Killer of Witches: The Life and Times of Yellow Boy Mescalero Apache

by W. Michael Farmer

  I watched the stars turn slowly about the North Star and wondered why Wind had called me to this place high above the plains and deserts. After a while, I got up, walked to the edge of the south cliffs, and relieved myself. When I returned, I lay down with my feet to the east and head to the west, held the Yellow Boy across my chest, and looked into the deep dark forever before my eyes. I had little time to think of the unblinking white points of light in the velvety blackness, before sleep, in the warm robes of fatigue, took me.

  CHAPTER 19

  OWER COMES

  My eyes fluttered open in the early morning light and stared straight up into the dark sky turning light blue turquoise on the horizon. The high stars were still bright, and the high places, scattered up and down the valley and mountains catching the sunlight peeping over the horizon, formed lakes of yellow in the darkness still covering the ground and the western side of the mountains. I stretched like a cat stretches after a long nap, stood, and leaned the rifle I had held all night against a boulder. Facing the sun, I raised my hands to sing my morning prayer, the same prayer my mother had taught me, and the one I had sung every day since I was a small boy at Bosque Redondo.

  “Come Sun of the morning

  “Bright light of Ussen

  “Ussen give us its Power

  “Give us the Sun of the morning”

  Standing high on a point above the desert floor surrounded by light and darkness, I felt I was in a holy place and sang the prayer three times more, facing the other cardinal directions.

  The night air had been warm, not cold like it was in the desert below. The rock on which I lay kept its heat, and I had slept comfortably all night. I cradled the rifle in the crook of my left arm and walked from my resting place to where cliffs fell away from the rounded top of my mountain to the wreckage of boulders far below. I saw a thin, white pillar of smoke rising from Rufus’ shack, and many more like it from the barely visible villages and ranch houses up and down the great river. The smoke rose straight up until at a particular height it bent parallel to the brown desert to drift and break up in a light intermittent breeze that carried it for miles before it finally disappeared.

  On high cliffs in the Guadalupes with He Watches, I had many times watched the sun rise over the road from the east and cast its light over the llano south toward the Davis Mountains. The height didn’t bother me in the Guadalupes, and it didn’t here. In the Guadalupes, when the Thunder People and Wind came, He Watches and I had left and gotten out of their way. But this mountain, where my dream sent me, was nearly a thousand feet higher than He Watches’ place in the Guadalupes, and there was nowhere to hide. Either I left this place with my Power, or storm spirits would take me, never to be seen again, that I knew for certain.

  I sat down in the cool shadows, leaned the rifle against a boulder, crossed my legs, folded my hands in my lap, and tried to focus my mind on the gifts of Power I might be given and whether I ought to accept or reject them. As the sun climbed higher, no images or thoughts passed through my mind, which was strangely empty and blocked—something I had never before experienced.

  The sun was hot against my skin, my deepening thirst burning on my lips and in my throat. He Watches had once told me about finding Power by letting go of body needs. Until my Power came, I focused on letting go of what bound me to life, the sun’s searing heat, thirst, hunger, and the sense of my spirit floating above me tethered to my body.

  The passing day brought the sun to hide behind far mountains and the sky on the horizon to fill with the color of fresh, dark red blood. I dimly saw gray, billowing clouds building to the southwest and smiled, my dry lips cracking. I thought, At last they come. Darkness came slowly and with it the recognition of dim flashes of light within the clouds far away, as they strolled toward my mountain on slim, dark legs of falling rain.

  Directly above me, the stars appeared in the night sky. A cool, moist breeze washed over me, bringing relief from the heat of the day, giving me strength. The flashes in the clouds grew brighter as they came closer, and the slim legs of rain grew to giant black stubs striding across the waiting, thirsty desert. The stars above me disappeared, and the weak, cool breeze became a gentle wind growing in power as the dark, stumpy legs brought the flashing clouds ever closer. The Thunder People and Wind were coming to take me or bless me with my Power. Holding the rifle, I pushed myself erect and walked to the top of the mountain a few paces away from the boulders that had sheltered me with their shadows during the day. I faced the coming storm and waited. It arrived with flashing lightning arrows and rumbling thunder and moaning from the strengthening wind as it swept over the place where I stood.

