by Lou Cameron
“Bah! Your voice is the voice of a woman. Has that black White-Eyed girl been teaching you to speak, Eskinya?”
“I did not stop your pony to talk about our captives, my father. I stopped you because you are leading us to certain destruction!”
“I lead you to the safe green hunting grounds of long ago. Let go my bridle. I know how to thread my way between the soft spots we seem to be encountering. This is not the first bad country I have crossed, you know.”
“Listen to me, my father, it is getting dark and the ankles of your pony are raw. You have had too much tiswin and don’t know what you are doing. I think you should at least make camp here for the night. In the morning … ”
“Let go of my bridle. I have spoken,” Kaya-Tenay insisted, slapping wildly with his open palm and catching Jezebel across one upflung arm as she ducked her head against Eskinya’s broad shoulders. The younger Nadene let go his father’s bridle and danced his pony out of the old man’s reach. In Spanish he soothed, “That will never happen again, Hey-Zabel,” and the girl replied, “I’m all right, but what was that all about?”
“My father is drunk. Unless he comes to his senses in time, his people are doomed. Our ponies cannot live in this country, and what is a man without a pony?”
Before Jezebel could answer, Eskinya’s mother, Cho-Ko-Ley rode up beside them and asked in Nadene, “What were you and your father fighting about? If he wants this woman, you should give her to him. I know you like her, but she is a captive. She has no rights of refusal unless one of the Real Women has adopted her into one of the clans.”
Eskinya shook his head. “That is not what we were fighting about, my mother. The old fool is drunk and he keeps riding his pony through the soft spots. The pony is already growing lame and ...”
“How dare you speak that way about your father in front of this black White Eyes?” Cho-Ko-Ley cut in savagely.
Eskinya said, “The girl does not know our tongue, and besides, I have to speak out against his madness before it’s too late. The others are afraid of Kaya-Tenay when he has been drinking, but I am not. I am more afraid of losing all our ponies that I am of his temper, or the spirits he talks to when he’s been at the tiswin.”
Cho-Ko-Ley gasped and raised her hand to strike. Then she turned her face away. “You never knew him when he was younger and our people were feared from the Gila to the Yaqui. If you no longer have respect for your father, I think you should go away. There is no room in my heart for such a wicked son.”
Eskinya winced as if she’d struck him, and they both knew he could put the matter to rights by simply giving in. But Eskinya sat his horse in silence until his mother started to move on. Then he said, “Hear me, my mother. I think you should let him ride on alone if his mind no longer serves him.”
Cho-Ko-Ley didn’t answer. Eskinya hadn’t expected her to. He and Jezebel sat there, watching the others file past, until Digoon and Naiche reined in with the other captives. Naiche asked, “Why have you stopped here?” and Eskinya replied simply, “I am going off with my prisoners and my ponies. Do you want to come with me?”
Naiche hesitated. Then he said, “Kaya-Tenay is drunk, but he is still my friend.”
He waved at the Unger family, each member mounted on its own pony, now, and added, “My woman and I will go where Kaya-Tenay leads us. I don’t think the captives will try to escape, but if they do, you have nobody to blame but yourself.”
The captives, of course, were unaware of the meaning of this conversation. They watched silently as the Indians argued. Once, Alfrieda asked Jezebel to translate, but the black girl answered, “Just hush and let me listen, Mizz Frieda. I don’t mind but ever’ third or fourth Injun word, and they seem to be talkin’ ’bout us!”
In fact, the disposal of the captives was the least of Eskinya’s worries. The fact that they were his was not in dispute. He’d made his move and it was too late to change his mind. Eskinya was leaving the band of Kaya-Tenay. That much was certain. The question was only whether he would leave it alone.
Digoon watched as Naiche rode after the older chief. He pretended a great lack of concern as he said softly to Eskinya, “You will need help in keeping these captives together. I think I’d better go with you.”
It was a beginning. Digoon was only a child, and Mexican-born to boot, but he was joined by Taza and the older, tested Ki-E-Ta.
Ki-E-Ta said, “Let me get my two wives and my ponies and we will leave this place.” But Eskinya shook his head and said, “We shall wait here until the others have had time to think. My father led these people a long way for a long time. It is too soon for me to expect them to leave his side.”
