Product Description
In this riveting, action-packed alternate history, the Apaches forge their own bold nation and enter the world of racketeering and politics--all the while maintaining their traditional ways--as a new neighbor to a United States that will never be the same again . . .
In 1884 only one thing stood in the way of United States expansion: the Apaches. The U.S. Army believed it could easily defeat this ragtag band of savages who viewed one another more as rivals than allies. But one of those "savages" was a military genius: Juh, "He Who Sees Ahead." It was Juh's vision that persuaded the various tribal leaders to set aside their differences and work together, thus turning the disconnected bands of warring Apaches into the most cohesive fighting force the West had ever seen--and crushing the invading army.
Thus was born Apacheria--the Apache Nation--and a world where Juh and his son, Little Spring, matched wits and weapons with a cast ranging from Teddy Roosevelt and Carrie Nation to Al Capone and J. Edgar Hoover. A world where it was best to stand with the Apaches, and never against them . . .
In 1884 only one thing stood in the way of United States expansion: the Apaches. The U.S. Army believed it could easily defeat this ragtag band of savages who viewed one another more as rivals than allies. But one of those "savages" was a military genius: Juh, "He Who Sees Ahead." It was Juh's vision that persuaded the various tribal leaders to set aside their differences and work together, thus turning the disconnected bands of warring Apaches into the most cohesive fighting force the West had ever seen--and crushing the invading army.
Thus was born Apacheria--the Apache Nation--and a world where Juh and his son, Little Spring, matched wits and weapons with a cast ranging from Teddy Roosevelt and Carrie Nation to Al Capone and J. Edgar Hoover. A world where it was best to stand with the Apaches, and never against them . . .
Ingram
The Apache Nation tangles with Al Capone's mob in this exciting and imaginative alternate history adventure by the acclaimed author of the Mo Bowdre southwestern mystery series.
About the Author
Jake Page has been a ranch hand, a hard-rock miner, an editor at Natural History and Smithsonian magazines, and a book publisher. His Mo Bowdre mysteries include The Stolen Gods, The Deadly Canyon, The Knotted Strings, Lethal Partner, and A Certain Malice. He has also written hundreds of magazine articles and columns and many other books, including Hopi (in collaboration with his wife, Susanne, a photographer). Mr. Page lives in Corrales, New Mexico.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Three men watched from above as an eddy of dust far out on the tawny floor
of the valley of San Simon resolved itself into a column of cavalry, a
hundred and maybe more blue-coated horsemen inching westward like a line
of ants across the sun-parched land. Behind the soldiers, to the east, the
Peloncillo Mountains lay across the earth, blue in the shadows of
mid-morning. Less than a day's trek to the south, where the Peloncillos
faded into other mountains, lay old Mexico.
The troops inching across the desert, three thousand feet below the
three men, were headed for Fort Bowie, where the White Eyes exerted
control over Apache Pass and offered protection for the trains of wagons
that toiled west toward Tucson and east to New Mexico, many bearing silver
from the mines in Arizona. The troops below were the fifth such arrival in
two days, a growing stream of men and horses pouring confidently toward
the fort in the belief that the final pacification of these lands was near
at hand.
Two of the three observers high in their eyrie were of the second
generation of Apaches to watch such intrusions by blue-coated United
States soldiers. They had never known the world without the White Eyes.
They had fought, they had run, they had hidden, and then they had fought
again and again. In war parties bent on vengeance for the deaths of their
own, they had sent countless numbers of these intruders to their deaths.
But the endlessly replenishing stream of miners, settlers, and soldiers
had worn them down. The People were fewer now. Looking to the exhaustion
of their women and the fearfulness of their children, no longer able to
lead the old life but forced instead to run, to be on the alert, always on
the move, some courageous men among them had sadly, bitterly, said: enough.
Many now lived on the reservations set aside for them, most at San
Carlos, to the west and north of the Gila River--a terrible place of heat,
flies, and boredom, where warriors were instructed to scratch in the dry
earth for a living, which was bad enough, but where the earth came forth
with little as a result. The People survived only by lining up each month
in hopes that the White Eyes' promised rations would be sufficient.
The Apaches knew that all the other tribes were gone--defeated. The
Navajos just north were on a reservation, the Comanches run out of Texas,
the tribes of the great plains--all sequestered, their spirit gone along
with the last of the buffalo herds. Only the Apaches--and only some of the
Apaches--still roamed free, if running ahead of the cavalry could be called
roaming free.
This destiny, the end of the old ways and maybe the end of life, had
often engaged the three men now watching from high in the Chiricahua
Mountains as the detachment of horsemen crawled across their land. The
white man they called Red Beard--known otherwise as Thomas Jeffords, the
friend of Cochise--peered through binoculars at the advancing column. They
were Buffalo Soldiers, the ones with the black curly hair of the buffalo,
thick lips, and darkest of skin, the most relentless of the soldiers that
crisscrossed the land in ever-increasing numbers these days, an
infestation.
