DAVID AND GOLIATH
Rafe found Dr. Steck slumped behind his desk in Santa Fe. He was responding to the latest fiat from General Carleton, and he wasn’t in a good mood. He slid the glasses to the end of his thin nose and looked over them, brightening when he saw Rafe. He lit up when Rafe told him that Victorio had asked to meet with him and arrange to live in peace on the land his people already occupied.
He was humming to himself when he set out on horseback with Rafe and Caesar the next morning. They read Twelfth Night aloud, passing the book among them as they rode.
“I like this play the best,” Casesar said.
“Why is that?” asked Dr. Steck.
“’Cause Sebastian, the brother Viola thought was drowned, he turned up live and kickin’ in the end.”
“Do you have a brother?”
“I did. He’s gone on to the Lord, though.”
“We only have the brothers and sisters that God allotted to us,” Dr. Steck said, “but there is no limit on friends.”
Friends, Rafe thought, are rarer than hen’s teeth in this country. He was grateful to have found one in Caesar.
Twelfth Night occupied them for most of the ninety-mile trip to Bosque Redondo, but General Carleton was not happy to see them.
“I forbid it!” Carleton pounded the desk top so hard the quill pens, ink well, and account book did a little jig. “As far as the Indians are concerned, I am the sole authority in New Mexico.”
Dr. Steck tried to slip reason sideways into the tirade. “Victorio’s proposal to live on a reserve in his own country
is a sensible one. I’m sure he and I and the other Chiricahua Apaches can reach an amicable arrangement.”
“You will have nothing to do with them. One of my officers will parley with Victorio. He will give him and his tribe two choices. They can submit to the authority of the United States Army and go peaceably to Bosque Redondo, or they will be hunted down and killed.”
“That’s monstrous!”
“You will leave immediately,” Carleton’s eyes bulged. “If you return here, I shall have a detail of soldiers escort you away.”
Michael Steck rested one hand on the table, leaned into Carleton’s fury, and pointed a finger at the general’s nose. “You are a madman,” he said in a low, calm voice. “You are a hypocritical, greedy, cruel, stupid, short-sighted megalomaniac.”
Megalomaniac. Rafe had never heard the word, but he liked it. He thought the maniac part particularly suited Carleton.
RAFE MET CAESAR AT THE OUTSKIRTS OF ALAMOSA BEFORE dawn and they headed southwest. Caesar rode his dapplegray gelding, the only horse around who stood as tall as Red. Caesar gave Rafe a quizzical look.
“Are ya’ll sure you want to ride that hoss into the lion’s den?”
Rafe flashed him a sardonic smile. “If an Apache steals Red, it will be over my dead body and Red’s, too, I reckon.”
Out of habit, Rafe looked for Patch. Some mongrel with more charm than the rest had gotten past her curt refusals. She gave birth to four puppies last night. When Rafe left the tiny inn on one of Alamosa’s side streets this morning, the innkeeper’s children were staring raptly into the box they had lined with straw as a nest for them.
Rafe didn’t ask Caesar where he had slept. Caesar wasn’t welcome in places where Anglos predominated. Rafe would insist that his friend and partner be allowed to stay where he
did, and ugly scenes ensued. More than once both of them had stalked out of a hotel or boarding house and unfurled their blankets under a tree. Caesar usually found his own accommodations. He had a knack for finding accommodating accommodations.
They led two mules loaded with the gifts that Dr. Steck had asked them to buy in Alamosa’s market. Steck hadn’t said so, but Rafe assumed the gifts were an apology for the treatment Victorio and his men had received from Inspector General Davis, Carleton’s envoy. Davis had delivered Carleton’s ultimatum, and Victorio, being no man’s fool, had refused to take his people to Bosque Redondo. He and his warriors had ridden up into the mountains, and no one had seen anything of them since.
Rafe knew the officer Carleton had sent. Afterward, Rafe had seen him in the officers’ mess. He had raised his glass of brandy in a toast, “Death to the Apaches, and peace and prosperity to this land!”
