White Apache

by Len Levinson

  Juh and Geronimo rode side by side, followed by their wives and children. Both warriors believed Mangas Coloradas should have struck one last blow against the White Eyes and suspected the great chief had become too old for effective fighting leadership. The coming generation of war chiefs would not let the White Eyes off so easily.

  Jocita rode behind Juh, and she too was troubled by the Mimbreno retreat, but she was a Nednai, and the Nednai never surrender. Where have we failed the Lifegiver? she wondered. She turned to Fast Rider sitting on his horse, pleased that he had become a hero of the People, but there was a secret he never would know—his father had been a Pindah. This is the son of the warrior who has killed the bear, figured Jocita. And he already has received the power of the bat. Perhaps, after the generation of Victorio, Juh, and Geronimo have passed, it is this boy who shall become our saviour.

  Hope became the last resort of the People as they rode the trail of misery to the land of the Nakai-yes.

  At Fort Marcy in Santa Fe Nathanial entered the orderly room. Sergeant Tooey glanced up. “May I help you, sir?”

  “I'm Captain Nathanial Barrington. You're probably carrying me as killed in action, but as you can see, I'm very much alive.”

  “Indeed you are, sir. I didn't recognize you without your beard, and I'll rectify the records immediately. What the hell happened to you?”

  “I was captured by Apaches and finally escaped.”

  The sergeant reached for a notebook, then became thoughtful. “Come to think of it, your wife was here a while back. Trying to catch a stagecoach east, she was. The poor lady thinks you're dead, so you'd better not take her by surprise.”

  “Is she married to anyone else, by any chance?”

  “I didn't think of asking.”

  “She leave an address?”

  The sergeant wrote on a square of paper and handed it to Nathanial.

  “Tell the commanding officer I'll be back after I see my wife.”

  Nathanial departed the orderly room. His heart beat eagerly, and he broke into a trot as he headed for Clarissa's home. If she's pregnant with another man's child, I'll put a bullet through my brain, he thought.

  He'd never forget the first moment he'd seen her, with the summer sunlight on her face, her hair like spun gold, in the Hudson Highlands north of New York City. Having lived with her as man and wife for over a year, he was aware of her many human imperfections, yet loved her goodness, kindness, and great beauty. Oh God, I hope she's not in bed with another man.

  Cowboys and vaqueros in varying states of inebriation stared at the officer running among them. Finally, he arrived in the residential neighborhood where she dwelled, found her house, knocked on the front door, and waited anxiously for her to answer. His heart thundered like the charge of the Apache brigade, his ears popped, and the door was open by Rosita, his maid.

  He smiled. “Remember me?”

  "Dios mios!” cried Rosita, holding her hands to her mouth. Then she fainted dead away.

  Nathanial carried her into the living room, where a toddler sat on the floor and played with dolls. The proud father lay Rosita on the sofa, then dropped to his hands and knees and gazed into the face of his newest child. She had the eyes of Clarissa and the jaw of his mother, perhaps the brow of his father and the attitude of his brother. “Do you know who I am?” he asked softly.

  She grabbed his nose as if it were a rattle. “Da-da.”

  He hugged her to him, feeling her little heart beating against his. This is the fruit of my body, my own princess to pamper and spoil. I am going to raise you to become the most magnificent woman in the world, provided your mother isn't living with another paramour.

  Clarissa stopped to watch a fight on the way home from her daily walk. It was between an American bull-whacker and a Mexican vaquero, and they went at it in the middle of the street, beating each other bloody, but neither would fall.

  Why can't men be more like women, who hate without being violent? Clarissa wondered. If it were up to us, we'd settle the damned slavery debate without a drop of blood being spilled. She then continued toward her home, happy to be leaving violent Santa Fe in only two weeks.

  Nearing home, she noticed the door half open. Fearing robbery, kidnap, or worse, she drew her Colt and rushed inside, astonished to see a tall, wide-shouldered army officer wrestling with Natalie on the floor, while Rosita lay asleep on the sofa. And then the soldier turned.

