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

by W. Michael Farmer

  I pulled the Henry’s hammer back from safety to full cock in the smooth, fluid motion Rufus taught me, brought the rifle’s butt plate to my shoulder, sighted, and without hesitating, fired. The child was within ten yards of the tree when the gourd exploded, showering chunks of gourd pulp and seeds all over her. An instant later, a burned piece on the tree near the base of its trunk suddenly turned white. The roar from the Henry rippled through the trees and rolled off the stronghold cliffs down into the valleys below. In the group of men watching, there was stunned silence as the child, screaming in terror and covered in gourd pieces and juice, continued to run.

  The woman arose from the grass and ran to catch her. She caught her by her shirt, said something to quiet her, and holding her by the shoulders, brushed pieces of gourd out of her hair and looked carefully at her scalp. When she finished, she looked toward Juh, pointed two fingers toward her eyes, and then waved her palm parallel to the ground. The men who watched grunted in wonder and shook their heads in disbelief.

  Juh turned to me. “Truly Ussen has given you a powerful gift. I’ll go to the sweat lodge and pray he won’t punish me for doubting him. The slave is yours. Come to my lodge when the shadows are shortest. Then I’ll say to you what I know of the Witch you hunt.”

  As our warriors sat with Juh on blankets in the shade of tall pines near his wives’ tipis, I lit one of my thin, black cigarros, smoked to the four directions, and passed it to Juh, who smoked and passed it to the others.

  The smoke complete, Juh said, “This witch you hunt is big, maybe a mongrel Nakai-yi and Comanche. His head has no hair. He takes many scalps and sells them to the Nakai-yes for silver. Indians and vaqueros ride with him, and the Indians may be Comanches. These Indians find pleasure in taking scalps, and in doing so, they prove they have no interest in being clean and purified. Are these the men you hunt?”

  I glanced from Juh to He Watches, who nodded. Then I said, “Until He Watches sees them, I cannot know, but these sound much like the ones He Watches told me of when I discovered our people killed and scalped and our camp burned.”

  Juh grunted, crossed his arms, and stared into the distance.

  At last he said, “A few years ago, I learned that a Nakai-yi, maybe part Comanche, called Sangre del Diablo (Blood of the Devil), was a brujo, a witch, and a scalp hunter. He had come across the great river with Comanches, and a few banditos had joined them to raid and scalp in this country. He took over an abandoned rancho and acted like a Nakai-yi of wealth while he took cattle and slaves, Nakai-yi and Indian, from villages out on the llano and in the Blue Mountains. I planned to raid his rancho and kill this witch who took scalps and sold them to the Nakai-yi, but after reflection, I decided to wait until I knew more about him before I started a war that might make my warriors sick or even die.

  “The merchants in Casas Grandes had a trick they liked to use on Apaches. They offered us many gifts when they asked us to come in to Casas Grandes for peace discussions and presents so we’d leave them alone in our raids. At the meetings, they gave us whiskey from a barrel that had no bottom to make us too drunk to defend ourselves, and then they killed as many of us as possible before the rest ran away. We loved the powerful whiskey of the Nakai-yes so much that we took the bait twice in the span of fifteen years and saw the slaughter of many warriors. Then a new alcalde (mayor) was selected in Casas Grandes. He let it be known he wanted to live in peace with Apaches, even to the point of giving them bigger and finer gifts if they didn’t raid around Casas Grandes. The call was made again for peace discussions, and we came.

  “I had learned my lesson from the last massacre. When I took my band in for the peace talks, I camped away from town on the river, and I made sure no more than half of my warriors went into Casas Grandes at one time. For every drunken Apache in Casas Grandes, there was one deadly sober one waiting for revenge just outside the village. None of my people were murdered at those meetings. After a few days, we returned to my stronghold with our presents. I straggled behind the others, still drunk, barely able to sit in my saddle, almost falling in the river getting across.

  “The trail back to my stronghold wound through tall mesquite and creosote thickets. I rounded a turn through one of them and there, with sun’s glow behind him, stood a giant, naked man, his arms up, a human skull in each hand, strange swirling signs tattooed on his torso, tattoos that looked like fire around his wrists and up his arms, his legs painted red, his face black with touches of white to make it look like a skull, and an owl, death in the flesh, its wings spread in hover ready to fly, perched on his shoulder.

