I stepped back to avoid another thrust at my belly, and my heel slid on a smooth, moss-covered rock. Off balance, I staggered backwards. The witch, very fast for a big man, flew on top of me before I could raise my knife. We hit the sand hard, his blade nipping the side of my ear as he stabbed down. He grabbed for my throat with his free hand as he pushed himself up to stab at me again.
Ussen filled me with a strength I have never known before. I knocked his reaching hand away and jabbed my free thumb in his left eye as his big blade came up. Its downward swing for the middle of my head slowed. He bellowed in agony. I twisted to one side as his blade stabbed again with all his power into the sand by my ear. I jammed his jaw up with the palm of my hand and drove He Watches’s blade deep into the muscles of his neck. A bright red shower of blood spewed over us. He rolled to his back, his left hand over his empty eye socket, blood covering his chest and throat, as he reached for He Watches’s knife.
The Comanches who had been screaming for my death watched in silence as I rolled to my knees and crawled to pick up the Henry. It filled my hand, and I turned and raised to my knees in time to see Sangre del Diablo, an eye gone, blood streaming and squirting in a fountain from his neck, standing with He Watches’s blade in his right hand. He roared like a great bear and staggered toward me.
The Henry thundered, and the witch’s head jerked back, his right eye disappearing in a spray of blood and brains out the back of his head. Before he fell, the Henry sent a bullet into the bloody eye socket already empty. Sangre del Diablo flopped on his back, empty eye sockets staring at the deep blue above us, his devil’s blood turning the sand around him black.
I thought, witch, today Ussen has taken your eyes and your life, but you escape my revenge too easy.
Screaming in fury, the leader of the front four, the Segundo, threw his rifle to his shoulder and fired. A stripe of burning fire whipped across my back. In the same instant Rufus’s buffalo gun boomed. The Segundo’s head snapped back as if it had been hit with the witch’s club, and he staggered and fell facedown in the river with half the back of his skull gone.
The canyon filled with fury; captives screamed and hid behind boulders in the water. I ran for the boulders I had first hidden behind. The Comanche and bandito horses thundered back upstream, tearing their reins from the hands of their dismounted riders, who fired wildly into the brush and canyon sides. Rufus’s buffalo gun boomed over the sharp cracks of the Comanche repeating rifles. One of his bullets slammed into a packhorse leader between his shoulder blades as he turned to run back upriver. Rufus was nearly as fast loading his Sharps as I was with the Henry, and he killed the second packhorse leader before he had run five yards beyond the first.
The Comanches, trying to find cover and shoot at the same time, were easy targets, and I killed the rest of the front four. The side riders ran for cover behind boulders in the river or in scattered bits of brush on the sides of the canyon. They made the mistake of facing Rufus and me, and were killed by Kah and Beela-chezzi. Not a Comanche or a bandito escaped.
CHAPTER 35
THE WORLD IS SMOOTH AGAIN
Kah and Beela-chezzi climbed down to the river. As they walked down the bank, checking each body, ready to cut a throat if the Comanche or bandito was still alive, they brought the horses that had tried to run upstream, led them to brush growing against the canyon wall, and tied them there. The captives, saying nothing, the children still wide-eyed and trembling, the women solemn, uncertain who we were and what we would do with them, waded out of the river and sat down on the sand in the middle of the bank to look at the bodies of their captors and to watch us. It wasn’t long before the younger children began to play in the sand.
Rufus climbed out from behind his boulders and worked his way across the river. The quiet—no birds singing, no babies crying, no guns firing, no men groaning in the grip of death as they entered the Happy Land of the grandfathers—told its own story of what had happened here on the Río Piedras Verdes. The sun burned straight down in the time of shortest shadows and filled the canyon with bright light.
From the ridge top Yibá had watched me face Sangre del Diablo and had seen how I had killed him. As soon as the witch died, Yibá had begun the ride to bring us our ponies by riding along the ridge’s edge south and then down a steep canyon trail off the ridge leading to the river.
