Stryker saw four of Cantrell’s men drop out of the column and ride east until they disappeared into the gray curtain of the rain. The pueblo must be close.
Trimble swung east, motioning Stryker and the others to follow. The remaining vaqueros rode on to stake out the village from the other side. Thomas rode out of the darkness and swung his horse beside Stryker. The black paint on his face ran down his throat and chest and mingled with the rusty stain of blood on his shirt. He was quiet and withdrawn and said nothing.
The village consisted of adobe houses clustered around a central plaza where there was a church, stores and a well. Most of the buildings were ruined and the church roof had caved in years before. The shop fronts were crumbling, though a couple still had the tattered remains of canvas awnings that flapped in the wind. To the south of the village, beyond a stand of timber, lay an ancient lava flow, most of it as tall as a man on a horse. A few bushes and bunches of scrub grass struggled for life on its top, adding to the rain-swept bleakness of the place.
Stryker found shelter in the trees, then swept the pueblo with his field glasses, pausing constantly to wipe rain from the lenses. Several of the adobes still had roofs and if Pierce and Dugan had sought shelter here, they would be in one of them. No horses were in sight, but they would have taken their mounts inside with them or stabled them in another adobe.
Wordlessly, he passed the glasses to Birchwood; then he motioned Cantrell, Trimble and the Comanche closer. “The adobe on the left, under the oak. We’ll take the horses inside there, then sweep the village on foot.” He looked at Trimble. “Clem, how is the hand?”
“I’ll manage, Cap’n.”
Stryker waited until a thunderclap rolled across the sky, then said, “Both these men are good with guns, but Silas Dugan is better than most. Be careful, and keep another man in sight at all times.” He looked around at his four companions. “Any questions?”
There were none and Stryker said, “Then we’ll ride on in.”
They had to cross fifty yards of open ground, but the day was so wild and the visibility so bad that Stryker was confident they could pass unnoticed. That proved to be the case because they reached the adobe without drawing fire.
The house was small, but it was large enough to accommodate the horses and it still had most of its roof.
Trimble loosened the girth on his mount, then wiped rain off his face with his sleeve. “What do we do now, Cap’n? Start kicking in doors?”
“Thomas can see and hear better than any of us.” He turned to the Comanche, rain dripping from his hat onto the mud floor. “Can you find them?”
The Indian nodded. “If they are here, I will find them.”
“We’ll do some searching ourselves,” Stryker said.
“But if you find out where they’re at, come looking for us. Don’t try to take them by yourself.” He looked into the man’s eyes. “Do you understand?”
Thomas nodded, but said nothing. He turned on his heel and stepped outside the door. An instant later he was dead.
Stryker heard the two shots, close together and louder than the roaring of the thunder. He ran for the door, his Colt in his hand.
Rain whip-lashed through the village, and searing lightning flares followed one after another. Thomas lay sprawled on his back, splashed with mud from his fall. Rake Pierce stood ten yards away.
The man’s long black hair tossed across his bearded face and he was grinning.
“Pierce, you bastard!” Stryker screamed, all his pent-up fury turning his voice into a rabid shriek of rage. He raised his gun and fired at Pierce, who was starkly outlined by a shimmering lightning flash.
Pierce fired back, then ducked behind a low wall.
Stryker followed, his boots splashing through mud, mouth open in a soundless roar. He reached the wall, the downpour hissing around him. But Pierce was nowhere in sight.
Then, from somewhere ahead of him, unseen behind the spinning maelstrom of wind and rain, came the man’s roaring voice. “I’m gonna kill you, Lieutenant Stryker. Goddamn you, we’ll end it here today.”
Chapter 39
Boots pounded behind Stryker and he turned quickly, his gun coming up fast.
“Don’t shoot, Cap’n!” Trimble yelled. “It’s us!”
The three men ducked behind the wall and Birchwood said, “We tried to head him off, came round behind the adobe, but he was gone.”
“He fired at me, then ran away, damn him,” Stryker said.
Trimble nodded. “Ol’ Rake likes an edge, Cap’n. Standin’ out in the open that way, he figgered he didn’t have one.”
“Was that the man Pierce shouting, Lieutenant?” Cantrell asked.
