by Lou Cameron
Eskinya was aware of the sob in her voice, and his voice was gentle as he soothed, “I have spoken to my father and the others. None of my people will hurt you as long as you behave. I think my mother likes the boy called Willy. It has been a long time since she had young children of her own. Maybe she will adopt him if he does not die. White Eyes do not make very good Nadene, but such things have happened.”
Not understanding, Jezebel said nothing.
They rode in silence for a time. Then Eskinya said, “I am a Husband. I have been on many raids and I have six ponies and two burros. One of the ponies, the one I told you about, has a bad leg. The others are all fine animals.”
“That’s nice. Which of those Apache ladies is your wife, the pretty one with the red ribbons in her braids?”
“That would be my sister, Lu-Ka. She is the wife of Naiche, who has the yellow-haired girl on his pony. I have no wife. I used to have a wife, but she was killed by Mexicans near Jano. That was a bad fight we had at Jano.”
“Oh, then you mean you used to be a Husband.”
“No. Once a boy has fought well four times, he is always a Husband, whether he has a wife or not. I think when we have reached safer camp grounds, I may take another wife. A wife is a lot of trouble, but there are things to be said for having one. Were you ever married, in the country black White Eyes come from?”
“No,” said Jezebel. “Slaves, I mean, captives like me don’t get married. Our masters sometimes let us say we’re married, but it’s not the same thing. No woman can be married to a man who doesn’t own his own body, can she?”
“Your words are very strange. The White Eyes must have customs very different than ours. How long have you been a captive, anyway?”
“You mean before you captured me? All my life. I was born a captive and I suppose I’ll die a captive. Some of the White Eyes, as you call them, have said it’s wrong to keep my people the way they do, but the ones who own black people will never let them go without a fight.”
“I see. Your people must have done a very bad thing to the White Eyes. When my people hate captives, they kill them.”
“What … what happens if someone like me is captured by Indians who don’t hate her?”
“After you have been with us a while, and we see you know how to act, you might be adopted by some older woman who has no children, or one of the Husbands will ask you to marry him.”
Jezebel gasped, “You must be joking. We’ve heard the way Indians treat captured women. You’re only playing cat and mouse with us, aren’t you?”
“I do not know this game. You and the others are small and helpless. If we intended you any harm, we would have done it by now.”
“You mean you don’t torture prisoners?”
“Of course we torture prisoners, if we hate them. But why should we hate you, or the others we took from the wagon? Were any of our people hurt? Have you, the ugly old woman, or either of the children done anything bad to us? Truly, you speak very foolish words, even for a woman. Maybe if I taught you to speak Nadene, you would make more sense. The tongue of the Mexicans is as foolish as the people who speak it. They, too, speak all the time of hate and torture. The Jesus Ghost they say lives in the sky must be a very cruel person.”
They rode a time in silence. Then Jezebel asked, “How do you say hello in Apache?”
“You say nil deesh-ash, and you do not call us Apache. We are Nadene, Real People. Is this so hard to understand?”
Jezebel twisted her lips around the unfamiliar sounds and managed, “Neal dish-ash. Naw, is that hello, Real Person?”
Eskinya laughed, and the captive girl was surprised how much an Apache laughed like other folks, both black and white, as he explained, “There is no way to say hello, as your people mean it. When a Real Person meets another, and they do not think the other wants to fight, they say nothing, or perhaps they say what is happening. What you just said means that you are coming with me, and this is true.”
“I suppose it is.” She frowned, then giggled and repeated, “Neal dish-ash, Eskimo. That is your name, isn’t it, Eskimo?”
Eskinya laughed again and said, “That is better than Apache. I teach you to speak our language and then you will be ... I am not sure. Would you like to be a black Nadene, or do you wish to remain as you are, a black White Eyes?”
Jezebel didn’t answer, and after a time Eskinya said, “I asked you a question.”
The slave girl answered, “I know. I’m thinking about my answer.”
