Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “I will go with you,” Victorio said.

  “You should stay here, Brother.” Lozen didn’t say what they all were thinking.

  What if the Bluecoats captured Victorio? What if they cut off his head and boiled it? Since the horrific fate of Red Sleeves, many people came to believe that the Bluecoats ate the people they took captive. Lozen could be walking into a terrible trap.

  “Maria can come with me to talk Mexican to Hairy Foot,” she said. “He understands our language a little, too.”

  Victorio didn’t think the plan would work, but if anyone could get word to Tse’k, Lozen could.

  AT TWILIGHT, RAPE, CAESAR, AND THE OTHER TEAMSTERS circled the wagons of the supply train. They strung lines between the wheels and tied the horses to them. They tethered the draft animals in place at the wagon tongues. While some cooked, others played cards and swapped stories. Patch lay with her hindquarters to the wheel and bared her teeth at any hound who looked remotely enamored of her.

  The dozen men of the army escort pitched their tents and picketed their horses among the piñon trees. They stacked their rifles against the tree and hung their bridles, powder horns, and knapsacks from the branches. Civilians and soldiers took turns standing watch, although some of the civilians grumbled about it.

  They didn’t mind standing watch—they just didn’t like the company. The men of the 125th Infantry were black, and the sight of former slaves in United States Army uniforms was repugnant to the Southerners in the train. Caesar rode with the soldiers when he could, finding men who had lived near his father’s plantation and listening for news of the war.

  Rafe poured hot water from the kettle into a tin basin, set it on an upturned crate, and rinsed out his second shirt and his spare pair of socks. As he worked, he watched Caesar perform supper. He wasn’t the only one. The lieutenant, the sergeant, the other drivers, and the cattle drover drifted over. The lieutenant brought venison he had shot, and Caesar fired up another skillet.

  The lieutenant had haunted their camp all the way from Santa Fe. Rafe was amused by the spectacle of a white officer almost on his knees before a black man, trying to recruit him for the regiment. In a troop of former field hands, Caesar was a gold strike. He could read, write, and cipher. He was stronger than two average men, and he knew the country. The lieutenant had promised him a sergeant’s stripes and the princely sum of fifteen dollars a month, the two extra dollars to come out of the lieutenant’s own pay.

  Rafe had twitched an eyebrow when Caesar politely refused. Caesar caught the look and he explained later. Well, he didn’t exactly explain. He had only asked Rafe, “Would you join the army again?”

  Rafe had laughed. No, he wouldn’t.

  Caesar had spent a lot of time at army posts. He had seen the men sweating in the August heat to make adobe bricks for barracks that would let in the rain and the wind. He had watched them chopping and hauling thousands of cords of wood. He had observed that it wasn’t so different from slavery. Neither were the brutal punishments that some officers inflicted for minor offenses.

  In the settlements and forts, Caesar added Marse to the front of every white man’s name and suh after it. He rarely spoke unless asked a question; but on the trail a transformation came over him. He spun yarns about San Francisco. He recited fables starring that trickster, Bre’r Rabbit. When he wasn’t talking, he sang. Tonight it was an old Southern field hands’ song.

  “‘Love, it am a killin’ thing,’” he sang. “‘Beauty am a blossom, but if you want yo’ finger bit, just poke it at a possum.’”

  As they traveled, he would pick up limbs and throw them into the “possum belly,” a hide slung under the wagon. By the time they stopped for the night, he had enough for a bonfire. He tied a rolled bandana around his head to keep the perspiration from his eyes. As he worked, he wiped his hands on half a feed sack stuck into his belt.

  A gooseberry and currant cobbler bubbled in the dented dutch oven. A pot of peeled bulrush stems, lamb’s quarter, and pigweed came to a hesitant simmer. He wrapped the sacking around the handle and pulled the pot off the flames so its contents would only parboil. While he was at it, he added a chunk of brown sugar and some of the vinegar he and Rafe used to clean their weapons.

  Rafe had shot a javelina, and Caesar had threaded the boar’s ribs onto a spit. Now and then he used a new axlegreasing brush to baste the ribs with a lethal blend of ground chiles, onions, wild garlic, strong black coffee, and whiskey. He called the results House Afire.

