by Chuck Tyrell
“I’ll need a free hand, sir.”
“That you shall have.”
“In writing, if you will, sir.”
The general nodded. “You shall have it.”
“Desertion’s high, sir. Who will be my troops?”
“Your choice.”
“May I take leave of absence, sir?”
“Your reason?”
“To learn the enemy, sir.”
“How long?”
“At least a month, sir, and perhaps longer.”
“Then you shall be on detached duty on my orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pick up your orders from Major Adams this evening, Lieutenant. You’re free to go.”
Stryker snapped to attention and saluted. “Very good, sir.”
“You’ll want to get a new uniform.”
Stryker hesitated.
“What is it?”
“Er, nothing, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” Stryker saluted again, turned on his heel, and marched from the office.
By the good Lord, what have I opted into? Stryker leaned against the wall outside the general’s office.
“Problem, sergeant?”
Stryker came to attention. “No, sir, Major Adams, sir. I was just leaving. The general said to see you this evening for written orders, sir.”
“Very well. Carry on.”
“Yes, sir.” Stryker saluted.
“Just a moment. I understand you hail from Virginia.”
“Yes, sir. Weyanoke, sir.”
“Would you happen to know Gabriel Lee? He’s a Virginian.”
“Yes, sir. He was one year behind me at VMI. We fought at Hay Market together. Well, we were in the same cadet corps, anyway.”
“And you joined the army.”
“Yes, sir. The Frontier Army is somewhat better than Anton Prison. I was given a choice. I took four years in the army, sir.”
“You’re sergeant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. Carry on.”
“Sir.”
Matthew Stryker stepped from the fort commander’s offices into the heat and interminable dust of New Mexico’s desert. No. Many called it “desert” but Apaches lived in the land. They didn’t seem to carry water, so there must be a way to get enough moisture. Already, Stryker’s VMI-trained military mind pecked away at the assignment from General Hunter. He made his way to the lines of tents that housed enlisted men. A very large black man with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves backed out of the first tent in line.
“Sarge?”
The buffalo soldier snapped to attention and executed a perfect about face. “Sir,” he said.
“I’m no officer, as you can see, Sarge. I’m looking for Ben Stroud. Whereabouts can I find him?”
“I reckon he’s in the guardhouse, sir.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me, Sarge. We got the same number of stripes, you and me, in the same army. I’m Matt Stryker.”
“Pleased, Sergeant Stryker.” The black sergeant made no move to shake hands with Stryker, and he didn’t volunteer his name.
“Thank you for the information, then.” Stryker turned to go.
“What you be wantin’ Ben for, Sergeant, if y’all don’t mind my askin’.”
Stryker stopped but didn’t turn back. “I need his help. I need him to volunteer.”
A note of interest crept into the black sergeant’s voice. “Y’all lookin’ for volunteers? What for?”
“Fight Apaches.”
“We been fightin’ ’em.”
“Could be, Sarge ... ” Stryker left the comment hanging.
“Kearns. Reginald Kearns. Some folks call me Samson.”
Stryker stuck his hand out. “You top kick of the buffalo boys?”
Kearns took the proffered hand after a slight hesitation. “Like I said, pleased. Ain’t often a white man offers a hand to one of us.”
“Sergeant Kearns, I grew up in Virginia, and I played with black kids long before I had white ones as friends. And some of them were a sight tougher and smarter than me.”
“Slaves?”
“They were. And friends.”
Samson Kearns shook his head. “Ain’t no man alive who’s got the right to buy and sell human beans.”
“Maybe that’s why my pa manumitted every black person—man, woman, and child—on our plantation in the fall of ’61. Ever one got to choose. Stay and farm for shares. Stay and get paid like any hired man or woman. Or leave.”
“Stryker, eh. Seems I’ve heard that name.”
“Our place was Seven Oaks in Weyanoke, or was until the Army of the Potomac decided to bivouac there anyway. Not much left. So I’m here.”
