Apache Lament

by Patrick Dearen

  “I have no one.”

  “What about your baby’s father?”

  “Yah-ik-tee, he is not present since before Little Squint Eyes was born.”

  “That mean he’s dead?”

  “We mustn’t speak of it. Ghosts may be about.”

  For himself as well, thought Sam with a look back. The ghosts of past regrets.

  When he straightened in the saddle, he took a moment to study the woman. So many things about her identified her as Apache, but her features were not among them.

  “You was born Mexican, wasn’t you,” he said. “That some-thin’ you can talk about?”

  “I’m Ndé. Apache. It’s been so for ten summers since a warrior lifted me up on his horse at the salado grande, the big salt.”

  “Had to be hard gettin’ stole that way. Treated you awful bad, I guess.”

  She turned, her eyes flashing anger.

  “I’m Ndé,” she repeated. “I’m proud to be Ndé. It’s white people I hate.”

  Sam briefly looked down at his saddle horn. He had never considered that Apaches could hate just as he could. Animals didn’t hate; they just killed.

  “My people don’t do the things yours do,” he said.

  “Hmpf! They kill the fathers of our babies. Little Squint Eyes has no father because of them.”

  Sam breathed sharply. “I’m sorry he don’t have a father. But it was your people took ever’thing from me. My wife and baby both.”

  She stared at him and the anger in her eyes seemed to fade. Was it understanding that replaced it? Or even compassion?

  Sam’s voice began to crack as he went on. “You stood right there beside me at her grave. Now I find out you was hatin’ me the whole time, after all I did fightin’ that cat off.”

  Sam began to blink a lot and he turned away, finding the desert growing fuzzy. He wished he had never seen this squaw. She was a terrible reminder of so many things, of so many black nights and blacker days. Why the hell didn’t he just ride off and leave her?

  “Little Squint Eyes, mi niño. Gracias.”

  Abruptly Sam felt ashamed. He hadn’t intended to beg more thanks from the woman, especially gratitude expressed with a sob. When that cougar had dragged her baby away, Sam had only done what any honorable man would have.

  He brushed his eyes, and when he looked back at her, she gave him much more to think about.

  “You’re an enemy,” she said, “an Indaa. But I can’t hate you.”

  Surprised, Sam didn’t know how to respond. But words came out nonetheless.

  “Well, señora, can’t say as I hate you neither. Even with you keepin’ it a secret who jumped me.”

  Sam hoped the horses held out.

  Twice during the morning, he and the Apache woman walked and led their mounts for a mile or two. But the animals were still jaded even after Sam let them roll in the dirt and graze while he and his wards nooned at El Muerto water hole under El Muerto Peak. With Little Squint Eyes’s fever persisting, Sam didn’t dare tell the señora that the place had been named for the dead.

  After cooling the infant in a spring-fed pool, they pressed on for the Davis range, its far-flung skyline a dark blue as it rose out of a rolling grassland. The four beats of each horse’s walking gait—each hoof striking the road separately—soon sang Sam to sleep, but he didn’t realize it until the woman spoke from the dun alongside.

  “Gian-nah-tah.”

  Sam looked up, squinting as he found her in the glare. “What?”

  “Gian-nah-tah. I’m glad he didn’t kill you.”

  “So that’s who jumped me.” Sam laughed quietly at her delay in answering. “Only been about six hours since I asked you.”

  When the woman seemed not to grasp the humor, Sam added, “Sure come a long ways after you.”

  “I’m pledged to him. But I would kill him myself if I could.”

  Sam knew she was from a different culture, but he was as bemused as he was startled.

  “That how courtin’ is with your people?” he asked. “One wantin’ to kill the other?”

  “Gian-nah-tah is a great warrior, but he has no respect for the ways of the Ndé. He’s why the spirits turned away and let you white men overrun us.”

  It was an interesting perspective, thought Sam, but not one that gave credit to Captain Franks’s planning and determination. Or to his own.

  “It was somethin’ had to be done, the way you Mescaleros been killin’.”

  Now her face showed the anger Sam had seen before.

