Blood of the Devil

by W. Michael Farmer

  “You know that narrow spot up Nogal Canyon where the creek runs over on one side?”

  “Hmmph. Know place.”

  Branigan grinned and nodded. “Good. We’re gonna start keepin’ the herd up the canyon above it. Anybody steals ponies outta Nogal, they’re gonna have to drive ’em by that narrow spot to get off the reservation and down in the basin. I want you to find yourself a place to shoot from there at the narrows. When they come, and they’re gonna come, I want you to pick off as many as you can except for one. Leave one alive to spread around what happened. You want the job?”

  I didn’t have to think much about it. Stopping Indahs from stealing Mescalero ponies was warrior’s work. Breaking up tiswin drunks, not so much. “I take job. Shoot Indah who take ponies.”

  Branigan grinned and nodded. He pulled out his pipe and tobacco and said, “Good. Let’s you and me smoke on it.”

  “Enjuh. We smoke. When you want me to guard Nogal Canyon?”

  Branigan began filling his pipe. “I want you on watch when it gets dark.”

  I nodded and looked in his eyes. “I be ready.”

  CHAPTER 18

  COYOTE WAITS

  I followed the wagon road through the reservation down the valley toward Tularosa and took the trail south across Río Tula-rosa into Nogal Canyon. Entering the canyon, the trail ran along the hills on the east side, while the little stream running out of the canyon was on the west side. The place Branigan thought would be a good one for an ambush was on an east-side hill where the canyon narrowed until it was no more than two long bowshots (about two hundred yards) across, a distance easy to cover with my rifle. The place Branigan chose had junipers and pines growing across the canyon floor. I saw those might provide the raiders cover when bullets flew. I moved on up the canyon to the top of the next hill so I had a clear shot across the canyon between the trail on the east side and the little creek on the west. The distance east to west across the canyon floor didn’t increase more than fifty or sixty yards, which meant the distance was a shot I’d rarely miss, even in the dark.

  I tied my pony in some junipers on the backside of the hill out of sight from the trail, and then made a nest with juniper needles that would keep me warm as I waited. There was still a little light left when I finished my nest, so I used it to find and stack a few rocks into a low wall for me to lie behind for cover in case the raiders returned fire.

  The canyon grew cool as the sun went down, and it was soon cold enough to see my breath. I wrapped my blanket around my shoulders and legs and sat in my nest with my back against a juniper tree and my rifle across my knees, staring down the trail and waiting for the moon to rise and the Indahs who would die for stealing our ponies. For some, my rifle would certainly make this their last raid. In darkness blacker than a witch’s soul, I ate from the bag of venison jerky, nuts, and dried fruit Juanita had made for me, a bag that I always carried on my saddle for when I had to stay out longer than a day. I finished my meal, and checked the loads in my rifle and pistol.

  Coyotes called from near the water on the west side of the canyon, and an occasional night bird screeched. Little animals scrambled, sniffing through the brush, making the dry grass snap and crack, but it was too cold for most frogs and insects to make much noise. I saw the faint glow of the moon behind the mountains and shivered in expectation and excitement that this night I might help end the Indah and Nakai-yi raids on our horses.

  As the moon floated up over the eastern ridges, rising like a feather carried on an easy breeze, I thought of my life and how good the spirits were to us when Juanita and I might have been childless, or how my daughter might have been born without her father if Sangre del Diablo’s shot had killed me at the great river. Without thinking, my hand brushed the fresh scar from the witch’s bullet, which puckered and ached when the air was cold.

  What if Kah had not come along and saved me from bleeding out? I owed Kah much and hoped Ussen gave him and Deer Woman a child soon. I wondered if Delgadito had lived through Nana’s long raid or if wolves and coyotes in some high, lonely place chewed his bones. I believed that if he came back, he would take Falling Water as his wife and support her and her mother, Sleepy. Delgadito had a wild and free heart. It would be hard for a woman to change him if she dared try. I didn’t know Falling Water well enough to guess if she had that kind of courage and wisdom, and as I thought about it, I didn’t know if Delgadito had the courage and wisdom to let her make him a better man.

