Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “Kiowa,” said She Moves Like Water, “that old man of yours must rub his thing with mescal paste, so it’s plenty stiff.”

  “That old man of mine, he has the strength of two young ones,” said Wide. He’s pretty good for a Chiricahua.”

  Wide pushed herself to her feet, bottom first, and lowered that bottom next to Lozen on the blanket She took out a large packet of tin cones and another of cowrie shells and nodded toward Daughter.

  “Maybe your niece would like these on the dress for her feast. I also have two fine skins I can give you for it.”

  “These would look pretty on a dress.” Lozen let them stay on the blanket. She wanted to know what was expected in return.

  “Will you make the little one’s cradleboard for me?”

  “Grandmother is the best at making them.”

  “I want you to make it. My people talk of your power.”

  Lozen looked at her in surprise. Women still asked her for herbs to cure whatever ailed them, but since the soldiers had retreated toward the east, everyone seemed to think most of her powers had left her. Spirits were fickle and apt to change allegiances with little notice.

  “My people say good comes from whatever you touch,” Wide added.

  Lozen had helped Grandmother make many cradles, but she had never completed one herself, or sung the prayers that would grant its occupant long life.

  “Grandmother gave me her song,” Lozen said.

  “Then you’ll do it for me?”

  “I’ll ask the spirits, and give you my answer tomorrow.”

  A gnat flew into Wah-sin-ton’s eye, and he began to cry. Daughter retrieved him and carried him to Lozen’s blanket. She caught a bee, split it, and held it to his lips to taste the sweetness inside.

  “Aunt,” she said, “When I have a baby, will you make the cradle?”

  “You have to run four times first.” Lozen knew that She Moves Like Water was already thinking about whom to ask to sponsor her daughter in the ceremony of White Painted Woman.

  “And you must learn how to cook and sew better than you do now,” She Moves Like Water added. “No man wants a woman who lies around in the sun all day like a lizard.”

  How was it possible that the tiny child had become a woman, Lozen wondered. Where had the time flown? The years were like Broken Foot’s geese, heading off to some unknown destination. She put her hand against her own stomach, as flat as any boy’s. She felt sad not because she had no husband or children, but because she did not want them. She thought of the words her grandmother sang while making a cradle.

  Good, like long life it goes.

  With White Water circling under it, it is made.

  With White Shell curved above it, it is made.

  Lightning dances all around it, they say.

  With Lightning it is fastened across.

  Its strings are made of rainbows, they say.

  Black Water makes a blanket to rest on.

  White Water makes a blanket to rest on.

  Sun rumbles inside it, they say.

  Good, like long life the cradle is made.

  As Wah-sin-ton now is wrapped in the good things of the world, so I once was, Lozen thought.

  She had never tried to imagine herself as an infant in a cradleboard on her mother’s back. Once, a blanket of White Water had kept her warm, White Shell had shaded her, the zigzag lacing of Lightning down the front had held her secure. Thongs of rainbows had tied the parts of her cradle together. Sun had kept her company, rumbling and ruminating in the rabbit fur blanket with her.

  Several of the ten- and eleven-year-old boys skidded to a stop in front of Lozen. Burns His Finger delivered the message. “Your brother wants you to come.”

  Lozen didn’t ask why. She would find out soon enough. “Niece, take these things to my lodge.”

  Lozen didn’t hurry. She didn’t want to seem disconcerted, but she was. Victorio didn’t usually send for her in the middle of the day. The women must have wondered about it, too. They gathered their work and their children, and hurried after her.

  Lozen found the men at the council ring. Most of the band had assembled there already, and others hurried in.

  Victorio stood up as she approached. “Sister, these men have something to report.”

  Talks A Lot directed his message to Victorio. “Nantan, we saw two thousand soldiers with three hundred and fifty horses and five hundred mules. They were three days’ travel on the other side of the pass.”

  “How did they get to the other side of the pass without our seeing them?” Victorio asked.

