Written in Blood

by John Wilson

  “When Father Hidalgo raised the banner of rebellion against Spain in 1810, my father was overjoyed. Although I was only a boy of eleven, I vividly remember him sitting me on his knee and telling me that this was a new dawn. That freedom from Spain would mean freedom for everyone from the likes of Ramirez.”

  Santiago smiles ruefully. “Again he was naïve. Hidalgo’s army was defeated and the survivors fled north. Hidalgo was betrayed; some say that Ramirez was involved, but, in any case, Father Hidalgo and his companions were taken to Chihuahua for trial. My father, although heartbroken at the defeat of his dreams, insisted on traveling to Chihuahua to see his heroes. While he was there, Ramirez denounced him as a revolutionary traitor to the very judges my father had spoken with only a few months before. Without any evidence they accepted Ramirez’s charge, and my father was sentenced to be executed.

  “My father was shot the day before Hidalgo, July 29, 1811, my twelfth birthday. His head was cut off and placed in an iron cage and hung from the gate of Ramirez’s hacienda as a warning to others. Of course, my mother was in an impossible position, and that is when we fled to Mexico City to begin a new life.”

  Santiago takes another drink and gazes thoughtfully into his glass. I sit in confusion. It is a sad story, but what does it have to do with me?

  “Was he the Don Alfonso Ramirez in my father’s letter?”

  Santiago looks startled, as if he has forgotten my presence. “No. No,” he says. “I am sorry. My mind tends to wander these days. The Ramirez in this story died many years ago, but he had a son. A boy of my age, called Alfonso.

  “After my father was killed and before we left for Mexico City, I used to visit the gates of the Ramirez hacienda, where they had hung my father’s head.”

  Santiago notices the look of shock that crosses my face.

  “I know,” he says, smiling ruefully, “it is a gruesome thing for a twelve-year-old boy to visit the severed head of his father, but those were violent times and there was no grave for me to visit.

  “I used to talk to my father’s head as it swung gently in its iron cage above the gate. I would tell him how mother was doing, about our plans to move to Mexico City and about my dreams of avenging his death.

  “One day as I stood before the gates, Alfonso Ramirez returned from a hunting trip with two companions. I moved aside to let them pass, but Alfonso reined in and addressed me. ‘So you are the son of the traitor hanging from our gate. I have heard that you come to visit him. Does he enjoy the visits?’

  “Alfonso’s companions laughed coarsely, but I remained silent. ‘I asked you a question and I expect an answer. Are we not generous? Aren’t you glad we hung your traitor father’s head from our gate so that you could come and have these enlightening conversations with it?’

  “Anger boiled in me, but I pushed it back. I could not fight three mounted men. I turned and walked away.

  “I heard the hoofbeats and half turned before Alfonso rode me down. I think my leg broke that first time, but Alfonso didn’t stop. I lay in a haze of hooves and pain, protecting my head as best I could as he rode back and forth over me. All the while, Alfonso was shouting, ‘This is how we teach peasants to respect us,’ and his companions were laughing.

  “Eventually the nightmare stopped, and they left me for dead. I was bruised and bleeding everywhere and several ribs were broken. My left arm and right leg were also broken. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe for the pain.

  “Luckily, a woodcutter found me and took me home. It took many months but my injuries finally healed, all except my leg, which set crooked and has blessed me with this limp all my life. As soon as I was well enough to travel, we moved to Mexico City.”

  Santiago pours himself another drink and drains his glass as if he needs the alcohol to push back the memories of that day. I’m shocked by what he tells me but still confused as to what it has to do with me. At last, Santiago feels up to going on.

  “I never returned to Casas Grandes or exacted the revenge I had promised my father I would. However, as I prospered, I kept myself informed of Alfonso Ramirez’s life. His father died in a riding accident in 1821, the year Mexico finally achieved independence from Spain.

