Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “Git along there, boys.” With a flick of his wrists he gave the reins a hard snap, and the coach lurched foward.

  The men cheered, and Rafe wondered what Cochise was really up to.

  Chapter 22

  PASSED OVER

  Broken Foot sat on a blanket in the shade, along with Victorio, Skinny, Loco, He Steals Love, and a few others. Broken Foot had just sent the apprentices off on a race to the top of a nearby peak and back. Talks A Lot would probably run himself half to death rather than allow Lozen to pass him. Loco had counted on that when he bet his piebald pony on him.

  “Letting your sister come on this raid was a good idea.” Broken Foot ripped a page from the Bible and rolled tobacco in it. He had stolen cattle from the same Mexican priest who had involuntarily supplied the Bible. He licked the edge of the paper to seal it into a cigarillo. “The boys are working twice as hard as usual.”

  “They’re better behaved, too.” Loco lifted the bearravaged lid of his right eye to see them more clearly as they scrambled up the rocky slope.

  Broken Foot and Loco were right. When Talks A Lot, Flies In His Stew, Chato, and the others weren’t bent double under loads of wood and toting two water jugs each, they were waiting to be sent on an errand. They didn’t grumble about tending the fire or cooking or having to eat whatever was left after the men finished. They raced off across the desert or up a steep slope whenever ordered to. They were careful to use the special words reserved for the war trail. This was supposed to be a raid on the Bluecoats’ horses and mules, but it could easily turn into a battle.

  They listened attentively to Victorio’s instructions. “Do not lie in the shade. Enemies will look for you there. Do not turn quickly to look back. That brings bad luck. Do not sleep until given permission.”

  Lozen had always competed with the boys, but now she was doing it where the men could watch and judge. She was amused to see the effect of that. The pain of Gray Ghost’s departure eased like a healing wound as Lozen stared into the fire at night. The salve for it was the sound of the men’s talk, and the privilege of hearing the stories they told only among themselves, in the language reserved for them. She had discovered a world that she never would have known if she had stayed with the women in camp.

  She paced the boys in the races. She blew the first embers into flames in the morning. She rolled up in her blanket after everyone else had gone to sleep. She didn’t speak unless spoken to. And worst of all, she cooked better than any of them.

  None of that surprised Broken Foot. What did surprise him was that the boys didn’t resent her as much as he had expected. They had known her a long time. They were used to her. They all wore amulets that she had made for them, charms to give them keener sight and make horses docile for them.

  What the boys envied and resented was not that Lozen had invaded their world, but that the spirits had given her magic, and quantities of it. Worse, she used it with the dignity, generosity, and serenity of someone three times her age. If it occurred to them that that was the reason the spirits gave her such gifts, they didn’t admit it.

  BROKEN FOOT WAS WAITING AT DAWN WHEN THE ARROW-head of geese appeared at the horizon, their faint, rackety honks announcing the arrival of spring. Broken Foot thought their song the most awesome of all the sounds in the world. They were calling to him, inviting him to come north with them. He lifted his chin, spread his arms out from his sides, and imagined joining them in flight.

  If he could fly, his shriveled leg wouldn’t matter. If he could fly, maybe the warriors would have voted him leader of the Warm Springs band yesterday after Skinny announced that he was giving up the position. Everyone agreed that Broken Foot was brave, experienced, and wise. They knew his Goose magic made him tireless and strong. They came to him for advice, for war medicine, for ceremonial sings, and for amulets. In spite of that, they chose a younger man, a handsomer, more vigorous man, one who drew people to him with the quiet force of his character. They chose Victorio.

  Broken Foot loved Victorio as a son. He admired him as a warrior and respected him as a man. Broken Foot knew Victorio deserved the honor, but he had thought he himself had a chance in spite of his limp. The men of the Enemy People to the south had elected Long Neck as their leader, even though he stuttered so profoundly he had others speak in council for him. Crook Neck’s head canted at an acute angle, but the Mescaleros to the north picked him to lead them. A crippled leg, though, that was different.

