Black Apache

by Clay Fisher

  But they could no more close on black Flicker in full warrior flight than they could on Kaytennae and Charra Baca double-mounted on the tall bay horse. So the tactic of Flicker going one way, and Kaytennae and Charra Baca the other, succeeded. It split the Yaquis in chase and in argument. All they caught that night were the further insults in fluent Apache hurled back into their filed teeth by a rolling bass voice with rich black American accents to its Indian tongue. By the time the Yaquis had returned to their camp and run in and saddled their ponies for a more relentless chase, it was too late for that fading night.

  Flicker swam the Montezuma River high up where it bent to cut at the base of our bluff. He landed within ten feet of where he and Kaytennae had gone into the water. Five minutes later he was scrambling over the lip of the bluff, asking, “Where’s Kite and the girl?”

  I started to answer worriedly that God alone knew, when we all heard the sudden nickering of our horses tethered in the draw.

  “Come on!” Flicker panted. “That might not be them.”

  But when we reached the gully, it was Kaytennae and a flushed and weeping Charra Baca who met us there. It was a reunion of greatest brevity but deepest emotion.

  Nor was it one of human happiness only.

  Old Loafer had recognized the puffing mount of Kaytennae and Charra Baca as his tall bay friend, and the old dog’s wild gyrations of both bounding about and wagging of ragged tail led us all to laugh in great relief. At which Flicker said he thought it was all most touching, but he would a damned sight rather be making long tracks away from there than standing around laughing.

  No dissent being voiced, we followed Kaytennae once more. He took us north from the Yaqui camp, following the river. We got into the shallows of the stream after a ways and waded five miles to break our trail from the Yaqui trackers—the very most feared in the Indian world. Then we left the river and struck inland, south by east.

  When the sun came, we could see no Yaqui pursuit.

  But we could see something else.

  Directly ahead was a clear-watered minor tributary of the Montezuma. It was down in a small canyon, well grown with cottonwoods and scrub pine. We could even see the meadow grasses growing in the flats of this beautiful riverlet and its widened canyon. And grazing those grasses and browsing the cottonwood buds and the willows’ newest bark were several fine pack mules and a remuda of good horses. I recognized the old white mare mule that was the belled leader of our stock and next moment heard the reedy voice of Young Grass inviting us to come on down the easy trail from mesa-top level where we were, breakfast was almost ready.

  We rode down, happy as natural children.

  This was Tanque Roqueño, Little Rocky Tank, and Packrat had found it as unerringly as had his friend Kaytennae. We were all blessedly reunited, none were wounded, and there had been no sighting of our retreat, that we could determine, by the renegade Yaquis. For that hour of that fresh new day, we were safe. It was a time to sort out our gods and give them thanks for the gifts of Flicker and Kaytennae.

  This we did, inspired by the politician, Packrat, who suggested, “Let’s pray to all gods at once, including the Yaqui. That way, no god will feel slighted, amen.”

  We bowed our heads in a small circle. It was a delicate, a membrous moment. The thing I remember of it most poignantly was that Flicker and Stella Allison had their hands touching.

  Oh, there was one other thing I noted, cheating a glance as the others did not. Zorra was wearing the most exquisite set of turquoise earrings, with necklace and shirt-belt of the same blue stones, that I had ever seen. Except, of course, upon the pudgy person of El Ratoncito.

  I said a separate little apology for the shameless she-merchant of Fronteras.

  Even if I had to interrupt my chanting of the e’ra pro no’bis, the refrain of the Litany to the Virgin, whose burden translated into “pray for us.”

  I thought it all right under our circumstances to include a prostitute with the Virgin, just the once.

  After all, there was the example of Mary Magdalene.

  Perhaps Zorra also might reform.

  38

  REPORT FROM THE

  CAMP OF THE ENEMY

  The reunión at Tanque Roqueño was permitted to go forward one hour by Robert Flicker. Then my chief of soldiers called us to council. His words startled us.

