Ghost Warrior (45 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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Cushing squinted up at the hills and the retreating Apaches. “We've routed them.”
“Maybe they want us to think that,” said Rafe.
Cushing eyed him coldly. “I'm in command here, Collins, and may I remind you that you are merely a civilian.”
Rafe wanted to say that being merely a civilian, he would
go back to his mules, who, on their most obdurate days, had more sense than Cushing. But he could see that if anyone was going to escape this canyon alive, they would need every man. He and the others left the horses with two of the privates and went forward on foot.
They had advanced about twenty yards when the slopes erupted Apaches. Far more of them were hiding there than had originally shown themselves, and every rock and bush sprouted one. They swarmed down, firing as they came. During the fight they shouted, “Come get us, you white sons of bitches,” in passably good English.
Rafe and John Mott retreated together, reloading and firing as they went. They had almost reached the mouth of the canyon when they heard Cushing cry out, “Sergeant, I am killed. Take me out.”
Rafe and Mott ran back to him. They each grabbed an arm and, holding their rifles in their other hands, they dragged him toward the horses. A bullet grazed Rafe's sleeve and hit Cushing in the head, but Mott and Rafe continued to haul his lifeless body along with them.
Each of them knew that if they were him, they would not want to be abandoned to this enemy. They couldn't bear to think of other soldiers finding them and looking at them in horror and disgust, the way they had reacted to the sight of Apache victims. It wasn't a reasonable dread, this anxiety about their corpses. Their souls would have decamped, just as the lieutenant's had, leaving their bodies behind like so much discarded bivouac litter, but they both had thought about it.
Mott glanced back. The first of the warriors had closed to less than two hundred feet behind them. “Time to save our hides.”
They dropped Cushing, and Mott took his pistols and Sharps. They slung their carbines across their backs and sprinted for the horses. Bullets whined around them, and the nearest Apaches ran across the broken ground as though it were a level cinder track.
Rafe had seen them run footraces. He had no illusions that
he could outpace them. He only hoped he could reach Red before they caught him. He vowed that if Red could save his arse one more time, he would find him a pasture of sweet grass with a pretty filly to dote on him.
He heard the rhythmic sigh of moccasins coming up behind him, but he dared not look back. If he stumbled, he was caught, and if he were only killed outright, that would be the good news.
He whistled. Red broke the tether and started for Rafe at a gallop. Rafe could feel the warrior's presence behind him now, like a wind pushing against his back. He could smell the rank odor of the man's sweat mingling with his own, which didn't smell so good, either. He could hear the rasp of breathing which made him think he at least was giving him a run for his money. It wasn't any kind of consolation.
He felt his hat jerked off his head. The slight tug pulled him off balance. He stumbled, then sprawled full-length, and the Apache, unable to stop, leaped over him. Rafe lifted his stubbled cheek off the ground in time to see his pursuer skid to a halt.
Rafe had never seen anything with such preternatural clarity. The Apache stood as though frozen in time and bathed in light, knife in one hand, Rafe's hat in the other. He wore only moccasins and a breechclout of unbleached muslin draped over a rawhide thong. Rafe could count the stitches in his moccasins and see the individual threads in the muslin.
Red reared and caught the man on the head with a hoof. He fell, a long gash opened across his forehead, eye, and cheek. Red came down on him with his front legs; then he reared up and did it again. Rafe got his feet under him and grabbed the Apache's rifle. When he settled into the saddle, Red was already in motion.
Rafe heard two shots. Red faltered, gathered himself, and plunged on. Rafe saw the next bullet cut across Red's neck, severing his spine. Red lurched, then collapsed, and Rafe jumped clear. Rafe stretched out alongside Red, using his body as a shield. He no longer heard the gunfire and the shouting.
He always carried small lumps of coarse brown sugar in his pocket, and he pulled out the last one and held it in front of Red's muzzle. Red took it between his teeth, but his throat muscles would no longer work below the wound in his neck. Red licked Rafe's hand instead.
With his free hand Rafe stroked the velvet of Red's muzzle. He scratched his nose, then rubbed and pulled his ears, the way Red liked. He murmured to Red as he reached along his leg and pulled his knife from the sheath tied above his boot.
With his bandana he wiped the tears from his eyes. He did not want to bungle this because he couldn't see. At least the blacksmith, Felmer, had given his knife a fine edge.
