Two dozen riders swept into the camp like hawks attacking doves. With incredible speed and violence, the Apaches gunned down men as they scrambled for cover or ran for their horses. A few of them, unlucky enough not to die, were clubbed to the ground, including the lanky man in buckskins.
It was over as suddenly as it had begun. Six dead men lay sprawled around the camp and the remaining four were herded against a wagon, their hands in the air. Stryker read the fear in their faces, each of them well aware what was in store for him.
Some of the Apaches gathered around the body of the dead girl. One of them stepped away, clubbed his rifle and drove it into the skull of the lanky man. The man’s head exploded in a scarlet halo of blood and brain, but the Apache kept clubbing him, even when he lay dead on the ground.
One of the others dropped to his knees. Raised his hands as though in prayer and loudly pleaded for his life. This amused the Apaches highly, until one of them kicked the man into silence.
There was no sign of Pierce and Dugan. As wary as barn rats, they’d pulled out and left their men to face the Apaches.
Trimble wriggled closer to Stryker. “Cap’n, we’d better skedaddle. The Apaches—”
He never completed what he had to say. The rifle muzzle pressing into the back of his head stilled the words in his mouth.
Stryker turned, looked up and found himself looking into cruel black eyes, glittering in a lined, weather-beaten face, an iron lance blade at his throat.
Trimble found his voice again, looking at the Indian with the lance. “Hail, great chief Geronimo,” he said. “I’m right pleased to make your acquaintance.”
The Apache, his face emotionless, motioned with his lance, and Stryker and the others got to their feet. Their guns were taken from them and they were pushed down the slope of the ridge.
“Cap’n,” Trimble whispered, “I don’t have a real good feelin’ about this.”
Stryker nodded. “I don’t need your teeth to tell me that.”
Stryker knew that to be taken prisoner by Apaches was to admit to yourself that you were already dead. He recalled that the sign above the gates of hell read,
Abandon hope all ye who enter here
, and he could read words to that effect in the merciless eyes of the warriors around him. They were writ plain enough.
Yet he felt one small glimmer of hope.
They were not herded together with Pierce’s men, but ordered to sit near the campfire. Trimble noted that as well, because he was smiling and nodding at the Apaches, though they studiously ignored him.
Birchwood seemed scared, and that was no fault in him. But he held his head high, preparing to die like an officer and a gentleman and bring no disgrace to his regiment or family.
An hour passed. The Apaches reverently wrapped the body of the dead girl in a blanket and carried her into the trees. The three remaining captives were stripped naked and spread-eagled on their backs, their ankles and wrists bound with rawhide to stakes. The man who had begged for mercy was whimpering, and one of the others, who could have been the breed Billy Lee had mentioned, told him to shut the hell up.
The Apache that Trimble had identified as Geronimo stepped in front of Stryker. There was nothing about him to suggest he was a great war chief. He wore a white Mexican shirt, breech cloth and buckskin moccasins to his knees. His head was bound in a black headband and he carried a new Winchester ’73 in his hands.
“Who speaks for you?” he demanded.
Stryker rose to his feet. “I do.”
Geronimo looked at him closely, with the wide-eyed curiosity of a child. “Broken Face. I have heard your name spoken many times.”
“And I have heard the name of Geronimo many times. And always men say you are a great chief, a brave warrior and mighty hunter.”
If Stryker thought flattery would get him everywhere, he was quickly disillusioned. The Apache looked at him with disdain. “You have the same easy way with lies as all white men.” His eyes hardened. “You are a soldier. Why do you come to take our land?”
“That is not my reason for being here,” Stryker said. “I hunt a man called Rake Pierce and another called Silas Dugan.”
“Why?”
Stryker touched his face. “This, and other reasons.”
Geronimo was silent for a few moments, reading Stryker’s eyes.
The Apache had a keen intelligence and would not be easily fooled. Stryker knew only truth would satisfy this man. He would detect a lie as easily as a diner spots a fly in his soup.
“I too hunt Pierce and Dugan,” Geronimo said.
“They’ve killed and scalped many of my people.” He waved a hand. “But they are gone from here.”
