Blue Coats alone couldn’t find the Apaches, and scouts alone wouldn’t force them to come back. Nantan Lupan decided to go after the Apaches in the Blue Mountains with many scouts and a few Blue Coats. He spent moons talking with the Nakaiyes in Chihuahua and Sonora until they finally agreed he could cross the border to chase the Apaches hidden deep in the Blue Mountains.
Sieber poured us some coffee and sat back down, blowing over the top of his cup to cool it. He took a swallow and said, “The biggest problem Nantan Lupan faced after the Mexicans agreed to let him cross the border was finding the Chiricahua camps.”
I nodded, tasted the bitter coffee, felt it hot and scalding the inside of my mouth, and said, “Nantan Lupan has light in his eyes, but he will never find Chiricahua in the Blue Mountains. Looking for Apache camps like trying to find snake in black cave. How will he do this?”
Sieber grinned. “Well, he got real lucky, luckier I’d say than a cowboy with less than a dollar in his pocket winding up with the queen bee in a whorehouse.”
I didn’t understand what Sieber meant and frowned. He just laughed and waved his hand like he’d said nothing.
“There’s a White Mountain Apache warrior named Tzoe who married a couple of Chiricahua sisters in Chato’s band. Last year when Chato left with the others, Tzoe didn’t want to go, but his wives swore they weren’t gonna be left behind, and Chato made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” At this, he winked and grinned, for what I did not know, and continued, “So he left with the rest. Three moons ago Chato came north looking to steal ammunition and brought Tzoe with him. Tzoe’s best friend, who rode with them, was killed during a raid on a charcoal camp, and it sent Tzoe to a dark place.”
I nodded. I knew Tzoe’s heart. I had mourned a long time after my close friend Klo-sen, and my grandfather, He Watches, who died fighting the witch, went to the grandfathers’ Happy Land. I said, “Hard thing to lose good friend. Tzoe fights no more? Goes back to wives? Sits in wickiup with long face? What he do?”
Sieber pulled out his pipe, stuffed it with tobacco, and lit it with a match while he studied my face. “Tzoe had a long talk with Chato and said that his medicine had told him he ought to go back to San Carlos and look after the Warm Springs People. Chato let him go, and the others with them gave him enough food to get back to San Carlos.”
The sky was blazing in a fiery sunset. Oranges, reds, and purples streamed against far clouds just above the horizon. Blue Coats and scouts were at their cooking fires. Somewhere a mule brayed and horses snorted and stamped in a nearby rope corral. Sieber lowered his pipe, took a big swallow of coffee, and continued.
“Tzoe was in an abandoned camp about twelve miles from San Carlos when Lieutenant Davis and his scouts caught him. He didn’t put up a fight. One of my scouts told me Tzoe grinned when he saw Davis. The lieutenant put him in leg irons, took him back to the reservation, and questioned him about who he was and what the breakaway Apaches were doing. Tzoe answered every question and told Davis most of the Apaches wanted to come back but their leaders wouldn’t let ’em.”
I nodded and said, “Victorio killed Mescaleros riding with him who wanted to go back to reservation. Victorio made bad medicine. Maybe that medicine kills ’im. Every warrior ought to make his own choice.”
Sieber blew a stream of blue pipe smoke toward the stars in the cool, falling, night air. “Lieutenant Davis believed Tzoe spoke the truth and asked if he would lead Nantan Lupan to the Chiricahua camps in the Blue Mountains. Davis told me Tzoe didn’t think more’n a minute before he said he would. Davis telegraphed Nantan Lupan what he had learned. Nantan Lupan told the lieutenant to send Tzoe down here to Willcox where he could talk to him face-to-face and decide if he spoke the truth. Davis sent him, and Nantan Lupan believed him. He had the guide he needed to find the Chiricahua camps in the Blue Mountains. So you see all the rushin’ around gettin’ ready to go down into Mexico after the breakaways. Nantan Lupan is usin’ nearly two hundred Apaches and about fifty troopers for this here little ride.”
“Hmmph. Al Sieber, you have two hundred Apaches already. Why you want me?”
