CHAPTER THREE
Tinges of pinks and lavenders covered the Arizona horizon proclaiming the coming of dawn. Another penetratingly hot day would soon follow in this unforgiving land, the desert air still and silent. McCallister stretched his stiff muscles and leaned the old bored out Hawken breech loader against a partly standing corner of the ancient adobe edifice where he had camped. A place the Apache called nalkide, the ancient ones, and his rifle’s battered stock was a testament, eloquently adorned with abalone shells, beads, and turquoise, it gave honor to his mother’s ancestors and took their power.
His sharp eyes probed the low rolling bajadas, broad flat slopes shaped from centuries of sediment washing out of the surrounding Dragoon Mountains, the sky islands, about twenty five miles south, southeast, which extended for miles before him. Like his home in the Pinaleño Mountains, the Dragoons were part of the Sierra Madre range, a place of deep gullies and creek beds with giant mesquite trees that grew strangely stunted. Enormous oak and walnut trees were profuse along the creek beds. For now, the only movement he saw was from a few scurrying desert animals in pursuit of their morning meal.
With hands the color of oiled leather, McCallister offered corn pollen to the rising sun before starting his day to ask for blessed guidance. Then he tossed a small amount of it in each of the four sacred directions. Rising, he removed a small leather pouch from his parfleche he had tied to the side of a pack mule. Inside was the last of his pemmican, thinly sliced dried salted venison pounded with a stone maul before being mixed with dried berries and marrow fat. He put a little of the high protein food into his mouth and chewed. He did not dwell on the hardship or difficulty of his life. It was the only life he had ever known.
Things had been tensing up. Cochise was the principal chief of the Chiricahua and recently Alex had given the chiefs and sub-chiefs sacks of corn during the winter snows, gaining the respect of Cochise but making Butterfield unhappy. The horses had been delivered and the stage had made its first run last September. Problem was it brought more White’s into the territory and they thought they could take what they wanted without asking or even having the slightest thought that the land belonged to someone else. Emotions were boiling over including his and it was getting harder to keep tempers from flaring.
He silently wondered what the young pretty girl was doing all alone in Fort Yuma. This rugged untamed country was no place for a young woman like her, traveling with only a female companion. From the looks of her she came from some breeding, a real prize, the kind that makes men crazy hungry, which caused him to wonder even more what kind of bastardo would abandon her like that? He shook his head and hoped she would be alright but he had his doubts.
The mule held tanned pelts and a dressed out white tail deer for his mother’s aging matriarchal clan who now lived deeper in the mountains to avoid any contact with White’s. Putting his food away, he packed up his small camp and soon was riding White Cloud with the mule trailing alongside, into the mountain passes and along the trails towards the secret campsite. The wolf was staying out of sight which always gave Alex an uneasy feeling.
Normally a sign would have been given by now from the posted guards that a rider was approaching. Coming up over the last ridge, Alex saw the village and the reason no sign had been given. Pain etched his face. Women, the old, children, even babies, were lying murdered and brutalized with their ears, noses, and scalps cut away to be worn as ornaments or sold for bounty. His mother was identifiable only from the design of her chin tattoos and the simple gold ring she wore his father had given her. The bounty hunters missed that, but her long tresses were gone, as was the braid always adorned with eagle chest plums.
Sonora had been the first state to enact a scalp bounty law in 1835, offering 100 pesos for the scalps of braves with the peso roughly equaled to an American silver dollar. Historically there was no love lost between Mexicans and Apache anyway but the scalps cashed in Sonora flamed native animosity towards both Mexicans and Anglos, encouraging more raids and greater violence. Indian hunters could keep any livestock or loot. In 1849 Chihuahua enacted a similar law offering a graded bounty: $250 for warriors, $150 for women; $100 for children under fourteen which stayed on the books until the 1880’s.
Alex sat for a long while in stunned silence until a slight breeze rose and stirred the bloodied clothing. Because she was female, her death would have been of no importance, but she was his mother, so he buried her high as he could, in the rock cliffs during the secrecy of night, usually reserved for men or chiefs, covering her body with stones. He left all possessions with her, except for her gold ring which he put into his jish and then he sang her death song and made a promise.
