ABSALOM STUCK IT OUT INSIDE LONGER THAN RAFE WOULD have thought. He didn’t retreat from the cot at the American House until halfway between midnight and dawn. At least he waited until Migdalia left before he climbed into the wagon bed and started rustling around next to Rafe, fluffing up the empty feed sacks and scratching like a hound.
“You were right,” he said.
“Don’t bring them in here.”
“The fleas were bad enough, but twenty men snoring make a racket that would wake the dead.” He laid his blankets on top of the sacks. “That’s not why I left, though.”
Rafe resisted the urge to ask why he did leave. Absalom could talk all night, if given any encouragemnt. Or even if not given any encouragement.
“You missed all the commotion,” he said.
Rafe grunted, half-asleep, and still adrift on a sensual cloud.
“That drummer with the rooster got drunk and started bothering the ladies.” Absalom would never refer to a woman as a whore. That was one of many qualities. Rafe admired in him. “I think the damsels slipped some sleeping potion into his drink. When he tumbled onto the other side of my cot to get busy knitting up ‘the raveled sleeve of care,’ they sneaked in, stripped him buck-naked, and shaved him, from ankle to scalplock. When he woke up, all hell broke loose among Samson and the assorted Delilahs.”
Rafe chuckled and drifted off to sleep to the lullaby of Absalom talking about his Lila. The next morning he wasn’t happy to see Rogers’s boiled onion eyes staring through the rear opening of the wagon’s cover.
“I’ll be with you in a twinkling.” Absalom pulled on his boots.
Rogers’s eyes and the rough country of his face disappeared.
“What’s he doing here?”
“He’s going to El Paso, too. I said I’d travel with him.”
“He’s an egg-sucking weasel, Absalom.”
“I can take care of myself. And you yourself have told me how dangerous the road is. Best to travel in company. Anyway, since they’ve found gold up at Pinos Altos, there’s a lot of traffic. Prospectors are heading there in droves, Rogers says.”
“Keep your money close.”
“I have it strapped to me.” Absalom reached under his shirt and patted his stomach. “When will you start for Socorro?”
“Tomorrow morning.” Rafe would have left it at that, but he knew Absalom would ask why he wasn’t leaving today. “I have to get a new tire on the left rear wheel before I load up. There’s no sense attempting El Jornado del Muerto late in the day.” Actually, Rafe would prefer not to travel the hundred-mile stretch of desert called The Day’s Journey of the Dead Man at any time, but it couldn’t be avoided.
Rafe climbed out of the wagon and went to see to the mules and his own plumbing. On the way, he passed Rogers’s horse. He saw the tips of a bow and several arrows sticking from the blanket roll tied behind his saddle. Odd. Rogers didn’t seem the sort to collect souvenirs.
Chapter 16
ASHES TO ASHES
Lozen stopped and climbed down from her mare.
“What is it?” Stands Alone leaned down from the pinto that Lozen had given her from her share of the stolen horses.
Lozen crouched to study the frayed mark of the broomed hoof on the horse’s rear left leg. “This is Red Sleeves’ pony, the smoke-colored one with the rabbit’s ears.”
“Why would he be here?”
“He sometimes camps in the canyon where Loco killed the bear. He says the yucca ripens there first, and he likes the roasted stalks. He usually brings his wives to do the roasting, though. And he usually stops to visit with Skinny and with Broken Foot.”
“Maybe he’s in trouble.”
Those who knew Red Sleeves best had begun to worry about the old man’s judgment. He seemed to think the Americans would keep their promises. It wasn’t like him to embrace such foolish illusions.
They followed the tracks upstream. At the entrance to the canyon, they tied their ponies to a cedar and crawled through the bushes. They stopped when they could see the thatched lean-to.
Red Sleeves must have been bathing at the stream. He walked back naked and dripping, and neither Lozen nor Stands Alone dared let him know they were there. They stifled giggles at the sight of his member swinging from side to side and slapping against his bare thighs. Broken Foot gave Red Sleeves a sly look whenever he was present for the story of Coyote’s big penis. The rumors were true.
