Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  As the weeks dragged by, Davis wondered if Geronimo, the old jilt, intended to leave him at the altar as he had so many others, but he didn’t complain. He fished for river trout, and he hunted quail, pronghorns, and wild pigs. He gave his prey to José María Soto, whom he dubbed “the cook from dreamland.”

  He discussed literature with a Yankee in a sack coat and a low-crowned wideawake hat clamped down on a bald spot shiny as a peeled onion. The Yankee claimed to be writing a novel about the Apaches. When he was out of earshot, Al Sieber allowed as how, like all writers, he was so lazy he had to lean against a tree to break wind.

  In December Cochise’s son Mischievous brought a dozen warriors and twice as many women and children. Davis escorted them to San Carlos, and no one could accuse him of dillydallying. He kept them off the main trails and still managed to move them along at forty or fifty miles a day. They covered the 175 miles in less than five days. He made the trip north again with Mangas and Chato and fifty or sixty of their people, then returned to the border camp to wait.

  Finally, in February of 1886, a patrol sighted Geronimo’s band. The women, children, and old folks outnumbered the fifteen or sixteen warriors four to one, and they were all well mounted. Geronimo was not happy to see a protective escort of the army’s scouts, a third of whom were now Chiricahuas. Mickey Free translated his complaints.

  “We made peace with the Pale Eyes.” Geronimo’s glower made it clear why he had a reputation as a bad piece of business. “Why should we need protection from them?”

  Davis chose his words carefully. He did not want to stampede the old desperado back across the border. “There are bad white men just as there are bad Indians,” he said. “They might drink too much whiskey and start trouble.”

  “If they attack us, we can take care of ourselves.”

  “If they see me with you, they will know you are at peace. You will not have to risk the lives of your women and your children.”

  Geronimo took his time thinking about that. Gradually the scowl lines smoothed out some, making him look slightly less murderous.

  “We are brothers.” Geronimo shook Davis’s hand. “From now until forever.”

  “And what is that?” Davis nodded to the cloud of dust behind them.

  “Ganado. We will camp here while they graze.”

  Ganado. Cattle. With a herd of cattle, they could travel only twelve or fifteen miles a day. Cows had to graze. They needed lots of water. They had to stay on the beaten trails. They would be impossible to hide.

  Dear God, Davis thought. What am I to do?

  Chapter 62

  A VERY PRACTICAL JOKE

  Britt Davis watched the two pasty-faced individuals stride back through the gate in the adobe wall. Their city shoes clattered across the wooden porch. The heavy oak door of the ranch house slammed behind them.

  One of the men claimed to be a United States Marshal and the other an American Collector of Customs from Nogales, just across the border. At first, Davis thought maybe one of his Mexican packers had smuggled something, but the case was much worse than that. They ordered Davis to arrest Geronimo and his warriors and take them to Tucson to stand trial for murder. While he was at it, he was to confiscate the contraband stock.

  Davis protested that he could not do that without orders from General Crook. The marshal replied that in the morning he would subpoena Lieutenant Davis, his Mexican mule packers, Al Sieber, and the five cowboys here at Sulphur Springs Ranch. If Davis refused to help him, he would raise a posse comitatus of every man in nearby Willcox.

  Davis analyzed the fix he was in. Making a run for it was out of the question. For miles the prairie lay flatter than that porch floor on the ranch house. The brush was no higher than a jackrabbit’s ears.

  The five cowboys had watched as Geronimo’s people made camp in the shelter of the four-foot-high adobe wall surrounding the house. With much braying and shouting, the packers had settled their mules about fifty yards away. The scouts had chosen to bivouac just beyond them. Geronimo’s herd boys had driven the cattle off a half mile where the grass was better. Britt Davis had just pitched his own tent and was anticipating the rapture of one of the cook’s meals when the two city slickers arrived and ruined his appetite.

  Fort Bowie was thirty miles to the east, too far to send for help tonight. As a show of good faith, Britt had allowed Geronimo and his men to keep their weapons. If they got wind of this, they would draw down on the escort or break for the border and maybe take the scouts with them. Many of the scouts, were relatives of Geronimo’s people. They had come along to accompany them to the reservation, not the gallows.

