The woman laid her rifle against the wagon and stood facing him, keeping her distance. “I know where we got it, pops. South of here. We were camped about two miles north of the Big Bend, right close to a mountain.”
“Sounds like the Packsaddle to me, ma’am,” Trimble said. He nodded. “We’ll ride around them parts, I reckon.”
“It wasn’t the mountain that gave us smallpox, Mister. Two men came riding into our camp. Big men and well armed. They’d brought whiskey with them and stayed for the night and we girls showed them a real good time. Then, at first light, they came to me and said they’d no money. But the bigger of the two, a man wearing buckskins who called himself Silas—”
Stryker was suddenly alert. “Ma’am, was his last name Dugan?”
The woman shook her head. “Since when does a man give a whore his last name? He called himself Silas and the man who was with him Rake.”
“When was this?” Stryker asked.
“Nine days ago. The smallpox took us real fast.” Stryker and Birchwood exchanged glances, and Trimble stepped into the silence. “Ma’am,” he said, his voice hollow, “he didn’t give you blankets, did he?”
“He said he was camped nearby and he’d stashed away food and blankets to hide them from the Apaches. He said blankets were better than money, because we’d need them if we planned on heading for Fort Bowie. He said the nights get cold in the Chiricahuas. He brought us the blankets and some food and right after that, we all got sick.”
Suddenly Clem Trimble looked old. “Ma’am, the Mexicans pay Silas Dugan in gold to spread disease among the Indians. I reckon he aimed on doing it to the Apaches, but they went on the warpath, broke down their rancherias and spoiled his plans. He spreads smallpox with infected blankets because he had the pox once hisself and it can’t trouble him a second time.”
For the first time the woman acted like the girl she was. Tears started in her hot eyes and she said, “We drank his whiskey and done everything for him a man could daydream about. Why would he do that to us?”
His voice clicking in his throat, Trimble said, “Because he’s Silas Dugan and he thought it was a funny joke to play on you, ma’am.”
“Can a man be that evil?”
“If you’ll forgive me for sounding like a preacher, ma’am, evil is at war with the entire creation. That’s how ol’ Silas thinks of hisself, a man at war with God hisself and the rest of humanity.”
A silence followed that grew, then stretched taut, and Stryker decided to break it. “Mount up,” he said.
He swung into the saddle of the criollo and then kneed the horse toward the woman, keeping his distance. “Is there anything I can do for you, ma’am? If I meet up with General Crook’s command, I could send a doctor back here.”
The woman shook her head. “Thank you, but we’ll be dead by then.” She lifted her eyes to Stryker. “Have you whiskey?”
“Sorry. I don’t have any.”
“No matter; we’ll just die sober.” Her fevered gaze softened and Stryker was no longer looking into the hard eyes of a whore but of a woman in pain. “Lieutenant, my name is Stella Parker. Will you remember that?”
“Do you have kinfolk I can contact, ma’am?”
“No, no folks. Just say my name sometimes. I mean years in the future, will you say, ‘Stella Parker,’ now and then?”
Too overcome to speak, Stryker nodded.
“Thank you,” the woman called Stella said. “Thank you most kindly.”
Chapter 29
Stryker and the others rode due south, in the direction of Packsaddle Mountain. Riding through rugged, difficult terrain, they crossed Box Canyon and were within two miles of High Lonesome, yet another forbidding chasm, when thunderheads began to build above the Swisshelm Mountains to the west.
Within minutes the clouds had turned black and the air smelled of ozone and of the pines that were already tossing their heads, worried by a rising wind.
“Big blow comin’ up, Cap’n,” Trimble told Stryker. He winked. “We don’t want to be caught in no canyon when the rains come; a man can drown quicker’n scat that way.”
Stryker was irritated, not at the old man but at the volatile temperament of the desert summer. He was praying that Pierce was still camped close to the Saddleback and had not already slipped south into Mexico.
“Look for a likely place to hole up,” he said. He looked around himself, but saw nothing that promised shelter. Trimble was right; there was always a danger of flash floods in the canyons and arroyos. They would have to reach higher ground.
