Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Rafe and Caesar followed the small river, climbing steadily. It chortled past them as though tickled by the tips of the willow branches brushing it. A gentle night rain had washed the dust off the rocks, trees, and bushes, and now the sun was polishing them. Birds sang as if strife hadn’t been invented. It was a lovely day to go courting death.

  “Now how is it you know where Victorio and his people pitch camp?” Rafe asked Caesar.

  “Josefa, she say the folks in Alamosa have trucked with the Warm Springs ‘Paches since her gran’mammy was a sprat.”

  “Josefa? You mean you have a woman cached in Alamosa, too?”

  “I reckon I catched her, all right.” Caesar gave him a sample of the smile that beguiled women of all ages.

  “Did Josefa say why the Apaches never attack Alamosa?”

  “She say they always treats ‘em fair. They ain’t never bushwacked ’em, cheated ’em, sold ’em bad whiskey, nor stolen they women.”

  “Are only saints allowed to live in that town?”

  “Naw, but if you had rattlesnakes residin’ in your back forty and you knew they was too clever for you to kill ’em, wouldn’t you treat ’em with respect?”

  “I would.”

  “Do ya’ll s‘pose the Apaches’ll shoot us first or say, ‘Howdy do’?” Caesar asked.

  “Too late to worry about that now.”

  Around the middle of the afternoon the stream seemed to disappear into a wall of basalt towering a hundred feet into the clear blue sky. They dismounted and made themselves comfortable under the walnut tree that Josefa said was the customary meeting place. They heard the high whistling keen of a hawk, but they didn’t see any birds circling overhead. The hawk’s cry always sounded mournful to Rafe, but now it sent shivers along his spine. He was pretty sure no hawk had made it.

  “How long did Josefa say we should wait here?”

  Caesar scanned the top of the cliff. “Long as it takes.”

  It took a few hours. When the sun was about to insert itself between the sky and the top of the cliff, Caesar said, “Mebbe this is the wrong place. Mebbe they’s waiting under another walnut tree.”

  “They’ve got to put on their best bib and tucker. And we’re probably a goodly distance from their bivouack.”

  “What is a tucker anyways?”

  “Damned if I know. Something to do with female attire, I think.”

  Red’s ears pitched forward. Caesar’s hand went to the butt of the old breech-loading flintlock in the saddle boot. At least fifty Apaches rode toward them. They had put on their best bibs and tuckers, all right, but they hadn’t painted the red stripe across their faces. That was a good sign. They were armed, though. Besides their usual cutlery, many of them carried old Mexican flintlocks. A few had the Spencer repeating rifles and the Smith carbines used by Union troops in the late war of the rebellion.

  Victorio rode in front. He did not look like a harried fugitive or one of the ragtag beggars waiting for rations at the agency. None of them did. He wore a fringed leather hunting shirt stained white with clay and decorated with silver disks, tin cones, and beadwork. The lower parts of his tall moccasins were solidly beaded around the turned-up, red-painted strips of rawhide at the toes.

  Rafe was surprised to see Cochise riding next to him, and he thought about how many men would like to have had him in their gunsights. On the other side of Cochise was a tall, ferocious-looking individual on a coffee-colored pony. The stranger was almost the same color as the pony, darker than any Apache Rafe had ever seen, and much heavier. He carried over two hundred pounds, and all of them solid meat.

  He fit Kit Carson’s description of Juh, Long Neck, the most elusive and bloodthirsty killer in the whole tribe of them. Carson pronounced the name Whoa, or rather Wh-Wh-Whoa because of the man’s stammer. “Wolf mean,” Carson called him. “Wolf mean with b’ar and painter thrown in. Old Wh-Wh-Whoa is wrath walking upright.”

  On Victorio’s left rode Lozen and an old man wearing a cap of hawk feathers and long gold chains dangling from his earlobes.

  His name is Nanay, Rafe thought, but they call him Broken Foot.

  Rafe was struck by how much Lozen and her brother resembled each other, and how handsome they both were. Lozen rode a bay mare with black feet. Rafe remembered the bay mare she had stolen from Don Angel at least thirteen years ago. He almost smiled at the memory. She had looked so brash and rafish in a boy’s breechclout and shirt that day.

