“As you wish, Naiche,” the hard-twisted Apache woman said, cradling her rusted Spencer carbine in the crook of a thin brown arm. Two Colt pistols were belted to her bony waist, and she bore battle scars all over her flesh from knife and bullet wounds. “I will tell the others.”
She turned her pony with a plaited rawhide jaw rein and rode silently off the rocky ridge.
Naiche glanced at the sky. There would be no moon tonight, a sign from the Four Spirits that they approved of his attack on the cabin in darkness, hiding his warriors’ approach. Thus he decided to wait, for it was unwise to ignore a sign from the Spirits, bad medicine that could cause their attack to fail, or cost them many lives.
* * *
With their ponies tethered in a rocky ravine, Chokole led them toward the cabin on foot, then later on her hands and knees through tangles of creosote brush, until finally she went down on her belly to crawl, slithering like a snake around clumps of cactus and creosote stalks, making no sound. Naiche crawled in her wake while the others were scattered, forming a deadly circle around a crude pinyon log cabin with windows alight. The scent of smoke came from its chimney. In pole corrals behind the cabin a half dozen horses nibbled at mounds of hay. Two mules were in a separate corral. In another pen several small calves settled down for the night beneath the shadow cast by a thatched roof of pine limbs and mud. He could almost taste the roasted mule meat on his tongue now at the feast they would have to celebrate the success of their raid.
Naiche heard Taza and two more warriors off to his left, a sound only a trained Apache ear could hear. The circle was almost complete around the settlers cabin. Very soon, the time for killing and scalping would begin.
A door into the cabin opened when a dog barked. Golden lamplight spilled out onto the hard-packed ground, framing the outline of a man with a rifle. It was too much for Naiche to resist, a perfect shot at an enemy even though the others were still inside.
Very softly, covering the cocking mechanism with his palm, he thumbed back the hammer on his Spencer and took careful aim. Chokole heard the faint sound and glanced over her shoulder, then she shook her head, asking him to wait until they were closer to the cabin under the cover of the creosote bushes.
Naiche ignored her, his blood coursing through him in rapid bursts, thinking about the scream of a dying man when his bullet passed through the white man’s heart. Sighting carefully along the barrel until he was certain he could not miss, he feathered the trigger gently.
The bang of his Spencer crackled through the night silence blanketing barren mountains around the cabin. The man in the door frame let out a yelp and dropped his rifle, bending over to clutch his belly as his wail grew louder. He staggered forward a half-step when another rifle exploded from the brush, ripping open one side of his skull in a shower of blood, bone, and plugs of his hair.
Another figure dashed to the doorway with a rifle. Chokole was ready. Her gun roared while Naiche sent another cartridge rattling into the firing chamber of his rifle. In the same instant three more guns erupted from scattered positions near the front of the cabin.
The second white man screamed the cry of a young man as he sank to his knees without firing a shot. He let his rifle fall and reached for his throat, making strangling noises before he fell over on his face.
Two more white-eyes foolishly rushed outside, directly into the line of fire from Naiche’s warriors. Guns banged at them from the creosote bushes.
One slender man went spinning around, slammed into the wall of the cabin by force of impact from a lead slug. The other fell back into the cabin. When he landed, a thundering roar from his shotgun sent bits of dried mud and sticks flying from the roof.
“Ayiiii!” Chokole cried, rising up in a crouch to rush the door. Others let out the Apache war cry as Naiche began running behind Chokole toward the cabin.
He could hear the white women’s screams, and the sound was like sweet music to his ears. He would enjoy torturing the survivors, even the women, for their shrill cries satisfied some inner need he’d learned during his training as a warrior under the greatest of all Apache war chiefs, Cochise.
* * *
A boy of less than sixteen years lay on the blood-soaked dirt floor of the cabin, whimpering, holding a mortal wound in his side, blood spilling between his tightly clasped fingers. Naiche stood over him, his knife poised about the white-eye’s skull.
In the few words of the white man’s tongue he’d learned at Fort Thomas while he was a prisoner there, he spat, “This Apache land!”
