Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  She stood it against the arbor’s corner pole, and she and Lozen sat back on their heels to look at it. Its lines were graceful and practical. The yellow pollen gave it a cheerful look, like solid sunshine. Lozen thought of the last two lines of Grandmother’s song. “Good, like long life the cradle is made. / Sun rumbles inside it, they say.”

  With the tips of her fingers, Lozen set the dangling bird bones and pebbles to swaying and clicking together softly as though having a private conversation. She opened the front flaps and felt the soft padding of leather. She smiled up at Grandmother. Sensing enemies at a distance was good magic to have, but Grandmother’s gifts were better.

  SINCE HE MARRIED SHE MOVES LIKE WATER, MORNING Star had come to understand why the old men cheerfully turned their responsibilities as leaders over to the younger ones. He understood why they seemed content to stay home by their fires while their grandchildren crawled over them like puppies and younger men rode away to steal ponies, captives, and glory. Sometimes he thought he would be happy to spend most of his days watching his woman move about her camp as slender and supple as a willow withe, as graceful as a hawk in flight.

  Now he watched her take her best doeskin skirt and tunic top from their parfleche and shake the creases out to the music of the tin cones that formed a thick fringe all over them. It was the same costume she had worn at her ceremony of White Painted Woman. Morning Star had come to Warm Springs to attend the feast and to visit Cousin before he became known as Loco. He had seen She Moves Like Water often when he visited here, but she had been a child then.

  He had fallen in love with her when he saw her emerge from the tall tipi of oak saplings. After she had run four times to show her strength and agility, he had joined the line of people waiting for her blessing. When he kneeled and felt the butterfly brush of her fingers making a cross of pollen on his forehead, he had felt as though he were tumbling head over heels down a steep, grassy slope.

  He had summoned the courage to approach her when the dancing began. He remembered the gentle pressure of her head on his shoulder and the warmth of her breath on his neck during that first dance. He remembered moving in time with her, circling to the rhythm of the drums, like their own hearts beating. He remembered feeling light-headed with joy and longing and surprise.

  Most of the unmarried men of the Warm Springs band had courted her, but none as single-mindedly as he did. He had helped her cultivate the cornfield, and he had cut firewood for baking the mescal she and the other women harvested. He had waited by the trail for her to pass, and she had spoken shyly with him, always observing propriety by having a friend nearby and keeping bushes between her and him.

  When she kept the haunch of venison and the tanned hide he left at the door of her lodge, he knew she would marry him. His sister and grandmother had packed the family’s belongings onto a few mules, and the three of them left their home in the Mogollon Mountains to the west. She Moves Like Water and her mother and younger sister raised a tipi of hides for the couple near their encampment and built a domed lodge for Sister and Grandmother. Morning Star’s family had always had relatives among the Red Paints of the Warm Springs band, and they had visited often. Lozen already knew the children here and, he remembered with a wry smile, had fought with most of the boys at one time or another.

  As night approached, Morning Star dressed for the dancing. She Moves Like Water had laid out his best breechclout and moccasins, his war cap decorated with eagle and turkey feathers, and the cartridge belt Lozen had taken from the drunken Pale Eyes and given to him. The belt’s original owner would not have recognized it. Lozen had rubbed it with pollen, giving a golden burnish to the leather. She had beaded the edges and decorated them with a fringe of metal cones. She had added cowrie shells and pieces of the Pale Eyes’ green glass.

  She Moves Like Water set out the fringed and beaded parfleche, but she didn’t open it. Inside it Morning Star kept his bags of pollen, his war amulets, and his izze-kloth, the medicine cord.

  Medicine cords were worn on the war trail and during the Fierce Dance, like the one they would hold tonight. Only a shaman with great influence could make a cord that had Enemies-Against power. Broken Foot had assembled this one of four twisted rawhide thongs that he had painted, each a different color—red, yellow, black, and white. He had woven eagle down, beads, shells, petrified wood, an eaglet’s claw, bits of lightning-struck wood and the sacred blue stone into them.

