The heads remained, rolling back and forth like hastily discarded balls on a playground evacuated of children.
Then he was aware of an insistent, familiar presence descending upon his mind. This alarmed him least of all that had just occurred, and still caused him far less consternation than the fact that the Mexicans and the Running Indian had surprised him in the first place. A scent filled his nostrils, even over the burning flesh of the dead Mexican roasting in the fire. He recognized it as the smell of Rider Who Walks.
“I am here, Rider Who Walks,” he said to the silent night. “I welcome you.”
That was enough. He felt himself slip back. It was like sinking beneath cool waters.
The Rider opened Piishi’s eyes to find himself surrounded by death. A corpse lay burning in the campfire, and four severed heads, Mexicans, lay strewn about, staring, as surprised as he was by their state, apparently.
Yet Piishi was flat on his back, and his limbs ached horribly. There were scraps of hemp tight around his wrists and ankles, the loose ends severed, hacked by a knife.
What had happened here?
It was the Gans.
That was Piishi. Not having had to force himself into this body, the Rider had not needed to subdue the consciousness within. Piishi was aware of him, and he was aware of Piishi. It was like having a small voice in his ear. They could converse without either of them having to talk.
“What are the Gans?”
“Mountain Spirits. They saved me from the Mexicans. I have seen the Gan Dancers, but never the spirits themselves. They are watching over us, Rider.”
Not having seen what happened personally, the Rider inwardly shrugged. Maybe the Apache had come out of the night and saved him.
“No, I told you. It was the Gans.”
The Rider frowned. It was strange to share his thoughts this way. He sat up, feeling the blood rush back into Piishi’s limbs. He rubbed his elbows.
“Your knife is in the jefe’s belt. In the fire.”
The Rider stood shakily and moved to the fire. He booted the corpse over with the toe of Piishi’s high moccasin, and gingerly kicked the knife out of the dead man’s belt. It was scorched, but undamaged. He stooped and picked it up.
“It is cool to touch?”
“Yes,” thought the Rider. “Magic iron. Where’s the rifle I gave you?”
“A Running Indian took it. He ran down the mountain.”
“He might be going to town. We should go and get him.”
“We will never catch him. They run like rabbits. We should go on to Pa-Gotzin Kay.”
“The town is full of rurales. If he goes to them, he could lead them back up here.”
“He has seen enough tonight. I think he will go home to his people and his corn beer. The stronghold is only a little ways away now. We can be there by morning.”
Pies, the Rarámuri Indian who worked as a wrangler for the Alvarez outfit, was not headed for his people and his corn beer. He raced through the night, speeding down the precipitous slope. He was headed to Nacozari, to tell Don Elfego that his son Benito and the men with him had been killed by the Apache. First he would alert the rurales. By the time he reached the road, still clutching the fine Henry rifle in a terrified grip, he decided he would not mention the Apache gods.
In the vardo, Faustus took a black eyeglass case from a shelf, snapped it open, and removed a small loupe fitted with dark glass lenses, similar in composition to the bead the old man had given the Rider to wear.
He wrinkled his bushy brow, fitting the lens into his left eye and placed a hand over his right.
“What’s that?” Belden asked.
“It will enable me to see whatever Piishi sees, so long as he wears the necklace I gave him.” He paused, and Kabede thought he saw a dim amber light twinkling briefly in the dark lens. “The Rider is with Piishi now. They are moving up into the mountains.”
“How do you know they are together?” Kabede asked.
Faustus let the loupe drop into his palm, and he slipped it into his vest pocket.
“Piishi would not move otherwise. They will reach the stronghold soon.”
“What’s the plan if this Indian shaman decides he don’t care for Joe’s palaver?” Belden asked.
“We shall cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I suggest a watch on the wagon and animals, beginning with myself, and sleep for the rest of you.”
“You know,” said Belden, as Faustus opened the vardo door, “if these rurales decide they want this rig, Corporal Mendez ain’t gonna stop them. And if we kill one Mexican we’re going to have to kill ‘em all.”
