Ghost Warrior

  Patch’s granddaughter ranged through the scrub and cactus, ever alert for the threat of jackrabbits and quail. The three of them had made it through the pass in one piece. That was cause for celebration.

  Anglos had begun referring to the break in the mountains between southern Arizona and New Mexico as Apache Pass, but Rafe still thought of it as Doubtful. Either name fit. Apaches were the ones who made it doubtful, Cochise and his Chiricahuas, with the able assistance of Whoa and Geronimo and their merry band.

  Rafe was in Victorio’s territory now, and he relaxed a little. Victorio had kept his word. The Warm Springs people had remained at peace. Rafe looked forward to seeing them again. Maybe Lozen would be there this time.

  She had been away six months ago when he had gone to tell them about the slaughter of Eskiminzin’s people and to warn them about Cushing. Caesar had inquired about her among his Apache kinfolk, and He Makes Them Laugh had said she had gone to see someone. Finally he admitted she was conferring with her spirits. He said that her people called her Grandmother, and that they thought of her as di-yin, a shaman, a very holy woman.

  A holy woman. The more chances Rafe had to see her and talk to her, the more unapproachable she seemed.

  Rafe found Mattie Jones cutting Caesar’s hair in the dooryard of their one-room adobe house on the outskirts of Central City. Two of Patch’s great-grandchildren were tussling around Caesar’s feet. A pig rooted in a dusty pen. Chickens bustled around. A horse and a mule munched hay in a corral of mesquite limbs.

  Next to the corral a truck garden had gone mostly to autumn seed, but cabbages still flourished. Beyond the corral lay a field of dry corn stalks and the remains of the bean and squash plants that had grown up alongside them. Another field had been planted in cotton. Rafe would have thought Mattie never wanted to see cotton again, but there it was.

  Caesar sat on a stool reading a newspaper while Mattie brandished a pair of shears manufactured with sheep in mind. She had to stand back and extend her arms to make room for the bulge of her stomach. She wore a .41 caliber Butterfield Army Model revolver in a holster on her hip. She had to use the last hole in Caesar’s belt, and she wore it slung under the overhang of her belly, but in less pregnant circumstances the holster and its contents would have suited her. Mattie had never lacked an air of confidence, but now there was a feeling of calm mixed with it.

  Caesar threw his arms around Rafe, and Rafe hugged him back, though the act embarrassed him. An embrace would not have occurred to either of them before they’d started spending time among the Apaches.

  Caesar nodded at the chestnut. “So you put Red to pasture?”

  “Killed at Bear Springs.” The words stuck in Rafe’s throat still. He coughed to cover the break in his voice.

  “Then you were with Cushing when Whoa got him.”

  “I was.”

  Mattie tugged Caesar’s jacket so he would sit back down. She regarded Rafe with suspicion and some hostility. Rafe knew she was thinking that he had come to lure Caesar away and get him killed. She was right about the first part, anyway.

  Rafe took from his saddlebag a package wrapped in clean sacking and tied with cord and handed it to her. She untied it and drew in her breath at the sight of the red woolen shawl with long fringes of the sort the Mexican women wore.

  “There’s something inside,” Rafe said.

  She unfolded the shawl to expose the tiny pair of blue stockings, a cap, and mittens, knitted from an old wool army uniform jacket that Rafe had painstakingly unraveled. Rafe didn’t mention that the owner of the jacket had died at Bear Springs. Some would consider it an evil omen, but Rafe looked at it as new life from the rags of death.

  Mattie smiled at Rafe with her luminous dark eyes. She picked them up in hands as large and calloused as a man’s, but with long, graceful fingers. She held them so Caesar could see them.

  “That’s mighty nice of you, Rafe,” said Caesar.

  “A pleasure.”

  “Can you learn me to do this, Marse Collins?”

  Rafe thought that she would have learned to knit in the big house, but then he realized that the mistress must have kept her as a field hand. She would not have allowed anyone as beautiful as Mattie to be close to her husband and son, the lieutenant who brought her out here.

  “I reckon I can,” he said “’Tain’t hard.”

