Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  She gave him the mirrored glass the sentries used to signal each other. “Watch Disgruntled and He Runs.” She pointed her chin toward the ledge below. Two boys sat with their legs dangling over the edge of it. “If they fall asleep, throw a rock at them.”

  “Do you think the Old Man will return?” He Steals Love called after her.

  She stared at the dark, wavery line of men straggling across the vast bowl of snow. “He always returns.”

  THE BIG PALE EYES HAD HAIR AND A BEARD ALMOST AS white as the cloth he carried tied to the end of a stick. Red Sleeves waited patiently while White Hair conferred in Spanish with the warriors who had come with him. He watched his men ride away to wait for him at the old campsite called Leaves Shaking. The forty Pale Eyes reined their horses in around him. He supposed they wanted to be in position to head him off should he decide to bolt.

  He had no intention of running, though. He rode his pony at a walk behind the white-haired one who was almost as tall as he was. The Pale Eyes’ nantan looked like Ghost Face, like winter itself with his ice-blue eyes and hair and beard as white and unpredictable as blown snow.

  Red Sleeves knew he was more likely to die today than live to see the sun rise. He felt sad at the thought of not seeing another morning sky. The bright colors of dawn always reminded him of the bright paper bunting at the fiestas in Janos. He thought of dawn as a time when the sun threw a party for the new day.

  Red Sleeves could think of no alternative to making peace. Not for himself. The young men could go on fighting, but he was too old. He was too tired.

  The days of glory were gone for him. The Bluecoats with their exploding wagons had made sure of that. He probably would never come home triumphant from a battle again. And if he did, he would know the triumph was temporary. The women who used to sing greetings now wailed out their grief instead. He heard their cries in his dreams. He felt saddest for the young ones. What sort of world would they inhabit?

  He had thought this all out. If the Pale Eyes did surprise him and keep their promise, then his coming here would save the lives of his people. He would take them the presents the Pale Eyes promised him. The women would sing and dance, and he would hear laughter again. If he died, maybe his son Mangas would step out from his father’s shadow and become a great leader. The worst that could happen would be that the Americans killed him and sent his spirit to the Happy Place.

  Lulled by the sway of his pony and the unintelligible hum of the Pale Eyes’ talk, he wondered what sex was like in the Happy Place. Was the sensation of entering a woman better there? He hadn’t been able to satisfy his wives, or himself, since he returned from Janos. In that respect, death and the spirit life after it would be an improvement.

  He could play hoop-and-pole every day. Maybe he could win back the brindle pony he lost to Chief Juan José before the Hair Takers killed the old man at the Death Feast so long ago.

  Maybe the chief had already lost the pony to someone else. Being careful not to think of anyone’s name, Red Sleeves amused himself by remembering the list of friends and family who had left for the Happy Place, and speculated as to who might now be in possession of the brindle pony. He smiled to himself. He didn’t know why the animal had appealed to him, something about the slightly loco look in his eyes.

  He hoped that no one called his name after he died. He would be glad to leave the sorrow that his life had become. If death released him from his pain and his responsibilities and his shame, he did not want anyone trying to coax his spirit back.

  SAD AND PERPLEXED, GRAND AND COMICAL. THAT WAS HOW Red Sleeves looked to Rafe as he rode in on a pony so small that the old man’s bare feet almost brushed the snow. Night had fallen, and the frigid wind had gotten even colder. In spite of that, Red Sleeves had on only a red-and-white-checked cotton shirt and blue overalls of jeans cloth with the legs cut off, exposing knees and calves as knobby and scarred as cedar stumps. A straw hat perched on top of his huge head with a cord tied under his receding chin to hold it in place. Once Colonel West took custody of him, and Joseph Walker and his men rode away, Red Sleeves towered over everyone around him.

  He brightened when he saw Rafe. “Mi amigo.¿Como estás?”

  Colonel West stepped between them and nodded to the two guards. With bayonets fixed on their muskets, they motioned Red Sleeves toward the fire. One of them tossed him a blanket.

