Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  She sprinted away, grasping branches to pull herself along. Victorio leaped and hit her with such force that the fall knocked the wind from her. He threw himself across her. Pressed against the rocky ground by his weight, she gasped for breath. The world exploded with a crash that deafened her. A hail of metal clattered around her. Flying chips of rock stung her legs and arms. Dust choked her. Her ears rang.

  She felt the warm, slow flow of blood down her arm and for the first time panic shook her. If the Bluecoats had murdered her brother, she would run at them. She would kill as many as she could with her knife and her bare hands until they finished her.

  Then Victorio pushed himself to his feet, and Lozen stood, too. A long gash had opened his left arm from his shoulder to his elbow. More blood ran from a diagonal cut across his thigh. Lozen put an arm around his waist, and the two of them scrambled down the far side of the ridge. The din of the big guns stilled suddenly. Lozen heard the shouts of the Bluecoats coming closer.

  Chapter 34

  AN ULTIMATUM FOR DESSERT

  Dr. Thomas Overland did not expect Apaches to knock before entering. No one in Janos did. But Apaches had never shown an interest in rustling his leather bag of medical instruments, so he also didn’t expect fifty-three of them to push open the street door and walk into his small examining room. The door was made of fourteen-inch-thick oak planks banded with iron, but Dr. Overland never locked it.

  Dr. Overland’s wife, Dona Elena, was serving him coffee and milk custard in the kitchen beyond the arched doorway at the rear of the examining room. His three daughters were arguing about whose turn it was to pump water to clean the supper dishes. The maid was in the examining room dusting the framed paintings of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and St. Jude, the patron of desperate causes. She ran screaming through the kitchen when the front room filled with dusty warriors, a bristle of bows, arrows, war clubs, lances, knives, and muskets, cracked traces of war paint, plenty of menace, and flies. As more of them crowded in, the ones in front pushed into the kitchen and ranged along the walls.

  The daughters bolted after the maid. Dona Elena came to stand behind her husband’s chair. He was fluent in Spanish, so he did not need her to translate, but she put a hand on his shoulder to let him know that if they were to die today, they would die together.

  Dr. Overland thought there was a chance he and his family wouldn’t die. The reason occupied the litter made of blankets and agave stalks that four of the men carried in. Its occupant must be as important as he was big for them to have toted him all this way.

  A lad who couldn’t have been much more than eighteen ran his lance horizontally along the table and swept the earthenware dishes and serving bowls onto the hardpacked dirt of the floor. He gave a wave of his hand and the four men lifted the litter onto the table, where the patient lay like a main course in front of Dr. Overland. The doctor fanned away the flies.

  The patient raised himself on one elbow and barked something at his men. Half of them trotted away, probably to keep watch in the street. Dr. Overland was observant, even in adverse circumstances. He noticed that the young man looked chagrined, probably because he hadn’t thought to assign a watch.

  “The American Bluecoats shot Red Sleeves, my father,” the boy said in Spanish. “Heal him or we will kill everyone in Janos.” He didn’t have to say that they would start with the present company. “We will kill even the chickens and those ugly little dogs that have no hair.”

  So this was the famous Red Sleeves. Dr. Overland lifted the blanket, and the stench of the chest wound hit him like the flat of a hand. The hole crawled with maggots, but at least the worms had eaten some of the putrefying flesh.

  “Mi amor,” the doctor said to his wife, “Bring my bag.”

  Dona Elena slid through the door, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and their visitors. She returned with the leather bag.

  Red Sleeves shivered, and Dr. Overland gently laid the blanket back over him. Doña Elena hurried to put the kettle on the fire. She went behind the big adobe-brick stove, stepped out of her petticoat, and began tearing it into strips.

  Dr. Overland washed his hands. “Traigame dos botellas de la medicina especial,” he called to his daughters peering in from outside. He added in English so the Apaches wouldn’t understand him, “Don’t let them see where we keep it.”

  The oldest daughter returned with two bottles of brandy. Dr. Overland gave one to Red Sleeves. The son supported his father in a half-reclining position and held the bottle so he could drink. For a sick man, Red Sleeves didn’t take long to drain it. He looked hopefully at the second bottle, but Dr. Overland shook his head.

