Savage Frontier

by Len Levinson

  Nathanial reached into his shirt and pulled out Johnny's watch. The case was gold, carved with floral designs, and on the back:

  to Johnny

  from Mother and Father

  If I ever get out alive, I'll return this watch to Johnny's parents, swore Nathanial. But I don't think I'll get out alive. The damned Apaches will attack at dawn, and that'll be the end.

  Two Jicarilla chiefs, Chacon and Lobo, lay on their bellies a short distance away. “We should attack while they are weak,” declared Lobo. “I see no reason to wait.”

  But Chacon was a more deliberative leader. “Lobo,” he began patiently, “they will send more armies if we kill them all. We have already shown we are strong, but more would invite disaster.”

  Lobo smiled bitterly. “They take our land, then promise to pay us, but somehow never do. They are liars and schemers and I think we should kill them all.”

  “Imagine hordes of bluecoat soldiers coming to the homeland. If we are dead, who will defend our women and children? We must exercise self-discipline, not surrender to our angry desires.”

  Lobo took a deep breath. “You are so sure of yourself, but I am filled with rage. I wish I could be more like you, my brother. I and my warriors will do as you say.”

  “Let us send word that we wish to talk. Perhaps the White Eyes will respect us more after today. Otherwise, I shall follow my brother Lobo on the warpath, and my knife will taste Pindah blood.”

  The sun dropped toward the high peaks, casting orange shadows onto bottomless gorges, as victorious Jicarilla warriors withdrew from the field of honor.

  Chapter Two

  Next morning Maria Dolores climbed into the stage-coach, then her maid passed Carmen to her. Little Zachary crawled aboard without help and sat next to his mother. “I don't want to go,” he said in one of his surly moods.

  “But your grandfather needs us.”

  Zachary barely remembered his grandfather, but didn't want to miss his father when he returned. He felt his mother's body warmth through his clothes, as other passengers crowded into the coach. They were all civilian men and one smelled badly. Zachary pinched his nose.

  Maria Dolores feared her aging father would be dead before she arrived in Santa Fe, about sixty-five miles to the southwest of Fort Union. Nathanial will be angry when he finds us gone, but I must go to my father, for I am his only child.

  The maids waved to Maria Dolores and the children as the stagecoach pulled toward the gates. A detachment of dragoons was their escort, and Zachary stared wide-eyed out the window at an officer who came abreast of them. He was Lieutenant Will Marlowe, a friend of his father's.

  “Hope your trip will be comfortable, Mrs. Barrington.” Lieutenant Marlowe glanced at the unsavory character slouching in the corner. “If there are any problems, just call my name.”

  “I doubt there'll be any need,” she replied, for beneath her serape lurked a loaded Colt Dragoon in a hand-tooled leather holster.

  The officer took his position in advance of the stagecoach, then returned salutes from guards at the gate. Zachary smiled, because he loved military customs. When I get big, I'll be a soldier like my father, he swore.

  Zachary's father had fallen out of the saddle and was lying on the ground, his eyes showing white. Corporal Strobeck and the other dragoons clustered around.

  “Maybe we should tie him down over the saddle,” offered Private Adams, of the Boston Adams, a rich man's son who'd joined the army for adventure, but got more than he'd bargained for.

  Private Gilhooly of County Cork spat at the ground. “I don't think he's gonna make it. Lost too much blood.”

  “We can't leave him here,” said Corporal Strobeck, who had served a hitch in the Prussian Army. “Help me up vith him.”

  As they struggled to raise Nathanial to his saddle, his consciousness vaguely returned. “What the hell's going on?” he muttered.

  “You fell out of the saddle, sir.”

  Nathanial remembered riding across the chaparral, but now had a bump on his head. Grunting, they lifted him higher, then Corporal Strobeck tied his waist to the pommel. “That ought to hold you, sir.”

  I'm not going to survive, Nathanial thought as they led his horse away. He leaned backward, but the rope wouldn't permit him to fall. He figured the buzzards had eaten Johnny Davidson, his bones bleaching in the sun. Each new stab of pain made him hate Apaches more. Someday, in one of these valleys, I'll catch those Apache bastards when they least expect it, he vowed. If I survive, they'll pay for what they've done this day.