Rafe had to admit that he was right. If all Anglos had been like Dr. Steck, coexistence might have been possible, but Rafe was amazed to have met even one man like him. There would be no peace or prosperity while Apaches and Americans tried to occupy the same space. Steck talked about the need to preserve this “interesting” people, as he called the Apaches, but he wasn’t trying to earn a living running cattle or prospecting for gold or hauling freight.
Rafe and Caesar followed the small river, climbing steadily. It chortled past them as though tickled by the tips of the willow branches brushing it. A gentle night rain had washed the dust off the rocks, trees, and bushes, and now the sun was polishing them. Birds sang as if strife hadn’t been invented. It was a lovely day to go courting death.
“Now how is it you know where Victorio and his people pitch camp?” Rafe asked Caesar.
“Josefa, she say the folks in Alamosa have trucked with the Warm Springs ‘Paches since her gran’mammy was a sprat.”
“Josefa? You mean you have a woman cached in Alamosa, too?”
“I reckon I catched her, all right.” Caesar gave him a sample of the smile that beguiled women of all ages.
“Did Josefa say why the Apaches never attack Alamosa?”
“She say they always treats ‘em fair. They ain’t never bushwacked ’em, cheated ’em, sold ’em bad whiskey, nor stolen they women.”
“Are only saints allowed to live in that town?”
“Naw, but if you had rattlesnakes residin’ in your back forty and you knew they was too clever for you to kill ’em, wouldn’t you treat ’em with respect?”
“I would.”
“Do ya’ll s‘pose the Apaches’ll shoot us first or say, ‘Howdy do’?” Caesar asked.
“Too late to worry about that now.”
Around the middle of the afternoon the stream seemed to disappear into a wall of basalt towering a hundred feet into the clear blue sky. They dismounted and made themselves comfortable under the walnut tree that Josefa said was the customary meeting place. They heard the high whistling keen of a hawk, but they didn’t see any birds circling overhead. The hawk’s cry always sounded mournful to Rafe, but now it sent shivers along his spine. He was pretty sure no hawk had made it.
“How long did Josefa say we should wait here?”
Caesar scanned the top of the cliff. “Long as it takes.”
It took a few hours. When the sun was about to insert itself between the sky and the top of the cliff, Caesar said, “Mebbe this is the wrong place. Mebbe they’s waiting under another walnut tree.”
“They’ve got to put on their best bib and tucker. And we’re probably a goodly distance from their bivouack.”
“What is a tucker anyways?”
“Damned if I know. Something to do with female attire, I think.”
Red’s ears pitched forward. Caesar’s hand went to the butt of the old breech-loading flintlock in the saddle boot. At least
fifty Apaches rode toward them. They had put on their best bibs and tuckers, all right, but they hadn’t painted the red stripe across their faces. That was a good sign. They were armed, though. Besides their usual cutlery, many of them carried old Mexican flintlocks. A few had the Spencer repeating rifles and the Smith carbines used by Union troops in the late war of the rebellion.
Victorio rode in front. He did not look like a harried fugitive or one of the ragtag beggars waiting for rations at the agency. None of them did. He wore a fringed leather hunting shirt stained white with clay and decorated with silver disks, tin cones, and beadwork. The lower parts of his tall moccasins were solidly beaded around the turned-up, red-painted strips of rawhide at the toes.
Rafe was surprised to see Cochise riding next to him, and he thought about how many men would like to have had him in their gunsights. On the other side of Cochise was a tall, ferocious-looking individual on a coffee-colored pony. The stranger was almost the same color as the pony, darker than any Apache Rafe had ever seen, and much heavier. He carried over two hundred pounds, and all of them solid meat.
He fit Kit Carson’s description of Juh, Long Neck, the most elusive and bloodthirsty killer in the whole tribe of them. Carson pronounced the name Whoa, or rather Wh-Wh-Whoa because of the man’s stammer. “Wolf mean,” Carson called him. “Wolf mean with b’ar and painter thrown in. Old Wh-Wh-Whoa is wrath walking upright.”
On Victorio’s left rode Lozen and an old man wearing a cap of hawk feathers and long gold chains dangling from his earlobes.
His name is Nanay, Rafe thought, but they call him Broken Foot.