  “That’s for sterilizing the wound, Chief. For killing the bad spirits,” he said. “Para matar a los espíritus malos.”

  “Espíritus santos para matar espíritus malos. Holy spirits to kill evil ones.” The old man lay back down and smiled beatifically up at the doctor. “Tu eres muy buen amigo.” He closed his eyes and began to snore like a bison in a mud wallow.

  With his forceps, the doctor picked out worms a few at a time. When he realized that would take too long, he scooped up wriggling masses of them with his hand and threw them into a wooden bucket of table scraps intended for the family pig. As he pushed his hand deeper into Red Sleeves’ chest in search of more of the maggots, he prayed.

  THE SCORES OF BUZZARDS TOOK FLIGHT, THEIR WINGS cracking loud as a volley of gunfire. Crows hissed at Rafe like an audience displeased with the villain in a melodrama. Even in the December chill, the stench of rotting flesh hung as heavy as artillery smoke.

  Caesar pulled his bandana up to cover his nose and mouth. Standing on a low rise upwind and at a distance, he surveyed the body stripped naked and staked out facedown across a stout yucca plant. The spiked leaves had pushed through him to protrude from his back.

  “It ain’t human to do a man that-a-way.” The bandana muffled Caesar’s deep voice.

  Rafe didn’t say anything, but he disagreed with Caesar. This was terribly human. An act of kindness would have suprised him more than brutality. Besides, what animal could have thought up such torture?

  The charred shape of another man hung head-down from a blackened soapberry tree. The Apaches had set the dead tree on fire, and Rafe had no doubt that they had watched him roast alive, starting with his head. He could imagine them making jests and cackling at his agony. The other men had been luckier. Lances, bullets, and arrows had sent them to whatever reward or punishment awaited them. From the way body parts were scattered, Rafe figured coyotes had dined here, too.

  “Been dead a couple weeks,” he said.

  “Do you know them?” Caesar asked.

  “Hard to say, but I recognize the clothes on some of them.” The men Rafe knew usually wore the same canvas trousers, flannel shirts, and baggy wool coats year in and year out. Rafe had come to recognize the nuances of each man’s set of them.

  Rafe continued to walk among the bodies. Those who had died on their backs stared up at him from empty sockets. He had the feeling they were pleading with him to find their eyes and put them back where they belonged. Rogers wasn’t among them.

  “They’re miners from the Santa Rita, bound for Tucson, I would wager. The Apaches probably hid in that wash we just crossed.”

  “More of Cochise’s devilment?”

  “This side of the pass is Red Sleeves’ country. He has a particular want of affection for the miners at Santa Rita and Pinos Altos.”

  “Maybe John Teal’s bullet killed Red Sleeves.”

  Rafe started to say that the old buzzard would probably bury them all, but it was too grim and too likely a prophecy. He didn’t want to lend it encouragement by voicing it.

  “Shouldn’t we give them a proper burial?” Caesar asked.

  “The soldiers can do it when they get here.”

  Caesar looked grateful to be excused from the task of burying close to a ton of decaying flesh in rocky soil. He took off his hat and bowed his
head. Rafe waited until he finished praying.

  As they turned to walk to where Red and Caesar’s big bay gelding cropped the dry grass and Patch lay in a puddle of sunlight, they saw the line of mounted men round a bend in the trail. They led a string of mules, heavily loaded. They weren’t Apaches, but Caesar and Rafe readied their guns anyway. As they drew closer, he saw that a company of Carleton’s soldiers rode with them.

  “Howdy.” The civilian in the lead glanced at the untidy litter of corpses, as though he had seen plenty such before.

  He had intense blue eyes. His white cascade of a beard reached the middle buttons on his coat of bison fur. He would have loomed large even without the coat. With it, he made Rafe feel like David exchanging amenities with Goliath.

  “How do you do?” Rafe said.

  “Still got my hair on my head.” The stranger took off his hat and released the wild white thatch of it to spring out around his head in defiance of the rule of the hat’s crown.