  Among the People there occasionally rose to prominence a warrior woman, and one of these was Jocita of the Nednai tribe. Lithe, sinewy, she sat in front of her wickiup, watching her two-year-old son stumbling around the fire. “Do not go too close,” she warned him. “You will burn yourself.”

  The stubborn child paid no heed as he continued toward the flames, reaching his hands out. He was built sturdily, deeply tanned like all children of the People, but his hair was a few shades lighter. This was considered a mark of favor from the mountain spirits, but only Jocita, her husband Juh, and one other person whose name she didn't know, comprehended the truth.

  Jocita had been first wife of Chief Juh, but she'd never conceived a child with him. So he'd married Ish-keh and two other wives, with whom he had sons. Jocita had assumed she was barren, but then gave herself, in a moment of supreme weakness, to a sunny-haired Pindah war chief during a peace council at the Santa Rita Copper Mines three harvests ago. Then she'd become pregnant. Jocita believed her son was exceptional, due to his unusual parentage, and one day he would accomplish great deeds.

  Chief Juh had discovered her infidelity, but preferred to avoid disgrace, pretending the child was his. Jocita had refused to sleep with Juh since he'd married Ish-keh, although she noticed that Juh still looked at her in that certain way.

  The boy leaned forward and appeared about to fall into the fire, but Jocita didn't move. Then he reached out, placed his fingers in the tantalizing flames, shrieked, fell to the ground and wailed.

  His mother rushed to him. “I warned you,” she said patiently. “But you wouldn't listen.”

  She carried her whimpering half-breed son to a mountain stream and plunged his little hands beneath cool rippling waters. “You must listen to your mother,” she cajoled him.

  She heard approaching hoofbeats as a war party of about fifty warriors drew closer, headed for Mexico. They were led by the popular subchief, Lucero, a tall slender twenty-six-year-old Mimbreno fighter with long black hair and an ocher stripe painted across his nose. Jocita bowed her head and prayed for the success of his mission.

  Three suns ago, the Nakai-yes Mexicans in the village of Fulgencio had invited the People for free whiskey and food, and some of the People accepted. While the celebration was underway, the Mexicans had opened fire upon the unsuspecting People, massacring them all.

  Such catastrophes had been occurring throughout the history of the People, out of lust for whiskey and presents. Jocita would never go near the Nakai-yes unless prepared for war. The boy stopped crying as he studied the warriors riding past.

  “One day,” she whispered into his ear, “you shall go with them.”

  Lucero's warriors advanced deeper into Mexico, as a half-moon floated across the sky. Stern faces and rigid self-discipline masked the fury of the warriors, for each had lost a relative or friend at Fulgencio. Lucerno's cousin had been killed in the outrage, and the subchief had sworn never to touch whiskey again.

  The great chief Mangas Coloradas had not volunteered for the raid. He was growing old, tired, increasingly forgetful. A strong, sagacious warrior was required to replace him. Lucero was being groomed for the highest position among the Mimbrenos.

  All the subchiefs and war leaders of Mangas Coloradas's generation, such as Delgadito, Cuchillo Negro, and Ponce, were becoming old. The People were fighting on two fronts, against their longtime enemies, the Nakai-yes Mexicans, and now, more tentatively, with t
he Pindah-lickoyee White Eyes. Lucero knew the sad tale of the jicarillas, who were being driven from their homeland by Pindah soldiers. How much longer before the White Eyes set their greedy eyes upon the Mimbreno homeland? wondered Lucero.

  The warriors rode down a winding arroyo, beneath a canopy of cottonwood leaves. Creatures of the night watched behind bushes and hedges. Lucero often wished someone else would take Mangas Coloradas's position. For reasons not clear to him, the mountain spirits had elevated him among the Mimbrenos. He felt unworthy and wished the mantle could be passed on.

  Lucero was no power-hungry subchief such as Juh of the Nednai, or a holy man like Nana of his own clan. Lucero enjoyed hunting most of all, and then came his beautiful wife and children. Raiding was an unpleasant necessity, but when Lucero struck, it was like thunder.