  Talks a Lot looked squarely at Lozen. “They marched from the west, just as your sister described.”

  The crowd murmured. That was impossible. How could soldiers come from the west? Lozen felt elation and fear. Her vision had been right about the Bluecoats, and that meant peril for them all.

  “That’s not possible,” Geronimo growled.

  “Do you say I deceive?” Talks A Lot rounded on him. “Or do you think I’m so foolish I don’t know east from west?”

  Geronimo waved his hand. “The sun rises in the east and so do Bluecoats.”

  “Not these Bluecoats.” Talks A Lot knew that losing his temper in council would mark him as immature, so he held it in check. “We talked with Cheis. He knows about the soldiers. He saw a group of them on a scout, and he smoked with their leader. The Bluecoat told Cheis the soldiers’ plan.”

  Talks A Lot paused. He knew what he had to say next would cause a stir. “The Bluecoat soldiers are going to march on foot through the pass to the Red Paints’ country when the moon is full again. They plan to kill all the Pale Eyes Graycoats. Cheis wants the Red Paint warriors to join his men and ambush them in the pass. He sent messengers to hold council with Red Sleeves and with Long Neck.”

  Victorio didn’t have to think about that long. “The plan is a good one. In a month the sun will be hot enough to cook a bird’s egg on a flat rock. The soldiers must march a day and a half across the desert without a spring or a stream.”

  “That’s what Cheis says.” In his eagerness, Talks A Lot almost spoke before Victorio had finished. He looked chagrined, but Victorio waved him on. “We can hide above the spring at the pass. When the Pale Eyes get there, they’ll be tired and thirsty. We can kill them all.”

  Victorio could see the eagerness in his men’s faces. This was a plan that could not fail.

  “We have to prepare. We’ll collect the lead the Pale Eyes left at the mines when they fled east. We’ll trade with the comancheros for powder. We’ll soak cowhides in the stream to make shoes for the horses. We’ll butcher our mules, and the women will dry the meat to take with us. We’ll make war medicine.”

  “We have talked among ourselves, Nantan,” Talks A Lot said. “All of us want your sister to come with us when we fight the Bluecoats. Cheis also asks that she come. He says that nantan’s sister is a di-yin with great power.”

  That was little consolation for Lozen. For longer than anyone could remember, Mexicans had attacked from the south and Navajos from the north. Yavapai, Pimas, and Papagos raided from the west. Bluecoats always marched from the east. Now the Pale Eyes soldiers could spring from anywhere. Like lighting.

  Lozen thought of the cradle song. “Lighting dances all around it.” The words had always comforted to her, but now they turned ominous.

  PART THREE

  1862 Shaman

  Coyote and Dog Argue

  Some dogs were going along in the woods. A coyote saw them, and he said, “Why don’t you dogs come stay with us in the mountains. We’re happy here. We live free among the trees and the cold clear streams. We eat deer and all kinds of good things.”

  The dogs said, “We live with some people, and they give us meat and a warm, dry place to sleep. They’re all the time saying to us, ‘You dogs, we love you.’”

  The coyote said, “But up in these hills we hear you crying down below when those people whip you.”

  “If we don
’t obey our masters, they have to whip us sometimes.”

  “A whipping is a whipping,” said Coyote.

  “But you have many enemies out here in the woods. Down below, we don’t have to dodge anyone the way you do. When it snows, you get cold while we stay warm. Sometimes you don’t have enough to eat. We don’t think we should live in the woods with you.”

  Coyote watched the dogs trot off down the mountain. “Still,” he said to himself, “A whipping is a whipping.” And he went away.

  I’m talking about fruits and flowers and all sorts of good things.

  Chapter 31

  EXPENSIVE GIFTS

  Grandmother was chanting her morning song so softly that it did not carry beyond the cluster of lodges and arbors of She Moves Like Water and Corn Stalk’s camp. Lozen could see her sitting cross-legged at the doorway of her lodge built between a sandstone boulder and a walnut tree. Grandmother said the rock would shield her lodge from the wind. It would absorb the sun’s rays on clear winter days and share its warmth with her. The walnut tree would shade her in the summer and deliver nuts to her in the fall. All she had to do, she said, was make sure the tree’s gifts didn’t hit her on the head. Gifts were like that, liable to hit the recipient on the head when she wasn’t looking.