  “Alfonso inherited the ranch, prospered and developed a reputation for cruelty that surpassed even his father’s. Although only in his early twenties, he became obsessed with having a son to follow him and set about searching for a suitable wife. Through his network of powerful connections, he soon found one, a young immigrant girl called Maeve. I can only assume that she was swept off her feet by visions of Alfonso’s wealth and power.

  “In any case, the son that Alfonso craved did not arrive. For ten years, the couple remained barren. There were births, but the infants were either stillborn or sickly and died soon after birth. I shudder sometimes when I think what the poor girl’s life must have been like in that decade, no better than a slave to Alfonso’s desire for a son. I do not for a moment imagine that Alfonso was capable of doing anything other than blaming her for the lack of an heir, and his blame was not something any person would wish to draw upon themselves.

  “Eventually, though, Maeve became pregnant once more and bore a healthy son. Alfonso was ecstatic, but it had been a very exhausting birth, and that night Maeve began bleeding. Alfonso was celebrating, drinking and showing off his son to his cronies. He ignored Maeve’s problems and the midwife’s pleas that the doctor be fetched.

  “That night, Maeve died. It is said that, when he was told the news, Alfonso merely finished his drink and said, ‘It is of no consequence. She has given me a son.’

  “The son, Roberto, grew strong and—”

  “Roberto Ramirez was the famous scalp hunter,” I interrupt.

  Santiago nods. “That is what some say, although so many stories have grown up around him now, that it is impossible to separate fact from fiction. He carried the burden of his father’s evil reputation around on his back like a stone.

  “What is certain is that Roberto did not turn out to be the son that Alfonso craved. Before he reached the age of ten, he ran off into the desert one night and never returned. When Alfonso was told that his son had gone, he flew into a rage and beat the messenger to death with his bare hands.

  “By then, Alfonso had married once more, a Mexican woman, and she had born him a second son, a couple of years after Roberto was born. Alfonso now had two sons, but, so the story goes, Roberto was the only one he ever cared for.”

  “Is Alfonso Ramirez still alive?”

  “No. He died almost thirty years ago, at the time when the scalp hunters were so busy. The last years of Alfonso’s life were not happy. He became more cruel than ever, driving the workers away and letting the ranch and hacienda run down. His wife died—I do not know the circumstances—and Apache attacks drove off most of Alfonso’s fine horses and what workers had stayed with him. In the end, only his second son stayed beside him, so I suppose he at least got his wish for a loyal son.”

  Santiago falls silent. It’s an incredible tale of violence and death, but I am still confused.

  “Thank you for telling me this,” I say. “It fills in gaps in what I have heard, but what does it have to do with my father?”

  “I’m not certain,” Santiago says. “I never saw Alfonso’s first wife, Maeve, or any of his family for that matter. She was said to be a great beauty and very charming with dark hair, flashing eyes and the wit of her ancestors. You see, Maeve came from Ireland and her family name was Doolen.”

  12

  I ’ve been riding east through the mountains and thinking about what Santiago told me every waking moment for the two days since I left Esqueda. I can come up with only two possibilities for what it all means. Either it means nothing—Alfonso Ramirez’s first wife had the same name as my father by coincidence—or Maeve Doolen was in some way related to my father, and hence me.

  A coincidence, given that my father mentioned both Casas Grandes and Alfonso Ramirez in his letter, seems remot
e in the extreme. The name Ramirez and the town of Casas Grandes are inextricably linked with my past and that suggests strongly that the tragic Maeve Doolen is as well.

  So, if there is a connection, what can it be? Maeve married Alfonso very soon after Mexico gained independence in 1821, which would make her around thirty years older than my father, so it seems unlikely that they were brother and sister. Perhaps, my father is the son of Maeve’s brother, which would make her his aunt and my great-aunt. It seems plausible given that Irish families were probably quite large. At least now I know to ask about the Doolen name when I reach Casas Grandes.

  What makes me shudder is the thought that the foul Alfonso Ramirez might have been my great-uncle and his son, the scalp hunter Roberto, my cousin!

