Ghost Warrior (35 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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“Coyote leaned his head back on his shoulders. He stared up at the top of that tree, and it seemed to sway and rotate in the wind. The clouds moving past the top of that tree made Coyote dizzy. They convinced him that the sky really was about to fall on them.
“‘I'm getting tired and can't hold the tree up much
longer,' said Lizard. ‘Catch on and hold it while I fetch my children to help us.' Coyote grabbed that tree trunk, and he held on with all his strength. Lizard scampered down and ran away.
“Coyote held that tree all night while sleet fell on him and icicles formed on his nose. In the morning his muscles ached so badly he couldn't hold on anymore. He let go of the tree and ran to a hollow place in the rocks. He waited for the sky to fall, but it stayed where it had always been. Coyote realized that Lizard had tricked him.
“‘Worthless Coyote!' he grumbled. ‘Son of a Coyote! You never will have any sense.' Angry and hungry, cold and wet, he headed off to wherever he was going.” He Makes Them Laugh paused before he added, “I'm talking about flowers and fruit and other good things.”
He Makes Them Laugh started another Coyote story, progressing through them in the usual order, and Lozen sank into an anxious revery. She felt like Coyote, holding up the sky, straining until her muscles ached. How much more weighted down must Victorio feel as every day people arrived asking him for shelter, food, and advice.
The world had gone so far awry that the sky falling no longer seemed far-fetched. For instance, how could someone as big as Red Sleeves vanish? Where were those who had gone with him to hold council at the diggers' village two years ago? Had the Pale Eyes killed them? Had they decided to visit Long Neck in Mexico and been detained there for some reason? Had they set out on a horse-stealing expedition south to the wide water because the stock in northern Mexico had been depleted by warriors desperate to feed their familes?
If Red Sleeves and his men were dead, then their names must never be spoken again. Their wives must marry other men who could bring meat for the family kettle. If the missing ones lived, then they could be discussed. For a few men to fail to return from a raid was common enough, but not all of them. Never all of them.
Parties of warriors had gone out looking for them. Once
Victorio had approached Bluecoats under a white flag, to talk peace and ask about Red Sleeves, but the soldiers had opened fire on him.
The mystery tormented everyone. Whispers of witchcraft circulated through the villages. Suspicion roosted like crows among the arbors and lodges. It circled like vultures over the dance grounds and the hoop-and-pole fields. People became wary of their own friends and relatives. They watched each other, looking for signs of evil magic. Many came to Lozen, asking her for protection against witches and spells.
He Makes Them Laugh started the last tale as the sun was about to rise. He had just finished when Chato and Fights Without Arrows appeared. People moved closer to hear whatever message they brought.
“Many Mescalero relatives and friends of Broken Foot's second wife have come,” Chato said. “They bring news of Red Sleeves.”
“‘The Bluecoats lured him to their camp with promises of peace and gifts for his people,” Fights Without Arrows said. “Then they killed him. They ambushed those who waited for him and killed all of them.”
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
“There is more.” He waited for the talking to stop. “The Bluecoats cut off the Old Man's head. They boiled the flesh from it.”
A woman screamed. People drew their blankets over their heads and moaned with horror and grief. Lozen sat stunned.
Death was inevitable, and Red Sleeves had lived a long life. But to be condemned to spend eternity headless, that was worse than death. That was worse than the Pimas, who dropped heavy rocks onto the faces of their slain enemies so their loved ones would not be able to recognize them in the afterlife.
Fights Without Arrows crouched next to Lozen. He opened a saddlebag so she could see the calico, tobacco pouch, and Broken Foot's best saddle blanket inside.
“Grandmother,” Fights Without Arrows murmured. “Broken Foot knows these are insignificant gifts, but he asks that
you bring your curing herbs, your wand, and your healing stones to his second wife's camp.”
“Is someone ill?” Lozen wondered why Broken Foot, her teacher, would be asking her to hold a sing when he was more qualified.
“He doesn't know.”
“He doesn't know?”
“You must see for yourself.” Fights Without Arrows stood up. “He asks that you hurry. Chato and I are going to Red Sleeves' village to tell them what happened.”
Quietly, so as not to disturb Grandmother, Lozen collected her medicine and hurried through the gray light of dawn to Wide's camp.
Wide's relatives had walked for two days and three nights from the reservation at Bosque Redondo. Exhausted, they wrapped themselves in blankets, hides, and rags, and slept. Some had stacked their few belongings in an attempt to block the cold wind.
