2008 Writing D e s e r t E x p o s u r e 
September
2008
Emiliano's War
The last bronco Apache finds a new battle to fight.
By Jack Warner
"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past," William Faulkner famously once said. In this vivid short story set along the Bootheel borderline, the past comes violently to life to settle scores both old and new. Our Grand Prize winner tantalizingly asks, "What if. . .?"
In the Animas Valley, New Mexico
The last warm glow of the sun had vanished behind the jagged peaks of the Peloncillos when the five men came to the rusty barbed-wire fence. It was six strands high, but the third strand was mashed down and it was easy to crawl through, even with their big backpacks made from sacking. The leader took several steps through the white sandy underbrush and crouched by a boulder, listening, as the others ducked under the fourth strand and stepped from one nation into another.
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The moon was an hour away from appearing over the Animas Mountains to the east and the darkness was nearly total. The spring wind cutting up the valley drowned the small sounds of stones nudged and mesquite limbs brushed as the men gathered behind their leader.
They had walked only half a mile from the truck, but they had 20 miles to go before dawn. There was no time to waste. The leader looked back, staring at each man in turn. Like him, they were dark, unshaven, dressed in light jackets and jeans. He nodded and stepped onto a barely visible track, leading down a narrow arroyo for 10 steps and then up and over the side. One by one, the first four men clambered up the stony side of the arroyo and disappeared over the top. The backpacks were long and thin, sticking up higher than their heads, but they weren't heavy. The men moved easily with them.
The fifth man got halfway up and slipped, sliding back several feet and falling to one knee. He mouthed a curse and started back up. He was almost at the top of the arroyo wall when there was a small thunk, a sound almost smothered by the wind. He made a gargling sound and slid to the bottom of the wash. His legs twitched spasmodically and then he was still.
An hour passed. A family of javelinas came down the arroyo and stopped when they saw the man lying there. The old boar stepped forward warily, sniffed at the man, and then led his family around the body at a trot.
A shadow emerged from the rocks to the left, moved silently to the body, felt for a pulse, and lifted the corpse to its shoulder. The full moon had almost cleared the eastern mountains and its pale light outlined the arrow protruding from the dead man's neck. The shadow and the corpse melted into the darkness.
In the northern Sierra Madres, Mexico
My name is Emiliano. That is my Mexican name, of course. No one still alive knows my real name, not even this young woman here who is writing down what I say. Maybe she will know it one day, if she does not run away, and if no one comes and kills us both.
Now, I don't want anyone to think I kidnapped her to come here and do this. She came when I asked her if she would take down the story of my life, because I cannot speak English and I don't know how to write. She will put my words into English for me.
I want to do this for two reasons. First, I promised the young green-suit policeman that I would explain why I started this war. And second, because I am the last bronco Apache.
My father and my grandfather never surrendered. I don't guess I have anybody to surrender to. But I never lived on a reservation. Never lived in a house. I have lived in the mountains all my life, and it has been a pretty long one. My grandfather and my father lived this way because they wanted to be free. I will tell you a little about them.
My family came from the Warm Springs band, the Chokonen. My grandfather was a warrior with Victorio. He and my grandmother were killed when the Mexicans trapped Victorio and most of his people at Tres Castillos. My father says people who got away told him Victorio and my grandfather and some others killed themselves with their knives when they ran out of bullets. I don't know.
My father wasn't there. He was still a boy, but he had gone on a raid with some other men. When he found out what happened, he and the others joined Nana and Juh. He was with Nana on that great raid they made. But when Nana and Geronimo decided to come in, my father stayed in Mexico. When Geronimo broke out again and came back to these mountains here, my father and my mother and some others stayed away from him. They didn't like him very much.
When Geronimo agreed to go back again, my father and a few others trailed along behind, and they saw all those people put on trains and taken away. It was almost 30 years before they let any of them come back to New Mexico and Arizona. They even took the Apaches who had scouted for the Army. It was pretty bad.
So my father came back here to Mexico with my mother, who was a Chiricahua woman. They were part of a band of about 20, maybe seven or eight fighting men. I guess they lived pretty quiet. They had to be careful because if the Mexicans saw them they would shoot at them. I was just a little boy when there was some trouble that broke up the band. Some of the women saw a Mexican and his wife and little boy riding toward our camp. This was very unusual, because Mexicans hardly ever came that far into the mountains. The woman was riding ahead with the little boy, and the man was a little behind them.
Well, those women should have gone and told the men what was happening, but for some reason they got angry and when the Mexican woman and little boy rode by, the women jumped out and killed the woman with their knives and carried the boy off. The man couldn't find them. But pretty soon there were Mexicans in the mountains all the time, looking for us.
Our band decided to split up. My father and mother took me and my little sister, and a girl whose parents had died, and went away.
Lordsburg, New Mexico
I'm Danny Rope. I'm a Border Patrol agent. The day all this started, on this side of the border, anyway, I was working south and east of Cloverdale. It was March 7 — I damn sure won't ever forget that date.
It was a fine spring morning in a beautiful part of this country. Not many people know the New Mexico Bootheel, mainly because there really isn't anything there but cows, deer, wolves, javelina and lions. Probably that's why it's so beautiful.
There's one road that runs through it. It's only paved part of the way. I've had people stop me on the paved part and ask if they could get lunch at Cloverdale, which is on the map near the end of the road. Well, I hate to tell them, but you can't get anything at Cloverdale. Only thing there is one building, and it's been abandoned a long, long time. I don't know why it's on the map.
All the land down here is part of an outfit called the Animas Foundation, which is made up of the huge old ranches, the Grey Ranch, the U-Bar and the like. The only people who live here are the cowhands. The foundation isn't real thrilled by tourists, and they don't want anybody getting out of their cars. All the gates down here are locked, but every Border Patrol officer has the combination to every one of them.
So the Bootheel is very quiet. It's not like anything I've seen anywhere else in New Mexico. After a good wet winter like this, the grass is almost knee high, on soft rolling hills between the Peloncillos and the Animas mountains. Not until you're about a mile or even less from the border fence does the grass fade away and you've got the broken, rocky ground, the boulders, the yucca and agave and cat's claw and mesquite that you find north of the Bootheel.
Well, like I said, it was a lovely morning, and I was just admiring the day when I turned east off the road just north of Cloverdale. There was a brisk breeze coming up as the sun warmed the air. I took the Blazer through one gate, locked it behind me, and headed in a more southerly direction toward the border, looking for sign as I went.
As I got close to the end of the grass, I noticed a buzzard wheeling around just about where the border fence would be. It hadn't been there when I went through the gate. I turned the Blazer toward it, moving maybe 10 miles an hour, and pretty soon two more buzzards showed up.
When I got close enough to see the fence, there was a big boulder, high as a one-story house, about 10 yards this side of the wire. On top of this big rock there was a smaller one, maybe five feet high. Leaning back against it there was a man. Far as I could see he was naked, with an odd sort of pattern on his chest. I radioed Lordsburg to tell them where I was and what I had. I was pretty sure when I got out of the truck that he was dead.