Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (26 page)

That was when the lone Indian with a
rifle came stumbling down the broken lane.

As the Indian rounded the vardo, not
even glancing at the camels, and trotted across the plaza to the building where
Mendez and the
rurales
slept, Belden swung
up onto the vardo’s porch and burst inside, causing Kabede and Faustus both to
bolt aright, pistols and rifle aimed at him.

He ignored the threat and leaned in
the doorway so they could see the Indian under his arm.

“We got trouble,” he said.

“Apaches!” the Indian called, even
before he’d reached the building. “Apaches!”

The rising sun spilled red light
into the deep canyon and the Rider felt himself stiffen.

“Do
not look down
,” Piishi’s voice suggested in his head.

He was hugging the stony wall of the
mountain path (at time broken into harrowing gaps across which he’d been
obliged to hop, it was hardly a path-why did the Apache favor such precarious
causeways?), cowering from the sheer drop like an unwanted child nuzzling a
mother’s cold breast. To make matters worse, his slow, careful progress was
incurring the omnipresent Apache’s stoic but unavoidable disapproval. No doubt
if Piishi had control of his body, he could navigate the treacherously narrow
path with the careless alacrity of an ibex at play. The Rider was considerably
less confident in his abilities. It was a long way down, thousands of feet into
the brushy canyon below.

It was cool here too. He could see
his breath, and his fingertips ached. The snow capped ridges were close enough
to make out the details of the trees now.

Soon he came to a high pile of
boulders that littered the path ahead, cutting off progress.

“What now?” the Rider panted aloud,
falling gratefully against the boulders, which occupied a wide enough section
of land to put him at ease.

“Now you will tell me who you are
and what you are doing up here alone,” said a woman’s voice from above.

The Rider looked up, and saw an
Apache woman sitting on her heels atop the boulder slide, a Winchester cradled
in her arms, a Navajo blanket over her shoulders. She was broad faced and angry
looking, and her sudden appearance, with her wild black hair and penetrating
eyes, sent an involuntary shiver through the Rider, as if he had come across a
dangerous animal by accident.

“I
know this woman
,” said Piishi. “
She
is Lozen, Bidu-ya’s sister.”

“Do
you know Bidu-ya?”

“Even
you know him, Rider. As Vittorio. They are my cousins.”

Vittorio. The Rider indeed knew that
name. Whites were terrified of him. If the newspapers were to be believed, he
had recently slaughtered a patrol of 9th Cavalry at Ojo Caliente.

The woman on the boulder shrugged
off her blanket and stood, aiming her rifle down at him. She wore the clothes
of a man, crossed bandoliers over a vest, the cartridge loops filled with
bullets.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Answer
this
,” Piishi said.
“Do not show
fear.”

The Rider spoke the words as Piishi
dictated. He was aware that he was speaking Apache, and understanding it as
well when Lozen spoke.

“Piishi of the Chihine’Dine. We are
cousins.”

She stared, then put up her rifle.

“You look…older, Piishi,” Lozen
said. “What are you doing here?”

Again, Piishi told the Rider what to
say.

“I heard the prophet speak at San
Carlos. I came to hear more.”

“More are coming from there today.
Goyaałé with his Bedonkohe people, and Juh and Naiche too.”

This gave the Rider and Piishi both
pause. San Carlos was miles away, and a person like Goyaałé, Piishi said,
would be missed if he and his band were to light out.

“We heard no news of them leaving
San Carlos.”

“They have not left yet,” said
Lozen.

“How will they get here in time?”

“The prophet’s power will make it
happen. If you had waited, he would have brought you too.”

She jutted out an ample hip then,
resting the stock of the rifle there and looked down at him. The posture was
both feminine and intimidating at the same time.

“Are you coming up here or not?”

“I’m coming,” the Rider said through
Piishi.

He clambered up the slide of
boulders, being careful not to slip, and joined her at the top.

