Killer of Witches: The Life and Times of Yellow Boy Mescalero Apache Read online

  I held on to the horse’s mane and bounced on its warm withers as Caballo Negro and Mother walked to a low bank and waded across the river to the high banks of the western edge. They led the animals up the western bank to the llano and began running west at a pace that covered many miles and saved the animal’s strength. It was strange for me, but it felt right, riding in the cold darkness with only the light of stars and hearing Mother and Caballo Negro breathing deep gulps of air as their moccasins flew over the dead, dry grass. A quarter moon did not come until the night was more than half gone. But even in the deep darkness, with only stars lighting the llano, Caballo Negro led the way as if he saw as well as he did in the light of day. I thought, No Blue Coat will ever catch us.

  CHAPTER 3

  ON THE Llano

  * * *

  Sons-ee-ah-ray and Caballo Negro ran west for many miles the night we left the Blue Coats and Bosque Redondo. They stopped three times, more to rest the horses and mule than themselves. They stopped first when the moonlight finally fell on the llano, and it was much easier to see in the dark and shadow-filled distance. Sons-ee-ah-ray led the animals into a shallow arroyo while Caballo Negro crept to the top of a rise and looked back toward the east, toward where soldiers would come. He watched and listened with his ear to the end of his knife handle, the blade stuck in the ground, and he sniffed the air. He saw nothing, heard nothing, and smelled nothing of the Blue Coats.

  My mother allowed herself two swallows of water and gave me one after holding up one finger to be sure I understood that’s all I could have. When I nodded, she gave it to me, and then waited for my father to return. He reappeared like a ghost floating out of the llano brush shadows and sat down on the arroyo bank, shaking his head at Sons-ee-ah-ray’s questioning stare. Without the warmth of the horse under me, I soon grew cold and shivered until Sons-ee-ah-ray and Caballo Negro sat together, and Sons-ee-ah-ray, holding me on her lap, wrapped a thin blanket around us all. We drank a little more water and ate what Sons-ee-ah-ray had made in the past week for us to eat on the run, dry meat pounded together with meal, nuts, and dried cactus fruit. It was something like what the warriors carried when they went on raids and couldn’t risk revealing themselves with cooking fires. It had taken her over a year, scrimping and saving every bit of food she could preserve, every special gift of nuts or dried fruit given her by other women, to gather the delicacies she had needed to make it. She hadn’t doubted we would need it when we escaped Bosque Redondo.

  In the deep stillness of the night, I drifted off to sleep huddled in the warmth of my father and mother. When I awoke, tied again on the gray horse jogging behind Sons-ee-ah-ray and Caballo Negro, I looked out over the dark, rolling plains that were covered with never-ending dry, crackling grass and felt confused, disoriented, and frightened. I felt the wind on my hands and face and saw the occasional cactus and mesquite bush casting black shadows in the dim quarter moonlight. The night air was freezing cold, and bouncing on the boney horse made my bones feel like they rattled in every socket, but soon I realized we were far from Bosque Redondo and felt comforted, thinking the freezing air and boney horse worth it to leave the place of the Blue Coats with my warrior father and beautiful mother running in front of me.

  We came to low rolling hills rising out of the llano like big bubbles in a pot of stew. They were covered with many bushes and separated by dry arroyos that passed around them like trails to be followed. We wound our way among the arroyos until we came to a black pool of water with a skim of ice around its edges, surrounded by grass and a few round boulders clustered on one side, where water dribbled, filling the pool.

  Sons-ee-ah-ray and Caballo Negro stopped again. He crept to the top of the highest hill next to the pool and studied the way we had come. He seemed to be gone a long time as I sat with mother after we had filled our water bladders, emptied our own, and let the animals drink. She looked very tired and hung her head like a jaded horse, and her moccasins looked ragged and in need of repair. I asked why she didn’t fix them. She said we needed to put more distance between the Blue Coats and us, and then there might be time to fix them when we stopped at daylight. When my father returned and again shook his head at her look, she seemed to regain her strength and, smiling, opened our blanket to him and motioned him to sit with us.