“Well, sir. When you gets to calling out your volunteers, I’d take it kindly if you’d not forget Reginald Kearns, if you please, sir.”
“You’d have to get rid of that habit.”
“What habit?”
“That habit of calling white men ‘sir’ even if they’re the same rank as you. Ya see, my volunteer bunch will most likely be black and white with some red in it, and maybe some yellow. We won’t have time or place for judging a soldier by what color of skin he wears.”
Samson Kearns looked Stryker up and down. “That’ll be good, if you can make it work, Stryker. Yeah. Be good, I say. Don’ y’all forget about me, then.”
“As if I could. Now, by your leave, I’ll go talk to Ben Stroud.”
“That man’s more Apache than black, but you go right ahead.”
So Matt Stryker made his way to the guardhouse, a sandstone structure that stood south of the cavalry’s stables and just west of the graveyard. And when a soldier died at Fort Bliss, he was as likely to have passed on due to dysentery or camp fever as to gun, arrow, or knife.
Fort Bliss’s guardhouse held the same odors of old sweat, vomit, rancid urine, and half-cleaned latrine buckets as a man would expect in any prison. Not a pleasant smell, but after a couple of days, inmates got used to it. Stryker knew. He’d survived the Yankee prison camp at Anton, where a third of the CSA men incarcerated died. At least the guardhouse at Fort Bliss didn’t smell of death.
“What’ll it be, sarge?”
“‘Day, corporal. Need to talk to Ben Stroud.”
“Ben Stroud? He’s prolly still sleeping off the whiskey.”
“I’ll wake him. Could you let me in?”
“Help yourself.” The corporal took a ring of keys off a peg and unlocked the main door to the cellblock. “You know Ben?”
“By sight.”
“Like I said, help yourself.”
Stryker opened the iron strip-reinforced door and stepped into the cellblock. The miasma made his eyes water. Only two of the six cells were occupied, one by a sunburned white man in prison stripes. A deserter, probably. The other by a slight man in faded blue. He slept, apparently, face to the wall.
“Ben? Ben Stroud.”
The man didn’t move a muscle. “Whacha want?”
“You.”
Silence. Then, “What fer?”
“Can’t say here.”
“Then get me out.”
“This evening. Get up and come over here ... please.”
Ben Stroud turned over and opened one eye a crack. “Ain’t feeling so spry.”
“Whiskey’ll do that to you.”
“Only had a couple.”
“Couple a dozen, most likely. Come on, Ben. I need your help.”
Stroud grunted ads he heaved himself to a sitting position. “Oh my ... somethin’s got into my head. It’s beatin’ from the inside like there’s no tomorrow.”
“You can do it, Ben. On your feet and over here. Come. On!”
Stroud stood and teetered, but he was able to stagger four steps to where he could grasp the bars of the cell and make his way to Stryker. “Made it.” He squinted. “Awful bright in here.”
“Listen to me, Ben Stroud.”
Stroud took a deep bre
ath, held it, then sighed. “Yeah? What?”
“Teach me how to be an Apache.”
“Say what?”
“I said, Ben Stroud, teach me to be an Apache.”
“White men don’t make good Apaches.”
“I gotta learn.”
Ben Stroud squinted again. “How come?”
“Time to get serious. Can’t fight people you know nothing about. I need to get as close to being Apache as you can make me. We’ve got a month. And I’ll see that you get sergeant’s pay.”
Stroud looked Stryker straight in the eye for the first time. “All right, Matt Stryker, Yeah, I know who you are. Now we’ll just see if you got what it takes to be a Apache. We surely will.”
“Good. I’ll be back at sundown to get you out of this stinking place.”
“Kin I go back to sleep now? Head’s killing me.”
“Go.” Stryker didn’t stay to watch Stroud flop back onto the bunk. And when he went back through the cellblock door, the corporal sat at the desk, asleep.