  I heard horses whinny and a light rumble of galloping hooves up the trail behind the hill in front of me. I crawled to my rock fence, stretched out on my belly, and covered my back and head with my blanket, making me nearly impossible to see. I rested my rifle’s barrel on a rock in the little wall I had made and checked again my sight pictures against brush and stones scattered in the canyon and on the trail around the hill in front of me in the dim light of the rising quarter moon. The shadows were confusing in some cases, and the light low, which made it harder, so it took longer for me to point on a target than I had thought when Branigan asked if I wanted to take this work.

  I sighted my rifle on the place where the riders would come around the trail curve toward me and waited. The sound of running ponies grew louder, and then one, a brown and white pinto, mane and tail flying in the cold night air, looking like a living shadow, was around the curve and charging down the road below me. Another, a big black with a blaze face, raced past my sights, and then two big grays came running side-by-side. Behind them came a big red pony, its shiny coat like a mirror in the moonlight. Driving on came a dark figure on a black and white pinto swinging and snapping a length of reata (rawhide rope) and whistling loud like a googé (whip-poor-will).

  I didn’t hesitate. I sighted on the figure, closed my eyes for an instant, so I’d still be able to see in the night after its flash as I squeezed the trigger, and fired. The rifle’s thunder filled the canyon and came echoing back. In the low, white light, I saw the pinto had no rider. I levered a new cartridge into the chamber and waited, but no more riders came. Taking my blanket and rifle, I walked to my pony, tightened the cinches, and swung into the saddle. I stayed in the juniper shadows as I rode down the hillside and up the trail to the curve. The pinto had stopped a couple of hundred yards down the trail from where I rode off the hill. It stood watching me, ears up, reins hanging down to the trail dust. I moved with care. His rider might yet try to kill me. Coyote, the trickster, always waits.

  I waited in the deep shadows of a big cottonwood tree, studying the trail up the canyon trying to find the Indah I knew I had hit. Then, not fifty yards away, in little spots of moonlight, the shadow of a small juniper lying on the trail moved a little when there was no breeze.

  I swung down from my pony, cocked the Henry rifle and put its stock butt to my shoulder, and, pointing the rifle across the back of my pony directly at the then-unmoving shadow, advanced up the trail, keeping the pony between me and the shadow. When I was fifteen yards away, I saw the rider’s bare legs outlined in the trail dust and heard a gurgle each time he tried to breathe.

  A wave of great sadness washed over me, and a bitter taste filled my mouth like that of the Río Pecos when I was no more than five harvests old at Bosque Redondo. I had shot and probably killed an Indeh brother stealing ponies. I hated to think that I had spilled Indeh blood for a few ponies. Good warriors shouldn’t die like that. Even worse, it might be a boy trying to make himself a name at the wrong place and time.

  Keeping my rifle ready, I advanced on the shadow in the dust and came to look down at the face of Delgadito. A dark, perfectly round hole was just below his right nipple, the blood leaking out of it filled with bubbles. I heard the rattling, wheezing sound of air coming out of the wound as he took slow gasps, waiting for the night to stay black forever.

  I kneeled beside him. He managed to mumble as he looked in my face, “So, it is you Yellow Boy. I thought either the luckiest or the best marksman had killed me. I’m glad it was the best mark
sman. I thank Ussen for an Indeh friend to kill me and not some miserable Indah with a lucky shot.” He took a wheezing breath and coughed a little, blood covering his lips, pain rippling across his face. “Don’t look so grim, Aashcho. I draw near the Happy Land. It’s a good night to die. Kill the witch, send him blind . . .”

  His breath flew away in a long sigh and did not return.

  I sat down in the cold and dust beside him and felt more alone than when I had found my father, Caballo Negro, scalped by Sangre del Diablo’s band. Delgadito had a good death, I gave it to him, but I didn’t want him to go. I picked up a handful of dust and let it fall through my fingers, wondering if this bit of earth was where we all ended up. I laid my rifle across my knees and found a cigarro in my policeman’s vest. Cupping my hands close to my body to keep down the initial flash from the match, I struck it with my thumbnail as I had seen my father do many times when I was a boy. I lighted the cigarro and made smoke to the four directions, asking Ussen to make Delgadito’s journey to the Happy Land of the grandfathers a good one.