  “At first I thought I was having a bad whiskey dream and snapped my head to dispel it, but the figure remained. We stared at each other for a long moment before the figure said, ‘I am Sangre del Diablo. I hold in my hands the spirits of death. If I curse you, you’ll get sick and die. Your people will disappear, for the owl will come often and take them. Your stronghold will no longer keep out Nakai-yes who come to burn it. Stay far from me, and you and your Nednhi will live. Come to my land, and you and all your Nednhi will surely die.’ ”

  Juh paused for a moment and looked at us solemnly, squinting at eternity as he called up his memory of the Witch. “There was a bright flash and puff of smoke. My pony reared and twisted in fright, but I had sobered up enough to grab its mane and managed to stay mounted while calming him. When the pony settled, Sangre del Diablo had disappeared. In the gathering gloom, I looked for moving bushes and listened for sounds or horses and movement. I saw and heard nothing.

  “My head began to throb, and I felt sick from all the whiskey I’d drunk and the vision I’d just seen. I knew those who claimed to be witches and shamans had their tricks. Perhaps I had just witnessed one, perhaps not. I decided not to risk assuming what I had seen was a trick and to leave Sangre del Diablo alone.

  “I believe the witch you seek keeps his band in a big hacienda half a day’s ride from the Nakai-yi village of Casas Grandes. I’ve seen his magic and know it’s powerful. As much as I want to kill him, I keep my warriors away from his hacienda. Who can fight against magic, Killer of Witches? Perhaps, even you can’t kill him. Perhaps he’ll take your hair after he kills you, and you’ll have an ugly, sagging face in the land of the grandfathers. But perhaps you can take him if Ussen guides your rifle. I don’t know. I’ll show you the way to his hacienda. We’ll leave when the sun comes tomorrow. I’ll not risk my warriors against him. You alone, you Mescaleros, have to kill and blind him and destroy his band. If you do, I’ll be in your debt. This is all I have to say.”

  Juh stared at me waiting for an answer.

  Sticking out my chin, I said through clenched teeth, “Show the way.”

  He Watches and I said nothing, lost in our clouds of thoughts as we walked back to the Mescalero tipis.

  Juanita, on her knees in the shade beside the tipi, was grinding corn and acorns with mano and metate stones. She stood and waited for us to reach her tipi. When we were near, she said, “My man shot well today. Juh sent a slave. She is young, cries often, and stinks of gourd. I’ll keep her and teach her to work for me and show her our ways.”

  He Watches smiled and nodded as he turned for Socorro’s tipi. I smiled and said, “A slave to help is a good thing. Woman, tomorrow I ride to kill the Witch. I must clean my rifle, sharpen my knife, and straighten my arrows. Bring me a blanket to sit on and my supplies.”

  Deep in the night, under the shadows of the moon, beneath the glowing white of her tipi, I satisfied Juanita’s powerful, insatiable urges for lovemaking. She whispered her need for me and begged me to come back to her as I held her and arched my body against her as a bow with arrow drawn, its release leaving her weak and trembling, praying to Ussen that she would become pregnant. She seemed desperate to have some physical part of me growing inside her before I risked my life facing the Witch.

  That night, we were one spirit entwined with that of Ussen, and we finally slept content in knowing each other and in life lived fully.
The time had come to set things right for the remnant of Mescaleros who had survived the Witch’s attack, made the long trips across the llano, lived life on the reservation, and followed me to this great mountaintop fortress with faith in my vision.

  Far out on the llano with the Blue Mountains to our backs and the sun high overhead, we rode until Juh stopped his horse on a high hill several miles away from a long winding stretch of green along a small stream that wound its way out of the dry foothills of the Blue Mountains. Juh pointed his rifle toward a white smoke plume rising straight up from a cluster of tiny far buildings nested near the end of the green.

