The White Mountain people had plenty of them grazing loose. Dead Shot and the boys had told Rafe that Lozen’s nickname was Tlii-yin’iihne, She Steals Horses. Taking her neighbors’ mounts would be a cakewalk for her.
Rafe decided to keep his chestnut with him even when he visited the privy.
Chapter 53
OUT OF THE POT AND INTO THE LINE OF FIRE
When Victorio and Lozen came back from a council, they found Broken Foot smoking a cigarillo and warming his swollen joints at the fire. He wore a shiny tin pot upside down on his head, a sharp, new ax stuck into the back of his belt, and a happy smile. When he stood up, his knees and ankles cracked like distant rifle fire.
“Ha’anakah, you are come.” Victorio and Lozen embraced him.
“Where are the young men?” asked Victorio.
“They’ve camped among the tall pines to the east.” Broken Foot corrected himself. “Some of them are waiting there. The others have come here to see their sweethearts, their wives, their children. Right now, Brother, your son is probably whispering through the back wall of Maria’s daughter’s lodge. He’ll be here soon.”
They knew that everyone would be here soon. They would come for the distribution of the stolen issue goods stacked under She Moves Like Water’s arbor. Broken Foot lifted the canvas that covered the bounty and peered under it.
“Have you been on a raid to Mexico?” he asked.
“No. Just as far as the road to Tucson.”
“The road to Tucson is more convenient than Mexico.” Broken Foot looked pleased and relieved that the man he called Brother had not turned into a cringing dog trotting after the Pale Eyes, like his old friend, Loco. Broken Foot sat down and turned up the heat on his knees again.
“You have been on a raid yourself, Uncle.” Lozen tapped on the tin pot.
“No.” Broken Foot adjusted the pot at a steadier angle. “We took these from a wagonload of things that the agent was delivering to his friends instead of to us.”
“Then the situation at the Tulerosa isn’t any better than here.”
“It’s not good, but I think it’s better than here. The Mescaleros are easier to get along with than the White Mountain people.” He rolled a cigarillo. “Your son has brought you many things from Mexico. One more raid, and the council will consider voting him warrior rank.” Broken Foot didn’t point out that the boy had served his apprenticeship with men other than his own father. “You’ve trained him well. He’ll be a good fighter and a leader.”
Lozen held out the coil of iron wire. “This is for your daughter’s feast.”
“We have decided to hold her feast at Warm Springs, even if we have to fight every Pale Eyes in the country.” Broken Foot took the pot off his head, put the wire inside it, and set it back on his head. “The young men have hidden supplies and weapons in the usual places along the trail south. Come with us, brother.”
“Did you bring extra horses?” asked Victorio.
“We stole some, but the army chased us and took them back. We have only what we’re riding.”
“I went to Big Mouth’s camp to talk to his wife about a sing for her mother.” said Lozen. “The White Mountain people have at least two hundred ponies. They’ll be easy to take. The boys can go with me.”
She was happy at the prospect of stealing horses again with her old friends, Fights Without Arrows, Chato, and Flies In His Stew.
THEY HAD HAD TO LEAVE THE OLDEST AND THE FEEBLEST people behind, but over three hundred women and children and sixty warriors left San Carlos under cover of darkness. Lozen rode up and down the line, encouraging the weaker ones, looking for stragglers, and urging people not to lag.
When morning came, Lozen’s spirits sent her a warning. She joined Victorio and Broken Foot at the head of the column.
“Can you tell how many are coming?” Victorio asked.
“A lot.”
Fights Without Arrows, Flies In His Stew, and Chato returned from their scout and confirmed it.
“At least two hundred are following us,” said Fights Without Arrows. “We saw Bluecoats. We saw the Pale Eyes’ White Mountain scouts. We saw white men from the country all around here. They must have left this morning before light.”
“Too bad we can’t go back and raid that country,” said Chato. “No one is left there to protect the stock.”
