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

by W. Michael Farmer

  Nana and I shared a cigarette, blowing the smoke to the four directions. The old man said, “As you told me, it is cold in these mountains. We were much warmer in the land of our fathers around Ojo Caliente. But here there is a little food, wood for fires, and plenty of game for the young men to hunt and keep us fed through the cold time. The agent steals from us, this I can tell, but he leaves us alone. When the Season of Little Eagles comes, I will take back some of what he steals. This reservation is a good place to rest. You must like it here. You’re not riding with Sieber as a scout. Maybe you’d want to ride with a war chief like Victorio instead?”

  Sitting cross-legged and leaning on my rifle as if it were a staff, I shrugged. “I still try to make our first child with my woman. There’s my family for which I must hunt and protect when the Nakai-yes and Indah try to take our ponies. Maybe one day I’ll ride with Sieber’s scouts if Indians still fight other Shis-Indeh. Maybe one day I’ll ride with Victorio. Maybe one day you’ll stop Godfroy from stealing from us. Who knows?

  “I heard you say your band was once part of Victorio’s. Now I hear he is in Mexico with Juh and Geronimo while you sit by your fire in the mountains. I can tell you’re still a strong warrior with light behind your eyes. Why are you here?”

  Nana looked away and stared in the fire crackling beside them. At last, he looked back into my eyes and said, “Victorio leads his people.”

  CHAPTER 32

  VICTORIO

  * * *

  In the time of the Ghost Face Season the Indah call February, Victorio, who had disappeared into Mexico with eighty men in the Season of Large Fruit, reappeared at Ojo Caliente. During his visit, he spoke of how much better off those warriors were who went to Mescalero with Nana and said that maybe he ought to go there, too. The Indah in charge agreed with him and asked their chiefs to let them send him there. However, when the order came to take him to Mescalero, fearing the Indah were trying to trick him and take him to San Carlos, he disappeared again. Of course, I didn’t know all of this at that time.

  Nana knew of Victorio’s words in Ojo Caliente through riders who came to the reservation over the western edge of the mountains to avoid being seen in Mescalero, and he shared them with me. During his visits with me in the Season of Little Eagles, Nana hinted to me that the great Chief Victorio had decided to settle in Mescalero and live in peace with the Indah as long as they kept their word, but maybe not until late in the Season of Large Leaves. While the Mescaleros waited for the famous Mimbreño war chief to make up his mind, Nana decided to settle accounts with Agent Godfroy.

  Late one afternoon as I sat cleaning my guns on a blanket by an open side of the tipi, Nana with his grandson Torres rode up, leading a heavily loaded packhorse, and stopped to visit. He left the boy in charge of the ponies and walked into the shade where I motioned him to come and sit with me. Juanita brought him a jug of cool water for which he expressed much thanks. Then he pulled corn shuck cigarette makings from a vest pocket, carefully rolled one, and had a smoke with me, signaling that he wanted to talk some serious business. I waited until he spoke.

  “You know the Agent Godfroy steals from us. I learned he sends part of our rations by wagon to a man in the Indah village across the mountains, Las Cruces. The man sells and trades it and shares money he makes with Godfroy. I took back our rations.”

  I frowned. “How did you do this? Have you caused trouble for the Mescaleros doing the right thing?”

  The old man laughed.

  “I caused no trouble. Near the village of La Luz, the wagon road from Tularosa winds through a long thicket of big grease-wood bushes and twisted mesquite. The wagon carrying the rations Agent Godfroy stole from us came through the thicket pulled by a team of mules and driven by two Mescaleros Godfroy had ordered to drive the wagon to Las Cruces.

  “When the Mescaleros drove the wagon far enough into the thicket so it had to stay on the road, my warriors rode out of brush and stopped three in front and three behind wagon. Their cocked rifles rode butt first against their thighs. The middle warrior held up his hand palm out for the wagon to stop, and it did. The Mescalero holding the reins asked, ‘What do you want?’

  “My warrior said, ‘We want the wagon. Those supplies belong to people on the reservation, not the thieving agent who steals food from our hungry bellies. You go back to the reservation and forget the names of any you know here when you tell Agent Godfroy what happened.’ The drivers nodded, climbed off the wagon, and ran for the reservation. They never looked back.”

