Birchwood nodded. “The world is changing, sir, and the Apaches can’t change with it. If they can’t, then they must be swept aside.”
“Indeed, Lieutenant. But our little corner of the world hasn’t changed, and it won’t until barbarians like Pierce and Dugan no longer cast their shadows on it.”
At first light, Stryker and the others made a hasty breakfast of bacon and coffee, then saddled their horses, Trimble choosing the buckskin pony that Billy Lee had been riding.
The old man had bound up his left hand in a bandage torn from his shirt, giving himself an even more ragged appearance. He picked up a new Winchester and a belt of ammunition and assured Stryker that he could still shoot as good as ever.
Birchwood took the Winchester that had been carried by Diamond and he tucked the man’s Remingtons in his belt.
“You any good with a rifle, Mr. Birchwood?” Stryker asked.
The officer nodded. “I came first in my class in rifle shooting at the Point, sir.”
Stryker felt a little niggle of jealousy. “I finished dead last.”
There was no diplomatic way to comment on that, so Birchwood settled for, “Is that so, sir?”
“Yes, Mr. Birchwood,” Stryker snapped, irritated, “that is so.”
The young lieutenant suddenly found that he had urgent business elsewhere. Stryker shoved the spare Colt into his waistband and shook his head.
What was it about rifle shooters that made them so damned . . . uppity?
Despite his wound, Trimble insisted on riding point as they headed due west. The old man had spent hard years in the mountains and he was enduring, as tough as a knot in a pine board.
Stryker and Birchwood followed a trail that rose gradually, passing through forests of pine, juniper and mountain mahogany. The sky was a clear blue, not yet scorched colorless by the sun, and a few bands of gossamer cloud rode so high a close-sighted man could not have seen them.
The silence and emptiness of the land grated on Stryker’s nerves. He was suspicious of the morning, his eyes scanning the terrain around him. This was bushwhacker country, a wilderness of trees and rock where a man could shoot, shoot again, and then vanish completely, as though he had never been.
Beside Stryker, Birchwood rode with the Winchester across his saddle horn, his face calm. But there was tension in the way he held his head and shoulders, as though the country they were riding through were whispering warnings.
The tobacco hunger in him, Stryker led the way into a stand of trees, the forest floor carpeted thick with pine needles. He built, then lit, a cigarette while Birchwood dismounted and stretched his legs.
Finally Birchwood looked up at Stryker and said, “Clem’s long in coming back, sir.”
“Uh-huh,” Stryker said. “I believe he may have crossed some sign.”
“Well, we know he’s not been ambushed. The sound of rifle shot would travel for miles through these rocks,” Birchwood said, looking around.
Whether he was attempting to reassure himself or both of them, Stryker could not tell. He nodded to the trail. “See the bald ridge up there? We’ll cross that, rest up in whatever shade we can find on the other side and wait for Trimble.”
Birchwood swung into the saddle and gathered up the reins. “If I live through this, sir, which I’m beginning to doubt, I’m going to ask for a transfer to Kansas where there’s nothing but flat, long-riding country for as far as a man can see.”
Stryker stubbed out his cigarette butt and nodded. “You’ll do all right in Kansas, Mr. Birchwood. That is, if you can stay away from whorehouses and whiskey.”
An hour later, as Stryker and Birchwood waited in a copse of pines, Trimble showed up, sitting his horse at a walk.
Stryker waved the old man over and then waited for him to speak.
“I found ’em, Cap’n,” Trimble said. “An’ they’re real close.” He nodded. “Camped in a valley over yonder.”
“How many, Clem?”
“Speakin’ for myself, Cap’n, I’d say too many.”
Chapter 32
They rode west, away from the bald ridge, with Trimble leading the way. After ten minutes the old man drew rein. “I reckon we best walk from here, Cap’n,” he said.
They had entered a round, shallow basin about ten acres in extent, thick with good grass, especially among the cottonwoods that fronted a stream bed. The water had all but dried up, reduced to a series of unconnected puddles only a few inches deep.
Around them rose rugged mountain slopes, and to Stryker’s surprise, a narrow ledge of snow still clung to one of the peaks.
They led the horses into the cottonwoods, and Trimble slid his rifle from the boot. “Ready, Cap’n?”
