The Shináá Cho showed no sign of a dust streamer anywhere on the llano stretching across the Tularosa Valley to the Valley of Fires. I figured Red Pony had already stopped in Three Rivers and passed to the other side of the Valley of Fires. He had not yet begun his ride across the llano, or, somewhere out on the llano, he waited in ambush. I put the Shináá Cho away, lighted a cigarro, and smoked while I thought about what to do. I decided Red Pony waited on the llano for the tribal policemen, who were sure to follow him. He would not stop in Three Rivers if he believed a policeman followed, and he had to know, after his attack on He Catches Horses, at least one must surely come. The distance to the pass, too far for him to have made it already, meant there had to be a dust streamer if he were riding. I decided what I had to do, finished my cigarro, and rode down off the mountaintop along the edges of the world.
The trail down from the mountain was narrow and winding. It used long and short switchbacks, the drop-offs from the trail edges as bad as anything I saw with General Crook’s scouts in the Blue Mountains. Down off the mountains, I rode south across the foothills in the deepening darkness of the late afternoon mountain shadows before I stopped at a spring with enough flow to make a small waterfall as it rushed to the thirsty desert ready to gobble it up. At the spring, my ponies and I rested and waited for moonrise.
The moon, glowing bright white, popped over the mountains behind me, casting inky black shadows from the pines and piñons. Swapping ponies to give the one I had ridden all day more rest, I rode a little south and then down a deep twisting arroyo that emptied runoff water from the mountains and foothills into the Three Rivers arroyo that drained out on to the llano. Down in the valley, I followed the western fork of the Three Rivers arroyo, which drained into the llano south of the southern end of the Valley of Fires. From there, I rode straight for the mountains and passed south of the southern end of the Valley of Fires by a distance of about a pony ride in two fingers of time (about half an hour) long (three or four miles).
There are two pass entrances through the mountains at the southern end of the Valley of Fires, but they come out at the same place on the Jornada del Muerto. The moon was setting in the Blue Mountains with dawn soon to come, when I rode down the white, sandy trail of the northernmost pass entrance.
Deep in the pass, a long straight stretch ends in a sharp turn north and then turns west and south again just before the pass ends at the Jornada del Muerto. At that turn is a small water seep surrounded by brush and a good place to hide and rest ponies. I decided to wait there for Red Pony, who would tire of waiting to ambush me at the southern end of the Lake of Fires and ride on, using the pass to head for the great river.
I made a lookout place behind some small piñons on a ledge on the opposite wall of the canyon. From there I could see Red Pony coming from more than a thousand yards away, and from behind me I could see over five hundred yards out of the canyon toward the Jornada. The water seep lay less than a hundred-fifty yards away, and it was easy to see my ponies as they stood resting in the shade, their tails driving away flies after their blood. I crawled into the shade at my lookout and made a nest to wait, watch, and think with a full canteen of water, extra cartridges, my blanket, and some trail food.
I ate my trail food and thought a long time about Red Pony, a strong warrior in his prime years, forced to live with a people he didn’t choose or want. It wouldn’t take much to make his anger boil over beyond his control. But a strong man, a warrior, didn’t lose control of himself, or he didn’t live long to dance his victories.
Branigan didn’t mix Mescalero and Jicarilla in his tribal police because he knew he had to have harmony among his policemen, or he would fast lose control of the reservation, and the Blue Coats would come back. Nobody wanted the Blue Coats back. Still, Red Pony wanted Jicarilla warriors in the tribal police who had as much authority over Mescalero as Mescalero over Jicarilla. Fair enough, but without the Jicarilla obeying Mescalero tribal police, I knew there would be many events like the one I faced now, and the Jicarilla would never get their own tribal police. None of the events like this one would end well, and all of them would be remembered and used to stoke the fires already burning in the bellies of the Jicarilla.
I didn’t want to kill Red Pony. I had seen his woman and children. They needed him to keep from starving in the next Ghost Face Season. But if I let him get away, many others might try it, too. I realized then that both tribes were waiting to see what happened with Red Pony.
