Ghost Warrior (33 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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The men stood at the foot of the mound, took off their hats, and lowered their heads. Were they praying? Lozen knew that under that mound was the corpse that she and Stands Alone had brought to Hairy Foot long ago. What drew the two men here? Why would they stand on top of a dead man's bones in the country of their enemies, risking
danger from both the dead and the living? Were they seeking help from the spirits?
“The black white man is back.” Stands Alone recognized Caesar as soon as he took off his hat.
Lozen gave a small grunt of agreement. She was still trying to understand what brought these men here. They must have had some strong connection, the two living men and the dead one.
“Why do you follow Hairy Foot?” Stands Alone murmured.
“I want his red horse.”
“You have horses. And besides, Hairy Foot's horse is old now.”
“He's still better than any I have. And soon we'll have to kill the few ponies we have left to feed everyone.”
Lozen herself wondered why she watched Hairy Foot whenever she found him. She wondered why she listened for word of him from returning scouting parties. And when the men boasted that they would be the ones to kill him, why did the idea of his death bother her? She wondered why she dreamed of him sometimes. Was he trying to tell her something?
“For a white man, he has strong magic,” she said at last.
“How do you know?”
“Everyone's trying to kill him, but he's still alive.”
THE BEST LAID SCHEMES
A
frigid wind raked the exposed lookout post. Lozen shrugged off the cowhide and stood up. She opened the blanket and let the cold wind buffet her. She tried to do what her brother had taught her. She tried to imagine herself as an icicle, a friend to cold, to snow, to ice. The wind cut like knives, though, and she decided it was no friend of hers.
She wrapped the blanket back around her. Snow covered the valley floor below and the mountains all around. Light from the rising sun gilded the tops of the higher peaks. They were more beautiful than the gold rocks that the Pale Eyes sought. In the darkness of the coldest winter she had always known that this country would feed, protect, and teach her people. Now she couldn't be sure. The reason for that was slogging through the drifted snow of the valley below her.
Red Sleeves led twenty-three men toward Pinos Altos, the mines that her people called Where They Whipped Him. He had returned from Janos wearing the Mexican hat, trousers, and shirt that the American doctor there had given him. Red Sleeves was determined to talk to the diggers and Bluecoats who had recently come to the abandoned mining camp.
The Pale Eyes had sent a Mexican to tell him that they wanted peace. They said that if he would come in alone and unarmed, they would guarantee him safe conduct. They would give him blankets, flour, and beef for his people. Only Red Sleeves believed the Pale Eyes' promises.
“Maybe we have displeased Life Giver,” he said. “Why else would he give the Pale Eyes such powerful medicine. They can shoot wagons at us now.”
Those exploding wagons at Doubtful Pass had demoralized
everyone. The warriors had planned to kill all the wasps, but instead they had stirred up the nest. Bluecoats swarmed everywhere. A cloud of despair had settled over the Chiricahuas, over the Red Paints and the Tall Cliffs People alike.
Even Red Sleeves' oldest friend, Skinny, could not convince him to stay away from Pinos Altos. Red Sleeves said he could not listen to the hungry cries of the children anymore. His
muy amigo
, the American medicine man in Janos, said he should do whatever was necessary to make peace, and Red Sleeves agreed with him.
Lozen heard the rustle of the stunted juniper behind her and turned to see He Steals Love using its trunk to pull himself up over the ridge of rock. Lozen was sure that he wanted to be alone with her, but he also worried that people would gossip. Lozen knew that people had stopped gossiping about her. No one wanted to offend her. They might need her to sing over an ill relative someday, or calm a wild horse, or make a cradle or a war amulet.
“Share my lodge, Lozen.” He spoke in a rush. “I will bring you horses and mules loaded with goods from Mexico.”
“Life Giver has shown me another path.”
“Life Giver does not intend that you live alone, without a husband, without children.”
He Steals Love annoyed her the most when he tried to tell her what Life Giver intended for her, but she changed the subject rather than argue with him. He Steals Love should be used to her changing the subject. It always signaled that the discussion about matrimony had ended.
She gave him the mirrored glass the sentries used to signal each other. “Watch Disgruntled and He Runs.” She pointed her chin toward the ledge below. Two boys sat with their legs dangling over the edge of it. “If they fall asleep, throw a rock at them.”
