by Len Levinson
Corporal Dennison beckoned to the Apaches with his pistol. “C'mon, you bastards! We're ready!”
The Apaches retreated into the wilderness, and the dragoons waited to make sure they were gone. Then Beau said, “Let's get out of here!”
They loaded their dead and wounded onto horses, then mounted and headed back to Fort Buchanan, while glancing warily behind them, hoping the Apaches wouldn't follow.
When the People were certain the White Eyes wouldn't return, they emerged to retrieve their dead. No one felt the defeat more keenly than Cochise, for this was his second raid as war chief. Still, there was booty to be had. Cochise found a soldier who had feet about the same size as he, so he sat beside him, pulled off the man's boots, and tried them on. They appeared to fit, and looked rather elegant, Cochise thought.
His brother, Coyuntura, peeled a shirt off the back of another dead soldier, when a folded piece of paper fell to the ground. He looked at strange symbols, having no idea what they meant:
Dear Mother,
I pologize fore not writin, but am in a new detachment and don't got much time. I think of you off en and . . .
Coyuntura tossed the letter, and the wind caught it in its invisible net, carrying it high in the sky. Then Coyuntura put on the shirt, admiring orange stripes on the sleeves. He gave out a victorious yell, although they had captured no horses or weapons and lost eleven of their number. The steady fire of the pistols had been too much for the bravest of the Chiricahuas. Somehow, the White Eyes had been ready for them.
Coyuntura searched the pockets of another dead soldier and found a small black book with tiny letters. He opened the book and gazed at:
Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance.
Coyuntura gazed at the symbols, wondering what they portended, for he knew instinctively they were religious. He decided to keep the leather-bound tome, so dropped it into the leather bag suspended from his waist. Then he found what he was looking for, a black pouch of tobacco. Coyuntura opened the pouch and took a hefty sniff. As he was dropping the pouch into his bag, he heard a moan beneath him. The eyes of the bluecoat soldier fluttered; evidently he was still alive. Perhaps the soldier could be nursed back to health, even living to old age, but the People had rancor for the white race despoiling their sacred homeland. Without hesitation, Coyuntura slit his throat.
3
* * *
Nathanial rode a train to Washington, D.C. and checked into the Emory Hotel, a resting place popular among Army and Navy officers, with a house of ill fame across the street. Then he hailed a coach, directing the driver to an address in Georgetown, a sedate neighborhood of farms and cottages, where his father resided.
Nathanial hadn't seen the old soldier since the summer, after Nathanial had returned from New Mexico Territory. They had spoken little, because relations were awkward in the family, his father having abandoned his mother during Nathanial's childhood for another woman, a beautiful octoroon thirty-odd years his junior. His father and the octoroon had parted recently, and now the colonel resided with his aging Negro maid.
The coach stopped, and Nathanial bounded toward the brick mansion, then rapped on the front door, which presently was opened by Mattie, the stooped, unkempt maid. Nathanial kissed her damp forehead, for she was practically a member of the family, then she led him into the parlor, which was dusty, smelling of old curtains and decaying wood.
“I'll get your father,” she said. “He'll be real happy to see you.”
I'll bet, thought Nathanial, as he sat on a red velvet chair. Oil portraits of distinguished Barringtons hung on the wall, barely visible in dim light emitted by dirty windows. He'd never seen his father's parlor so untidy, with old coffee cups, dirty glasses, a pile of newspapers next to his father's chair, a dirty plate on the fireplace mantel.
Nathanial felt as if his world were cracking apart, with his wife ignoring him, and his father sinking into squalor. Nathanial received another blow when the colonel emerged from the corridor, leaning on a cane, hunched over, pale and wizened. Nathanial blinked, his mind reverberating with images of the stalwart Army officer who had so dominated his youth.
“My boy,” said the old colonel, hugging him. “About time you came to see me.”
