Ghost Warrior (40 page)

Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior

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FEEDING THE HAND THAT BITES

R
afe and Caesar dismounted to stretch their legs under the old cottonwood. While Caesar watered the pack mule, Rafe lifted the puppies out of the burden basket hanging in front of his stirrup and set them down in the grass. Patch came over to sniff, lick, and inspect them.

Rafe would miss them on the ride back, but they were presents for Caesar's nephews, Charlie Sets Him Free and Wah-sin-ton, and one for Lozen if she wanted him. Rafe had knitted tiny socks for Maria's baby, and he and Caesar had brought presents for the adults, too.

Lozen's comment about wanting a dog had surprised Rafe. He knew her people had always regarded dogs with a superstitious fear, but the Mescaleros living at the Bosque Redondo reservation had started keeping them as pets, or at least they tolerated the soldiers' strays.

Rafe and Caesar scooped the cold water over their heads and threw handfuls of it at each other. The bloated storm clouds advancing from the west seemed to push the July heat ahead of them and made drawing breath a labor. Rafe and Caesar lay in the grass with their hands clasped behind their heads and waited for the sentries' hawk whistle signaling their arrival. The horses grazed, and the three puppies played until they grew tired and fell asleep. Rafe sighed in contentment.

He and Caesar had had little time to lie about and do nothing. The government had shifted territorial offices to California, which left the departments of New Mexico and Arizona in disarray. Army posts were established and abandoned, expanded, reduced, relocated, and renamed. Rafe and
Caesar kept busy freighting construction materials. They hauled lime from Mesilla, lumber from Pinos Altos, and charcoal from Santa Rita. Rafe hated the idea of dying while defending a wagonload of lime, but the pay was good.

One of the new posts was Fort Bascom. In the sort of irony lost on the army, the starched-collars in Washington named it after George Bascom, the lieutenant who had bungled negotiations with Cochise about ten years earlier and started the warfare that consumed them all still.

Maybe it's fitting, Rafe thought. Bascom had been responsible for providing a living for thousands of soldiers, and in many cases, a dying.

Bureaucratic idiocy, the egregious thievery of the rations contractors at Bosque Redondo, and George Carleton's irrational arrogance had finally worn down Dr. Steck. He had resigned in disgust. He should have waited. The Department of the Army had relieved Carleton of duty, although his departure hadn't helped the situation. A succession of generals squabbled and dithered while roving packs of Apaches continued to raid the army and civilians alike.

“It's ironic,” Rafe mused.

“What is?” asked Caesar.

“Don't most of the white men in this territory make their living supplying the army?”

“They do.”

“If the Apaches are exterminated, the army marches away, and the good citizens are left with their hands in an empty till.”

“You means white folk hereabouts want the Injun troubles to go on, so's they can keep makin' money off the gum'ment?”

“Exactly. But here's the irony. With the army scouring the mountains for Apaches, you'd think they'd make themselves scarce.”

Caesar laughed. “Nosiree-bob. They hovers around the forts and the roads like so many turkey buzzards. They stole six mules, 'leven horses, and three oxen from down to Fort Cummins' just last week.”

“Yep. The Apaches have become as dependent on the army as the hooligans roosting in the saloons.”

“I reckon you could say the gumâment's feedin' the hand that bites it.”

Rafe chuckled. “You could say that.”

The two of them read aloud for a while, passing the book back and forth, while dark clouds encroached on the blue sky, setting the cottonwoods' leaves to fluttering in the wind. By midafternoon they had heard nothing that sounded like an Apache signal. No one had come for them, and the first drops had started to fall.

“Let's go.” Rafe set the puppies back in the basket.

Rafe and Caesar put on the gutta-percha ponchos they always carried in July and August, the rainy season. Rafe's was big enough to form a tent that covered the saddlebags and the puppies. Caesar's was the same size, but it barely covered him.

“We goin' back to Alamosa?”

“Nope. We came to deliver Dr. Steck's last presents to Victorio and his people, and we're going to see that they get them.”

“How do you expect to find them? We was blindfolded last trip.”

“I'll follow my ears.”

“Your ears?”

“Remember how we splashed through that stream for quite a ways?”

“Yeah, but where is it?”

“You're looking at it.”

Caesar stared at the stream, then up at the cliff a mile or so away. “You mean they rode us in a big circle and brung us back to it?”

“I'd say so. I think your new brother-in-law, He Makes Them Laugh, told us stories to distract us from listening to what was going on.” Rafe didn't know whether to be insulted or amused that the Apaches thought so little of his intelligence. “Did you notice the echo we heard part of the way, as though we were going through a narrow canyon?”

“You think they's a way through that wall?”

“Like the Mexicans, I half believe that Apaches can make themselves invisible, but I doubt they can walk through solid rock.”

“The Lord parted the Red Sea for Moses.” Caesar grinned at him. “Maybe He can part that there cliff for us.”

Neither of them spoke about the possibility that they wouldn't be welcomed as friends on the other side. A crash of thunder opened the fandango. Rain poured down as though someone had slid back a sluice gate.

EVEN THOUGH THE LOUD SPLATTER OF RAIN OBSCURED ANY signals the sentries might give, Lozen knew something was wrong when no one came to meet them. Fights Without Arrows, Chato, He Steals Love, Flies In His Stew, Ears So Big, and He Makes Them Laugh knew it, too. They dismounted, and the apprentices took the horses' reins. They all waited in silence while Lozen closed her eyes and prayed to Life Giver to tell her if enemies were near. When she finished, she made the sign for no.

The rain abated. A few more wind-driven sprays hit them; then the storm grumbled off over the mountain, leaving the trees to drip. Fights Without Arrows used gestures to divide the group and send individuals in different directions.

