I had never questioned why a party of warriors containing Golahka – a war shaman – had wandered so blindly into an ambush, but I did so now, and saw that it could only have happened if there had been some great failing on the part of the scouts. Potro. Or my father. Why he – who had been so skilled – should have failed thus was impossible to know. But certain it was that his actions had not gone unseen. I knew that Punte had watched, and told Keste of it. And now I had to accept that perhaps there were others who had knowledge of it. Ozheh, Torrez and Biketsin had returned from the ambush. So had Golahka. When I considered the arrow I saw that my father’s cowardice had not gone unpunished. Someone – a warrior of my own tribe, perhaps one who even now sat and mingled his voice in song with mine – had fired the arrow that killed my father.
Time passed, and still Chodini took no vengeance for the insult he had received from the White Eyes. Faint murmurs of disquiet arose from some of the young men, who began to whisper that the chief had become old and wearied with battle. In truth, he was aged. But his prowess was undimmed, and it was not weariness that stayed his hand. It was the vow of brotherhood he had made with the White Eyes. He had given his word. Chodini was a proud man, and an honourable one. To break his word would have been an act akin to hacking off his own limb.
In those moons of uneasy peace, our tribe was increased in number by the arrival of two Hilaneh warriors. They knew well the prowess of Chodini and Golahka and sought to ride beside them. These warriors were welcomed as our own. But with them they brought many tales: disturbing tales that set our teeth on edge.
The territory of the Hilaneh is far to the east, separated from the range of the Dendhi by a broad desert plain. It seemed that into their fertile hills so many White Eyes had come that to avoid them the Hilaneh were forced into ever smaller corners of their own land. As if this were not hard enough, these settlers had made an agreement in which they promised to protect the Mexicans against the Apache!
This tale passed from mouth to mouth with angry confusion.
“Do they not know of the Mexicans’ treachery?” asked Chodini.
“They do. Our chief has told them often. Was he not a child at Bavisco?”
All knew to what the Hilaneh warrior referred. Many summers ago, members of his tribe had been invited to feast with the Mexicans in the town of Bavisco. When all had taken their places, the Mexicans offered a great spread of food, and stood watching as the tribe satisfied their hunger.
The food was poisoned.
Warrior, woman and child alike died. Near fifty of the Hilaneh had ended their lives in tortured spasms.
“Has not the Mexican always sought to take Apache lives?” asked Chodini, perplexed. “Why should the White Eyes then side with the Mexicans against us: we, who have offered the White Eyes nothing but friendship and welcome?”
None could answer his question, for indeed what could be said? All agreed with Golahka as he commented, “The ways of these people are strange indeed. We should keep far from them.”
To preserve the peace, we shunned contact with the White Eyes, staying away from the trails they made across the plains. While the Apache makes his way by following the mountains, the White Eyes ride beside the rivers in our dry country as if terrified to leave them. They were but guests on our land; Ussen did not whisper to them of where to find the water that lay hidden beneath the earth. They must cling to the springs and watercourses. Thus it seemed an easy task to avoid them.
Of Keste, there had been no sighting. It was more than fifteen moons since he had gone from our camp, and I had ceased to listen for the twang of his bowstring. I believed he had long since left the Black Mountain range, and perhaps joined with the groups of wild young renegades that roamed the mountains near to the border with Mexico. I could not believe Dahtet would fare well living such a life, and my heart sorrowed for her.
As the earth lay basking in the heat of summer, I rode to the upland plain to hunt rabbits with no thought of danger. Many of the women and children had gone east to harvest the mescal that grows in the rocky foothills, the baked hearts of which would help feed the tribe throughout the winter. They were accompanied by many warriors, for the capture of the women and children of the Chokenne was still fresh in our minds. Thus neither Golahka nor Chodini was in our camp when I set forth alone.
I hunted well that day; the horse I rode had long since known the ways of our tribe, and ran after rabbits with no bidding. I butchered the creatures there on the grass, spilling their guts on the ground for the vultures that the meat would not sour. Tying their back legs together with a thread of sinew, I slung my kill from the shoulder of my horse and turned for home.