“Most of the White Mountain men are on foot, but they’re trotting along like Old Man Coyote.”
“Those White Mountain men are mad about all the horses we took from them.” The smile filled the deepest crevasses of Broken Foot’s face. “I bet they feel pretty foolish.”
Lozen leaned sideways on her piebald pony so she could murmur to her brother. “They expect us to head for Mexico. If the women and children break into small groups and turn east into the mountains, Fights Without Arrows, Chato, Flies In His Stew, and I will cover their tracks.”
“The rest of us men can keep riding south to leave a trail,” said Victorio. “When we come to Ash Creek, we’ll scatter, double back, and meet you at Three Flat Rocks.”
The plan worked for a while. For ten days they kept to the high ground and evaded their pursuers. As the band’s animals gave out, the young men swooped down on the ranches in the valleys and stole more.
The local ranger company gave up about two days into the chase. The other civilians drifted off to protect their own livestock. After a week, the soldiers returned to San Carlos for supplies. The White Mountain men and the police, with Dead Shot as their leader, kept going. Dead Shot and the others could follow tracks through rough country, and the White Mountain men wanted their horses back.
They caught up with Victorio’s people and pinned them against a sheer cliff. Victorio’s warriors and Lozen kept up a covering fire, but the women and children had nowhere to go. The White Mountain scouts captured several of them and rounded up the horses.
Then Lozen and the others saw Dead Shot raise his rifle and signal the White Mountain men to leave with the captives and the horses. They had gotten what they’d come for, and they’d just as soon Victorio and his people didn’t return to San Carlos. In his own way, Dead Shot was letting them know he understood why they were going, and maybe he even wished them well.
On foot, the Warm Springs people traveled east and south for hundreds of miles through the mountains. They crossed lava beds and broken buttes, peaks, and canyons until they reached the country they knew so well. Then came the hard part, living through the deep snows and freezing cold of winter with few horses, their food supply exhausted, and hunted by every Pale Eyes for a hundred miles around.
IN MARCH 1878 LT. CHARLES MERRITT WAS STARTLED TO see Victorio and twenty-two warriors ride in to the fort that once had been the Warm Springs agency. They were ragged and emaciated, and their ponies looked as though they could drop dead on the spot. Lieutenant Merritt called for an interpreter and beckoned Victorio into his office. He set a chair near the stove for him, but Victorio stood with his blanket wrapped around him.
“We’re willing to surrender,” he said, “if you’ll let us stay here. We want to bring our old ones home, but we would rather die than go back to San Carlos.”
Merritt thought about it. The army and the irate citizenry had been chasing this man all over two territories, and now here he was, standing in the office, making a very reasonable request.
“You have my sympathy. I know this is your home country.” He offered Victorio a cigar, but he waved it away. “You can stay until I receive orders telling me what to do. If you and your people make no trouble, I’ll supply you with food.”
“We will cause no trouble.”
Merritt believed him. While he and his superior, Colonel Hatch, waited to hear from Washington, Merritt arranged for the old ones at San Carlos to be sent by wagons to Warm Springs. He managed to have an agent assigned to the post to distribute food and blankets. The new agent was rigid and arrogant. Neither Lieutenant Merritt nor Victorio liked him, but at least he did his j
ob with a fair degree of honesty.
Given the wrangling between the Indian Bureau and the War Department in Washington, Merritt realized he might never hear from them. For once, their inefficiency might have a good effect. Victorio’s people lived quietly through the summer and fall. They farmed their old fields. They stole no horses or cattle. They did nothing to molest the settlers crowding in around them, and even became friends with some of them. None of that was good enough.
LOZEN AND HER SISTERS LOOKED OVER THE HEAPS OF PINON nuts, berries, and cactus fruit. The harvest had been good. Ears of corn lay in colorful heaps in all the arbors. They would have enough food this winter.
