Ghost Warrior
Page 58
George Wratten was coming with them as interpreter. Even Lozen trusted him. Even she believed he was a friend, but if the entire nation of Pale Eyes was determined to kill them, what could he do?
Lozen knew what she could do. The soldiers had searched all of them, but they had not found the thin knife she had hidden in the thick, knee-length braid that was tucked into her belt. If the white people attacked, she would kill as many of them as she could, and then she would kill herself.
The last of the warriors climbed into the coach car. Lozen put a hand on the rail and a moccasined foot on the bottom step.
“Shiwoye, Grandmother.”
Lozen looked back and saw Hairy Foot dodge through the shouting mob of soldiers. He ran toward her. She turned away, mounted the stairs, and walked into the monster’s belly.
The women and children boarded. Soldiers closed the doors and locked them. The whistle shrieked. The train chugged into life and crept forward.
Rafe walked alongside it in the shower of cinders and soot, and tried to catch a glimpse of her through the windows. As the train picked up speed, he stopped and watched it dwindle into the distance.
“Yalan, Shiwoye,” he murmured. “Good-bye, Grandmother.”
Epilogue
GHOST WARRIORS
Not all Pale Eyes wished Geronimo’s people ill. Kinder ones protested the conditions at Fort Pickens in the malarial swamps of Pensacola, Florida. After six months they prevailed. The government transferred Geronimo’s small band to Mount Vernon barracks, a sixty-year-old army post in Alabama. The buildings occupied a rise of land, but they, too, were surrounded by swamps. The forest grew so thick around it that the Ndee men climbed trees to catch glimpses of the sky.
General Nelson Always Too Late To Fight Miles had told them that they would see their families in five days, but eight months passed before they were reunited. George Wratten stayed with them as interpreter. Dr. Walter Reed served as their physician. They had need of him.
The Ndee tried to hide their children, but the authorities found them and took them away. They sent them to the Indian school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to be turned into lawabiding, God-fearing citizens. Kaywaykla, the child Victorio named His Enemies Lie In Heaps, was the youngest of the Chiricahuas to attend.
Lozen went with the parents when they greeted the train bringing the young ones back for holidays. They discovered to their horror that many of the children were stricken with consumption. It was a disease that they had never known. It was also a death sentence because neither their di-yin nor the Pale Eyes could cure it. A popular remedy with the Pale Eyes was a poisonous hallucinogen called lachnanthes mixed with alcohol, strychnine, chloroform, and morphine. Other Pale Eyes recommended the fumes from a cow barn or a syrup containing ground-up millipedes. The People declined them all.
The children coughed. They grew thin and spit up blood. Distraught parents begged Lozen to rid the young ones of the worms that caused the sickness. Lozen ground up the root they called narrow and steeped it in a watertight basket with four hot stones to heat the water. She performed the traditional rituals with pollen before she gave it to her patients, but the medicine had little effect.
She had to acknowledge that her spirits had deserted her, and her medicine was useless. Whenever one of her young patients died, Lozen felt as though a part of her went with the child. She grew thin from anxiety and sorrow and lack of sleep. No one was surprised when she caught the disease herself.
Stands Alone, Niece, and Her Eyes Open sat by her side while Broken Foot worked to make her better. The entire band stood outside and sang the choruses of the healing songs. Lozen heard it all, but she felt a strange mix of detachment, disorientation, and relief. She was supposed to be the healer, not the patient, but being a patient had its advantages. She did not have to feel responsible if the medicine failed.
When Ghost Owl came for her, she closed her eyes, smiled, and greeted him as an old friend. He and she had a long journey to make together, and she was eager to start. She did not stay to see her people carry her body far into the woods and bury her where no Pale Eyes would ever find her. She did not hear the wailing that went on for weeks. She was free at last to ride with her brother across every mountain and valley of the land she cherished.
Those who revere her memory know she still rides there.