  Rafe gave Caesar a stack of the Prescott Miner. The earliest one, dated April 1871, lay on top. In jubilant fourteenpoint type the headline read, EIGHT BUCK INDIANS KILLED. And in smaller print, 117 SQUAWS AND PAPOOSES CAPTURED.

  Caesar leafed through the papers, reading aloud, while with a currycomb, Mattie raised the tight curls so she could see where they were uneven. She trimmed the ones that stuck out and brushed the loose hair off his shoulders with snaps of her apron. When she finished, Caesar stood up and offered Rafe the stool, but Rafe preferred to stand.

  “I’ll put water on for coffee.” Mattie carried the shawl and the baby clothes inside. Rafe took advantage of her absence to get to the main reason for his visit.

  Before he could, the chestnut reached his head over the top of the gate and pulled the bolt. The gate swung open, and he trotted after Rafe.

  “Look at that!” Caesar said.

  “He learned it from Red.” He glanced at Caesar. “Are you finding steady work?”

  “This and that,” Caesar said. “I works at the mines, hauls freight for the gum’ment.”

  “Caesar, the army finally sent the man for the job.”

  “Killing Apaches, you mean?”

  “Making peace with them.”

  “I guess you’d be referring to General Crook.”

  “He’s a wonder.” Rafe had never met any officer like Crook. “Something must have infected the stiff-dickies in Washington with horse sense. They sent a sane, competent general. He yanked the flagpole from Los Angeles and brought it back to Tucson where it belongs.”

  “By the looks of those new boots, I’d say you signed on as a scout.”

  “A mule skinner. Crook’s too smart to trundle supply wagons around the country. He’s depending on mules. He’s asked me a thousand questions about them. He’s recruited a bunch of scouts, too; men who really know the country. You should think about joining us. The pay is good, and the enlistment is only for six months.”

  Rafe didn’t say what was really on his mind. He and Caesar could ride together again. Without Caesar and without Red, he had been feeling lonelier than usual in this lonely life.

  “I can’t leave Mattie, what with the child and all. I gave her my word I’d keep close to home.”

  That was the answer Rafe had expected. “I’d say the same thing if I were in your boots.” He wanted to suggest that Caesar bring Mattie with him to Cook’s headquarters at Camp Grant, but of all the filthy, flea-ridden, squalid posts in the territory, it had to be the worst. The soldiers assigned there called it the Old Rookery. Besides, Mattie had made a home here, and she wasn’t in condition to travel.

  “What you boys hatchin’?” Mattie came outside carrying a blue-and-white china plate with fat chunks of corn bread on it.

  She held the plate out so Rafe could take a piece. She let her fingers linger on the plate, as though unable to believe such a beautiful object belonged to her.

  “Rafe says General Crook is looking for men to scout for him.”

  Mattie’s eyes narrowed.

  “I tole him I wasn’t going nowhere.”

  “Praise the Lord.” Mattie smiled, gracious in victory. “Rafe Collins, that yaller hair of yours looks like a hayfield in a windstorm.” She pointed to the stool. “Sit.”

  Rafe’s eyelids drooped as she combed the worst of the tangles from the thick mop of hair whose ends brushed the shoulders of his red flannel shirt. He felt an acute attack of elation at the touch of her fingers separating out a section, cutting it, and then moving on. Making love with a woman was the greatest gift bestowed on man, but this and home cooking vied for second place.
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  “I’m going to visit Victorio and his people as long as I’m on this side of the Pass.”

  “They’s gone,” said Caesar.

  “Where?”

  “The gum‘ment moved ’em to the Tulerosa Valley.”

  “That’s a hundred miles north of here.”

  “People ‘round here decided the Warm Springs land was too good to waste on savages,” said Mattie. “Now what did the gum’ment do with that land, Caesar?”

  “They declared it public domain.”

  “And Victorio went peacefully?” Rafe remembered what Victorio and the others had said about the country where they lived: “When we forget the names of the places, when we cease to know what happened here, we no longer know who we are.”

