Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  She found the bell mare, stroked her, whispered in her ear, and gave her the grass from her shirt. She left six horses tied securely so they couldn’t bolt when Victorio and the others stampeded the herd. The men would cut those lines themselves and ride the horses away. She retied the lines on the others with slip knots.

  She had time before dawn arrived, so she glided to the wagons parked behind the fort. The sentries and several teamsters were engrossed in a game of cards. A lantern threw their shadows up the adobe wall of the saddlery. Gliding through Bluecoats’ villages while they slept was one of Lozen’s favorite pastimes. It made her feel invisible. She ghosted past the men and slipped in among the wagons.

  She climbed into a couple of them and felt around. The sacks and barrels contained cornmeal and bacon by the smell of them. The wagon held enough food to feed her people through the hungry time of early spring, and she wished she could drive it away. In the third wagon she found a cartidge belt and a powder horn.

  She slung the powder horn across her shoulder and buckled the cartidge belt at her waist. She fastened it in the last hole, but it still rode low on her hips. Maybe Broken Foot’s song to bring ammunition was going to work as well for her as it did for him.

  She was about to cut the mules’ tethers when she saw the big red horse. She was surprised that Hairy Foot had left his roan unguarded. She regarded him solemnly in the stars’ light. He stared at her just as solemnly.

  You’re playing with me, she thought. If I try to catch you, you’ll cause a commotion.

  He looked so docile, though, that she began to think perhaps her powers had grown strong enough for her to steal him. She stroked his soft muzzle. The stars reflected in his big eyes gleamed like sparks.

  You’re a trickster, she told him silently.

  She ran a hand up his muzzle, then along his neck. He didn’t back away from her. Her heart bagan to beat faster. This was the night he would become hers.

  Then she felt his teeth clamp onto her shoulder. He bit her hard enough to send a tingling sensation into her fingers, but not enough to break the skin. He could have drawn blood if he’d wanted.

  I understand, she thought. You are his horse. His spirit is stronger than mine.

  He would not be hers tonight. She unfastened the amulet she had braided into her hair to make her run faster. She had tied together the pair of hummingbird’s wings and skull and the piece of blue stone with deer sinew, and she had sung over it.

  Maybe this would help Hairy Foot and his horse outrun death. The young men of her band were determined to prove themselves by killing him and taking his horse as a prize. Lozen separated out some hairs in Red’s mane and used them to tie the amulet in place.

  She cut the mules’ tether lines; then she snaked on her stomach back to the nearby pickets and waited for the sentries to pass again. When they did, she gave the nightjar’s call. Yelling and flapping their blankets, Victorio and the others charged in among the horses.

  Lozen gathered the lead line of the bell mare and jumped onto her, relishing the twitch and flex of the mare’s muscles against her thighs. She heard the sentries’ shouts and the pop of gunfire as she rode toward the hills with the mare’s bell clanging wildly. The other horses followed the bell, and Victorio and his men brought up the rear, chivvying strays back into the herd.

  As the bullets whizzed past her, Lozen vibrated her tongue against the roof of her mouth in the high, triumphal cry. Dawn splashed pink across the dark sky, and the mare moved effortlessly under her. If she and the men could avoid patrols and get the herd safely home, her family could contact the Mexican traders in Alamosa. They could use their share of horses to obtain goods for Daughter’s ceremony of White Painted Woman.

  Everyone needed the ceremony. In celebrating Daughter’s entry into womanhood, they would remember how important they all were to Life Giver. They would know that as long as they had women like Daughter, The People would continue.

  The difficulty now lay in avoiding attacks from the miners and the Bluecoats. The soldiers had fired on every group who had approached them to ask for a peace council. The miners shot at everyone, regardless of their sex, age, or intent. As Lozen rode into the new day with the army’s herd behind her, a plan occurred to her.

  “SO I MANAGED TO STAY AHEAD OF THE APACHES, AND picked them off until my last cartridge was gone.” While he talked, Capt. John Cremony shuffled the deck and dealt hands to Rafe, Caesar, and the young lieutenant. “Then I headed up a canyon, and I’ll be doggonned if it didn’t end in a sheer wall. I was trapped like a rat with a dozen Apaches closing in on me, whooping louder’n so many banshees. And me without so much as a penknife or a tooth-picker to defend myself.”

