Ghost Warrior (32 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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Victorio returned from conferring with Cheis. He sat next to Lozen with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. Lozen fell asleep leaning against the wall, with Victorio softly chanting his war song. Before dawn, she
awoke to the echoing call of the Bluecoats' metal horns and drums and their small metal flutes.
This song had no words, but the Bluecoats greeted each day as faithfully with it as she and Victorio, Broken Foot, and Grandmother did with their morning songs. She had heard it often after a night spent watching the fort's corral and sentries. With all their rituals of bugle song and formations and walking in step in strange patterns on their dance ground, Lozen assumed the Bluecoats must be religious, but what a strange religion it was.
Leaning on the top of the rock breastwork, Lozen and Victorio watched the morning brighten along the mountain peaks. Rocks and bushes materialized from the gloom. Broken Foot limped downslope to join them. He looked up at the cloudless sky, wet a finger in his mouth, and held it up into the wind. “A good day to fight,” he said.
The bugles sounded again, and the soldiers flowed in their neat ranks from the gates in the stage station's wall. In the center of the column soldiers pushed a pair of small, two-wheeled wagons, each with an iron tube mounted on it.
Chato, Ears So Big, Flies In His Stew, He Makes Them Laugh, and Talks A Lot, the one they now called Fights Without Arrows, ran at a crouch to where Lozen knelt at the wall.
“These boys want to be near your Power.” He Makes Them Laugh grinned at her.
Chato scowled. “We can see better from here.”
“Make sure every shot hits the man you aim at,” Broken Foot said.
Today they would finish what they had started. When they ran out of arrows, they would fight with their knives, with their lances, with rocks, with their hands.
The soldiers stopped long before they came into musket range, though. They unloaded the wooden chests from the horses. They bustled around the two small wagons like ants around a dead catepillar. Heads appeared above the breastworks as the warriors watched them.
“They're getting balls as big as loaves of Mexican bread
from those boxes.” Victorio handed the telescope to Broken Foot. “The tubes on the wagons must be a new sort of firestick.”
“Two guns with big bullets.” Fights Without Arrows gave a scornful snort. “What use are two guns, even big ones, against so many of us?”
The Bluecoats stepped away from the left wagon. Flames shot from the mouth of the tube. The rumble that followed it was loud even at this distance. Lozen and the others watched the ball make a whistling arc against the blue sky. The warriors in its path moved away from it. A second one followed from the other wagon.
“Those balls will be easy to dodge,” Fights Without Arrows said.
Then the shot exploded with a roar. Glowing fragments of lead and iron streaked outward, shattering rocks and sending them on their own deadly trajectories. The second one did the same. The Bluecoats pushed the wagons closer and fired two more shells. They advanced again and fired to the left, to the right, and down the center. Shells burst one after the other over the breastworks, raining fire down on them. The din drowned out the warriors' cries.
Men sprinted up the mountains, zigzagging as they ran. Lozen climbed onto the wall and stood silhouetted against the sky, transfixed by the power of the Pale Eyes' magic. This was what her vision had shown her.
She was more curious than afraid. How did the Pale Eyes do this? What spirits gave them thunder and lightning encased in balls of metal? How did the spirits teach them to deliver death so well?
She scanned the rocky slope above her and saw Victorio coming back. Why was he returning? He had told her time and again that in battle she would be on her own. Everyone must scatter to make pursuit more difficult.
He shouted as he slid down the slope, but his words were lost in the explosions, the pop of gunfire, and the clatter of rocks pelting past her. He pointed upward, and she saw the ball shrieking toward her.
She sprinted away, grasping branches to pull herself along. Victorio leaped and hit her with such force that the fall knocked the wind from her. He threw himself across her. Pressed against the rocky ground by his weight, she gasped for breath. The world exploded with a crash that deafened her. A hail of metal clattered around her. Flying chips of rock stung her legs and arms. Dust choked her. Her ears rang.