As I began to descend the mountain trail, I saw smoke rising from the flat desert in the west. It was a great distance from the White Eyes’ settlement so it could not be a fire lit by them. Full well I knew that our women and children had travelled east – and besides, any fires they made would be of dry wood and lit in deep arroyos that they would not alert our enemies to where they camped – so neither did it belong to them.
This fire had been lit with green wood to create much smoke: a signal fire. One of our people was in distress. My heart leapt within me, and, throwing aside the rabbits I had slain, I rode at once towards it.
The person who lights a signal fire will retreat to a hidden place where they may watch who comes in answer, for the smoke can as well be seen by an enemy as a friend. On reaching the fire, I expected to wait long for the person who had made it. I jumped from my horse, throwing the reins down beside a pile of rags seemingly heaped beside the fire to feed it, and began to look about me.
It was only when the heaped rags stirred and a clawed hand reached beseechingly towards me that I knew my mistake.
It was a woman. A woman who had not the strength to crawl away and conceal herself. A cloth covered her head, but as her eyes sought mine it fell back. I started in shock: her nose was split open with a knife. The wound was fresh; it had perhaps occurred four or five sunrises since, for although dried blood had crusted upon her neck, a new flow now began to ooze forth.
I felt no stir of recognition. I did not know her. For many thudding heartbeats I stared, horrified, upon the ruined face. And then she spoke.
“Siki…” Her voice was cracked with thirst and as faint as the hiss of an arrow. But it set my ears ringing and my heart pounding as if Ussen had roared my name from the mountain tops. “Siki. Do you not know me, sister?”
Tears I could not shed for Tazhi now ran for Dahtet. More easily could I have borne finding her dead than seeing her like this – her body destroyed, the gentle soul within her crushed. She had fled with nothing – not even a vessel for water – and made the journey homewards alone and unarmed. It had cost her dear. She was little more than a dried-out shell.
Burning off its thorns in the ashes of the fire, I split leaves of the prickly pear and laid them across Dahtet’s wounded face to soothe it. A few sips of water and a mouthful of dried meat was all she could take before her eyes clouded with weariness. When I lifted her onto my horse, she was light as a child, her bones brittle as twigs. I rode behind her, her head thrown back against my shoulder, my arms about her waist to stop her falling; she was so weakened with hunger and thirst that she could not sit unaided.
I had ridden fast across the plain that morning, but our return was slow. The horse could do no more than walk with us riding thus, and the sun had already dipped below the horizon when at last we entered our camp.
The women had also returned from the east, for the tepees burst with laughter and life. Everyone fell silent on seeing Dahtet. They could not yet view her face, hidden as it was beneath its binding, but all surmised who she was as I stopped beside her family’s tepee, and an astonished murmur rippled through the camp.
I had barely laid her unconscious body upon the warm hides and left her in the care of her weeping mother, when her father’s roar of outrage tore the night air. He stood amongst the warriors, arm
s outstretched towards the stars. “I will avenge this wrong,” he swore to Ussen. “I will hunt Keste down. I will kill him.”
“No.” The voice was quiet. Hard, cold as the steel-bladed sword. It was Punte, father of Keste. “You will not. He is my son. I will do it.”
Dahtet did not know what the men planned.
In the days that followed, she kept to her tepee and did not see the warriors’ brows furrowed with anger, nor the stone face of Punte, nor hear her own father murmuring to Golahka of the vengeance he would take. Dahtet said she was too weak to leave the pile of hides upon which she lay, and she refused to be carried into the sun’s healing warmth. In truth she feared to have the tribe look upon her ruined face. Even before me she could scarce lift her head and meet my eyes for the weight of heartache and shame that burdened her.
Keste had marked her as one who had betrayed her husband. An adulteress.
Her innocence was not in doubt. But innocence would not heal her wounds, nor soothe away the horror of her mutilation.
Only in the concealing night did she at last begin to whisper of what had befallen.
