Apache Lament

by Patrick Dearen

  He knew why.

  It wasn’t the setting, or the absence of immediate threat. It was because he was with Nejeunee.

  Twenty feet upstream under a small maple, she sat mending the cradleboard with leather tie strings from the saddles. Sam looked at her often, noting her smooth profile and the shapely swell of her calico blouse. He especially liked the brush of her black hair against her cheek as she checked Little Squint Eyes on the ground beside her. Nejeunee had a grace about her that Sam had never let himself appreciate, and when she looked up at him and smiled, he did so in return without embarrassment.

  Ever since they had dismounted here, there had been something unspoken between them. Sam could feel it, and he could see it in her glances. Her eyes danced as they did when she played with Little Squint Eyes, but there was more. They seemed alive in a fresh new way, and Sam wondered what his own would show if he could see them.

  He kept thinking about how he had held her at the cottonwood. She had turned her face aside, and yet her head had found the hollow of his neck. He had felt the touch of her hair against his jaw, and her warmth as the tremble of her body had faded. There had been something special about that moment, and he longed to take her in his arms again.

  Rising, Sam went to her, and she greeted him with another smile as he sat so that Little Squint Eyes was between them. Whatever the immediate effects of the Frenchman’s assault, the child seemed all right now, for he lay gurgling and cooing as he batted at imaginary objects. Sam placed an index finger before the tiny hands, just as he had done on the day of the cougar attack, and Little Squint Eyes gripped it with delight in his face.

  “Inádlu,” said Nejeunee, smiling down at the infant.

  “That Apache?” Sam asked.

  “It means ‘he laughs.’ He likes you, so he laughs.” She lifted her gaze. “You give me reason to laugh also, Sam-el.”

  Sam read a lot into her statement, but no more than what he thought was in her expression.

  “I’d almost forgot how to laugh myself,” he said.

  He felt Little Squint Eyes tug his finger. “Inádlu,” Sam repeated. “Kind of pretty, the way you say it. Your name too—Nejeunee. Mean anything?”

  “Kind, or friendly. If I say, ‘nejeunee Sam-el,’ it’s to say, ‘good friend Sam-el.’ ”

  For a moment, he explored her eyes, and she did nothing to discourage him.

  “I am your friend, Nejeunee. And I hope I can say ‘nejeunee Nejeunee’—‘my good friend Nejeunee.’ ”

  Little Squint Eyes had released Sam’s hand, and Sam impulsively stretched it toward Nejeunee. He was blind to Apache custom, and when she didn’t take it, he realized he must have offended her. But no sooner had he withdrawn his hand than her fingers stole out across the infant and accepted it. As their clasp lingered, things yet unspoken swelled inside him and showed in her eyes. Then Little Squint Eyes batted their joined fingers, and Nejeunee and Sam both laughed and the spell was broken.

  “Feelin’ left out, are you?” he asked the infant. Working his little finger free of Nejeunee’s hold, Sam let the tiny hands take it.

  Nejeunee gave a girlish giggle and let the baby take her finger as well. “See, Little Squint Eyes? Now you have shimá, mother, and Sam-el both.”

  Nothing could have relaxed Sam more, and he no longer felt a need to hold some of the unspoken words in reserve.

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t ever see you again,” he said.

  Nejeunee only looked at him.

  “I wanted to,” Sam added, “but I didn’t think they’d let me. Then I woke up this morning and decided I wouldn’t let anything keep me from it.”

  Still, she only stared, and Sam began to wish he had remained quiet.

  He glanced at Little Squint Eyes. “I know you been worried sick about your baby.”

  For a moment, Sam looked away, but the squeeze of Nejeunee’s hand brought his head around again.

  “A hollow was in my heart,” she said. “Not even Jesucristo could take it away. It grew greater with every day. I was happy knowing Little Squint Eyes was well. But greater happiness had fled to the lake-of-the-gone-forever.

  “And then you appeared around the tree, Sam-el.”