I checked the bodies of the Comanches I’d killed and then walked back to stand next to the remains of Sangre del Diablo, truly a witch of power. Staring at the gore on the bloodstained sand, I thought, It is not enough. My rage flared again, as I used my knife to cut off the witch’s clothes. My thought was to cut off his genitals and stuff them into his mouth as he had done to my father, but then I remembered what I’d told Kah years ago when he would have mutilated the Indah scouts that had captured him during our first test of manhood: “My father is a great warrior, and he says he never cut a dead body. It is not good. There are better ways to make the living suffer and humiliate the dead.”
I left Sangre del Diablo naked for the vultures and wolves to claim, but suddenly, one of the captive women screamed in rage. She came out of the water, a crying baby tied to her back, her face covered with deep, ugly bruises and one eye swollen shut, wading up the bank, holding high a big, round stone the size of her head. She ran to the body of Sangre del Diablo and swung the stone down with all her might into what was left of his head. As it flew apart, crushed like a ripe melon, she screamed, “For my People, witch!”
I considered the evil he had done, all the Apaches and those from other tribes he had scalped, all the men he had hung on crosses, all the poisons he had made to make men die in agony, all who had had their eyes torn out and killed by his trained búh (owl). At last, his end had come by He Watches’s blade and my rifle, and a woman had mutilated him. Truly Ussen must have a scale in the stars that weighs our fortunes to make them balance.
I heard Rufus’s boots crunching the sand. He stood beside me, spat a brown stream on the bloody mess of brain and bone that was once the witch’s head, and said, “Just wish that one had died ’fore all the grief he caused ever’body that got within ten mile of him. Son, you amazed me th’ way ya killed him. I almost killed him, but decided it had to be yore vict’ry. I’m real proud of ya. You’re mighty lucky that’s just a scratch across yore back.”
I nodded. “Ussen made the world smooth again today.”
Kah and Beela-chezzi joined us. Beela-chezzi said, “I thought the witch and then, for a heartbeat, the Segundo had killed you, but I see it’s nothing worse than stripes we took in learning to be warriors. I have grease and herbs that will stop it from becoming red and hot. Truly, Yellow Boy is a Killer of Witches, and this day he has killed a very bad one. Your courage is great, grandson. Live long. What shall we do with the captives? It’s still a long walk to Casas Grandes.”
“I’ll speak with them, and then we’ll smoke and decide what to do. Take all the weapons and bullets from the Comanches you can find. We can use them all. Leave the bodies. The black birds, wolves, and coyotes will have their fill. The first flood that comes will wash away what’s left of them. All will be gone. Then the land will be free of them and will no more taste their bitterness.”
I approached the women and children, who were sitting in the middle of the bank squinting at us in the bright, fiery light. They watched me with sad, but unafraid, eyes. I looked over each one for a moment, and then spoke so they all heard me above the splash and swirl of the river.
“Does anyone here speak the words of the Nakai-yes or the Apache?”
A young woman, beginning to grow big with a child, stood and said, “I can speak the words of the Nakai-yes.”
I motioned to her and we walked to boulders near the canyon wall, a place where we could speak without the others hearing us.
Before I could open my mouth, she asked, “Are you Apaches?”
“Yes, Mescaleros.”
“Are you going to kill us? Or keep us as slaves?”
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“We won’t kill you or keep you as slaves. No slaves live on our reservation. The witch slaughtered and scalped your men for money. He planned to claim their scalps as Apaches, and the Nakai-yes, closing their eyes to any difference, would have gladly paid him every penny he demanded because they hate and fear Apaches. The witch planned to take you to Casas Grandes and sell you as slaves to hacendados or to houses of women.”
She stared at the sand and nodded. “I heard them say this. The one with no hair warned them not to rape or torture us because it would lower our price and cost him money. Why did you kill him?”
“My brothers and I took three years to find this witch and today finally kill him. He killed all our people as he did your men. Now he wanders in darkness, blind in the Happy Place. The world is smooth again. The Mescaleros give you back your life.”
She stared at me with big, sad eyes and said, “We’re grateful to have our lives back, but the Season of Ghost Face comes soon. We’ll starve without our harvests and our men to help and protect us. What can we do? Will you help us?”