Now the scowling clouds above them were black. Thunder banged and lightning flashed skeletal fingers that clawed the face of the sky. Rain hammered down, falling like a cascade of stinging steel needles.
Stryker turned in the saddle. “Up ahead!” He had to yell over the noise of the storm. He waved the others forward.
He pushed the little criollo up a steep, pine-covered rise and headed toward a limestone overhang, jutting out from the lower slope of a shallow peak. The overhang was low, no more than six feet, holding up a detritus of fallen rocks, whitened tree limbs and rubble. But it covered a deep gash in the slope that went back fifteen feet, gradually sinking lower until it petered out at a rock face. It would shelter both men and horses until the storm passed.
The wind ravaged through the trees like a shark, shredding pine needles, cartwheeling them into the air. Lightning blazed and thunder roared in the voice of an angry god.
“Hell,” Trimble said, throwing himself off the back of Birchwood’s horse, “it’s like the end of the world.”
Stryker and Birchwood led their mounts into the shelter of the overhang. The horses were frightened, their eyes showing arcs of white, but they stood where they were, preferring even that meager shelter to what lay outside.
Stryker stepped deeper into the cleft, found a place to sit and built a cigarette. He wondered how the women were faring back at their camp. Huddled in the wagon probably, waiting for death to take them.
“Stella Parker,” he said aloud.
Birchwood looked at him strangely, but said nothing.
“The woman with the rifle,” Stryker said. “Her name was Stella Parker.”
“Oh,” Birchwood said.
Stryker glanced up at him. “Yes, that was her name all right.”
After the storm passed, they mounted again and rode south and that night camped in the looming shadow of the Packsaddle.
As though ashamed of its temper tantrum, the desert compensated by putting on a show. The violet sky was clear, glittering with far-flung stars, and a bright moon rose, braiding the pines with mother-of-pearl light. A soft breeze rustled, heavy with the scent of damp moss, and out in the darkness the waking coyotes shook themselves and sprayed from their coats water that haloed around them like beads of silver.
Stryker sat by the fire, drinking coffee and smoking. Opposite him, Birchwood was deep in thought, his young face crimsoned by the flames.
“Something troubling you, Mr. Birchwood?” Stryker asked. “You still tearing yourself apart over your whiskey bender?”
The young man shook his head. “No, sir. My betrothed can’t hear me, I know, but I’ve made another vow that I will not enter houses of ill repute and that my lips will ne’er again touch whiskey.”
“Very commendable, Mr. Birchwood. I’m sure your lady would be pleased to know that her cavalier has sworn off whores and strong drink.”
Birchwood looked sharply at Stryker, but the lieutenant’s face was empty.
After the time it took him to light another cigarette and sample his coffee, Stryker said, “So what’s sticking in your craw?”
Birchwood poked a stick deeper into the fire, throwing up a shower of sparks. “I think we should head back to Fort Bowie, sir. We’ve followed our orders and ascertained that there are no Apaches within miles of the post. Now it’s time to go back.”
“We will, just as soon as I settle with Rake Pierce.”
�
��We have no orders to that effect, sir.”
“Mr. Birchwood, the man is a deserter, a murderer, a gunrunner and a scalp-hunter. He needs killing. I don’t require orders to that effect.”
“Sir, have you noticed that there are only two of us?”
“Trimble doesn’t count, huh?”
“He’s out of it. This isn’t his fight.”
“Or yours, Mr. Birchwood?”
The young officer hesitated, then said, “You asked me what was troubling me. Well, sir, it’s the right or wrong of going after Pierce that troubles me. I don’t know where my duty lies. But I doubt that giving my life for my senior officer’s personal vendetta should be a part of it.”
Birchwood’s comment had stung, and Stryker felt molten steel scald his insides. “Your duty, Lieutenant, is to follow orders and I’m giving you one now. You will join me in the pursuit of the deserter and renegade Sergeant Rake Pierce. Have I made myself perfectly clear?”
The young officer’s face was stiff, the iron discipline and respect for authority of the frontier army presenting him with an impassible barrier. “Yes, sir. Perfectly, sir.”