  I raised my arms, holding the rifle high, and began to sing, over and over, in a loud clear voice.

  “Ussen has the Power

  “Over all the world

  “Ussen has the Power

  “Over the Storm Spirits

  “Ussen brings the Thunder People and Wind

  “For Ussen, they will take me or leave me

  “For Ussen, they will leave me with a gift

  “A gift for the benefit of the People”

  The clouds rolled toward me like great running horses; the storm spirits riding them came shouting and shooting their brilliant, blinding arrows into the ground and between clouds. The voice of Wind came in a thousand whispers, came in myriad shrieks, filling my ears and pushing me backwards, trying to push me off my mountain, trying to kill me. I stood leaning against the Wind and saw a long, crooked arrow of lightning strike a low mountain far below me near the little Indah village on the great river. Wind slowed and was still. The whole world seemed to pause as if suspended in the night, waiting, like I waited, for Power.

  I sat down, lay the lightly oiled rifle across my knees, and stroked the long, smooth barrel and beautifully finished stock before laying my left hand on the brass. Sliding the web of my thumb to just behind the hammer, I pulled it to safety. Then, locking the trigger and wrapping my fingers into the trigger guard and loading lever, I held it erect before me. I stared at the weapon against the distant flashes of light, and my thoughts condensed from thin, vaporous feelings to a towering white anvil cloud in which flashed the lightning of a single idea. I thought, This rifle is Yellow Boy, an extension of myself, its power part of me. Its power strikes wherever I look. It is part of my Power. I waited, wrapped in this new thought, wondering what it meant for my life, for my gift.

  The black rolling clouds drew closer and Wind grew strong and powerful. A brilliant, white lightning arrow flew across the night sky, blinding me for a few seconds. Instinctively, I grasped and squeezed the rifle with both hands to avoid losing it in my blindness, and recognition, like an electric current, flowed from the rifle up my arms and settled in the middle of my chest. My arms shook with the power of the current. I gasped, pulling into my lungs the moaning wind, my reflexes attempting to relax my fingers, which were locked around the rifle, but I sat paralyzed and trembling in the growing wind until the current went away, and I felt my arms and body relax, and still holding the weapon before me, I collapsed slowly backward until I lay flat and still on the rusty, red rock of the mountain, the rifle resting on my chest.

  My mind suddenly active, thoughts moving at blinding speeds, filled with fluttering images and words from prayers, raced to stay even with the mad pounding of my heart. The only thing I remembered seeing just before the current passed through me were the two great eyes I had seen in my dream. They were gone. I wondered if I was in a dream, but I knew better.

  A male rain came sweeping over me, washing me clean, filling my mouth and taking away the fire of thirst. Another lightning arrow, bright as the sun, blinded me and seared the air, ripping the sky like a woman tearing cloth. A crack of thunder followed so loud it hurt my ears. Another arrow, greater than the one before, lighted the entire sky and struck the mountaintop above me, struck the mountain where I had been warned not to go. Wind came and rushed over me, howling and shrieking like demons c
aught under the earth. It pulled at me but did not move me, then left at last and pulled no more.

  And despite the passing fury, there was stillness in my being, and in the stillness, a voice spoke clearly to me but not in my ears. It said, The Yellow Boy protects the People. Wherever you point it, there its power will go. It is your Power. You will shoot and not miss. Remember Evil is a witch. It wants to kill you. It always speaks lies. It wants your spirit. The Yellow Boy protects you, protects the People, and will destroy Evil. It is a killer of witches.

  Witches will be blind in the Happy Land, in the land of the grandfathers. When you confront a witch, shoot out its eyes, and it will become a blind ghost. Ghosts of blind witches cannot see you, cannot kill you, cannot harm you. You are Yellow Boy. You are Killer of Witches, their destroyer. Ghosts cannot harm you. Do not be afraid of them. Live free and be strong for the People. Ussen leaves you this gift. Do you accept it?

  From the center of my being, I cried into the storm, “Yes, I accept it! Give me this gift. I will have it.” And the voice was no more.

