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

by W. Michael Farmer

  I stared at her. Why do these women and their mothers suddenly think I have forgotten all my father taught me?

  “Juanita will bring you a full bride price and marry a good man. This I promise, Maria.”

  “You will not take her when you are together alone in the desert? You promise this?”

  “I will not take her. I vow it so before Ussen. Go and help the others. The day is long and you all will suffer in the heat with little water. Go.”

  She smiled, turned to go, and said over her shoulder, “Ka dish day (goodbye) Yellow Boy. You have the spirit of a true warrior.”

  Juanita and I crept down small winding arroyos toward the fast disappearing smoke column from the vaquero fire. I carried my rifle and pistol, knife, a pouch of bullets, and a bladder of water. She ran with Ish-kay-neh’s sling tied to her belt, smooth stones she found in the arroyo in a pouch, and my bow and quiver of arrows. Before we began, she went behind some creosote bushes, loosened her shirt, and tied it so her breasts were better supported, for she was large but knew how to take care of herself, a companion to be respected and depended upon.

  We ran for a time without stopping, the sun rising, and the air growing warm. Halfway to the vaquero fire, we looked at each other, and I still saw the anger and fury in her eyes. I wanted this to stop and attacked her look with calm words.

  “Why are you angry with me? I’m doing the right things.”

  She clenched her teeth, stared down the arroyo, and said, “Did you do the right thing lying with Deer Woman last night? You took her mother’s best chance to live easy in her grandmother years. Was Deer Woman’s body that fine? Did you enjoy it that much? I don’t believe you’ll take her for a wife after you used her. No good man will want her now. I thought you a better man than that.”

  Her words stung like the switches men had used on us as boys to make us run faster when we trained. Hot blood filled my mind. “Who told you this? Did you see us with your eyes or was this a dream?”

  “Deer Woman said she went to thank you for helping us and you took her. She said she didn’t resist because we need you and was afraid you would leave us if she did not. Now you’ve ruined her chances for a strong warrior husband. Will you take me, too, now that we are alone? She said she had to show you what to do. I’ll resist. I will not help you. You’ll regret it if you try to take me. Stay away. I’m not afraid of you.”

  I knew Deer Woman was angry with me, but these were bad lies, and I had to speak. My fury blew like Wind against her. Someday, Deer Woman, I thought, I’ll cut off the end of your nose and show the people what a liar and whore you are. Your husband will want to beat you every day. I cannot believe she was my friend

  when we were children. She has changed much.

  I spoke slowly, not letting my fury betray me.

  “I took an oath, swore to Ussen and your mother that I would not touch you. I will not. Ask Maria if I did this. You’re safe with me. Deer Woman is Coyote. She lies. It’s true she came to me last night. She offered herself and said she wanted me to lie with her. I said no. I said she must go. I said I would not take her and destroy the price her mother can ask from a warrior who wants a virtuous first wife. Deer Woman grew angry. She said Delgadito had been with her many times. It’s true. My father saw them night crawling in the bushes. She said someday Delgadito would take her as first wife. I told her Delgadito would never take a used first wife. She didn’t believe me. She lied to you because she knows I watch you with happy eyes. She tells lies about me among the other women? This cannot stand. I will not have it.”

  Juanita’s eyes narrowed, studying my face for the truth. She said nothing and looked away.

  CHAPTER 25

  HORSE RAID

  * * *

  We reached the place of the vaquero fire well before the shadows grew short. Many horses stirred dust in the corral, and a Nakai-yi vaquero, his sombrero pulled low over his eyes and a rifle in the crook of his arm, sat on the gate scanning the llano to the north. Five other Nakai-yes, four napping, and one sitting cross-legged on a blanket smoking a cigarro and cleaning a pistol, were in the shade made by the dirty white cloth pulled off the top of the wagon. Another man, using his skinning knife and a piece of plank for a cutting board, cut pieces of meat he tossed in a big pot on the fire. This was about half the number of men I believed I had seen by the fire the last night. I wondered where the others had disappeared and considered wiping out all the vaqueros left in their camp and taking all the horses rather than running off with a few after sending the vaqueros chasing a decoy as I originally planned.