“Do you think the Old Man will return?” He Steals Love called after her.
She stared at the dark, wavery line of men straggling across the vast bowl of snow. “He always returns.”
 
 
THE BIG PALE EYES HAD HAIR AND A BEARD ALMOST AS white as the cloth he carried tied to the end of a stick. Red Sleeves waited patiently while White Hair conferred in Spanish with the warriors who had come with him. He watched his men ride away to wait for him at the old campsite called Leaves Shaking. The forty Pale Eyes reined their horses in around him. He supposed they wanted to be in position to head him off should he decide to bolt.
He had no intention of running, though. He rode his pony at a walk behind the white-haired one who was almost as tall as he was. The Pale Eyes'
nantan
looked like Ghost Face, like winter itself with his ice-blue eyes and hair and beard as white and unpredictable as blown snow.
Red Sleeves knew he was more likely to die today than live to see the sun rise. He felt sad at the thought of not seeing another morning sky. The bright colors of dawn always reminded him of the bright paper bunting at the fiestas in Janos. He thought of dawn as a time when the sun threw a party for the new day.
Red Sleeves could think of no alternative to making peace. Not for himself. The young men could go on fighting, but he was too old. He was too tired.
The days of glory were gone for him. The Bluecoats with their exploding wagons had made sure of that. He probably would never come home triumphant from a battle again. And if he did, he would know the triumph was temporary. The women who used to sing greetings now wailed out their grief instead. He heard their cries in his dreams. He felt saddest for the young ones. What sort of world would they inhabit?
He had thought this all out. If the Pale Eyes did surprise him and keep their promise, then his coming here would save the lives of his people. He would take them the presents the Pale Eyes promised him. The women would sing and dance, and he would hear laughter again. If he died, maybe his son Mangas would step out from his father's shadow and become a great leader. The worst that could happen would be that
the Americans killed him and sent his spirit to the Happy Place.
Lulled by the sway of his pony and the unintelligible hum of the Pale Eyes' talk, he wondered what sex was like in the Happy Place. Was the sensation of entering a woman better there? He hadn't been able to satisfy his wives, or himself, since he returned from Janos. In that respect, death and the spirit life after it would be an improvement.
He could play hoop-and-pole every day. Maybe he could win back the brindle pony he lost to Chief Juan José before the Hair Takers killed the old man at the Death Feast so long ago.
Maybe the chief had already lost the pony to someone else. Being careful not to think of anyone's name, Red Sleeves amused himself by remembering the list of friends and family who had left for the Happy Place, and speculated as to who might now be in possession of the brindle pony. He smiled to himself. He didn't know why the animal had appealed to him, something about the slightly loco look in his eyes.
He hoped that no one called his name after he died. He would be glad to leave the sorrow that his life had become. If death released him from his pain and his responsibilities and his shame, he did not want anyone trying to coax his spirit back.
 
 
SAD AND PERPLEXED, GRAND AND COMICAL. THAT WAS HOW Red Sleeves looked to Rafe as he rode in on a pony so small that the old man's bare feet almost brushed the snow. Night had fallen, and the frigid wind had gotten even colder. In spite of that, Red Sleeves had on only a red-and-white-checked cotton shirt and blue overalls of jeans cloth with the legs cut off, exposing knees and calves as knobby and scarred as cedar stumps. A straw hat perched on top of his huge head with a cord tied under his receding chin to hold it in place. Once Colonel West took custody of him, and
Joseph Walker and his men rode away, Red Sleeves towered over everyone around him.
He brightened when he saw Rafe.
“Mi amigo
.
¿Como estás?”
Colonel West stepped between them and nodded to the two guards. With bayonets fixed on their muskets, they motioned Red Sleeves toward the fire. One of them tossed him a blanket.
“Make certain he does not escape.” West enunciated the words very carefully. “Not under any circumstances. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” The guards grinned. “If'n he tries to escape, should we shoot his red arse?”
“Certainly.”
As the men marched Red Sleeves away, Rafe walked over to West. He didn't much care what happened to Red Sleeves. He knew that if the old hypocrite hadn't been responsible for the death and destruction on this side of Doubtful Pass in the past ten years, he hadn't done much to stop it. But he knew that what West intended would mean more trouble.
