by Mike Blakely
No one got seriously injured, and I quickly reorganized the orchestra and called for a soothing moonlit rendition of a Mexican love song I had recently learned called “Al Corre y Corre.” The erstwhile dance floor turned into a bonfire that warmed against the chill of the high-desert night as everyone gathered around, some arm in arm, singing,
Ven, ven, joven querida
Aquí a las flores
A mis amores
Hacerme feliz
I played until the rims of the Manzanos and Sandias began to show against a slate sky, then I went back to Kit’s house for an hour or two of sleep.
Thirty
Days of recruiting, drilling, scouting, and waiting for orders turned into weeks then months. My frustration began to build, for I knew that I could have ridden to Boggsville and back three times to see Westerly. Yet Kit insisted we remain ready to ride at any moment, should the Confederates attempt another attack. And reports of Indian troubles began to increase, the redmen having taken advantage of the army’s preoccupation with the Rebels.
Finally, Kit came to me one day with a piece of paper rolled in his hand. He handed it to me, and I read it. Since I possess the innate and irritating ability to remember such minutiae, I will tell you that the missive represented, in writing, Special Order Number 176 from the Department of New Mexico, Assistant Adjutant General’s Office, Santa Fe, dated September 27, 1862. In so much military mumbo jumbo, the First New Mexico Volunteer Cavalry had received orders from Brigadier General James Henry Carleton to reoccupy Fort Stanton, which had been abandoned since the start of the war.
Since that time, the Mescalero Apaches had been raiding Mexican villages along the Pecos, and attacking freight wagons on the old Chihuahua Trail. They had killed sheep herders and prospectors, stolen hundreds of horses from ranches, carried children away from villages. This while the army had been busy dealing with the threat from the Texans. Now, Kit was ordered to reoccupy Fort Stanton, in the heart of Mescalero country, in order to deal with the Apache menace.
I forced a smile and handed the dispatch back to Kit. “When do we go?”
“We ride at dawn.” Kit looked weary. He took a deep, labored breath and tried to shrug the persistent ache from his left shoulder. Weary or not, he was ready to lead. For some disturbing reason, I wasn’t so sure I was ready to follow.
Something nagged at me even as I made my preparations to ride ahead of the First New Mexico Cavalry and scout the way to Fort Stanton. Some voice, with which old Burnt Belly could have had a conversation, tried to speak to me, warn me, protect me. But I was no mystic; at least not of Burnt Belly’s caliber. I could tell only from the tone of the barely heard whisper—the mumble that made me strain so to hear it—that grave danger lay before me.
The next day, on the trail, the chant I could not quite attend mumbled as if waiting just beyond the next rise. But scouting ahead of the regiment over the next rise, I felt no closer to it. It continued to bother me, like an invisible mosquito hovering about my ear. And all along the trail to Stanton, day after day and night after night, it hummed like a distant blooming tree swarmed by honeybees. Yet, in dreams, I could not find the tree. Not that I dreamed much, for I could not sleep. On rare occasions, when I did sink into a few minutes of slumber, an unintelligible whisper, so real that I felt breath in my ear, would make me bolt from my bed, gasping for air and reaching for weapons.
When we reached Fort Stanton, the voices that had attempted to warn me ceased. This was even worse than not having been able to understand them as they haunted me day and night. Now they were just gone, and I knew I had missed whatever wisdom they had offered. I still was not sleeping well, and I felt a certain dread about having ridden into the lair of my enemies, the Mescalero Apaches.
I know I have mentioned it before, but let me refresh your memory. My very first year on the frontier, while standing night guard over some horses at a camp in the Sangre de Cristos, I shot a wolf that I feared would kill a little watchdog I had back then named Jibber. Well, it turned out not to be a wolf at all, but a Mescalero brave dressed in the hide of a wolf to fool me and my camp mates. He had surely come for horses or scalps, and I had unknowingly prevented his raid. This warrior I had accidentally killed was the son of the Mescalero chief Lame Deer, who had sworn to avenge his son’s death to his dying day.
