Knight of the Tiger

by W. Michael Farmer

  Maud, crying and saying, “Muchas gracias, Maria,” took the giggling Johnnie and hugged Maria. She leaned back, looking at her son in her arms, and hugged him close as he threw his arms around her neck. The colonel turned to me and said in respectable border English, “Por favor, Doctor Grace. Take the madre and her niño inside the station and verify he is healthy and well cared for so we can take the fotograpía to satisfy our governments that they are happily reunited.”

  We went inside the station waiting room. I examined Johnnie while Maud and Maria watched, whispering to each other, laughing, and making Johnnie giggle with their happiness. He was in perfect health, and I told that to the colonel, who smiled and nodded. He motioned the photographer to set up his camera. In a few minutes, the photographer took several exposures of Maud with Johnnie in her arms, both with big smiles. The colonel and I gave the photographer instructions about where and to whom to send the pictures on both sides of the border, and then paid him. Maud and I signed several documents for the colonel, releasing Johnnie into Maud’s care and certifying he had been delivered to her on the day promised, and in good health.

  The colonel shook hands with me, clicked his heels, and gave a quick little bow from the waist like some European martinet.

  “Muchas gracias, Señora Wright and Doctor Grace. The government of Mexico wishes for you a long and productive life. Adiós.”

  He turned to step out the door when Maud said, “Colonel, un momento, por favor.” He turned to look at her, a now-what frown on his face.

  She stepped over by the colonel and spoke Spanish near his ear in a voice so low, only he could understand her. He nodded, and when she finished, said, “Sí, señora, it will be done.” With that, he saluted and stepped out the door, ordering his men aboard the train, yelling, “Vamonos, hombres!”

  All this time Maria sat on the bench where Maud and I had waited for the train. Maud walked out to the platform with Johnnie, hugged her again, and had a few words with her. Maria broke into a big smile and hugged her, saying, “Oh gracias, señora. Muchas, muchas gracias.” The colonel motioned her to hurry. She tore herself away from Maud, waving goodbye, and climbed on the train as it began creeping out of the station.

  I offered to carry Johnnie as we walked to my borrowed Model-T, but Maud just laughed. “I’ve waited on Johnnie too long to give him over now.”

  Curiosity circled my brain. “It’s none of my business, and don’t feel obligated to tell me anything, but what did you tell the colonel just before he left?”

  She scrunched her shoulders and said, “I don’t mind telling you. Just don’t spread it around. There’s nothing left for me in Mexico except Ed’s bones. I told the colonel I wanted Maria and her family to have what was left of our ranch. I told the colonel where to send any papers that needed signing and said I’d sign them. You saw him assure me that he would see to it. You’re my witness.”

  I laughed, feeling better than I had in a long time at such a fine act of generosity. I opened the Model-T’s door for her and said, “Yes, ma’am. I’m your witness any time you need one.”

  I drove Maud and Johnnie back to her friend’s big Victorian house just off Stanton Street in El Paso. They’d fixed her a room and told her to please stay as long as she could. At the curb, I helped her out, and we hugged goodbye. I swung Johnnie, giggling, high in the air before giving him a kiss on the cheek on the way to his mother’s waiting arms.

  I stopped by Hotel Dieu Hospital to visit Susan Moore. Doctor Rose had decided to wait until her bullet worked its way closer to her skin before attempting surgery, and said it might take a year or more before it moved enough for him to be able to remove it. Her wounds were healing, but she was still having nightmares about her husband’s death and her narrow escape. Based on my experience seeing my father murdered and escaping by the thinnest of margins from being murdered myself, I knew she was going to have bad dreams for a long time.

  By the time I briefed George Carothers on Johnnie’s return and tied up loose ends with the Department of State, it was late afternoon. I took a cab to the train station, expecting to wait several hours before I could catch the next train to Columbus. But, because the army was shipping so much materiel west, a train left nearly every hour. I managed to get a seat on the next one. Exhausted, I asked the conductor to wake me at Columbus and, pulling my hat over my eyes, spiraled into the depths of sleep unbothered by ghosts or jaguars.

  CHAPTER 46

  PELO ROJO’S CAMP

  I first looked for Yellow Boy at Sweeny Jones’s tent. From the sentry’s guard post, I could see Satanas, Yellow Boy’s paint, and our two pack mules under the army horse shelters near the tent. Finding Yellow Boy after sundown would be easier than I expected. In the lights around the camp, there was a sense of abandonment. No other horses and mules crowded under the shelter with our horses and mules, and no men except the sentries moved anywhere.