  A few women gathered wood, fetched water, and blew the banked embers of their cookfires into flames. If they saw Lozen, they would tell her about their illnesses and misfortunes. They would solicit her advice on conjugal matters about which she knew little. They would ask her to hold a sing for them and give them medicine and charms. Usually she listened patiently, but she had something important to do today.

  At the family’s storage arbor she picked up her saddle, newest saddle blanket, and best bridle. Carrying the saddle on her hip with the blanket and bridle draped over it, she climbed to where she often greeted the day, and she said her morning prayers as the sun rose.

  She circled the hoop-and-pole field where Talks A Lot and Chato were sweeping away debris. Battle with the Bluecoats might be imminent, but that wouldn’t stop the men and the boys from spending most of the day here. Lozen cut across a shallow wash and heard a man’s voice and a laugh from the thicket that filled the upper end of it. She was pretty sure the speakers were Maria and Ears So Big. Lozen smiled to herself. So that was why Ears So Big had been showing up at mealtimes and offering to help with the chores.

  As Lozen approached the horse meadow, she saw the three children. Their mothers had probably sent them to gather sticks for the fire, but instead they were doing what Lozen had done when she was five or six. They had cornered Skinny’s old gray warhorse. One boy held the gray’s nose while the second one set a bare foot on the jutting angle of the pony’s back knee. As he scrambled to climb aboard, the girl put her shoulder under him and lifted. He hauled himself up until he was lying on his stomach across the horse’s back with his feet flailing. He righted himself, leaned down, and pulled her up. Then the two of them helped the other boy join them. They drummed their heels on the gray’s sides and shouted. The pony moved as far as a thicker stand of grass.

  Lozen walked through grass that brushed her thighs. Her new mare and old Coyote headed toward her at a trot, and the others followed, worried that they might miss something tasty, or at least mildly entertaining. The children whooped and bounced as the gray lurched into a canter to catch up with the herd.

  The horses gathered around Lozen, and she stroked them. She crooked her arm under the jaw of Victorio’s black stallion and slipped the bridle over his nose. He was the fastest and biggest the family owned. Only the best they had would do for the favor she was about to ask. She saddled the black and tied on the saddlebags. She slung the carbine case’s strap over her shoulder and mounted.

  Broken Foot’s wives’ camp was tucked into the crook of a sandstone outcrop near the river. Standing apart from them was the arthritic cedar that Broken Foot called Uncle. Broken Foot liked to spread his blankets between the exposed roots. He said that Uncle whispered stories to him when he slept there.

  When Lozen was younger, she would stand with her arms wrapped as far around Uncle’s rough trunk as they would go. She would press her ear against the cedar, listening for whispers. She thought she heard them, but they might have been wind sighing through Uncle’s branches.

  She rode to the arbor where Wide and Her Eyes Open were slicing venison and hanging it on racks to dry. Since the birth of her daughter, Wide’s breasts had outgrown her doeskin top, and she wore a blanket like a poncho while she sewed a bigger one. At the hoop-and-pole field, Broken Foot liked to grumble that he would have to trade for a couple of bison hides to get enough leather to cover her. “She’ll keep me warm this winter though,” he would say. Victorio had looked solemnly at him. “We’ll have to send a search party for you, old friend. We will have to roll her off you, and pull out your flattened body.”

  Her Eyes Open handed Lozen a warm mescal cake. “He’s expecting you, Daughter.”

  Wide nodded toward the dark-eyed child staring at her from her new cradleboard. “My daughter has learned to catch the blue stone you hung from the cradle. She goes after it more often than the other charms. Wouldn’t you say that’s a good sign, Cradlemaker?”