Years later, I had successfully rescued a captured child from Lame Deer’s winter village in the Guadalupe Mountains, earning more hatred from the chief, and therefore the entire Mescalero tribe. All this meant that I traveled through Mescalero country at great peril. My scalp was worth more than a hundred horses to them. The chance to slowly torture me to death was a thing all Mescalero braves dreamt of. Foolishness, loyalty to Kit, and the fear of cowardice were the only things that had brought me here in the first place. I was absolutely out of my mind to be taking up arms against the Mescaleros.
THE DAY WE arrived at Fort Stanton, Paddy Graydon, Kit, and I took a stroll around the grounds to assess damage to the post’s buildings and try to decide where to start repairs. The Union forces had attempted to fire the post when they retreated in the face of the Confederate invasion from Texas the year before. A lucky rainstorm had quenched the fires before they could do extensive damage to the stone and timber buildings, but Indians and area settlers had carried off much of the lumber to burn or build things.
Paddy Graydon saw this as an opportunity. Paddy, you will recall, was the mastermind who had tried to stampede the mules loaded with howitzer shells into the camp of the Texans before the battle of Valverde. Paddy had a mind for such schemes. He was known as an energetic thinker, a brave man, and a congenial fellow, and now served as captain of H Company, First New Mexico Cavalry. He was trying to convince Kit that the three of us should become silent partners in a timbering firm that would sell lumber to the army in order to make the repairs on Fort Stanton.
“You think that’s legal?” Kit asked.
Paddy avoided the question. “Look at all the money Lucien Maxwell has made contracting to the army while you and me have been out here getting shot at.”
“That’s Lucien. He’s a private citizen. We’re soldiers.”
Paddy waved the suggestion off. “We’re volunteers. Somebody’s gonna get the contract. Might as well be us.”
Kit scuffed at the dirt with the toe of his boot. “I think we can do the timbering on our own. No need to contract anybody. It’ll save the government some money and give the boys something to do.”
Paddy sighed and turned to the north as he heard the clop of hooves coming at a trot. A young soldier, covered in dust, his horse lathered with sweat, stopped several steps away and dismounted, pulling an envelope from inside his cavalry tunic as he approached on foot.
“Colonel Carson,” the young soldier said with a salute, “General Carleton sends his warmest regards.” He handed the sealed envelope to Kit.
“Thank you, son,” Kit said, taking the envelope. “Tie your horse and get some grub. I’ll have somebody see to your mount for you.”
“Yes, sir.” The private dismissed himself with a salute and turned to drape his bridle reins over a hitching rail in front of the ruins of the officers’ quarters.
“Report after you’ve et,” Kit added. “I want to know what you saw between Santa Fe and here.”
“Yes, sir.” The courier turned and walked toward the supply wagons.
“I don’t have my spectacles on me, Kid,” said Colonel Carson, as he handed the letter to me. He sometimes used this as an excuse when his mind was just too weary to work at his newly acquired reading skills. I opened the dispatch and began to read: “‘By command of Brigadier General Carleton … so on … October twelfth …’”
“The twelfth?” Paddy said. “That boy made pretty good time.”
Kit lifted his chin. “Go on, Kid.”
