“Yes, sir.”
A tap-tap on the office door. “Enter!” Crook yelled.
Colonel Mike Devore stepped inside and Stryker sprang to his feet. The colonel stuck out his hand. “Good to see you again, Lieutenant, and all in one piece.”
Stryker took the man’s hand and smiled. “I was carrying Apache lead for a while, sir. But I’m on the mend.”
“You’ll have to tell me about—”
“Yes, yes, Colonel, I’m sure Lieutenant Stryker will later. Is your regiment ready to leave?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then keep in close contact with Geronimo and his people. I’ll follow on with the infantry and mountain howitzers.”
“Yes, sir.” Devore hesitated, then said, “Did you sign the authorization for Lieutenant Stryker’s promotion?”
Crook looked baffled.
“I left it on your desk, sir.”
Crook glanced at the piles of papers scattered across his desk and shook his head. “That will have to wait, I’m afraid.”
Stryker grinned. “Probably just as well, sir. The captain in command of the detail at the spring plans to report me for insubordination.”
“Ah, Captain Forrest,” Crook said. “Damn that man—he’s forever reporting people. I’ll give him a hearing, as I always do, and then forget I even spoke to him.” He looked at Devore. “I’m sure you’re anxious to lead out your regiment, Colonel.”
“Yes, sir.” Devore smiled at Stryker, silently made the word, “Sorry,” with his mouth and emphasized it with a roll of his eyes.
After Devore left, and as Crook buckled on his cartridge belt and holstered Colt, Stryker said, “Sir, I’d like to join the expedition. I am willing to serve in any capacity.”
Crook, slender, wiry and well over six-foot tall, smiled. “Thank you for volunteering, Lieutenant, but the answer is no. You look like hell, standing there like a bent old man. You will therefore remain here at Fort Bowie and recuperate from your wounds. I’m sure Captain Forrest will find tasks for you.”
“But, sir—”
“Rest and recuperate, Lieutenant. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir.” Stryker was weighed down by a sense of defeat. Rake Pierce would head south with Silas Dugan, trailing Geronimo like coyotes on the edge of a buffalo herd. The man would not come near Fort Bowie where he was known and would be arrested.
Stryker cursed his luck. All he could do now was loaf around the post, as useless as tits on a bull.
First Lieutenant Steve Stryker stood to rigid attention in Captain Forrest’s office while the man read, or pretended to read, the contents of a large manila envelope.
Four days had passed since Crook had left with three regiments and seventy-five Apache and Navajo scouts. Since that time, Stryker had supervised the unloading of supplies, inspected the feet of the remaining soldiers, managed the kitchen to ensure the proper preparation and presentation of food, and spent the last two days watching over a detail of six ham-handed infantrymen strip and clean the temperamental steam engine that powered the fort’s well.
The railroad clock on the office wall ticked slow seconds into the room and the rough pine boards under Stryker’s feet creaked when he shifted his weight even slightly. Outside, a dog barked incessantly and the sun pounded the post’s adobe, stone and wood-frame buildings with merciless heat.
Stryker was hot, sweat trickling down his back, running on his cheeks, and the thick air inside the captain’s office felt and tasted like long-baled cotton.
Finally, Forrest lifted his eyes. “I have another detail for you, Lieutenant. You and . . . damn, I’ve forgotten his name. Ah yes, Second Lieutenant Birchwood.”
The captain saw Stryker lift an eyebrow in surprise. He said, “He’s a troublemaker, hitting the bottle too much and threatening others. I should have him court-martialed, but he comes of a good Boston family and I’ll give him this one last chance to redeem himself.”
“Sir, Mr. Birchwood promised his betrothed that his lips would ne’er touch whiskey. I very much doubt—”
“I don’t give a damn what he promised his betrothed. He’s drinking whiskey now, and I want him off the post and away from the sutler’s store.”
Stryker’s heart sank. That could only mean guarding the spring, Forrest’s way of getting rid of both troublemakers at once.
The captain’s eyes were filled with acid. “You will help Second Lieutenant Birchwood onto his horse. Then you will scout to the south. I want to know if there are any hostiles within striking distance of the fort. Understand?”
Stryker’s heart leaped. “How far south, sir?”