“I suggest sleeping with your guns loaded then, Mister Belden,” Faustus said, before ducking outside and closing the door.
“You still don’t trust that old man,” Belden said, settling down on Faustus’ own cot.
“No, I don’t,” said Kabede, sitting erect, his rifle across his knees.
Belden put his hat over his eyes.
“Maybe you should’ve taken first watch then.”
He was snoring easily in moments.
Nothing untoward happened in the night, though each subsequent watchman strained his eyes to detect some creeping form in the shadow around the vardo. Kabede walked the length of the camel train to the Rider’s onager tied behind, but the animals raised no alarm. He fed them and watered them, and listened intently for the sound of spur or hammer beneath the ceaseless drunken clamor raised by the Mexicans.
A bit before dawn, when the sky was purpling like a bruise, the voices finally dwindled and turned to snores. Belden yawned and scratched his chin, thinking of breakfast.
That was when the lone Indian with a rifle came stumbling down the broken lane.
As the Indian rounded the vardo, not even glancing at the camels, and trotted across the plaza to the building where Mendez and the rurales slept, Belden swung up onto the vardo’s porch and burst inside, causing Kabede and Faustus both to bolt aright, pistols and rifle aimed at him.
He ignored the threat and leaned in the doorway so they could see the Indian under his arm.
“We got trouble,” he said.
“Apaches!” the Indian called, even before he’d reached the building. “Apaches!”
The rising sun spilled red light into the deep canyon and the Rider felt himself stiffen.
“Do not look down,” Piishi’s voice suggested in his head.
He was hugging the stony wall of the mountain path (at time broken into harrowing gaps across which he’d been obliged to hop, it was hardly a path-why did the Apache favor such precarious causeways?), cowering from the sheer drop like an unwanted child nuzzling a mother’s cold breast. To make matters worse, his slow, careful progress was incurring the omnipresent Apache’s stoic but unavoidable disapproval. No doubt if Piishi had control of his body, he could navigate the treacherously narrow path with the careless alacrity of an ibex at play. The Rider was considerably less confident in his abilities. It was a long way down, thousands of feet into the brushy canyon below.
It was cool here too. He could see his breath, and his fingertips ached. The snow capped ridges were close enough to make out the details of the trees now.
Soon he came to a high pile of boulders that littered the path ahead, cutting off progress.
“What now?” the Rider panted aloud, falling gratefully against the boulders, which occupied a wide enough section of land to put him at ease.
“Now you will tell me who you are and what you are doing up here alone,” said a woman’s voice from above.
The Rider looked up, and saw an Apache woman sitting on her heels atop the boulder slide, a Winchester cradled in her arms, a Navajo blanket over her shoulders. She was broad faced and angry looking, and her sudden appearance, with her wild black hair and penetrating eyes, sent an involuntary shiver through the Rider, as if he had come across a dangerous animal by accident.
“I know this woman,” said Piishi. “She is Lozen, Bidu-ya’s sister.”
“Do you know Bidu-ya?”
“Even you know him, Rider. As Vittorio. They are my cousins.”
Vittorio. The Rider indeed knew that name. Whites were terrified of him. If the newspapers were to be believed, he had recently slaughtered a patrol of 9th Cavalry at Ojo Caliente.
The woman on the boulder shrugged off her blanket and stood, aiming her rifle down at him. She wore the clothes of a man, crossed bandoliers over a vest, the cartridge loops filled with bullets.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“Answer this,” Piishi said. “Do not show fear.”
The Rider spoke the words as Piishi dictated. He was aware that he was speaking Apache, and understanding it as well when Lozen spoke.
“Piishi of the Chihine’Dine. We are cousins.”
She stared, then put up her rifle.
“You look…older, Piishi,” Lozen said. “What are you doing here?”
Again, Piishi told the Rider what to say.
“I heard the prophet speak at San Carlos. I came to hear more.”
“More are coming from there today. Goyaałé with his Bedonkohe people, and Juh and Naiche too.”
