Stryker's Bounty (A Matt Stryker Western #3)

by Chuck Tyrell

  “Jay zus,” Carpenter said. “Where’d you get the duds?”

  Stryker grimaced. “When a man hunts other men for a living, Lige, it pays to keep trail stuff cached around the territory. Tucson’s a good place when you’re looking south towards Mexico.”

  “Damn.”

  Stryker eyed Carpenter’s change of wear. “You do pretty well yourself,” he said.

  Carpenter also wore tan canvas breeches, stiff and new, along with a brown shield-front shirt. His head was still protected by a short-brimmed brown bowler.

  “That citified hat’s not gonna give you much shade,” Stryker said.

  “I’ll make do. Got a couple of big bandanas for shade.”

  “You got grub?”

  “Hardtack. Jerky. No coffee, though. All I got’s an empty cup.”

  “I got Arbuckle’s we can use when we get a chance.”

  Carpenter nodded. He pulled his Colt SAA .45, checked the action and loads, set the hammer down on the empty chamber, and returned the pistol to its holster behind his right hip. He left his Winchester in its saddle boot, but Stryker could see it was well cared for.

  “Let’s go shake the tree,” Stryker said, “see what falls out.”

  “Two hunnert fifty pounds of gold ain’t gonna fall outta no tree,” Carpenter said.

  “Nope. I reckon we’ll have to dig for that.” Stryker reined the palomino paint east on Congress Street, across the Southern Pacific tracks and out into the foothills of the Rincon Mountains. He had no idea where the Dents were or which direction they took from Miller’s Well. The tracks of five horses and a mule went south from the burned out stage stop. Right down the San Pedro River, which had its origins down in Mexico. Still, he couldn’t see the Dents going all the way south to Tombstone. They were carrying gold, and Stryker was a bounty hunter by trade. The bounty on that much gold would definitely be worth the chase. A pretty penny it would be, even though Old Dominion had not put out a public notice.

  Two hours outside Tucson, Stryker stopped on a hogback and built a fire. When it was going well, he added greasewood to make smoke. The fire was small and the smoke rose almost vertically in the hot still air. Stryker used his big bandana, stretching it out with both hands, to create a series of five breaks in the column of smoke. He let the little fire burn for another five minutes or so, then snuffed it out, scattering the greasewood and stomping the embers until no spark showed. Just to make sure, he covered everything with a layer of dry sandy soil.

  “Who you bringing in?” Carpenter asked.

  “We’ll see.”

  “Heard about that sashay down into Mexico.”

  “Yeah.”

  Carpenter said no more. Stryker remounted the palomino paint and rode east. Carpenter followed.

  Norrosso showed up just before sundown. One minute Stryker and Carpenter rode across the flanks of the Rincons toward Sierra Colorado, the next minute an Apache with a thick dirty white headband and a faded blue cavalry shirt with sergeant’s stripes stood in their path. There was no sign of a horse.

  “His name’s Norrosso,” Stryker said. “No better scout around, unless it’s Wolf Wilder, and he’s retired to that ranch in Lone Pine Canyon.”

  “What?” Norrosso said when Stryker and Carpenter reined their horses to a halt some dozen feet away.

  Stryker dismounted. “Coffee?”

  Norrosso shrugged.

  “This is Carpenter,” Stryker said. “He rides with me.”

  Norrosso shrugged. He squatted. “Coffee,” he said.

  Stryker dug the Arbuckle’s and the little coffee pot from his saddlebag. “Mind smashing the beans?” he said. He held the beans and pot out to Carpenter, who took them without a word.

  When Carpenter returned from smashing Arbuckle’s egg white encrusted coffee beans and putting them in the pot, Stryker had a tiny fire built. Carpenter put three cups of water in the pot and handed it to Stryker. No one said a thing until the coffee was brewed and drunk. Then Norrosso said, “What?” again.

  “Norrosso,” Stryker said. “As in Sonora, I find I must once more ask for your help.”

  Norrosso tossed the dregs from his cup and handed it to Carpenter. “Good coffee,” he said, then turned to face Stryker.

  “We need to find four men and a woman,” Stryker said. “The men are thieves and hard men. The woman is the wife at the stage stop called Miller’s Well.”

