“Lieutenant, nothing’s happening. It’s been quiet since the soldiers left.”
“Yes, and that’s what’s troubling the hell out of me,” Stryker said.
Chapter 14
Stryker stepped into the heat of the aborning day, his entire left side afire with pain. His saddle and bridle had been hung on the hitching post outside the cabin, but there was no sign of his dead horse. Joe Hogg had probably hauled it away somewhere.
Squinting his eyes against the sun glare, he looked to the west where the steep-sided hogback provided a formidable obstacle for a sick man.
Stryker began to put one foot in front of another—high and steep or no, the hogback was just another hill to climb.
He was even weaker than he’d thought. He climbed the slope one step at a time, pausing often to recover.
He was in no condition for a fight. If an Apache found him now . . .
Stryker shrugged off the thought. He was behaving like a frightened old maid who hears a rustle in every bush.
The crest of the hogback was still high above him and the unrelenting sun gave him no peace. He was sweating heavily, the rifle in his right hand slick.
Still he climbed, using brush and bunch grass to help pull himself upward wherever he could. Above him buzzards were gathering, birds of ill omen who weighed him in the balance and didn’t give much for his chances.
Stryker cursed the buzzards, cursed the heat, cursed the hogback and finally cursed himself. He’d been a fool to attempt this so soon after being shot. If Mrs. McCabe didn’t find him, he could die out here.
Finally, through sheer strength of will, he gained the crest and started down the other side. This time the going was easier and didn’t tax him as badly.
He found the game trail between the hills and followed it west, dropping five hundred feet lower until the far-flung reaches of the Sulphur Springs Valley came in sight.
Stryker took cover behind a clump of mesquite and looked around him. Out in the flat, away from the Chiricahua foothills, the land drowsed in the sun and made no sound. From a pile of jumbled rock close to Stryker’s foot, an irritated rattlesnake shook its warning, then, its point made, slithered away. The buzzards still quartered the colorless sky, slowly drifting downward, wary, serene and patient.
Stryker used the Henry to help himself to his feet, then stepped into the open. North, in the direction of Apache Pass, nothing moved across the face of the vast land. To the south, a silent, sun-blasted emptiness told the same story.
The sand around Stryker was churned up by the passage of horses, unshod Apache ponies. The tracks headed north. Joe Hogg could have told him how many Indians had passed this way, but he guessed they were many.
It seemed to Stryker that the whole Apache nation was on the move, hurrying to join Geronimo and Nana. Fort Merit, with its tiny garrison, could be the only target. He was willing to bet that the adobes and jacals around the post were already deserted. The Mexicans had been fighting Apaches for hundreds of years, and if they were coming . . . they knew.
Then he saw the wagon tracks.
Two heavily-loaded freight wagons had passed this way, and very recently. Good businessman that he was, Rake Pierce was following his customers.
A mindless, primitive urge to kill resurrected in him, Stryker tilted back his head and drank from his canteen, splashing more of the water over the wreckage of his face. Only then did he notice that the buzzards had drifted away from him and were circling low about a hundred yards to the south.
He studied the land in that direction, willing to dismiss the dead or dying creature as a wounded antelope or the remains of a coyote kill. It would be a useless and foolish expenditure of his already depleted strength to investigate.
Yet . . . something about the buzzards troubled him, awakening in him an instinct for danger. He shook his head, angry with himself. He was scared, that was all, and a man’s fear makes the wolf seem much bigger than he is.
Then he heard the choked, agonized shriek that made up his mind for him.
The dying creature was a man.
The thing that had once been human lay in a small clearing between a pair of mesquite juniper-covered hills that were bright with summer wildflowers. The man was spread-eagled beside the ashes of a fire, his wrists and ankles bound to stakes with strips of rawhide.
His eyelids had been cut off and fires had burned in his hands and on his groin. There was little left of either. His naked body was covered in small cuts and the desert fire ants had been busy on him.
The man raised his head, trying to see with black, burned-out eyes. There was a terrible fear in his quavering voice. “Who’s there?”
“Lieutenant Steve Stryker.”