  “I never turn from a fight with another man,” Juh said. “From witches, I stay far. They are ghosts I cannot kill. There stands the hacienda of the Nakai-yi witch. The Nednhi go no farther. We ask Ussen for the Mescalero warriors’ safe return to my stronghold after they send the Nakai-yi witch to the grandfathers. Your women and children will always stay safe with my band. Go! Kill the Witch. Help us. We wait for you.”

  Juh and his warriors turned and disappeared down the trail back toward the Blue Mountains.

  I pulled open the Shináá Cho and studied the emerald green trees and brush east and west along the waterway and the high adobe walls of the hacienda partially hidden by the shade from the trees. West of the walls, I saw a large splash of green and glints sparkling off a lake. I pointed with my nose in that direction as I handed the telescope to He Watches, who stared through it and then passed it to Klo-sen and Beela-chezzi. When they returned it to my hand, I took a final look and said, “Let’s ride there. Maybe we’ll find a place to hide while we learn more of this witch, this brujo and his hacienda.”

  CHAPTER 39

  SANGRE DEL DIABLO

  * * *

  When we reached the lake, we crawled through the bushes surrounding it, and tasting the water, found no alkali. We watered and hobbled our ponies, screening them in brush from the hacienda, and then rested, waiting for the light to dim.

  Lying in the shade of a small cottonwood, Klo-sen said, “The Nakai-yes who first built the hacienda feared raids by the Apaches. Do you see the stone watchtower there on top of the hill to the south? There are no signs, paths or cut brush, of anyone being near it in a long time. This witch fears no raiders. His hacienda is easy to approach unseen, and he doesn’t even use the watchtower. Why do you think this is so, He Watches?”

  “The Witch has great power. Maybe he already knows we’re here, but he doesn’t care because he thinks he can kill us when he wants. Maybe he thinks we’re afraid to raid his hacienda.”

  Klo-sen raised his brows and looked at me as if to say, “What do you think?”

  After taking a puff from a cigarro, I stretched out nearby and said, “I think Ussen gives me Power. I’ll kill the Witch even if he has great power, even if Juh fears him.”

  Beela-chezzi grunted and said, “I believe this. We’ll help you. Tell us how.”

  I nodded. “You’re true warriors and good amigos. Together we’ll take revenge on this witch who steals the lives and scalps of our people and many others.”

  When the thin edge of night came, the setting sun just lighting the tops of the far eastern mountains, we left our resting place and began running parallel to the stream that passed by the Witch’s hacienda. As we had agreed, Beela-chezzi ran east a couple of miles before turning into the stream bosque and working his way back west to learn the features of the streambed as he moved back toward the hacienda. Klo-sen did the same thing, except he started a couple of miles upstream, west of the hacienda, and learned the stream east. I ran directly for the hacienda to study its buildings, walls, and fences.

  In the darkness, before the moon rose above the eastern mountains, I crawled through the trees and brush along the little stream until I saw yellow and orange light flickering from a fire of burning wood piled higher than a man’s head in front of the compound’s gates. Guitars played; fiddles squealed. Hollow log drums pounded a steady thumping rhythm that made it easy to lose all sense of time and space. Around the flames, tall and graceful with long, shiny, black hair in braids that often reached below their waists, danced Indians of a tribe I had never seen before. I knew they must be the Comanches Juh said rode with the Witch. Scattered among the circle of Comanches were drunken Nakai-yi vaqueros, probably banditos, who laughed and cursed as they staggered around the fire poorly imitating the smooth Comanche dance steps and gyrations. All the dancers held their right hands high in the firelight and shook scalps of shiny black hair. Other vaqueros and Comanches sat with women, keeping time with their feet to the drum’s rhythm as they watched the dancers and passed around bottles of whiskey.

  Standing in front of an ornately carved chair painted in yellow and black, arms crossed, and watching the dancers, was the tallest, biggest Nakai-yi or perhaps Nakai-yi-Indio mix I had ever seen. For a while, he kept time with the dancers and then sat down, still keeping time by pounding the big chair’s arms with his fists. His face, with smooth and delicate features, which might have been a woman’s, was painted black and touched with white to give it a ghostly, skull-like look, and his hair, looking strange for reasons I sensed rather than saw, was long and black and hung over his shoulders in long braids.