Another racial discussion was taking place a day’s ride to the south, as the men of Caldwell’s camel patrol made camp for the night. The argument was between Troopers Streeter and Rogers, the only native-born enlisted men, aside from Corporal Muller, who preferred to chew his tobacco in lofty silence as he lounged against his saddle. At the suggestion of Rabbit-Boss, there was no fire. The camels had been allowed to graze their cuds and belch contentedly to one another in the darkness. The men were fed cold pemmican and hardtack, washed down with warm canteen water. The wiser hands among them had thought to spice their water with a few drops of vinegar, but even so, it was easy enough to heed the corporal’s warning to go easy on the stale water.
The lukewarm argument between Streeter and Rogers was political, and the immigrants listened with little interest. Rogers was a New Englander and Streeter was a poor white from the Carolinas. Neither Streeter nor any member of his hard-working family had ever had the thousand dollars for one slave, but to Streeter, the “peculiar institution” was a point of personal honor. He seemed willing to defend with his life, not the possession of a black man, but his sacred right to possess one if he ever got the chance.
Rogers, who had never been in Dixie, was just as adamant in his own religious conviction that all men were brothers—Apaches, Mexicans, and Trooper Streeter being possible exceptions. When Streeter repeated his suggestion that slavery was a just punishment for the black descendants of Cain, Rogers asked innocently, “Don’t you think your own family might have come down from Adam and Eve, Streeter? I mean, you don’t look that much like a monkey, but. ..”
Streeter fell into the trap by snorting, “’Course my folks come down from Adam and Eve. Everybody comes from Adam and Eve, goddamn it! What are you, some kinda cotton-pickin’ heathen?”
“I was just wonderin’, seem’ as you think Adam and Eve was colored folk.”
“Colored folk? Adam and Eve? Now who in thunder ever said a fool thing like that?”
“You did. You said Cain was a nigger, born to be your slave. If Cain was a nigger, and his ma was Eve, and his pa was Adam … ”
“Oh, Jesus, you are purely stupid, Yankee! I never said Cain was no nigger. I said his chillens was! It says so right in the Good Book. It says how Cain kilt his own brother and was sent to live all by his lonesome off in the Land of Nod.”
“Yeah? Well, how did his kids get to be black, then?”
“Well, do Jesus, there warn’t no folks in the Land of Nod, were there?”
“I dunno. It says he went into the Land of Nod until he came to a City of Men.”
“Don’t be an idjet! The onliest men was back home with Adam and Eve and the rest of us white folks. The folks Cain met up with was somethin’ else. No decent white gal was about to marry up with Cain, after the way Cain done his own kin! The onliest way Cain could have chillens was to marry up with some sort of monkey gal, or mebbe some breed of ape. Anyway, he married somethin’ over there in Nod, and them niggers you keep frettin’ over is what come outten Cain’s loins. The Good Lord spared Cain’s life, instead of hangin’ him, so’s decent folks would have niggers to help ’em with their chores.”
Rogers snorted. “That’s stupid. Colored people are children of God, just like you and me!”
“Oh yeah? Then how’d they git so goddamn dumb and black? Anyone with eyes to see can tell a nigger ain’t quite human.”
“All right, let’s say they’re different, for the sake of this fool argument. Let’s say th
e Lord made more than one kind of man, or even a critter that ain’t quite a man. That still don’t give you the call to treat those folks so mean, does it?”
“Shoot, I ain’t never been mean to no nigger in my life. Niggers don’t mind workin’ for a white man. Why, I’ve seen niggers back home jest singin’ and laughin’ all day whilst they chopped cotton or split a few cords of wood.”
“Is that a fact? How come you have to lick ’em with a whip, or chase ’em down with bloodhounds, if they’re all so happy about bein’ slaves?”
“Now listen, damn it, you’re jest talkin’ ’bout a lot of things no Yankee understands, you hear?”
Lounging nearby, Matt Caldwell was aware of the angry edge the Southern boy’s voice was taking on, and murmured, “Corporal?” to his noncom, Muller. Muller spit, said, “Yes, sir,” and in a louder tone called, “Streeter? I think you’d better relieve Csonka out on the picket. That fool Polack can’t see as good as you in the dark.”
Streeter muttered, “Damn Yankees don’t have sense to find their own assholes in the latrine!” as he got to his feet and moved out under the stars, shouting, “Hey, Csonka, where the hell you at?”
