Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  A pebble from the ledge above hit the ground near Lozen and rattled down the slope. She slid behind a boulder and waited for Stands Alone to pass before she tossed a stone at her.

  Stands Alone whirled around. She had put on the clothes she had worn when the three Pale Eyes men returned her—a full skirt of cotton cloth and a white tunic belted with a red sash. Instead of moccasins she wore straw sandals. A gourd of water hung at her waist.

  “Where are you going?” Lozen asked.

  “Juan Mirez told me he met El Gordo coming back from Sonora. The old carrion eater is headed for Mesilla.”

  “You said he always travels with guards. How will you kill him?”

  “Life Giver will show me a way. Don’t tell your brother’s wife where I’ve gone until it’s too late for anyone to come after me.”

  Manuel Armijo. El Gordo. He was a wily one. He was like the fat rat that ate the cornmeal every winter. El Gordo was eating Stands Alone’s chance for happiness. She would not feel like a woman of The People again until she killed him. If Stands Alone returned safely, she and Lozen would celebrate the ceremony of White Painted Woman together.

  “May we live to see each other again,” Lozen said.

  Lozen watched Stands Alone grow smaller as she descended the trail at a fast walk. She pulled the wooden plug from the opening of her gourd canteen and poured a little water into a deposit of red clay. Lozen dipped her fingers into the mud. She closed her eyes and smeared it across the upper part of her face to form the red stripe that distinguished the Red Paint warriors.

  She looked out over the narrow valley that pointed southwest like the head of a lance. Ground fog pooled there, clinging to the base of the mountains that sloped into it. The lavender peaks rising beyond those surrounding the valley lay at the end of a three-day march. The vastness of the country exhilarated her. For her, the horizon was just another destination. She saw it all with a hawk’s eye. She wanted to spread her arms, step off the edge, and soar out over the green slopes. Broken Foot said that his Goose magic let him do that, though never when anyone was watching. Maybe he was teasing her and maybe not.

  She saw the men far below, moving through the mist. They entered a stand of cedars and disappeared.

  “Yalan,” she murmured. Good-bye.

  THIS WAS THE BEGINNING OF THE SUMMER SEASON CALLED Thick With Fruit. Trays of boiled locust pods, sumac berries, and yucca fruits pounded and glazed in their own juice were stacked under a brush arbor and ready to be set out again in the morning sun to dry. Everywhere in camp burden baskets leaned against each other. They were filled with mesquite beans, sunflower seeds, juniper berries, and the glossy seeds of the grama grass.

  Women roasted piñon nuts by tossing them with live coals on trays woven of green yucca leaves. Before He Makes Them Laugh took up his sentry position above the camp, he left the ribs of a deer and a stomach full of blood. Grandmother had added wild onions and chili peppers to the paunch, and it was now cooking over the coals.

  Lozen sat between She Moves Like Water and her sister, Corn Stalk, and passed them each a cake of mescal flour sweetened with sumac berries.

  “My mother and I went to the lodge of Her Eyes Open at dawn this morning,” said She Moves Like Water. “She accepted our gift of an eagle feather and a blue prayer stone. She will sponsor Stands Alone for the ceremony of White Painted Woman.”

  Lozen was elated. It was a act of overwhelming generosity. Preparing for one feast took months of work. A second one would impose an almost impossible burden on Lozen’s family.

  “I’ll haul all the wood and water and tan the hides, Sister,” Lozen said. “I’ll grind the mescal meal and hoe the corn and weave the baskets and trays. I’ll cook and, mend and watch Daughter.”

  She Moves Like Water laughed. “You’re usually making arrowheads and tending the horses. Did you look down there and see that you have a girl’s thing and not a boy’s?”

  “I don’t know.” Lozen pretended to look under her own skirt. “What does a boy’s thing look like?”

  Corn Stalk giggled around the hide she was chewing for Lozen’s ceremonial dress.

  Grandmother stood in the fire’s light, and all the women came to attention. Grandmother was a good storyteller.

