He had never stopped mourning his wife, killed and scalped by Mexican bounty hunters when Sister was an infant. Morning Star had given horses, blankets, and saddles to this shaman and that one in the hope that they would cure his father’s grief. Sister prayed every day, asking the all powerful spirit, Life Giver, to cure him.
Whenever women brewed a batch of tiswin from the sap of the mescal plant and announced a party, her father was the first to arrive and the last to leave. Sister would wait while he danced with the other revelers. Women whom she’d always known to be chaste would stagger off into the bushes with him. Sister’s cheeks would burn as she listened to the laughter and the rustling from the darkness. In the pale light of many dawns she had helped her father home.
Sister couldn’t stay sad this morning, though. The sky arched intensely blue. Butterflies floated in the palo verde trees crowding the dry streambed of the arroyo. Doves wooed in the mesquite trees. Women called softly from one family’s cluster of brush-thatched shelters to another as they ground corn and mended moccasins.
When Sister reached a stand of mesquite trees, she laid out the rawhide loop of the tumpline. She began gathering limbs and placing them in one end of it. As she wandered farther away in search of firewood, she saw a barrel cactus on the sunny wall of the arroyo. Last fall’s shiny yellow fruit grew in a whorl around its top.
She slid down the slope at the shallow mouth of the gully and walked downhill. The arroyo narrowed; the walls closed in overhead and sliced the bright strip of sunshine thinner. The overhanging rim threw a deep shade that cooled the air.
She reached up and picked one of the fruits. She squatted at the bottom of the cleft and rested her arms on her knees while she savored the tart juice and the crunch of the tiny black seeds packed inside.
A puff of cold wind startled her. It didn’t belong here in the middle of the summer. It stirred the wisps of hair around her face. Its chill started a prickling at the nape of her neck. A roar filled her skull, a babble of voices. She stood up and raised her chin, her mouth partly open, her eyes closed.
She raised her arms to shoulder height, her palms cupped upward, as she had seen di-yin, holy men, do. She held them there and waited for the Wind Spirit to speak to her. When it did, the voice-that-wasn’t-a-voice resonated in the bones of her face like the flutter of leaves in the cottonwood. She turned slowly until dread stopped her as surely as a stone cliff. She faced into the approaching evil and imagined Ghost Owl swooping toward her, come to steal her soul. Chills chased along her spine; her heart raced.
When the rumbling started she thought it was the Wind Spirit again, but then the ground began to tremble. Dirt fell from the arroyo’s rim onto her shoulders and outstretched arms. The rumble fragmented into the beat of hooves. She opened her eyes as the first horse reached the edge of the gorge and leaped it. More followed. She saw the tensed muscles of their foam-flecked legs and the wide cinches under their taut bellies as they passed overhead. Drops of their sweat fell on her. She saw the clumsy wooden stirrups, each containing a dusty black boot.
Mexican soldiers. Lancers probably. She counted fifty or sixty at least. Not many warriors had remained in camp, and they were as sick as her father and Corn Flower.
When the last soldier had leaped the gully and the thunder of hooves receded, Sister tried to scramble up the steep side, impelled by the need to warn her brother’s wife, her father, and the others. The soles of her moccasins slipped on the gravelly slope, and she slid to the bottom, sand driven to the quick under her fingernails.
She sat with her knees drawn up to make herself as small as possible. She twined her fingers together to keep them from shaking. Already the soldiers were shooting. They laughed and shouted. Sister heard the clatter of an iron lancehead striking rock and bouncing. She heard the screams of the women and children.
She fought back the fear rising in her throat. Fear was a distraction, and she had to be able to think and act. Her brother had told her that as soon as she was old enough to understand the words.
She could tell by the scattering of hooves and the rustle of bushes that they were chasing their prey through the undergrowth. She heard a horse approaching the arroyo, searching the thick brush for survivors. Sister crawled backward on her belly among the cactus and creosote bushes, the thorns catching at her skin and clothes and hair. The rocks scraped her elbows and knees, but she didn’t feel it. When she could go no farther in the narrow cleft, she found a coyote den dug into the wall. She breathed a quick prayer of thanks to Life Giver, though she would rather have been beholden to any creature but a coyote. Coyotes were trouble—always had been, always would be.
