Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “Cochise brought your friend Wallace to trade for his kin. Led him on a rope like a mule to that hill outside. He looked unharmed.”

  “Bascom won’t trade for him?”

  “Nope. The chief is being remarkably patient, though.”

  “He wants his family back.”

  “I reckon. This morning he left a note on the hill.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Don’t know. Bascom won’t let anyone retrieve it.” The sergeant managed to unhook the canteen from his belt with both manacled hands, and in a rattle of chains he slid it across the floor. Rafe hung off the edge of the cot and almost fell into an eddy of his own frailty. He snagged the canteen by its lanyard. It hadn’t much water left in it.

  “Water’s rationed.” The sergeant leaned his head against the wall. “I had to dig the bullet out of your withers with a spade,” he added in a wry tone. “The lead ball had spread, of course. You didn’t like it much.”

  “I remember.”

  “You were a might feverish afterward, from the putrefaction. I put some maggots in the wound. They cleaned it out.” Mott gave Rafe a sideways look as wry as his tone. “We have a generous supply of maggots.”

  “I thank you.” Then he remembered the mules braying and what Mott had said. “Rationing water? How long has it been?”

  “Three days.”

  Rafe remembered that the spring was almost a third of a mile away, at the head of that ravine where the Apaches jumped him. He raised himself on his elbows, sat up, and slung the sergeant’s canteen over his good shoulder. He managed to swing his legs off the edge of the cot and teeter there, as though perched over an abyss. He waited for the room to stop jigging before he stood up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder which the sergeant had wrapped in the red sash from a dress uniform.

  Using the three-foot-long handle of his whip as a cane, he walked outside and through the press of men and filth. The westbound stage had arrived while Rafe was unconscious, adding a driver, conductor, and seven disgruntled but supremely fortunate people to the tally. The mules still brayed in the corral. Patch trotted anxiously next to him as though determined to prevent any more evil from happening to him.

  A soldier stood aside so Rafe could look through the loophole in Red’s stall. The boy didn’t look more than fifteen. He reminded Rafe of himself when he joined the army, a lifetime ago, it seemed.

  The lad’s thin wrists outran the cuffs of his rumpled tunic by at least three inches. His yellow hair slanted across his left eye. Hard calluses paved the palms of his hands, but he hadn’t been in the army long enough to have acquired them here. Plow handles must have laid them down. Rafe wondered if the lad would live to return to that plow and the rich Mississippi delta soil it churned through, or if he would die here.

  The hostler’s body still lay face up where it had fallen, eyes bulging toward the leaden sky. A light snow sifted like powdered sugar over it.

  “The lieutenant won’t let us send a detail out to bury him,” the soldier said. “I been throwin’ rocks at the crows to keep ’em from eatin’ his eyes. An’ I fed your dog and horse whilst you was asleep.”

  “That’s kind of you, son.” Rafe looked out at the hill and the tall stake planted at the crest of it. He considered the wall’s heavy wooden gate, the big iron bolt, and the arm bandaged against his side.

  “Open the gate for me,” he said.

  “Cain’t, sir. Lieutenant Bascom’s orders.”

  “Give me your canteen, then, and as many others as you can gather.”

  The soldier returned with fifteen or so, and Rafe slung them over his good shoulder. He braced the base of his left palm against the bolt and pushed, leaning his body into it. He shoved against the gate with his left shoulder. Lights exploded in front of his eyes, but he pushed the gate open enough to squeeze through. Patch came after him. Behind him he could hear Cochise’s brother Coyundado start his serenade again.

  He climbed the hill, feeling the stare of Apache eyes from the rocky aeries that surrounded the station. He untied the folded paper from the stick. The message hand been written on the back of an invoice for bowler hats, brogans, and Dr. Kilmer’s Cough Remedy. He recognized Jim Wallace’s neat hand, but the words were Cochise’s.

  “I have three other white men now, besides the one called Wallace,” it began. “Treat my people well, and I will do the same by yours. Cochise.”

  Three others. Rafe wondered who they might be. The express rider? Some luckless travelers? Freighters?

  From the hill he walked to the spring and filled the canteens. He gave the sergeant’s to Patch to carry by the cord. She trotted behind him with her head up so it wouldn’t hit the ground.