  The guard let me pass, and not fifty yards from the horse shelter, I saw a figure wrapped in blankets beside the coals of a small fire. I smiled. If he was sleeping, it was a golden opportunity to pay back Yellow Boy for those times he’d made me jump by appearing like a ghost out of nowhere. I crept forward, careful not to scrape by a bush, kick a pebble, or step on a stick. I was within ten feet of him when he sat up in his blankets, his old single-action army revolver cocked and pointed at my middle. I froze, held up my hands palms out to show they were empty, and heard the hammer on the revolver ease down.

  “Hombrecito! You sounded like wild horses thundering through the camp. Take coffee and meat for your belly and warm yourself by the fire. Come.”

  He stoked up the fire, put on the coffee and stewpots, and sat back on his heels while I went for the gear I’d left with the guard. When I returned, I spoke of meeting the gringo big army chief and of what happened to Maud Wright and Susan Moore in El Paso.

  He then told me about the Punitive Expedition leaving. “This day many soldiers go to Mexico. Many horses, many iron wagons—soldiers call ’em trucks—go into Mexico. Man birds, soldiers call Jenny, they fly into Mexico. Many guns go into Mexico, all after Arango.” He shook his head. “Gringos waste many days. Arango too smart, too long live with Apaches. Gringos no catch. Maybe Hombrecito and Yellow Boy no catch. We Apaches. Know desert. Know sierras. No lose tracks. Maybe still no catch Arango.”

  I took a swallow of his hot bitter coffee and said, “Do you think it’s best to stay at Pelo Rojo’s camp until we learn Villa’s whereabouts?”

  Studying the fire, he nodded. “Sí. Wait in Pelo Rojo’s camp. Find Arango more easy if we wait there. Maybe we lucky, maybe Arango come to Pelo Rojo, maybe not. Pelo Rojo scouts find Arango and army pretty soon now.”

  Excitement stirred in my core. “When do you want to go?”

  “Go now. Better ride night time, easier miss gringo army.”

  Confused, I frowned. “How could we run into the gringo army when it’s already left and heading south for Casas Grandes when we’d be riding west?”

  “Peach say gringo Star Chief has two armies. One leaves this place today. Another leaves maybe tonight from Culbertson rancho off to west. Columbus army joins rancho army at Casas Grandes. Peach goes with Star Chief. He leaves tonight.”

  When I frowned at the name Star Chief, Yellow Boy rubbed the edge of his coat collar between his thumb and forefinger. I thought, Ah, yes. Pershing, a brigadier general, wears a big gold star on each side of his collar.

  Yellow Boy said, “Before he leaves, Peach tells me come quick. Help army chase Villa to ground. I say to Peach, ‘Hombrecito comes today. We go to sierras, keep promise he makes, then find army, all go home.’ Peach, he laugh. Comprende what I mean.”

  I ate while Yellow Boy packed the mules with the load of supplies he’d brought from Mescalero for Rojo’s camp. The cold night air made every breath look like a puff of smoke and made me shiver and stand close to the fire while changing clothes. In an hour, we headed west. A waxing, gibbous moon filled the rollin
g desert with soft white light and painted inky black shadows around the yuccas and mesquite. Yellow Boy, closely following the same trail that led to Hatchita, pointed us toward the dark mountains in the distance, barely outlined against the stars in the moonlight.

  We rode all night, stopping at ranch tanks to water the animals and, near dawn, found a place in a mesquite thicket to rest in the shade for the day. The second night, Yellow Boy picked his way up familiar canyons on the Bonito River, and, just as the sky turned to a delicate shade of gray, we rode up a familiar trail to a plateau on top of a ridge in the middle of the Sierra Las Espuelas.

  The eastern sky was turning an angry red and far to the north, we could barely see the tops of the Animas Mountains above the rolling mountains surrounding us. Yellow Boy, raising his rifle over his head three times, stopped in sight of a tall rock outcropping that looked like some gigantic finger pushing out of the earth, surrounded by boulder-sized marbles. A nightjar answered in sharp chirps that rose to a flourish out of the trees on the eastern side of the ridge. Yellow Boy waved me forward.