She poked a yucca stem into the hole to dislodge any rattlesnakes that might be there; then she wriggled in feetfirst. When her toes hit the back of the den, her head and shoulders were still exposed. She grabbed a broken piece of dried ocatillo stem shaped like half a cylinder and perforated where the thorns had been seated. She lay her left cheek on the warm ground, cupped the ocatillo stem around her nose and mouth and scooped the sand over her head. Then she buried her arms and hands in it.
As the sound of the hooves grew louder, she wondered if she had covered enough of her black hair. The horse stopped just above her. Sand cascaded down the slope and onto her head. She could feel the soldier’s eyes searching the bushes and the shadows under the arroyo’s walls. She waited for a lead ball from his musket to drill through her skull. She wondered if she would feel the solid heat of it. She wondered if, when she died, she would see her mother in the Happy Land.
She heard the soldier ride away, but she stayed motionless. She breathed through the holes in the cactus stem while the silence from the camp lengthened and the sun climbed up the slope of the sky, hovered at the peak, and started down the other side. She lay there until the light in the arroyo dimmed. She didn’t flinch when a rattlesnake slithered over her arm.
She murmured to him as Morning Star and her grandmother had taught her. “Ostin, Old Man, I have troubles enough. Don’t bother me or give me snake sickness.”
When he moved on, she wriggled out of the hole, shook sand from her hair, and brushed it out of her ears and eyes. Her throat ached, and her lips stuck together when she tried to moisten them.
Sister peered over the rim of the arroyo. The sky had turned pink, but it pooled bloodred at the western rim of the world. Shadows crawled farther out from the rocks and trees and bushes as though ambushing the day. A wind moaned sorrowfully. Smoke still rose from the remains of the shelters.
Sister knew the route to the site where her people had hidden food supplies, water jugs, weapons, and utensils. All the children over the age of five knew they should make their way there in case of an attack. She also knew she should leave immediately. Even if the soldiers didn’t come back, the souls of those they had killed would be restless. Sister imagined them flapping like wounded birds around the campsite, confused by their sudden change in form and frightened about the long journey ahead of them.
Supernatural creatures scuttled around at night, eager to bewitch the unwary. And Ghost Owl soared about in search of souls to steal. No one traveled after dark unless necessity gave them no choice.
Sister wriggled through the bushes on her stomach, as silent as the shadows lengthening along the stony ground. She lay motionless under a bush, ear to the ground, listening for the faint vibration of boots or hooves before moving to the next bit of cover.
With a prayer to the helpful spirits, she took ashes from the campfire and rubbed them on her face and hands to ward off ghosts. The ashes were still warm. An old woman and a young one had thrown themselves across three small girls in an attempt to shield them, but the soldiers had shot them all and taken their scalps. In the last of the day’s light Sister recognized the mother, wife, and daughters of He Who Yawns.
Those were the first bodies she used for cover, and soon she had more of them than she needed. Most of the dead had been scalped, with bloody holes where their right
ears had been. To collect on the government’s bounty, the Mexican lancers had condemned the Ndee’s spirits to wander eternity mutilated. That was as bad as the killing itself.
Sister crawled on her stomach until she reached the charred ruins of her father’s shelter. He lay on his back in front of it. He still clutched his bow with an arrow nocked, but a Mexican dragoon had driven a lance through his chest and pinned him to the ground. His head was turned toward her, his face on a level with hers. His eyes were open, and she thought he might open his mouth and demand that she pull the lance out of him so he could get up.
Her father’s blankets would be useful in the cold mountain nights to come, but Sister did not touch them. She did not untie the knife sheath from his belt or pry the bow and arrow from his fingers. To take anything that belonged to a dead person might lure the spirit back and cause it to cling to her.
She entered a dry gulley and followed it to the camp of her grandmother and She Moves Like Water. She did not find either of them there. They might be lying dead in the bushes, hidden by the night shadows, or the Mexicans might have captured them to sell as slaves.
