Stryker took his chance.
He dived to his left, drawing his gun before he splashed into the mud. He and Dugan fired at the same instant. Momentarily unnerved, the gunman’s bullet went wide, burning across Stryker’s ribs. But Stryker’s shot parted Dugan’s beard at the point of his chin, driving his shattered jawbone into his throat.
Dugan’s scream was a gurgling screech of pain and terror. The gunman staggered back, holding his gun high. Stryker fired again, missed, and fired a third time. This bullet crashed into Dugan’s left shoulder and he dropped to his knees, his lower face a scarlet mask of blood, teeth and bone.
Stryker rose to his feet. He stepped in front of Dugan, raised his boot and used the sole to kick the man’s face. Dugan fell on his back, still alive, his terrified eyes looking into Stryker’s.
Wails braided through the wind, swelling, waning, and swelling again, like howls from the lowest regions of hell.
“Hear that, Silas?” Stryker said. “They’re coming for you.”
Lightning flashed, flickering white on Dugan’s shattered face, gleaming in his scared eyes.
Suddenly sick of it, Stryker raised his gun. “You’ve an appointment to keep in hell, Silas,” he said. “I don’t want to hold you up.”
He fired into the man’s forehead. Dugan’s body jerked and all the life that had been in him left.
“The trouble with you, Dugan, is that you lived too long,” Stryker said.
He reloaded his Colt and shoved it back in the holster only to draw again as footsteps thudded behind him. He turned and saw Birchwood, his face bound up and tied on top of his head like a dead man in a coffin.
The young lieutenant looked at Dugan, then at Stryker. Anticipating Birchwood’s question, he said, “His luck ran out. Now I’m going after Rake Pierce.”
“He’s gone, sir. As soon as the shooting started between you and Dugan, he ran for his horse and fled the field.”
Stryker smiled inwardly at Birchwood’s choice of words. You can take the boy out of West Point . . .
Trimble stepped through the teeming rain to Stryker’s side. “Cap’n, ol’ Rake’s skedaddled. Left Silas to face the music.” He then saw the body sprawled behind Stryker and Birchwood. “You killed him, Cap’n?” His voice held a note of disbelief.
“I got lucky,” Stryker said. “He didn’t.”
He looked at Cantrell. “That’s one of them down, Don Carlos.”
The Mexican nodded silently, an awareness of the emptiness of revenge in his eyes. The gunman was dead, beyond suffering. There was nothing more to be done with him.
“I’m going after Pierce,” Stryker said.
Trimble was horrified. “Cap’n, ol’ Rake knows mountains like an Apache. He’ll lay up somewhere an’ kill ye fer sure.”
“Maybe my luck will hold.”
“Let me go with you, Cap’n. I’ll smell him out for you.”
Stryker shook his head. “This is personal, Clem, between Pierce and me. I have to do it alone.”
He reached into his saddle roll and pulled out his blouse. Indifferent to the rain streaming over his bare chest and shoulders, he removed the cotton shirt and dragged the blouse over his head.
“If I am to fall,” he said, “I’ll fall as a soldier.”
“Sir, I respectfully request that I accompany the lieutenant.”
“You’re wounded, Mr. Birchwood. I’d say you’ve already done enough. You will remain here until I return.”
“But, sir—”
“That is an order.”
Birchwood looked disappointed, but said only,
“Yes, sir.”
Stryker swung into the saddle and looked down at Cantrell. “I’ll kill him for you, Don Carlos.”
“It is my duty to go with you, Lieutenant.” Stryker smiled. “I appreciate the offer, but you shoot even worse than me. I’ll do this alone.”
“Then go with God, Lieutenant.”
“Clem, south you reckon?” Stryker asked.
“He’s draggin’ a pack mule, Cap’n. Rake badly wants to sell his scalps, especially now when he can keep all the profit.”
Stryker touched his hat and kneed the criollo around the adobe and into the snarling storm. The day was shading darker, shadows gathering on the mountain crevasses and rock ledges, and the wind ravaged through the tall timber. The land shimmered with constant lightning flashes, thunder rolled across the sky, rain fell in tumbling sheets and it seemed to Stryker that the whole world had gone insane.
