by Chuck Tyrell
Stryker didn’t have an answer. “Let’s try to get some sleep,” he said.
Chapter Eight – … to Catch a Thief
Stryker felt a presence, not one of danger, but still he cracked his eyes just a little bit, only enough to see what was in front of him.
“Aha. I see you are awake, Gopan.”
“Yes, Dahtegte. I am awake.” Stryker could not keep the frustration from his voice. “Awake, with hardly enough spit to keep my tongue from cracking.”
“I see that you White Eyes dig where there is no water.”
“Looked a likely place.”
“That is not a good way to find water. Here.” She handed Stryker a truncated gourd. It held water, which he drank in three swallows.
“Where’s you get the water?”
“Under the cottonwoods.”
Stryker sat up and looked around. A new hole gaped in the sandy floor of the gully. The morning sun had not yet baked the wetness from the sand that rimmed the hole. “Why there?”
“That’s where the water is.” Dahtegte’s face showed a hint of a smile.
“How’d you know?”
The biggest cottonwood is always closest to the water.”
Stryker nodded. “Not always downstream from the grove, then?”
“Almost never.”
“I need to let the Misfits drink.”
“They drank water while you slept. Me. Bly. Lion. Ponies. We give them water.”
“While I slept?”
“Yes.”
“Top!”
“Yo.”
“You let me sleep while these Injuns dug for water?”
Dahtegte puffed up. “I am Indeh. One of the walking dead. If I please, you cannot find me. If I please, I can find you anywhere.”
“Stryker snorted. He handed the half gourd back to her and stalked off to see where he should have dug for water.”
As the Apache woman said, the hole was directly in front of the largest cottonwood, which seemed to spread its roots in an attempt to hoard any water from its smaller neighbors.
“Hmmm.” Stryker took note. And when he looked into the hole, water came up to within two feet of the gully floor. He vowed to remember.
Stryker caught a whiff of smoke tainted by roasting meat. “What ... ”
Samson came toward him with a ground squirrel spitted on a mesquite branch. “Not New Orleans Cajun style, Cap, but fresh and well done. What’ll it be?”
“A leg’d be good.”
Samson grabbed a leg bone and pulled a well-roasted thigh from the squirrel. Handing it to Stryker, he said, “Plenny more where that came from, Cap.”
Squirrel and roasted pads from prickly pear cacti took the edge off the Misfits’ hunger. They hunkered down under the cottonwoods, right where Samson told them to.
Stryker stood up in front of the Misfits. Samson started to call them to attention, but Stryker stopped him. “Nothing Army out here, Top. Nobody saluting anybody else. Nobody shouting orders. Everybody doing what’s right in the situation. Now. We got good scouts. Lion and Ponies. Bly and Dahtegte. Let’s listen to what Bly says about Yuyutsu before we set our route for today. Bly, tell ’em.”
Bly stepped over to where Stryker stood, then hunkered down to put himself at the same eye level as the Misfits. “The man Yuyutsu is a good fighter and warrior. He hates White Eyes. He hates Nakaye. He lost his mother, younger brother, and little sister at Tres Castillos. His other younger brother was killed in Apache Pass. His anger has boiled in his head and in his heart until he now can only see death for those who invade our lands. Babe, woman, man, boy, or girl, Yuyutsu kills all Nakaye. Mexicanos pay silver pesos for black hair of Apaches, not only grown men. Also women and children, even babes. He is not right. But I understand him. I will find Yuyutsu for you. Cap says you will fight only warriors.”
“That is true,” Stryker said. He looked every Misfit in the eye, one at a time. “We’re not here to kill women and children. We’re here to hit Yuyutsu, a man who’s gone a little crazy. We can’t have him around to slaughter them what looks for a new life in this land. Only by eliminating crazy men like him and his band can we bring peace to these mountains.”
He stood there for a moment. “I talk too much,” he mumbled and sat down.
Bly continued. “Apaches move by day. They fight by day. We will move by night and find our ambush spot by night. Apaches have long eyes. Their lookouts stand high on the mountain. They see all that moves. Now. We will wait here while the sun travels. Sleep. Every warrior sleeps when he can. I have spoken.”