Sister retrieved her blanket from the ashes of her shelter. Fire had charred the edges of it, but it was usable. Still lying on her stomach and with a wary eye on everything around her, she rolled it tightly. She took spare moccasin laces out of one of the pouches hanging from her belt and knotted them together. She tied each end of the roll with the long cord. She put the cord over her head and adjusted the blanket roll so it rode in a diagonal across her back.
Panic swept through her. Was everyone dead? Had the Mexicans of Janos ambushed her brother and the other men? Was she alone, many long days’ journey from the valley to the north, the one her people called home?
She slid to the bottom of the gully where she felt safe enough to move at a crouch. Feeling her way, she found the small spring that had supplied water to the camp. She drank enough to wet her throat and ease the thirst. Keeping her head below the gulley’s rim she followed it down the mountainside, moving like a wisp of smoke through the darkness.
By the time she reached the bottom of the mountain, the night air had cooled considerably. Ahead of her stretched the valley leading to the Janos River and the thicket of vines, cactus, and willows where those who had survived would meet. She could run there in a short time, but she couldn’t risk that. Soldiers might be waiting in the darkness for her to blunder into them.
She slid on her stomach over the edge of the gully and started out, pulling herself forward with her arms and pushing with her legs. In camp, Creep and Freeze was a game all the children played. Now she knew why.
Chapter 2
“THE RAVELLED SLEAVE OF CARE”
Rafe Collins and Absalom Jones stood at the bar that ran along the far end of Dona Yolanda’s cantina, La Luz. Horses, Texans, and a billiard table filled the center of the room. Campaigns with these Texans and others just as rambunctious had battered the table. It boasted a marble base that had required most of the population of Mesilla to lift it off the freight wagon and carry it into the cantina, but whenever a horse backed into it, the heavy red silk cord tassels at the corners swayed.
The Texans were playing billiards on horseback. Each player in turn took his outside foot from the stirrup and slid down so his cue stick was level with the table. If their game had rules, they weren’t evident to the casual observer. Whenever one sank a ball, he celebrated with a Comanche war whoop that made dread dance a Virginia reel up and down Rafe’s spine.
They were raising a lot of ruckus, but there was too much tobacco juice on the dirt floor for them to raise a lot of dust. Rafe was glad about that. He’d hauled a load of salt beef and flour from El Paso the night before, and since he made the forty-mile trip as fast as his mules could travel, he’d breathed enough dust already. Rafe knew better than to dawdle between El Paso and Mesilla. Apaches found dawdlers easy pickings.
Rafe considered searching out a bar infested with fewer Texans, but he liked La Luz. Besides, most places had a clientele as rowdy as this one. The war between the United States and Mexico had officially ended in February of 1848, more than two and a half years ago. The settlement of Mesilla had sprung up in the disputed strip of land between Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. The rule of law had not yet taken up residence.
Rafe caught Dona Yolanda’s eye and held up two strong, scarred fingers, tanned by years in the sun to the color of old whiskey. The same sun had bleached his blond hair almost white. After a life spent staring into its glare, he narrowed his light green eyes out of habit, giving him a thoughtful look. The sun had nothing to do with his long legs, slender waist, big hands, powerful arms, and broad shoulders. His parents and the handling of an indeterminate number of mules were responsible for those. Countless tussles with adversity made him look older than his twenty years.
“Two more shots of Taos Lightning, gentle lady.” He watched Dona Yolanda select a slender bottle from among the dowdier soldiers on the back bar. She filled two small glasses.
The bottle’s label proclaimed it to be Taos Lightning, but Rafe doubted that it was the real thing. The whiskey’s manufacturer had been slaughtered in the Pueblo uprising in 1847, though there were many who claimed that his spirits, if not his spirit, lived on.
“That ol’ Meskin is fixin’ to shoot hisself with a hoe,” Absalom Jones observed.
Absalom’s accent proclaimed North Carolina roots, but Rafe didn’t ask. One didn’t inquire into a man’s origins here. Absalom had mentioned that he was headed for California, but that didn’t set him apart from the thousands of others headed for the newly discovered goldfields there.
