Killer of Witches: The Life and Times of Yellow Boy Mescalero Apache
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Walking back down the canyon toward Carmen’s fire, we found sage and herbs used in a purifying smoke and carried them back to the camp. Carmen had found a small natural tank and had brought a bucket of water back to camp. When she saw us smeared from the blood of the horses, she covered her mouth with her hand. When she learned why we were bloody, she sent us to the tank where we bathed and smoked.
For the rest of the afternoon, we sat by a small fire and bathed in the purifying smoke. Carmen and her little son watched us, apparently curious about the meaning of the purification and surprised at how spiritual we seemed to be. With the coming of dusk, we finished our purification and ate the corn she had baked into bread.
CHAPTER 46
NEW BEGINNINGS
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As we approached the foot of the mountain, I saw five tiny figures of horsemen descend the winding trail down to the llano. I stopped and pulled the Shináá Cho to study them. The man in the middle was big, powerfully built, and clearly dominant. I knew without guessing Juh came to greet us. Of those with him, I recognized two who had accompanied Juh when he showed us the place of the Witch’s hacienda.
I called to Beela-chezzi and said, “Juh comes to greet us.”
Beela-chezzi dismounted and checked the panniers and other packing rigs on the horses to ensure they weren’t lost when we went up the steep stronghold trail. He grunted and said, “Hm-mph. Juh will be happy to use the Witch’s bullets he was afraid to take. Let’s wait here for them. There will be less for each of us to manage going up the mountain trail, and I can better look after Carmen and the boy.”
Carmen smiled and said, “I can ride the trail up that mountain, but perhaps you will keep an eye on our son.”
Beela-chezzi looked at her, his eyes sparkling. “Sí, I will help our son . . . if he needs it.”
Juh stopped before us and said, “Dánt’e, Killer of Witches and Beela-chezzi. So, you return with a Nakai-yi woman and child and loaded packhorses. I don’t see your amigos, the grandfather with the stiff knee and the warrior, Klo-sen.”
My face an iron mask in front of my feelings, I said, “They are gone. The Witch nearly killed me. We killed most of the Witch’s band, but two Comanches and the Witch escaped. The rest are no more. His second in command went blind to the Happy Land. We gave his slaves their freedom and sent them on the road to Casas Grandes. We burned his hacienda. Beelachezzi has taken a woman and her son from the Witch. His tipi is full of life again. Bullets and other supplies ride on these ponies. A few we need, but most are for your people. I will hunt and find the Witch. One day, I’ll send him blind to the land of the grandfathers.”
Juh grinned and nodded, his eyes sweeping the packhorse loads. “Presents will be welcomed by the People. Your band is free to stay long among us, Killer of Witches. Come, we’ll ride with you to the stronghold.”
I looked at Beela-chezzi, who was smiling. He nodded and said, “Enjuh!”
Juh sent word of our return on the legs of a young messenger. It was midafternoon when Juh and his warriors led us to the edge of the tall trees where our women and children stood proudly, arms outstretched, chanting, “They come!”
We rode to the camp’s center fire near our tipis, where the wood and brush were piled high, and dismounted. The tipis of Klo-sen and Beela-chezzi, those of men not married, sat on the edge back from the others. Klo-sen’s tipi and all his possessions would be burnt or thrown away so his ghost would not come back. I dismounted and walked first to Socorro’s tipi where she stood waiting and looking expectantly back down the trail for He Watches. I said, “Grandmother, he is gone. Beela-chezzi and I have buried him. You are in my care now.”
She raised her chin and looked in my eyes. “I hear you, Grandson. I go to the other side of the mountain and mourn him. Go to your woman’s tipi. Think no more of me.”
“Stay in camp, Grandmother. There are many dangers on the mountain. Mourn here. I’ll look after you.”
“I go. If I do not return, burn my tipi and all that is in it.”
“Grandmother, I hear you, but I want you to stay.”
She put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes. “You’ve been a good son. We were proud of you. Kill the Witch who took him. Now I go.”
She turned from me and disappeared into the trees. I sighed and watched her go, knowing I would never see her again.
Sons-ee-ah-ray approached me from her tipi. “My son returns, and my heart is glad. I know one day you will avenge your father. What happened to the warrior Klo-sen?”
I looked into my mother’s eyes, and my heart sank, realizing for the first time why she asked. “He is gone to the happy land of the grandfathers. He saved the lives of Beela-chezzi and me. He was a great warrior. I was proud to ride with him.”
Her eyes were wells of great sadness. “When he returned, he would have been my man. Now I can only grieve for him.”
I sat smoking by the fire with Juanita, who sat with hands in her lap waiting for me to tell her my story. At the feast with the Nednhis, Beela-chezzi and I had little to say except that we destroyed most of the Witch’s band and his hacienda, that I had sent Segundo, second to the Witch, blind to the land of the grandfathers, and that the Witch had escaped with two Comanches. I promised to hunt for him again and take vengeance for the murder and scalping of the Guadalupe band and for the deaths of my grandfather and Klo-sen.
When I changed my shirt to wash for the feast given by the Nednhis, Juanita saw the bruised and red rawhide marks around my wrists and elbows, the deep burns running around my shoulders, and the raw, red cuts in the flesh under my arms. She made me let her apply a mixture of fat and herbs she made for skin burns. Her powerful hands were gentle and rubbed the ointment into the wounds, lifting their burn and ache away from me.
We could hear the drums and chanting at the feast in the Nednhi camp several hundred yards away as our band gave away the booty we couldn’t use. The night insects were in full song, and nearby in Beela-chezzi’s tipi, we heard Carmen’s full-throated laugh.
