Killer of Witches: The Life and Times of Yellow Boy Mescalero Apache

by W. Michael Farmer

  The sun was well above the mountains, and the air warming when I returned, tired but relaxed, to Sons-ee-ah-ray’s fire. The smell of fry bread from her big iron skillet was intoxicating. Caballo Negro, eating a big piece wrapped around a strip of meat, waved to me.

  His cheeks full, Caballo Negro said, “Sit. Eat. You do well to run. Young warriors become lazy after a raid. That is a good way to die in the next raid.”

  I took the large piece of fry bread and meat my mother handed me. “I had a good run. I don’t feel right unless I run every day I can.”

  “You danced long and well with Porico’s daughter. Does she interest you?”

  “Yes, she’s a good woman. I like her. I liked dancing with her.”

  “Enjuh. She is built to make strong children, her eyes are kind, and I see she works hard with her little sister, Moon on the Water, to help Maria. Porico is a great warrior who has killed many Indah and Nakai-yes. Her children will have his power in their blood as well as yours and mine. Wait two Seasons of Many Leaves before you take a pony to Maria’s wickiup. You’ll have many more raids by then and will be able to afford a good bride price. Tell Juanita your intention in a season. If she wants you, she’ll wait. If it is for you, Maria will let her wait. This I know. In the time between now and your asking, stay out of the bushes with her. I don’t want Porico ready to kill you. Be a man of honor with the woman you want. Don’t be like Delgadito and steal the bride price of every woman who has eyes for you.”

  “What has Delgadito done?”

  “He talked your friend from your boyhood days, Deer Woman, into the bushes the other night after they danced. Sons-nah and his wife drank too much tiswin to watch her. She was eager like a mare in heat and didn’t take much convincing. I hear Delgadito laughs with his friends and says Deer Woman expects he will marry her now because she wore him out in the bushes. Maybe wife number two, but not the first, ever, he says. If Sons-nah finds out what happened, Delgadito will be a gelding and will not need a wife.”

  I slowly chewed my bread and meat as I listened to Caballo Negro. I felt bad that Deer Woman had made a bad mistake with Delgadito. She expected what he wouldn’t deliver and would be disappointed at her life. On the other hand, it sounded like Caballo Negro had already talked to Porico and Maria about Juanita. One Wheel Dance did not make a couple ready to marry. Still, I knew my father’s words were wise, if not premature. I thought, I would never take a woman to the bushes, even if I planned to keep her. Taking a woman without marriage first shows disrespect for her and lowers the bride price due her family. Besides, a good woman never does that anyway.

  From deep in my thoughts, I heard Caballo Negro speaking words that slowly penetrated my consciousness.

  “. . . driver might have killed me if your arrow had not filled his skull. Already a strong warrior, one who will be wanted on raids and in wars against the Indah and Nakai-yes, you shoot well; your bow, strong, powerful. But a warrior needs a weapon with long reach. I have presents for you to increase your power.”

  I looked up in surprise and my heart raced as if I were still running when Caballo Negro handed me the Yellow Boy rifle and the long-barreled revolver, still in its holster, that he had taken from the wagon train.

  CHAPTER 12

  FIRST SHOTS

  * * *

  Caballo Negro and He Watches took me to a canyon west of the low canyon trail to teach me how to load and fire the Yellow Boy rifle and the pistol taken in the wagon train raid. They had me bring the small, heavy wooden box Caballo Negro had given me during that raid.

  We stopped in a canyon with nearly vertical walls winding north. Juniper, scattered across the bottom of the canyon, offered shade, so we made a camp there in its cool, dark shadows. He Watches showed us a small burbling spring nearby, its cold water springing from the rocks with a life of its own but leaving only a damp spot when it disappeared in its sandy wash.

  We spread a blanket in the shade and sat down. Caballo Negro, his muscles bulging with the weight, heaved the small box into place in front of us. He slid his knife blade into the tight, narrow crack where the top joined the sides, carefully prying the top up, its long straight nails looking like a demon’s crooked teeth as it slowly raised up, the nails against the wood squeaking and groaning. Inside, we found small, brightly colored boxes made of the stuff the Indah call cardboard, each box fitting together perfectly to fill the much larger wooden box. I stared with interest, wondering what the boxes held.

