Ghost Warrior

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “Are the rocks alive, too?”

  Broken Foot looked around at the high cliffs rimming the valley, the boulders heaped at their base, and at the towering formations of sandstone. “Some of them.”

  “When I was a child, the tall rocks seemed like sentinels to me,” Lozen said. “Like warriors protecting us all.”

  “That’s what they are. You will protect our people, too, all of them. We will need all the protectors we can train. The young men think we can defeat the Bluecoats forever at Doubtful Pass, but I’m not so sure. We will have troubled times ahead, I think.”

  “I don’t feel strong enough to protect everyone.”

  “The old ones, the grandmothers and grandfathers, watch all the children from the time they’re born. They know what each is capable of. This one will be a great warrior. That one will prefer to stay home by the fire. This one will make people laugh. That one will cause sadness to his family. That one will chase women. The other will run away from a battle. They’ve been watching you for years. They’re not surprised that the spirits have spoken to you.”

  “Sometimes I wish they hadn’t”

  “We have all wished that from time to time.” He chuckled. “I prayed and fasted and asked for my power, but your spirit chose you. If you accept the responsibility, you must know how to approach that spirit and any others you encounter. You have to be able to appease your spirit and keep it happy, or it will turn on you. They can be spiteful.”

  “I don’t think I’m ready.”

  “No one is ever ready.” Broken Foot gave a rueful little smile. “The association between a di-yin and his power is like a marriage. It’s different for each person, but it will last all your life, unless something goes wrong. And like a marriage, the union is not always peaceful. Sometimes it becomes strained, and the spirit gets angry with you, or you with it.

  “You can refuse the gift, but you must choose now. You shouldn’t start, then decide you want to quit.”

  Broken Foot smoked in silence while Sister weighed dread, excitement, pride, fear, awe, and uncertainty to see which was dominant. “I want to learn,” she said finally.

  “Enjuh! Good.” He took a breath and started. “Remember that you do not merely pray. You are prayer. When you eat, that is prayer. When you dance, you’re praying. When you sleep, when you chew hides to soften them, when you defecate, you’re praying. But there are some prayers that can call the spirits and persuade them to help you.”

  He started to chant the prayer he recited each morning to greet the day. When he reached the end of the first line, he stopped. The words were different from those used every day. Lozen repeated them. He sang it again and she repeated it again. Then a third and a fourth time. When he thought she imitated the pronunciation, the timing, and the intonation well enough, he chanted the second line.

  Lozen remembered sitting at a curing ceremony for her father. She and her family had sung the chorus of the diyin’s songs. The sing had gone on all night, and Lozen had fallen asleep to be poked awake by Grandmother’s elbow in her side. She remembered trying not to sway as she stood for hours and days during the ceremony of White Painted Woman when Broken Foot sang cycle after cyle of four songs each. Thinking about it now, another emotion joined the dread, awe, fear, excitement, and uncertainty.

  Boredom.

  Chapter 32

  MOVING HEAVEN AND EARTH

  The women of The Great Western’s household referred to her oversize bedstead as El Cielo. They called it “Heaven” because across its mahogany head-, foot-, and side boards, its Navajo maker had carved and painted, at Western’s request, a fandango of cherubim in a gaudy cantina of clouds. On the stout legs supporting heaven, the Navajo had carved the four chiefs of the Insect People who were the first inhabitants of earth—Water Monster, Blue Heron, Frog, and White Mountain Thunder.

  Four of Western’s mustachioed muchachos tilted the bedstead to maneuver it through the door from the inner room. Once they cleared the opening, Western danced alongside, waving her arms and shouting, “Tengan cuidado, tengan cuidado . “Have a care, have a care.” When they dropped it, she loosed a string of oaths in Spanish that made even Rafe blush. Ignoring her, the muchachos picked up the bed and headed for the front door. They seemed to consider her just the largest obstacle among many.

  Western and her household had cleaned up the rubble from a hellacious going-away party the night before. Judging by the number of broken bottles, abandoned boots, pieces of torn clothing, and the still-unconscious revelers swept out with the cigarillo stubs, it must have been quite a fandango.