  I ride on, running the same thoughts round and round my brain without getting anywhere. The trail has been climbing steadily since I left Esqueda, and now I am deep in the mountains. There is a blanket of old snow on the ground, and Coronado and I exhale clouds of white breath in the cold air. I have my blanket wrapped tightly around me and hope that Santiago’s information—that we should cross the pass this afternoon and be able to descend the other side before nightfall—is correct.

  Once over the mountains the journey should be easier. Casas Grandes will still be several days away, but we will be traveling along valleys in a huge arc around the north end of the next mountain range. At the moment, we are working our way around the shoulder of a mountain, and I hope the pass will come into view soon. Fortunately, the snow is old and the trail is marked by the tracks of those who have already passed this way.

  At first I think that the bloody patches on the snow below the pass are where some hunters have butchered their game. I am right about hunters and butchering, but the game is human.

  The first body is sprawled beside the trail, arms spread out as if pleading for help. It is an Apache warrior, killed by a bullet through the chest. The top of his head is a bloody mess, and there are marks in the snow where someone sat, as Ed had described to me, hauling off the man’s scalp.

  In all, I count five bodies, two quite far from the trail where they ran to try and escape or find some cover from which to fight back. Most have been shot, but some show ax or knife cuts. All have been scalped.

  The last one lies almost at the summit of the pass, and, horrifically, he was still alive after he was scalped. I can see the bloodstained trail where he dragged himself along before he finally expired.

  I cross the pass, deep in thought. It was obviously an ambush. The party of Apaches were fired on without warning from rocks higher up the mountainside. Their ponies and weapons are gone, but obviously the reason for the massacre was to acquire scalps. Is someone still paying for such gruesome human trophies?

  After a while, I notice that there are splashes of blood on the snow beside the trail. Does this mean that one or more of the victims escaped?

  By dusk, the trail has descended far enough that there are only patches of dirty snow in sheltered hollows. I move off into the scrub trees to one side, find a small, relatively flat open area and make camp. I have brushed down Coronado with the brush Santiago gave me, tethered him, collected a decent pile of firewood and warmed myself by a good blaze when I sense someone behind me. Before I can turn, a strong arm wraps itself around my neck and a knife blade, glinting in the firelight, wavers before my eyes.

  “Do not struggle, Busca,” a familiar voice says in my ear. “It is Nah-kee-tats-an, and it would be bad luck to kill you.”

  The arm releases me and I turn. The Apache warrior who confronted me on the trail days ago is crouching beside me. His left hand holds his knife, but it is low and the shoulder of his shirt is soaked in blood.

  “You’re wounded,” I say, realizing that he is the survivor of the massacre who left the blood splashes by the trail.

  “It is not much,” he says. “Only enough to remind me of my dead friends when I find the men who killed them.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Scalp hunters. Three warriors fell dead, and I was wounded in the first volley. Two tried to fight back, but there was no cover and they were cut down. Their death gave me my chance to escape over the pass. I was hiding here awaiting dark when you arrived. My father was right; I will not die easily a second time.

  “And you, Busca, you are twice lucky. I thought at first you were one of them. I was ready once more to kill you.”

  “Thank you for not killing me,” I say weakly. “I have a little food. Will you join me by the fire?”

  “I would be honored, Busca.”

  “Where were you headed when you were attacked?” I ask after I have shared out the last of the tortillas and beans that Santiago gave me.

  Nah-kee-tats-an thinks for a long minute before answering. “We were going to join Victorio, who is collecting a band in the mountains to the east. Tell me, Busca. How were the bodies of my companions?”

  It takes me a moment to work out what the question means. “They were scalped,” I reply eventually.

  Nah-kee-tats-an nods. “As I thought. It is the old days that Too-ah-yay-say talks of returned.”

  “Roberto Ramirez and the scalp hunters?” I ask without thinking. What would this proud man think if he knew that I suspected I was related to the worst of the scalp hunters?

  “There is a story my people tell of this Ramirez,” Nah-kee-tats-an says. “One day, some women found a child wandering in the desert. He was lost and near death. They took him back to their village and cared for him until he regained his strength. He said his name was Ramirez, and he lived with my people for many years.

