Apache Lament

by Patrick Dearen

  Hours had passed since the rising sun had cast a great darkness over Nejeunee’s life for the third time. Even yet, she experienced things distantly. There was little room between the beargrass-studded mountainside at her left shoulder and the sheer precipice on the opposite side of her pony, but she saw the Indaa rider ahead as if through a fog that shrouded every danger, and she heard the hoofbeats of the other horses and mules as if with someone else’s ears. Even the slippage of her dun’s hoofs came to her like a trifling rumble underfoot when thunder sounded.

  Nevertheless, Nejeunee was aware that the Indaa with red hair rode directly behind her, and to his rear, the scowling killer of One Who Frowns: Mat-to, she had heard others call him. The uncertainty of the next moment was terrifying, for back in the arroyo Mat-to would have killed her and dashed Little Squint Eyes against the rocks if not for the rider several horse-lengths ahead of Nejeunee.

  Another man had called this rider Sam-el, and twice he had intervened in her defense. But he was an enemy like all the rest, an animal without decency who was probably saving her for his own pleasure. Nejeunee hated him. Wolves of his kind had taken he-who-cannot-be-mentioned away from her, and now they had unmercifully killed her sisters. If it were in her power, she would draw a knife across his white throat.

  From behind, Red Hair began to speak in a language she didn’t understand. She suspected that he addressed her, but not until a pebble struck her thigh did she reflexively look back. Red Hair was grinning, showing his tobacco-stained teeth, and Nejeunee didn’t need to speak his language to know what was in his eyes. With a look of contempt, she turned away, but now Mat-to spoke up in the trade language familiar to every Ndé and especially to Nejeunee.

  “Meskin, ain’t ya,” he said in Spanish. “One ’fore you turned A-pach’, anyways. A damned whore draw blood on me again, I’ll finish what I started when I dragged you out of that hole.”

  Nejeunee rode on as if she hadn’t understood. She had her back to this killer of women and it gave her a sense of refuge.

  “Breed just like cockroaches, you Meskins do,” Mat-to continued. “No tellin’ how many whores that half-breed muchacho of yours will be papa to. You hearin’ what I say?”

  Nejeunee heard, all right, but she didn’t dare acknowledge.

  “Turn around here to me,” Mat-to demanded. “Show me that spiteful look I seen all them times in that cathouse.”

  The rising anger in his voice must have alarmed Little Squint Eyes, for he began to cry.

  “You waitin’ for me to shoot that squallin’ muchacho? Turn around to me!”

  Nejeunee heard a revolver hammer spring back to full cock, and she looked back in utter fear. Caught in the line of fire, a dodging Red Hair leaned so far off his horse that the mountainside’s beargrass scraped his hat. Over his shoulder he was shouting at Mat-to, but so was Nejeunee as she saw the scowling man’s six-shooter trained on her.

  “Por favor, no! Mi niño! Mi niño!”

  “Your niño, hell!” mocked Mat-to. “Since when’s a Meskin whore care about a boy?”

  “I am Ndé, Apache! Mi niño is Ndé! Por favor!”

  Mat-to spat between his teeth and smiled cruelly. “That’s it, beg. Go on, louder! Like a boy not wantin’ a man draggin’ him to a room no more. Beg, you bitch!”

  Nejeunee heard a shout from down-trail and saw Mat-to’s eyes shift. He was looking past her, even as his revolver stayed fixed. More shouts came, shrill and dire in the Indaa tongue, and Mat-to yelled back.

  Facing down-trail again, Nejeunee understood as soon as she squared herself astride the dun. Ahead and below, framed by her horse’s ears, Sam-el was twisted around on his mount in confrontation, his glinting carbine upright in his hand.

  More shouts ensued, from below and behind, before the voices calmed and Sam-el slid the rifle back in its saddle scabbard. When Nejeunee glanced over her shoulder, she found Red Hair upright in his saddle and a crimson-faced Mat-to without a visible weapon.

  The dun carried Nejeunee and Little Squint Eyes on down to Sam-el, who waited beside a chalky boulder at a momentary widening of the trail.

  “Lo siento, señora,” he said as she reached him.

