Some carpenter had strengthened the wagon seat with extra boards, but still it sagged under Armijo’s weight.
“Señor Collins, what a pleasure to encounter you here. We will camp with you tonight.” Armijo spread his arms to include his little caravan, though the arms’ bulk prevented them from ever lying flat against his body, anyway. “As you can see, we reached Chihuahua in safety, thanks be to God, and have returned. On the way back I bought some servants for my wife.” He gestured to the ragged and filthy women and the boy behind the wagon. “General Carasco captured them at their camp outside Janos.”
Three of Armijo’s men helped him climb down from the seat, giving Rafe an unwelcome view of the man’s backside.
It was an arse, Rafe thought, that was big enough to be declared a Mexican state.
Armijo was wheezing like a leather bellows when he finally made landfall. He jerked a chain, and the same young Apache woman Rafe had seen with him three months earlier in Mesilla climbed out of the wagon. She was still beautiful. She still looked lethal.
When she jumped down, she landed on one foot. The other foot and ankle were swollen and bruised a dark purple, and she could put no weight on it. The ankle was obviously broken and must have hurt like the very dickens, but Rafe could see no indication of pain in her eyes. Only hatred smoldered there, a hot and well-tended fire.
The chain was fastened to a shackle around her undamaged ankle. Armijo looped the other end to a spoke of the wagon wheel and fastened it in place with a large iron lock. He put the key into the pouch hanging from his belt.
Armijo nodded to the swollen ankle. “She tried to escape again, so I have ensured that she will not make another attempt.”
“For the love of God.” Rafe turned on his heel and walked away.
“Will we be moving to another campsite?” Absalom asked.
“It’s too late for that, but we’ll hitch the wagons and drive upriver a bit. I don’t like the smell of this place.”
RAFE AND ABSALOM SAT BY THE FIRE. CAESAR MENDED A bridle at a discreet distance. Since Rafe found them sharing a bottle in the wagon yard in Mesilla, he had never seen them give any indication that they were other than a Southern planter and his loyal slave. At five feet eleven inches, Rafe had always thought of himself as a tall man, and strong enough to make a six-mule team sit up and take notice. Caesar dwarfed him in every physical dimension. He worked hard, said little, and never complained.
Absalom held up two pairs of moccasins. The soles and the leather patches used to mend them had worn through. The knee-high tops were scarred. Four parallel gashes ran diagonally on one of the left moccasins, about midway between the ankle and knee. From the size of them Rafe would have bet that a bear had left them there.
“We found these hanging over a low branch where our horses were tethered before the Apaches stole them.”
Rafe took the one with the claw marks. He ran his fingers over the deep grooves and imagined the encounter that had put them there. He noted the neat stitching, the way the strip of leather from the sole had been brought up and sewn in place to reinforce the toe. The style was Apache, and peculiar to the bands around here, the ones who called themselves Red Paints. He wondered, briefly, what the moccasin’s previous owner was like.
“Why were they left there?” Absalom asked.
“They’re a message,” Rafe said. “The Apaches are saying, ‘We walked until our moccasins wore out. Now we have your horses, and you can walk.’”
“You know,” Absalom said. “I had every intention of shooting those two thieves today and taking their scalps as souvenirs. When that horde of fifty or sixty Apaches stepped out of the bushes, I’ll tell you. Rafe, I pissed myself. They could have skinned and salted us both, yet there they all were, jumping around like cockroaches in a hot skillet. They preferred to have their joke and spare our lives.”
“There’s no telling what an Apache will do. They’ll steal stock from everybody, and they’ll kill anybody tries to stop ’em, but their blood feud is with the Mexicans.”
Absalom took a drink of whiskey from his tin mug and stared into the fire. The two men sat in a lengthening silence that Rafe found far more comfortable than talk.
“I suppose you’re wondering about Caesar,” Absalom said finally.
“No, I’m not.”
“His mother was in charge of the nursery at the big house on my family’s plantation. We grew up together, Caesar and I. When we were young, we fished and picked berries together. We raided the watermelon field in the summertime. I taught him to read.”
