Ghost Warrior Read online

  Caesar laid the torn tail of the shirt across his thigh and positioned one of the calico patches under it. When he picked up the needle, it disappeared in his big hand. He turned under the raw edges of the tear as he worked and laid down a neat bird-track of stitches.

  When the pile of carded fur glowed like a golden cloud in the fire’s light, Rafe took out a peeled willow stick sharpened at both ends, with a four-inch disk set a quarter of the way up the shaft. He moistened the wool and wound it onto the upper end of the spindle. He laid the shaft across his thigh with the point of the short end resting on the ground. With his free hand he tugged at the hair, stretching it gently as with the palm of his hand he rolled the spindle along his thigh to his knee. He slid it to the top of his leg to start the process again. When most of the first strand had wound itself onto the spindle, he worked another clump into the tail end of it. Spinning never failed to soothe him.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” Absalom asked.

  “A Navajo taught me.”

  Rafe didn’t add that the Navajo had been a velvet-voiced woman and that the year he had spent with her had been the happiest of his life. That year defined contentment for him, a concept with which he would otherwise have been unfamiliar. His memories of her included her spinning, always spinning. With a small weighted drop spindle and a bowl of carded wool, she spun while walking. The yarn would lengthen like spider’s silk at the ends of her fingers.

  She had died in his arms, killed between sunup and sundown by the cholera that the gold rushers hauled west along with their iron stoves and millstones, their pianofortes, family portraits, and the good china. He didn’t mention to Absalom that he had wept when he saw the light in her eyes extinguished like a candle, or that for months afterward when he lay at night in his blankets, tears angled across his cheeks until they dampened the pale hair curled around his ears. Even now, almost two years later, sorrow as unavoidable as a desert sandstorm swept over him from time to time.

  She didn’t tell him her real name. Indians had odd notions about the power of names. But in the dark, when he whispered in her ear, he called her Dream Weaver. To tease her he had sometimes called her Spider Woman, the holy being who gave the knowledge of weaving to her people. To honor Spider Woman, she always left a hole in the middle of each blanket she made, like the hole at the center of a spider’s web.

  He had one of her blankets with him still. When he saw the hole, it reminded him of her absence. The spindle had belonged to her, and when he held it he imagined the warmth of her small brown hand.

  She hadn’t taught him to knit, though. In Texas when he was young, he and his sister would gather snagged clumps of buffalo hair from the bushes. His mother had taught him to make stockings from them.

  “Aren’t stockings of buffalo wool on the rough side?” asked Absalom.

  “Yep.”

  Rough but substantial, he thought. These might last long enough to keep my feet warm until a bullet or an arrow or a rattler sends me to the place where warm stockings aren’t necessary. Given the prevailing moral wind in this territory, that might not be so long from now.

  A full moon and a sky spangled with stars supplied almost enough light for Rafe to see his work without the campfire. The Apaches’ fires twinkled on the mountainside above them. A cool breeze carried the sound of their laughter, flurries of it at first, then gusts, then finally a full-out gale.

  “Do you suppose they’re laughing about that joke they played on Caesar and me?” Absalom asked. “Them presenting their posteriors for our inspection and making off with our mounts to boot.”

  “Maybe so,” Rafe said. “Apaches do like a joke.”

  A HUNDRED OR MORE PEOPLE FROM SKINNY’S AND RED Sleeves’ bands gathered at Broken Foot’s fire to hear his stories. The warriors sat in front, then the apprentice boys, and finally the women and children. Sister sat with her arm around her cousin, the one called Dazsii, Stands Alone. She pressed against her, as though to make up for the two years she hadn’t been able to touch her or see her, as though to keep her from being stolen again.

  Stands Alone stared toward the fire, but Sister had the feeling she wasn’t hearing the stories. Sister had told her that she had found the bodies of Stands Alone’s mother and sister at Janos. Stands Alone’s father had died from the bite of a rattlesnake several months earlier.

