Ghost Warrior (5 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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To end the conversation, Rafe rolled up in his blanket near the fire. With his saddle for a pillow he went to sleep.
He awoke with a start and sat bolt upright with his pistol cocked and leveled at the shouts and oaths coming from Armijo's camp. Rafe threw back his blankets and pulled on his
boots. He kept his pistol in one hand and picked up his rifle in the other. He approached Armijo's wagons warily. Absalom and Caesar followed.
“The gen‘ral's lookin' sour as buttermilk,” observed Absalom.
Armijo waved his arms and screamed. His fury had pumped so much blood to his pockmarked face that it reminded Rafe of the pomegranates in Mesilla's marketplace. The shackle that had held the young Apache woman lay empty next to the wagon wheel.
“¡Carajo!”
Armijo screamed.
“Maldita puta india.”
“He's all in a fester, ain't he?” Absalom added the obvious. “What do you suppose happened?”
“Looks like that Apache woman vamoosed.”
Armijo rounded on them, suspicion flashing in his beady eyes. “Have you seen her, Collins?”
“Can't say as I have.”
Armijo waved both hands at his men and shouted in Spanish. “You misbegotten piles of goat shit, saddle up and scour the hills. She can't have gotten far.”
Rafe chuckled as he watched Armijo waddle off to direct the search. He looked around at a landscape cut by steep ravines and littered with boulders. It was a country of stunted cedars and creosote bushes, cacti, and rank growths of Mother Nature's malice. It would be sure death to most crippled travelers, but not to an Apache. Broken ankle or not, Rafe was certain no one would find this one.
Rafe glanced up at the sun rising above the mountains to the east. “Let's hitch the teams and go, or we won't make Santa Rita by nightfall.”
While Absalom and Caesar brought the mules and positioned them between the traces, Rafe lowered the tailgate of the first wagon and checked the load. The barrels of flour and salt beef stood lashed in place, but he noticed that the large crate of horse shoes and iron ingots near the tailgate had shifted slightly. Forgetting that it would be too heavy for him to move alone, he started to push it back in place. Caesar materialized at his elbow.
“I'll take care of that for ya, suh.” But Caesar was too late.
When Rafe shoved the trunk, it moved. He also noticed that someone had pried the lid up slightly on one end, leaving a narrow opening.
“What's the problem?” Absalom asked.
“Someone's stolen shoes out of this crate.” Rafe climbed onto the wagon bed, took the crowbar from its leather loops along the side, pried the lid up, and stared down into the box. “I'll be damned.”
Folded inside the crate and staring up at him through the tangles of her hair was Armijo's Apache slave.
“Did you tuck her away in here, Absalom?”
“I swear on God Almighty's Holy Bible, I didn't.”
Rafe studied her warily, as though expecting her to pop out, knife in hand, like a death-dispensing jack-in-the-box.
“I've heard of Apaches getting things out of locked places, but never nailing themselves into one.” Rafe turned in time to catch a glance pass from Absalom to Caesar. He stared through narrowed green eyes at Caesar. “Did you do this?”
Caesar suddenly forgot the English language. Mouth half open, eyes wide and blank, he looked down at Rafe in total noncomprehension.
“You shouldn't have done it, Caesar,” Absalom said.
Caesar recovered his ability to speak. “I couldn't leave her there, Massa Ab'slom.”
“How did he get the shackles off?” Rafe asked.
“We're both good at picking locks with a wire. When we were kids, we used to get into the brandy supply my father kept shut up in a trunk.”
“I would have set the others free, too, Massa, but the Mek‘scans stood guard over 'em all night.”
“I'm sorry for any trouble we have caused you, Rafe.” Absalom picked up his saddle. “We'll forfeit our pay for this run and be on our way. We'll take her with us on our spare mule.”
“She'll make catfish bait of you at the first opportunity.”
“Beggin' your pardon, suh,” said Caesar with uncustomary boldness, “But no, suh, no she won't.”
“So, you're now an expert on Apaches, are you?”
“No, suh, I ain't.”
“Where are the shoes and the pig iron that were in the crate?”
“I hid 'em behind the barrels, suh.”
Rafe climbed onto the wagon bed and looked. Horseshoes were stacked in every crevice around the sides and back of the wagon bed.
“By God, man, you're as devious as any Apache.”
Rafe didn't want Absalom to go. He knew Shakespeare, and they had passed the hours lining out the Bard. Besides that, having Caesar along was like employing three men, all of whom actually put in a full day's labor.
