Ghost Warrior (48 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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L
ozen tried cooing like a dove to the big brindle bull, but she didn't fool him. He could see that she looked nothing like a dove. She didn't smell like one, either. He was irate and chagrined that she had sneaked up on him while he cavorted on his back in the mud, singing to himself, his lanky shanks churning the hot air.
He lurched up out of the wallow and gave four grunts and a snort. His horns looked wide enough to hang one of those Mexican hammocks between them. His crusted muzzle, pulled by the counterweight of his horns, swung from side to side like a snake's. Strings of saliva whipped back and forth.
He plowed the earth with his left horn, then with his right. With a bellow, he charged Lozen and tried to rip out her horse's entrails. The gray sidestepped and seemed not to take the discourtesy personally. Lozen decided to leave the bull to breed with the cows that she and the men didn't manage to round up. She'd gotten his attention now, though.
The pony fled up the canyon with the brindle's breath singeing the far end of his tail. Lozen turned the horse sharply, and he leaped like a goat up the rocky slope. The bull's momentum carried him past and into the cloud of green-and-yellow-striped grasshoppers and the turkeys that chased them. The grasshoppers soared above the grass, and the turkeys rose in a great flapping of wings. Lozen headed into a small side canyon in search of livestock hiding in the scrubby growth of creosote bush and cactus.
She had come to Cheis's country with Victorio, Fights Without Arrows, Broken Foot, Chato, Flies In His Stew, He
Steals Love, and He Makes Them Laugh. The usual complement of herd boys included fifteen-year-old Wah-sin-ton and Sets Him Free. These animals were what the Mexicans called
ladinos,
crafty and wild.
Cheis's men had driven them here years ago. The Tall Cliffs People had let them multiply so they could hunt them when they needed meat. After a witch put the evil into Cheis's belly and killed him, the band's council voted his son Taza
nantan.
Cheis had trained Taza for the position, but Taza was not the leader his father was.
Then in early summer, John Clum, whom The People called Hat, Soft And Floppy, arrived with fifty-six White Mountain Apache police. He said the Tall Cliffs People's land no longer belonged to them. He said that too many bad men lurked there. He persuaded Taza to take three hundred of the band north to San Carlos with him. Over four hundred others chose to go to Mexico with Long Neck and Geronimo. About two hundred headed east to live on their own or join Victorio's and Loco's bands. They were the ones who had told Victorio about the wild cattle.
The Pale Eyes agent at the Warm Springs agency cut beef rations. The snowy season of Ghost Face was on the way. Victorio's people needed more than the few cattle they could butcher here and carry back in the hides. Victorio and Broken Foot had decided to drive them to the camp where the women were gathering piñon nuts. They could slaughter them there and dry the meat.
Lozen had gone on enough raids to know how to drive stock, how to head them, how to turn them, when to crowd them, and when to give them room. By late afternoon, though, she and her horse were lathered, lacerated, winded, and irritated. She and the others decided to start back to camp with what they had. On the way, they met Long Neck, Geronimo, and their men headed south with a herd of cavalry horses.
Victorio shared tobacco with them. “Do you have guns?” he asked. “And bullets and powder?”
“We don't need powder anymore.” Long Neck gestured,
and a Mexican rode forward with a shiny new carbine.
Victorio hefted it. It was lighter than the old ones. He worked the lever, listening to the action of the bolt and the hammer, watching the smooth, interconnecting slide of it parts. He handed it to Lozen, who levered it, raised it, and looked down the two sights.
“I'll give you four cows for it,” Victorio said.
“Six.”
“Six then.”
“Come with us, and get your own guns,” Long Neck said.
“Not today.”
Geronimo smiled his parody of good humor. “The Americans will keep cutting the beef issue until you agree to go into the San Carlos corral with Taza and the rest of the tame ones. You'll have to live with those White Mountain coyotes.”
