Apache Lament

by Patrick Dearen

  Just as the two rangers started away, something akin to a sob came into Franks’s voice. “You boys be careful. The last thing I want is to write bad news to somebody.”

  “That’d be my Mary Jane,” Jonesy said predictably.

  As the pair rode on into a howling wind—receding figures framed by the canyon’s snowy bluffs—Sam looked at Franks and felt guilty for thinking what he had. After all, he had always found the captain a good and honorable man. If he had a fault as an officer, it was that he was too kindhearted, for he treated each man in the company almost like a son.

  As the reconnoiterers entered the gulch, the situation reminded Sam all too much of Bass Canyon. He too had ridden in advance, foolishly confident in his ability to detect trouble. Once inside, he had turned to the three schooners and, with a wave of his arm, had summoned Elizabeth to her grave—Elizabeth, for God’s sake, his entire world. But she hadn’t been alone. Trusting, five fellow strugglers had also followed, negotiating a winding trail past side gulches and sculpted arroyos and jutting rock shoulders.

  A hundred yards ahead of the schooners that spring day, Sam had just reached the end of the pass when gunfire from behind had startled his bay. Spurring the animal back, Sam had shouldered his Spencer against figures exploding on foot and horseback out of a left-side gulch and up from an arroyo thick with ocotillo. He had cocked the hammer and fired, and levered in another cartridge and fired again. Both shots had gone wide, and then a third had slumped a painted warrior across his horse.

  The way the breast had gushed blood, Sam had realized that he had delivered a killing shot. But a mortal wound hadn’t been enough to keep the fiend from riding Elizabeth down, or his war club from descending in a terrible arc. Every mile was to have brought Sam and Elizabeth closer to New Mexico for the birth of their first child, but that moment in Bass Canyon had delivered instead a purgatory that Sam was living even now, here with Company A on the trail of her killers.

  “If your stare were a fire, it would sear your saddle horn.”

  Sam recognized Arch’s voice, but he couldn’t understand what his friend was doing in Bass Canyon.

  “Samuel.” This time Arch was straightforward. “We have orders to march.”

  Sam looked up from his saddle horn to see a sorrel pulling away with Arch, his breath cloud visible. Ahead, the other rangers had already created separation, and inside the gulch one of the reconnoiterers repeatedly signaled “forward!” with his arm.

  Sam just hoped the two rangers were better at their job than he had been.

  He took his gray after the company and rode abreast of Arch as they entered the canyon. The bluffs were steep and intimidating, particularly on Sam’s left where rimrock was a mere ghost through fog. Under the rim, as far up-canyon as Sam could see, the slope consisted of slide chutes with ice-glazed gravel, rocks, and boulders. The boulders, some as large as wagons, were especially troubling, for they hovered over Sam like sinister things ready to swoop.

  “I do say, there reside some wicked widow-makers above us,” remarked Arch. “That is, were any of us bonded in holy matrimony in order to engineer widows.”

  With no furloughs permitted during a ranger’s term of service, no enlisted man in Company A had a wife. But only Sam had ever buried one, and the lone person he considered a friend had pointed it out once again.

  This time, Sam held his tongue. What good would it do, railing against Arch? Better instead for Sam to grit his teeth against memories of that shovel blade glinting in the bright day of Bass Canyon. By the snatch of that Apache fiend’s hand—the same hand that had wielded the war club—Sam had been denied even the solace of Elizabeth’s locket as the dirt had sprayed her veiled face in a shallow grave. At least he could have worn that silver pendant against the heart that was still hers, that would always be hers.

  Once more, Arch’s voice intruded on that terrible scene.

  “Samuel, I can’t seem to refrain from saying something inappropriate. If you’re willing to accept my apology again, I sincerely tender it.”

  “Hell,” spoke up Matto. “Don’t see where DeJarnett deserves an apology. I don’t ever get none from you.”

  For better or worse, Sam was back in the present, rocking to the gait of his gray and shivering to a wind that whistled through the boulders. He didn’t want to keep remembering, to keep living in the past. But the past was the only place where Elizabeth still lived—just as the future was the only place where he might avenge her.