Lozen and He Makes Them Laugh crawled across the meadow where the ponies usually grazed. Before they reached the edge of the village, gusts carried the odor of wet ashes and charred wood, and the sound of a dog barking. Then they saw the burned arbors and the blackened heaps of Stands Alone's lodges in the gloom under the tarnished gray sky. Two horses, a mule, and two men shrouded in glistening black ponchos stood in the mud in the middle of Stands Alone's camp. The dog barked furiously in the direction of Fights In A Line and Chato, who were approaching from upwind. The men faced the same way, with their hands held out at their sides to show they were empty. Lozen and He
Makes Them Laugh couldn't see their faces, but they recognized the horses.

“Hairy Foot and Uncle,” He Makes Them Laugh murmured. “Chato will shoot them.”

As though to verify that, they heard the solid
ka-thunk
of a bolt sliding home. Lozen could tell by the sound that it was Chato's shiny new rifle, the one he called Many Shots. Hairy Foot and Uncle must have heard it, too, but they didn't move to defend themselves or flee.

Lozen stood up and walked into the open to show Chato and the others that she didn't consider the Pale Eyes a threat. He Makes Them Laugh splashed after her through the puddles that were shrinking as the water soaked into the earth.

The dog whirled on them. Hackles raised, head lowered, she started toward them at a stiff-legged gait. The two men turned around, and Lozen saw grief in their eyes, and relief at the sight of her instead of someone more likely to murder them. She did not detect guilt or fear or deception.

Hairy Foot said something to the dog. She sat down, her ears laid against her head, her lips drawn back to expose sharp teeth in a snarl. Hairy Foot slowly drew the poncho off over his head and threw it aside. He untied the bandana from around his neck and wiped the sweat from his face with it, although Lozen thought he might be wiping away tears, too.

“No lo hicimos,”
he said. “We didn't do it.”

“Yo se,”
said Lozen. “I know.”

Fights Without Arrows, Chato, and the others advanced across the dance ground, converging on them with rifles leveled and arrows nocked.

“They led the Bluecoats here.” Chato aimed his Winchester at Rafe's face. “We will kill them slowly by fire, as befits Pale Eyes witches.”

“You will not harm them.” Lozen moved to stand in front of him. “They're brothers to Stands Alone.”

He Makes Them Laugh ignored them all and ran to his grandparents' camp. When he began to howl in mourning, Patch threw her head back and joined in. Lozen started at a
headlong run toward the trail to the cave. Now that the rain had stopped, the vultures had begun to weave their circles in the sky above the cliff.

She sprinted up the steep slope, grabbing rocks and bushes to pull herself along faster. She leaped a boulder that had rolled onto the path and almost landed on the outstretched hand of Disgruntled. Someone had scalped him. Nearby lay Victorio's pony, Coyote.

She pleaded and bargained with Life Giver as she scrambled upward, oblivious of the scrapes, cuts, and bruises the rocks and brambles left on her hands, arms and legs. The stench hit her as she cleared the top of the ledge. The sun broke through the clouds and shone into the cave, lighting up the bodies that lay sprawled across the floor. Most of them had bloody wounds on the crowns of their heads.

Lozen scooped ashes from the firepit and scattered them on the bodies as she moved among them. She found her grandmother with her friend Turtle. The two of them lay in each other's arms as though they had fallen asleep, except that they, too, had been scalped. Lozen sat at Grandmother's side and rocked back and forth, trying to contain her grief, but the effort was futile. She lifted her face toward the sky beyond the cave's ceiling, closed her eyes, and wailed.

RAFE TRIED TO FOLLOW LOZEN AND THE OTHERS, BUT THEY soon disappeared around the second bend in the path. He was left to scramble up as best he could. He hadn't gotten far when he heard the keening cry. Lozen had found something terrible. He wondered whom the marauders had killed. Her mother, her father? Her grandmother? Caesar's new family?

Not long after, male voices joined Lozen's in wailing their grief. They startled Rafe. He would not have thought Apache men capable of so much emotion.

He had almost reached the top when Chato came back. He stood in Rafe's path, with one foot set on a boulder and his
forearm resting on his thigh. He glared down at Rafe and spoke in Spanish.

“Grandmother Lozen says not to kill you. She says, âHairy Foot, go away. Go away, pronto.'”

Rafe turned and started down the slope, leaning back to counter the pull of gravity while the angle of descent jammed his toes into the ends of his boots. The hair on the back of his neck stirred. He didn't think Chato would waste a bullet on him. He would probably sneak up on him and bash his skull in with that serviceable-looking war club dangling from his belt.

Rafe let his breath out in a gust of relief when he made it to the bottom of the trail. He found Caesar with He Makes them Laugh. They had wrapped two bodies in blankets and tied them across the mule's back. The mule's original load of gifts sat stacked in the center of the dance ground with Caesar's gutta-percha poncho covering it.

“These are my brother-in-law's grandparents.” Caesar nodded toward the bodies. “I reckon the riffraff that set up shop near the fort kilt them. My brother here says they must've kilt the 'ole folks in the cave up yonder, too. He says Lozen's grandmother is up there.”

“We have to leave.”

“I'm gonna help bury his people.”

“If they find us here when they get back, they'll kill us.”

He Makes Them Laugh listened intently, trying to understand the strange words.

Caesar nodded toward He Makes Them Laugh. “He's family. I can't leave him to do this alone.” Caesar collected his gray's reins and the mule's.

When He Makes Them Laugh saw that Caesar intended to stay with him, he yanked the reins away fom him.

“Vaya.”
He waved toward the trail back to the cliff wall.
“Â¡Vaya!”
He drew a hand across his throat, the sign for quick death in any language.