Apache Lament Read online

  And then had come that final journey with her familia to the base of the Guadalupe cliffs where a great saline basin gleamed in the desert sun. As was their custom every autumn, the villagers had embarked by caravan, the drivers popping rawhide whips against ox teams plodding with empty carretas. Upon reaching the Guadalupes’ shadow, the men had set about loading these wooden-wheeled carts with life-sustaining salt for the return trip.

  Of the ensuing events, Nejeunee recalled nothing clearly, except the wind tugging at her mother’s rebosa as it had rested in a red pool where only pure white should have been. Even today, that image troubled Nejeunee, more so than any other memory of her first life. She was Ndé now, and proud to be one of the People. But even in her hatred for the Indaa and Mexicanos, she knew that a great evil had been done to her mother.

  Recently, brief visions of that day had begun flashing through Nejeunee’s mind. Sometimes a painted and disfigured face joined the disturbing portrait of a rebosa draped across blood-soaked ground crusted with salt. There was a stone-headed war club as well, descending in terrible judgment. Nejeunee realized that in her ten winters with the People, she had only known one man disfigured in such a way, and when she heard muted hoofbeats behind her, she turned and saw him riding up.

  Astride a paint pony, Gian-nah-tah was a warrior of thirty winters with a gaudy red headband holding his straight black hair in place. Eagle feathers waved from his war cap, a turban of mountain lion pelt with the tail hanging in back. The remainder of the skin hugged his torso as protection against the cold, while buckskin leggings served a similar purpose.

  Bearing a bandolier of cartridges and a quiver of hardwood arrows, Gian-nah-tah presented a picture of ferocity that Nejeunee knew was certain to instill fear in the Indaa. He carried a Winchester carbine in his hand and a bow of wild mulberry about his shoulder, a bone-handled knife in his rawhide belt and the loop of that haunting war club about his wrist.

  But all these things paled in comparison to a face streaked black on the right. The other side, he left bare, so that an enemy might see the eyeless socket and the long scar that wrenched his upper lip into an animal-like snarl. Nejeunee had heard whispers that he was a witch, manifesting evil through his power, and she could believe it every time she looked at him.

  “Listen!” said Gian-nah-tah, halting the paint near Nejeunee. The warriors and other women turned, and he gave them a moment to gather. “Behind come Indaa, as many as we. The power to find enemies told me where they were. From the rim I watched them approach in the snow, and I lay in wait where the tilted rocks lie over the canyon. With my hands I rolled down tsé ntsaa, big rocks, and made the black wind roar through the canyon. The Indaa ran like ga’í, the rabbit. They still follow, but we will celebrate as we ride until neeldá, the dawn, lights the sky.”

  Even as Nejeunee rushed about, helping pack onto travois all they had unloaded, she rejoiced with the other women at Giannah-tah’s victory in the canyon. They retold his exploit repeatedly among themselves, their outward joy a little greater each time. Nejeunee, for her part, recounted it more than anyone, hoping that by doing so she would bury a sudden thought that no Ndé should have.

  What deeds of bravery had Gian-nah-tah told upon returning ten winters ago from the salt bed with the stained rebosa?

  Practiced in breaking camp quickly, they were on the move within minutes—Nejeunee, the cradleboard at her back, astride a small roan; Gian-nah-tah, eleven warriors, and three other women on mounts of their own; and the six teepees, sleeping blankets, and meager provisions on three travois pulled by mules. There had been five travois before the hard winter, but the band had been forced to butcher two of the work mules for food. For the last week, Nejeunee had subsisted on jerky and what the women had scrounged from the desert, but now her stomach had a great emptiness. For herself, Nejeunee wouldn’t have been concerned, but her milk might diminish, and Little Squint Eyes could gain only so much nourishment from moist sugar wrapped in a teat-like cloth.

  They marched as daylight faded into a hard dark that brought bitter cold seeping through the woolen blanket about Nejeunee’s shoulders. She had learned to bear discomfort without complaint, but it was too much to expect of Little Squint Eyes. Early in the night, as ice crackled under the horses’ hoofs and the dragging frames of the travois sang against snow, he began to cry. Nejeunee didn’t know if it was from hunger or cold, but she halted long enough to remove the child from the cradle-board and take him under the blanket. There at her breast, he could find warmth and nourishment.