  At least, Broken Foot thought with a grim smile, he had a reason for not being chosen. The warriors passed over Loco, too, and his only physical defect was his scarred face and his bear’s temper. At Broken Foot’s urging, Victorio had chosen Loco as his second, but Broken Foot knew that was small consolation for him.

  In his cap covered with goose feathers, Broken Foot looked like a large, ungainly bird himself. He had increased the resemblance by painting a broad, black band across his cheeks, nose, and eyes, forehead and temples. He had painted the lower half of his face and his neck white following the curve of his jaw.

  The annual flight of the geese always awed Broken Foot. Each spring they left from farther south than any of The People had traveled. They passed over this country and flew to a land where, Broken Foot had heard, the snow never melted, not even in the low country. In the fall, they reversed directions and did it again with their young trailing them. Many birds traveled with the seasons, but in Broken Foot’s opinion, the geese were the most powerful flyers. As they soared overhead Broken Foot sang to them, asking them to share their stamina with him.

  When their calls faded, he climbed down from the flat rock jutting out over the water. He limped to the cottonwood grove where the women were pulling the hide coverings off their lodges and folding them. They had banked the fires and stacked the bed frames. They were preparing for the annual trading trip to Alamosa.

  He had to pass She Moves Like Water’s camp to reach that of his wives, and Grandmother set a gourd of soup on a log for him. The last handful of acorn meal thickened it a little. Potatoes bobbed in it, and a few early onions. Grandmother went back to packing utensils and old blankets onto her pony. Lozen and María folded the hides from Grandmother’s lodge. Six years of wind, rain, and hot sun had long since torn and rotted the canvas Victorio had taken from Hairy Foot’s wagon in the Jornado del Muerto.

  Corn Stalk and She Moves Like Water loaded the pouches of dried meat and bundles of tanned hides onto the family’s last mule. Winter, the season of Ghost Face, had camped long and cold with them. Many of the Warm Spring horses and mules had ended up simmering in the rusting kettles or roasting over the cookfires. Few of them were left for trading, and more of the people would be making the trip to the Mexican town of Alamosa on foot. Still, everyone looked forward to the spring outing.

  Victorio’s child was eight now and looking more like her father every day. When she saw Broken Foot approaching with the limp that gave him a goose’s rolling gait, she formed her friends into the geese’s flying formation. With arms outspread, she led them toward him. Honking like a goose, she veered this way and that, and they followed her lead, imitating the flight of the birds.

  Broken Foot craned his thin neck and jutted his bony chin. He crouched and snaked his head from side to side. He draped his blanket across his shoulders, grasped the corners, and fluttered them like gray wings. He rose to his full height. He stretched the blanket out as far as it would go, flapped it, and hissed.

  The children had played this game before. They screamed and scattered. Broken Foot chased them among the women. He hissed, flapped, and pretended to peck at them, and at the women, too. They laughed and swatted at him with whatever they were holding.

  The sun hadn’t been up long when the women hoisted their burden baskets and cradleboards onto their backs. Those who were riding put the cradles’ straps over the pommels so they hung at their mounts’ sides. From there the babies could stare wide-eyed at the passing scenery until the rhythm of the horses lulled them to
sleep. Older children clambered in twos and threes and fours onto the backs of the family ponies. The herd boys chivvied the stock into place at the rear. The men took up positions along the flanks.

  The column of horses, mules, and walkers started toward the opening in the cliff where the stream passed through. Usually Skinny led it, but now Victorio rode at the head with his family. If Loco was angry that the council had passed him over for the position of chief, he gave no hint of it. He closed his eyes and napped as he rode.

  Stands Alone and He Makes Them Laugh joined Lozen, and soon they put her in better spirits. Loco and Broken Foot weren’t the only ones passed over in council. The warriors had voted Talks A Lot, Ears So Big, Chato, and Flies In His Stew to the rank of warrior. Even though Lozen had served as an apprentice on seven horse-stealing expeditions, no one had suggested making her a warrior. She wasn’t disappointed because she didn’t expect it.