  I continued cleaning my gun, rubbing my hands up and down the barrel, leaving a thin layer of gun oil on the rifle. Finished, I set the rifle across my knees and said, “What did you do with the supplies?”

  Nana grinned. “A part is cached in the Rinconada for when my people need them, and the rest was given to the Mescaleros.” He shrugged. “Why not? The supplies are yours. The supplies there on my packhorse belong to your camp.”

  I nodded. “Enjuh! If Godfroy tries stealing from us again, I’ll help you take it back.”

  Nana’s face broke into a smile. “Enjuh!”

  Early in the Season of Large Leaves (late June), Victorio rode into the Mescalero Agency with thirteen of his warriors. He had learned that the Mimbreños held at San Carlos were coming to Mescalero, and he told the new agent, Samuel A. Russell, who had replaced Godfroy, if that was so, he agreed to live on the reservation and stay peaceful. Russell assured him that he had heard correctly, and the move included giving his people protection from the Indah and food for their bellies. Victorio camped near the agency in order to know immediately when his people came in, but he often visited Nana and his people in their Rinconada canyon.

  During Victorio’s visits, Nana sometimes brought him to my camp. The men around the fire, the women behind them in the shadows, sat and listened to his stories of how the Indah lied to him, the miserable life at San Carlos, how he had stayed with Juh on his flat, mountaintop fortress deep in the Blue Mountains (Sierra Madre), which protected them against soldier raids, and how he had raided the Nakai-yes, most of whom had nothing of value left and starved in the winter because raiding Apaches destroyed or took nearly everything they owned. He shrugged his shoulders at that and said to nodding heads around the fire, “The strong live; the weak die. Apaches aren’t weak.”

  Victorio’s charisma pulled fighting men to him like iron to a magnet. Delgadito, Kah, and Ko-do listened to his stories with rapt attention, often smiling, even laughing aloud, and nodding they understood.

  I liked Victorio, too, but I listened, as Caballo Negro had taught me, with a critical ear, a small inner voice asking if what Victorio said made sense. Some of what Victorio said made a lot of sense, the lesson being the Indah were untrustworthy and often betrayed the Shis-Indeh. But his pronouncements that the Blue Coats could never defeat the Apaches if they fought true warriors rather than women and children made me think of Bosque Redondo, and I knew it was not true. The way Victorio irrationally bounced between the extremes of wanting all-out war with the Indah and wanting to live on the reservation in peace made me decide to do nothing with him. In his own way, Victorio was dangerous to both the Indah, murdering and raiding across the Apachería that covered New Mexico, Arizona, and most of northern Mexico; and the Shis-Indeh, who followed him into lethal clashes with Blue Coats and Indah fighters like Sieber, experienced killers, expecting no mercy and giving none.

  At the end of his last visit, Victorio and Nana spoke with Delgadito, Kah, and Ko-do in the night shadows for a long time. When Victorio and Nana rode off to Nana’s Rinconada canyon, I knew for certain Delgadito, Kah, and Ko-do planned to join Victorio if he left the reservation.

  In the Season of Large Fruit (late August), Victorio learned that the Grant County authorities had issued indictments against him for horse stealing and murder and might come for him. Victorio didn’t believe Agent Russell had the brains and courage to protect him and wavered between running and staying on the reservation. A few d
ays after Victorio heard about the Grant County indictments, he saw Judge Warren Bristol, Albert Fountain, and several others he recognized cross the reservation on a hunting and fishing trip. The sight convinced him they were coming to arrest him. Despite pleas from the Mescalero chiefs and Doctor Blazer, with whom he had become friends, Victorio and his people, including Nana’s band and several Mescalero warriors, Delgadito, Kah, and Ko-do among them, jumped the reservation in early September to leave a trail of blood and murder across southern New Mexico.

  In the months after his return, Delgadito often disappeared alone with Deer Woman into the pines and junipers. Still, he did not approach Deer Woman’s mother to ask for her. Deer Woman was even more haughty and rude than on the trek to Mescalero as if saying with her actions, See, he wants me after all, but he doesn’t have the horses yet to offer for a bride. You fools were wrong about Delgadito and me. After he jumped the reservation with Victorio, she let it be known in a voice filled with triumph that he was after horses to offer her mother a suitable bride price. He was coming back to take her to be his wife. Juanita and I kept our counsel.