"Company B, Ninth Cavalry," Red Beard said. "They've come from Fort
Stanton. Your Mescalero cousins over there must be calm." He grinned at
his two companions through reddish brown whiskers tinted with streaks of
white. "Old Hotfoot Hatch wouldn't've let any of his troops go if he
thought he had a problem over there on the reservation. He'd just as soon
keep his boys out of Crook's hands. Him and Gen'l Crook don't see
eye-to-eye on the best way to rid this here country of you pitiless
savages."
The two Apaches grinned. Red Beard was talking about Colonel Edward
Hatch, the white officer whose Negro soldiers had helped chase the
Comanches from Texas, and then raced two thousand miles around the
landscape in one year in pursuit of Victorio and his small band of Apaches
before Victorio disappeared into Mexico, there to be reported dead at the
hands of the Mexicans.
General Crook had been in this country long before, and reappeared
just recently, sent to bring a final end to the Apache depredations in the
Southwest. It was he who had earlier persuaded so many Apaches to go to
San Carlos--even Geronimo had been persuaded--and it was Crook who now was
in charge of the relentless pursuit of the last free-ranging Apaches--the
"renegades."
George Crook, the Tan Fox, with his voluminous side whis-kers and his
erect frame, was hardly ever seen in the blue uniform of the army, but in
the tan canvas clothes of the civilian. General George Crook, the White
Eyes whom Apaches re-spected above all others of his kind, was a man of
his word and a worthy enemy. Crook told Geronimo, and all the Apache
leaders with whom he met, that they could live in peace on the
reservations set aside for them, or they could be hunted down by him and
killed, even if it took him fifty years to do it.
In this endeavor Crook preferred the black troops, the Buffalo
Soldiers, over all the others, for they were almost as tire-less and
"pitiless" as the Apaches themselves. They could ride throughout the day
and into the night, day after day, month after month. They could go hard
under the fierce sun, and go long without rations.
But more dangerous were the Apaches whom General Crook paid to be
scouts. They wore blue jackets over their breechclouts and rode with
Crook's officers. They were former warriors who knew the land, knew the
location of all the hid-den springs and most of the mountain strongholds,
knew the Apache ways of war. It was Crook's use of Apache scouts that
Colonel Hatch--and his superiors--disapproved of.
Thanks in part to the counsel of Thomas Jeffords, the two Apaches
watching the little stream of cavalrymen on the valley floor knew all of
this about their enemy. One of the two Apaches was Naiche, a son of
Cochise. But for a deerskin bag hung around his neck, he was naked from
the waist up and wore only the traditional white breechclout tucked into
his belt and a pair of high-legged deerskin moccasins that were now folded
down onto his calves. A red cloth tied around his head kept from his face
the long black hair that hung down his back and was whipped by the high
mountain breeze.
Naiche's face was smooth and unscarred except for deep lines of pain
that surrounded his wide-set black eyes--eyes that looked intensely outward
under low eyebrows and over flat cheekbones. Below a long straight nose,
his mouth tilted upward on the left-hand side, giving him an expression of
permanent skepticism, or what had been taken by some to mean uncertainty.
The great Cochise had hoped that his son Naiche would inherit the
mantle of leadership among the Apache groups called the Chiricahuas, but
that had not happened. Some, thinking Naiche indecisive, had gone with
Taza, Cochise's other son, and yet others had retreated into their
traditional bands, hoping to live in the old way, a way that Cochise, as
he lay dying in his stronghold more than ten years earlier, had warned was
no longer the path of survival.
Naiche now looked over at the third man, a Nedh'ni Apache from the
south in old Mexico, the man they called Juh. He had been visiting among
the Chiricahuas now for more than a month, living in the high meadows in
the mountains among Naiche's people, talking. Juh spoke haltingly at
times, unable to get his mouth and his tongue to make certain sounds
without a great effort. His voice was deep and always quiet, barely above
the whisper of a wind, and people listened with special attention whenever
he chose to speak.
Nearly six feet in height and thus tall for an Apache, Juh was now
somewhere in his fifties, and recognized by most of the people as one of
the fiercest of men. All his life, Apa-ches had been at war with the rest
of the world, and he had killed many White Eyes, many in hand-to-hand
battle--fighting that he relished, especially when he used the
old-fashioned Apache lance, which he wielded with stunning quickness and
the strength of an athlete.