  “Make certain he does not escape.” West enunciated the words very carefully. “Not under any circumstances. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” The guards grinned. “If’n he tries to escape, should we shoot his red arse?”

  “Certainly.”

  As the men marched Red Sleeves away, Rafe walked over to West. He didn’t much care what happened to Red Sleeves. He knew that if the old hypocrite hadn’t been responsible for the death and destruction on this side of Doubtful Pass in the past ten years, he hadn’t done much to stop it. But he knew that what West intended would mean more trouble.

  “Colonel, the Chiricahuas will never surrender if you kill the old man.”

  “This isn’t any business of yours, Collins. I have my orders from General Carleton.”

  As Rafe headed for the wagon where Caesar watched the horses and mules, he passed the guards’ post. Red Sleeves had rolled himself up in his blanket by the fire there. His bare legs and feet stuck out of the end of the bedroll, and he was snoring. The old man had gumption, Rafe had to give him that.

  Rafe went to sleep thinking about the events that had led to this, as surely as a lighted fuse would set off dynamite. They started with Bascom, of course, but the situation would have gotten out of hand anyway. Old Red Sleeves was no saint. And even if he had been, he couldn’t stop his young men from rustling cattle and horses any more that Carleton could control the thievery and rascality among civilians and soldiers alike in his jursidiction.

  The moon stood at midnight when Rafe got up to take the pressure off his plumbing. He was about to crawl back into the warm cocoon of his blankets when he heard Red Sleeves shout in Spanish. “I am not a child to be played with.” Six shots followed. Caesar sat up and grabbed the pistol under his saddle.

  “The old man is dead,” Rafe said.

  “Red Sleeves?”

  “Yep.” Rafe started to crawl back into his bedroll.

  The deed was done. They would have to survive the consequences. Then curiosity got the better of him. Hunched against the cold, he walked to the fire. Patch followed him. The two guards stood looking down at Red Sleeves’ body. By the fire’s light, Rafe could see raw burns on the old man’s legs. They were in the shape of bayonet blades. The soles of his feet were charred. The guards must have applied a lot of heat to have an effect on those calluses.

  One of the guards looked at Rafe, then spit a stream of tobacco not far from where Red Sleeves’ lay. “The old snake tried to escape.”

  “He’s still wrapped in his blanket.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Yes.”

  The guard spit again, just missing the toe of Rafe’s boot. A lieutenant arrived and prodded the body with the barrel of his musket.

  “Let him lie. He’ll not rot between now and sunup.”

  “Hell.” One of the guards laughed. “In this cold he ain’t gonna rot till April.”

  Rafe went back to bed. He wondered how long the Apaches would take to find out their chief was dead, and to learn that the white men had hoodwinked them again. Not that they hadn’t done their fair share of hoodwinking over the years. He fell asleep grateful that they weren’t likely to know about it yet. When they found out, there would be hell to pay.

  At first light, Rafe and Caesar went to toast their outsides at the cook’s fire and scald their insides with some of the toxic brew he called coffee. The man who had walked sentry duty the night before stared morosely into his tin mug while steam embraced his head. He was one of Walker’s men, and probably nettled that his party’s guarantee of safe conduct had been rendered null and v
oid during the night. The teeth he had knocked out of Red Sleeves’ jaw as souvenirs didn’t cheer him much.

  Soldiers had gathered around the body, and one of them left the group and double-timed toward the cookfire. He was a spindly young specimen that Rafe thought the army should have thrown back, but probably kept because its war with the Confederacy had left it short on cannon fodder.

  “I need your knife, Cookie.” The soldier snatched the butcher knife from the cook’s hand and ran off.

  He returned a short time later holding aloft a bloody rag of skin with a hank of coarse black hair attached. “Got me a keepsake, boys. I got me the big chief’s scalp.” He tried to hand the bloody blade back to the cook who waved it away.

  “Damnation! Wash the infernal thing off.”

  The soldier rinsed the hair with water from his canteen and sat down to begin stretching it onto a hoop. When the others finished stripping the body of anything that could be kept as a trinket, they picked it up, still in the blanket, and threw it into a shallow gulley.

