Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  She looped the knotted end of the mare’s rope over her wrist and settled in to wait. He Makes Them Laugh slid over to sit next to her, and Lozen put her fingers against his lips to keep him from doing something foolish, like speaking. The two of them had acted as apprentices on this scout. They had run errands, tended the fire, cooked, listened a lot, talked little, and ate whatever was left over. For the entire scout He Makes Them Laugh had shadowed her, pleading with her to put in a good word for him with Stands Alone.

  “Has a witch given her a charm to put a spell on me?” he would ask while he helped her haul wood. As she stirred the stew of dried venison and pinole, parched cornmeal, he would hold out an arm that was sinewy and strong. “Look at this.” He would put on a doleful face. “I’m wasting away from love. You have to help your poor cousin, or else you must bury me.” He looked so comical that she laughed and said she would do her best.

  Lozen fell asleep almost under the mare’s belly. She awoke when Victorio nudged her before the sun rose. The four of them draped their blankets across their shoulders and waited. In the milky predawn light Lozen could see that her mare was a blood bay with dark stockings, tail, and mane. She took off her moccasins and tied them together so she could sling them across the mare’s neck. She wanted to make this first ride barefoot because she had someone to greet in her own way, and moccasins would hamper her.

  At the sound of sleepy Spanish voices outside, Lozen took a small run and leaped onto the mare. The other three mounted and took up positions at the perimeter of the herd. Lozen put her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. The key grated in the iron lock. The chain rattled outside the big oaken door. As it swung open, Victorio galloped his midnight-blue stallion through it. Loco and He Makes Them Laugh flapped their blankets and yelled. Lozen trilled the women’s call. The loose horses headed out after Victorio and the big black. Lozen felt the mare’s muscles bunch under her, and she was ready when she reared. As the mare sprinted through the gate, Lozen caught a glimpse of the vaqueros’ sleepy, astonished faces. She let the laugh loose then. The joy was too intense to contain.

  With Victorio in the lead, the herd thundered toward the cottonwoods by the river and the wagon parked there. Absalom was washing his face in a basin of muddy water. Rafe had just set a soot-lacquered pot of water on the fire to boil. He was roasting coffee beans when he heard them coming. He saw Don Angel’s black stallion in the lead with a tall Apache on his back. He grabbed his rifle and leveled it, but there were too many other horses in the way for a clear shot. Then one of the thieves broke away and headed for him.

  Rafe swiveled the rifle toward him. The horse veered suddenly, galloping parallel to the campsite, and so close Rafe could have tossed a stone underhand and hit her. The rider pulled his feet up under him, crouched, then stood on the mare’s back, his bare soles comforming to the horse’s lines; his long, brown legs flexing in rhythm with her stride. Rafe had seen Comanches and rambunctious Texans do the same thing, but it still impressed him.

  As the mare pulled alongside, Rafe realized that the rider wasn’t male. Lozen held the lead rope lightly in her left hand, and with her right she gave Rafe a military salute as sharp as any West Point second lieutenant. He had never seen such a look of joy and mischief.

  “Capitán Pata Peluda,” she shouted. “¿Cómo estas?”

  Captain Hairy Foot. She remembered him. She must have known all along that he was camped here. She and those other red rogues had been watching him, just as they had been watching Don Angel, his vaqueros, his horses, and his Apache-proof corral.

  When she had passed him, she dropped back into a sitting position; then she and the others splashed across the stream in the sandy arroyo. Rafe stared at her until she and Don Angel’s remuda—every horse he owned, by the look of it—disappeared around the end of the canyon wall. He wanted, suddenly and with an astonishing intensity, to ride away with her. He wanted to feel at ease on every crag and in every cranny of this wild country. To live in the cool, shady canyons and cedar-fragrant mountain slopes while the white men struggled across the deserts. To take what one wanted with no fear of consequences. To disdain money and commerce and social constraints. To eat no one’s drag dust.

  “‘To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus,’” he recited aloud. “‘And witch the world with noble horsemanship.’”

  “Henry the Fourth?” Absalom lowered his rifle.

  “Henry the Fourth, Part One.”

  “Do you know that Apache?”