  “One day, a party of scalp hunters attacked the village while the men were away on a raid. Ramirez organized the boys of the village to defend the women and infants. They fought bravely, surprising the scalp hunters with their violence. However, they were being pushed back on all sides when the men returned. The scalp hunters were defeated and fled, leaving several bodies around the village. While the people tended their wounds and celebrated their deliverance, the Ramirez boy was found going around the bodies, slitting the throats of those who showed any signs of life and scalping the bodies. As a reward for his bravery, the warriors allowed him to keep the scalps and he became a respected member of the band.

  “But the old ways were vanishing. The people were hunted and spent their lives fleeing from hideout to hideout. Eventually, when there were but a handful left, Ramirez disappeared. He took with him the scalps that he had been given in the scalp hunter’s raid.”

  Nah-kee-tats-an fell silent. I am about to ask if knows any stories about Roberto Ramirez after that, but he abruptly stands up and says, “I must tend to my pony,” and disappears into the trees.

  I sit and try to make sense of the many pieces of information I have collected about Roberto Ramirez. Ed dismissed him as the most brutal of the scalp hunters. Wellington suggested that any story about him depended on who told it. Nah-kee-tats-an’s story fitted with what Santiago had told me of Alfonso’s son running away from home as a boy, but the boy adopted into an Apache band for helping fight off the scalp hunters didn’t sound like someone who would turn into one of the very people he had fought against.

  My head swirls with all the stories I’ve been told. They are all different, but bits of all of them talk of the Ramirez clan, Casas Grandes and scalp hunters. Perhaps they are all part of one story: mine. It’s confusing, but I am determined to continue and find out everything I can.

  Unfortunately, I don’t get a chance to find out any more from Nah-kee-tats-an. After he returns from tending his horse, he lies down without a word and falls asleep. When I awake the next morning, he’s gone.

  13

  A s far as I can see, ruined adobe walls, some thirty or forty feet high, rise as if growing from the brown desert floor. Green and blue lizards scuttle up walls, and swallows swoop through empty windows far above my head. The black stumps of beams jut from walls where long-collapsed floors once spanned rooms, and
thick growths of cactus block doorways that lead nowhere.

  It’s almost impossible to imagine these barren squares bustling with vendors selling brightly colored cloth, painted pots and exotic birds, or to see laughing children chasing each other through these long-abandoned courtyards and rooms. Yet this place must once have been a thriving city at least as big as San Diego.

  Casas Grandes is a city of the ancients Wellington told me about, a city that was a ruin long before even the Apaches arrived in this land. A city that may have spawned the legend of the city of gold that drew Coronado on in his unsuccessful search. But if this is a city of the ancients, where is the modern town and Alfonso Ramirez’s hacienda?

  I ride on, eventually leaving the ruins behind, and arrive at a place that is filled with more than ghosts. Modern Casas Grandes is a pale shadow of what the ancient city must have been, but at least there are people here. They watch me warily as I pass.

  I ride down the main street and come to a saloon. It’s a low adobe building with a dark doorway. It’s not at all inviting, but there are five horses tethered outside, suggesting that it is occupied and might be a good place to ask about the Ramirez hacienda or if anyone remembers the name Doolen.

  As I dismount, a man steps out of the nearby alley. He’s skinny, with high cheekbones, a sharp nose and sallow skin. His hair is long and greasy and he wears a mustache and chin beard. His eyes are an unsettling shade of blue, and there’s no friendship in them as they scan me and Coronado.

  “Howdy,” the man says. “You planning on stopping to wet your whistle?”

  “I am,” I reply, although part of me is regretting not just riding on.

  The thin man lets me go ahead. As we head for the doorway, I examine the dust-covered horses. They’re a mixed bunch, but all are lean and their tack worn. The last one in line makes me hesitate. It’s a large black horse, and there are a cluster of fresh scalps and one old one hanging from the saddle horn. The horn itself is ornamented with some worn silver work.