Chapter 24

“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY”

A high stone wall extended out from the stage station and enclosed the stalls where the horses were kept. Each stall had a loophole at the end of it, and Rafe, Jim Wallace, and the station’s hostler peered through them at the Apaches outlined against the gunbarrel-gray sky at the crest of the hill.

Bascom’s sergeant, John Mott, joined Rafe at his loophole. Mott was probably no more than thirty years old, about Rafe’s age, but he looked ten years more than that. Years in the sun had tanned his face and hands to the texture of saddle leather. Squint lines radiated out from his pale gray eyes. Rafe was relieved to see him among Bascom’s green troops.

Bascom expected an attack from Cochise, so he had moved his camp to just outside the walls. Rafe could have spit and almost hit the lieutenant’s tent, the rip in its side sewn up with large, uneven stitches. It reminded Rafe of a wound that wouldn’t heal any time soon.

Leave it to The Newt to locate his tipi the closest to the walls, Rafe thought.

Cochise and his men had appeared on the hill an hour or so ago. At the sight of them, Bascom and his command had crowded inside the gate. Now the station’s yard teemed with soldiers and mules.

“The Newt looks pale as a bleached shirt, don’t he?” said Wallace.

Neither Rafe nor Wallace worried about their immediate safety. They knew that no sane Apache would attack a fortified position, not even if they outnumbered the defenders, which in this case they certainly did. But they could not convince the lieutenant of that. He rushed around, giving his men one order, then changing his mind on the next pass, and issuing a conflicting one.

“The chief’s carrying a white flag,” Sergeant Mott called out. “He wants to parley.”

With the white cloth flapping in the cold wind, Cochise and three of his men walked down the hill toward the station. They stopped just out of rifle range and waited. The sergeant took a large white handkerchief from the front of his tunic and tied it onto a guidon pole.

“The lieutenant must be shitting his breeches just about now,” Jim Wallace observed to Rafe.

For a few moments Rafe thought Bascom would order his men to fire on Cochise and his delegation. Instead, he selected a corporal and two privates to go with him. He ignored Wallace, who spoke a little Apache, and Rafe and the sergeant, who were the only other ones with any knowledge of them. Rafe knew why. Bascom could not abide anyone who was more competent than he was. That narrowed his society to just about zero.

Sergeant Mott spoke to Bascom before he handed him the white flag. Bascom cut him off with a wave of his hand, turned, and stalked away.

“What did you say?” Wallace asked when the sergeant rejoined him and Rafe on the bench.

“I told him if he wants to avoid a war bloodier than he can imagine, he must release the hostages. I told him he can rely on Cochise to keep his word and work to get Felix Ward and the cattle back. Was I right about the chief keeping his word?”

Both Rafe and Jim Wallace nodded.

“Bascom said he would give them their freedom when the boy is restored.” Sergeant Mott hitched up his belt and crossed his arms over his chest. “I reckon he thinks that even if Cochise didn’t snatch the lad himself, he can make all them brunets jig to his tune.”

“Shit,” Wallace breathed softly. “’Pache don’t jig to nobody’s tune but their own.”

From the blacksmith shop where the Apache prisoners were locked up, Cochise’s brother, Ox, began chanting in a high, loud voice. The soldiers crowded around the loopholes so they could watch the parley. Rafe, Wallace, the hostler, and Sergeant Mott had already selected holes with a view of Cochise’s face. Bascom’s face didn’t matter. For all his gold braid and bluster, he was helpless as well as powerless, and Rafe knew it. Wallace knew it. The sergeant knew it. The hostler knew it. Cochise was the one who would decide whether they lived or died here. The irony was that Cochise’s decision, and everyone’s lives, depended on what Bascom said and did.

They could tell that the talks were going badly. Jim Wallace swore under his breath.

“I can’t let him get us slaughtered.” Wallace unbuckled the belt that held his holster.

“I’ll come with you,” Rafe said.