She felt the warm, slow flow of blood down her arm and for the first time panic shook her. If the Bluecoats had murdered her brother, she would run at them. She would kill as many as she could with her knife and her bare hands until they finished her.
Then Victorio pushed himself to his feet, and Lozen stood, too. A long gash had opened his left arm from his shoulder to his elbow. More blood ran from a diagonal cut across his thigh. Lozen put an arm around his waist, and the two of them scrambled down the far side of the ridge. The din of the big guns stilled suddenly. Lozen heard the shouts of the Bluecoats coming closer.
AN ULTIMATUM FOR DESSERT
D
r. Thomas Overland did not expect Apaches to knock before entering. No one in Janos did. But Apaches had never shown an interest in rustling his leather bag of medical instruments, so he also didn't expect fifty-three of them to push open the street door and walk into his small examining room. The door was made of fourteen-inch-thick oak planks banded with iron, but Dr. Overland never locked it.
Dr. Overland's wife, Dona Elena, was serving him coffee and milk custard in the kitchen beyond the arched doorway at the rear of the examining room. His three daughters were arguing about whose turn it was to pump water to clean the supper dishes. The maid was in the examining room dusting the framed paintings of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and St. Jude, the patron of desperate causes. She ran screaming through the kitchen when the front room filled with dusty warriors, a bristle of bows, arrows, war clubs, lances, knives, and muskets, cracked traces of war paint, plenty of menace, and flies. As more of them crowded in, the ones in front pushed into the kitchen and ranged along the walls.
The daughters bolted after the maid. Dona Elena came to stand behind her husband's chair. He was fluent in Spanish, so he did not need her to translate, but she put a hand on his shoulder to let him know that if they were to die today, they would die together.
Dr. Overland thought there was a chance he and his family wouldn't die. The reason occupied the litter made of blankets and agave stalks that four of the men carried in. Its occupant must be as important as he was big for them to have toted him all this way.
A lad who couldn't have been much more than eighteen ran his lance horizontally along the table and swept the earthenware dishes and serving bowls onto the hardpacked dirt of the floor. He gave a wave of his hand and the four men lifted the litter onto the table, where the patient lay like a main course in front of Dr. Overland. The doctor fanned away the flies.
The patient raised himself on one elbow and barked something at his men. Half of them trotted away, probably to keep watch in the street. Dr. Overland was observant, even in adverse circumstances. He noticed that the young man looked chagrined, probably because he hadn't thought to assign a watch.
“The American Bluecoats shot Red Sleeves, my father,” the boy said in Spanish. “Heal him or we will kill everyone in Janos.” He didn't have to say that they would start with the present company. “We will kill even the chickens and those ugly little dogs that have no hair.”
So this was the famous Red Sleeves. Dr. Overland lifted the blanket, and the stench of the chest wound hit him like the flat of a hand. The hole crawled with maggots, but at least the worms had eaten some of the putrefying flesh.
“Mi amor,”
the doctor said to his wife, “Bring my bag.”
Dona Elena slid through the door, trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and their visitors. She returned with the leather bag.
Red Sleeves shivered, and Dr. Overland gently laid the blanket back over him. Doña Elena hurried to put the kettle on the fire. She went behind the big adobe-brick stove, stepped out of her petticoat, and began tearing it into strips.
Dr. Overland washed his hands.
“Traigame dos botellas de la medicina especial,”
he called to his daughters peering in from outside. He added in English so the Apaches wouldn't understand him, “Don't let them see where we keep it.”
The oldest daughter returned with two bottles of brandy. Dr. Overland gave one to Red Sleeves. The son supported his father in a half-reclining position and held the bottle so
he could drink. For a sick man, Red Sleeves didn't take long to drain it. He looked hopefully at the second bottle, but Dr. Overland shook his head.
“That's for sterilizing the wound, Chief. For killing the bad spirits,” he said.
“Para matar a los espíritus malos.”