I cocked my rifle, set it to safety, and waited, dozing in the hot shade, but alert for my pony’s hearing something in the canyon I might not yet see or hear. At the time of shortest shadows, a coyote came trotting down the trail, his tongue hanging out, panting, heading for water at the little seep tank. He had almost rounded the bend to the seep when he stopped, and sniffing the air, got low to the ground. Staying close to the canyon wall, he crawled around the bend and cautiously raised his head to look at the seep. He saw my ponies and saddle but no sign of the source of the man smell. He sniffed again and waited. When the man smell source never appeared, he crept up to the little tank and slaked his thirst, noisily lapping the water with his big red tongue. The ponies’ ears went up when he approached, and they eyed his every move. When they saw he only wanted water, they were still. I smiled. Even Coyote and ponies could get along for common need. His thirst gone, Coyote trotted on, heading for the Jornada. Later a family of quail came out of the low brush around the seep, and they, too, drank before running back into the brush.
The sun had fallen close to the western mountains, and shadows began to appear on the southern canyon wall and on the bend wall in front of me. I heard from far back up the canyon the dim echoes of rocks clicking together like those scattered by a moving pony. The Shináá Cho did not show anything yet. Maybe the changing heat made a few rocks roll down the sides of the canyon. I waited. As if by magic, he suddenly appeared, his pony trotting on the edge of the trail, Red Pony floating smooth and easy on its back. My ponies stared at the bend in the trail, their ears up.
I waited. The distance closed at a good pace. I knew the shadows on the bend in the canyon wall where I waited made me all but invisible to him. Five hundred yards, four hundred yards, three hundred yards, I waited until I knew I wouldn’t miss if he tried to run.
Two hundred yards, I yelled, “Hold! Stop, or I’ll kill you!” My yell echoed down the canyon walls, making it impossible for Red Pony to find my location. He jerked back on the reins and the pony stopped. Even in the falling light, I saw his head scanning the canyon walls for me, the temptation to charge ahead great.
Wise man, he waited, and yelled back, “What do you want?”
“Get off your pony. Lay your rifle, pistol, and knife in the middle of the trail and step back.”
He hesitated for a moment before sliding off his pony. He laid the weapons before him and took a step back, apparently still trying to decide whether to risk running.
“Now what?”
“Reach down and pick up the pistol.”
He scowled and reached for the pistol he had just laid down. When his hand was a less than an elbow length away I shot the pistol. It jumped in the air, its handle destroyed. The booming thunder from the rifle echoed across the canyon. He jerked back, his eyes filled with surprise, his arm and upper body stung by the flying sand. In the blink of an eye, I shattered the stock of his rifle and, with another shot, made it flop in the sand like something just killed. I shot again and his knife, its blade shiny even in the shadows, went tumbling somewhere off to the side, and the thunder from the shots made the canyon roar like some huge, wounded animal.
He scowled in the direction where he saw the flames from my rifle and yelled as the echoes died out, “Tell me what you want!”
“I want you to understand I do not miss. If you run, I will kill you. Do you believe what I say?”
He nodded slowly. “I believe it. Tell me what you want. It must be something, or you would have killed me
already.”
“I want you. I’m Yellow Boy, Mescalero tribal policeman sent to bring you back for nearly killing old man He Catches Horses. Tata Crooked Nose will judge you fairly. If He Catches Horses cheated you, you will not stay many days in the calaboose. Lie facedown on the trail. If you move, I’ll shoot you. You won’t die, but I’ll cripple you worse than I did your pistol and rifle. Do you understand?”
He nodded, disgust filling his face. “I understand,” and then lay down on the trail. I came down the side of the canyon carefully, never taking my eyes off him. Reaching him, I kneeled on his back, tied his hands behind him with a piece of rawhide, and then tied his feet. I gathered what was left of his weapons and my gear, gave his ponies water, swapped saddles on his ponies, and saddled mine.
