Blood of the Devil

by W. Michael Farmer

  “Hmmph. My woman speaks my heart. I’ll go when the warm winds come.”

  Blazer sat on his front porch enjoying the falling light and a pipe. The frogs and peepers were just beginning to tune up for their nightly chorus, and smells of steak and chiles, fried potatoes and onions, and hot apple pie still floated out open windows that were filled with the glow of soft, yellow light from lamps in the front of the house. The coming night was warmer than normal for the Season of Little Eagles.

  I wanted to speak with Blazer in his barn so nobody saw or heard us. I rose up quietly out of the low light and murmured, “D’anté, Blazer. We go to barn and speak alone?”

  He laughed through the brush pile of gray hair on his face. “Well, I’ll be jennied. My old bones are glad to see you again, Yellow Boy. There’s no need to go to the barn. Not many folks are around right now, and the new agent’s not due for a moon or two. Sit down there on the steps. Can I get you anything? I think my woman still has a pot of coffee on the stove.”

  “Hmmph. Coffee, good.”

  He left his chair, went inside, and came back with a cup of coffee in each hand, gave one to me, and then sat down beside me. We talked a long time about many things. He said we were wise to slip away when the Blue Coats came. Most of the Blue Coats had gone away after the Nakai-yes wiped out Victorio. Some stayed at Fort Stanton but would come quickly if the agent called for them. The Mescaleros had had a hard winter. Some became sick, and some died, as there was not much food from Agent Russell and no guns to use in hunting. He looked off into the night and shook his head. “Why, I had to give ’em cattle to slaughter and corn for tortillas, and I sent my best shots out for game when the snow flew to help keep ’em fed.”

  As I listened, I knew Blazer was right. I was glad we had gone to the land of the Nakai-yes far from the Blue Coats. Blazer blew the smoke from his pipe in a long, white stream against a black sky filled with more lights than I could ever count.

  “I hear tell that the new agent comin’ is called Llewellyn. They say he’s from Nebraska out to the east on the plains, that he’s a man of his word who uses common sense in dealin’ with folks. If that’s true, it’ll be a good thing for everybody. Your People thinkin’ about comin’ back?”

  “Hmmph. Baby on cradleboard better here than Juh strong hold. More safe.”

  “Baby? Did I hear you say baby?”

  I smiled. I hadn’t tried to speak much English in a long time, but suddenly, I was full of words. “Juanita gives us girl child. She kicks so much we think boy comes. First cry sounds like Wren in tree. Call her Kicking Wren. Women and children need safe place away from witch until I kill him, but no want to live by Blue Coat law.”

  Blazer nodded. “I don’t blame ’em one bit. I’d be mighty glad to see you folks come back. You can even take your old camping spot you had before you left, and I’ll help you get acquainted with the new agent.”

  “Blazer good friend to me and my People. Maybe we come back. Find work. Make money, buy Juanita and Kicking Wren warm blankets, and listen to máquina (sawmill) make flat wood for Indah house. No give up rifle.”

  Blazer nodded, “No give up rifle.” He drank the rest of his coffee and listened to the peepers and insects. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and we smoked to the four directions using one of my cigarros. When the cigarro was gone, Blazer said, “So you didn’t find the witch you wanted to send to the Happy Land of the grandfathers?”

  “I find him.”

  It was hard for me to speak. I felt bitter water come up from my belly and go back down again. I said, “Juh showed Beela-chezzi, my grandfather, Klo-sen, and me, where to find witch’s hacienda. Witch is giant, no hair on head, uses women shamefully. Witch surrounded by Comanche brothers and Nakai-yi pistoleros. Name Sangre del Diablo. He nearly killed all of us. Beela-chezzi and me, we survive. The witch and two Comanches escape, we kill all rest.

  “One moon later, I track him from Casas Grandes. He rides to bring more Comanches from reservation in land of Tejanos. I am fool and run into his ambush. He wounds me. Still, I catch him crossing the great river. Shoot him in chest, but no kill. Not strong enough to follow him. No send him to Happy Land blind. I sleep in darkness until Kah finds me and fixes wound. He helps me back to Juh stronghold where Juanita makes me strong again.

