"And if that doesn't happen in our time?"
Gokhlaya's mouth was a grim semblance of a smile. "Then, when the thousands come, we will die as men die, not as the deer within the circle." Hart and his Apache friend rode on in silence for a while. Hart no longer felt uncomfortable with long silences, for he had begun to be one with the People.
"My Power has told me that if the People die now, there will yet come a time when we will be raised up again," Gokhlaya said. "The white-eyes will not care for the land as we have done—they will kill the animals and the plants, until Grandmother Earth is nearly dead from the poisoning. Then will the white-eyes see what they have wrought, and children will be born to them who will know the way of the People. This has my Power told me of the future, Firehair, but it will be long, long from now, when you and I are one with our ancestors, and even our children and our children's children are gone from here."
"When does your Power speak to you, Gokhlaya?"
"When I am called to listen, my Power speaks... or when the tribe needs guidance, or when I have begged to be heard. A man must not mock his Power or call upon it unwisely."
"Did your Power come to you first when you were a boy?"
"I met my Power for the first time when I made my vision quest, as I grew to manhood. Later, when my first family was gone from me, my Power told me I was to be a medicine man and use my gifts for the tribe."
Hart knew Gokhlaya was shaman as well as warrior; he was respected as much for his wisdom and his medicine as for his courage in battle. "And you have spirit gifts that other men do not, my friend?" he asked, and Gokhlaya nodded, as if it were an ordinary question.
"My Power taught me to call up the wind, to see things that are far from me, and to change my shape so my enemies cannot find me."
Hart digested that, no longer unwilling to accept the seemingly impossible. The People believed in the world unseen; they asked dead ancestors for guidance and they cured things the white man thought incurable.
"What do you mean when you speak of changing your shape?"
"Once, when the white soldiers trapped us in a box canyon, Naiche's men and mine, I changed my warriors into stones so that the soldiers rode among us and saw us not."
Hart couldn't think of what to say to that, so he remained silent until Gokhlaya spoke again.
"The old ones and the small ones starved on the reservation. The soldiers gave to each of the People a dog tag of metal to wear about the neck. To get food, each one was forced to walk across the desert from the reservation to Fort Thomas to show the name tag. Many could not go."
"How far was it to the fort from the reservation?"
"Twenty miles. The sick, the old, the infants, the crippled, could not walk so far."
Hart shook his head in disgust; he knew from Destarte that the meat they'd been given was all too often infested with maggots, and the flour alive with weevils. Corrupt Indian agents were the norm, and with feeling running so high against the redman, there was no one to control the thieves who injured them.
The life of the Chiracahua Apache will soon vanish forever,
Hart thought as he rode with the proud contingent of braves. This life of hunting, gathering, and oneness with the land will disappear and the People will be herded onto reservations, like wild horses into paddocks, and they will wither there. He was grateful he had come in time to learn their ways, for the destruction of the last true Keepers of the Land would soon be complete, and all that once had been the Apache way would be no more.
"Gokhlaya's wife and children are very young for one his age," Hart said to Destarte as she finished cleaning up their evening meal and settled in to sew.
"Is it a sign of virility to have so young a wife?" He rested against the piled up animal skins, watching her work on the newly tanned deerskins.
"They are his third family," she replied.
Hart raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"What happened to the others?"
"They are gone."
"Dead, Destarte? Were they all killed, or did they die in some epidemic?"
She shook her head vigorously, to show she could say no more. Hart remembered the night when he'd first come to Apacheria, and the haunted look that had come to Gokhlaya's eyes when he'd blundered into asking about his "first" family.
It was Naiche who finally relented and told him the story of Gokhlaya's past.
"It was the time of the first treaty," Cochise's son told him reluctantly. "The treaty that the White Father in Washington said would last forever." The broad and handsome face of Naiche creased in contempt. He was tall and imposing, standing in the shadow of the mesa beside Hart.
