He turned away, bent over and retched uncontrollably. He threw up everything that was in his stomach, then gagged convulsively on its emptiness.
“Try this, sir.” Birchwood was beside him, a cup of coffee in his hand. “It might help.”
Stryker took the cup and with bloodshot eyes looked over the room. “You men,” he said, “step careful over here. I made a real mess.”
His thoughts turned inward. A mess of everything.
The coffee cup in his hand, Stryker stepped back to Stearns’ body. Seemingly out of nowhere, slow black flies were angling above the bloody stump. He walked into a cell, dragged a blanket off the cot and spread it over the youngster’s body. The soldiers were watching him, their eyes neither accusing nor sympathetic. Just . . . watching.
He felt he had to say something, anything. In the end, all he could manage was “I’m sorry.” Words as inadequate as they sounded.
Stryker hadn’t really expected “You did your best, sir,” or “Sam was too far gone, sir,” but what he didn’t anticipate was total silence. It was not a hostile quiet and in its emptiness it did not apportion blame. Perhaps it was just dull resignation, that and the awareness that come night the moon would rise but they would not see it because they might all be as dead as Private Stearns.
Speaking into the vacuum, Stryker said, “I just wanted all of you to know that I tried.”
This time there was no answering silence. Soldiers shuffled their feet, lit their pipes or stepped to the stove for coffee. The men manning the windows found sudden interest outside. Flies droned and gorged under the table amid the blood puddles. Kelly was sobbing quietly, but Stryker, who did not know how to comfort himself, could do nothing for her.
He looked at his hands, crusted in rust red. There was no water to spare to wash them. Stryker smiled a bitter little smile. Yes, he’d been caught red-handed, demonstrating his lack as a leader and as a man.
The early morning brightened and hard sunlight bladed through the windows, catching up flickering dust motes. In the cruel illumination Stryker’s disfigured face was a fearsome parody of his once handsome features and men did not look at him, or, if they did, turned quickly away, shocked by what they’d seen.
He drank his coffee, his churning belly slowly settling.
Then the Apaches started firing again.
By noon, another soldier was dead and two were wounded, one with a sucking chest wound who could not live. As far as anyone could tell, since the sortie outside, not a single Apache had even been scratched.
The Apache fire was increasing as more warriors, coming up from the south, joined in the battle. As Indian confidence grew, Geronimo had sent in mounted attacks, the warriors boldly riding right up to the adobe. The soldier with the chest wound had been struck by a lance hurled through a window. And, as the whooping Apache rode away, he’d demonstrated his disdain for the marksmanship of those inside by showing them his bare ass.
Stryker could not fault Birchwood’s infantrymen. They were green troops, hastily recruited and trained for the Indian Wars, and this was their first taste of fighting Apaches, a deadly, ruthless enemy much their superior.
Joe Hogg could have made a difference, but Joe was dead. His Henry was propped in a corner and Stryker, ignoring the bullets zinging through the windows, crossed the room and picked up the rifle.
If he could get to one of the saloons, he could lay down a good fire and attack the Apaches from the rear. That would give Birchwood another chance to try a breakout and catch the Apaches off guard. It was a slim chance, but it was the only chance any of them had. If he made it to—
The Apache fire suddenly ceased.
A soldier at the window closest to him was staring outside, his eyes wide, his jaw slack. “What the hell?” the man said.
Stryker stepped to the window and saw what the soldier saw. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
Chapter 22
A red-haired woman was walking across the dusty, sun-splashed ground toward the adobe.
Her dress was stained and torn and her hair hung over her shoulders in dirty tangles. She walked purposely, neither looking to the left nor right, her eyes fixed on the building.
All Indians, but especially the Apache and Navajo, had a superstitious dread of madness, believing that sufferers had been possessed by a powerful, malevolent demon. One by one they left cover and shrank back from the woman, watching her with black, wary eyes.
She was a
nepotonje,
a bear watcher, since all understood that the demon often reveals itself in that guise. The more pragmatic Sioux would call her simply,
witkowin
, crazy woman, but the Apache knew better than that.