It was nearly dark in the canyon when we rode east for Three Rivers and Mescalero.
Tata Crooked Nose heard the charges against Red Pony. A Jicarilla witness contradicted every Mescalero witness. He Catches Horses, who had suffered several bad cuts and whose face was many colors from the beating, refused to speak of their fight, and so did Red Pony. He Catches Horses said he and Red Pony would settle their own differences. Tata Crooked Nose gave He Catches Horses back the ponies Red Pony took, and warned Red Pony that if anything like this happened again he would spend many days in the calaboose if he didn’t get killed trying to escape. Red Pony, his face an unmoving mask, said nothing. He nodded he understood and walked away.
I don’t believe Red Pony and He Catches Horses ever settled anything. Two moons after I brought Red Pony back, his wife didn’t show up at the agency for rations. Branigan sent Kah to check on them at the Río Tularosa camp, and he learned that the entire family had disappeared six suns before. Branigan decided that with his family with him, Red Pony would be slow to make trouble and ordered no one after him.
Two harvests later, after two hundred Jicarilla disappeared from the reservation and camped outside of Santa Fe demanding the governor see them and give them their own reservation, I learned that one of their leaders was Red Pony.
CHAPTER 40
TIME OF THE GHOST FACE
After I took Red Pony back to Tata Crooked Nose, I had no more chases or hard cases that year. The tribal police took care of the people who needed help with their rations, collected drunks, broke up gambling fights and arguments, and hunted the reservation for Indah who made whiskey to trade and took in exchange everything a Mescalero or Jicarilla might own. Stories began to bubble out of the reservation camps about a witch that could change shapes, and di-yens often started trouble by claiming they knew a particular man in another camp who was a shape-shifter. After a young warrior named Kadinshin was accused and nearly killed because an old di-yen believed he was a shape-shifter, Tata Crooked Nose called all the di-yens to the agency and warned them to keep their beliefs to themselves. He said if they didn’t shut up, they’d be spending long times in the calaboose. After that, rumors and stories about a shape-shifter became whispers but never fully went away.
Tata Crooked Nose believed the People better off if they knew what the Indah knew. He encouraged the fathers to send their children to the boarding school near the agency. Although many fathers refused to send their children to the boarding school, between the Mescaleros and Jicarilla, enough children went to the school near the agency that Tata Crooked Nose started another one at the Three Rivers Jicarilla camp.
I didn’t blame the fathers for keeping their children out of the Indah school. If a child went there, he had to live there and wear the same costume every day, do work for the Indah, and learn all their ways, besides learning to read and count, counting we already knew how to do, and making tracks to read on paper. I didn’t want Kicking Wren away from her family. We needed her there to help her mother and to learn what was proper for a Mescalero woman. I didn’t want her to forget the customs of her people that we’d taught her. I wanted her to be Apache, not Indah. She needed the kind of Indah schooling I’d had with Rufus Pike, not to be a little slave for the Indah teachers. I decided I wouldn’t send her to the agency school.
That harvest, late in the Season of Earth is Reddish Brown, Tata Crooked Nose called all the chiefs and tribal police together and told us he would not be an agent anymore. He said Captain Branigan would stay to oversee things until a new agent came and that we should help him all we could. I thought then and still believe Tata Crooked Nose was one of the best agents we had in all the years I lived on the reservation. All the policemen promised to do the best we could to help Captain Branigan.
The Ghost Face Season came with much snowfall and hard, bitter cold, so cold that when the horses made water, it froze in balls before it hit the ground and stuck to their legs. We stayed in our canyon close to our tipi fires to stay warm, and protected the horses in the shallow cave we used for camp councils. Juanita worked nearly every day with her sister, Moon on the Water, to make baskets they could trade at Blazer’s store for supplies, cloth, beads, and sweets that did not come with issued rations.
Moon on the Water, whom all the people called Moon, started her growth into womanhood. Her breasts grew and her hips began to take on the shape of a grown woman’s. Juanita and Maria thought they might have to do her Haheh in the snow, but the sign of her womanhood did not come.