His father, once a handsome man, had metamorphosed into a scrawny old buzzard with a double chin, thinning gray hair atop his head, and a medium-long gray beard. Nathanial tried to be cheerful. “There's been much to do in New York, and Clarissa has become a great success—have you heard?”
“A success at what?” The old man scowled.
“Piano.”
“I didn't know she played the piano.”
Nathanial felt chilled, because his father had heard Clarissa play during the round of parties and celebrations that had attended their wedding. He's losing his mind, realized the worried son.
“Let me get you a drink,” said the colonel. “I can't ask Mattie, because she doesn't walk so well these days.”
“Why don't you hire a second maid?”
His father turned and looked at him suspiciously. “I don't like strangers.”
The colonel filled two glasses with whiskey, handed one to Nathanial, and raised the other shakily in the air. “To your mother—did you know that the Whigs intend to nominate her for president, and her running mate will be Henry Clay?”
Nathanial tried not to frown, but realized in addition to losing his memory, his father also had misplaced reality. “She'll get my vote,” replied Nathanial.
His father raised his finger in the air. “The Democrats will try to assassinate her, so you'd better hurry home and protect her.”
“Don't worry—Otis will protect her.” Nathanial referred to a Negro servant who worked in his mother's home.
His father seemed to relax. “Suppose you're right,” he agreed. “But I don't want her alone. Since you have no obligations of your own, you should move from your hotel into your mother's home.”
“Apparently, you've forgotten that I'm married.”
“When did that happen?”
“You were there—-don't you remember?”
The old man blinked in confusion. “Oh yes,” he said, “of course.”
“Have you seen a doctor lately?”
“I'm as good as ever, except for the pain in my back, and I can still whup you, boy. Of course, the Buchanan administration is out to get me, because I know their dirty game. Did you know that General Scott offered me the post of inspector general, but the Buchanan administration overruled him?”
Spittle rolled down the corner of the old man's mouth, his left hand shook, and Nathanial realized his father was ready for the asylum, but the old soldier would resist the move. “Father, I'd like to take you to a doctor.”
“I wouldn't let one near me because they're in the pay of the government.”
“To be honest, you're making rather strange remarks.”
“The man who sees clearest is considered insane.” Then the colonel's face became tender. “My dear son, I never should have left your mother, for I have ruined her life, along with yours and your brother Jeffrey's. Perhaps I'd be better off dead. What use am I to anyone?”
“You must let me hire another maid, to take care of you and Mattie, Father. And you must permit a doctor to look at you.”
“Never.” The old colonel laughed nervously. “I've just been joking. The Democrats don't care about me in the least. I'm just an old war horse whose best days are gone, a figment of my own imagination.” He raised his hand to his forehead and sighed, “I become fatigued, lose my train of thought. Perhaps you'd better come tomorrow, after I'm rested.”
The old man took Nathanial's arm and urged him toward the door. Nathanial never successfully had defied his father, who pushed him outside. Nathanial stood on the stoop as the door slammed in his face. I'll go back to New York and ask Mother, he decided. She'll know wh
at to do.
Nathanial caught the first train north, left his luggage at the Saint Nicholas Hotel, noted his wife was not home, kissed his seven-month-old baby daughter, then rode a coach to his mother's home on Washington Square.
Amalia Barrington lived in a three-story brick building in a row of similar homes on the northern border of the square. He knocked on the door, which presently was opened by Belinda, his mother's Negro maid.
“Has she gone to bed?”
“Yes, but I'm sure she'll see you, sir.”
Nathanial and Belinda behaved formally although once, in a train chugging through South Carolina, they'd nearly committed the forbidden act. Nathanial waited in the parlor as Belinda climbed the stairs to his mother's room. Nathanial gazed at the painting of himself in his West Point uniform, confident and strong, but now couldn't manage his own household.
Belinda descended the stairs. “She'll see you now, sir.”