Broken Foot limped to meet her. He clutched his curing wand so tightly that pale half-moons formed at his knuckles.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don't know. I think the Bluecoats put a spell on my second wife's cousin's small son. They are powerful witches, those Bluecoats. They cursed the Navajos. They gave them a sickness that covers them with running sores. The Navajos threw corpses full of maggots in the river near the Mescaleros' camp. Many of my wife's people got sick, but I don't think that caused this boy's condition.”
Broken Foot looked wearily around at the sleeping relatives for whom he would now be responsible. “I've seen patients suffering from bear sickness, coyote sickness, the effects of lightning, thunder, witchcraft, and snakes, but I've never seen anything like this.”
 
 
A PALE STREAM OF MORNING SUNLIGHT ENTERED THE LODGE door. When it flowed over the child, he cried out in agony. His arms jerked and his fingers became rigid claws. His legs
contracted with such force that his knees struck his chin, snapping his teeth closed on his tongue. Blood dribbled from the corners of his mouth, but his jaws had clamped so tightly together that Broken Foot could not pry them open. The sound of the child's gurgling filled the shelter as the blood backed into his throat and trickled from his nose.
With trembling hands Lozen fumbled at the cords of her medicine bag. She spilled some of the pollen, and she was so shaken she couldn't remember the first song of the healing cycle. But the songs would not have helped anyway. A convulsion shook the boy. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he went limp.
His mother began to wail. The aunts and uncles and cousins took up the cry. The keening spread through the camp. It made Lozen's head ache and jumbled her thoughts. She went outside with Broken Foot.
“What's happening to us, Uncle?”
“We have strayed from the path. We must ask Life Giver to send us a sign so we can find the correct way again.”
The boy's father stood off to one side, staring at nothing. Lozen put a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“My brother, did your child eat anything unusual on the way here?”
“He found three sacks of pinole by the trail, but his mother told him not to eat any of it.”
“Where are his belongings?”
The father pointed his chin at a feed sack lying by the door. Lozen crouched beside it and searched through the contents. Underneath his rolled up shirt and a small pair of moccasins, she found the pinole. One of the pouches was half empty. She poured some of the parched corn into her hand and sniffed it. She held it up for Broken Foot to smell.
“Something's wrong with it,” he said.
Lozen emptied it onto a woven tray and carried it to her shelter.
Grandmother was waiting for her. “What happened?”
“Wide's cousin's child died.”
Grandmother glanced at the tray of parched corn. “Where did the pinole come from?”
“Someone left it by the trail, Pale Eyes probably. It might be poisoned. Maybe it killed the boy.”
That night Lozen left the tray out when everyone went to sleep. She wasn't surprised to find three dead rats in it the next morning.
SEEING RED
J
ust because horse-stealing was necessary didn't mean it couldn't be fun. Lozen felt the usual mix of excitement, glee, serenity, and power, and a hint of fear. She lay on her stomach and watched the Bluecoats through the far-seeing tube. This was the new fort the Bluecoats had built at Doubtful Pass. Lozen looked for the guns on wheels that had killed so many warriors, but she didn't see any.
The helter-skelter of wooden lodges amused her. Any Mexican peasant knew he should build a wall around his village to fend off attacks, but the Bluecoats were either too stupid or too lazy to bother. They had merely picketed the horses.
The sliver of a moon was well on its way along before Lozen heard Victorio's quail call. She ripped up a bundle of grass and stuffed it down her shirt. She added branches of the pungent bush the Mexicans called
hediondilla
, “little stinker.” She stuck more of the bush into her headband, into the tops of her moccasins, and under her belt. That should throw the dogs off her scent.
She eased slowly downslope. She lay behind a yucca plant downwind of the pasture and watched the twin glows of the sentries' cigarillos approach. Talking in low voices, they strolled past, their muskets dangling in the crooks of their arms. When they were out of sight, Lozen slipped in among the horses. Some of them moved away nervously, but none whinnied or tried to rear. That was why Victorio had sent her in first.
She found the bell mare, stroked her, whispered in her ear, and gave her the grass from her shirt. She left six horses tied
securely so they couldn't bolt when Victorio and the others stampeded the herd. The men would cut those lines themselves and ride the horses away. She retied the lines on the others with slip knots.
She had time before dawn arrived, so she glided to the wagons parked behind the fort. The sentries and several teamsters were engrossed in a game of cards. A lantern threw their shadows up the adobe wall of the saddlery. Gliding through Bluecoats' villages while they slept was one of Lozen's favorite pastimes. It made her feel invisible. She ghosted past the men and slipped in among the wagons.
She climbed into a couple of them and felt around. The sacks and barrels contained cornmeal and bacon by the smell of them. The wagon held enough food to feed her people through the hungry time of early spring, and she wished she could drive it away. In the third wagon she found a cartidge belt and a powder horn.