  People came to her with problems. They called her by the affectionate name of Grandmother. Warm Springs men asked her to look for enemies before they headed out on raids. In Alamosa, the Mexicans would seek her help in breaking wild mustangs. They knew she could make a horse docile without harming it.

  Lozen was glad to be included on horse-stealing expeditions now and then. That was privilege enough. Women had to be able to defend their families when the men were away. They learned to ride well and to shoot accurately; but now Lozen realized that She Moves Like Water was right. They did not become warriors.

  Chapter 23

  TOO MUCH OF NOT ENOUGH

  The last day of December blew sleet like a swarm of ice arrows down the narrow canyon and into Rafe’s face. The year 1860 wasn’t leaving without a fight. Rafe pulled down his hat, shifted the collar of his faded army greatcoat up around his ears, and slouched lower on the seat of the light coach called a celerity. Slouching didn’t make his high perch any warmer. The five passengers had lowered the canvas curtains over the open sides, and Rafe envied them that small protection.

  One or more of the passengers must have brought a supply of whiskey, because the voices coming from inside the coach grew steadily louder and more contentious. Rafe sighed. They had looked a hard lot when they boarded.

  The hardest of them was a barrel-chested, basset-eyed fop with drooping side-whiskers called Picadilly weepers framing his square jowls. He wore a plug-hat, patent-leather halfboots, and the newfangled arrangement of matching wool vest, coat, and trousers. Rafe pegged him for a troublemaker. He hadn’t proved Rafe wrong.

  None of the passengers had elected to ride on top of the coach today, but Rafe’s dog did. She sat with her head up, a lacework of icicles dangling from her muzzle. He had named her Patch, short for Apache. He hoped she had a nose for her namesake, although today she would have to wait for the odors to melt to smell them. She probably couldn’t even detect the cheap cologne that the guard, Toomey, wore. The aroma reminded Rafe of a dead possum rotting under a jasmine bush.

  Toomey had gone the whole hog with the Butterfield look. The same clothes he wore today hung in the window of every general merchandise store from Memphis to Tucson. The style’s namesake had never gotten closer than Arkansas, but one couldn’t fling a dead rooster in Tucson and not hit a John Butterfield.

  Toomey had pulled the legs of his pantaloons down over the tops of the high leather boots, as Butterfield did. It was a style that defeated the boots’ purpose in this thorny country, but vanity would win over practicality most of the time. In warmer weather Toomey wore Butterfield’s calf-length yellow linen duster, silk cravat, and starched, white linen shirt. Now, however, he had on a coat made from a bison hide worn fur-side out Rafe felt as though he were sitting next to the bison itself, though a bison would have smelled better, been more predictable, and more amusing company besides.

  Butterfield’s flat-crowned hat covered the bald spot that captured more of Toomey’s cranial real estate each month. If Rafe ever needed a hat himself, he had only to ride along the route of the Butterfield stage and choose one. The trail was littered with them.

  Toomey shouted over the wail of the wind. “Have you ever plugged an Apache woman, Collins?”

  Rafe almost wished the man had kept himself occupied shooting at everything that moved, and some things that didn’t. Toomey was partial to blasting small birds with his shotgun and shattering cacti into green mist.

  Rafe shook his head and stared at the horses’ rumps. The thought of bedding an Apache woman hadn’t occurred to him. He had seen women of other tribes in the establishments he frequented, but he’d never known anyone to take an Apache except by force. From what he had observed, Apache women were surprisingly demure. Except for that minx of a horse thief, he amended. She was not like any Indian woman, or any woman of any race for that matter, but she was not what he would call flirtatious. He would as soon court an irate badger as woo her.

  “I know they’s standoffish as a rule,” Toomey said, “but I hear if you can get one liquored up, she’ll teach your doodle to dance, and no mistake.”

  Doodle? Rafe almost laughed in spite of his sour mood. Did they call it a doodle in San Francisco, where Toomey came from? Did Toomey’s fellow members of the Committee of Vigilance refer to their doodles?