“That does it for now,” Stryker said. “Check your weapons. Keep ‘em close to hand. Don’t sleep all bunched up in one place. Spread out. Bly’ll have the next rendezvous place picked out by sundown. That’s all.”
The men scattered, each looking for a shady spot that was inconspicuous at the same time. Stryker watched with approval. Ben Stroud hadn’t worked out, but he’d found Samson Kearns, a Top Soldier worth fifty times as much. And Bly. Even though it was unusual for an Apache to go up against another Apache, there was something about the renegade Yuyutsu that Bly hated. And Ferguson was down with a broken leg. Someone would have to stay here with him. But who? Chances were he’d need Sharpy Bailor the long shooter. The Greer boys looked after each other naturally, a good team. Wouldn’t do to break them up. If it came to stealing horses, no one was better than Boogie Hill. In fact, when it came right down to it, every Misfit had in important skill. Which was the reason he was chosen in the first place. A Squad wasn’t like any other. Those other troops were just a cog in the machine of the Army. A Troop had misfits for men and the General of the Army of the Southwest as its patron and official backer. Now it was up to A Squad to prove to the general that his trust in the Misfits was not misplaced.
Stryker started to go back to his hidey hole under the overhanging branches of the paloverde, then stopped and motioned Samson over.
“What’ll it be, Cap?”
“We’ll want lookouts, Top.”
“I figured so. Mick Finney is up on the mesa and Paddy O’Malley’s watching from that bluff.” Samson waved a hand at a rugged face of red rock that looked like it had been forced up through the desert floor by a giant’s hand.
“Good man, Top. Four-hour shifts, then?”
“That’s the way I see it, Cap.”
Stryker nodded. “Never know what’s coming, Top.”
“Nope. But we can be ready, sure enough.”
“That we can. I’ll be under the paloverde,” he said, and headed for the green tree. He checked rifle and pistol, made sure their mechanisms worked as they should, then settled down to get some shuteye.
But sleep didn’t come. Instead, Stryker’s mind became a hornet’s nest of memories and possibilities.
“Never do what the enemy expects,” Professor Francis Smith said. “Hannibal took elephants over the Pyrenees and beat much larger Roman forces at Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae. He won because he knew his own strengths and his enemy’s weaknesses.”
Then the professor added a very important bit. “The Romans hit Carthage while Hannibal was still in Italy, so he had to rush back to protect his homeland. Scipio Africanus, the Roman general, spent a lot of time studying Hannibal’s tactics, and developed counter tactics of his own. Scipio thrashed Hannibal at Zama. Point. When your enemy is successful, study him. Find out the whys of his success. Then you can come up with a way to stymie him.”
Prisoners at Alton had lots of time to talk about the war and why the CSA lost. What’s more, not one in a hundred were officers.
“The South started to lose after Stonewall Jackson got himself killed,” Phil Kelly said. He was only a lieutenant, but prison kind of leveled out the ranks. “JEB Stuart learned war under Ol’ Stonewall. I mean, JEB allus knew what the Yanks was doing and what they was planning to do. Why, that man and his horsemen rode all the way around the Yank’s whole Army of the Potomac. Twice he done that. With JEB in the saddle, Gener
al Lee always knew what was going on over on the Yankee side of the fence. And ya gotta know what the other guy’s thinking and how he’s moving. JEB got cut off from General Lee at Brandy Station. That may be why we never won at Gettysburg.”
George Standfield put his two cents in. “Yes, and Sheridan threw more’n ten thousand cavalrymen in against JEB at Yellow Tavern. JEB and Fitzhugh only had about five thousand. All them Yanks hit our boys hard and JEB, he rode out front to give us’ns more fight. The First Virginia pushed them Yankees back. They was running. Then that Yankee private, one who was running away, just up and turned around, and shot JEB Stuart down. Wasn’t no more than twenty yards off. With JEB laying there dying, the heart went out of the First, and Sheridan’s cavalry got us on the run. Fitzhugh just didn’t have it.”
“That fight at Yellow Tavern didn’t mean a thing,” said Jim Elliot. “Nothing except for JEB Stuart’s death. Without him, General Lee just never had useful cavalry whatsoever.”