“Yes, but they were here, and then they rode away.”
“They scented the Apache, as the antelope does the wolf.”
“That is so.”
“What will you do when you find these men?”
“Kill them.”
Again Geronimo was silent. Then he said, “It is said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I will think on this.” His eyes swept the three men. “You may live or you may die. I will decide.”
He turned on his heel and walked away.
Birchwood looked at Stryker. “Well, sir, I think that went rather well.”
Trimble stated what was in Stryker’s mind. “Sonny,” he said, “if you think that, you’re a damned eejit.”
Chapter 34
The day slowly stretched into late afternoon and the heat grew. An Apache brought a bladder of water and tossed it at Stryker’s feet. Over at the other side of the camp, men were shrieking, a sound that put Stryker’s teeth on edge.
If things turned out badly and the torture began, could he resist screaming and instead curse his enemies? Could he die well?
The cries of men in mortal agony that echoed around the valley convinced him otherwise. They were dying like dogs, and so would he. The Apaches knew how to kill a man slowly and in great pain. Sometimes the torment would last for hours, other times for days.
The women were the worst, or so he’d been told, but there were no women here. That thought brought him little solace.
Birchwood was sitting, his chin on his drawn-up knees. He glanced at Stryker. “Where the hell is he? Let’s get it over with.”
“Geronimo will be here in his own good time,” Trimble said. “An Apache don’t like to be rushed into a thing.”
A scream ripped through the fabric of the afternoon; then another, and another, tearing loose from a man’s throat. The Apaches, their faces solemn, were roasting meat on a small fire that had been lit on the man’s belly.
Birchwood was very pale. “I won’t let them kill me like that,” he said. “I’ll try to take one of the bastards with me.”
Both Stryker and Trimble looked at him, but said nothing. Then the old man said, “Cap’n, you in good with God?”
“No. Are you?”
Trimble shook his head. “We’re not exactly on speakin’ terms.” He looked at Birchwood. “How about you, Lieutenant?”
Stryker answered for him, his voice flat, like a man making a joke on the gallows. “Mr. Birchwood has recently become much taken by whorehouses and strong drink. No use asking him.” He looked at Trimble. “Why the sudden interest in God?”
“Because now’s a time for prayin’, if you catch my drift, Cap’n. Except that nary a one of us is a prayin’ man an’ that’s surely a disappointment to me.”
“I can pray, and sing all the grand old hymns,” Birchwood said.
“Is that a fact?” Trimble said. “Well, let ’er rip, boy.”
The young man waited until a wild, agonized shriek ended in bubbling sobs, then said, “I don’t feel much like it.”
Stryker passed Birchwood the water bladder. “Take a drink, Mister,” he said. “Your throat sounds dry.”
Geronimo stepped out of the trees and walked to where Stryker and the others were sitting. The lieutenant rose to his feet.
“I am Goyathlay, the one the white men call Geronimo,” the Apache said. “Where I walk, I leave no tracks. I can make rivers run backward and I can still the rising sun in the sky. I am able to do these things because my medicine is strong.”
Stryker waited. He felt his heart thud in his chest.
“I have thought long and hard about what I must do, and then the Great Spirit made it clear to me. Crook presses us close and my people must hide in the Madres. Two of you will go after Pierce and Dugan and you will kill them for us. The one who remains must die. You will choose who this man is to be, and tell me.”
“Hell, Cap’n, I’m the oldest and it should be me,” Trimble said. “I’ve lived my life and—”
“Clem, shut your fucking mouth,” Stryker snapped, angry beyond all measure. He stared into Geronimo’s black eyes, his own blazing. “All three of us go, or none of us. We will not choose and we will not leave one of our own behind to be tortured.”
“Well,” Trimble sighed, “that sure enough thow’d the hog fat on the fire.”
Geronimo was silent for a long time, his face still, revealing nothing. Then he said, “If you had chosen otherwise I would have killed all of you. You have spoken like a man and in so doing purchased your lives. You will leave now and kill our enemies.”
“How will you know that the thing is done?” Stryker asked.
