But Felipe said, “Maybe Chihuahua, Senor. Many soldiers of Presidente Diaz are there.”
The girl turned and limped back into the adjoining room. Felipe watched her go and shook his head.
“It will be a long time before Alta can entertain gentlemen again. Now my whore is all tore up and those dirty gringos are costing me money.”
Stryker paid for the drinks, made to turn away, but stopped. He beckoned to Felipe by crooking his finger.
“Yes, Senor?”
“Come here, Felipe.”
When the man stepped closer, Stryker drew back his right fist and punched him hard in the mouth. Blood dribbled from the corner of Felipe’s mouth as he lurched against the bar, rattling bottles.
He put fingers to his bleeding lips and wailed, “Why did you do that?”
Stryker smiled. “Because you have no cojones.”
He walked out into the bright sunlight, Birchwood and Trimble grinning beside him. They swung into the saddle and rode south.
Behind them Felipe stood at the door of the cantina and aired out his lungs, throwing curses at them in Spanish and English.
“I think you upset that little feller, Cap’n,” Trimble said.
“Serves him right,” Stryker said.
Chapter 35
For the remainder of the day they rode through the foothills of the Madres, avoiding the high desert country that stretched almost three hundred miles to the east. That night they camped in an arroyo and made a meager supper of the last of their bacon and some stale biscuits.
The next morning Trimble picked up sign—the tracks of shod horses—but lost them again in the canyons and the oak, juniper and piñon forests that covered much of the mountain country.
“I reckon we’re two hundred and fifty miles north of Chihuahua, give or take,” Trimble said. “It’s a lot of country to cover, Cap’n.”
“We’ll catch up to them sooner than that,” Stryker said. “They’re close; maybe only a few miles ahead of us.”
“And Geronimo is right behind us,” Birchwood said. “Sir, do you think he’ll be looking over our shoulders to see that we do what we promised?”
Stryker shook his head. “I doubt it. My guess is that he’s already shaken off General Crook, crossed the border and is heading for his old stomping grounds in the eastern Madres. From there he can strike deep into central Mexico and raid into Texas and New Mexico.”
Trimble nodded. “The Apaches have their women and young ’uns stashed in the mountains. Nothing an Indian does makes sense and he’ll fool you every time, but I think you got it right, Cap’n.”
“I sure hope so, Clem,” Stryker said. “I don’t want to meet up with Geronimo again, unless it’s to take his surrender.”
“An’ that’s the day pigs will fly, Cap’n,” the old man grinned.
At noon they rode into another village and managed to barter one of their spare Colts for tortillas, beans, bacon and a small sack of coffee.
The village mayor said that he had not seen the two
americanos
and that in all his life he’d never even met a man with red hair and a red beard.
He also asked if the United States was at war with Mexico to bring Army officers so far south.
Stryker realized that the blue blouses and officer’s shoulder straps worn by him and Birchwood were too conspicuous. Further bartering obtained them a couple of baggy cotton shirts. After they left the village, he and Birchwood changed, stashing the uniform blouses in their blanket rolls.
Trimble, who’d been watching closely, could not let that go without comment. “Well, Cap’n,” he said, “you two look like a couple of Messkin peasants an’ no mistake. Now you don’t have all that gold braid on your shoulders, maybe I should start callin’ you Pancho instead of Cap’n, huh?”
Stryker turned to the old man. “See that rifle under your knee, Clem?”
“I see it.”
“Call me Pancho just once and I’ll shove it right up your ass.”
Trimble cackled and slapped his thigh, as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
A horseman traveling from here to there leaves a scar on the country, even in the mountains. The mark made by Pierce and Dugan was the death they left in their wake.
The day was fading into dusk when Stryker and the others rode up on the abandoned coach. They had been following a well maintained wagon road that curved around an outcropping of rock and had hidden the coach until they were almost on top of it.
Its four horses were still in the traces and had pulled the coach toward a patch of grama grass growing beside the road. But one of the rear wheels had wedged between rocks and the horses had been brought to a halt. They stood with their heads low, too tired to kick at the flies that clouded around their legs.