  Sam-el’s words of regret were unexpected—but he was still an enemy, and she would not dignify an enemy with a response.

  “Por favor,” he added, motioning for her to bring her horse alongside his.

  They waited there, letting the others go by, and at first Nejeunee didn’t know the purpose. But as the last rider passed with a pack mule, and Sam-el had Nejeunee fall in behind, she realized that he had placed her in a position of greater safety.

  But maybe this Indaa who now followed was just biding his time for his own cruelties.

  As troubling as the clashes with Matto had been, something else dominated Sam’s thoughts as his gray picked its way down the treacherous trail.

  Captain Franks was dead, and so was he.

  Haunted, focused, determined, obsessed. Traits born of tragic circumstances that Franks had never escaped, the terms also described Sam, who still lived every moment in Bass Canyon. For Franks, everything had ended with a look of peace on his face, although a peace based on delusion. But Sam couldn’t muster even the suggestion of a smile, although he had done exactly what he had promised over Elizabeth’s grave.

  It made him wonder which of them, he or Franks, was the more dead.

  At least Franks’s troubled journey was over, buried with his remains under rocks high on a summit ridge. He was safe there from all the crippling memories, at rest from the consuming passions, while Sam rode on relentlessly through Bass Canyon.

  That tormenting ride persisted as the hours wore on and the sun burned away the snow. In late afternoon the company spilled out into the desert at the Diablos’ northeast point, where the range bent sharply left and right. Turning in the latter direction, south, the men followed the range’s base for three miles and made camp at dusk at a marsh in the shadow of the dramatic summit ridge.

  The day had been trying for the sleep-starved rangers, who had dismounted and led their spent horses the final ninety minutes. Sam hadn’t thought a man could walk and sleep at the same time, but momentary dream figures had flashed through his mind as he had watched his boots trudge one after the other past lechuguilla and spiny cholla.

  Throughout, the woman ahead of him had endured without complaint, even with the cradleboard at her back. But now, as she sat nursing her baby while the thirsty stock watered among the common reeds behind her, he could see the tiredness in her face. For a moment he felt compassion for her, this mother whose entire world had turned upside down, and then he reminded himself that she was of the pack of butchers from Bass Canyon.

  As his hate surged, Sam wandered away into the skeletons of dormant mesquites that surrounded the marsh. Soon he broke through to the thicket’s west side, where a big yucca angled up over his head. He stopped there, a hand on the thick trunk as his hat brushed the daggered crown, and looked up at the Diablos.

  Suddenly he realized that the company had worked its way back along the escarpment’s base to a location that had to be almost directly below where Captain Franks had died. Three thousand feet up on that sawtooth rim, at a spot barely three crow-flight miles away, a meaningless pile of rocks was all that remained of a man’s life. Soon, Franks would be as forgotten as Elizabeth and all the other emigrants who had died in Bass Canyon.

  Sam heard a crackling of brush, and he checked over his shoulder to see Arch emerge from the mesquites, a lot of brutal days showing in his bristly face.

  Sam nodded to the rim. “Sure left him in a lonely place. The least we could’ve done was scratch his name on a rock. We was halfway down before I thought about it.”

  When Arch stayed silent, Sam continued to study the heights. “I know we’ve had our differences, Arch, but I appreciate you takin’ a stand the way you did. You know, against goin’ off and leavin’ him.”

  “Spoken like someone as egocentric as
you’ve proven yourself.”

  Sam had no idea what Arch had said, but he knew it wasn’t a compliment. His anger rising, Sam faced him with a request.

  “Say it straight out where I can understand it.”

  “I didn’t take a stance because of you,” simplified Arch. “I did it for an admirable officer and man who deserved better.”

  Fair enough, thought Sam. Thinking that was the end of it, he looked back at the ridge, but Arch had more to say.

  “It’s on your hands. His suffering, his death, it’s all on you.”

  Facing him again, Sam only stared.

  “You know it as well as I,” Arch continued. “Franks’s judgment was clouded by physical and emotional distress, and all I asked was that you join me in persuading him to turn back. You refused, and the fruits of your decision lie atop that mountain.”

  Sam gave a half-laugh of disbelief. “So you had to follow me over here just to say that? You even look at his face when we was buryin’ him? He died happy.”