  “Yeah, and he’s the one who kept things peaceful around here. Now that he’s gone, I’s expectin’ the riffraff to come tricklin’ on over the pass from Arizona.” Caesar put a hand on his rifle. “My brother-in-law says Victorio would rather take his chances with the Bluecoats than live with Whoa again. He says Whoa is one mean coyote.”

  “Then you’ve seen Pandora and your nephew?”

  “Yep. I took ’em some blankets and corn. They was raggedy looking, Rafe, all of ’em. And hungry. You could see it in their eyes. The Tulerosa is north of here and colder. They won’t have a chance to plant anything before winter sets in.”

  “The army will take care of them.”

  “The gum’ment promised them a thousand blankets and plenty of beef and corn, but I ain’t seen none of it, and I’m the one who freights the goods.”

  “At least on the Tulerosa there aren’t many whites to bother them.”

  “Not yet,” said Caesar.

  THE TATTERED COVERING OF THE DOMED LODGE DIDN’T stop the icy wind. It hardly slowed it down. Lozen tried to scoop snow higher onto it to provide some protection, but her hands were so numb she could hardly grip the board she was using as a shovel. Her People had suffered hard times before, but they had never been forced to stand still for them. In winter they could move to the sheltered valleys or go to Mexico.

  She went inside to continue to sing and make medicine for Third Wife. Corn Stalk and She Moves Like Water lay on each side of Third Wife, sharing the heat from their bodies. Third Wife shivered so violently the other two had to hold her to keep her from rolling off the mattress of pine branches. Lozen fed the last few sticks into the small fire in the middle of the lodge.

  Food might have helped Third Wife, but the cook pots were empty. The promised beef hadn’t arrived. Instead, the agent had given them pig meat in small metal containers. Each container had the picture of a devil painted in red on it. Lozen’s people had recoiled in horror at itsi chidin, devil meat. They knew then that the Pale Eyes were trying to poison them or witch them. Lozen and Broken Foot had had to hold a four-day sing to rid the camp of the sorcery.

  The agent gave out blankets, too, but they were flimsy things, thin and full of holes where the moths had eaten them. When Broken Foot saw them, he commented that at least the insects were getting enough to eat. Third Wife’s new baby boy lay with Daughter and the other children in a pile under some of those blankets. Stands Alone and Maria kept watch, huddled together under a blanket that they shared. The rest of the blankets were wrapped around Third Wife, and still she shivered.

  Third Wife had had a hard time delivering the child. They all knew the trip here had caused it. A woman was not supposed to ride on horses or in wagons after the fifth month, but she had had to endure the trek across the mountains, five days in a jolting army wagon. No one was surprised that the baby became wedged in the birth tunnel. Third Wife had struggled for a day and a half before Daughter could finally pull the child free, wash him, and wrap him in rabbit skins.

  Third Wife stopped shivering. She looked up at Lozen, her eyes sunken in the purple hollows around them. Lozen could see her spirit leaving as surely as if she were watching Third Wife ride away on her little buckskin mare. The light went out in those laughing eyes.

  The women began wailing their grief. Lozen walked outside, the thin soles of her moccasins munching in the newfallen snow. In a fury, she faced into the howling wind. The noise of it sounded like the spirits laughing. She had something to say to the spirits.

  “If you will not help me,” she shouted into the storm, “then do not talk to me anymore. Don’t come around here if you’re only going to do what you want.”

  She crouched with her head down and her arms around her knees. She thought about promises made. Her brother had promised to take care of his people. If he left here he would have to abandon many of them because they were too sick or weak to travel. He could not bring himself to do that. He hoped the Pale Eyes would keep their promises.

  Lozen knew they wouldn’t. The Great Father in Washington had promised that Warm Springs would belong to her people for as long as the mountains stood and the rivers flowed; then they had taken it. They had promised Lozen’s people they would give them the things they needed, but they had not.

  The Pale Eyes belonged to a rich and powerful nation. They ate beef and soft bread. They rode big horses and wore warm coats when the cold wind blew. As rich as they were, they could not spare food and blankets for those they had made homeless and destitute.

  Promises. Lozen thought of the promise she had made to her capricious and crotchety spirits. She had said she would keep the peace with the Pale Eyes for the good of all her people, but the bad behavior of the Pale Eyes and her own spirits made that promise hard to keep.