  His fingers like an eagle’s talons gripping the edges of a box, Caballo Negro pulled it straight up and out of the wooden box. He gave it to me, took another, gave it to He Watches, and then took one for himself.

  I hefted the box, surprised at its weight, more like a rock of the same size than a block of wood. Caballo Negro showed me how to lift off its top. Inside, four neatly aligned rows contained shiny, short pesh-klitso tubes. Lifting one out, I saw it had a short gray tip on one end. It looked like the bullets Caballo Negro put in his shoots-many-times rifle.

  Caballo Negro said, “The Indah who make this type pesh-e-gar call it a rifle, and they make these pesh-klitso tubes with the gray heads. The Indah call them cartridges or bullets. Guns shoot them. Learn these and other Indah words used with this weapon. Some day you may have to trade for them and ask for them in the Indah tongue. Do you understand what I tell you?”

  I nodded. “Yes, Father, I understand.” I turned to He Watches and asked, “What are the Nakai-yi words for them? You have not told me.”

  He Watches grinned. “The Nakai-yi say rifle, same as the Indah, but for cartridges, they say cartuchos.”

  Caballo Negro took a cartridge and held it end-to-end between his thumb and forefinger. “These give the rifle its power. The gray heads are the bullets it shoots. Without them, this rifle is only good for a club. Even if the rifle has a belly full of these, it cannot shoot them if it is broken or dirty.

  “Warriors risk their lives on raids to get cartridges, and some die. But, we cannot fight the Indah, cannot raid effectively, and cannot win wars without them. Don’t waste them. Be sure the cartridges you use are the right length and circle size. Be sure they are made for your rifle. They must not be too small or too big or your rifle will not work. If you don’t use the right kind of cartridge, the rifle can explode in your hands and send you to the grandfathers. These boxes of cartridges I know are the right ones. They have the same Indah symbol on the box that is on the barrel of the rifle. See, the symbol looks like two forked twigs side-by-side, and there is the same symbol here on the barrel of the rifle. The Indah call the two forked twigs side-by-side forty-four. You will be wise to learn these symbols. Remember this forty-four cartridge when you raid against or bargain with the Indah. There are other parts and words you must learn. Take care of your rifle. Clean and oil it often. I’ll show you how to do this. If it breaks and will not shoot, you’ll have to find another. This is all I have to say. Do you understand my words?”

  “I hear you and understand your words. I will remember them.” The words were hard to learn at first, but I held them fast in my memory. I knew my life might one day depend on them.

  I had held the rifle since it had been given to me that morning. The feel of it in my hands gave me as much pleasure as a man might have for the feel of his woman or holding his baby child. Its shiny golden receiver gave me pleasure, shiny enough to see my reflection as I saw it in a bowl of still water. Its long black barrels gave me pleasure, one on top of the other, the bottom one having a long slit cut in it until the slit was within a hand’s width of the end of the barrel. I even enjoyed the smell of its gun oil and the bits of unseen gunpowder clinging to it. I carried it in the crook of my left arm as I rode. That day, as I sat on a blanket, legs crossed, with Caballo Negro and He Watches, it rested across the top of my thighs.

  Caballo Negro curled his fingers toward the palm of his hand, motioning for me to give him the rifle. I handed it to him butt first. Caballo Negro took the rifle, saying, “N
ow I’ll show you how to load and shoot it.”

  He held the rifle erect, resting the stock butt on the blanket, and pulled the lever up until it stopped and was parallel to the ground. He turned the rifle so I saw how pulling the lever down pushed the hammer back and how pulling the lever up raised the loading elevator, carrying a cartridge in the receiver until it aligned with the open breech of the barrel. He pulled the lever down again and carefully laid the cartridge he took out of the box on the loading elevator. When he pulled the lever back up, the elevator went up and at the same time a rod pushed the cartridge into the top barrel, and the end of the rod covered the barrel breech.