  “Kah no return to Victorio. Takes Deer Woman for wife. We know witch comes back. He tells his two Comanches he comes in three moons to Elias camp in Blue Mountains. We find both these Comanches and kill ’em. No find witch yet. Now want Juanita and Kicking Wren and others here safe before I try to kill witch again. That is all I have to say.”

  In the weak light from windows, I saw Blazer staring at me and slowly shaking his head. We listened to night sounds for a long time while he smoked before he said, “Go on. Bring your People back to the reservation. They’ll be better off here.”

  CHAPTER 15

  NANA

  We returned to the reservation riding in white moonlight, ghosts unseen, passing Nakai-yes and Indah who hid behind their walls in the night and still thought maybe Victorio waited for them. We rested for two days by the water at the rancho of Rufus Pike, but we did not see him. He hadn’t been there when I rode to see Blazer and returned to the stronghold, either. We found his mule tracks scattered along the trail like he was riding toward Mescalero.

  From Rufus’s rancho, we rode over the pass the Indah call Baylor, and across the llano of tall grass toward the mountains where the reservation lay. We rested in the little brown and orange mountains called Jarilla in front of the Sacramentos for a day before we rode again in the night for our canyon hidden on the reservation.

  Returning to our canyon felt good, like seeing an old friend after being gone on a long raid. Juanita and the other women found a cache of food and supplies they had hidden in a cave during the Season of Earth is Reddish Brown before the Blue Coats came to the reservation. They made little fires that burned hot with no smoke, and we ate well and filled our bellies. We cut lodge poles up on the ridge above us, but we were careful to hide the places where we took them and did not cut too many in one place to tell knowing eyes we were there. The women hid our tipis in tall trees, and we made a corral for our ponies from brush so the fence and the ponies were hard to see, and hunters used their bows so the boom of a rifle didn’t attract attention from passersby.

  Ten suns after we returned, I rode the ridge trails to visit Blazer and learn more about the new agent. I left my pony in the trees above the place where the máquina sawed wood for the Indah. Once more, it was early in the night when I found Blazer. Many frogs and insects sang on the little river running past the máquina and through the agency grounds, but not much water ran there. Blazer sat in his rocking chair on the wooden floor in front of his house while he smoked and watched the night.

  When I appeared, I said, “Blazer, we come back, stay in same canyon we stay before.”

  He laughed. “Well, Yellow Boy, you’re like magic. One minute, there’s nothing, and then you appear like the wind made you. My heart is glad your people have returned. Let’s have a smoke and talk. Come sit with me.”

  I sat with him and lighted one of my cigarros.

  Blazer said, “I’m looking after things until the new agent shows up in maybe three or four suns. Bring your people in, and I’ll enroll ’em and give you some supplies. When the agent comes, I’ll let you know to come in, and you can see him and decide for yourself if you like him. Just be sure your warriors know to keep their rifles out of sight. There’re still a few Blue Coats here to keep an eye on things, and they get nervous when they see an Apache with a rifle he’s not supposed to have.”

  “Hmmph. This I will do. We come tomorrow for supplies.”

  Blazer and the clerk at his store smiled when they saw us, and the Indah women who were buying supplies there laughed much and made noises and faces to make Kicking Wren laugh. The clerk gave money for two of Juanita baskets, and as Shiyé’s uncle and teacher, I used some of it
to buy Beela-chezzi’s son a knife to go with the bow and arrows I had made for him in Juh’s stronghold. I thought of He Watches and how proud I had been when he gave me my first knife. I was seven harvests, and that was one or two more than Shiyé had, but he had a grown-up spirit that made him ready to learn the use of a long knife. His mother, Carmen Rosario, once a slave to Sangre del Diablo, was happy with her choice of Beela-chezzi as her man and father to her son. She kept her head covered and face nearly hidden so the Indah in the store wouldn’t think she was a Nakai-yi captive and tell the Blue Coats to take her back.

  Delgadito kept his word with Kah and stayed away from Deer Woman all during the Ghost Face Season and through the Season of Many Leaves when we came back to the reservation. He hunted often and kept the tipis of women who had no warrior without hunger. Sleepy and Falling Water often invited him to eat with them at their tipi. Juanita told me that Falling Water thought Delgadito might want her for his wife and that she would accept him, but he had not made any move to give her mother a bride present when we settled in our canyon on the reservation.