  She reminded him of Shakespeare’s Viola, both of them jumping the fence men put around their sex. Lozen was still doing it. She must be older than twenty-five by now, with no sign of a husband, and here she was, riding with the men.

  Rafe tried not to stare at her, but that was difficult. She struck such a contrast with the warriors in their breechclouts and blankets, their headdresses of fur, feathers, bones, and antlers, and their motley assortment of Apache, Mexican, and Anglo attire, with the addition of army jackets, some with bullet holes neatly patched.

  Strings of beads hung from Lozen’s earlobes. Necklaces of beads and shells formed a collar around her neck. She wore a magnificent doeskin skirt and tunic, intricately beaded and stained a golden yellow with cattail pollen, probably.

  The hoyden still prevailed, though. To accommodate the saddle, she had hiked the skirt up on her strong brown thighs. The long fringes on the tunic swayed gracefully as she moved in rhythm with her horse. The hundreds of tin cones around the tunic’s square yoke jingled merrily.

  Her long hair flowed across her shoulders like black water over smooth river rocks. The ends lay mingled with the fringes on her thighs. Her hair was clean and soft. Rafe wouldn’t have expected that. What did Apaches use for soap, anyway? He tried to imagine the women washing their hair while the United States Army hounded them and gangs of drunken miners roamed the countryside on scalp hunts. Sparks glinted where the sun glanced off stray locks. Wisps curled like black swan’s down around her face.

  You’re not here to admire Victorio’s sister, Rafe thought. He figured that showing any interest at all in a man’s sister could get him killed. At least it could in Texas where he grew up. Lozen looked at him as though she had never seen him. He returned the indifference.

  Victorio dismounted, and as he and Rafe approached each other, a woman from the rear of the group rode up. She was dressed like an Apache, but she looked Mexican.

  Before Rafe could say anything, Victorio put his arms around him and drew him into an embrace. Rafe fought the reflex to stiffen and recoil. Men didn’t hug each other where he came from.

  “I bring greetings from Dr. Steck,” Rafe said in Spanish.

  The Mexican woman translated from Spanish to Apache, then back again. Rafe recognized her voice as the one he had heard with Lozen under the cottonwood by the river that night a few months ago.

  “Where is Father Tse’k?” asked Victorio. “The sight of him would make our hearts glad.”

  “General Carleton is the nantan for this territory. He forbids Father Steck to meet with you.”

  “Kal’ton.” Lozen stared at the end of her nose, bringing her dark irises close together. “Bidaa Digiz.”

  The men laughed, and Rafe smiled. He could guess why she called Carleton cross-eyed. He was incapable of seeing anything beyond his own limited view of the world.

  “Father Steck sends you these presents to show his friendship and respect for you,” said Rafe. “He asks me to tell you that he regrets the decision of nantan Carleton. He will try to convince him to let you stay at Warm Springs.”

  “We do not need the permission of Kal‘ton to stay where we have always lived,” Victorio said. “We do not tell Kal’ton that he must take his wives and children and leave his home.”

  A young man dismounted and walked toward them. He was small and wiry, and Rafe had the feeling he could run for days over rough country, but then he would have said the same for any of them. What set this one apart was his headdress, a skunk pelt with the head, the tail, the four legs
, and some of the aroma still in place.

  He tilted his chin down and waggled the skunk’s head so it seemed to be the one talking. “Tell me, Hairy Foot,” the skunk said, “does Kal’-ton have a wife and children?”

  “Yes, I think he does.” Rafe felt like a fool talking to a dead animal, but the rest of the party seemed to enjoy the joke. And to tell the truth, the effect of a skunk talking in Apache was comical.

  “And where do they live?”

  “A month’s journey to the east of here.”

  “They must be very happy, then. They do not have to talk to Old Man Cross-eyed.” The young man took the reins of the mules and led them back to his horse through the laughter of his companions.

  Rafe expected the meeting to end then. The Apaches had the presents and Dr. Steck’s regrets. “Do you want me to carry a message to Father Steck?”