“Yes, that was him.”
“He’s trying to get you good an’ mad, Cap’n,” Trimble said. “In a gunfight, an angry man is a dead man.”
“He’s succeeding,” Stryker said.
His mind was working. As Trimble said, Pierce would look for an edge. But what kind of an edge? His eyes moved across the plaza to the three ruined stores. Each had an open front where goods had been displayed, leaving a wall about four foot high under them. Unlike the windowless adobes, a man could shoot from concealment there.
Was that where Pierce and Dugan were holed up? The range was too great for his Colt. He turned to Birchwood who was white-knuckling his Winchester in both hands.
“Lieutenant, dust along the store fronts over yonder and we’ll see what happens. You too, Clem.”
Both men rose and fired at the stores, working their way along the open fronts. Bullets thudded into adobe or rattled through the stores, followed by sounds of shattering pottery and glass.
“Cease fire!” Stryker yelled.
He did not have long to wait for a reaction.
Both Pierce and Dugan rose from behind the low wall of the middle store, working their rifles. Bullets chipped Vs of adobe along the top of the wall, and Birchwood, a split second too late in getting to cover, was hit, a round opening up his left cheekbone.
Stryker turned to him. “You all right, Lieutenant?”
The young man looked at the fingers he’d touched to his cheek, now streaming with rain and blood. “I believe so, sir,” he said.
“A battle scar to show your betrothed,” Stryker grinned.
Birchwood nodded. “I sincerely hope it’s the only one.”
Cantrell stuck his gun over the adobe wall and shot at the store. But return fire drove him behind the wall again.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “we know where they are and they know where we are, so how do we get to them?”
“The short answer is ‘not easily,’” Stryker said. He looked at Birchwood. “I guess you know you’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”
The lieutenant nodded, the blood running down his cheek intermingled with rain so it had taken on a pink cast. “I’ve always been a bleeder, sir, ever since I was a boy. One time I remember—”
“Stryker!”
The voice from the store front was not Pierce’s. It was Silas Dugan’s harsh rasp.
Stryker turned to Trimble. “Clem, see if you can do something for Mr. Birchwood’s wound.” He got closer to the wall and yelled, “Dugan, you sorry piece of shit, what do you want?”
“Harsh words, Lieutenant. A thing I’ll keep in mind. It could make the difference atween you getting it in the belly or the head.”
“I asked you, Dugan, what the hell do you want?”
Thunder shook the village and lightning scratched across the black sky. The wind had turned ferocious, baring its teeth, ratcheting up the rage of the raking rain.
“Stryker!” Dugan yelled. “Are you still there?” The lieutenant glanced at Birchwood. Trimble had torn a strip off the white cotton shirt he was wearing and had wound it under the young man’s chin and tied it at the top of his head. It seemed to have stopped the bleeding, at least for now.
“I’m here! What do you want?”
“See, me and ol’ Rake are getting soaking wet and we got the coffee hunger. So what do you say we have it out, us against you four? Step into the plaza and so will we, and then we can go to our work and end this thing.”
“Clem,” Stryker asked, “can we take them?”
The old man shook his head. “Not a chance in hell, Cap’n.”
Stryker bit his lip, thinking. Rain dripped from his hat in strings that got caught up in the wind and scattered into the roaring day.
“Clem, give me your rifle,” he said.
Doubt in his eyes, Trimble handed over the Winchester. Stryker stood and fired at the store where Pierce and Dugan were holed up.
After he ducked back again, grinning, Trimble asked, “Hit anything, Cap’n?”
Stryker shook his head. “No, that was just my answer to Dugan’s proposal.”
A moment later, his voice angry, the gunman yelled, “Now you get it in the belly, Stryker.”
Long minutes ticked past and the rain and wind grew in intensity, driving mud and stinging pine needles into the four men crouched behind the wall.
“Anybody hear that?” Birchwood asked, his face stiff with unease.
Trimble nodded. “Yeah, Lieutenant, I’ve been hearing it for quite a spell.”
And so had Stryker. A thin, eerie wailing rose and fell in the wind; a lost, lonely sound, as poignant as a widow’s tears.