  In the aroused village of Monkey Woman, both before and after being thrown into the prison hut, Charra Baca had overheard some things.

  Santiago Kifer had come to his mother because of his eyes. Monkey Woman had treated him and a miracle had followed. Santiago could see again. More, he knew from Pretty Boy—just as I had feared—that the map to El Naranjal had been restored. It developed that not only had Santiago’s brute half brother understood what he had watched of the actual citric acid restoration of the ancient map, he also understood every word of English we had spoken in front of him.

  There remained no question what the Yaquis would do.

  Pretty Boy and his broncos lobos, those outlaw rurales, would go immediately on the trail of the Franciscan priest’s small band of treasure hunters. With them would ride, also, Monkey Woman and her firstborn bastard son, Santiago Kifer, he of the inexplicably restored eyesight. These Yaqui vulture troops would not directly attack us seekers after El Naranjal, but rather they would harass and track us until Kaytennae had guided us to the portal of the great lost mine. Then the butchering would proceed. And the first to die would be the cursed black Apache who had killed four of the six men of Pretty Boy’s war party. And captured Pretty Boy’s fugitive wife, the Yori woman. Yes, and humbled and made a dog of Pretty Boy into the bargain, had this black one.

  So much had Charra Baca learned in the camp of Monkey Woman. She had heard what she had heard only because Santiago spoke en Español, and the others replied to him in like tongue. Of the Yaqui language, the runaway wife of the shoemaker of Casas Grandes comprehended not a syllable nor lingual accent. Flicker said not to worry over what she may have missed, but think only of what she hadn’t missed.

  “God knows,” he finished, “what Charra’s told Kite and me is more than plenty. They mean to dog us like buffalo wolves and cut out the weak or slow ones of us by hamstringing when we fall behind or are caught apart from the others. They will herd us toward El Naranjal, and, when Kite has us going into the wings of the orange grove corral, they will close the gates on us and the beef shoot will begin. They can easily check the carcasses for which one has got the blood-soaked map on it. Any one of us that doesn’t understand what I’ve just said can ask for a translation from our friend, the padre.”

  He paused to sweep our intent circle with those piercing dark eyes, and, in that moment, seeing him there in the early sunlight of the meadow at Tanque Roqueño, I had again to think of his physical magnificence.

  Robert Flicker was perhaps six feet and two or three inches in height, as tall almost as the great Texan gunfighter, Ben K. Allison, but a man of thicker thew and sinew. Flicker had no fat on him but did not look lean and gaunt in the manner of my old pistolero, or, indeed, of his gray-eyed lost sister who rode with us now. He, Robert Flicker, drew the eye with different magnets.

  His costume was a combination of Apache n’deh b’keh, high soft boots; thigh-tight Mexican vaquero pants; and an American cavalry jacket with bright brass buttons and sergeant’s chevrons on the sleeves.

  He wore no hat, summer and winter, save that one composed by nature of his thick and savage hair. This hair held, if not an Apache straightness, then only a sort of slight, flat wave in its otherwise wild shag. The effect of Flicker’s leonine face, extremely handsome by any race’s definitions of the male human animal, surrounded by this cocklebur of fiercely untamable hair—which Packrat told me Flicker barbered with sheep shears each spring and autumn—was one of the most powerful and forbidding impression.

  As with Allison and othe
r tall men of the horse, this black American soldier and gentleman-almost, Robert E. Lee Flicker, became of doubled power and beauty when astride a favored mount.

  But even afoot and, as I watched him now, poised and waiting for any of us to query him, the Negro renegade fascinated the imagination.

  As the Spanish say, he “drew the eye.”

  In that moment I knew that here was the warrior to match Niño Bonito, Santiago Kifer, Monkey Woman, and whatever number of their rurale-clad wolf pack might now come yowling with them on our track to El Naranjal.