  “My grandmother says that’s a very good sign. She says your daughter will be a great beauty.”

  Lozen turned the horse upriver. She didn’t tell Wide that Grandmother had also said, “That child will cause her family trouble.”

  Her Eyes Open had said Broken Foot was expecting her. That was good. Lozen had to time this right. Before his morning prayers, Broken Foot usually limped off downriver to find a good place to defecate. He sometimes walked a long way in search of the best spot, one where he wouldn’t be disturbed.

  Lozen dismounted and led the black to where Broken Foot sat cross-legged on his favorite shelf of rock jutting out over the stream. His long, wrinkled legs and arms looked like driftwood washed up there. This was where he came to greet each new day, enjoy a cigarillo, and see the sun along on its journey. Smoke issued from his narrow nostrils and spiraled past his nose.

  He turned to look at her, his face as long and narrow as a horse’s. His upper lip was so thin that it seemed folded in above the lower one. His lower lip protruded full and dark red as a ripe cactus fruit. He had a habit, when he was deep in thought, of chewing on his lower lip as though it really were a cactus fruit.

  He stared at her for such a long time that she began to fidget.

  “My brother hopes you have use for this pony and saddle, and for the blankets and tobacco he sends you.” Lozen tethered the black to a cottonwood where he could crop the grass. She put the tobacco pouch onto the rock, along with the carbine. Parting with the rifle pained her, but small gifts would not do today.

  “You and your brother trained that black horse well.”

  Broken Foot took out a pinch of tobacco. He picked up a leaf from the stack next to him and trailed tobacco along its length. He took a smoldering shred of juniper bark and lit the cigarillo. He watched the smoke rise as though he had never seen such a thing before.

  Lozen waited, but he seemed to have forgotten her. Maybe her lessons would start later. Maybe he had changed his mind. Maybe he didn’t want to teach her at all. And maybe, now that the time had come, maybe she didn’t want to learn.

  Becoming a di-yin was an arduous, time-devouring process for the teacher and for the student. It was ruinously expensive besides. Years were required to learn the hundreds of songs, the prayers, and the rituals necessary to keep on good terms with the world of spirits. If Broken Foot didn’t want to start down that long trail, life would be much simpler. Relieved, Lozen turned to leave.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  “I have to weave baskets for the harvest and scrape deer hides for Daughter’s feast dress.”

  “Sit.”

  She climbed onto the rock and drew her heels up under her skirt. She wrapped her arms around her legs, rested her chin
on her knees, and watched the stream hustle over the rocks. As the silence lengthened, she began to hear voices in the splash and chatter of the water. She was trying to make out what they were saying when Broken Foot spoke.

  “Are those the deer hides He Steals Love brought for you?” His voice jerked her back to the rock and the business at hand.

  “He brought them for Daughter’s feast.”

  “He brought them for you. He pretended they were for Daughter.”

  “He asked nothing from me in return.”

  “He still wants to marry you.” He turned to look at her. “He’s a good fighter, and handsome besides. You can marry and be a di-yin, too, you know.”

  “I’m too old to marry.”

  “You were born the year of the Hair Takers’ Death Feast. That means you’ve seen twenty-five harvests. That’s not so old.”

  Lozen changed the subject. “Where do the geese go?”

  “When I was a boy, the old men told me that the geese start their journey far to the north. They each carry twelve pieces of bread and they fly south for twelve days. When they’ve eaten the bread, they stop.”

  “Who bakes the bread for them?”

  Broken Foot chuckled. “I never thought to ask the old men that.” He drew in another lungful of smoke, closed his eyes, and let it out slowly. He blew smoke in each of the four directions.

  “The places of our land speak to us,” he said. “They tell us to act sensibly. They tell us not to make mistakes.” He gestured to the water, the mountains, earth, and sky, the trees, and the buzzards circling. “Power saturates the world. All things have power, some more than others. Sometimes spirit beings give us some of their power. Sometimes, if we ask correctly, we can get power from them.”