Rafe was struck by how much Lozen and her brother resembled each other, and how handsome they both were. Lozen rode a bay mare with black feet. Rafe remembered the bay mare she had stolen from Don Angel at least thirteen years ago. He almost smiled at the memory. She had looked so brash and rafish in a boy’s breechclout and shirt that day.
She reminded him of Shakespeare’s Viola, both of them jumping the fence men put around their sex. Lozen was still doing it. She must be older than twenty-five by now, with no sign of a husband, and here she was, riding with the men.
Rafe tried not to stare at her, but that was difficult. She struck such a contrast with the warriors in their breechclouts and blankets, their headdresses of fur, feathers, bones, and antlers, and their motley assortment of Apache, Mexican, and Anglo attire, with the addition of army jackets, some with bullet holes neatly patched.
Strings of beads hung from Lozen’s earlobes. Necklaces of beads and shells formed a collar around her neck. She wore a magnificent doeskin skirt and tunic, intricately beaded and stained a golden yellow with cattail pollen, probably.
The hoyden still prevailed, though. To accommodate the saddle, she had hiked the skirt up on her strong brown thighs. The long fringes on the tunic swayed gracefully as she moved in rhythm with her horse. The hundreds of tin cones around the tunic’s square yoke jingled merrily.
Her long hair flowed across her shoulders like black water over smooth river rocks. The ends lay mingled with the fringes on her thighs. Her hair was clean and soft. Rafe wouldn’t have expected that. What did Apaches use for soap, anyway? He tried to imagine the women washing their hair while the United States Army hounded them and gangs of drunken miners roamed the countryside on scalp hunts. Sparks glinted where the sun glanced off stray locks. Wisps curled like black swan’s down around her face.
You’re not here to admire Victorio’s sister, Rafe thought. He figured that showing any interest at all in a man’s sister could get him killed. At least it could in Texas where he grew up. Lozen looked at him as though she had never seen him. He returned the indifference.
Victorio dismounted, and as he and Rafe approached each other, a woman from the rear of the group rode up. She was dressed like an Apache, but she looked Mexican.
Before Rafe could say anything, Victorio put his arms around him and drew him into an embrace. Rafe fought the
reflex to stiffen and recoil. Men didn’t hug each other where he came from.
“I bring greetings from Dr. Steck,” Rafe said in Spanish.
The Mexican woman translated from Spanish to Apache, then back again. Rafe recognized her voice as the one he had heard with Lozen under the cottonwood by the river that night a few months ago.
“Where is Father Tse’k?” asked Victorio. “The sight of him would make our hearts glad.”
“General Carleton is the nantan for this territory. He forbids Father Steck to meet with you.”
“Kal’ton.” Lozen stared at the end of her nose, bringing her dark irises close together. “Bidaa Digiz.”
The men laughed, and Rafe smiled. He could guess why she called Carleton cross-eyed. He was incapable of seeing anything beyond his own limited view of the world.
“Father Steck sends you these presents to show his friendship and respect for you,” said Rafe. “He asks me to tell you that he regrets the decision of nantan Carleton. He will try to convince him to let you stay at Warm Springs.”
“We do not need the permission of Kal‘ton to stay where we have always lived,” Victorio said. “We do not tell Kal’ton that he must take his wives and children and leave his home.”
A young man dismounted and walked toward them. He was small and wiry, and Rafe had the feeling he could run for days over rough country, but then he would have said the same for any of them. What set this one apart was his headdress, a skunk pelt with the head, the tail, the four legs, and some of the aroma still in place.
He tilted his chin down and waggled the skunk’s head so it seemed to be the one talking. “Tell me, Hairy Foot,” the skunk said, “does Kal’-ton have a wife and children?”
“Yes, I think he does.” Rafe felt like a fool talking to a dead animal, but the rest of the party seemed to enjoy the joke. And to tell the truth, the effect of a skunk talking in Apache was comical.
“And where do they live?”
“A month’s journey to the east of here.”
“They must be very happy, then. They do not have to talk to Old Man Cross-eyed.” The young man took the reins of the mules and led them back to his horse through the laughter of his companions.
Rafe expected the meeting to end then. The Apaches had the presents and Dr. Steck’s regrets. “Do you want me to carry a message to Father Steck?”