  Each item carried its own special power. The blue stone would make his bow and his pistol shoot accurately. The wood protected him from lightning. Other items would ensure that no bullet could harm him and would keep him from getting lost. Morning Star lifted it reverently, said a prayer, and put it over his head. He settled it across his chest from his right shoulder to his left hip and fastened his bags of pollen to it.

  He sat cross-legged on the hides spread across the lodge’s floor. She Moves Like Water knelt behind him and combed the snarls from his hair. His hair was so long that she had to comb it in sections, starting with the ends.

  “Maybe you will find a woman in Mexico,” she murmured. “One who will satisfy you and will work hard.”

  The touch of her hands in his hair and on his neck sent thrills through him. They had not coupled since the baby began to make her presence known by a bulge under She Moves Like Water’s skirt. Nor would they be able to for several more years, until Daughter stopped nursing.

  Coupling led to pregnancy, and pregnancy interrupted the flow of milk to the first baby. Besides that, caring for two small ones while cooking, tanning hides, sewing, harvesting, preparing food for winter, hauling wood and water, and making baskets and water jugs imposed an unreasonable burden on their mother. People scorned a man who got his woman with child too soon, but no one condemned him if he took a second wife or slept with a Mexican slave.

  “I would go with you if I could,” she said.

  The deepening darkness seemed to separate them from the rest of the world. They had not slept apart for more than seven or eight days, and this was the first war raid since then. She Moves Like Water would never admit to being afraid for him, but she was. He was stronger and handsomer than any man she knew, but he was more than that. He had magic of his own. It drew people to him and made them like him and trust him. He had the power to make She Moves Like Water love him more than life itself.

  Morning Star picked Daughter up from her nest of rabbit skins.

  “I’ve talked to my sister,” he said. “She knows she must help you and do whatever you tell her.”

  “The time of her feast is coming.”

  Morning Star knew that a girl’s ceremony of White Painted Woman influenced how people regarded her family. Doing everything right, and generously, was making She Moves Like Water anxious. “I’ll bring back horses to trade for the things we’ll need. It will be the best feast anyone has seen since your own.”

  “Lozen hasn’t said so, but I know she wants Stands Alone to celebrate with her.”

  “We can gather enough for both of them.”

  “For their dresses we’ll need ten deer hides with no blemishes or holes in them.”

  She Moves Like Water’s sister’s new husband called from outside. “Brother-in-law, the singers and the drummers are gathering. Nantan wants you to enter the dance first.”

  “Tell him I’m coming.”

  “Skinny wants you to lead? Why didn’t he appoint an older man?”

  “I don’t know.” He handed Daughter to her and touched his medicine cord with one hand. “I should have asked Broken Foot to include a charm to keep me from tripping over the end of my breechclout while I dance.”

  She Moves Like Water leaned close, intoxicating him with her smoky aroma. She lowered her voice.

  “Watch over my sister’s husband.” She didn’t have to remind him that this was Corn Stalk’s man’s first time on the war trail, and that he tended to be rash and heedless.

  Morning Star put his arms around his wife and his d
aughter and held them to him. Then he pushed aside the hide door and emerged into the dusk, tying on his war cap as he went. The tin cones that Lozen had sewn onto the bandolier jingled as he went to join the men, all of them dressed in their best, looking fierce and capable and ready to dance up the sun.

  Chapter 10

  SHADOW WARRIOR

  The warriors danced away into the night beyond the bubble of the fire’s light. The drummers and singers stopped abruptly, leaving the rhythmic music of the tin cones on the men’s clothes jingling in the darkness. The sound grew fainter until it became inaudible, leaving the women, the children, and the old people in a vortex of silence.

  During the Fierce Dance the boys had maintained their usual ferment of mischief on the perimeter. They jostled and insulted each other, they dropped thistles into breechclouts. They threw pebbles at the girls who disdained to notice them. Once the men’s dance ended, the undercurrent of noise continued among the boys, but they came alert, too. Social dances would follow the Fierce Dance. They always did. Not to hold a social dance after a war dance invited disaster in battle. Even on the war trail the warriors followed the custom, with half of them taking the women’s part.