Caldwell was aware that Muller had favored his fellow Northerner in breaking up the dispute, but it was the New Yorker’s squad, and a good officer backed his noncoms as far as possible.
At least the others hadn’t taken sides in this stubborn dispute that was tearing the Regular Army to bits. There had been fistfights among the enlisted men and whispered talk of secret duels among certain hot-headed junior officers. One congressman had beaten another unconscious with his cane right in the House Of Representatives, and if that new Republican Party actually tried to put an Abolitionist in the White House in the coming election, there was no telling what might happen. Those Southern threats of taking thirteen states out of the Union were preposterous, but it did seem sinister, the way Secretary Davis had managed to put so many of his own in key positions. Those guns they’d ordered out of Leavenworth to bolster a Texas garrison made little sense, with the border quiet and the Comanche behaving themselves again. That officer he’d warned about seditious talk back east was probably just enamored of the sound of his own voice, but that talk about loyalty to one’s own state coming ahead of any oath he’d given to the Union had come perilously close to out-and-out treason. What had that fool’s name been? Oh, yes, Stuart. J. E. B. Stuart. The other Southerons called the hothead “Jeb.” Someone had threatened to send a letter about him through channels, but of course, nobody had. The army washed its own dirty linen, and if the Kiowa didn’t kill Jeb Stuart, he’d probably grow up before that talk about states’ rights got him in any serious trouble.
His chain of thought was broken by Digger Greenberg coming over to hunker down beside him. The scout bit off a chaw from the inexhaustible supply of cut plug he seemed to have and muttered, “We ain’t all that fer from Fort Havasu. Make in a few hours, did we ride whilst cool and comfortable like.”
Caldwell said, “Those Apache have white women and children with them. Rabbit-Boss says they’ll be making forty or fifty miles a night. We can do sixty if we have to, and … ”
“Back up, I never said we had to leave them folks with them Apache, Lieutenant. I only aim to swing over to the fort, pick up at least a full platoon, and...”
“I don’t want to waste the time. Besides, I’m not sure Captain Lodge would give me the extra men. He’s just as likely to hold us all at Havasu and send to Fort Yuma for reinforcements. You know he’s holding that crossing with a skeleton force, as it is.”
“Well, what iffen he does take us offen them rascals’ trail? It ain’t our fault them fool immigrants tried to cross back there alone, is it?”
“Damn it, Goldberg, those women and children are depending on us!”
“No, they ain’t. They don’t know we’uns is followin’ after Diablito like the idjets we is!”
Caldwell allowed his lip to curl as he suggested, “If you’re so frightened, why don’t you just ride on back to the fort alone?”
The scout spit. “I ain’t been hired to do that. Me an’ Rabbit-Boss is drawin’ three dollars a day to lead you jaspers wherever in tarnation you think you’re aimin’ fer.”
“Well, I’m aiming to catch Diablito and rescue the captives.”
“Shit, you ain’t about to do no sech thing. I keep tryin’ to tell you them Apache outnumber us four or five to one. You jest figure to keep followin’ that ornery Diablito till he catches you!”
“Trained troops have been a match for ten-to-one Indians in the past. Why, at Medicine Wells .. .”
“Goddamn it, we ain’t talkin’ ’bout Injuns! We’re talkin’ ‘bout. Apache! You think Diablito’s about to hit us whoopin’ and a-wailin’ like a mess of crazy Sioux? Sioux fight out in the open, like we’uns.”
“All right, how do Apache fight?”
“You jest keep this foolishness up, sonny, and I suspicion you’ll likely find out the hard way.”
Kaya-Tenay rode ahead of his people, singing softly to the stars. His pony was a good one and the night was cool. The northern constellation his people called Nahukos circled the One Star That Never Moves as faithfully as ever, and it was good to be alive.