A grimace that could have been a smile stretched the man’s cracked lips. “Oh, thank God it’s you! I’m saved.”
Wearily, Stryker took a knee beside Sergeant Miles Hooper. He lifted the canteen from his shoulder and pressed it to the man’s lips. Hooper drank deeply, then laid his head back on the ground.
“You’ve saved me, Lieutenant. Oh, please, I need a doctor bad. Get me to the post.”
“What happened, Hooper?” Stryker asked.
“Rake . . . Rake Pierce. I . . . I asked him for ’elp and he threw me to the Apaches, like I was a piece of meat.” Hooper raised his head again. “I can’t see you, Lieutenant.”
“Sun blindness. It will pass.”
“He—Rake—laughed, Lieutenant. The Apaches were working on me, making me scream and he laughed. He’s . . . he’s not a man; he’s a fiend.”
Hooper tried to raise his head again. “My pisser,” he croaked, “did they take my pisser?”
Stryker glanced at the blackened lump of burned flesh between the man’s legs.
“No,” he said, “it’s fine.”
“Thank ’eavens. I’ll need that for the whores when I get well again.”
“Where is Pierce headed?” Stryker asked. Silently he undid his holster flap and slid out the Colt.
“North, Lieutenant. That’s all I know, following the Apaches.” He moved his head. “Get the lads to cut me free and put me on a horse. I need a doctor real bad. I’m glad you saved—”
Stryker’s shot slammed into Hooper’s temple. He holstered his revolver and got to his feet, looking down at the dead man. Hooper had been a murderer, a deserter and a disgrace to his uniform, but nobody deserved to die as he’d done.
A sick emptiness in him, Stryker headed back toward the game trail between the hills. His steps were slow and halting, a dragging, agonized shuffle across the hot sand. Blood was seeping through his shirt, weakening him.
He gave up after twenty yards and collapsed into the thin shade of a juniper that struggled for survival in the narrow crevice of a fractured boulder. The sun rose higher in the sky, pounding the land into submission, and only the insects moved, making their small sounds in the bunch grass.
Stryker closed eyes that felt as though they were heavy with sand. He leaned his head against the rock and breathed through his mouth, grabbing at the thin air. Gradually he let not sleep, but a deep unconsciousness take him.
As the day shadowed into the lilac tint of evening and the stars set sentinels in the sky, an antelope trotted past the split rock, only to bound away when it caught sight of the sprawled human. A pair of hunting coyotes winded Stryker but quickly lost interest when they scented richer, closer and deader meat. . . .
His uneasy, restless slumber dragged on.
“Lieutenant! Lieutenant Stryker!”
Stryker’s eyes flew open. Mrs. McCabe was calling into the darkness for him. He struggled to his feet just as the woman emerged from the gloom—leading a horse.
“When it got dark I grew worried,” she said. “I thought . . . I thought maybe you were—”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“Where is Kelly?”
“Asleep.”
Stryker felt like he was a hundred years old. He stepped wearil
y toward Mary McCabe and studied the horse. “He’s a criollo,” he said. “I once saw a regiment of Mexican lancers mounted on them. How did you come by him?”
“One of the dead Apaches was riding him. I found him wandering under the cottonwood beside the cabin. I bridled him,” the woman said. “He’s not a tall horse. Can you get on his back?”
Stryker managed a smile. “Seems like I’ll have to. I can’t make it back to the cabin on foot.”
It took him several attempts, but finally he managed to climb onto the little horse’s back. The criollo was well-trained and had stood quietly while Stryker mounted him. Now Mary gathered up the reins and led the horse back toward the game trail.
On the way, Stryker told her about finding Sergeant Hooper. He did not tell her the man had still been alive and that he’d fired a mercy shot into his brain.
“The Apaches are heading north to join Geronimo,” he said. “So is Rake Pierce, the man who beat me with a shackle chain.”
When she turned, Mary’s face was a pale blur in the gathering darkness. “You want to kill him, this man?”
“Yes, I do, Mrs. McCabe. I want to kill him real bad.”
