Apache Lament

by Patrick Dearen

  Next, he handed it to Gian-nah-tah. For hours Gian-nah-tah had appeared beaten, a stoop-shouldered shell of a man unworthy of the mountain lion skin he wore. Now as he drank, he seemed to transform into at least a semblance of the fierce warrior who struck fear in Nejeunee.

  Nejeunee drank next, tasting the grit. She prayed especially that the power of the lightning would charge her milk, for Little Squint Eyes would be the beneficiary as he nursed at her breast. As for herself, Nejeunee felt no sensation, but what could she expect, considering how violently her stomach churned as she stood beside Gian-nah-tah?

  Nah-kay-yen summoned the water bearer again and relinquished the cookware with instructions to pass the mixture from Ndé to Ndé outside the fires. Then he turned to Nejeunee.

  “The Gáhé must be appeased. Do what you must before we die.”

  Nejeunee looked down at the snow. She couldn’t face Giannah-tah, not when she was so overcome by the image of a cruel horseman overtaking a helpless señora. Strangely, the white salt bed of memory and the snow of this night looked very much alike—except that the snow at her feet was alive with firelight, while the salt bed cried of death through its red pool.

  Without looking up, Nejeunee made her way to a fire. There she removed the cradleboard and placed it on the ground. She took a moment to rearrange Little Squint Eyes’s blankets and then stood upright and stared into the flames. They reminded her of infierno, a place of judgment that she had learned about as a child. In her mother’s arms she had felt safe from those terrible fires, but now they would rage throughout her as long as she lived.

  For three seasons, her mourning blouse had draped from her shoulders, but she would wear it no more. Removing it, Nejeunee held it in her hands, dwelling on all that it had meant—the loss, the pain, the endless loneliness. The blouse had been a tragic reminder of an enduring love, but even if she searched to the farthest reaches of the winter, she still would never find hewho-cannot-be-mentioned.

  Her eyes blurred as she laid the blouse almost gently across the blaze, blue calico briefly holding its color against fiery tongues of red and yellow. Then the calico began to scorch, a black death crawling across it, and when it burst into flames she closed her eyes and felt the moisture squeeze out.

  For a moment, she wanted to open her wrists with the knife at her hip, but Little Squint Eyes began to coo, and she knew that she had a noble cause that was worth any sacrifice.

  Once more positioning the cradleboard upon her shoulders, Nejeunee went to the woodpile beside the fire and took up a slender stick. Turning, she started back toward Gian-nah-tah, her head hanging lower with every step. The few steps seemed to take almost forever—and she supposed they did, for they stretched from that long-ago day, when a war club had descended, to this moment when she stopped before the one who had wielded it.

  Still, she wouldn’t look up, focusing instead on the firelight playing against his buckskin leggings. The thought of him clinging to her and grunting was more loathsome than ever, but she blindly lifted the stick and lightly rapped Gian-nah-tah above the elbow—a lover’s tap to the arm of a witch to signify that she would accept his advances.

  From beyond the fires, Nejeunee heard a girlish squeal of delight, and she knew that Quick Talker had seen.

  “Look at me!” shouted Gian-nah-tah.

  Nejeunee thought he addressed only her, but as she looked up she found him scanning the bystanders as fire reflected in his single eye. Maybe it was the contrast with the shadowy socket where his other eye had been, or the flicker of the blazes against his disfiguring scar, but never had he appeared so evil.

  “Inside the fires we dance to bring the Gáhé down from their sacred caves!” he cried. “We dance, and the Gáhé will drive away the ghost-cold and the Indaa!”

  That eye so alive with fire looked down at Nejeunee, and his voice dropped to an arrogant snarl. “And when the Indaa turn back, you will come to kuughà, my teepee, and never leave.”

  Somehow the rangers had survived the night and its frozen death.

  Sam awoke beside the smoldering fire to the smell of woodsmoke and the realization that he couldn’t feel his toes. He sat up in his tarp and saw men stirring in the bedrolls that crowded the ring of blackened rocks, where Arch squatted over a coffee pot in the glowing coals. Someone behind Sam moaned, and he checked over his shoulder and found Franks rising to an elbow.

  “Captain, you make the night all right?” Sam asked.