“I’ll go, too.” The hostler took the pistol from the back of his trouser belt and hung it by its lanyard on the peg with Wallace’s.

Rafe added his Colt revolvers to them, but he didn’t feel good about it. He studied the bushes and rocks and the shallow ravine that lay along the route to the hill. From here he could see almost to the bottom of the ravine. Nothing stirred there. Rafe remembered Wallace’s advice about driving a stage. “When you see Apaches, be careful. When you don’t see Apaches, be more careful.”

The big iron hinges squealed as two soldiers pulled the doors ajar. Rafe scratched Patch’s ears and told her to wait for him. She sat with her ears cocked, eyes intent until the closing gate blocked her sight of him.

Rafe, Jim, and the hostler started across the broken ground. They had passed the midpoint when nine half-naked warriors appeared over the rim of the ravine. They alarmed Rafe, but they didn’t surprise him. He should have known the Apaches had performed their invisibility act. He whirled and sprinted toward the high stone wall that seemed to have moved itself considerably farther away since he left it.

Bullets whined past him from at least three directions. He heard Jim Wallace shout for help. Rafe didn’t slow down. If the Apaches had gotten Wallace, Rafe knew he could be of no use without his pistols.

He had almost reached the wall when the lead ball hit him like the flat of a hand shoving against his left shoulder blade. The force of it knocked him off balance. He tripped on a rock and pitched forward. He felt the grittiness of the sand against his cheek and in his mouth, but no pain from his back, only a spreading numbness. He got halfway to his feet again when Bascom pelted past and knocked him down. Neither he nor the three soldiers with him offered to help.

Rafe lay with eyes closed, the stones pressing into his cheek, and prepared to attempt verticality again. When a pair of hands grabbed him under the arms, he tried to fight them off. He wondered how he could kill himself before the Apaches did it in their own, leisurely way.

Then he saw the iron tips of Sergeant Mott’s boots at nose level. He felt Patch licking his face. The sergeant hauled him to his feet and half supported him, half dragged him toward the gate.

He saw the hostler make a run at the far end of the stone wall and scramble up it. A soldier’s head and shoulders popped up at the top of the wall, fired straight down into his face, and then disappeared. The hostler fell backwards and lay still. Rafe, Patch, and Sergeant Mott slipped through the gates before the soldiers slid the big bolt home.

“Jim Wallace?” he asked.

“The hostiles got him,” Mott said.

Rafe swayed, leaned his back against the wall, realized that the contact hurt, a lot, and slid down it, anyway. His last thought, before he went unconscious from loss of blood, was bitter disappointment that the Apaches hadn’t killed George Bascom.

 

 

SHE WORE ONLY A BREECHCLOUT AND MOONLIGHT. LIKE war paint, the moon’s silvery glow outlined the straight ridge of her nose and the curves of her high cheekbones. It lay in an arch across the top of each taut, upturned breast. Her hair floated in a midnight forest around her. Rafe ached to wander into that wilderness and never come out.

“Lozen.” He didn’t know if he said it aloud or not. He did know that he was naked, unarmed, and defenseless, and he didn’t care.

“She walks in beauty … .” He was surprised he remembered the poem. He couldn’t remember from which army officer he had learned it or who had written it. “She walks in beauty like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes.”

She smiled like a desert sunrise, bright and lovely, but with the certainty of misery and devilment to come, and more heat than a man could bear. He walked toward her, unable to stop himself even if he’d wanted to. She put a hand to her waist and the breechclout fell away.

Dear Lord, he thought, she’s more beautiful than any woman has a right to be.

He walked into the fortress of her arms and into the fragrance of smoke and sage and horses. He cupped her breasts in his palms, lowered his head and kissed them. She pulled him to her, and he put his arms around her. He kissed her neck and shoulder. Passion so addled him that the boundaries of his body vanished. He could not have said where her skin and his touched. His skin became her skin. When he kissed her, his mouth melded with her soft, full one. His bones became hers, his desire hers.