  “A Ndé baby doesn’t cry.”

  It was too dark to see who rode beside Nejeunee, but she had no trouble recognizing the complaining voice. He-who-cannotbe-mentioned had taken One Who Frowns as wife before Nejeunee had ever joined the People, and when he later had brought Nejeunee as well into his teepee, One Who Frowns immediately had lived up to her name. She had never borne he-who-cannotbe-mentioned a child, and from the start the older woman had resented Nejeunee’s youth and the possibility that Nejeunee might be the one to present their husband with that for which he had yearned.

  Then had come the day when Nejeunee had announced that she was with child, and as pleased as their husband had been, One Who Frowns’s hostility toward her had risen in equal measure. Of course, he-who-cannot-be-mentioned had never lived to see Nejeunee give birth, but One Who Frowns had been there, midwifing even though Nejeunee had not welcomed her. With his first breath Little Squint Eyes had cried, and his crying had persisted as Nejeunee had allowed One Who Frowns to take him so that Nejeunee could move near the fire and clean herself. Meanwhile, One Who Frowns had squirted Little Squint Eyes with water from her mouth and dried him with bunched grass.

  This, Nejeunee had expected of any midwife, and also the cattail pollen that the older woman had blown upon the newborn. But Nejeunee had been unprepared for what One Who Frowns had said in extending the crying baby to Nejeunee.

  “You know the ways of the People with wailing babies. Strangle him!”

  But Nejeunee had brought Little Squint Eyes to her breast and his crying had ceased. From then on, however, One Who Frowns had seized every opportunity to remind Nejeunee that her baby was unworthy of being called Ndé. Now, in the dark and the piercing cold, One Who Frowns continued to criticize Little Squint Eyes.

  “He who was my husband would be ashamed to call him his son.”

  “We shouldn’t speak of yah-ik-tee, he who is not present.” Nejeunee cast a furtive glance into the night. “Niishjaa, the owl that hunts the winter snows, may give voice to the dead.”

  “The owls will bring evil ghosts because of Little Squint Eyes. The owl was ready to call his name and summon him to the Land of Ever Summer the moment he was born. You should have strangled him and burned the cradleboard you fashioned. The cradleboard is as evil as he.”

  “I don’t want to hear this!” Nejeunee exclaimed quietly.

  “May he die tonight. Like an animal so I can say ‘yah-tats-an, now it is dead.’ ”

  “Shut up, old witch spirit!” Nejeunee wrapped her arms even more securely around Little Squint Eyes, but she knew that were the time to come, there would be nothing she could do to keep the owls from taking him.

  Until Nejeunee lashed out at One Who Frowns, they had spoken in hushed tones. But Nejeunee’s outburst caused the two shadowy riders ahead to drop back alongside. To intrude on an argument was typical of only the band’s other two women, sisters by birth who were notorious for idle talk.

  “One Who Frowns must be speaking of Gian-nah-tah again, Nejeunee,” said one woman, whose voice she recognized as that of Brushing Against. “You should give him a sign that you’re interested. He among all the People has the power to find enemies.”

  Nejeunee was not surprised that Brushing Against was the first of the women to speak, for she was the older of the sisters and had made it her purpose to tell Nejeunee what to do.

  “We know he wants you to warm his kuughà, teepee,” said the younger sis
ter, whose rapid speech had earned her the name Quick Talker. “We’ve been telling you since first frost.”

  “Look at One Who Frowns,” added Brushing Against, who always viewed matters practically. “She’s already taken another husband for the good of the People. Why can’t you?”

  “Idzúút’i! Go away!” Nejeunee told both of them.

  “A woman so upset by the mention of a man means she has strong feelings for him,” said Quick Talker. Highly excitable, she was more in tune with emotional matters than was her sister. “Next time you walk by, hit him with a stick.” She giggled. “Just a tap—don’t knock him out. That’s how I chose the one who’s now my husband. Four mornings later I was cooking for Klosen outside his kuughà and bringing his horse up for him.”