  “So do they.” Caesar said dryly, and he nodded toward the bodies.

  The man looked only mildly surprised that a Negro would be so impertinent to a white man, and Rafe put a mental mark on the credit side of his ledger.

  “The name’s Walker, Joseph Reddeford Walker.” He gestured behind him with the hat before he jammed it back over his unruly hair. “Me and the boys are on a jaunt looking for wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.” He grinned. The man had a way about him.

  Rafe had heard of Joseph Walker. The word was that he’d spent thirty of his sixty-five years on the frontier. Gossip also said that he had struck a deal with General Carleton. He could do anything he wanted, and Carleton wouldn’t interfere, so long as the general got a cut of whatever discoveries Walker made. Walker’s company of forty men reminded Rafe of John Glanton’s scalp-hunters. He would have bet Red that their number included the usual thieves, murderers, trappers, miners, and Confederate deserters. From somewhere in his past Rafe found an image of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and hung it on Walker and his associates.

  “We’ve ridden clear across the country to California, but the rich veins have played out there, so we’re of a mind to do some prospecting in this neck of the woods. We have a plan to thwart any mischief the Apaches might hatch.”

  Rafe couldn’t stop himself from asking. “What plan might that be?”

  “We intend to kidnap one of their high muck-a-mucks and hold him hostage until we’re safely through the territory.”

  “God go with you.”

  “We’ve taken care of ourselves through four thousand miles of wilderness and savages out for our hair. God knows He needn’t concern Hisself with us.”

  Caesar and Rafe swung into their saddles and watched the party rumble off.

  “I reckon that means God can spend more of his time looking out for us,” said Casesar. “Do you think the scheme will work?

  “Look how it worked for Lieutenant Bascom.”

  Rafe had other doubts about the plan. General Carleton was quite specific in his orders concerning Apaches. Rafe had read them.

  The campaign against Red Sleeves’ band of Apaches must be a vigorous one, and the punishment of that band of murderers and others must be thorough and sharp.

  If Walker did manage to capture a chief, would the army let him live long enough to serve as a hostage?

  “Your brother’s grave isn’t far from here.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the soldiers to arrive and give us an escort.”

  “No. We can be back before they finish with this burial detail.” Rafe saw the hesitation in Caesar’s hazel eyes. He gave a sparse smile that had little of humor in it. “Don’t waste your last bullet,” he added.

  “‘I have hope to live, and am prepared to die,’” Caesar recited, with a hint of a smile. “Measure for Measure.”

  “I don’t know that one.”

  From inside his patched and faded cotton shirt, Caesar retrieved a packet wrapped in oiled cloth. He laid back the corners of the cloth to reveal red velvet. He opened that, too, and held out the book inside. “The ladies at the house where I lived threw a good-bye shindig when I left. They knew I liked the Bard, so they gave me this. I was going to give it to Absalom.”

  Rafe opened it and leafed through it.

  “Page fifty-one,” Caesar said.

  Rafe read from where Caesar left off. “‘Be absolute for death; either death or life / Shall thereby be the sweeter.’” He closed it and held it out, but Caesar shook his head.

  “You take it.” He looked down, suddenly shy. “Maybe we could recite from it the way you and Absalom used to do.”

  “That we can. That we can.” But what Rafe really wanted to hear was the account of how Caesar had fared all those years, living in a brothel. “Did you enjoy that farewell fete the ladies threw for you?”

  Oh, yessir.” Caesar’s grin grew impossibly wide. “I do believe San Francisco is still talking about it. I can’t remember the last day of it, but the ladies told me I had a good time.”

  LOZEN AND STANDS ALONE LAY ON THEIR STOMACHS ON the ledge and looked over the edge of it. Both had their bows and arrows on their backs. They had left their long pieces in camp because they saw no sense in carrying heavy weapons for which they had no ammunition.

  They watched the two men lead their horses to the ovalshaped mound on the low rise by the river. Hairy Foot’s dog followed along. Dogs were bad luck, but this one didn’t seem to have brought Hairy Foot bad luck. Maybe the dog was his helping spirit.