  Now they were packing to move back to Fort Yuma. Rafe had seen armies break camp with less hullabaloo. The thick adobe walls resonated with shouts and orders in English and Spanish. Women and children ran back and forth. They dropped things, and occasionally, when circumstances warranted, they threw things.

  Rafe felt disoriented by all the activity. Traveling alone at night made him think of himself as the only human being left in an indifferent universe. The solitude of those long night rides still rang like a knell in his bones.

  He had arrived here before dawn as usual, as the last conscious celebrants staggered, singing, into the night. He had fallen onto the narrow bed in a small room off the rear courtyard. Still in darkness, he had risen to consciousness when Dulce, his favorite of Western’s women, slid naked under the sheet and curled against him. She said nothing, but he recognized the scent and the feel of her.

  The delirium her touch loosed in him was more intense than any that alcohol could create. The two of them had made a slow, langorous love that seemed more dream than reality. When they finished, he had fallen headfirst down the well of sleep.

  He had waked after dawn to find Dulce so long gone that the covers no longer held her warmth. He had gotten up, washed in the horse trough, checked on Red, and with Patch at his heels, he had wandered into the kitchen. With stale tortillas, he had scooped the residue of cold beans from a pot and shared them with Patch while the kitchen staff stuffed utensils into sacks.

  Rafe had returned to Tucson after four months of freighting supplies for the Union troops in New Mexico Territory. The only good news to come from there was that George Bascom had been killed at the battle of Valverde. Unfortunately the Rebs also were killing a lot of Union soldiers who had less to answer to heaven for than Bascom.

  Rafe knew it was time to leave New Mexico when recruiting sergeants started eyeing him wolfishly. Besides, he’d heard that federal troops from California had retaken Fort Yuma and were headed for Tucson. He arrived to find that the Rebs had decamped and the Union soldiers had occupied the town a few days before.

  Now he was trying not to think about how much he would miss Western and the assortment of humanity she referred to as her family. Rafe sipped the whiskey Dulce set in front of him as she rushed by, and he savored the frisson caused by her hot breath stirring the hair above his ears. To keep his mind from how much he would miss her and Western, he read the latest edition of the Tucson Times slowly from front to back, and then from back to front.

  The editor usually included a column of instructions on some useful subject or other—how to shoe a horse, or build a flutter mill, or rive shingles. This week he offered his readers advice on how to kill Apaches. He suggested mixing brown sugar with strychnine and pressing it into cakes. One could wrap the cakes in cloth bags and tie them to the saddle. “When pursued by the red vermin,” he wrote, “cut the sacks loose and return in an hour or so to collect a crop of hair from the corpses.” He added a postscript, “The method works equally well on Navajos, coyotes, and rats.”

  Western approached, curly strands of damp red hair clinging to her forehead. She pushed them away with the back of her hand.

  Rafe rose politely, and while he was up, he put his own hand on the back of the chair. “Do you need to load these?”

  “No.” Western sat down. “A gent has offered to take the whole kit and caboodle. He wanted to buy my girls, to
o. I said they go with me, if they want to.”

  Rafe thought about asking Dulce to stay with him. He tried to imagine living on a small rancho with her. He would plant corn and raise some cattle. She would keep his clothes clean and neatly patched, and his belly full of tortillas, beans, and chiles. If he married her, he would have to stay with her, to protect her from the Apache raids. He would have to look at the same view every day. He knew he couldn’t do it. He knew he would only break her heart.

  Western broke into his reverie. She gestured to the people still scurrying past her. “What was it Poor Richard said in his almanac, ‘A few moves are as bad as a fire’?”

  Rafe chuckled. “You could stay.” That would solve the problem really. Dulce would be waiting for him here whenever he returned from his wanderings.

  “My Albert is certain that the diggings near Fort Yuma will produce gold and silver in quantity.”

  Rafe couldn’t bring himself to tell her that he had seen her Albert in Mesilla in convoy with the young widowed wife of a miner. Albert seemed to have been consoling the widow very effectively.

  Rafe handed Western a piece of paper, creamy-colored, stiff as parchment, folded in thirds, and sealed with a circle of red wax. “Don Esteban sent you this.”