  Rafe and Caesar spent the day making repairs to the harness and shoeing the mules. That night Rafe lay in his blankets and listened to the coyotes quarrel over the largesse in the gully. He woke up the next morning with a sense of relief that bordered on giddiness. Maybe West and Carleton were right. With Red Sleeves dead, maybe the situation would improve.

  He wasn’t surprised to see the soldiers assembling at their camp a few hundred yards away. Colonel West wasn’t the sort to let grass grow under his feet. The sentry wandered over to watch Rafe and Caesar load the coffin of tools and spare wagon parts back into the wagon box. He still looked morose.

  “Guess what Colonel West is claiming,” he said.

  “That Red Sleeves rushed the guards, and they shot him in self-defense.” Rafe slipped the bridle over Othello’s head.

  “That’s right. He also says the army captured the old man in a bloody battle.”

  Rafe remembered Joseph’s Walker’s plan to use Red Sleeves to get them safely through Doubtful Pass. What was it that Scottish poet said about the best laid plans? Rafe grinned at Conners.

  “And now your hostage is about as useful to you as a three-legged mule.”

  “You’re just right all around this morning, Collins.”

  “You could prop him up and tie him on his horse,” said Rafe, looking deadly solemn. “Maybe you could fool his men long enough to get through the pass.”

  “We might, if’n the chief had a head.”

  “What?”

  “Surgeon Sturgeon cut it off.” Like everyone else, the sentry enjoyed saying the surgeon’s name.

  Rafe and Caesar found Sturgeon watching the kettle boil. Red Sleeves’ face looked up at Rafe from the roiling water, like some monstrous practical joke. The cook was not happy with the use of his kettle, but Dr. Sturgeon seemed pleased with his prize.

  “I plan to send the skull to O. S. Fowler, the eminent phrenologist,” he said. “I would venture to say that he has never seen a specimen of such herculean proportions.”

  “What is a friend-ologist, suh?” Caesar, too, could not stop staring into the big black kettle. He was disoriented by Red Sleeves’s head in a place where a hunk of salt pork should be. He expected to see onions and potatoes bobbing around it.

  The doctor looked pleased to be asked. “Phrenology is the study of human behavior as it relates to areas of the skull. By measuring irregularities on the surface of a person’s head, the bumps and hollows, a skilled practitioner can predict the development of such traits as combativeness, amativeness, philoprogenitiveness …”

  In spite of his misgivings, Rafe smiled to himself. He didn’t know the meaning of amativeness or philoprogenitiveness, but he was familiar with phrenology. During the war, he had overheard the officers’ discussions of the subject. He remembered a captain quoting John Quincy Adams, something to the effect that he did not see how two phrenologists could look each other in the face without laughing.

  When the Apaches get wind of this, Rafe thought, all hell will break loose, but when it does, how will anyone be able to distinguish it from the present situation?

  Rafe, Caesar, and Dr. Sturgeon watched the soldiers prepare to march out. One of them carried a white flag.

  “What’re they up to?” But Rafe could guess. It was the only sensible thing to do, given the circumstances.

  “He’s going to use the white flag to get close to the men who are waiting for Red Sleeves, then bushwhack them.” The doctor verified Rafe’s suspicions. “General Carleton has a surefire plan to annihilate Apaches and Navajos. He’ll lure them into coming in for talks and presents. Those who surrender he will move to a reserve somewhere far from civilized society. He says he will subjugate them or destroy them. He’s enlisted Kit Carson to take hostilities to any who resist.”

  Rafe had only met Carson once, in a card game in Santa Fe, but he knew his reputation. Carson was the man for the job. Even so, the words “surefire plan,” roused Rafe’s old friend, foreboding. He wondered why no one else seemed to notice that a plan based on massacring groups of Apaches who came in to talk peace could not convince the others to surrender.

  If they did agree to go to a reservation, forcing the Navajos and the Apaches to live together would never work. They had warred against each other for centuries. Kit Carson might be able to subdue them, but even he could not persuade them to get along.

  Rafe wondered if the army made special efforts to promote stupidity in its officers, or did promotion to higher rank engender it?