“Colonel, the Chiricahuas will never surrender if you kill the old man.”
“This isn't any business of yours, Collins. I have my orders from General Carleton.”
As Rafe headed for the wagon where Caesar watched the horses and mules, he passed the guards' post. Red Sleeves had rolled himself up in his blanket by the fire there. His bare legs and feet stuck out of the end of the bedroll, and he was snoring. The old man had gumption, Rafe had to give him that.
Rafe went to sleep thinking about the events that had led to this, as surely as a lighted fuse would set off dynamite. They started with Bascom, of course, but the situation would have gotten out of hand anyway. Old Red Sleeves was no saint. And even if he had been, he couldn't stop his young men from rustling cattle and horses any more that Carleton could control the thievery and rascality among civilians and soldiers alike in his jursidiction.
The moon stood at midnight when Rafe got up to take the pressure off his plumbing. He was about to crawl back into the warm cocoon of his blankets when he heard Red Sleeves shout in Spanish. “I am not a child to be played with.” Six shots followed. Caesar sat up and grabbed the pistol under his saddle.
“The old man is dead,” Rafe said.
“Red Sleeves?”
“Yep.” Rafe started to crawl back into his bedroll.
The deed was done. They would have to survive the consequences. Then curiosity got the better of him. Hunched against the cold, he walked to the fire. Patch followed him. The two guards stood looking down at Red Sleeves' body. By the fire's light, Rafe could see raw burns on the old man's legs. They were in the shape of bayonet blades. The soles of his feet were charred. The guards must have applied a lot of heat to have an effect on those calluses.
One of the guards looked at Rafe, then spit a stream of tobacco not far from where Red Sleeves' lay. “The old snake tried to escape.”
“He's still wrapped in his blanket.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Yes.”
The guard spit again, just missing the toe of Rafe's boot. A lieutenant arrived and prodded the body with the barrel of his musket.
“Let him lie. He'll not rot between now and sunup.”
“Hell.” One of the guards laughed. “In this cold he ain't gonna rot till April.”
Rafe went back to bed. He wondered how long the Apaches would take to find out their chief was dead, and to learn that the white men had hoodwinked them again. Not that they hadn't done their fair share of hoodwinking over the years. He fell asleep grateful that they weren't likely to know about it yet. When they found out, there would be hell to pay.
At first light, Rafe and Caesar went to toast their outsides at the cook's fire and scald their insides with some of the
toxic brew he called coffee. The man who had walked sentry duty the night before stared morosely into his tin mug while steam embraced his head. He was one of Walker's men, and probably nettled that his party's guarantee of safe conduct had been rendered null and void during the night. The teeth he had knocked out of Red Sleeves' jaw as souvenirs didn't cheer him much.
Soldiers had gathered around the body, and one of them left the group and double-timed toward the cookfire. He was a spindly young specimen that Rafe thought the army should have thrown back, but probably kept because its war with the Confederacy had left it short on cannon fodder.
“I need your knife, Cookie.” The soldier snatched the butcher knife from the cook's hand and ran off.
He returned a short time later holding aloft a bloody rag of skin with a hank of coarse black hair attached. “Got me a keepsake, boys. I got me the big chief's scalp.” He tried to hand the bloody blade back to the cook who waved it away.
“Damnation! Wash the infernal thing off.”
The soldier rinsed the hair with water from his canteen and sat down to begin stretching it onto a hoop. When the others finished stripping the body of anything that could be kept as a trinket, they picked it up, still in the blanket, and threw it into a shallow gulley.
Rafe and Caesar spent the day making repairs to the harness and shoeing the mules. That night Rafe lay in his blankets and listened to the coyotes quarrel over the largesse in the gully. He woke up the next morning with a sense of relief that bordered on giddiness. Maybe West and Carleton were right. With Red Sleeves dead, maybe the situation would improve.
He wasn't surprised to see the soldiers assembling at their camp a few hundred yards away. Colonel West wasn't the sort to let grass grow under his feet. The sentry wandered over to watch Rafe and Caesar load the coffin of tools and spare wagon parts back into the wagon box. He still looked morose.

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