“I will hunt the bastardos down and kill whoever did this.” Alex said quietly, and he meant it. He had a pretty good idea. It would be foolish for the meat to go to waste. The rest of the day he sliced, smoked, and packed. Most he would leave for Gopan, with luck he would find it. He had moved his clan deeper into the mountains not far from here. For a brief moment Alex thought of the Skinwalker, but he knew this was solely the work of scalp hunters.
He filled his par-fleche with choice pieces of meat, turned the mule loose, mounted his horse and picked up a trail marked with three shod and five unshod hoof prints, one outrider, not drifters. The trail led out of the Pinaleño’s and into the Dragoons, along an ancient trade route from Mexico’s Sierra del Pinacate region northwest from the Sea of Cortes.
He suspected most were Cuchans but the lure of easy money had drawn soldiers, miners, Mexicans even other Indians. Scalps remotely resembling Apache were being turned in for cash.
Alex pressed his heels against his horse and rode hard until mid-afternoon. The Dragoon’s loomed ahead, the ancestral home of the Chiricahua. No doubt, Pablo’s bunch was on the hunt. His eyes moved across a small stream bed and focused on ferns growing on the opposite muddy shaded banks crushed from hoofs of horses with a heavy load.
He urged White Cloud into the water. After crossing, he dismounted and pressed his fingers into one hoof print with a deep notch in the front right frog of the horse’s inner foot. He traced around the injury. Anger surged through his body…nothing but stupidity! He should have gutted the ruffian in Yuma when he had the chance. He did not have the answer to how these men had found his mother’s Rancheria, but more than a few men knew who he was. Remounting, he moved up the trail. After about an hour he came upon an area littered with shattered fragments of bones.
Unconcerned at first, Alex though it was an old Chiricahua camp, probably the scene of a festival after a raid into Mexican territory where cattle and horses had been slaughtered for food. He dismounted and upon closer inspection soon realized that there were many different kinds of bones, a lot of bones. Then he found several animal carcasses, most nothing more than mummified remains but they appeared to have been purposefully placed.
The scene forced his thoughts back to the Skinwalker. Alex understood how to fight scalpers but with this man-thing he felt uncertainty, fear gnawed at him like an animal in his mind. Touching the pouch he felt for the wolf fetish. He must trust his medicine. He moved on foot leading his nervous horse through the burial-like ground until he came to a slab of stone. Fresh stains covered the top. This was more than just a burial place. Nothing moved. Carrion birds were perched on top of the rocks, watching, waiting for their next meal.
Alex pushed on and passed the last outcropping. That’s when he saw them. Instantly he swung his Hawken around to face five headless Cuchans, still dressed in their customary red military coats with infantry epaulettes and red strips of cloth around their waist. Brass mounted leather scabbards complete with swords was over pantaloons worn in three different lengths, the shortest on the outside reaching just below the knees.
Like before, these men were stretched upright and bound to sturdy pieces of oak. Scalps hung from leather belts. Alex pinched a bit of corn pollen from his jish and blessed himself before quickly scanning the scalps with his eyes, relieved that his mother’s was not among them. He saw one set of foot prints, someone walking toe to heel, definite Indian, making a heavy imprint. He felt his heart pound as he stepped in a little closer brushing at buzzing flies and trying to ignore the strong smell of decaying flesh. He saw the now familiar circles. Hastily he backed away quickly remounting his horse. Horse and rider moved towards the ridge as Alex scanned the ground for fresh sign.
Soon he picked up a heavy blood trail. In the mix of hoof prints Alex clearly saw the imprint of the lame horse, now heavily favoring its leg. The bastardo was wounded. The hatred seethed in him. When he caught up with them it would be a terrible thing to behold, his rage for these men undeniable.
Alex heard the small voice in his head, the little voice he had heard for most of his life when something wasn’t right, it said only one thing to him, “leave,” and he couldn’t agree more. He needed to get away from this place. The strange whisperings were usually right. Gopan had taught him to listen to his little voice. It had warned him before. He respected the little voice. It told him of this evil then and he knew the same evil was present in the here and now. His path would cross it again but until then he would hunt these men down and make them pay, and pay they would with their lives. He was the one that intended to do that, not this man-thing. That was the part of him he knew well, the determination to set things right. The other part of him wanted to avenge Nizoni. He heard his little voice warning of that also. He didn’t like what he was hearing.