Though Rabbit-Boss was sure the wanderers were making for the Mojave River, Kaya-Tenay had no idea just where he was taking his people. The ranges and basins were much the same up this way as they had been in the Sonora Desert, and he knew vaguely that lesser peoples inhabited this new land. If they stayed out of his way, Kaya-Tenay bore them no ill will. If there was no good water up ahead, he would simply ride until they came to some. Meanwhile, the ponies could manage on prickly pear, once the women and children gathered some and peeled it for the ponies’ tender muzzles. His principal wife, Cho-Ko-Ley, said they had enough food for the next few days. Maybe, when he was certain no Blue Sleeves were following, he would lead a hunt up the nearest ridge. At this time of the year, there would be plenty of game in the high country. Tonight he would simply enjoy life.
Kaya-Tenay smiled at the North Star and sang:
“The father of the night, he stirs.
Among the dancing little eyes of night, he stirs. Among the flying bats and owls, he stirs. The pollen of the night-blooming cactus flowers, he stirs. He stirs, he stirs, he stirs, he stirs!”
His song went on like this for many verses, and to a white person, it might have sounded monotonous. To Kaya-Tenay, it was beautiful, for four is a good number and all good things should be repeated four times.
Had Kaya-Tenay possessed a modern map, or had he known the Great Basin as well as Rabbit-Boss, he would have been leading his people more to his left. The Mojave River has its beginnings in the San Bernadino Range far to the west of Kaya-Tenay’s chosen route. Like other rivers of the Great Basin, the Mojave has no outlet to the sea. It runs down cool and clear from the snow-capped San Bernardinos, winds north and east across nearly a hundred miles of bone-dry desert, and slowly dies in a vast inland delta of treacherous rule marsh and seasonal lakes and salt flats. It was into this land of low-lying desert marsh that Kaya-Tenay was taking his people.
Such water as there was was a bitter poisonous brew of potash, borax, sodium chloride, and other salts. Nothing lived in what the Diggers called the Big Emptiness, for the soil was poisoned, too, and nothing moved across the barren playas of sun-baked mud or dazzling salt but drifting sand and the occasional shadow of a soaring buzzard. Sometimes, foolish mustangs or an occasional lost antelope fawn wandered out into the Big Emptiness, and a hungry buzzard sometimes took a chance on finding a meal along the edges of the vast expanse. One day white men would map the stretch between Death Valley and the Colorado, and one day twenty-mule teams would haul borax from the hellish flats, but they would fight no Indians for possession of this dead heart of the desert. No Indians who knew the Great Basin ever went there. Kaya-Tenay would not have gone there, had he known what Nahukos and the other stars were leading him into.
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br /> A quail called from the darkness ahead. Kaya-Tenay answered with the soft yip of a kit fox, and the shadowy form of a mounted scout materialized against the starlit north horizon. Kaya-Tenay had sent his nephew, Poinsenay, ahead of the column to make sure there were no ghosts or other strangers waiting in ambush out there in the darkness. There were other Husbands, of course, fanned out ahead and to either side of the column, so Kaya-Tenay didn’t stop his followers as he rode to join Poinsenay. The way was still secure, or the recognition signal would have been the sound of Brother Coyote, barking a warning to his mate. Poinsenay would say, in his own good time, why he’d dropped back.
The two men rode side by side for a time. Then Poinsenay said, “There is nothing out there ahead of us. Once, I saw what looked like a Spirit Bear rearing up against the sky. It was only one of those yucca trees they have in this country. I have been seeing less and less cactus and more and more of the shaggy yucca trees.”
Kaya-Tenay nodded. “I have noticed. Country always changes as one moves about. I think this is a good thing. There would be no point in wandering if the country everywhere was the same. If every hill and valley was the same, nobody would ever travel and the whole world would live as Pueblos and Mexicans do!”
Kaya-Tenay grimaced, and then, because he considered himself a fair-minded man, he said, “I take that back. Mexicans move about a little. Even they must wonder sometimes what lies over the faraway ridges. The Pueblos are the ones I do not understand. Can you imagine yourself being born, living all your life, and lying down for the Long Sleep, without ever having left the same canyon?”
Poinsenay said, “No. There is something else I noticed up ahead. The hills to either side are spreading wider, ever wider, like the jaws of a great coyote. Only, we are riding out, not in, and this basin grows ever wider and more open as we go north.”