Still talking, Rafe placed the blade at one side of Red's neck. Red sighed, as though in thanks or acceptance. Rafe drove the big knife in as far as the hilt and pulled it toward him. It was hard work cutting through hide, muscle, and sinew, but he managed to sever the windpipe. As blood poured out and the breath rattled in Red's throat, Rafe put an arm around his neck and his face against his chest. He was listening so intently to the burble of blood from the gash, the rale of wind through the severed windpipe, and the last desperate heave of Red's gallant heart that he didn't hear the hoofbeats.
“Rafe, move out” John Mott pulled Cushing's big stallion to a halt, showering Rafe with dirt. “The damned ammunition mule won't budge. You're the only one he'll heed.” Mott led a piebald with a chunk taken out of his ear. “Are you hit?” He handed the piebald's reins to Rafe.
Rafe looked down at his blood-soaked shirt. “No. No. I reckon not.” In a daze, he took the reins and mounted.
“The hostiles have pulled back,” he said. “Maybe we can flank them and recover the bodies. Kilmartin, Fichter, and I will cover the pack train's retreat. We need you to handle those damned mules.”
“The Apaches haven't pulled back. They're planning to cut us off where the trail passes through the foothills.”
“If we retreat across the river, we'll put the swamp at the
headwaters between us. It's longer, but it should throw them off.” Mott put a finger to his hat brim. “Sorry about your horse.” Then he galloped away.
When he was gone, Rafe saluted Red. He could hardly speak around the stone of grief in his throat. “So long, old friend.”
PROMISES, PROMISES
T
he day was mild for November. Rafe whistled “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as he rode. His chestnut gelding was in a good mood, too. Rafe had found him this morning with a length of tether rope. The chestnut had made large circles with his neck and head, flinging the rope round and round. Rafe could see no purpose to it except high spirits. If the critter developed a sense of humor, Rafe figured he would have to give him a name sooner or later.
Patch's granddaughter ranged through the scrub and cactus, ever alert for the threat of jackrabbits and quail. The three of them had made it through the pass in one piece. That was cause for celebration.
Anglos had begun referring to the break in the mountains between southern Arizona and New Mexico as Apache Pass, but Rafe still thought of it as Doubtful. Either name fit. Apaches were the ones who made it doubtful, Cochise and his Chiricahuas, with the able assistance of Whoa and Geronimo and their merry band.
Rafe was in Victorio's territory now, and he relaxed a little. Victorio had kept his word. The Warm Springs people had remained at peace. Rafe looked forward to seeing them again. Maybe Lozen would be there this time.
She had been away six months ago when he had gone to tell them about the slaughter of Eskiminzin's people and to warn them about Cushing. Caesar had inquired about her among his Apache kinfolk, and He Makes Them Laugh had said she had gone to see someone. Finally he admitted she was conferring with her spirits. He said that her people called
her Grandmother, and that they thought of her as
di-yin,
a shaman, a very holy woman.
A holy woman. The more chances Rafe had to see her and talk to her, the more unapproachable she seemed.
Rafe found Mattie Jones cutting Caesar's hair in the dooryard of their one-room adobe house on the outskirts of Central City. Two of Patch's great-grandchildren were tussling around Caesar's feet. A pig rooted in a dusty pen. Chickens bustled around. A horse and a mule munched hay in a corral of mesquite limbs.
Next to the corral a truck garden had gone mostly to autumn seed, but cabbages still flourished. Beyond the corral lay a field of dry corn stalks and the remains of the bean and squash plants that had grown up alongside them. Another field had been planted in cotton. Rafe would have thought Mattie never wanted to see cotton again, but there it was.
Caesar sat on a stool reading a newspaper while Mattie brandished a pair of shears manufactured with sheep in mind. She had to stand back and extend her arms to make room for the bulge of her stomach. She wore a .41 caliber Butterfield Army Model revolver in a holster on her hip. She had to use the last hole in Caesar's belt, and she wore it slung under the overhang of her belly, but in less pregnant circumstances the holster and its contents would have suited her. Mattie had never lacked an air of confidence, but now there was a feeling of calm mixed with it.
Caesar threw his arms around Rafe, and Rafe hugged him back, though the act embarrassed him. An embrace would not have occurred to either of them before they'd started spending time among the Apaches.
