Ghost Warrior (19 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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With a rustle of pine boughs, Lozen turned over on her side and faced the lodge's curved side. She could see the glow of the fire through the canvas covering that once had stretched over Hairy Foot's wagon. Maria cuddled against her back, but the touch only increased Lozen's longing for Gray Ghost.
Tears scalded tracks down her cheeks. She was still awake when Stands Alone gathered her blankets and tiptoed out. She must have decided to go to the lodge of He Makes Them Laugh. Tomorrow she would cook for him, and everyone would consider them married.
Her absence made Lozen feel even more bereft.
A LIGHT DUSTING
A
n icy wind blew gaunt gray clouds across the December sky. It played tag with leaves and trash around the corners of the adobe huts called Fort Webster. The soldiers wore their greatcoats with the collars turned up and the flaps on their hats pulled down over their ears. At night, Apaches drifted through the fort as silently as the occasional gusts of snow. No one in the garrison went out after dark without his gun primed, loaded, and at half-cock.
Still, camping here was better than sleeping in the open, and Rafe had taken a liking to Dr. Michael Steck, the superintendent of New Mexico Territory. Rafe had found work as a driver for the government's freight wagons, too. The army had returned to protect the miners and ranchers. Rafe suspected that the miners riled the Apaches up on regular basis to keep the army around.
Rafe appreciated the irony of the fact that the army paid him to haul beef and corn to feed the Indians whose thefts and murders the soldiers had come here to stop. And why not feed them? Warfare hadn't worked. Bribery might—for a little while, anyway.
On this trip Rafe planned to bargain for some mules and harnesses and recover his wagon. A recent patrol had told him it was still sitting in the Jornada del Muerto. In the meantime, he was playing a game of two-handed euchre with Dr. Steck.
Steck watched as Rafe set the rest of the pack facedown on the table and turned over the top one. Steck studied the five cards in his hand. “Some of Red Sleeves' people put on an exhibition of horsemanship the last time they came in for
rations,” he said. “It was quite a performance.”
Rafe said nothing, and Steck glanced at him over the cards. “The Apaches don't impress you?”
“They impress me, all right, but not their horse savvy.”
“Ah, yes. You're familiar with Comanches, aren't you?”
“You know what they say … .” Rafe took one of his cards and placed it crosswise under the undealt pack.
“What do they say?”
“A white man will ride a mustang until he's winded. A Mexican will take him and ride him until he's dead. The Comanch will then ride him wherever he's going.”
“That says more about their indifference to life than their man horsemanship.”
“I thought the Comanch were about as indifferent to life as the human species could get, but that was before I made the acquaintance of the Apaches.”
“Considering the insults and betrayals that Chief Red Sleeves has suffered, I would say he's shown considerable restraint.”
“Then I reckon I'm not familiar with the definition of restraint.”
“The miners raid their camps and attack their women and children. The soldiers confiscate horses that they obtain legally from Mexican traders.”
Rafe let that delusion slide right on past, and Dr. Steck continued with the list of crimes and injustices against his wards.
“My predecessor, that rascal Fletcher, stole the docile Apaches' rations. He sold them whiskey. The government neglected to send them the tools they needed for agriculture.”
“Docile Apaches. Now there's a notion.”
“I firmly believe that many of the thefts and murders in this country are committed by our own criminal element, and blamed on the Apaches. I tell you, they have become quite tractable. I'm expecting them here for their rations at any time. Red Sleeves says the Warm Springs people will come in with him.”
“Of course they will.”
Steck looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“You're a good man, Michael.” Rafe meant it. Dr. Michael Steck was moral, honest, kind, exacting, and resolute. He had taken on the superintendent's job with responsibilities that Job, Solomon, and Hercules would all decline if they had sense. He had done the job so well that even the Apaches liked him; and they didn't like anybody, as best Rafe could tell. But Steck was new here, and he had more to learn about his charges.
Dr. Steck waited for an answer to his question.