  Matto, his remark ignored, couldn’t resist repeating it. “Said, I don’t see where DeJarnett—”

  “Forget it, Arch,” interrupted Sam, angry at Matto for meddling in a private matter. “Talkin’ about it, or not talkin’ about it, don’t change what is.”

  With slopes pressing in on either side, the snowy canyon bottom squeezed down to only a few horse-breadths in width. Avoiding the overhanging rocks, Sam fell in behind Arch, who, like the riders ahead, hugged the less-threatening bluff on the right. Boye, the preacher boy, however, rode along directly under those jutting boulders.

  “You’re braver than me, Boye,” said Sam, who was nearest him.

  Boye cast wide eyes up at the rocks. “Bring these down on me, O Lord, and if there be any Apache enemies here, let them die with me!”

  From two horses ahead, Matto looked back. “Somebody shut him up.”

  For once, Sam agreed with Matto. Boye damned sure knew how to send a chill down a man’s spine.

  “Boye—”

  Sam couldn’t hear his own voice, for the preacher boy persisted in urging the boulders to rain down judgment.

  “I dare say, Boye,” said Arch. “Three months have elapsed since Chief Victorio departed for the Apache hereafter. But I wager he can still distinguish your words without inclining an ear.”

  Undeterred, Boye stretched an arm to the rimrock. “Like Samson in the Philistine temple, Lord, bring this mountain down on me if it be Your will!”

  As the preacher boy paused for a breath, the subdued words of Captain Franks on point filtered back through the riders. “You men hold it down back there!”

  Arch turned around in the saddle. “Samuel, do we muzzle our self-proclaimed chaplain or merely wedge a neckerchief against his warbling tonsils?”

  “Hell,” said Matto, “just shoot him and be done with it.”

  Sam knew that Matto wasn’t necessarily joking; the man was just that mean, even when it concerned someone with obvious problems. Boye, however, had no issue with responding to Franks’s authority, and his voice dropped to little more than a whisper. Nevertheless, he continued to call upon the Almighty to deliver punishment, and evidently his words were loud enough for Matto to hear. When Matto’s shoulder twitched as if he wanted to reach for his revolver, Sam didn’t know where this would end. For God’s sake, if Sam was going to ride down the vermin who had killed Elizabeth, he needed the help of every one of these men.

  “Matto,” he said, not wanting to take sides, “best wait on Apaches before gettin’ so riled.” Sam turned to the preacher boy. “Boye, you got me rattled. Please quit it.”

  Still, Matto’s .45 had almost cleared its holster when the rocky heights began to rumble.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sam could hear it and feel it in almost the same instant.

  Thunder rolled down from the left-side rimrock, and a quake surged up from the canyon floor and shook eight hundred pounds of horse under his thighs. The gray shied and Sam whirled to the bluff’s highest reaches, where a cloud of snow and dust rose up turbulent and terrifying, showing flashes of churning rock and boulders. An unstoppable force racing hell-bent for him, it grew in size and threat like the monster it was.

  “Let’s get out of here!” someone cried above the roar.

  Sam didn’t know which way to go, but the gray bolted up-canyon with Arch’s sorrel and Sam gave the animal its head. He had never felt such upheaval. The end of the world seemed upon him, and all Sam could do was cling to the gray and let the ine
vitable take its course.

  He glimpsed shadow riders as a quick dusk descended, suffocating and shrouding the way. Suddenly a rider was down ahead, a helpless figure on hands and knees, sinking to the crush. But Sam was a victim too, the debris pelting him and beating a cadence on his hat. With no time to reason, he came up alongside the figure and leaned down in search of a hold.

  His hand locked on a forearm and the gray leaped forward, carrying Sam and dragging his burden. It was precarious for both men, for any moment the one below could plow into a rock, or impede the gray’s legs and drop the animal. Maybe the latter was why the horse stumbled to its knees, but the gray was up and away quickly with Sam still clutching the deadweight that twisted under the stirrup.

  The way ahead grew brighter, and just before the gray broke into the clear, the dragged man slipped from Sam’s grasp. In the time it took Sam to check the overhanging slope and find it stable, the horse accomplished several more strides. He wheeled the animal back into the haze, where the rumble had given way to a whispering rush of gravel.

