Ghost Warrior (51 page)

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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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He called after them. “If someone speaks against Hairy Foot in the Pale Eyes' council, that man will regret it.” As for himself, he knew he would get into trouble, but he didn't care. He surveyed the wagons, goods, and animals stalled in the middle of the road. “We must move these before someone comes.”
“We can drive them to that arroyo.” Rafe looked up and down the empty road. “No one will see us there, and we can choose what's useful and unload and repack. You should take only what's rightfully yours and leave the wagon mules here.
“Enjuh,”
said Victorio.
“Do you know how to drive a wagon and mule team?”
“No.”
“We can learn,” said Lozen.
“I'm sure you can.”
Rafe assigned He Makes Them Laugh the job of leading the mules. Victorio and Mangas were to take the second wagon, and he would manage the first one. Lozen could come along with him. He showed Victorio where the brake was, told him how to hold the reins and what to do with them, and gave him a quick lesson in cracking a whip. He expected to handle the first team himself, but when he climbed aboard, Lozen was sitting in the driver's seat with the reins in her hands.
He shook his head in exasperation, reluctant to waste more time teaching her. As it turned out, it took precious little time. Lozen set the mules in motion as if she had been staging all her life.
“So, Chidin Alch'ise, Little Devil …” She looked over at him. “How do you like being a wild Apache renegade?”
He threw his head back and laughed. The two of them joked and chuckled all the way to the transfer point in the arroyo. Rafe couldn't remember when he had felt this happy.
 
 
WHEN HARRY HART CALLED RAFE INTO HIS OFFICE A FEW days later, he didn't have to guess what the topic of conversation
would be. Hart's tantrum made John Clum's look like tempests in a coffee pot. He screamed at Rafe that he would never work for the government again.
“And when I prove that you are responsible for the theft of government goods, I will see that you rot in jail.”
Rafe smiled and laid Victorio's gift, the war club, on the desk. Hart gave it the look Rafe had come to expect and anticipate with pleasure. He stared at it as though it were a rattlesnake. He grew pale around his dingy collar.
“If any more wagons lose their way and wander into your Tucson friends' clutches …” Rafe gave him a wolf's grin. “There will be hell to pay.”
Rafe walked out, still wolfish about the gills. Hart's threats didn't bother him. In the past thirty years, he had outlasted scores of army officers, governors, commissioners, Indian agents, and bureaucrats of indeterminate stripe. He would outlast this one, too. As for Victorio and Lozen, now that they had supplies, only one lack prevented them from bolting like a spooked team with the bit in their teeth. They needed horses.
The White Mountain people had plenty of them grazing loose. Dead Shot and the boys had told Rafe that Lozen's nickname was Tlii-yin'iihne, She Steals Horses. Taking her neighbors' mounts would be a cakewalk for her.
Rafe decided to keep his chestnut with him even when he visited the privy.
OUT OF THE POT AND INTO THE LINE OF FIRE
W
hen Victorio and Lozen came back from a council, they found Broken Foot smoking a cigarillo and warming his swollen joints at the fire. He wore a shiny tin pot upside down on his head, a sharp, new ax stuck into the back of his belt, and a happy smile. When he stood up, his knees and ankles cracked like distant rifle fire.
“
Ha'anakah
, you are come.” Victorio and Lozen embraced him.
“Where are the young men?” asked Victorio.
“They've camped among the tall pines to the east.” Broken Foot corrected himself. “Some of them are waiting there. The others have come here to see their sweethearts, their wives, their children. Right now, Brother, your son is probably whispering through the back wall of Maria's daughter's lodge. He'll be here soon.”
They knew that everyone would be here soon. They would come for the distribution of the stolen issue goods stacked under She Moves Like Water's arbor. Broken Foot lifted the canvas that covered the bounty and peered under it.
“Have you been on a raid to Mexico?” he asked.
“No. Just as far as the road to Tucson.”
“The road to Tucson is more convenient than Mexico.” Broken Foot looked pleased and relieved that the man he called Brother had not turned into a cringing dog trotting after the Pale Eyes, like his old friend, Loco. Broken Foot sat down and turned up the heat on his knees again.
“You have been on a raid yourself, Uncle.” Lozen tapped on the tin pot.
“No.” Broken Foot adjusted the pot at a steadier angle.
“We took these from a wagonload of things that the agent was delivering to his friends instead of to us.”
“Then the situation at the Tulerosa isn't any better than here.”
“It's not good, but I think it's better than here. The Mescaleros are easier to get along with than the White Mountain people.” He rolled a cigarillo. “Your son has brought you many things from Mexico. One more raid, and the council will consider voting him warrior rank.” Broken Foot didn't point out that the boy had served his apprenticeship with men other than his own father. “You've trained him well. He'll be a good fighter and a leader.”
Lozen held out the coil of iron wire. “This is for your daughter's feast.”
“We have decided to hold her feast at Warm Springs, even if we have to fight every Pale Eyes in the country.” Broken Foot took the pot off his head, put the wire inside it, and set it back on his head. “The young men have hidden supplies and weapons in the usual places along the trail south. Come with us, brother.”
“Did you bring extra horses?” asked Victorio.
“We stole some, but the army chased us and took them back. We have only what we're riding.”
“I went to Big Mouth's camp to talk to his wife about a sing for her mother.” said Lozen. “The White Mountain people have at least two hundred ponies. They'll be easy to take. The boys can go with me.”
She was happy at the prospect of stealing horses again with her old friends, Fights Without Arrows, Chato, and Flies In His Stew.
 