One slashing sweep of his knife blade passed across the scalp of the boy while Naiche held an iron grip on his yellow hair. The sound of tearing flesh, of a razor-sharp blade passing across bone, was quickly drowned out by a scream so loud it filled the cabin walls. Blood sprayed from the torn scalp lock as Naiche held it high, showing it to Chokole and the others before he shook the blood from it.
Across the room, Taza sliced off the scalp of a whimpering girl with one swift motion. She shrieked as Taza shook blood off her torn scalp so that she was covered with crimson droplets from head to toe, as though she’d been outside in a red rain.
Then Taza drove his knife into her belly, and the girl passed out. The blade opened her stomach with ease. With his free hand he pulled the white girl’s intestines and organs through the wound, making a grisly popping sound, scattering coils of purple intestine across the floor. Taza held the liver in one fist, squeezing blood and bile from it. Then he let out a war whoop and threw it against the cabin wall.
Chokole knelt over an older man whose chest still rose and fell slowly. With practiced skill she cut off his eyelids so it appeared he was staring at her, even though pain had rendered him unconscious.
Otoe, a seasoned warrior of many battles with the bluecoat soldiers, pulled another dying white man by his hair over to the fireplace, where an iron pot held boiling beans. He swung the pot hook out of the way quickly, so as not to burn his hands, for like Naiche and the others he was hungry, and the beans would be eaten as soon as the killing was finished.
Otoe dropped the unconscious white man’s head into the hot coals and flames. He looked over at Naiche and grinned as the man’s hair and face burst into flame, evoking a moan from what was left of the dying man. In Apache he said, “We will eat the brain of our enemy along with his pot of beans.”
“It is good,” Naiche muttered, searching the cabin floor for a final victim.
A soft groan from outside reminded him of the boy who fell at the base of the cabin wall. He strolled through the doorway, his knife tip dripping blood, to slice the scalp from the last of the enemy.
The white boy was conscious, watching him as he seized a fistful of his curly blond hair.
“No, please no!” the boy yelled.
Naiche’s wicked grin was his only reply as he swept his blade across the wounded boy’s forehead. Blood squirted all over Naiche’s arms and hands, and the scent of it, even the feel of it, was good. The warm liquid steamed in the chilly night air as he held his hands up to the sky and gave a harsh cry of joy.
Chokole came outside. “All are dead,” she said in the softest of voices, with no hint of the ferocity revealed by her actions only minutes before. “These white-eyes are like all the others. They die like cowards, screaming, trying to hide under their wooden beds. Geronimo speaks truth when he tells us the white-eyes have no stomach for fighting. We will drive them from our lands when Geronimo gathers more warriors and guns.”
It was true, Naiche thought as he shook the bloody scalp dry and hooked it through his belt. He spoke to Chokole in the darkness while the others began carrying flour and sugar and other foodstuffs outside to be loaded on the settler’s horses and mules. “The repeating guns are what make the white soldiers strong,” he began. “When we raid the fort and take these guns for our own, the bluecoats will stand no chance against us. They are not brave men. Their repeating rifles give them the strength of ten men. We must have Winchesters and many bullets, and more brave
warriors who are not afraid to slip away from the reservation to follow us in a fight to defeat the enemy. As we speak, Isa is moving from one lodge to another at the fort, talking to warriors who want freedom, to live in the old ways. Isa promises many will follow him, and they will bring repeating rifles and bullets into the Dragoons to our secret place.”
“It will be good,” Chokole agreed. “With many-shoot guns, we will defeat these white-skinned cowards easily.”
Naiche watched Taza bring haltered mules and horses from the corrals behind the cabin. “Do not forget Geronimo will return with warriors hiding in the Sierra Madres in Mexico, and he will steal many strong ponies from the Yaquis so our movements will be swift.”
Otoe came to the cabin door to speak to Naiche. His arms and chest were drenched in blood. “Let us eat the white man’s beans, for I am very hungry.”
