Leaving Yuma

by Michael Zimmer

  The sun was barely up the next morning when a young man in his late teens came to fetch me. He was wearing a heavy butcher knife in a brass-tacked sheath, and sneered as he stood above me fingering the weapon’s chipped scales. He was looking for a reaction, preferably fear, but I’d lived among the Yaquis for too many years to give him that kind of satisfaction. I turned my head away as if bored, and he laughed and whipped out the blade. I couldn’t help a small, grating moan as my limbs were freed. My hands had turned purple from a lack of circulation, and I couldn’t feel anything below my knees. The youth, predictably, appeared unconcerned with my disability.

  “On your feet, dog,” he commanded.

  I tried, but my limbs wouldn’t cooperate. My legs wobbled and bowed, and I had to look to where I wanted my hands to go, then kind of flop them in that direction. The Yaqui’s contempt for me deepened as he watched.

  “Are all white men as feeble as you?” he asked.

  “Did your mother enjoy copulating with the skunk that sired you?” I replied.

  I guess my Yaqui was improving, because he gave me a kick in my ribs that sent me spinning across the ground. His reply came faster than I could follow, although I didn’t have any trouble interpreting his feelings, especially with that butcher knife jacked back over his shoulder. That ol’ boy wanted to cut me open so bad, he could taste it, but I just laughed at him. You might think me foolish for doing so, but a man didn’t get far with those desert tribes by groveling.

  “Why don’t you go find a snake to copulate with?” I suggested.

  “I will cut out your tongue, then laugh when you try to howl at the moon.”

  That might not sound too impressive to a gringo, but it was pretty bold talk for a Yaqui. It was also buying me some time, so that while he was making similar promises for my future, I actually managed to climb to my feet, as shaky as they might have been. I stood there, swaying and light-headed, rubbing feeling back into my wrists, until he started to wind down. When he finally sputtered out of prophecies, I said, “Where?”

  He didn’t like me, not one bit, but he was finished making threats, and turned away without answering my question. He took off at a swift walk I couldn’t come close to matching in my faltering gait, although I did my best. He was about fifty yards out front when he abruptly turned toward a low-domed wickiup made of willow saplings and arrow weed, held together with plaited yucca leaves. Batting aside an antelope hide hanging over the lodge’s entrance, he disappeared inside.

  With a destination in sight, I slowed down to have a look around. I didn’t see Luis or Abby anywhere, but there was a ramada some distance beyond the wickiup where the young Yaqui had disappeared that caught my eye. Several women were sitting in its shade, grinding some kind of grain or nut into flour with a pestle. A number of children were playing in the dirt in front of the open-sided structure, and I felt a huge wave of relief when I recognized Susan among them, wearing a simple jerga shift and holding what looked like a grass-stuffed leather doll. She grinned real big when she saw me and started to come over, but one of the women spoke a sharp reprimand, and the girl quickly backed away, her face clouding over as if she wanted to bawl but was afraid to.

  I smiled and winked to show her it was all right, and she smiled back. Turning toward the wickiup, I was only peripherally aware of another white child standing in the shadows behind the women, a boy a few years older than Susan, wearing a breechcloth and moccasins. Then I brushed the antelope skin aside and ducked into the darkness.

  The wickiup’s interior was similar to just about every other Yaqui lodge I’d been in over the years—bigger than it looked from the outside, with rolled-up reed sleeping mats and blankets pushed against the walls, rawhide bags and leather pouches stuffed with food and other belongings hanging from the structure’s willow frame. A Krag-Jorgensen rifle, the kind our boys had used so well in Cuba in 1898, leaned against a fancy Mexican saddle propped up on its horn, and there was a squat figure sitting behind a small blaze in the middle of the lodge. Staring at the old man’s features, cast to a bronze hue by the flickering embers of the fire, I remember thinking, He hasn’t changed much.