  “You will come with us,” said Victorio.

  The side of beef mounted on the coffee-colored pony grunted. He looked as though he had a bone to pick with Victorio’s decision to lead two Pale Eyes to his village, and that the bone was stuck in his throat. His face contorted as he struggled to speak. Victorio glowered at him.

  Kit Carson said old Whoa had a stammer. Carson also said he roosted in the Sierra Madre a hundred miles south of the Mexican border. If so, that didn’t stop him from raiding southern Arizona and New Mexico Territories. Rafe wondered what brought him this far north. From the look that passed between him and Victorio, Rafe would have bet it wasn’t brotherly love.

  Victorio gave an impatient wave of his hand and made a curt reply. Then he gestured to Lozen, who handed Caesar a wide strip of sacking.

  “So you can’t see the route,” the Mexican woman explained.

  Caesar looked at Rafe, and Rafe nodded. Caesar folded the sacking and tied it tightly around his eyes. When Lozen handed a strip of cloth to Rafe, she looked up at the amulet on his hatband and smiled. Rafe fought the urge to reach out and touch her hair.

  As he was getting ready to tie on the blindfold, he saw her ride forward and take Red’s reins. Red balked.

  “It’s okay, partner.” Rafe reached forward and rubbed Red’s ears.

  Rafe sank into a reverie, lulled by the conversations around him. He hadn’t noticed before, but the men spoke in low, gentle tones. He heard none of the shouting and hardness of the white men’s talk. He listened in vain, though, for Lozen’s voice.

  He was about to doze off when he heard Skunk Head talking at his elbow and Maria translating. Apparently Skunk Head had decided to entertain the two Pale Eyes.

  “Old Man Coyote was going along,” Skunk Head recited, “and he saw a white man with a herd of fat sheep. Coyote said, ‘What pretty animals. Can I herd them for you?’ The white man said, ‘No, I’ve heard you’re a bad fellow.’ But Coyote begged until finally the white man said, ‘All right, but see that big mud puddle over there. Don’t let the sheep get in there. It’s pretty deep.’

  “The white man went off home, and Coyote killed those sheep and ate them. Then he stuck the heads and the tails in the mud puddle. He called to the white man, ‘Hey, your sheep are stuck in the mud. Come quick.’ The white man ran out, and he saw the heads and the tails. ‘Run to my house and tell my wives to give you a shovel,’ he said.

  “Coyote, he ran to the house, and he said to the white man’s wives, ‘Your husband told me to have intercourse with you.’”

  Rafe heard Caesar chuckle. The Apaches guffawed.

  “The wives said, ‘We don’t believe you. He wouldn’t say that.’ Coyote, he went to the door and he shouted, ‘Your wives won’t do what you say.’ The white man got angry, and he yelled, ‘Tell them to hurry up!’ ‘See there,’ said Coyote. ‘What did I tell you?’ So the women had intercourse with Coyote. When he finished, he went away laughing.”

  Skunk Head went away, too, chuckling to himself, and the conversations started up again. After a while Caesar started a spiritual that the field hands sang while chopping cotton.

  O David,

  Yes! Yes!

  My little David,

  Yes! Yes!

  And he killed Goliath,

  Yes! Yes!

  Yes, he killed Goliath,

  Yes! Yes!

  When Caesar paused between verses, Rafe realized that conversation had ceased. He considered telling Caesar to stop. The Apaches might think he was making “bad juju,” as Caesar called it. But no one protested. No one stuck a lance into either of them. The song was a long one to begin with, and Caesar made up more verses as he went along.

  Oh, Daniel,

  Yes! Yes!

  Poor ole Daniel,

  Yes! Yes!

  Daniel in the lion’s den,

  Yes! Yes!

  Safe in the lion’s den,

  Yes! Yes!

  The silence between the verses began to seem reverential. The repetitive words must have sounded like a shaman’s medicine song to the Apaches. Come to think of it, Rafe mused, it was a medicine song. Caesar was asking God to keep him as safe as Daniel in the lion’s den.

  David and Goliath. It was an appropriate theme, given the state of hostilities. Since the United States Army would be Goliath in this contest, Rafe hoped the outcome would differ from the biblical one.