"We had made our camp in the Sierra Madre near a Mexican village called Kaskiyeh. It was in the year the white-eyes named fifty-seven, near the time of the spring rains. The birds chirped in the trees... the women and children splashed water on each other's bodies for the men were not about." Hart curbed his impatience, for he knew an Apache never told a story without first setting the scene.
"There were no guards for the ranchería then. The blue coats had gone from us, and we thought the camp was safe. Many warriors were hunting game; others had gone to town. Only old Noposo, the father of Alope who was the woman of Gokhlaya, remained with the women and children, for he was too old for travel.
"The daughter of Gokhlaya was four summers old—his son, two summers, a small baby, was still in his tsoch. When the sound of horses was heard the women thought the warriors must be returning and ran to the riverbank to greet their men.
"But then they listened again, for the sound was of horsemen who cared nothing for Grandmother Earth. They crushed things before them as they came.
"Soldiers with naked sabers were in our camp, some carried lances of iron. The children ceased to shout and play; silence descended for a moment before the screaming began.
"Alope ran to save her children, but a soldier fell upon her. She scrambled out from under him, searching frantically for her children, but the soldier pursued her and brought her down again.
"Women and children were running and shrieking; blood was splattering as at a slaughter of cattle. Her child ran toward Alope on small, fat legs. She screamed to her son to run as the wind, but the yellowleg's saber cut the head from his small shoulders and it rolled to his mother's side.
"Alope screamed and screamed for her son. She fought and kicked and scratched like a maddened wildcat at the man who threw her to the ground and covered her body with his own.
"Alope's mother-in-law snatched up the no-name baby from its tsoch, and tried to run away, but a hand grabbed her long hair so fiercely that her body felt it had been torn apart. The baby fell and rolled close to its mother, but she could not reach it.
"The soldier forced Alope's legs apart; she shrieked aloud, but not at her own pain. A soldier had picked up her baby and shouted to another that he would make a wager. He threw the baby high in the air and it stopped its crying. Alope saw the soldier raise the steel of his bayonet to catch the child—she tried to close her eyes for she knew now what he intended, but she could not help but watch the tiny flailing arms and legs fall through the air.
"The laughing soldier caught the fat baby on the sharp point of his bayonet. The mother saw the astonishment, the anguish, and the blood.
"The soldier disemboweled the child, and Alope shrieked out her anguish, but the soldier cut off her breasts and stuffed them in her mouth to silence her. Perhaps, she saw no more, after that."
Naiche halted in his recital. He did not look at Hart, who was so horrified by the tale he had to turn away. It would have been unseemly for one warrior to see another with tears in his eyes.
Naiche said, after a long time, "Gokhlaya found them. Later that day, his Power spoke to him. Perhaps it told him of his Special Purpose.
"The great chief Mangas Coloradas came to him then, and told him the People must leave that place of death. Gokhlaya said he understood. On the trail, he would eat no meat and slept apart from the
other warriors.
"It is said Mangas understood Gokhlaya had died with those he loved, and from that death arose a spirit so fierce, it would be remembered for all time. Where a warrior had stood, a war shaman lived... a spirit so powerful had come to live in him that the white-eyes will mourn his birth forever.
"Gokhlaya went up into the mountains and lived apart from the People. For one year, only Mangas visited his tipi. His chants could be heard from the mountaintop... they were not of this earth, but sought the gods.
"When he returned, his Power had given him certain gifts. He could sometimes see the future... he could free himself from bondage... he could call up the wind. All this have I witnessed with my own eyes."
Hart listened in rapt attention to this extraordinary recital. How was it that no newspaper, no congressman, no general, had ever spoken of the hideous wrongs that had driven Gokhlaya to such terrible vengeance? How was it no one spoke of the tragedy that had changed him into the fierce Geronimo, whom everyone called savage.
Twice later, Hart tried to paint the tale he had been told, but the sorrow he felt for his friend's great loss made him feel he intruded on sacred ground, and at last he abandoned the attempt.