Victorio and fifteen of his men galloped across the dance ground. Victorio gave a hawk’s shrill whistle to signal the boys to bring in the rest of the horses. The men scattered to their families’ camps. Victorio leaped off his pony before he had stopped. Lozen had never seen such a wild look in his eyes.
She grabbed the carbine that Wah-sin-ton had given her, and her pouch of cartridges. She Moves Like Water, Corn Stalk, Stands Alone, and María prepared for flight. Daughter called the children.
Victorio talked fast as he stuffed food, ammunition, his fire drill, extra rawhide rope, and spare moccasins into a saddle pouch. “The Pale Eyes judge and sheriff from Central City are at the Fort. Dead Shot says they plan to arrest me. The agent says the Bluecoats will take us all back to San Carlos.”
“They will not put chains on you and lock you up like they did Geronimo.” Lozen was ready to kill anyone who tried.
“We won’t go back to San Carlos,” said She Moves Like Water.
“That’s what I told them.” Victorio tied the blankets behind his saddle. “I did what I have wanted to do for a long time. I pulled the agent’s beard so hard he couldn’t straighten his neck afterward. I would rather have killed him.”
Daughter carried her youngest son in a cradleboard. The rest of her young ones gathered around her. Besides her own, she and Corn Stalk were caring for several orphans. “What about the children?”
“Go with the Bluecoats. They’ll feed you all until we can come for you.” Victorio followed She Moves Like Water to the lodge. “You must stay here.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Dead Shot says the Bluecoats have orders to shoot any of us men and boys they see. They will not give us a chance to surrender. If you are with us, they will kill you, too.”
She Moves Like Water reached up to touch his cheek. “I will not go anywhere without you.”
She hugged Corn Stalk, Daughter, and the children. Each of them murmured, “May we live to see each other again.”
SOLDIERS AND SCOUTS OF THE NINTH CAVALRY CAUGHT UP with Victorio and his sixty warriors in the Black Mountains. All around them, snake-tongues of lightning flicked at the horizon and thunder rumbled. Dodging bullets, Victorio, Lozen, Wah-sin-ton, and the others dismounted and scattered up the slope, taking cover and firing as they went. When Victorio ran out of cartridges for his Winchester, he handed it to She Moves Like Water and took from her the old musket she had primed and loaded.
They reached the series of ledges as a frigid wind roared through and a bolt of lightning struck a mesquite tree on a nearby promontory. The detonation of thunder left their ears ringing, and the first huge drops of rain began exploding around them.
They knew these mountains well. The heap of boulders behind them had an opening at ground level. They could slither through it before the Bluecoats knew they had gone. Once on the other side they could disperse into the creases and folds of the mountains. Victorio motioned for the men to go on while he and Wah-sin-ton and Lozen kept up a steady fire to draw the soldiers’ attention and keep their heads down. He shouted over the thunder and gunfire for She Moves Like Water to go with the men, but she took his empty musket and went on loading.
A bullet struck a nearby rock and shattered it. A chunk of it hit She Moves Like Water’s hand and sent the sack of bullets flying. She crawled out along the ledge to reach for it, and another bullet hit her in the head. She pitched sideways, with her legs over the cliff’s rim, and began to slide down, the wind whipping her long hair across her face.
“Mother!” Wah-sin-ton screamed.
Victorio scrambled toward her. He made a desperate grab and caught one blowing corner of the blanket she had draped across her shoulders. He pulled on it, but it came loose. Her arms dragged along the ground, pulled backward by the weight of her body. Victorio’s fingers grazed hers as she disappeared over the edge.
Lozen crawled to him. “Come away,” she shouted into the wind. “You can do nothing here.”
She saw the bewilderment and the disbelief in his eyes. He slid on his stomach toward the rim of the cliff, maybe to convince himself that she was really dead and not clinging to a tree root or some rocks just below the edge. Lozen knew that her sister had been dead before she fell. She held on to Victorio’s moccasin with both hands.
“Her spirit is gone,” Lozen screamed. “Come away now!”