  “You white men killed women as they cooked,” she charged. “Like cowards, you killed them and left the snow to cry tears of blood.”

  Sam flinched. “I wasn’t a bit proud of it. Ever’body looked alike with those blankets. But don’t be tellin’ me about killin’ women, not after what one of your bucks did to my Elizabeth. You think that’ll make me want to help your baby? You damned squaw, not another word!”

  The woman’s chin began to quiver, whether from fear or anger or grief, Sam didn’t know. Hell, he didn’t even know all the reasons why he suddenly couldn’t hold his own emotions in check. But whatever the cause, he trembled and ached as he hadn’t in a long time.

  The two of them rode on that way as the hoofs drummed and Little Squint Eyes began to cry again. It seemed a weaker cry than before, and Sam watched with concern as the señora removed the cradleboard and laid it across her thighs. It rocked to the horse’s gait as she peeled away the infant’s covers, and Sam took his gray closer.

  The woman looked up with unvoiced questions. Sam could just imagine how worried Elizabeth would have been, a captive fearing for her baby’s life and terrified that the promised help might be withheld now. As guilt flooded him, Sam stayed silent, and so did the señora, but when he unscrewed his canteen, she extended a cloth and he drenched it.

  The cradleboard seemed well-balanced across the dun’s withers, but Sam stretched out a reassuring hand and supported it as she sponged the infant. Some things were better said with a gesture.

  Soon Little Squint Eyes quietened and began to nurse as the hoofbeats kept up their relentless rhythm. Maybe now was the time for words.

  “We been at war, your people and mine,” said Sam. “There’s nothin’ we can do to change that. But that don’t mean you and me’s got to be at war too. I lost somebody, and so did you. They’re gone, and they’re not comin’ back. All we got is what’s down the road, the next sunrise. Your baby’s sick, and what matters right now is workin’ together to get him some help.”

  Considering the ferocity of Apache warriors, Sam had no idea that their women could be so emotional. But the señora’s eyes and cheek began to glisten—in relief, he supposed—and when she spoke there was a gentleness in her voice that was like the soothing song of a trickling stream.

  “Que Dios te bendiga.

  “Y que Su Hijo te bendiga.”

  It was a prayer, and it made Sam wonder how anyone captured by heathens half her life ago could have faith in something that he had shunned since the Bass Canyon attack. As he stared between his horse’s ears at the advancing road, her words almost seemed to speak with his father’s voice from so many years ago.

  “May God bless you.

  “And may His Son bless you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “You’re in pain?”

  Sam wasn’t aware that he groaned until the Apache woman spoke from the horse that shadowed his gray. They were riding past Point of Rocks, a sheer face of stone shorn from a small Davis Mountains peak that was isolated from the magnificent main range immediately to the north. Burned red by the sunset at their back, the Point’s three-hundred-foot cliff was a landmark that told Sam that they were only a dozen miles from Fort Davis.

  Sam was indeed in pain, which was why he kept his left forearm against his chest as he rode.

  “The claws of the great cat cut deep,” she added. “I should prepare another cactus.”

  “The poultice you fixed sure helped. But
I’ll heal up on my own when this ridin’s over, providin’ I don’t have to fight anybody else off. Hard for scratches to scab over if you don’t give them a chance.”

  The woman went quiet as they rode past green live oaks growing between boulders at the Point’s base, one of the grassy plain’s few locations with trees.

  “You’re braver than Gian-nah-tah,” she finally said.

  Sam looked at her. He had always considered Mescaleros a strange contradiction. In one sense, they were skulking cowards who preyed upon the unwary only when the odds were in their favor—the story of Bass Canyon. And yet from what Captain Franks had said, in the face of certain death, these same warriors would fight gamely to the end like cornered badgers.

  Sam weighed his words before responding; he didn’t want to stir up trouble again.

  “How’s your people measure bravery?” he asked.

  “A brave man doesn’t threaten Little Squint Eyes.”

  “That what he did?”