As he drew closer, Lozen and Stands Alone could see diagonal red stripes on his legs. Then he turned, and they saw the raw, bloody gashes on his back. They heard the buzz of flies. Red Sleeves flicked at them with a bundle of grass and winced at the pain it caused.
He groaned as he limped around his camp gathering wood. Lozen had never seen him look so old and exhausted. Since before she could remember, he had been the Chiricahuas’ ablest warrior and wisest counselor. Even Cheis came to him for advice.
Lozen crawled backwards, and Stands Alone followed. Stands Alone wanted to spend time with He Makes Them Laugh, and as his cross-cousin, Lozen could act as chaperon. They retrieved their horses and led them up the slope to the ledge where the boys kept watch.
He Makes Them Laugh, Chato, and Talks A Lot were observing the trail winding across the plain below. One end of it unraveled into the maze of alleys in Mesilla to the south. The other came to an abrupt halt at the new mines at Pinos Altos.
“We saw Red Sleeves,” Lozen said.
“Where did you see him?” He Makes Them Laugh took the bag of dried mule meat and boiled mesquite beans that Stands Alone handed him and smiled his thanks.
“The Canyon Where The Bear Fought. He looks as though a bear attacked him.”
“Then the story is true.”
“I told you he would know what happened,” said Stands Alone. “He knows everything.”
He Makes Them Laugh pointed his chin at Talks A Lot and Chato. “We went to the lodge of the Pale Eyes trader who’s been stealing food from Red Sleeves’ people.”
“A Mexican there told us that the diggers had caught The Old Man and whipped him,” Talks A Lot said.
“Whipped him?”
“Like a mule,” said He Makes Then Laugh. “They almost killed him. The Mexican said the Pale Eyes taunted him while they did it. They turned him loose, and no one has seen him since.”
“Maybe he’s waiting for the wounds to heal before he takes revenge.” Chato was thinking about earning glory and a warrior’s rank.
When Stands Alone gave the water jug to He Makes Them Laugh, she let her fingers rest on his for just a moment. He turned his head away, suddenly shy, which was not like him at all.
Talks A Lot nodded at the dust cloud growing in the west. “We’ve been waiting for them.”
They watched a wagon and rider approach. They were passing below when the wagon’s driver stopped and climbed down to relieve himself. The man on the horse rode up behind him and bashed him on the head with the butt of his carbine. Even from their ledge, Lozen and the others could see that it must have crushed his skull, but the murderer dismounted and stabbed his victim several times in the back, anyway. He cut away a circle of scalp and yanked it off. He threw the hair down and rolled a rock over it.
He pulled a wide belt from under the man’s shirt, tugged off his boots, and took his weapons. He unhitched the two mules and tied their reins to his saddle horn. He fired several arrows into the wagon and a couple more into the corpse. Then he led the mules away from the trail and into the foothills to the south.
“He doesn’t know how to use a bow very well,” Chato remarked.
“When the enemy is dead, one doesn’t have to,” Lozen said.
“He wants the other Pale Eyes to think our people did it,” said He Makes Them Laugh.
“But we don’t take our enemies’ hair.” Stands Alone thought a moment. “Maybe he wants the other Pale Eyes to think Comanches did it.”
“Why would two Pale Eyes be enemies?” Chato asked. The puzzling ways
of white men provided a constant source of speculation.
“The dead one must have had something the live one wanted,” Talks A Lot said. “They always want what others have.”
The sun traveled its own trail while they watched a dust cloud grow in the south until it produced four men. Three of them kept watch while the fourth examined the body. Then they, too, rode away.
Lozen and the others continued to observe. No more riders appeared, but buzzards did. A single dark dot in the sky at the horizon grew until an eddy of them circled high over the body. Lozen led her mare down the trail. Stands Alone and the boys followed her. The Pale Eyes might have overlooked something useful. Pale Eyes threw away so many useful things.
When they arrived at the wagon, Chato began searching through the hay in case the Pale Eyes had hidden anything there. He Makes Them Laugh used a metal rod from the wagon to wrench off the iron rings. Talks A Lot untied the rope used to tie down the hay and coiled it.