  Finding an unidentifiable figure rising, Sam yielded the stirrup long enough to let the man step up behind him. Then they were away again, and Sam didn’t slow the gray until they negotiated a bend to the right and overtook the company.

  He met Arch approaching on horseback with a bay in tow, while a stony-faced Boye looked on from astride his roan. Beyond, strung out along a thirty-yard stretch of canyon, the remaining six riders and horses stirred in the drifted snow.

  “I was just starting back to check your welfare, Samuel,” said Arch.

  “Hell, I’m the one you oughta been worried about.”

  Matto’s grating voice in his ear told Sam who he had risked his neck for, and he didn’t know how to feel about it.

  Matto dismounted, grinding his jaw. Not only that, but his face was crimson and the bulging veins in his temple seemed ready to burst. Without even a glance at Sam, he stalked away in the direction of his horse. Sam supposed that an expression of gratitude wasn’t in his makeup.

  Arch extended the bay’s reins as Matto approached, but the surly ranger stormed by. Too late, Sam realized that he bore straight for Boye, who, with head down now, didn’t seem to know that he was near.

  “Matto, don’t start somethin’,” Sam warned, taking the gray after him.

  “Start it, hell!” Matto never slowed. “I’m finishin’ it!”

  He drew his revolver, and the cock of the hammer brought Boye’s gaze up.

  “All your doin’!” charged Matto. “You near’ got me killed!”

  He was in such a rage that the revolver trembled in his hand, but if he merely intended to frighten the young ranger, it didn’t work. The preacher boy opened his arms wide like a man crucified and threw out his chest.

  “A vessel of a just God, you’ll be!”

  Sam knew that he had to intercede, but he didn’t know how. “It’s what he wants, Matto! Is it worth hangin’ for, givin’ him what he wants?”

  “He called them rocks down and near’ got me killed!”

  Sam’s voice dropped; he had to convey calm reason. “Listen to what you’re sayin’. He don’t have that kind of power. Arch, tell him.”

  “Indeed, he does not,” said Arch. “Three forces could have provided impetus for that slide—nature, man, or the Almighty—and only the Almighty might have done so with mere words.”

  “I’ll kill him!” cried Matto.

  Boye only lowered his head in a prayerful pose. “Into thy hands, O Lord,” he whispered, “I commend my spirit.”

  “You heard Arch, Matto,” pleaded Sam. “Who you think had reason to roll rocks down on us? We’s chasin’ Apaches, for God’s sake.”

  “What’s happening back here?”

  Sam looked up at the sound of Franks’s voice and saw the black horse bearing the captain approaching in a lope. Perhaps placing too much trust in Matto’s respect for his authority, Franks turned his animal between that wavering .45 and Boye.

  “Son,” Franks said to Matto as he drew rein, “lower your revolver and tell me what the trouble is.”

  For a moment, Sam wondered if Matto’s rage was so great that he would shoot whoever was before him. Then the ranger holstered his revolver and walked away a few steps, his face as swollen as a threatened horned toad.

  Franks turned to Boye, who no longer offered himself up for sacrifice. “Son, you all right? I know the Almighty’s got a place for you, but let Him take you in His own good time.”

  Franks alone carried sway with the preacher boy, but Sam didn’t know how the captain could be so patient with him, or with Matto either. He guessed it was because not many men were willing to put their lives on the line for the promise of a silver dollar and change a day.

  By now, all the rangers had gathered around Franks, and with a bobbing forefinger, he tolled them off, one through nine.

  “I can’t tell you men how glad I am you’re all accounted for,” he said, fighting through a cough. “This would be a lonely place to await Judgment Day.”

  Franks proceeded to address each man by name and ask about injuries. Once through, he spoke to the entire company.

  “Seems our overcoats and luck did their jobs, but we cannot expect such good fortune next time. Those Mescaleros saw us coming, so we need to be vigilant.”

  Franks paused, suffering another coughing spell. “If they think they’ve deterred us, they’re wrong. They’re not dealing with the US Army this time—we’re the Frontier Battalion, serving at the pleasure of the State of Texas. And we can take care of our own state better than any damned Yankee. Men, let’s get ready to march.”

  Sam appreciated Franks’s encouragement; a leader had to show confidence. But after what they had endured, he wondered if anyone else was concerned that this wasn’t going to be easy.