  Memories of my first trip to the top of this ridge flooded my mind. Yellow Boy stopped when we were directly under the rope leading to the alarm bell and spoke Apache in a low but easyto-hear voice. “Who watches? Muchacho Amarillo and Hombrecito bring gifts to our brothers in Pelo Rojo’s band.”

  Long auburn hair so dark it was nearly black in the new sunlight framed wide, doe-like eyes peering over the rock finger top. “I am Hawú Lichoo’ (Red Dove), daughter of Kitsizil Lichoo’ who you call Pelo Rojo. It’s been many seasons since Muchacho Amarillo and Hombrecito found the camp of Kitsizil Lichoo’. His heart will be glad when he sees you.” Hawú Lichoo’ waved her hand toward the trees on the eastern side of the ridge and said, “Go!”

  Yellow Boy waved his rifle in salute. “You guard the camp well, daughter of Rojo!”

  We followed the rope on a path off into thick Emory and blue oaks, pines, juerga trees, and squawberry bushes. A large corral from the old days, hidden well back in the trees, still stood. The first time I’d seen it, it had held maybe ten horses and mules, and there had been the three smaller pens connected to it holding several cows and a few calves. Now it held nothing, and it didn’t appear to have been used for a long time. The leather rope we followed passed across the tops of brush and trees; the rope end was tied to the flapper of an old church bell that hung between two notched posts. The sentry pulling the rope rang the bell to sound an alarm when enemies approached. We followed the trail through the trees down the side of the ridge and could hear the faintest sound of water flowing at the bottom of the ridge.

  The air near the canyon’s bottom was moist and chilly. Water burbled over rocks in a wide, slow creek strewn with big, smooth boulders, reminding me of giant eggs. Wisps of ghostly morning fog floated across shafts of sunlight, beaming like searchlights through the tops of the trees.

  We splashed across the creek, turning downstream for a couple of hundred yards until we reached a bench covered with trees and brush a few feet above the creek, its surface a lazy mirror moving with barely a ripple. The bench was maybe three hundred yards long and fifty yards wide, reaching halfway across the canyon from the eastern wall. Sycamore and cottonwood trees and heavy brush lined the edge of the shelf, making it look impenetrable. We rode up onto the bench, following a narrow, hard-to-see trail at its far end.

  The trail on to the bench led past sycamore, ash, walnut, and maple saplings until we came to the edge of the camp, all but invisible from only a few yards away. Even smoke from the cooking fires couldn’t be seen in the morning mists, and it was eerie not to hear any village sounds. No dogs barked. No children yelled at play. No mules brayed or horses snorted. We didn’t hear or see anything suggesting human activity until we literally walked into the camp’s clearing. Women prepared meals at fire pits holding beds of glowing hot coals producing little smoke. A few men lounging near the doors of their lodges spoke in soft voices to visiting friends. Brown-faced children with jet-black hair played without making a sound. Babies, waiting to be fed, strapped to tsachs (cradleboards), took in everything around them without the slightest complaint.

  Ten brush wickiups, just like fifteen years before, formed an outer perimeter closest to the creek and blended perfectly with the surrounding brush. Six appeared to have occupants. They faced five small cabins with walls five or six feet high made of flat river rocks mortared with mud. They clustered together toward the back of the nearly vertical canyon wall on the eastern side and near the center of the camp. Two circular cabins, the largest one about fifteen feet in diameter, the other maybe twelve feet in diameter, stood out from the other three stonewall lodges, which were rectangular and about six feet wide by eight feet deep.

  I remembered the first time I’d seen them and thought they looked strange. It took me a while to realize that their walls didn’t have sharp, ninety-degree corners. Each wall literally curved into the other, making them harder to distinguish from the natural rock and brush background. In both the circular and rectangular lodges, the walls supported a roof of poles tied together and covered with canvas, hides, brush, or some combination of all three. These lodges stood as solid as any adobe house.

  Everyone stared at us. Several groups of two or three men approached. Some wore classic desert moccasins with rawhide soles and leg shafts long enough to reach their knees, long white breechcloths, shirts, and vests. Others wore pieces of Mexican army uniforms the women had reworked to be more comfortable. Most of the men pulled their smooth black hair back with red and blue patterned bandannas, but two or three wore ancient cavalry hats, and I saw one or two dusty brown Stetsons.