  Sarah stowed the letter in the waist of her skirt, next to her pistols. “I thank you kindly, Rafe. Is the don doing well?”

  “Very well.” Rafe knew Sarah would ask Mrs. Murphy to read the letter to her later. Rafe would never embarrass her by offering to read it, thereby letting slip that he knew she couldn’t do so herself.

  Sarah leaned forward and lowered her voice. “We’re leaving the strongbox till last. Bring your saddlebags ’round back after sundown, and we’ll transfer your money.” She crossed her arms, as though about to offer him the deal of a lifetime. “Of course, I can give you fifty thousand dollars in paper money for those double eagles of yours. The paper’d be easier to carry.”

  “That would be Confederate currency, would it not?”

  Western gave him a green-eyed grin. “Guaranteed theftproof.”

  “That’s the only thing guaranteed about them. I hear that since the Rebs left, people have been using their paper money in the privies.” Rafe let the whiskey burn down his throat. “What do you hear about the general in charge of the California troops?” Rafe figured Western would know. News stopped here first, even official army dispatches.

  “James Carleton? I met him at the market shortly after the troops arrived.” Her smile soured a bit. “He’s thin as a windlestraw, pale as a peeled turnip, and as gloomy as if his mother had just died owing him two dollars.” She glanced toward the door. “Speak of the devil.”

  The tall officer took off his hat and peered into the dimness of the American House’s interior. “Mrs. Bowman, good day to you.” He looked distinctly uncomfortable at being here, and he wasted no time on amenities. “Perhaps you could tell me where I might find a Mr. Rafe Collins.” He had the pinched accent of someone from the spare, cold northern states—Maine, maybe, or Massachusetts.

  “You might find him sitting here with me, General. Won’t you join us?” Sarah produced a bottle and set it on the table.

  “I do not touch spiritous drink, Mrs. Bowman. ‘Nor thieves, nor coveters, nor drunkards, nor revilers shall inherit the kingdom of God,’” he intoned.

  “I suppose,” said Western. “But there you have Jesus turning all that water into wine at the wedding. Don’t you reckon he inherited the kingdom?”

  Carleton pretended he didn’t hear her. Standing as though on parade, he turned his gray eyes to Rafe. Rafe had seen musket balls with more mercy in them.

  A George Bascom departs this mortal coil, he thought, and a James Carleton arrives. God does have a sense of continuity.

  “Mr. Collins, you have been recommended as a scout and a driver who knows the Overland Trail better than anyone in the Territory.

  Rafe glanced at Western. She shook her head.

  “Twarn’t me, Rafe. Though it’s true, no one knows the trails like you do.” She smiled up at General Carleton, obviously amused by his discomfort at being in her den of iniquity. “Apache arrows bounce off Rafe Collins like pebbles off an India-rubber bathing apparatus.”

  Talk of bathing apparatuses turned General Carleton’s face as scarlet as the trim on his starched uniform. “Captain Cremony said I should try to find you, Mr. Collins, if you were still alive.”

  “Would that be the John Cremony who served on the Boundary Commission back in ’50, ’51?” Rafe asked

  “It would. He’s in charge of my cavalry troops.”

  “You would have to hire me and my rig. I plan to buy a wagon today and a team of mules.” Though, to tell the truth, Rafe had no idea where he’d find enough mules to make up a span, unless he bargained with the Apaches, who’d stolen most of them in the territory.

  “Then we will pay you as an independent contractor. Captain Cremony will put you on the rolls.”

  In his years in the army, Rafe had met plenty of Carleton’s ilk. If the word martinet hadn’t been coined to fit him, then he had been created to define the word. He was the sort who mistook bluster for the aura of command. Carleton raised two fingers and touched the air where the brim of his hat would be if he were wearing it. He turned on his polished heels and left.

  “He fair bristles with dispproval, don’t he?” observed Western. “He’s a God-fearing man and an Apache-hating man.”

  “Most men hate Apaches. Even the Apaches hate each other.”

