by Lou Cameron
Cho-Ko-Ley glanced around and saw she seemed to be unobserved by the others, hiding in the dry wash from the eyes of distant strangers. She slid the leather tiswin bottle inside her skirt and moved forward to crouch over the hole she’d scooped in the sand. If anyone saw her, they’d think she was relieving herself in the usual manner.
Gripping the tiswin bottle between her thighs, Cho-Ko-Ley reached under herself and pulled the corncob stopper. The home-brewed mixture of mescal and corn liquor gushed out, and Cho-Ko-Ley giggled as she thought, “Such a pissing would do honor to a pony!”
And then her secret Spirit Voice whispered, “Do not laugh! You have just done a terrible thing! You have just poured your Husband’s last bottle into the earth!”
Cho-Ko-Ley moved off the latrine hole and quickly scooped sand onto the spilled liquor as she muttered to herself. “I did it to save him from the bad thing inside his heart. I did it for the man Kaya-Tenay used to be.”
She put the empty bottle aside and smoothed the sand over the scene of her crime. The sand was warm and felt as clean and sensuous as a new deerskin against Cho-Ko-Ley’s once young hands. The cruel daylight illuminated the jagged white scar on the woman’s left forearm, but Cho-Ko-Ley ignored the place her man had struck at her with the knife. He’d been too drunk to really hurt her, after all, and it wasn’t as if it had been Kaya-Tenay’s fault. Everyone knew there was something bad inside his heart. Something that came out when he drank too much tiswin.
There was no tiswin now. The band was far from the Sierra Madre, in a strange, flat place Cho-Ko-Ley could not name. Her Husband said the hand of every man was turned against them in this place, and Cho-Ko-Ley was glad. If Kaya-Tenay had no friends in this new land, then perhaps he could not get drunk here, and perhaps things could be as they’d been so long ago, when Kaya-Tenay’s stomach was still flat and one fierce, loving wife had been enough for him!
A shadow fell across the sand where Cho-Ko-Ley could see it. It was the shadow of a friend, for no Nadene cast a shadow where an enemy could see it, and no one else could move up behind one so silently.
Cho-Ko-Ley said, “This person was shitting. She hopes she was not shamed by another’s eyes at such a time.”
A young man’s voice said, “Mother, it is me.” The woman nodded. “I knew it was you, Eskinya. Only a son I helped to teach could move so like a puma through this dry brush!”
The youth dropped to his haunches at his mother’s side with a pleased blush. He knew his mother flattered him and he knew it was wrong to feel pride in the idle prattle of a mere woman, but his mother was a good person, and though Eskinya had no word that would describe love as a white son might mean it, he loved his mother just the same.
There was a smell of tiswin about his mother, and Eskinya knew she did not drink. He noticed the empty bottle and guessed at once what this might mean. Looking away, Eskinya said, “I was to the north just now, scouting for sign. I went far, but I kept low and nothing saw me. I thought once a buzzard had noticed me in the brush, but I made signs at it and it flew on.”
“One must signal a buzzard that one still lives, lest it start to circle and give your position away,” nodded the woman. They were just making conversation, she knew. The tricks of hiding on the trail were taught to all Nadene from birth.
Eskinya sighed and said, “I came across the track of a White Eye’s wagon. There is a wagon trace not far north from here. I read in the pebbles that many wagons have passed from the east to west there. Only one, however, has passed within the past few days.”
The woman didn’t answer, and Eskinya flushed as he explained, “I did not guess at this thing, Mother. There were fresh horse droppings and in one place freshly crushed greasewood. The leaflets had not fallen from the broken twigs and … ”
“I know you read signs,” his mother cut in gently. “Get to the thing that troubles you, my son.”
Eskinya said, “One wagon, alone, not far. I think if I tell my father and the others, they will want to go after it. The sign reads no more than two men. Maybe women riding the wagon, but only two men.”
“How many horses?”
“Four. But I think they are mules. The shoe prints were like those shoes the Mexicans put on mules for the White Eyes over in the Gila Valley. I think two men are striking out across the desert alone, looking for the Yellow Iron the White Eyes like so much. I think if I tell the others, it will be a saguaro fruit they won’t be able to resist plucking!”
