Ghost Warrior (36 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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The amulet lay as light as spider webs in the broad palm of his hand. He touched the tiny skull and stroked the feathers with his scarred fingertips. He couldn't say why, but he felt sure she had left it to bring him and Red good luck.
POKING AT A POSSUM
T
all Girl held out a folded blanket with a pouch of tobacco and a fringed bag balanced on top. She lost her own balance, and Lozen caught the things she carried before they hit the ground.
“Help me, Grandmother,” Tall Girl mumbled. Her eyes held that blank look that Lozen abhorred. No matter that The People had eaten their meager winter supplies and that few berries or seeds were ripe now. Tall Girl had managed to hoard enough mescal to ferment into the thick gray beverage called
tiswin.
“Is someone sick?”
Tall Girl only turned and wobbled away. Lozen handed the presents to Daughter and started off after her.
“Will you come to the dance?” Daughter called after her.
“If I can.”
Lozen heard the baby screaming before she reached Tall Girl's lodge. She must have given the child
tiswin
again.
Tall Girl herself fell asleep, but Lozen sang all day and into the night while the baby's two grandmothers and her own chanted,
“Yu, yu, yu, yom.”
With explosive, gutteral chants of
“ha, ha, ha,”
Lozen marked the baby on the forehead, lips, chin, and chest with pollen. Hissing, she rubbed the carved snake over the child's body. Finally she shouted, “
Ugashe
. Be gone,” and threw the stick into the fire.
As she chanted and rubbed the child's contorted limbs and neck, she fell into a trance. She didn't hear the distant pulse of the dance drums or even the two grandmothers singing nearby. She forgot that the men she had ridden with were dancing the story of their raid on the fort. She didn't hear
*the laughter when He Makes Them Laugh did his parody of a victory dance over a bedraggled chicken he had found.
As dawn approached, more people joined the grandmothers, until fifteen or twenty swayed in rhythm to the chanting. Corn Stalk, Maria, even Stands Alone added their voices. When the sun rose, the baby seemed exhausted by the struggle. Lozen despaired. Her legs ached from being folded under her all night. She wanted, more than anything, to sleep. Instead, she prayed one more time to Life Giver.
When she finished, she looked down and saw that the baby had quieted. His breathing steadied; his muscles relaxed. Lozen thanked Life Giver; then she shook Tall Girl awake.
“Do not ever give your children
tiswin.”
Tall Girl looked frightened, as if Lozen would put a spell on her if she disobeyed. “Yes, Grandmother.”
Lozen and her own grandmother walked back among the sleepy dancers who talked quietly and yawned as they dispersed to their camps.
“Do you feel as though you've been in another country?” Grandmother asked.
“Yes.” Lozen recognized everyone around her, but they seemed unfamiliar. She always felt this way after a sing.
“When we sing for someone,” said Grandmother, “Life Giver takes us to the place where spirits dwell.”
Lozen wanted to roll up in her blanket and sleep the day away. Instead she found the family waiting for her. When Corn Stalk's and She Moves Like Water's mother arrived, Victorio walked away to sit at a distance with his back to her. The subject under discussion was Daughter's feast.
“Her Eyes Open has agreed to be her sponsor,” She Moves Like Water said. “Will you accompany her in the dancing, Sister?” she asked Lozen.
“Yes.”
With that settled, they discussed whom they would ask to drum, to sing, and to officiate. They took inventory of what goods they still needed as gifts, and how much the new horses would bring. The most troublesome problem was how
to avoid the Bluecoats during the months they prepared for the ceremony and for the days they held it.
“We can agree to go to the place the Bluecoats have set aside for us,” said Corn Stalk. “We'll be safe from attacks.”
“No.” She Moves Like Water was adamant. “You've heard Wide's relatives talk about that place. We will all grow sick and disfigured and die, like the Mescaleros.”
She Moves Like Water's mother picked up the moccasins she was mending and headed for her own fire. Victorio dipped a gourd into the rabbit stew and joined the women. Most men disdained women's company, but he welcomed their opinions. They looked at problems in a different way than the men did.