Victorio followed his usual policy of ignoring him. He gestured to the herd boys to cut six cows from the herd. Then he and Lozen and the others rode away without looking back.
 
 
CAESAR RODE WITH FOURTEEN MEN OF THE NINTH CAVALRY and the lieutenant, plus ten White Mountain scouts on foot, their captain, Joe Felmer, and the rancher whose cattle they were hunting. The scouts had no trouble finding the cattle's prints. The track was well trampled.
Dust covered the men, the horses, the pack mules, and the equipment. It settled in Caesar's eyes, his ears, his nose, his throat. It clung in the two-weeks' growth of beard. Only a few sips of water remained in each canteen. Over the long summer, the soldiers had learned to survive in a land determind to kill them. They had always had endurance, but Caesar was proud to see them develop resourcefulness.
In the search for renegade Apaches, they had forded rivers, climbed mountains, slid down talus slopes, crossed barren expanses, and threaded their way along narrow ledges. The Apaches had used their old method of dividing their raiding parties when pursued, then dividing again and again and scattering
so the soldiers could never chase them all.
Caesar had no illusions. Some of the raiders were bad men, but many were only trying to feed their families. He thought of the cornfields the soldiers had destroyed. The loss of their crops only made the Apaches more apt to raid.
The lieutenant waved him forward. Felmer and the scouts had found a large camp of women and children, and the cattle were there.
The rancher shifted the twig he was chewing to the corner of his mouth. “I hear tell they's a big camp in these parts where the 'Pache been taking stolen stock. I reckon we done found it.”
“We'll ride in fast,” said the lieutenant. “Aim for the men, but if anyone else takes a bead on you, shoot him. Round up the women and children to hold for transport to San Carlos.”
Night had almost fallen by the time they neared the camp and the lieutenant shouted “Charge.” When they passed the outermost lodges, the soldiers began to whoop. Caesar wasn't sure who let off the first shot, but his men fired at will, until they realized that no one was shooting back. The camp was deserted. In their headlong career, they overturned trays of piñon nuts. The horses knocked over racks of drying meat, too. There were a lot of racks. Caesar smelled a piece of the meat. Beef. He was ready to bet they wouldn't find any cattle on the hoof here.
The horses had scattered embers from the cookfires and ignited arbors and lodges. By their light men picked up souvenirs—bows and arrows, leather pouches, a few tin pots. They milled about; then they drove off a colt and a sore-backed mare, the only horses they found.
 
 
HE MAKES THEM LAUGH WAS AS RESPONSIBLE FOR SAVING everyone as Lozen was. He had invited them all to hear stories, so when Lozen heard the roaring in her ears, they could get the women and children to safety quickly.
At dusk the next day, when Lozen could assure them that
the Bluecoats had ridden far away, they returned to see what they could salvage. Victorio was taut with rage as he walked through the ruins, trying to comfort and reassure those who chose to walk the path of peace with him. When they asked why the Bluecoats had attacked them Victorio had no answer, but Lozen knew he blamed Geronimo and Long Neck as much at the Bluecoats.
 
 
JOHN CLUM WAS ON A TEAR AGAIN. HIS SHOUTS CARRIED to where the 110 men of his Apache police force had set up camp. Eight companies of the Ninth Cavalry were supposed to have been waiting here at Fort Bowie.
“What do you mean they aren't here? Where in the goddamned hell are the unreliable sons of bitches?”
Dead Shot glanced toward the commandant's office; then he went back to sewing a new sole on his moccasin. “Take cover,” he said solemnly in Apache. “Turkey Gobbler is dragging his wings again.”
Rafe laughed at the image of that whiffet, Clum, posturing to make himself look larger. He realized, with a start, that he had understood what Dead Shot had said. Dead Shot realized it too. He and Dreamer, Little One, Flattened Penis, Skippy, and Big Mouth beamed at Rafe as though he were a dimwitted child who had just learned a clever trick.