  “Does the cold make your tongue flap like chattering teeth?” asked Nejeunee. “I had no interest in Gian-nah-tah when I was younger and could choose any man on the reservation.”

  “Who knows when we’ll ever return there?” Brushing Against responded. “Here the women are few, just the four of us, and most of the men are alone. Gian-nah-tah has had no one to warm him at night since the sickness on the reservation took his wife.”

  An image of the bloody rebosa surged through Nejeunee’s mind, darkening the night even more.

  “Evil in a Ndé is its own sickness,” she said, surprising herself.

  “What do you mean?” asked Brushing Against. “Are you now insulting me? Or is it Quick Talker?”

  But One Who Frowns was evidently more perceptive—or perhaps she saw an opportunity to create a problem for Nejeunee. “Maybe it’s Gian-nah-tah she speaks of.”

  “Is that it, Nejeunee?” pressed Quick Talker. “Any available woman should be proud to serve Gian-nah-tah. Weren’t you singing his victory over the Indaa the same as we were?”

  “One Who Frowns just wants to make trouble,” said Nejeunee. “All she has to do is chatter like a squirrel and leave the rest to the biggest gossips in all the People.”

  “Now you are insulting me,” said Brushing Against.

  “And me,” added Quick Talker.

  Nejeunee could hear one of them begin to cry, for Mescalero women were more emotional than the señoras in the village of her youth.

  “I was only wanting to help you,” sobbed Quick Talker. Nejeunee should have guessed it was she who wept; Quick Talker was as fast with a tear as she was with her words.

  Nejeunee sought out the shadow that was One Who Frowns. “Why is it all right for a Ndé woman to cry and not a baby in his cradleboard?”

  “Hmph!”

  It was One Who Frowns’s only response, and Nejeunee supposed it was because she had no answer that wouldn’t bring an angry retort from the other women. Not only that, but One Who Frowns had been known to weep as well.

  “The tiny ears of a field mouse could hear our women from Tl’é’na’áí, the moon.”

  Nejeunee had been so intent on the conversation and on One Who Frowns’s silhouette that she hadn’t realized that a trailing rider had come abreast on the opposite side. A snowdrift evidently had muffled the hoofbeats to the level of a soft patter of rain.

  Nejeunee shuddered as she turned, for she realized who had spoken.

  “If the field mouse could hear,” added Gian-nah-tah, “think what the Indaa could do.”

  Nejeunee wished she could crawl into a burrow with ga’í, the rabbit, and hide. In the impenetrable night, she had lost Giannah-tah’s position in the march. How long had he been riding within earshot, and what had he heard?

  “Nejeunee’s child was wailing,” spoke up One Who Frowns. “She must keep it quiet, or the Indaa will track us down. From birth it has wailed.”

  “He was hungry and cold,” defended Nejeunee, readjusting the blanket about Little Squint Eyes. “He doesn’t know the Indaa are behind. Without our children, the People have no tomorrow.”

  “Then a woman without a husband should warm a man’s kuughà, teepee,” said Gian-nah-tah. “It is her duty as a Ndé.”

  With a cluck of his tongue, Gian-nah-tah took his pony ahead, but his words stayed with Nejeunee.

  She didn’t have long to ponder, for from one of the nearby horses came subdued giggling. “See, Nejeunee?” Quick Talker pointed out quietly. “One rap on the head and things will be different for you.”

  But maybe it wasn’t always a tap on a would-be suitor that could alter a life. Maybe a crushing blow on a rebosa-draped señora could do so with far greater consequences to a ten-yearold girl.

  CHAPTER 4

  Stooping at the flank of his unsaddled horse, Sam lifted its hind leg out of the snow. He was careful to work from the front, protecting himself from being kicked. Slipping a loop of leather over the animal’s pastern, he buckled it into place and lowered the hoof. As he stretched the attached sideline toward the gray’s foreleg in order to hobble the horse, he looked across the small flat at Franks.

  The captain had taken a turn for the worse. He had managed to unsaddle his black and unfurl his tarp and bedroll between lechuguilla daggers, but now he sat slumped, coughing and expectorating phlegm. It was as if he had exhausted all his energy just as dusk had overtaken them, here where Mescaleros had stirred the snow below La Nariz.