“Lieutenant Davis, who’s been put in charge of the reservation while Captain Crawford rides the Blue Mountains with his scouts, has informers all over San Carlos to help him know what the People are sayin’ or if they’re plannin’ trouble. What he’s heard is that Crawford has at least two or three scouts that favor the breakaway chiefs and don’t want to see ’em have to come back. They don’t know Tzoe is guidin’ us to the Chiricahua camps. If they find out, they might try to kill him. He’s a warrior and can take care of himself. Problem is, he’s our only reliable guide. There’s two or three others who claim to know the way, but they ain’t anxious to guide us, and I wouldn’t trust ’em anyway. We could end up in the Pacific Ocean if they showed us the way. Tzoe? I trust him. He wants his wives back and wants the chasin’ around to end.
“To be on the safe side, I think there needs to be somebody to watch his back so we don’t lose him to some scout tryin’ to protect a cousin or brother down there in the Blue Mountains. I think you’re that somebody. I want you to join the scouts for this expedition. Your big work’s gonna be protectin’ Tzoe. Besides, we need the best scouts we can find, and I think you fit the bill. How about it, Yellow Boy?”
I stared at the fire, thinking. I wanted to go. I wanted to learn more about the Blue Mountains and where the Chiricahuas camped than I had learned on the trips to Elias’s camp, trying to find the Comanches and witch. I might even get lucky and find the witch’s camp if he’d come back with more Comanches and was hiding in the Blue Mountains. My spirit wanted to stay close to Juanita and Kicking Wren, but the Apache raids had to stop.
Stars were lighting on the eastern horizon, and far out on the llano two coyotes howled. Yes, I thought, Coyote waits, just like he did for Delgadito.
I looked in Sieber’s eyes and nodded. “Hmmph. I go with Nantan Lupan to Blue Mountains. Protect Tzoe from attack. Bring back Chiricahua. When we go?”
Sieber grinned. “I’m mighty glad to hear that, Yellow Boy. We leave here in two days and go on down to San Bernardino Springs for a few days to shake out the real players for the campaign, and then we head down the San Bernardino Valley toward the Río Bavispe. We’ll get you signed up and your equipment issued tomorrow. You’n make some extry moccasins and meet the rest of the scouts. How about some supper? I’m hungry.”
“Supper good thing. Belly makes growling wolf noises.”
The night before we left for San Bernardino Springs, the wind came up. By sunrise, it carried clouds of dust blowing over the big, nearby playa, stinging our skin like switches on our legs when we were small boys and the warriors chased us, making us run far and fast. All that dust and wind made it hard to see and hear the Blue Coat chief.
Teniente (Lieutenant) Gatewood, a Blue Coat officer, commanded all the scouts at Willcox. At the command of the scout leaders with three yellow stripes on their coats, we gathered in one place and waited, huddled over with our backs against the wind until the wagons were filled with ammunition, food supplies, and water, and the pack mules were harnessed and ready. The wagon freighters and mule packers, fast and efficient, soon pulled up to wait beside us.
Teniente Gatewood rode across the front of the scouts, and the sergeants yelled against the whistle of the wind for us to stand and get ready. He rode back and forth in front of us two times and looked over every scout before he stopped on the far side of us and raised his right arm. I saw the scouts tense, like just before a race. Gatewood threw his arm forward and yelled, “Ugashé (Go)!”
We scattered forward, quail running from a coyote, each of us finding our own path. I stayed close to Tzoe, but I didn’t expect any trouble until we came near the Chiricahua camps far away in the Blue Mountains. We could keep our pace, which was slightly slower than a horse could trot, all day if needed. That night I heard Sieber tell the Blue Coat officer, Bourke, that we covered almost exactly four miles on th
e hour. Every day we ran fifteen or twenty miles and stopped to let the much slower freight wagons catch up with us. It took five days to reach San Bernardino Springs, but the scouts ran just a little more than half a day each day.
When we ran down the San Bernardino Valley in the land of the Nakai-yes, all the supplies were on mules, and even then, the trooper horses and mules worked hard to keep up with us. Sieber told Bourke he knew we could run forty miles or more a day, every day, if we had to.
We stopped to rest when the sun had raised halfway between first light and the time of shortest shadows. Mesquites made us shade on the edge of an arroyo, and we smoked and relaxed, lying on the sloping brown sand of the arroyo banks while we waited for the wagons hauling supplies, the pack train mules, and Blue Coats to catch up.