Juanita said, “Tell me of the scars on your wrists, elbows, and shoulders. How did the Witch do that to you?”
“Hmmph. You know how the Indah killed their God? You know they nailed his hands to a crosspiece that they tied high on a pole and then nailed his feet to the pole. You have seen this in the Indah holy places kept by the black robes?”
Her eyes grew wide, and she slowly nodded her head.
“The Witch did something like that to me, except he let my feet dangle and tied me to the crosspiece by my arm joints and lay the crosspiece across the top of the pole stuck in the ground. He planned to let me hang there the rest of the night after he killed Grandfather and all the next day before he came the next night and told his owl to kill me. If not for Klo-sen and Beelachezzi freeing me, I would be in the land of the grandfathers, and you would be looking for another man.”
She covered her mouth with her hand for a moment, and then she said, “Tell me all the story of the battle you had with this witch.”
“This I’ll do, but tell me first, why is Gourd Girl, your new slave, with Sons-ee-ah-ray and not with you?”
Juanita giggled. “She is no longer a slave. Your mother wanted a daughter, and she adopted her. She is called Lucky Star because you did not kill her shooting at the gourd.”
I stared into the fire and shook my head. “It seems all we do is free slaves we should be taking.” I looked in her eyes and smiled. It seemed she held a secret. “Tell me.”
She laughed. “Tell you what?”
“You look different. I can tell when you hide something from me. What is it? Have you found new tipi poles or traded a basket to a Nednhi woman for a new pot?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.” She coyly bent her head to look at her moccasins and then looking in my eyes, smiled, and said, “By Next Season of Little Eagles, I think you will have a son.”
My eyes sparkled as I held her and whispered, “Enjuh!”
The
morning air was cool and felt good on my skin as I ate Juanita’s morning fry bread and watched the shadows change in the morning light. I saw a young boy leave Juh’s tipi and run toward mine. He came to our fire and, puffing a little from his run, said, “Dánt’e, Killer of Witches, my father asks that you come to his tipi. He has news for you.”
I found Juh on his blanket under the tall pines. He waved for me to join him. After I sat down, he said, “A Mimbreño warrior with a message from Victorio came in last night. He told me a story I know you’ll want to hear. He said he was hidden in the bosque resting his horse on the Rio Casas Grandes when he saw a ghost, or maybe a giant witch, riding with two Comanches, wipe out three wagons filled with women and children on the wagon road to Casas Grandes. A baby survived and the Witch didn’t let the Comanches kill it. He took it and said he was leaving it with a woman in Casas Grandes. They burned the bodies with the wagons, and the warrior heard the Witch say the stupid Nakai-yes would believe the Apaches did it, even though the horses had been killed. He told the Comanches to go to the camp of Elias and he would meet them there in three moons.”
I stared at the blanket under me, rage burning inside my mind like hot, fiery coals dumped on my head. I worked to keep my voice steady. “Where is the camp of this Elias? Who is he?”
Juh crossed his arms and shook his head. “Elias is Apache. He has his main camp on the western side of the Blue Mountains, north of the pass the Nakai-yes call El Paso Pulpito. Mostly he raids the villages and hacendado herds on the Rio Bavispe. Sometimes he goes north and crosses the border when he can get enough banditos to ride with him or when Geronimo sends word.”
“Will you show me the trail to the camp of Elias?”
Juh studied my face and slowly nodded.
“Yes, Killer of Witches, but you need time with your family. In four days, I will send a warrior to show you the way to the camp of Elias.”
I saw the faint smile breaking on Juh’s lips and knew Ussen was giving me another chance to destroy the Witch.
ADDITIONAL READING
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Austerman, Wayne R., Sharps Rifles and Spanish Mules: The San Antonio–El Paso Mail 1851–1881, Texas A&M University Press, College Station, TX, 1985.
Ball, Eve; Lynda A. Sánchez; and Nora Henn, Indeh, an Apache Odyssey, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1988.
Ball, Eve, In the Days of Victorio: Recollections of a Warm Springs Apache, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ, 1970.
Blazer, Almer N., Santana:War Chief of the Mescalero Apache, Dog Soldier Press, Taos, NM, 2000.
Bray, Dorothy, editor, Western Apache–English Dictionary: A Community-Generated Bilingual Dictionary, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, Tempe, AZ, 1998.
Cremony, John C., Life Among the Apaches, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 1983.
Haley, James L., Apaches: A History and Culture Portrait, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1981.
Opler, Morris, E., Apache Odyssey:A Journey Between Two Worlds, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2002.
Opler, Morris Edward, An Apache Life-Way: The Economic, Social, & Religious Institutions of the Chiricahua Indians, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 1996.
Robinson, Sherry, Apache Voices: Their Stories of Survival as Told to Eve Ball, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM, 2003.
Sonnichsen, C.L., The Mescalero Apaches, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1958.
Thrapp, Dan L., The Conquest of Apacheria, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1967.
Worchester, Donald E., The Apaches: Eagles of the Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK, 1992.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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W. Michael Farmer, a member of the Western Writers of America, learned about the rich mosaic of historic figures depicted in his books while living in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for fifteen years. He has a Ph.D. in Physics and has conducted atmospheric research with laser based instruments he developed. He has published short stories in anthologies, won awards for essays, and published essays in magazines. His first novel, Hombrecito’s War, won a Western Writers of America Spur Finalist Award for Best First Novel in 2006 and was a New Mexico Book Award Finalist for Historical Fiction in 2007. His other novels include: Hombrecito’s Search; Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright: The Betrayals of Pancho Villa; and Conspiracy: The Trial of Oliver Lee and James Gililland.