  Grandmother had bound up Stands Alone’s broken ankle and sung over it. Sister and Grandmother had made room for her in their brush shelter. Tonight she would share her blankets with her as she had when they were children.

  In the cleared space near the fire, Morning Star and Loco were telling the story of the white man and the black white man who had chased them to recover their two stolen horses. Morning Star poured water onto the front of his breechclout, as though he had urinated on himself, and everyone laughed. He grunted as he pretended to lift a heavy shotgun to his shoulder. The laughter grew louder when he and Loco bumped into each other and waved their pretend weapons and stared at them when they refused to fire.

  They chased their phantom ponies in circles while people doubled over. Weak with laughter, the children clung to each other. The women put their hands over their mouths and giggled behind them.

  Cousin and Morning Star pretended to fling themselves onto the horses’ backs. They fell off, rolled in the dust, got up, and tried again. With their arms wrapped around the invisible ponies’ necks, they galloped into the darkness, weaving from side to side.

  When the uproar finally died down, Broken Foot limped to the center of the circle. He had invited them all here tonight, and he and his wife would give presents to those who stayed until he finished his stories. People came not so much for the presents but because he was a good storyteller.

  “Long time ago, Trickster Coyote saw some miners, some diggers coming. They rode fine horses, and they led mules piled with good things. Coyote knew about Pale Eyes, so he made a plan.”

  From somewhere among the boys came the sound of a voice. Broken Foot peered into the darkness. “You,” he pointed his nose at Talks A Lot. “My wife’s brother couldn’t come tonight, but he promised me tobacco. Go to his camp on the other side of the ravine and get it for me.”

  Talks A Lot stood up and raced away. Everyone else laughed. They knew that Broken Foot’s wife’s brother would send the boy to someone else for the tobacco. That person would guess what was happening and would pass him farther along. Talks A Lot would return footsore and exhausted the next morning, and he might think twice about interrupting the next time.

  Broken Foot continued. “Old Man Coyote defecated by the side of the trail. He took off his hat and put it over the turds. He waited for those Pale Eyes diggers to pass by.

  “‘What do you have under your hat?’ they asked.

  “‘A magical bird, all brightly colored,’ Coyote answered. ‘He can answer any question I ask him.’

  “‘Can that bird tell you where to find money?’ they asked.

  “‘Sure.’

  “‘Show him to us.’

  “‘Only the one who owns him can talk to him.’

  “That really got the diggers excited. They put their heads together again.

  “‘Sell him to us,’ the diggers said.

  “‘No. He’s worth too much.’

  “‘We’ll give you our horses and our mules and everything.’”

  Coyote pretended to consider the offer. “‘All right,’ he said. ‘But I’ve had this bird a long time. He likes me a lot. If you let him out before I’ve gone far away, he’ll fly after me.’

  “‘All right,’ the diggers said.

  “‘When I come to that last ridge over there, I’ll wave to you. Then you lift the hat just a little bit and reach under it and grab him and hold him so he can’t fly away.’

  “The diggers waited until Coyote rode far away. When he waved to them, they reached under that hat, and they grabbed real hard. They grabbed so hard they squeezed that brown stuff right out between thei
r fingers. Those Pale Eyes were so mad. Even today they try to kill Coyote whenever they see him.” To fool Coyote into thinking he wasn’t talking about him, Broken Foot added the usual deception, “I’m talking about fruits and flowers and other good things.”

  The sun was still a few hours from rising when people went off to their shelters. Sister and Stands Alone whispered as they always had. Sister was about to tell her cousin who was courting whom these days when she heard a faint roaring inside her skull. It grew louder.

  “Enemies,” she whispered. She shook Grandmother. “Enemies are coming.”

  She ducked through the low opening. Stands Alone and Grandmother followed her. Embers winked from the fire circles. Starlight illuminated the shelters. From a nearby shelter she heard Loco snoring like Old Ugly Buttocks the Bear.

  Sister held her palms up. She looked toward the stars and turned slowly. When she faced east, the spirit stopped her.

  She ran to She Moves Like Water’s shelter.