I studied all the scouts, especially Tzoe. He sat by himself, minding his business, his eyes sagging with sadness. He was near my age, a fine-featured, strong warrior. No unmarried woman would avoid him. None of the others scouts paid him any attention. Sieber had pointed him out to me the day after I arrived and said he had told no one else of our arrangement, including Tzoe. He wanted Tzoe to become my friend before he told him a stranger watched his back. Sieber feared that if it came out that Tzoe guided us, and that I kept a protective eye on him, plans might be hatched to kill both of us.
As I watched Tzoe, he stood and turned to climb the arroyo bank behind him for probably some alone time in bushes far from the rest of us. The arroyo banks were little more than head high, their sand, steep and soft, so he stretched his arm across the top of the bank and grabbed the trunk of a small mesquite to pull himself over the top.
A rattlesnake had already claimed the mesquite’s shade. Seeing Tzoe’s hand reach past it to the tree, it coiled and began its loud, unmistakable rattle as soon as Tzoe’s head cleared the top of the bank. The snake’s head, less than an arm’s length from his face, even closer to the arm holding the mesquite, was in a perfect position to strike and kill him. Every scout in the arroyo froze to watch the action. We all knew if Tzoe didn’t quickly get away from the snake, it would strike, but if he moved it would strike. Here in the wilderness without a strong medicine man to drive away the snake’s demon spirit, Tzoe wouldn’t last long. It would be the end of Nantan Lupan’s best guide for rounding up the Chiricahuas in the Nakai-yi country.
From my seat on the opposite bank of the arroyo, I saw the rattlesnake’s head, speckled by the sunlight filtering through the mesquite leaves, and heard the rattling stop and then start again, harder than before. I didn’t have to think about shooting. In one motion, the butt of my rifle came to my shoulder. As the snake’s head filled my sights, it disappeared in thunder and smoke. The bullet flew so close to the side of Tzoe’s head, his hair twisted like a dust devil wind had passed by.
Silence hung in the hot, dry air like just before shooting begins in an ambush, until someone said, “Tzoe has no need to go to the bushes now!” We all, including Tzoe, laughed. He pulled up farther on the bank top and, grabbing the bloody snake’s body, threw it off into the brush, and then turned to ease back down the bank. The barrel of my rifle still had little wisps of smoke drifting out the end. He knew where the shot came from.
He walked over to where I sat and grinning, said, “Ahéhye’e (thank you). I’m Tzoe of the White Mountain band. Yesterday another scout told me your name is Yellow Boy. You must be the same one who, as I heard Juh tell the other chiefs, never missed and had the Power to go after the Nakai-yi Comanche witch Juh would not attack. You are the same warrior?”
“I’m the same warrior. I’m glad Ussen gave me the Power to kill the snake and you’re not hurt. Do you want to smoke thanks to Ussen with me?”
He nodded. “Yes, I want to smoke to Ussen with you. I owe you my life for Ussen’s gift to you.”
I pulled a cigarro from my shirt pocket and lighted it with a match I started with my thumbnail. Off to the east we heard faint yells of, “Jaadé! Jaadé!” (Antelope! Antelope!). Soon there was the distinct, distant thump, thump from the Springfield .45-70 carbines the scouts carried. We all grinned and nodded, happy to have antelope for our meal that night.
CHAPTER 22
INTO MEXICO
Tzoe convinced Nantan Lupan he had told the truth, and the Blue Coats made him a sergeant. Being sergeant made it look natural for him to lead us in the direction of the Chiricahua camps. After his meeting with the snake, he led his scouts on until we camped near Dos Cabezas (Two Heads) Mine. The land around the mine had water and good grazing for the horses and mules. We made our little individual campfires and, with clouds saying it might rain, set up wickiups over beds we made of pulled grass, and waited for the wagons, mule pack trains, and Blue Coats.
We saw the wagons coming from a long way off. They made a long, high, dust cloud like those I’d seen as a boy when I sat with my grandfather, He Watches, scanning the eastern road from the top of Guadalupe cliffs. I watched them come with the Shináá Cho and saw the dust covering the wagoners’ faces and clothes with a fine powder, which made them look like mountain spirits at a dance and forced them to wear bandannas over their mouths and noses to breathe. Two columns of Blue Coats followed by pack mules led the wagons. Every foot, hoof, and wheel was adding to the dust and sand in the still, evening air, when the Blue Coats reached us.
We cooked some of the antelope heads, hearts, livers, and haunches, along with cottontail rabbits and quail our fast runners caught. When the Blue Coats, wagon freighters, and mule packers were ready to eat we gave them coffee, tortillas, and meat we didn’t use.