I slogged through the preliminary niceties and got to the meat of the missive. Kit was being ordered, as we suspected, to engage the Mescalero Apaches
in combat in order to put an end to raids, killings, and kidnappings. But the orders went beyond anything we had expected, to the point that my voice darkened and my brow gathered with disbelief as I read:
All Indian men of the Mescalero tribe are to be killed whenever and wherever you can find them. The women and children will not be harmed, but you will take them prisoners, and feed them at Fort Stanton until you receive other instructions about them. If the Indians send in a flag and desire to treat for peace, say to the bearer that when the people of New Mexico were attacked by the Texans, the Mescalero broke their treaty of peace, and murdered innocent people, and ran off their stock; that now our hands are untied, and you have been sent to punish them for their treachery and their crimes; that you have no power to make peace; that you are there to kill them wherever you can find them; that if they beg for peace, their chiefs and twenty of their principal men must come to Santa Fe to have a talk here; but tell them fairly and frankly that you will keep after their people and slay them until you receive orders to desist from these headquarters; that this making of treaties for them to break whenever they have an interest in breaking them will not be done any more; that that time has passed by; that we have no faith in their promises; that we believe if we kill some of their men in fair, open war, they will be apt to remember that it will be better for them to remain at peace than to be at war. I trust that this severity, in the long run, will be the most humane course that could be pursued toward the Indians.
The Indians are to be soundly whipped, without parleys or councils except as above.
I looked up at my friends, my mouth hanging open at the severity of our orders.
“About time we cleared these savages out of this country,” Paddy said, rubbing his hands together eagerly.
“The most humane course?” I said, looking at Kit.
Kit shrugged. “You know General Carleton don’t believe much in smokin’ with Indians.”
“But these orders don’t make sense in the field. On one hand, we’re to shoot any warrior we see on sight. On the other hand we’re to tell them under flag of truce that their flag of truce means nothing. Then what? Shoot them down the moment they drop their flag?”
“Exactly,” Paddy said. “And if they can, they’ll kill us on sight, so we can’t go soft on them.”
“You ought to know,” Kit reminded me. “These Mescaleros have had a bounty on your scalp for well onto twenty year.”
I folded the orders and handed them back to Kit. “But are you sure this is right?” It was the question Kit always asked himself and others. “Is it right?”
“I’ve thought on it, Kid. I’ve known General Carleton for years and I’ve fought bad Indians with him.” He slapped the orders against his open palm. “Yes, it’s right. It’s hard, but it’s right. I feel for the poor ignorant critters, Kid, I really do. But there won’t be nothin’ left of ’em if we don’t tame ’em. The white man will kill every last one of ’em if they don’t civilize. And they won’t civilize easy. We’ve got to make ’em do it by force. That’s the only way they understand. All we can do is take the fight out of ’ em and try to get ’em a good piece of land to call their own. General Carleton is right. This is the only way.”
Paddy slapped me on the shoulder. “He said not to harm women and children. That’s honorable, Greenwood. You’ve spent too much time among the heathens. You better whiten up, now.” He chuckled. “Just think of the country that will open up. Anyway, seems like you’d rest easy with the Mescaleros whipped. Take that bounty off your head.”
I clenched my jaw tight. They were right about one thing. This was going to happen the way General Carleton wanted it to happen whether we brought it about or not. But Paddy and Kit did not know how my mind worked. I was looking back into history, five thousand years, then reflecting the past into the future. What I saw was the fall of the Mescalero nation, sure enough. The U.S. Army was too powerful not to succeed. But it would not end there. Another raiding tribe would come next. Perhaps the Arapahos or the Navahos. Perhaps my wife’s own people, the Cheyennes. Then another would fall, and another. The Utes, the Pawnees, the Shoshones, the Crees, the Blackee, the Crows, the Sioux.
And then, finally, my own adopted people, the Comanches, and their allies, the Kiowas. Swept from my valley on the Canadian where the rain pelted the ruins of old Fort Adobe, where the buffalo crossed the river, where the black bear lumbered, and the deer nervously browsed. Pushed onto some uninhabitable reservation to starve in humiliation, drown in white man’s drink, and die of civilized diseases.