Ki-E-Ta said, “He leads them badly when he listens to the voices in his bottles, but once he was a mighty Husband. I think many of them hope he will recover his senses before he leads them to disaster. If I were you, I would speak out more loudly against Kaya-Tenay. Your words are too soft for a man who would lead his own band.”
“You are not me, Ki-E-Ta. Nor am I Kaya-Tenay. The moon will be fat tonight. When it rises above the grass-clad hills to the east, I intend to ride into its rays. Those who wish may ride with me. Those who do not may follow Kaya-Tenay. I have spoken.”
He meant, of course, that he was through talking about it in Nadene. Half turning to the girl on the saddle pad behind him, Eskinya spoke in Spanish. “Listen to me. I want you to tell your friends that I am taking them away from here with only a few friends to guard them.”
Jezebel started to translate, but the Indian cut in. “I have not finished speaking. You must learn our ways if you intend to follow them. Now, I want you to tell the old yellow-haired woman and her children that I intend to let them go. The boy looks strong and might in time be of use to our nation. But he is still very young and the women are no use to me at all. The mother is too old and scrawny. The daughter will not be old enough for a man to want for at least two years. I know the Blue Sleeves will be out looking for all of you. So I am going to take them to a safe place and release them for the Blue Sleeves to find. I think if the Blue Sleeves recover this family, they may lost interest in following my father’s pony tracks.
Jezebel asked, “What do you mean, your father’s pony tracks?”
“You interrupt again! You are very beautiful, but you talk too much, even for a woman. When my friends and I ride off with captives and ponies, my father will be very angry. So angry he will want to fight with me. I think we will get away, but Kaya-Tenay will come after us, leading his people out of this death trap. Now do you understand?”
Jezebel laughed and, mixing English with Spanish, said, “Do Jesus, if you ain’t a regular Br’er Rabbit!”
Eskinya frowned and said, “I did not understand that.”
In a gentler tone, Jezebel explained, “It’s a story my people tell of a very clever rabbit, or maybe a wise black boy. This rabbit, or black boy, or whatever, got people to do what he wanted by asking them to do just the opposite. You don’t want to ride off and start your own tribe. You’re trying to save the tribe you have by tricking them into chasing you out of this desert! You’re trying to make your father so mad at you he’ll forget his visions about some Indian fairy land he found in a bottle. You’re hoping he’ll be so intent on scalping you that he’ll drop those bottles and come after you with blood in his eye!”
“I don’t think my father would scalp me, but if I can make him remember the man he was, it would not be a bad way to die.”
Jezebel felt an odd pang as she gasped, “You don’t intend to die to save your people, do you, Eskinya?”
The Indian shrugged. “All men die sooner or later. At worst, it can only happen a little sooner. It helps to remember this when a man is forced to make a choice, but if I can keep my father from killing me, I shall take you into the White Mountains with me until my father decides he no longer hates us. My father’s mother was a Chiricahua Nadene, and my kinsman Cochise will take us in until everyone’s blood has had time to cool. I th
ink you will like it in the White Mountains, Hey-Zabel.”
The black captive asked quietly, “What if I don’t want to come? Would you take me there against my will?”
Eskinya started to nod, for the captive’s question was ridiculous. Then he reconsidered and thought for a time before he answered, “I don’t know, I shall have to think about that.”
The same setting sun was painting the desert rose and purple a day’s journey to the southeast as Rabbit-Boss jogged on ahead of the camels. The lye-burned Csonka had been sent toward Fort Havasu in the care of Trooper Dorfler with orders not to stop before they got there. Most of their drinking water had been used, or according to Greenberg, wasted, in washing the chemical salts from Csonka’s second-degree burns. Smeared with bacon grease and covered with Caldwell’s spare clean underwear and a shirt donated by Muller, Trooper Csonka was going to make it, though his legs would be scarred for life, or at least until the Battle of Gettysburg, a few years into the future, where a Rebel bullet would be waiting with the unlikely name of Taddeusz Csonka written on it.
The leading of Greenberg’s camel had been turned over to High Jolly, after the Muslim turned down the chance to ride south with Dorfler and the injured Csonka. Greenberg had opined High Jolly was a fool, but Caldwell noticed the sardonic scout himself seemed willing to play this hand out to its end, whatever that end might be.