Rafe glanced over Absalom’s shoulder. A fog of tobacco smoke obscured the view, but sure enough, Miguel Sanchez stood in the doorway with the butt of a wooden hoe handle in his mouth. Rafe had seen this drama before.
“It ain’t loaded.” Rafe took his extra shot of whiskey from the bar and carried it to the man.
He held out the glass. Sanchez studied it over the end of the handle. The whiskey’s amber silk glowed seductively in the lantern light. Rafe waited until Sanchez realized he could not drink the whiskey while his mouth was occupied by the non-business end of a hoe. He set the hoe against the wall and accepted Rafe’s gift with a gracious nod of his white-haired head and a smile that gave a tonsil-view unobstructed by front teeth.
“Dios le bendiga, señor,” he said. May God bless you.
“Same to you, old man.” Rafe said it in Spanish; then he nodded politely and returned to the bar.
“Apaches.” He tapped his temple with the scarred, callused tips of his fingers. “They unsettled his reason.”
“How’s that?” Absalom asked.
“Sanchez was hoeing his corn when a bunch of brunets rose up around him. They’d stuck corn leaves in their hair and blended with the crop. Mexicans swear Apaches have mastered invisibility, and I reckon they might be right.”
“What happened?”
“One of them stabbed Sanchez with his own machete. Knocked out his front teeth and punched on through the back of his neck. Sanchez executed a passable possum imitation, but he expected them to finish what they had well begun.”
“And they didn’t?”
Rafe shook his head. “Apaches are capricious critters.” He took a sip of the whiskey. “Sanchez ain’t been right in the head since.”
It was a long speech for him. It left him feeling out of breath and foolish for having used up so much air in the making of it, but he squandered a little more. “How old would you say he is?”
Absalom studied the man. “Sixty or seventy.”
“He’s shy of forty. The fright turned his hair white as a boiled linen shirt.”
“I’m surprised the savages left him his scalp.”
“Apaches don’t lift hair, which is odd considering their own scalps bring a hundred pesos each on the other side of the border.”
“Their hair?”
“The M
exican authorities have put a bounty on it.”
Rafe drained his glass and set it on the bar. Doña Yolanda filled it. She allowed a few drops of whiskey to slosh over the sides. Such extravagance was rare for her, but she had fixed her attention on the Texans. They bore watching even in sober circumstances, although in Dona Yolanda’s experience, sober and circumstances were mutually exclusive terms where Texans were concerned.
These Texans didn’t disappoint her. One of them, mounted on a nervous gray, drew his old navy Colt revolver. He aimed it at the six ball cowering in front of the four ball near the far pocket. Doña Yolanda laid the barrel of her shotgun along the high bar, its muzzle pointed at him. Rafe and Absalom moved apart to give her a clear field of fire.
If the Texans hadn’t been as free with their money as they were with their mischief, she wouldn’t have tolerated them. She allowed horse billiards in La Luz, but she forbade pistol billiards. She likewise frowned on their shooting at the cockroaches.
“Párate, pendejo,” she barked.
The Texan looked up, astonished by her crankiness and deeply hurt by her referring to him as a pubic hair.
“No pistolas.” She repeated it loudly and slowly in English. “No pistols.”
“But ma’ am …”
“No pistolas.” Dona Yolanda waved the musket’s muzzle at the line of holes in the adobe wall behind the billiard table. They were a souvenir of the first, last, and only game of pistol billiards Texans had played in La Luz.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Texan returned his Colt to the waistband at the back of his filthy canvas trousers. He shifted the wad of tobacco in his mouth and spat onto the dirt floor.
With her forefinger Dona Yolanda separated out a strand of hair over her ear and pulled it from the bun nesting at the nape of her neck. She stretched it taut so Rafe and Absalom could see the silver streak, like a moonbeam in the lustrous midnight of her hair.
“Tejanos …” She leaned forward. Rafe translated her Spanish for Absalom. “Texans are devils sent by God to turn us gray,” she said. “They and the Apaches drive us early to our graves.” She tucked the end of the lock back in place.