  “Any epitaph might as well have said Killed by DeJarnett.”

  Arch immediately started away, but Sam grabbed his shoulder.

  “Don’t you go makin’ it my fault!” said Sam. “Wasn’t a thing about his dyin’ the captain would’ve changed. He finished what he set out to do and got his boy back, least in his mind, and he went peaceful. That’s a damned sight better than I ever will.”

  “So I was correct. Vengeance was never going to be sufficient for you, was it.”

  This time when Arch turned to leave, Sam didn’t stop him. Sam hadn’t intended to confirm Arch’s earlier accusation and see the smug look on his face, but the truth had slipped out.

  Peace was just as far away as ever, and Sam had no hope of finding it.

  When Sam followed the smell of coffee back to a fire at camp, exhausted rangers sat leaned back against their saddles and ate hardtack and jerky. Headed for his own stores, Sam passed the baby in his cradleboard as the mother knelt at the marsh and drank with a cupped hand. Sam had sampled the water earlier and found it gyppy, so he was looking forward to disguising its taste in black coffee.

  Digging a cup out of his saddlebag, he poured a steaming portion from the smutty pot and turned to seek out his supper. As he did, he saw the woman pull a reed out of the shallows. Curious, he watched her wash away the mud and begin gnawing at the rootstock.

  Sam was anything but an Apache lover, but he questioned how much nourishment the rootstock could give the young woman. After all, she was eating for two, and he doubted that the Diablos had been any kinder to the Apaches than they had to Company A. As he studied her face, he realized for the first time how drawn it was.

  “Anybody offer her some food?” he asked with a scan of the rangers.

  Several men looked up, and two or three exchanged glances.

  “She’s half-starved,” Sam added. “Least somebody could’ve done was give her somethin’ to eat.”

  “Missed the mark again, I have,” spoke up Boye, turning and rummaging in his saddlebag. “Running short, but provide, He will.”

  Matto caught Sam’s attention. “We’s all short of food. It’s your damned fault she’s here. If you want her fed, nobody stoppin’ you.”

  Arch never looked up, and Boye continued to rummage without producing anything. Sam supposed he couldn’t blame any of them, not after subsisting on half-rations in the Diablos where the shooting of game would have given away their position. Sam’s supply, as well, was all but exhausted, but he figured he could sleep just as well hungry as not. Anyway, the company would likely come upon rabbits or a deer tomorrow.

  From his saddlebag, he retrieved his last hardtack biscuit and final strip of jerky and approached the woman, who gently rocked the cradleboard as she chewed on the rootstock.

  “Toma,” he said, extending the food.

  Looking up, she accepted without comment. But as her eyes lingered on him, they triggered something inside Sam. Boye had touted the benefits of service, and for a moment, Sam’s spirits were strangely lifted. But then it dawned on him again just who and what this woman was, and he stalked away confused and angry at himself.

  CHAPTER 16

  They rode under the warming sun of a new day, and Jonesy’s deformed jaw was fast at work.

  Mary Jane this, and Mary Jane that.

  Maybe it was because he and the rest of Company A were bound for home camp in Musquiz Canyon near Fort Davis. Or maybe Jonesy just wanted to twist a knife a little deeper into Sam’s heart.

  Damn it, Sam didn’t need a reminder of what Jonesy had that he didn’t, but the Yankee seemed determined never to let him forget. He rambled on about his girl as they bore south and watered at a boulder marked “Rattlesnake Spring” under the Diablo rim. The escarpment’s passing folds, steep and red-hued under a band of cliffs, listened in silence as Jonesy kept up his blather on into midmorning. Even as the company veered a little west through a three-mile-wide passage between the Diablos on the right and lesser mountains on the left, the New Jersey native never tired of bragging about his sweet Mary Jane.

  But Sam began to wonder how long it might be before Jonesy could post a letter to her at Fort Davis. Sam hadn’t realized how dependent the company had been on Captain Franks until he and the others faced the prospect of returning on their own. Indeed, the country turned broken, carrying the riders down into gulches and up demanding rises in a pattern that taxed their jaded horses. With distant landmarks obscured, they tried to navigate by compass, but the lay of the land usually dictated their course. And across every brutal mile by hoof or foot, vegetation such as creosote or yucca, sotol or pitaya, reminded Sam that this was a desert—as if the bone-dry arroyos weren’t evidence enough.

