Miguel chewed a mouthful of bacon, savoring the smoky taste. “Well, I was alone some of the time,” he said. “When I first got away, that is.” The captain looked puzzled. “The Apache brought me pretty far up into the Catalina Mountains,” Miguel explained, “and there was no chance to escape. Then one night there was a real ruckus and I made a run for it. I nearly got away, but a warrior hit me with a stick and I tumbled over the side of a bluff. That’s when I got this cut on my head, and my shoulder got hurt pretty bad. By the time I landed on the ground I was covered in cactus thorns. Even though I was so banged up, I knew I had to keep moving before the Apaches found me again. I tried to walk south and travel mostly at night so they wouldn’t see me. I slept during the day when it was hot.” His words tumbled out. “I didn’t have any food or water. Then I stepped on a scorpion in the dark and lanced my foot with my pocketknife to try to drain the poison.” He looked down. “I guess that was pretty dumb.”
The captain listened attentively, and Miguel stopped talking just long enough to gulp down another swallow of coffee. Even with sugar, its bitterness was powerful. “After that, I think I passed out for a while, and when I woke up, a boy about my age was leaning over me. He had pulled out most of the cactus spines and bandaged my head and foot. He had even cooked a rabbit and found some water.” Miguel took a breath. “He seemed to know the way back to Tucson, and once I could move, we traveled together.” Miguel mopped up the runny egg yolk with the last piece of biscuit. “If he hadn’t helped me, I would have died out there.”
A clean-shaven young soldier with ruddy cheeks pulled back the tent flap and stepped in. “Medic, sir!” he said, saluting. He held a pail of water in one hand and had a leather haversack slung over his shoulder.
“Corporal Pinter,” the captain greeted him, “this here’s the young chap who took a little sojourn with the Apaches. Here he is back from the dead to haunt us.” The two men shared a short laugh. The captain looked at Miguel’s empty plate. “You had enough?”
Miguel nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
Then the captain noticed the half-filled coffee mug. “I know you’ve had enough of that. In fact, I think I see hair sprouting on your chest already.”
The medic grinned. “That Rio coffee’ll grow hair on a bald man,” he said. Then he looked flustered. “No offense, sir,” he stammered.
“Check over this desert rat, will you, Corporal?” the captain said. “He’s been clubbed by Apaches, fallen over a cliff, and been bit by a scorpion, but here he sits.”
The medic took a clean cloth and a sliver of brown soap from the bucket and washed the dirt from around the wound on Miguel’s forehead.
“This seems to be healing nicely,” the corporal said. “Now let’s see what’s under that bandage on your foot. If you can call it a bandage!” He peeled off the soiled strip of fabric. “Stung by a scorpion, eh? Nasty little devils.”
Miguel looked at the angry red skin that swelled around the cut. He spoke softly to the medic. “My friend Rushing Cloud said the scorpion was giving me a message to be more like him—to drink very little water, to travel at night, and to navigate by the stars.”
The captain interrupted. “Miguel was telling me that after he was stung by the scorpion a boy found him and led him across the desert.” He looked at Miguel. “An Indian boy, I presume?”
“He’s a Tohono O’odham,” Miguel corrected him as the medic prodded the tender flesh around the cut. “He’s nothing like the Apache.”
“Tono . . . what?” the corporal asked. “I’ve never heard of any tribe called that. Only friendly Indians I’ve ever seen were Papagos.”
Miguel spoke up again, eager to share his new knowledge. “Papago is what some people call the Tohono O’odham, but they don’t like it one bit. Their real name means People of the Desert.”
“Mighty interesting,” said the medic.
Miguel winced as the medic cleaned the wound. “I never knew what the word Papago meant, and I sure didn’t know it was kind of an insult. You know what else? The Apache don’t like the name Apache, either. It means ‘enemy,’ so it makes them angry. They call themselves Indé.”
And what should I be called? Miguel suddenly thought with confusion. He was Mexican, but when Mexico sold the territory where the family had its ranch, he became American—just like magic. He remembered Rushing Cloud saying that while people might change on the outside, they are still the same on the inside, where it counts. Miguel was American, but he would always have his Mexican heritage.
“So where is this Indian of yours?” the captain asked, interrupting Miguel’s thoughts.
Miguel felt an unexplained emptiness. “His name is Rushing Cloud,” he repeated. “He disappeared last night after we found your camp. I wanted him to stay with me. I told him the cavalry would help him get home too, but he just vanished.”