The officer was growing accustomed to the unfamiliar gait of Fatima, and while she smelled worse than any pig and bubbled like a teapot under him, he had to admit they’d never have made it riding Army Issue horses, or even mules. From time to time he caught a, sudden glimpse of his own elongated shadow to the east, and had to laugh at the ridiculous silhouette the sunset painted on the flat baked clay. The camel really did look like a horse designed by a committee. A committee of schoolmarms, at that. He could see why Jefferson Davis’s enemies in Congress had hooted at his purchase of nearly a hundred of these funny-looking beasts to send against the Indian nations, but to give the devil his due, the crazy-sounding idea seemed to be working. The camel was adapted to the Great American Desert and, given a fair trial by American soldiers willing to learn something new, should form a vital force in the taming of these new lands seized from Mexico in the war.
The sun was setting over Caldwell’s left shoulder, but its rays reached across the playa country to etch the distant mountains pink against the purple eastern sky. Caldwell asked Greenberg, “Is that snow over there on those hills?”
The scout shook his head. “Not this time of the year. Must be cloud banners burnin’ offen them peaks. The Providence is too high to call hills. It’s more like an island of fair-sized ridges out in the middle of nowheres. Got more desert on the fer side afore you gits to the Colorado, but it’s high desert. Not nigh as dry as where we is right now. Do them Apache make it past the Providence, ain’t no way in hell we’re about to catch ’em.”
“I thought we were trying to head them off.”
“That’s what Rabbit-Boss thinks we oughta do. Iffen it was up to my ownself, we’d be runnin’ fer our skins. You got eleven men here, countin’ me and that fool Injun. You really reckon to whup thirty or forty Apache with ten guns and that diggin’ stick of Rabbit-Boss?”
“It’s more like, let’s see … twenty-eight guns. You and High Jolly have a rifle and pistol each. Muller, his men, and me carry two dragoon pistols and a carbine, so … ”
“Them carbines don’t count fer shit!” Greenberg cut in. “Them muzzle-loaders is only good fer one shot in a fire fight and them Apache bows kin shoot as fer, and a damn sight faster, than them six-guns of your’n. Sayin’ all eleven of us gits off one good rifle shot as they charge, which is too much to hope fer, that still leaves us facing twenty or thirty howlin’ mad Apache at point-blank pistol range.” He spit and added morosely, “You purely do like long odds, don’t you, Lieutenant?”
Matt Caldwell rode a time in silence. The he said, “I thought Apache skulked about, avoiding a stand-up fight in the open.”
“Well, sure they does. No man in his right mind cottons to gittin’ kilt iffen he kin help it. But look at this country around us, damn it! There ain’t no way Diablito’s gonna figure on sneakin’ up on us out here in all this nothin’ much! When we meet up with that old boy, it’s gonna be Comanche style. Out in the open and man to man. What do them sojer books of your’n have to say ’bout takin’ on a force four times your size in a free-style, no-quarters, kickin’-and-gougin’, no-foolin’-around fight?”
“The book says I’m not supposed to do it.”
“Well, fer once, your book makes more sense than you do. I’ll allow we’d stand a chance dug in ahint some rocks, or even creosote bush fer a mite of cover. Do we reach the Providence well ahead of them Apache rascals and hole up next to water, you got an outside chance of bringin’ it off. Them peaks yonder ain’t nigh as close as they might look to you, though. Do you aim to beat Diablito to a half-ass chance to make a stand, we’d best pile that fool Injun up here on this critter with me and git crackin’.”
“Will Rabbit-Boss ride with you? He seems to be afraid of the camels.”
Greenberg spit. “He’ll do what I tell him, iffen it makes sense to him. We got us a moon-bail risin’ in a mite, and there’s no sense him lookin’ fer sign on foot out there ahead. A mounted man kin see a quarter mile in moonlight across this dead-flat playa. You want me to take the point?”
Caldwell nodded. “You’d better.” Then he called to High Jolly, “Move Mister Greenberg’s mount out ahead of us, drover.”
But Greenberg said, “Keep the fool A-rab back here with you-all. I aim to have a clear view ahead when all I got to see by is a puny moon-ball.”