Fort Bliss operated like any other army post. Squads of soldiers worked at odd jobs like painting the board fence at the southern boundary of the parade ground, and one of the houses on officers’ row. Another group trimmed the shrubbery at the house most surely occupied by the General. Odd jobs. Stryker listened in vain for the sound of rifles being fired on a range. In fact, like most other forts in the west, Bliss had no firing range.
The regimental band practiced, though, led by an officer in dress uniform. Stryker could hear his voice even though the band was halfway across the parade ground from him. “Gentlemen. We are to play for the dance tonight, and we must do the regiment proud. Now. Ah one, ah two ah—the band broke out in strains of Oh, Susanna, and did a good job of it, to Stryker’s ear. He could not help but wonder if the band soldiers could hit a target fifty yards away with their standard issue .45-70 Springfields.
Stryker headed for the sutler’s store, walking purposefully, as if on an important errand for some officer, making it less likely that one of the officer corps would hail him and put him to work on some private assignment. He got as far as the door before being hailed.
“Sergeant. Oh, sergeant!”
Stryker pretended not to know the young officer was hailing him. He put a hand to the sutler’s door.
“Sergeant. You. You at the sutler’s.”
Stryker came to attention. “Sir.”
“Get your lazy ass over here. Help these men get the piano into my quarters.”
“Sir.” Stryker took his time surveying his surrounds within Fort Bliss. “I’m on assignment from the General, sir. Would you like to clear it with him, sir?”
The officer, a lieutenant by his bars, mumbled under his breath. “Very well, sergeant. Your name for future reference, if you will.”
“Matt Stryker, sir.”
“Stryker. I’ll remember that name.”
“Yes, sir.” Stryker came to attention and saluted.
“Carry on.”
“Thank you, sir.” Stryker entered the sutler’s store.
“What’ll it be, son?”
“You sell guns?”
“I have some I’ve taken in lieu of payment for goods. Some people tend to use more credit than they’re worth.”
“Could I see what you’ve got?”
“Sure.”
“Elsinore. Watch the store. I’m taking the sergeant to the gun room.”
“Yes, father.” The woman’s voice had the polish of finishing school, and Stryker lingered just a mite to see if she looked as good as she sounded.
She did. Even dressed in gingham with a starched white apron, she walked with the poise of a prima ballerina. Stryker wondered if she were not sadly misplaced. He tipped his greasy felt hat to her. “Ma’am.” He followed the sutler through the store and into a back room.
“A few, as you can see,” the sutler said.
Understatement must have been one of the sutler’s strong points. Pistols hung on pegs by their trigger guards. Rifles and shotguns marched along the walls, left and right. Boxes just the right size for rifles were stacked against the back wall, three deep and a dozen or so high.
“Looks like it could be a room in the armory at Richmond,” Stryker said.
“Thought you might be a southrun, sergeant. You’ve about lost your drawl, though.”
“Sometimes helps to speak like a Yankee. My name’s Matt Stryker. Might I know yours?”
“McCabe. Adolphus McCabe. Serving the fort here since ’58.”
Stryker gave McCabe a sharp look. “CSA, too?”
“What soldiers call themselves don’t matter much. Just make it a point not to hold any of their paper money. Silver and gold. A merchant like myself survives on silver and gold.”
“Hmmm. Silver and gold, is it? Reckon that’s what paid for Miss Elsinore’s finishing school.”
McCabe didn’t bat an eyelash. “Naturally. A man can’t expect his only daughter to grow up cultured on an outpost where command changes allegiance with every shift in the wind. No sirree. I sent her off to San Francisco. In fact, she just got back.”
Stryker changed the subject. “Tell me. Have you got a dozen .44 caliber Henry carbines?”
“ I can go you one better. How about that same number of rifles, but Winchester M1866 fifteen-shot repeaters?”
“Use the Henry .44 cartridge?”
“As you well know.”
“What about revolvers? Ones converted to shoot that cartridge?”
Starrs and Remington Armys and Colt M1860s. Only got two Starrs, but plenty of the others.”