Stryker swung out of the saddle and stepped closer to the coach. There was a dead man slumped in the driver’s seat. He wore the fancy trappings of a vaquero, embroidered short jacket and silver-studded pants. His ivory handled Colt was still in the holster.
An older man was sprawled inside the coach, gray-haired and distinguished looking. He’d been shot several times. The man was impeccably dressed in the highest fashion, but by the disarray of his clothing it looked as though he’d been robbed of his jewelry and watch and chain.
“Over here, Cap’n!”
Stryker answered Trimble’s beckoning arm and walked to the side of the road where he was standing. “Take a look,” he said. “She says it all.”
The woman had been young, dark and exceedingly beautiful. She lay on her back, stripped half naked, her legs forced open. She’d been raped, and then her throat had been cut. The middle finger of her left hand had been cut off, probably to get at a ring she’d worn.
Stryker looked at Trimble. “Pierce and Dugan?”
“Who else, Cap’n?”
“This is a private coach,” Birchwood said. “It’s got a fancy coat of arms on the door and the words ‘Hacienda Cantrell.’”
“Some rich rancher’s rig,” Trimble said. “Probably belongs to the man inside. I reckon this was his wife or daughter.”
The vaqueros came from the south, eight men riding hard in a cloud of dust. Before Stryker could react, he and the others were surrounded, steady guns pointed at them.
One of the vaqueros looked down at the dead woman and said something in Spanish to Stryker. He shook his head. “
Americano
,” he said.
An emotion that could have been pity crossed the vaquero’s hard, lined face. “This is very bad for you,” he said.
“We found the coach and the bodies,” Stryker said. “These people have been dead for hours.”
The vaquero made no answer. He turned his head and looked as a handsome young man riding a magnificent palomino stallion galloped beside them. The man savagely drew rein, the horse’s haunches slamming into the ground.
He leaped from the saddle and ran to the dead woman. He kneeled, cradled her in his arms and raised his face to the sky, letting out a scream of loss, grief and despair that splintered apart the hush of the evening and sounded barely human.
The vaquero who had first spoken to Stryker had dismounted. He stuck his gun into the lieutenant’s ribs and whispered, “I think, very bad for you now.”
Stryker knew it was useless to protest his innocence again, and he held his silence.
After that one primitive scream, the young man held the woman in his arms, sobbing, his head bent over her. Minutes passed; then one of the vaqueros, older than the others, stepped beside him.
He quietly said something in Spanish to the man, then nodded toward Stryker.
Their eyes met; the young man’s were full of death.
He rose to his feet and looked into the coach, standing motionless for several long moments. Now he turned again to Stryker. After the initial shock of seeing the lieutenant’s crushed face, he said quietly, evenly, almost without anger, “It will take you a long, long time to die, my friend.”
Stryker had feared Geronimo, and now he feared this man. But he came quickly to anger, figuring he had been pushed around enough and had nothing to lose.
“I’m an officer of the United States Army, and I did not kill these people,” he said. “We found them just before your men arrived.”
“That’s the God’s honest truth, your worship,” Trimble said. “But we’ve been hunting the men who did this.”
The young man’s eyes ranged over Stryker, taking in his sky blue breeches with their yellow stripes and the knee-high cavalry boots.
Sensing the man’s dawning doubt, Stryker stepped to his horse and removed his and Birchwood’s shirts. He threw the young lieutenant his, then held up his own where the shoulder straps could be seen. “First Lieutenant Steve Stryker, United States Cavalry, at your service.”
The vaquero who’d been holding a gun to Stryker’s ribs said something to the young Mexican, who reached out and grabbed the lieutenant’s hands. After a while he dropped them and said, “Pedro is right, you have no blood on your hands.”
“We have no blood on our hands, nor do we have the jewelry that was taken from the bodies,” Stryker said. “You may search us if you have a mind.”
The young man thought long and hard, then shook his head. “That will be unnecessary, Lieutenant. If you were the guilty ones, you would not have lingered at the scene of your crimes.” He shoved out his hand. “My name is Don Carlos Santiago Cantrell. The man in the coach is my father, and yonder lies my wife. They were returning from the mission in the village of Playa Vicente where my wife prayed that the Madonna would bless us with a child. But she gave us no child, only death.”