“I’m very glad to hear that, Mr. Birchwood,” Stryker said.
Suddenly Trimble was beside him. “Don’t look now, Cap’n, but we got comp’ny,” he said.
Chapter 30
Stryker unbuttoned his holster flap as he rose to his feet. Two men sat their horses in the shadows, black outlines against the moon-raked night. Some primitive instinct warned him of danger and he felt a malevolence gather around him, as though the air had suddenly grown colder.
“Hello the camp!” one of the riders yelled.
Stryker stepped out of the firelight. “Come on ahead.” Somewhere to his left he heard Trimble cycle his Spencer. Birchwood had faded to his right, half in shadow.
He watched the riders come, aware that he’d not been alone—Clem and Birchwood had sensed the brooding danger as he had.
The two men stayed beyond the rim of the firelight. “Smelled your coffee,” the man to the right of Stryker said. “We could sure use a cup.”
Before Stryker could answer, the rider looked beyond him into the gloom. “Clem Trimble, is that you I see skulking back there? I know I heard your Spencer.”
The old prospector stepped out of the gloom. He let his rifle hang loose in one hand and knuckled his forehead with the other. “Yeah, it’s me, Billy. Ol’ Clem Trimble as ever was.”
The man called Billy smiled. “You loco old coot, I thought your hair would be hanging in some Apache buck’s wickiup by now.”
“Apaches never troubled me none, Billy. Until lately, that is.” He grinned. “It’s real nice to make your acquaintance again, Billy. I don’t recollect meeting your compadre there.”
“This here is Tom Diamond from up Denver way,” Billy said. He was talking to Trimble but his eyes were trying to pin Stryker to the darkness.
“Right pleased to meet you, Tom,” Trimble said.
“Last I heard o’ you was when you gunned ol’ Shep Shannon down Abilene way.”
Diamond’s head turned slowly, like a lizard. “Shut your trap, old man,” he said. “I’m tired of hearing you talk.”
Trimble nodded, smiling, saying nothing.
The old prospector looked afraid, and Stryker reckoned he had every right to be. There was an air of malice and threat about the two riders and an aura of danger that seemed to wrap them both to the eyes in a sinister black shroud.
“Still want that coffee?” Stryker asked.
The man called Diamond answered. “Sure we do, but we’ll get it ourselves . . . afterward.”
“Cap’n, this here is Billy Lee, the man I was telling you about if you recollect, him being kin to ol’ Bobby Lee an’ all.”
Trimble was warning him, Stryker knew. He was stretched tight, his mouth dry, a cold sweat on him.
Lee nodded. “The old coot’s right. Cousin kin to the great man himself. And that’s why I don’t cotton to Blue bellies, especially ugly ones like you.” The man grinned and turned to his companion. “You ever in all your born days see an uglier Yankee than that ’un?”
Diamond shook his head. “Can’t say as I have.” “Know your enemy” was a saying at the Point, and Stryker took time to study the two riders. Both were dressed like Texas drovers, but they wore guns, belts, boots and spurs that no cowhand could afford. That’s where their similarities ended.
Lee was short, thin, with the eyes of a snake. Like any westerner who laid even a tenuous claim to manhood, his top lip was covered in a downy fuzz that did nothing to conceal a small, cruel mouth. He was poised, eager and ready to kill.
By contrast Diamond was a tall, handsome man with a thick dragoon mustache, black hair falling to his shoulders in glossy ringlets. He wore two Remingtons strapped to his chest in shoulder holsters, a gun rig Stryker had never seen before. At first glance he looked like a thinking man, but that was an illusion. Diamond was a mindless killer, and now he wore that brand on his face like a mark of Cain.
Lee was talking. “What are you soldier boys doing here?”
Stryker began, “My name is—”
“I know your damned name. I asked you what you’re doing here.”
Anger flared in Stryker. “If you know my name, then you know what I’m doing here.”
“You tell me, soldier boy.”
“We’re scouting for Apaches.” This from Birchwood, who looked like a towheaded farm boy in the ruddy firelight.
“You’re a damned liar,” Lee snarled. “You already know Geronimo is being chased into the Madres by Crook. You two are looking for a man. A man by the name of Rake Pierce, a real good friend of ours.”