  “Yep. She’s the minx we saw that day we returned Pandora, Armijo’s Apache slave.” Rafe paused. “Armijo’s dead, by the way.”

  “Do tell. What got him? Apoplexy? An irate husband? A cheated peon?”

  “Apache steel. While he was shitting. I’d wager that Pandora did it.”

  “I reckon he’s where he belongs to be,” Absalom said.

  The pungent odor of burning coffee beans sent Rafe back to the fire to rescue them. As he crushed them with the blade of his knife, he thought about that Apache child. What was her name? Lozen? Sprightly? She did keep appearing in his life; but then, for all its vastness, this territory didn’t boast that many permanent residents, and only a few trails crossed it, not that Apaches stuck to the trails except to plunder them.

  Rafe had discovered that some people had a way of crossing his path. Like Absalom here. They had some connection to him that reached beyond understanding. He wondered if he would see her again. And if so, under what circumstances.

  “They got Don Angel’s prize stud,” Rafe said. “The Don has always bragged on his Apache-proof corral.” He chuckled. “He’ll be miffed.” He shook his head. “The Apaches will not stop their thieving ways. In spite of all the powwows, palavers, and promises, they seem hell-bent to keep Mexico and the United States, and every other tribe out for their scalps.”

  “This horse trader I know,” drawled Absalom, “was trying to pass off a skin-poor, spavined, hidebound gummer of a jade, with at least one other serious problem besides. The buyer watches the horse for a while, and then he turns to the trader and he says, ‘Mister, this horse is blind. Look at how he keeps running into trees and fences.’ The trader shifts his chaw from one side of his jaw to the other, and he says, ‘Naw, he ain’t. He just don’t care.’”

  Absalom squatted near the pan and with a beatific smile inhaled the coffee beans’ aroma. “I reckon the Apaches are like that horse. They just don’t care.”

  Chapter 15

  AN EGG-SUCKING WEASEL

  Someone had painted GARGLING OIL and PLANTATION BITTERS on the cracked side of the sutler’s store. The lowslung adobe building stood at the end of the row of them that made up the former Mexican presidio at the Santa Rita mines. Only a single company of American soldiers occupied the triangular adobe fort itself.

  The store’s thatched roof kept the sutler’s wares from the worst of nature’s elements, but not from the worst elements of humanity. Rafe had heard the rumors that the sutler himself, a pole-thin individual named Fletcher, might be counted among those worst elements. Fletcher wore trousers of black domestic, a high-collared linen shirt, and a sanctimonious expression. He quoted Scripture and, according to rumor, sold whiskey to the Apaches. Rafe knew that the whiskey was composed of grain alcohol for devilment, red pepper for kick, tobacco for color, and dead toads and urine for spite.

  According to the peace treaty signed with the Boundary Commission, the Apaches were supposed to farm in exchange for land, tools, and rations until the crops came in. Red Sleeves had persuaded his people to give it a try, but Fletcher hired Mexicans to plant the land set aside for the Indians. He sold the crops, and Rafe had no doubt that he pocketed the profits.

  That hardly mattered, since the government had not given the Apaches even a hoe. Fletcher skimmed the rations intended for his charges, too. Rafe had hauled the beef, flour, and beans, and he could see that considerable shrinkage had occurred by distribution day.

  Rafe’s concern about the thievery wasn’t
altruistic. He didn’t care that the Apaches weren’t getting their full share of the dole, but riling them up with broken promises wasn’t healthy. Rafe was tempted to go against his policy of let-live-and-live and report Fletcher, but he knew in his bones that no one would do anything about it.

  Fletcher’s store was the only one for a hundred miles, which was why Rafe and Absalom stood at the counter. They were paying for their gunpowder and bullets, salt, cornmeal, coffee, tobacco, and a few tins of meat and peaches when three young Apaches entered. Ignoring the stares from the clientele, the boys examined every shovel and button as if they had nothing else to occupy them. Absalom raised an eyebrow and Rafe shrugged.

  He laid on the counter several segments of Mexican escudos and some American silver quarter dollars embellished with a bust of Liberty, who looked as though she would brook no nonsense. “You remember old Chief Red Sleeves … ,” Rafe said.