  Norrosso remained silent.

  “They went south from Miller’s Well,” Stryker said. Then, after a minute, he said, “Dodge Miller would like to see his woman.”

  Norrosso’s gaze lifted to take in the jumbled land east and southeast. The sun lay hot on the land and mirages like great shimmering lakes danced at the bases of the blue mountains in the distance. “They went that way?” He nodded toward the mountains.

  “Could be,” Stryker said. “Not sure.”

  “Men who know, follow the river,” Norrosso said.

  Stryker nodded. “They’ve got something to hide,” he said. “They’ll take paths not easy to follow.”

  Finn Dent got back to camp sometime after midnight. The whiskey had worn off, but something hung hot and oiling in his gut.

  “Took your ass long enough,” Lester growled from the dark shadow of an old oak. “How much did you spend drinking?”

  “Only had two drinks, pa . . . well, two paid for and one on the house, kinda. I’m all right. Got supplies and cat’ridges, just like you said.”

  “See anyone?”

  “No one ta know. Never went to see no whoor neither.”

  “Hmph.” Lester uncocked his shotgun. “Light and take care of the stock. You’ll wanna put a nosebag on your nag. It’s come a piece.”

  “I can take care of my own hoss, pa. Ain’t like I was a shavetail brat or nothing.” He swung down from his gelding and began loosening the cinch so’s he could get the saddle off and over to where he figured on sleeping.

  “You get extry waterbags like I said?” Lester Dent still wasn’t satisfied that his eldest son had done as he was ordered.

  “I done it, pa.” Finn finished unsaddling the gelding. He lugged the saddle over to the spot he’d picked out and flopped it down. He got a gunnysack nosebag with a couple of cups of oats in it. Even if supplies were slim, Lester Dent always carried oats for the horses. “Nags with oats in they bellies’ll always outlast grass-fed ones ever time.” That’s what Pa Dent said.

  Finn’s guts cramped and he made for a bush to get behind. He hardly had time to lower his pants and squat before the contents of his large intestine splattered on the ground. Even after he’d voided everything, Finn’s body kept trying to get something out of his system.

  At last he was able to close his sphincter, and bumbling around with one hand, found a rock that would do to wipe with. When he stood to pull his pants up, he staggered a step and nearly put a foot in what he left behind. He didn’t look at his stool, but if he had examined it, the amount of blood, fresh blood, would have shocked him.

  He made his way back to his saddle, stifled a groan, and lay down. Dawn would come too soon. Sleep. That’s what he needed right now. Sleep.

  Lester Dent watched. The boys’d never been to war. They didn’t really understand the need to watch. Oh, they stayed awake during their shifts, believe the Good Lord, they stayed awake. But they didn’t watch. Lester Dent watched.

  He heard Finn get up and go off behind that tree. He heard the boy voiding his guts on the dry ground. He heard the little groans Finn made as he tried and tried but nothing came. He heard the night sounds of crickets and katydids resume after Finn lay back down.

  The woman never moved. It was hard for Lester to tell if she was sleeping or awake, but it didn’t matter. She never moved. She did the cooking and she cleaned up. She never said a thing, and when one of the boys wanted to hump, she bent over like a bitch in heat. Lester didn’t watch the boys hump but it did seem that they got the urge a little too often. Finn got the supplies. Tomorrow the
y’d pony up and move out through Hell’s Gate and east on Hell’s Trail. Wouldn’t no one follow them on Hell’s Trail. Not many, anyway. A line of gray showed atop the Chiricahuas to the east, and cactus wrens began to twitter. Lester Dent kept watching.

  Molly Miller rose in the half-light of early dawn. She saw Lester Dent watching from a position in the rocks about fifty feed above the camp.

  She ignored him. She stirred the ashes of last night’s fire. No coals remained alive. Like me. She gathered sticks and tinder from a nearby packrat’s nest. Then she climbed to Lester’s watch place. She held out her hand. “Lucifer,” she said.

  Lester didn’t even look at her. He dug an oil-paper-wrapped bundle of matches from his vest pocket, unwrapped it, picked one out, and put it in Molly’s outstretched palm.

  Without a word, Molly turned away from Lester Dent and went back to building the fire.

