Stryker's Revenge

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The cabin was closer now.

Bullets from all sides of the basin stung the air around Stryker. He thumbed off a fast shot at the Apache by the corral post. Another miss. Behind him Hogg was firing steadily but didn’t seem to be scoring hits either.

The Apache stepped away from the corral and drew his Winchester to his shoulder. He and Stryker fired at the same time. The Indian’s bullet crashed into the bay, and Stryker cartwheeled from the saddle, landing hard on his back in a cloud of dust.

A man who is thrown by a galloping horse doesn’t get up in a hurry. Stryker lay stunned as bullets kicked up startled exclamation points of sand around him. Finally he raised himself into a sitting position. Feet pounded to his right, coming fast. The Apache, grimacing in rage, had grabbed his rifle and was readying himself to swing a killing blow at the white officer’s head.

A shot.

The Apache went down, screaming, half of his skull blown away. Stryker turned his reeling head and saw a woman standing at the cabin door, a smoking Sharps still to her shoulder. . . .

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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, February

Copyright © The Estate of Ralph Compton, 2010

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eISBN : 978-1-101-18468-4

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Excited, apprehensive, no one wanted to wait until morning. It was the witching hour, dark, but the bandages would come off now.

The desert wind threw itself at the adobe wall of the hospital, rattling the timber door and the windows in their frames. Blowing sand drove through the unquiet night and sifted into the fort’s buildings, coating floors and furnishings, grit grinding into the wool blankets of fretful soldiers, making them toss and turn and groan in hot, troubled sleep.

Attracted by the rectangles of amber light that spilled onto the ground from the hospital windows, a thin, stunted calico cat blinked in the wind like an owl, then climbed onto a sill and looked through a dusty, fly-specked pane.

The cat saw, but could not comprehend, the scene inside. She would never know it, but that night her ignorance of humans and their ways was a rare stroke of good fortune in her hard, desperate life.

There were four people in a room curtained off from the rest of the empty hospital ward. The single guttering oil lamp that hung from a ceiling beam touched three of them with halos of light and shadow, darkness pooling in the hollows of their cheeks and eyes, giving them the austere look of painted medieval saints.

The man sitting up in the bed, the object of their interest, had no face.

His head was wrapped around and around in white cotton, like a museum mummy. Only his eyes, sky blue, frightened, were visible. Those and the gash of his mouth, the bandages above and below stained by the food he’d eaten that day.

His hand, once strong and tanned mahogany brown, but now thin, white and veined with blue, was clasped in both those of the beautiful girl sitting on the man’s bed. Her brown eyes sought his, penetrating the fearful mummy mask, concerned . . . adoring.

“It will be all right, Steve,” she whispered, smiling. “Dr. Decker says you’re as good as new.”

Colonel Abel Lawson beamed at his daughter. “Of course he is, Millie.” He took a step toward the bed and looked down at the bandaged man, grinning from under the sweep of his great dragoon mustache. “It’s been two months, Steve. I’ve never known Surgeon Major Decker to stay sober that long.”

“Indeed, sir, but it’s a state of affairs I intend to remedy as soon as Lieutenant Stryker’s bandages come off,” Decker said. He was a small, gray-haired man, buttoned into a white coat worn over a careless, shabby uniform.

Decker’s eyes moved from the colonel to his daughter and back again. Like a man who can’t swim and stands on the bank of a turbulent river, asking how deep the water is, the doctor’s voice held a note of uncertainty.

“It’s been this long,” he said. He looked at Stryker, as if seeking his support. “It could keep until morning.”

“Nonsense, Major,” Colonel Lawson blustered. “The sooner the lieutenant is back on his feet”—he knew this next would bring smiles, and it did—“and safely wed to my daughter, the better.”

He looked at Stryker. “I need you at my side in Washington, Steve. A few more days for your cuts and bruises to heal, and then a captaincy and the capital, as my aide. It will make your career, especially with my lovely daughter on your arm to dazzle the men and turn the women green with envy.”

“Father, I fear I may have to fend the women off.” Millie smiled as she squeezed Stryker’s hand. “Steve will be quite the handsomest man in Washington, you know.”

“Indeed,” Lawson agreed. “Now, you haven’t changed your mind, Lieutenant—or should I say Captain? Are you still willing to leave this Arizona hellhole for the shady boulevards of the capital?” The colonel, eager to seal the deal, added a barb. “As for myself, I should think you would. It’s not often a junior officer with no connections or social position is given such an opportunity. Your father is a clergy-man, is he not?”

“Papa,” Millie scolded, a frown gathering between her eyebrows, “what a singularly unfortunate thing to say.”

“I speak only the truth, my dear. Lieutenant Stryker is a soldier. He understands such things.”

Stryker tried to smile, but his mouth felt stiff and unyielding under the bandages.

For a moment he felt a surge of panic that quickly passed. As far as he could tell, the bullet wound in his side had healed, thanks to Decker. When the man was sober he was a good doctor, and Stryker told himself that his smashed face was no doubt back to normal.