 
THEY HAD HAD TO LEAVE THE OLDEST AND THE FEEBLEST people behind, but over three hundred women and children and sixty warriors left San Carlos under cover of darkness. Lozen rode up and down the line, encouraging the weaker ones, looking for stragglers, and urging people not to lag.
When morning came, Lozen's spirits sent her a warning.
She joined Victorio and Broken Foot at the head of the column.
“Can you tell how many are coming?” Victorio asked.
“A lot.”
Fights Without Arrows, Flies In His Stew, and Chato returned from their scout and confirmed it.
“At least two hundred are following us,” said Fights Without Arrows. “We saw Bluecoats. We saw the Pale Eyes' White Mountain scouts. We saw white men from the country all around here. They must have left this morning before light.”
“Too bad we can't go back and raid that country,” said Chato. “No one is left there to protect the stock.”
“Most of the White Mountain men are on foot, but they're trotting along like Old Man Coyote.”
“Those White Mountain men are mad about all the horses we took from them.” The smile filled the deepest crevasses of Broken Foot's face. “I bet they feel pretty foolish.”
Lozen leaned sideways on her piebald pony so she could murmur to her brother. “They expect us to head for Mexico. If the women and children break into small groups and turn east into the mountains, Fights Without Arrows, Chato, Flies In His Stew, and I will cover their tracks.”
“The rest of us men can keep riding south to leave a trail,” said Victorio. “When we come to Ash Creek, we'll scatter, double back, and meet you at Three Flat Rocks.”
The plan worked for a while. For ten days they kept to the high ground and evaded their pursuers. As the band's animals gave out, the young men swooped down on the ranches in the valleys and stole more.
The local ranger company gave up about two days into the chase. The other civilians drifted off to protect their own livestock. After a week, the soldiers returned to San Carlos for supplies. The White Mountain men and the police, with Dead Shot as their leader, kept going. Dead Shot and the others could follow tracks through rough country, and the White Mountain men wanted their horses back.
They caught up with Victorio's people and pinned them
against a sheer cliff. Victorio's warriors and Lozen kept up a covering fire, but the women and children had nowhere to go. The White Mountain scouts captured several of them and rounded up the horses.
Then Lozen and the others saw Dead Shot raise his rifle and signal the White Mountain men to leave with the captives and the horses. They had gotten what they'd come for, and they'd just as soon Victorio and his people didn't return to San Carlos. In his own way, Dead Shot was letting them know he understood why they were going, and maybe he even wished them well.
On foot, the Warm Springs people traveled east and south for hundreds of miles through the mountains. They crossed lava beds and broken buttes, peaks, and canyons until they reached the country they knew so well. Then came the hard part, living through the deep snows and freezing cold of winter with few horses, their food supply exhausted, and hunted by every Pale Eyes for a hundred miles around.
 
 
IN MARCH 1878 LT. CHARLES MERRITT WAS STARTLED TO see Victorio and twenty-two warriors ride in to the fort that once had been the Warm Springs agency. They were ragged and emaciated, and their ponies looked as though they could drop dead on the spot. Lieutenant Merritt called for an interpreter and beckoned Victorio into his office. He set a chair near the stove for him, but Victorio stood with his blanket wrapped around him.
“We're willing to surrender,” he said, “if you'll let us stay here. We want to bring our old ones home, but we would rather die than go back to San Carlos.”
Merritt thought about it. The army and the irate citizenry had been chasing this man all over two territories, and now here he was, standing in the office, making a very reasonable request.
“You have my sympathy. I know this is your home country.” He offered Victorio a cigar, but he waved it away. “You can stay until I receive orders telling me what to do. If you
and your people make no trouble, I'll supply you with food.”
“We will cause no trouble.”
Merritt believed him. While he and his superior, Colonel Hatch, waited to hear from Washington, Merritt arranged for the old ones at San Carlos to be sent by wagons to Warm Springs. He managed to have an agent assigned to the post to distribute food and blankets. The new agent was rigid and arrogant. Neither Lieutenant Merritt nor Victorio liked him, but at least he did his job with a fair degree of honesty.
Given the wrangling between the Indian Bureau and the War Department in Washington, Merritt realized he might never hear from them. For once, their inefficiency might have a good effect. Victorio's people lived quietly through the summer and fall. They farmed their old fields. They stole no horses or cattle. They did nothing to molest the settlers crowding in around them, and even became friends with some of them. None of that was good enough.
 