  Knows her place. Dent went back to watching. Birds began to flit about, looking for morning insects or whatever.

  Molly’s fire flared, burned for some minutes, then collapsed into coals. By that time, she had saleratus biscuits made and in the little cast-iron frying pan.

  Ain’t just anyone who can make biscuits in a fry pan. Molly Miller would do, Lester Dent figured, even if she was just a hump when the boys wanted it.

  Lester Dent was nobody’s fool. He read the hate and anger in Molly Miller’s eyes, and he didn’t care, as long as she did what was needful. As long as she was useful, there was a way. Whenever she was no longer useful, a bullet to the brain would do, or maybe a hank of rope around the neck. How she went depended on the circumstances, whether they needed the bullet or whether the boys wanted to make a game of her death.

  Wee Willy helped Molly fix breakfast, and that was all right, too. Long as he didn’t get to thinking the bitch was his long lost ma, or something else twisted up in his puny little brain. Wee Willy was strong of muscle, but there wasn’t no one who’d say he was strong in the head.

  Lester watched.

  Although he watched and although he’d been amongst the guerrillas under James Danby, Lester Dent had no experience with the stealth of the Apaches. Mescaleros, Jicarrillas, Chiricahuas, Coyoteros, or White Mountain, Apaches were invisible unless they didn’t care who saw them. What’s more, an Apache man could run farther and faster than most horses, and he needed much less water.

  Lester Dent knew the way only as Hell’s Trail. Norrosso and the White Mountain Apache scouts loosely attached to General Crook’s troops at Fort Apache and Camp Thomas knew it as Nalyudi, or the Maze. Nalyudi had no water, of course, but it led to Dos Cabezas and the Coronado Trail, which the Spaniard explorer had blazed to the Prieta Plateau in search of Cibola, the legendary seven cities of gold. The Apaches knew nothing of Coronado or Cibola, but they knew of ancient dwellings in ki datbaa, in which lay rusting metal breastplates and round helmets. The Apaches ignored the swords but more than one double-edged dagger with chasings on the blade found their way into the hands of Apache chiefs like Puma of the Jicarilla and Gondalay of the White Mountain tribe.

  Lester watched, but did not see the dark eyes beneath tan headbands that noted five horses and a heavily laden mule. Four men and a woman. The five had to make camp in the twisting corridors of ki datbaa, for thus it got its name, full of switchbacks and blind canyons that confused the way. Dark eyes saw the efficiency of the woman. And they saw her standing spraddle-legged and bent over while two of the men used her, one after the other.

  One pair of dark eyes belonged to Bodaway, who often worked with Al Sieber out of Camp Thomas, and he recognized the woman. Under his breath he said, “Nantan Miller will cut off your . . . he gestured toward his genitals . . . and feed them to you while you still live”

  Norrosso’s friends saw other men, too. A party of four rode from the direction of Tucson, as if they were intent on catching the Dents before they moved into Hell’s Gate and Hell’s Trail. Another group came from Alamo, riding carefully as if expecting to meet superior numbers. John Walker, a whiteman who turned Pima after marriage, rode ahead of those men.

  All, including Stryker and Carpenter, seemed to be in pursuit of the Dents.

  Chapter Nine

  Stryker and Carpenter made no effort to hide. Still, they rode by night, as the blistering daytime sun sapped the strength of man and beast all too quickly. And while the palomino paint was mustang bred and mountain born, the pony was still an unknown as far as Stryker was concerned. So he and Carpenter shaded up during the heat of the day and rode carefully toward Hell’s Gate and the trail that was hell to the unwary and those who knew not the desert, but was ki datbaa to Apaches since time immemorial.

  While the Dents crashed into the labyrinth of Hell’s Trail, taking wrong turns and retracing their steps as often as they made progress, Stryker and Carpenter closed in from the west, as did Nate Cousins and his gunhands. The rabble from Alamo, following John Walker, moved quietly for rabble, but the eyes of Norrosso’s Apache Scouts noted their progress.

  As Stryker and Carpenter saddled up at dusk, an Apache in knee-high moccasins, breechclout, and fading cavalry blouse materialized. Stryker rubbed the tears from his cheek with his upper arm. Dagot'ee, he said. Norrosso sent me.