  I wrapped Delgadito in my blanket and tied his body across his pony. I led them up the trail into the high country and left him in a cliff wall shelf I covered with rocks to keep the animals from his bones, and sacrificed his pony beside it for him to ride in the Happy Land. I found sage and other herbs and made a fire to purify myself in its smoke. Ussen had told me in my vision that part of my Power made sure I would never have Ghost Sickness as a Killer of Witches. Still I felt the need to bathe in the purifying smoke. A man I knew and respected had died by my hand. Coyote waits.

  CHAPTER 19

  GOOD TIMES

  I told Branigan what had happened with the ambush, except I didn’t tell him the man I had killed was Delgadito or that I knew him. I went home to Juanita, heavy hearted. She watched me sit by the fire for ten suns, ignoring her and Kicking Wren, as I wrestled with what I had done.

  One evening we were alone. Moon on the Water had taken Kicking Wren to visit and play with Maria and her. I sat gazing into the fire, unable to stop thinking about what it meant to have killed Delgadito. I had never thought about the men I had killed before, and it churned my guts to think about the man, not a friend or an enemy, I had wiped out for a few horses.

  Juanita sat cross-legged across the fire from me and worked on a basket with black, diamond patterns beginning to form in the coils made from yucca fibers interwoven with sumac stems. The crackling fire’s yellow light shone off her raven’s wing hair. I saw her cast a curious glance toward me, pause, and then continue her work. She finished a round on the basket and puffed her cheeks. Laying the basket in her lap and crossing her arms, she said, “My man no longer laughs with pleasure to see the day come or enjoys his woman and child. He spends his hours staring at the fire. Why?”

  I looked into her eyes a moment, nodded, and then lighted a cigarro, blew smoke to the four directions, and offered it to Juanita, who smoked to the four directions and then coughed a little before handing it back. She studied me and waited.

  “I killed Delgadito.”

  Her fingers went to her mouth. “Why did you do this?”

  I clenched my teeth to speak the truth and sighed. “I was waiting one night on a hill in Nogal Canyon to ambush Indah horse raiders less than a moon ago. Branigan told me I could shoot Indah if they stole our ponies. A figure came driving away Mescalero ponies, stealing them. I shot at him. I thought he rode like an Indeh, but I could not be sure. I couldn’t clearly see him, but he was raiding our ponies. I shot. In the darkness, I did this, and I didn’t miss.

  “I found him in the dust on the trail out of Nogal.” Pointing to the spot below my right nipple, I said, “My bullet hit him here. He lived long enough to tell me he was glad Ussen let a true warrior kill him rather than some sorry Indah. I didn’t want to kill him, but I did what Branigan said, shoot the raider, even if it is an Indah. Now, I think, maybe from now on, I must only shoot for myself and not for the Indah tribal police chief. Maybe I must find other work. I don’t want to be the cause of Indeh blood because an Indah says so.”

  She stared at me awhile, and then lowering her hand from in front of her mouth, wise Juanita said, “Husband, Delgadito left us because you said his hatred against the Blue Coats was more important to him than the family he might make with Falling Water. He raided and killed many Indah and Nakai-yes riding with Nana. You killed him trying to steal ponies from his own people. He had no loyalty to this band or to any other Mescaleros. I’m sorry he died, but he chose to leave and to steal our ponies. He chose the price paid for taking his own people’s ponies.”

  I knew Juanita spoke the truth, and soon my time of staring at the fire finished. A man made a choice to live or die raiding. I had chosen a different path, made a different choice, and if those choices crossed, like trails in the wilderness, one likely disappeared.

  Before the Season of Little Eagles, Juanita took Kicking Wren off her cradleboard and soon she was finding her way into everything in the tipi. Juanita’s mother, Maria, who by custom I was never supposed to see, looked after the child while Juanita worked at her chores and spent many long hours making the beautiful, coiled baskets and trays she sold or traded at Blazer’s store. Moon on the Water sat with her often and worked on her own baskets, learning how to make the design patterns and how to sew close weaves for making a beautiful basket that another woman, Indah or Indeh, might want enough to trade or pay In-dah money for.