Still on his hands and knees, Victorio wailed his grief and loss and rage. When the echoes of it died, Wah-sin-ton took his father’s arm and pulled him away. As though in a trance, Victorio followed them through the opening in the rocks.
On the exposed slope on the other side, the icy wind blew the torrents of rain slantwise at them. Sleet and hailstones pelted them while thunder exploded one peal after the other. Lightning-struck trees crashed around them. The thunder and lightning frightened Lozen, but she was grateful for the rain. Even the Ndee scouts could not track them through this.
They found a large boulder with a huge cedar fallen at a slant across it. Tangled with it were tree roots, trunks, and branches weathered to a silvery gray. They crawled under its shelter and pressed against the boulder. Lozen chanted to keep Thunder from hurting them.
Continue in a good way;
Be kind as you pass through;
Do not frighten these poor people.
My Grandfather, let it be well.
Don’t frighten us, your people.
Wah-sin-ton moved forward at a crouch and stared out at the storm. The blowing rain washed the tears from his cheeks. Lozen put her arms around Victorio. He leaned his head against her chest and sobbed for a long time. When the rain slowed, he went out to stand with his arms up. The wind blew his wet hair and his breechclout around him.
“No more peace,” he shouted. “For as long as I live there will be war.”
PART FOUR
1878 Warrior
Coyote and Walking Rock
Long time ago, so they say, Coyote was walking around. He came to some other coyotes sitting near a big rock.
“You’d better show this rock respect,” they said. “It’s alive.”
“Don’t be silly,” Coyote said. “Rocks aren’t alive.”
“It can move fast, so you’d better be careful.”
“You fools don’t know anything.” And Coyote, he jumped up onto that rock and he defecated on it. He jumped back down and he laughed.
“See, I told you so.”
He started on his journey again, but that rock rolled after him. Coyote was surprised, but he said, “I’m faster than you are.”
He started to trot along, but the rock rolled faster. When Coyote looked back over his shoulder, there it was, coming after him.
Coyote said, “I’ll show you how fast I can go.”
He ran as fast as he could, but the rock kept up with him. It rolled faster and faster, until it was right behind him.
Coyote got scared, and he dived down into a hole to hide. The rock rolled over the entrance to the hole and trapped Coyote inside. He tried to talk his way out, but that rock wouldn’t move.
Finally Coyote said, “I’m sorry I soiled you. Let me go, and I’ll clean you off.”
The rock rolled away from the entrance to the hole, and Coyote came out and cleaned the feces off the rock. When he finished, the rock rolled back to where it had been, and Coyo
te continued his journey.
I’m talking about fruit and flowers, and all good things.
Chapter 54
IT’S HARD TO KICK AGAINST THE PRICKS
Rafe caught the end of the mule’s lead line as it whipped past, and he planted his heels. Caesar and another soldier grabbed the rope and held on while the shrieking wind lashed snow into their faces. They pulled until the veins stood out on their arms and necks, but the mule continued to slide down the icy slope, dragging them with him.
When he lost his footing and rolled, Rafe shouted for the men to let go. The pack lines broke, strewing food and equipment into the drifts of snow. His descent ended against a boulder.
The lieutenant peered out from under the oilskin slicker tented over his hat. “Collect what you can salvage, Sergeant, and distribute the load among the troops.” He looked down at the thrashing, braying mule. “Don’t waste a bullet on him.”
For the next three days they limped toward the army post at Warm Springs. Most of the horses and mules that hadn’t died had gone lame. The black soldiers, Southerners all, shivered under their blankets as they walked through an assortment of rain, sleet, and snow, the one constant being wind. Rafe had never seen such weather, and this was only the first of December.
Icicles hung from the wide brims of the hats the soldiers had bought to replace their useless forage caps. Those on foot had shoes in tatters, or none at all. They left bloody prints in the snow, but no one complained. Even after weeks in the field with them, Rafe still found their endurance and optimism astonishing. He said so to Casesar.
Ghost Warrior Page 48