“I understand.”
“You do?”
“I wanted to kill the man who abused me and cut me with a knife. I’m a coward who just never found the courage.”
“You have courage, Mrs. McCabe. It’s a quiet, womanly sort of courage that doesn’t shout its name, but it’s courage nevertheless. If you’re a coward, I haven’t seen it in you yet.”
“No one has ever said anything like that to me, Lieutenant.”
“A woman needs a man to say things to her, Mrs. McCabe. He should tell her about the way her hair catches the sunlight, the blue sky that lives in her eyes. True things.”
“West Point taught you well, Lieutenant Stryker.”
“No, life taught me well, or it’s trying to.”
“Hold on tight,” Mary said. “We’ve reached the hogback.”
Chapter 15
The McClellan saddle was designed to favor the horse, not the rider, and Stryker felt stiff and uncomfortable as he headed the criollo south across an endless brush desert cut through by dry creeks and wide, dusty washes.
He felt uncomfortable for another reason.
Mrs. McCabe and Kelly walked beside the horse, their only protection from the blazing sun a tiny white parasol that the woman had preserved from the time before her marriage. Stryker knew they were suffering, but neither uttered a word of complaint, a fact that did nothing to ease his conscience.
Mary knew that the lieutenant wasn’t fit to walk a long distance and she’d accepted it. But again, that didn’t make it any easier.
They’d left the cabin at first light that morning, planning to meet up with Birchwood and his infantry on the trail south. Stryker would then abandon Yanisin and his people to their own devices and use a series of forced marches to reach Fort Merit, hopefully before the Apaches attacked.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, not even a good one, but it was all Stryker had, and at least he felt he was taking the initiative again.
He looked down at the woman. “How are you holding up, Mrs. McCabe?”
“It’s hot.”
Kelly’s head was bent and her feet were dragging. She had earlier refused to sit on the horse in front of Stryker, but now he asked her again. This time the girl eagerly agreed, and he lifted her in front of him.
They had been walking for three hours and a look at Mrs. McCabe’s face told Stryker that she too was growing exhausted. He drew rein, freed a stirrup and said, “Get up behind me, Mrs. McCabe.”
The woman shook her head. “That’s too much for the horse.”
“He’s a tough little bronc,” Stryker smiled. “He can carry all three of us.”
The woman had no argument left in her. She climbed up behind Stryker who kneed the criollo into motion. The horse’s gait did not change and it seemed to handle the additional weight with ease.
Kelly leaned her head on Stryker’s chest, lightly and tentatively at first, but then it grew heavier as the child slept.
The sky islands of the Chiricahuas soared above the three people on the little horse, dwarfing them into insignificance. Here and there eroded stone spires and columns rose out of thick tree canopies like the pillars of a ruined cathedral, ancient incense that smelled of pine still fragrant in the air. The sun had impaled itself on a peak and was motionless in the sky, unable to shake itself free. The entire vast land shimmered in the heat, distorting the way ahead, hard on the eyes, harder still on Stryker’s stretched-taut nerves.
This was Apache country and no man who entered it, unless he was a fool, ever rode at ease.
And that was proved just thirty minutes later when three mounted Indians emerged from the shimmering landscape as though they were riding through a curtain of lace.
Over Stryker’s shoulder Mary McCabe saw what he was seeing. She immediately slid off the criollo and lifted Kelly from the saddle. The girl was still asleep and her head rested on her mother’s shoulder.
There was nowhere to hide, no time to run, but Stryker was a horse soldier and the woman knew that if it came to a fight she and Kelly would be an encumbrance.
Stryker racked the Henry and sat his saddle, waiting, his eyes fixed on the oncoming Apaches. He was still very weak, in no shape for a battle, but, as they had been for Mary, his options were limited.
All three of the Indians carried new Winchesters and they came on at a walk, unhurried, their flat, black eyes weighing Stryker, evaluating him as a fighting man.