“Then what are you waiting for? Why don’t you tell your father what you know?”
Eskinya stared down at the sand. “I have been thinking of what that Husband who just visited us said. I have been thinking that our brothers will be angry if we stir the Blue Sleeves up by going after those White Eyes and their wagon.”
“The messenger of our northern cousins has gone away to lick the boots of his White-Eye’d masters. Mangas Coloradas has no way of knowing what we do, as long as we do it over here on this side of the Great Red River.”
“He will know, Mother. Mangas Coloradas sits like a spider in a web, listening and watching to what goes on about his people. They say he does not trust the White Eyes. They say he does not trust Cochise. They say he does not trust anyone. He just sits and waits, until he makes up his heart. I think Mangas Coloradas has two hearts. I think he could turn against the White Eyes, or against us. I think it would be foolish to irritate him.”
Cho-Ko-Ley nodded, watching a small green fly as it crawled across the wetness of the corncob stopper she’d forgotten on the sand. Her son was wise for his years. Her words would have to make sense to him. Therefore they would have to be chosen carefully.
Cho-Ko-Ley said, “I am only a woman, but I have lived longer than many of the Husbands in this band. I have lived through many War Walks following my Husband with the spare ponies and more than once carrying him from the field to tend his wounds. Once when the Mexicans had your father pinned down in an arroyo, I slipped above them onto the rim rocks, and three of them died before the others ran away. Another time the Papagos came to our rancheria while the Husbands were away. The other wives screamed. I killed the Papago leader with my bare hands, and when the other wives took heart and joined me, the Papagos learned to their sorrow that a Nadene born a woman was still, by the two hundred and fifty gods, a Nadene!”
“These things are known to me, Mother. I have heard my father say that had you been born a man, you would have been as great a Husband as himself. Once when he was sick from too much tiswin, he wept and said he had wished many times for a brother such as yourself. In truth, you are wise and strong for a woman, but your words puzzle me. I think there is something you want to say, but you hesitate to say it for some reason.”
Cho-Ko-Ley nodded. “I do not know how to speak like a Husband, even to my son. But my thoughts are not the thoughts of a wife.”
“What are these thoughts, my mother?”
“They are about the wagon tracks you found out there. You say they lead west away from the river.”
“That is true. The White Eyes are alone on the desert, at least a day’s walk into the sunset.”
“They will be moving slowly, as White Eyes move with their many possessions and soft, grain-fed ponies. It would be easy for us to catch up with them. Two men with rifles would mean nothing to you and the others. I think it would be a good fight.”
Eskinya looked away, shocked by his mother’s boldness. A sexual advance from her could hardly have confused him more, for Nadene women did not suggest a fight. They had the right, if one of their men had been killed, to demand vengeance, and such torturing of prisoners as the Nadene went in for was usually done by bereaved widows and sisters of the fallen. Initiating action against an enemy, by a woman, was unheard of. Perhaps, he thought, his mother had been drinking the tiswin he still smelled in the dry heat of the wash!
Cautiously, Eskinya asked, “Do you know the White Eyes with the wagon, Mother? Have the spirits granted you a vision of some o
ld enemy among the seekers of Yellow Iron?”
Cho-Ko-Ley said, “No. I care nothing about the people crossing the desert to the northwest.”
“You wish to possess their rifles or their ponies or the things White Eyes carry in their heavy wagons?”
“I wish nothing they have. I only want your father to lead us after them away from the river.”
Eskinya frowned, trying to understand. His mother was staring strangely at a little green fly on a corncob near her knees. Eskinya watched the fly for a moment. Then his hand moved with the swiftness of a striking sidewinder, and the fly was buzzing unharmed inside Eskinya’s closed fist. He said, “If this fly was bothering you, I will kill it.” But his mother said, “Let it go. It is bad to kill anything that lives without reason.”
Eskinya opened his hand, allowing the fly to escape. Then he asked quietly, “Do we have a reason to kill the people with the wagon?”