“Damn it, use your initiative, Mr. Stryker. As far south as you deem is necessary to ensure the safety and well-being of Fort Bowie.”
Forrest waved a hand, signaling his boredom. “Pick up whatever supplies you need; then roust Mr. Birchwood from the sutler’s.”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain bent his head to the papers on his desk again, perhaps convincing himself that First Lieutenant Stryker no longer existed.
Stryker got his supplies from the cookhouse. The sergeant cook was overjoyed that the horribly disfigured officer who had stood over him and watched his every move was leaving. The man was so relieved that he sacked up enough bacon, biscuits and hardtack for a regiment.
After saddling Birchwood’s bay and the criollo, Stryker tied the sack to the saddle horn and led the horses to the sutler’s store.
Second Lieutenant Dale Birchwood was stinking drunk.
He was draped over the bar, a bottle and glass beside him. Stryker stepped over to him and shook his shoulder. “Mr. Birchwood, I need you for a detail.”
The young officer turned and considered Stryker with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Go to hell, Stryker,” he said, and turned away. His trembling hand reached for the whiskey, but Stryker snatched it away and smashed it on the floor.
“How long has he been like this?”
The sutler was a big man with the arms and shoulders of a blacksmith. “Days. Since he rode in with the drovers.”
“You always let your customers get drunk like this?”
“Mister, when a man’s got a gun on his hip, threatens to draw down on you and don’t much care if he lives or dies, you serve him as much whiskey as he wants.”
“Help me get him on his horse.”
“Hell, in that condition, he ain’t going anywhere on a hoss.”
“He’ll have to, won’t he? Now give me a hand here.”
“Suit yourself, but he’s gonna go ass-over-rain-barrel first chance he gets.”
The sutler was a strong man and he easily manhandled Birchwood into the saddle. The young officer lay on the horse’s neck, then threw up a vile-smelling stream of stale whiskey. Strings of saliva hung from his mouth and his cherry-red eyes popped out of his head like a pair of rotten eggs.
“Stryker, you dirty son of a bitch!” Birchwood yelled. He made to swing out of the saddle, but the sutler grabbed his leg and stopped him. “Let me down from here, you goddamned—” The Lieutenant launched into a stream of curses that a boy from a good Boston family should never have known.
As Birchwood’s curses grew louder, Stryker glanced hurriedly around him, saw no one in sight, and grabbed Birchwood by the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. He drew back his fist and hit the foaming, raving lieutenant a hard, sharp rap on the jaw.
Birchwood’s body went slack and Stryker draped him over his horse again. He turned to the sutler. “What did you see?”
The man smiled. “I seen you punch him.”
A note of irritation in his voice, Stryker repeated his question. “What did you see?”
“The officer fell asleep on his hoss.”
Stryker nodded. He swung into the saddle, grabbed the reins of the bay and turned south. Ahead of him lay a thousand square miles of towering sky islands cut through with deep, shady canyons, thick with cottonwoods, mesquite, willow and wild oak. The lower slopes of the mountains were shaggy with walnut, alder, sycamore, maple and juniper. Higher, there grew ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, their lofty canopies silhouetted like arrowheads against the hard blue sky.
Somewhere in this wilderness lurked Rake Pierce, a needle in a vast haystack. Stryker had no real reason to believe he could find him, but at least he was trying, better than sitting on his ass in the officer’s mess in Fort Bowie or carrying out Forrest’s petty and vindictive orders.
Stryker followed a winding game and Indian trail through Bear Spring Pass. At nearly six thousand feet above the flat the air thinned and he rode through thick forests of walnut, sycamore and pine.
Riding due south he dropped down to a timbered plateau and passed between a couple of craggy mountain escarpments before coming up on Pinery Canyon. He took a switchback route to the canyon floor, and stopped once to allow a black bear to amble through a thicket of ponderosa and Apache pine just ahead of him.
Only then, perhaps wakened by the sudden start of his horse when it scented the bear, did Birchwood wake up.
He lifted himself upright in the saddle and looked around, blinking like a puzzled owl. “Wha . . . wha the hell?”
Stryker smiled. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Birchwood.”
“Where . . . where the hell are we?”