There was a larger issue than holding Daughter's ceremony without fear of attack. The Bluecoats demanded that all The People move to places set aside for them, to live under the army's supervision.
“We have always moved about this country as we pleased,” Victorio said. “Now the Bluecoats try to tell us where we can live and hunt.”
“Why can't our set-aside place be right here?” asked Lozen. “We can ask Tse'k to let us stay. The fort is only a day's ride away. The Bluecoats can hand out the food and gifts there. We can use our share for the feast and the ceremony.”
Victorio smiled to himself. None of the men had suggested that. Maybe they all believed it was far too reasonable a solution for the Pale Eyes to accept. If they did think that, they were probably right.
“The Pale Eyes won't talk peace,” Victorio said. “They shoot at everyone who comes near them.”
“That's right,” She Moves Like Water added. “Remember what the Bluecoat
nantan
said.”
The Mescalero refugees had told them about General Carleton's orders to his soldiers. “Kill all the men found off the reservation, regardless of what they're doing. Capture the women and children.” He seemed to be the only one who didn't recognize the absurdity of demanding that The People
go to the reservations, and then shooting them when they tried to do so. Lozen had nicknamed Carleton Bidaa Digiz, Cross-Eyed, because he looked no farther than the end of his own nose.
“The Pale Eyes, Tse‘k, has been like a father to us,” said Lozen. “He does not lie. He treats us fairly.” He treated them so fairly, in fact, that they had nicknamed him Ba'ch'othlii, He Can Be Trusted.
“We don't know where he is,” said Victorio.
“We can ask Hairy Foot to deliver a message to him.”
Victorio grunted. Maybe she was right. Maybe Hairy Foot would help them. He was as honest as Tse'k. “How will we find him?”
“I know the trail he uses. I can wait for him.”
“It's too dangerous.” Alarm gave a ragged, insistent tone to She Moves Like Water's voice.
Lozen had become too valuable to the Warm Springs people, to all the Red Paints, to take such a risk. Besides that, She Moves Like Water knew that Victorio would go with his sister. Victorio called Lozen his right hand. They went everywhere together.
“I will go with you,” Victorio said.
“You should stay here, Brother.” Lozen didn't say what they all were thinking.
What if the Bluecoats captured Victorio? What if they cut off his head and boiled it? Since the horrific fate of Red Sleeves, many people came to believe that the Bluecoats ate the people they took captive. Lozen could be walking into a terrible trap.
“Maria can come with me to talk Mexican to Hairy Foot,” she said. “He understands our language a little, too.”
Victorio didn't think the plan would work, but if anyone could get word to Tse'k, Lozen could.
 
 
AT TWILIGHT, RAPE, CAESAR, AND THE OTHER TEAMSTERS circled the wagons of the supply train. They strung lines between the wheels and tied the horses to them. They tethered
the draft animals in place at the wagon tongues. While some cooked, others played cards and swapped stories. Patch lay with her hindquarters to the wheel and bared her teeth at any hound who looked remotely enamored of her.
The dozen men of the army escort pitched their tents and picketed their horses among the piñon trees. They stacked their rifles against the tree and hung their bridles, powder horns, and knapsacks from the branches. Civilians and soldiers took turns standing watch, although some of the civilians grumbled about it.
They didn't mind standing watch—they just didn't like the company. The men of the 125th Infantry were black, and the sight of former slaves in United States Army uniforms was repugnant to the Southerners in the train. Caesar rode with the soldiers when he could, finding men who had lived near his father's plantation and listening for news of the war.
Rafe poured hot water from the kettle into a tin basin, set it on an upturned crate, and rinsed out his second shirt and his spare pair of socks. As he worked, he watched Caesar perform supper. He wasn't the only one. The lieutenant, the sergeant, the other drivers, and the cattle drover drifted over. The lieutenant brought venison he had shot, and Caesar fired up another skillet.
