Nana, a veteran of many battles, was worried, too. Juh was preoccupied with watching their backtrail, while Chokole had said nothing since she cut the white prisoner’s eyelids off and left him staked out across the ant bed. A curious silence gripped the women and younger warriors as they made their way higher into the Pedregosas. There were no more war chants, no celebrations of their freedom as there had been before. Everyone was waiting to see if the five warriors Naiche left behind to ambush the three whites were successful when the white Apache hunters were drawn to the shrill cries of pain from the prisoner Chokole gutted.
It was a gamble, that these cautious white men would ride up to the man staked across the bed of red ants, but Naiche felt it was a risk worth taking. His warriors were well hidden near the ocotillo grove, armed with repeating rifles, their horses tethered over a mile away in a second stand of ocotillo. If the white-eyes even came close to investigate the dying man’s screams, they would make perfect targets for the Apaches’ Winchesters in open desert surrounding the sandpit.
Off to the north, blanketing the desert flats they’d crossed to reach the mountains, a veil of smoke hung like a dark pall over the land. Naiche knew what the smoke meant. It was a way to draw the soldiers to their trail, a telltale sign of their passing and the direction they were taking. No doubt the fire was set by the three white men hounding their trail, seeking help from the bluecoats led by Mickey Free.
Nana rode over, after a long look at the smoke-filled desert behind them.
“It is a signal to the bluecoats,” he said needlessly, for every member of Naiche’s band understood the smoke sign which was visible for miles, and why it was there.
“Mickey Free does not need smoke to tell them where we are and where we are going,” Naiche said. “He reads our tracks and he knows we are headed for the mountains to make our escape to Mexico.”
“He may try to convince the soldiers to cut us off, to get in front of us,” Nana warned. “We will be caught between the bluecoats and the three white men . . . only I do not believe they are whites, not after what they did to Delgada and Boishta and his brother. These white-eyes kill like Apaches . . . marking their victims. Like the smoke covering the desert behind us, the way Delgada and Boishta and Sonsi were blinded is a message, telling us what they plan to do to us if they are able to find us.”
“We are Apaches,” Naiche said. “We fear no enemy on the face of Earth Mother. Only the Comanches are our equals in combat. These men are not Comanches. The prisoner Chokole left to die said one was from the north country where it snows.”
“Perhaps they are Utes,” Nana suggested, but it showed in his voice he did not truly believe it.
“They are white-eyes who have lived among some of the north tribes. Like Mickey Free, they have learned our ways, and we must expect them to think and act like Apaches,” Naiche said, sure he was right about these white men. They were not members of any plains tribe he had ever seen or heard of, not Indians with white skin. There were times when he wondered if they were human, or if they could be spirit warriors from the Land of Shadows, for they seemed invincible at times, a thought he wouldn’t share with the others, for it would instill fear in them.
Spirit warriors were the ghosts of dead Indians, according to Apache legend, and Naiche had never seen one. Most of his life, he had believed they did not truly exist except in the minds of the Old Ones.
Nana looked down at his wrinkled, battle-scarred hands for a moment. “It does not matter,” he said. “They have killed half our number, and yet they keep coming. We must try to find a way to stop them if the ambush at the ocotillos fails.”
Naiche had been considering it—another trap of some kind to stop or delay the three white-eyes if the ambush at the sandpit somehow went wrong—but very few among his warriors were clever enough to engage an experienced enemy like the men who followed them now.
“It might be best for us to send the others onward to join Geronimo while we pick a place, and a time, to halt them,” he added, hoping it would not be necessary if they could be killed approaching the screaming man tied across the ant bed. He had given his five warriors careful instructions where to hide and wait in ambush. Isa led the ambush party, and Isa knew how to make himself seem to disappear.
“You and me and Juh are the most experienced when it comes to fighting a dangerous enemy,” Nana said.