  Brush suddenly popped from behind, and Sam drew his revolver by instinct and whirled. He jumped to his feet, his every sense fixed on movement in the scrub oaks down-canyon. He counted three gray-brown figures—no, four—and they continued to break twigs as they advanced from right to left through the tangled limbs and shrubby undergrowth. He glimpsed a strange white flag, and another and another, and then Nejeunee was standing beside him and pointing.

  “Tseenaagaaí,” she said calmly.

  Now Sam saw them for himself: deer flashing their white tails as they grazed the canyon bottom.

  Sam turned to Nejeunee. “Want to tell me again how brave I am?” he said with a chuckle.

  But at least the two of them were no longer discussing personal things. The truth was, Sam was scared by what Nejeunee had said, and by what he was feeling. It was all too much, too soon, and he needed time away from the influence of her eyes and touch so he could think.

  But as the sun crawled across a tangle of limbs above, and matters of the heart stayed safely in the list of things unsaid, Sam couldn’t pull himself away from her. He didn’t want to be out of her presence, not even for a little while, and when she sat at stream’s edge and placed her bare feet in the shallows, Sam eased down beside her.

  As he listened to the creak of the cradleboard while it swung with Little Squint Eyes from a nearby hackberry limb, Sam smoothed his palm across the stream’s surface. Soon, however, he and Nejeunee looked at one another, and for hours that went by much too fast, they engaged in good-natured small-talk. Then without warning, she splashed him in the face with her foot, and he splashed her in return with his hand. She laughed and he laughed, and they kept up their banter and teasing play until she left Little Squint Eyes in his care and went into the brush downstream to bathe.

  Alone now except for the sleeping infant, Sam had nothing to distract his thoughts. But he decided he didn’t really care to figure things out. There was a connection between Nejeunee and him, and he was sure that she felt it too, and it was better to live in the moment than break it apart trying to understand it.

  Nejeunee soon returned, wrapped in a woolen Army blanket and carrying her freshly washed clothes. Her shoulders were beaded with water and her wet hair was glossy, and Sam couldn’t take his eyes off her as she stood before the limbs of an oak and hung the garments in the sunlight. Whenever she nursed Little Squint Eyes, she did so discreetly under her blouse, and she was not immodestly clad even now. But for the first time, Sam saw a small, buckskin pouch dangling from her neck.

  From a distance, it seemed to be marked by an artistic cross—two meandering yellow lines passing through similarly crooked streaks of red. More than once, she had said things that had suggested a Christian faith, and the colorful design made him wonder even more.

  Sam stood as she approached. “I’m next up for a bath, I guess,” he said. Then he motioned. “So what’s the little leather bag?”

  Nejeunee paused and glanced at it. “Power is in all things. Special power is inside for me alone to claim.”

  “What you got painted on it?”

  With her slim fingers, she brought the artwork to her lips.

  “To Ndé, it’s the red and yellow snake, but I see more. I see the cross of Jesucristo in the long-ago village of the kindly señora. The Blessed Son is a power greater than any. When Little Squint Eyes is older, I’ll teach him to pray for His help.”

  Sam looked down and found a weary breath. “Wish it was all that easy.”

  He knew that Nejeunee came up before him, but he was back at Bass Canyon for a moment.

  “Your heart has its own hollow,” she said quietly.

  “Friend of mine told me it’s a long, hard climb up out of hell. I’m thinkin’ that once we ever sink that far, it’s not muc
h use even tryin’ to crawl out.”

  “Your loss was great, Sam-el.”

  He looked at her. “So was yours from what you told me. But you seem to get by better than me. I suppose havin’ a baby to look after helps.”

  At his words, Nejeunee went to the nearby hackberry, where Little Squint Eyes still swung in his cradleboard. Removing the infant, she pressed him to her breast with a loving kiss and looked at Sam.

  “I hold Little Squint Eyes in my arms,” she said, “but it’s Jesucristo who holds me in His.”

  Sam stared at her, wondering if that kind of assurance could ever be his.

  “I might’ve felt the same way too, once upon a time,” he whispered. “But I guess I kind of gave up after—”

  No. He wouldn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t relive Bass Canyon aloud, even if he couldn’t control the memories. With a long, troubling sigh, he turned away, and the sunlit stream before him began to blur.