So what does all that history mean to me? Elephants. Winners becoming losers. New commanders outfoxing old ones. JEB Stuart. JEB Stuart. Eyes for Robert E. Lee. Without eyes, even the best general can’t win, no matter the odds.
Yuyutsu attacked the Wasserman wagon train from ambush. But the army always chased. The army always seemed to be out to punish someone for something. Always following. Point. If he was to turn the tables on Yuyutsu, it would have to be from ambush. Problem was, as soon as Apaches started taking casualties, they scattered. Ran like quail. So the Misfits would have to cover possible escape routes as well as the point of ambush. All with a dozen men. No, with eleven men, Stryker included. Willem Black could stay behind with Ferguson. Bly and Dahtegte could not be expected to side with White Eyes against their own kind.
Effective tactics tend to be simple. Or so said VMI Professor of Tactics Francis Smith.
Despite the noonday heat, Stryker slept. Still, the day was yet bright and the sun no more than three-quarters across the sky when something woke Stryker. As usual, he cracked an eyelid before moving. This time, there was no Dahtegte there to wake him. A little disappointed, he sat up, slowly and carefully, so no sudden movement of bird or snake would give him away.
Nothing moved. Nor was any Misfit visible to the casual eye. Stryker nodded to himself. As it should be.
Samson Kearns came like a shadow. “What?” The word barely reached Stryker’s ears.
Stryker put a hand on Samson’s shoulder and placed his mouth close to Samson’s ear. “Top. I need you, Bly, and the other scouts to gather round. It’s time to talk war.
~*~
The raid marked a second double handful—twenty in all—since Yuyutsu started leading his twenty-seven warriors against the hated Nakaye. Twenty times he led a chosen few, never more than thirty, to strike at villages in Mexico. Sometimes the village was destroyed, leaving men and women, children and babies all dead. Each with a spot scalped from their heads and stuffed into their mouths or left on their foreheads, to show all that scalps of Nakaye were worthless, even though those same Mexicans paid in silver pesos for Apache scalps.
Most villages offered little in the way of plunder, as people in Sonora tended to live hand-to-mouth with little laid by and hardly any firearms worthy of use by a Nedni brave.
But in this raid, Yuyutsu’s men hit a wealthy rancho, which was like a small but very rich village. True, the vaqueros fought more skillfully and more fiercely than farmers, but the rancho had good horses and good mules.
Yuyutsu’s raiders carried away eleven Remington rolling block rifles, two unopened boxes of center-fire ammunition, and twenty-two serape blankets. Each brave picked for himself, taking knives, hair combs, trinkets for their wives ... Yuyutsu did not keep count.
Each raider picked one horse from the rancho’s remuda to take back to camp. the rest were shot so enemies could not use them. They also led away four pack mules.
Meat from one of the mules roasted on the coals of the camp’s main fire. In time, all four mules would be eaten. Little meat was as tasty as mule meat. The Apaches who followed Yuyutsu were uncharacteristically noisy. Tonight, they would celebrate. Tomorrow they would once more be taciturn mountain-bred warriors who lived in complete harmony with Mother Earth.
Already Yuyutsu planned another raid into the country of the hated Nakaye. At this moment, all were satisfied with fine roasted mule meat and tiswin fermented from Mexican corn.
Although Yuyutsu raided for revenge, to repay the Nakaye for their cowardly killing at Animas, where they had invited Apaches to feast and make merry, as was sometimes the custom at Mexican villages. They’d put out tables of food and barrels of White Eye firewater, a wicked drink that robbed a man of common sense so that he could not tell when danger lurked.
Yuyusutsu was not at the massacre at Animas, but his father—Juan Jose Compa—an Apache held captive by Mexicans for the years of his youth, was among the dead. The Nakaye and their swinging cannon killed more than a hundred Indeh that day. It was also the day ten-year-old Yuyutsu vowed that ten Nakaye Mexicans must die to atone for each Indeh and one hundred or more must die for the killing of Juan Jose Compa. With strong white teeth, he bit off a large chunk of coal-roasted mule. He would make the Nakaye pay, and if White Eye soldiers got in the way, they too would die.
Chewing on a mouthful of meat, Yuyutsu renewed the vow he’d made when only ten. Now, at the age of forty, he no longer counted the number of Nakaye his men had killed. No matter how many, it was never enough.
