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Authors: Lucia St. Clair Robson

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BOOK: Ghost Warrior
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When a voice said, “
Ugashe,
go away,” she jumped and lost her footing. The loose rock gave way under her. Her forward momentum stopped abruptly, and she hung, suspended, before the hand that had caught the back of her tunic hauled her to solid ground. She turned, expecting to see
Talks A Lot or Ears So Big, He Steals Love, or Flies In His Stew. Instead she stared into Hairy Foot's iridescent green eyes.
“Ugashe,”
he said again.
She straightened her leather tunic and raised her chin. She brushed past him and stomped away, trying not to slide on the loose gravel of the slope and lose what little dignity she had left. She wanted to turn around and ask him, in Spanish, if she could ride his horse, but she didn't know the words she would need. He wouldn't permit it, anyway. He would throw rocks at her like the other Pale Eyes did.
 
 
SISTER SAUNTERED OVER TO JOIN THE BOYS AS THEY MOVED up to compete at archery, and she felt everyone's eyes on her. She wished she could retreat and stand with the women and girls, but she couldn't quit now. Talks A Lot and his friends glared at her. She was going to embarrass them again. Talks A Lot was about to shove her away when an older boy from Red Sleeves' band swaggered toward her. His own people called him Angry for good reason.
“Ugashe,”
he shouted at Sister. “Get away from here.”
As one, Talks A Lot and his friends moved in front of her. Sister was an annoyance, but she was their annoyance. Angry lost the staring contest and stalked away.
Hairy Foot stuck a playing card onto a tree fifty paces away. Sister waited until the last of the boys had fired and retrieved his arrow from the card. She walked over to Hairy Foot as though she had never seen him before.
“Por favor.”
She held out her hand.
He gave her the deck and watched her shuffle through it. Holding the cards, she could feel the essence of the strange smelling, pale-eyed men who had handled them. The hair on the nape of her neck stirred as she felt their spirits travel through her fingers and up her arm, like the tingle she got when she hit her elbow on a rock.
She chose the card with five black arrow heads. One was in the center and the others arranged around it like the four
directions of the wind. She glanced up at Hairy Foot with a look that wasn't so much request as complicity. He gave a solemn nod of consent.
She pulled the torn card off the twig and replaced it with the new one. She returned to where the boys stood but kept walking to take up a position twenty paces behind them. Any of the boys could have hit the card from here, but they hadn't thought of it. They would be angry with her for doing it, but they were usually angry with her, anyway.
Her arrow landed in the middle of the center figure on the card. She placed the next four in the shapes around it, going from west to east. The Pale Eyes cheered when she finished, and she looked at them in surprise. Hitting the card was easy and not worth any fuss. The Mexicans and the Americans crowded around her, though.
“Muy lozana.”
A Mexican reached out to pat her on the shoulder.
“Eres lozana,”
shouted another.
The rest began to chant
lozana.
Sister dodged through the crowd and joined the women and girls watching from one side.
“Now you have a Mexican name,” said She Moves Like Water.
“What does it mean, Grandmother?”
Grandmother would know. When she was young, Mexicans had captured her and held her for three years before she escaped.
“
Lozana
means ‘sprightly' or ‘spirited.'” Grandmother opened one side of her blanket and draped it around her so they shared its warmth. “It's a good name.”
Sister said it softly to herself, pronouncing it her own way. “
Lozen
.”
Calling people by their real names was disrespectful if they were alive and dangerous if they were dead. This was a name she could use without fear of consequences. Lozen.
 
 
RAFE WATCHED HER FROM THE CORNER OF HIS EYE. THE Mexicans were right. She was spirited. She also had a larcenous heart and good taste in horseflesh. He couldn't identify the young woman with her. Her face was shrouded by her blanket, but he thought she might be Pandora.
John Cremony walked over to stand with Rafe and watch the contests. “Things are going well, wouldn't you say?”
“For the time being.”
Ceremony nodded toward a group of men walking past. They wore loincloths, loose cotton shirts, moccasins, and cloth headbands, but their long hair was tied into a club at the napes of their necks. “I'm not familiar with those Apaches.”
“That would be because they're Navajos.”
“Navajo territory lies more than two hundred miles to the northwest. What would bring them here?”
“Red Sleeves invited them. He married off one of his daughters to a Navajo chief.” The Navajo didn't know Rafe understood more than a little of their language. “Red Sleeves sent runners to tell the Navajos we have strong horses and mules, and heaps of goods. Sounds like the old chief is gathering allies to comb the pestiferous white men out of his hair.”
“But he just agreed to keep the peace.”
Rafe shrugged. “They were assessing how strong the defenses are here. They were discussing whether to launch a direct attack or be content with small raids and ambuscades.”