  Chapter 40

  KINFOLK

  Caught in the night behind his blindfold and lulled by the surefooted gait of Red under him, Rafe dozed off. He woke with a start to the high, wailing women’s call that pumped fear through his veins. He almost yanked off the blindfold and pulled his pistols from the saddle holsters.

  “You may look now,” said the Mexican woman.

  Lozen handed him the reins, and when Rafe’s eyes adjusted to the light of the full moon, he thought he was dreaming. As the procession rode through the rows of boys and women and into the village, he saw cookfires illuminating the hillsides all around. The size of the encampment made him reconsider just who was Goliath and who was David.

  Rafe estimated that several thousand people had turned out to greet them. Dr. Steck’s presents wouldn’t go far with this mob, but they seemed overjoyed to see the mules and their loads, anyway. The women danced, sidestepping in time to a chant that sounded to Rafe like a thousand cats with their tails caught in vises. The children swarmed around the procession. Boys led the Apaches’ horses away, but Rafe and Caesar declined all offers to take theirs. Rafe didn’t feel like testing the dictum that Apaches wouldn’t steal from guests.

  Caesar rode up beside Rafe. “They sure ain’t layin’ low, is they? Don’t they savvy that Ole Cross-Eyes Carleton means to root ’em out, wheat and weed?”

  “They savvy.” But Rafe himself was at a loss to understand the carefree mood and the huge number of people.

  The singing, dancing crowd of women led them to an open space where they had laid out blankets and hides. Victorio gestured for them to sit on his right side. Rafe took that as a high honor because he could tell the other leaders had been seated by rank on Victorio’s left. Cochise sat next to him, then Red Sleeves’ son, Mangas, and Whoa, with Broken Foot beside him, and the scar-faced one Rafe knew as Loco. Lozen sat behind her brother. From much farther along in the ranking of warriors glowered a square-jawed, beetlebrowed, droop-mouthed, thin-lipped visage that Rafe had caught glimpses of at Santa Rita.

  Caesar saw him, too. “Is that Geronimo?” he murmured.

  “I think so. He must be taking a holiday from murdering Mexicans.”

  Whoa and Geronimo present in the same location. Rafe imagined Kit Carson looking at him from across a tableful of beer bottles and saying, “Those two will present you with a complete invoice of rascality.”

  “Con permiso.” The young Mexican woman knelt behind Rafe and Caesar. “I will translate,” she said in Spanish.

  “What is your name?”

  “María. María Mendez.”

  Rafe realized that he and Caesar were about to be included in a council. It began with more oratory than a congressional filibus
ter. Even Whoa gave a speech, or rather he muttered it to Geronimo, who delivered it.

  Victorio finally arrived at the point. “Tell Father Tse‘k that his children, the Ndee, long to see his face again and welcome him at our fires. Tell him that our women can no longer gather food to eat. Our children are hungry. Mothers weep for their dead sons. Wives weep for their husbands. Tell Father Tse’k that we want peace.”

  “But you will not take your people to Bosque Redondo.”

  “No, we will not live with the Navajos at that place.”

  Nanay, the one called Broken Foot, stood up. He waved an arm to include the surrounding countryside. “This land speaks to us,” he said. “It teaches us how to behave correctly. It keeps wickedness away.”

  Cochise rose next. “If we leave our land, the young ones will forget the names of the places here. Those who forget the names, forget what the names mean; they forget what happened there. When we cease to know the meaning of the land, we no longer know who we are.”

  Rafe wondered how he would explain all that and realized he needn’t even try. Dr. Steck would understand it, but he could do nothing. No one else would have the slightest interest.

  “I’ll tell him, but I do not think Carleton will change his mind.”

  “Life Giver decides who will eat well and who will not. Life Giver decides who will live and who will die. Life Giver decides who will go and who will stay.”

  After the council, the women served a feast; then Victorio distributed the gifts of blankets and knives, the pots and beads. Rafe noticed that most of the first recipients were women, widows he assumed. He was impressed by how self assured Victorio was, and by the fact that no one grumbled about their share.