  Off in the brush and weeds surrounding the corral, a roadrunner clicked and a small flock of desert wrens fluttered from bush to bush. The big windmill by the corral creaked and groaned, catching little occasional puffs of breeze to pull more water into the big iron tank half in the corral and half out. I was sure the vaqueros thought little of possible danger in the peaceful late morning around them.

  I studied the horses using the Shináá Cho. Some had no brands at all. Others were marked with the symbol “US” the Blue Coats used. Several different marks branded the rest, and many carried no iron on their hooves. I realized many of the horses in the corral must be Indian ponies stolen from the reservation. If we returned them, I knew the reservation People would be happier to see us than if we came poor with empty hands, and all the women and children could ride the rest of the way to the reservation. The Nakai-yi guard looked like he waited and watched for other vaqueros, maybe those I had seen around the fire. More ponies might be coming, but with more vaqueros. More vaqueros made our chances of taking some ponies and getting away without a fight small. I decided to wipe out those in front of me and take all the ponies.

  We moved down the narrow arroyo that passed by the camp. It was maybe a man’s arm span wide, and chest high deep. I motioned Juanita to work her way to the corral fence on the side opposite the guard. At my signal, she was to use her sling to brain the guard and then stay near the gate until I took the others.

  I planned to take the cigarro smoker and the man cutting meat for the pot first. Awake and alert, they acted as guards for the whole camp and would raise the alarm when I attacked.

  I believed my bow best to use against the vaqueros rather than my rifle. The vaqueros not in camp might hear the sound of gunshots, and at a distance of less than thirty long strides, a bow could be as fast and as deadly as a rifle.

  Juanita went to her place by the corral fence. I made a circling motion with my hand and wrist, signing her to begin. Her stone struck the vaquero in the back of his head just below his sombrero brim. He slumped off the corral gate and fell like a sack of rocks, raising a puff of dust at the bottom rail of the corral gate when he landed. Juanita was quick over the corral bars and through the milling horses to reappear like a ghostly shadow at the rails near the gate.

  The cigarro smoker heard the guard hit the ground, and looking toward the corral gate, frowned to see the guard gone and a puff of dust at the gate. He stretched up for a better look. My aim with the bow was good but the smoker was turning his head to say something to the meat cutter when the arrow hit him low and in the neck rather than in his throat where I had aimed. He grabbed the shaft and opened his mouth to yell when a stone struck his forehead and he fell back, silent and still. The meat cutter looked up, saw the smoker lying with an arrow in his neck, and opened his mouth to bellow an alarm when my arrow hit his windpipe. Clutching its shaft and gurgling blood, he began to stand up from his stool but pitched forward into the fire. Hitting the bucket of cut meat made enough noise to rouse the napping vaqueros. Too late; a stone struck one man behind his right ear and he fell over hard, his revolver clutched in a death grip, his eyes wide and frozen. The other three caught arrows in their hearts and fell back, their hands on the shafts and their bodies trembling in death. I ran forward, my knife drawn, ready to finish off any vaquero still living, but there was no need.

  Juanita ran from the gate and joined me. We took
guns and bullets from the bodies, pulled down the white cloth providing shade, and emptied the wagon of food supplies, mostly cured meat and sacks of cornmeal and beans. While Juanita made piles of supplies and weapons to load on ponies and filled canteens, I tied brush to the tails of five ponies and setting fire to it sent them running south raising dust and laying a smoke stream for anyone to see. I used the vaquero saddles on the ponies and loaded them with blankets packed with supplies Juanita had organized. We drank our fill from the great iron tank and there I dumped the bodies and gutted one to poison the water enough to delay their returning amigos from following us.

  I tied the ponies carrying our loot head-to-tail and we mounted two that I pulled for us to ride. We followed the tracks of the ponies I sent running south until we turned off west on hard ground, leaving little sign of our tracks. Unless an Apache rode with the vaqueros tracking us, they would never see where we turned toward the mountains.