  Clarissa thought she was having an unusually vivid dream. She and her supposedly dead but now beardless husband stared at each other for a few moments, then she dropped onto a nearby wooden chair, her blue eyes glassy.

  “Guess who's home,” said Nathanial cheerily.

  “Is it a ghost I see?” asked Clarissa, an otherworldly tone to her voice.

  “No, but I was wounded pretty badly, and the Apaches nursed me back to health. It took me a while to recover, but anyway, here I am.”

  He appeared darker, leaner, like a stranger. She didn't know what to make of it. “What happened to your beard?”

  “I lost it in the Black Range. You're not in love with someone else?”

  “Oh no, of course not. It took a while to accept your death, but here you are again.”

  He pulled his Colt and pointed it to his head. “Perhaps I should shoot myself, so you needn't struggle with the adjustment. I'm home, my darling. And if you don't think I'm real . . .”

  He took her hand, pulled her to her feet, and kissed her lips. Finally convinced, she relaxed in his arms. “I've been so unhappy without you,” she murmured.

  Now he realized why he'd returned to the land of the White Eyes. It wasn't because he preferred civilization, but because he had needed his little New York wife, with her quick mind, upturned nose, slim body conservatively dressed, her small but delicious breasts. All these things added delight to his life, and besides, he'd never really cared for prairie dog stew. “I'm home at last,” he whispered.

  Rosita was given the rest of the day off, and the first thing she did was go to church. Nearly deserted prior to the vespers Mass, the house of prayer echoed her footsteps as she made her way to the statue of the Virgin, where she kneedled, crossed herself, and whispered, “Oh Madre mio, I ask nothing for myself, but please help the Americanos that I work for. They sleep with this one, they sleep with that one, they have more money than brains, and now the captain has risen from the dead like Jesus Christ. Oh, Blessed Virgin, please teach them the truth of your son's gospels, because they do not know whether they are coming or going. Never have I seen such crazy gringos!”

  The next day Nathanial, Clarissa, and Natalie visited the rest of the family. Maria Dolores waited at her adobe mansion with her two freshly scrubbed and eager children. Zachary fairly dived onto his father, while Carmen remained shyly in the background.

  It was an awkward meeting for all concerned, and even the children perceived a pall of minor and major betrayals hanging in the air like perfume, as Nathanial sat on the floor and played with them.

  “Tell me about the Apaches,” said Zachary, gazing admiringly at his hero father.

  “If I tell you everything, you'll want to live among them yourself.”

  “Oh tell me—tell me—tell me!”

  Nathanial opened his mouth, but how could he describe visions atop the lightning-blasted mountain, or the feeling when sheep are stolen successfully, or the Snake Dance? “We lived in little huts called wickiups,” he tried to explain. “We cooked over open fires.”

  “What did you eat?” asked Carmen.

  “Mostly roast meat, but sometimes there was prairie dog stew.”

  Maria Dolores smiled indulgently, proud of her two healthy children and other accomplishments. She studied the stranger whom she once had married and understood more clearly why. He was a decent, ruggedly masculine fellow who never took himself seriously, but she and he never could stop fighting over the army, which she considered the most stupid and pointless profession in the world. Incredible though it see
med, he'd finally had enough of military life. If only he could have seen the light sooner, reflected Maria Dolores.

  Nathanial grinned nervously as he played with his children. He had sired four little ones by three different women, which condemned some to fatherlessness. From now on, I'm staying with Clarissa, he swore. I simply cannot continue behaving in this irresponsible manner.

  In the distance he heard a laugh, and it sounded like the judgment of Satan. He studied his first wife, noticing that she still was statuesque and quite pretty, but she had nagged constantly, and he simply couldn't tolerate it anymore. It was not meant to be, he thought philosophically.

  Zachary cried when it was time for Nathanial to leave. The father promised to visit every day before he departed for the East.

  “And then?” asked Zachary as his mother wiped his tearstained face.

  “I'll be back someday,” Nathanial replied.

  “Liar!” The boy turned and ran shrieking to his room.

  Later, as Nathanial walked home beside his wife, with Natalie in his arms, he said, “If only I had met you sooner, Clarissa.”