  We rested there by that pool longer than we had at the first stop. Before we started running again, Caballo Negro went to the animals hobbled in the grass surrounding the pool. He ran his hands over their muzzles and legs, removed their hobbles and looked at their hooves, rubbing his thumb over one or two of them before he let the horse drop it. When he was satisfied, he nodded, came back to us, picked me up and put me on the gray mare again, and, pointing with his nose in the direction he wanted to go, led us farther west.

  The coming dawn cast light on a line of cliffs and low hills in front of us, and Caballo Negro began turning south as he led us toward them. The sun was barely above the horizon when we moved into the shadows behind a high hill in front of the cliffs. After unloading the horses and mule, Sons-ee-ah-ray and I made a place to sleep in a small grove of piñons while Caballo Negro (who was often called “Caballo”) climbed to the top of the hill and stared east. When he returned, we ate and he said, “The Blue Coats are not coming. Let’s rest and let ponies graze until the sun hides again. I’ll watch from the top of the hill until the shadows are short, and then you come to watch, Sons-ee-ah-ray.”

  My mother nodded. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was watching Sons-ee-ah-ray fixing the ragged places in her moccasins and those of Caballo Negro.

  The wind was calm, the sun warm, and I slept all day. The second night, Caballo Negro and Sons-ee-ah-ray ran south along the sides of the hills and cliffs to the west. Before the moon cleared the eastern horizon, we came to another pool of water, drank our fill, and rested. Soon after leaving the water, the way south became much harder. It crossed a series of hills and deep arroyos, and Sons-ee-ah-ray and Caballo Negro had to run up and then race down, making it hard to keep the steady rhythm that had carried us far the night before. As the moon rose, we came down from the hills, and the land was flat again. They ran until the moon was high, and we found water made by a little spring dribbling out of a rock formation stuck there without rhyme or reason. Even as young as I was, I saw my mother was very tired. She stumbled often, and after we stopped to drink and rest, she was slow to rise, but she never complained.

  Leaving the pool, we did not run far. The moon had barely moved when Caballo Negro held up his hand for us to stop. He pointed directly in front of us. We were approaching the white ruts of a wagon road that disappeared west behind a high ridge. He sniffed the air and then turned west, running toward the high ridge behind which the ruts disappeared. He tied off the horses in a small grove of piñons, took me down, and spoke to my mother and me in a low voice. “Do you smell the wood smoke? The wagon tracks in front of us say maybe there is a ranch on the other side of the ridge. A ranch means horses and food. Maybe I can take some, and we will run no more, eh, Woman?”

  She smiled, nodded, and, trembling from the cold wind, said, “I know you are a strong warrior. We’ll wait.”

  “If I do not return, ride these animals south toward the next water as far as they can make it. If they fall before the next water, leave them and run on. Wait there. Sons-nah and another warrior with their families will meet you within a day and take you on to Cha’s camp with them. Be strong, Woman. Now we live free.”

  He turned to me.

  “Ish-kay-neh, take your bow and guard your mother. Always help her if you leave without me.”

  I wanted to wail for him not to go, but I kept my mouth shut and nodded. My mother had taught me from the time I was off the cradleboard that Mescaleros do not cry. No matter what comes, they know how to suffer, how to endure.

  Caballo Negro took his bow and quiver of arrows and disappeared into the night, running up the ridge. My mother and I squatted together by the biggest piño
n tree, and she wrapped a blanket around our shoulders. I had my bow, a weed arrow nocked against its string. Tensed for action, I was ready to fight if it would help Caballo Negro. The night was quiet, the only sounds from the restless piñons in a gentle wind. I smelled the weak trace of wood smoke, of which Caballo had spoken. The moon rose to the top of its arc and fell toward the southwest horizon.

  We heard a small pop in the distance, a rifle shot, then another and another. I started to rise, but my mother, her teeth clenched, grabbed my arm and looked at me with narrow eyes, telling me to be still. A woman screamed. I thought at first it was Cougar’s war cry like we sometimes heard near Bosque Redondo, but I soon understood it was a woman’s cry of fear.