Author’s Note
The Ndee avoided using a person’s given name, even when speaking of them in the third person. When they had to refer to someone, they used terms of kinship or nicknames. The nicknames were usually humorous and unflattering and not spoken in the person’s presence.
The People often went by Spanish names, as well as the ones they chose or that were chosen for them; and they changed those names from time to time. When someone died, that person’s name was no longer spoken. If it was the same word as a common object or animal, the Ndee made up new terms for those rather than risk calling up the ghost of the one deceased. For this reason, some names or their translations have been lost.
Some people were known by one or more names to their own people, but by different ones to the Mexicans and Americans. Cochise, for instance, was called Cheis by the Ndee.
To avoid adding more confusion to a situation already difficult for those not familiar with it, I have people refer to individuals by their given names, although rarely calling them that to their faces.
Praise for Lucia St. Clair Robson
“A magnificent novel as only Robson can write.”
—Roundup Magazine
“No one makes history as familiar and as vivid as Lucia St. Clair Robson. In Ghost Warrior she has breathed life into an extraordinary spirit and genuine heroine, Lozen. I can’t wait to place this book on my keeper shelf.”
—Fern Michaels, bestselling author of Texas Heat and Texas Rich
“The only disappointment I found in this book was having to put it down.”
—True West Magazine
“Lucia St. Clair Robson has written an epic novel. Ghost Warrior evokes the life of a Native American woman, who at last, and rightfully so, takes her place in history. The characters are memorably drawn, the narrative resonates with the truth of time and place, and Lozen, warrior and shaman, leads her people in a valiant fight against injustice. Ghost Warrior will compel readers to read on and on … late into the night.”
—Matt Braun, Spur-Award-winning author of The Kincaids and winner of The Cowboy Spirit Award
“A great main character, immense moral tragedy, all sung with full lungs.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The spirit of Lozen, shaman, warrior, healer and expert horse thief, surely possessed Robson while she wrote not only the story of Victorio’s beloved sister, but of her people, from the time when they lived near streams and good grass to the cruel end when they survived like lizards, hiding in the rocks, enduring heat, cold and thirst. For this, Robson deserves a warrior’s embrace.”
—Jeanne Williams, Golden Spur Award winner and Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award winner for Lifetime Achievement in Western Literature
“Ghost Warrior is a big, rousing, heart-breaking read—with crisp command of the history, of Apache customs and of the nature of implacable warfare, Ms. Robson takes us through the last tragic days of the Chiricahua Apaches in the Arizona desert. She tells the story through a woman shaman on the Apache side and a wise man on the white side and lets them play out the ruinous tale. A fascinating book that deserves wide readership.”
—David Nevin, New York Timers bestselling author of Treason
“Geronimo, Victorio, Cochise—so legendary is the toughness and the hit and hide warfare of the Apache people in their centuries long struggle against the Mexican and then U.S. invasions that it might come as a shock to readers of Lucia St. Clair Robson’s Ghost Warrior that Apache’s were spiritual human beings with a complex culture and that a woman, Lozen, was equal in importance with those famed war chiefs. The author’s trademarks—exhaustive cultural resear
ch and earthy prose—make the reader believe and care.”
—James Alexander Thom, author of Follow the River and The Red Heart
“Lucia St. Clair Robson is more qualified to tell the story of Lozen than any writer today, and she does so in an award-winning style … well-defined, personal, accurately depicting historical characters with careful attention to historical fact. For anyone whose reading choice is the American West, history, action, strong women, or the mystical quality of the American Indian’s medicine, this is the book.”
—Don Coldsmith, bestselling author of The Spanish Bit Saga
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
GHOST WARRIOR
Copyright © 2002 by Lucia St. Clair Robson
www.luciastclairrobson.com
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Map by Ellisa Mitchell
eISBN 9781429936057
First eBook Edition : May 2011
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001058612
First edition: May 2002
First mass market edition: May 2003