Chapter 7: Santa Fe

The scent of sagebrush and warm sandstone sharpened as Thomas led the small party west toward Chiricahua lands, Winona’s arms still a phantom pressure around his waist from her fierce assent. Beside him, Dawson rode stiffly – Baya’s freshly braided bridle gleamed on his buckskin paint, a silent declaration he hadn’t fully processed. Dawson carefully learning the language of the Apache from Thomas as they meandered across the plains, Winona picking up English from the two Green Berets.

Sky Eagle ranged ahead like a hunting hawk, bow slung low. Behind, Great Buffalo’s pony kicked up ochre dust that tasted metallic in the midday heat. Four days hard ride brought them to a valley where juniper trees clawed at limestone cliffs. Sky Eagle whistled—three descending notes—and figures materialized from shadowed crevices: Chiricahua scouts in mountain lion pelts.

Lozan emerged last, her silver-streaked braids woven with dried thistle flowers. She studied Thomas’s laptop screen displaying the cinchona tree, fingertips hovering over the image as if testing its warmth. “This bark?” Her voice rasped like shifting pebbles. “We call it tzi-ditl’iné – ghost wood. It grows where rivers slice deep canyons, two suns south -- half-way to Santa Fe.”

“We trade for more steel,” Winona cut in, dismounting to show Lozan her quiver of aluminum-tipped arrows. “Their forts have mountains of Toledo metal. We will trade for the ghost wood. Wind Rider says it will cure their swamp fever.”

Lozan’s laugh was dry wind through dead branches. “The Spanish are locusts. They strip, they burn.” She tapped the laptop that Thomas used to show her the picture. “This spirit-box knows sickness cures?” At Thomas’s nod, she spat. “Then listen: Tzi-ditl’iné saves lives, but harvesting its bark invites the canyon spirits’ wrath. We must offer turquoise and pollen where we cut.” She fixed Thomas with a gaze like flint striking steel. “You carry otherworld power. Will you bleed for the ghost wood?”

“Yes and we offer more,” Wind Rider answered. “Alliance with the newly formed Apache Nation. It is a merger of Coyotelo and Kiowa tribes. We are now stronger. We look to form a choke against the northward expansion of the Spanish. We came across the bloody remains of a Crow village burned by the Spanish, and later the Spanish were found dead with Crow lances in them.” Technically, Wind Rider didn’t say anything that was a lie.

She took some of the aluminum arrows and gave a small amount of the powder of the ghost wood -- quinine.

Santa Fe’s adobe walls rose at dawn on the fifth day – pale sentinels against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The Spanish had not been here long enough to finish their fort. Spanish sentries glared from the parapets of incomplete walls as Wind Rider and his troupe approached. Dawson muttered, Remember the Alamo.

Thomas shook his head grimly. Wrong century. Same greed. Winona’s ears caught the English words, not knowing all the words, but seeing most of the meaning from their body-language. She would learn the language of her man’s past.

A gaunt-faced captain demanded tribute at the gates: “¿Oro? ¿Plata?” Gold? Silver?”

Wind Rider gestured to Winona, who unveiled bundled obsidian blades and elk hides. His sidearm hidden beneath the blanket over his shoulder. The captain sneered but waved them through. “And some medicine that will cure the swamp fever.”

Inside, the scent of roasting chilies and open sewage choked the air. Crow and Comanchero vendors huddled in shadowed alleys, casting fearful glances at Spanish soldiers patrolling the plaza. Winona’s hand tightened on Thomas’s arm as they dismounted near the governor’s palace – a squat fortress draped in Castilian banners. “Their eyes eat our souls,” she whispered.