  The skillet occupied the center ring. Fist-size chunks of boar meat sizzled in grease along with spring onions and wintered-over carrots and potatoes. Like a fencer, Caesar turned sideways to the fire. He held his right hand out to one side as though for balance and used his left hand to tip and shake the frying pan while the grease sizzled like fireworks.

  He strewed a handful of chopped red chiles over the ingredients, added some salt, and tossed them. He put in more grease, a blizzard of flour, and a little water, and stirred the roux into a thick gravy.

  “Boy, where did you learn to cook like that?” the lieutenant asked.

  Caesar winked. “Why, suh …” His drawl thickened, his stock of words shrank. He became deferential, the way a chameleon took on the colors of his surroundings. “My mammy done taught me, suh.”

  Rafe knew that was only partly true. Caesar was too shrewd to admit that he had added parboil, puree, and roux to his vocabulary when he lived and worked in the bordello in San Francisco. Caesar claimed that the French cook there could produce a savory soup from an old pair of boots.

  Being known as a black man who had consorted with white women, even ones of easy virtue, would get him into deadly trouble here. He was so discreet about his private life anyway that only Rafe knew about the quiet Mexican woman named Mercedes who welcomed him whenever he went to Socorro, or vivacious Concepción who did his laundry and more in Tucson, or Pilar in Tubac who had learned to cook greens and fatback.

  After dinner Rafe scrubbed the pots with river sand while Caesar fed and watered the mules and horses. The two of them were looking forward to reading from their latest find, Twelfth Night, while the soldiers, teamsters, and drovers gathered to listen. The men formed a remarkably wellbehaved audience considering they were so heavily armed that they clanked whenever they scratched or coughed, which was frequently.

  Caesar let Rafe do the reading. A black man who could read became known as uppity, which was not healthy. They settled into their canvas chairs near the fire’s light, and Rafe began with Duke Orsino’s first line, “‘If music be the food of love, play on, / Give me an excess of it …’”

  Red’s head went up, and his ears pricked forward. Patch growled, then barked, and all the dogs chimed in. A chorale of coyotes sang descant in the hills. The men scattered for cover in a clicking of breech bolts that sounded like a swarm of metal crickets.

  They all waited on point like so many spaniels. Finally, the camp dogs grew bored and went back to sniffing each other instead of the wind. Rafe had dowsed the fire at the first alarm, which made reading out of the question. He rolled up in his blankets with his head on his saddle. He was floating so far out on the calm waters of sleep that at first he thought the woman’s voice was a dream. A woman’s voice here would more likely be a dream than reality anyway.

  “Hola, Capitán. Capitán Pata Peluda.”

  A chill ran through Rafe. The stir in his stomach wasn’t butterflies, but more like beetles. The dogs started again. The lieutenant, his Springfield waving vaguely in the direction of the voice, hustled over to him. He wasn’t desert-smart, but at least he had the sense to know who was.

  “Who the hell is that?”

  Rafe started to say, “An old friend,” but he realized that would be taken in all the wrong ways. The men already called him a nigger-lover. They would add Injun-lover.

  Injun lover.

  Don’t wander into that wasteland, son, he admonished himself. Aloud he said, “Someone who wants to par
ley, I reckon.”

  “I’ll tell the men to saddle up, and we’ll see to this.”

  “If it’s a ruse, then they want you and your command to chase the decoy so they can attack the wagons while you’re gone.” Rafe knew the lieutenant was green, and not the brightest candle in the mineshaft. He was the one who had swallowed John Cremony’s old chestnut about being killed by Apaches.

  “Keep a close eye on Red,” Rafe said. “My man and I will go out and see what they want. If you hear gunfire, send Sergeant Mott and a few men after us.”

  He’d found that acting as though the matter were settled usually helped new officers make up their minds to do the sensible thing. He put on his hat, touching the hummingbird amulet on the hat band for good luck. He stuck his knife into his boot, loaded his pistols, and set them at half cock. Caesar did the same.

  Rafe pulled a burning branch from the fire. He knew better than to insult Lozen by calling her name.

  “Yo vengo,” he called. “I’m coming.”

  “Abajo el álamo grande al lado del rio,” came the answer.

