Blood of the Devil

by W. Michael Farmer

  Bear Chief got very angry. He said, “You whipped my boys, too. So, first I’ll finish with you, and then I’ll take the fat!”

  Old Coyote was brave. He stood his ground by the hot fire. The Bear Chief started around one way, but Coyote ran to the other side. As they circled the fire, Coyote said to Bear Chief, “I’m not afraid of you, either. Open your mouth wider, it won’t scare me!”

  Coyote kept saying that while he circled the fire, and he picked up the hot pebbles with one of the pieces of deerskin he put near the fire. He threw the hot pebbles into Bear Chief’s mouth while he snarled and growled. Bear Chief, very angry, didn’t notice the hot pebbles thrown in his mouth. He kept up the chase, round and round the fire. Coyote kept throwing hot pebbles in his mouth until, soon, the hot pebbles began to work, and Bear Chief dropped dead.

  Then Mother Bear came down to see for herself why Bear Chief did not come home. She saw Bear Chief lying dead and became very sad and angry. She went after Coyote, but Coyote circled around and did the same thing with Mother Bear. He raced around the fire, first one way and then another, making fun of old Mother Bear. He mocked her, and she chased him harder, roaring loud, and Coyote threw hot pebbles into her mouth like he had with Bear Chief. Soon old Mother Bear dropped dead, too.

  Old Coyote was the hero then. He’d killed both bears. He’d won the fight and won back the fat for the whole camp. Everyone was happy, and they had a big feast because they could eat all the fat they wanted. No one ever again tried to take all the fat. And the two Bear Boys had to make their own living, hunting their own food.

  Beela-chezzi worked with Ish-kay-neh, now fourteen harvests, training him to be a warrior and preparing his own son, Shiyé, and my little brother, Little Rabbit, to begin training. He made them run every day, even in the snow, and jump in the stream to bathe in the early morning, even if they had to jump through a little ice frozen on the top of the stream. As hard as his training was for the boys, neither Shiyé, Little Rabbit, nor Ish-kay-neh complained, and they worked hard at what Beela-chezzi told them to do. I helped with their training by showing them how to make arrows fletched and marked so anyone knew who they belonged to and how to tip them with blunt ends for bird hunting, or, for big game, sharp points filed from iron barrel hoops. I also showed them how to make bows from tse´lkani strong enough to kill an elk or a man, and how to hunt and catch the little animals like rabbits that tasted good roasted over the fire or in a stew pot. I gave them the bows and arrows I made with them watching. Good students, they learned well how to make their own. I was glad to help these good boys, but my heart was sad. They would not know the pleasures of riding with the warriors on raids as novices, or as warriors. I wondered what tests would prove their manhood for the women and all the Mescaleros.

  Juanita and I were under the blankets many times that Ghost Face Season, but no baby grew in her belly, and her face was marked with lines of sadness. I told her Ussen would choose the best time for a baby in her belly. She smiled and nodded she understood, but her eyes said something different.

  Warm winds came, and the snow melted, filling the creeks to overflowing. The sky was brilliant blue again, not covered with clouds, and the grass down the canyon was a deep, dark green that matched the pines. The Season of Little Eagles passed into the Season of Many Leaves, and the streams once filled with melted snow grew small again and easy to cross. People all over the reservation came out of their camps and canyons ready to gamble, play, or fight, and Branigan’s police, me included, were busy keeping order.

  With the streams nearly back to normal, our little camp went to the agency to collect supplies, and those with Indah money or things to trade visited Blazer’s store. Juanita had a nice collection of baskets she’d made for trade, and Blazer’s clerk gave her a good price for them.

  While she bargained inside, I sat and smoked on the store porch, feeling the warm light on my face, my eyes nearly closed in the pleasure of the day. Through the slits of my eyes, I saw Branigan come out of the agency building. He saw me and came walking in my direction. I stood to meet him. We spoke of the Ghost Face Season and the coming Season of Many Leaves and of wild Apaches and Indah raiders we would have to fight that year.