  It was I, Nunez, of course, who had to answer his demand for challenges to his judgment.

  “There are no questions,” I said to him, when the others held their silence. “What is it that you will now do, Soldado Negro? Have you decided?”

  “I have,” Flicker said. “We’re going to run for it.”

  “Run for it!” I cried, astonished. “You mean that we shall flee? Run away? You, Flicker, afraid at last?”

  He looked at me, white teeth bared in that grimace of his that was a smile only if black-maned lions smiled.

  “I mean,” he said, “that we will run for your orange grove, Nunez. We will bust our butts running for it, comprende? Now get your horse, Father Hunchback. When a nigger runs, he runs. Get moving!” He wheeled on the others. “Mismo al todos, compañeros; montad en vuestros caballos. Al instante!”

  At the order to mount up at once, the compañeros raced to throw saddle or surcingled blanket on riding animal. The women cinched tight the packs, ordered the mules into line. In minutes, Young Grass came to Flicker, saying, “Nosotros somos listo, we are ready;” and Flicker grinned.

  “Well, niña linda,” he said, “when a beautiful woman says she is ready, a man must take her at once.”

  “I didn’t say I was ready, I said we were ready,” the old Mescalero snapped.

  “No matter,” granted Robert Flicker gallantly. “I still know a beautiful woman when I see one.”

  “Gracias to you and God,” the old lady mumbled.

  “Por nada,” Flicker bowed. “Start your mules.”

  39

  THE RUN FOR EL NARANJAL

  Young Grass shouted ugashe, go! at the bony white bell mule. She struck the obstinate creature a tremendous whack with her knobby walking cudgel. The mule squealed, kicked, tried to bite, and, defeated, squatted and blew urine out at the old lady. Whhaackk! Again the Mescalero squaw welted the brute’s haunches. As if by magic, Cosa Dulce, that was the white mule’s name—Sweet Thing—altered her argument. The musical bell about her scrawny neck commenced to tinkle in the tempo of a gaining trot. The other mules came rapidly to its rhythm. The riders of the camp followed in the order of their readiness. Altogether, it was not the quarter part of one hour after Flicker gave order to break bivouac that we were once more on the march.

  I sat with Flicker at trailside watching to see that the company got by in good pace and proper position behind the wary Kaytennae. When the last of them were past, old Loafer, my watchguard of the camp, came up through the dust to bark at me and say that nothing had been forgotten, nothing left behind that would profit the enemy. I turned uncertainly to Flicker.

  “I wish to God,” I said, “that I knew what we were doing.”

  “You mean you wish you knew that I knew what I was doing, don’t you, padre?”

  “Pardiez!” I said. “By damn, that may be it.”

  “You have company, Nunez. I wish the same.”

  “My God, you don’t know?”

  “I haven’t known since Huera died.”

  It was the first I had heard that his Apache wife was departed. I had naturally thought many times to ask him of the woman, for whom I had myself hungered. But always I had stopped short. Flicker was a man of utmost inner dwelling. I knew little if any more of him now than when I had helped him escape the Texas Rangers ten years gone.

  “I am saddened to hear of Huera,” I told him now. “I always imagined that you two went to live apart from the Nednhi. To be alone. I had imagined happiness for you.”

  “There was no happiness,” Flicker said. “Huera never recovered from what the scalpers did to her.”

  “Quita, God forbid such sadness.”

  “When she was gone,” Flicker said, as if not hearing me, “I made the vengeance vow to kill them all.”

  “Surely you haven’t done this senseless thing?” I said, aghast.

  “I have done nothing else the past eight years. Some I followed a year. There were twelve of them. Now there is only Kifer left, number thirteen.”

  “You killed twelve men? You gave eight years of your life to that, to murdering twelve white men?”

  “They happened to be white, padre.”

  “No, Flicker, I don’t think so. Would you have hunted them all down had they been Indians? Mexicans, even?”

  “I would.”