“As the lieutenant told you, we’re scouting for Apaches,” Stryker said.
“What is this, a goddamned liars’ meetin’?” Lee asked. “Stryker, we got us a Mescalero breed who’s been trailing you. He seen you talk to them poxed whores, then followed you here.” The gunman smiled. “The only reason you’re at the Packsaddle is because the whores told you Mr. Pierce had a camp close by.” He grinned like a death’s head. “Well, them whores won’t be talkin’ to anybody else.”
“Her name was Stella Parker,” Stryker said.
“What the hell are you yapping about?”
“One of the women you killed. Her name was Stella Parker.”
“Like I give a shit.”
“Here’s my offer,” Stryker said, a terrible anger in him. “You tell Pierce and Dugan to surrender themselves up to me by noon tomorrow and we’ll head back to Fort Bowie where they will receive a fair trial and benefit of clergy.”
Lee laughed. He turned to Diamond. “Did you hear that? He’s making us an offer.”
Diamond did the lizard turn of his head. “Billy, you talk too much. Let’s get it done.”
Then his hands streaked for his guns.
Stryker was drawing.
During a gunfight, thoughts don’t proceed through a man’s mind in an orderly fashion. They flash into his head instantly, fully formed, like images at a magic lantern show. As they now did for Stryker.
I’m slow. Way too slow.
My body is already weakened. I can’t take another hit.
Dive! Hit the ground!
Both Lee and Diamond were firing.
Stryker hit the dirt hard, rolled and came up on one knee.
The two gunmen were fighting their skittish horses, Lee turning backward in the saddle to get off a shot.
A bullet cracked past Stryker’s head. He fired. Missed.
Trimble’s Spencer boomed. Diamond’s saddle horn disintegrated and the man jerked backward.
Birchwood was on his belly, his Colt straight out in front of him, grasped in both hands. He was firing steadily, methodically, running out his five-shot string.
Stryker fired at Lee. A hit. The gunman’s thin chest seemed to cave as he bent over, blood on his lips, his shoulders pushing forward.
The Spencer blasted another shot
. Diamond was hit hard. He was firing both his Remingtons, the big revolvers rolling with the recoils.
Trimble yelped in pain and his rifle thudded to the ground. He was out of the fight. Birchwood was trying to reload, his fumbling fingers dropping shiny brass rounds onto the grass.
Stryker rose to his feet. He raised his Colt and fired at Diamond. A clean miss. He fired again. But the gunman was already sliding from the saddle. He hit the ground with a thud.
Like Trimble, Billy Lee was out of the fight. Slumped over and still, Lee let his horse carry him toward the surrounding trees at a walk. Birchwood was on his feet. He assumed a target shooter’s pose he’d been taught at the Point, his revolver held high at arm’s length, left foot tucked behind his right heel. He fired, thumbed the hammer, then fired again. Lee rolled slowly from the saddle.
Thick gray gunsmoke twined through the clearing, silvered by moonlight.
Stryker turned. “Clem, are you hit?”
The old man cackled. “Ol’ Tom clipped a finger off’n me, Cap’n. Cut her as clean as a whistle.”
“Mr. Birchwood?”
“Unhurt, sir.” The young officer stepped to Stryker and looked him over. “You seem to be all of a piece, sir.”
Stryker nodded, amazed that all three of them were still alive.
Trimble, holding a bloody left hand, offered the reason. “We was lucky, Cap’n. Green horses and men who had killed too often and too easily. That breeds carelessness and they was only half trying. Then they suddenly knowed they wasn’t dealin’ with pilgrims, but by then it was too late for them.” He shook his head. “It’s a real shame, because Billy Lee was one of the best around, an’ him bein’ close kin to ol’ Bobby an all.”
“Let me see your hand,” Stryker said.
The ring finger of the old man’s left hand was gone, blown off clean at the knuckle. “The trigger was shot off’n my Spencer,” Trimble said. “Gonna need a gunsmith afore she’s right again.”
“We have to do something with your hand,” Stryker said. But just what, he did not know.
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