Dust Devil

by Bonds, Parris Afton

  * * * * *

  The attack, when it came three months later in the semidarkness of an early January dawn in 1866, was so unexpected, so swift, that the ninety-five unarmed women, children, and old men asleep in their hogans had little chance to escape the slaughter that followed.

  Rosemary, whose hogan was away from the others, almost out of sight of the rancheria, was awakened from an already troubled sleep by the heartrending screams. Her first incoherent thought was the men were returning from their hunting expedition, for with the winter the antelope and deer had migrated further south again.

  By the time she reached the hogan’s doorway, soldiers swarmed over the rancheria like ravaging locusts. They were all black men, the first Rosemary had ever seen, from the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments. These Buffalo Soldiers, as the Plains Indians called them, used their rifles and pistols on the women and children who tried to flee into the surrounding mountains. The camp became a shambles. Wounded children cried for mercy, and Rosemary, paralyzed by horror, watched as one soldier with black woolly hair swung a rifle butt against Lucero’s head. A spray of blood blanketed her world. Where was Toysei, she wondered wildly, and Adala and War Blanket? Within mere seconds the ground was strewn with Navajo dead. Crimson decorated the snow-covered ground.

  Intruding into the scene of horror rode Hasteen, and she knew at once how the Buffalo Soldiers had found their camp. Even as she whirled to gather up a crying Stephanie, Hasteen charged his horse toward her hogan. Half-sliding, half-slipping, Rosemary fled down the slope of the arroyo with Stephanie in tow. On the stream’s other side was a crevice in the canyon wall that opened into a narrow passageway. If she could make it there before Hasteen, there was a chance.

  The water was shockingly cold when she and Stephanie plunged into the stream and waded across. As she pushed her way through the greenbriar that patched the far bank, she heard the scraping of horse hooves descending like a rolling boulder down the slope and into the stream. Then she felt the pain as her hair was jerked suddenly from behind.

  "Run, Stephanie!” she yelled and tried to twist loose from Hasteen’s grip. His horse lost its footing on the slippery shale, and Hasteen fell upon her, knocking the breath from her lungs.

  "Murderer!” she shouted when she broke free, gasping. Then she glimpsed the pain that stamped his face and knew in that instant he had not expected the carnage to accompany his betrayal.

  She turned and scrambled upward, but he grabbed at her legs, and she slid back down. Sharp rocks gridded her thighs. At the same instant she kicked out at him, Hasteen went rigid. He pitched forward, not crumpling but falling like a toppling statue. At the far side of the bank a bewhiskered soldier quickly reloaded his Springfield, and she realized the man had not recognized Hasteen as their informer.

  She struggled out from under his body and threw herself into the greenbriar-covered crevice as the rifle cracked. The bullet impacted with rock just beyond and above her head. An arm’s distance away Stephanie sat whimpering, her forefinger jammed in her mouth.

  "For God’s sake, hush, pet!” Rosemary begged. But the din of massacring drowned out the child’s hiccoughs of tears.

  Little by little she edged forward on her elbows until she was next to Stephanie. "We’re going to race, all right? When I tell you to go, you must run as fast as you can.”

  The two raced down the narrow corridor of redstone. Rosemary, hearing the laughter of her daughter, thought how macabre and ironical it sounded as it mingled with the screams and gunfire behind them.

  CHAPTER 21

  For three days Rosemary and Stephanie existed on pinon nuts and juniper berries. Exhaustion showed in Rosemary’s face, the hollow cheeks and the shadows beneath the eyes. She slept in snatches, awakening at the rustle of leaves or the snap of twigs. She couldn’t stop shivering, weather from the bone-slicing cold or the relentless images of carnage she wasn’t sure which. Maybe both. Sometimes a tree popped with the cold, cracking like a rifle shot. Immediately she would gather Stephanie’s little body close to her for reassurance.

  Where was Lario? And the fear that haunted her returned — dead!

  She kept moving, confining her steps to the rocks and icy streams by instinct. She was a hunted animal with no thought to the future. Only the survival of the moment. And that looked doubtful to her as she watched the tiny snowflakes begin to fall again the afternoon of the third day. The sawtoothed peaks of the Chuska Mountains nearly blocked off the gray shafts of the winter sun, her and Stephanie to huddle in chilling shadows of approaching night.