  As Franks faced him, his gray eyes had a blank look as if Sam’s question hadn’t registered.

  “Captain?” Sam repeated.

  Franks’s brow wrinkled and he winced.

  “Still feelin’ poorly?” persisted Sam.

  But Franks only lowered his head and brought quaking fingers to his temple.

  Concerned, Sam glanced at the fire. “Let me rustle you some coffee.”

  Sam turned away to throw back his tarp, only to hear Franks moan again. This time it came with intelligible words.

  “Walter? That you, Walter?”

  Once more, Sam faced him.

  “You’re all grown up,” said Franks, staring at Sam but not seeming to focus. “Walter . . . Walter . . . Come back . . . Please come back.”

  Then Franks’s eyes began to well—vacant eyes as sad as the emotion in his trembling whisper.

  Sam would never know what it was like to love a son, not after Bass Canyon. But the plaintive plea of a father who had lost more than a war stirred something in Sam’s heart that he had believed buried with Elizabeth and their unborn child.

  Franks lay back again, and when he closed his eyes he seemed to rest easier. For a few moments, Sam watched the rise and fall of his chest, a peaceful rhythm abruptly broken by a coughing fit. When it passed, Sam readjusted Franks’s cover and rose. As soon as he turned to the fire, he found Arch extending a steaming tin cup through the drifting smoke.

  “Hear all that?” Sam asked quietly as he accepted. “Way he looked at me, seemed to think I was his boy.”

  Arch poured a second cup of coffee for himself. “Sometimes a person may be asleep even if his eyes are open. The captain may have looked at you, Samuel, but I doubt he saw you.”

  Sam sipped, feeling the black coffee’s warmth all the way down his throat. “Yeah, his eyes was like a dead man’s.”

  Sam wished he hadn’t phrased it that way; it brought a terrible memory of Elizabeth’s lifeless eyes staring but never seeing.

  “The captain suffers from a lot of unresolved trauma,” said Arch, “and he’s not alone.”

  “I wanted to tell him, ‘Yeah, it’s me, it’s Walter,’ so he’d rest better.”

  Arch stoked the fire with a few unburned twigs left over from the night. “It wouldn’t have been fair to him, Samuel. No one should attempt to live a lie, even for a moment.”

  Sam watched him rearrange the red-checked bandana about his neck. “I’m guessin’ more of us try to than ever ’fess up.”

  “A defense mechanism, pure and simple. To ignore something in our past is to pretend it never happened.”

  Sam had long-since realized that it was useless to pretend. For him, the past and the present had merged into a never-ending hell. As for Arch, Sam wondered if he was aware that he continued to fidget with the bandana knot.

  “It’ll eat you up, the bad stuff will, Arch. Holdin’ it in—tryin’ to, anyway—I’ve done my share of it, and it’s just not any good. What little I’ve told you about my troubles has helped. Can’t change things, but it’s helped.”

  Still, Arch fussed with the knot, and Sam wondered if his friend had understood a thing he had said. Or maybe he had.

  “I tendered an offer to listen, and you did so voluntarily,” said Arch.

  Sam wasn’t sure if there was a trace of agitation in Arch’s voice, but he got the message. If and when Arch was ready to talk about things, he would do so of his own accord.

  Across the fire, someone swore. Looking over, Sam saw Matto sit up in his fr
ost-covered bedroll and survey the heights, ghostly bluffs through a swirling fog.

  “Hell of a thing to wake up to, snow all around,” Matto grumbled. “How high he expect us to go in these damned mountains?”

  No one bothered to respond, but that didn’t keep Matto from protesting more. Interspersed with his complaints was profanity, much of it in Spanish, a tongue Sam had become fluent in during his years in the South Texas brush country.

  By the time Matto rolled up his bedding, his discontent had spread. As Red and another ranger huddled with him and conversed in hushed tones, Sam was troubled to realize that they were the men who had been so eager to bolt with Matto the night before. Even now, there was nothing to suggest that their topic was anything other than desertion, for Red motioned toward Franks, and the other ranger pointed back down-canyon. When Matto slung an arm toward the sidelined horses, the three seemed to reach an agreement, for they took up their saddles and started for the animals.