  The storm broke over the eastern side of the mountains and, rumbling in distant thunder and lightning arrows between clouds, passed on. I lay unmoving, lay where Wind bathed me, lay with thoughts of my gift and my new name entwined in my spirit. I knew Ussen wanted my shooting ability to benefit the People. I needed to listen to Ussen and use the Yellow Boy in a good way, for Ussen had chosen me and the rifle to be his tools. Steam rose off the boulders and mountaintop and surrounded me in a cloud in which I slept the rest of the night.

  Morning came in light and shadow, bringing me back from the world of visions. I stood and sang my morning prayer to Ussen and then drank cool, sweet water left in the hollows of the rocks for me when the Thunder People and Wind passed by.

  As the sun lifted above the far horizon, I began my way back down the mountain, back to the house of Rufus Pike, back to my friend and mentor.

  CHAPTER 20

  POWER

  * * *

  At midday Rufus returned to the shack from repairing the cattle pool catch basin. His jaw dropped and his face broke into a wide grin when he saw me stretched out relaxing in the porch shade, my hair and breechcloth still wet from jumping in the corral watering tank.

  Rufus spat on a nearby creosote bush and said, “Well, I’ll be. Th’ lightnin’ in that there storm last night didn’t kill you after all, did it? I’s right worried it mighta wiped you out after I seen that big lightnin’ strike up on old Baldy, and the rain come down so hard ’bout washed us away down here. You all right? You find what you were a lookin’ fer?”

  I sat up and nodded. “I not hurt. Wind brings me gift of Power.”

  Rufus slowly chewed and waited, but I said no more. At last, he asked, “Are ya hungry? I’s just about to eat a little dinner.”

  “No eat in three days, Rufus Pike. I have hunger. I wait when I return to eat with you.”

  “Well, I’m proud you did. Come on in the shack. I got beans and corn, chilies, and a little strip of beef on the stove. That an’ some tortillas oughta fill ya up.”

  I ate two pie pans full of Rufus’ cooking before putting down my spoon and knife and patting my uncomfortably full belly. “Good food, Rufus Pike. You cook better than woman. After siesta, we shoot?” I hadn’t said anything, but I was anxious to show off my new Power. I had not yet seen it work, but I knew it was there. The spirits told me it was. I believed them.

  “Why shore, we’n shoot after we rest our eyes and it cools off a bit. Light won’t be all that good, but it’ll be okay for just shootin’ across the canyon.”

  I walked out on the porch and lay down in a shadow next to the door, my hand never leaving my rifle. I’d even kept it close while we ate. Rufus came out and stretched in the shade on the other side of the door.

  The back of the canyon was catching oblique shadows cast off the western wall, but the eastern wall was aglow with fading golden light. Light would remain before dusk for a while, but shadows made it impossible to see a target at any useful distance. Rufus leaned his Sharps against a ragged ancient juniper and began pulling target bottles out of a nearby sun-bleached, gray packing box. He wrinkled his nose and made a face. “Dang if these old whiskey bottles don’t stink of cheap licker after a hot day.”

  I picked up a rock half the size of my fist and handed it to Rufus.

  “Throw far, throw hard, any direction.”

  Rufus grinned and shook his head. “Yore gittin’ purty good at hittin’ movin’ targets. But this’n here? I doubt you can see ’er more’n ten or twenty yards in this light. You ain’t gonna hit this rock when I throw ’er. Might as well wait till I set some bottles up.”

  “Throw rock, Rufus Pike.”

  “Okay. Just hate to see you waste a bullet.”

  Rufus cocked his arm and threw the stone hard and fast toward the dark shadows on the far canyon wall. I moved the lever on the rifle as his arm came forward and had the rifle’s butt plate against my shoulder just as the rock curved into the sunlight above us and began to disappear into the shadows on the far wall. When the rifle thundered and the rock exploded into a brown puff of dust, catching the falling light in golden twinkles, Rufus yelled, “Damn!”

  I smiled, feeling strangely warmed, and said, “Throw again, Rufus Pike.”

  Ten times Rufus threw stones, big and small, low and high, slow and fast, and ten times the stones turned to dust and a shower of fine gravel from my rifle bullet. In the near darkness, Rufus stared at me and said, “Yore shootin’ is way beyond what you could do before you went up on the mountain. Is it your gift that you’n shoot like that?”