  “Someone bad is coming!” She kept her voice low. One didn’t shout and attract enemies.

  Morning Star grabbed his lance and bow and quiver.

  “Come back,” She Moves Like Water called after him. “She’s just a child.”

  “She sees what we cannot.” Morning Star didn’t stop to wonder how his sister knew that enemies were coming, and he wasn’t surprised that she knew. He found her shivering, her eyes wild and staring.

  “From which direction?” he asked.

  She pointed toward the east and the boulders where a few sentries kept watch. Morning Star ran from lodge to lodge calling softly to the men inside. They were emerging from the shelters when the first shots rang out. The shadowy horsemen swept down from the rocks, firing as they came. Children screamed, and the women took what possessions they could. They rolled them into their blankets, grabbed their babies, and ran. The light of a burning lean-to illuminated the Red Paint men as they darted from cover to cover. They kept up a steady fire with their bows and arrows so the women and children could escape.

  Sister was collecting water jugs when she heard the hoofbeats and saw a horseman galloping toward her. Morning Star leveled his bow and swiveled, following the horse’s course. He fired and the rider jerked and pitched sideways. His boot caught in the stirrup, and the horse passed Sister, dragging his rider by the heel.

  Sister saw Grandmother and She Moves Like Water disappear into the ravine. She found her cousin Stands Alone limping through the confusion. She put her arm around her waist and helped her down the slope, too. Sister pulled brush over the two of them; then they waited.

  THE GUNFIRE WOKE RAFE. HE LISTENED UNTIL HE LOCATED the source, the Apache encampment on the mountain.

  “What do you suppose that is?” asked Absalom.

  Rafe slid back into his blankets and fluffed up his saddle. “It’s probably a tiswin celebration that got out of hand. Most of them do.”

  “Tiswin?”

  “A nasty brew they make from fermented mescal.”

  Caesar picked up his old firelock pistol and started off.

  Absalom called after him. “You can’t help Pandora this time.”

  “Got to try, don’t I.” It wasn’t a question.

  Caesar untied his horse from the picket line and rode up the trail into the green defiles of the mountain. He dismounted before he reached the Apache camp and crept forward. Men moved about in the glow of the burning shelters. When Caesar saw they were not Apaches, he stepped into the light.

  The scalp hunters were too busy ransacking the lodges to notice him. One of them stooped to carve a circle around the crown of the head of the body sprawled on the ground. He put a foot on the nape of the corpse’s neck and yanked. The skin came off with a sucking sound. By the light of burning brush shelters Caesar recognized the individual who held up the long hank of black hair. He was Shadrach Rogers, the blacksmith’s apprentice.

  Caesar jumped at the sound of the voice behind him.

  “Who in hell are you?”

  Caesar held his hands out from his sides to show he meant no harm.

  “Turn around slowly.”

  Caesar pivoted on his heels to face a small man whose eyes were hidden in the curved shadow of a wide-brimmed hat. He held an old caplock rifle, cocked and leveled at Caesar’s chest.

  “What are you doin’ here, nigger?” The man’s North Carolina accent started up an old, chaotic fear in Caesar.

  It brought back childhood memories of packs of men with voices such as his, of baying bloodhounds, galloping hooves, and the pop of musket-fire in the night. It reminded him of flaring torchlight and white men standing at ease, laughing over the mutilated body of the man Caesar had called father. It reminded him of his young mother weeping.

  “I come to see what the shootin’ was ’bout, massa.”

  “You needn’t meddle in other folks’ business.” John Glanton surveyed Caesar’s solid, six-foot-three-inch frame, the thick muscles of his arms, the breadth of his shoulders. He nodded to the scalped corpse. “The Comanch there cashed in. We’re short a man. Are you looking for work?”

  “Suh, I’s headin’ for California with my massa.”

  Glanton braced the butt of his rifle on the ground, covered the muzzle with his hands, and leaned his chin on them. Caesar thought it would be a boon to humanity if the gun were to go off and take the man’s brains with it.