Sergeant Sweeny Jones, Al Sieber, and Mickey Free ate at our fire. Mickey Free, an Indah-Nakai-yi interpreter, had only one eye. He had been taken by Apaches at the age of twelve and later freed by Blue Coats. Teniente Bascom had started a war, spilling much Indah blood by accusing Cochise of taking Mickey Free, when he had not, and then hanging innocent warriors. I had made friends with his good friends, Tzoe and John Rope, a White Mountain scout. I liked Mickey Free, and soon we became friends as we joked around the fire. After supper, we sat, smoked, and talked while we enjoyed our full bellies.
Mickey Free, slurping his coffee, looked across the fire at Tzoe and grinned. He said, “Grandson (a term of affection between friends), what story do our brothers tell me about you going face-to-face with Rattlesnake at your first rest today?”
Tzoe’s cheeks turned redder than normal. He grinned and nodded. Al Sieber frowned and stared hard at Mickey Free and then Tzoe. Sweeny Jones’s eyes grew wide, and his jaw dropped. He leaned forward, one ear cocked toward Sergeant Tzoe.
Tzoe said, “Your brothers tell you true, Mickey Free. We stopped to rest in the shade of mesquites on the edge of an arroyo. I needed some alone time in the bushes and began to climb up the bank of the arroyo. When my head cleared the top of the bank, Rattlesnake lay coiled and waiting for me. He didn’t like me bothering his nap, and he started to rattle, his head no more than an arm’s length from my nose. One good strike and he would have killed me for certain. I knew, if I moved, he would strike and could not miss my face. His anger grew when I froze, staring at him, and wondering how long before I went to the Happy Land.”
Sieber shook his head and asked, “What’d you do? If you ain’t bit, you sure as the devil oughta been.”
Tzoe smiled and nodded toward me. “No, Rattlesnake did not strike. My friend Yellow Boy sat across from me on the far arroyo bank. In less time than it takes to draw a breath, he shot the head off Rattlesnake.”
Sieber’s frown went away. He grinned and cut his eyes to me and then to Tzoe. He laughed good and slapped his leg the way the Indah do when they feel good about a laugh. He said, “I knew that bringing a shooter like Yellow Boy along on this ride was a good idea. Bet you didn’t need to go to the bushes after that.”
We all laughed, but Tzoe just looked at the ground and shook his head.
From a few wickiups over sounded the melodic hum of music from a bow across the strings of a tsii�
�edo’a’tl (wood that sings), what the Indah called an Apache fiddle, played by a scout singing softly near his fire. Its strings were horsehairs, and its body made from the husk of a mescal plant. Its gentle rhythm filled the night as we listened and felt easy. Its song made me think of Juanita and the days I courted her. I wished her nearby. I hoped she and Kicking Wren stayed safe while I followed this trail.
We ran four more days and came to San Bernardino Springs on the border of the land of the Nakai-yes. Some Blue Coats had already come to guard extra supplies and send out patrols with scouts to stop the Chiricahuas, who tried to come north and raid Indah ranchos and mines or ambush Blue Coat patrols for bullets and ponies. A Blue Coat named Captain Crawford had also come with another hundred scouts.
I looked over the scouts riding with Captain Crawford, thinking I might see a friend or enemy. One stood a head taller than most of those around him, and I immediately recognized the scowling, pox-scarred face of Soldado Fiero, the sergeant who led the Chiricahua scouts to catch or destroy my little Mescalero band after we’d escaped the reservation when the Blue Coats came to disarm and unhorse us. I was ready to kill him when Juanita knocked him senseless with a stone from her sling. The last time I saw him, he was still in the dream world where Juanita sent him, his men carrying him back to Mescalero. He still wore his blue coat as Captain Crawford looked over his scouts, but he no longer had three yellow stripes on his sleeves. I wondered if failure to catch us, and returning with a big knot on an aching head, led to his loss of those yellow stripes. I decided to avoid any trouble with him if I could. Thanks to Juanita’s skill with a sling, I don’t think he ever saw me at Rufus’s ranch. Still, word of my skill with my rifle might give him some hint that I was the one responsible for sending him dreaming back to the Blue Coats and enough reason to come looking for me. It was his choice. I was ready, no matter what he chose.
Blood of the Devil Page 13