  “Don’t like the looks of this, Arch,” said Sam, watching through the rising smoke.

  “I’ll grant you that it doesn’t bode well.”

  “If they go, we all might as well go.”

  “Indeed. They represent thirty percent of our force.”

  “Arch, I know you’re still havin’ doubts about this, but we got to stop those three.”

  Sam looked at him and found that same twitch in his cheek that had suggested indecision the night before. Finally, Arch drew a deep breath.

  “Samuel, I wish you hadn’t convinced me of the innocent lives we stand to save.”

  It was all the reassurance Sam needed, and he edged around his friend and started for the horses. “We talk Matto out of leavin’, others will stay too. Let’s see if we can get him off to himself.”

  “I fear we are the last two men he wants to see privately.”

  “ ’Cause of what he let slip out?”

  “Indeed.”

  As chance would have it, Matto’s sidelined bay was isolated from the other nine horses, thereby promising Sam the two-onone discussion he wanted. He was dismayed by the bay’s condition, and he was equally discouraged by a quick scan of the other horses. Even this quickly, all the animals had deteriorated into sorry, beaten-down nags. Sam supposed it was no wonder; their scant allotments of grain would barely have kept horses serviceable even in ideal conditions.

  As Sam approached, Matto had his back turned and was busy trying to fit a bit into the bay’s mouth.

  “Matto, need to talk to you,” said Sam.

  The ranger wheeled. Sam couldn’t tell what showed in his eyes—dismay or embarrassment or shame—but Matto tried to cover it up with an angry outburst.

  “What the hell you want, DeJarnett? Leave me alone. I ain’t done nothin’.”

  “No, but you’re about to, I think.” Sam nodded to the other two rangers. “Y’all goin’ someplace?”

  Matto didn’t seem anxious to look at him. Turning away, the ranger set the bit against the horse’s teeth and tried to place the bridle crown over the ears. But the bay sensed his agitation and slung its head, complicating the task. Matto needed to calm the horse, not an easy matter when he couldn’t calm himself, and he resorted to swearing.

  Sam stepped forward to Matto’s shoulder so that the bay could see him clearly. “Easy, boy, easy.” He showed the gelding his hand and passed it down the angular face. He followed up with more soft words and gentle coaxing, and finally the horse relaxed enough for Matto to secure the bridle.

  “Didn’t ask nothin’ from you,” the ranger complained, still avoiding eye contact. Tying the reins to a nearby scrub juniper, he took up a blanket and laid it across the bay’s withers.

  “You can’t do this,” Sam pleaded. “The three of y’all can’t ride off this way.”

  “The hell we can’t,” said Matto, keeping his back to Sam as he hoisted the saddle.

  Arch finally spoke up. “Matto, my man, a force split seventy-thirty would be exceedingly vulnerable for the thirty if the Apaches circle back.”

  “We’s goin’,” said Matto, throwing the saddle across the horse.

  Sam stood by helplessly, watching his hopes of wreaking vengeance on those Mescaleros grow fainter by the second.

  Elizabeth!

  He could see her yet in Bass Canyon, an innocent and terrified woman fleeing a butcher out of hell.

  Elizabeth!

  To what lengths would Sam go to avenge her, to avenge a child who would never be born? Was there anything he wouldn’t do? Could there be any act too vile? Any words too despicable?

  “You climb on that horse and I’m tellin’ them.”

  Sam could hear his own voice, but a cruel and heartless stranger was behind it.

  Matto turned, furrows in his brow.

  “The other two,” Sam added. “They’ll spread it through the whole country.”

  “What are you—”

  “That boy in Juarez. I’m tellin’ them what all those men did to him.”

  Matto’s jaw dropped and his face blanched, and for a long while the two of them stared, one soulless man at another. Finally, Matto lowered his gaze and walked lifelessly toward the fire.

  “You, Samuel, are a royal bastard,” said Arch.

  Sam couldn’t disagree, and he wondered what had happened to the person he used to be.

  “Don’t go judgin’ me, Arch,” he said as they faced each other. “Till you’ve been in my place, don’t go judgin’ me.”

  “You prevailed on my sense of decency—we’ll save lives, you contended—but you’ve lost sight of what’s decent.”