  By the time Rafe reached the gate, the canteens felt as though they weighed fifty pounds each, but he was almost hopeful. Surely now that the stakes had been raised by three more lives, Bascom would relent.

  He delivered Sergeant Mott’s canteen to him and knocked on the lieutenant’s door. He started into the persuasion he had rehearsed, but he knew before he had waded in ankledeep that he would fail. He could tell by the panicky look in Bascom’s eyes and the stubborn set of his thin lips. The man would not relent. His fragile opinion of his own abilities would not let him do anything that could be interpreted as retreating.

  Rafe’s hands shook with rage as he handed over the note. He wanted to strangle him. He wanted to watch his round, mantis eyes pop from his head. He wanted to hear Old Man Death rattle and wheeze and cackle in Bascom’s throat.

  He thought of trying to find Cochise in that deadly maze of rocks and peaks where he had his stronghold and bargain for the lives of Wallace and the other three men. He knew he could do nothing, though, so long as Bascom held Cochise’s family. He imagined the leisurely, agonizing death the four men faced. He wanted to curse Bascom to eternal damnation. He wanted to rant at heaven over the surplus of boneheadedness that God had added to His ultimate creation, Man.

  Chapter 25

  WOMEN’S WORK

  Geronimo rode in front with Victorio and Loco. Lozen came behind them with Broken Foot and Red Sleeves. Talks A Lot, He Steals Love, and the other young warriors and apprentices followed. They had climbed all morning toward the towers of fawn-colored rock that flanked the narrow defile leading to Cheis’s stronghold. They leaned into the cold wind whining through the cliffs, outcrops, and heaps of avalanche rubble.

  Geronimo was discussing the group of The People who had acquired the Spanish name Tontos, Foolish Ones, or Bini-e-dinéh, People Without Minds. Geronimo now spent most of his time with his sister’s husband, Long Neck, leader of the Enemy People. He seemed unconcerned about the low esteem the Chiricahua had for his adopted band. The Enemy People clawed out a living in Mexico’s Sierra Madre, a territory even less charitable than that of the Chiricahuas. Everyone looked down on the People Without Minds, but the Chiricahuas generally considered the Enemy People to be inferior, too.

  Geronimo talked loudly, so the apprentices could hear. “Those Bini-e-dinéh, those People Without Minds, they’re so ignorant, they eat coyotes, snakes, even fish. If one of them ever invites you boys to eat with him, sniff the pot first. You never know what he might feed you. You could grow all smelly and spotted like a fish.”

  Geronimo was jollier than Lozen had ever seen him. He was the only jolly one. Everyone else rode grim-faced, in spite of his stories and jokes, in spite of the prospect of mules for the taking.

  Geronimo had brought the news that the American soldiers had betrayed the sacred trust of hospitality. They had invited Cheis to a meal, and they had captured not only his nephews and his brother Ox, but his wife and children, too. The Bluecoat chief would have held Cheis prisoner if he had been slower with his knife and his feet. Word had spread like a grass fire through the Chiricahuas country. Already people referred to the incident as Cut the Tent.

  “Why won’t the Bluecoat let the captives go?” Victorio asked.

  Geronimo grimaced, although with h
im a grimace was hard to distinguish from his usual expression. “I went with Cheis when he held council with the Bluecoat chief,” he said. “The Bluecoat is frightened. He’s afraid of seeming a fool in front of his men, and so he’s acting like a bigger fool. I think the Pale Eyes are People Without Minds, too.”

  “And all for that red-haired, crazy-eyed, no-good coyote of a boy,” said Loco. “It was a good day for the White Mountain people when his mother escaped from them years ago and took him with her. Now they’ve stolen him back.”

  “How many mules do the Bluecoats have?” Talks A Lot led the conversation back to the most important point.

  “Fifty-six, if the Bluecoats haven’t eaten them or they haven’t died of thirst,” Geronimo said. “The only water they have is stored in one of those big, wooden pots.” He made a circle of his arms to indicate a barrel. “Even if the Pale Eyes sip like lizards, that pot has been dry for at least a day.”