“Chokole is wise in the ways of war,” Naiche told him, as the lines of Apache women passed him leading heavily laden pack animals. “The four of us could kill them easily, if we choose the time and the place.”
“Chokole is brave,” Nana agreed.
“Send for her. And bring Juh. The smoke gives us away to the bluecoats and Mickey Free. We must not allow them to catch us, or let this happen again.”
“I will bring the others. Juh and Chokole will know what we must do if the trap at the sandpit fails.”
Naiche gave the sign of agreement, still watching the smoky desert floor behind them for any sign that columns of soldiers were moving toward them.
Nana rode away to bring back Juh and Chokole, while Naiche considered a plan. The three whites were proving to be more troublesome than the bluecoats, or Mickey Free. If they could be stopped, Naiche was sure they could make it through the Pedregosas to Mexico. There was still a chance the ambush might work, but he’d been listening closely all day for the echo of rifle fire and heard nothing. Perhaps the distance was too great now.
Chokole came riding toward him, her face a mass of worry lines. She halted her pinto in front of him, yet she waited a moment to speak.
“Nana says we will go after the three whites,” she said, her voice even, hard. She glanced over her shoulder. “This will not be easy, Chief Naiche. We should wait to see if Isa and Nednah and the others kill them. Or do you have another plan of attack that will be certain to take them off our trail?”
He did, although it would involve great danger for whoever was placed close to the white invaders. “Yes. The lessons I learned from Geronimo will work. Three or four of us will dig shallow pits in the desert sand. We will hide with our rifles under the flat leaves of the agave plant and lie in wait. They will follow our tracks, as they have since they came into the Dragoon Mountains. We hide in the small pits we dig, covered with brush and then we wait for them to ride close.”
“This will be dangerous,” Chokole said.
“Yes, but they know too many of the Apache ways of war, and they are killing us off a few at a time. We wait in the holes until they are very close, and then we kill them when our rifles will not miss, the way Geronimo killed the Mexican soldiers on the feast day of Saint Jerome. With an old Spencer rifle he was able to kill twenty Mexican soldados. ”
“We only need to kill these three white-eyes, and the most important one is the big man who rides the black horse named MacCallister. He is the one who must die soon, or he will lead the bluecoats to us.”
Chokole had spoken the truth. According to the white man they took prisoner, the man called Falcon MacCallister was the one responsible for so many Apache losses. “Yes,” Naiche said bitterly. “This Falcon MacCallister must be the first white man to die.”
Nana rode up with Juh, and they halted their horses in a half circle around Naiche.
“Tell us what you want us to do,” Juh said. “Nana says we will go back to kill these three white-eyes. There have been no gunshots from Isa and his warriors. Either the white-eyes knew it was a trap and rode around it, or they may be waiting for the soldiers to join them.”
Naiche watched his people moving up a steep mountain trail into the Pedregosas. “Come with me,” he said to the others, after making sure the pack animals made it over the next rise. “I will show you how we will kill them. Send someone to the front to tell the women to keep moving. Tell them not to wait for us. The border into Mexico is only a few hours away, and there, they will be safe.”
“Wait!” Chokole exclaimed, pointing north into the worst of the smoke. �
��Five horses come. It will be Isa ... to tell us the white men are dead.”
Naiche and Juh stared at the five darker shapes of horses moving through the curtain of smoke, for they were hard to see so far away through the smoke at such a distance.
But when Naiche got a closer look at the horses, anger began to well inside him. “The horses have no riders,” he hissed, his teeth tightly clenched to fight back the rage building in him. “Isa and the others have been killed. The white men send back the horses as a message to us. Our warriors are dead.”
Juh swallowed. “But we heard no guns,” he said with his gaze still fixed on the riderless cavalry horses stolen from Fort Thomas.
“There are other ways to kill,” Chokole told him darkly, a deep frown pinching her face.
Naiche’s anger slowly changed to a touch of fear. Who were these white demons who killed Apaches without shooting a gun or making a sound? He had tried everything to halt them, and still they kept coming after him and his people. Were the three white men spirit warriors from another tribe?