“You will come with us,” said Victorio.
The side of beef mounted on the coffee-colored pony grunted. He looked as though he had a bone to pick with Victorio’s decision to lead two Pale Eyes to his village, and that the bone was stuck in his throat. His face contorted as he struggled to speak. Victorio glowered at him.
Kit Carson said old Whoa had a stammer. Carson also said he roosted in the Sierra Madre a hundred miles south of the Mexican border. If so, that didn’t stop him from raiding southern Arizona and New Mexico Territories. Rafe wondered what brought him this far north. From the look that passed between him and Victorio, Rafe would have bet it wasn’t brotherly love.
Victorio gave an impatient wave of his hand and made a curt reply. Then he gestured to Lozen, who handed Caesar a wide strip of sacking.
“So you can’t see the route,” the Mexican woman explained.
Caesar looked at Rafe, and Rafe nodded. Caesar folded the sacking and tied it tightly around his eyes. When Lozen handed a strip of cloth to Rafe, she looked up at the amulet on his hatband and smiled. Rafe fought the urge to reach out and touch her hair.
As he was getting ready to tie on the blindfold, he saw her ride forward and take Red’s reins. Red balked.
“It’s okay, partner.” Rafe reached forward and rubbed Red’s ears.
Rafe sank into a reverie, lulled by the conversations around him. He hadn’t noticed before, but the men spoke in low, gentle tones. He heard none of the shouting and hardness
of the white men’s talk. He listened in vain, though, for Lozen’s voice.
He was about to doze off when he heard Skunk Head talking at his elbow and Maria translating. Apparently Skunk Head had decided to entertain the two Pale Eyes.
“Old Man Coyote was going along,” Skunk Head recited, “and he saw a white man with a herd of fat sheep. Coyote said, ‘What pretty animals. Can I herd them for you?’ The white man said, ‘No, I’ve heard you’re a bad fellow.’ But Coyote begged until finally the white man said, ‘All right, but see that big mud puddle over there. Don’t let the sheep get in there. It’s pretty deep.’
“The white man went off home, and Coyote killed those sheep and ate them. Then he stuck the heads and the tails in the mud puddle. He called to the white man, ‘Hey, your sheep are stuck in the mud. Come quick.’ The white man ran out, and he saw the heads and the tails. ‘Run to my house and tell my wives to give you a shovel,’ he said.
“Coyote, he ran to the house, and he said to the white man’s wives, ‘Your husband told me to have intercourse with you.’”
Rafe heard Caesar chuckle. The Apaches guffawed.
“The wives said, ‘We don’t believe you. He wouldn’t say that.’ Coyote, he went to the door and he shouted, ‘Your wives won’t do what you say.’ The white man got angry, and he yelled, ‘Tell them to hurry up!’ ‘See there,’ said Coyote. ‘What did I tell you?’ So the women had intercourse with Coyote. When he finished, he went away laughing.”
Skunk Head went away, too, chuckling to himself, and the conversations started up again. After a while Caesar started a spiritual that the field hands sang while chopping cotton.
O David,
Yes! Yes!
My little David,
Yes! Yes!
And he killed Goliath,
Yes! Yes!
Yes, he killed Goliath,
Yes! Yes!
When Caesar paused between verses, Rafe realized that conversation had ceased. He considered telling Caesar to stop. The Apaches might think he was making “bad juju,” as Caesar called it. But no one protested. No one stuck a lance into either of them. The song was a long one to begin with, and Caesar made up more verses as he went along.
Oh, Daniel,
Yes! Yes!
Poor ole Daniel,
Yes! Yes!
Daniel in the lion’s den,
Yes! Yes!
Safe in the lion’s den,
Yes! Yes!
The silence between the verses began to seem reverential. The repetitive words must have sounded like a shaman’s medicine song to the Apaches. Come to think of it, Rafe mused, it was a medicine song. Caesar was asking God to keep him as safe as Daniel in the lion’s den.
David and Goliath. It was an appropriate theme, given the state of hostilities. Since the United States Army would be Goliath in this contest, Rafe hoped the outcome would differ from the biblical one.