What Paddy and Kit could never grasp was the fact that I possessed the benefit—or perhaps, here, the curse—of a broad historical view and an appreciation for philosophical thought. I knew from my historical analyses, and from my mystic explorations with old Burnt Belly, that time did not simply stretch out and away in one direction on a straight line like an infinite bow string. Instead, time was a place where a rolling wheel touched a vast plain. It was a great hoop forever trundling forward on a limitless surface. It was even, perhaps, a collection of hoops and wheels of different and constantly changing sizes rolling along together, sometimes side by side, sometimes one within the other. The part of each wheel that touched the surface of time would leave its mark, then roll up and away. But that nick in the wheel would come around to rut the shifting steppes of time again, though the circle might grow to such a size that a thousand years would pass, or shrink so suddenly that its stamp would touch again tomorrow. And who is to say that one of the ever-revolving hoops might not rise above the plain and float, spinning, for a generation; or that one wheel might not careen away in a great circle above the plain to come crashing violently down again in a year, or a season, or a lifetime.
What happens happens again. Joy begets joy. Anger breeds anger. Evil whirls into darkness. Light spirals into goodness. I could see it coming now, all too clearly. The Indians and their way of life would vanish before my eyes, within my lifetime. And I would do my part to bring it about. No man could remain neutral. A great sadness descended upon me, like a suffocating blanket soaked in blood. I feared that by taking up arms in subduing the Mescaleros I would set in motion the machine that would eventually destroy my own Comanche family, and Westerly’s people, the Cheyennes, and all the other free plains tribes. Perhaps this was what the voices had tried to tell me on the way to Stanton.
“You all right?” Paddy said, grabbing my shoulder. “You look pale, Greenwood.”
I turned and walked away, taking the young courier’s horse by the reins to find the poor beast some grass.
WHAT WAS LEFT of Fort Stanton lay on a level sward along the south bank of the Bonita River. Bonita, Spanish for “pretty,” fit the little stream well. Timbered with cottonwoods and willows, it twined in gentle curves across the high prairie, its waters cool and clear. The grounds of Fort Stanton afforded a fine view of Sierra Blanca to the southwest, looming at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. To the northeast, the Capitan Mountains rose, their piñon-covered shoulders climbing to ten thousand feet. Low hills surrounded the fort nearby.
One evening, not long after we arrived, a man named Charlie Beach rode into the camp we had established just downstream of the fort. I had met Charlie before, and we had always gotten along fine. We both traded among the Indians. Charlie with the Mescaleros, I with the Comanches and Kiowas. It seemed that Charlie had gotten afoul of the Comanches sometime long ago, the same way I had gotten crossways with the Mescaleros. So we didn’t compete for trade and we stayed out of each other’s territory simply because we had grown accustomed to having hair on our heads and wanted to keep it there. We both belonged to the fraternity of Indian traders, and as such felt a common bond. We weren’t friends, really, for I hardly knew Charlie, but we understood each other’s lingo. However, I was often suspicious of his motives, for he didn’t have many good things to say about the Mescaleros, the very people who kept him in business.
“BUNCH OF TISWIN-SLURPIN’ savage
s,” Charlie said that night over a plate of beans he shoveled into his mouth with a piece of hardtack. We were sitting outside of Kit’s tent, prodding Charlie for information.
“What’s that tiswin?” Paddy asked.
“The foulest drink ever concocted,” Charlie said. “Them squaws take maize kernels and let ’em sprout, then they chew ’em up and spit ’em into a pot. They ferment it in there and it turns into tiswin.”
“Good God,” Paddy replied, a disgusted frown on his face. “They drink squaw spit?”
“It’s nasty stuff, but they’re pretty nasty critters.”
“Whereabouts have you seen them camped lately?” Kit asked.
“I left Manuelito’s camp way down in the Guadalupes, but their harvesttime is about done, so they’ll break camp to go huntin’.”
“Where do you reckon they’ll hunt?”
“Like as not the Sacramentos for elk and such. Unless they take a mind to hunt up some poor Mexican’s sheep herd.”
Kit questioned Charlie for quite some time on the location of other camps, the strength of the tribe as a whole, and information on which Mescaleros had done the most raiding. There was a chief named El Listo, or the Ready, whose warriors Charlie claimed had been most active on the warpath, but he said Chiefs Manuelito and Long Joe had also led raids.