“I'll be damned.”
“The good news is that the Navajos decided the slim pickings here weren't worth the whole passle of them making that long trip.”
As they walked toward John Cremony's tent, the blacksmith's assistant, Rogers, reeled toward them. He had draped his arm around a young man whose smile covered most of his thin face. Rafe could tell they both had been drinking.
“Looky here.” The young man set the tooth-size gold nugget in the palm of his hand and rolled it back and forth with one grubby finger. “I found it in the water off yonder.” He
pointed up toward the canyon carved by the stream that passed near Red Sleeves' village.
If Red Sleeves thinks he has troubles with white men now, Rafe thought, they are about to get much worse.
 
 
LOZEN STARTED FOR THE STREAM AT TWILIGHT WITH A wicker jug in a tumpline on her back. She almost tripped over the young Pale Eyes sprawled near the water. He was the apprentice of the white man who worked in fire and iron.
He lay where he shouldn't have, so close to Red Sleeves' village. Lozen set the water jug on the ground. When she squatted at his side, she could smell the whiskey. She lifted the lower edge of his filthy wool coat, gripped the pistol butt, and eased it out of the waist of his trousers. She stuck the gun into her belt. She took the man's big knife from its sheath and put it next to the pistol.
Lozen eased the tongue of the cartridge belt out of the metal buckle and tugged it loose; then she considered how get it out from under his waist. No clever plan occurred to her, so she braced her feet against his side and shoved, pulling on the belt as he rolled over. He grunted and stopped snoring, but he didn't wake up.
She threw the bandolier over her shoulder, adjusted the water jug on her back, and stooped to collect the iron basin. She walked away at a leisurely pace. When she came to the river, she braced the jug between rocks in the streambed with its mouth facing into the current. While it filled she untied the small leather pouch hanging from the bandolier. It held bits of yellow rock. She upended it, spilling the contents into the water.
She watched them scatter downstream like glittering gnats.
WASHINGTON SAYS …
W
hile Skinny waited for his turn at hoop-and-pole, he chanted his prayer for success.
The wind will turn your pole.
The wind will make mine fly true.
This time I will win everything.
Later I will win again.
The mountain spirits called the Gaan had handed down the instructions and the sacred symbolism of hoop-and-pole. No women were allowed near the field where the men played the game from morning until night. Its religous origins didn't stop them from laughing and joking, though. While Skinny was preoccupied with his prayer, some of them cackled over the fact that he couldn't sit down.
Not long after the solemn council with the Pale Eyes, the temptation to steal the Santa Rita miners' horses and cattle had grown too strong to resist. Skinny, Morning Star, Loco, and thirty other men had made off with fifty cows. Hairy Foot, John Cremony, and twenty Bluecoats had given chase.
Certain that he was out of rifle range, Skinny had turned his back, lifted his breechclout, slapped his rear end, and taunted the Bluecoats. Cremony had handed his new rifle to Hairy Foot. Hairy Foot's shot had plowed a furrow diagonally across Skinny's buttock. The warriors and the Bluecoats stopped shooting and laughed like coyotes as Skinny sprinted up the mountain with his hands clasping his wound. To make matters worse, the Bluecoats had recovered the cattle.
Red Sleeves and Loco each balanced a long pole upright
in the palm of his right hand and steadied it with his left. They waited for Broken Foot to roll a willow hoop toward the furrow in the dry grass piled at the north end of the playing field. He swung his arm, releasing the hoop at the top of its arc. It rolled across the pine needles laid down to make the surface slippery. Loco and Red Sleeves lowered their poles and chased the hoop. As it entered the cleft in the pile of hay, they threw the poles along the ground after it, trying to slide them under the hoop as it fell.
Everyone gathered around to inspect the nine notches on the butt of each pole and the beads on the hoop's thong spoke. Broken Foot began the complicated process of tabulating the score.
“Here comes your horse again,” said He Who Yawns.
Morning Star watched his pony approach at a diligent canter. The dun had an innocent look, as though convinced that Morning Star had called him.
“The herd boys are lazy,” grumbled He Who Yawns. “They play cards all day and let the horses run where they will.”
“Coyote sits back on his tether and breaks it,” Morning Star said. “My sister has seen him do it. And he chews through hobbles.”
“He's a coyote, all right,” added Broken Foot. “He came into my wife's camp yesterday and ate her meal cakes.”
