Apache Lament

by Patrick Dearen

  As the company pushed on, the temperature plunged and the wind picked up, the kind of chilling blast that could peel the flesh from a man’s face. The only way Sam could endure it was to pull his collar up around his temples and tilt his hat brim down for a shield. Even so, he didn’t know if he would still have ears if this ever ended.

  But not until the company halted at dusk did Sam realize the full impact of this ruthless day in the snowy canyons of a range named for the devil. As he tried to climb off his horse, he discovered that he was frozen to his saddle.

  He wasn’t alone. Around him, men labored to dismount, victims of ungodly cold and long hours in fixed positions that impeded circulation. Merely removing a boot from a stirrup was a challenge, and even after Sam extricated his right foot, he thought he would never swing his leg over the cantle.

  Finally, he flopped under the far stirrup and lay exhausted in snow that rose fetlock-high on his animal. Panting, his will all but stripped, Sam pulled himself up by means of the stirrup leather. Ahead, through the bunched horses and barely animate men, he could see a statue-like figure still in the saddle, his horse a stark black against the white beyond.

  No one could say the captain wasn’t game. A lesser man would have asked for help in dismounting, but Franks struggled without a word, his cough the only sound that passed his lips. Maybe it was typical of a man who bore even the memory of a lost son in silence, except for that heartbreaking summons for “Walter” during the previous night’s delirium.

  Jonesy, who stood watching as he held his roan just ahead of Sam, said something unintelligible. Sam supposed that everyone’s lips were numb, but that didn’t keep the New Jersey native from working his crooked jaw.

  “The old man can’t even get off his horse.”

  This time, Sam understood, even though Jonesy pronounced his words like a man roaring drunk.

  “Guess whipping us damned Yankees,” the northerner added, “is just as hard now as it was in the war.”

  Sam had never before wished for Jonesy to limit his topics to Mary Jane.

  “Lost someone, did he?” Jonesy went on. “Well, he’s not the only one. No, sir. Maybe it was my own father that put his precious Walter in the ground. Or maybe it was Franks himself who killed my father.”

  Good God, thought Sam. He hadn’t known about Jonesy losing his father in the war, but the way the ranger openly mocked the captain was shocking. In an ordeal like this, open disrespect for Franks could drop morale even lower.

  Sam decided to ignore the remarks and hope that Jonesy would drop the subject, but Arch unaccountably followed up.

  “Perchance, Jonesy,” said Arch, straining to enunciate as he stood alongside Sam, “growing up bereft of a father merely spared you misery and abuse.”

  Jonesy turned. “What’s that mean?”

  “He might have proven at home in these mountains.”

  “Huh?”

  “If not diablo incarnate, he may have been a worthy minion of his.”

  Jonesy’s face may have been too numb to show much expression, but Sam could see plenty of confusion in his eyes.

  “What are you talking about?” Jonesy asked. “What little I recall of my father is all good.” He slung a hand toward Franks. “He didn’t deserve some Yankee hater like that killing him, that’s for sure.”

  Jonesy spun to the captain, who still fought to dismount from the black gelding.

  “You hear me?” Jonesy shouted at him. “If not, I’ll come over and yell it in your ear!”

  Sam quickly looked at Franks. The captain either hadn’t understood or didn’t realize the comment was meant for him, for he merely continued his pitiful attempts to swing off the horse.

  “Let it go, Jonesy.” Sam’s plea was quiet, measured, but inside he screamed. For God’s sake, let it go!

  Then Jonesy took a step toward Franks, and Sam knew he had to do something quickly.

  “So how’s Mary Jane like the cold?” Sam asked. “Reckon she’s all warm by the fire someplace?”

  But Jonesy kept walking, leading his horse as he brushed past the ranger ahead.

  Sam, the reins of the gray in hand, stumbled after him. “What’s that you was sayin’ last night about her? You know, somethin’ about—”

  Abruptly Boye stepped in Jonesy’s path, forcing him to stop.

  “ ‘Lust not after her beauty in thine heart,’ ” quoted Boye. “ ‘A whore is a deep ditch.’ ”

  Even from behind, Sam could see Jonesy tense before the preacher boy.

  “You calling my Mary Jane a whore?” Jonesy demanded.