  “It is part of gift. I tell all when Caballo Negro comes.”

  “Well, I shore hope he comes soon. Watchin’ you hit them rocks ever time you pulled the trigger has got me more’n a little curious how ya did it.”

  Later, Rufus said that in all his years of shooting, he had never seen a marksman go from a tolerable shot to one that was deadly accurate in three days. He said this sort of marksmanship usually required many years to accomplish, and that, with constant practice.

  I waited outside his shack for Rufus to awake. My pony snorted, and soon the old man was on the porch with his revolver. I had heard him cock the gun when he climbed out of bed and open the shack’s door, but I sat motionless on my pinto watching him. When he saw me, Rufus lowered the hammer on his revolver and asked, “Where you goin’, boy? It ain’t even dawn yet.”

  “Have dream. Witch attacks my People. I go. I stop him.”

  “You mean you gotta go now? Caballo Negro and He Watches oughta be here in a few days. I know yore people thinks them things is real and has lots o’ power, but if a witch is after ’em, what makes you think you can stop it?”

  I stared at Rufus, who was shivering in his long johns, the heavy pistol dangling in his right hand as the night peepers resumed their songs.

  “My Power. Vision says this rifle and me, we one. It shoots where I look. No miss. Yellow Boy shoots out witches’ eyes. They no more in land of living. They blind in the land of the grandfathers. They no do harm there and suffer in the long time night. My Power says I am Yellow Boy, Killer of Witches. My name is Yellow Boy.”

  Rufus sat down on the porch step and smoothed his hair, which looked like prairie grass after a hard wind. “That there sounds like a mighty powerful vision. So you’re no longer called Nah-kah-yen; you’re Yellow Boy now, and that there rifle shoots where you look? Is that why you didn’t miss yesterday evenin’?”

  “It is so. I go now. You good friend to Yellow Boy, Rufus Pike. I not forget. Adios.”

  Rufus stood and gave a salute, touching his pistol barrel to his brow as I swung my pony toward the valley. “Use yore head, and be careful. Tell ol’ Caballo Negro and He Watches I’ll be expectin’ ’em one o’ these days. Kill them witches that’s a hauntin’ yore mind. Make ’em pay if they’s after yore People. Adios, Yellow Boy.”

  I rode into the darkness, proud to b
e chosen by Ussen, proud to have the Power of the Yellow Boy.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE MASSACRE

  * * *

  I like riding at night. Most of my People won’t ride or move around at night unless they have to. They think their horse will take a bad step or a deadly snake or centipede will bite them when they cannot see all. But riding at night hides me from enemy eyes, and cool night air helps horses go farther with less water. These are good things worth the danger.

  When I rode away from Rufus Pike’s ranch toward Tortugas Mountain, and beyond to the great river, a thin moon gave only a little light, but enough. I turned southeast across the desert before I reached Tortugas Mountain, I rode alongside the eastern mountains until I found the low pass I had seen when I sat on the mountaintop waiting for Power. From there, I rode my pony hard all night, east across the llano. As the sun rose just above the horizon, we stopped to rest in the little mountains at the big, natural tanks the Nakai-yes called Hueco, which were filled with water from the season of rains just past. The tank’s cool, sweet water was the treasure we had hungered for in our long, dark ride, and we drank long, good swallows, filling our bellies and grateful to Ussen we had found it before the sun came.

  I rested my pony, rubbing him down and hobbling him in some grama grass growing behind a juniper thicket next to a high canyon wall. Nearby, I crawled under a piñon for shade. It was a good place to sleep, the pine needles soft, and the crisp, pungent smell of pine sap filling the air. I kept my rifle on safety and slept easily. I remember no dreams there.

  Before the sun came to the top of the day, I was riding east toward the great salt flats and the high peak in the Guadalupes called El Capitán by the Nakai-yes. From the Hueco Tanks, I followed nearly the same trail east Caballo Negro had used riding west to the ranch of Rufus Pike. I rode my pony fast as I dared, first walking, then a jog, and a lope that ate up the miles. I wanted to ride faster, but I knew if I pushed him too hard, he might drop and slow me down even more. The sun was hot and dry, but the season of rains was passing, and all the waterholes were full wherever I stopped.