  I sat down cross-legged on the man’s right, as befitted a guest rather than a prisoner. Old Toad must have been in his sixties by then, an advanced age for a Yaqui in those days, but his resemblance to the amphibian he was named after was as startling as ever. The way he sat enhanced the image—his knees up and out, arms usually folded between them. He had a wide face with heavy jowls and small black eyes that never seemed to blink. The only thing that was really different about him was his hair, a steel-gray now, where it had been only lightly streaked in my youth.

  Toad was holding a cigar between the fingers of his left hand that looked vaguely familiar. At first I thought it might have been one of the brands I used to smuggle north across the border, but I couldn’t place the name. He continued to study the slim panatela as if I wasn’t there, and after a few seconds the young brave who’d cut me loose took the hint and left. When he was gone, Toad spoke.

  “You have fared well, White Dog,” the old man said without looking up.

  I didn’t know if that was a question or an observation, although, judging from my bedraggled appearance, I was guessing the former. I didn’t reply. Poking a rolled-up piece of heavy paper into the fire, Toad lit the stogie. His movements were slow and deliberate, and he pinched the flame out afterward and set the paper aside for reuse. Closing his eyes in appreciation of the undiluted tobacco—pure leaf was hard to get for a bronco in those days—he drew in a lungful of smoke. He held it for almost a full minute, then tipped his head back to exhale a slim stream of blue toward the ceiling. My eyes followed the pother as it entwined itself in a lattice of arrow weed. Taking a deep breath, Toad brought his gaze back to the fire, as if seeking answers in the pulse of its coals.

  “I did not expect you,” he confessed after a bit.

  “It was not my idea.”

  “You broke the sacred trust of the Cañon Where the Small Lizards Run.”

  I winced at that, but wasn’t really surprised that he knew. I didn’t ask how, figuring he’d just give me some nonsense like a gecko told him. I never understood the Indian way of thinking, but I never bought into its mysticism, either. At the time, it was my punishment for revealing the slot cañon’s location to outsiders that had my bowels threatening to turn to water, my knees to jelly.

  “The woman, she is yours?”

  I hesitated only a moment, then said that she was, hoping both Abby and Susan’s situation might be marginally better if Toad thought she was my wife. Of course, I could have just as easily made things worse. Most of the decisions I had to make down there were a crap shoot, at best.

  “And the child?”

  “She is also mine.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, though having yet to look directly at me. After taking another drag on the cigar, he began to speak, his words low, almost gentle.

  “In a dream, long before you came to live with us, I saw you kill the soldiers who tried to take away the life of my son. Later I saw him rise from the killing ground to become a great warrior of the People. So when you left us that day, I knew the truth of my dream, and that the time had come for you to go back to your own kind. Now my thoughts are like the whirlwind because I did not foresee your return. I don’t know if the right thing to do is to kill you as an enemy, or let you live as before.”

  “You didn’t let me live that day at Vaquero Springs,” I reminded him. “I stole that Mexican’s horse and left before you could make that decision.”

  Toad considered my argument for a moment. In his own cutthroat way I knew he wanted to do the right thing, to please his spirit guides and his gods. But I also understood his hatred of all white men, and in his mind there was little difference between the Mexicans who had invaded his country from the south and east, and the Americans who came from t
he north.

  “In my dream, you went away after freeing my son.” He paused for nearly a minute, then shook his head in indecision. “I will have to think about this some more,” he said, then motioned toward the door. “You are free to go, but not to leave. If you try to run away, the others will hunt you down, and I will not be able to stop them if they decide to end your life.”

  I nodded silently, knowing there was nothing I could say that would influence the old warrior’s decision. He would make up his own mind regarding my fate. I just hoped that damned gecko stayed out of it.

  Before I left, I leaned over to pick up the piece of paper he’d used to light his cigar. I stuck it in my pocket, then stood and walked out, never having once looked into the old man’s eyes, or he into mine.