  Two suns after we returned from our visit with Blazer, Delgadito came to sit with me while I sat in the shade of a tall pine showing Shiyé how to make his own arrows and handle his big new knife. I told the boy to run and play with Lucky Star but to put away the big knife first.

  From his vest pocket, Delgadito pulled a new bag of tobacco he had bought at Blazer’s store and an oak leaf to roll a cigarette. He smoked to the four directions and passed it to me. I smoked to the four directions, and we passed it back and forth until it was gone, after which he didn’t waste sunlight with unimportant words.

  “Yesterday, I hunted in the Rinconada. I found Nana’s camp there.”

  “Nana’s in the Rinconada again? That’s where he camped when he stayed the winter before Victorio came. Does he plan to stay on the reservation? How many warriors does he have?”

  “He won’t stay. He doesn’t trust the Blue Coats or the agent. He has fifteen warriors with him, and they’re all Warm Springs Apaches, not like Victorio’s mix of Apaches, Navajos, and Comanches.” He paused for a moment and stared up the ridge. “While I was there, a handful of Mescalero warriors slipped over the ridge to come and talk with him. When they left, they were excited and laughing. You know what that means.”

  I nodded. “How many Mescalero warriors do you think might go out with him?”

  Delgadito shrugged.

  “Ten, twenty, who can tell? Nana speaks well of you. He says for you to come for a visit.”

  “Will you go out with him?”

  Delgadito’s eyes narrowed, and he spoke through clenched teeth.

  “The Indah and Blue Coats don’t treat us fairly. They took Mescalero rifles and ponies without cause. We still have many scores to settle and blood to spill. I’ll go.”

  “You’ll be making a mistake. Falling Water waits for your bride price offer. She’s a good woman. She works hard, makes good baskets, makes White Eye money for her family. You’d have a good life with her, and the People need you here, not being shot at or killed by Blue Coats or Indah.”

  He looked up on the ridge, studying the trees, then nodded. “I know Yellow Boy speaks wise words, and I’ll think on them. Will you visit Nana?”

  “I’ll go to Nana.”

  I followed the same trail through the tall, whispering pines that Juanita and I had followed in the Ghost Face Season when we visited Nana and his people hidden in their wickiups in a small canyon adjoining the Rinconada. When I found their canyon, I had to look hard to see their wickiups and, had I not known they were there, I would have missed them. Three warriors coming from deep in the canyon saw me and stopped. One disappeared toward a large wickiup set back in the tall pines. The others stood calmly, their rifles in the crooks of their arms.

  One said, “Ho, Brother. You come to our camp. What do you want?”

  “I’m Yellow Boy of the Mescalero. Nana asks that I come to speak with him. I’m here but I don’t see Nana.”

  The warrior who had gone to the large wickiup reappeared behind an arthritic old man whose hip joints made him slow and tottering. Nana squinted toward me and smiled.

  He called in a loud voice, “Ho, Yellow Boy! Nish’ii’ (I see you), my son. Come to my wickiup, and we’ll smoke.”

  I grinned as I slid from my pony, and the three warriors disappeared. His greeting was the same one he had used to surprise me when he crept up close to my lodge early one morning nearly two harvests earlier. I liked visiting Nana. He was old in his body but timeless in his skill, and, from what Delgadito told me, he could still sit a horse and ride hard all day as well as any warrior in his prime.

  We sat in front of his wickiup in cool shade. He made an oak leaf cigarette, and we smoked to the four directions. He asked after Juanita and said Delgadito had told him we had a girl child. We laughed over the memory of when he’d camped here before and his warriors had taken back supplies the agent Godfroy had stolen. They’d given some back to my People, and some, they kept cached. I asked him how he had been lucky enough to miss the massacre of Victorio in the land of the Nakai-yes.

  He looked at me, and then stared down the canyon and said, “My Power saved me. My gift of Power has always been to find ammunition when the people need it. I don’t think Victorio and his warriors had more than thirty bullets between them. We were desperate to find many bullets quick as we rode, riding north from the Río Conchos and east of the City of Mules out on the llano. We had made many raids, killed many Indah and Nakai-yes, and the Blue Coats and Nakai-yes chased us hard. We all needed rest and food before we could cross the llano to the Blue Mountains and hide from those who chased us. Three warriors brought us a herd of about thirty cattle. If we could hide in peace for three or four days we could slaughter the cattle and cut the meat in thin slices so it dried quickly in the hot sun, and we could pack it to live on until we were safe in the Blue Mountains. Victorio decided to drive the cattle to a small lake and grass for our ponies at a place he knew called Tres Castillos. He sent me and Blanco off to find bullets and to bring them where he camped at Tres Castillos.”