Rafe made no comment, in hopes that Absalom would not turn loose any more information. He had found that personal histories almost always contained troubles. People didn’t confess good news or virtues. Rafe had troubles enough of his own. He didn’t need to weigh down his heart’s springs with anyone else’s. Besides, the histories of most men out here included crimes and derelictions that could prove dangerous to know.
“My ma died when I was a sprat, and Caesar’s mammy raised me. When she was dying of a fever, a year or so back, I promised her that I would set Caesar free. My father passed on not long after, and as the inheritor of his estate I found myself in a position to make good on my promise.” He glanced at the spot where Caesar had been sitting.
“I thought about taking him north, but slave-catchers are on the lookout for runaways. The laws are designed to prevent a colored person from leaving the South for any reason. We thought perhaps they would accuse me of slave theft as a ruse to throw me in jail and sell Caesar down the river to the rice plantations.” Absalom threw a few more limbs onto the fire. “We decided to slide sideways, joining the Argonauts in search of gold. We wouldn’t be suspected, heading west instead of north. We reckoned to ride clear to California. Since slavery is not allowed there, Caesar can be a free man whether he finds gold or not. When I see him safely set up, I shall return home and marry the beauty who waits for me.”
Absalom reached into the inner pocket of his vest and pulled out a miniature portrait in a double frame clasped shut to form a box. He opened it and held it up. Rafe studied it in the fire’s light.
He felt uneasy, staring at another man’s betrothed, but he couldn’t help himself. The sight of her, blond hair falling in ringlets around the narrow oval of her face, set up a longing in him. It reminded him that there were riches in the world that had nothing to do with gold or silver; but obtaining them was next to impossible and fraught with its own peril.
“That’s an admirable undertaking.” Rafe kept his voice noncommittal, although when Absalom put the portrait away he wanted to ask if he could look at it a while longer.
“When we finish this delivery to the Santa Rita mines with you, we’ll have enough money to continue our trip.” Absalom took another sip of whiskey. Whiskey might set free the demons in some men, but for Absalom it was apparently the key to opening his heart and letting out angels of good deeds. “I have some money hidden away, but that’s to stake Caesar when he gets to California.”
Rafe raised his tin mug of whiskey. “To the success of your enterprise.” But he had his doubts.
With few exceptions, this territory was populated by men like John Glanton, scoundrels of every race and nationality who had only one thing in common. They had committed murder, rape, theft, arson, blasphemy, loitering, and every other conceivable misdemeanor. Some of them came to New Mexico Territory to enjoy a system of justice even more lackadaisical than the one in Texas. For others, San Francisco’s Committee of Vigilance had made life too precarious and liberty too uncertain, so they had drifted east and washed up here. Rafe would not have wagered a centavo that a pampered Southern fop and an inexperienced slave could avoid the snares laid by man and nature between here and California.
To end the conversation, Rafe rolled up in his blanket near the fire. With his saddle for a pillow he went to sleep.
He awoke with a start and sat bolt upright with his pistol cocked and leveled at the shouts and oa
ths coming from Armijo’s camp. Rafe threw back his blankets and pulled on his boots. He kept his pistol in one hand and picked up his rifle in the other. He approached Armijo’s wagons warily. Absalom and Caesar followed.
“The gen‘ral’s lookin’ sour as buttermilk,” observed Absalom.
Armijo waved his arms and screamed. His fury had pumped so much blood to his pockmarked face that it reminded Rafe of the pomegranates in Mesilla’s marketplace. The shackle that had held the young Apache woman lay empty next to the wagon wheel.
“¡Carajo!” Armijo screamed. “Maldita puta india.”
“He’s all in a fester, ain’t he?” Absalom added the obvious. “What do you suppose happened?”
“Looks like that Apache woman vamoosed.”
Armijo rounded on them, suspicion flashing in his beady eyes. “Have you seen her, Collins?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
Armijo waved both hands at his men and shouted in Spanish. “You misbegotten piles of goat shit, saddle up and scour the hills. She can’t have gotten far.”