  “She wants to meet us under the big cottonwood by the river.” From habit Rafe translated for Caesar, although Caesar had learned a lot of Spanish from Mercedes, Concepción, Pilar, and who knew whom else. He probably understood more than Rafe did.

  “Who is she?” Caesar asked.

  “I’d wager she’s the hoyden who’s been trying to steal Red.”

  Patch maintained a low growl in the back of her throat. Rafe didn’t have to see her to know that the fur stood up like the spikes of a teasel along the ridge of her back. Rafe knew how she felt. The fur at the back of his own neck was stirring.

  Lozen’s voice sent shivers all through him, mostly gen . erated by fear, but not completely. What did she want of him? What if this were a trick? What if he were poking at a possum and risking Caesar’s life in the doing of it?

  His blood drummed in his ears as he waited for the piercing warble of attacking Apaches. He listened for the whine of the arrows. Then he heard the steady crunch of Caesar’s boots and sensed the quiet, rock-steady strength of him.

  Caesar was brave, yes, but that was nothing special out here. Caesar woke up every day knowing that he might be singled out for insult or injury by some brute or other who had nothing close to his education, strength, and grace. That took fortitude of a special kind.

  Rafe reached up and touched the amulet again. He felt the bit of blue stone, the hummingbird wings, and the skull that was smaller than the nail on his littlest finger. They calmed him. The person he was walking toward through the darkness had given it to him. The fear left him, and he was relieved that once again he had kept quiet through it and had not made a fool of himself.

  The torch burned quickly, but a few more bundles of flaming grass took them to the cottonwood. Rafe saw two shadowy figures standing under it. Once again the scamp had eluded the sentries.

  “¿Qué quiere?” he asked. “What do you want?”

  He waited while Lozen held a whispered conversation with her companion, a Mexican captive maybe. Finally she spoke in halting Spanish aided by whispered prompts.

  “My brother, the one they call Victorio, he wants to talk to Tse’k.”

  “Does your brother desire to live in peace?”

  “Yes, if our people can stay in our own country.”

  “You mean a reservation at Warm Springs?”

  “Reservation?” Lozen consulted with her companion. “Si,” she said. “Reservación. Bina’nest’thl’oo,” she added.

  “Been a nest loo?”

  Lozen laughed, a soft ripple of sound. “Bina’nest’thl’oo.” She repeated it as though instructing him in the correct pronunciation. “It means …” She paused, searching for the words in Spanish. “‘A fence goes around them.’”

  “Where does your brother want to meet Dr. Steck?” asked Rafe.

  “He will wait in the willow grove in the small canyon east of Alamosa.”

  “When?” Rafe wanted to ask Lozen if she would be waiting there, too.

  “A month from now. At the time of the new moon.”

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Steck.”

  “Enjuh,” she said.

  Rafe knew that meant “good,” and that she probably considered the parley to be over.

  Caesar touched his arm. “Ask her about Pandora.”

  Rafe obliged. “Is the captive well?”

  “She lives still.”

  She lives still. Rafe supposed that was as much as one needed to know in these perilous times. He realized he finally had the opportunity he’d wished for from time to time. He stood face-to-face with an Apache who would talk to him without trying to kill him. But he couldn’t think of anything to say, except maybe to ask if she and her people had eaten the horses they stole from the fort a month ago. And if she still had his telescope.

  “Are your people suffering?” The question sounded ridiculous to him. Of course they were, but that they might be hadn’t occurred to him before. Apaches served up suffering, they didn’t partake of it themselves.

  She held up a fist, palm inward, with only the little finger extended skyward. “We carry our lives on our fingernails.” She said it without emotion or bitterness, though it was a bitter thing.

  While he pondered that, Lozen and her companion disappeared. One moment he could see them standing there, outlined in a pale glow of starlight, and the next, they were gone. They reminded him of the very ghosts Apaches feared so much.

  “What do y‘all s’pose she meant?” Caesar asked. “‘We carry our lives on our fingernails.’”

  “I don’t know.”

  Rafe did know. He just couldn’t explain it.

  Chapter 39

  DAVID AND GOLIATH

  Rafe found Dr. Steck slumped behind his desk in Santa Fe. He was responding to the latest fiat from General Carleton, and he wasn’t in a good mood. He slid the glasses to the end of his thin nose and looked over them, brightening when he saw Rafe. He lit up when Rafe told him that Victorio had asked to meet with him and arrange to live in peace on the land his people already occupied.