Spread out before them, hidden
entirely from view from the path and the canyon below was a deep cleft of land
that took the Rider’s breath away. The earth was red and rich within, verdant
with a generous sprinkling of green shrubs and trees. This was no typical
Indian fortress generously given the appellation of oasis for its abundance of
cactus pears and stagnant, seeping groundwater. It was a real paradise, with a
pool of clean water continuously fed by a trickle high in the rock wall, no
doubt originating from the mountain snow above, the ages old source of this
grand anomaly. Birds nested in the crafty trees, and he even spied squirrels
winding up the trunks. There were wickiups and other structures at the far end.

“I will take you to see the prophet,”
she said.

“Pa-Gotzin-Kay,”
said Piishi, in the Rider’s mind as they descended into the little valley
. “This is the most sacred stronghold of my
people, Rider. If ever the white men found it…”

“They
won’t,”
the Rider promised silently.

If they did, the Rider knew that
would be the end of the Apache for all time. The end of this place, for as they
passed the sheltering stone, the Rider detected a glimmer shot throughout the
surface. There were veins of sparkling, untouched gold, like fossilized
lightning somehow trapped in the smooth, eroded rock, emanating outward from
the old, dwindling waterfall like the garish and overabundant embellishments of
some baroque cathedral. There was gold enough to drive a nation full of men to
madness and fund an epoch of butchery.

“You
are not like other white men, Rider,”
said Piishi suddenly. “
I know your heart as you know mine. There is
no lust for gold in you.”

“I
don’t need it.”

“But
you want the death of a man. This…Adon. He is your gold, Rider.”

They had picked their way down to
the floor of the stronghold, and a fawn pranced before them into the brush.

Lozen led them past other armed
Apaches, who regarded him with mild interest as they cleaned their rifles.
These were Vittorio’s men. With the help of Piishi’s knowledge, he marked some
of them. Kas-tziden was there, Góyą́ń, and Silva too. It was odd
to see strange, hard faces and know them instantly. Silva was impetuous and
loved women too much, Kas-tziden liked his drink. Lozen had power; power to see
the movement of her enemies from afar. She was their seer, one eye naturally
open to the
Yenne Velt.

They found Vittorio himself with
another warrior and the prophet, standing near the pool, which was fed by the
waterfall. Many other Indians stood or sat around, not all of them Apache, by
their dress. The Rider recognized Navajo in black wool vests, and Piishi picked
out a group of strange looking warriors all in wolf skins as Tonkawas. There
were Pawnees, with impressive bear claw necklaces and their singular hair,
paint stiffened and roached. There was a band of Indians in loincloths with
bowl-cut hair and intricate patterned blankets over their shoulders neither of
them could identify.

Vittorio (or Bidu-ya, as Piishi knew
him) was lean, and his sharp eyes glittered like arrow tips beneath his broad
warband. His hair was shot with streaks of gray, though he was not old. Gray
hair and scars were the only marks of rank among the Apache. Though he was a
killer, the Rider had Piishi’s memories of him as a boy, playing the hoop and
stick game and splashing in the river, and this softened his perception of the
warrior somewhat, made him more human. He saw the happy times, the dances, the
pony races, and he saw the lean times on the reservation too. He remembered the
double dealings at San Carlos, the bad meat and the poor drainage, the
hardscrabble gardens and the missionaries pushing the white man’s salvation.
The filth and the smell. No wonder he and his band had left.

The second warrior neither Piishi
nor the Rider knew. He wore a Stetson with a horsehair band from under which
his long black hair spilled over his narrow shoulders. He had thin whiskers
over his upper lip, and a bullet scar across his left forearm. The handle of a
knife stuck out from his boot.

When the prophet turned, the Rider
did not need Piishi’s memories to know him. He was indeed Misquamacus. Older,
uglier, his face like the bottom of a dry wash cracked by the sun, his white
eyebrow split over his eye by the meandering scar a 3rd Cavalry saber had given
him at Sand Creek.