  He paused to study his cards. The silence lengthened. Finally the lieutenant asked, “What happened?”

  Cremony looked up, nonchalant. “Why, they killed me. Damn them, sir, they killed me.”

  Rafe never tired of seeing the chagrin on the faces of John Cremony’s latest audience. Cremony was in a good mood for someone exiled to Fort Bowie, ninety miles from what passed for civilization. Cremony confided in Rafe that he was damned relieved to put a hundred miles between him and General Carleton. He pronounced Carleton the most unscrupulously ambitious and exclusively selfish man of Cremony’s acquaintance. Rafe didn’t dispute that.

  “I was at the battle of Pittsburg Landing,” the lieutenant said

  “Shiloh?” asked John Cremony.

  “That’s what they call it. Almost twenty thousand on both sides killed or wounded.” The lieutenant rearranged his cards. “Shortly after the battle we boys were feeling pretty used up and dejected, even though ole General Grant saved the day, and we pushed the Rebs back. I was on advance picket line on a moonlit night, and the Rebs had a post not more than a hundred yards away. We shot at each other till we tired of it; then we swapped newspapers, coffee, and tobacco. We’d set them out in the middle of the ground for the other side to fetch.

  “A Reb corporal walked right into our camp, sat on a log, and asked if anyone knew how to play poker. Well, I guess we did. He pulled out a deck of cards and a few of us sat down. Pretty soon another Reb came over, and another, until blue and gray together squatted around watching the play.

  “They were absorbed in the game, when a man on a horse rode up. ‘By crimminy,’ I cried. ‘It’s General Grant.’”

  The lieutenant paused, and Rafe, Caesar, and John Cremony leaned forward. “What did the general do?”

  “We all stood up, looking like whipped schoolboys, and saluted. Grant eyed us stern as a sphinx. He took the cigar from between his teeth, and he asked the Reb corporal. ‘Who’s ahead?’ ‘Why we are,’ said the corporal. ‘Those chumps you brought down here can’t play poker a little bit. But they can fight, General.’ ‘Have to sometimes,’ said Grant. And he rode away.”

  Rafe thought about those twenty thousand men dead and wounded in one battle. It made the dustup at Doubtful Pass seem like small potatoes.

  “I hear that General Grant says he knows but two songs,” said Caesar, “‘Yankee Doodle’ and the other one.”

  They all chuckled, and then Cremony went back to letting off steam about Carleton.

  “At Bosque Redondo the Navajos and the Apaches were killing each other over a pint of whiskey or a spavined mule or a patch of corn. They were dying of flux from the water and the smallpox that the Rebs left behind, so what does Carleton do?”

  “He opens a school,” said Rafe.”

  “He opens a damned school. You can imagine how successful that was.”

  “Why wasn’t it?” asked the lieutenant.

  Cremony gave him a pitying look, as though condoling him for having been in the privy when intelligence was handed out.

  “Their chief explained it to me.”

  “What did he say?” Rafe looked up, interested.

  Cremony leaned back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and took a few puffs on his cigar while he remembered the exact words, transl
ating them from Spanish to English as he went.

  “‘You say that because you learned from books, you can build all those big houses. Now, let me tell you what we think. You begin when you are little to work hard at learning so you can learn to do all those wonderous things. And after you get to be men, the real work of life begins for you. You build the houses, the ships, the towns. And then you die and leave them all behind. We call that slavery.’”

  “He’s right,” said Rafe. “The Apaches don’t need to work.”

  “That’s what the chief said. He said they were free as air. He said the Mexicans and others work for them. What they cannot get from the Mexicans …”

  “And the American ranchers and farmers and miners,” added the lieutenant.

  “ … What they cannot get from others, then the river, the woods, the mountains, and the plains provide. He said, ‘We will not send our children to your schools to become slaves like yourselves.’”

  Rafe finished the story. “So, the chief packed up everyone, lock, stock, and moccasins, and lit out.” Rafe poked his stockinged feet farther under Patch’s stomach. Her solid body and thick fur provided a bone-soaking warmth in the December chill.