 
LOZEN AND HER SISTERS LOOKED OVER THE HEAPS OF PINON nuts, berries, and cactus fruit. The harvest had been good. Ears of corn lay in colorful heaps in all the arbors. They would have enough food this winter.
Victorio and fifteen of his men galloped across the dance ground. Victorio gave a hawk's shrill whistle to signal the boys to bring in the rest of the horses. The men scattered to their families' camps. Victorio leaped off his pony before he had stopped. Lozen had never seen such a wild look in his eyes.
She grabbed the carbine that Wah-sin-ton had given her, and her pouch of cartridges. She Moves Like Water, Corn Stalk, Stands Alone, and María prepared for flight. Daughter called the children.
Victorio talked fast as he stuffed food, ammunition, his fire drill, extra rawhide rope, and spare moccasins into a saddle pouch. “The Pale Eyes judge and sheriff from Central City are at the Fort. Dead Shot says they plan to arrest me.
The agent says the Bluecoats will take us all back to San Carlos.”
“They will not put chains on you and lock you up like they did Geronimo.” Lozen was ready to kill anyone who tried.
“We won't go back to San Carlos,” said She Moves Like Water.
“That's what I told them.” Victorio tied the blankets behind his saddle. “I did what I have wanted to do for a long time. I pulled the agent's beard so hard he couldn't straighten his neck afterward. I would rather have killed him.”
Daughter carried her youngest son in a cradleboard. The rest of her young ones gathered around her. Besides her own, she and Corn Stalk were caring for several orphans. “What about the children?”
“Go with the Bluecoats. They'll feed you all until we can come for you.” Victorio followed She Moves Like Water to the lodge. “You must stay here.”
“I'm coming with you.”
“Dead Shot says the Bluecoats have orders to shoot any of us men and boys they see. They will not give us a chance to surrender. If you are with us, they will kill you, too.”
She Moves Like Water reached up to touch his cheek. “I will not go anywhere without you.”
She hugged Corn Stalk, Daughter, and the children. Each of them murmured, “May we live to see each other again.”
 
 
SOLDIERS AND SCOUTS OF THE NINTH CAVALRY CAUGHT UP with Victorio and his sixty warriors in the Black Mountains. All around them, snake-tongues of lightning flicked at the horizon and thunder rumbled. Dodging bullets, Victorio, Lozen, Wah-sin-ton, and the others dismounted and scattered up the slope, taking cover and firing as they went. When Victorio ran out of cartridges for his Winchester, he handed it to She Moves Like Water and took from her the old musket she had primed and loaded.
They reached the series of ledges as a frigid wind roared
through and a bolt of lightning struck a mesquite tree on a nearby promontory. The detonation of thunder left their ears ringing, and the first huge drops of rain began exploding around them.
They knew these mountains well. The heap of boulders behind them had an opening at ground level. They could slither through it before the Bluecoats knew they had gone. Once on the other side they could disperse into the creases and folds of the mountains. Victorio motioned for the men to go on while he and Wah-sin-ton and Lozen kept up a steady fire to draw the soldiers' attention and keep their heads down. He shouted over the thunder and gunfire for She Moves Like Water to go with the men, but she took his empty musket and went on loading.
A bullet struck a nearby rock and shattered it. A chunk of it hit She Moves Like Water's hand and sent the sack of bullets flying. She crawled out along the ledge to reach for it, and another bullet hit her in the head. She pitched sideways, with her legs over the cliff's rim, and began to slide down, the wind whipping her long hair across her face.
“Mother!” Wah-sin-ton screamed.
Victorio scrambled toward her. He made a desperate grab and caught one blowing corner of the blanket she had draped across her shoulders. He pulled on it, but it came loose. Her arms dragged along the ground, pulled backward by the weight of her body. Victorio's fingers grazed hers as she disappeared over the edge.
Lozen crawled to him. “Come away,” she shouted into the wind. “You can do nothing here.”
She saw the bewilderment and the disbelief in his eyes. He slid on his stomach toward the rim of the cliff, maybe to convince himself that she was really dead and not clinging to a tree root or some rocks just below the edge. Lozen knew that her sister had been dead before she fell. She held on to Victorio's moccasin with both hands.

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