  He was humming to himself when he set out on horseback with Rafe and Caesar the next morning. They read Twelfth Night aloud, passing the book among them as they rode.

  “I like this play the best,” Casesar said.

  “Why is that?” asked Dr. Steck.

  “’Cause Sebastian, the brother Viola thought was drowned, he turned up live and kickin’ in the end.”

  “Do you have a brother?”

  “I did. He’s gone on to the Lord, though.”

  “We only have the brothers and sisters that God allotted to us,” Dr. Steck said, “but there is no limit on friends.”

  Friends, Rafe thought, are rarer than hen’s teeth in this country. He was grateful to have found one in Caesar.

  Twelfth Night occupied them for most of the ninety-mile trip to Bosque Redondo, but General Carleton was not happy to see them.

  “I forbid it!” Carleton pounded the desk top so hard the quill pens, ink well, and account book did a little jig. “As far as the Indians are concerned, I am the sole authority in New Mexico.”

  Dr. Steck tried to slip reason sideways into the tirade. “Victorio’s proposal to live on a reserve in his own country is a sensible one. I’m sure he and I and the other Chiricahua Apaches can reach an amicable arrangement.”

  “You will have nothing to do with them. One of my officers will parley with Victorio. He will give him and his tribe two choices. They can submit to the authority of the United States Army and go peaceably to Bosque Redondo, or they will be hunted down and killed.”

  “That’s monstrous!”

  “You will leave immediately,” Carleton’s eyes bulged. “If you return here, I shall have a detail of soldiers escort you away.”

  Michael Steck rested one hand on the table, leaned into Carleton’s fury, and pointed a finger at the general’s nose. “You are a madman,” he sai
d in a low, calm voice. “You are a hypocritical, greedy, cruel, stupid, short-sighted megalomaniac.”

  Megalomaniac. Rafe had never heard the word, but he liked it. He thought the maniac part particularly suited Carleton.

  RAFE MET CAESAR AT THE OUTSKIRTS OF ALAMOSA BEFORE dawn and they headed southwest. Caesar rode his dapplegray gelding, the only horse around who stood as tall as Red. Caesar gave Rafe a quizzical look.

  “Are ya’ll sure you want to ride that hoss into the lion’s den?”

  Rafe flashed him a sardonic smile. “If an Apache steals Red, it will be over my dead body and Red’s, too, I reckon.”

  Out of habit, Rafe looked for Patch. Some mongrel with more charm than the rest had gotten past her curt refusals. She gave birth to four puppies last night. When Rafe left the tiny inn on one of Alamosa’s side streets this morning, the innkeeper’s children were staring raptly into the box they had lined with straw as a nest for them.

  Rafe didn’t ask Caesar where he had slept. Caesar wasn’t welcome in places where Anglos predominated. Rafe would insist that his friend and partner be allowed to stay where he did, and ugly scenes ensued. More than once both of them had stalked out of a hotel or boarding house and unfurled their blankets under a tree. Caesar usually found his own accommodations. He had a knack for finding accommodating accommodations.

  They led two mules loaded with the gifts that Dr. Steck had asked them to buy in Alamosa’s market. Steck hadn’t said so, but Rafe assumed the gifts were an apology for the treatment Victorio and his men had received from Inspector General Davis, Carleton’s envoy. Davis had delivered Carleton’s ultimatum, and Victorio, being no man’s fool, had refused to take his people to Bosque Redondo. He and his warriors had ridden up into the mountains, and no one had seen anything of them since.

  Rafe knew the officer Carleton had sent. Afterward, Rafe had seen him in the officers’ mess. He had raised his glass of brandy in a toast, “Death to the Apaches, and peace and prosperity to this land!”

  Rafe had to admit that he was right. If all Anglos had been like Dr. Steck, coexistence might have been possible, but Rafe was amazed to have met even one man like him. There would be no peace or prosperity while Apaches and Americans tried to occupy the same space. Steck talked about the need to preserve this “interesting” people, as he called the Apaches, but he wasn’t trying to earn a living running cattle or prospecting for gold or hauling freight.