Caesar nodded at the chestnut. “So you put Red to pasture?”
“Killed at Bear Springs.” The words stuck in Rafe's throat still. He coughed to cover the break in his voice.
“Then you were with Cushing when Whoa got him.”
“I was.”
Mattie tugged Caesar's jacket so he would sit back down. She regarded Rafe with suspicion and some hostility. Rafe
knew she was thinking that he had come to lure Caesar away and get him killed. She was right about the first part, anyway.
Rafe took from his saddlebag a package wrapped in clean sacking and tied with cord and handed it to her. She untied it and drew in her breath at the sight of the red woolen shawl with long fringes of the sort the Mexican women wore.
“There's something inside,” Rafe said.
She unfolded the shawl to expose the tiny pair of blue stockings, a cap, and mittens, knitted from an old wool army uniform jacket that Rafe had painstakingly unraveled. Rafe didn't mention that the owner of the jacket had died at Bear Springs. Some would consider it an evil omen, but Rafe looked at it as new life from the rags of death.
Mattie smiled at Rafe with her luminous dark eyes. She picked them up in hands as large and calloused as a man's, but with long, graceful fingers. She held them so Caesar could see them.
“That's mighty nice of you, Rafe,” said Caesar.
“A pleasure.”
“Can you learn me to do this, Marse Collins?”
Rafe thought that she would have learned to knit in the big house, but then he realized that the mistress must have kept her as a field hand. She would not have allowed anyone as beautiful as Mattie to be close to her husband and son, the lieutenant who brought her out here.
“I reckon I can,” he said “'Tain't hard.”
Rafe gave Caesar a stack of the Prescott
Miner
. The earliest one, dated April 1871, lay on top. In jubilant fourteenpoint type the headline read, EIGHT BUCK INDIANS KILLED. And in smaller print, 117 SQUAWS AND PAPOOSES CAPTURED.
Caesar leafed through the papers, reading aloud, while with a currycomb, Mattie raised the tight curls so she could see where they were uneven. She trimmed the ones that stuck out and brushed the loose hair off his shoulders with snaps of her apron. When she finished, Caesar stood up and offered Rafe the stool, but Rafe preferred to stand.
“I'll put water on for coffee.” Mattie carried the shawl and
the baby clothes inside. Rafe took advantage of her absence to get to the main reason for his visit.
Before he could, the chestnut reached his head over the top of the gate and pulled the bolt. The gate swung open, and he trotted after Rafe.
“Look at that!” Caesar said.
“He learned it from Red.” He glanced at Caesar. “Are you finding steady work?”
“This and that,” Caesar said. “I works at the mines, hauls freight for the gum'ment.”
“Caesar, the army finally sent the man for the job.”
“Killing Apaches, you mean?”
“Making peace with them.”
“I guess you'd be referring to General Crook.”
“He's a wonder.” Rafe had never met any officer like Crook. “Something must have infected the stiff-dickies in Washington with horse sense. They sent a sane, competent general. He yanked the flagpole from Los Angeles and brought it back to Tucson where it belongs.”
“By the looks of those new boots, I'd say you signed on as a scout.”
“A mule skinner. Crook's too smart to trundle supply wagons around the country. He's depending on mules. He's asked me a thousand questions about them. He's recruited a bunch of scouts, too; men who really know the country. You should think about joining us. The pay is good, and the enlistment is only for six months.”
Rafe didn't say what was really on his mind. He and Caesar could ride together again. Without Caesar and without Red, he had been feeling lonelier than usual in this lonely life.
“I can't leave Mattie, what with the child and all. I gave her my word I'd keep close to home.”
That was the answer Rafe had expected. “I'd say the same thing if I were in your boots.” He wanted to suggest that Caesar bring Mattie with him to Cook's headquarters at Camp Grant, but of all the filthy, flea-ridden, squalid posts in the territory, it had to be the worst. The soldiers assigned
there called it the Old Rookery. Besides, Mattie had made a home here, and she wasn't in condition to travel.
“What you boys hatchin'?” Mattie came outside carrying a blue-and-white china plate with fat chunks of corn bread on it.
She held the plate out so Rafe could take a piece. She let her fingers linger on the plate, as though unable to believe such a beautiful object belonged to her.
“Rafe says General Crook is looking for men to scout for him.”
Mattie's eyes narrowed.
“I tole him I wasn't going nowhere.”