“We burned the bodies of your men to save them from the black birds, coyotes, and wolves. We took nothing from your rancheria. The witch took you and ten packhorses of loot from your rancheria and then burned everything, even your crops. There is nothing left for you there. My friends and I return north to our land the Indah took from us. Where do you want to go? We will help you if we can, but we must go quickly. The time we can stay away from the reservation grows short.”
She looked at the white, glaring sand and the rushing, rumbling river, and held her belly. “My child needs the help of a man to grow strong. He needs him to put food in my belly. I need food to make milk in my breasts, or the child will starve, and I will, too.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “Mescalero, kill us or sell us, but don’t leave us to starve.”
An idea flew out of my mouth unbidden. “Will you live with Chiricahuas, become part of a band?”
“We are Opata. The Chiricahuas have raided our rancheria many times. How will they treat us? We will work and help their women, but I won’t be among them as a slave. They are hard men, raiders and warriors, not farmers, and they make me afraid. I can’t speak for the others, but I’d rather die than become a Chiricahua slave. If you choose to sell us to them, I’ll run away or kill myself rather than let a Chiricahua use me for his pleasure or work my child like an animal. I know the rest of the women and children think this, too.”
I took council with my brothers. We decided to take them to Juh’s stronghold and ask that they be adopted into the band as second or third wives. We would not leave them as slaves.
By a few riding double, the Opata women and children all had rides on the ponies of the Comanches. We rode the trail we had followed from Elias’s camp. From there, we knew the trail to Juh’s stronghold.
The sun was nearing the edge of the western mountains, and the shadows fell deep in the canyon of Elias when I waved at a warrior up the canyon wall who was watching the trail into the camp. He waved back, but I saw him studying us with his be’idest’íné as we walked our ponies toward the first wickiups in the rancheria. A crowd of women and children formed as if by magic, and warriors, rifles ready, stood among them. As we approached, they formed two lines for us to ride between and watched us as we passed.
Elias met us at the end of the lines, arms crossed, his face a mask of indifference. Because I had killed the witch, Beela-chezzi said I should ride first, and the others agreed. Stopping in front of Elias, I slid off my pony and walked up to him waving my palm parallel to the ground to show that all was well.
Elias said, “So, Mescalero, you return to the camp of Elias with all your brothers and have many Opata captives on fine ponies. I see you did not find the witch you told grandmother you hunted, but slaves and ponies instead.”
I was tempted to remind Elias of how his band had run from the witch, but it is a bad custom, and sometimes makes bad blood, to make fun of your host.
“I’ve killed the witch and sent him blind forever to the Happy Land, and my brothers and I have wiped out his band to the last warrior and bandito. The Opata here were his captives. Now we take them to Juh’s stronghold and ask they live free.”
A gentle murmur swept through the crowd around us. I saw warriors, their eyebrows raised in surprise, look at each other, and Elias frowned. He cocked his head to one side, crossed his arms, and looked at me in disbelief. “You, Mescalero, killed the great, hairless, demon witch, Sangre del Diablo? You sent him blind to the Happy Land of the grandfathers? How? Everyone I know, in or out of the Blue Mountains, feared and stayed away from him as my People and I did. If he didn’t witch you and make you sick and wishing to die, he killed you and took your hair so you had none in the Happy Land.”
“Yes, Sangre del Diablo tried to kill me with his war club in a charge on his big black pony. He came snapping his teeth and howling like a wolf. Ussen gave me Power to send witches blind to the happy place, Power to shoot out their eyes with my Yellow Boy rifle. I did this to Sangre del Diablo, and a captive woman smashed in his skull after we killed his Comanches and pistoleros. We’ve freed you and your people from fear of the day when Sangre del Diablo comes.”
Elias’s face cracked into a big smile. “Enjuh! You’ve done a great thing for all Apaches. Be our guests this night. We’ll feast you and celebrate your victory while we give Kitsizil Lichoo’ a new wife.”
Elias let us use all his empty wickiups on the far side of his camp, and he gave a place close by us to the Opata to make their beds and fires. Kitsizil Lichoo’, washed and dressed, ready to take a new woman, came to visit us and learn what had happened to the witch.