  The men stood at the foot of the mound, took off their hats, and lowered their heads. Were they praying? Lozen knew that under that mound was the corpse that she and Stands Alone had brought to Hairy Foot long ago. What drew the two men here? Why would they stand on top of a dead man’s bones in the country of their enemies, risking danger from both the dead and the living? Were they seeking help from the spirits?

  “The black white man is back.” Stands Alone recognized Caesar as soon as he took off his hat.

  Lozen gave a small grunt of agreement. She was still trying to understand what brought these men here. They must have had some strong connection, the two living men and the dead one.

  “Why do you follow Hairy Foot?” Stands Alone murmured.

  “I want his red horse.”

  “You have horses. And besides, Hairy Foot’s horse is old now.”

  “He’s still better than any I have. And soon we’ll have to kill the few ponies we have left to feed everyone.”

  Lozen herself wondered why she watched Hairy Foot whenever she found him. She wondered why she listened for word of him from returning scouting parties. And when the men boasted that they would be the ones to kill him, why did the idea of his death bother her? She wondered why she dreamed of him sometimes. Was he trying to tell her something?

  “For a white man, he has strong magic,” she said at last.

  “How do you know?”

  “Everyone’s trying to kill him, but he’s still alive.”

  Chapter 35

  THE BEST LAID SCHEMES

  Afrigid wind raked the exposed lookout post. Lozen shrugged off the cowhide and stood up. She opened the blanket and let the cold wind buffet her. She tried to do what her brother had taught her. She tried to imagine herself as an icicle, a friend to cold, to snow, to ice. The wind cut like knives, though, and she decided it was no friend of hers.

  She wrapped the blanket back around her. Snow covered the valley floor below and the mountains all around. Light from the rising sun gilded the tops of the higher peaks. They were more beautiful than the gold rocks that the Pale Eyes sought. In the darkness of the coldest winter she had always known that this country would feed, protect, and teach her people. Now she couldn’t be sure. The reason for that was slogging through the drifted snow of the valley below her.

  Red Sleeves led twenty-three men toward Pinos Altos, the mines that her people called Where They Whipped Him. He had returned from Janos wearing the Mexican hat, tr
ousers, and shirt that the American doctor there had given him. Red Sleeves was determined to talk to the diggers and Bluecoats who had recently come to the abandoned mining camp.

  The Pale Eyes had sent a Mexican to tell him that they wanted peace. They said that if he would come in alone and unarmed, they would guarantee him safe conduct. They would give him blankets, flour, and beef for his people. Only Red Sleeves believed the Pale Eyes’ promises.

  “Maybe we have displeased Life Giver,” he said. “Why else would he give the Pale Eyes such powerful medicine. They can shoot wagons at us now.”

  Those exploding wagons at Doubtful Pass had demoralized everyone. The warriors had planned to kill all the wasps, but instead they had stirred up the nest. Bluecoats swarmed everywhere. A cloud of despair had settled over the Chiricahuas, over the Red Paints and the Tall Cliffs People alike.

  Even Red Sleeves’ oldest friend, Skinny, could not convince him to stay away from Pinos Altos. Red Sleeves said he could not listen to the hungry cries of the children anymore. His muy amigo, the American medicine man in Janos, said he should do whatever was necessary to make peace, and Red Sleeves agreed with him.

  Lozen heard the rustle of the stunted juniper behind her and turned to see He Steals Love using its trunk to pull himself up over the ridge of rock. Lozen was sure that he wanted to be alone with her, but he also worried that people would gossip. Lozen knew that people had stopped gossiping about her. No one wanted to offend her. They might need her to sing over an ill relative someday, or calm a wild horse, or make a cradle or a war amulet.

  “Share my lodge, Lozen.” He spoke in a rush. “I will bring you horses and mules loaded with goods from Mexico.”

  “Life Giver has shown me another path.”

  “Life Giver does not intend that you live alone, without a husband, without children.”

  He Steals Love annoyed her the most when he tried to tell her what Life Giver intended for her, but she changed the subject rather than argue with him. He Steals Love should be used to her changing the subject. It always signaled that the discussion about matrimony had ended.