Ghost Warrior (44 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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Cushing put Rafe in mind of the relay races soldiers held when off duty. Men would space themselves out along the course so they could snatch the baton from the flagging runner
who started before them. The army was like that, begining with Bascom. Or maybe the line went back a couple hundred years to that first high-toned Spaniard rattling through the desert in his suit of armor like a loosely packed case of tinned sardines on horseback. The Spaniards, after all, had been the first to enslave the Apaches and start the whole chain of events in motion. The lineage of military demagogues passed through Bascom, Carleton, and now Cushing. They were the men for the job, if killing Apaches was the answer.
Cushing was four or five inches shorter than Rafe's five feet, eleven inches. He was lean and sinewy, and with his sleeves rolled up, Rafe could see the veins standing out on his arms and hands. He was slightly stoop-shouldered and restless as a ferret. He had sandy hair and eyes like smoky quartz.
Rafe heard Lieutenant Whitman ask him if he and his men had come to help bury the dead.
“I kill them,” Cushing said. “I don't bury them.” He gestured to the wagon loaded with water, food, ammunition, blankets, and medical supplies. “We're heading east to hunt Mescaleros.”
Whitman shrugged and went back to digging.
“I heard the blacksmith's here,” Cushing said. “I want him to look at the mounts' shoes.”
“They killed his wife. He took her home to bury her.”
Cushing shook his head. “A white man's got no business setting up house with a squaw.”
Royal Whitman didn't turn to look as Cushing strode back to his big black horse and ordered his men to mount.
Rafe could see that digging graves would occupy most of the day. He helped throughout the morning, and then he took his leave. He had heard that Victorio and the Warm Springs band had returned from Mexico and had set up camp near Fort Craig in New Mexico.
Rafe could see from the devastation around him that the army was not providing protection for the Apaches who came in peacefully. Rafe decided to leave his wagon at Joe
Felmer's ranch and ride east. He would pick up Caesar at Central City, and the two of them could warn Victorio to be careful.
He decided to keep Red with him. Red had emphatically stated his feelings about retirement. Besides, Rafe could switch off between Red and the chestnut and cover ground faster. He had made that trip so many times, he knew the shortest routes, the narrow, steep, God-help-us trails that Cushing's supply wagon couldn't maneuver. If he started well before sunup, he could cross Doubtful Pass before Cushing arrived there. The traveling would be more bearable before sunup, too.
Honest labor, desperate rescues, and brutal slaughter. In Arizona they were all best conducted early, before the kiln of a sun sapped breath, nerve, muscle, and thought.
IN THE BAG
L
ozen stopped pouring the chunks of piñon resin into the Lkettle and listened to the whinnies coming from the pasture. “Your gray is after my mare again, Sister.”
“Maybe he won't misfire this time.” Stands Alone added sticks to the blaze under the kettle.
The horses weren't the only restless ones. From the river came the doleful notes of a flute. It sounded as though it were going through that awkward stage when boy's voice changed pitch without warning.
The young man playing it must have learned from one of the men of the western bands during the stay in Mexico. Flutes made the Chiricahua uneasy. They were connected with love magic. Love magic could go awry and cause sickness and insanity, but this flute was being played too badly to pose much danger.
“He'd better have other arrows in his quiver,” Third Wife said, “because that flute will not bring down his prey.”
The women leaned forward to avoid the pack of small boys careening past, waving wooden spears and rifles. The boys could imitate the lever action of a Winchester and the report of a rolling block Remington as perfectly as they could a quail or a sharp-shinned hawk. No one wanted to be a Bluecoat, so they wrestled for it. The Bluecoats always died, but they did it with enthusiasm. They whirled, staggered, fell, groaned, got up. They fell again, writhed, bucked, and sprawled full-out. The others rushed in to finish them with their lances.
Stands Alone's six-year-old son, Darts Around, and María's boy, He Throws It, fired at each other from behind
lodges and tanning frames, rocks, bushes, drying racks, and the women. The women ignored them. Smearing the woven jugs with pinon pitch was a tedious process, so Lozen and her friends made a social occasion of it.
Stands Alone poured the warm resin into her jug. She added a hot rock and tilted the jug to spread the pitch evenly. Other women were smearing it on the outside, using a stick wrapped with buckskin. Some worked in red ochre for decoration.
They were still waiting for word from Washington that this land was theirs permanently. In the meantime, they were happy to be able to sleep through the night, and to see their children run and shout again. The agent at the fort provided food and blankets. The men occasionally raided into Mexico, but they spent most of their time playing hoop-and-pole. Some of the women weren't happy about having them around so much, but they all felt safer.