  Another Ghost Face Season came, and Kicking Wren, a great pleasure for Juanita and me, and still less than three harvests old, did well playing with the other children much older than she. Ish-kay-neh ran long distances by himself, did well in arrow shooting, slinging rocks, and throwing rocks by hand with boys his age from other bands. His victories showed he had paid close attention to what we taught him of the old ways, customs, and stories about doing a thing right and well. In an earlier time, he would have been ready to go on raids as a novice, but now there were no more raids, at least none anyone would admit. Beela-chezzi, Kah, and I smoked often by the fire, sharing the ideas we had trying to decide how to test the maturity of the boys growing to manhood in our little band without the benefits of learning by helping warriors on raids.

  Deer Woman had her first child, a son, in the Season of Large Leaves (midsummer). Kah strutted around our camp for a moon with his chest out and a smile that nearly touched his ears. Sleepy made the child a tsach, and after the ceremony, Kah named him Para-dee-ah-tran (The Contented) because he almost never cried or whimpered from the day of his birth. Deer Woman never had to hang his cradleboard in a tree to teach him the need for quiet. After Para-dee-ah-tran was born, Deer Woman was sweeter and more content than at any time I had known her since her Haheh (puberty ceremony), and she and Juanita became close friends once more after more than four harvests of carefully avoiding each other.

  Sitting by the fire while the wind moaned and the snow flew, I smoked a cigarro and watched my girl child play with a little doll I had carved for her, and Juanita taught Moon on the Water tricks for making the tight, beautiful baskets for which she, Juanita, was well known. I thought of the year past and felt content. We didn’t have an easy life, but our little band had not gone hungry. I had been shot at but never hit, and there was no word from anywhere of the witch, Sangre del Diablo. I hoped, maybe, I had killed him after all. All the children were growing strong and healthy and learning the old ways, and the Blue Coats didn’t bother the People as long as we did nothing that appeared threatening.

  We had heard of the breakout at San Carlos by Juh and Geronimo, how they had escaped into the Blue Mountains in the last Ghost Face Season, only to return and stir up the People of Loco and Chihuahua at San Carlos and lead them in a breakout that left many Indah and Nakai-yes dead on both sides of the border. But the Mescaleros stayed peaceful and far away from the Chiricahuas, who left a path filled with blood, smoke, and destruction.

  Sitting there by the fire, thinking of our good fortune, I forgot that Coyote watches. The trickster waits until you are sleeping in your thoughts and then plays a trick that you never dreamed would happen, especially after a year’s good fortune.

  CHAPTER 20

  SERGEANT SWEENY JONES

  In the time the Indah called 1883, we again rode our horses early in the Season of Little Eagles, and the whole camp went to Blazer’s store, the women to get their supplies, the children to play games with children from other camps, our nearly grown boy to enter bow shooting, racing, and riding contests with others close to his age, and the men to smoke, gamble, watch the sawmill, and listen to the latest gossip about the agency. I waited on the store porch and smoked a cigarro, listening to the others, while Juanita and Moon on the Water bought supplies from my pay as a policeman and bargained for good prices on their baskets so they could buy the pretty things they wanted.

  I saw Branigan come out of the agency building followed by a Blue Coat with three yellow stripes on his coat sleeves. The trooper cut his brown hair, bleached white by the sun, short, and he stood straight as a well-made arrow.

  Branigan motioned me to come over to the agency steps. He held up his palm as I approached and said, “D’anté, Yellow Boy. The winter has been long. Your People
are well?”

  “D’anté, Branigan. My People are well. No come to agency when very cold and snow blows hard in the Ghost Face Season. Hard to get over the ridges in deep snow. I stay with them as you said. There was no trouble even with many games of Monte.”

  Branigan nodded and turned to the Blue Coat. “Sergeant Sweeny Jones, our friend is Yellow Boy, a Mescalero policeman, the man you asked to see.”

  Sweeny Jones nodded and stuck out his hand for a shake, and I gave it two solid pumps. He said, “D’anté, Yellow Boy. Mr. Al Sieber wanted me to stop here and talk to ya after I carried some dispatches from General Crook to the commander at Fort Stanton. I’m on the way back to meet up with Sieber and General Crook at Willcox over to Arizona Territory.”

  “Hmmph. Al Sieber and me have good talk after he see me shoot. Why Al Sieber say you talk to me? I know you?”

  Sergeant Jones grinned.