“What I mean is that winter is not a good time for raiding. They'll let the government feed them and give them blankets and kettles and knives and gewgaws for the next few months. When spring comes, they'll head south again, and we can all be grateful we're not Mexicans.”
“I think you're wrong, Rafe. This time they will stay, and they will farm.”
And that, Rafe thought, is like expecting a wolf to hoe beans. He changed the subject. “Have you heard of a man named Rogers?”
“The scoundrel who whipped Red Sleeves?”
“Among other transgressions.”
“They say he went to harry the good folk of California. Good riddance to bad cess.”
The door opened and let in the draft that had been waiting outside like a cat. A lieutenant, his face red from the icy wind, poked his head in. “They're here, Dr. Steck.”
“Did Victorio and the Warm Springs people come, too?”
“I reckon. They all look alike to me.” The head disappeared; then it popped back in. “Mr. Collins, the boys brought back your wagon. It's missing its cover and has a load of sand in it, but it looks none the worse for wear, considering. They took it to the wagon yard.”
With Red trailing after him, Rafe accompanied Dr. Steck to the storehouse where the Apaches had gathered. The first detail he noticed was the absence of young men. He shook his head with a small, rueful smile. He wasn't surprised. The young ones hadn't waited until spring to raid into Mexico.
The second thing he noticed was how old and weary and harmless Red Sleeves looked. The wrinkles in his face had deepened to gullies that pulled the corners of his mouth down into a doleful pout. Rafe almost couldn't imagine him spreading death and desolation.
“Hairy Foot! My friend!”
Before Rafe could react, Red Sleeves engulfed him in a hug that compressed his rib cage and squeezed the breath out of him. Red Sleeves hadn't bathed lately—but then, who had? Rafe pulled away with the imprint on his cheek of the metal tweezers the chief wore on a cord around his neck. The chief conversed in Spanish.
“Give me
fósforos,
my good friend.”
“I don't have any.”
“And the stockings?”
“All gone.”
Red Sleeves held up a bare foot, the sole of which looked like a very dirty tortoise shell. “Like my moccasins.” He displayed a massive grin packed with teeth.
Rafe wondered, though, if his moccasins had really worn out, or if he was putting on a show of poverty for Dr. Steck. If he and his people were putting on a show, it was a damned good one. What were they buying with all those horses they'd stolen this fall? Maybe they ate them. Red Sleeves looked like he could eat a horse on any given day.
“Telescopio?”
Red Sleeves asked hopefully.
“I was telling him about your telescope, Rafe.” Dr. Steck beamed at the ragged crowd, and they beamed back at him. Rafe had never seen Apaches so pleased with a white man. They were good judges of human nature, after all.
Rafe pulled from his saddlebag the sack made from the sleeve of an old shirt. He took the telescope out and handed it over. Red Sleeves looked through it, exclaimed
“Enjuh!”
and passed it in turn to the young man whom Dr. Steck called Victorio. Victorio was tall for an Apache, about Rafe's height, and as muscular as any panther. He would have seemed taller if he hadn't been standing next to Red Sleeves.
Rafe remembered him from that time in John Cremony's tent at the Santa Rita mines, and at the shooting contest when the little horse thief got her name, Lozana. He realized that the last time he had seen the two of them, they were galloping away aboard a pair of Don Angel's prize horses.
Rafe surveyed the crowd and found Lozen standing with Pandora among the women at some distance away. He suppressed the urge to smile and wave. Lozen wore a blanket wrapped around her, but below it he saw the fringes of a skirt that hung around the ankles of her old moccasins. She no longer wore the maiden's hair or ornament. She must have married, maybe to that good-looking, strapping specimen. who couldn't stop staring at her.
Victorio handed the glass to her. She aimed it at Rafe, and he stared back into its single eye for what seemed like a long time before she passed it around. All the women stared at him through it and giggled.
Rafe never expected to see the telescope again, but when it reappeared in his hands, he tried to feel Lozen's touch on it. He wished he could separate the warmth of her hands from all the others. What foolishness.