  Breeze blowing through the tall pines near Nana’s wickiup sounded like a sigh for a story I knew did not end well.

  Nana said, “The Nakai-yes under Terrazas had nearly a thousand men, and the Blue Coats with their dark-skin soldiers and Apache scouts were nearby. With so many men, Terrazas was not afraid of the Apaches and sent the Blue Coats back across the border.

  “Somehow Terrazas figured out where Victorio was headed and laid an ambush for us near the lake. The Nakai-yes started firing on Victorio and our band as the long shadows came, and kept it up for a long time after the Apache stopped shooting back. I know this because an old grandmother here with us was there. She played dead by smearing the blood of her dead grandson on her face and neck to convince the Nakai-yi soldiers she was near the Happy Land. She was lucky they didn’t throw her in the fire with the other bodies. The ‘brave’ Nakai-yes shot many women and children when the warriors couldn’t fight back. Most of the women and children who lived were taken to the City of Mules and sold into slavery; many, sent to labor and die in the mines, some, to the haciendas, some to farms far south.

  “Blanco, a few others who had been out hunting, and I were the only men who survived, and several of the women and children managed to escape, too. They looked to me to be their leader. I had returned with many bullets. I still have most of them, as the light was coming at the end of that night. But I was too late.

  “No shots sounded in the early morning stillness. Blanco and I saw a big fire from a long way off. When we crept in close enough we saw Nakai-yes burning bodies of women and children that were killed. But they left many warrior bodies for the coyotes, wolves, and buzzards.”

  I thought of the bones I had seen of the slaves the witch had killed and burned near Casas Grandes and knew what I might see if I went to Tres Castillos.

  “What did you do, Grand
father?”

  Nana said, “We waited three days before I sent warriors to bury those who had been left for the coyotes and wolves. We had to be careful. The Nakai-yes knew our burial customs and might be waiting in ambush, but they were gone. The warriors found Victorio and several others lying by boulders. They had been wounded many times. Some, the Nakai-yes had killed with their long knives. Others killed themselves with their knives rather than become slaves or be thrown in the Nakai-yi fire. Victorio, his pistol, rifle, and bullet belt, all empty, had his knife in his heart. There were many warriors who died by their knives after their bullets were gone. We had nothing we could dig with and covered them with stones and big flat rocks. Victorio died as warrior, died as Mangas and Cochise had wanted to die years before, but Ussen had not given them that gift. Victorio died a good death, a warrior’s death, fighting until he entered the Happy Land. I’ve grieved for my father-in-law all through the Ghost Face Season, but I know he watches and waits for me to join him when my time comes.”

  He stopped and looked off down the canyon, apparently reliving the experience. After a few moments, he began to speak again, slowly at first, as if coming out of a dream. He said, “Now I’ll do my own raid. Maybe I’ll die in it. We’ll see, but I want only the best warriors to go out with me. I ask you to help me kill the Indah, kill the Blue Coats, kill the Nakai-yes, kill anyone who gets in our way, and we will take anything that makes us strong and rich to the land of the Blue Mountains. Come with me, Yellow Boy.”

  I shook my head and didn’t hesitate to answer.

  “I won’t do this.”

  He frowned and said, “Why not?”

  “I have an enemy who nearly killed me. Ussen says I must send him blind to the Happy Land. I have a girl child still on the cradleboard and more children to make with her mother. Our little band still lives; it needs all its warriors. You already take one from us. You take Delgadito. You take other Mescaleros from the reservation. Maybe you’ll bring soldiers back like they came before and make everyone on the reservation suffer. No, I won’t go. Nana is a great warrior. I think he’ll raid over many long trails, take much, and kill many. But many warriors will die or suffer from bullet wounds or long knife cuts before Nana slips into the Blue Mountains. I won’t chance that and leave my woman with no man to care for her. That is all I have to say.”