The lieutenant had haunted their camp all the way from Santa Fe. Rafe was amused by the spectacle of a white officer almost on his knees before a black man, trying to recruit him for the regiment. In a troop of former field hands, Caesar was a gold strike. He could read, write, and cipher. He was stronger than two average men, and he knew the country. The lieutenant had promised him a sergeant's stripes and the princely sum of fifteen dollars a month, the two extra dollars to come out of the lieutenant's own pay.
Rafe had twitched an eyebrow when Caesar politely refused. Caesar caught the look and he explained later. Well, he didn't exactly explain. He had only asked Rafe, “Would you join the army again?”
Rafe had laughed. No, he wouldn't.
Caesar had spent a lot of time at army posts. He had seen
the men sweating in the August heat to make adobe bricks for barracks that would let in the rain and the wind. He had watched them chopping and hauling thousands of cords of wood. He had observed that it wasn't so different from slavery. Neither were the brutal punishments that some officers inflicted for minor offenses.
In the settlements and forts, Caesar added
Marse
to the front of every white man's name and
suh
after it. He rarely spoke unless asked a question; but on the trail a transformation came over him. He spun yarns about San Francisco. He recited fables starring that trickster, Bre'r Rabbit. When he wasn't talking, he sang. Tonight it was an old Southern field hands' song.
“‘Love, it am a killin' thing,'” he sang. “‘Beauty am a blossom, but if you want yo' finger bit, just poke it at a possum.'”
As they traveled, he would pick up limbs and throw them into the “possum belly,” a hide slung under the wagon. By the time they stopped for the night, he had enough for a bonfire. He tied a rolled bandana around his head to keep the perspiration from his eyes. As he worked, he wiped his hands on half a feed sack stuck into his belt.
A gooseberry and currant cobbler bubbled in the dented dutch oven. A pot of peeled bulrush stems, lamb's quarter, and pigweed came to a hesitant simmer. He wrapped the sacking around the handle and pulled the pot off the flames so its contents would only parboil. While he was at it, he added a chunk of brown sugar and some of the vinegar he and Rafe used to clean their weapons.
Rafe had shot a javelina, and Caesar had threaded the boar's ribs onto a spit. Now and then he used a new axlegreasing brush to baste the ribs with a lethal blend of ground chiles, onions, wild garlic, strong black coffee, and whiskey. He called the results House Afire.
The skillet occupied the center ring. Fist-size chunks of boar meat sizzled in grease along with spring onions and wintered-over carrots and potatoes. Like a fencer, Caesar turned sideways to the fire. He held his right hand out to one
side as though for balance and used his left hand to tip and shake the frying pan while the grease sizzled like fireworks.
He strewed a handful of chopped red chiles over the ingredients, added some salt, and tossed them. He put in more grease, a blizzard of flour, and a little water, and stirred the roux into a thick gravy.
“Boy, where did you learn to cook like that?” the lieutenant asked.
Caesar winked. “Why, suh …” His drawl thickened, his stock of words shrank. He became deferential, the way a chameleon took on the colors of his surroundings. “My mammy done taught me, suh.”
Rafe knew that was only partly true. Caesar was too shrewd to admit that he had added
parboil
,
puree
, and
roux
to his vocabulary when he lived and worked in the bordello in San Francisco. Caesar claimed that the French cook there could produce a savory soup from an old pair of boots.
Being known as a black man who had consorted with white women, even ones of easy virtue, would get him into deadly trouble here. He was so discreet about his private life anyway that only Rafe knew about the quiet Mexican woman named Mercedes who welcomed him whenever he went to Socorro, or vivacious Concepción who did his laundry and more in Tucson, or Pilar in Tubac who had learned to cook greens and fatback.
After dinner Rafe scrubbed the pots with river sand while Caesar fed and watered the mules and horses. The two of them were looking forward to reading from their latest find,
Twelfth Night
, while the soldiers, teamsters, and drovers gathered to listen. The men formed a remarkably wellbehaved audience considering they were so heavily armed that they clanked whenever they scratched or coughed, which was frequently.

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