  Cremony laughed. “I wish I could have seen the look on Carleton’s face when he discovered that five hundred Mescaleros had decamped in the night.”

  Rafe chuckled himself. A sizable pile of chits lay on the table in front of him. A few glasses of more than middling brandy sloshed inside him. It gave the rough-walled room a soft glow and a sensuous shimmy. Best of all, he held a handful of cards that looked to be winners. Rafe felt expansive, lucky, and—temporarily at least—blessed.

  He should have known better.

  When the shouts and the gunfire sounded, Cremony and the lieutenant were fast, but not so fast as Rafe and Caesar. They dodged among the soldiers pouring out of the barracks, pulling up their braces, and priming and loading their new percussion-lock Springfields.

  With Patch ahead of him, Rafe raced toward the wagon yard. As the rocks and thorns destroyed his latest pair of bison wool socks, he cursed himself for taking his boots off. He cursed himself for not tying Red at the door, although an Apache could steal him from there as easily as anywhere else, if Red would allow it. He cursed himself for almost believing the sergeant when he said the Apaches had a superstition about this place and would never attack it.

  Caesar reached the wagon yard first. “Othello and Desdemona are here,” he called. “The other two are gone. I’ll check the wagon.”

  Rafe let his breath out in a rush when he saw Red silhouetted against the pink sky. He knew that chasing the raiding party by himself wouldn’t accomplish anything, so he didn’t bother to saddle up.

  He limped up to Red. He rubbed his muzzle and squeezed his ears, something Red liked more than anything else. Red put his face against Rafe’s chest and pushed. Rafe ran a hand down his neck and felt an object in the mane. It was tied into the hairs, not merely entangled with them, as though snagged by accident. He cut it free and studied it in the pale light.

  “What have you been up to, old man?”

  Red didn’t answer.

  It was an amulet, that was certain. That an Apache had made it was also certain. That it had belonged to Lozen was most certain of all. But did she intend it for a good purpose or an evil one?

  The amulet lay as light as spider webs in the broad palm of his hand. He touched the tiny skull and stroked the feathers with his scarred fingertips. He couldn’t say why, but he felt sure she had left it to bring him and Red good luck.

  Chapter 38

  POKING AT A POSSUM

  Tall Girl held out a folded blanket with a pouch of tobacco and a fringed bag balanced on top. She lost her own balance, and Lozen caught the things she carried before they hit the ground.

  “Help me, Grandmother,” Tall Girl mumbled. Her eyes held that blank look that Lozen abhorred. No matter that The People had eaten their meager winter supplies and that few berries or seeds were ripe now. Tall Girl had managed to hoard enough mescal to ferment into the thick gray beverage called tiswin.

  “Is someone sick?”

  Tall Girl only turned and wobbled away. Lozen handed the presents to Daughter and started off after her.

  “Will you come to the dance?” Daughter called after her.

  “If I can.”

  Lozen heard the baby screaming before she reached Tall Girl’s lodge. She must have given the child tiswin again.

  Tall Girl herself fell asleep, but Lozen sang all day and into the night while the baby’s two grandmothers and her own chanted, “Yu, yu, yu, yom.” With explosive, gutteral chants of “ha, ha, ha,” Lozen marked the baby on the forehead, lips, chin, and chest with pollen. Hissing, she rubbed the carved snake over the child’s body. Finally she shouted, “Ugashe. Be gone,” and threw the stick into the fire.

  As she chanted and rubbed the child’s contorted limbs and neck, she fell into a trance. She didn’t hear the distant pulse of the dance drums or even the two grandmothers singing nearby. She forgot that the men she had ridden with were dancing the story of their raid on the fort. She didn’t hear *the laughter when He Makes Them Laugh did his parody of a victory dance over a bedraggled chicken he had found.

  As dawn approached, more people joined the grandmothers, until fifteen or twenty swayed in rhythm to the chanting. Corn Stalk, Maria, even Stands Alone added their voices. When the sun rose, the baby seemed exhausted by the struggle. Lozen despaired. Her legs ached from being folded under her all night. She wanted, more than anything, to sleep. Instead, she prayed one more time to Life Giver.

