands, it was how to make exquisite torture of dispatching a captured enemy. Suspend a live victim upside down over a low fire and cook his brains until steam spurted from his ears. Or cut a small incision just below a victim’s navel, reach in with your fingers, and pull out a section of the man’s small intestine so you could nail it to a tree—then force your enemy to walk round and round that tree, slowly, agonizingly, dragging more and more gut from his belly with every tortured step until he died in his tracks.
What would he do now to his enemy, this Governor Bent?
A little while ago Big Nigger had watched how the Indians and Mexicans had hacked their first victim into pieces right in front of the American jailhouse. They let the sheriff escape—so the mob went looking for him. By the time they hunted down the American, Tomas’s mob had worked themselves into even more of a fury. But now the Indians appeared to take much enjoyment in seeing just how long they could keep the sheriff alive while they carved off a little more of the white bastard with every slice of their machetes.
By the time they were finished with him in the alley, the mob had grown too big. Some splintered here, others there, different crowds streaming off behind one leader or another in search of an American’s shop to plunder, or an American’s house to raid, seeking to murder the inhabitants—men, women, and children too.
But those who stayed behind with Big Nigger were the ones who knew the Delaware had big game in his sights. The biggest in the whole damned territory.
He led them to the walls surrounding the Bent house. And they hoisted two men over the top of the adobe barrier, dropping to the ground inside the courtyard where they hurried over to drag the huge log from its hasps inside the gate. The pair had barely dragged the hewn timber through its iron sockets when Big Nigger threw his shoulder against one side of the double gate and flung his way into the darkened courtyard.
Screaming, shrieking, crying for blood, more than thirty of the Indians clambered on top of the house with their planting tools and began to hack a hole in the roof. Big Nigger grinned wolfishly. This was just like digging into a burrow to yank a cowering prairie dog from its den.
Using the large, squared cottonwood log from the gate, a dozen of them battered at the door to their enemy’s house. Finally a single wide panel shattered and they could peer inside. He saw shadows flickering at the mouth of a hallway. Voices, both angry and afraid too, echoing down that blackened hall.
Some Mexicans stepped up beside him, elbowing close with their muskets. He inched backward, wary that they knew little of their firearms while the attackers shoved the gun barrels through the gaping splinters of the door and fired.
“I hit him!” one of them cried.
Furious, Big Nigger seized the Mexican by the neck and flung him backward like a rawhide doll. “No one kills the governor—no one but
“I’ll wound him bad enough he can’t run away with his family,” the bowman vowed, bringing his short weapon up and pulling the string back to his cheek.
While Big Nigger watched through the splintered door, the first arrow pierced Bent’s cheek. As the governor snapped it in two and ripped it from his face, another arrow struck him high in the chest. He staggered, his knees becoming watery.
Now Big Nigger was furious.
“Enough!” he screamed, propelling the bowman aside so roughly he took three others with him when he sailed backward against the mob. “Bring that ram up here! Knock this door down!”
Stupid fool that he was, Bent was attempting to run away—staggering from the parlor as the remaining sections of the front door shattered into splinters and the mob streamed through the portal. The American was shuffling toward the hallway, raking at the arrow in his chest like a drunkard, mumbling incoherently.
With his left hand Big Nigger snatched a torch from one of the Mexicans and stalked after the wounded man the way a hunter would follow the blood spilled by his wounded prey. Far down at the end of the hallway he heard frightened talk, muffled voices—then a shriek as Bent must have come into view of them. Sobbing women, several of them, Big Nigger thought as he penetrated the shadowy veil of that hallway.
Now that his men had the back door blocked, he turned right into the blackened hall and saw them—the women and children. Strange thing was, one of the women was already half through the wall. She was reaching back into the hall, her arms held out for a child the others were passing to her. Big Nigger stood rooted to that spot a moment more when the women spotted him and screamed in terror, shoving the children through the hole they had made in the wall. A fireplace poker and a large pewter serving spoon lay at their feet on the floor. He admired their fortitude in digging through that wall by scraping out the mud seal around the adobe bricks with their simple tools and fingers too.
“Charles!” one of them cried, the woman who was halfway through the hole.
The rest started backing away as Big Nigger slowly advanced, his torch hissing in the darkened, narrow confines of that hall. There could be no escape. His enraged mob of Pueblos and
“Run, Rumalda! Oh, run!” another woman shouted to the one in the wall as she and another seized hold of the governor, dragging him toward the hole.
As the two women attempted to push the man through, the one already in the hole used what little strength she possessed to pull the stocky American into the opening of their makeshift portal. Bent was trying to speak— nothing any of them could understand, every word of it garbled and nonsensical. Even for Big Nigger, who understood enough English to know that Bent was already out of his head and dying.
But not, the Delaware vowed, before he could get his hands on the governor.
With more than two dozen of the Indians pressing up behind their tall leader, Big Nigger watched Bent do something very strange. With his sticky, bloody fingers, the American fumbled in his vest pocket and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. The governor held it up, his lips quivering, his hand trembling as he appeared to implore