This gave the Rider and Piishi both pause. San Carlos was miles away, and a person like Goyaałé, Piishi said, would be missed if he and his band were to light out.
“We heard no news of them leaving San Carlos.”
“They have not left yet,” said Lozen.
“How will they get here in time?”
“The prophet’s power will make it happen. If you had waited, he would have brought you too.”
She jutted out an ample hip then, resting the stock of the rifle there and looked down at him. The posture was both feminine and intimidating at the same time.
“Are you coming up here or not?”
“I’m coming,” the Rider said through Piishi.
He clambered up the slide of boulders, being careful not to slip, and joined her at the top.
Spread out before them, hidden entirely from view from the path and the canyon below was a deep cleft of land that took the Rider’s breath away. The earth was red and rich within, verdant with a generous sprinkling of green shrubs and trees. This was no typical Indian fortress generously given the appellation of oasis for its abundance of cactus pears and stagnant, seeping groundwater. It was a real paradise, with a pool of clean water continuously fed by a trickle high in the rock wall, no doubt originating from the mountain snow above, the ages old source of this grand anomaly. Birds nested in the crafty trees, and he even spied squirrels winding up the trunks. There were wickiups and other structures at the far end.
“I will take you to see the prophet,” she said.
“Pa-Gotzin-Kay,” said Piishi, in the Rider’s mind as they descended into the little valley. “This is the most sacred stronghold of my people, Rider. If ever the white men found it…”
“They won’t,” the Rider promised silently.
If they did, the Rider knew that would be the end of the Apache for all time. The end of this place, for as they passed the sheltering stone, the Rider detected a glimmer shot throughout the surface. There were veins of sparkling, untouched gold, like fossilized lightning somehow trapped in the smooth, eroded rock, emanating outward from the old, dwindling waterfall like the garish and overabundant embellishments of some baroque cathedral. There was gold enough to drive a nation full of men to madness and fund an epoch of butchery.
“You are not like other white men, Rider,” said Piishi suddenly. “I know your heart as you know mine. There is no lust for gold in you.”
“I don’t need it.”
“But you want the death of a man. This…Adon. He is your gold, Rider.”
They had picked their way down to the floor of the stronghold, and a fawn pranced before them into the brush.
Lozen led them past other armed Apaches, who regarded him with mild interest as they cleaned their rifles. These were Vittorio’s men. With the help of Piishi’s knowledge, he marked some of them. Kas-tziden was there, Góyą́ń, and Silva too. It was odd to see strange, hard faces and know them instantly. Silva was impetuous and loved women too much, Kas-tziden liked his drink. Lozen had power; power to see the movement of her enemies from afar. She was their seer, one eye naturally open to the Yenne Velt.
They found Vittorio himself with another warrior and the prophet, standing near the pool, which was fed by the waterfall. Many other Indians stood or sat around, not all of them Apache, by their dress. The Rider recognized Navajo in black wool vests, and Piishi picked out a group of strange looking warriors all in wolf skins as Tonkawas. There were Pawnees, with impressive bear claw necklaces and their singular hair, paint stiffened and roached. There was a band of Indians in loincloths with bowl-cut hair and intricate patterned blankets over their shoulders neither of them could identify.
Vittorio (or Bidu-ya, as Piishi knew him) was lean, and his sharp eyes glittered like arrow tips beneath his broad warband. His hair was shot with streaks of gray, though he was not old. Gray hair and scars were the only marks of rank among the Apache. Though he was a killer, the Rider had Piishi’s memories of him as a boy, playing the hoop and stick game and splashing in the river, and this softened his perception of the warrior somewhat, made him more human. He saw the happy times, the dances, the pony races, and he saw the lean times on the reservation too. He remembered the double dealings at San Carlos, the bad meat and the poor drainage, the hardscrabble gardens and the missionaries pushing the white man’s salvation. The filth and the smell. No wonder he and his band had left.