“Between the mountains of the Chokenne and the Dendhi there is a range that extends into Mexico. It was here that we settled.”
“None could find you,” I told her. “Keste was sought, but no trace of you was discovered.” I did not tell her of his attack on me. I could not add to her woes.
“We were well hidden,” she sighed. “In a valley – a mountain scooped hollow by the great hand of Ussen. There is but one way in, and that is concealed beneath a great slab of stone. A single juniper tree clings to a rock above it. Truly, Siki, I felt as though I had entered the Happy Place when we found it. There we remained. We were safe. Keste was content. Then others came: three young men who had also gone from their tribes. They were wild, Siki, and they challenged him, but Keste bested them all. He is a fine warrior.” Dahtet could not keep the pride from her voice. “And now they look upon him as their chief.”
I bit my tongue to catch the sour words that wished to fall. Keste’s ambition had burned so bright that his own tribe could not contain him: he had to fashion a new world about himself in which he could shine as leader. A pretty picture indeed.
“It was Keste who hurt you?” I was in no doubt, for well I knew his ungovernable temper. But still I wished to hear it from the mouth of Dahtet.
“Yes.” She tore her own heart out admitting it. “He became jealous. He thought I looked with admiration upon the others. I did not, Siki, I swear it. Yet still he punished me.” Her voice became the smallest of whispers. “Often he went away hunting, raiding. Seven sunrises ago, he returned swaying, and I knew he had drunk much Mexican liquor. He said I had lain with other men in his absence.” Dahtet was filled with confusion. “But even if I had wished it, how could I have done so? The other men had gone with him when he rode. I was alone.”
“Do not seek reason in the actions of Keste,” I murmured. “He has surely tipped into madness.”
“He has not!” Even now, Dahtet leapt to defend him.
“To hurt an innocent woman? Is this justice?” I asked hotly.
“No indeed.” Dahtet began to weep. “And I am marked for ever! All will call me faithless.”
“They will not. Your people know your worth.” I spoke soothingly, but even now Dahtet felt no ill will towards Keste.
“Siki,” she said falteringly, “I have thought that perhaps his jealousy came from great love. For does not love make men do foolish things? I think perhaps it was love of me that made him do this. Might it not be so?”
How could I answer such a question? Her tone begged me, pleaded with me to turn the universe on its head. It was easier to say that we walked on the stars and that Mother Earth hung above our heads than believe that this mutilation was an act of love!
And yet how could I say aught else but “Perhaps.” The word stuck like a knife in my throat.
Satisfied with this lie, Dahtet lay back upon the hides. Soon her soft breathing told me she was asleep.
And then in the darkness I knew that her father was not. He had heard all. His breathing had quickened with fury. Fury, and sudden excitement, for Dahtet had, all unknowing, told him where he would find Keste.
I did not wish to go. Many moons before – when I had first felt the chill of Keste’s hatred – I had made a solemn vow that I would not harm one of my own tribe. And yet when Golahka came to me, it seemed I had little choice.
“Four will track him,” said Golahka. “The fathers of Dahtet and Keste. Our chief. Myself. We would have sought him long before, but knew not where to look. He will cause more harm if he remains free. He must be killed. For justice. You know it, Siki, do you not?”
I could not answer. My mouth had become dry as the desert dust. My heart pounded.
“Dahtet would not wish it,” I whispered.
“Dahtet will not know.”
“Yes!” I raged. “She will know. How could she not? Did not all hear her father’s vow of vengeance? The women will tell her.”
Golahka laid his hand upon mine and set my spirit trembling. “She will not know until we are gone. It will be too late then for her to do aught.”
I shook my head. It was not Dahtet warning Keste that troubled me, but the knowledge of how sharp her pain would be, how great her anger, if she knew I rode against him. I would not betray her. I could not do such a thing.
“I cannot come. I will not.”
“It is Chodini’s request.” Golahka paused awhile to let his words settle in my head. My chief wished me to ride beside him. There could be no greater honour. And it would be my fourth journey. On my return, I would be a warrior.