  “A young woman was so beautiful,” she said, “that all the young men wanted to marry her. She told them, ‘After a while, if you all show me your penises, I’ll marry the man with the smallest one.’ Old Man Coyote, he went to Mouse and offered him a present in return for exchanging penises.”

  As Grandmother told the story, Lozen looked up at the sky, thrown over the world like a black robe beaded with light. She realized that she liked not having the men around. The women could sit closer to the warmth of the fire when men weren’t occupying the best seats. The women were merrier when they were alone, and more mischievous. Definitely more mischievous. Lozen ducked to avoid the prickly pear fruits that some of them were tossing at each other.

  Grandmother went on with the story in spite of the giggling. “After all the young men lined up, the young woman said, ‘Coyote has the smallest penis. I’ll marry him.’ But then Mouse appeared dragging Coyote’s huge penis after him. Dust and burs covered Coyote’s penis. Cactus spines stuck to it from being pulled across the ground. Everyone poked it with sticks and wanted to know why it was so big. ‘Because it belongs to Coyote,’ Mouse said. The girl laughed and said she would never marry anyone with such a large penis. It would get stuck inside her. It would hurt her. Old Man Coyote got so mad, he fastened his own penis back on; then he killed that mouse.” Then to fool Coyote, Grandmother added, “I’m talking about fruit and flowers.

  “Old Man Coyote is a trickster,” said Grandmother. “And men have learned to be like him. Even if Coyote offers you something good, don’t take it.”

  Amid the laughter and the cries of “Wah, wah, wah,” a tremor started in Lozen’s chest. A roar vibrated her skull and rang in her ears. Her heart began to race. She stood abruptly.

  “We have to go.”

  Without question or argument, Grandmother began herding the children together, making sure they each had a blanket and food.

  “Don’t spoil the fun,” Tall Girl called out.

  “We have to go. Now. Everyone.” Lozen helped She Moves Like Water settle her daughter’s cradleboard on her back.

  “The boys will tell us if an enemy comes,” Tall Girl said. “We’re not following a crazy girl into the mountains at night.”

  Her Eyes Open grabbed Tall Girl by the elbow and hauled her up like a half-filled burden basket. She shoved her forward so hard that Tall Girl stumbled and almost fell. Her Eyes Open only had to give She Sneezes and Knot the look. They hustled after the others.

  “What about the food?” asked Squint Eyes.

  “Leave it.”

  Lozen searched the campsite, looking into every shelter for any child who might be sleeping; then she trotted after the silent procession. What if she couldn’t get them away in time? What if she were wrong about enemies approaching?

  She picked up a straggling girl and carried her at a run to her mother, who was searching for her but didn’t dare call out. She returned to the rear of the column. With an arrow nocked she followed the others until they entered the boulder-strewn underbrush. She knew that Grandmother, Her Eyes Open, and the other older women would see that everyone reached the cave that was their hiding place.

  Lozen climbed the slope to the lookouts’ post on a high ledge. He Makes Them Laugh was waiting for her. Two small boys, the other sentries, slept curled together on a blanket. They sat up and looked apologetic.

  “What happened?” murmured He Makes Them Laugh.

  “Enemies are coming from the south.”

  “Mexicans?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He Makes Them Laugh primed and loaded the ancient musket that Skinny had left with him. They didn’t have to wait long. Holding torches over their heads, thirty horsemen thundered into the camp bel
ow. They set the brush shelters ablaze as they rode. By the light of the burning lodges and arbors, Lozen could see them pitching baskets of seeds and nuts into the flames. Some wheeled their mounts, trampling the women’s belongings. Some of them urinated on the trays of drying fruit. Lozen could hear their laughter.

  “Pale Eyes diggers,” Lozen breathed. “From Santa Rita.”

  He Makes Them Laugh turned to look at her. “The old ones are right about you, Cousin.”

  He smiled at the boys who huddled against the rock wall. “Now, warriors, we’ll play a game of Creep and Freeze. We’ll leave those Pale Eyes far behind us.”

  Chapter 11

  SAINTS PRESERVE US

  Rafe couldn’t remember when he’d been in the presence of so many women of his own race. He was surrounded by two of them, to be exact, and one of them was big enough to divide and create a third. Sarah Bowman was six feet tall, and her heap of cayenne-red hair increased her altitude. During the war with Mexico she had worked as a laundress and cook, and the soldiers had nicknamed her The Great Western.