  Wedged between a boulder and a trachyte-porphyry ridge and banked by rabbit brush she and Stephanie were partially protected from the fierce winds that drove down the canyon that night. But it did not stop the icy moisture that numbed her hands and feet. She stretched out her hands for Stephanie and looked in horror at the blue that colored them. Next black and then frostbite, she thought.

  Her hands felt alien as she gathered Stephanie against her to conserve their body heat and tried to rub her daughter’s tiny feet and hands, which fortunately still had some color in them. Rosemary’s movements decelerated as she grew sleepier with each passing moment.

  I must not sleep!

  "Stephanie! Stephanie!” She shook her daughter. "Wake up!” The child’s heavy lids lifted and then closed, and Rosemary shook her again. "I have a story to tell you —a bout the Gate of the Clashing Rocks and the Slayer of Enemy Gods.”

  Once more the little girl’s eyelids fluttered open. Rosemary began the Indian tale of how the bear, Usen, had been the ruler of all the earth he walked, but soon she heard her voice slur. Stephanie was curled up against her, asleep. What is the use? Perhaps ’tis easier this way than what we face if we are caught.

  She let her eyelids fall. Curiously, the cold no longer bothered her.

  * * * * *

  Heat. The heat stung. Rosemary opened her eyes. She was still alive! The falling snow almost obliterated the patches of sky visible through the brush above her. Slowly she turned her head. She was lying in a lean-to, hastily erected, from what her recent experience could discern. Nearby a fire burned. A small smile touched her lips. Pinon —t he Indian panacea. The resinous wood would bum in the wettest weather.

  The stinging of her feet drew her attention back to her immediate person. There sat Lario, briskly massaging the soles of her feet, then each toe. "This is a woman’s work for her brave,” he said with a thin smile, but she saw the relief that leaped into his eyes.

  "I should have known you would find us.” Was that her voice that sounded so much like a croak?

  "You left a trail that even a white man could follow.” He took patches of her calico skirt from his pocket. "I collected these—before someone else could.”

  His smile faded, and she knew what he was thinking. "Are they —I s everyone dead?”

  He nodded, and she, who had thought her heart was as dry as dust, welled up inside with tears for the dead women and children. And suddenly she remembered their own child. "Stephanie!” Her head twisted about frantically, her eyes searching.

  "Sin-they is all right,” Lario said. He turned his head to where his poncho lay in a heap. "She is sleeping.”

  Reassured, she sighed.

  "Manuelito has surrendered. At Fort Wingate with the twenty-three men we have left. Guayo went with Manuelito after he learned of Adala’s death.”

  His hand stopped the massaging of her feet. "Only the Apaches are left who still refuse to be imprisoned at Bosque Redondo. I am going to join the Warm Springs chief, Victorio.”

  She jerked her foot away and sat up. "I’m going with you, Lario. Stephanie and I.”

  He shook his head. In the flickering firelight she could see the weary lines that creased each side of his mouth. "No. I have kept the two of you with me — and almost lost you to the Yeibechai. I would rather not have you and at least know that you are alive somewhere . . . that your thoughts hear and speak with mine, though maybe I will never see you aga
in.”

  She scrambled next to him. She laid her head on his chest, nuzzling the hollow of his neck with her lips. "You tried to leave me behind once before, Lario Santiago. You did not succeed then — and you won’t now.”

  He wound his fingers in her silky hair and tilted her head back. "You are as delicate as the blade of my knife, Turquoise Woman . . . and as durable.”

  She knew he meant it as a compliment. "With you, for you,” she whispered, "I can be strong,” and she offered him the sanctuary of her lips. Later they made love, slowly, leisurely, drawing from each other sustenance, like water from a well, renewing their life’s strength. The pleasure of giving, of hearing Lario’s hoarse cry, was equal to the pleasure his knowing long brown fingers brought to her own body.