  “Naw, we ain’t never met, but you shore impressed Mr. Al Sieber with your shootin’ and good sense. You probably heard last year about the breakout at San Carlos by Chihuahua, Geronimo, Juh, and them other bloodthirsty banditos. They’ve been raidin’ outta their camps in the Sierra Madre down to Mexico. Lieutenant Davis caught us a White Mountain Apache Chato had taken last year during the breakout. He wanted to stay, but his wives was Chiricahuas and wanted to leave with ol’ Chato, who didn’t give ’im much choice, if ya know what I mean. He calls hisself Tzoe, but he’s got such purty, rosy cheeks and smooth skin us troopers jest call ’im ‘Peaches.’ ”

  Branigan motioned us over to sit on a bench, and Jones stopped talking long enough to cut a chew, pop it in his cheek, and get it softened up so he could spit and chew. The air was cold, but the sun was bright and warming. Horses stomped and nickered in the stone corral where the Blue Coats once held my People in horse apples a hand-length deep until they were nearly all sick. Whoops and yells drifted down the valley from men playing hoop-and-pole on a flat place up the wagon road from the agency. While Sweeny Jones got his tobacco going, I sat down, leaned my back against a porch post, and lighted another cigarro. Branigan sat in a rocking chair with his arms crossed, watching and waiting for Jones, who first spat a long stream of brown juice out on to the road and then continued.

  “Ole Peaches says he knows where the Chiricahua camps are in the Sierra Madre and promised General Crook he’d lead us to ’em. General Crook, he spent most of the winter getting things worked out with the Mexicans so’s we’n go down there without them givin’ us any trouble. In about a month, he’s gonna take a few troopers and a whole lot of scouts and either get them Apaches to come back to San Carlos or wipe ’em out. Mr. Al Sieber says the general is taking a big gamble, damned if he does, damned if he don’t, but it’s gotta be done, or folks on the border is gonna be bleeding for a long the time, and the US Cavalry is gonna look mighty foolish chasin’ ghosts the rest of its days.

  “Mr. Al Sieber asked me to stop by the reservation here and see if you and a few other Mescaleros want to join up for this here little ride General Crook is about to take with his Apache scouts. He told me he wants you to come. Says there’s a special job he has in mind that you’d be perfect for with your shootin’ skills and all. Army pays thirteen dollars a month, gives you a uniform just like I’m a wearing, two bandoliers of cartridges, a Springfield rollin’ block carbine, a canteen, shirt, pants, and a few other gewgaws you’d probably find right handy. I already asked Mr. Branigan there if he’d give ya time off from the policeman job you’re a workin’, and he said he thought he could do without you for three to six months, but no more. You’d be back here well ’fore the snow flies, so that ain’t a problem. How ’bout it? You gonna help us with them Chiricahuas down to Mexico?”

  I sat there feeling the warmth of the sun, like the closeness of Juanita, and smoked and thought about going into Mexico to face the Chiricahua and their friends. Thinking about how the Chiricahua scouts had nearly killed us at Rufus Pike’s rancho when we left the reservation to escape the Blue Coats made me feel this trip might be a chance for a little payback. Sweeny Jones had stirred my memory of wild and free times. My friends, Kah and Beela-chezzi, would keep meat on the rack for Juanita and the other women while I was gone. I wanted to go. I wanted to see Al Sieber again, meet General Crook, the man the Apaches had come to call Nantan Lupan (General Gray Wolf), and learn about this special job Al Sieber said he thought I was perfect for. Besides all this, if the witch had returned to Mexico with more Comanches, I might have a chance of finding him again and, if Ussen helped me, sending him to the land of the grandfathers blind.

  I said to Sergeant Sweeny Jones, “I go. Talk to Al Sieber. Maybe I go to Mexico and scout Blue Mountains with Nantan Lupan. I take my wife back to our camp first. Now she in Blazer’s store selling baskets. When we ride?”

  Branigan’s dark face got a little darker, and Sergeant Sweeny Jones grinned and nodded. Branigan said, “I was hopin’ you’d stay, but maybe you can earn your keep in Mexico and help out the general. Just don’t let the Chiricahuas put a bullet in you when you ain’t lookin’.”

  The camp returned to its tipis the next day, and I had told Juanita what I planned to do. She wasn’t happy about me being gone for a long time, but she told me to do what I thought best, and she put together a good bag of trail food for me. Kah and Beela-chezzi promised to keep her, Kicking Wren, and my other women well provisioned while I was gone.