Cho-Ko-Ley nodded. “Yes. It will take our band a day’s travel to the west away from the river, and away from anywhere we can obtain freshly brewed tiswin.”
Eskinya’s eyes hardened in understanding. His mother suddenly buried her face in her hands. Then Eskinya said soberly, “I think I will tell the others about the wagon. I will try to catch the wagon before the others, and if there is White Eyes’ tiswin in the wagon in one of those brown glass bottles, I will break it before I do anything else. I will kill the White Eyes and break all their bottles.”
Cho-Ko-Ley fought for self-control as she husked, “You’ve always been a good boy, Eskinya!”
“All right, mister, what are you, a thief, a drunk, or a damn fool Abolitionist?”
Matt Caldwell stood at attention in the Fort Havasu orderly room as he wondered just how he was supposed to answer his new commanding officer. Captain Calvin Lodge was a prim-lipped man of forty-odd, with thinning gray hair and a Yankee whaler’s chin whiskers. He was seated behind an improvised desk of unplaned lumber as he stared unwinkingly up at his new junior officer. The room was stuffy and dark despite the whitewash on the adobe walls. A faded, tattered flag was pinned to the rear wall, beside a large tan paper map, too lightly drawn to make out from where Matt stood. The captain asked, “Well?” and Matt replied, “The captain has my service record and orders in front of him.”
Lodge glanced down and snorted, “They even spelled camel wrong. It says you were stationed at Leavenworth before they sent you out here. You didn’t notice whether the Free-Staters or Southern guerillas were winning back in Bleeding Kansas, did you, Mister?”
“I’d say it was about a draw, sir. Last summer the Slavocrats burned Lawrence nearly off the map. Then John Brown and the Free-Staters hit at Pottawatamie and murdered three Southerons. As fast as we could round them up, the local courts just turned them loose.”
“You rode against both sides?”
“Tried to, sir. Our orders were to shoot John Brown’s men on sight, but he rode out of the state before we could catch him.”
“What about the others, the pro-slavery guerillas?” Matt Caldwell didn’t answer. His commander at Leavenworth had been a Virginian. Captain Lodge would know that, if he’d really read the transfer papers.
Lodge nodded grimly and asked, “What did you do, son, write a letter over your captain’s head?”
Matt shook his head and said, “No, sir. I was taught to always go through channels.”
“In other words, you protested formally against the way the army’s been favoring the Slavocrats in Kansas.”
It was a statement, not a question, so Caldwell didn’t answer. Captain Lodge got up and went to a campaign chest on a side table. He took out a bottle and two thick glass tumblers and came back to the desk. He poured two drinks. “Welcome to Fort Havasu, Lieutenant. It’s hard to find our kind of people in this man’s army since that piss-ant Jeff Davis got control of it!”
Matt Caldwell picked up his glass, but held it un-tasted as he said, “Sir, I believe it’s my duty to inform you I am not an Abolitionist.”
Lodge cocked an eyebrow. “No? What are you, then?”
“A soldier, sir. I don’t consider it a soldier’s duty to take sides in a political argument.”
“But you got in trouble back in Kansas by protesting your former C.O.’s pro-slavery views.”
“I didn’t protest his views, sir. I protested his dereliction of duty. Our job at Leavenworth was to keep order in Kansas. I didn’t consider it our duty to look the other way when either side burned a barn or a town. I mean, had my CO. been favoring the Free-Staters against the Southerons, I’d have protested that, too!”
Lodge laughed bitterly. “That’ll be the day, when Jeff Davis allows anyone but a Slavocrat sympathizer to command a vital post. Don’t you see what’s happening, Mister? For God’s sake, he just made Robert E. Lee the commandant at West Point!”
“I’m afraid I don’t know Colonel Lee, sir. I understand he’s a good soldier. Wasn’t he one of the captains who took Mexico City in the last war?”
“He was, and so was I, along with a pretty fair fighter named U.S. Grant. We were all captains then, Mister. Only, Sam Grant’s been driven out of the army on trumped-up drinking charges and I … I’m still a captain at a frontier post too far west to matter. Yet Bobby Lee’s a colonel in command of the most strategic post in the Union. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not sure just what you’re suggesting, sir.”
