by Clay Fisher
“Anh,” croaked old Young Grass. “Among our people, if you are not somebody, then you are nobody.”
“I am an Apache, anciana,” Charra said impulsively. “You will see. We are the same blood.”
The Mescalero squaw raised her head. The seamed face studied the freshness of the young girl. The slitted pouches of the eyeflesh parted to show a moment’s glitter of dead-black Apache pupil. “Never,” was all she said.
And that was the ending of our happy day at Hueco Perdido, the lost water hole of the Apache people. It was to be the last day, too, of my black robe’s sheltered innocence, both of heart and high purpose.
This was God’s place.
Tomorrow we would be in Lucifer’s.
10
GOING TO COCHISE
Young Grass halted us at midnight. We were well into the Dragoon Mountains, even by moonlight a pitiless and foreboding range. She had found water again, however, with even a patch of scant grass beside it. “Goat Eye Tank,” she said. “Apache water. Everybody rest here.”
We took her at her word, dropping to the barren earth like so many lifeless stones. Young Grass would not let us go to the water hole but brought each of us a share of its precious fluid in the horse-gut bota she carried, asling, over scrawny dark shoulder. “We must leave the tank as it was,” she explained. “This is not possible, should I permit White Eyes, like yourselves, to mar the edges of the hole.”
“But, God’s name,” I protested, “it is solid rock. How might we damage it? And, for that matter, whereby do you call us White Eyes? We are one Mexican woman, one young Apache girl, and one mestizo priest of Mexico.”
“As for leaving your sign on the rock, you would do it, believe me. An Apache would know I had brought you here.”
“Do you say this is forbidden to others?”
“Yes, if the Apache knew I had brought you here, it would go unhappily for me.” She paused, reaching to reassure me with her patting hand. “But do not fear, little priest,” she smiled. “We are not apt to meet my people by night, and by day we shall all be far away from here. Coming in darkness and by only the light of the moon, none of you could ever find it again.”
I conceded the unlikelihood of such a return to Goat Eye Tank, quita! And thanked the old lady for bringing the water in her pony-intestine bag to each of us. Then I said to her, “Now, when we travel on, will the way lie downhill? It seems to me we are on the divide here. Is this so?”
“Yes, Jorobado,” she answered, “but we will not all go downhill. Two of us will climb upward from this place.”
Nerves tightening, I sensed the Indianness here. Old doubts of red reliability leaped within me. A man who is even one-half of the white blood will never wholly trust an Indian, except that he continually forces himself to the chore.
“Mother,” I said, “you have not told us something.”
The Mescalero squaw rested on the long cudgel she employed as crutch and cane upon the march. Braced thus, she gestured to the north. “Do you see that dark headland rearing there?” she said. “That is where Josana must go to find her mother’s people, and where I must go to guide her. You and the fornicator will go on to the mining camp, downward.”
“You promised to guide us to Headstone,” I charged. “We hold you to your Apache vow. Will you break it?”
“Listen, Jorobado,” the old woman said, “you and the milk cow can find Headstone by yourselves. The girl would never reach the Chiricahua without me, and I vowed also to help her do that. Look again to the north.”
A knowledge came to me, as I turned once more to scan the grim, great headland. “Cochise’s stronghold!” I guessed excitedly aloud, and the old lady said, “Yes, it is where the Chiricahua will be in a bad time like this. I can take the girl there with safety. You would be killed in the pass.”
“Indians!” I burst out. “Ingrates, all of you!” I glared at the withered Mescalero. “But for me, Josana would not be alive to look for her Apache mother!”
Instantly, the old harridan was contrite. She put bony hand gently to my indignant shoulder. “I will remind the Cochise people of that fact,” she told me. “Perhaps they will honor it and not kill you when they find you still here at their tank in the morning.”
When I stubbornly pursued the argument of her loyalty, Young Grass only shrugged that, should I persist in this cháchara, this chitchat, the sun would come and catch us all still sitting there. “On the other hand,” she concluded, “if we all go now, we may each live a long time yet.” She straightened, gripping the mesquite walking cudgel. “Come, Josana,” she said. “We go north.”