Cantrell crossed himself hurriedly. “It is the cries of the dead,” he whispered. “They walk abroad in the storm.”
Trimble looked hard at the young Mexican. “Don Carlos, I don’t know what’s scarin’ me more, Rake an’ ol’ Silas, or you!”
“Be very afraid, old man,” Cantrell said. “Many people have come to this village seeking plunder, and few have ever returned.”
The wailing carried in the wind like smoke, shredding into what sounded like long, drawn-out sobs.
Stryker prided himself in being a practical man, but he felt shivers finger up and down his spine. He had been taught many things at West Point, but dealing with the supernatural had not been one of them.
Then it seemed that Pierce and Dugan had missed that particular lesson themselves.
“Stryker!” Dugan yelled. “Who’s doing all that damned screaming?”
“It’s all the people you’ve murdered, Dugan,” Stryker called out. “Those are dead Apache women and children coming back for your dirty scalp.”
He waited a moment and hollered. “Surrender now, Dugan, and we’ll protect you.”
“You go to hell!”
Bullets chipped along the top of the wall and whined into the gloom.
Trimble shook his head. “I never took ol’ Silas for a scaredy-cat when it comes to ha’ants an’ sich.”
“He has a right to be afraid,” Cantrell said.
Stryker latched onto that. Had the wailing unnerved the superstitious Dugan so much that he might have grown careless?
Now was the time to do something, a course of action better than waiting for night, when he and the others could slink away like whipped dogs.
“Mr. Birchwood,” he said, his mind made up, “I’m going for my horse. You and the others will lay down a covering fire.”
The lieutenant had been trained not to question orders, and said simply, “Yes, sir.”
But Trimble was not a soldier and had no such qualms. “What the hell you plannin’, Cap’n?”
“Clem, when you hear shooting from across the plaza, just come a-running.”
“Cap’n, you’re—”
But Stryker was already moving, crouching low through the wind and rain as he ran for his horse.
Chapter 40
Stryker reached the adobe without drawing fire. He was relieved, but at the same time he felt a twinge of concern. Even amid the gloom of the storm he’d been visible to Pierce and Dugan for a couple of seconds.
They were expert marksmen, so why the hell hadn’t they shot at him?
He had no answer to that, and put the thought out of his head.
The criollo was standing on three legs, its head lowered, dozing. The little horse objected strongly to being led out into the storm and fought the bridle. But eventually it accepted its harsh fate and allowed Stryker to lead it outside.
Windblown rain hammering into him, he stepped into the saddle and swung the horse around the side of the adobe. Here the wind was cut by the building and even the downpour seemed less.
He kneed the horse forward, but immediately drew rein as Silas Dugan stepped around the corner, a grin on his lips and a gun in his hand.
The man’s buckskins were black from rain and his wild red hair tossed in the wind, his beard matted against his chest.
In that moment, Stryker had a flash of insight: This was what death looked like.
“Get off the damned horse, or I’ll blow you right out of the saddle, Stryker,” Dugan said. His gun was up, steady on Stryker’s chest.
He had to play for time. His Colt was in the holster and he was no fast-draw artist.
Stryker swung out of the leather, and Dugan said, “Step away from the nag. Well away. I told you I’d give it to you in the belly and I want a clear shot.”
“We can talk about this,” Stryker said desperately.
“All my talking is done, Stryker. Now it’s killing time.” He smiled. “You really didn’t think we was stupid enough to let you get behind us, huh? I could have shot you when you made your run from the wall, but I didn’t. I wanted to watch you die, see, kicking your legs in the mud and screaming like the ugly pig you are.”
Dead men have few options, but Stryker was left with one: defiance.
“Dugan,” he said, slowly and evenly, “you’re a squaw-killing son of a bitch and I hope I see you roast in hell.”
The gunman grinned. “Now you get it, Stryker, one right in the belly.”
The hammer of his gun triple-clicked as it was thumbed back.
Stryker was about to go for his Colt, but the wind saved his life.
A tremendous, shrieking gust blasted over the roof of the adobe, carrying with it the wails of the dead.
Dugan’s eyes flickered and his jaw went slack. For an instant, fear danced in his eyes, and he instinctively raised his head to the wind.