Stryker quickly glanced around him. He saw nothing in the terrain that would give him an advantage. Now that he’d looked at his hole card and didn’t like what he’d seen, he gripped his rifle tighter and waited for the inevitable. No matter what, he would take his hits and survive long enough to fire two shots. Remembering what had befallen Hooper, he wouldn’t abandon Mrs. McCabe and her daughter to the same fate.
The Apaches stopped ten yards away, and then one of them rode forward. He was young, stocky, bands of red and yellow paint across his nose and cheeks. At one time or another in his wild life, this warrior had been an Army scout.
Reining his pony alongside the criollo, the Apache stared hard into Stryker’s face. Astonishment gave way to puzzlement and then to a wide grin. The warrior turned and enthusiastically beckoned the other two closer.
Stryker lifted the muzzle of the Henry an inch until it was pointed at the belly of the Indian closest to him. The man, still intent on studying the soldier’s shattered features, didn’t seem to notice. His head was inclined at an angle as he tried to imagine how the big officer had gotten that way.
As their leader had done, the other Apaches crowded around Stryker, staring at him in wonderment, excitedly discussing him in a language he did not understand.
One of the Apaches swung away and rode to where Mary and the child were standing. He studied the woman’s face, then let out a wild yip of delight.
Stryker stiffened in the saddle. The reckoning had come, and he was ready.
The Apache slid off his horse, grabbed Mary’s chin and turned her head so the others could see the terrible scar on her cheek. That immediately touched off a storm of laughter among the Indians that surprised Stryker. For some reason, Mary McCabe’s scar was “a real thigh-slapper,” as Joe Hogg would have said.
So far the Apaches had shown no hostile intent, and for now Stryker was content to let it remain that way.
The Apache let Mary go and mounted again. The warrior wearing the traditional war paint of the Army scout pointed to Stryker’s face. “Ugly,” he said. He pointed to the woman. “Ugh, same ugly.” As his companions laughed, he said, “A good joke.”
And with that, the three warriors rode away, heading north, their heads thrown back, still laughing.
Stryker felt the tension drain out of him. Hogg had once told him that Apaches were notional and that the white man did not share the
ir sense of humor. Now, for some reason known only to themselves, a disfigured Army lieutenant accompanied by a scarred woman in the middle of the wilderness had struck them as funny.
Stryker didn’t appreciate the joke, but he appreciated that it had saved their lives.
That night they camped two miles south of Rucker Canyon and its abandoned Army post. Sheltered by a narrow box canyon, Stryker built a small fire and they ate a hasty supper of broiled bacon and a few stale biscuits.
At first light, they were on the trail south again. And at noon they met up with Joe Hogg and Lieutenant Birchwood’s depleted infantry company.
Chapter 16
Hogg was riding next to a huge man wearing a greasy buckskin shirt, his red hair falling in a tangled mass over his shoulders. A full beard covered his chest and when he looked at Stryker, then looked again, his black eyes were small and mean and full of malice.
Stryker smiled at Hogg. “Good to see you again, Joe.”
“See you brung the whole family,” the scout said.
Birchwood was a hundred yards behind Hogg. He cantered to Stryker and saluted. “Lieutenant Birchwood reporting, sir.”
Stryker looked beyond the man and past the column of weary infantrymen. “Where are the Apaches, Lieutenant?”
The young officer shook his head. “We didn’t find them, sir. The rancheria was abandoned, everyone gone.”
“Did you encounter any Apaches?”
“No, sir.”
“We did find this skunk, and a couple of others with him who are now deceased,” Hogg said. He leaned over in the saddle, shot out his booted foot and knocked the red-haired man off his horse.
The redhead hit the ground hard, raising a cloud of dust. He stayed where he was and cursed viciously at Hogg.
“His name is Silas Dugan,” the scout said, smiling. “He’s a scalp hunter by trade and a real good friend of Sergeant Pierce. In fact, Lieutenant, you might say they’re partners.”
Dugan got to his feet, spitting fury and hate. “I’m gonna kill you one day, Joe,” he said. “You might be in bed with a whore or kneeling to say your prayers or singin’ in the church choir, but I’m gonna walk right up to you an’ scatter your brains, you son of a bitch.”
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