The second warrior neither Piishi nor the Rider knew. He wore a Stetson with a horsehair band from under which his long black hair spilled over his narrow shoulders. He had thin whiskers over his upper lip, and a bullet scar across his left forearm. The handle of a knife stuck out from his boot.
When the prophet turned, the Rider did not need Piishi’s memories to know him. He was indeed Misquamacus. Older, uglier, his face like the bottom of a dry wash cracked by the sun, his white eyebrow split over his eye by the meandering scar a 3rd Cavalry saber had given him at Sand Creek.
When the Rider had known him, he had been a Cheyenne all in red stained buckskins and beads, the wound over his eye still fresh. Now he wore the garb of a Chiricahua, long red shirt, red leggings, and a red breechclout that touched the ground. He wore Apache talismans, like the tzi-daltai Piishi had presented the Rider, and a kind of bandolier of woven chords strung with smooth stones and beads—an izze-kloth, Piishi’s mind told him. He wore no band across his wrinkled brow though, and his striking silver and white hair hung like cobwebs from his old head.
Vittorio’s stoic face slackened slightly at the sight of Piishi, and his expression brightened.
“Piishi,” said Vittorio. “Is it you? What’s happened to you?”
The Rider nodded, but his eyes flitted to the other two. The one in the hat was sizing him up and looked unimpressed. Misquamacus was peering directly at him, and the Rider had a feeling like when he was a boy playing hide and seek, watching through a crack in a curtain as a playmate tried to penetrate the darkness and find him.
“Hard times,” the Rider said. “I’ve been sick.”
“This is Inya,” said Vittorio, gesturing to the man beside him. The Rider detected a distaste for the other Indian in Piishi.
“An outlaw,” said Piishi. “I have heard of him. He was cast out of the Bedonkohe band for taking a man’s wife by force.”
Misquamacus stepped away from the other two toward Piishi, peering right into his eyes—at the Rider.
“My cousin, Piishi,” said Vittorio.
“This is not Piishi,” Misquamacus said directly.
The Indians looked at each other querulously. Some who had been sitting rose to their feet.
“He knows. He sees,” said Piishi.
Yes, said the Rider. He had thought he might.
Misquamacus came closer, narrowing his eyes like a man trying to see
through a lit window. The Rider could smell him, a wild smell of wood smoke, sweat, and tobacco.
“Who are you?” Misquamacus demanded, his eyebrows coming together.
The Rider felt Piishi’s consciousness stirring, rising to the surface.
“Be calm,” he cautioned.
“This is a white man in an Indian’s body,” Misquamacus said finally, turning away. “Take him and throw him off the mountain.”
Piishi’s essence stirred, shouldering past his own, threatening to take over his body. He felt the flutter behind his eyes starting as the warriors rushed in, pulling knives.
“No!” he thought.
“I will not die here!” Piishi argued.
Vittorio stepped between the warriors and Piishi.
“I do not know what is happening here, but this man is my cousin,” he said.
“He’s not your cousin, brother,” said Misquamacus. “Your cousin’s dead. A white man is wearing his skin like a blanket.”
“Wait,” the Rider said in English through gritted teeth, as much to Piishi as to the others. “Piishi is not dead.”
Inya stepped past Misquamacus, and came before Vittorio, a wolfish look on his face, as if he was eager for a fight.
“Stand aside, Bidu-ya,” he said, putting a hand on his knife.
“Get this thing of yours away from me,” Vittorio said in disgust to Misquamacus.
Inya drew his knife in answer to the insult.
“What-would-Paveve’keso say,” the Rider said haltingly, fighting to keep control of Piishi, “if she–could see you–now?”
Misquamacus regarded him, eyes narrowing.
“Who are you?”
“Rider-Who-Walks.”
Within, Piishi settled, as Misquamacus gestured for Inya and the others to stand down.
“Put him in my wickiup,” Misquamacus said to Vittorio.
“What is this?” Vittorio asked. “This is not Piishi?”
“It is and it isn’t,” Misquamacus said. “I will restore what is and take out what isn’t.”
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 18