When he entered her, her muscles tightened around him as though she held him in her strong hand, and squeezed with a slow, tantalizing rhythm. He thought the heat inside her would sear him. He thought the exaltation that flooded him would drain the life out of him. Then he stopped thinking.

With unconcern, he saw her big knife flash in the moonlight. He felt the flat of its tip a cold triangle under his ear. He tilted his head back to expose his neck to her.

The old Navajo song, Yeibichai, the “Prayer of the Night Chant,” echoed in his head.

May it be beautiful before me.
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
May it be beautiful all around me.
In beauty it is finished.

He felt the blade slice like a caress across his throat while she smiled at him, bewitching, beguiling. He died and climaxed at the same time in a spate of warm blood and hot semen. Death was worth it.

With a grunt he woke up, heart pounding and body drenched in sweat despite the cold air. The cot’s blankets twisted around him in a clammy knot. His arm and shoulder throbbed with an ache that penetrated his bones. His cock throbbed, too, but it was already slumping from the perpendicular. He lay shaken and panting from the dream.

“She walks in beauty like the night … .” He had dreamed of Lozen before, but never like this. He looked around in the pale light. He remembered that he was in the storeroom next to the station manager’s office. Lieutenant Bascom had established his quarters in the office, and Rafe could hear him and Sergeant Mott arguing there. Rafe could hear mules braying outside, too. From the pitch of their complaints he could tell what was bothering them.

He tried to say, “The mules need water,” but his own mouth was dry as dust and all that came out was “water.” It didn’t matter. No one could have heard him over the argument, anyway.

“That misguided fool, Michael Steck, has coddled the savages.” Bascom’s shouting reminded Rafe of the mules’ braying. “With the connivance of the government, he’s made pets of them while they murder and plunder at will. It’s time to teach them a lesson.”

The sergeant spoke too low for Rafe to hear everything he said, but “Damn fool,” and “West Point jackass” did filter through the thin planks of the wall.

“Corporal,” Bascom shrieked, “Arrest this man for insubordination.”

Moments later the door of Rafe’s room slammed open, and four soldiers propelled John Mott through it. They locked manacles on his wrists and ankles and fastened the long chains to a beam overhead.

They left, and the sergeant looked Rafe up and down. “Son, you’ve got the hoofmarks of the nightmare all over you.”

“I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet, all right.” Rafe wondered if he had said anything aloud while he dreamed of Lozen, but he was too embarrassed to ask. He glanced toward the wall that separated them from Bascom. “What happened?”

“Cochise brought your friend Wallace to trade for his kin. Led him on a rope like a mule to that hill outside. He looked unharmed.”

“Bascom won’t trade for him?”

“Nope. The chief is being remarkably patient, though.”

“He wants his family back.”

“I reckon. This morning he left a note on the hill.”

“What did it say?”

“Don’t know. Bascom won’t let anyone retrieve it.” The sergeant managed to unhook the canteen from his belt with both manacled hands, and in a rattle of chains he slid it across the floor. Rafe hung off the edge of the cot and almost fell into an eddy of his own frailty. He snagged the canteen by its lanyard. It hadn’t much water left in it.

“Water’s rationed.” The sergeant leaned his head against the wall. “I had to dig the bullet out of your withers with a spade,” he added in a wry tone. “The lead ball had spread, of course. You didn’t like it much.”

“I remember.”

“You were a might feverish afterward, from the putrefaction. I put some maggots in the wound. They cleaned it out.” Mott gave Rafe a sideways look as wry as his tone. “We have a generous supply of maggots.”

“I thank you.” Then he remembered the mules braying and what Mott had said. “Rationing water? How long has it been?”

“Three days.”

Rafe remembered that the spring was almost a third of a mile away, at the head of that ravine where the Apaches jumped him. He raised himself on his elbows, sat up, and slung the sergeant’s canteen over his good shoulder. He managed to swing his legs off the edge of the cot and teeter there, as though perched over an abyss. He waited for the room to stop jigging before he stood up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder which the sergeant had wrapped in the red sash from a dress uniform.