  Anything could happen in battle, and a war leader could be killed by a stray bullet or arrow. Lucero had purified himself with religious observances, was sprinkled with holy pollen, and wore his Killer of Enemies Bandolier. Pantherlike, Lucero led his warriors out of the arroyo and across a cactus-strewn basin showered with glittering stars.

  Chapter Three

  A stagecoach rolled down the muddy main street of Santa Fe as vaqueros, soldiers, bullwhackers, and businessmen walked the planked sidewalks. Maria Dolores gazed through the window at her former hometown, worrying about her father.

  “Let me see, Mommy,” asked Zachary.

  She held him to the window. In the eyes of the small boy, Santa Fe was a carnival of colors and characters, gleaming as if jewels were encased in adobe walls.

  The dragoons whooped for joy, anticipating the fleshpots of the saloon district. Zachary loved their rough power, because they reminded him of his father. The stagecoach rolled through the gates of Fort Marcy, and the lawyer opposite Maria Dolores said with relief, “Thank God for an uneventful trip.”

  Everyone grunted and smiled except the strange, sallow man with the bad smell, who hadn't said much throughout the journey. The stagecoach came to a stop in front of the command post headquarters, where a detail of soldiers waited.

  Maria Dolores asked them to deposit her luggage in the orderly room, then she put Carmen into her Navajo harness, took Zachary's hand, and together the family headed for the main gate. She looked like an ordinary Mexican mother, and no one would guess she owned a saloon, a hotel, several houses, and large tracts of land, all accumulated during the early years of marriage. She'd left the holdings in the care of her father and gone to Fort Union with her husband, in an effort to save her marriage.

  It felt wonderful to be back in Santa Fe, for she missed the town's excitement. The foundation of her fortune had been a small initial investment in the Silver Palace Saloon, and she stood across the street from it, frowning as she noted paint peeling from the facade. She crossed over, entered the main room, and was surprised to see it reasonably clean, the cuspidors polished, the bartender wearing a laundered shirt, just as she'd left it.

  It was filled with the usual crowd of drunkards and prostitutes, the latter self-employed, for Maria Dolores wouldn't profit from prostitution, but neither did she prevent the poor creatures from earning their squalid living in her establishment.

  All eyes turned to the voluptuous Mexican woman with two children. “That's the lady what owns this damned place,” said a soldier sitting at the bar. “Her husband's a lieutenant in the First Dragoons.”

  Zachary walked alongside his mother, remembering a glorious night long ago at the Silver Palace Saloon. His father had brought him inside and they'd had a serious talk, although Zachary couldn't remember the subject. Then somebody had insulted his father, who proceeded to throw people around and beat them up. Zachary always had a good time with his father, but his mother generally was strict and serious.

  Maria Dolores arrived at the office, knocked three times, opened the door. She hoped to see her father behind the desk, but instead Miguelito, the hunch-back dwarf, was there, scratching his pen on a ledger. His face lit up when he saw her. “Thank God you are here!” he said, scrambling to his feet.

  “Where is my father?”

  The dwarf held his hands behind his back and looked at the floor. “We had to bury him, senora.”

  Maria Dolores felt as if someone had kicked her in the stomach. She sat on the sofa, feeling guilty about her father. “How did he die?”

  “In his sleep. He felt no pain, senora.”

  “Is my house still there?”

  “Yes—that is where he lived. I have not dismissed the maids, so you can move right in.”

  Maria walked home with Carmen on her back and Zachary in hand, but her thoughts were with her strange, remote father, who'd spent most of his life reading books, trying to understand himself and the world. Upon arriving home, she left the children with her maids, then proceeded to the cemetery, where she crossed herself and dropped to her knees before her father's fresh grave.

  She felt ashamed about arguing with him, though she'd been right most of the time. Her father had been a dreamer, wanderer, and amateur scholar who never had married after the demise of Maria Dolores's mother over fifteen years ago.

  Maria Dolores felt as if she'd lost something, perhaps the opportunity to be a daughter instead of an interruption to her father's endless studies. But her father had died with his deepest secret intact. Only Maria Dolores knew that he had been a Marrano, a Spanish Jew who practiced Christianity publicly, but maintained his ancient heritage in private.