“Mr. McCabe, I’ve got a feeling we’ll do business, one way or another.” Stryker offered his hand.
McCabe shook it. “A pleasure, I’m sure.”
“You look like a man with his ear to the ground. If you should hear of guns or ammunition or both headed for Apacheland, I’d appreciate you letting me know. Just get word to Matt Stryker at Fort Bliss, if you would.”
“Such information could be mutually beneficial, could it not?”
“I’m sure it would, with details to be worked out at the time.”
McCabe squinted, then nodded his head like he’d come to a decision. “All right, Stryker, seeing as you’re secesh.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Stryker said, “US Army, Mr. McCabe. US Army.”
Chapter Three – Take the War to the Apaches
The sun touched the tops of the Potrillo Mountains as Matt Stryker knocked on the door to General Hunter’s offices.
“Enter.”
Stryker opened the door, removed his battered campaign hat, and stepped inside. A sergeant major sat at a desk positioned to keep anyone who entered from being able to walk straight to the general’s offices. “What is it?” the sergeant major said.
“Matthew Stryker here on orders to see Major Adams.”
Adams’ voice came from the open door of the small office on the left. “Come on in, Stryker.”
“Sir.” Stryker strode into Major Adams’ office. The sergeant major watched him like he was looking for a mistake that would let him pounce on Stryker. He saw none.
“Matthew Stryker, sir, reporting as ordered.”
Major Adams looked up from his paperwork. “You’re a lieutenant, Stryker. Get rid of those stripes.” He pushed a pair of looey straps across the desk. “Put these on your tunic.”
“Sir.”
Adams gave Stryker a hard look. “Don’t know why, Stryker, but you’re on special duty, attached to this office. The general expects you to report back here in one month with a full troop of volunteers.
“Yes, sir. I’ll need authority to make requisitions and attach personnel.”
“Yes. Yes. That’s all here.” He handed Stryker a thin envelope.
Stryker opened the flap and removed a single sheet of paper.
To whom it may concern
Lieutenant Matthew L. Stryker is attached to the office of the commanding general, Arm
y of the Southwest, and is to be extended every courtesy and assistance. His requisitions for men and materiel shall be considered as coming from this office, with paperwork forwarded to Major Andrew A. Adams at Fort Bliss.
George Washington Hunter
General, commanding
Army of the Southwest
The general’s signature flowed across the page, hardly readable, but carrying ample authority.
“Thank you, Major,” Stryker said. “I’ll put the bars on my tunic. Thank you, sir, and by your leave, sir.”
“Report in no less than thirty days, Stryker.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do that, sir.”
From the General’s offices, Stryker went straight to the guardhouse. A different corporal sat at the desk.
“What’ll it be, sergeant.”
“I need you to let Ben Stroud out.”
“Can’t do that. He’s got ten days coming, and he’s only been here one, going on two.”
“Need ’im now.”
“And I said, no can do.”
Stryker pulled the envelope he’d gotten from Major Abrams to the corporal. “The General says I can requisition anyone I want or need. I need Ben Stroud.”
The corporal pushed his chair back and stepped past Stryker to the door. “Sergeant of the guard,” he hollered.
No answer.
“Sergeant of the guard!”
A door slammed and boots crunched against gravel. “What’s going on?”
The corporal took a step back. “This here man wearing sergeant’s stripes come askin’ for Ben Stroud, saying he’s Lieutenant Matthew Somethin’ Stryker. I told him Stroud still has time to serve, but he wants that drunk now.”
“Sergeant Stryker?”
“Until about an hour ago I was,” Stryker said. “General Hunter made me into a second looey and gave me a job of hunting Apaches. Says I can have any man I want for the job, and I want Ben Stroud.”
“Show me that paper, Tygart.”
The corporal handed the General’s letter to the sergeant, who squinted at it, held his breath as he mouthed the words, then let it out almost like a sigh. “Looks like Stroud goes free,” he said.
“No, sarge, he don’t go free, he goes tied to me. If he tried running away, he’s dead.”