He watched the Apaches walk to where the army had assembled to oversee distribution of the beef and corn. As Lozen turned to go, Rafe saw that she wore a musket in a leather case whose strap rode across her back. A pair of white hawk feathers decorated the case, along with strings of beads and shells, and a small leather bag no doubt full of Apache hocus-pocus. He wondered if the gun was one of those stolen from his wagon. Several of the men had them, but she was the only woman with one.
He wanted to stride after her. He wanted to yell, “Hey, you, let me see that.” He wanted to catch hold of her arm. He wanted to touch her. Instead he walked to the wagon yard with Red butting him playfully in the small of the back. He was startled to see his wagon and an old friend there.
“Othello.”
The mule looked up as though he had seen Rafe a few
minutes earlier instead of almost five months. He looked thin, but otherwise he seemed in good spirits.
Rafe walked around the old Packard. He ran his hand along the familiar gouge taken from the side by a sharp boulder that had tumbled down a slope and barely missed destroying the wagon. He poked a finger into the splintered holes left by Apache arrows. He could remember what event had left each dent and scar and gash in it.
It would need work to make it serviceable again, but at least he had recovered it. Instead of returning home, home had come back to him. He stepped onto the hub and climbed inside. The lieutenant had been right about the sand.
He noticed several strands of fringe lying outside a heap of it in the corner. He brushed the sand away and uncovered a leather bag, beautifully beaded. One of the thieves must have dropped it. No one would leave such a piece of work behind on purpose.
He opened it and saw the heap of pollen inside, like a remnant of a golden summer's day. He started to empty it over the side, and then he stopped. He thought of his Navajo woman and the reverence she had had for pollen.
He shook some of it onto the driver's seat, and it glittered like powdered sunlight as it fell. He climbed down and sprinkled it on the axles and on the tongue. He scattered the last of it to the four directions as he had seen her do. He did it in memory of her, and—though he would never admit it—he did it in thanks to God for the return of his Packard. He also did it, maybe, for luck. When he finished, he put the copy of
Romeo and Juliet
into the pouch and stuck it into the back of his trousers. Then he went off to talk to the army's wainwright about the repairs to the wagon.
That night Rafe laid his bedroll next to the wagon with the saddle for a pillow. He rolled up in the blankets and tied Red's tether to his wrist. Even if he woke up with snow stacked on top of him, he would not leave Red alone with the Apaches camped nearby.
 
 
LOZEN MOVED, SILENT AS THE DRIFTING SNOWFLAKES, among the hulking forms of the adobe buildings. A door opened, and a rectangle of light fell out onto the snow. Loud voices spilled after it. Lozen slid into the deep shadow between the officers' lodge and the room where the Pale Eyes agent, Tse'k, conducted business. She pulled her blanket around her and pressed against the wall. She watched three Bluecoats walk past, silhouetted briefly in the strip of moonlight beyond the front corners of the buildings.
The door slammed shut, and the light blinked out. Lozen continued on to the wagon yard. She knew where everything was. They all did.
She also knew that the sentries paced opposite courses around the perimeter of the corral and the wagon yard. She knew when they would pass each other, and where. She left a bottle of whiskey there, as though some careless soldier had dropped it; then she settled into the darkness to wait. The whiskey had cost her a mule, but it would be worth the price. The sentries didn't let her down. She heard one of them give a low call to the others. She saw them look around, then slip off into the shadows.
She found Red near Hairy Foot's wagon. He eyed her warily in the full moon's light, but he didn't move. He didn't snort or whinny. She stared at him, sensing his plan.
No, she thought. “You can't fool me. As soon as I try to untie you, you'll wake Hairy Foot.”
He could have done it now, but she had the feeling he was playing a game with her. He would let her get close, and then he would alert Hairy Foot. She made a loop in the horsehair rope she carried, so she would be ready to put it around his nose to guide him once she mounted.

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