Naiche pointed to the animals being taken from the sheds and corrals. “As soon as everything is lashed to the horses. We must be ready to escape quickly if the soldiers come. When all is finished, we eat. Chokole and I will gather the white mens’ guns and ammunition. One is a Winchester, a gift from the Great Spirit. With even one repeating rifle, we will kill many more of the enemy until Isa comes to the mountains with more warriors and Winchesters.”
Otoe gave what might pass for a smile. “It is good, Naiche, to kill our enemies again. For too long we have been like dogs, kept in cages at the fort. My heart is happy to be free, killing the whites who have driven us from our lands.”
Naiche turned toward the dark outlines of the Dragoons high above the settlement. “Very soon, the land will be ours again. We will take it back and cover Apacheria with the blood of those who took it from us.”
“The Spirits have answered Geronimo’s prayers,” Chokole said with a glance toward the sky.
“It is not only his prayers the Spirits hear. When Geronimo kills, the cries of his dying white enemies reach the Moon, the Winds, Mother Earth, and the Sun. It is his courage the Spirits reward.”
“As well as our own,” Chokole said.
Naiche stared into her black eyes. “As well as our own, my warrior woman. We have only begun to fight.”
Chapter 5
Naiche sat under the stars, admiring the Winchester, turning it over in his hands. He understood only a little of how the gun worked. With a box of cartridges between his folded knees he kept watch from a ridge above the Chiricahua’s hidden canyon where the wickiups of the women and children sat in an uneven line along the bare banks of a spring-fed stream high in the Dragoons.
Roasting a mule carcass on a firepit below, several woman attended to the cooking, turning it often on a spit above dry pinyon limbs, giving off no telltale smoke that would alert the soldiers to their presence. Now the starving children would have something to eat—the mules and flour and sugar and salt pork taken from the settler’s cabin. It would serve to put some meat on their bones to help them survive the winter months ahead. The Spirits had indeed smiled on their successful raid tonight.
Chokole walked softly up the ridge, balancing her Spencer in one hand. He gave her a single nod to acknowledge her presence and continued to examine the many-shoot rifle.
He understood how the cartridges were fed through a metal loading gate into a tube below the barrel, counting five, and a sixth fit into the firing chamber. By working the lever under the stock, a shell was ejected while the hammer was drawn back in firing position, then another was somehow magically pushed into the chamber. By lowering the hammer gently with his thumb he did not have to waste a cartridge by firing it to see how the weapon worked.
At last, he thought, I understand the white man’s deadly gun and I am ready to go to war with it.
Chokole squatted beside him. “The meat is almost ready,” she said, also admiring the rifle. “Do you know how to make the bullets shoot?”
“I will teach you its ways,” he promised. “But we must have many more, one for each warrior in our band.”
Chokole watched the distant desert floor many miles to the north, in the direction of Fort Thomas. “It will be a long war,” she said, “even with many-shoot rifles. The white-eyes are so many, and we are so few. They are like ants moving across the land.”
“More will join us,” Naiche told her, even though her wisdom was as great as any member of the tribe, she having lived for more than thirty winters. As a young girl she had been chosen to be a sixth wife of Cochise, before the old chief died. She had never taken a husband or given birth to children, preferring war over the traditional life of an Apache woman.
“Many are afraid, Naiche. The soldiers and their cages have broken their spirits.”
“It is true. Some of our bravest warriors no longer have the will to fight. Even Geronimo cannot reach them when he begs them to join us. They are dead in spirit, and only their weary bodies live on at the stinking white man’s reservation.”
Chokole nodded, the copper scent of blood still strong on the scalps tied to her belt. “Geronimo tells them this place called San Carlos is the worst. They dug a hole in the ground and covered it with logs, tossing scraps of food to him like a dog, forcing him to live in his own excrement. I was with the Chiricahuas on Salt Creek when the soldiers brought him there in chains, covered with his own filth, starving, blood dripping from his wrists and ankles where the chains cut into his flesh. But when he looked at me, even though his head was bowed, I saw the same fire in his eyes. They could not break his spirit, and they could not break yours while you were in the cages. You are a brave chief, Naiche.”