A trio of buzzards had landed next to the corpse and stood in a huddle, discussing who would eat the eyes. Lozen threw rocks at them, and they rose in a flapping of wings. Absalom lay on his stomach, but his face was turned in profile, his cheek resting in the bloody dust, his eyes open.
Lozen recognized him. “He’s the one who came to our camp with the black white man and Hairy Foot.”
“The ones who helped me escape from El Gordo,” Stands Alone added.
Talks A Lot kept a safe distance. No telling what any spirit might do, much less one murdered and a Pale Eyes besides. “Yesterday we saw Hairy Foot and this one at the lodge of the Pale Eyes trader.”
“I have to take him to Hairy Foot.” Stands Alone maneuvered her pony into position near the body and dismounted. “Help me lift him onto the horse.”
. “Have you become foolish?” The boys backed away. Ghost Owl might come at any moment to claim the soul—and take theirs while he was about it.
“He and the other two saved my life. I owe him a debt. I cannot let buzzards and ants and brother coyote eat him. Hairy Foot will know the proper Pale Eyes ceremonies.”
“You don’t owe anything to a dead white man,” Chato said.
“He did me a favor. That makes him my brother. It’s the custom, and you know it.” Stands Alone turned to Lozen. “Will you ask your spirits for protection?”
“I don’t have ghost magic.” But she walked away and stood in silence, trying to remember the prayers Grandmother recited to keep ghosts from capturing the souls of the living.
Holding high a pinch of pollen, she prayed. “We trade this sacred dust to you to take the evil away from our sister and our brothers.” She scattered the pollen to the four directions so that it would carry her prayer upward. She asked that the dead man’s ghost be allowed to leave unhindered on its journey to wherever Pale Eyes went when they died.
She took ashes out of the bag hanging from her belt. Chanting the prayer Grandmother had taught her when she was very small, she rubbed some of them on Stand Alone’s face and the backs of her hands. The boys both came forward to receive them, too. She rubbed more of them on the muzzle of Stand Alone’s pony and on his back. Then she made a cross mark with pollen on the foreheads of Stand Alone, the boys, and on the horses, too.
He Makes Them Laugh and Talks A Lot caught hold of the dead man’s arms. Lozen and Chato took his feet. Together they lifted him onto the pony’s back. Lozen pulled Stands Alone up behind her on the mare. Leading the horse with Absalom’s body lying facedown across its back, arms dangling on one side and legs on the other, they set off for the Pale Eyes’ settlement.
RAFE SAW THEM APPROACHING BEFORE HE HAD RIDDEN three miles from the fort. He knew, without knowing how, that the corpse was Absalom. He drew his army-issue Hall carbine from its saddle boot, primed and loaded it, and laid it across his thighs.
He put the palm of one hand on the angular stiffness of the letter in the pocket of his old army coat. Not much more than an hour ago, four prospectors had come into the American House where Rafe had ordered a whiskey to fortify himself for the Jornada del Muerto. They had announced that they had found a man who had met the common death of the country, slaughtered by Apache marauders. One of them had held up the letter he had found in Absalom’s pocket.
Absalom had written it to Lila. He must have planned to mail it in El Paso, where he could buy one of those newfangled postage stamps. Rafe understood how the officers must have felt when they had to draft condolence letters to the kin of those slain in the war with Mexico.
He had finished his whiskey while he debated with himself. The sensible self advised him to continue his journey north, write to Absalom’s fiancée, and post the two letters in Socorro or Albuquerque. His mad self told him he had to recover Absalom’s body and bury it, Apaches or no Apaches.
His mad self won. So here he was alone on the trail with four Apaches coming toward him. Maybe they had heard already about the whipping the miners gave Red Sleeves. Maybe they were coming to take revenge. They didn’t have the look of a war party, but they didn’t look like those wretched-looking Apaches he had seen at the agency, either.
The three boys rode ahead, and he realized they were the ones in the sutler’s store the day before. Then he recognized the two women mounted on the same mare he had seen galloping away from Don Angel’s Apache-proof corral. He had once again come face-to-face with that horse thief, Lozen, and the lovely assassin, Pandora, who collected ears and dispensed padlocks.