  “ ‘She also lieth in wait as for a prey,’ ” Boye continued. “ ‘Come not nigh the door of her house.’ ”

  “What right you got talking about my Mary Jane that way? She’s the sweetest, most innocent girl in all of New Jersey.”

  Jonesy had closed what little space there was between the two, but the preacher boy wasn’t deterred.

  “ ‘Neither let her take thee with her eyelids. Her house is the way to hell.’ ”

  Jonesy drew back a fist. “Why, you little bas—”

  He tried to throw a punch, but Sam seized his arm. It would have been a powerful blow, judging by the strength Sam needed to prevent it.

  Jonesy whirled on Sam with wild eyes. “Let me at him, DeJarnett! You hear what he said about my Mary Jane?”

  Jonesy broke free and tried to lunge at Boye, but the icy footing wouldn’t cooperate. He went down hard at Sam’s boots, leaving the preacher boy to hover over him.

  Boye pointed down at Jonesy, as if singling him out in admonishment. “ ‘Walk in the Spirit,’ ” Boye warned, “ ‘and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.’ ”

  It was like throwing kerosene on a fire. With an oath, Jonesy tried to kick him, but the preacher boy had taken a step back.

  “Y’all quit it!” Sam ordered. “We don’t need this—we’s freezin’ out here!”

  Sam reached down to offer Jonesy a helping hand, but the New Jersey native angrily pulled away. As he came to his feet, his puffed face still showed plenty of fight, but Boye had wisely retreated beyond a horse.

  “It’s all over now,” Sam told Jonesy. “Here, hold my horse for me.”

  Hoping it would distract him, Sam stuffed the reins in Jonesy’s hand and went to Franks. The captain had slipped his right boot out of the stirrup but had yet to swing his stiff leg across. Sam knew better than to ask if he needed help, so he stayed silent as he came abreast of the gelding and guided Franks’s foot up and across the animal’s rump. When the captain stepped down, Arch was there to support the coughing man and make sure his left boot cleared the stirrup.

  “Awful cold, Captain,” said Sam as he went around the black’s hindquarters. “Best you move around some till we get a fire goin’. Arch, let’s rustle up some wood.”

  At this confluence of two gulches, the temperature was falling as fast as the night. With frostbite a growing danger, it was important to gather fuel quickly. As other rangers searched the slopes, Sam and Arch started up the shadowy drainage on the right, their boots spraying snow with every shuffling step. As soon as they were out of earshot of everyone, Sam turned to Arch.

  “You want to tell me what that was about?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Back there. All those things you was sayin’ to Jonesy about his father.”

  “Merely the truth, Samuel. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  Sam breathed sharply. “You aggravated a situation that didn’t need aggravatin’. Jonesy was done poppin’ off, and you went and got him riled up even worse.”

  “That wasn’t my intent.”

  “You near’ caused a fight. Even worse, look how he was yell-in’ at the captain.”

  Arch went silent as they found a tangle of driftwood and began pulling limbs free, the wood groaning and popping. When Arch finally spoke, his voice was subdued.

  “Samuel, you’re right. It was imprudent of me. I confess to allowing my own feeling
s to exacerbate matters.”

  The gloom didn’t allow Sam to see Arch’s eyes, but he studied his friend nevertheless.

  “Arch,” he said with concern, “is there somethin’ you needin’ to talk about?”

  Arch looked down and stirred the snow with his boot. Twice he glanced up, as if wanting to speak but denying himself. The third time, he managed a single syllable before his gaze fell again. Finally came spiritless words.

  “I think not.”

  Sam could respect that. There were things that lived inside a man that he just had to deal with on his own.

  As dusk faded into unyielding dark, all that seemed to matter anymore was survival.

  They crowded a blazing fire, exhausted men caught in frigid weather that grew worse by the moment. Sam hoped the firewood held out, for he feared that not even a bedroll could stave off what lurked beyond the flames. He began to think of it as a living presence, something evil and pitiless, a frozen death ready to pounce.