  Red Sleeves slumped in his saddle, his face trenched from care and weariness. Cheis’s wife was Red Sleeves’ daughter. Her children were the Old Man’s grandchildren. The news of their capture seemed to have hardened Red Sleeves’ spirit like an insect gall on a scrub oak leaf.

  “The Pale Eyes are very troublesome people,” he said sadly.

  They stopped on a ridge and looked down. The four wagons in the rutted road below were the reason for Geronimo’s good humor. Buzzards wandered among the ruins and sat on the blackened wheels. The men of Cheis’s band had tied the nine Mexicans’ wrists to the wheels before setting the wagons on fire. The heat had cooked their flesh until it fell away from the bones, and then it had charred the bones.

  “We took the three white men to trade for Cheis’s family,” Geronimo said. “The Bluecoats don’t care about Mexicans, so we amused ourselves with them.” Geronimo grinned. Nothing made him happier than dead Mexicans, and the more horribly they died, the happier he was.

  Victorio forbade torturing enemies. He and Lozen left the others joking about Geronimo’s cooking talents and how best to prepare Mexicans. They walked to the nearby pile of rocks deposited by Ndee grateful to have come to the top of that long climb. Lozen added a piece of shale to the altar. She scattered pollen to the four directions and then onto the pile of stones.

  She was praying for success with the raid on the Bluecoats’ mules when she heard the familiar sighing in her head. She felt the sucking sensation in her chest, as though the wind that gusted around her had formed a vortex that drew away her breath.

  She turned until she faced the southwest. She trembled as the dread washed through her like a flood through a narrow canyon. When it passed, she stood drained and shaking. Each time the spirit spoke to her the feeling became more intense. She opened her eyes and found the men staring silently at her. The group had grown. Cheis and several of his warriors had come to meet them.

  “Have the Pale Eyes sent your family back to you?” she asked him.

  “No.” Cheis had always maintained a dignified calm, but now he looked about to explode with hatred and rage.

  “Where are the enemies coming from?” Victorio asked.

  She pointed her chin toward the southwest.

  “Did the spirits tell you how many?”

  “Many, I think, but they’re far away.”

  “My wife’s cousin was hunting,” said Cheis. “He saw seventy Bluecoats with three Ndee prisoners. He thinks the Ndee are Coyoteros. The Bluecoats are on foot, but they should arrive by midday tomorrow.” He looked down at the wreckage below. “The Bluecoat chief took our men from their families. I didn’t stop those men’s women from killing the Pale Eyes we captured from those wagons. They killed the white man from the stone house, too, and left the bodies where the Bluecoats will find them on their way here.”

  “The Bluecoats will make war on us,” said Victorio.

  “Let them.”

  BY THE WAN LIGHT OF THE SETTING MOON LOZEN LAY ON her stomach near the spring. She could feel the ground’s chill through her doeskin shirt and breechclout and on her bare thighs, but the scrub oaks that hid her from sight also provided some shelter from the cold wind. Victorio had held her chin steady while he painted a broad, reddish-brown stripe of deer blood mixed with mescal paste across her cheeks and the ridge of her nose. The horizontal stripe matched his own and those of the men who rode with him. It also confused the familiar contours of her face so that it would blend with the light and shadows of the desert.

  Lozen had wondered if Victorio could hear her heart pounding while he did it. The expedition for army mules had turned into something much more significant and dangerous. She had expected to be sent home, but the men had voted to allow her to come with them.

  Lozen rubbed dust into her hair. She broke leafy twigs from the scrub oak and stuck them into her headband. She draped her faded blanket over her back and legs, rested her chin on her crossed hands, and vanished into the landscape. In less time than it took a nearby spider to wrap up the fly thrashing in her web, the rest of Victorio’s men turned into stones and earth and bushes as magically as she had.

  Cheis wasn’t interested in mules. He wanted to lure the Bluecoats out so he could kill them and rescue his family. If he could not do it this morning, all would be lost. He did not have enough men to take on these soldiers combined with the ones who would be arriving soon.

  Through the branches of the scrub oaks, Lozen could see the spring’s rock-lined basin. She could hear the desperation in the mules’ distant braying. The Pale Eyes would have to water them soon, or their corpses would start piling up behind that wall. But the Pale Eyes operated on assumptions and beliefs that were incomprehensible to reasonable people, so she and the spider waited.