“Praise the Lord.” Mattie smiled, gracious in victory. “Rafe Collins, that yaller hair of yours looks like a hayfield in a windstorm.” She pointed to the stool. “Sit.”
Rafe's eyelids drooped as she combed the worst of the tangles from the thick mop of hair whose ends brushed the shoulders of his red flannel shirt. He felt an acute attack of elation at the touch of her fingers separating out a section, cutting it, and then moving on. Making love with a woman was the greatest gift bestowed on man, but this and home cooking vied for second place.
“I'm going to visit Victorio and his people as long as I'm on this side of the Pass.”
“They's gone,” said Caesar.
“Where?”
“The gum‘ment moved 'em to the Tulerosa Valley.”
“That's a hundred miles north of here.”
“People ‘round here decided the Warm Springs land was too good to waste on savages,” said Mattie. “Now what did the gum'ment do with that land, Caesar?”
“They declared it public domain.”
“And Victorio went peacefully?” Rafe remembered what Victorio and the others had said about the country where they lived: “When we forget the names of the places, when we cease to know what happened here, we no longer know who we are.”
“Yeah, and he's the one who kept things peaceful around
here. Now that he's gone, I's expectin' the riffraff to come tricklin' on over the pass from Arizona.” Caesar put a hand on his rifle. “My brother-in-law says Victorio would rather take his chances with the Bluecoats than live with Whoa again. He says Whoa is one mean coyote.”
“Then you've seen Pandora and your nephew?”
“Yep. I took 'em some blankets and corn. They was raggedy looking, Rafe, all of 'em. And hungry. You could see it in their eyes. The Tulerosa is north of here and colder. They won't have a chance to plant anything before winter sets in.”
“The army will take care of them.”
“The gum'ment promised them a thousand blankets and plenty of beef and corn, but I ain't seen none of it, and I'm the one who freights the goods.”
“At least on the Tulerosa there aren't many whites to bother them.”
“Not yet,” said Caesar.
 
 
THE TATTERED COVERING OF THE DOMED LODGE DIDN'T stop the icy wind. It hardly slowed it down. Lozen tried to scoop snow higher onto it to provide some protection, but her hands were so numb she could hardly grip the board she was using as a shovel. Her People had suffered hard times before, but they had never been forced to stand still for them. In winter they could move to the sheltered valleys or go to Mexico.
She went inside to continue to sing and make medicine for Third Wife. Corn Stalk and She Moves Like Water lay on each side of Third Wife, sharing the heat from their bodies. Third Wife shivered so violently the other two had to hold her to keep her from rolling off the mattress of pine branches. Lozen fed the last few sticks into the small fire in the middle of the lodge.
Food might have helped Third Wife, but the cook pots were empty. The promised beef hadn't arrived. Instead, the agent had given them pig meat in small metal containers.
Each container had the picture of a devil painted in red on it. Lozen's people had recoiled in horror at
itsi chidin
, devil meat. They knew then that the Pale Eyes were trying to poison them or witch them. Lozen and Broken Foot had had to hold a four-day sing to rid the camp of the sorcery.
The agent gave out blankets, too, but they were flimsy things, thin and full of holes where the moths had eaten them. When Broken Foot saw them, he commented that at least the insects were getting enough to eat. Third Wife's new baby boy lay with Daughter and the other children in a pile under some of those blankets. Stands Alone and Maria kept watch, huddled together under a blanket that they shared. The rest of the blankets were wrapped around Third Wife, and still she shivered.
Third Wife had had a hard time delivering the child. They all knew the trip here had caused it. A woman was not supposed to ride on horses or in wagons after the fifth month, but she had had to endure the trek across the mountains, five days in a jolting army wagon. No one was surprised that the baby became wedged in the birth tunnel. Third Wife had struggled for a day and a half before Daughter could finally pull the child free, wash him, and wrap him in rabbit skins.
Third Wife stopped shivering. She looked up at Lozen, her eyes sunken in the purple hollows around them. Lozen could see her spirit leaving as surely as if she were watching Third Wife ride away on her little buckskin mare. The light went out in those laughing eyes.
The women began wailing their grief. Lozen walked outside, the thin soles of her moccasins munching in the newfallen snow. In a fury, she faced into the howling wind. The noise of it sounded like the spirits laughing. She had something to say to the spirits.

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