  “Not like this one, Rafe.” Western stared at the door through which Carleton had just hurried, knocking aside a couple of muchachos in his flight. “Not like this one.”

  RAFE WAS MORE AT HOME IN WAGON YARDS THAN ANYWHERE else. He felt a muted joy and an intense satisfaction in the beauty, practicality, and toughness of wagons. He liked to put a hand on them, to feel the rough wood of their frames and the cold iron of their fittings.

  Apache and Mexican bandits had put an end to freight hauling. These wagons had been parked a long time. Their condition hadn’t improved any in the four months Rafe had been away. Grass and bushes grew between the spokes. Canvas rotted on their ashwood hoops.

  The one Rafe wanted stood in the same place he had last seen it. It was an old Wilson wagon, the sort the government used during the recent war against the Mormons. The iron fittings had rusted and would have to be replaced, but even in this dry climate, the wooden body did not have to be wedged to make it fit tightly. Its makers had used oak for the framing, gum for the hubs, hickory for the axletrees, and poplar for the siding. He could find no knots or soft spots.

  “If you’s fixin’ to buy her, Marse Rafe, you’s made a good choice.”

  Rafe whirled around. “Caesar!” He held out his hand, and with no hesitation Caesar’s huge fingers enveloped it. His grip was strong and sure, and Rafe could find nothing of a slave in it. Caesar’s haunting hazel eyes looked directly into his.

  “I’s sure glad to see you, Marse Rafe. I thought those Apaches might have caught up with you. Then I saw Red over yonder at the stable, and I knew they hadn’t.”

  “It hasn’t been for lack of trying.” Rafe and Caesar walked around the wagon, studying it from every angle.

  “When you buy this here wagon,” Caesar said, “I could help you fix it up. I’s learned a thing or two about ’em.”

  Rafe lifted the mildewed canvas and looked inside while he searched for the best words to break sad news to Caesar. “Are you driving for the army?”

  “Yes, sir, thanks to you, sir.” Caesar slid him a sideways smile. “All that training you gave Marse Absalom and me came in handy.”

  “How is Carleton to work for?”

  Caesar shrugged. “I stays out of his way. He surely hates Apaches, though.”

  Rafe found it odd that two people would mention a fact that applied to so many. “Does he hate them more than most?”

  “Yes, sir, he does.”

  Rafe knew
he couldn’t avoid the subject any longer. “I saw Absalom when he rode through on his way back.”

  “Did you now?” Caesar’s face lit up. “I was thinking of going east once’t the Yanks have whipped the Rebs. Helping out on the farm with him and Miss Lila. I ’spect the slaves will all be freed then and he’ll need a hand.”

  “He was killed.”

  “Apaches?” Caesar squatted, sat back on his heels with his elbows resting on his knees, and pretended to study the broken rear wheel.

  Rafe leaned against the wagon bed, glanced sideways, and saw a glitter of grief in Ceasar’s eyes. “I don’t think so,” he said gently. “Remember Pandora?”

  “I do.” Caesar pretended to wipe his brow on his arm.

  “She and that little horse thief they call Lozen brought his body to me, must’ve been ten years ago at least.”

  “‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’” Caesar said.

  Rafe knew Caesar was referring to Absalom, and he wasn’t surprised that he could quote Shakespeare. He had heard Absalom and Rafe recite the Band for hours, for days, for weeks on the trail.

  “‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,’” Rafe added.

  “‘It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.’”

  “He was a good man,” Rafe said. “Merciful and just.”

  “Yes, sir, he was that. Do you know where he’s lying?”

  “I buried him under a cottonwood on a pretty hill near a stream in the mountains not far from Pinos Altos. Lots of sunlight in winter and shade in summer. Birds singing all year round. It’s a place I’d like to spend eternity, if I had a choice.”

  “General Carleton reckons to use the infantry to secure the spring at Doubtful Pass. Then the wagons will follow with the cavalry as escort. He plans to build a supply depot at the Pass. Once’t the army has dug in its heels there, I’d like to find Marse Absalom’s grave.”

  “I’ll take you to it, but the Apaches might have other plans for that spring at the pass. It’s a proper place for an ambush.”