“It is not possible,” Juh said. “Isa picked four of our most trusted fighters.”
“It is said spirit warriors can kill with a look . . . they do not need weapons,” Nana murmured, his eyes downcast as if he were afraid to look at the horses coming toward them lest some magic take his soul, too.
“They were young and lacked battle experience,” Chokole reminded him. “The years in prison at Fort Thomas made some of our young men careless. There was no chance to give them proper training as warriors.”
Nana agreed hesitantly, though it was evident he still favored the spirit warrior idea. “Chokole speaks truth, Chief Naiche. There are only a few of us who were given a warrior’s difficult training.”
The five horses came toward them at a trot, drawn to the scent trail of the other horses climbing into the peaks carrying the Apaches’ food supplies and guns. Naiche watched the geldings approach, wondering how the three whites could have known about the ambush awaiting them.
Juh voiced Naiche’s concerns. “These white-eyes are far too clever for our younger warriors. The four of us remember what it was like to make war against the mighty Comanches . . . the Arapaho, and the Kiowas. We can kill these white men ourselves. Give us the word.”
Naiche was torn by indecision . . . to keep on running toward Mexico, or stand and fight these white-skinned fiends . . . unless a bullet could not kill them. More and more, he was beginning to believe these men might be spirits without flesh or blood. He could find no other explanation for every attempt they made to escape them.
“Aiyee,” Nana moaned as if to himself when the ponies finally came to them. Five bloody scalp locks could be seen hanging from the horses’ manes.
He glanced at the others, his eyes wide with fear.
“There can be no doubt. These white devils are mighty warriors, be they man or spirit. We must be very careful when we confront them.”
Chokole grasped her Winchester and held it high over her head. “I swear to whatever spirits are listening, I will kill these men for what they have done to my brothers!”
Naiche nodded, but his eyes betrayed his doubts as he looked out over the smoke-covered desert and wondered just who—or what—was coming to meet them.
Chapter 44
Near the highest elevations, the Pedregosas offered shelter in many forms. Deep caves ran through the bowels of the earth. Steep-walled canyons crisscrossed the mountain range, providing a network of passageways where Naiche and his followers could stay out of sight while moving ever southward, although almost never in a straight line that would have made their journey that much shorter.
Here, Naiche felt relatively safe from the doggedly determined white men who had been glued to their trail since they broke away from the reservation and entered the Dragoons. His sense of safety, however, was not shared by Chokole or Nana, and Juh seemed unusually watchful now.
Naiche had abandoned his plan to lay in ambush for the white men at the base of the mountains. He would select the right spot when he came upon it and then prepare a deadly bushwhacking for the white-eyes from which he was certain they would not escape, if they were mere mortal men.
Chokole scouted the trail ahead. Nana, the most experienced warrior in Naiche’s dwindling band, brought up the rear with two young warriors, staying back a mile or more, climbing to higher crests and ledges to watch patiently for any sign of the three pursuers.
As the day wore on until the sun was directly overhead, Naiche relaxed more and more. The maze of snake-like canyons they followed were ancient pathways to the land of Mexico, known only to Apaches who once roamed this rugged terrain. The white men had found it easy to track shod cavalry horses in sand and softer ground, but in the heart of the Pedregosas dark rock had been carved by wind and water since the beginning of time. Even a shod horse left little more than scratches on the surface of stone-bottomed ravines and gullies. Stunted juniper and pine grew on higher slopes, appearing to be clinging to walls of rock with nothing hut roots to hold them in place. The Pedregosas were one of the driest mountain ranges anywhere, in Naiche’s experience, and only someone who knew where to look would be able to find scarce water for animals and men.
Naiche’s calm was soon interrupted when Chokole came galloping her pinto mare in his direction . . . he could tell by the way she pushed her wiry little mount that she’d seen something amiss in the trail ahead.