“I need you and Caesar to finish the trip. We'll hide her under the canvas, but she rides in your wagon. And if she strangles you with your own suspenders, it's your fault.”
“Can you tell her that?”
“¿Habla Español?”
Rafe asked.
She said nothing, but she had been Armijo's captive, so Rafe figured she had picked up some of the language.
“Usted va con nosotros. Estará segura.”
He turned to Absalom. “I told her she could go with us and that she'd be safe.” Rafe sighed. “We'll figure out what to do with her when we reach Santa Rita. Some of her people will probably be there.”
“They'll take her in then.”
“Maybe.”
“But she's an Apache.”
“With them it's hard to say. I can't keep all the bands straight, and half the time they seem to be at war with each other.”
Rafe shook his head. In his years in this country he had seen just about every variety of human being, mostly those roosting at the lower end of the social order. For sheer cussedness, wind, and eccentricity, though, the Apaches had every other race whipped.
“I figure to call her Pandora.” Caesar grinned, and Rafe saw the light of a keen intelligence in his eyes. Maybe he had underrated him. Maybe he and Absalom would make it to California after all.
He also realized that Caesar's eyes were the same dark hazel as Absalom's. He hadn't noticed it before.
“Do you know who Pandora was?” Rafe asked.
“Yes, suh. Back in the old days the Greeks' god, Zeus, he was jealous ‘cause Prometheus done give fire to humans. Zeus made a woman out of clay, and he blew the breath o' life into her. Then he sent her down to earth with a little box. Prometheus' brother, he got curious about dat box, no matter that Prometheus warned him not to look inside. He opened it, and evil come swarmin' out. He set loose all the sorrows that devil us now.”
“One thing remained in the box,” added Absalom.
Rafe knew what that one thing was. “Hope,” he said. “What remained was that sly, old deceiver, hope.”
He wondered what troubles this Pandora would unleash.
INDIAN GIVING
S
ister and Talks A Lot carried a cowhide so stiff that when a gust caught it, it blew them backward a few steps. They collided with Ears So Big and Flies In His Stew, who followed them. Sister and Talks A Lot maneuvered the hide edgewise into the wind and continued climbing.
Sister had scraped the flesh from the inside of it and soaked it in water for three days. Instead of pegging it down to stretch it, she had left it to shrink in the summer sun while the women lectured her on the error of tanning it that way.
Sister knew she should be tending the cookfire and helping She Moves Like Water prepare the venison stew that would feed visitors. The people of Sister's Warm Springs band had camped near Red Sleeves' village in the mountains overlooking the old copper mine at Santa Rita. Talks A Lot, Flies In His Stew, and Ears So Big had planned to spend the day watching the men play hoop-and-pole until they saw Sister set off toward the cliff with her hide.
They knew her well. Whatever she planned to do would likely be interesting, maybe dangerous, and almost certainly unusual. But if the other boys found out they had gone off with a girl, the ridicule would dog them for a long time, so they had loped away in another direction and circled around.
When they reached the top of the ridge, the wind snapped the tattered blanket around Sister's legs and whipped her shoulder-length hair into her face. To show her grief for her father's death she had cut her hair and made her blanket into a poncho. It would replace her doeskin tunic and skirt for the customary time of mourning.
Sister led the way to an old mine shaft gouged into the
side of the cliff. Talks A Lot looked down at the steep spill of gravel that covered the side of the mountain and fanned out like a delta onto the valley far below. Talks A Lot guessed what Sister had in mind. It was a frightening prospect, but he couldn't back out now. He beckoned to Ears So Big and Flies In His Stew.
“You can watch,” he said to Sister.
He tugged at the hide, but she held on. He tried to shove her to the edge of the rock shelf to force her to let go, but she braced her legs and gave him her flintiest stare. He knew how strong she was. When they were about eight, she had wrestled him to a state of immobility that he still heard sly comments about. He also knew she would rather be flung off the cliff than give in. He let go and glowered at her.
“Four will fit.” Sister was gracious in victory.
She sat down and hooked her feet into two of the straps she had sewn on the front. Talks A Lot sat next to her. Ears So Big and Flies In His Stew positioned themselves behind. The riders each stuck a foot out and shoved. The cowhide scraped forward until it teetered on the edge; then it dropped as though the ground had fallen away from under it. The world tilted. Sister stared into a golden abyss of sunlight.