Nathanial passed Belinda on the narrow space, but they didn't tarry or flirt, for Belinda had married Otis. Nathanial knocked on the door to his mother's sitting room, she bade him enter, and he found her in a black quilted robe, for old people are troubled by chills, a bony gray-haired queen with deep-set eyes and a mouth that once had been pretty, but now was thin-lipped, surrounded by crevices.
He kissed her cool cheek, which reminded him of parchment. “I'm afraid I have bad news, and thought I should ask your advice.”
“Your father has gone mad?” she asked.
Nathanial was stunned. “How did you know?”
“I know everything.”
“He belongs in an asylum, and his maid is nearly as dotty as he.”
She thought a few moments, and in the golden glow of gaslight, he imagined the eager, serious girl she must have been. Then she said, “I suppose we'll have to bring him here. We will depart for Washington on the first train tomorrow.”
“What if he refuses to come?”
“He wouldn't dare,” she replied.
A shiver passed up Nathanial's spine, for despite the many battles he'd fought, the only person who made him feel stark terror was the woman who had given him life.
Nathanial returned to the Saint Nicholas Hotel and discovered his wife had not yet returned home. He poured a glass of whiskey and sat in the living room, imagining himself gray, gaunt, unable to remember what he'd had for breakfast, worrying about enemy spies.
The door opened, and his wife appeared, her face flushed with happiness, wearing a purple shawl that established the splendor of her golden hair. The joy on her face vanished when she saw her husband. “Oh—you're back early,” she said awkwardly.
He smiled falsely as he arose from the chair. “What an unpleasant surprise, to see your husband. Where have you been?”
“With Mister Thorndyke and a theater manager from Philadelphia. We were discussing my concert there.”
“What a thrill it must be to perform for total strangers,” he said sarcastically.
“More fun than drinking alone, I assure you.”
“How can you assure me, when you have never experienced the rare pleasure of drinking alone?”
“By the same token, you have never performed, so you don't know what you're talking about, as usual.”
“I can't help thinking that applause has turned your head.”
“I can't help thinking you're jealous.”
There are some remarks to which an officer does not respond, especially when they ring true. “I'll sleep on the sofa tonight,” he said icily. “I wouldn't want to disturb the rest of a great artist.”
“You may sleep on the floor if you like, or in the bathtub. I suspect you've had a fight with your father and have decided to take it out on me.”
“I didn't fight with him at all. He's only gone mad, and my mother and I are bringing him back to New York tomorrow.”
She appeared contrite. “I'm sorry. I didn't know. I'll go with you ... to help.”
“We wouldn't want to distract you from your brilliant career. After all, what is a mere old man compared to a piano?”
“Now you're being rude, Nathanial. It's not fair.”
“You have abandoned your family for a life on the stage, like a cheap actress.”
“You have conveniently forgotten that you abandoned me for almost a year while you lived among the Apaches, having a grand time, while I was alone with your daughter, believing you had died.”
She failed to enumerate certain romantic interludes with Beau Hargreaves and another gentleman during the gloomy period when she'd believed her husband had been killed in action. She feared her husband would kill someone if he discovered the truth and nearly had convinced herself that the incidents never occurred.
Her defiance made him angry, for she was smaller and younger than he. “Far be it from me to prevent you from pursuing your tawdry goals,” he said. “I have a busy day tomorrow, so I bid you good night.” He proceeded to remove his clothes.
She made her way to the bedroom, where she closed the door, took out a handkerchief, and cried. She had worked, studied, and sacrificed all her life, tried to be decent, and had not committed very many sins, except for those lapses after Nathanial had been reported killed in action. Now that she needed his support, he behaved like a spoiled child. She felt betrayed and undermined by his pettiness.
She took a bath, a luxury she never failed to appreciate, since New Mexico Territory had lacked running water, and a common, ordinary bath required half a day of preparations with a wood stove. Then she looked in on Natalie, and on her way to her bedroom passed her husband on the sofa, reclining like a lumbering ox. Just because he's worthless, without a notion of what to do with his life, it doesn't mean I have to be the same, she lectured herself. Secure in her talent and the adulation of her many admirers, she crawled into bed alone.