He rode far out in front of the line of pack horses and mules to reach her, hoping she was not bearing bad news, yet all but certain this would explain her haste. She had spotted some form of danger ahead. He was sure of it.
She pulled her pony to a halt in front of his bay, and then pointed back down the canyon from which she had ridden. “I saw two of the white-eyes, Chief Naiche,” he began. “They rode across the top of a ridge in plain sight. They did not try to hide from me.”
It was puzzling news—two of the whites who had proven to be so clever allowed themselves to be seen against the skyline.
“Why did they show themselves?” Naiche asked, knowing that Chokole would understand why he asked this very simple question that did not fit the actions of cautious men.
“It is a trick,” she replied. “They wanted us to see them, to follow them, thinking we would behave recklessly. I am sure they meant to lead me into an ambush.”
He grunted his agreement. “You are very wise, Chokole, not to follow them. What else could it be besides a trick to lead you to a spot of their choosing, where the other whites would kill you with their rifles?”
“My heart told me this . . . not to follow them,” she answered, still looking backward from time to time. “But this is also a sign that somehow, even without knowing these canyons, they have gotten ahead of us. They will be preparing an ambush where they believe we must travel.”
Juh rode up to overhear the conversation, for he knew that Chokole’s return to the main band meant trouble was waiting for them somewhere to the south, the direction they must take to get to Mexico.
“What is wrong?” Juh asked, searching Chokole’s face as if he could read her thoughts before she spoke to him.
“Two of the white-eyes rode across a high ridge in plain sight,” she told him. “They took no measures to stay off the horizon where no one would see them. It was a trick, of that I am certain.”
“Yes,” Juh muttered. “They hoped you would follow them to the killing place they picked out. It is grave news, to know they are ahead of us now. We will be forced to turn east or west to ride around them.”
Naiche’s anger, and his fear, returned. “They must be mounted on good horses,” he said. “Only a strong animal with speed and endurance could get past us.” He turned to Juh. “Go back and tell this to Nana. Leave the younger men to guard our rear. We will need our best fighters to confront them, and our best trackers to find out where they are waiting for us in the canyon.”
“I will look for their tracks,” Juh offered. �
��My eyes are still young enough to see the hoofprints left by a white man on a horse with iron shoes. After I bring Nana to you, Naiche, I will go alone to find their horse sign.”
Chokole asked Naiche in a pleading voice, “Let me go with Juh. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. I can show him the ridge where I saw the tall man on his black horse, and the white man with long red hair.”
“It was the red-haired one and MacCallister you saw?” Naiche asked, for the revelation caught him off guard. The prisoner they had left to die in the desert said that Falcon MacCallister was an Indian fighter from the northern regions. Perhaps MacCallister was not as smart or as cunning as they first thought, to ride out in the open. But how had Mickey Free gotten ahead of them to join MacCallister? Free and the soldiers were still far to the north, according to his scouts.
“Yes, the one called Falcon,” Chokole replied. “He did not look down in the canyon even once when he crossed the ridge, and I knew then it was a trick to lure me to the place where they meant to kill me. The man with red hair rode behind him.”
“You are wise,” Juh said, staring south at towering walls of solid rock on both sides of the canyon they followed. “From up high on the rim, a good rifle shot could kill many of us. It is time to change direction when we come to the next fork in this ravine.”
Naiche’s worries had only worsened, now that Mickey Free and Falcon MacCallister were between them and the Mexican border. He wondered again if MacCallister and the other white-eyes were from the Land of Shadows, able to ride great distances as the spirits of dead warriors from another tribe. But why would a spirit warrior from some faraway place make war on the Apache? It made no sense.
Juh continued to study the canyon walls south of them, the direction they had intended to take. “It is impossible for them to overtake us,” he said after a moment’s thought. “These mountains are too rough for a horse to travel so quickly to take riders past us. We have covered many miles, and still we cannot outrun them.”
Cry of Eagles Page 27