  As the days drifted through the Seasons of Brown Earth and Ghost Face, stories reached the reservation about the raids and killings Victorio had inflicted on ranchers, sheepherders, and any other Indah or Nakai-yi living in southern New Mexico who happened to be in his path. I heard that four troops of Indian scouts from San Carlos and the Warm Springs had joined the long lines of Blue Coats and mule pack trains carrying their supplies following his depredations. But luck and skill were with Victorio and his fighting men, and they moved into the Blue Mountains in Mexico with few casualties, there to join Juh and other camps to sit by the fire through the Ghost Face Season and make plans for again raiding north in the Season of Little Eagles.

  On an achingly cold, clear day filled with bright sunlight and ice blue sky, I rode to Blazer’s store to buy cartridges. Blazer sat in the circle of men around the big pot-bellied stove listening to the latest gossip and stories, and he waved for me to join them when I came through the door. I knew all the men, had even worked with some, and they all knew of my accuracy with my rifle. They nodded hello or waved a hand at me and kept talking. I raised my hand, palm out flat, and going to the counter said, “Rifle need .44 caliber bullets.” I held up my right forefinger. “One box it need.”

  The clerk pulled a box of cartridges off the shelf behind him.

  “Doin’ some huntin,’ Yeller Boy?”

  “Soon big snow come, deer stay under trees. Make much meat when snow stop.”

  I handed the clerk my money pouch, and the clerk counted out the cost of the cartridges, and returned it.

  “Good luck with them deer. They’s good eatin’ sure ’nuf.”

  I nodded and quietly moved around the circle until I came to a large barrel filled with apples and sat down to lean my back against it and smoke while I listened to the men talk. Before long, they apparently forgot I was there, and the subject changed to Victorio and what the Army might do when he came north in the spring.

  A man with close-clipped hair, whose missing front teeth made him hard to understand, said, “I’s over to Fort Stanton not long ago talkin’ to a sergeant friend o’ mine. He’s claimin’ that the Army thinks ol’ Victorio is gittin’ men, guns, and horses from the Indians on the res here, and they gonna put a stop to it by takin’ their horses and guns away. Can you believe it? Why, the Rio Tularosa will run red with blood. The Mescaleros need their guns and horses to hunt and defend themselves. They ain’t gonna part with their guns.” He rose up a little, looked around his shoulder, saw me sitting there, and added, “Is they, Yellow Boy? They need ’em to hunt. Thievin’ agent’ll starve ’em to death if they don’t.”

  I nodded. “Need to hunt. They no take Yellow Boy’s rifle.”

  CHAPTER 33

  THE DISARMING

  * * *

  The long lines of distant Blue Coats with their troops of Indian Apache scouts and mule pack trains converged on the Mescalero Agency from trails in every direction during the Season of Little Eagles at nearly the same time of day on the day the Indah called 12 April 1880. High on a ridge above the agency, I held the Shináá Cho tightly in my hands without using it, astonished at the size of the army descending on the peaceful reservation now looking from the heights like a kicked-over anthill.

  A company of dark-skinned troopers passed within a couple of hundred yards of where I had disappeared into the brush. An Indah Blue Coat officer led them, accompanied by a civilian scout leading about twenty Apache scouts I recognized as Chiricahuas, hard-looking men armed with pistols, knives, and long-range, rolling block rifles normally given to Blue Coat soldiers who fought standing on the ground rather than shooting or swinging long knives from their horses. Their trail drifted down the side of the ridge, making them pause often as the horses and mules picked their way along the rocky, twisting switchbacks down to the agency where a big, newly erected officer’s tent sat across the road from Blazer’s store.