  She had seen the sorrow on his son's face, which touched her deeply. “We can settle in Santa Fe if you like. As long as I have you, I don't care what my address is.”

  At that moment Nathanial realized why he loved Clarissa so. It wasn't simply her classic English-Scottish beauty, because there were many beautiful women in the world, and not her goodness, because numerous decent people could be found, but she didn't fight over every little detail and freely gave of herself, which inspired him to greater reasonableness. Holding Natalie firmly, he leaned toward his little wife and bussed her cheek. She hugged his arm more tightly. “We are going to be very happy together,” she said.

  In days to come neither spouse asked embarrassing questions. Why look for trouble? they had decided independently. As a result, Clarissa's prediction came true. Their misery appeared over, and joy entered their lives once more.

  On June 27, 1857, after getting lost in the upper range of the Gila River, Colonel Dixon Miles and his dragoons stumbled upon a clan of Coyotero Apaches peacefully gathering mescal. Without warning, the soldiers attacked, killing twenty-four Coyotero men, women, and children, and taking twenty-seven prisoners.

  In writing his final report on the Gila Expedition, Colonel Bonneville claimed complete success. He even alleged that Henry Linn Dodge's murderer had been killed among the Coyoteros. Bloated with victory, he wrote that he had driven the Apaches from eastern New Mexico Territory for all time. Now he was free to spend the winter planning the defeat of the Chiricahua Apaches in the far western end of New Mexico Territory, who were led by old Chief Miguel Narbona and an obscure subchief named Cochise.

  ‘Tis only a matter of time before all savages are settled on reservations, or dead, he speculated. Nothing will stop me except civil war, but such a calamity would be to no one's advantage, and men of reason surely will prevail.

  Five hundred miles to the east, during a violent summer thunderstorm in Nebraska Territory, a fifty-seven-year-old farmer with a deeply lined face and thick graying hair kneeled in his bedroom, praying for divine assistance.

  He was John Brown, antislavery guerrilla fighter, and once he'd wanted to become a minister of the Lord. The previous year, he and his five sons had hacked to death five proslavery activists along Pottawatomie Creek. He never had been charged for the crime, but throughout the South, millions of slaves still lived under the lash, and sometimes John Brown believed God had chosen him to free them.

  Slaves would rise up and throw off their captors if they could be armed, he anticipated, and he knew that army arsenals filled with weapons were located throughout the nation, including the South. If a determined band of antislavery fighters took an arsenal by surprise in the very vitals of the South, guns and ammunition would be available for a general uprising.

  In such an enterprise white women and children might be killed, but the wages of slavery were death in John Brown's opinion. He believed extreme measures were justified in the struggle to end the evil of slavery and recalled the line in Revelations: . . . he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. Yea, sometimes Christian soldiers are ordained to spill blood for the greater truth, he believed. Clasping his hands together, John Brown closed his eyes. Oh Lord, is this what you want me to do?

  In the thunderous downpour, with lightning shooting across the heavens, he thought he heard the answer: Yes.

  The Gila Expedition wasn't the only U.S. army unit in the field that summer. Throughout the West bluecoat soldiers fought Indians, and in barren west Texas it was the elite Second Cavalry against the Comanches, lords of the Southern Plains.

  One afternoon in July, Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee led a detachment of the Second Cavalry in pursuit of the renegade Comanche Chief Sanaco. Colonel Lee and his troopers had been in the saddle ten days, enduring hot sun, short rations, dust in the nostrils, and boredom.

  Despite hardship and the threat of instant death, the troopers respected their colonel, for he was one of the most famous heroes of the Mexican War, and his father, Light Horse Harry Lee, had been a hero of the Revolutionary War, plus a close friend of George Washington. Yet the colonel was no prig, and the men called him Bobby Lee. At Fort Cooper he kept a pet rattlesnake to which he fed frogs, plus a cage of chickens. They and his men comprised his family, his wife too sick to accompany him to his duty station.

  Sweating profusely, Bobby Lee rode alongside one of his favorite junior officers, Lieutenant John B. Hood, another scion of a proud southern family. After hours of silence Lieutenant Hood turned to his commanding officer and said, “Sir, might I ask your advice on a personal matter?”