  Captain Franks seemed the most vulnerable. All through supper, he had sat hunched over, as if his shoulders had lacked the strength to support him. Now, across from Sam, he lay in a fetal position in his tarpaulin, his back to the fire. Even in a spot cleared of snow, a bedroll and tarp offered little insulation; the ground itself was frozen. As the firelight flickered against the canvas drawn about the captain’s shoulders, Sam thought he could see the poor man shivering.

  “Bunch of fools we are.”

  As Matto began to complain, Sam hoped that Franks had already drifted off to sleep. Someone as sick as the captain didn’t need the added burden of knowing that Matto was sowing seeds of discontent.

  “Never knowed it so cold,” added Matto, who hunkered by the blaze as far from Sam and Arch as possible. “Get away from the fire and it’d peel the hide off. What the hell we doin’ here?”

  “Dying is what,” said the ranger named Red.

  “No use in this,” agreed someone else.

  Jonesy seemed shaken as he stared into the fire. “My Mary Jane, so far away . . . I . . . I don’t want to die.”

  “We’s fools to just let it happen,” said Matto. “We’s fools to traipse off up here in the first place.”

  Sam had to put a stop to this. He could still hear Elizabeth’s screams, and tomorrow, or the next day, or the one after that, they would catch up with those Mescaleros and turn them into good Indians. Dead Indians. But he couldn’t do it alone.

  “Let’s hold it down, let the captain sleep,” he said, scanning the firelit faces.

  Matto scowled but wouldn’t look at Sam. “Nobody tellin’ me when I can talk and when I can’t. Ain’t takin’ nobody’s orders no more, not his”—he nodded to Franks—“not nobody’s. If I want to get up tomorrow and ride out of here, I’ll damn sure do it.”

  “I’d be right behind you,” spoke up a previously silent ranger.

  “You ain’t the only one,” said Red.

  Sam could only hope that Franks hadn’t heard.

  Arch, standing quietly over Sam, cleared his throat. As Sam looked up through the curling smoke, he was sure that his friend was about to join the chorus of malcontents. Then Arch made brief eye contact, and his cheek began to twitch as if he grappled with indecision. The spasm persisted until the wind gusted, tossing the yellow flames.

  “Perhaps for now,” said Arch, “we should concentrate on enduring the night.”

  Boye sat closest to Franks, and abruptly the firelight seemed like hellfire in the preacher boy’s eyes. “It’s the Lord’s doing, sending a whirlwind out of the south and cold out of the north. Handing out punishment, He is.”

  “He can take a horsewhip to you for all I care,” growled Matto.

  “Yeah, but this freeze don’t care who’s who,” Red added. “It’s got ahold of us all.”

  “The Lord knows what He’s about,” said Boye. “ ‘By the breath of God frost is given.’ ”

  Sam leaned toward the popping fire, seeking warmth. He didn’t know whose doing this was, whether some uncaring God or nature or the devil himself. He just knew that the frozen death was all around, creeping closer by the minute.

  “Never saw a fire give out so little heat,” he said, watching the sparks rise from the flames. “Man go to sleep in this, might not ever wake up.”

  Jonesy pulled a limb from the dwindling pile and started to add it.

  “Hold off on that,” said Sam. “Wood’s got to last us.” He looked up at Arch. “Arch, fast as this wood’s burnin’, we goin’ to have enough?”

  “I fear we greatly overestimated our supply, Samuel.”

  Sam stood and adjusted his coat collar. “Yeah, and as fast as this temperature’s droppin’, we got to do somethin’ about it quick.” He dug into his trousers pocket. “Won’t be easy by match light.”

  Sam turned to the impenetrable dark, and so did Arch. As they started away, Sam checked over his shoulder. All those able-bodied rangers still hugged the lapping flames, and not a single one had the courage to leave the fire and help.

  At Arch’s shoulder, Sam cut trail to the crackle of ice, his boots growing heavier by the step. The warm blaze quickly became like a distant memory, but their shadows stayed ahead of them for a while, long and dark and crawling wickedly across the snow.

  Sam didn’t like what he was feeling—the growing sense that something evil waited in the night ahead.

  “The frozen death,” he muttered. “Like somethin’ ready to jump on us.”

  “You as well,” remarked Arch. “I thought it was only I.”

  “You feel it too?”

  “Ever since night fell, Samuel.” He took a quick look around. “It’s as if something malevolent is stalking us, manifesting itself in a numbing cold.”