As he rode nearer to the shelf of lava rock, the unearthly wailing grew louder and seemed to originate from the rock itself. He saw the reason immediately. The wind was forcing itself through tunnels in the lava caused in ancient times by gas bubbles. When the wind gusted, it howled through the cavities and sounded like human wails.
Stryker felt a slight pang of disappointment. He’d been open to the possibility that supernatural forces had helped him kill Dugan. But it had been no such thing . . . just holes in rock.
He rode on, his eyes scanning the way ahead.
Pierce was out there, maybe waiting, and the man was better with the rifle and revolver than he could ever be.
Thus Stryker faced the reality of his situation. It was a truth not calculated to build a man’s confidence.
Chapter 41
Despite the torrential downpour, Pierce had left signs of his passing: a broken branch here, a scuffed rock there, a hoofprint left in deep mud.
Stryker wondered at the man’s clumsiness; then it dawned on him: Pierce was not being careless; he was leading him on . . . to a place of the renegade’s choosing.
Drawing rein, Stryker scanned the terrain ahead of him. Visibility was down to fifty yards or less, and that deeply shadowed. The wind somersaulted through the trees, stripping branches of needles, and the thunder and lightning raged, as dangerous and threatening as a rabid wolf.
Through the steel veil of the rain, Stryker made out a towering parapet of rock cut through by a notch about sixty feet wide, created during some ancient earthshake. The bottom of the cleft was thick with lodgepole pine and tumbled boulders, one of the larger rocks carved into the shape of a skull by centuries of wind and rain.
Stryker’s newfound superstition made him look on the rock as an omen—it was where Pierce could be waiting to bushwhack him.
He pulled his Colt, dismounted, and led his horse into the shelter of some oaks. Keeping to as much cover as he could, he moved carefully toward the notch, pausing now and then to wipe rain from his eyes.
The notch was thirty yards away and there was no sign of Pierce.
Thunder blasted. But this was the thunder of a rifle. Stryker felt a powerful blow slam into his left shoulder. He spun around and dropped, a movement that saved his life. Pierce’s second bullet split the air inches above his head.
Like a wounded animal, Stryker sought the shelter of the trees, burrowing into the wet, mossy earth behind an oak. He lay on his back and touched fingers to his wound. They came away red. He’d been hit hard, maybe so hard he might never be able to get to his feet again.
The thought panicked Stryker. He could not lie there and let Pierce slaughter him.
Struggling against waves of nausea, his head spinning, he rose on one knee and stole a look around the tree trunk. Pierce’s bullet chipped bark an inch from his face, driving wood splinters into his forehead.
Stryker ducked back, breathing hard, and laid the back of his head against the tree. Rain ticked through the branches and the oak talked to the wind in a rustling whisper. The land around him flickered from dark to sizzling white as lightning flashed and made the air smell of a distant sea.
His back against the trunk, Stryker painfully pushed himself to his feet. He turned his face to the rain, mouth open, glorying in its coolness. The oak leaves traced shifting, lacy patterns against the angry sky and he studied them for long moments, wondering at their fragile beauty.
Consciousness was ebbing from Stryker with his blood. Now was the time. But if he was to die, he’d meet his God on his own terms: standing on his feet.
He raised his Colt to shoulder level and stepped from behind the tree and walked into the open.
Rake Pierce stood six feet away, straddle-legged, his gun in his hand, his thick body haloed by rain.
“Stryker, you damned freak,” he said, “now I’ll finish what I started.”
His gun came up, very fast.
Stryker heard a strange, flat
click!
, the sound that always precedes a close lightning strike. A split-second later, even as Pierce’s gun roared, the oak behind Stryker was hit. The bolt stabbed out of the sky like a column of living fire, briefly enveloping both men. They stood like statues bathed in terrible light for an instant, then were blasted to the ground.
The lightning split the oak in half, entirely stripping it of bark and leaves, and a few scarlet roses of flame bloomed briefly before they were pounded into darkness by the rain.
Stryker lay stunned, his face in the mud. He turned and saw the death throes of the oak and realized what had happened. But he had escaped one death, only to face another. Just two yards away, Pierce was on his hands and knees, struggling to get to his feet.