Rafe chuckled as he watched Armijo waddle off to direct the search. He looked around at a landscape cut by steep ravines and littered with boulders. It was a country of stunted cedars and creosote bushes, cacti, and rank growths of Mother Nature’s malice. It would be sure death to most crippled travelers, but not to an Apache. Broken ankle or not, Rafe was certain no one would find this one.
Rafe glanced up at the sun rising above the mountains to the east. “Let’s hitch the teams and go, or we won’t make Santa Rita by nightfall.”
While Absalom and Caesar brought the mules and positioned them between the traces, Rafe lowered the tailgate of the first wagon and checked the load. The barrels of flour and salt beef stood lashed in place, but he noticed that the large crate of horse shoes and iron ingots near the tailgate had shifted slightly. Forgetting that it would be too heavy for him to move alone, he started to push it back in place. Caesar materialized at his elbow.
“I’ll take care of that for ya, suh.” But Caesar was too late.
When Rafe shoved the trunk, it moved. He also noticed that someone had pried the lid up slightly on one end, leaving a narrow opening.
“What’s the problem?” Absalom asked.
“Someone’s stolen shoes out of this crate.” Rafe climbed onto the wagon bed, took the crowbar from its leather loops along the side, pried the lid up, and stared down into the box. “I’ll be damned.”
Folded inside the crate and staring up at him through the tangles of her hair was Armijo’s Apache slave.
“Did you tuck her away in here, Absalom?”
“I swear on God Almighty’s Holy Bible, I didn’t.”
Rafe studied her warily, as though expecting her to pop out, knife in hand, like a death-dispensing jack-in-the-box.
“I’ve heard of Apaches getting things out of locked places, but never nailing themselves into one.” Rafe turned in time to catch a glance pass from Absalom to Caesar. He stared through narrowed green eyes at Caesar. “Did you do this?”
Caesar suddenly forgot the English language. Mouth half open, eyes wide and blank, he looked down at Rafe in total noncomprehension.
“You shouldn’t have done it, Caesar,” Absalom said.
Caesar recovered his ability to speak. “I couldn’t leave her there, Massa Ab’slom.”
“How did he get the shackles off?” Rafe asked.
“We’re both good at picking locks with a wire. When we were kids, we used to get into the brandy supply my father kept shut up in a trunk.”
“I would have set the others free, too, Massa, but the Mek‘scans stood guard over ’em all night.”
“I’m sorry for any trouble we have caused you, Rafe.” Absalom picked up his saddle. “We’ll forfeit our pay for this run and be on our way. We’ll take her with us on our spare mule.”
“She’ll make catfish bait of you at the first opportunity.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, suh,” said Caesar with uncustomary boldness, “But no, suh, no she won’t.”
“So, you’re now an expert on Apaches, are you?”
“No, suh, I ain’t.”
“Where are the shoes and the pig iron that were in the crate?”
“I hid ’em behind the barrels, suh.”
Rafe climbed onto the wagon bed and looked. Horseshoes were stacked in every crevice around the sides and back of the wagon bed.
“By God, man, you’re as devious as any Apache.”
Rafe didn’t want Absalom to go. He knew Shakespeare, and they had passed the hours lining out the Bard. Besides that, having Caesar along was like employing three men, all of whom actually put in a full day’s labor.
“I need you and Caesar to finish the trip. We’ll hide her under the canvas, but she rides in your wagon. And if she strangles you with your own suspenders, it’s your fault.”
“Can you tell her that?”
“¿Habla Español?” Rafe asked.
She said nothing, but she had been Armijo’s captive, so Rafe figured she had picked up some of the language.
“Usted va con nosotros. Estará segura.” He turned to Absalom. “I told her she could go with us and that she’d be safe.” Rafe sighed. “We’ll figure out what to do with her when we reach Santa Rita. Some of her people will probably be there.”
“They’ll take her in then.”
“Maybe.”
“But she’s an Apache.”
“With them it’s hard to say. I can’t keep all the bands straight, and half the time they seem to be at war with each other.”
Rafe shook his head. In his years in this country he had seen just about every variety of human being, mostly those roosting at the lower end of the social order. For sheer cussedness, wind, and eccentricity, though, the Apaches had every other race whipped.