  The drums stopped, and the men grew quiet and stood to face the giant. He rose out of the chair, and, raising his arms, said in a deep voice they could all hear, “I, Sangre del Diablo, call the Witch’s ghost for my Power. The ghost will fill me and guide us. Soon, we’ll go! Be ready! We’ll take many scalps, slaves, cattle, and horses! Take your pleasures now. The trail leads far.”

  The men raised their arms and howled like wolves. The women made long yodeling screams like hunting mountain lions. All that noise made the hair on the back of my neck tingle. The howling and screaming soon died out, but one woman continued to scream in a loud wail. Sangre del Diablo waved for her to be brought forward, and a Comanche dragged her, screaming, to the Witch. When they stood before the Witch, she screamed even louder, her eyes wide, filled with fear. The Comanche drew back a fist to silence her, but the Witch held up his hand and shook his head. He took her under the shoulders and lifted her as easily as a child might lift a small doll, looked in her face, and said something I could not hear above her screams. She stopped her screaming in the space of a breath and seemed to go limp in his hands. He set her on her feet and there she stood perfectly at ease, staring into the night with vacant eyes.

  The giant in a soft voice said to the Comanche, “You know how to handle horses but not a woman? Watch, I’ll show you.”

  The Witch sat down in his chair and held her with his eyes. He reached his fingers in a leather bag hung on the chair and blew a light dust over her from his fingertips. He waited, the only sounds the crackling of the fire and tree peepers and frogs, while she stood trance-like, slightly rocking from side to side. He spoke to her, and she took off all that covered her. I wanted to look away, but like the Comanches and the women around the chair, I did not. He motioned her to come to the chair and there he used gentle hands on her body and pleasured her.

  A drum began to beat and the giant softly slapped her face. It was as though she had just awakened, and seeing herself naked before the crowd, without a sound, turned, grabbed her clothes, and ran into the compound, the man who had brought her to the giant following her, and the giant roaring in laughter. The Comanches and their women whooped and shook their fists at the demonstration of the Witch’s power over one of them.

  I have never before or since seen any woman treated that way. I wanted to run away but willed myself to stay and watch, knowing that soon Ussen would use me to kill the Witch.

  I pulled open the Shináá Cho and stared at the giant’s face for a long time. I noticed a thin black line lay between the hair and his forehead. Why does he paint himself that way? The longer I studied the face, the more hot anger grew in my gut, a fire almost more than I could control as I lowered the Shináá Cho. I felt the cold steel of my rifle barrel and d
esperately wanted to use it. I hesitated. A cold, steady focus began to settle over me and guide my thoughts.

  What is the significance of the hair and paint? What did he mean when he said the Witch’s ghost would fill him? Isn’t he already a witch? I could easily shoot him from here, but I’d never escape, and Klo-sen and Beela-chezzi wouldn’t have a chance when the Comanches and vaqueros swarmed after me like angry hornets. No, it’s better to wait, take a full measure of vengeance, and live a long time after we send this evil to the land of the grandfathers.

  I watched the scene through the night as the drunken vaqueros and Comanches passed out or took a woman, often carrying a blanket, and disappeared into the dark brush along the stream beyond the fire.

  Near dawn when the fire was growing low, the giant, bleary-eyed from drinking too much, pointed at a woman and yelled for her to bring him his sack. She disappeared, running toward the big house in the northwestern corner of the compound, and soon returned with a black-splotched, greasy bag held out in front of her, her nose wrinkled as if she smelled something bad. When she reached his chair, he snatched the bag from her outstretched hand and waved her away. Grinning, he untied the top and ran his arm down into the bag and retrieved a scalp, long dried, perhaps even specially cured. Its black hair was long, and it filled his fist as he held it up and howled like a wolf and shook it. Staring at the scene through the Shináá Cho, I felt sick. The scalp still had the ears attached, and from the left ear, hung pieces of turquoise on a silver wire like Caballo Negro wore.

  I collapsed the Shináá Cho and left the trees like a ghost passing in the dawn and ran in the dim light and cool morning air back to the lake, glad to be away from a place of such evil.