Juh's chest was notably thick and he was longer-waisted than most of
his kinsmen, with long powerful arms and hands with broad palms and long
flat fingers. He sat now on a red slab of rock, bare-chested and dressed
in the same manner as Naiche, leaning on one hand while with the other he
held the barrel of his Sharps rifle. In repose, he had a deceptively lazy
look, like a mountain lion at rest.
There was no Nedh'ni warrior who would not follow him, and most of the
Chiricahuas who had taken Cochise as their leader in the 1860s and early
1870s now perceived Juh as the rightful heir to Cochise's mantle. Just as
important as all the enemies he had killed, when a war party led by Juh
surged out of the fastnesses of the Sierra Madres and descended on the
Mexicans, wreaking vengeance and death on them, few Apache warriors failed
to return, few women had to wail and keen in mourning while the others
rejoiced at the return of their men.
The most startling aspect of Juh's appearance was the ob-sidian eyes
that seemed almost to burn in narrow triangular slits under heavy dark
brows. From the slitted eyes, his cheekbones fell straight down like cliff
faces past a prominent, wide nose that was bent from a blow he had
received as a young warrior in a raid on the Mexican town of Janos. Dark
fissures ran down past the corners of his mouth, which was typically set
in a full-lipped frown. His rare smiles were like the sun emerging from
behind a cloud.
He smiled now...
of the valley of San Simon resolved itself into a column of cavalry, a
hundred and maybe more blue-coated horsemen inching westward like a line
of ants across the sun-parched land. Behind the soldiers, to the east, the
Peloncillo Mountains lay across the earth, blue in the shadows of
mid-morning. Less than a day's trek to the south, where the Peloncillos
faded into other mountains, lay old Mexico.
The troops inching across the desert, three thousand feet below the
three men, were headed for Fort Bowie, where the White Eyes exerted
control over Apache Pass and offered protection for the trains of wagons
that toiled west toward Tucson and east to New Mexico, many bearing silver
from the mines in Arizona. The troops below were the fifth such arrival in
two days, a growing stream of men and horses pouring confidently toward
the fort in the belief that the final pacification of these lands was near
at hand.
Two of the three observers high in their eyrie were of the second
generation of Apaches to watch such intrusions by blue-coated United
States soldiers. They had never known the world without the White Eyes.
They had fought, they had run, they had hidden, and then they had fought
again and again. In war parties bent on vengeance for the deaths of their
own, they had sent countless numbers of these intruders to their deaths.
But the endlessly replenishing stream of miners, settlers, and soldiers
had worn them down. The People were fewer now. Looking to the exhaustion
of their women and the fearfulness of their children, no longer able to
lead the old life but forced instead to run, to be on the alert, always on
the move, some courageous men among them had sadly, bitterly, said: enough.
Many now lived on the reservations set aside for them, most at San
Carlos, to the west and north of the Gila River--a terrible place of heat,
flies, and boredom, where warriors were instructed to scratch in the dry
earth for a living, which was bad enough, but where the earth came forth
with little as a result. The People survived only by lining up each month
in hopes that the White Eyes' promised rations would be sufficient.
The Apaches knew that all the other tribes were gone--defeated. The
Navajos just north were on a reservation, the Comanches run out of Texas,
the tribes of the great plains--all sequestered, their spirit gone along
with the last of the buffalo herds. Only the Apaches--and only some of the
Apaches--still roamed free, if running ahead of the cavalry could be called
roaming free.
This destiny, the end of the old ways and maybe the end of life, had
often engaged the three men now watching from high in the Chiricahua
Mountains as the detachment of horsemen crawled across their land. The
white man they called Red Beard--known otherwise as Thomas Jeffords, the
friend of Cochise--peered through binoculars at the advancing column. They
were Buffalo Soldiers, the ones with the black curly hair of the buffalo,
thick lips, and darkest of skin, the most relentless of the soldiers that
crisscrossed the land in ever-increasing numbers these days, an
infestation.
"Company B, Ninth Cavalry," Red Beard said. "They've come from Fort
Stanton. Your Mescalero cousins over there must be calm." He grinned at
his two companions through reddish brown whiskers tinted with streaks of
white. "Old Hotfoot Hatch wouldn't've let any of his troops go if he
thought he had a problem over there on the reservation. He'd just as soon
keep his boys out of Crook's hands. Him and Gen'l Crook don't see
eye-to-eye on the best way to rid this here country of you pitiless
savages."
The two Apaches grinned. Red Beard was talking about Colonel Edward
Hatch, the white officer whose Negro soldiers had helped chase the
Comanches from Texas, and then raced two thousand miles around the
landscape in one year in pursuit of Victorio and his small band of Apaches
before Victorio disappeared into Mexico, there to be reported dead at the
hands of the Mexicans.