“Espíritus santos para matar espíritus malos.
Holy spirits to kill evil ones.” The old man lay back down and smiled beatifically up at the doctor.
“Tu eres muy buen amigo.”
He closed his eyes and began to snore like a bison in a mud wallow.
With his forceps, the doctor picked out worms a few at a time. When he realized that would take too long, he scooped up wriggling masses of them with his hand and threw them into a wooden bucket of table scraps intended for the family pig. As he pushed his hand deeper into Red Sleeves' chest in search of more of the maggots, he prayed.
 
 
THE SCORES OF BUZZARDS TOOK FLIGHT, THEIR WINGS cracking loud as a volley of gunfire. Crows hissed at Rafe like an audience displeased with the villain in a melodrama. Even in the December chill, the stench of rotting flesh hung as heavy as artillery smoke.
Caesar pulled his bandana up to cover his nose and mouth. Standing on a low rise upwind and at a distance, he surveyed the body stripped naked and staked out facedown across a stout yucca plant. The spiked leaves had pushed through him to protrude from his back.
“It ain't human to do a man that-a-way.” The bandana muffled Caesar's deep voice.
Rafe didn't say anything, but he disagreed with Caesar. This was terribly human. An act of kindness would have suprised him more than brutality. Besides, what animal could have thought up such torture?
The charred shape of another man hung head-down from a blackened soapberry tree. The Apaches had set the dead tree on fire, and Rafe had no doubt that they had watched him roast alive, starting with his head. He could imagine
them making jests and cackling at his agony. The other men had been luckier. Lances, bullets, and arrows had sent them to whatever reward or punishment awaited them. From the way body parts were scattered, Rafe figured coyotes had dined here, too.
“Been dead a couple weeks,” he said.
“Do you know them?” Caesar asked.
“Hard to say, but I recognize the clothes on some of them.” The men Rafe knew usually wore the same canvas trousers, flannel shirts, and baggy wool coats year in and year out. Rafe had come to recognize the nuances of each man's set of them.
Rafe continued to walk among the bodies. Those who had died on their backs stared up at him from empty sockets. He had the feeling they were pleading with him to find their eyes and put them back where they belonged. Rogers wasn't among them.
“They're miners from the Santa Rita, bound for Tucson, I would wager. The Apaches probably hid in that wash we just crossed.”
“More of Cochise's devilment?”
“This side of the pass is Red Sleeves' country. He has a particular want of affection for the miners at Santa Rita and Pinos Altos.”
“Maybe John Teal's bullet killed Red Sleeves.”
Rafe started to say that the old buzzard would probably bury them all, but it was too grim and too likely a prophecy. He didn't want to lend it encouragement by voicing it.
“Shouldn't we give them a proper burial?” Caesar asked.
“The soldiers can do it when they get here.”
Caesar looked grateful to be excused from the task of burying close to a ton of decaying flesh in rocky soil. He took off his hat and bowed his head. Rafe waited until he finished praying.
As they turned to walk to where Red and Caesar's big bay gelding cropped the dry grass and Patch lay in a puddle of sunlight, they saw the line of mounted men round a bend in the trail. They led a string of mules, heavily loaded. They
weren't Apaches, but Caesar and Rafe readied their guns anyway. As they drew closer, he saw that a company of Carleton's soldiers rode with them.
“Howdy.” The civilian in the lead glanced at the untidy litter of corpses, as though he had seen plenty such before.
He had intense blue eyes. His white cascade of a beard reached the middle buttons on his coat of bison fur. He would have loomed large even without the coat. With it, he made Rafe feel like David exchanging amenities with Goliath.
“How do you do?” Rafe said.
“Still got my hair on my head.” The stranger took off his hat and released the wild white thatch of it to spring out around his head in defiance of the rule of the hat's crown.
“So do they.” Caesar said dryly, and he nodded toward the bodies.