  Sweeny Jones tried for two days to recruit other Mescaleros for the expedition, but none wanted to become a scout and work for the Blue Coats against the Chiricahua. The third morning after I’d met Sweeny Jones, we met again in front of the agency and rode down the wagon trail toward Tularosa in the early morning light, the air still cold enough to see our breath. We were halfway to Tularosa when the sun brought bright light letting us see the blaze of white sands, which looked like a great, white cloud against the foot of mountains the Indah and Nakai-yes called San Andres. A thin, green line of mesquite and creosote bushes showed where the white sand ended. On the long trail we rode in those days, I liked seeing that land the best.

  Sweeny Jones was a good horseman. He knew how to ride far in a day and not kill his pony by using the walk, trot, gallop style the Apaches had used for years when not on raids. On raids, they rode until their ponies were ready to drop, then stole fresh ones. In two days riding southwest, we crossed the great river and rode out across the llano covered in grama grass, creosote bushes, and mesquite. Scattered among them, gourds were making new leaves on vines creeping in every direction away from long afternoon shadows, and the stalks on yuccas, filled with pods ready to flower, reached for the sky. I tried to remember where I saw the largest crowds of yuccas, so I might bring the women back for mescal when I returned.

  We rode into the army camp at Willcox near the end of the fifth day on our ride out of Mescalero. There were Blue Coat tents, large and small, arranged in straight rows near the iron wagon tracks that ran in from the northeast, tents for packers scattered near corrals for more mules than I had seen anywhere, and off to one side, fires started by distinct groups of Apaches, a few wearing Blue Coats. I had seen Apaches in Blue Coats before, including some at Fort Stanton near the reservation, but the sight of them still left a bad taste in my mouth. In the center of the camp were mounds of supplies, harnesses for packs, canteens, blankets, and guarded by troopers, boxes of ammunition and rifles.

  At the head of the Blue Coat tents stood a big tent with a fire and stools in front, a cooking fire with pots hung from a tripod, and a frame supporting a side of roasting beef. The sides of the tent were rolled up to let in any breeze, and I saw an old Indah with a long, gray beard sitting at a table and looking at a big, thin, white skin covered with long wiggling marks drawn on it. I soon learned the Indah called it a map. As we rode past, Sweeny Jones looked at me and grinned. “That there is the general’s tent, and that’s who you Apaches call Nantan Lupan, General Gray Wolf.” I looked back at Nantan Lupan and wondered how such an old man cou
ld still be a big chief leading the Blue Coats against the Chiricahuas in Mexico.

  As we rode though the camp, no one paid any attention to us. All walked quick on their own trails. We stopped by another big tent close by the fires of the Apaches who cooked their evening meal. Sweeny Jones swung down from his pony, motioned for me to dismount, and said, “Wait here.” He went in the tent while I looked over the Apaches by their fires. Most of them, I could tell by the way they talked and dressed, were Chiricahuas, but a few others were mixed in who looked a little different, and when I heard their voices, they said their words in a different way from the Chiricahuas, which made them even harder to understand. These were, I later learned from talking with Al Sieber, White Mountain, Yuma, Mohave, and Tonto scouts. By the time we returned from the Blue Mountains, I knew them all very well.

  As I studied the scouts and wondered why he had asked me to come, Sweeny Jones came out of the tent followed by Al Sieber who grinned at me through the brushy pile of hair under his nose. He said, “Yellow Boy. You did come. I hoped you would.”

  CHAPTER 21

  TZOE AND THE SNAKE

  Al Sieber and I sat by his fire and smoked while the sun, four fingers (about an hour) above the horizon, warmed our backs and made long shadows. He told me how Nantan Lupan listened to the Apache chiefs after he returned from warring with the plains tribes. The chiefs told him how the agents cheated the People of their rations and how the People did nothing at San Carlos except wait around for the next issue of rations. The People needed action and were restless. If Chihuahua and the Warm Springs chiefs came for them, they would probably go without resistance, many Indah and Nakai-yes would die, and the border would burn and bleed for a long time.

  Sieber said that, after listening to the chiefs, General Crook made things much better on the reservation, but knew if the renegades stayed in the Nakai-yi’s Blue Mountains, there’d always be trouble. He had to make them come back, by talk, which he preferred, or by blood and steel, wiping out many. Too many Blue Coats guarded the Indah on this land for the Apaches to live free, even in the Blue Mountains.