“I am Goyathlay. It will be written in the wind and I will know.” He turned to the warriors around him and said something in his own tongue. The Apaches brought Stryker and the others their guns and then their saddled horses.
Geronimo waited until the three white men had mounted; then he said, “Pierce and Dugan will ride south into Mexico. They have many Apache scalps to sell for gold.”
Stryker nodded. He looked across the camp where bloody, broken things were still screaming, but more weakly now. He swung his horse away and the others followed.
He felt Geronimo’s eyes on his back until he was swallowed by the shadows of the hills.
They had crossed Big Bend Creek and were heading due south in the direction of the Perilla Mountains before anyone said a word. Predictably it was Trimble, who would speak even when he’d nothing to say.
“That was close, Cap’n,” he said. “In all my born days I never come nearer to losin’ my hair. ’Course, if a man’s gonna get scalped, better it’s by ol’ Geronimo. It’d give a man the feelin’ that the cuttin’ had more class, like.”
“Clem, I don’t want to be scalped by anybody,” Birchwood said.
“Just so, Lieutenant. Just so.”
They camped that night in Saddle Gap, then crossed into Mexico early next morning, riding into rolling country just south of where the peaks of the oak- and pine-covered mountains of the Sierra Madres brushed against the sky.
For an hour they followed a military road that cut through shaggy oak forests, and then stopped at a wicker and adobe village that had spread itself along both banks of a creek.
It was just short of noon, but the heat was intense and the village seemed deserted as its inhabitants sought shelter from the raking sun.
A cantina, consisting of a single adobe building with an adjoining outhouse, stood at the end of the main street, the name
El Lobo Rojo
painted on the wall to the right of the door.
Stryker and the others looped their reins around the hitching rail and stepped inside. Away from the pitiless sun, the interior of the cantina felt shady and cool. A bar stood in a corner, an array of bottles on its shelves. There were a few tables and chairs, and a doorway, covered by a blanket, led into another room.
Stryker stepped to the bar and ordered tequila for himself and Trimble. He nodded in Birchwood’s direction. “He’ll have milk if you have it, water if you don’t.”
“I have no tequila, Senor,” the bartender said. He was small and very dark, with quick brown eyes. He shrugged. “Only mescal.”
“Then that will have to do.”
The bartender smiled at Birchwood. “There is cold water over there in the
cantaro
, Senor.”
Birchwood poured water from the earthenware jug into a cup and returned to the bar where Stryker was sealing shut a cigarette.
The bartender waited until the officer lit his cigarette, then said, “What brings
soldados Americanos
this far south? Are we at war?”
Stryker drank some of the fiery mescal, then shook his head. “No, we’re not at war. I want information. I’m looking for two men. Deserters.”
“
Desertores
,” Trimble said.
“Ahh . . .” the Mexican said, “but many gringos pass through San Pedro. The question is, how to tell one from another?”
“You’d know these men. They’re tall, big, mean as hell and one has red hair and a beard the same color.”
A shocked surprise registered on the Mexican’s face. “Yes, two men. One with red hair. They were here last night and drank mescal. Alta entertained them.” The man spread his hands. “I think they hurt her bad, very bad.”
The little man stepped to the doorway, pushed back the blanket and yelled something in Spanish.
He returned to the bar and said, “Alta is lying down. But she will be here.”
A small, slight girl stepped into the room. She hobbled when she walked and made little grimaces of pain.
“She can talk American, Senor,” the Mexican said. “It is her business, you understand.”
“Alta, you met two men here last night,” Stryker said.
The girl spat. “Pigs! They used me like I was . . . filth.” She held her head high, her hands on her slim hips. “I’m a whore, but I’m also a human being.” Alta turned on the bartender. “Felipe, you heard me call out and you did nothing.”
The man shrugged. “Alta, big gringos with guns; what could I do?”
“You pig, Felipe! You have no cojones.”
“Alta, did the men say where they were headed?” Stryker asked. “They have Apache scalps to sell.”
Trimble smiled. “Seems to me they wasn’t doin’ much talkin’, Cap’n.”
The girl looked at him. “That is correct, old man. They spoke little and told me nothing.”