  She knew they had created something indestructible, a love far more enduring than their bodies. She lay there in the cradle of his arms, drifting in the savage sweetness of release and thought that some of his fatalism was claiming her. Outside the warmth of the firelight the Yeibechai were waiting, the gods of the Supernatural, of death. But as long as she and Lario remained together, the light of their love would keep the Yeibechai at bay.

  * * * * *

  The fleas were worse than ever that August. Rosemary finally relented and took Stephanie to the stream one morning to anoint her scalp with a mud plaster that suffocated the pests. The child loved it. She dabbled in the mud and spread it on her naked sun-browned body.

  Looking at the mud-caked skin and the coppery curls stiffly packed with the plaster, Rosemary had to laugh. She was reminded of the Buffalo Soldiers and their wiry black hair. But the curve of the woman’s lips disappeared with the recollection of that tragic afternoon the soldiers had attacked the rancheria.

  A chill coursed up her spine, and she looked about her at the Apache camp. It had taken Lario more than three weeks and almost six hundred miles to lead his wife and child back into the New Mexico Territory to Victorio’s camp.

  The camp lacked the friendliness and warmth of the Navajo rancheria. It was because it was not as clean, she told herself. There were the thin, mangy dogs that roamed the camp, seeking a tuft of green to lie on; the flimsy hovels that the Apache squaws erected in minutes, leaving them and moving to newer ones when they became filthy and flea-ridden. And there was the impermanence of the camp — always moving in and out of the rugged and impassable canyons that converged and twisted through the Mongollon Mountains.

  Or perhaps she felt more a stranger at the camp because of the Warm Spring Apaches themselves — the Chihinne or Red People they called themselves because of the band of red clay painted across their faces. The women carried knives and some of them had ammunition belts and rifles. Then there was always the sight of a squaw braiding a bridle with the hair of some scalped victim.

  Rosemary found it difficult to adjust to these more barbaric customs of the Apache. It was bad enough that the men braided animal pelts in their hair, but when an Apache woman wanted to tattoo Rosemary’s forehead and chin Lario had to explain as tactfully as he could that her customs forbade tattooing. All of which together went to make her and Lario outcasts in Victorio’s camp.

  But what she found most intolerable was the fact that Stephanie readily and successfully adapted to the Apache way of life. The child spoke Apache better than English, and often Rosemary would have to ask her daughter’s help in communicating. Wistfully, Rosemary realized how happy she had been at the Navajo rancheria. Now only the nights when she and Lario came together in the privacy of their wickiup did she experience the hours of contentment, the moments of ecstasy, that made all else worthwhile.

  She calculated that enough time had elapsed to suffocate the fleas and began to wash off the dried mud in the rushing water with the soap from the sotol, a yuccalike plant. Stephanie squirmed and kicked, and when Rosemary finally released her, she scrambled to her feet and planted both her tiny fists on her naked hips in imitation of the caique, Victorio.

  "No more water!” she sputtered. Her golden-red curls were plastered to her face, and her grubby hands pushed them out of her eyes. Then once more in good humor, she began to laugh as the water dripped on her small potbelly.

  Rosemary could not help but compare her with Jamie — Jamie with the even disposition, sweet and considerate. And Stephanie — explosive, mercurial, gregarious, and terribly spoiled by the other Indian children who, out of admiration, allowed her to have her way. Though barely three, she tried to keep up with them in their games and loved cooncan, which was played with hoops. And she was quite fearless on a pony. She should have been Stephen’s daughter, Rosemary thought — or son.

  With the thought of Stephen she automatically recalled Cambria and its beauty, with the Pecos lacing the green valley like a blue satiny ribbon. The loss of Cambria was like the loss of a child to her; yet it was a grief she would willingly bear for the privilege of being near Lario.

  The bathing over, she started back to camp. Her heart quickened when she saw Lario in conversation with Victorio but she continued her pace. It would never do for the lowly wife to interrupt her husband even in greeting.

  Wife! She was not Lario’s wife. But she belonged more to him than she ever could to Stephen. Just looking at Lario made her pulse race with excitement. He was much taller than Victorio, who was of average height and already graying. The Apache men were built like deer, with small hands and feet, slender sinewy arms and legs, and full-chested lithe bodies. Like the Apaches, Lario wore only the breechcloth and knee-high moccasins, and when she glimpsed his muscle-corded thighs and back, she blushed with the memory of their nights of love. For this she would cede Cambria to Stephen.