Without further word or other farewell for either Zorra or Jorobado, the ancient squaw limped off into the moonlight. We could see the tracery of the footpath going northward and climbing steeply even within our limited view. Charra Baca plainly did not know what to do. But God answered her quandary through his servant, Father Nunez. I embraced her strongly. “Go, daughter,” I said. “You came to find your people. I came to seek the gold of El Naranjal. Our paths must divide here. Go with Young Grass, or you may never find your true home, your own people. Vaya, Charrita mia. Do not be afraid, for God has revealed this advice to me.”
There were, of course, some salted tears, but the foster-mother Zorra enlisted herself on the side of God and Nunez, carrying the last hesitations.
“Remember,” she encouraged Charra, “this is God’s little padre. Didn’t we name him that? Of course. I wouldn’t trust an ordinary priest to confess an angel, but Father Rat Turd, here, well, he is in business for himself. If he says his God gave him the word, believe it. Hurry, now. That old bastard isn’t waiting one step for you.”
Charra ran off after Young Grass, sobbing the first three or four strides, then commencing to laugh and call out to the old lady to wait for her, that she was coming, and Young Grass would never regret guiding her.
It was at this point, the two of them having come together at a yon turn of their goat path of a trail northward, that I recalled something: The Mescalero crone had forgotten to describe for me the remaining trail to Headstone. I screeched as much out to her, begging her to hear me and to come back and fulfill her word to Padre Jorobado.
Well, an answer did come. It was thin with distance and twisted by echoing among the rockslides, yet I made it out clearly. It was the voice of Young Grass and what it told me was completely Indian, and particularly Apachean. “Go downhill,” she shrilled, “or go to hell.” Then, in a reedy croak of postscriptum that I held to be insufferably childlike in its Indian pride, “Young Grass and Josana are going to Cochise!”
Well, Zorra and I had to face it.
Go downhill or go to hell.
Mexican whores and half-breed priests weighed not a sucking pebble’s gross in the Apache scale of human values. Zorra and I were worth less than two of those pony droppings the Mescalero hag had mentioned knowing by name throughout this southwest part of the Arizona Territory. But one thing I did know. Whatever we were worth right then, we would be worth considerably less come the new day, providing the Chiricahua caught us at Goat Eye Tank. Apache water was not priest water. Or whore water. I caught the eye of Zorra and nodded.
“Well, mujer,” I said, straightening as much as God had designed my backbones to permit, “let us go downhill. There is no visible trail, to be sure. However, I shall ask God to direct our progress. Perhaps he knows the way to Headstone.”
“Downhill is better than hell,” Zorra said. “You and God go ahead, padre. If he leads you over a cliff, I can always switch off and take the road to the other place. I understand that is downhill, too.”
“Gird up your loins,” I advised, starting out down the mountainside.
“You may be sure of that, Father Rat Filing,” the insolent bawd replied, stumbling to come after me. “In my art, the ungirded loin earns a leper’s fee.”
“B
e still,” I commanded her. “Don’t you ever think about anything but business?”
“Do you?” she answered succinctly.
I did not respond, but went sliding and falling down the rocky slot which I prayed was the trail to Headstone, Arizona. I knew Zorra followed me from her unmentionable cursing of the dark and body-bruising way. We continued the descent in excess of two brutal hours, coming out at last on a high, desolate bench overlooking a parched river valley out of which a wagon road climbed to pass along the bench southerly from our interception of it. In desperation we guessed this must be the route to the great new mining camp we sought.
“Praise His name,” I panted to Zorra. “We are saved.”
“You may be saved,” she said. “I’m starved. Get out of my way, Nunez, I’m going into town and find work.”
She did not wait, but set out at a doubled pace. Not relishing the dark and windy bench, I hobbled after her. And in this fashion, at three ante meridiem, in the hour just before moon set, we came to the fabled bonanza diggings of the Schieffelin Ledge, at Headstone, Arizona.