  There was another pop and then no more. Orange and yellow light filled the night sky on the other side of the ridge, and my mother and I stared at it, wondering if it meant we did not have to run anymore.

  We heard horses running across the ridge before we saw Caballo Negro in the moonlight. He led six horses, and rode with a saddle on the seventh one, a large feed sack filled with supplies, and several blankets, rolled and tied, on the back of the saddle. His bow and quiver of arrows hung across his body. He guided the horse with one hand and carried a long soldier rifle with the other. It was the first rifle I remember seeing in the hands of my father.

  He rode to my mother and me and slid out of the saddle, smiling. “Woman, we will no longer shiver under thin blankets, and we will ride fast and far. These are good, strong ponies.”

  Though she should have been happy, she frowned. “Are you wounded anywhere?”

  “I am not. But the Indah did not let me take these horses without a fight. He came firing this rifle at where he thought I stood in the shadows. I killed him with two arrows. Then his woman came out screaming, trying to take the rifle and shoot some more. She looked weak and sick. I decided she would not last as a slave for you. I killed her with another arrow. I filled a sack with things we need from the house and then set it on fire after I dragged them inside and pulled my arrows from their bodies. I took only the best horses from the corral and left others. With those horses left in the corral, it might take awhile for other White Eyes to realize the ranch did not accidentally catch on fire. Maybe the Indah will never understand this was an Apache raid.”

  My mother laughed, and shaking her fist high said, “Enjuh!”

  I thought, My father is a great warrior. His story will be told around Mescalero fires for many years.

  We loaded the fresh horses with supplies off the boney horses and mule and drove the boney animals off toward the burning house. Caballo Negro set a steady pace that ate up the miles with the fresh, new horses. My mother and I rode together on one and led the rest. We stopped only once to rest before we reached the waterhole where Sons-nah and his family with my friend, Gah, and another warrior and his family were to meet us.

  Caballo Negro let the animals drink and scouted the ground around the water. He led us to a low hill a bowshot from the waterhole and hobbled the horses in an arroyo behind it. He told Sons-ee-ah-ray to make a small shelter on the side of the hill away from the water so anyone stopping there would not see us. Caballo made a place for himself at the top of the hill to watch the waterhole. We ate more of Sons-ee-ah-ray’s trail food, and then she and I crawled under the blanket-covered brush shelter to sleep while Caballo guarded the waterhole and waited for Sons-nah and the others.

  The sun was high when Sons-ee-ah-ray left our little shelter to watch the waterhole while Caballo slept. Her leaving awoke me, but I soon drifted back to sleep after I felt Caballo lie down beside me.

  Then I had a bad dream in which a great bull with long, sharp horns, the kind owned by the Indah, was chasing me across the llano. I must have made noise because Caballo Negro shook me awake and held his fingers to his lips with the edge of his hand to signal me to be quiet. I understood and lay there wondering how close to the night the sun’s travel was. Sons-ee-ah-ray suddenly appeared, touched Caballo, and silently pointed toward the watching place. He slid out of the shelter, took his bow and arrows, and crept up the hill to see the waterhole. They said nothing to me. I had to see what was happening. Perhaps, Sons-nah and Gah had arrived. I crawled through the weeds to a large creosote bush down the side of the hill and looked out through the branches.

  A Mexican cowboy, a vaquero, sat on his horse two long bow-shots away, and there was a big pistol in his hand. His eyes studied every detail of the ground and brush surrounding the waterhole. Even as young as I was, I understood he was trying to decide if someone was waiting to ambush him if he went to the water.

  He looked the waterhole and brush over for a long time. Sons-ee-ah-ray had trained me to be perfectly still when I hid, and I was. I knew Sons-ee-ah-ray watched him too, waiting perfectly still. I wondered what Caballo Negro planned.