  Now as Sam searched the mysterious dark, he wasn’t just perplexed. He was scared, and he drew his revolver and carried it muzzle down. Still, he didn’t feel one whit safer, and he thumbed back the hammer with a click.

  “Careful, Samuel,” warned Arch. “A .45 slug is of no consequence to a phantom, but potentially lethal to us should you trip.”

  Arch was right. How could a man shoot something he could only feel?

  He eased the hammer back into place but kept the weapon at his thigh as they ventured farther into the night, which seemed to loom up like a black veil that not even the flickering firelight could pierce.

  Suddenly the darkness began to moan—a plaintive, lonesome wail that seemed at once both wind and something more.

  Sam froze, his hand tightening on the walnut grip of his Colt. “Good God, what is that, Arch?”

  Arch stopped with him, and for long seconds Sam heard nothing but that eerie sough that made him want to turn and run.

  “Except for nocturnal denizens,” said Arch, “the night holds nothing that the day does not.”

  Arch sounded like a man trying to convince himself, a tack that Sam also tried.

  “Just wind, I guess.” But even Sam wasn’t satisfied with the explanation. “Think there’s such thing as ghosts? Or at least Indian spirits?”

  “ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of.’ ”

  Sam supposed that meant that Arch didn’t know any better than he did. Sam was still pondering when a flaring match startled him and he saw Arch shielding the small flame with a cupped hand.

  “On your left, Samuel.”

  Sam brought his Colt up in full cock as he pivoted to a shadowy form a few feet away on a rising bluff.

  “Easy, my man!” exclaimed Arch. “It’s merely a dead juniper ripe with firewood.”

  “Damn it, Arch, don’t be pointin’ things out in the dark that-away.”

  “Apology tendered. I—”

  Another unearthly cry exploded out of the up-canyon gloom—and this time it seemed to rise up from so near that Sam wouldn’t have stretched out an arm for all the silver dollars in Texas.

  “Arch, let’s grab all the juniper wood we can carry and get the hell out of here.”
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  CHAPTER 9

  The small fires blazed in the night, but they also seemed to burn through Nejeunee’s soul.

  There were four in all, each representing one of the four winds. Spaced thirty feet apart, they marked the corners of a square that held not only Nejeunee and Little Squint Eyes, but Gian-nah-tah and Nah-kay-yen. Looking on from outside were the rest of the band, a dozen hunched and shivering men and women crowding the blazes.

  Chanting to the spirit winds, the gutaaln went from fire to fire and cast tádidíné that set the flames leaping. But the ghost-cold remained, growing ever deadlier, and it would never go away unless Nejeunee yielded to the killer of her mother.

  Bitter was the smoke that hung in Nejeunee’s throat, but not nearly so bitter as what she carried in her heart. For the love of the child who slept in the cradleboard at her back, she would give herself over to a living death from which there could be no escape.

  Nah-kay-yen briefly disappeared into the night, and when he returned he bore an empty cast-iron kettle. In the center of the square, he placed it on the snow and removed the lightning-struck amulet from his neck. As he knelt, Nejeunee saw that he still had only limited use of his left arm. Nevertheless, with stiff fingers he held the dark stone over the cookware and began chipping at it with a knife.

  The gutaaln claimed the amulet held the power of lightning, and Nejeunee had no reason to doubt it. With every strike of the metal blade, fire flew as surely as lightning streaked across a stormy sky.

  Soon Nah-kay-yen tilted the cookware in such a way that Nejeunee could see firelight glinting from the fragments. Evidently satisfied, the gutaaln produced a stone mano and set about grinding the flakes into a powder. Completing the task, he motioned to a warrior, who responded by bringing a woven basket. At the gutaaln’s instructions, the man added water to the kettle and then retreated, leaving Nah-kay-yen to stir the concoction with his knife.

  With the powder suspended, if not dissolved, the gutaaln stood. Holding the cookware up before a fire, he prayed to the spirit of the wind that it represented, and then slowly revolved until he had done the same with the other fires. At the conclusion, he implored the lightning to fight the ghost-cold. As a dozen voices beyond the flames rose up in supplication, Nahkay-yen brought the kettle to his lips.