She slung the powder horn across her shoulder and buckled the cartidge belt at her waist. She fastened it in the last hole, but it still rode low on her hips. Maybe Broken Foot's song to bring ammunition was going to work as well for her as it did for him.
She was about to cut the mules' tethers when she saw the big red horse. She was surprised that Hairy Foot had left his roan unguarded. She regarded him solemnly in the stars' light. He stared at her just as solemnly.
You're playing with me, she thought. If I try to catch you, you'll cause a commotion.
He looked so docile, though, that she began to think perhaps her powers had grown strong enough for her to steal him. She stroked his soft muzzle. The stars reflected in his big eyes gleamed like sparks.
You're a trickster, she told him silently.
She ran a hand up his muzzle, then along his neck. He didn't back away from her. Her heart bagan to beat faster. This was the night he would become hers.
Then she felt his teeth clamp onto her shoulder. He bit her hard enough to send a tingling sensation into her fingers, but
not enough to break the skin. He could have drawn blood if he'd wanted.
I understand, she thought. You are his horse. His spirit is stronger than mine.
He would not be hers tonight. She unfastened the amulet she had braided into her hair to make her run faster. She had tied together the pair of hummingbird's wings and skull and the piece of blue stone with deer sinew, and she had sung over it.
Maybe this would help Hairy Foot and his horse outrun death. The young men of her band were determined to prove themselves by killing him and taking his horse as a prize. Lozen separated out some hairs in Red's mane and used them to tie the amulet in place.
She cut the mules' tether lines; then she snaked on her stomach back to the nearby pickets and waited for the sentries to pass again. When they did, she gave the nightjar's call. Yelling and flapping their blankets, Victorio and the others charged in among the horses.
Lozen gathered the lead line of the bell mare and jumped onto her, relishing the twitch and flex of the mare's muscles against her thighs. She heard the sentries' shouts and the pop of gunfire as she rode toward the hills with the mare's bell clanging wildly. The other horses followed the bell, and Victorio and his men brought up the rear, chivvying strays back into the herd.
As the bullets whizzed past her, Lozen vibrated her tongue against the roof of her mouth in the high, triumphal cry. Dawn splashed pink across the dark sky, and the mare moved effortlessly under her. If she and the men could avoid patrols and get the herd safely home, her family could contact the Mexican traders in Alamosa. They could use their share of horses to obtain goods for Daughter's ceremony of White Painted Woman.
Everyone needed the ceremony. In celebrating Daughter's entry into womanhood, they would remember how important they all were to Life Giver. They would know that as long
as they had women like Daughter, The People would continue.
The difficulty now lay in avoiding attacks from the miners and the Bluecoats. The soldiers had fired on every group who had approached them to ask for a peace council. The miners shot at everyone, regardless of their sex, age, or intent. As Lozen rode into the new day with the army's herd behind her, a plan occurred to her.
 
 
“SO I MANAGED TO STAY AHEAD OF THE APACHES, AND picked them off until my last cartridge was gone.” While he talked, Capt. John Cremony shuffled the deck and dealt hands to Rafe, Caesar, and the young lieutenant. “Then I headed up a canyon, and I'll be doggonned if it didn't end in a sheer wall. I was trapped like a rat with a dozen Apaches closing in on me, whooping louder'n so many banshees. And me without so much as a penknife or a tooth-picker to defend myself.”
He paused to study his cards. The silence lengthened. Finally the lieutenant asked, “What happened?”
Cremony looked up, nonchalant. “Why, they killed me. Damn them, sir, they killed me.”
Rafe never tired of seeing the chagrin on the faces of John Cremony's latest audience. Cremony was in a good mood for someone exiled to Fort Bowie, ninety miles from what passed for civilization. Cremony confided in Rafe that he was damned relieved to put a hundred miles between him and General Carleton. He pronounced Carleton the most unscrupulously ambitious and exclusively selfish man of Cremony's acquaintance. Rafe didn't dispute that.
“I was at the battle of Pittsburg Landing,” the lieutenant said
“Shiloh?” asked John Cremony.
“That's what they call it. Almost twenty thousand on both sides killed or wounded.” The lieutenant rearranged his cards. “Shortly after the battle we boys were feeling pretty used up and dejected, even though ole General Grant saved
the day, and we pushed the Rebs back. I was on advance picket line on a moonlit night, and the Rebs had a post not more than a hundred yards away. We shot at each other till we tired of it; then we swapped newspapers, coffee, and tobacco. We'd set them out in the middle of the ground for the other side to fetch.