  “The one who looks like he should be standing in front of a cigar store?”

  Rafe nodded. “His people have the run of the place.”

  “Damned gummint coddles them,” Fletcher growled.

  Absalom divided the purchases between two feed sacks. “What about the Apaches’ raids on pack trains and wagons?”

  “Red Sleeves still pretends he and his people are the best friends the white men ever had.” Rafe threw the sack of cornmeal across his shoulder. “He claims the raids are the work of hotheads from the wild bands in Mexico.” He gave a wry chuckle. “The country’s crawling with Apaches from across the line.”

  “Why?” Absalom followed him out to the manure-strewn ruts that served as a street. Absalom was topped off as usual with questions.

  “Apaches are shrewder than Philadelphia lawyers. They’ve savvied to the notion of the new border. They’ve moved north across it where the Mexican soldiers can’t get at them. The whole breed is treacherous, but the ones from the Sierra Madre are the worst of the lot.”

  Rafe threw the sack of cornmeal across Red’s back and tied it in place. As he and Absalom headed away from the post, they saw the crowd of Apaches waiting at the door of the agency office. They were a sorry sight, shabby and stoic and wrapped in tattered blankets. He had the feeling the blankets weren’t so much for protection against the sharp-edged December wind as to make them feel invisible. They reminded him of a trained bear he had seen when he was a boy. The bear’s handler had pulled the animal’s claws and teeth and kept him on a short leash attached to a collar so tight he struggled for each breath.

  Better that they’re here, he told himself, than waiting in ambush along the road. But still, he couldn’t shake off the memory of the scamp Lozen, standing on that bay mare and saluting him as she galloped past. He wanted to turn around to see if she was among the silent crowd, her blanket wrapped around her, her head bowed.

  THE GREAT WESTERN’S LATEST EMPIRE OCCUPIED A FEW acres of creosote bush a mile from Fletcher’s store. Her husband, Albert, had erected a building of unseasoned pine boards. If Albert’s talents lay in carpentry, his interests rested elsewhere. The pine-board skeleton poked through a mottled skin of canvas, packing-crate planks, and sheets of zinc.

  The board over the door announced that this was THE AMERICAN HOUSE. If it was anything like The Western’s former establishment in El Paso, it served as beanery, bar, hotel, boardinghouse, gambling den, music hall, theater, laundry, barbershop, post office, and brothel. The Western didn’t miss much in the way of opportunity. Rafe was surprised to see her still here, though. Western had a fondness for the army, and the thirty soldiers and one shavetail lieutenant left at the adobe fort hardly qualified as one.

  Rafe and Absalom rode through the gate of Western’s wagon yard. Rafe unloaded his supplies into his wagon. They walked to the American House where the keening of a lovesavaged trio of musicians filtered out through the thin walls. “Mexicans can ‘suck melancholy from a song as a weasel sucks eggs,’” observed Absalom.

  “As You Like It,” Rafe said. He and Absalom had lined out so much Shakespeare in their travels that the response was reflexive.

  They would part company here. Rafe was going north to deliver planks and nails for the barracks the army was building at Socorro. Absalom was heading for El Paso with a load of hay. He had been paid in advance, and the money would get him as far as San Antonio.

  Rafe was melancholy at the thought of Absalom leaving, but someone named Lila, with eyes like sunlight on sapphires and hair like corn silk, waited for him at home. In Rafe’s opinion, Absalom possessed the two rarest luxuries of life: love and a clear conscience.

  When they entered The American House, the musty odor of the walls’ canvas lining almost choked Rafe. The smell always reminded him of his time in the army. Sometimes at night when he’d tried to sleep in his tent, the odor had seemed heavier than a dozen blankets smothering him. He thought it would steal his breath away, like a witch’s cat.

  The American House swarmed with humanity. A host of dogs waited, ever-hopeful, for beef to topple off one of the trays held aloft by the help. The staff consisted of Mexicans, blacks, a Seminole by the look of his turban, and even a Chinese. The clientele included miners, drifters, and cardsharps.

