Free Ghost Warrior by Lucia St. Clair Robson

stood the clusters of hide-covered tipis, arbors, and domed brush shelters. Naked children raced back and forth. Smoke and the smell of roasting horse meat snagged in the branches above. Rafe looked for Pandora’s reaction, but she would have made a formidable poker player.
    The women gave them sideways glances. The men stood or squatted in groups and smoked cigarillos. They looked as though they were engaged in what Texans called swapping lies. They ignored the three men, but the children gathered in clumps to watch them approach.
    Caesar turned to help Pandora off the horse, but she hand already slipped down. Without a backward glance, she limped to the nearest group of women tending a cook fire. They acted as though she had just come back from the river with water.
    â€œYou didn’t expect gratitude, did you, Caesar?” Rafe asked.

    â€œI di’nt do it for the thanks, suh.”
    â€œShould we explain how we came to have the woman?” asked Absalom.
    â€œThey’ll get the story from her.”
    An individual rose from the fog of smoke surrounding the nearest group of men, and he kept on rising.”
    â€œGood lord,” Absalom murmured. “He must top six and a half feet.”
    â€œSpeak of the devil,” Rafe answered.
    â€œIs that Red Sleeves?”
    â€œI suppose so.”
    Each item in Red Sleeve’s inventory exceeded specifications, from his bowed legs and long muscular torso to a forehead broad enough to lay out a poker hand were it horizontal. His nose and nostrils resembled the prow of a ship going downwind with the sails unfurled. His mouth looked capable of swallowing a prairie chicken, leaving only the claws to pick his teeth with. Age was beginning to leave its tracks in the leathery surface of his face. Rafe guessed he’d weathered sixty years at least.
    â€œHermano,” Red Sleeves said. “¿Tienes tabaco?”
    Rafe pulled a braid of tobacco from his pocket, cut it in two, and handed him half.
    â€œÂ¿Y fósforos?”
    â€œUnos pocos . A few.” Rafe always kept a few friction matches separated from his supply of them so anyone asking wouldn’t know how many he had. Apaches were always begging matches, and they didn’t need them. They could strike a light with two sticks and a pinch of dried grass almost as fast as he could pull a match from his pocket. With flint, steel, and dried moss they could produce fire as fast as with a match.
    â€œÂ¿Tiene usted pelo de búfalo?” Rafe asked.
    Red Sleeves stood silent for the briefest of moments, just long enough to betray curiosity about why the Pale Eyes wanted buffalo fur.
    He held up a hand, a signal to stay put. He gestured to one of the women who ducked into a lodge and came out
with a large sack. Red Sleeves brought it to Rafe.
    An Apache child of twelve or thirteen moved closer for a better view. Her shaggy black hair and the Mexican blanket she wore as a poncho made distinguishing her sex difficult, but Rafe had a feeling she was a girl. She had an angular grace about her. The poncho reached only to her knees, exposing bony calves covered with scratches and scars. Even barefoot she moved with ease across ground so rough and thorny Rafe winced at the thought of walking shoeless on it.
    When she got closer, Rafe could see that she wasn’t interested in him or Absalom or Caesar. She studied Rafe’s big roan with the look of someone who intended to either make an offer or help herself to him.
    â€œDon’t let it cross your thieving little mind, sprat,” Rafe said cordially. But he couldn’t blame her for coveting Red.
    Red came from thoroughbred and Percheron stock. He stood two hands above the average American horse and twice that much taller than the Mexican ponies the Apaches rode. He had a generous forehead, slender muzzle, wide nostrils, a dark mane, and tail. In his youth he had held the position of near wheelhorse of the first artillery piece.