The flaming red hair was unmistakable and Stryker recognized her immediately as the silent, staring woman he’d rescued from the Apaches. He assumed she’d have left with the other women from the post, but, deranged as she was, she must have run away and hidden in the hills.
But Jake Allen had found her in the hospital, tried to force himself on her, and she’d killed him. That would explain the gunman’s death, but it shed no light on what he was doing at the abandoned Fort Merit in the first place.
As he saw the woman reach the adobe and a soldier unbolted the door for her, Stryker felt a vague pang of disappointment. After Joe Hogg had found female tracks on the bluff, Stryker had harbored a flicker of hope that somehow Millie had come back, looking for him. He had not fanned the flames of that hope, knowing how foolish it was, yet now he realized that a feeble, dying spark had still lingered in him.
The woman stepped inside, looking around her. Her eyes showed no recognition of the soldiers, or any interest in where she was. But she did see Kelly. Without a word she crossed the room, her battered shoes clinking through the empty brass shells littering the floor, and sat beside the girl. Kelly looked at her warily, but the woman reached out and took her in her arms, laying her head on her breast.
“Sleep now, child,” she whispered.
Those were the first words Stryker had ever heard her say.
Apaches didn’t scare worth a damn and although the crazy woman had unnerved them, they soon resumed firing on the adobe.
“Mr. Birchwood,” Stryker said. “A word, if you please.”
The young lieutenant stepped beside him and, his breeding coming to the fore, tried to say all the right things. “Don’t blame yourself, sir,” he said. “No one could have done better.” He looked at the blanketed body. “Private Stearns must have had a weak heart.”
“There was nothing wrong with his heart, Lieutenant. Without ether or even whiskey, the pain was just too much for him to bear. I’m to blame. I’m a damned butcher, not a surgeon.”
Birchwood would not be moved. “It had to be done, sir. It fell to you and you did your best.”
Bullets thudded into the adobe. Stryker glanced out of a window and saw the Apaches massing for another mounted attack.
Stryker had intended to tell Birchwood about his plan to reach one of the saloons and catch the Indians in crossfire. He pushed that aside for now and stepped to the window. One of the soldiers moved back and Stryker took his place. He was aware of his limitations. A fair hand with the revolver, he barely passed muster at the Point in rifle shooting, coming in dead last out of a class of thirty-eight.
Now he steeled himself. The Henry wasn’t a cumbersome model 1869 Cadet Rifle and maybe he could do better. He had to do better. He racked a round into the chamber and waited for the attack.
It never came.
The Apaches suddenly faded back into the hills, leaving behind them only emptiness and silence. As Stryker watched, a dust devil spun across the parade ground and abruptly collapsed into a puff of sand. A piece of yellow paper, tossed by the breeze, fluttered around the adobe like a moth before rising higher into the air and vanishing from sight.
From behind Stryker, a man asked, “Why the hell did they pull back like that?”
No one answered him because no one knew.
Stryker walked to the door, stepped outside and looked around him. The peaks of the Chiricahuas were bathed in afternoon light, their lower slopes green. A bird called. The scent of cedar and sage hung in the air like a thin mist, as subtle and understated as the French perfume of a beautiful Washington belle. Deep in the bunch grass, crickets sawed tunes on their serrated legs, filling the morning with scratchy sound.
The riders came from the west—dirty, shaggy men mounted on small, wiry ponies.
Stryker had left his field glasses in the adobe. He took off his slouch hat and held it high against the sun, his eyes squinting in the glare, trying to make out the manner of these men.
He reached down and unbuttoned his holster flap.
If this was Rake Pierce and his renegades, he would do no talking. He would draw his gun and shoot the man dead. The chances were that he’d die right after, but it would be worth it if he could drag Pierce down into hell with him.
The men rode closer and Stryker was aware of Birchwood’s dozen soldiers shaking out into a line behind him. If a fight came, it would be up close and personal, and even green troops would not miss at that range.
And neither will I
, Stryker promised himself.
Neither will I.
Chapter 23
The three riders taking the point were all big men wearing dusty range clothes, pants tucked into scuffed boots that sported spurs as big and round as tea-cups. Each wore a Colt on his hip and had a Winchester booted under his left knee.