11
DOOMED IN TOMBSTONE JAIL
Approaching it, we saw the mining settlement to be in a state of high disturbance. It was lighted by lantern, lamp, torch, and bonfire. At first we believed it to be burning, and we commenced to run, fearful to find it in ashes. Drawing yet closer, we saw that people by the hundreds were in the dusty streets. Riders galloped the main thoroughfare. Men on foot crowded, shouted, cursed, and bellowed in senseless laughter. The air being restless, as it is at three in the morning, and set in our direction, we could smell the raw stink of the Anglo whiskey. Coming shortly to the town’s outer edge, we made halt to consider our course. By chance we crouched beneath a large, poorly carpentered sign nailed to an ancient yucca stalk.
“Aha, Nunez,” Zorra said. “Does it say Headstone?”
I glanced up. Of course the sign did not read Headstone. Rather, it proclaimed the place to be Tombstone. Charra Baca had been correct. I admitted this graciously to my companion. The maid of Fronteras was forgiving.
“Mierda, priest,” she laughed. “What does it matter who is right about the name? We have found the place.”
“A true thing,” I agreed. “Now what?”
Zorra frowned quickly at the query.
“Listen, Nunez,” she said, “here we part. It cannot help me in my business to be seen with a priest. Nor will it help the priest, either. So, good-bye. I hope you find your gold.”
She departed my side before I might say her aye or nay. I called after her, but I had served my purpose in finding for her the new mining camp with its many rich Americanos. For another moment I shivered under the unpainted boards of the sign, then plucked up my brown robes and scuttled after my onetime housekeeper of Casas Grandes. However, she had already out-distanced me. Nor would she respond to my cries. By the time I had taken to cursing her for abandoning me, I had come into the principal avenue of Tombstone, Arizona.
After that, I was given no opportunity to search for the foster-mother of Charra Baca. It was all I might do to save my own situation. Indeed, to preserve my life.
Within ten strides of the thoroughfare, I was run down by a four-horse hitch of freight animals. The wagon they drew passed over my body, but God lay with his servant in the cold mud of Allen Street. Tottering up, I was again knocked down, this time by a yowling Anglo horseman, fair into the noxious garbage of the gutter. Finally, I was chased up onto the whipsawn lumber walkway of the street, by the arrival of the Tucson stage. Here, with remaining dizzied strength, I fell behind an alley rain barrel.
This oak-staved sanctuary proved to be an unexpected confessional. From its harbor, I was able to eavesdrop on the streetside populace and to learn, all swiftly, the nature of the mortal sin that Tombstone planned.
Hearing it, I forgot my bruises.
This was not a joyous crowd that coursed the raw dirt roadway of the new camp; it was a mob: a mob that intended soon to take from the town jail a poor blackamoor of no means and no defense and to hang him by the neck! His crime, you ask? The excuse, rather, the mob gave to itself for murder most foul? Military desertion. And ten years past!
But the truth, the real reason—ah, God forgive them.
They were not going to take the “nigger,” as they called him, from Tombstone Jail to kill him out of racial anger. He would not hang because he was a black man, which he was. Neither were they going to hang him for an army deserter, which he also and as surely was. They were going to “take the black bastard out and stretch him” because he had been that day apprehended riding with the Apaches.
Yes, he had been caught in the company of six Mexican hostiles and a lone New Mexican bronco. The “nigger Apache” had been captured when a stray bullet knocked him off his pony in a running rifle fight over near the Fort Huachuca ammunition depot. The Mexican Apaches had made their escape when their black comrade was shot. They were last seen riding south. Two of them were holding up the sagging form of the American bronco brother. The pursuing Huachuca troops reported that the American Apache appeared to be fatally struck.
At these final words, a chill came over me. I shrank farther behind the alley barrel. God save us, that was my black soldier Flicker they had in Tombstone Jail. And it was my Apache godson Kaytennae whom the troops had seen being carried, dying, from the field at Huachuca dump.
Was Kaytennae already dead somewhere in the freezing darkness along the retreat of the Mexican wild ones?
Would brave Flicker indeed be hanged before the sun came to warm the corpse of slim Kaytennae?
