Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

Ghost Warrior (54 page)

BOOK: Ghost Warrior

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She raised the gun barrel until it pointed straight up. She wheeled the mare, kicked her sides, and rode away with the mare's bell clanging. The mules trotted after her, all except Malaria. He whirled and made a beeline for Rafe. Rafe
grabbed his lead rope in case the mule should change his mind and go off gallivanting. All he carried were tents and trenching tools. Rafe suspected the Ninth would not defeat Victorio with trenching tools.

Rafe had always known Lozen was a thief, but now he realized she was much worse than that. She had almost certainly killed one or both of the Mexican muleteers, both of them good men, men with families. She could have killed him, too, but she hadn't. Still, he couldn't let her make off with the supplies and the ammunition.

Rafe raised his Sharps and fixed her in the sight. She did not try to dodge, and she did not look back. He knew what she was saying. You are my friend. I know you will not kill me.

He increased the pressure against the trigger, feeling the crook of his finger interlock with the smooth curve of the metal. He took a deep breath. He gave himself a stern but brief lecture on duty and the folly of holding with the hare while running with the hounds.

He lowered the carbine.

Chapter 56

WE RUN LIKE LIZARDS

M
others and grandmothers rode with the infants' cradleboards slung from the saddle horns. Their older children sat behind them, sleeping with their cheeks against their backs, their arms dangling. The ropes that tied them to their mothers' waists kept them from tumbling off. Her Eyes Open's five-year-old grandnephew, Torres, sat behind her, and his baby sister's cradleboard hung alongside. Her Eyes Open and Lozen traveled up and down the weary line, waking the women who dozed so they wouldn't fall off their horses and take the children with them.

For months Victorio and Broken Foot's bands had barely kept ahead of the soldiers. They had beaten the Bluecoats at every turn, but the warfare had taken a toll. The old life, as unsettled as it might have appeared, seemed idyllic to Lozen. They had all been together then, instead of bereft of their very young and their very old. They had not been able to rescue the members of their band still at San Carlos, and the sense of loss never left them.

For generations they had built their lodges under the cottonwoods by the stream at Warm Springs. Now they never camped near water, and they avoided the shelter of trees and warm valleys. They built their tiny daytime fires among the boulders and in the high crevices. At night they made no fires at all, no matter how cold the wind. They laid out their ragged blankets on the bare heights or in caves. Lozen remembered winter nights when everyone gathered around a big fire and listened to stories until the sun rose. Those days were the stuff of legends themselves now, as distant as the
tales of Giant Monster, Child Of The Water, and White Painted Woman.

The Comanches in the band suggested fleeing east into their country. From there they could swing south to Mexico rather than run the gauntlet of Bluecoats guarding all the routes here. The country to the east was more barren and provided less cover. The People had not cached food or supplies there, but Victorio agreed to try it.

For the journey the women had cut the tin cones off the fringes of their clothes so that the bells would not alert the Bluecoats. They were all hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and pursued, but they were alive, and they were free. No one complained, but they had to find water before the horses gave out.

The young men reported the army's scouts nearby, although the soldiers themselves must be many miles behind them. The nearest spring lay in an exposed position, and the band dared not stop there. They would drop down on it from above.

The trail to the broad ledge above it was so narrow that everyone dismounted before starting up it. Victorio walked along the line to make sure each small child was secured by a rope to an adult. Then he and Lozen headed the procession on foot while the other men led the horses at the rear. Lozen turned to watch the children and the mothers with their cumbersome cradleboards and water jugs. In some places the trail had crumbled away, and they would have to jump the gaps. If one of the adults fell, no one could do anything about it.

When they all had reached the top, Lozen lay on her stomach and wriggled out over the edge. She spidered down the cliff face, finding cracks and niches for her fingers and toes. She had always been strong, but a year on the run, fighting alongside the men, had hardened and defined every muscle. She had always been fast, too, but now she could overtake a deer on an uphill slope and not breathe hard.