  Since the war, her legend had gathered steam. Strong men and unruly ones said she was the roughest fighter on the Mexican border. The Indians believed she was supernatural. The Mexicans were only slightly more afraid of God and the devil than of her.

  He had met her a year before because of her inflatable rubber bathing tub. The longing for a hot bath and a warm woman had lured him to her hotel in the teeming Texas border settlement that people were starting to call El Paso.

  In El Paso she had seemed completely at ease among the hordes of gold rushers, sharps, and opportunists who thronged the settlement on their way west. She looked equally at ease now, playing euchre by firelight in a treechoked canyon, deep in Apache country. The noisiest things around were her talkative old mule, Jake, the stream chuckling in the darkness nearby, and laughter from the bivouac of the army escort.

  Western had sold her share in the hotel in El Paso and packed her chattel into the wagon now parked next to Rafe’s. She said she was going to meet her husband, Albert Bowman, who was helping with the construction of Camp Webster, the new army post near the Santa Rita mines. She always referred to Albert as The Sergeant. Rafe had met The Sergeant, and he recognized. the bright gleam of gold fever in the man’s eyes. Rafe figured Albert would lead The Great. Western a merry chase, but then she was used to that. She had followed the army to hell and back for more than a dozen years.

  The second American woman in the party, and Rafe’s partner at euchre, was Anna Maria Morris. Mrs. Morris was on her way to join her husband. Major Morris had taken command of Camp Webster, hence the company of soldiers as escort. Mrs. Morris held her cards with her arms around the Negro baby who slept in her lap. The child belonged to Mrs. Morris’s slave, Louisa, who was grinding corn for the morning’s bread.

  The Great Western’s friend, Cruz, was crooning a lullaby in Spanish to her six-year-old daughter and the four youngest of the five towheaded sisters who traveled with Western. The girls in their long calico skirts lay on top of their blankets like fallen blossoms.

  The fifth and oldest sister, Nancy, was Sarah’s partner at euchre. In fact, Rafe found himself in the company of an entire flock of female beings. It was an unprecedented occurrence that made him think he might be happy, for the moment, anyway. The country’s founders had promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but Rafe had been too busy holding on to the first two to chase the third.

  Sarah Bowman raised her head and sniffed the breeze. “I pray that skunk ain’t planning to pay us a social call.”

  Rafe, too, had noticed the odor getting stronger. “Does your mule eat skunks as well as rattlesnakes?”

  “If he was hungry enough, I reckon.”

  Sarah had laid out three tricks and declared trump when five Mexicans arrived with flat-brimmed straw hats in hand. They stood in the mysterious country at the firelight’s border, where any sort of supernatural occurrence was possible. Four of them stared at Sarah Bowman as though she were the answer to their prayers.

  Sarah spoke to the fifth one in Spanish. “What do they want, Juan?”

  Her driver and cohort, Juan Duran, shrugged. “They’re worried about the general.”

  “Armijo?”

  “Yes.”

  Rafe sighed and glanced toward the pale gray oblong, like a storm cloud stalled near the stream. It was the filthy canvas cover of Armijo’s old trading wagon. Armijo was all the plagues of Egypt in one loose bale. Wherever he went, trouble followed.

  “The general went to relieve himself, and he has not returned.”

  “Then go fetch him,” Sarah said. “He’s probably drunk.”

  “They are afraid of Apaches, Western,” Juan answered in English.

  “Then pray tell,” Mrs. Morris asked, “why don’t they ask the soldiers for help? Ten armed men sit in bivouac not three hundred yards from here.”

  Juan shrugged again.

  Rafe wasn’t surprised that the Mexicans hadn’t gone to the soldiers. Mexicans were accustomed to American soldiers as enemies, not as allies. But he was almost annoyed that they had come to The Great Western for help instead of to him. People had a habit of turning to him when they wanted someone to put a hand into the fire to save their bacon. And there was danger enough to go around. For the past six months Apaches had been ambushing wagon trains and stealing cattle and horses, too. They were up to some serious mischief. So much for old Red Sleeves’ promises of eternal friendship with his American brothers.