  Shadows were growing long when we stopped to rest the horses in the same arroyo the women and children were following. I climbed up a hill, used the Shináá Cho to look for them through the wavering heat against the far gray haze, and looked back over our back trail to ensure no one followed us, but saw nothing in either direction. When I returned to Juanita, she looked at me, her brow wrinkled with questions, but I shook my head and took the canteen of water she offered. We sat in the hot shade of the arroyo’s west bank and listened to the occasional buzzing of insects and the ponies stamping against flies attacking them.

  Juanita spoke in a low questioning voice.

  “It is true? What you told me earlier in the cool of the day? What Deer Woman said and did? What my mother asked of you and you swore to?”

  I snorted, looked in her eyes, and nodded. “I did not lie.”

  She held my eyes. “I believe you. I was wrong to speak to you with an evil tongue. I have much regret for those words. Deer Woman and me, we were friends since leaving the cradleboard. We had the same Haheh. The lies she told me I didn’t want to believe, but I knew you were with her. I saw her go to you. I believed her when she said you’d asked her to come. I didn’t like it. I expected you to be a better man, not a one to steal a widow’s chance for her daughter’s bride price, not one to deny a woman a powerful warrior, one who is rich, for a husband. I had my own hopes for you. Now, I know my hopes are gone. What I wanted, you are, but my friendship with her blinded me to the truth.”

  I looked away and stared at the bright mountains against the dark, blue sky and felt my heart open like a morning glory at the coming of the sun.

  “This day you showed you are a worthy warrior, one I always ride with. You’re better than I am with a sling, and you have great courage. I’m proud you came with me. Four moons ago, I expected Deer Woman to tap me for the victory dance. She chose Delgadito instead. Now I know why. At that dance, you chose me. Our dancing was good. I felt like a man who had found a piece of turquoise he never knew he had in his treasures.

  “I spoke of you to my father who now has gone away. He told me to wait two years before I tied my pony in front of your mother’s lodge. By that time, he felt I would have much to offer Maria and Porico for you. He said to tell you my heart because many warriors would bring a pony to your mother’s lodge, but if you knew my heart and wanted me, you would wait for mine.

  “Much has changed in the time since we danced. My father walks in the happy land of the grandfathers. Many in Cha’s camp have been wiped out. I have a new name, and Ussen has given me Power. Now we’ll go to the reservation and submit to the Indah. Our warriors can no longer raid and make war. There are no more ponies to take except these we have here. I speak to you now what is in my heart. Will you wait for a husband until I bring my pony to your mother’s lodge?”

  I looked in her eyes. She had never stopped looking at me since she began speaking. Streams of water on her cheeks, a smile on her mouth, she said, “I’ll wait. Bring your pony soon, Yellow Boy.”

  I laughed, filled with a pleasure I had never known.

  “I’ll come in the next season of Many Leaves. But know this, woman. After you are my wife, if you speak to me as you did this morning, I will beat you.”

  She looked at her hands folded in her lap and said, “I know. I will deserve it.”

  CHAPTER 26

  RESERVATION

  * * *

  Near nightfall, we found the women and children. As the sun slipped behind the mountains in a glory of oranges and lavender tinting high, thin clouds, I spotted the little group with the Shináá Cho. Their faces filled with smiles of relief, as they squatted silently below the ragged edge of a low, grassy hill and watched us come. At the foot of the hill, dusk turning to black sky pierced with burning white stars, I told them to come down, eat, and rest.

  To avoid confrontation with vaqueros, Blue Coats, and marauding Indeh, I decided we ought to travel at night, and He Watches agreed with me. The younger children rode with their mothers, and the women without little children and the boy, Ish-key-nay, led the ponies in groups of three or four to avoid losing them all in one fell swoop if we were attacked. The ponies, prizes sure to earn us many friends and supporters on the reservation and gifts of food, clothing, and hides or canvas for shelters, carried us far and fast.