  “A brave man stands up to Mat-to to save Little Squint Eyes,” she continued. “A brave man fights ídóí, the great cat, to save Little Squint Eyes. A brave man rides through a night and a day and into another night to save Little Squint Eyes. You’re braver than the warrior who left a kindly señora’s rebosa lying in her blood while he pulled me up across his horse.”

  Involuntarily, Sam pulled rein and turned to her.

  “God Almighty, you sayin’ this Gian-nah-tah killed one of your family and he’s the one stole you? And now you’re pledged to him?”

  The woman hung her head, and a deep sadness entered her voice.

  “Gian-nah-tah will take what’s his. The horse soldiers will carry me to the reservation, and Gian-nah-tah will be waiting.”

  “Don’t you have a say?”

  She looked up. “I’ll go to kuughà, his teepee, or he’ll kill Little Squint Eyes. He has said so.”

  “The son of a bitch!”

  Sam’s outburst was in English; he didn’t know a Spanish term strong enough to convey his anger. Indeed, his rage grew until his voice quaked.

  “That’s wrong. It’s just wrong. You was Mexican startin’ out—why don’t you go back to your first people?”

  Her dark eyes told him before she answered, for they were those of a person as lost as he. But, somehow, she managed to lift her chin a little higher.

  “I have no people but Ndé. But I wish your bullet had killed Gian-nah-tah.”

  “If I’d knowed how it was, I’d’ve chased him down and finished him.” Sam ran his hand across his bristly face. “Maybe he bled out anyway. I can’t get over him sayin’ he’d hurt your baby.”

  He rode on, and the woman kept pace on the dun alongside.

  “You’re more than brave,” she said. “For an Indaa, you’re kind like he-who-cannot-be-mentioned.”

  “Who?”

  “We mustn’t speak of yah-ik-tee, he who is not present.”

  “Your man, I guess. Little Squint Eyes’s father.” Sam leaned around to see the cradleboard at her back. The infant was flushed, but at least he was sleeping. “Speakin’ of bein’ kind, I guess we was both lucky that way. Don’t think anybody was as tenderhearted as Elizabeth. She’d’ve carried on about Little Squint Eyes the same as she would our own baby. Just be glad you get to hold yours, ’cause she never did.”

  “She didn’t?”

  Sam shook his head, and grief muffled his words. “All we wanted was to be left alone. All we wanted was to get to New Mexico so she could have her baby and we could be a family. I might as well be buried in that pass too, ’cause they’re not any deader than me.”

  Sam turned away; he was overcome by the memories, and he didn’t want her to see.

  “Lo . . . Lo siento, I . . . I’m sorry, Sam-el.”

  There was his name again, spoken with compassion by someone he had tried hard to hate but couldn’t. He enjoyed hearing her say it, even though he had every reason not to.

  Facing her, Sam forced a smile. “You’re awful kind yourself, señora. Sure like the lilt in my name when you say it. Now if I just knowed yours.”

  Sam made sure they rode abreast, but he knew that the woman still had to be frightened.

  Somber night squeezed in on all sides as they passed through the settlement of Fort Davis under a black mountain that hid the starlight. Already faced with an uncertain future, she was now about to enter her enemy’s stronghold, and Little Squint Eyes was sick. He was very sick, and she probably worried whether an Army surgeon would actually treat him. She had only Sam’s word—something he didn’t give frivolously—but he knew that in dealing with the Army, there was only so much that even a Texas Ranger could do.

  Where the point of the mountain angled down on the left, they reached the military reservation, which had no boundary walls. From out of the shadows stepped four dark forms, blocking their course and raising a challenge.

  “Who goes there?”

  “DeJarnett,” said Sam. “Ranger Company A.”

  As a silhouette approached and struck a match, Sam opened his coat to let the light flicker in his Cinco Peso badge.

  “Got a Mescalero woman we captured,” he explained. “She’s got a sick baby. We need the surgeon.”

  With two escorts walking ahead, Sam and the woman urged their horses inside the grounds. It was too dark to make out details of the post, but Sam had been here often. Fort Davis lay at the mouth of a three-hundred-yard-wide canyon between mountains with countless vertical columns of rock standing side by side. He and the woman passed between the sutler’s store and cavalry barracks, skirted the broad parade ground, and went around the south end of officers’ row, a line of a dozen or more houses spanning the canyon mouth.