  Caballo Negro sighted the rifle toward a rock on a cliff wall on the far side. He squeezed the trigger and the hammer snapped forward. I flinched at the unexpected, overpowering boom that hurt my ears when the rifle fired. Caballo Negro and He Watches laughed. They said they had done the same thing the first time they were shown how a many-shots-rifle works. He Watches held out two small balls of piñon gum in his open palm to me.

  “When you shoot many times, use these in your ears. If you do not, you will not be able to hear like you should for a time, and an enemy may come without you hearing him.”

  Without moving the lever, Caballo Negro pulled the hammer back with his thumb until it clicked about halfway back. He stopped at the click and released the hammer. It didn’t move. He squeezed on the trigger, but it didn’t move. He explained that, even fully loaded, the rifle did not fire until the hammer was pulled back all the way until it clicked a second time. He pulled it back to the second click and squeezed the trigger again, and the hammer snapped forward as before.

  Next, he put his thumb on a flat piece of yellow iron just above the yellow receiver at the end of the second barrel with the slit cut in it. I saw there was a coil of iron inside the second barrel and that the spaces between the coils began to vanish as Caballo Negro pushed the flat piece of yellow iron up toward the end of the slit. The coils completely disappeared when the yellow iron reached the end of the slit. Caballo Negro held the yellow iron tight and turned the end of the barrel in a west to east motion, and the end of the barrel rotated open to expose the opening of the barrel on the bottom. He let go of the twisted end piece and it stayed in place.

  “Now we’ll fill the belly of the rifle with cartridges.”

  He tilted the rifle so it made a shallow angle to the ground and began sliding cartridges, their brass first, down the empty tube with the slit. He counted as bullets slid down the tube until he reached fourteen, and having filled the tube, stopped. Then he twisted the barrel end back into place and slowly lowered the end of the yellow iron down on the cartridges, which held it within a knuckle-joint length of the where the barrel twisted to open. The stack of cartridges, easy to see in the tube slit, looked like a golden arrow, the gray bullets making identifying bands down its length.

  “Now the rifle’s belly is filled with cartridges. You have only to move the lever out and back to take a bullet from the belly barrel and put it in the shooting barrel to make it ready to fire.”

  Caballo Negro pointed at the hammer, fully cocked, and then at the closed barrel breech where the cartridge had disappeared from the loading elevator. He held the hammer under the web between his forefinger and thumb, and squeezing the trigger slowly, eased the hammer down, then pulled it back to half cock, and stopped so the rifle could not be fired.

  “Do you understand what I have shown you?”

  I nodded. Caballo Negro, careful to keep his finger off the trigger, cycled the lever fourteen times and let the ejected cartridges fall on the blanket. He motioned me to pick them all up.

  “How many cartridges came out of the rifle?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Good. That is what I loaded. Always count your cartridges. One day it might save your life.” Caballo Negro handed the rifle to me. “Now you do all the things I did, and always keep the barrel pointed away from anyone else unless you intend to kill them. Sometimes a cartridge can hide from you, and the rifle will fire when you are not ready. You must be careful. But first, look along the barrel top.”

  A hand’s width down the length of the barrel from the loading gate opening squatted a small rectangular piece of black iron with a notch cut above the center of the barrel. At the end of the barrel was a short, vertical blade.

  “The rifle will shoot a bullet where you point it when your eye on what you wish to shoot makes the blade on the end of the barrel lie in the middle of the notch and the blade’s top is at the top of the top of the notch. Do you understand what I have told you?”

  I nodded, not entirely certain I was telling Caballo Negro the truth. I then went through all the motions of loading and unloading the rifle while Caballo Negro and He Watches rested their eyes in the shade under the high canyon wall. The precise feel of the weapon was a joy, a pleasure I’d never known before, as I let the cartridges slide down the loading barrel and then ejected them by cycling the lever up and down. As my father had instructed, I was careful to count the bullets as I loaded and picked them up, always counting, so I didn’t lose any.