  The sun had risen when the whistle of a hawk signaled that the Pale Eyes were opening the gate. Lozen stayed relaxed. Before she and the others took the mules, they would let them drink enough to slake their thirst, but not enough make them bloated and slow. They had to be in shape for the long trip to Mexico.

  She could feel the vibrations of hooves through the ground pressed against her stomach. The braying grew louder and more frantic. The hawk whistled twice more. Only two men were driving the mules, and the spring was out of rifle range for the soldiers at the stone house. This would be easy.

  At the sentry’s last, long, mournful hawk call, she stood up and tucked her blanket into the back of her belt. Already she could hear the shouts of Victorio’s men and the pop-pop-pop of their muskets firing over the mules’ heads to spook them. Giving her high, eerie cry, Lozen ran to join the warriors converging on the spring.

  The mules didn’t stampede as they were supposed to. Most didn’t even raise their heads from the water. Lozen flapped her blanket, but as Broken Foot often said, a mule was more stubborn than Her Eyes Open, his wife, on her worst day.

  With shouts and snapping blankets, cudgels and gunfire, the men drove individual animals away, only to have them wheel and dodge back to the water. Lozen was running toward the milling throng of swaying rumps and sharp hooves when she saw the big roan approach at a gallop. Hairy Foot was heading back to the stone wall with his dog racing beside him.

  Lozen stood between him and safety. She picked up four stones, and as she trotted along, she knotted each one in a corner of the blanket. Then she ran at an angle intersecting the roan’s course.

  He saw her coming, but her war paint had changed her so completely that she detected no light of recognition in his eyes. She saw no fear either, just a determination to get where he was going. As he approached she sprinted to cut him off. With the dog snapping at her heels she ran parallel to the roan’s forequarters and tossed the blanket. The weighted corners sent it soaring above his head. It settled like a large bird on a branch. The horse stopped short, throwing his rider over his neck.

  Hardly breaking stride, Lozen vaulted into the saddle. She tucked her blanket into her belt, grabbed the reins, and kicked the horse’s sides. Hairy Foot picked himself up and ran for the wall. She felt a tw
inge of regret at setting him afoot among men who would do their best to kill him, but it passed. Life was hard and death was easy, but if anyone could outrun death, Hairy Foot could.

  Without bothering to put her feet in stirrups that were set too long for her anyway, she galloped away. She tugged Hairy Foot’s carbine from its saddle boot and waved it over her head with a shout of joy. She glanced over her shoulder to see if Victorio had witnessed her triumph. The roan swerved. Lozen turned in time to see the tree limb rush toward her, but not in time to dodge it. The branch hit her across the chest and knocked her heels over head in a somersault along the horse’s rump.

  She landed on her stomach, bounced, and skidded, still clutching the rifle. Gulping to suck air into her lungs, she watched the roan, stirrups flapping, prance up to Hairy Foot. Hairy Foot climbed back aboard, and he and his dog reached the gate safely. She heard the iron bolt slam shut.

  Aching and bleeding from abrasions on her arms, knees, and cheek, she limped to where the men were rounding up the mules. She hoped no one had seen her fall. If someone had, everyone would hear about it.

  She had a rifle, though. As for the horse, he was still hers. Possession had only been delayed. She felt sure she would see him and Hairy Foot again.

  “COLLINS, COME OVER HERE.” DR. IRWIN BECKONED TO Rafe.

  Lieutenant Bascom walked away from Irwin, and his hasty breakfast came up faster than it went down. Rafe could hear the remains of cold beans and biscuit splattering onto the hardpan of the desert floor.

  Rafe winced as he eased out of the saddle. The fall from his horse at the spring had reopened the bullet wound in his back. He didn’t relish seeing what Irwin wanted him to look at, so he used the wound as an excuse to take his time.

  He limped slowly toward Bascom and Dr. Bernard Irwin, the post surgeon from Fort Buchanan. Irwin had arrived with seventy soldiers and three captive Coyotero Apache cattle thieves six days before, just in time to be too late to save the mules. Knowing Cochise, Rafe had a feeling that wasn’t a coincidence.