Stryker pushed his Colt in front him, grasping the butt in both hands. He had no hope of rising before Pierce did. Rain battered into his face, ribbons of yellow and scarlet from the searing lightning flash danced in his eyes and the day had darkened into a grim, gray gloom.
He rested the butt of the gun on the muddy ground, pointed it at Pierce and fired.
His bullet crashed into the man’s ribs and Pierce screamed and toppled over onto his right side.
Rake Pierce was not a brave man. His only strength was an ability to put the fear of God in others, women, children and men who knew they could not match his gun skill.
But now hate drove him, not courage.
And it was also hatred that motivated Stryker, binding him to Pierce, as firmly as if they’d come out of the same womb and as unbreakable as the steel shackles the man had used to destroy his face.
Drawing on their last reserves of strength, both men climbed to their feet. They staggered toward each other, shooting as they came. Stryker took another hit, but kept upright. His bullets found Pierce twice, but the man would not die.
Snarling like wolves, they closed on each other. Stryker grabbed Pierce’s gun hand, and found the man had little strength left. He viciously rammed the muzzle of his Colt into Pierce’s right eye and pulled the trigger.
Pierce let out another shriek, then fell on his back, pulling Stryker with him.
That was how Clem Trimble found them at first light the next morning, locked in an unholy embrace, snarls of hatred still on their faces.
Trimble pulled Stryker off Pierce and clucked like a mother hen over his wounds.
“Cap’n,” he said aloud, with only himself to hear,
“I reckon if you survive, you’ll have used up all nine of them cat lives o’ your’n.”
Chapter 42
The officer’s mess at Fort Apache was decorated with swaths of red, white and blue bunting to honor the visit of Senator Otis Henry Nelson and his lady. The distinguished legislator was on an inspection tour of the Southwest, “to show,” he was fond of saying, “that Washington cares about our boys who wear the blue.”
Above the rock fireplace, beside a black-draped portrait of the gallant Custer, but at a respectful distance, the calendar tacked to the wall proclaimed that the date was February 16, 1899.
“So, Lieutenant Colonel Stryker, I hear you’re shipping out for the Philippines tomorrow with the valiant Seventh.”
“Not the entire regiment, sir, only a company. The rest of the Seventh will follow later.”
“Give them hell, Colonel,” Nelson said. He was a small, thin man with a few wisps of dry, mousy hair combed across a bald pate. A pair of pince-nez glasses, attached to a cord, were perched at the end of a pointed and permanently red and sniffling nose. “Keep the saber sharp, I say, and give those savages the keen edge of it, like we did the Apaches. Huh, Colonel Stryker, is that not the way?”
“Apache warriors never let a soldier close enough to hit them with a saber, Senator,” Stryker said. “As for the Filipino rebels being savages, I don’t think—”
His voice trailed away. Nelson was no longer listening. The man was staring over Stryker’s shoulder, his eyes searching for the really important people.
“Yes, yes, Colonel, very interesting,” Nelson said absently. “If you will excuse me . . .” He stepped around Stryker and raised a hand. “Ah, General Funston, a word with you . . .”
“You look well, Steve. Even taller than I remembered, if a little grayer.”
Stryker turned toward the woman’s voice.
“And the full beard becomes you so,” she added.
It took Stryker a few uncomfortable moments before he remembered the face. “It’s wonderful to see you again,” he said. “After all these years.”
He was taken aback. Still dressed in a mourning gown of rustling black two years after her father’s death, to call Millie matronly would have been a compliment. Major Birchwood, less courteous but more accurate, would say later, “Hell, her ass is an axe-handle wide.”
“I heard about your father, Millie, or should I say Mrs. Nelson?” Stryker said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“We are old friends, Steve. Millie is just fine.” The woman’s eyes, made small by the upward pressure of her chubby cheeks, misted. “Papa gave his all to Washington and our great nation, but in the end it was just too much for his poor, noble heart.”
Millie dabbed at her eyes with a small lace handkerchief. “However, the senator has been a tower of strength, supporting me in my time of great need. The senator and I have three sons, all made in his image. Two are destined for the clergy and the oldest will follow his dear papa into politics.” She added, with some pride but little affection, “The senator is a remarkable man.”