Clum had asked Rafe to take charge of the mule train on this expedition, and Rafe had almost refused. Weeks of heat, thirst, hardship, bother, and sphincter-constricting peril he could abide, but not in John Clum's company. In the past three years, John Clum had protested just about every order, directive, suggestion, and memorandum that the army or the Department of the Interior had sent him. Yet here he was, setting out to follow the government's latest whim telegraphed to him March 20, 1877, a month ago. He was to arrest renegade Apaches. He was to seize stolen horses and restore property to its rightful owners. He was to march the renegades to San Carlos and hold them until they could be tried for murder and robbery.
The idea was foolhardy to the point of insanity, but Clum was enthusiastic about it. Rafe could agree, for once, with the
Arizona Miner'
s editor when he wrote, “The brass and impudence of this young bombast is perfectly ridiculous.” But Rafe was between jobs, and, since they would be going to the Warm Springs agency, he might see Lozen.
Once he got to know Clum, Rafe could understand why the Apaches on his police force put up with him. He was charming when he wanted to be. He was honest, courageous, and a demon for hard work. People admired him or hated him, but they were never indifferent on the subject.
Rafe thought of Geronimo whose smile reminded him of Caligula watching lions eat Christians. He remembered Whoa, as imperious on his little brown pony as any Roman caesar.
God knows, Rafe thought, the Apaches are used to arrogant leaders.
The best part of the trip had been getting to know the White Mountain Apache police. Rafe liked to sit at their fires, sharing tobacco and listening to them tell stories, the point of which seemed to be to poke fun at each other. Tonight they were mending their moccasins, cleaning their new breechloading Springfields, and rolling powder and lead balls into squares of paper, then twisting the ends closed to make cartridges. They did all of it with a sort of ferocious domesticity.
Dreamer took from the fire a sharpened green stick threaded with chunks of sizzling venison and handed it to Rafe. Rafe started to blow on it to cool it enough to eat, but the men all grunted in disapproval.
“If you blow on the meat,” said Dreamer, “you'll blow the deer away.”
While Rafe waited for the venison to cool, he asked the question that had bothered him the entire trip.
“Why do they call that one Flattened Penis?”
Dreamer shrugged, a gesture he'd picked up in his travels. “I don't know. It's just a name.”
The talk meandered on, a discussion mostly of the trouble
that Geronimo, Whoa, and the wild Chiricahuas had brought down on everyone. Little One opined that it was fine for the leaders and the young men to go off raiding, but the women and children and old people suffered.
Big Mouth summed up their feelings about the renegades. “We're done with them,” he said. “We'll catch them all and lock them up.”
“Mba'tsose indee tsokonen,”
Dead Shot added. “Those Chiricahua people are coyotes.”
Rafe was about to head for his cot when Dead Shot started a story. “Long time ago, so they say, Coyote saw some Prairie Dog Women sitting in a circle playing the stave game.”
Flattened Penis stood up abruptly and walked away. Rafe snapped to attention. He had figured out that the Apaches' stories were often parables intended to teach some lesson. He had started catching enough of their language to know it was as subtle and enigmatic as any oriental mystic's. He might learn the words, but he would never understand the assumptions and beliefs behind them.
Flattened Penis's abrupt retreat made Rafe think he might get a clue about how the man earned his name. He also realized that Dead Shot had heard his question to Dreamer and had been waiting for a chance to address it. One could not expect immediate answers from Apaches, or even decipherable ones, but the answers came nevertheless if one were patient. They were like the newfangled telegraph with its code of short and long clicks. One had to study them to know what they meant.
Dead Shot told how Coyote convinced gopher to dig a hole up under the prettiest Prairie Dog Woman so he could wiggle in there and poke his thing up into her. But when she felt it, she took a big rock and smashed it. “Make love to this,” she said. The men thought the story was side-clutchingly funny.
Rafe wondered if the point of the fable was that Flattened Penis had tried to woo the wrong woman and had suffered for it. If that was the case, he was still suffering for it.

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