Stands Alone called to her son, Darts Around, to bring more wood, but he pretended not to hear her. Maybe he had become rebellious because his father refused to go on the war trail and the boys made fun of him. Whatever the reason, he stole meat from the drying rack. He took a family pony without permission, rode it into a gopher hole, and broke its leg. Something must be done about him. Stands Alone glanced toward the hoop-and-pole ground and smiled.
Loco was on his way. He had painted white circles around his disfigured eye and mouth. He wore a straw wig, and he carried a feed sack. Growling like a bear, he chased Darts Around, who dived into his parents' lodge and burrowed under the blankets. Loco dragged him out feetfirst while the women laughed until their sides ached.
Loco lifted Darts Around up by an ankle and tried to lower him headfirst into the sack, but Darts Around grabbed the edges. Her Eyes Open pried his fingers loose so Loco could slide the sack up over him. He slung it over his shoulder with Darts Around screaming and thrashing, and then sneezing.
“Listen!” Loco growled. “Listen, boy, if you do not behave
as you should, I will carry you to the Mountain Spirits.”
The wriggling stopped, but the sneezing continued.
“The Mountain Spirits will tie you up and eat you, piece by piece.” Loco pinched the closest bulge in the sack. “Will you behave as a Red Paint should?”
The reply was muffled, “I will.”
“Enjuh.
Good.”
Loco dumped the sack onto the ground, and Darts Around crawled out, shaken, mortified, and covered with dust. Loco turned to the other boys peeking from behind the lodges.
“This will happen to all of you who disobey your parents. If you don't listen to them, you could be killed by enemies. Or you could cause the death of others.”
Loco stamped his feet and lumbered off. He passed Long Neck without a greeting. Loco counseled peace with the Pale Eyes, which meant that he and Long Neck did not agree. But because of Loco's Bear power, even Long Neck did not try to bully him.
Long Neck and Geronimo had come to Warm Springs to recruit men to go after the Bluecoat lieutenant known as Weasel. The Warm Springs men gathered at Victorio's fire to talk about it.
“I will wait here for a message from the Great Father in Wah-sin-ton,” said Victorio. “I have given my word that I will keep the peace.”
Long Neck's leg started jiggling, a sign that he was angry. He started telling a story, in his halting way. “Long ago, they say, at the Place called Three Peaks Together, the People Without Minds were camped near some soldiers. They thought the soldiers were their friends, but one day the soldiers started killing them. Instead of fighting or running away, the People Without Minds held a council. They asked each other, ‘Why are the soldiers shooting us?'
“By the time they decided to run away, most of them were dead. It happened just so, at the place called Three Peaks Together.”
Everyone knew what he was saying. Eskiminzin was a fool to trust the Pale Eyes, and he had grown careless besides.
The old man's sentries were asleep when the Papagos, Mexicans, and Americanas. attacked before dawn. Eskiminzin did not keep watch. He did not walk around his camp at all hours. He did not tell the young ones to sleep with one eye open and with their weapons in their hands.
“I have a plan,” said Long Neck. “My men and I attacked the Bluecoats' wagon and caried away the box of metal disks they value so much. Taking their money will stir them up like hornets. My woman will lead them into the canyon called Where They Trap Horses. We will wait for them there.”
Lozen remembered whose plan that had been originally, but she said nothing. There was no point in losing her temper at Long Neck. He was as Life Giver made him. To get angry with him would be like railing at a mountain gale or a roaring flood.
Long Neck scowled and studied the ground, reluctant to bring up his men's request. “The warriors ask that the sister of the Warm Springs
nantan
go with them to fight Weasel.”
Lozen answered for herself. “I have prayed long and often about this. My spirits have told me to keep peace with the Pale Eyes. I will not put my people's lives in danger to go with you.”
Long Neck acted as though he hadn't heard her. “We see now where a man gets his womanly ways.”
The skin paled along Victorio's jaw as he clenched his teeth. Long Neck was his guest here, and one treated guests with courtesy. “The soldiers attack those who attack them,” he said.”We do not attack them, so they cause us no harm.”
Everyone knew he was implying that the raids of those like Long Neck and Geronimo brought retaliation against any Apache not directly under the army's protection.
“Than you and Eskiminzin are brothers.” Long Neck dismissed him as though he, too, were a careless old man who would allow his people to be slaughtered by those he was fool enough to trust. “Cheis will go with us. He is a warrior who's not afraid to fight.”
Lozen spoke up. “They say, long ago, that Coyote was
very hungry, and he came upon a tip beetle. That beetle was standing right up on his head, the way tip beetles do.
“‘I'm someone who eats only fat,' said Coyote. ‘And I'm going to eat you.'