  She knew that at the moment Lario was disagreeing with Victorio’s policy, for rather than attempting to set free imprisoned Navajo and Apaches and establish a more permanent camp Victorio preferred a "strike and run” type of operation. His warriors would lie in wait along portions of routes remote from settlements for small parties and unprotected wagon trains, and having plundered both travelers and wagons, would rapidly retreat to the fastness of the mountains.

  Victorio was an intrepid warrior and, so she thought, would have made an excellent general. And while she did not like his policy of revenge on sometimes innocent settlers, she knew the aging man to be at least a compassionate one, which was evident even in the way he teased Stephanie about her hair, telling her she painted her curls with red dye when no one was looking.

  There lived among the Warm Spring Apaches for a time a young Chiricahua Apache called Gokliya, whom Rosemary thoroughly detested. The Apache would as soon kick a sleeping dog out of his way than step over it. He was a troublemaker and a braggart. Worse, he refused to follow Victorio, wanting to be a leader himself, thereby causing a rift in the camp. She made sure she and Stephanie stayed out of his way when he was at the camp.

  Eventually Victorio ousted Gokliya. But neither she nor the rest of the Territory had heard the last of the Chiricahua Apache, for later in a battle with Mexican Rurales he established himself as a reputable war chief under the name of Geronimo.

  The passage of time, like the growth of Stephanie, could not be seen. The sun moved a little more to the north, the child was a little taller. For Rosemary time moved like the sluggard Pecos beneath the shade of the tamarisks and poplars.

  She wanted desperately to leave Victorio’s camp. She was tired of playing the soldadera, a miscast role for the woman who hated killing in all its forms. She wanted the permanence of a home and an orderly life. Thoughts of Cambria and Jamie crowded more often into her mind. What did Jamie look like now? Did he remember and miss her?

  Then one crisp autumn evening after she had tucked a sleeping Stephanie between the warmth of her buffalo robes and returned to grinding the small amount of com kernels left, for it seemed she never had enough time to finish her work, she saw from the comer of her eye Lario stiffen, as if he were listening to or for something.

  She put away the mano, a stone slab, and moved ov
er next to him. In the light of the fire’s dying embers his bronzed face was as pale as the gypsum whitewash. "What is it, Lario?”

  His black eyes raised to hers. "You don’t hear it, do you?”

  She paused. "No.”

  "Tecolate, the Owl. He calls.”

  Her head canted. Did she hear the dismal hoo-hooing of an owl, the bird of ill fortune, or was it a trick of the wind on her imagination? Her hand cupped his jaw. "I won’t let omens decide my life for me!” she said with a fierceness born of desperation.

  His hand caught hers and brushed his lips against the inside of her wrist. "You are the strong one, aad,” he whispered. Aad, the Navajo word for wife!

  That night they did not make love but held each other throughout the hours of darkness. Toward dawn he laid his forehead against hers, then kissed her temple, saying, "I love you.”

  She had known for a long time now of his love though he had never uttered the words to her. And now she understood its full depth.

  CHAPTER 22

  In February a late winter screamed down upon Victorio’s camp with all the fury of a trading-post whore. The grazing for the paltry flock of sheep and herd of cattle was insufficient, and the dry bitter cold forced the camp to move down out of the Mongollon Mountains closer to the more fertile Rio Grande Valley — a warmer climate and better grazing range but more exposed to the danger of discovery by the Fourth U.S. Cavalry.

  Yet it was not the weather but a visit of a sub-chief that had precipitated this latest move. Barboncito and several of his warriors had escaped late the summer before from Bosque Redondo, and the frightening tale they brought back convinced otherwise those who entertained thoughts of giving themselves up in exchange for food and shelter at the Bosque Redondo.

  Rosemary remembered Barboncito as he had sat talking with Lario two days earlier. The chief’s face with the strong nose and hooded eyes was ravaged with grief. "It is a miserable place,” he told Lario in a hoarse, almost inaudible voice. "We are prodded with bayonets and herded into adobe corrals where they are always counting us and marking numbers in small books.