  “Ndé or Indaa, a warrior doesn’t give up; he fights,” Nejeunee told him from behind.

  Sam turned, strangely unafraid for Nejeunee to see the emotion in his face.

  “You’re a warrior, Sam-el,” she added. “And brave.”

  Through all the yearning, Sam found a bittersweet smile that he could have mustered for no one else.

  “Except when it comes to deer?” he managed to joke.

  In his bedroll within arm’s reach of Nejeunee that night, Sam lay awake, staring up through bare limbs at the jeweled sky and hearing again her words.

  His father had believed, and so had Elizabeth, strongly enough for Sam to have regretted not setting a cross when he had buried her. Now he had confirmed that Nejeunee—this young woman thrust into Apache culture against her will—still clung to her faith despite everything that had happened to her.

  Once, Sam too might have acknowledged some level of belief, but he figured that the difference between acknowledging and committing was like the contrast of a pebble to a mountain. Even if he did yearn for the caring arms of someone greater, was it possible for a man who had shown through his actions that he had lost his soul?

  But maybe a spark of it still existed, waiting to flare if he would only answer the summons.

  Shortly before daybreak Sam awoke, not even aware that he had gone to sleep. But he felt refreshed, and strangely overjoyed, for just beyond the cradleboard and Little Squint Eyes, Nejeunee lay resting peacefully. She had graced his dreams, and now he wanted to reach for her and relive the glorious moments of the afternoon before.

  But bliss could become hell in a moment if the Army seized Nejeunee for a killing that had been justified.

  Sam realized he had been remiss in not being more vigilant, and in alarm he rose and saddled his gray in a light frost. As was common in winter, the animal humped its back to the cold leather, and Sam was adjusting a cinch when he heard the pleasing lilt of a voice behind him.

  “Sam-el?”

  Looking back, Sam found Nejeunee standing a few yards away, a blanket around her shoulders as she held Little Squint Eyes.

  “I’ll be back quick as I can, so be ready,” he said. “If you hear me shoot, head up the canyon and don’t never come back.”

  He straightened the stirrup and started to step up, only to hesitate.

  Never.

  Sam didn’t like the sound of that. Turning, he led the horse up before Nejeunee and, before he would let himself anticipate her reaction, hugged her lightly. Neither of them spoke, but when he rode away, he could still feel her warmth as she had accepted his arms.

  He bore downstream, the tightness in the gray’s back relaxing as the animal warmed. But as horse and rider navigated the twists of the canyon, Sam’s tension only grew, for he knew the consequences to Nejeunee if he met pursuers and she couldn’t hear his warning shot.

  He made it to the canyon mouth without incident before sunrise and again reconnoitered from a high ridge. If soldiers from Fort Davis were to give chase, they would probably do so no later than today, for the elements could wipe out a trail quickly. From behind an angling yucca, he watched the sun burst over the jagged skyline of faraway mountains. The blaze was as swollen as the orb that had precipitated the attack on the Mescalero camp, and Sam began to tremble.

  How close the rangers had come to killing Nejeunee. How close Sam had come to killing her. He had fired repeatedly, taking a bead on one blanketed form after another. Damn him to hell, he had taken friends from her, her world from her.

  Just as her people had taken his.

  He dwelled on that, and more, as the long shadows receded in the broken country below and the distance remained empty. How very wide the gulf was between Nejeunee and him. They had so many things going against them, and he knew he had no right to expect even a friendship.

  And yet something was happening, and he felt it growing stronger by the moment whether they were together or apart.

  On into midmorning, Sam’s thoughts were on Nejeunee alone, and then a corner of his mind alerted him to a plume of dust in the ocher reaches of the lowlands. Stepping out from the yucca to orient himself, he was troubled to find that the blight lay on a line to the Fort Stockton road. So distant that it didn’t seem to move, the plume could have been a dust devil, but when it didn’t dissipate after several minutes, Sam rushed for his horse with a wag of his head.

  A cavalry patrol had picked up their tracks, and he and Nejeunee had no choice but to run.

