Ghost Warrior (38 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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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.
KINFOLK
C
aught 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 filibuster. 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.
When all that was finished, the dancing started. The crowd milled in and out of the light thrown across the ground by the huge fire. They greeted friends. They chatted and laughed, at ease with each other and at home in a situation that felt totally alien to Rafe. Rafe and Caesar stood with the men, aware that they were being scrutinized by the women in particular. Rafe watched for glimpses of Lozen in the crowd, and he knew Caesar was looking for Pandora. Then Skunk Head appeared and held a conference with Maria.
She turned to Rafe and Caesar. “The one they call He Makes Them Laugh wants to give these to the black Pale Eyes.”
He Makes Them Laugh carried a pair of tall moccasins, covered with beadwork. He started talking, and María had to speak fast to keep up.
“I told my woman when she cut these out four years ago that they were so big she could use them to carry the baby in. She said they would fit the black Pale Eyes and that some day she would give them to him.” He Makes Them Laugh handed them to Caesar.
“Don't say, thank you,” Rafe muttered.
“Why not?”
“Not polite. Say you'll wear them a long time, or something like that.”
Caesar took off his hat. He held it to his chest with one hand while he accepted the moccasins with the other.
“Tell your woman these are very beautiful.”
“She says to tell you she named our son Ch‘inayihi'dili,” said He Makes Them Laugh. “It means Sets Him Free.”
“I'd surely like to meet him.”
He Makes Them Laugh and María held another conference; then he sent a boy off with a message. Stands Alone arrived soon after with her five-year-old son walking behind her.
“Don't talk to her directly,” warned Rafe. “No matter what white people might think, Apache women are as chaste as Desdemona.”
Caesar crouched down and held out a penknife with a deer horn handle. The child stared fixedly at it while Caesar demonstrated how to open it. He held the blade so the haft pointed toward Sets Him Free.
“Please tell him it's a present for him,” said Caesar.
Maria obliged.
The child ran forward, snatched the knife, and retreated to his mother's skirt. Caesar laughed so heartily everyone turned to look.
“Tell him I'm gonna call him Charlie.”
Stands Alone bent down and whispered something to her son. He walked out to stand in front of her.
“Shida'a,”
he said.
“Shida'a
means uncle,” said María.
“Uncle,” Caesar beamed at Rafe, “I gots me some kinfolks.”
A second boy joined Charlie Sets Him Free. María said he was Victorio's son by his second wife and his name was Washington. Before long the two of them were riding on Caesar's shoulders. Before the dancing ended, they had fallen asleep in his lap.
By the time Victorio announced the last dance, Rafe was
dozing, too. Then he felt a tap on his shoulder. Lozen walked away from him and onto the dance ground where couples were gathering. Rafe wanted to decline the invitation, but he had seen what happened to men and boys who did. Broken Foot and Loco seemed to be in charge of the dance, and they dragged the reluctant ones out to face their partners.
Rafe joined Lozen so that they stood a pace away from each other. At least he wouldn't have to touch her. The step was simple enough, and he'd been watching them do it all night. Together they swung back and forth, she taking five steps forward and he backwards, and then reversing so that he advanced on her.
The singing, the drumming, the crackle of the leaping fire, Lozen facing him; her strong, lovely face now in shadow, now lit, all seemed like a dream, except that he would never have dreamed of doing this. The throb of the drums and the sway of bodies around him mesmerized him. He drifted away from his reality to a world more fantastical than he could have imagined.
When the drums and the singing stopped, he and Lozen walked toward the crowd standing around the dance ground. She spoke to him in Spanish, though she looked straight ahead and she hardly moved her mouth. Maybe she didn't want people to see her talking to a Pale Eyes.
“¿Donde está su perra
? Where is your dog?”
“Tiene niños.
She has little ones.”
“Dogs are useful,” Lozen said. “They have far-sight. They can warn of enemies.”
“I will bring you a puppy.”
“
Enjuh,
good,” she said. She looked slantwise up at him, a mischievous smile playing across her full lips. She knew he was ignorant of the customs. “The man is supposed to pay the woman for dancing with her.”
All Rafe had in his pockets was lint, except for a shiny copper penny. He held it on the palm of his hand so the engraved likeness of the Indian faced up.
Lozen's smile was radiant, though Rafe knew she had no use for a coin as currency. She took it and slipped it into the
small pouch hanging at her waist. She reached out a hand and touched the leather pouch that he had found in his old wagon years ago, and in which he kept whichever of Shakespeare's works he was reading. Her smile turned a little sly, and he knew for sure, finally, who had made it.
Without saying anything more, she put her arm through that of an old woman with a ringtail's elfin face and flared ears. The two of them walked off into the assembling dawn.
Her grandmother, Rafe thought. The old one is probably Lozen's grandmother.
Lozen had a family. She had a life far different from anything in Rafe's experience, and yet similar, too. Rafe had had a grandmother, until the Comanches, frugal with their arrows, clubbed her to death.
Victorio took Rafe and Caesar to a brush-covered shelter at his wife's camp. Someone had put down two heaps of fragrant cedar branches inside. Rafe and Caesar picketed their horses at the entrance. The camp grew quiet except for occasional coughs and snores and the brief fussing of a baby. Rafe slept more soundly than he would have thought possible, being in the den of the lion and all. He left his boots on, though.
When the sound of women's laughter woke them, the sun had already risen. Charlie Sets Him Free and Wah-sin-ton stood in the doorway.
As soon as Caesar stirred, the boys shouted,
“Shida'a.”
They ran in, jumped on him, and started bouncing on his chest.
Caesar spoke in gusts as his new relations jolted the wind out of him. “What's the word for
nephew
, Rafe?”
“I think it's
shik'a'a
.”
Rafe left them wrestling in the tangle of the blankets and stepped outside. The first thing he noticed was that both Red and the gray were munching on piles of grass that someone had left for them. The second thing he noticed was that the valley was on fire, or at least it appeared to be. Smoke hovered over everything. It came from the cookfires scattered
along the river and across the surrounding hills as far as the eye could see.
The rancheria covered much more area than he had thought, and all of it was in a ferment. In spite of the fact that they had spent most of the night dancing, women and girls swarmed in and out of Victorio's wives' arbors and the cookfires scattered around them. Rafe saw Lozen and her grandmother and Pandora sorting, chopping, peeling, skinning, and gutting with the rest. A second arbor contained baskets and trays of food and trinkets. Leather pouches bulged with goods. So much for Victorio's claim that his people were poor.
Other women hurried to and fro with loaded burden baskets and water jugs. Some bent at the waist under heaps of firewood. The young children collected kindling and carried small water jugs, or they chased each other around, more excited and frenetic than the day before. An army of small boys rubbed down the hundreds of ponies and led them to better grass. A group of girls sang and danced where the boys would be sure to see them.
Victorio, Loco, and fifteen or twenty men were clearing rocks and pebbles from the dance ground, then sweeping it with bundles of brush. Some of them laid a foothill of wood for a fire and dragged in four thirty-foot-long saplings that seemed to have some special purpose. Steam rose from a hut by the river, and Rafe heard the muted chant of male voices from inside it.
Caesar came out, hoisted the boys onto his shoulders, and stood next to Rafe. He was wearing his new moccasins with his wool trousers tucked into the high tops. Rafe felt a twinge of envy.

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