The man looked only mildly surprised that a Negro would be so impertinent to a white man, and Rafe put a mental mark on the credit side of his ledger.
“The name's Walker, Joseph Reddeford Walker.” He gestured behind him with the hat before he jammed it back over his unruly hair. “Me and the boys are on a jaunt looking for wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.” He grinned. The man had a way about him.
Rafe had heard of Joseph Walker. The word was that he'd spent thirty of his sixty-five years on the frontier. Gossip also said that he had struck a deal with General Carleton. He could do anything he wanted, and Carleton wouldn't interfere, so long as the general got a cut of whatever discoveries Walker made. Walker's company of forty men reminded Rafe of John Glanton's scalp-hunters. He would have bet Red that their number included the usual thieves, murderers, trappers, miners, and Confederate deserters. From somewhere in his past Rafe found an image of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and hung it on Walker and his associates.
“We've ridden clear across the country to California, but the rich veins have played out there, so we're of a mind to do some prospecting in this neck of the woods. We have a
plan to thwart any mischief the Apaches might hatch.”
Rafe couldn't stop himself from asking. “What plan might that be?”
“We intend to kidnap one of their high muck-a-mucks and hold him hostage until we're safely through the territory.”
“God go with you.”
“We've taken care of ourselves through four thousand miles of wilderness and savages out for our hair. God knows He needn't concern Hisself with us.”
Caesar and Rafe swung into their saddles and watched the party rumble off.
“I reckon that means God can spend more of his time looking out for us,” said Casesar. “Do you think the scheme will work?
“Look how it worked for Lieutenant Bascom.”
Rafe had other doubts about the plan. General Carleton was quite specific in his orders concerning Apaches. Rafe had read them.
The campaign against Red Sleeves' band of Apaches must be a vigorous one, and the punishment of that band of murderers and others must be thorough and sharp.
If Walker did manage to capture a chief, would the army let him live long enough to serve as a hostage?
“Your brother's grave isn't far from here.”
“Shouldn't we wait for the soldiers to arrive and give us an escort.”
“No. We can be back before they finish with this burial detail.” Rafe saw the hesitation in Caesar's hazel eyes. He gave a sparse smile that had little of humor in it. “Don't waste your last bullet,” he added.
“‘I have hope to live, and am prepared to die,'” Caesar recited, with a hint of a smile.
“Measure for Measure.”
“I don't know that one.”
From inside his patched and faded cotton shirt, Caesar retrieved a packet wrapped in oiled cloth. He laid back the
corners of the cloth to reveal red velvet. He opened that, too, and held out the book inside. “The ladies at the house where I lived threw a good-bye shindig when I left. They knew I liked the Bard, so they gave me this. I was going to give it to Absalom.”
Rafe opened it and leafed through it.
“Page fifty-one,” Caesar said.
Rafe read from where Caesar left off. “‘Be absolute for death; either death or life / Shall thereby be the sweeter.'” He closed it and held it out, but Caesar shook his head.
“You take it.” He looked down, suddenly shy. “Maybe we could recite from it the way you and Absalom used to do.”
“That we can. That we can.” But what Rafe really wanted to hear was the account of how Caesar had fared all those years, living in a brothel. “Did you enjoy that farewell fete the ladies threw for you?”
Oh, yessir.” Caesar's grin grew impossibly wide. “I do believe San Francisco is still talking about it. I can't remember the last day of it, but the ladies told me I had a good time.”
 
 
LOZEN AND STANDS ALONE LAY ON THEIR STOMACHS ON the ledge and looked over the edge of it. Both had their bows and arrows on their backs. They had left their long pieces in camp because they saw no sense in carrying heavy weapons for which they had no ammunition.
They watched the two men lead their horses to the ovalshaped mound on the low rise by the river. Hairy Foot's dog followed along. Dogs were bad luck, but this one didn't seem to have brought Hairy Foot bad luck. Maybe the dog was his helping spirit.

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