“I figure to call her Pandora.” Caesar grinned, and Rafe saw the light of a keen intelligence in his eyes. Maybe he had underrated him. Maybe he and Absalom would make it to California after all.
He also realized that Caesar’s eyes were the same dark hazel as Absalom’s. He hadn’t noticed it before.
“Do you know who Pandora was?” Rafe asked.
“Yes, suh. Back in the old days the Greeks’ god, Zeus, he was jealous ‘cause Prometheus done give fire to humans. Zeus made a woman out of clay, and he blew the breath o’ life into her. Then he sent her down to earth with a little box. Prometheus’ brother, he got curious about dat box, no matter that Prometheus warned him not to look inside. He opened it, and evil come swarmin’ out. He set loose all the sorrows that devil us now.”
“One thing remained in the box,” added Absalom.
Rafe knew what that one thing was. “Hope,” he said. “What remained was that sly, old deceiver, hope.”
He wondered what troubles this Pandora would unleash.
Chapter 5
INDIAN GIVING
Sister and Talks A Lot carried a cowhide so stiff that when a gust caught it, it blew them backward a few steps. They collided with Ears So Big and Flies In His Stew, who followed them. Sister and Talks A Lot maneuvered the hide edgewise into the wind and continued climbing.
Sister had scraped the flesh from the inside of it and soaked it in water for three days. Instead of pegging it down to stretch it, she had left it to shrink in the summer sun while the women lectured her on the error of tanning it that way.
Sister knew she should be tending the cookfire and helping She Moves Like Water prepare the venison stew that would feed visitors. The people of Sister’s Warm Springs band had camped near Red Sleeves’ village in the mountains overlooking the old copper mine at Santa Rita. Talks A Lot, Flies In His Stew, and Ears So Big had planned to spend the day watching the men play hoop-and-pole until they saw Sister set off toward the cliff with her hide.
They knew her well. Whatever she planned to do would likely be interesting, maybe dangerous, and almost certainly unusual. But if the other boys found out they had gon
e off with a girl, the ridicule would dog them for a long time, so they had loped away in another direction and circled around.
When they reached the top of the ridge, the wind snapped the tattered blanket around Sister’s legs and whipped her shoulder-length hair into her face. To show her grief for her father’s death she had cut her hair and made her blanket into a poncho. It would replace her doeskin tunic and skirt for the customary time of mourning.
Sister led the way to an old mine shaft gouged into the side of the cliff. Talks A Lot looked down at the steep spill of gravel that covered the side of the mountain and fanned out like a delta onto the valley far below. Talks A Lot guessed what Sister had in mind. It was a frightening prospect, but he couldn’t back out now. He beckoned to Ears So Big and Flies In His Stew.
“You can watch,” he said to Sister.
He tugged at the hide, but she held on. He tried to shove her to the edge of the rock shelf to force her to let go, but she braced her legs and gave him her flintiest stare. He knew how strong she was. When they were about eight, she had wrestled him to a state of immobility that he still heard sly comments about. He also knew she would rather be flung off the cliff than give in. He let go and glowered at her.
“Four will fit.” Sister was gracious in victory.
She sat down and hooked her feet into two of the straps she had sewn on the front. Talks A Lot sat next to her. Ears So Big and Flies In His Stew positioned themselves behind. The riders each stuck a foot out and shoved. The cowhide scraped forward until it teetered on the edge; then it dropped as though the ground had fallen away from under it. The world tilted. Sister stared into a golden abyss of sunlight.
The children careened, shrieking and laughing down the slope in a rumble like an avalanche. As the hide rocked and pitched, they leaned from side to side to keep from flipping over. Sometimes it took to the air, landing again with a kidney-jolting thud. The dislodged gravel tumbled and chuckled beside it like Mountain’s children. The valley floor rushed up at them. The hide hit the bottom of the slope, leveled abruptly, and sped out onto the overflow of gravel. Sister’s sixteen-year-old cross-cousin, He Makes Them Laugh, was waiting for her.
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