  Two hundred yards ahead in mid-canyon, Sam distinguished the hospital’s long outline. On its left, hazy in the night, stood a bungalow with windows as black as the looming cliffs.

  The escorts, both Negro enlisted men, abruptly stopped.

  “Surgeon done in bed,” said one. “I knows we s’posed to take you there, but he don’t like bein’ bothered thataway.”

  Sam and his gray brushed past with the woman following. “Let me worry about it.”

  The escorts had to run to catch up, but thereafter the men proceeded to the surgeon’s quarters without comment. After Sam secured the horses, he followed the soldiers up the creaking steps of a covered porch while the woman stayed behind to check Little Squint Eyes. When the soldiers hesitated at the door, Sam took the initiative and rapped on the jamb. There was no immediate response, but he persisted until the glow of a lamp appeared through a window.

  “Identify yourself,” a slurred voice said through the door.

  “Need help,” said Sam. “I’m with the Rangers, Company A.”

  Sam could smell liquor on the surgeon’s breath the moment the door swung open. An officer of mid-forties with bushy sideburns and a goatee, he had the flushed face, swollen nose, and bloodshot eyes of someone consumed by the bottle. He sure as hell didn’t inspire confidence, but Sam didn’t waste time dwelling on it.

  “We got a sick baby.” Sam turned and motioned for the woman to bring Little Squint Eyes to the door.

  “That a squaw?” the surgeon asked.

  “Captured her and her baby a few days ago. He’s bad with fever.”

  Sam could hear the steps complain under the woman’s weight, but the surgeon waved her away.

  “Have her bring him to the hospital tomorrow.”

  The surgeon tried to close the door, but Sam prevented it with a boot.

  “You need to look at him,” Sam insisted. “He might not make it till tomorrow.”

  The surgeon’s eyes narrowed. “Sir, I will thank you to remove your foot.”

  Sam glanced back at the señora holding Little Squint Eyes in the lamplight. The concern in her face was greater than ever.

  “Listen,” Sam told the officer, “her baby’s burnin’ up and you’ve got to do somethin’.”

  “Mus
t I direct these soldiers to remove you? I will see the child in the morning.”

  “That’s not good enough. We come sixty-five miles, ridin’ day and night from Van Horn’s Wells. I’ll be damned if I let him die on your doorstep.”

  “This is not a matter worthy of attention so late.”

  “ ’Cause he’s Mescalero?”

  “Mescaleros, sir, are why this post is garrisoned.”

  Sam let out a weary breath. “I don’t think I’m bein’ unreasonable in what I’m askin’.”

  “In the morning, sir. Now if you will please remove your—”

  “Enough of this!” Sam drew back his coat, his downward glance directing the surgeon’s attention to the revolver in his holster. “One way or another, you’re doin’ somethin’ for that baby.”

  The surgeon looked up, and for a sobering moment he stared at Sam.

  “Very well,” said the officer.

  Stepping outside, he spoke quietly to one of the escorts and then led Sam and the señora to the nearby hospital in the shadows. Accompanied by the soldiers, the latter two mounted a wrap-around covered porch and followed the wobbling surgeon around the right corner and midway down the long veranda. Beside a window with lamplight, the officer pushed open a door and called for someone. Moments later, a Negro enlisted man in uniform appeared.

  “Bring in the child,” the surgeon instructed him.

  The Negro was evidently a medical corpsman, and as he approached the señora and reached for Little Squint Eyes, she hesitated and looked at Sam.

  “It’s all right,” Sam assured her. “We got him help now.”

  With a kiss to her baby’s forehead, the woman passed the infant into the man’s care.

  The surgeon had already gone inside, and as the corpsman carried Little Squint Eyes across the threshold, Sam motioned for the señora to enter next. He hadn’t noticed that the soldiers had assumed positions beside the door, but now they moved quickly to block access.

  “We’s to take you off of the post,” said one.

  Over the soldier’s shoulder, Sam could see the surgeon looking at him.