A rumor came to Yuyutsu’s ears. The Nakaye, unable to win any fight with any Apache anywhere, had asked the White Eye bluecoats to send soldiers into Mexico to root the Apaches from their hideaway camps in the Sierra Madres. The rumor brought no fear to Yuyutsu’s heart. The blue coated Americans were as clumsy in the desert as were the Nakaye ... maybe more so. He smiled as he gnawed on mule meat. More White Eyes, more Mexicanos, more fighters to kill as they had killed his father at Animas, thirty years ago.
A youngster, one appointed to lookout duty, approached. “Older brother,” he said, “a man comes, wishing to speak to Yuyutsu.”
Yuyutsu said nothing, but gave the youngster his full attention.
“He says that he is of the White Mountain tribe, that his chief is Alchesay, that he would talk to Yuyutsu.”
Yuyutsu still said nothing.
“He says his name is Bly.”
Chapter Nine – Sometimes It Takes A Woman
Lion came. Ponies came. The Top Soldier came. But no Bly, and no Dahtegte.
“This looks like it, Cap,” Samson Kearns said.
“Where are the Apaches?”
“God only knows. A man only sees an Apache that wants to be seen.”
“Be good to have horses,” Lion said.
“Easier,” Stryker said, “easier, but Apaches will figure anyone after them will ride horses. That, and we don’t plan to chase the renegade, we want him and his bunch to run into our ambush.”
“Easy to say.”
“I’m aware of that. And I’m wondering where our Apache scouts’ve gone.”
“I am here.” Dahtegte stepped into the circle and hunkered down beside Stryker.
“Where’s Bly?”
“Scouting.”
“Do you have any idea where the renegades are? And where they’re going?”
“Yuyutsu’s main camp is near the Sacred Mountain, the one White Eyes call Graham. But he is not there. Only mothers and children.”
“I’m not interested in women and children. Where’s Yuyutsu?”
Dahtegte stood. She looked down on Stryker. “Do not think that Apache women are weak and obedient. Hear this. When Apache woman becomes Apache man’s wife, he becomes her family, he moves to her wickiup. Women work and hold tribes together. Men hunt, raid, get revenge, act like man. Woman allows it.”
She began a chant, almost under her breath. She closed her eyes. She spread her arms with hands open and palms to the sky. Her chant came softly but with incredi
ble strength.
Gooseflesh spread up Stryker’s arms and across his shoulders.
Slowly, Dahtegte turned, her body the axis and her arms, straight out from her shoulders, forming the needle of a human compass. Her right arm passed a point that would be south southwest on a compass rose. Dahtegte paused. Then began her chant again, this time turning in the opposite direction.
She stopped.
“Apaches in that direction,” she said, pointing a few degrees south of south southwest. “They are nearly fifty miles away.”
“How do you know?”
“Power.”
“Power?”
Dahtegte nodded. “Every Apache warrior has a Power. For me and for Lozen, the Power shows us where enemies are. For you here, Yuyutsu is enemy.”
Stryker didn’t know whether to believe her or not.
“Cap? I reckon that gal’s right. They’s voodoo people amongst we’uns what know impossible things. No way they could know, but they does. I say we listen to the Apach’.”
“It’s daytime. They’ll be moving.”
“Resting,” Dahtegte said. “Perhaps talking to Bly.”
Stryker could not believe what she said. “What did you say! Bly’s with the renegade?”
The woman warrior nodded. “He must find out what Yuyutsu is thinking, without letting our enemy know what we are thinking.”
“They’ll kill him.”
Dahtegte shook her head. “Bly is wild ... no, what do you say ... like a coyote, very hard to catch.”
“Sun’s going down. We’ve got to move. I figure we can make fifty miles by morning. But without Bly, I don’t know where to go.” Stryker rubbed a hand over the bristle on his face and took a step away from the Apache woman.
“You don’t trust Dahtegte?”
“For what? Of course I trust you.”
“Then listen.”
Stryker folded his arms across his chest and nodded to Dahtegte. “All right. You tell us where to go, then.”
“To the dip between the Big Hatchet and Little Hatchet mountains. Forty miles. Maybe a little more.”