The horse that Morning Star had stolen from Hairy Foot's two friends had a sharp, slender muzzle and roguish eyes. His long, loose-jointed legs tapered to oversize hooves giving him a clumsy, shuffling walk that rolled into smooth, light-footed flight when he galloped. He was coyote colored, with a dark brown mane and tail and stripe running along his backbone. Like Old Man Coyote he favored the ladies, and he wooed the mares with enthusiasm. He acted as though he accepted Morning Star's authority because doing so amused him.
Broken Foot declared Loco the winner, and Red Sleeves shrugged out of his blue coat and handed it to him. He had already lost the last two buttons, so Loco wore the coat open and hanging loose over his breechclout. Since the Pale Eyes
had distributed presents to the Red Paint leaders several days ago, the new blankets and calico, the mirrors, knives, and shirts had flowed like a river among the winners and losers at hoop-and-pole. All Red Sleeves had left of his splendid suit of clothes was the fringed, gold epaulet dangling from the back of his belt.
Red Sleeves took up his pole again, ready to recoup his losses, but He Who Yawns raised himself onto the balls of his feet so he could murmur into his ear. Red Sleeves looked up at the sun, just disappearing behind the peak to the west. He glanced regretfully at the coat, whose sleeves Loco was rolling up so they didn't hang past his fingertips.
Red Sleeves sighed. He Who Yawns was right. At tonight's council they would plan the raid into Sonora to avenge the massacre of their women and children at Janos. By the time they finished the meal that Red Sleeves's wives were preparing and gathered at the council fire, the night would be well along.
Everyone knew that the revenge scout preoccupied He Who Yawns. Even though he wasn't a member of the Red Paint Chiricahuas, Red Sleeves had sent him to invite allies to this council. He had traveled across the Pale Eyes' new imaginary line between here and Mexico, and climbed the steep track to the stronghold of Long Neck and his Enemy People. He had ridden to Cheis's Tall Cliffs People in their aerie among the crags and spectral stone columns on the western side of Doubtful Pass. He had visited Skinny's band at Warm Springs. Wherever he went he spoke of little else but revenge.
He had married Alope at seventeen, younger than most, and he had loved her and their three small daughters with all the fervor of youth. No one had lost more to the Mexican lancers at Janos than He Who Yawns. Even though he was young and inexperienced, and he lacked the tact and generosity that would make him a great leader, Red Sleeves had decided to place him in charge of the raid. Now Red Sleeves would have to persuade the other warriors to agree with his decision about He Who Yawns, but in his thirty years as
chief he could count on one hand the times his men had refused to do that, and he would have fingers left over.
 
 
RED SLEEVIES GAVE CHEIS THE HONOR OF BEGINNING THE council by smoking to the four sacred directions. Cheis rubbed his tobacco pouch between his thumb and fingers to show it was empty. He looked at his younger brother, Coyundado, who sat farther down in the ranks of warriors. In Spanish
coyundado
meant “tied to a yoke,” but in naming Cheis's brother that, the Chiricahua meant the ox himself.
Cheis's strength was of the tall, supple variety, swaying almost imperceptively, like an oak, to accomodate the vicissitudes of life. His brother Ox was powerful, too, but built low to the ground. He took more than the usual amount of time to consider every question, which gave him a reputation for being slow to act. Cheis relied on him for advice, though, and rarely went anywhere without him.
Ox unrolled of top of his moccasin and retrieved the small leather sack he had folded into it. Before he opened it he fingered the contents. Amusement and chagrin flitted across his round face too quickly for anyone to see except those who knew him well. Cheis's impassive expression never shifted as he watched his brother.
The rest waited while Ox wrapped the thick fingers of one hand around the sack to hide the angular, untobacco-like bulge in it, and reached in with the other. He poked around and pulled out a pinch of tobacco. He closed the sack, replaced it in his moccasin cuff, and rolled the tobacco in a sumac leaf.
He handed the cigarillo to Cheis, who accepted it solemnly. No one gave any sign that they knew what had happened, but most of them had heard of the wanderings of the rooster feet. The story circulating among the nightly fires was that when Cheis was thirteen, he put a rooster's foot into seven-year-old Ox's gourd of stew. Instead of making a fuss, Ox had acted as though it weren't there. When Cheis went on his first scout as an apprentice, he had found the foot in
his water sack. It and its sucessors had been passing between them ever since, in a blanket roll, in a moccasin, under a saddle, or tied to a war cap along with the feathers, and with never any indication that it existed.
After the opening ritual, Red Sleeves started the discussion. The Americans intrigued, puzzled, and irritated everyone. If the Ndee complied with the Americans' demands, they would not be able to avenge the massacre at Janos. That was unthinkable.
“Wah-sin-ton says this. Wah-sin-ton says that.” Morning Star looked around the council fire. “Who is this Wah-sin-ton?”
“Maybe he's the Pale Eyes' most powerful chief,” Red Sleeves said.