  In the corner, the lovely Mexican woman whom Western called Mrs. Murphy dealt monte in a bubble of civil tranquility. He decided to join that game as soon as he had wet down the dust in his throat, the way Mexican women sprinkled water onto their dooryards on dry summer days. When the game ended, Western would provide him with a señorita who would come to his wagon. She would pretend to love him, at least for an hour or so, and he would love her for the same amount of time.

  The musicians finished their mournful invoice of passion, lies, flashing eyes, and everlasting sorrow and went to the bar to restore their energy. The room filled with conversation and the cicada chirp of cards being shuffled.

  Absalom and Rafe ordered a whiskey each. They leaned their backs against the rough lumber of the bar and surveyed the activity.

  “I’m anticipating with delight a night on a bed,” Absalom confided.

  “Have you seen the sleeping arrangements?” Rafe nodded toward the cloth partition, pulled back to expose a row of cots placed about two feet apart.

  Absalom shrugged. “The Great Western is a laundress. The sheets will be clean.”

  “But your bedmate may not be.” Rafe let the whiskey burn to the core of his sadness at Absalom’s departure and soothe it. “And he’ll almost certainly harbor fleas.”

  “No matter. I sleep sound as a pig of lead.”

  The Great Western’s voice rose over the general din. “Where are you going with that rooster?”

  A dry-goods drummer with a shock of gray hair and a beard to match brought both wayward eyes to focus on her. “Madam, I must rise early, and I intend to use him to awaken me.”

  “No, you won’t. Chickens attract panthers. Had one come through a window last month. Threw my shoe at him, and he made off with it.”

  Western walked over to Rafe and Absalom. She wore a pair of Colt six-shooters in the belt of her purple velvet skirt. The handles nestled under the generous overhang of bosom in its starched linen shirtwaist. The yellow cap of the Third Artillery perched on one side of her ebullient red hair.

  “Mr. Collins, a pleasure to see you again.”

  “I see you’re prospering, Mrs. Bowman.”

  “Busy as a flea in a tar bucket,” she made a deprecatory wave at the bustle around her. “We’re just temporary here. Now that the boundary commission’s left we plan to up stakes and head west.”

  “Where?”

  “The army’s building a fort at the Yuma crossing. Albert thinks the gold diggings will be good up on the Gila.”

  “Do you still have the bathing tub?” Rafe had been in a revery of suds for the past fifty miles.

  “Some Bible salesman shot holes in the India rubber one. Said it was the work of the devil. I guess he never read his own wares or he would know that cleanliness is next to godliness
. I have a horse trough out behind the kitchen. I’ll tell Juanita to heat you some water.”

  “I’d appreciate that, ma’am.”

  “There’ll be a supper set at eight and another at nine. Steak and poached eggs.” Western leaned close to be heard over the whooping of a man who’d just come through the door. “Anything else you gentlemen need?”

  Rafe gave her a wry smile. She winked in return.

  “I have just the one for you,” she said. “Her name’s Migdalia.” She turned to Absalom. “And you, sir?”

  “Thank you kindly, ma’am, but I have a sweetheart.”

  “Then you are blessed.” The whooping continued, punctuated by panther screams. “Rogers, pipe down or get out.”

  “You should stand me drinks. Western,” Rogers whooped again, “I just whipped that old bastard Red Sleeves.”

  A cheer went up from the miners.

  “What do you mean?” Western asked.

  “He came into camp and pulled each of the boys aside, telling ’em real confidential like, that he knew where there was lots of gold in Sonora. Said he’d tell them where it was, but to keep it a secret from the others. The boys got to comparing their stories and realized he’d promised each of ‘em the same thing. I said, ‘The polecat plans to lure us out where his red scum can murder us. Let’s administer a strapping to the old heathen.’ So we tied him to a tree, and I whipped the billy bejeezes out of him. I don’t reckon he’ll bother us no more.”

  Western glared at him. “Did you kill him?”

  “Naw. We let him go so’s he can show the other lice and nits that we don’t tolerate lying and horse thievery.”

  “Hellfire,” Western muttered. “Those idiots will get us all kilt for certain.”

  Rafe shook his head as gloom set in. Despite the treaty with the Apaches, the odds on them killing the unwary were always good anyway. Rogers had just made them better.