Miguel glanced up just as the captain and the medic exchanged a meaningful look. A feeling of uneasiness settled over Miguel, and he eyed the men warily.
“Luckily, these wounds are pretty clean,” the medic said, packing up his bag. “You’re going to have a couple of right manly scars there, though. Someday you can brag to your grandchildren about how you got them.”
The burst of energy that had fueled Miguel’s flood of conversation was nearly spent. He felt consumed by exhaustion and couldn’t keep his eyes from fluttering closed.
“I know you’re plumb worn out,” the corporal said, “but I’m gonna have to take a closer look at that shoulder. Can you take off your shirt?”
“It’s really Rushing Cloud’s,” Miguel explained. “He gave it to me last night.” He tried to pull it off, but couldn’t raise his arm high enough. The medic gently slid the sleeve from Miguel’s good arm and eased the shirt over his head. Next, he untied the sling. Miguel groaned as the young soldier tested how far the arm could move and then prodded the joint with his fingers. Searing pain surged through Miguel’s shoulder and spread across his chest and back.
The medic let out a breath. “This arm is pulled right out of its socket. I can pop it back in, and it’ll likely heal just fine, but it’s going to wake you up real good when I yank it.”
The captain stepped quietly outside the tent, his boot steps moving off down the row of tents and sounding fainter and fainter. The sound of tin plates and cups rattled in Miguel’s ears, and the soldiers’ voices seemed louder than they had before.
“I usually give the men a couple of shots of whiskey before I perform this little maneuver,” the corporal said, taking a dented metal flask from his sack. “I guess if you’re old enough to be clubbed by an Apache, you’re man enough for a swig of this to help you through.”
“I just turned thirteen,” Miguel murmured. He had believed it when Papá had told him he would become a man when he had his birthday. Yet he had felt like a child compared to the Apache and like a bumbling little brother next to Rushing Cloud.
Miguel sniffed the amber liquid in the flask. It gave off a woody aroma mingled with a faint hint of sweetness, but both were overpowered by a sharp, pungent smell.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I guess I could give it a try.”
“Just swig it,” Corporal Pinter advised. “If you let that whiskey linger in your mouth, you’ll never get it down.” He looked apologetic. “I wouldn’t give this to you if there was a better way.”
Miguel’s hand shook as he lifted the flask and gulped down a large swallow of whiskey. He coughed and sputtered as the fiery drink burned his throat and lit into his stomach like a burning match. He tried to hand the container back, but instead, the corporal tilted Miguel’s head back and forced him to drink more. He gagged on the fiery liquid.
“Everybody remembers their first shot of whiskey,” the medic said, releasing Miguel. “Just add this to that list of stories you’ll have to tell.” He helped Miguel over to the captain’s cot and eased him down onto his back. The wooden frame creaked, and the thin mattress sagged under him. Miguel had not seen a soft bed piled with wool blankets in weeks, and he longed to give in to the need for sleep. His head felt light, and the room began to float in a hazy blur of images.
“Go ahead,” the medic’s voice soothed. “Just let go.” Miguel tried to focus on the soldier’s face, but it dissolved into a pink shadow. He closed his eyes, but the room still seemed to be spinning. The medic straightened Miguel’s arm, and he gasped at the pain.
“You ever heard a rebel yell?” the corporal asked, but Miguel couldn’t focus on the question and his tongue felt thick and unable to form words. The medic kept talking in gentle tones, as if from a great distance, and slivers of pain darted through Miguel’s shoulder like arrows. “Guess you’re not old enough for that. During the war I unfortunately had occasion to hear them Southern Rebs give their famous yell. Why, it just curdled my blood. Lucky you never heard it for yourself. But you think on it, and when I fix to pull this shoulder back into place, you give it a try. Just yell for all you’re worth. I bet you’ll come real close.”
The medic braced his knee on Miguel’s chest, and Miguel’s eyes fluttered open for a moment. One thick hand pressed around his shoulder at the joint, and the other gripped his upper arm. He wanted to see what the medic was doing, but he was overcome with dizziness. Suddenly, Miguel’s shoulder seemed to rip from his body with a sickening pop! In a blinding flash of white light that blazed across his closed eyelids, Miguel heard a distant voice let out a wild, deafening scream.