  “No,” I said. “You would not. You still hate the white man, Flicker. You deserted your God over it, blaming Him for what the whites had done to you.”

  “Bullshit. Papist bullshit. I never knew that God you talk about, Nunez.”

  “Another lie. You told me your father prayed on his knees every day of his life, and you beside him.”

  “My father was praying for me.”

  “But of course!”

  “He was praying for me to get a better God than he had. He didn’t live to see how his God answered that prayer. Thank God.”

  “Thank what God, Flicker?” I said, “Don’t you know yet there is a devil? You serve Satan, hating as you do.”

  “More Roman bull manure, Nunez.”

  “No, think. Who sent you to steal the ammunition from Fort Huachuca? Did you do it to get ammunition for Nana and Victorio, as you claimed, so they might fight free of the white man? Don’t you see that, doing so, you only guaranteed more white men would die?”

  “That’s a damn lie. I thought only of helping the Chiricahua get back to Mexico, to go free.”

  “Well, what truly happened then, Flicker? Think about that. You did not get the ammunition. Nana and Victorio went out as planned, depending on you. They were slaughtered by the Mexican and American troops alike. You yourself told me Tule Moon and Go-ta-chai told you of this.”

  “They did. Victorio lost a hundred people. His own son Washington fell. I don’t know how many Nana lost.”

  “You see?” I nodded. “The Chiricahua broken, running for their lives, and who was it failed them—God?”

  Flicker looked away from me.

  “Are you saying it was me, padre?”

  I spread my hands. “You must answer that,” I said.

  But Robert Flicker did not answer it. Instead, he made a pretense of standing in his stirrups to peer back toward the valley of the Moctezuma, looking for Yaquis.

  “We’ve got to go,” he said. “No more talk, Nunez.”

  I at once put up complaining hand.

  “Hold—damnation!” I insisted. “One more question.”

  Flicker checked his restive horse.

  “No, by Christ,” he said. He gave me a final mean stare. “And here’s a new war I’m going to make for you. If you open your ugly little half-breed trap one more time, I will add mestizo backslider priests to my White Eye list. Comprende, Father Bullchips?”

  To this day wherein I set down these memories of our journey, I do not know if he would have harmed me.

  He may have.

  Robert E. Lee Flicker was a stranger to us all, and mostly to himself.

  For that moment, I told him lo entiende, meaning that I understood him, and backed my mount nervously away from his.

  But again I did not know my man.

  “I’m glad,” was all that Flicker said.

  And the air about us cleared of more than the dust of our company’s departu
re. The shaggy-maned badman of Mexican Apacheria leaned over from his horse, patted me on the head as if I were some small saddle-trained dog, and said, “Come on, padre, we’ve got a gold mine to find. Last one to catch up to old Kaytennae is a nigger baby.”

  We both laughed and away we went shouting on our horses and kicking them in the ribs to make them race the wind, and that is how the run for El Naranjal began.

  How it ended we shall now see, and with a terrible swiftness no one of us could then dream.

  It remains that man merely gathers the storm unto himself.

  God still delivers the lightning.

  40

  GHOST GUARDS OF THE TEPEHUANE

  The journey from Tanque Roqueño (near Nacozari) to the country of the Tepehuane Indians (between Durango and Culiacañ, Sinaloa), where the legend held that the gold of the Franciscans lay buried, was in itself a sufficient hell to fill a separate journal. Suffice it for this tale that we forced desert, mountain, jungle, raging stream, sandstorm, cloudburst, freezing cold, and broiling heat, twenty-three days unabated. On the dawning of the twenty-fourth day, we came to the base of rearing 10,335-foot Cerro Huehuento, the great monolith from which, the legend said, the country of El Naranjal must be located.

  In the entire march thence we had not seen one Yaqui behind us nor had a glimpse of Santiago Kifer and his two deputies, Crench and Belcher, much less a frightening view of Monkey Woman and her mad son Pretty Boy.