What, now, of the gold of El Naranjal and the Apache church that gold was to have built in the Sierra Madre? Was that dream also dead? Shot by the rifle bullet that had killed Kaytennae? Strangled by the hempen noose that would murder Robert E. Lee Flicker?
The questions coursed my mind without answers. I cowered deeper yet behind the rain barrel off Allen Street. I turned my face to Heaven. “Lord God of Hosts,” I pleaded, “can you not send your twisted, unfrocked priest of Casas Grandes one more miracle to go with the map of El Naranjal? Let me pray and let thee answer me.”
I stepped from behind the barrel into full view of the passing vigilante citizens of Tombstone. Kneeling in the mud of the roadway, I commenced aloud my litany in the Latin of my calling. I had scarcely begun the prayer when the Lord my God took action, sending two rude bullies of the town to come upon me from the rear.
My accosters bore large fowling pieces with the barrels cut off short, and each wore a star-shaped medallion of pewter marking him an officer of the civil law.
“Why, lookee hyar, Belcher,” announced the first of them, a keg-bellied lout with greasy blond hair and the mustaches of an Eskimo walrus. “See what we done caught us.” He raised me out of the mud. “I ain’t see’d one in brown fur afore, but I reckon he’s a mackerel snapper priest all the same. Ain’t he, Belcher?” he frowned, worried.
Belcher, a lank brute, mean and dirty as a buried bone, was an educated man. “He’s a Friscan,” he said proudly. “I see’d a hull passel of them in Californy. They ain’t the power of the blackbird ones, but they’re good enough for a nigger Cathlick, I reckon. Lower him down, Crench.”
Crench set me once more on the ground, where I commenced to protest in English against the rough handling.
Belcher was impressed with my command of his tongue but was not to be turned from the mission on which his superior had dispatched Crench and himself. “Sorry, padry,” he said, “but we got us a rush on. Nigger up to the jail’s got about a half hour to live. Nigger knows it and asked the marshal for a priest. Marshal Karper, being a Christian man, said as long as we couldn’t save the black son of a bitch’s life, it was only fair to give the Lord a crack at saving his soul. You agree, padry?”
I nodded, standing to my full five feet.
“We are all sons
of the same Father,” I answered the hulking churl. “Black or brown, or even white. I am ready to go with you.”
Both scowled hard at me. They seemed to realize they had heard something wrong, but they were unable to ferret it out in such short time. “All right,” Belcher said. “March.”
So it was they took me up Allen Street to confess the sins and clear the soul of the deserter American cavalryman, Robert E. Lee Flicker, doomed in Tombstone Jail.
And so it was that God sent me my other miracle.
12
CELL OF THE MAD DOG
The deputies of Tombstone conducted me rudely up the slough of despond. The mud of Allen Street sucked at my sandaled feet and my priestly spirit. It seemed that every misbegotten seeker after the silver metal whom God had ever created was obstructing our passage. The church, never popular in Estados Unidos, was fair sport. To see one of its servants humbled in arrest fired the populace. Nunez was hooted at, even spat upon. But he endured. Even elevated himself.
Such human curs would snap at the robes of Christ; I strode among them as a maned lion in the company of hairless jackals.
At the juzgada, my escorts cudgeled the rabble back from me with their fowling pieces. They would barrel whip them or jam muzzles, end on, into gut or kidney. The beast people fell away and we were safely through the plank doors of the prison.
My gasp of relief was premature.
God’s name, the foul air of the place was unbreathable. We had come into a human zoo. The five cells visible to me were one vara, one pace, by two. Into each of these tiny cages as many as six captives were pushed and sealed by the strap-iron doors. There were no apparent provisions for defecation or urination. A single, sickly lantern lit the place into a half-darkness from whence issued the moanings, coughs, laughings, and puling and puking revulsions of the damned who were trapped therein. It was as a pesthouse in a time of plague.
There seemed in my view but one illumination of pride. Most of the inmates appeared to be Anglos, not my people. I made to inquire of the deputies about this.