The year after Hart arrived, General Crook began to hound the Chiracahua again. The men painted their faces to prepare for battle and fastened the war bands of buckskin at their brows. Hart heard them joke that their scalp locks were ready for any warrior strong enough to take them, and wondered what the soldiers would think when his own red-chestnut hair was spotted among the ranks of the Apache.
From the moment the tribe had been commanded to go to war, every act took on religious significance. Gokhlaya called each object by its sacred name; horse became charger or warhorse, arrow became missile-of-death, even camping and cooking became part of the ritual.
Hart brooded over what role he was to play in the conflict. He had no desire to ride against his own kind, yet the confusion in Destarte's eyes at her husband being thought less than a man because he would not fight, made him search his heart for answers. Gokhlaya took the decision from his hands, commanding him to remain behind with the women and old men to defend the camp.
"Firehair is a novice in our ways of war," he said openly in council. "Firehair has no Power to guide him, and would be a danger to the more experienced warriors." It was an uncomfortable situation, not least of all within his own tipi; but as Hart's feelings were gravely ambivalent, in the end he was grateful to remain behind when the war parties rode out.
There was little expected of a man in camp, so Hart spent his time painting and sketching. He took out his frustrations on the sketch pad and tried to render everything he'd learned of the Apache language and customs into a dictionary and works of art. He also tried to help Destarte with her work, but she was so distressed that such help would reflect further on his manhood, she would have none of it.
Destarte lay beside her husband on the rush-filled bedding, beneath the bearskin blanket she'd worked on so laboriously during the long winter nights.
"You are quiet tonight, my Destarte," Hart said, slipping his arm around her shoulders. She'd seemed oddly preoccupied all evening and had answered his questions in monosyllables, which was quite unlike her. "Are you still so troubled about my not going to fight with the other braves?"
Destarte turned her body a little to nestle it into her husband's arms. "Sometimes I have been troubled about this, but not because I wanted you to go... only because the relief I felt at keeping you here with me was so great, I know I must be disloyal to the People. But that is not why I am quiet."
Hart smiled into the darkness. Destarte always went to such pains to be scrupulously honest with him. He wondered fleetingly how many men of any race could say the same of their wives. He waited, knowing she would tell him what troubled her in her own time.
"What would the people of Leadville think about a child who was half white and half Apache?" she asked.
"They would not be kind to such a child." Hart had wondered during the months of their marriage if Destarte might be taking measures to prevent pregnancy, for fear of such a half-breed being born to them.
"The People love all children," she said, as if thinking out loud. "But they, too, might be unkind to our son."
"But we haven't a son, my little wife," he said good-naturedly. "So you needn't worry about such things tonight."
Destarte reached for her husband's hand and placed it on her belly. "But we do have a son, my Firehair. He is so small now that no one needs to be unkind to him, yet. But one day..."
Hart raised himself up on one elbow and turned to her in the darkness. "Are you telling me we're going to have a baby, Destarte?"
"You are not upset with me?"
"Upset? Are you crazy? I've been afraid to ask why you weren't expecting. God knows we've given a baby every chance in this world to get started... how do you know it's going to be a boy?"
Destarte laughed softly, with relief. "I feel it is a boy. In my heart, I know he is like his father."
"A redheaded Indian," Hart said, trying the new knowledge on for size. "By God, that should set tongues wagging, shouldn't it? I love you, Morning Mist McAllister. I love you so damned much I could explode. And I love our son and I don't give a good goddamn what anybody in Leadville or Denver or Apacheria thinks about him... I just care about what the two people under this bearskin think."
"I, too, do not care, my husband," Destarte said. "But perhaps the child will care. I worry only that he be big and healthy and happy, for sickly babies or crybabies are sometimes killed when they are born, for the good of the tribe. Especially when there is war...."
Hart put his arms around Destarte and hugged her to his broad chest, loving the sweet sense of fulfillment she always brought him, excited beyond words by the news.