General Crook had been in this country long before, and reappeared
just recently, sent to bring a final end to the Apache depredations in the
Southwest. It was he who had earlier persuaded so many Apaches to go to
San Carlos--even Geronimo had been persuaded--and it was Crook who now was
in charge of the relentless pursuit of the last free-ranging Apaches--the
"renegades."
George Crook, the Tan Fox, with his voluminous side whis-kers and his
erect frame, was hardly ever seen in the blue uniform of the army, but in
the tan canvas clothes of the civilian. General George Crook, the White
Eyes whom Apaches re-spected above all others of his kind, was a man of
his word and a worthy enemy. Crook told Geronimo, and all the Apache
leaders with whom he met, that they could live in peace on the
reservations set aside for them, or they could be hunted down by him and
killed, even if it took him fifty years to do it.
In this endeavor Crook preferred the black troops, the Buffalo
Soldiers, over all the others, for they were almost as tire-less and
"pitiless" as the Apaches themselves. They could ride throughout the day
and into the night, day after day, month after month. They could go hard
under the fierce sun, and go long without rations.
But more dangerous were the Apaches whom General Crook paid to be
scouts. They wore blue jackets over their breechclouts and rode with
Crook's officers. They were former warriors who knew the land, knew the
location of all the hid-den springs and most of the mountain strongholds,
knew the Apache ways of war. It was Crook's use of Apache scouts that
Colonel Hatch--and his superiors--disapproved of.
Thanks in part to the counsel of Thomas Jeffords, the two Apaches
watching the little stream of cavalrymen on the valley floor knew all of
this about their enemy. One of the two Apaches was Naiche, a son of
Cochise. But for a deerskin bag hung around his neck, he was naked from
the waist up and wore only the traditional white breechclout tucked into
his belt and a pair of high-legged deerskin moccasins that were now folded
down onto his calves. A red cloth tied around his head kept from his face
the long black hair that hung down his back and was whipped by the high
mountain breeze.
Naiche's face was smooth and unscarred except for deep lines of pain
that surrounded his wide-set black eyes--eyes that looked intensely outward
under low eyebrows and over flat cheekbones. Below a long straight nose,
his mouth tilted upward on the left-hand side, giving him an expression of
permanent skepticism, or what had been taken by some to mean uncertainty.
The great Cochise had hoped that his son Naiche would inherit the
mantle of leadership among the Apache groups called the Chiricahuas, but
that had not happened. Some, thinking Naiche indecisive, had gone with
Taza, Cochise's other son, and yet others had retreated into their
traditional bands, hoping to live in the old way, a way that Cochise, as
he lay dying in his stronghold more than ten years earlier, had warned was
no longer the path of survival.
Naiche now looked over at the third man, a Nedh'ni Apache from the
south in old Mexico, the man they called Juh. He had been visiting among
the Chiricahuas now for more than a month, living in the high meadows in
the mountains among Naiche's people, talking. Juh spoke haltingly at
times, unable to get his mouth and his tongue to make certain sounds
without a great effort. His voice was deep and always quiet, barely above
the whisper of a wind, and people listened with special attention whenever
he chose to speak.
Nearly six feet in height and thus tall for an Apache, Juh was now
somewhere in his fifties, and recognized by most of the people as one of
the fiercest of men. All his life, Apa-ches had been at war with the rest
of the world, and he had killed many White Eyes, many in hand-to-hand
battle--fighting that he relished, especially when he used the
old-fashioned Apache lance, which he wielded with stunning quickness and
the strength of an athlete.
Juh's chest was notably thick and he was longer-waisted than most of
his kinsmen, with long powerful arms and hands with broad palms and long
flat fingers. He sat now on a red slab of rock, bare-chested and dressed
in the same manner as Naiche, leaning on one hand while with the other he
held the barrel of his Sharps rifle. In repose, he had a deceptively lazy
look, like a mountain lion at rest.
There was no Nedh'ni warrior who would not follow him, and most of the
Chiricahuas who had taken Cochise as their leader in the 1860s and early
1870s now perceived Juh as the rightful heir to Cochise's mantle. Just as
important as all the enemies he had killed, when a war party led by Juh
surged out of the fastnesses of the Sierra Madres and descended on the
Mexicans, wreaking vengeance and death on them, few Apache warriors failed
to return, few women had to wail and keen in mourning while the others
rejoiced at the return of their men.
The most startling aspect of Juh's appearance was the ob-sidian eyes
that seemed almost to burn in narrow triangular slits under heavy dark
brows. From the slitted eyes, his cheekbones fell straight down like cliff
faces past a prominent, wide nose that was bent from a blow he had
received as a young warrior in a raid on the Mexican town of Janos. Dark
fissures ran down past the corners of his mouth, which was typically set
in a full-lipped frown. His rare smiles were like the sun emerging from
behind a cloud.
He smiled now...