  It was the kind of place a man might ride into and never find his way out.

  Along a hidden arroyo lined with catclaw and scrub mesquite, the company came upon javelinas feeding on prickly pear, and Sam felled one with a Winchester shot. It was only mid-afternoon, and this section of maze looked as if it had never seen water, but here was a flat suitable for camp and a cookfire. There was no one to order a halt for the day, but the other rangers must have suffered from hunger almost as much as Sam did, for everyone dismounted and pitched in to butcher the animal. The hide reeked, but meaty strips soon were roasting over a fire and giving off an agreeable-enough smell.

  When fully cooked, the meat tasted all right as well, at least according to the first men to sample the fare. Necessity forced Sam to be patient, for he was last in line and even after he stabbed a charred steak with his knife and stepped back, it continued to sizzle on the blade. Looking up through the smoke as it cooled, he saw the Mescalero woman sitting forgotten as she nursed her child. Once more, Sam couldn’t bring himself to take a bite when someone as vulnerable as Elizabeth bore her hunger in silence.

  Damn it, didn’t he loathe himself enough already?

  The next thing he knew he was standing over her, their gazes locked. There was something peaceful about a mother with a nursing baby, and for now, at least, the butchers of Bass Canyon seemed far away.

  “There’s more after this,” Sam said, sliding the skewered steak free.

  Just as she had the evening before, she received the food in silence, but this time she looked at him more intently. What was in those dark eyes of hers? Questions?

  If so, she wasn’t alone, for Sam had plenty to ask of himself.

  Returning to the fire for his own portion, he carried it by knife to his saddle in front of a mesquite near her. Removing his holster belt, he sat and did more thinking than eating, despite the distraction of Jonesy wearying everyone with another Mary Jane story. Sam hadn’t even begun to resolve anything when the Apache woman motioned to herself and then to the brush, a modest way of informing him that she needed to take care of bodily functions.

  Securing the baby in the cradleboard, she stood and shouldered the frame. Sam rose with her and followed her through squawbush and other spiny shrubs. Still ca
rrying meat skewered on his knife, he stayed close as they dodged prickly pear scarred by foraging javelinas. When they reached a gnarled guayacan, a shrub taller than Sam and dense with tiny green leaves, the woman motioned for him to stay.

  She disappeared behind the foliage, but the hood of the cradleboard soon edged out as she placed it on the ground. Turning away to give her added privacy, Sam stood eating the last of the meat and dwelled on things. His future was a dark haze and his present nothing but confusion, and both were built on a past where the good things of his twenty-seven years had been crushed in a moment.

  From behind, Sam heard a rustle and a startled shriek, and he pivoted to glimpse tawny hide as the cradleboard slid out of sight behind creosote. What the—

  “Ídóí!”

  He broke for the cradleboard to the woman’s cry and collided with her. An instant later he saw a mountain lion straddling the frame and dragging the baby away, cradleboard and all. Barehanded or not, the woman would have chased after the panther, but Sam was between the two and already bolting for it through creosote and sotol.

  Everything was a blur, his actions instinctive. The cradle-board was at an angle, with the powerful jaws locked on the hood’s rim only inches from the baby’s face. With a yell, Sam overtook the burdened cat just before it gained a thicket of mesquites. He lunged between the panther’s striding legs and tried to wrench the cradleboard free, and when that failed he slashed at the predator’s rib cage and hindquarter with his knife.

  The hide was thick, a challenge for even a sharp blade, but Sam inflicted enough damage for the cat to drop the cradle-board and turn on him. One moment he was staring into a set of cold, yellow eyes, and the next he was fending off fangs and claws that shredded his coat and threatened to take him down.

  They might have done so, but suddenly a mesquite club rained down, pummeling the tawny hide, and the cougar sprang away and ran into the brush.

  Frantic, the woman dropped the club and swept the cradle-board up in her arms to the infant’s crying. Again and again she voiced an Apache word that must have been his name, but Sam shouted as well.