Stryker's Revenge (3 page)

The cavalrymen were all young; one of them, Trooper Muldoon, was just sixteen. They had never been this close to dead people before and it showed in their strained faces as they laid out the already-smelling dead.

After the bodies were arranged in a row, covered by whatever items of clothing the soldiers had found in the luggage, Stryker stood in silence, looking down at the now-faceless dead. He lifted his head and yelled. “Sergeant Hooper, form the troop in line behind me.”

Hooper did as he was ordered, and then the lieutenant said, “Now remove the coverings from the bodies.”

When that was done, Stryker moved to the side of the line and addressed the men in a loud, harsh voice. “Look well, all of you, and know your enemy. The Apache is not a warrior, not a soldier, but a killing animal. The only way to deal with such a savage beast is to kill him before he kills you.”

Stryker walked down the line, looking into the young faces of undersized boys recruited from city slums. To favor its horses, the United States Cavalry preferred troopers to be small and light, and their rations of hardtack and greasy salt pork—and not much of it—were designed to keep them that way.

“Men,” Stryker said, “we will meet up with the Apache later today. When we find them, what do we do?” He glanced down the line. “You, Trooper Muldoon, what do we do?”

The young man’s face was flushed from being singled out for attention. He swallowed hard. “Kill them, sir.”

“And their women?”

“Kill them, sir.”

“And their children?”

“Kill them, sir.”

“God curse the savages to hell! That’s the spirit, Trooper Muldoon,” Stryker yelled.

Another voice, from the end of the line, said, “I wish we had our sabers, sir.”

Stryker strode in the direction of the voice. “Damn his eyes, who said that?”

“I did, sir. Trooper Murphy.”

The lieutenant stopped in front of the man, a slight, stooped towhead with eyes the color of rain. “True blue, Murphy. And so do I wish I had my saber. But if we can’t give them the steel, we’ll give them good old American lead.”

A ragged cheer went up from the soldiers, and even the normally staid Hooper joined in the clamor.

Hogg stepped to Stryker. “You fight Apaches afore, Lieutenant?”

“No, this will be my first action.”

“You’re learning fast.”

Stryker smiled his crooked smile. “Look at my face, Mr. Hogg. It’s because I’ve got hell on my side.”

Lieutenant Stryker rode beside the guidon, Hogg taking the point somewhere ahead of the patrol. The sun was now full in the sky, and the brush-covered hills around them were free of shadow. Scattered stands of mesquite and juniper grew in the valleys, and once Stryker saw an isolated cottonwood standing as a lonely sentinel near a dusty dry wash, close to the burned-out skeleton of an old freight wagon.

Four miles due east lay Apache Pass. To the west arced the worn track of the old Butterfield Stage route. Ahead of Stryker the rocky southern peaks of the Dos Cabezas Mountains shimmered in the heat haze.

Stryker dismounted the patrol to rest the horses, and led his men forward at a slow, shuffling walk. The only sounds were the creak of leather and the rattle of horse harnesses, the click of hooves and boots on rock.

The lieutenant’s long johns stuck to his upper body and legs, and sweat trickled through the gray alkali dust on his cheeks. Behind him, covered in that same dust, the soldiers plodded forward like a column of ghosts. Trooper Kramer, who had a weak chest, wheezed with every step, and his mouth was wide-open, battling for each tortured breath of bone-dry hot air.

Nothing moved in the vast land, but somewhere up ahead were the Apaches, unseen, yet a palpable presence all the same.

Ahead of Stryker the figure of a mounted man undulated in the heat waves, his horse’s legs impossibly long as it picked its way forward like a distorted giraffe.

Gradually the image settled and re-formed into its usual shape, the buckskin-clad figure of Joe Hogg astride his mustang.

Stryker halted the column and waited for the scout to come.

“Water ahead, Lieutenant,” Hogg said, drawing rein. “And dead people.”

The lieutenant said nothing, waiting.

“Ashes of the ranch house are still warm,” the scout continued. “I’d say it happened no more’n two hours ago.”

“The dead?”

“Man, woman, three children.”

“Where are the Apaches?”

“I don’t know. But they’re around, lay to that.” Stryker turned. “Mount up,” he yelled.

