“How are you, sir?” he asked.
“Well, I tried to get out of bed and fell down. Does that tell you something?”
Birchwood said nothing, but he shifted his feet uncomfortably.
“Tomorrow morning you will break camp before sunrise and proceed south to the Apache village. Bring Yanisin and his people this far, then send Mr. Hogg to fetch me. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. I will leave a squad here to protect the cabin should the Apaches decide to attack again.”
“No, you won’t, Lieutenant. You might need all the men you have and then some.” Stryker was tired and in pain. Looking at the fresh-faced Birchwood he suddenly felt old. “There’s a possibility that the Apaches will turn north and attack Fort Merit. For that reason, you will send half the company back to reinforce the post garrison.”
“I was not aware of that possibility,” Birchwood said.
“I’m guessing, Lieutenant, and I know that trying to outguess Apaches is always a dangerous business. But if I’m right, Major Hanson can’t hold the fort against Geronimo and Nana with just a single understrength company.”
He shifted uncomfortably in the bed. Mary McCabe had put some kind of poultice on his wounds and now they itched.
“Joe Hogg says Yanisin is a tame Indian and he shouldn’t give you any trouble. The big question is: How will his young men react? Listen to Mr. Hogg. He knows Apaches better than most. If you reach the rancheria and the young bucks show signs of a fight, get the hell out of there in a hurry. Do not engage them.”
Stryker’s eyes searched the younger man’s face. “Do you understand your orders, Lieutenant?”
“I do, sir. Perfectly.”
Stryker tried to smile and used the young man’s name for the first time. “Dale, I’m sending you out with half a company of infantry when what you really need is a regiment. Just . . . just be careful.”
“I will, sir, as far as my orders allow.” He saluted smartly. “Sir, with your permission I’ll see to my men.”
“Yes, do that,” Stryker said. God, he was weary. “Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
Birchwood saluted again, turned smartly and stepped out of the door.
Stryker had the nagging feeling that he was sending the young man to his death.
Still weak and lightheaded, Stryker managed to drag himself out of bed to see the company leave. Mrs. McCabe was asleep in a chair, her daughter lying on a pallet on the floor.
As quietly as he could, he stood in the doorway, the chill desert night not yet giving way to the dawn.
The company moved out silently, marching toward the hogback. Birchwood saw Stryker, grinned and saluted. He then took his place at the head of his men.
Joe Hogg kneed his horse toward Stryker and drew rein opposite the door.
“You look like hell,” he said.
“And I feel worse.” Stryker’s eyes sought the scout’s face in the indigo light. “Bring them back, Joe,” he said. “Every last one of them.” He hesitated, then added, “And bring yourself back.”
Hogg smiled. “Gettin’ shot done you some good, Lieutenant. You’re suddenly full o’ the milk of human kindness, as ol’ Shakespeare says.”
“You saved my life, Joe. Nobody else could have dug that bullet out of my back.”
The scout nodded. “I think maybe yours was a life worth saving. I sure hope so.” He looked beyond the cabin door to the darkness inside. “Take care of Mrs. McCabe, Lieutenant. Two scarred people should look out for each other.”
He slid his Henry from the boot. “Take this; it’s fully loaded. If you need more than sixteen shots, you’ll be in a war you can’t win anyway.”
Stryker shook his head. “I can’t take your rifle, Joe. You may need it.”
“Hell, I’m surrounded by men with rifles. A Colt won’t do you much good if the Apaches come back.”
Stryker took the Henry, amazed at how heavy it felt in his weakened hands. “Ride easy, Mr. Hogg,” he said.
The scout touched his hat, then turned around and cantered into the darkness. Soon there was no sound but the talk of the coyotes and the morning song of the desert wind.
“Both your wounds look much better,” Mary McCabe said. “They’re healing and I don’t see any sign of an infection.”
“What do you use on the bandage that works such wonders in just three days?” Stryker asked, smiling.
“A tea of chaparral and live oak bark. That and the clean desert air keeps wounds clean. I’ve lived long enough in the wilderness to pick up a few things about Indian medicine.”
“I still feel weak as a kitten.”
“It will take time.”
“I don’t have time. Lieutenant Birchwood and his men will be here soon, herding an entire Apache tribe north.”
“You will go with them?”
“Yes. You and Kelly and me. We’re all going.”
“Do you really think the Apaches will attack Fort Merit?”
“I don’t know for sure. It depends on Geronimo. If he thinks he’s strong enough, destroying an Army post would bring him much renown and respect among his people.”
“How is the bandage? Is it as tight as you wanted?”
“It will do.” The woman had helped him dress earlier, and now Stryker swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Bring me my boots, Mary.”
He tugged on the boots, then said, “Now help me to my feet.”
Leaning heavily on the woman, Stryker stood erect. Suddenly the cabin reeled around him and he reached out to the wall and closed his eyes, swaying, until the feeling had passed.
“You’ll fall down,” Kelly said, looking up at Stryker, her sad little face troubled.
“No, I won’t,” he said. He patted the child’s head. “See? I’m feeling all better now.”
Mary smiled. “She worries about you.”
“I thought I might have scared her.”
“Children can see past faces to what a person has inside, Lieutenant. Only adults are blind to that.”
“Then thank God for children, huh?”
The woman nodded. “Kelly is the only good thing that came out of my marriage. I thank God every day for sending her to me.”
Stryker buckled on his cartridge belt and holstered Colt. He picked up the Henry and it still seemed heavy. He slung a canteen over his shoulder.
“You should be in bed,” Mary said, watching his face, pale under his weather-beaten tan.
“I know. But I need to find out what’s happening.”
“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!”