They drew rein when they were five feet from Stryker.
“Howdy,” the older man said, “name’s Abel Warden from over to Tucson way. I’ve got three hundred head of beeves for Fort Bowie coming up about half an hour behind me.” He waved a hand to the man on his right. “This is my foreman, Arkansas Charlie Mullins, and this young feller here”—he nodded toward the man on his left—“is John Warden, my oldest son and segundo.”
Abel Warden laid his hands on the saddle horn, his eyes ranging over the battle-scarred adobe and the dead soldier still lying in the dust in front of the building.
“You’ve been through it,” he said.
Stryker nodded. “Apaches. They quit when they saw you coming.” He smiled. “I don’t think that’s going to be a permanent arrangement.”
He introduced himself and Birchwood, then said, “You know Nana is out and joined up with Geronimo?”
“Heard that. Figgered they’d head south into Old Mexico, though. Back in Tucson, they say General Crook is headed for the Territory to lead another expedition against the Apaches.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“Well, it’s what they say. ‘Lead another expedition, ’ was how it was put to me.”
Arkansas Charlie and the younger Warden were staring at Stryker with that slack-jawed, rube-at-a-carnival-freak-show look he’d come to know so well. Abel, older and maybe wiser, didn’t let it show.
The man’s eyes ranged across around the post again, then to the dozen soldiers, then back to Stryker. “This all you got, Lieutenant?”
“This is it. Everybody else is at Fort Bowie.” Warden nodded. “Maybe you should come with us.”
“How many drovers with you, Mr. Warden?”
“Us three and three others.” He saw a flicker of doubt fleet across Stryker’s face. “They’re all good men, Lieutenant, and they’ve fit Indians before. Comanche mostly, and Kiowa. They’ll stand.”
Warden nodded in the direction of the cottonwoods. “The creek over there still got water?”
“Some. But three hundred head of cattle will drink it dry.”
“Good. Then there’ll be none left for the Apaches.”
“One thing, Mr. Warden: I have womenfolk with me, a young girl and a crazy lady. And two wounded soldiers, one of them real bad.”
“Can they walk? I got no wagon, only a pack mule.”
“They can walk. The badly wounded man will die real soon.”
Warden nodded. He turned to his foreman. “Charlie, you and John bring up the herd.”
When the men had left, Warden followed Stryker to the adobe. He swung out of the saddle and set a foot inside, but quickly stepped back again, gulping air.
“Whoa, Lieutenant, no disrespect,” he said, “but I can’t stomach that stink. It could turn a man for sure.”
“I have two dead men inside,” Stryker said. He did not elaborate. “And it’s hot.”
“Kill any Apaches?”
“Maybe two. I don’t know. The Apaches dragged them away.”
“They’ll do that. They always try to recover their dead.”
Warden’s gaze scanned the mountains around him. “Which way did they go?”
“North, back into the hills.”
“How many?”
“Again, I don’t know. Forty, fifty, at least.”
“They’ll be back.” Warden thought for a while, then said, “I’ll have the boys cut out a couple of head and leave them here. Apaches are always hungry and they may wait to fill their bellies before they come after us.”
“They might,” Stryker allowed.
“Or they might not,” Warden said. “Comanches are notional, so are Kiowa, but they don’t come close to Apaches in contrariness.”
A half hour later, Warden’s bony herd spread out along the creek. “They’ve been living on mesquite beans since damn near we left Tucson,” the man offered by way of explanation. “I think every blade of grass is burned down to the roots between here and the Colorado.”
The rancher’s three other riders were just as shaggy and trail-worn as their boss, but they looked like tough and competent men and they kept their tongues still and rifles close.
While the cattle watered, Birchwood’s infantrymen buried their dead, including the soldier and Mexican from the jacals, both of them already badly decomposed.
“Sir, we have a problem,” Birchwood said, saluting.
To Stryker’s surprise, he’d found all three of their horses still in their stables. It seemed that the Apaches, confident of victory, had left them there to be picked up later.