But before he could swing into the saddle himself, Hogg stopped him. He dug into the pocket of his coat, leaned from the saddle, then dropped a handful of spent shells into the officer’s palm.

“I found some of these at the stage and more at the ranch. Shiny brass, .44-40 caliber. This was brand-new ammunition fired from repeating rifles.”

“What do you think, Joe?” Stryker asked, looking into Hogg’s eyes.

“I think at least half of them bucks have repeaters, Henrys or Winchesters. Judging by the firing pin strikes, I’d say, like the ammunition, the rifles are new.”

Stryker’s voice was tense, tight. “Somebody running guns to them?”

“That would be my guess.”

“Tell me it’s Rake Pierce, Joe. Damn you, tell me it’s him.”

Hogg was quiet for a while. A horse shook its head, the bit chiming. Trooper Kramer was agonizingly coughing up phlegm and dust, and somebody laughed and slapped the man’s back.

Finally Hogg sat back in the leather and said, “Well, before we left Fort Merit, Colonel Devore told me that Pierce was running guns to the Apaches. But he said he was in the Madres.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Joe? Why didn’t Colonel Devore tell me?”

“We didn’t want to get you worked up over nothing, Lieutenant. The Madres are a far piece away and it’s a heap of country to cover, even if the Mexicans would allow it, which they wouldn’t.”

“But Pierce could be here, in the Arizona Territory.”

“Anything is possible, Lieutenant. For sure, Sergeant Pierce was always a man who didn’t cotton to being penned up in one place for too long.”

Stryker swung into the saddle and gathered up the reins. “I want him, Joe. I want that bastard at the end of my gun.”

“If he’s in the territory, I’ll do my best to find him for you, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, find him. And when you do, let me be the first to know,” Stryker said. “I’d sell my soul to kill that man.”

Hogg was silent, obviously thinking about what he had to say. Then he said it, a plainspoken man with harsh words wrenching out of him like whetted iron.

“Lieutenant Stryker, from what I’ve seen an’ heard on this patrol, you no longer have a soul to sell.”

It was difficult to read Stryker’s face, a stiff, misshapen mask that could no longer reveal emotion. Only the eyes were alive, now clouded like a sky before rain.

“Then I’ll drag Rake Pierce down into hell with me, and consider my eternal damnation well worth the price.”

Under his gray beard, a smile found its way to Hogg’s lips. “Lieutenant, if I was a preaching man, about now I’d say, God forgive you.”

Stryker nodded. “Mr. Hogg, I assure you, if you were a preaching man you would not be with this column.”

 

Once again Stryker took his place beside the guidon. “Ride ahead,” he told Hogg. “Find me those savages.”

“There’s water at the ranch, Lieutenant.”

“The men and horses have water enough. We can always swing by there and replenish our canteens on our way back to Fort Merit.”

“There’s also six Christian people who need buryin’.”

Suddenly Stryker was irritated. “Mr. Hogg, we’re not a damned burial detail. The dead are beyond hurt. They can fend for themselves.”

Hogg shook his head. “It just don’t seem right, Lieutenant.”

“Mr. Hogg, as long as I’m in command, I’ll decide what’s right. If you have any reservations on that point, you may return immediately to Fort Merit.”

The scout was silent for a few moments, as though he was turning over that option in his mind. Finally he said, “I reckon I’ll stick, Lieutenant. We can all go to hell together.”

He swung his horse away and once again cantered into the shimmering heat of the afternoon.

Stryker waved the detail forward, and they headed due north for the next hour.

Directly ahead of the lieutenant, beyond the foothills, soared the domed peak of Government Mountain, where in ancient times mysterious peoples from farther south had once mined obsidian. Juniper and mesquite grew at the base of its slopes, giving way to brush as the mountain climbed to its full height of almost eight thousand feet. The peak’s shadowed foothills spread away in all directions, like the knotted roots of a gigantic oak.

Somewhere in that tangle of arroyos, trees and hills were the Apaches.

Stryker took off his battered campaign hat and wiped sweat from the leather band. Were the savages watching them even now, waiting until they came into rifle range? And where the hell was Joe Hogg?