He accepted her compliment in silence, for deep inside he knew he would never be the fighter Geronimo was “I fight for my people, Chokole. More will join us soon. Until that time comes we must continue to raid the white-eyes and take their repeating rifles and bullets. When Isa comes with warriors and guns from Fort Thomas, we will be much stronger. Then we will attack the larger ranches and white man’s villages, until we burn them all from the face of Earth Mother. It is The Way.”
The call of an owl came from a distant mountaintop, a signal from Otoe that no one was following them. The tracks made by the white-eyes’ iron horseshoes were hard to wipe away from the earth with a mesquite or pinyon branch, and Naiche had worried that someone who could read sign might lead the soldiers to them. Without iron tools other than simple knives there was no way to remove the iron from the stolen mules and horses.
“No one comes,” Chokole said needlessly, for she knew Naiche recognized the call of the owl made by Otoe.
“The Four Spirits are smiling. We have food and strong horses, and mule meat, and the cattle will keep the children and women alive in spite of their bad taste.”
Chokole grunted her agreement, taking the Winchester when Naiche offered it to her.
“I will show you how to load and fire it,” he said, “but we have no bullets to waste, only three boxes. Once you understand how the bullets travel in and out of the barrel, and the way it must be loaded, it will be enough until we engage the enemy in battle.”
“Will we fight again soon?” she asked, peering down at the rifle and its strange loading gate.
“As soon as our warriors’ strength returns. They have been hungry for many suns, and now we have plenty. Before the new moon comes, we will strike again near the white mans’ town they call Tombstone. There is a ranch to the south. I have watched it for two suns, and there are few white-eyes to guard it. I counted only five.”
She held the Winchester to her shoulder, looking between its sights. “With this I can kill six of the enemy without reloading. I must have one, and we must find more for the others very quickly.”
* * *
Isa led fourteen silent shadows among the barracks at Fort Thomas. Only three, including Isa, carried knives, while the rest had no weapons.
They crept to a corner of the building where rifles and ammunition were kept under the watchful eye of two soldiers.
Isa whispered to a young warrior beside him.
“I will kill the one on the left. You kill the one on the other side, and be sure to cover his mouth so no one will hear his death screams.”
The warrior named Sola gave the sign for agreement.
Isa readied his blade, inching forward. Sola came soundlessly behind, a crude knife made from a rusted plowshare in his fist.
Isa lunged around the corner of the small building, thankful there was no moonlight to make him an easy target.
A shadow stirred on one side of the door. The gleam of a rifle barrel was dull, hard to see in dim starlight. Isa’s lunge sent him crashing into the soldier’s chest while Sola made a similar dive to reach the other guard.
“What the hell—” the soldier gasped, bringing his rifle up just as eight inches of iron entered his belly.
Isa jerked the blade upward, hearing the crack of bone and pop of gristle as blood shot all over his right hand. His free hand clamped the guard’s mouth shut as he slumped against the wall, dropping his rifle to reach for the pain racing through his body.
Isa twisted the knife into the soldier’s heart and felt him grow slack, muscles quivering while more blood squirted from his mortal wound.
Sola drove the second guard against the armory wall and pinned him there, ripping and tearing into flesh with his rusted knife, a hand covering the soldier’s mouth.
“Arrrgh!” the bluecoat blubbered between Sola’s powerful fingers. He slid to the ground on his rump, his Winchester tumbling from his grasp.
Isa jerked his knife from the soldier’s body and took the unfamiliar iron key from a ring attached to the guard’s belt. As he had seen the soldiers do so often, he put the key into the lock and twisted it.
The door opened into a dark room filled with rows of rifles in wooden racks.
“Tell the others to come quickly,” Isa whispered to Sola as he hurried to a wall lined with repeating rifles.
More shadows rushed into the armory. Without a word Isa directed them to the rifles, four for each man, while he took down cardboard boxes of cartridges and began stuffing them into burlap bags, two tied together so each warrior could carry a pair over his shoulder.
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