“The Pale Eyes want our leaders to ride many days to visit this fellow, Wah-sin-ton. Why doesn't Wah-sin-ton come to us instead?”
“Maybe he's too old,” said Loco. “Maybe his joints ache when he camps anywhere but in his own lodge.”
“Why won't the Americans give us guns and powder and ammunition to kill Mexicans?” Loco said. “The Mexicans are their enemies, too. We're not asking them to fight the Mexicans for us. We'll kill the treacherous coyotes ourselves.”
“We don't need their guns,” said He Who Yawns. “When we use bows, we do not have to depend on the Pale Eyes for powder and bullets.”
Cheis and Ox, Morning Star, and Broken Foot had faces that fell easily into smiles. He Who Yawns did not. His eyes glowed like coals from under an overhanging brow. His sharp nose, wide mouth, and thong-thin lips gave him a look of ferocity that was almost perpetual.
“The Americans and the Mexicans fought for two years.” Red Sleeves fell silent and stared off into the past, something he did more often these days. “We've seen the ground strewn with their rotting dead. The coyotes and the buzzards grew fat during that war. In all our years of making war with the Mexicans, I doubt we killed as many of them as the Americans did.”
Something else was bothering all of them. Broken Foot
spoke of it first. “Are we children that the American colonel should tell us what we can and cannot do in our own country? We have always gone to Mexico for horses and slaves. Mexico is our second home.”
Red Sleeves turned to a compact individual dressed in the white shirt and loose white cotton trousers of a Mexican farmer. Juan Mirez had taken off the breechclout and moccasins he had worn since Red Sleeves had captured him in Mexico at age nine. On the pretense of looking for mules to buy, he would find out where the soldiers had taken the captives.
“Do you have everything you need, my son?” Red Sleeves asked him.
“Yes, Uncle.”
Since Red Sleeves had recommended He Who Yawns as the leader of the biggest war raid anyone could remember, he had become even more overbearing than usual. He recounted again the perfidy of Mexicans soldiers and the warriors' obligation to the spirits of those murdered at Janos.
He committed the most basic discourtesy. He talked so much that he didn't allow others to make their own pictures in their heads. By leaving nothing to the imagination, he demanded that they see it exactly as he did. A good speaker said only enough to encourage the listeners to open up their thinking and travel in their minds to the place being spoken of, to see the events there for themselves.
“I have war magic.” He announced it as if they hadn't heard it before. “That night by the river, after the Mexicans had slain my mother, my woman, and my children, the spirits promised that bullets could never kill me.”
“Did they give you the power to stop bullets from killing the rest of us?” Broken Foot said it in a voice too low for He Who Yawns to hear, but the men around him chuckled softly.
While He Who Yawns talked, Morning Star let his mind wander. He thought about that invisible line undulating across mountains and deserts and rivers, the line the Mexicans were not supposed to cross. The People considered this an advantage. Mexican lancers could not chase the raiding parties across it.
Morning Star didn't agree. The Pale Eyes who called themselves American had taken a vast territory that the Mexicans considered theirs. If the Americans took land from the Mexicans, would they try to take land from The People, too?
At first The People had thought that the Pale Eyes with their rods and strings were playing a game, like hoop-and-pole, only this game required a field as big as The People's entire country. When they learned the real purpose of the chains and the poles and the far-seeing tubes, they had laughed uproariously around their fires at night. The Pale Eyes thought they could measure mountains and deserts and rivers the way a woman measured a buckskin to see if she could cut a shirt front or a moccasin top out of it.
Morning Star didn't laugh. He remembered watching with his sister from a ridge as a company of Mexican soldiers rode up the valley below. They had stopped at the ford in the stream, conferred, and then headed back the way they came. Morning Star told Lozen that the boundary lay there.
“How can they witch a wall from the air?” she had asked. He had looked solemnly at her. “They urinate in a line like Brother Wolf when he marks his hunting lands. When the Mexicans reach it, they smell the urine and turn away.” She had exploded into that wild, infectious laugh of hers.
Lozen. What to do about the child who was no longer a child? She was supposed to be helping She Moves Like Water and her sister, Corn Stalk, prepare for the ceremony that would mark her as a woman. Instead she was sneaking off with the boys and begging him to let her serve as his apprentice on his horse-stealing raids.
After the ceremony of White Painted Woman, his little sister would be free to marry. She would spend her days in the company of women. She would bear children and raise them. She would care for grandchildren when her own daughters went on raids with their husbands. The thought should have made him happy, but it didn't. She had horse magic and the power of far-sight and who knew what other gifts. He couldn't shake the feeling that the spirits had other plans for her.
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