"Nobody is going to kill our baby, Destarte, you can count on that. And nobody is going to be unkind to him either, so you can-just put that out of your mind right now, because any man who would try to harm him would have to go through me first, and just in case you haven't noticed, I'm a pretty big feller."
Destarte looked into her husband's eyes shining with his elation, and moved her soft curves against the hard strength of his body.
"I have noticed, my husband," she said mischievously. "In truth, I noticed how big you were even before I was your wife."
"You did, did you?" Amused and happy, Hart lifted her body with ease until she lay covering him, so that her face was smiling down into his.
"Once, when you were very sick and your fever was high," she said playfully, "you were having strange dreams and your manhood grew very large and I wanted to touch it so much I had to run away from you so that I did nothing unseemly."
"I was probably dreaming of you," he said, touched and aroused by her confession.
"You fill me with joy, my husband," she whispered.
"And with other things..." he murmured as the warmth of her engulfed him.
Naiche and Chatto, both hereditary chiefs, showed considerable benevolence toward Hart, and he found them generally willing to enlighten him with their stories of Apache history. The great leader Cochise, he learned from Naiche, had been a disciple of Mangas Coloradas, the revered chief of the five major Apache tribes, the Chiracahua. Nedni, Jicarilla, White Mountain, and Mescalero. It was clear that Mangas' memory was held in reverent esteem by all Apaches, and Hart knew he'd been captured treacherously by the white men, invited to a peace talk, taken prisoner, and beheaded. His head had been sent on tour around the country to show the bravery of the army in fighting Indians.
"If Gokhlaya is not a hereditary chief and isn't even Chiracahua, how is it that he occupies such a place of honor in the tribe?" Firehair asked, and Naiche deferred to Chatto to respond.
"Mangas was very wise," he said. "He saw in the young man, who was an orphan, unusual skills. Gokhlaya was not large in stature, yet he could beat the others at nearly every game. He was young and yet his wisdom was worthy o
f being listened to in the counsel of the older men. After Kaskiyeh, when Gokhlaya returned from his year of prayer and fasting, the white soldiers invited Mangas to a dinner and to bring with him the chiefs of all the tribes.
"Gokhlaya spoke and said that his Power had appeared to him in a dream and shown him the men of the Apache People, writhing on the ground and dying, although no shot had been fired. Gokhlaya counseled that the chiefs refuse the invitation, for there was treachery afoot.
"Mangas heeded the young man's warning and presented his case to the leaders. Three chose to go, Mangas, Cochise, and one other chief did not.
"The white soldiers had poisoned the stew with strychnine and all who attended the banquet died as Gokhlaya had seen it in his vision.
"After that, he was listened to."
"I can see why," Hart replied with a short laugh. God Almighty, but the whites had much to answer for—cholera-ridden blankets given to the Indians in trade, broken treaties, stolen territory, death marches...
"I have seen his Power with my own eyes," Naiche said. "Once, he summoned the wind to blind the soldiers' eyes with sand and once, when he was in prison, he saw the soldiers riding toward our village one hundred fifty miles away. He escaped and ran the whole way to warn us of the attack... some were even saved, but many were lost."
More loved ones to mourn, Hart thought. No wonder he never smiles. As to the mystical stories, he had seen too much to doubt as deeply as he once had. Two nights later he saw another example of Geronimo's Power that he couldn't ignore. A young brave named Alchise was being held in a Mexican jail and the authorities intended to hang him. Naiche, Chatto, Gokhlaya, and the braves met in council to decide how to handle the problem and while the men voted to free the boy by force, Gokhlaya offered a different solution.
"I will send word to the Mexicans that I will raise a great storm against them if Alchise is not freed," he said, and the elders agreed to the plan.
The following day word was sent to Colonel Garcia that the boy must be freed to avoid a storm that would level the jailhouse, but the weather had been clear for weeks and the captain of the guard laughed uproariously at the threat. He returned word that the skies were blue and would remain so until the boy's tongue matched their color, as it hung from his dying mouth.