At Fort Buchanan, far off in New Mexico Territory, Rebecca Hargreaves helped her Mexican maid prepare breakfast when there was a frantic knock on the door. Her first instinct was Apaches were attacking, so she took down the shotgun from the wall, made sure it was loaded, and opened the door cautiously.
Private Sullivan stood there, unable to restrain his excitement. “The cap'n has returned, ma'am!”
After replacing the shotgun, Rebecca ran to the middle of the scraggly parade ground. She wore a simple gray homespun dress, no cosmetics graced her careworn features, and a few strands of dark blond hair fell over one eye. Impatiently, she drew them out of the way as a detachment of dragoons could be seen about one thousand yards in the distance.
Other wives gathered on the parade ground, hoping and praying their man hadn't been killed, or lost a leg, or been mutilated by savages. “Some are wounded,” said Mrs. Caroline Barlowe, wife of Sergeant Barlowe.
Rebecca bit her lip as she perceived men with bandages, a few head down over saddles. She feared Beau among the casualties, but then spotted his black beard and tan vaquero hat, gold shoulder straps on his tunic. “Thank you, Jesus,” she whispered.
The women moved en masse to the orderly room, and they were as tanned as the soldiers, yet maintained their grace and femininity. Then the door opened, and Major Enoch Steen emerged, fifty-five years old, wearing a salt-and-pepper mustache, a Kentuckian cited for gallantry in the Mexican War.
Fort Buchanan had no main gate, so the arriving dragoons rode among the outbuildings, heading for the orderly room. Rebecca saw the bandage on her husband's leg, his riding posture not as it should be; evidently he and his men had fought the Apaches, although in other parts of the nation gentle souls bewailed the plight of the poor misunderstood Indian.
Beau pulled his horse to a halt in front of the orderly room, and a soldier helped him from his saddle; he limped to his wife and embraced her, giving thanks to the God who had delivered him safely home. Then he shuffled toward Major Steen, saluted, and delivered his report.
“You'd better have that leg looked at, Captain,” said Major Steen. “I'll speak with you later.”
; Accompanied by his wife, Beau headed for the shack that was their hospital, while Major Steen returned to his office, sat at his desk, and reflected that for the sake of safety, he required at least five hundred more dragoons, but taxpayers wouldn't tolerate additional military expenditures. No one knew precisely how many Apaches were in the vicinity, but three thousand warriors seemed a reasonable guess to Major Steen. What will I do if they ever converge on Fort Buchanan? he thought.
Raphael Fonseca, sole survivor of the Apache raid, opened his eyes and wondered if he were in heaven, except heaven was said to be glorious, with angels in white robes and gold halos, whereas he lay on a cot in a dismal adobe hut, with a fierce headache, numerous scars, his body covered with blisters. Can it be that I'm alive? he asked himself.
A miracle apparently had occurred, but then he recalled the last pathetic cry of his wife. Tears filled his eyes as he thought of Cecilia and his angelic children murdered by Apaches. His dreams of a lifetime, not to mention what small amount of wealth he possessed, gone forever.
Fonseca had worked twelve years as a vaquero, learning the cattle business and saving every penny, instead of throwing wealth on prostitutes and mescal at the nearest cantina. A religious man, he'd met his wife at church in Tucson, but now wanted to die; the pain unbearable, his body had been scorched by flames, his head felt broken into a million fragments. Worst was the memory of his wife and children, their beautiful lives snuffed out by Apaches.
Covered with bandages, listening to moans and sighs of other wounded men, he seethed with rage. If I live, I will pay the Apaches back, he swore.
Cochise knew his warriors doubted him, and indeed he doubted himself as he led them past the Dos Cabezas Mountains. They had won many horses and cattle in the first raid, but the price of the ambush had been too high. He anticipated challenges to his leadership and contemplated stepping aside, to let Esquiline or Elias take command. Cochise was willing to make any concession to keep the Chiricahuas together.