  Davis could obey the marshal, start an uprising, and die with the other Pale Eyes here on the ranch. If he succeeded in arresting Geronimo, he would fail in his duty to General Crook and the army would cashier him. If he defied the marshal, he would find a posse on his trail. If he escaped a lynching, he would face federal court and jail.

  Britt almost cried with relief when he saw a tail of dust in the direction of Fort Bowie. The cavalry was coming, or at least one cavalryman. If the soldier was the man Davis thought he was, he would suffice. Now Britt had a plan. He was almost grinning when Lt. Bo Blake rode up and leaped off his horse. Bo could have just dismounted, but leaping was more his style.

  “I’m damned glad to see you, Bo! With the Pandora’s box I find myself in, I forgot I sent the courier to tell you I’d be here.” Davis grabbed his hand and pumped it. Blake didn’t just look the part of the ideal soldier, he fit the bill, too.

  Bo lifted off his saddle and blanket, his saddlebags and rifle. He handed his horse’s reins to the Apache lad who appeared. Davis was not surprised that Blake didn’t give the boy even a suspicious glance. If Davis trusted him, then Bo did, too. In the morning, Bo would get his horse back watered, rubbed down, fussed over, well fed, and most likely with an amulet entwined like a charmed burr in his mane or tail.

  Bo turned to Britt. “What’s the trouble?”

  The cook brought enough venison stew, corn bread, and gravy for both. While they ate, Davis explained the dilemma and his solution.

  “You graduated from West Point a year ahead of me, Bo.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “That makes you my superior officer.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “You can order me to stay here under the marshal’s orders. Then you and the pack train, the scouts, and Geronimo’s flock and stock can hightail it while the marshal, the customs man, and the cowboys are asleep.”

  Davis knew that meant Blake would have to exceed his leave, but he was desperate. Bo Blake was Irish to the core and always game for a scrap or a joke, but he wasn’t stupid.

  “Good Lord!” He looked around at the layout. “You propose to pack up and move a bellowing mule train out from under those cowboys’ noses, not to mention all these people and cows and horses? There ain’t a snowflake’s chance in hell we could get out of here without a fight.”

  Davis waited. A fight had never stopped Bo Blake before, but he had one more question.

  “Can you convince Geronimo to sneak away, what with him spoiling for a tussle and so fretted up about his footsore cows and all?”

  “I figure if I stick by the Apaches, they’ll stick by me.”

  Blake smiled. “Then I’m in the game.”

  “Speak of the devil.” Davis nodded toward the marshal and the customs man heading their way. Did they intend to subpoena Blake, too?

  To Davis’s relief they only wanted to gloat. That Yankee writer at Britt’s camp on the border, they said, had been their lookout. He had reported on the earlier groups of Apaches, but Britt had spirited them north before they could catch him. These slow-moving cattle, though, they made him a sitting duck.

  “This is dry country, boys.” Bo held up a quart bottle of Scotch whiskey. “What do you say to wetting the whistle?”

  “I don’t say no.” The marshal held out his cup.

  Britt and Bo made sure t
he two men drank most of the whiskey.

  With a grin, Blake watched them teeter off to the ranch house a couple of hours later. “Geronimo could scalp them tonight, and they wouldn’t wake up for it,” he said.

  Britt checked his pocket watch. Only ten o’clock and everyone was asleep. Frogs croaked at the springs. The lead mule’s bell jingled now and then when he shook his head. Somewhere among the sleeping Apaches, a child coughed. Britt walked through the gate and stood between the two families who had bedded down on either side of it. His heart sank when he saw that the marshal had dragged his blankets out onto the porch not more than six feet away from them and was snoring like two grizzlies quarreling over a trout.

  Davis went back to his tent, called in Sergeant Moses of the scouts, and told him his plan. Moses asked for no explanation. If the lieutenant needed it done, Moses would see that it was.

  Davis then sent for Geronimo. While he waited, he rehearsed his story. He would have to mangle the truth if they were to get out of this alive.