  Disappointment filled my soul when I fired my first shot at a target and saw a little geyser of dust scatter more than the length of a forearm away from the stone for which I’d aimed.

  Caballo Negro, watching with his arms crossed, grunted, “Hmmph. Lever another cartridge and try again. Do not squeeze the trigger unless the v-notch and front blade hold on the rock.”

  Another shot, another miss, this one struck even farther from the rock and high. I levered another round and shot, then another and another, faster and faster until the barrel filled with cartridges was empty, and the rifle barrel burned my hand. I hadn’t hit the target rock a single time. I felt sick and angry. This beautiful weapon was of no use to me. I was far more accurate and deadly with my bow than this Indah rifle. I wanted to throw it on the ground, walk away, and never see it again. But it was Caballo Negro’s gift, and I would never dishonor my father that way.

  Caballo Negro nodded toward the blanket. “Put the rifle on the blanket and buckle the revolver belt and holster around your waist. I will show you how to use the revolver, and then we will return to camp.”

  I saw the disappointment in Caballo Negro’s eyes and swallowed the ball of cactus thorns in my throat as I strapped on the revolver.

  CHAPTER 13

  RUFUS PIKE

  * * *

  When I returned from my morning run the next day, Caballo Negro and He Watches sat by the fire eating. Our ponies were tied under the tall juniper near Sons-ee-ah-ray’s wickiup.

  Caballo Negro nodded toward the cook pot and said, “After you eat, we’ll go. Bring your rifle, pistol, and the box filled with cartridges. I have trail food ready.”

  Puzzled, since Caballo Negro had not said anything earlier about a trip, I asked, “Where are we going?”

  “To a man of honor, who teaches you how to shoot good, who teaches you how to deal with the Indah in days coming.”

  “Where is this man? What is his name?”

  “His ranch is four days west and north. He is called Roofoos Peek. Eat. Soon we go. Soon your rifle misses no more. Soon you know the ways of the Indah and can bargain with them for cartridges and help your People deal with them.”

  We rode the canyon trail out of the mountains until we crossed the Indah east-west wagon road. To keep out of sight from anyone on the wagon road, we stayed in the brush just to the south and followed the road west around the southern end of the Guadalupes, across the fiery salt flats and then across the spare, thin desert toward the great river. Circling around villages and Blue Coat forts, we took nothing, and passed unseen and silent through the land. After two days, we came to the great river, and staying on the east side, rode north around the greatest village I had ever seen. The Indah and Nakai-yes called it El Paso. It spread out on both sides of the river, and many Nakai-yes and Indahs camped there.

  Camping for the night in th
e mountains above the village, we used a small fire in a deeper than usual fire pit hidden in the rocks to drive away the cold night. I didn’t like the camp. I had a hard time seeing the stars, and scattered across the mountains were big bright fires in the camps of men Caballo Negro called miners, men who scratched holes in the ground like Badger, foolish men looking for pesh-klitso, looking for the metal they called gold, metal Ussen says we can take only without digging.

  Before the sun, we rode out of the mountains the Indah called Franklin and stayed north in the trees and brush along the great river. When the sun was halfway to the time of shortest shadows, we left the great river and rode east through tall, dark green creosote bushes toward the jagged mountains the Indah called the Organs. As the sun swung past the time of shortest shadows, we rode up a rocky wagon trail toward a canyon running back into the mountains. The canyon’s entrance, guarded by a house the color of old salt weed and two other gray buildings, looked out over the valley from at least a third of the way up the mountains. Looking west, back over my shoulder, I saw a line of mountains breaking above the horizon maybe two days’ ride away.

  Near the house was a large, gray iron holding tank half the height of a man and nearly as wide as two tall men across. Water, carried in a wooden trough that snaked back up the canyon, pooled there. I followed its form with my eyes toward a pile of rocks across a wash against the south side cliffs. Caballo Negro rode up to the holding tank and we let the horses drink. He studied the house and outbuildings with arms crossed, leaning back a little in his saddle while his pinto sipped the fine, clear water.