“The beetle, still standing on his head, said, ‘Be quiet, old man. I'm listening to what they're saying under the ground.'
“‘Tell me what they're saying then, because when you finish, I'm going to eat you.'
“‘They're talking down there. They're saying that they're going to come up here. They're going to catch a certain person who shit on that rock, and they're going to kill him.'
“That scared Coyote because he was the one who had dirtied the rock. He said, ‘I forgot something. I'll be back.' But he didn't return.”
The men laughed. Lozen had eased the tension, but everyone got the point. Whether tip beetle heard someone talking underground or whether he made up the story to scare Coyote didn't matter. Only fools ignored the voices of their spirits and disobeyed their commands.
The other, subtler implication was that shitting where one shouldn't, or raiding where one shouldn't, could get one in trouble.
 
 
SMOKE FROM THE GRASS FIRE SMUDGED THE BLUE SKY OF early May, but it did not obscure the footprints in the moist sand in the arroyo. The footprints weren't a mystery. For miles, the soldiers had been following the woman who made them.
“She's heading up the canyon.” Lt. Howard Bass Cushing beckoned to thirteen of the sixteen privates in the company. “These men and I will trail her. Sergeant Mott, you and Collins, Green, Pierce, and Fichter cover the rear.”
“The tracks are too clear, sir,” said John Mott.
“What do you mean?”
“The squaw set her feet down heavy. She avoided places where the prints won't show. Looks like she wants us to follow her.”
“More likely she doesn't know we're here. She's being careless.”
“Apaches aren't careless.” Rafe knew that disagreeing with Cushing wouldn't change his mind, but he had to try.
Cushing rounded on him, the steel predominating in his gray-blue eyes. “I suppose the bucks who attacked that wagon train and drank all that tonic and got falling-down drunk weren't careless.” He charged his Remington revolvers and capped them, lecturing all the while. “I don't believe all that superstitious mumbo jumbo about the Apaches, Collins. They aren't magic. They can't make themselves invisible. They don't know everything. They don't see everything. They're human, like everyone else. They make mistakes.”
Cushing waved his hand, the signal to move out, and the men followed him on horseback up the arroyo. While Mott and the three privates waited, Rafe made sure the pack mules were well tethered and their loads secure. The situation might get busy before long.
“You brought the old warhorse.” Mott nodded at Red.
“Yep.” Rafe knew he shouldn't have, but his young chestnut gelding had thrown a shoe. The real reason was that Red would not allow Rafe to go a scout without him.
“And your hound?”
“She's getting deaf as a dog iron. I left her with the sutler.”
When Patch saw Rafe filling his two cartridge belts, she had started her dance, rocking from one front paw to the other. When he rolled spare paper cartridges, and packets of coffee, bread, and bacon into his blanket, she had started leaping in place and barking. Rafe had taken her to the sutler's store and tossed scraps of jerked beef and biscuit crumbs onto the floor. When he sneaked out, she was inhaling every last bit, and the loungers in the store were making much of her.
Rafe and John Mott studied the high rock walls toward which Lieutenant Cushing and the other thirteen men were riding, spread out across the narrow canyon.
“This might be a hunting party, John. War parties don't usually take women with them.” Still, something made the
hair stir at the back of Rafe's neck. They'd seen no other Apache sign. No sign meant a person should be more careful than usual.
Rafe, Mott, and the three privates spurred their horses forward at a walk and spread out. They scanned the steep sides of the canyon for signs of life and of death.
“Too bad we ain't got the sons of bitches who stole the payroll,” Mott said in a low voice. “That was a low-down, dirty trick. The troops would have kicked the traces by now if anyone but Cushing were in charge.” He spit. “I never did see such a devil-take-the-hindmost scrapper as the lieutenant.”
Rafe kept his peace on the subject of Cushing and stared at the thorny landscape until his eyes watered.
“If I were an Apache, I'd set up an ambuscade in that canyon,” said Mott. “That dry gulch is a sack waiting to close around us.”
As though on cue, rifle fire reverberated across the canyon. Where no Apache had been, dozens appeared. Cushing and his troops retreated and joined Mott and Rafe to form a line, firing as they fell back.
The Apaches advanced down the slope, keeping a formation rather than scattering, and Rafe noticed the big man on a small brown pony at the ridgeline. With his lance, he was directing the movements of his men. Even at that distance Rafe recognized Whoa.
The soldiers' fire drove the Apaches back, and Cushing shouted the command to advance. Rafe started to protest, but Mott beat him to it.
“Sir, we will be crossing open ground when the hostiles have the cover and outnumber us. Do you think it's prudent to go farther?”

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