While she waited at the spring for the women to lower the water jugs, she watched a lizard materialize from the coarse sand at her feet. Its speckled scales blended almost perfectly
with its surroundings. It scurried between two boulders and vanished. Broken Foot often said they all lived like lizards these days, running and hiding among the rocks. Lozen reminded him that in the old stories, Lizard was clever enough to save his life by convincing Coyote that the sky was about to fall. Lizard also helped Child Of The Water battle the Giant Monsters back at the beginning of the world. Lizards could survive heat and cold, flood and drought. Resembling a lizard was not so bad.

She had filled the last water jug and sent it up when Fights Without Arrows signaled her that someone was coming. He and Victorio hauled her up while she fended off with her feet. From a distance she looked as though she were bounding like a deer up the perpendicular cliff.

Lozen, Victorio, Fights Without Arrows, Chato, and Broken Foot lay on their stomachs at the edge. They watched as the three Ndee, looking for tracks, approached across the plain below.

“The Bluecoats' dogs,” muttered Fights Without Arrows.

When men of the Ndee had first agreed to scout for the Bluecoats ten years ago, they had enlisted to fight against their old enemies, the Pimas and the Navajos. They had adventures while the others languished on the reservations. Their monthly allotment of the Pale Eyes' metal disks meant little, but their people did envy them their freedom. They admired their shiny new rifles and their plentiful supply of ammunition. Now, they were leading Bluecoats to their own.

“I had no warning of enemies approaching.” Lozen wondered if she knew them. She wished she had the far-seeing glass she had taken from Hairy Foot so many years ago, but it had long since broken.

“The spirits must be confused by this,” said Broken Foot. “How can our own people be enemies?”

Fights Without Arrows glared down at the three men. “Those coyotes are the worst kind of enemies.”

“I recognize them.” Victorio couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice. “They're Chiricahuas. They're Nantan Chihuahua's people.”

Each of the scouts drank while the other two kept watch, but they didn't look up. By the time they finished, Fights Without Arrows could not hold his rage any longer. He stood and leveled his Winchester at them.

“You betray your brothers for the Pale Eyes' metal,” he shouted. “We'll reward you with plenty of metal. We'll make you so heavy with metal you won't be able to trot after your Pale Eyes masters.”

The three scouts looked up; then they whirled and ran. Fights Without Arrows took aim at them.

“Do not shoot them, brother,” Lozen murmured.

He glared at her, incensed that she would tell him what to do.

“Let them go,” said Victorio. “They are few, and they aren't shooting at us.”

Fights Without Arrows looked at Broken Foot, sure he would agree that they should be killed.

“Let them go,” Broken Foot said.

“That was a stupid thing to do.” Chato turned on Fights Without Arrows. “Now they know where we are, and they'll tell the Bluecoats.”

“One with no sense at all should not call another stupid.”

Chato threw down his rifle and lunged at him. Victorio stepped between them and put a hand on Chato's chest. “We have no time for childish fights.”

Victorio turned and walked toward where his people waited. They would have to flee for their lives again, but he couldn't blame Fights Without Arrows for losing his temper.

ANOTHER HORSE COLLAPSED IN THE SCORCHING SAND. THE soldier who had been leading him unbuckled the cinch and wrestled off the saddle, bridle, and saddlebags. He threw them over his shoulder and staggered on through the cloud of alkalai dust.

The lava rocks had torn up the men's knee-high boots. The soldiers had stuffed their worn-out boots with scraps of leather, sacking, and blankets. The hot sand seeped into the
holes, and poured in over the tops of the high boots. It grated like sandpaper on their raw blisters.

No one talked. Even Private Simpson's banjo had nothing to say. Each man set himself to the labor of picking one foot up, levering it forward, setting it down in a place likely to do the least damage to it, shifting the body's weight over it, and starting the process again.

The only good part of this scout was that Caesar had come along as a civilian to help Rafe with the mule train. He had confessed that he still hoped he and Dead Shot could convince Victorio to surrender. Neither Rafe nor Dead Shot thought that likely.

Dead Shot put it best. “That Victorio, he one smart sumbitch.”

Now Dead Shot slowed his pace so Rafe and Caesar could catch up with him. “Tank, plenty close.” He pointed his chin at the peak ahead, skirted about with lava outcrops and boulders.

“Will it have water?” Rafe couldn't imagine water anymore, except for the odorous, alkali sludge in his canteen.