“To refuse your chief is also a betrayal, is it not, Siki?” Golahka’s eyes fixed me, glinting darkly. “You cannot deny the justice of this task. Is not justice of greater import than loyalty to one who has been blinded by love? If Keste remains upon the living earth we must always be looking over our shoulders, waiting for him to strike. Let us end it now.”
I could do nothing but nod my assent even as my stomach churned with misgiving. And then the strangeness of Chodini requesting that a novice girl ride beside him made me ask, “Why does he wish me to come?”
“We have need of you: of your Power.” Golahka’s voice was hard. Cold. His eyes met mine once more, full of a challenge which he dared me to meet. “Besides,” he added, “we must make use of you. Your presence will draw Keste forth. It is you who will bait the trap.”
Some summers before, a mountain lion had roamed amongst the rocks of our home. There are many such creatures in the hills, but it is rare indeed for them to attack our people. Yet this beast was aged, with a wounded leg that rendered it impossible to hunt deer as it had once done. Instead, it attacked a boy – older brother to Chee – seizing him by his head as he played with his friends in the hills and dragging him, lifeless, away. Chee’s grieving father, Biketsin, determined to catch and kill the beast, and thus he brought his dog to the very place where we had played, and tied it to a stake to tempt the creature forth. For five sunrises he watched and waited, and the dog grew thin at the end of its rope.
On the sixth sunrise Biketsin returned to our camp carrying the bloody hide of the mountain lion. The dog was not at his heels.
Chee and I had gone searching for it, and found the dog still tied to its rope, its side slashed open, its insides spilt upon the earth. Being children we had wept for it, shedding perhaps more tears for the animal than we had for Chee’s brother, for to mourn a dog is simple.
I recalled its glazed eyes as our grim band rode silently towards Keste’s hidden valley. It had seemed to me that even in death the dog’s terror had not abated. It had risen from the corpse in heated waves, strong as the scent of decay. And now my own throat was tight and dry, as though Golahka had placed a rope about it, and now bade me stand and wait.
There was more here than I understood. I had never seen the face of Golahka so stern. I could no
t interpret what made his eyes into dark, dead pools, and his mouth a tight, hard line. Why had he spoken of betrayal? When I considered it, my belly contracted with fear – not to face Keste, but that Golahka knew of my father’s cowardly flight. In my reluctance to go, had I perhaps ignited the flame of suspicion in his mind? Did he doubt my courage? Did he seek to test me?
While I sought to understand what lay behind his coldness, suddenly a new and terrible dread gripped my mind.
Had Golahka himself fired the arrow that had slain my father?
Golahka had ever been my mentor, my teacher, my friend. But a great chasm had opened up between us, and I knew not how to cross it.
Anguished, sick with foreboding, I scarce saw where we rode. My head was ever bowed with the weight of fear that Golahka had poured upon me. I knew only that Chodini tracked the path Dahtet had taken when she fled. I took little heed, for it was an easy task: her trail was spotted with blood. When Chodini raised his hand and made a sign for us to halt, I saw in the distance the place where a lone juniper tree stood clinging to a rock. The valley was indeed concealed. Had Dahtet not spoken of it, even the most skilled tracker would have ridden past thinking the trail lost and cold.
And now Golahka came to me, his face as hard as the rock that the tree’s roots desperately clung to.
“Go on alone. Do not conceal yourself. Tempt Keste forth. If he comes not, light a fire beneath the tree. Use green wood. Make much smoke. Signal him. When he comes, tell him you bring word from his wife.”
“Word?” I asked. My mind was empty. I could not invent a lie. “What word?”
The father of Dahtet said quietly, “Tell him she is with child.” From his eyes I knew he spoke truth. A hiss of breath escaped from Punte, and I realized he had not known of this until now.
“Very well,” I said.
“We four will separate. I will cross the high rocks and come upon the place from behind that line of trees,” said Chodini.
“I will go by the lower trail,” offered Punte.
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