The children careened, shrieking and laughing down the slope in a rumble like an avalanche. As the hide rocked and pitched, they leaned from side to side to keep from flipping over. Sometimes it took to the air, landing again with a kidney-jolting thud. The dislodged gravel tumbled and chuckled beside it like Mountain's children. The valley floor rushed up at them. The hide hit the bottom of the slope, leveled abruptly, and sped out onto the overflow of gravel. Sister's sixteen-year-old cross-cousin, He Makes Them Laugh, was waiting for her.
He was small, slender, and strong. He had acquired an old wool vest with brass buttons on the front. He had hung two of the buttons from the holes in his earlobes. He had knotted cords through the button holes and tied bird skulls and lizards to them. Six dead rats dangled from a thong passed through
their mouth. They looked as though they were clinging to it with their teeth.
“The Pale Eyes leave their garbage everywhere, and the rats swarm over it.” He lifted one by the tail. “Look how fat they are. They'll make a lot of grease in the stew.”
He wrinkled his long nose, stuck his upper teeth out over his lower lip, and did a scuttling little dance, chanting a rat song he made up on the spot. The boys laughed as they rubbed their bruised tailbones.
“Cousin, your brother's wife wants you,” he said when he finished.
Sister felt suddenly ashamed. A child was beginning to make a bulge in She Moves Like Water's belly. She vomited every morning. She always had work to do, and she needed Sister's help.
The hide had cost Sister a lot of work, and she wanted to take it with her. If she left it here, the boys would wear it out. She thought of how many times her brother had told her that a leader gave his people whatever he had that they needed. She remembered what Grandmother told her, “Whatever you give away comes back. It might not be anything you can see, but it will come back.” She slid the hide toward Ears So Big; then she and He Makes Them Laugh started at a lope back to camp.
Sister's cousin always had a good-natured disregard for the opinion of others, but even if he cared what people thought, he could still keep company with her. He was the son of her mother's brother, which made him Sister's cross-cousin. Cross-cousins could never marry each other, and so they were not bound by the same constraints as others.
When Sister reached her brother's wife's cluster of lodges and arbors. She Moves Like Water kept her voice low when she scolded.
“Have you been going around with those boys again? People will say bad things about you. You'll disgrace the family.”
“Granddaughter,” Grandmother called from the cooking arbor. “Grind more cornmeal. We have a guest.”
When Sister saw the guest, she understood why She Moves Like Water did not want to start a loud argument. Cheis was the leader of the Tall Cliffs People. His name meant “Oak,” in the sense of an oak tree's strength and endurance. He was tall, and Sister had to admit he was as handsome as her own brother. He was a man people expected would provide for them and protect them.
He had brought his people to hold council with the Red Paint men about avenging the massacre at Janos. He was almost twice as old as Morning Star, who was twenty-four, and he should have been with the older men at the fire of his wife's father, Red Sleeves. Instead, he had settled down here and offered tobacco to Morning Star, Loco, and Broken Foot. He had been discussing horses ever since.
One reason he kept away from Red Sleeves' camp was that his woman's mother, Red Sleeves' third wife, was there. Cheis never spoke her name. Instead, he used the title for a wife's mother, She Who Has Become Old. Avoiding contact with one's wife's mother was the respectable way to behave. Today it was also prudent because Red Sleeves' third wife was not happy, and when she wasn't happy no one was.
Red Sleeves had captured her on a raid when she was a beautiful thirteen-year-old. That she was Mexican wouldn't have mattered if she had accepted her position as the least important wife. But being third, or even second, wasn't in her nature. The resentment of Red Sleeves' first two wives had simmered for forty years.
Earlier that day, She Who Has Become Old had fallen asleep with her hair draped over a boulder to dry. Someone had worked the spiny seeds of the come-along bush into it. Her Mexican slaves had spent all afternoon combing them out. Everyone heard about it. Wife number one or wife number two had probably done it, but few of the women liked her, so the choice of pranksters was large. Cheis had reason to avoid Red Sleeves' camp, all right.
“People say that your little sister is good with horses.” Cheis smiled in Sister's direction.
Sister felt her cheeks grow hot at the attention. She bent her head over the grind stone.
“She has horse magic,” Broken Foot said.
“You should have seen her ride in Janos,” added Loco.
While Loco told the story of the wild horse race, Sister scooped the cornmeal into a gourd bowl. She worked deer grease into it and added dried gooseberries, pinon meal, and water. She patted handfuls of the stiff dough into flat cakes and laid them on the stone in the coals.