  Stryker nodded. “Coffee?”

  The Apache shrugged. “No time,” he said. “We go to the woman.”

  “Your name?”

  “Taklishim,” the Apache said.

  “There’s a man here to take us to Molly Miller, Lige.”

  “I heard him,” Carpenter said. “Let’s go.”

  “I hear you,” Stryker said. He mounted the palomino paint with a smooth easy motion. “Taklishim,” he said, “we follow you.”

  Taklishim started south.

  Carpenter looked a question at Stryker, who reined the palomino paint after the quick-striding Apache. Taklishim was already almost out of sight. Stryker knew he remained in sight for the two riders’ benefit. If they could not see him, they would soon wander off course.

  Stryker’s horse followed the Apache as if by magnet. Perhaps the scent of Apache was all he needed. The moon drifted up from behind the Chiricahua Mountains far to the east. Stryker realized they had yet to cross the San Pedro River. At least it would give them water for the horses so they wouldn’t have to deplete their canteen supply. Taklishim angled down a draw that led eastward toward the San Pedro. Four hours of following him brought Stryker and Carpenter to the muddy river.

  “For caballos alone,” Taklishim said.

  Stryker’s paint and Carpenter’s dun drank, but not much.

  “Tomorrow’s horse bells will come brown,” Taklishim said. His face was solemn but his eyes twinkled with mirth.

  Stryker wiped his face with his sleeve again. Neither he nor Carpenter drank from the canteens.

  They crossed the inch-deep, muddy San Pedro and continued east. This time up an arroyo that would probably bring them into the northern foothills of the Little Dragoon Mountains. Taklishim broke into a trot. Stryker’s paint lifted into a single-foot, as did the dun. They ate up the miles with minimum exertion.

  Then Taklishim stopped. “We walk,” he said. Stryker and Carpenter dismounted and followed the Apache, leading their horses. Both men walked with the loose-limbed stride of woodsmen rather than the stiff bowlegged gait of the habitual horseman.

  The land lay as if broken by some giant’s sledgehammer. Maybe John Henry’s. As the sky began to turn gray in the ease, Taklishim stopped. After a few moments, he led them off to the side to where a fractured slice of rock leaned away from its mother cliff. A pathway led into the space between the outward-leaning splinter of redrock, though the tracks in the loose sand were mad by soft padded feet of predators, not the hard hooves of prey.

  Taklishim slipped into a crevice and turned to beckon Stryker and Carpenter in. The two men dismounted, hooked their stirrups on their saddlehorns, and carefully led their mounts into the crevice. A few feet in, the crevice widened so man and horse coul
d walk easily. In a few more yards, the mother cliff became an overhang that offered respite from the boiling sun of Hell’s Trail.

  “You rest here,” Taklishim said. “Tomorrow we get the woman from Miller’s Well.”

  “Fire?”

  Taklishim waved his hand toward a spot on the back wall that was blackened with smoke from ancient fires. “If you need,” he said. “But better not.”

  Stryker nodded. “Might as well unsaddle the horses, I reckon.” He tugged at the latigo to loosen it from the cinch ring and let the surcingle go. He heaved the saddle from the paint and laid it off to the side. He upended his kepi and filled it with water from a canteen. The paint drank eagerly and wanted more when the kepi was empty. “That’ll have to do, old son,” Stryker said. He capped the canteen and hung it back on the saddle. “Need browse for these ponies,” he said to no one in particular. “A quart today. Another tomorrow, ‘n we’ll be out of oats, too.” He didn’t like to mistreat horses just because of the decisions some manmade.

  Carpenter put a gunnysack nosebag on his dun horse, too. Sometime between dismounting and caring for the horses, Taklishim disappeared. Stryker thought nothing of it. He trusted the Apache scout to be back when they needed him. He stretched his saddle blanket out on the sandy floor of the overhang and lay down. In moments, he was asleep.

  Third blind canyon. Second for the day. Lester Dent fumed. Damn it all. Hell’s Trail was supposed to lead from the Rincon Mountains across the top of the alkali flats and on to Dos Cabezas. But it wouldn’t if he kept stumbling into dead-end canyons.