  Chapter 48

  SLINGS AND ARROWS

  As the light snow drifted around her, Lozen stood near the pool where the other women were bathing. Steam rose from the surface of it. She pulled off her moccasins. She put her bead necklaces and her small bag of pollen inside them. Holding her blanket in front of her with one hand, she struggled out of her dusty tunic and skirt.

  She slid into the pool, leaving the blanket on the ledge. Stands Alone, She Moves Like Water, Corn Stalk, Maria, Her Eyes Open, and Daughter sat with their heads leaning against the wall of dark gray basalt. Lozen joined them and let her legs float in front of her. She watched her breath mingle with the steam rising off the water. She felt as light as the snowflakes falling on her hair.

  Whenever she bathed in the hot waters of the spring she knew the past year here wasn’t a dream. She was truly home. After that terrible time at Tulerosa, the Pale Eyes had finally kept their promise. They had given the Warm Springs country back to them. They also distributed blankets, beef, and corn at the agency half a day’s ride away. Lozen’s people were beginning to think they might recover from the terrible losses of the past ten years of warfare.

  Lozen closed her eyes and felt the snowflakes tangling in her eyelashes. The snow had come early, but it wasn’t a heavy one. The women had worked all morning harvesting corn. The thick ears filled the baskets and overflowed in heaps in the arbors.

  Broken Foot’s second wife, Wide, arrived and stripped. Unlike most Ndee women, she wasn’t shy about her body, and she didn’t ease into anything. She gathered herself to leap.

  “Avalanche,” announced Lozen.

  “Avalanche and flood,” added She Moves Like Water.

  “Avalanche, flood, and earthquake,” said Corn Stalk.

  Wide jumped, tucking in her elbows and pulling her legs up to form a tight, round projectile. She landed with a force that sent water sloshing over the lower rim and into the stream below. She came up sputtering and flinging her long black hair back and forth.

  While they talked about the old days, they washed each other’s hair with suds made from the pounded roots of the yucca. As the shadows lengthened, they climbed out and dressed. They sat with their feet dangling in the water and draped their hair over their arms to dry. They were almost ready to start for home when Wide’s eleven-year-old daughter, Denzhonne, Very Pretty, galloped up on her mother’s pony.

  Wide frowned. She had told her daughter not to ride the horse
until the sore on his back healed, but Very Pretty had a habit of doing what she wanted. Lozen tried to sympathize with Wide, but she remembered being the same way.

  Very Pretty called to Lozen. “Grandmother, Hairy Foot is here, and Uncle and Uncle’s woman and son. They brought a man who has a box that captures people and makes them small.”

  The women hurried to the field to collect the baskets of corn. The boys were supposed to be chasing off the crows with their bows and their slings, but the lure of Pale Eyes visitors was too strong to resist. Lozen lingered. Seeing the crops flourish, knowing her people would have corn and beans for the winter, reassured her. The Red Paints had always grown some corn, but for many years their lives had been too unsettled to plant or harvest.

  She turned to see Hairy Foot sitting on his big chestnut under the walnut tree. She held out her arms at her sides and grinned at him, inviting him to admire the corn plants. Then she ran to catch up with the other women.

  THE SMALL WAGON HAD “SIERRA SAM’S STEREOPTICON EXTRAVAGANZA” painted on its wooden side. The finer print proclaimed that the wagon’s owner could produce PAPER PRINTS, AMBROTYPES, STEREO VIEWS, AND CABINET CARDS OF BREATHTAKING CLARITY AND SCOPE. Sam used the wagon’s white canvas cover as a backdrop for his lantern slide show. He intended to coax Victorio and his people to pose for photographs. He told Rafe and Caesar that the suckers in the east would cough up cash for them.

  The black burnsides and beard bordering Sam’s solid jaw looked like an extension of the top hat he wore at a rakish angle. The hem of his wool coat came halfway to the knees of his dust-colored canvas trousers. If photography hadn’t been invented, Sam would have been a snake-oil salesman, and a good one, too.