  Excerpted from

  Despots and Dictators

  A Detailed Description of Tyranny

  within the United Mexican States

  by Herbert Carlton Matthews

  Broken Mill Press, 1930

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Yaqui Solution

  [Editor’s note: A true understanding of Yaqui/Mexican relations cannot be contained within a single volume, let alone excerpts from only one source, but a basic understanding of the conflict between these cultures is necessary to comprehend the mind set of men like Ghost and Old Toad. For readers who wish to know more about early Spanish interaction with the Yaqui nation, two excellent sources of information are Evelyn Hu-DeHart’s Missionaries, Miners, and Indians: Spanish Contact with the Yaqui Nation of Northwestern New Spain, 1533–1820, and Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821–1920.]

  * * * * *

  It should be noted that the often contentious entanglement of these two nations—one native; the other seeking new worlds to conquer and new wealth to claim—began as soon as the first Spaniard entered the Yaqui River Valley of Sonora in 1533, and was immediately ordered to leave … a battle ensued and the Spaniards withdrew, but the lines had been drawn, both figuratively and literally.

  * * * * *

  Although largely agrarian and fiercely protective of their land, which the Yaquis believed was granted to them by their Creator, their relationship with Spanish authority didn’t begin to seriously deteriorate for another two hundred years, when civilians in search of new lands to farm and mineral wealth to mine, began to encroach upon the almost sacred Yaqui River Valley in ever larger numbers … [which] resulted in a revolt in 1740 between the Yaqui/Mayo alliance and the invading Spaniards, and the loss of thousands of lives on both sides.

  [An] uneasy truce, marred by numerous skirmishes, existed between the two nations for another eighty years, until Mexican independence was won from Spain in 1821 … [after which] further attempts to control the Yaqui tribe led to increased hostilities.

  * * * * *

  Brutality, always a hallmark of war, marred the conflict in Sonora from beginning to end. [As examples] in 1868, the army first shelled, then burned, a Catholic church with approximately one hundred and fifty Yaquis inside; in 1903, Yaquis reportedly sawed the feet off of scout “California Dan” Ryan, and made him walk on his bloody stumps until he expired.

  * * * * *

  Thousands of Yaquis fled to the deserts and mountains during this time, waging guerrilla warfare against the government.

  * * * * *

  By the end of the nineteenth century, [Porfirio] Díaz was rapidly increasing his efforts to modernize the more rural areas of the country … [by] openly seeking backers from the United States and Europe who were willing to invest in Mexico’s infrastructure.

  By 1903, Díaz had grown impatient with the still-warring Yaqui resistance. Viewing it as a major obstacle to the progress he sought, and especially to the development of Hiakim (the Yaqui name for their homeland), he initiated what amounted to an eradication policy toward the Yaqui people. In 1904, Sonoran governor Rafael Izábal was ordered to oversee a series of statewide “round-ups” of the remaining Yaquis … [and by] 1909, between ten thousand and fifteen thousand Yaquis had been captured and deported. Some were sent to Bolivia or the United States, but most were sent to other parts of Mexico to work in near slave-like conditions on henequen, sugar cane, and sisal plantations in Yucatán and Oaxaca. An estimated sixty percent of these people died within their first year of confinement due to the harsh, unfamiliar climate and inhumane conditions of these plantations.

  Session Twenty

  The women were still under the ramada when I left Old Toad’s wickiup, but the children were gone. Remembering the boy I’d seen in the shadows brought a scowl to my face. Was it possible? I’d caught barely a glimpse of the lad, and at the time I hadn’t even considered the prospect of him being Abby’s son, but now I wasn’t so sure. If it had been him—and, mind you, I wasn’t convinced at that point that it was—then where were Del Buchman and the kid’s father? Could Old Toad’s village have been Ed Davenport’s objective all along? I hardly thought so. The Yaquis had never possessed the kind of wealth the old man would demand for his potato diggers. Which meant, perhaps, capture—and, ultimately, torture and death.

  Assuming the kid I’d seen was Charles.

  Free to roam, I headed for the Río Concepción. Although I’d drunk some yesterday when we reached the river, my thirst had hardly been quenched. Kneeling at its banks with the morning sun just peeking through the mesquite, I scooped handful after handful of cool water down my raw throat. I drank until I thought I was going to vomit, but I still wasn’t satisfied. My stomach was full, but it was going to take time to satisfy the rest of my system.