  Well, at least there was one. Falling into march formation, Sam came up alongside Jonesy and heard the New Jersey native’s shaken whisper.

  “Mary Jane . . . sweet Mary Jane . . . I . . . I don’t want to die so far from home.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Nejeunee wondered if the pain inside would ever go away.

  Three seasons had passed since he-who-cannot-be-mentioned had been laid to rest in a shallow rock cleft. She had watched the gutaaln, medicine man, sprinkle pollen and ashes about the grave, and scar-faced Gian-nah-tah close it with stones and dirt. Fearing the dead—even the one who had been her husband—she had hurried down the craggy hill before the owls could come and spirit him away to the Land of Ever Summer.

  Before that day had ended, Nejeunee had shorn her black hair close and smeared her face with ashes. Secreting away a single item in her phylactery, she had helped burn his belongings and wailed her grief. Even now, in this snowy winter under the rock-capped mountain La Nariz, which jutted up like a great nose, she still wore her mourning blouse, a striking blue-calico cape that fell past her hips.

  But the greatest reminder of her loss was the child who graced the cradleboard of split sotol that hugged Nejeunee’s back as she and the three other women went about setting up camp for the twelve warriors in the party. She had knelt and given birth more than a season after the owls had come for her husband, and yet in Little Squint Eyes’s face she saw his father every time she peered into the cradleboard or drew him out to nurse at her breast. The ache in her heart was most unbearable whenever she relived the birth ceremony, at which there had been no father to sing the gutaaln’s prayers with her, or to sprinkle the herbal waters to the sun above and earth below, and to the spirits that guided the four winds.

  Fatherless, Little Squint Eyes was, and fatherless he would always be unless Nejeunee chose to enter a kuughà, teepee, alone with Gian-nah-tah or another warrior. But such a union was unthinkable for now, her wounds still too fresh, and she was glad that this band had followed Victorio from the teepees of the New Mexico reservation. There, a male relative of her husband could have claimed her, but here she was free, and neither Gian-nah
-tah nor any other man could initiate courtship without some sign from her.

  Nevertheless, ever since the flowering of her womanhood, Nejeunee had been taught that a woman’s greatest purpose was to serve and bear the children of a good man who would call her “My Wife.” It was the way of the Ndé, the People, and she knew that someday she would have to consent.

  From a travois angling down from a mule’s hindquarters, Nejeunee removed the teepee poles that formed the framework and added them to a stack on an elevated flat just below La Nariz’s slope. Here between lechuguilla daggers, the other three women brushed away snow so Nejeunee could help erect six eight-pole teepees with canvas covers. The gutaaln had chosen this place because of its great power, for in the cliffs and high places of the Sierra Diablo lived the Gáhé, mountain spirits who communed with the supreme being Bik’egu’indáán. Tonight, perhaps, masked warriors would impersonate the Gáhé and seek Bik’egu’indáán’s help and protection by dancing the spirit dance.

  Nejeunee knew that Little Squint Eyes needed all the blessings that Bik’egu’indáán could bestow, for it had been a winter of privation, quick strikes at the Indaa, and relentless flight from these white people. Ranging throughout a land that had once been the People’s alone, the Indaa seemed determined to wipe out this last free band of Mescaleros, or at least drive them back to the starvation and sickness of the reservation.

  Out of a sense of duty, Nejeunee had always celebrated with the other women when the men had returned with accounts of a successful raid against an enemy. But ever since the Indaa had taken from her he-who-cannot-be-mentioned, conviction had replaced obligation. Now she utterly loathed white men and all others who were not of the People. So great was her hatred that it seemed to burn inside her like Sháa, the sun, did in the sky.

  And yet she could not forget that she herself was not originally of the People.

  Nejeunee remembered it almost as a dream now, those ten summers in the adobe village three days’ travel across the Rio Grande from the place called El Paso. There had been dusty streets with dirty-faced hijos and barking perros, and sun-baked fields of corn and beans where her father had toiled alongside other peones. Of all the images, that of the kindly señora with the rebosa drawn over her black hair was strongest, for a mother’s love endured like no other. Indeed, Nejeunee had gained from her a nurturing spirit that guided Nejeunee even yet with Little Squint Eyes.