Stryker shook the young Mexican’s hand, then Cantrell’s black eyes flicked to the dead man in the driving seat. “I should have ridden with the gun, not that cowardly
hijo de puta
.”
He looked back to Stryker. “I am honor bound to invite you to my hacienda, Lieutenant. But tonight no lamps will be lit in my home and my people will wail in mourning. It is not a place where you would wish to be.”
Stryker looked at the sky, at the darkness crowding closer, shadowing the vast land. “We will camp farther down the trail tonight, Don Carlos,” he said.
The man nodded. “I will join you with my vaqueros tomorrow before the noon hour. Together we will hunt the men who did this. Give me their names.”
“Rake Pierce and Silas Dugan. Pierce is a deserter from my regiment, and both are murderers and rapists. They rob and kill without conscience, as they did here.”
Cantrell repeated the names, then said, “Be ready to ride tomorrow, Lieutenant. If I must, I will hunt those men to the ends of the earth.”
The man turned on his heel and swung into the saddle. A vaquero carried his dead wife to him and placed her reverently in his arms.
The vaquero named Pedro closed the coach door and then gave the reins of his horse to another man. He climbed into the driver’s seat and kicked the dead guard to the ground.
He slapped the lines and the coach bumped over the rocks and lurched into motion, the other vaqueros following, surrounding their grieving
patrón
.
Stryker waited until the Mexicans were out of sight, then mounted his horse. “Clem, you can see better in the dark than I can. Ride on ahead and find us a place to camp for the night,” he said.
The old man cackled, then nodded. “I’ve got cat’s eyes, an’ no mistake, Cap’n. And lately, I’ve come to believe that atween us, we got us ourselves more lives than a cat.”
Stryker smiled. “Maybe, but if we do, I think we’re fast running out of them.”
“A truer word was never spoke, Cap’n.” Trimble grinned, knuckled his forehead and rode into the gloom, the first stars of night glittering high above him.
“The old man is right, sir,” Birchwood said. “That was a damned close-run thing.”
“And it’s not over yet,” Stryker said. “I have a feeling our troubles are just about to start.”
Chapter 36
Trimble found a camping spot in an oak grove near a thin rock spring. The old man fried bacon and wrapped the greasy strips in tortillas, a supper Birchwood, with his youngster’s appetite, declared a “crackerjack meal.”
Trimble sat opposite Stryker across a hatful of fire, and froze his coffee cup to his lips, speaking quietly around the rim. “Don’t look around right now, Cap’n,” he said, “but there’s somebody in the trees.”
“Maybe it’s a bear,” Birchwood said. He opened the cotton shirt and undid his holster flap.
“My teeth are aching like hell,” Trimble said. “It’s an Injun fer sure.”
He rose slowly to his feet, both hands up and visible on his cup. “Come right on in, big chief,” he said, talking into the black wall of the night. “We’ve got coffee on the bile.”
A few tense moments passed; then the darkness parted and a man carrying a rifle stepped into the camp. He wore white cotton pants tucked into high moccasins, a shirt of the same color and over that a blue vest, decorated with beadwork. His hair was cropped short with no attempt at style and the top half of his face was painted black.
He was looking at Trimble, but his eyes missed nothing, especially the slow rising of Stryker and Birchwood.
“He’s Comanche, by God,” Trimble said. “I haven’t seen one o’ them in nigh on twenty year.” The old man raised his hand, smiled and said, “
Maruawe
, great chief.”
The man ignored the traditional Comanche greeting and looked around the camp, his eyes resting briefly on Stryker’s face.
Trimble had run through all the Comanche he knew and now he said, “I see you have cut your hair and blackened your face. You are in mourning, great chief.”
“My name is Thomas, and this you will call me. I mourn the death of Donna Maria Elaina Cantrell. She was my friend.”
Stryker was on edge. Did the Comanche believe they were guilty of the girl’s murder? Was he about to push it?
Birchwood was obviously thinking along the same lines, because his hand was close to his Colt, his eyes fixed on the Indian.