“A Reb corporal walked right into our camp, sat on a log, and asked if anyone knew how to play poker. Well, I guess we did. He pulled out a deck of cards and a few of us sat down. Pretty soon another Reb came over, and another, until blue and gray together squatted around watching the play.
“They were absorbed in the game, when a man on a horse rode up. ‘By crimminy,' I cried. ‘It's General Grant.'”
The lieutenant paused, and Rafe, Caesar, and John Cremony leaned forward. “What did the general do?”
“We all stood up, looking like whipped schoolboys, and saluted. Grant eyed us stern as a sphinx. He took the cigar from between his teeth, and he asked the Reb corporal. ‘Who's ahead?' ‘Why we are,' said the corporal. ‘Those chumps you brought down here can't play poker a little bit. But they can fight, General.' ‘Have to sometimes,' said Grant. And he rode away.”
Rafe thought about those twenty thousand men dead and wounded in one battle. It made the dustup at Doubtful Pass seem like small potatoes.
“I hear that General Grant says he knows but two songs,” said Caesar, “‘Yankee Doodle' and the other one.”
They all chuckled, and then Cremony went back to letting off steam about Carleton.
“At Bosque Redondo the Navajos and the Apaches were killing each other over a pint of whiskey or a spavined mule or a patch of corn. They were dying of flux from the water and the smallpox that the Rebs left behind, so what does Carleton do?”
“He opens a school,” said Rafe.”
“He opens a damned school. You can imagine how successful that was.”
“Why wasn't it?” asked the lieutenant.
Cremony gave him a pitying look, as though condoling him for having been in the privy when intelligence was handed out.
“Their chief explained it to me.”
“What did he say?” Rafe looked up, interested.
Cremony leaned back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and took a few puffs on his cigar while he remembered the exact words, translating them from Spanish to English as he went.
“‘You say that because you learned from books, you can build all those big houses. Now, let me tell you what we think. You begin when you are little to work hard at learning so you can learn to do all those wonderous things. And after you get to be men, the real work of life begins for you. You build the houses, the ships, the towns. And then you die and leave them all behind. We call that slavery.'”
“He's right,” said Rafe. “The Apaches don't need to work.”
“That's what the chief said. He said they were free as air. He said the Mexicans and others work for them. What they cannot get from the Mexicans …”
“And the American ranchers and farmers and miners,” added the lieutenant.
“ … What they cannot get from others, then the river, the woods, the mountains, and the plains provide. He said, ‘We will not send our children to your schools to become slaves like yourselves.'”
Rafe finished the story. “So, the chief packed up everyone, lock, stock, and moccasins, and lit out.” Rafe poked his stockinged feet farther under Patch's stomach. Her solid body and thick fur provided a bone-soaking warmth in the December chill.
Cremony laughed. “I wish I could have seen the look on Carleton's face when he discovered that five hundred Mescaleros had decamped in the night.”
Rafe chuckled himself. A sizable pile of chits lay on the table in front of him. A few glasses of more than middling brandy sloshed inside him. It gave the rough-walled room a
soft glow and a sensuous shimmy. Best of all, he held a handful of cards that looked to be winners. Rafe felt expansive, lucky, and—temporarily at least—blessed.
He should have known better.
When the shouts and the gunfire sounded, Cremony and the lieutenant were fast, but not so fast as Rafe and Caesar. They dodged among the soldiers pouring out of the barracks, pulling up their braces, and priming and loading their new percussion-lock Springfields.
With Patch ahead of him, Rafe raced toward the wagon yard. As the rocks and thorns destroyed his latest pair of bison wool socks, he cursed himself for taking his boots off. He cursed himself for not tying Red at the door, although an Apache could steal him from there as easily as anywhere else, if Red would allow it. He cursed himself for almost believing the sergeant when he said the Apaches had a superstition about this place and would never attack it.
Caesar reached the wagon yard first. “Othello and Desdemona are here,” he called. “The other two are gone. I'll check the wagon.”
Rafe let his breath out in a rush when he saw Red silhouetted against the pink sky. He knew that chasing the raiding party by himself wouldn't accomplish anything, so he didn't bother to saddle up.
He limped up to Red. He rubbed his muzzle and squeezed his ears, something Red liked more than anything else. Red put his face against Rafe's chest and pushed. Rafe ran a hand down his neck and felt an object in the mane. It was tied into the hairs, not merely entangled with them, as though snagged by accident. He cut it free and studied it in the pale light.
“What have you been up to, old man?”
Red didn't answer.
It was an amulet, that was certain. That an Apache had made it was also certain. That it had belonged to Lozen was most certain of all. But did she intend it for a good purpose or an evil one?

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