  At last, the vaquero holstered his pistol, rode to a grassy spot near the waterhole, dismounted, and began loosening his saddle cinches. He untied a bedroll from the back of his saddle and tossed it in the grass. Next he pulled the silver-trimmed saddle from his horse and placed it by the bedroll. He pulled handfuls of grass and used them to rub down his horse, a big red one with a white blaze on its face, and then he led it to drink at the waterhole before leading it back to the grass and hobbling it after he removed its bridle.

  His big, round bottle with flat sides was like those I’d seen soldiers carry at Bosque Redondo. I had heard the Blue Coats call them canteens. He walked back to the waterhole, knelt on one knee by the water’s edge, and looked around, a hand on his pistol in its holster. Satisfied he was alone, he knelt on both knees, pushed his big hat back on his head, and, cupping his hands, dipped the water to his mouth and drank.

  The long arrow struck him in the middle of his shoulder blades with a sound like a fist smacking a gloved open palm, and it passed through to his front side. The only sound the vaquero made was a gurgling “aghhh,” as he fell face forward into the water. It had happened so quickly, I stared in disbelief. It was the first time I’d seen a man killed.

  Caballo Negro ran out of the brush, the knife in his hand his only weapon. He stopped momentarily to pull the big pistol from the holster and stuff it in his belt before he sheathed his knife, and, grabbing the vaquero by his boots, pulled him away from the waterhole. The body left a bright red trail of blood into the grass, and the water where the man had fallen was red. Caballo Negro walked back and flipped the bloody water away so it did not spoil the rest of the water.

  Sons-ee-ah-ray came and began to take the vaquero’s boots and clothes. Caballo Negro returned from the waterhole smoothing the sand, and I ran to help them. I remember the metallic smell of blood mixed with the smell of dirt from the man’s bowels. I learned that day death from an arrow has an ugly smell, not soon forgotten. Soon, long, dark red streaks filled the sky to the west as the sun disappeared, and I shivered in the cold air while looking at the hairy hide of the naked vaquero.

  CHAPTER 4

  CHA’S CAMP

  * * *

  Sons-ee-ah-ray took every piece of cloth and leather from the vaquero, and Caballo Negro pulled the arrow all the way through his body and washed it off. A good arrow was hard to make, and one with its power shown was even more valuable. The vaquero was a small man, and Caballo Negro picked him up with a little grunt and carried him away on his shoulder to hide in the sand. When I asked why, he said, “It will keep the coyotes and buzzards from finding him until we’re gone. The Blue Coats know to look where buzzards circle. Sometimes they show the place of a raid.”

  Late that night, Sons-nah and his family appeared. They came running in the moonlight from the east, and Gah was riding on her father’s back. The horse he had taken had been too weak to run far even without any weight on its back. When it couldn’t get up, he had killed it and took slices of meat for them to eat and a large piece of hide to make, repair, and replace moccasins. The other warrior, Klo-sen (Hair Rope), appeared a little later, his woman and two o
lder boys, both near the age of apprentice warriors, running with him downriver.

  That night was a time of thanking Ussen for helping us leave the place of suffering, protecting us on our separate trails, and bringing us together at this waterhole. Caballo Negro showed the others the good horses he had taken the night before, and when he gave one to each of the men and their women and one to Klo-sen’s two boys, they were very happy. Gah and I helped the women and Klo-sen’s sons dig a deep fire pit in the arroyo and gather brush to roast some of Sons-nah’s horsemeat. After we ate, the men sat near the fire, smoked their cigarettes, and told stories of their escapes across the llano from Bosque Redondo.

  Klo-sen’s sons kept watch while we slept that night. At dawn, the warriors decided no Blue Coats were looking for us and that it was safe to ride by day. Riding in daylight, we didn’t have to go slowly to follow the trail, so we traveled far that day. The women and children rode together in a group while the warriors stayed a few hundred yards on either side and behind us for our protection. Riding by day also allowed us to see from a long way off the best way into the mountains.

  Near sunset, after riding hard all day, we came to the foothills and mesas of the Guadalupes and found a box canyon where we could make a fire so the women could cook without its light being seen. Gah and I played in the freezing dark while the meat cooked, and the warriors and the sons of Klo-sen watched for vaqueros and Blue Coats, but none appeared.