  When she finished, she looked down and saw that the baby had quieted. His breathing steadied; his muscles relaxed. Lozen thanked Life Giver; then she shook Tall Girl awake.

  “Do not ever give your children tiswin.”

  Tall Girl looked frightened, as if Lozen would put a spell on her if she disobeyed. “Yes, Grandmother.”

  Lozen and her own grandmother walked back among the sleepy dancers who talked quietly and yawned as they dispersed to their camps.

  “Do you feel as though you’ve been in another country?” Grandmother asked.

  “Yes.” Lozen recognized everyone around her, but they seemed unfamiliar. She always felt this way after a sing.

  “When we sing for someone,” said Grandmother, “Life Giver takes us to the place where spirits dwell.”

  Lozen wanted to roll up in her blanket and sleep the day away. Instead she found the family waiting for her. When Corn Stalk’s and She Moves Like Water’s mother arrived, Victorio walked away to sit at a distance with his back to her. The subject under discussion was Daughter’s feast.

  “Her Eyes Open has agreed to be her sponsor,” She Moves Like Water said. “Will you accompany her in the dancing, Sister?” she asked Lozen.

  “Yes.”

  With that settled, they discussed whom they would ask to drum, to sing, and to officiate. They took inventory of what goods they still needed as gifts, and how much the new horses would bring. The most troublesome problem was how to avoid the Bluecoats during the months they prepared for the ceremony and for the days they held it.

  “We can agree to go to the place the Bluecoats have set aside for us,” said Corn Stalk. “We’ll be safe from attacks.”

  “No.” She Moves Like Water was adamant. “You’ve heard Wide’s relatives talk about that place. We will all grow sick and disfigured and die, like the Mescaleros.”

  She Moves Like Water’s mother picked up the moccasins she was mending and headed for her own fire. Victorio dipped a gourd into the rabbit stew and joined the women. Most men disdained women’s company, but he welcomed their opinions. They looked at problems in a different way than the men did.

  There was a larger issue than holding Daughter’s ceremony without fear of attack. The Bluecoats demanded that all The People move to places set aside for them, to live under the army’s supervision.

  “We have always moved abo
ut this country as we pleased,” Victorio said. “Now the Bluecoats try to tell us where we can live and hunt.”

  “Why can’t our set-aside place be right here?” asked Lozen. “We can ask Tse’k to let us stay. The fort is only a day’s ride away. The Bluecoats can hand out the food and gifts there. We can use our share for the feast and the ceremony.”

  Victorio smiled to himself. None of the men had suggested that. Maybe they all believed it was far too reasonable a solution for the Pale Eyes to accept. If they did think that, they were probably right.

  “The Pale Eyes won’t talk peace,” Victorio said. “They shoot at everyone who comes near them.”

  “That’s right,” She Moves Like Water added. “Remember what the Bluecoat nantan said.”

  The Mescalero refugees had told them about General Carleton’s orders to his soldiers. “Kill all the men found off the reservation, regardless of what they’re doing. Capture the women and children.” He seemed to be the only one who didn’t recognize the absurdity of demanding that The People go to the reservations, and then shooting them when they tried to do so. Lozen had nicknamed Carleton Bidaa Digiz, Cross-Eyed, because he looked no farther than the end of his own nose.

  “The Pale Eyes, Tse‘k, has been like a father to us,” said Lozen. “He does not lie. He treats us fairly.” He treated them so fairly, in fact, that they had nicknamed him Ba’ch’othlii, He Can Be Trusted.

  “We don’t know where he is,” said Victorio.

  “We can ask Hairy Foot to deliver a message to him.”

  Victorio grunted. Maybe she was right. Maybe Hairy Foot would help them. He was as honest as Tse’k. “How will we find him?”

  “I know the trail he uses. I can wait for him.”

  “It’s too dangerous.” Alarm gave a ragged, insistent tone to She Moves Like Water’s voice.

  Lozen had become too valuable to the Warm Springs people, to all the Red Paints, to take such a risk. Besides that, She Moves Like Water knew that Victorio would go with his sister. Victorio called Lozen his right hand. They went everywhere together.