“Will you make a charm for my horse, little sister?” Cheis asked.
Sister glanced at her brother. He raised one eyebrow, maybe as surprised as she was that Cheis would ask a favor from a child. Sister started to answer when a woman's voice sounded from the darkness. A boy's yelp followed it.
“Get out of my way, you little lizard.”
Consternation passed so quickly over Cheis's face that Sister only thought she saw it. He stood abruptly and almost broke into a trot so he would be out of sight when She Who Has Become Old appeared.
 
 
THE SUN WAS POISED TO SET WHEN RAFE, ABSALOM, AND Caesar reached the Santa Rita mines. Until its abandonment thirteen years earlier, the Santa Rita had been a Mexican outpost. After the United States' victory over Mexico three years ago, the territory changed hands, and a few dozen Americans had arrived to dig for the silver recently found there.
They gave the impression that working for silver rather than taking it at gunpoint was a new proposition for them. The Mexicans they had hired were mostly outlaws from the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. They, too, looked capable of slitting a man's throat for the gold in his teeth. Rafe kept his pistols ready whenever he came here.
A rattler slithered from among rocks and headed for a nearby mine shaft. Its dappled pattern of light and dark
looked like sunlight and shadows on water as it flowed into the darkness.
Absalom nodded at the pole notched along its twenty-five-foot length. “Is that what the peons used to climb to the surface?”
“Nope. Apache slaves. They worked on their knees in holes as black as a scalp hunter's heart. They broke up the rock with picks, put the chunks in those bags, and carried them out on their backs.”
“I imagine even Apaches fell off them now and then.”
“Hell yes. Didn't matter, though.” Rafe started the wagon forward again. He raised his voice so Absalom could hear him over the rattle of the trace chains, the complaints of the axles, and the miners' dogs, barking and howling like the chorus of a Greek tragedy. “The mine owners could always buy more Apache slaves in Chihuahua City. They still can, for that matter.”
Rafe stopped at the blacksmith shop. “Rogers,” he called.
A hulking lad appeared from the back of the shed. He wore a greasy leather apron over a pair of wool trousers with the cuffs rolled up. Sweat-damp spikes of coarse brown hair stood up like a dry stand of yucca above the red bandana tied around his head. He didn't look older than twenty.
“Did ya bring a nip of the critter, mate?”
“I have no whiskey to sell.”
“Did ya bring the horseshoes then, an' the pig?”
“The shoes and the iron are in the wagon. Tell José to unhitch the teams and give them grain.”
“Let the nigger do it.”
“He has business to attend to.” Rafe nodded to Caesar.
Caesar rode alongside the wagon, lifted the canvas off Pandora, and helped her settle in behind him.
“Bloody hell.” Shadrach Rogers spat a stream of tobacco. “We ain't plagued with enough savages around here, but what you've got to import more, and niggers besides.”
“I'll be back soon. Get that wagon unloaded.” Rafe mounted the big roan he called Red and flicked the reins.
Absalom fell in beside him, on a gray, and Rafe motioned for Caesar to ride next to him, too.”
“Where does he hail from?” Absalom asked when they'd left him behind.
“English by way of Australia.”
“One of the prisoners there, then?”
“I suppose.”
“How did he get here?”
“He didn't say.”
Absalom glanced at the rotting wooden frame of a crude ore crusher. “Did the Mexicans ever turn a profit here?”
“They hauled out twenty thousand mule loads of copper ingots a year for the mint in Chihuahua City. A mule load is a hundred and fifty pounds. You can cipher the sum.”
“Why did they abandon it?”
Lordy, Rafe thought. The man is filled to the brim with
why
.
“Apaches started causing death and destruction on a perpetual-motion basis.”
“Why's that?”
“About thirteen years ago scalp hunters befriended an old Red Paint chief named Juan José. His men got the chief and his people drunk—then he pulled the canvas off a cannon loaded with nails and scrap iron. He lit the fuse with his cigar, so I heard, and mowed them down, wheat, chaff, and weevils.” Rafe stared glumly between his horse's ears. “It wasn't just an evil act, it was a stupid one. The old man's successor was a firebrand named Mangas Coloradas. He escaped the postprandial entertainment. Mangas is probably the shrewdest leader the Apaches have ever had, and the largest.”
“Doesn't Mangas Coloradas mean Red Sleeves?”

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