  Crossing the shallow stream, I sank to the ground with my back to the soft bank, the sun’s rays—the same ones I’d cursed with such passion through the preceding days—warming my still-chilled frame. I was hungry, and would go looking for food soon, but first I wanted to think. I wanted to remember that incident Old Toad had related to me, and review it again from my memory, rather than his.

  * * * * *

  I was seventeen at the time, and as close to a pure-quill Yaqui as a captive White Eye was ever likely to get. About forty of us had been on a raid along the foothills of the Sierra Madres, far to the east. We were heading home with a dozen plunder-laden pack horses and a couple of prisoners—women we would keep alive and assimilate into the clan, or kill if they resisted too strongly.

  We’d skirted the Sabana Valley because of the Federale garrison there, but went out of our way to attack the little rancho at Vaquero Springs. We wanted the horses we knew the Mexican mustangers would have in their corral, and whatever loot we could find. We hadn’t known the soldiers—mounted Federales, not Adolpho Castillo’s collection of misfits and thieves—were approaching from Sabana until it was too late.

  The Federales had hit us from the east, much like Alvarez’s men had done to Luis and Abby and me, striking our flank with an element of surprise that nearly overwhelmed us. We fell back, but we didn’t scatter or make a run for it. We had our booty to protect, you see, culled from isolated homes and tiny villages all along the front range of the Madres. Old Toad sent a handful of boys ahead with the stolen stock, of which I suppose you might consider our captives a part of, while the rest of us hung back to fight a delaying action.

  The Federales were all over us. They had us outnumbered by at least four to one, and were better armed, to boot. We couldn’t hold out for long, and we knew it. All we wanted to do was keep the soldiers off balance, keep our own retreat organized. We would break apart, then come together again a few hundred yards down the trail, little pockets of resistance the Mexicans couldn’t contain. Like stinging wasps, we’d hit them from every side, then duck back into the chaparral before they could mount a counterattack.

  I didn’t have any doubts about what my fate would be if the Mexican soldiers caught me. I might have started out a captive, but I’d be a warrior in their eyes. Nor wou
ld it help that I was carrying an old single-shot muzzle-loading rifle taken off a California-bound immigrant the Yaquis had captured and butchered many years before. I hadn’t killed anyone with it, but that was only because I hadn’t needed to. If faced with the choice, I would have pulled the trigger without deliberation—it was a pretty nebulous line I walked in those days.

  We were probably forty-five minutes into the fighting when the soldiers finally overran us, and, for a while there, it was chaos everywhere you turned. Powder smoke hung over the battlefield in a tattered, swirling fog, and men and horses were screaming and dying on every side. I got separated from the others, and out of the blue it occurred to me that an opportunity for escape could finally be at hand. Warrior or not, I’d never given up on the idea of someday making my way back to my own people.

  There were soldiers everywhere, but none that seemed to be paying me any special attention, so with my heart pounding at my ribs, I took off for the chaparral. I’d just about made it when I heard yelling from behind me. Fearing the worst, I spun around and dropped to one knee, shouldering the old caplock with practiced ease. I figured I’d been had for sure, but it was Old Toad’s son, Slayer, who they’d brought to bay.

  There were at least four Federales on top of Slayer, and I knew he wouldn’t last long against those odds. A Mexican hates a Yaqui about as much as a Yaqui hates a Mexican, and those soldiers had blood in their eyes. For a moment I just knelt there, staring. You’ve heard the term … frozen with indecision? That was me. The chaparral was beckoning. I could be in it and out of sight within seconds, and not a soul to stop me, but Slayer … well, he wasn’t really a friend, not by gringo standards, but he was as close to one as I’d had in my years among the Yaquis. I’d trained alongside him under Old Toad’s tutelage, and we’d developed a guarded respect for one another’s abilities, if not a brotherly affection. There’s not a doubt in my mind that if I’d abandoned him that day, he would have been dead before I reached the chaparral.