“I daresay you don’t read the newspapers, then. Haven’t you been following the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Mister?”
Caldwell shrugged and replied. “Not too closely, sir. It’s my understanding that backwoods lawyer, Lincoln, is just out for some public notoriety at the expense of Senator Douglas and the Moderates.”
“That backwoods lawyer’s liable to be our next president, Mister! How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t know why I’m supposed to feel anything about that, sir. If the voters elect this Lincoln fellow, I suppose we’ll just have to live with whatever changes he wants in the War Department.”
“You agree, then, that the President of these United States is your commander-in-chief?”
“Of course, sir. It says so right in the A.R.’s.”
“I know what it says in the A.R.’s, Mister. But certain officers in this man’s army have taken the position that they only have to obey a government they agree with in every way. How do you feel about that, Mister?”
“I feel that’s wrong, if not high treason.”
“Even if many of your superior officers or, say the Secretary of War, were to tell you the new administration was being run by, well, a nigger-loving baboon?”
Caldwell met the other’s stare levelly. “Sir, if the voters of the United States elect one of those camels there and it’s able to give me an order, I guess I’ll just have to try and carry it out.”
Captain Lodge suddenly smiled, raised his glass, and said, “Drink your bourbon, son. You and me are going to get along just fine.”
The late afternoon sun was low in the west, but still a white-hot ball in a sky of burnished brass. The man on foot leading the mule team trudged head down, shielding his eyes with the wide brim of his Mexican sombrero. The only other man in the party rode the tailgate of the lightly built prairie schooner, his eyes resting on the eastern horizon. A loaded Sharpe’s rifle lay across his knees as his worn boots dangled above the California Trail. In the wagon, shaded but half stifled by the canvas cover, a feverish little boy moaned in his sleep as his worried mother held his head in her lap. Ernestine Unger was worried about more than her Willy’s fever. She was on her way to join her husband at Los Angeles City, accompanied by her two children, black maid-servant, and two young men she’d hired in Santa Fe to tend the team, guard them from the savage men, both red and white, along the trail, and do such campsite chores as men were expected to do, moving west,
It had all seemed so simple back at Santa Fe. Her Hansel had sent her more than enough to buy and equip a good
wagon. Hansel had a store near the beautiful Los Angeles River, and he wrote that the ranches and prospectors in California were stripping his shelves as fast as the clippers could deliver goods around the Horn. She’d paid more than she’d intended for the mules, but in truth, they were good mules and the Mexican who’d sold them to her had been more honest than he’d looked.
The wagon, too, had held up better than she’d expected, once she saw the mountains between the Rio Grande and Gila. She’d been about to purchase a heavy Conestoga for the trip, after traveling by stage as far as Santa Fe, but a nice ranchero, riding the last leg of the Santa Fe with her and the children, had warned her to travel light. And despite its frail-looking construction, the little prairie schooner had survived Apache Pass and the awful route down the Gila Valley.
Her servant girl, Jezebel, had been a dear on the long, hot journey, and the children, before this mysterious fever of Willy’s, had been as well behaved as any mother can expect from an eight-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old girl.
It was the young men she’d hired who were starting to worry her. The Mexican boy, Ramon, had never had much to say, but the last few days, his normal silence had turned to something else. Something more ominous than shy silence, or even sullenness. He was leading the team willingly enough at the moment, but, last night, when she’d asked him to fetch more firewood, he’d said something in Spanish and simply turned his back on her. Jezebel, in the end, had gone up the draw and found some dead mesquite.
Freddy Dodd, the other boy she’d hired in Santa Fe, had seemed a cheerful, smiling type in the beginning, but he, too, had taken to sulking the past few days. He was sulking even now, sitting with his back to them on the tailgate. Ernestine had asked him more than once what he and Ramon were unhappy about.
But Freddy had only looked away and answered, “Nuthin’,” in an adenoidal whine she hadn’t noticed in his voice before she’d listened to it all these weary days and nights along the California Trail.