  Dancing was embarrassing enough, but dancing with a girl was a more frightening prospect than war. Those who had seen at least twelve harvests had reached the age when they realized that girls had the power to cause them extreme mortification. They also knew that someday they would live in intimacy with those mystifying and dangerous creatures who glanced like hungry panthers at them from the other side of the fire.

  Skinny announced the first dance. The singers and drummers refreshed themselves with drinks of tiswin and took their positions again. The boys pulled up their moccasins, smoothed their hair, and adjusted their necklaces and belts. Comments passed back and forth in undertones.

  “You fart when you hop around out there.”

  “Your breechclout will fall off.”

  “You dance like a pregnant badger.”

  “My cross-cousin says she hates you.”

  The women always asked the men to dance, but the boys knew they’d increase their chances if they lurked in the girls’ vicinity. A valiant few ventured into enemy territory. To reach them the boys had to dodge the older women.

  “Be careful with those girls, you boys,” Her Eyes Open called out. “They have teeth down there, you know. They’ll bite your little mouse penises off if you try anything.”

  Talks A Lot, Flies In His Stew, and Ears So Big had discussed that teeth threat while they gambled away the afternoons at the horse pasture. They had tried to cajole information from the older boys, but they had received no reliable answers. They decided that a second set of teeth was unlikely, but with girls, anything was possible.

  As for the girls, they proved that a great deal can be said without speaking. They signaled with fleeting looks, with casual waves of a hand, the toss of a head, or cock of a hip.

  Neither Lozen nor Stands Alone were inclined to play the game.

  “He Who Steals Love has been watching you,” Stands Alone said.

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “He’s too old for me.”

  “I know five women who want to marry him.”

  “Then let them.”

  “Here come three of them now.”

  Tall Girl, She Sneezes, and Knot walked by with their arms linked.

  She Sneezes spoke loudly enough for Stands Alone to hear. “Who wants to marry an Already Used Woman?” The other two laughed.

  “Only a very fat man would want her,” Knot said.

  “A fat man with too many ears.”

  “Besdacada, knife-and-awl.” Stands Alone hissed the worst insult in her people’s language. “Smell this!” She extended her fist with her thumb wedged between the first and second fingers and flung it open in the obscene gesture.

  “Ignore them, Sister.” But Lozen knew how difficult that was.

  Not only had Manuel Armijo kept Stands Alone for his personal use, but since her family had died at Janos, she had no one to prepare the feast of White Painted Woman for her. She was old enough to be a woman, but she had not gone through the ritual that would give her a woman’s status. Lozen decided that she and Stands Alone would have the ceremony together or not at all.

  Flies In His Stew caught Lozen’s eye as he approached, but she raised her hand in a small gesture that said she would not ask him. She would not dance until someone asked Stands Alone.

  He Makes Them Laugh sauntered over. No war amulets hung from the fringed cotton shawl he wore tied at a slant across his chest. He did not carry the scratching stick and the drinking tube that apprentices took on the war trail. Instead of arrows, peeled sticks carved and painted with silly faces poked from the top of his quiver.

  Lozen was fond of her unambitious cross-cousin. She was almost amused by the fact that she wanted to go on the war trail but couldn’t, and he could but didn’t want to. He said that people could be brave for a little while, but they were dead for a long time.

  “Aren’t you going to Mexico with the men?” she asked.

  “Someone has to stay behind and protect you women.” He glanced at Stands Alone. She looked away, suddenly shy. He wasn’t her cross-cousin, and talking freely with him wasn’t proper.

  “Will you dance with me?” He wasn’t supposed to ask her, but he specialized in doing what he wasn’t supposed to do.

  Without looking at him, Stands Alone started for the circle of couples. He caught up with her and leaned down to say something in her ear. She threw her head back and laughed. Lozen hadn’t heard her laugh like that since before the Mexicans captured her.