It was very hot. Dust drifted in thick veils around the column, and the men riding at the rear were suffering. The stale smell of horse and man sweat hung in the air and the red and white guidon drooped listlessly in the stillness. From somewhere close by a rattlesnake made its presence known, an angry buzzing that almost immediately lapsed into silence as the snake sought protection under a mesquite bush. The sun was the color of white-hot iron, branding the suffering sky, and in all the vast, naked land nothing moved and there was no sound.

Now the foothills of the Cabezas were drawing close and Stryker halted the column. He called Sergeant Hooper forward.

“Rest the men, Sergeant. No fires. We’ll wait here for Mr. Hogg’s report.”

“Yes, sir,” Hooper said. He snapped off a smart salute as though he were still on parade at Aldershot with the Queen’s Own Rifles.

Stryker watched the man leave. Hooper was a good soldier, steady, but he had a fatal weakness for women. According to his record, it had been the rape of a fellow sergeant’s sixteen-year-old daughter that had forced him to desert and flee England ahead of a rope.

Desperate for experienced soldiers, the United States Army had weighed Hooper in the balance, decided that he had value as an Apache killer, and had posted him to the Southwest. As far as Stryker knew, the Army had never regretted that decision.

As for himself, he had never liked the man. Hooper was a good soldier, but he was an overbearing bully and Stryker read something in his eyes that he did not like, something that crawled. . . .

Grateful to get out of the saddle, the troopers sprawled in whatever thin shade they could find. They could not boil coffee, but pipes were lit and a few of them chewed on evil-smelling jerky.

Hooper had pickets out, and the horses, used to making do or doing without, grazed on scattered clumps of bunch grass and mesquite beans.

Stryker eased the girth of the bay’s saddle, then took his canteen from the horn. The water was brackish and warm, but it cut the dust in his throat, settled his burning thirst a little, and for that he was grateful. He watched his horse wander off in search of graze, then settled his back against a rock and waited.

Where was Joe Hogg? And where were the Apaches?

The lieutenant’s sweat-stained long johns smelled stale and old, tinged with the odors of tobacco, horse and greasewood smoke. His canvas cartridge belt with its holstered, heavy Colt was digging into his waist, chafing the skin. He thought about pulling off his boots for comfort’s sake, but decided against it. Just too much of a chore to drag them on again over his swollen feet.

A fly buzzed around his head and he waved it away, but it persisted, attracted by the salty sweat on his skin. Stryker grabbed at the fly, missed, grabbed again. This time he caught it. He leaned over, rubbed the fly into a smeared mess between his palm and a rock, then wiped his hand clean on the sand.

He closed his eyes. Trooper Kramer was wheezing like a pipe organ as Hooper berated him at length for gasping on sentry duty like a two-dollar whore.

Stryker grimaced. Shut the hell up, Hooper.

Slow hours dragged past and shadows lengthened as the sun dropped lower in the sky. Soon the evening light would drift across the desert like gray smoke and add its more profound hush to the silence.

Where the hell was Hogg?

Rising wearily to his feet, the lieutenant looked toward the Cabezas foothills. He stepped to his horse, removed his field glasses from the saddlebags, and scanned the hills again.

Nothing moved and even the heat had ceased to shimmer.

Stryker lowered the glasses. All right, if Hogg wouldn’t come to him, he’d go to Hogg.

“Sergeant Hooper!” he yelled.

Two mounted troopers behind him, Stryker rode at a walk toward the hills.

The day was shading into night and the air had grown cooler. Like his men, the lieutenant was once again wearing his riding breeches, the wide canvas suspenders slung over a sun-faded blue blouse with its officer’s shoulder straps.

The brush-covered hills gradually gave way to more level ground, but the going was made difficult by thickets of juniper, mesquite and unexpected parapets of white and tan rock.

Warily, Stryker rode west along the foothills, his eyes searching the shadowing country. Once a rustling in the brush sent his hand streaking for his gun. But he felt foolish when he saw that it was only a Gila monster seeking its burrow, a shy animal that spends only three or four minutes a year above ground.

Behind him, one of his men sniggered. It sounded like Trooper Rogers, a name Stryker mentally filed away for future reference.

For several minutes, he led his men northwest, following the gentle curve of the mountain range.