“Lead on, Clem,” Stryker said. Butterflies were dancing in his stomach.
Trimble led Stryker and Birchwood out of the basin; then he swung south along the lee of a low ridge. They were making their way through country made rough by close-growing juniper, mesquite and jumbled rocks when, after fifteen minutes, Trimble stopped. He motioned Stryker into a narrow arroyo, choked with brush and stands of low-growing prickly pear.
The old man’s voice dropped to a gravelly whisper. “Up there, on the ridge, Cap’n, we can see Dugan’s camp. The arroyo goes back a ways, maybe half a mile, then curves around and heads back to the place where we left the horses. It’s hard going, but we’ll be well hid when Dugan’s men come lookin’ fer us.”
Stryker had an idea. “Clem, can we get through the arroyo in the dark?”
“Sure, Cap’n. We’ll get our asses tore up by cactus, but we can get through.”
“They’d have more trouble finding us in the dark,” Stryker said. “If they even try.”
Trimble glanced at the sky where the sun had not yet reached its highest point. “Then we got us a wait.”
“In the meantime, we’ll get onto the ridge and take a look.”
The climb was steep with few handholds and patches of loose gravel hiding among the brush and grass. Coming down would be a lot faster and Stryker consoled himself with that thought.
Lying on his belly between Trimble and Birchwood, Stryker made his way to the rim and looked down at the valley below. Its slopes were thickly covered in timber and a fair-running creek ran along its entire length.
Pierce and his men were camped near the tree line, behind an arc of yellow sand. A single tent stood near the creek and two wagons were parked close to the pines, beside them the horse line where eight mules and a dozen saddle horses were tethered.
Stryker glanced at the sun. It was still behind him and he raised his field glasses, sure that there would be no flash of sunlight on the lenses.
He swept the camp, counting nine armed men coming and going near the fire and its smoking coffeepot. He saw no sign of Pierce or Dugan.
Then something happened that started his heart hammering in his chest and made a desert of his mouth.
Rake Pierce, big and hairy, wearing only the bottom part of his long johns stepped out of the tent. Dugan, bigger and even more hairy, came out behind him.
Pierce held a naked Apache girl by her upper arm. He looked around, scratched his belly, then raised a leg and broke wind, the fart so loud it sounded like a rifle shot. Beside him now, Dugan slapped his back and laughed.
The girl was struggling to get away, but Pierce held her in a vice grip. He looked around again and beckoned to a man to come closer. The man, tall and lanky, wearing greasy buckskins, stepped in front of him and Pierce threw the girl to him. He said something to the lanky man that made Dugan guffaw and slap his thigh again, and the man grabbed the girl, laid back his head and howled like an animal.
As Stryker watched, the man in buckskins dragged the naked girl under the wagon, pulled down his pants and rolled on top of her. Pierce watched for a while; then he and Dugan stepped back into the tent.
But it wasn’t over. Horror was about to pile atop horror. Stryker’s glasses filled with the image of the buckskinned man reaching his climax, then collapsing his whole weight on top of the girl. Finally he rolled out from under the wagon, pulled up his pants and dragged out the Apache. He looked around the camp and hollered, “Anybody else want a taste?”
Getting no takers, he casually took out his knife and cut the girl’s throat. Then he put his knee on the small of her back and scalped her. Brandishing the bloody scalp above his head, the lanky man ran around the camp, whooping like an Indian. His compadres stopped what they were doing and looked and laughed. A couple of them even joined in the demented cavort, jumping over the dead girl’s bloody body.
Sickened, numbed by what he had just witnessed, Stryker edged down from the ridge. He lay on his back and rested his head on the slope, breathing hard.
He looked at the red-hot coin of the sun, at its molten light that spread from horizon to horizon and burned out every trace of color from the sky, reducing it to pale white ashes.
Stryker closed his eyes, red flashes dancing in their lidded darkness. Something akin to guilt, and to grief, its bastard child, curled in his belly.
He could have killed Rake Pierce but didn’t.
All he had to do was tell Clem Trimble to shoot him. Bad hand or no, the old man could have put a bullet in Pierce’s brain pan and it would have been all over.
It would have been easy . . . too easy.