  The colonel had been scanning the horizon, ever on the lookout for Comanches. Wearing a wide-brimmed vaquero hat and his blue army uniform, Bobby Lee said, “By all means.”

  Lieutenant Hood appeared embarrassed by what he was about to say. “I'm seeing a local woman,” he confessed, “and, well, I've been thinking about marrying her.”

  No expression showed on the colonel's face, although he'd heard of the notorious liaison. In the opinion of Robert E. Lee no true lady would dream of sleeping with a gentleman prior to marriage, and in addition, the colonel was sensitive concerning unhappy unions and their consequences, because his father had been unfaithful to his mother, abandoning the family after squandering substantial monies on doubtful investments. After what his mother had endured, Bobby Lee believed scandal and dishonor must be avoided at all costs.

  So he turned to Lieutenant Hood and said, “Never marry, unless you can do so into a family that will enable your children to feel proud of both sides of your house.” Then he faced front once more, the subject closed.

  For the rest of the fruitless pursuit, Lieutenant Hood reflected upon what Bobby Lee had said.

  He never married the woman in question.

  Nineteen

  Cadet Buck Barrington sat in the academic building as Professor Albert E. Church, a short, round-faced man, elucidated the finer points of mathematics. Buck took notes rapidly, for an officer might need fortifications or even a bridge in the heat of battle, and couldn't expect a civilian engineer to design them.

  Midpoint during the lecture, as Professor Church explained abstract theorems, the door opened and Cadet Wesley Merritt, an upperclassman, entered. Merritt whispered into Professor Church's ear, then departed as swiftly as he'd come.

  Professor Church looked directly at Buck. “You're wanted in Major Delafield's Office, Cadet Barrington.”

  Buck rose to the position of attention, suspecting he might be reprimanded for sneaking out last night for a few beers at Benny Haven's with cadets Stephen Ramseur of South Carolina, George Custer of Michigan, and Morris Shaaf of Ohio. He marched out of the classroom, across the parade ground, and finally landed in the administration building, where he made his way to Major Delafield's office.

  The male secretary, a c
orporal, said, “Go right in, Cadet Barrington.”

  Buck opened the door and found the major sitting behind his desk, while Buck's mother perched on a green leather-covered chair, smiling broadly. Startled, Buck saluted. “Cadet Jeffrey Barrington reporting, sir!”

  “Have a seat, Buck,” said the major warmly. “Your mother has good news.”

  Amalia Barrington beamed as she turned to her son, and he couldn't remember when he'd seen her so happy. “It's not simply good news,” she said heartily. “It is news so wonderful that I have decided to travel here and tell you myself. Are you ready?” She smiled triumphantly. “Your brother is alive!”

  “We're finally home,” said Clarissa happily as the carriage rolled alongside Washington Square.

  The officer and his lady had arrived on the ferry only an hour before, their first day back in the great city. Nathanial glanced about like a tourist, amazed by the hugeness of it all, and couldn't help wondering what Juh and Geronimo would think if somebody dropped them on busy Broadway. They would consider it the spell of an insane sorcerer, and I agree.

  Occasionally, on his long trip east, Sunny Bear had caught glimpses of wickiups in the mountains and Apache raiding parties galloping through forests, as if warrior friends were accompanying him, fortifying his spirit. The hackney coach came to a stop at a three-storied brownstone north of Washington Square, and Nathanial expected his mother waiting, for he'd telegraphed ahead from Philadelphia, giving his approximate time of arrival.

  He climbed down from the cab, holding Natalie in his arms, as Clarissa ascended the stairs and knocked on the door. It opened and Otis appeared, one of his mother's Negro servants. Otis hugged Clarissa, then looked at the baby. “What a beautiful child, sir. I'll get the luggage.”

  “Where's my mother?”

  “Oh, she's waiting inside.”

  Clarissa led the way, and Nathanial followed her into the parlor . . . filled with people. A cheer went up, guests applauded, then his mother stepped forward, her eyes fastened on her new granddaughter. “Looks just like your father,” she said politely.