  Maria Dolores had discovered she was a full-blooded Jew when she was twenty-one-years old. Her father begged her never to tell anyone, for fear they'd be burned at the stake as in the days of the Inquisition. Not even her husband knew the truth about her Jewish background.

  The only prayers she knew were Catholic, and she'd never found any reason to relinquish the religion of her childhood, so she said an Our Father and Hail Mary over her Jewish father's grave, then returned home.

  After looking in on her children, Maria Dolores went to her father's private office. She paused at his door, took a deep breath, then opened it. A cloud of dust came toward her, making her cough. She pulled the curtains and saw a desk, chair, bookshelves, and stacks of tomes wherever she looked. They were about geography, history, poetry, religion, morality, the arts, zoology, and every other conceivable subject.

  My father was a bookworm, she reflected. He warned me not to marry an army officer and maybe I should've listened to him. She vowed never to disturb her father's room, so it would always be as he left it.

  Then she made her way back to the children's playroom, and couldn't help comparing her huge well-appointed home in Santa Fe to her primitive quarters at Fort Union. Thank God I don't have to return right away, she thought. My dear husband will have to get along without me for a while, I'm afraid.

  * * *

  At Fort Union, a crew of ghostlike dragoons rode limping horses through the main gate as men and officers from across the post gathered to stare. The dragoons were ragged and wounded, and their commanding officer was tied in the saddle, hat low over his half-closed eyes.

  Even Brevet Brigadier General John Garland, new commander of the Ninth Department, appeared in front of the headquarters building, an expression of concern on his face. Fifty-nine years old, gray-bearded, he joined other men and officers running toward the survivors.

  Nathanial was helped to the ground by soldiers and struggled to come to attention as General Garland approached. “What happened, Lieutenant Barrington?”

  “Ambushed by Apaches, sir.”

  “Take these men to the hospital at once!” Then General Garland held out his hand and steadied Nathanial. “Come with me.”

  The general placed his arm around Nathanial's shoulders, while a private on the other side held his waist. “We were riding through the mountains near Cieneguilla,” explained Nathanial. “I was talking with Lieutenant Davidson, just as I'm talking with you now, and next thing I knew, half the men were down.”

 
In the hospital, Nathanial was undressed by male nurses, then prepared for surgery. Short, baldheaded Dr. Barrow washed his hands in a basin, wiped them on his apron, dropped ether on a rag, and placed it over Nathanial's nose. Nathanial heard the doctor fussing behind him, then everything went black.

  The doctor cut into the swollen arm wound. It didn't take long to find the squashed bullet, and he yanked it out with a pair of pliers. His assistants sopped the blood, he sewed the hole, then covered it with bandages.

  He probed for the arrowhead in Nathanial's leg, managed to extract most of it, but a few fragments would remain inside for the rest of the West Pointer's life. The doctor then washed Nathanial's blood off his hands.

  The traveler whose body smell had so offended Maria Dolores had been christened Ned Smith, but he hadn't used that name for quite some time. Ahead, a sheriff's deputy sauntered toward him on the planked sidewalk, and the traveler was tempted to cut into the alley, but instead kept going, pretending to be unconcerned.

  The deputy paid no attention because the man in the black shirt blended into the sea of humanity that was Santa Fe. As Ned Smith approached the Silver Palace Saloon, he was tempted to have a drink, but didn't want whiskey on his breath during the ordeal that lay ahead.

  He came to the church and beyond were the gates of Fort Marcy. He figured the Army was better than prison, or the dance a fellow performs at the end of a noose. The traveler paused in front of the church, raised his head, and appeared to be admiring the architecture, but actually observed a Mexican girl about fourteen years old walking past him, skirts rustling. He suppressed a smile of pleasure. I've got to be careful.

  He was of average height and build, wearing a vaquero hat and a medium length brown beard to cover his features. If the crowd in San Antone had caught him, they would've torn him to pieces. But he'd been as fast and smart as in Saint Louis and other venues. Ned Smith's favorite pastime was murdering women.