  In the Season of Earth is Reddish Brown, Ish-kay-neh, who was soon to be a novice warrior, worked on a shallow cave hidden behind junipers in the cliffs near our tipis. It was big enough for everyone in the band to sit in and visit around a fire. He made a place for a fire back from the opening and well out of the wind and surrounded it by rocks to hold the ashes and coals in place. Then he made a latticework of poles with a little door across the front and covered the lattice with brush to help hold in the heat from the fire. As the Ghost Face Season days passed and the men and Ish-kay-neh hunted, we brought deer and elk hides that could wait for the women to tan and finish and tied them to the lattice, and that helped keep the place even warmer. Two or three times, we had a hard snow after a warm time and caught many deer snowed in under tall pine trees. We killed enough to get through the Ghost Face Season without using much in supplies from the agency, and we even had feasts in our cave meeting place after the women worked in it to stretch and finish the hides rather than let them freeze until the Season of Little Eagles when the warm winds came.

  Ish-kay-neh worked every day during Earth is Reddish Brown cutting a big supply of firewood for the Ghost Face Season. Our band used the cave often, and all the work he did serving us drew him closer to being a grown man of great respect by our People.

  In those times when we sat around the cave fire, the children begged Beela-chezzi to tell them stories of the old days, and he did. He was a very good storyteller, and he told them tales of raids Cha and his warriors made out of our camps in the Guadalupe Mountains on the Indah and Nakai-yes. He told them how he and I survived our attack on the witch, Sangre del Diablo. The wind moaned and snow flew outside, and their eyes grew wide, and their mouths dropped open as they listened to every word. We all listened. It wasn’t just a tale for the children. Even I listened, and I was part of the story.

  Kah knew all the Coyote stories, and the children’s favorite was Coyote and Bear. The way Kah used to tell it, Bear was chief at a camp where nobody could keep the fat when they killed game. Bear Chief wanted it all. Every day, he sent his two Bear Boys out among the people of the camp, and they gave the boys all the fat.

  One day Coyote visited Bear Chief’s camp. He liked what he saw and decided to bring his own camp over. After they made their camp, one of Bear Chief’s people came to the camp and asked him if he knew the rules of their camp. Coyote said no. “Well,” the visitor said, “in this whole camp, no one is supposed to keep the fat of any kind. That is the way of our Bear Chief.”

  Old Coyote said,
“I’m not going to give any fat to your chief if I kill the game.”

  The visitor said, “You’d better, or he’ll come and punish you.”

  That made Coyote angry, and the visitor returned to his own camp.

  Next day, Coyote went hunting. He took a nice, fat, young buck. Coyote brought the deer back quickly, and Bear Chief, seeing him, sent his two Bear Boys to get the fat.

  When the boys came, Coyote stepped out of his tipi and asked them what they wanted.

  The Bear Boys said, “We came after the fat. All of it from the deer you brought in.”

  “No!” said Coyote.

  One of Bear Boys said, “Our papa is chief here. We won’t go until you give us that fat!”

  “I say no. You two boys go home.”

  But they wouldn’t go and kept asking for the fat. Coyote got a stick and gave the Bear Boys a good whipping. They both started to cry and ran back to the camp of Bear Chief.

  Old Coyote was pretty smart. He knew that Bear Chief would come for a visit soon, so he built a big fire and scattered some pieces of deerskin large enough to cover the palm of his hand around the fire, and he put some pebbles in the fire.

  When the Bear Boys went home to their papa, he asked them why they came back without any fat and why they were crying.

  They said, “That new camper down there is the cause of all this.”

  Bear Chief got real mad when he heard this, and he went down to Coyote’s camp, where Coyote had this big fire going, and all the people went down to see what would happen.

  Bear Chief came growling and saying he wanted the fat. Coyote said, “No, this fat belongs to me. I killed the deer and brought it in.”