  To Rafe’s relief, the canyon opened out, and sunlight warmed the wind’s chill, although it still blew with enough rancor to keep him turtled inside his greatcoat. Maybe Rafe was trying to insulate himself from Toomey and the rising storm of passengers inside the coach. He knew that when Toomey got the bit in his mouth on the subject of women, he could neither be stopped nor turned, so the sight of half a dozen Apaches driving about twenty head of cattle cheered him up. They would distract Toomey. All Rafe had to do was make sure Toomey and his Henry rifle didn’t start a war right here, right now.

  The Apaches were approaching the trail at an angle and heading northeast. Toomey loaded the shotgun and his two pistols and put them at half-cock. His Henry stayed loaded all the time. As they came into range, Toomey raised the Henry and sighted on the man in the lead.

  “Put that down,” Rafe said.

  “Between us we have enough pills to make them all mightily sick.”

  “Put it down but keep it handy.”

  Toomey set the rifle alongside the shotgun resting across his thighs. The game he enjoyed hunting more than anything else was the two-legged kind. He often bragged about bagging greasers and maybe murderers back in California. For variety, the members of the Committee of Vigilance hung some of the cuplrits, or innocent men. Whatever.

  Rafe leaned out to the side. He had to shout several times before a hand pulled back the canvas curtain, and the plug hat and Picadilly weepers poked out and tilted to look up at him. The bulging eyes below the hat’s brim and above the weepers had gone from shifty to unfocused.

  “A party of Indians is approaching,” Rafe said. “They don’t look to be on the warpath but keep your pieces ready. Do not fire unless I tell you to.”

  The man poked his pistols out anyway and began waving them. Rafe put all six reins in one hand and took the whip from its boot. He snapped it with a loud crack so that the tip grazed the man’s hand. The plug hat withdrew abruptly, and Rafe shouted after him.

  “Fire those without my say-so, and I shall make you wish you hadn’t.” He turned forward again. “If the ’Pache don’t kill us all first,” he muttered.

  The Apaches made no effort to avoid the coach’s path, or to interfere with it. Rafe halted the horses and watched the cattle and their rag-and-bone escort cross the trail about fifty feet ahead of him. They were dressed as usual except for one. A boy in homespun pantaloons and the rags of a shirt rode behind the leader. He turned to look at Rafe as he passed. If Rafe had had any doubts about his identity, the red hair hanging from beneath his old hat and the upward cast to his left eye would have dispelled them.

  Rafe didn’t believe in interfering with other people’s business, but maybe the Indians had taken the boy against his will. Felix Ward wasn’
t worth saving for the benefit of civilized society any more than his stepfather, John Ward, was; but getting him away from his captors now might avoid a heap more trouble later. Rafe wasn’t prepared to fight for the lad, but he would try to trade for him.

  “Felix Ward,” he called out. “Do you want to come with us?”

  The boy glanced at him, and the sullen expression never changed. He looked away as though he had heard nothing. Rafe and Toomey watched the procession head off into the mountains.

  “Cain’t blame the boy for quitting John Ward’s company,” Toomey observed. “I knew Ward in California. The Committee cast him off for bad behavior.”

  Rafe chuckled at the notion. How low would a man have to sink to be rejected by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee? In any case, Felix Ward was well gone, and no one would miss him, least of all his not-quite-stepfather.

  Rafe hadn’t time to ponder the situation any further. The heat of Plug Hat’s temper had brought the contention in the coach to a full boil. The canvas sides flew up, and men spilled out of them in a roil of fists and heels and oaths. Rafe was tempted to drive on and leave them, but he pulled the horses to a halt.

  All he needed was for one of them to develop the “starts.” The starts were the demented fits that frequently overcame passengers deprived for weeks of sleep and subjected to the fear of attacks by Comanches or Apaches. The fits usually occurred when a passenger did fall asleep, only to be wakened suddenly by noise or jostling.

  Imagining himself to be under attack, the afflicted one lashed out at his fellow passengers. Rafe had also known them to jump down from the coach and hightail it off into the desert.

  He decided then and there to drive for Butterfield only until he saved enough money to buy a wagon of his own. He would return to hauling freight. The salt pork and corn might harbor worms and weevils, but at least they were quiet.