He sat by our fire, his face shining and happy, and nodded appreciatively as we told the story of the witch’s death. When I finished, I said, “And what of you, my friend? Will you stay here with this woman in Elias’s band or return to the stronghold of Juh?”
He shook his head. “My new woman is my second wife. She has parents no more, no true relatives in this or any other band. She goes with me to my camp in the Blue Mountains to the north.”
Kitsizil Lichoo’ laughed when he saw me raise my brows. “Juh moved his camp south when he broke out of San Carlos with Geronimo, Chihuahua, and Loco. Two moons after you left the stronghold to return to Mescalero, I gathered up a few warriors and made a new camp in a Blue Mountain canyon to the north. Sweet, cold water runs by it, and we have made brush corrals for our ponies and mules and lodges with stone walls that will keep us warm in winter and cool in summer. We’ve found a way from our camp through canyons out to the llano so the Nakai-yes won’t catch us when we raid the great herds of the hacendados. I’ll never raid my people north of the border. Men from other tribes have joined us. We’re still only twelve warriors, and there are only three women and a girl child with us. We must find women to help us grow strong and have children, so we don’t have to take them in raids. We grow slow, but well. Our camp is on your path to Mescalero. Come and see.”
Light filled my brain like a sunrise. “Do your warriors insist their women be Apaches?”
He looked puzzled and shook his head. “No. In fact, one of our women is a Nakai-yi. Why?”
I nodded toward the Opata women and children. “The witch’s captives. They need a band, and to survive, the women need men. I was taking them to Juh’s stronghold to ask that he take them, not as slaves, but as adopted Chiricahuas. You say Juh camps in another place, and you need women and children for your warriors. Why don’t you take them?”
He looked through the trees at the camp of the Opata women and children. “I can see future warriors and strong women there. Ha! I came to the camp of Elias to take another woman back to my wickiup. Now I can return with my woman and enough women and children for all my warriors. In the span of a day, I have gone from a little camp to a big one. Will they come? Will you help me take them there?”
“I want to see this camp of yours. We’ll help you. Come
, let us ask the women what they choose.”
As dusk came, a great fire was lighted and the freshly made tiswin brought out. Drummers began a slow, rumbling beat on a big, stiff hide, filling the camp with its boom-dah-dah-boom rhythm. Kitsizil Lichoo’ and I walked to the camp of the Opata women and children. They all sat down with us around a fire, and I told them who he was and why he was in the camp of Elias. They frowned in disbelief and slowly shook their heads when I told them he was a son of Juh. No Apache had red hair. He told them how when he was four or five harvests, Juh took him in a raid where his mother was killed. He had survived because the women in Juh’s band thought his red hair was good luck. He told them many of the same things he had told me about his new camp to the north. He said his warriors needed wives, and that I had told him they needed men. When he asked if they wanted to become part of his camp and become his warriors’ women and adopted children rather than be taken to some Nakai-yi village, they all nodded yes.
He said, “My warriors will want you all. Our camp is three suns’ ride from here. My new woman and me will not drink too much tiswin after our feast begins. We’ll leave at first light before Elias makes trouble. Don’t tell his people of our business. Be ready.”
“Enjuh,” they said as one, and, for the first time since I had found them, I saw a few women smiling.
The drum picked up in tempo, and singing and the wheel dance began around the great fire.
CHAPTER 36
LONG RIDE TO MESCALERO
Kitsizil Lichoo’ and his new woman, an easy-on-the-eyes, hardworking widow, Calico Dove, led the long line of Opata women and children, their packhorses, and my brothers and me out of Elias’s canyon mists as the sun shot long, golden shafts through the tall trees toward the top of the ridge above the camp. The night before, the camp, with much dancing and singing and tiswin drinking, had celebrated their union and our destruction of Sangre del Diablo and his Comanches. By the time Elias and his warriors awoke with their heads throbbing from too much drinking, our ponies had carried us far away, too far for them to catch us in order to take the Opata from us for camp slaves and wives. All the Apaches in the long string of ponies winding around the narrow cliff’s edge trails knew Elias and didn’t trust him in any of his words. The Opata seemed to sense the same, although they didn’t know him or have any other association with him. We were all glad to be gone from the camp of Elias.
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