When the Rider had known him, he had
been a Cheyenne all in red stained buckskins and beads, the wound over his eye
still fresh. Now he wore the garb of a Chiricahua, long red shirt, red
leggings, and a red breechclout that touched the ground. He wore Apache
talismans, like the
tzi-daltai
Piishi
had presented the Rider, and a kind of bandolier of woven chords strung with
smooth stones and beads—an
izze-kloth
,
Piishi’s mind told him. He wore no band across his wrinkled brow though, and
his striking silver and white hair hung like cobwebs from his old head.

Vittorio’s stoic face slackened
slightly at the sight of Piishi, and his expression brightened.

“Piishi,” said Vittorio. “Is it you?
What’s happened to you?”

The Rider nodded, but his eyes
flitted to the other two. The one in the hat was sizing him up and looked
unimpressed. Misquamacus was peering directly at him, and the Rider had a
feeling like when he was a boy playing hide and seek, watching through a crack
in a curtain as a playmate tried to penetrate the darkness and find him.

“Hard times,” the Rider said. “I’ve
been sick.”

“This is Inya,” said Vittorio,
gesturing to the man beside him. The Rider detected a distaste for the other
Indian in Piishi.

“An
outlaw
,” said Piishi. “
I have heard
of him. He was cast out of the Bedonkohe band for taking a man’s wife by force.”

Misquamacus stepped away from the
other two toward Piishi, peering right into his eyes—at the Rider.

“My cousin, Piishi,” said Vittorio.

“This is not Piishi,” Misquamacus
said directly.

The Indians looked at each other
querulously. Some who had been sitting rose to their feet.

“He
knows. He sees,”
said Piishi.

Yes, said the Rider. He had thought
he might.

Misquamacus came closer, narrowing
his eyes like a man trying to see through a lit window. The Rider could smell
him, a wild smell of wood smoke, sweat, and tobacco.

“Who are you?” Misquamacus demanded,
his eyebrows coming together.

The Rider felt Piishi’s
consciousness stirring, rising to the surface.

“Be
calm,”
he cautioned.

“This is a white man in an Indian’s
body,” Misquamacus said finally, turning away. “Take him and throw him off the
mountain.”

Piishi’s essence stirred,
shouldering past his own, threatening to take over his body. He felt the
flutter behind his eyes starting as the warriors rushed in, pulling knives.

“No!”
he thought.

“I
will not die here!”
Piishi argued.

Vittorio stepped between the
warriors and Piishi.

“I do not know what is happening
here, but this man is my cousin,” he said.

“He’s not your cousin, brother,”
said Misquamacus. “Your cousin’s dead. A white man is wearing his skin like a
blanket.”

“Wait,” the Rider said in English
through gritted teeth, as much to Piishi as to the others. “Piishi is not dead.”

Inya stepped past Misquamacus, and
came before Vittorio, a wolfish look on his face, as if he was eager for a
fight.

“Stand aside, Bidu-ya,” he said,
putting a hand on his knife.

“Get this thing of yours away from
me,” Vittorio said in disgust to Misquamacus.

Inya drew his knife in answer to the
insult.

“What-would-Paveve’keso say,” the
Rider said haltingly, fighting to keep control of Piishi, “if she–could see you–now?”

Misquamacus regarded him, eyes
narrowing.

“Who are you?”

“Rider-Who-Walks.”

Within, Piishi settled, as
Misquamacus gestured for Inya and the others to stand down.

“Put him in my wickiup,” Misquamacus
said to Vittorio.

“What is this?” Vittorio asked. “This
is not Piishi?”

“It is and it isn’t,” Misquamacus
said. “I will restore what is and take out what isn’t.”

Vittorio turned to regard the
Rider/Piishi. This time he drew his pistol from his belt, and waved it in a
dismissing gesture.