  I scanned their faces, wondering if Villa or some of his men had already arrived, but I saw no Mexicans or Americans.

  When we entered the camp, Rojo stood up from his place in front of the largest circular stonewall lodge and came to meet us. His long red hair showed streaks of gray falling from under an old, battered Stetson pulled down to his eyebrows, but he still dressed in the classic Chiricahua Apache style of long breechcloth and knee-high moccasins. I was surprised at how much he’d aged.

  Average height for an American, but tall for an Apache, and though he was in his early fifties, his big, corded muscles still made his shirtsleeves ripple when he crossed his arms. Nothing escaped his brown eyes. It never took long for anyone who met him to grasp his potential for being a bad enemy or a strong friend.

  Rojo stepped up to our horses and spread his arms, speaking in Apache and with a big grin on his face. “Welcome Muchacho Amarillo and Hombrecito. Many seasons pass since you were here. Our camp is your camp, as it has always been and will remain.”

  Yellow Boy slid off his pony and raised his rifle in salute. “Rojo, friend, it’s good to be back in your lodges. We bring gifts and supplies from your brothers in Mescalero. Hombrecito has studied the medicine of the Indah. He brings healing power to the People. We’ll help the People while we stay. Is there a lodge for Muchacho Amarillo and Hombrecito?”

  Rojo spoke more for the crowd’s benefit than for us. “We feast your return and presents and supplies. The women will prepare a lodge for you, and the young men will take care of your ponies and mules. Come! Let us eat and speak together.”

  The men returned to their smokes and conversation. Children began new games, and the women returned to their cooking fires, scooping up their babies as they went. Boys unsaddled and unloaded the horses and pack mules and led them to a small corral at the southern end of the camp. Yellow Boy asked the boys to feed our animals from the grain sacks on the pack frames and to rub them down with handfuls of grass.

  A young woman led us to our lodge, one of the little rectangular stone cabins a couple of places down from Rojo’s lodge. The roof was covered with canvas, and, like the other lodges, it stood in excellent condition. We stored our gear, and then bathed in the creek, its water cold and bracing.

  Rojo lighted his pipe with a twig from the fire when Ye
llow Boy and I sat down with him. His second wife, Calico Dove, gave us bowls of meat stew she had bubbling over the fire pit. She fried thin patties of cornmeal bread and flipped them for us to catch with our fingers and stuff in our cheeks while we ate, the hot grease running down our chins. I’d never eaten better anywhere.

  We ate our fill and sat back, studying the camp and sipping cups of strong jojoba coffee. Cool morning breezes swept down the canyon, and sunlight filtering through the trees made our shirts feel warm and pleasant on our shoulders.

  My head filled with questions about what Rojo knew about Villa. But sly Yellow Boy took the indirect way and broke the easy silence to ask a more obvious question: “Where are the camp’s warriors? On a raid? Hunting for meat? At San Carlos trading for horses?”

  Rojo, taking a long draw from a cigarette he had rolled from an oak leaf and blowing the smoke toward the treetops, leaned his head against a hand and looked at us with sad, rheumy eyes. His forearm and hand, palm down, swung an arc parallel to the ground.

  “Gone. Wiped out. In war between the Mexicans, the great hacendado herds disappeared. Both sides wanted the meat and took the cattle at every opportunity. The hacendados gave every peon a rifle and taught him to fight, to shoot other Mexicans, to shoot any Indian. Meat became harder and harder to find, and the peon soldiers defended the remaining cattle well. The warriors wanted and needed bullets in the soldier wagons.

  “I told the warriors to wait and watch, wait and watch like a hunter for the deer. They didn’t listen. Soldiers on the wagons, especially the iron wagons, had shoot-many-times guns, very fast, one gun like fifty soldiers. We couldn’t raid these wagons without losing many warriors. Hunger in the eyes of a man’s woman and children makes him a fool. Shoot-many-times guns wiped out many warriors who didn’t listen to Rojo. Now we stay in the mountains, let the Mexicans kill each other. We only hunt for our meat. Many women who lost their husbands went to San Carlos to sit in the dust and eat the weevil-filled bread the Indah give them. Other women ask to be warriors like Hombrecito’s woman. Now we have little. It’s the time before the Season of Many Leaves. The supplies you brought will help us much.”