  Chapter 36

  HOLDING UP THE SKY

  The two miners stood in the doorway of the tent that served as the officers’ mess. Rafe had seen them earlier at the sutler’s store, buying strychnine. They had held it up and announced. “Gonna mix this with cornmeal and use it to bait some red-bellied rats, boys.” The boys had cheered.

  Now the more bearlike of the two held a shilling shocker, a small book of the sort that sold for one bit, about twelve and a half cents. On the cover, a yellow-maned giant in a fringed leather shirt wrestled with a snarling Indian wearing a Comanche’s bison-horn headdress and brandishing a Sioux tomahawk. A cluster of blond scalps dangled like a line of fish from the Indian’s belt.

  The title read, Kit Carson Battles the Apache Menace. The book’s current owner stared at the man sitting at the table with Rafe and Caesar. Then he studied the cover again. He and his companion, who bore a striking resemblance to a ferret, held a whispered conference that carried to the back of the tent.

  “I tell you he is,” said the ferret.

  “He ain’t,” said the bear.

  “Ask him.”

  “I hain’t makin’ no dad-blamed fool of myse’f.”

  Finally, they sauntered to the barrel that served Rafe, Caesar, and Col. Kit Carson as a table.

  “’Scuse me, mister.” Ferret fixed his attention on Carson. “A feller tole me you was at the scrape with those ’Paches over yonder on Turkey Creek.”

  “I was.”

  Ferret flashed an I-told-you-so look at Bear. “And how many of the red rascals did ya kill thar?”

  “Nary a one.”

  “How come?”

  “I mizzled.”

  “Mizzled?” asked Bear.

  “Mizzled sartin.”

  “He departed suddenly,” Ferret translated. “With nor muss nor fuss,” he added.

  “You ran away?” Bear claim-jumped the I-told-you-so look.

  “Hell, yes,” said Kit Carson. “They was a chance of red gallinippers lookin’ fierce as two cents, so I skeedaddled.”

  “And was Colonel Kit Carson there?”

  “I won’t lie to you. He war.”

  “Cracky!” Bear lit up. “Is he as all-fired brave as they say?”

  “I h’yar tell he is some punkins.”

  The two men waited for the stories. Everyone who knew Kit Carson had stories, but Kit continued sawing at a chunk of beef with his bowie knife and seemed disinclined to
elaborate.

  Ferret glanced at Bear. “Reckon we won’t occupy any more of your time, mister.”

  “Good day to you, then,” mumbled Kit around the mouthful of beef.

  The two left with Bear singing, “‘My partner, he laid down and died. I had no blankets, so I took his hide.’”

  Rafe figured they would have been more disappointed if they’d learned that this really was Kit Carson. Carson was small and compact, maybe a few years past fifty. He had sunken cheeks, a drooping mustache, and thin, graying hair retreating from the bulge of his broad forehead. He had a bookish look, but he couldn’t write, and he couldn’t read the outlandish stories printed about him.

  “Then that story about you killing ten Apaches ain’t true, Marse Kit?” asked Caesar.

  Carson shook his head. “I jist told the ’Pache how the world was wagging and that the jig was up. They held a caucus and voted to adjourn the proceedings.”

  Rafe had heard a different account from a man who’d been there. Even adjusting for the usual windage of exaggeration, it was a thriller. Fifty or sixty Apaches had approached Kit and seventeen militamen. They were yelling like banshees and flaunting their weapons when Kit walked out in front of his party.

  The witness said Carson had seemed to elevate and expand. His eyes took fire. He drew a line in the dirt with the toe of his shoe and, in Apache, invited them to cross it and die. They declined.

  Carson was affable and talkative until the conversation turned to his own exploits. Those he dismissed with the wave of a hand as slender as a woman’s. As Col. Carson’s guests at the mess, Caesar and Rafe had joined him in disposing of bubble-and-squeak, a heap of boiled beef, cabbage, and potatoes. Caesar and Rafe had just arrived with the supply train, and they were avoiding the chaos of distribution day on the reservation here at Bosque Redondo.