Yibá came to our tipi often. I showed him how to make the best arrows, the right size for him, straight and true, with sharp, deadly iron points we filed from iron barrel bands. He learned quickly, but played dumb, as he sat by the fire working with me, but exchanging glances with Moon. I knew after her Haheh, Yibá planned to make Maria an early offer for Moon. Many young men in the other camps knew Moon. She beat them often in foot races when the camps came together, and her fine looks made young men’s heads turn in all the reservation camps.
Juanita wanted to have another child and stayed close to me under the blankets as the fires burned low, sharing her secrets and her needs. Her need for me to have a son grew by the day. I wanted another child, too, but I didn’t feel the pull she did to have one then. Still, it pleasured me much to keep trying. I didn’t complain.
Kicking Wren, a sweet child even at her very young age, followed her mother’s instructions around the cooking fire, learning the ways of women. I carved the child a doll, which she held to her breast when she decided it needed feeding as she had seen grown women feed their babies. I even found a few scraps of wood and leather and made her doll a tsach. She laughed and giggled, playing with them in the cold times of the Ghost Face Season.
One day Juanita, Kicking Wren, and I sat eating by the fire. As we ate, Juanita told Kicking Wren how important it was to learn how to find food in the wilderness even when the cold wind blew and the snow was deep. Kicking Wren sat nodding she understood, but her eyes wandered from Juanita to me.
She said in her soft little voice, “Father, can I ask you a question?”
“Hmmph. Ask and I’ll answer.”
“Will I go to the agency school like my friend Little Flower in Chief Roman’s camp?”
I was surprised. Where had this question come from? I looked at Juanita. She glanced at me and frowned. She didn’t know either.
“Why do you ask?”
“Little Flower told me it’s not any fun. The school chief does not let the girls race or chase the boys in Touch-Me-If-You-Can. They can’t throw rocks or shoot their reed arrows. She said they have to work all the time. That is what the Indah do, work all the time. They don’t play like we do here. I don’t want to go to the agency school. Will you make me go, Father?”
I sighed and looked at the ground before I looked at her. “No, child, you don’t have to go to the agency school, but you must learn the lessons well your mother and grandmothers and I teach you.”
Her face filled with relief, and she giggled as she said, “Yes, Father, I’ll learn them.”
A harvest after Tata Crooked Nose left, the new agent to replace him came to Mescalero. Captain Branigan left, but not before telling the triba
l police he was proud of the way we helped him and told us he would never forget us and for us to continue to do ourselves proud for the new agent.
I didn’t like the new agent. Where Tata Crooked Nose saw soil for growing crops, the new agent, Cowart, saw only dirt and weeds. He tried to make men work in the fields when they didn’t want to by cutting off their rations. Fathers who didn’t want their children in the Indah schools hid them or sent them to the mountains, but Cowart sent the tribal police after them to make them go. I had to do this once. It was a job I didn’t want or like, and I promised myself I wouldn’t be a policeman if I had to do it again. I knew that when Cowart insisted all children of the tribal police had to go to school, I wouldn’t be a tribal policeman anymore.
One day in the Season of Earth is Reddish Brown, in the year the Indah named 1886, two hundred Jicarilla disappeared from their camps on the reservation. Cowart, the agent when they left, tried to order the tribal police into going after them, but we refused to go. We said there were too many Jicarilla and not enough of us. Much blood might spill for no good reason if we tried to force them back. Cowart finally understood why we let the Jicarilla go after he spoke into the box (a telephone) that talked to the Blue Coats at Fort Stanton and demanded action. The Blue Coat chief said as long as the Jicarilla didn’t attack White Eyes, the Blue Coats would leave them alone, and the tribal police should, too. He said he didn’t have enough soldiers to chase Jicarilla, guard the country, and force Geronimo and his warriors to surrender and go far away to a camp at a place called Florida.
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