  From the corner of her eye Lozen saw He Steals Love start in her direction. She turned away and walked to where Talks A Lot stood. She poked his shoulder hard with her finger and headed for the dance ground. He followed, looking everywhere but at her.

  Talks A Lot had dressed for the war trail. This would be his first raid as an apprentice, and it was the biggest anyone could remember. He had haunted Broken Foot’s camp for weeks, running any errand, doing any chore, and giving him his family’s best pony in exchange for the war cap Broken Foot had sung over for him.

  He had even asked Lozen for a charm that would help him see enemies at a distance. Lozen had chosen creatures with good eyesight and had made him an amulet out of hawk down, a vertebrae from the mountain lion whose pelt was now a quiver for her brother’s arrows, and a turquoise bead. She had prayed to her spirits and asked them to bless it, but she told Talks A Lot she couldn’t guarantee anything. He had given her a fine deer hide for it, the first of the ten she would need to make the ceremonial dresses for herself and Stands Alone.

  Talks A Lot danced well, but Lozen could tell he was thinking about the coming revenge raid. She envied him.

  THE SUN HADN’T RISEN, BUT A PALE RIBBON OF LIGHT LAY along the horizon. The dark figures of the warriors and their women moved silently about, their slhouettes barely visible against that faint glow. Now and then Lozen heard a jingle of metal or clatter of cowrie shells as the men dressed and collected their equipment.

  “We’re leaving the horses behind so our enemies will have less of a trail to follow if they come after us.” Morning Star was making a quick repair to his moccasin while Lozen packed the last of the parched corn, the dried venison, and juniper berries. “Ride Coyote often or he’ll become ill tempered.”

  “How could we tell if he becomes more ill tempered?” She Moves Like Water spoke softly from the other side of the lodge where she nursed Daughter. “He’s so surly already.”

  Morning Star went on with the instructions to Lozen, although he knew she knew all of it already. “Don’t scatter the wood from its pile, or you’ll bring the warriors bad luck. When you eat, keep the bones piled in one place, or we shall become separated on the trail.”

  He stuck into his belt the old pistol that Lozen had taken from the drunken blacksmith’s apprent
ice. Morning Star was one of the few who had a gun. He had used up the powder and bullets she had stolen, but maybe he would find some to steal on the way.

  When he left the lodge, She Moves Like Water followed him outside, the baby still at her breast. “May we live to see each other again,” she said softly.

  Lozen hurried to keep up as Morning Star strode to the outcrop of rocks called They See Them Off. The warriors and apprectices there had painted the broad, reddish-brown stripe like a mask across their faces. Skinny surprised Lozen by turning to her.

  “The men want you to pray for them and ask your spirits if enemies are near.”

  Everyone watched as Lozen traced a cross of pollen in her left palm. She lifted her hands, palms up, and held them over her head.

  “Life Giver, hear me,” she chanted. “Guide the men on the trail. Let nothing delay their journey. When they meet with the enemy, make their arrows fly true and turn aside the bullets of the evil ones. Bring all of them back safely to us. Cover them with honor.”

  An eddy of morning wind stirred the wisps of hair around her face and blew the golden flecks of pollen into her eyebrows. She turned slowly; then she shivered and opened her eyes.

  “There is no one nearby to hinder you.”

  The men started off single file down the steep trail in the cliff face. The women returned to their fires, to their sleepy, hungry children, and their day’s work. Lozen waited to catch sight of the war party when it reached the plain below.

  The men would join Red Sleeves’ warriors, then travel west to meet those of Cheis’s band. They would turn south and find Long Neck’s warriors from the band called the Enemy People. He Who Yawns would bring the men from his own small band known as the In Front At Behind People. The force would then head for the Sonoran town called Arizpe.

  In his journey south, the Mexican captive, Juan Mirez, had joined a mule train traveling the wind-scoured passes and deep gorges of the Sierra Madres. Muleteers went all over northern Mexico. They knew what was what and who was where. They said that some of the Janos captives were being kept as slaves in Arizpe. Juan returned with the news. Now he was part of the expedition to take revenge.