  LOZEN LOADED HER RIFLE. FROM THE DARKNESS AROUND her, she heard the men doing the same. She filled her two cartridge belts; then she and the others followed Geronimo to Fat Boy’s tent. Thirty or so of the scouts fell in behind them. Everyone expected trouble. Fat Boy wouldn’t call for Geronimo at this time of night to chat.

  The scouts and the warriors formed a ring around Geronimo, Sergeant Moses, Mickey Free, Fat Boy, and the Bluecoat lieutenant who had just arrived. Lozen felt the tension resonating among them all.

  Fat Boy said the two white men were government officials. They came here to collect a thousand dollars fee for the cows Geronimo had brought over the border. If Geronimo didn’t pay it, they would take the cattle to Tucson. Fat Boy proposed that Geronimo and his people leave now. His Bluecoat brother would go with them while Fat Boy stayed behind to throw the officials off the trail in the morning.

  Lozen could see that Geronimo was furious. She dared not say anything, but she tried to will him to listen to the Bluecoat.

  Fat Boy has honest, laughing eyes, she wanted to tell him. He wants to do what is best for us.

  “No!” Geronimo spat out the word as if it tasted bad. “You promised that the cows could rest and graze. Let those men try to take them in the morning.” In his agitation he shifted his Winchester from arm to arm. “Why have you called me from my blankets for such a trivial thing?”

  He was about to stalk away, but Sergeant Moses started firing words at him like bullets.

  “You talk foolishness, like one of the People With No Minds.” Sergeant Moses had always hated Geronimo. Lozen could tell he was enjoying this. “The young Bluecoat nantan is a brave man. He’s an honest man. He is risking his life and his standing among his people for you, and you behave like an ungrateful child.”

  Moses waved his arm to include the country around them and the serrated rim of mountains in the distance. “All these places, they teach us, ‘Don’t make mistakes. Act sensibly.’ If you don’t listen to what they say, you will get into trouble.”

  The sergeant had a lot more to say, and he ignored Geronimo’s attempts to interrupt him. Lozen could see Geronimo wither under his attack. When the sergeant paused for breath, Fat Boy spoke.

  “Maybe Geronimo is afraid his people cannot sneak away without waking those two white men and the cowboys.”

  At first Lozen was as offended as Geronimo. Then she realized what Fat Boy was up to. It might work. Geronimo was shrewd, but he was also vain and oddly gullible.

  Geronimo put his foot into the snare. “My people can leave you where you’re standing and you would not know it.”

  Fat Boy’s face eased into the mischievous smile that had charmed Lozen the first time she saw it. “What a joke it would be,” he said. “If those men woke up in the morning to find that all the Indians and all the cattle, all the mules and all the ponies had gone.”

  Geronimo continued scowling, but Lozen had learned to read his rockslide of a face as easily as she read tracks in wet sand. The idea of playing a joke on the Pale Eyes appealed to him.

  Lozen felt the tension drain out through her feet, into the ground and away. What replaced it was the excitement and the joy she always felt when about to steal horses from under the noses of Bluecoats. Now they would steal themselves away.

  THE SUN HAD BEEN UP MORE THAN AN HOUR WHEN THE marshal and the customs man, suffering from the evening’s excess and wearing only their long johns, scrambled up a ladder to the flat roof of the ranch house. Cursing, they scanned the horizon with their field glasses. The land between the house and the seam connecting earth and sky was flat and empty except for two salient features. Davis sat on the empty wooden cracker box that the cook had left for him, and he held the mule’s bridle.

  The two men climbed down, went inside to dress, and then stalked to where Britt sat.

  “Where are those Indians?”

  “They’re gone.”

  “Can’t I see they’re gone? I want to know where they are gone.”

  “I don’t know.” Davis shrugged. “Lieutenant Blake is my superior. He took command, ordered me to remain in obedience to your subpoena, and left with the outfit ten hours ago. By now they’re forty miles from here. They could’ve headed in any direction.”

  “You are lying.”

  “Maybe so, but you can’t prove it.”

  The marshal and the customs man conferred.