  Glanton surveyed the burning camp and the absence of dead Apaches. “We been off chasing ‘Patch through the bushes like quail.” He sounded peeved. “We was all set to murder them in their beds. Somethin’ spooked ‘em, though, and we had to ride in and try to catch ’em on the run.”

  Caesar didn’t offer his sympathies for the failure of the man’s enterprise. He put two fingers to the brim of his hat, turned, and went to collect his horse.

  He wondered where Pandora and her people had gone. He thought of them hiding in the mountains in the cold of the night. He could easily imagine what they were feeling. He breathed a short prayer for them. He asked God to give them a safe haven, even though they were heathens, but safe havens seemed in as short supply here as where he came from.

  Chapter 7

  HER FUTURE IS IN THE CARDS

  The next time Rafe visited the Santa Rita mines he was alone. Absalom and Caesar had left for California in early November almost three months ago. Rafe wondered if they had gotten through the mountains before the snows. He didn’t like the thought of them as a main course for fellow travelers, like the misfortunate souls in George Donner’s group.

  Here in the high country of southwest New Mexico Territory snow had halted the survey of the new border with Mexico. It piled in three-foot drifts against the sides of John Cremony’s big tent. Inside, Rafe sat knitting on an empty powder keg. He shared the heat from the iron stove with Cremony of the United States Boundary Commission, Cremony’s two mastiff dogs, and his employee, José Valdez.

  Hundreds of Apaches had come for talks with the Americans of the Boundary Commission. Warriors sauntered about like lords of the manor, but John Cremony placed his confidence in the goodwill of chief Red Sleeves. He also trusted in God, José, the mastiffs, four six-shooters, a Whitney percussion rifle, a double-barreled shot gun, a machete, two bowie knives, and the shiny, Smith-Jennings .54 caliber repeating rife that the United States government had issued to the commission. Cremony figured he and José could fire twenty-eight shots without reloading.

  Rafe inspected the new Smith-Jennings. “The government finally bought repeating rifles,” he said. “So why did you seal the breech and turn it into a single-shot muzzle loader?”

  “Damned bureaucrats,” grumbled Cremony. “It requires a newfangled cartridge that doesn’t carry enough powder. They call it a ‘rocket ball,’ but it’s a fizzle, if you ask me. As a single shot, with the new sight, it’ll knock a crow out of a tree at three hundred yards.”

  Rafe leaned the rifle against the center pole and ducked to avoid the cluster of cartridge belts
and powder horns hanging there.

  “A Major Heintzelman passed through here,” Cremony said. “He told me the Yuma Indians killed someone named Glanton.”

  “John Glanton?”

  “Yes. Who is he?”

  “A scalp hunter.”

  “Well, it seems the lad was killing off the competition for ferry service across the Colorado River. What with the gold rushers passing through, the ferry has proved lucrative.”

  “He was probably taking Yuma scalps for the Mexican bounty, too.”

  “The Yumas came in unarmed to his camp. They brought firewood and built a blaze with the branches pointing out from the center. Everybody sat down for whiskey and philosophy, and when the branches burned down to the size of clubs, the Yumas grabbed them and attacked. The fire had hardened the ends into fine weapons.”

  Rafe was dubious. A man as evil as Glanton couldn’t be killed that easily.

  The dogs’ hackles rose along their backs. José reached for the carbine and laid it across his thighs. Rafe’s hand went to his pistol. John Cremony relit his pipe and settled deeper into the camp chair.

  “A month ago,” he said, “I had hardly finished setting up my tent when a villainous-looking set of Apaches showed up, wanting tobacco. They’ve been on the prowl ever since.”

  “They watch you from up there.” Rafe nodded toward the wooded clefts and crags of the nearest peak.

  “They beg, but I think begging is not their foremost objective.”

  “They’re after information,” said Rafe. “The number of arms, men and horses, amount of ammunition. They’re asessing the morale here, the discipline, and the plunder to be taken at the least risk. Every time you scratch your arse, they know about it.”

  “I suspected as much.”