Death would have come clean and fast to Pierce. He wouldn’t even have felt the bullet he straddled into hell or known who was killing him.
He needed to know. Stryker wanted the man to despair at the manner and timing of his death. He had to look into Stryker’s eyes, burning in their crushed sockets, and know he was in the presence of his judge, jury and executioner and that there was no mercy in him. Only then would Rake Pierce’s debt be paid in full and the reckoning be over and done.
Trimble slid down the slope on his back and came to a halt beside Stryker. “Cap’n, if we’re waitin’ until sundown, we’d best get off this ridge.”
Stryker looked at him and blinked, like a man waking from sleep. He held fast on the old man’s eyes, thinking about the Apache girl and the terror she must have felt in her last moments. And he recalled the lanky man who murdered as casually as he’d kill a rabbit, without thought or a pang of conscience.
A crazed recklessness rose in Stryker. He was damned if he’d scuttle into the brush and cower like a frightened animal, hiding until dark. He would not give Pierce that satisfaction.
“Clem,” he said, “let’s dust the bastards.”
The old man smiled. “Cap’n, that don’t sound like soldier talk.”
“No, it’s war talk.” Stryker smiled without humor.
“Then you’re speakin’ my language, Cap’n.” Trimble looked over at Birchwood, who still seemed to be in shock over the murder of the Apache. “You game for it, sonny?”
Shaken as he was, the young officer stood on his dignity. “Please address me as Lieutenant, Mr. Trimble.”
“Sure thing, Lieutenant. Well, sonny, are you game for it?”
Birchwood sighed, then smiled. “Damn right I am.”
Stryker looked from Birchwood to Trimble and grinned. “Then let’s open the ball, gentlemen.”
Chapter 33
Pierce’s camp seemed unchanged, until Stryker scanned the horse lines. Two ponies and a mule were missing. He felt concern ball up inside him. Had Pierce and Dugan ridden away for some reason?
No, it could be any two of the renegades. Maybe a couple of men who had left to hunt or were off scouting somewhere.
But Stryker felt uneasy. Pierce and Dugan had the instincts and inclinations of wolves. Had they sensed danger of some kind and fled?
Edging close to Trimble, Stryker told him what he’d seen. The old man nodded, then turned. “See them two teeth I got there on the bottom, Cap’n?” He opened his mouth.
“I see them,” Stryker whispered. “They’re the only two you have.”
“Uh-huh, an’ they’re what I call ‘Indian teeth.’ They start to punish me when Apaches are close.”
“They punishing you now?”
“You bet, Cap’n. An’ hear that? All the birds have gone quiet.”
Stryker listened into the afternoon. There was no sound, not even the scratching of insects in the brush. The men in camp seemed not to have noticed. Ten of them had gathered around the fire to eat and a few had lit pipes. No one had bothered to cover the body of the Apache girl and she still lay where she’d fallen. The sunlight gleamed on the polished dark skin of her arms and legs, as if she were still alive and full of health.
Another whisper from Trimble. “I don’t see ol’ Silas, nor that feller Pierce either.”
Stryker bit his lip, his mind working. Finally he said, “Shoot up the tent, Clem. Force them out. Mr. Birchwood and I will concentrate our fire on the men by the fire.”
The old man nodded and Stryker turned to Birchwood. “Ready?” The young man raised his hand, his rifle against his shoulder.
“Let’s get it done,” Stryker said.
He pushed out his Colt and opened up on the men around the campfire, Birchwood’s rifle blasting next to him. The renegades jumped up and scattered, all but one who lay stretched out on the ground.
The tent canvas ticked as Trimble’s bullets thudded into it. But there was no sign of Pierce or Dugan.
Men were milling in confusion around the camp. Someone, Stryker thought Birchwood, had scored another hit. He saw the lanky man running for cover in the trees, fired at him and missed.
Now the renegades were getting more organized and bullets were kicking up dirt around Stryker and the others. A man firing at an uphill target tends to shoot high, but Pierce’s men were finding the range.
Firing as they came, a half dozen charged for the ridge. Trimble dropped one, and the rest took cover.
Birchwood yelped as a shot kicked gravel hard into his face. He laid down his rifle, knuckled his stinging eyes . . . and missed the start of the Apache attack.