  “I guess we’re beat,” said the marshal. “We might as well go home.”

  “If you have no further need of me, I’ll return to my post at San Carlos.”

  “You can go to hell, and I wish you a happy journey.” But the marshal reached out his hand and grasped Davis’s. “It was a mighty slick trick, Lieutenant. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.”

  The two men walked back to the ranch house where the cowboys were grinning at them over the adobe wall.

  Chapter 63

  HAY-WEIGH ROBBERY

  The Bluecoat lieutenant called Fat Boy set Squint Eyes’ bundle of dried grass on the scale’s platform and cut the vine holding it together. When the bundle fell open, a large rock rolled from the center of it. Fat Boy tossed it among the other stones, mesquite limbs, and wads of wet grass he had found in the hay that afternoon.

  Squint Eyes screwed up her wrinkled face and screamed at him. “Hijo de puta.” Son of a whore.

  At sixty, Squint Eyes was as brown and withered as the grass, but her indignation was fresh and full of juice. “Vaya al diablo, Gordito.” Next she turned on the scout who caught her with her foot on the scale. “Goddam, no-good, sumbitch!”

  The Apache language didn’t include profanity beyond the enigmatic epithet, “Knife and Awl,” so Squint Eyes and the other women had learned it from the mule packers, both American and Mexican. When Squint Eyes ran out of Spanish expletives, she reloaded with English.

  While Fat Boy weighed their bundles, the older women joked with the scouts assigned to hay detail, and the younger ones flirted. The scouts were desirable. They had new rifles, handsome blue shirts, an air of importance, and accounts at the trader’s store.

  The army had agreed to pay the women a penny a pound for the hay, but they had become adept at badgering the lieutenant into giving them more. They refused dull nickels, accepting only shiny silver dimes, quarters, and half dollars. They had learned that they got more when they insisted he round the sum to the highest dime instead of a nickel.

  Lozen and Stands Alone stood next to their bundles of grass. Lozen felt shabby in her leather skirt and tunic, dirty and stained. Stands Alone’s clothes were as bad. The Chiricahua women who’d come to Fort Apache months earlier wore ankle-length skirts of flowered calico. Their blouses were decorated with ribbons, wide ruffles, and belts of silver conchos. They wore many strands of colored glass beads. Brass hawk bells jingled on the fringes of their moccasins.

  The sun was setting by the time Lozen’s and Stands Alone’s turns came. With a grunt, Chato tossed Lozen�
�s bundle onto the platform. Chato now wore the thick red-cloth headband and the dark blue shirt of a scout. Fat Boy had promoted him to sergeant, but he had acquired the worst sort of general’s attitude.

  Fat Boy opened Lozen’s bundle and seemed surprised to find no surprises in it. He handed her a quarter and a dime, the first she’d owned. She stopped to stare at them. They were perfectly round with the images of eagles and people subtly raised on their surfaces. If she made a hole at the edge of each, she could hang them from her earlobes.

  Chato shoved her away from the scale. She turned to look at him with an expression that was not quite neutral, not quite harmless, and not at all docile. She saw fear flicker in his eyes. Maybe he was remembering her magical powers and the harm she might do him.

  Niece saw the fear, too. She whispered as they walked away, “Be careful of him, Grandmother. He makes up stories about people. If he gets mad at you, he might say you’re a witch.”

  “He’s the one to be careful. Lies gnaw at the liar’s own soul.”

  Niece, Lozen, and Stands Alone followed the happy crowd of women to the Fort Apache mercantile. The trader, George Wratten, left his door open long after sundown. He was an honest man, and he spoke Apache fluently. His store had become the gathering place for the Chiricahuas. Lozen always looked for Hairy Foot there, but the scouts had mentioned that he worked mostly around San Carlos.

  Lozen wandered the narrow aisles in a daze. She inhaled the aroma from the coffee and tobacco. She touched the smooth, cool sides of the canned goods. She draped the chintzes and calicos across her hand, marveling at how light and colorful they were. She studied the beads and ribbons, the knives, axes, hawk bells, and tinware.