  Sam hoped a pot of coffee brewing nearby at a just-kindled fire would revive Franks, for a supper of hardtack and jerky wouldn’t do much to restore strength to someone of his years. Franks could have used a lot of things they didn’t have—nourishment, medicinal powders, shelter from the cold—but what he didn’t need was trouble among the men.

  Matto obviously hadn’t shrugged off his anger at Boye, and Sam had noticed him glaring at the oblivious young man as they had unsaddled their horses. Now, the preacher boy stood warming his hands at the fire while Matto and Arch came up out of the arroyo beyond with dead creosote limbs. The fire, more smoke than flame, was in danger of going out, but Boye seemed unconcerned, content instead with talking to himself—something about the tongue being a flame.

  Through the drifting gray haze, Sam watched a grinning Arch approach the fire. Sam could even hear the jingle of his friend’s spurs; for the moment, the currents were just right to carry sound.

  “Words of wisdom for the heathen, Boye?” Arch asked, depositing his wood beside the ring of flat rocks on edge.

  Boye’s gaze stayed on the struggling flame. “The tongue of the heathen defiles the body, I tell you it does. It’s set on the fire of hell.”

  “Right where somebody’s liable to send you, you lazy SOB.” Matto came up abreast of Arch and angrily threw his limbs on the pile. “Your arm broke or somethin’? We’s out gatherin’ wood, and you’re standin’ here too lazy to fan the fire. Can’t you see the damned thing’s goin’ out?”

  Boye wasn’t intimidated. “ ‘Go out from one fire, and another fire shall devour.’ ”

  “You even know what in the hell you’re sayin’?” challenged Matto.

  “Methinks he quotes Scripture,” opined Arch.

  Sam, who had been so distracted that he only now buckled the sideline around his horse’s foreleg, watched under the animal’s neck as Matto removed his hat, revealing greasy hair as black as his thick mustache.

  “Yeah, well,” said Matto, “they’ll be readin’ verses over him one of these days.” With a few waves of his hat brim, Matto stirred the smoke enough for flames to ignite.

  “Best a heathen like you comes into the Almighty’s fold while you can.”

  Boye, still in preacher form as he spoke, looked at Matto, and Matto looked at him. Sam didn’t like where this was headed and started for the fire, which erupted into a blaze that showed in Matto’s scowling face.

  Matto stepped toward Boye. “You’ve smarted off to me for the last time.”

  Arch casually gestured for Matto. “What say you assist me in procuring more wood?”

  But Matto stayed focused on Boye.

  “ ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you,’ ” said Boye, holding his ground.
/>
  “You callin’ me a devil?”

  Sam walked faster now, his duck trousers rasping with every stride.

  “I think you misunderstand about His Satanic Majesty,” Arch interjected. “Young Boye here proposes that you defy Lucifer’s—”

  Matto wouldn’t listen. With both hands he shoved Boye hard in the chest, sending the young man stumbling back. Desperate to right himself, Boye flailed his arms and inadvertently clipped Matto in the jaw. As the young man fell, an enraged Matto swung a fist that missed and lunged for him with an oath. Suddenly both men were down, a tangle of arms and legs thrashing in the snow.

  “That’s enough!” yelled Sam, breaking into a run.

  Captain Franks said something as well, but it was lost in Boye’s cries and Matto’s swearing. Boye, for someone who had courted death in the canyon, surprisingly made a fight of it, if only out of instinct. They rolled into the fire, the sparks flying and limbs popping. Knocking over the coffee pot and smothering the flames, they bowled over the upright rocks on the far side and came out in the snow again as Sam and other rangers converged on the scene.

  Boye was on top when Sam helped pull him away, and separating the two while the young man held a superior position infuriated Matto even more. He scrambled to his feet and would have lunged at Boye again—if not shot him—had Jonesy and another man not held him back. As it was, Matto swore at his restrainers as viciously as he did at Boye, until Captain Franks’s voice behind Sam put an end to things.

  Turning, Sam saw Franks stumbling up, his cough still plaguing him.