Hunting The Senior Warrior

[madwriter]

PROGRESS REPORT

New Words: 2400 on chapter 2 ("The Winnowing, 1874") of Copper Heart. Corporal Gus Beckett is part of the company that the 80-year-old Apache leader Nana, who Gus' family has a lot of history with, is leading on a merry thousand-mile-long back-and-forth chase across ravaged New Mexico.

Total Words: 89300.

Reason For Stopping: Hit the end of the scene, went to get ready for work.

Book Year: 1881.

Mammalian Assistance: None.

Exercise: None, which Tucker berated me for.

Stimulants: None.

Today's Opening Passage(s): Gus was no longer sure how long he and the rest of his company from Fort Wingate had been chasing the old Apache warrior Nana—who Gus still thought of as Broken Foot thanks to his family—but it had been some weeks. He’d quit counting some time ago, and every scorching day in the southern New Mexico desert that summer was as unrelentingly same as the last. Nor was he sure how far they had been chasing Nana round and round that desert. Gus didn’t want to tally that either, but not counting the ride down from the fort at the northern end of the Zuni Range, it must’ve been well over a thousand miles.

Hundreds of soldiers—including Buffalo Soldiers, negroes from the 9th Cavalry out of Fort Wingate—and a few dozen posse civilians, mostly drunk, had spent weeks being made fools of by an eighty-year-old Apache with arthritis and a humpback and a Spanish name meaning Grandmother.

Darling Du Jour: And Nana…Broken Foot…himself might be eighty and crippled while walking, but once he was on horseback he was a whirlwind, riding like a youth of twenty fresh from his first kills. Time and time again, in canyons and at springs, whether the Apache attacked the soldiers or the soldiers attacked first, the Apache kept going, soldiers and posse civilians died, Nana kept turning in directions the whites didn’t expect, and he stayed just ahead of the pursuers while he burned towns and ranches.

But far from demoralizing the soldiers, Gus’ warnings were heeded, and nobody went rushing in to a certain doom. Soldiers died in the attacks but not from stupidity.

The posse was another matter.

They were full of vengeance and ignorance about how to fight Indians, felt invincible with their guns—at least until two got themselves killed at East Red Canyon—and fueled by alcohol. At the end of July, when Bethke had said they’d all be on their way back to Fort Wingate, the reality was that the men and horses alike were exhausted, many men had no boots left to speak of, and the Apache had stolen much of the army’s own livestock, so the soldiers straggled to Fort Craig to rest and resupply. Some men from the towns of Winston, Chloride, and surrounding farms and mines took the opportunity of that lull to attach themselves to the soldiers, and the officers didn’t have the gumption to say no. Some may have welcomed the dubious help.

The trail the Apache left now—this was sometime in the middle of August, Gus reckoned—was easy to follow, which was endlessly worrisome to Gus. Nana had been a warrior for over sixty years; if he left a trail it’s because he wanted to be followed. And if he wanted to be followed that would mean bad business for the White Eyes.

Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: N.K. Jemisin; Master & God by Lindsey Davis.