Using the three-foot-long handle of his whip as a cane, he walked outside and through the press of men and filth. The westbound stage had arrived while Rafe was unconscious, adding a driver, conductor, and seven disgruntled but supremely fortunate people to the tally. The mules still brayed in the corral. Patch trotted anxiously next to him as though determined to prevent any more evil from happening to him.

A soldier stood aside so Rafe could look through the loophole in Red’s stall. The boy didn’t look more than fifteen. He reminded Rafe of himself when he joined the army, a lifetime ago, it seemed.

The lad’s thin wrists outran the cuffs of his rumpled tunic by at least three inches. His yellow hair slanted across his left eye. Hard calluses paved the palms of his hands, but he hadn’t been in the army long enough to have acquired them here. Plow handles must have laid them down. Rafe wondered if the lad would live to return to that plow and the rich Mississippi delta soil it churned through, or if he would die here.

The hostler’s body still lay face up where it had fallen, eyes bulging toward the leaden sky. A light snow sifted like powdered sugar over it.

“The lieutenant won’t let us send a detail out to bury him,” the soldier said. “I been throwin’ rocks at the crows to keep ’em from eatin’ his eyes. An’ I fed your dog and horse whilst you was asleep.”

“That’s kind of you, son.” Rafe looked out at the hill and the tall stake planted at the crest of it. He considered the wall’s heavy wooden gate, the big iron bolt, and the arm bandaged against his side.

“Open the gate for me,” he said.

“Cain’t, sir. Lieutenant Bascom’s orders.”

“Give me your canteen, then, and as many others as you can gather.”

The soldier returned with fifteen or so, and Rafe slung them over his good shoulder. He braced the base of his left palm against the bolt and pushed, leaning his body into it. He shoved against the gate with his left shoulder. Lights exploded in front of his eyes, but he pushed the gate open enough to squeeze through. Patch came after him. Behind him he could hear Cochise’s brother Coyundado start his serenade again.

He climbed the hill, feeling the stare of Apache eyes from the rocky aeries that surrounded the station. He untied the folded paper from the stick. The message hand been written on the back of an invoice for bowler hats, brogans, and Dr. Kilmer’s Cough Remedy. He recognized Jim Wallace’s neat hand, but the words were Cochise’s.

“I have three other white men now, besides the one called Wallace,” it began. “Treat my people well, and I will do the same by yours. Cochise.”

Three others. Rafe wondered who they might be. The express rider? Some luckless travelers? Freighters?

From the hill he walked to the spring and filled the canteens. He gave the sergeant’s to Patch to carry by the cord. She trotted behind him with her head up so it wouldn’t hit the ground.

By the time Rafe reached the gate, the canteens felt as though they weighed fifty pounds each, but he was almost hopeful. Surely now that the stakes had been raised by three more lives, Bascom would relent.

He delivered Sergeant Mott’s canteen to him and knocked on the lieutenant’s door. He started into the persuasion he had rehearsed, but he knew before he had waded in ankledeep that he would fail. He could tell by the panicky look in Bascom’s eyes and the stubborn set of his thin lips. The man would not relent. His fragile opinion of his own abilities would not let him do anything that could be interpreted as retreating.

Rafe’s hands shook with rage as he handed over the note. He wanted to strangle him. He wanted to watch his round, mantis eyes pop from his head. He wanted to hear Old Man Death rattle and wheeze and cackle in Bascom’s throat.

He thought of trying to find Cochise in that deadly maze of rocks and peaks where he had his stronghold and bargain for the lives of Wallace and the other three men. He knew he could do nothing, though, so long as Bascom held Cochise’s family. He imagined the leisurely, agonizing death the four men faced. He wanted to curse Bascom to eternal damnation. He wanted to rant at heaven over the surplus of boneheadedness that God had added to His ultimate creation, Man.