  From my peephole in the junipers, I studied the soldiers passing me and saw them well armed, their animals not worn down from a long trek fighting through the wilderness. I caught my breath and felt my heart pounding in my chest. At the end of the column, surrounded by six Chiricahuas, walked the women from my camp—Juanita, Maria, Socorro, Sons-ee-ah-ray, Sons-nah’s widow, and Deer Woman, two other old ones, and the young children. I didn’t see He Watches, Klo-sen, Beela-chezzi, or Ish-kay-neh, and I prayed to Ussen they still lived. Besides being the only men left to our little band, I needed them to help free the women.

  Confusion and questions fluttered through my mind like startled cactus wrens fleeing brush. Why did the Blue Coats take women and children when, if the man at Blazer’s store spoke true, they wanted Mescalero guns and ponies? If I rescue the women, how will we get away, and where will we go? I shook my head. Didn’t the Blue Coats and Indah agents ever speak the truth?

  I looked through the Shináá Cho and first studied Juanita, then Sons-ee-ah-ray, and later Socorro. They showed no ugly blue bruises or other signs of beatings. The Chiricahuas seemed respectful and didn’t hurry them along. In less than an hour, they were down the ridge, and reaching the store, the Chiricahuas made them sit in a group of other women and children who had voluntarily come in to the agency at Russell’s invitation.

  Swinging the Shináá Cho to Blazer’s store, I saw Agent Russell leave the commander’s tent, throwing up his arms in disgust and anger while his lips formed words I recognized as curses, for I had heard them when I worked at the sawmill.

  I had not brought in our little band as Agent Russell requested, but had decided to wait and watch what happened at the agency for a few days before I risked it. I knew Russell had acted like a fool for refusing to bend the rules in last year’s Season of Large Fruit to give Victorio rations without written approval from Washington. His fear of doing something for which Washington bureaucrats might criticize him had enraged Victorio and started a war that left southern New Mexico burning, and many ranchers, miners, and sheepherders slaughtered. The Army had spent much money for soldiers to find Victorio and punish him, but they always came up, as Rufus would say, “A day late and a dollar short.”

  Fury burned in my heart. Russell had betrayed the Mescaleros. He had asked Mescaleros to come to the agency where, the following day, Blue Coats from all directions surrounded them, took their weapons and horses and a large number of treasured personal items, and killed the men who tried to slip away. If my rifle had had a chance of reaching Russell at that moment, I might have killed him, but I focused instead on how to retrieve the women and children and escape the Blue Coats, especially the Chiricahua scouts, who would be able to track us even if we floated away in the air.

  I watched Russell and a Blue Coat officer lead a group of soldiers, rifles ready, out to the families who had come in, saw the massive number of Blue Coats converging on the agency, and, uncertain what to do, stayed close to tree cover. Russel
l and the officer rode over to them and appeared to urge the band to come on in close to the agency. The officer made a short speech, and a few men handed over their rifles. Others began to drift away. Soldiers raised their rifles but didn’t fire, waiting for the women and children to separate from the warriors, who were beginning to run. The Blue Coat with Russell raised his revolver and fired three signal shots, making those drifting away break into a mad dash for the trees. Suddenly a group of soldiers, their rifles up, appeared out of the line of tall pines toward which they ran. Swerving, the warriors ran toward another tree line. With women and children separated from the runners, the soldiers began to shoot. They killed fourteen men, but twenty-five made it into the trees. They took the rest prisoner and marched them back to the group of women and children sitting in front of the agency.

  The sun was falling in the west, and it was growing cold. The chiefs in the group before the agency directed the bands make fires, and Russell brought supplies out of his store to feed them. The group was eerily quiet. Adults didn’t speak, and babies didn’t cry. Most sat unmoving wrapped in their robes, staring at the black and white soldiers going about their business. After a long last look at the women and children, I slipped out of my cover and back off the ridge to run for my camp.

  Late dusk lay on the land when I approached the spring in a hidden box canyon, the air cold enough for me to see my breath, but little else. I reached the spring, saw no signs of recent use, smelled nothing on the air, and cupping my hands in the cold water, raised them to drink long swallows I had wished for all day. I moved back down the trickling stream a few feet, squatting by a boulder a little taller than my rifle to wait for enough light from the rising moon to search for a path up the canyon wall and to think through the ideas flying in my mind for freeing the captives. If I have to kill every soldier and risk being killed, those women and children must go free.