“In the mountains, hunting Apaches.”
The young officer glanced behind him, then at Stryker. “Where’s the company?”
“There is no company. Just you and me.”
Birchwood worked his jaw, then felt the bruise on his chin. “Did somebody sock me?”
“No, you fell down.”
“I need a drink.”
“Like hell you do.”
“Damn you, Stryker—” He got no further than that. Suddenly his eyes rolled in his head and he toppled sideways off his bay.
Stryker shook his head. There were still hours of daylight left, but Birchwood was in no shape to travel. He swung off his horse, grabbed the young lieutenant by the shoulders and dragged him into the shade of the trees.
They would camp where they were and move out at first light in the morning.
Stryker was loosening his saddle girth when he heard a noise. He stood perfectly still, listening into the silence. Nothing.
“I’m imagining things,” he said aloud.
But suddenly he felt as though he was under a glass dome and somebody was studying him. That noise he’d heard had sounded like a man in pain.
He looked around him, at the sunlight splintering through the trees, the shimmer of the deep creek that ran through the canyon, even this long after the snow-melt.
All right, now he needed Birchwood; if for nothing else, he wanted Birchwood to share his anxiety. Stryker untied the sack from the saddle, took out the coffeepot and filled it with water from the creek. He stood in front of the sleeping lieutenant and threw the water into his face.
“Wake up you drunken officer and gentleman,” he said. “Nap time is over.”
Chapter 26
Birchwood spluttered and tossed his head, an action he obviously instantly regretted because he groaned from deep in his belly and kneaded his temples.
His eyes lifted to Stryker. “Why did you do that, damn you?”
“We’ve got work to do.”
“Get away from me, Stryker. You’re the devil.” Stryker smiled. “All right, that’s it.” He grabbed Birchwood by his shirtfront, hauled him to his feet and stuck his face close to his.
“I’m not a forgiving man, Lieutenant, but I’ve been willing to let things slide because you were drunk. From now on, you address me as sir, or Lieutenant Stryker, whatever you please. But if you ever call me only by my last name again, I’ll beat the shit out of you. Do you understand me?”
Birchwood nodded, his mouth hanging slack.
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
Stryker’s eyes were merciless. “You’re full of self-pity because you had to kill a dying man. Well, we’ve both had to kill dying men. You get over it, Mister. You don’t crawl into a whiskey bottle and try to forget that it ever happened. Once you do that, you’ll have to stay inside the bottle for the rest of your miserable life, looking out from behind the glass.”
Birchwood was sobering fast. He tried to grab Stryker’s wrist and push it away from him, but the lieutenant was too big, too strong and too angry to be moved.
The young officer gave up the struggle and said, “Sir, don’t talk to me of self-pity. You wrote the damned book on that, sir. Your face was smashed up and you’ve been grieving for yourself ever since, sir.”
Stryker expected his gorge to rise, but it did not. “Mr. Birchwood, you’re correct. I did write the book on self-pity, but I crawled into myself, not the bottle. And I admit, one is just as bad as the other. But I’m trying to break out of me because I don’t like what I see in there. It’s a dark place where slimy things crawl. If you don’t do the same, your military career is over and so are you. And, like me, you’ll lose the woman you loved and you’ll never find another.”
“I . . . I told her my lips would ne’er touch whiskey,” Birchwood whispered, half sober, but still drunk enough to be maudlin.
“She doesn’t have to know.”
Stryker’s big hand had the young man pinned to a tree like a butterfly in a case. But he managed to struggle erect. “You have orders for me, sir?”
Stryker let him go, his arm falling by his side. Suddenly he was very tired, his wounds catching up to him like phantoms in the darkness. “I thought I heard a man cry out,” he said.
“A bird?”
“Maybe. We’re going to find out.”
As he was about to turn away, Birchwood’s voice stopped him. “When I shot that soldier, his brains flew out the other side of his head. They . . . they looked like the oatmeal a little child eats. Gray, like that, but mixed with blood and bone.”
“That’s what happens when you shoot a man up close, Lieutenant. Mr. Colt designed his revolver with that very thing in mind, to scatter a man’s brains. But the Apaches would have killed Private Carter just as surely, only much more slowly.”