  Sarah stood and straightened her skirts. She took a flaming mesquite limb from the fire to use as a torch. “Which way did he head?”

  Rafe had had his pair of Johnson army-issue flintlock pistols converted to percussion. He bit off the end of a paper cartridge, shoved it into the muzzle, and rammed it home. He half cocked the gun, and with his thumb he pressed a percussion cap onto the nipple. He did the same for the second pistol. With Armijo’s men crowding close behind them, Sarah and Rafe set out in the direction the general had taken. The smell of skunk grew stronger.

  They found the general toppled forward, his naked buttocks pointed toward heaven like the voluptuously curved prow of an overturned whaleboat. His white cotton trousers hung in folds around his ankles and feet. Rafe put his boot on the man’s hip and pushed him onto his side. He tried to stand between the body and Sarah.

  “Why don’t you go back to camp, Mrs. Bowman,” Rafe said. “You shouldn’t have to see this.”

  “In the war I saw sights as bad as can be, Mr. Collins.” Sarah bent over and held the torch close. She crossed herself. “Saints preserve us.” She pulled one of the pistols from her belt and looked around. “If they’d been Apaches, Jake would’ve warned me.”

  “Jake?”

  “My mule. He can smell Injuns a long ways off.”

  “The skunk,” Rafe said.

  “They covered their own scent with it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Clever devils, ain’t they?”

  “You could say so.”

  Blood still pulsed in a slow trickle from the neat slice that started at one ear and curved under Armijo’s three-tiered stack of chins to the other ear. That he had any blood left was amazing, considering the amount of it that formed a lake around him. His eyes bulged. Two bloody patches marked the former location of his ears. His severed genitals protruded from his mouth. Aside from the fact that his penis and testicles had migrated north, something else was strange about them.

  “What is that?” Sarah asked.

  Rafe squatted for a better look. Millipedes crawled up from under his shirt collar and into his hair. “It’s a padlock.”

  “A padlock? On his peter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Rafe shrugged, but he knew.

  This padlock had held the young Apache woman captive, the one Caesar, Absalom, and he had stolen away from Armijo. He wondered where Pandora had hidden herself. He wondered how long she
had been watching them. He wondered if she was watching them now.

  “AY, DIOS.” THE SERGEANT CROSSED HIMSELF AND TRIED not to flinch when thunder crashed almost simultaneously with the flash of lightning, looking and sounding for all the world like an explosion of a wagonload of dynamite. It wouldn’t do for the eight privates on guard duty to see him rattled, but the roar almost deafened him. The lightning restored color to a night that was as black as the depths of a cave.

  For an instant he could see the eagles on the brass buttons of his men’s blue wool uniform jackets. He could see the patches on the jackets, too. The uniforms had fought through the final desperate year of the war with the gringos. Life had not been easy for them since then.

  A blast of wind stormed across Arizpe’s central plaza, bending the apricot trees almost to the ground. A large limb on the nearby mahogany cracked, crashed to the ground, bounced, and quivered. The rain started as suddenly as a dam breaking. The sergeant pulled open the jail’s flimsy mesquite-wood door, and he and the soldiers crowded into the guardroom. Torrents hit the tile roof, creating a steady rumble inside the adobe room. Lightning pulsed through the high, barred window. The sergeant lit an oil lamp with an ember from the banked cooking fire.

  He lay down on a straw mattress in a front corner. His men set out a monte bank and a deck of cards on a blanket in the center of the floor. They lit their cigarillos and settled down to gamble.

  The sergeant was just starting to doze when he heard a rasping sound. It was an insignificant noise compared to the crashes of thunder and the wailing of the wind, but it was clearer, more penetrating, and more terrifying than both of them. It sounded like metal, a gun barrel maybe, rubbing against the rough outer surface of the jail’s adobe wall. No one in his right mind would be outside on a night like this. The noise was followed by the call of a nighthawk. Unlikely one of those would be abroad now, either.