“Sure 'nough fine water.”

Dead Shot pulled a flat packet from one of his sacks and unwrapped the oiled paper and the cloth. With a shy smile he held up the small photograph on a copper plate stored in a leather frame with a hinged lid and a clasp.

The sunlight glinting across the silver coating of the oldfashioned daguerrotype gave the images an ethereal quality. Depending on what angle Rafe held the frame, the subjects faded in and out of view. The photographer had posed Dead Shot, his young Warm Springs wife, and their two small sons with the usual propsâa barrel cactus, some striped Mexican blankets, and earthenware pots.

The baby, all eyes and button nose and bristly spikes of black hair, was laced into the cradleboard leaning against his seated mother's skirt. He looked startled by the whole enterprise. The young woman, in a calico dress, had her hands folded in her lap. With her head tilted slightly down, she looked up at the camera.

Dead Shot sat with his sturdy legs spread and his hands resting on his knees. The two-year-old leaned against his father's side, with his elbow set on Dead Shot's thigh and his head resting in the palm of his hand. The child had crossed his ankles jauntily.

Dead Shot had on his best checked gingham shirt. He wore a length of the same gingham wrapped around his head, the ends twisted and tied in a knot in the center of his forehead. He had tucked his cotton duck trousers into his high moccasins, and he wore a breechclout over them. The barrel of his Springfield rifle rested against his thigh. He stared straight out at Rafe with that direct, honest gaze of his.

The photograph had cost almost a month's salary. After his wife and children, it was his most precious possession. He was obviously waiting for some comment.

“Ba'oidii,”
Rafe said. “
Ba'oidii zho
. Handsome. Very handsome.”

Dead Shot grinned. He wrapped the photograph back up and stowed it in his pouch. He turned his attention to the country around him. What he saw, or rather, what he didn't see, puzzled him.

“Horse, him too damned quiet,” he said. “Mule, him too damned quiet.”

“What do you mean?” asked Rafe.

He went back to his own language. “The horses, they should smell the water in that tank now. They should be saying to themselves, âHey, I'm plenty thirsty. What are we waiting for? Let's go!'”

Rafe and Caesar exchanged a glance. Neither wanted to suggest that it had dried up. The possibility was unthinkable. Some of the soldiers were muttering to themselves, the first signs of the madness that thirst could trigger.

The scouts led the rush for the tank. The soldiers staggered after them. Lieutenant Gatewood caught up with Rafe, who could not manage more than a slow jog. They saw Major Morrow standing on the tank's rock rim. He waved his pistols to keep the men from reaching it.

Rafe smelled the stench before he saw the coyote floating
in what was otherwise a clear pool of water. Its rotting intestines floated out from the gash in its belly. Human feces bobbed around it. The meaning was clear to anyone who knew anything about the Apache sense of humor.

Desperate with thirst, men tried to veer around Morrow. He fired shots over their heads, but some of them reached the water and started drinking.

“I thought the Apaches had a superstition about killing coyotes.”

“Killing a coyote is bad medicine,” said Dead Shot, “but if they find a dead one they can do that.” He nodded toward the gutted animal. “A man with coyote power could do it. Geronimo, he has coyote magic, but he'd have to make medicine afterwards to chase away the bad spirits.”

Rafe put a hand on the chestnut's neck to steady himself. Pain pounded behind his eyes. His tongue had acquired the texture and tautness of a horsehair sofa. It made talking and swallowing an arduous and unsettling task.

Shouting, one of the soldiers set a zigzag course into the desert. Sergeant Carson ran after him and tackled him. Two other men helped subdue him, but they had to tie his hands and feet and carry him back. Rafe gave Carson the reins of his chestnut so they could load the man onto him.

“We have to go back,” said Morrow.

Rafe wanted to cry with relief. He wanted to turn on his heels and start north immediately. He wanted to throttle Gatewood when he protested.

“We can't stop now. Dead Shot says we're almost up with them.”

“The men are played out,” said Morrow. “We have to go back to that last well or we'll all perish.”

“Parker took seventy of his scouts into the field,” said Gatewood. “We can rendezvous with them and keep on Victorio's track.”

BOOK: Ghost Warrior

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