  Sam’s ride back up the tangled canyon seemed to take longer than before, and when he broke upon the small clearing where he had left Nejeunee, she was nowhere to be seen. But she was of the people who had long eluded the Army’s best, and she knew how to hide. When Sam called her name, he heard brush crackle across the creek, and he looked twenty yards up the sharp rise to find her leading the roan out from behind a brushy juniper. With Little Squint Eyes at her back, she agilely descended to the stream, and by the time she waded across, Sam had stepped off his horse and was waiting.

  “Nejeunee, there’s nothin’ I’d like better than to stay here,” he said. “I want to take hold of your hand and us walk up the stream and listen to it singin’ with the sparrows. I want to hear what color you like the best and little things like that, what it is you dream about when you’re wide awake. But we got Army comin’, and we got to save all of that for when we have time. Right now we got to ride.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Nejeunee was a woman on two journeys, and she didn’t know where either would lead.

  Forging up the snaking canyon, they broke trail through a tangle of gray oak and maple, mahogany and madrone. They crisscrossed the gurgling creek as the bordering slopes squeezed in on first one bank and then the other. They skirted a rock spire that towered from the stony streambed, and passed a deep pool where the gulch momentarily narrowed to only yards wide. And always more canyon waited ahead, hidden behind one bend after another, and they had no choice but to push on because she had killed an Indaa.

  As challenging as her flight was, and as uncertain its end, Nejeunee’s greater journey lay inside. Sam-el was there, bridging the impossible divide and making her more alive by the moment. She knew what he was surrendering for her. She was in trouble, and now he would be as well, and his sacrifice only added to her confusion about what was unfolding between them.

  She had no doubt that something was developing, even though Sháa had made only a few courses across the sky since they had met in the stained snows. They had been through so much together, and the intensity of those shared experiences made the time seem far longer. Indeed, she had never felt so powerful a bond with anyone except he-who-cannot-be-mentioned, and yet Sam-el was an Indaa, a hated enemy.

  No. He was her friend and more, and she wouldn’t fight what was inside her.

  “Blue.”

  “What?” asked Sam-el.

  She rode at his flank through a stretch of piñons under beetling cliffs, and he turned in the saddle with a creak of leather.

  “My color is
blue, like yá, the sky.”

  “I swear, Nejeunee,” he said with a laugh, “if you don’t have a way with conversation.”

  “I want to make that walk with you,” she added. “I want to hear the waters sing. I want to see the birds fly and watch the leaves dance in the four winds. I want to feel your hand in mine, Sam-el.”

  They were in flight, but Sam-el reined his gray about and the two of them held their horses side-by-side so that they faced one another. For a moment they just stared, and then his arm stole out as it had the day before. This time he gently stroked her hair where it fell across her cheek, but it was a tentative caress at best.

  “I don’t know your ways,” he said softly, “so you got to tell me when I do wrong.”

  In response, she inclined her face to his fingers and prolonged his touch by placing her hand over his.

  They rode on, but now the roan carried a different Nejeunee. It was true that Sam-el was unversed in Apache culture, or else he would never have initiated so intimate an act. But Nejeunee knew well the ways of Ndé courtship, and she had just signaled to both of them that she welcomed his attention.

  They spent that night in the canyon again, and the next three as the bends continued to lure them higher into the mountains. Throughout, they talked of happy things and of each other, even as she kept to herself the feelings that she had yet to process. Sam-el too seemed to leave a lot unstated, but she read much in his respectful glances.

  By their sixth day in a country too rugged for night travel, Sam-el’s horse developed a sore foot, limiting their miles, and he openly worried that they would no longer be able to outdistance the cavalry. But with day nearing an end, the danger from behind was suspended for a while, and they unsaddled and staked their horses in a small meadow bordered on the right by a half-dozen slender ponderosas on the stream bank.

  After so many hours in the saddle, Nejeunee was glad to stay on her feet while they ate airtights of beans and tomatoes. But after Sam-el sat on a ponderosa log and patted the bark alongside, she joined him and let Little Squint Eyes nurse. She and Sam-el talked as dusk came with a creeping chill, and he must have noticed her tremble, for he helped draw a blanket around her.