He felt a strange calm. He wanted to smile at the four of them as they rode so close that Red stretched his neck to nuzzle the mare’s nose. He felt as though he knew them. He longed to talk to them. He had so many questions he wanted to ask. He could ask them in Spanish, but he didn’t even have the words in English. Just an inchoate desire to find out more about them.
Lozen kicked her mare’s sides until she was sitting almost thigh to thigh with Rafe, but facing in the opposite direction. He could clearly see the grains of pollen on her forehead and the ashes. She wore the clothes of an Apache woman today instead of the dirty cotton shirt and breechclout he had last seen on her. She had hiked the skirt well above the tops of her high moccasins. Rafe tried not to stare at the exposed brown thighs as muscular as any boy’s.
Instead of letting her hair fall in a shaggy mass held back with a headband as he had last seen it, she wore it in a thick, double loop caught at the nape of her neck and tied vertically into a beaded oval of leather. Rafe knew that the hairdo meant she hadn’t married yet. He wondered if one of the three sprigs accompanying her considered himself a suitor. He wouldn’t have been surprised if all three of them did.
Behind the swag of hair that reached below her heavy eyebrows, he could see the roguish glint in her dark eyes. He got a good look at the strong line of her nose and the wild flare to her nostrils, the sensuous set of her full lips, their edges as gracefully defined as if chiseled by a sculptor.
My God, Rafe thought. She has sprouted into a beauty.
She took the pony’s lead line from Pandora and passed it to Rafe. The touch of her fingers sent a single shiver and a herd of thoughts of a carnal variety racing through him.
“Gracias,” he said.
“Por nada.” She had acquired a woman’s voice, low and husky.
He looked at the pony. Surely they didn’t mean for him to have that, as well. He held up the lead line. “¿ Y el caballo?”
“Es suyo,” Pandora answered him from behind Lozen’s shoulder.
Without another word they wheeled their horses and rode away. As he watched them go, Rafe felt sure that Apaches had not killed Absalom. Certainly those four hadn’t.
Rogers, he thought. Rogers did it.
He thought about what he would say when he buried his friend. The choice was obvious. “Good night, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”
Chapter 17
DEAD MAN’S JOURNEY
Rafe named the mule Othello because he was aristocratic, loyal, t
he color of very strong coffee, and prone to jealous snits at imagined slights. Othello’s nigh-wheeler position was reserved for the strongest, smartest animal. At night Rafe preferred to ride him rather than occupy the wagon seat.
He had started to doze in Othello’s saddle when a crack like a rifle shot jerked him upright. The noise came from just behind Othello’s hindquarters. In the middle of the hundred-mile stretch of desolation known as the Jornada del Muerto, with dawn’s hot breath almost on his neck, a spoke in the front wheel had snapped.
“Whoa, Rosie.” Rafe pulled on the jerk line to the left lead mule, a compact and nervous sidestepper with a reproachful gaze and the name of Rosencrantz.
Rafe walked to the side of the wagon and ran his hands around the wheel until he found the broken spoke. The others were sound. He could keep going until light.
He felt hot breath tickling his ear. He reached up and cradled Red’s velvety muzzle in the hollow of his neck and shoulder. Red nibbled his shirt, then his ear. Red was the reason Rafe dared to travel the Horn, as the Americans called the Jornada, alone. Red could throw dirt on any horse the Apaches could put up against him.
He climbed back aboard Othello and collected the jerk line. He raised up in the stirrups, cracked the whip, and gave a Comanche yell. The singletree chains jangled, and the wagon moved forward, the dry wood of its parts groaning as they rubbed together.
The thread of light at the horizon broadened to a ribbon and diffused into a soft glow. It hardly seemed capable of creating the inferno that he knew the summer day would become. Rafe felt like a beetle crawling over that flat expanse. He imagined an Apache lookout perched on some outcrop in the mountains about five miles to the east. He would be squatting on a rock there, with his forearms on his bare thighs, smoking the first cigarillo of the day. Rafe imagined him spotting the beetle wagon with its paired feelers of mules, then calling to the others, and all of them starting out full of bustle and glee on their day’s enterprise.
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