  Sam turned and walked away. “I’m not listenin’ to this.”

  But Arch stayed at his shoulder. “No consideration is too great for someone mistreated as a youth.”

  “When it comes to dealin’ with those Apaches, Matto’s the last person I’d feel sorry for.” Sam was getting angry, and he stopped and whirled on Arch. “Or is it even Matto you’re talkin’ about?”

  Arch flushed and, almost reflexively, adjusted his neckerchief.

  “You have no noble cause, do you, Samuel. You’re just a pathetic figure reveling in self-pity, seeking retribution no matter the cost to anyone.”

  Sam didn’t respond. What could he say? That he knew it as well as Arch?

  As so many emotions raged inside him, Sam pondered what Elizabeth would have thought.

  CHAPTER 10

  The morning sun had just burned away the fog when Sam and Company A rode upon four smoldering campfires set at the corners of a square.

  Through a winding canyon, they had tracked the Mescaleros to this small bowl cradled by mountains. Here the canyon ended, while ahead loomed a steep, narrow gulch that poured down from the heights. Thick with brush, the rocky ravine was impassable for horses, but the Mescalero trail continued on, a zigzag scar in the snow of the sharp slope on its right.

  For the first time since the company had embarked on scout, Sam could see his shadow, starkly black against white. After sodden days under depressing clouds, there was something exhilarating about bright sunlight, and for an instant his spirits soared like the slopes ahead.

  This might be the day.

  Franks ordered a dismount, something the captain managed for himself this time. Sam, once on the ground, stood rubbing the backs of his thighs and watched Franks lead his horse to a fire ring. Although the captain’s cough persisted, he had been clearheaded since awakening fully, and warmer conditions today seemed to have restored a little vitality to his step.

  Franks took up a stick and stirred the ashes. Flames broke out almost immediately, a sure sign that the fires had not been abandoned long. As smoke rose, he turned and seemed to trace its drift along the ascending Mescalero trail.

  Sam had learned for himself how rugged this range was. It was a huge rock, broken by canyons snaking down from the highest reaches. White-frosted juniper, madrone, and piñon pine crowded gulches and north-facing slopes, while dominating elsewhere were agave,
ocotillo, cholla, and prickly pear, all growing between exposed areas of sharp-edged limestone. Everything seemed poised to prick or scrape.

  But alongside the Apache path, the snow had softened the slope, hiding the threats behind an almost heavenly beauty. Several hundred feet up, the beaten track disappeared over the contour of the mountain. From where Sam stood, the trail seemed to reach the sky, the bluest of blues in contrast to the snow.

  For a moment, he wished he could believe as Elizabeth had—that there was a better place waiting beyond that blue veil, a place where they might be together again.

  How much easier life would be for him, if he could only live a lie.

  “DeJarnett . . . Jones.”

  Hearing the captain call, Sam walked his horse forward and converged on the fire at the same time as Jonesy. Franks was stooped, trying to scoop snow to smother the flames and keep the increased smoke from alerting the Apaches. Still weak, he would have gone down if Sam hadn’t grabbed his arm. Sam knew better than to say anything, so he assumed Franks’s task and buried the fire.

  “Boys, I need you to reconnoiter on foot.” A cough rattled Franks’s chest as he motioned to the gulch. “Hold to the cover in the ravine. If you top out on the summit ridge, it’s bare and exposed, so stay low. I want to see you back.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sam acknowledged.

  He slid his Winchester out of its saddle scabbard and passed the animal’s reins to Boye.

  “May the heathens save their judgment for me,” said the preacher boy.

  “DeJarnett,” added Franks, “don’t shoot unless it’s a matter of have-to. We’re about to overtake them, son, and we can’t afford to give up our position.”

  With Jonesy following, Sam started up the ravine, a cut that exposed the mountain’s underlying rock. The gully was dense with alligator-bark junipers and piñon that kept it in shade, but the undergrowth was worse, a tangle of rabbitbrush, sotol, and needlegrass that hid pincushion cacti. The pitch was steeper than Sam had expected, and as he maneuvered up through the thicket, his boots slipped in the unstable footing. His Winchester was a hindrance, catching in the brush, and the Bowie knife at Sam’s waist was a problem too, for the scabbard probed his groin.