  At this distance, the Sacramentos, where the reservation nestled, appeared as dark bumps on the northwest horizon. He Watches told me what he knew about the trail to the reservation, and I led my little band along dry arroyos and across foothills lying like giant lumps of bread dough on the llano. It was mid-September by Indah reckoning, the Season of Large Fruit as the Mescaleros count time, and some arroyos still held shallow, life-saving pools of water from the Season of Large

  Fruit rains. The easy access to water and cool nights made the long ride a ride we would all remember with pleasure in later years.

  After reaching the light-splotched shade and shadows of deep tree cover and cool water in the lush green valleys leading into the Sacramentos, I decided the risk was small enough to ride during daylight. After a few days of crossing ridges and following long narrow valleys, we rode to the top of a high ridge and looked down on a wide, green valley where a small village nested along the sides of a fast-flowing creek.

  With He Watches beside me, I pulled out the Shináá Cho. I saw Indah working a pile of logs next to a building set on the edge of the creek. The building looked like an adobe house with its sides open to the creek and some of the creek flowing under the house.

  The village had several small adobe and rough-frame buildings scattered up and down a road that ran past a large, two-story building with a place for a lookout on its roof peak. A large two-story house, surrounded by wood and adobe outbuildings, and behind it, corrals for horses and cattle beside a large barn, sat across the road from the open-sided adobe on the creek. Near the open adobe on the same side of the road stood a building with horses, some hitched to wagons tied to a hitching rail near the door. Indeh went in empty-handed and came out with bulging sacks.

  Up and down the valley, I saw a few tipis, usually in canyons leading off the road. I heard the ring of steel on steel from one of the houses close by the house on the creek, and from the house on the creek came squeaking metallic sounds and a rhythmic chuffing sound like a bear running through mountain brush.

  I handed the Shináá Cho to He Watches, who stared at the open-sided adobe house and whispered, “La Máquina (The Machine). I’ve heard many stories about it. The Indah medicine man, Blazer, owns it. When the reservation began, Santana asked Blazer, his good amigo, to stay after the other Indah were made to leave the reservation.”

  I frowned and asked, “La Máquina? What is this máquina? An Indah medicine man spirit?”

  He Watches shook his head as he studied the building and then the rest of the village. “La Máquina uses a big knife with teeth to cut logs into pieces of wood the Indah use to build their lodges. The Indah call it a sowmeal.” I looked at him, waiting for him to explain more about i
t, and though I’d heard Rufus call La Máquina a sawmill, I did not correct him, as that would be disrespectful.

  He said, “The blade that cuts the logs is taller than you and has teeth the size of your thumb. The creek is made to run through a box under it that makes the blade go up and down and causes the creaks and groans we hear. Mules pull the logs on to a pesh (iron) wagon that carries them to the blade.”

  He twisted in his saddle, and stared at the two-story house. “Ho! I see Indeh at the big lodge and several waiting. It must be the place for the Indah reservation chief. Let’s go down to that building and surrender to him. He’ll help us find a place to winter and shelter and food.”

  The agent, Fred Godfroy, smiling and nodding and with his arms spread, welcomed our little group through an interpreter, although I understood nearly everything he said. He told us the great father in Washington wanted to help us, that we also should learn to help ourselves, and that we must swear never again to raid or take the warpath against the Indah.

  When Godfroy saw the ponies Juanita and I had taken back from the vaqueros and heard our story, he sent riders to the camps scattered in the canyons across the reservation saying ponies had been returned by a group coming into the agency from the Guadalupes and for the people to come and see. For ten days thereafter, they did, whether they had lost any ponies or not. Half the ponies were claimed, and the grateful owners gave us presents from the little they had. It was enough to get us through the Ghost Face Season in a nearby canyon, which Godfroy had suggested we use to shelter us from the hard winds and deep snows.

  However, regardless of how glad to see us the agent seemed to be, I didn’t trust him. There always seemed to be a lie lurking behind his eyes.