Caldwell frowned. “I thought you didn’t know how to handle that camel of yours.”
Greenberg spit again. “I kin do anything, do I have to. I jest never was a man to do a thing I don’t.”
Morning found the tired men of the camel patrol skirting the marshy delta of a small braided stream running from the east into what would have been the waters of a great salt lake, had the playa still held its prehistoric contents.
Rabbit-Boss was out in front on foot again, after a frightened, uncomfortable night clinging to the cantle of Greenberg’s saddle. The braided stream ran to their left as they moved eastward toward the still-distant Providence Range. From time to time, Rabbit-Boss would cut over to the soft ground, stick his wand in the mud, and gingerly smell. Then he’d grimace, point his digging stick at the looming mountains, and start trotting again. Caldwell didn’t need Greenberg to tell him that the water this far out on the playa was impregnated with mineral salts.
The surface of the playa was gently rolling now. They were seemingly near its eastern edge, where long-vanished waves had once ebbed and flowed to carve the shallows of the nameless, long-evaporated lake. The Indian spotted something sprouting from the cracked surface just ahead and knelt to pull what looked like a blackened twig from the baked clay. It was a dead, salt-poisoned sprig of tarweed. To Rabbit-Boss, this was a good sign. They were coming to the shifting marginal zone where desert life and sterile salts fought their see-saw seasonal battle. They were hours from the playa’s edge, but the water flowing to their left would be fit to drink before that. The sun baked edges of the dried-up lake held little of the bitter salts that settled near the lower center.
Rabbit-Boss jogged on, searching the ground in front of his drumming footfalls part of the time and swinging his eyes up at the mountains on the horizon with every twelfth pace. A row of dark specks shimmered, outlined by the sunrise he was running toward. They had not been there the last time he looked, and Rabbit-Boss stopped, shielding his eyes to peer into the glare. Greenberg spotted the not-too-distant forms at the same time and reined in his camel, calling, “What are they, antelope?” as he unlimbered his saddle gun.
One of the distant figures waved and Caldwell, pulling up beside the scout, gasped, “My God, those are mounted people up ahead!”
“You think they could be Indians?”
“Don’t know. Was you expectin’ somebody else out here?”
Caldwell placed one hand on the grip of his dragoon as Corporal Muller rode up to ask, “Orders, sir?”
“Have the men fan out to my right, dismount, and be ready to fire on my command. I think they want to parley. Three of them seem to be coming forward. You’d better move it, Corporal.”
Caldwell, Greenberg, and High Jolly remained in position on their mounts as the mysterious riders came closer. Rabbit-Boss stood where he had frozen in place, the deceptive harmless-looking stick resting on his throwing shoulder. Off to the right, the six-man squad were carrying out their noncom’s orders in anxious silence.
One of the oncoming ponies broke into a gallop and came in fast ahead of the others. Caldwell raised a hand and shouted, “Steady on! I don’t think it’s an attack.”
He knew he was right as the running pony brought its rider into view, outlined against the sunrise. It was a white girl. Her clothes were in tatters and her corn-silk hair was disheveled and blowing in the wind of her pony’s run. She called out, “Don’t shoot! We ain’t Injuns! The Injuns are lettin’ us go!”
Caldwell saw the two behind her were another blond woman and a white boy. Alfrieda Unger’s pony shied as it caught a whiff of camel, and Rabbit-Boss ran forward to catch its bridle as the slim girl slid off the Indian saddle pad. She ran over to Caldwell as he dismounted to greet her. She threw herself against his chest and sobbed, “Oh, Lordy, I thought we’d never see the likes of you-all again! Them Injuns kilt Freddy and the Mex and carried us off like the savages they was!”
Caldwell held the frightened child, soothing her with reassuring pats as the other woman was helped from her mount by the young boy and Digger Greenberg. Caldwell’s breath caught as he got his first good look at the second, older captive. She was a tall, blond, willowy beauty in her middle thirties, and Caldwell could hardly remember having seen a more stunning vision. Despite her dirty face and trail-soiled clothing, her beauty was breath-taking. Caldwell felt a sick, sinking sensation in his guts as he thought of these two lovely white females in the hands of those filthy Apache. He would never ask, of course, but it was all too clear what their treatment must have been. Jesus, what if either of them was in a family way?