Stryker's Woman

by Chuck Tyrell

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Is that smoke I see?” Cat pointed at faint gray tendrils seeming to rise from a coulee off to the east.

  “Could be, ma’am. Best we get back to the party, I’d say. If that is smoke, they’d be Injuns around. The two of us ain’t much of an army to be having to fight Injuns, if it comes to that.”

  O’Malley turned the bay as if to retrace their tracks to the hunting party, but Cat remained where she was.

  “Miss. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Oh my, sergeant. Are you so afraid of smoke and shadows?” Cat shaded her eyes, looking at the far-off haze. “It may not be smoke at all.”

  “Miss. We don’t take chances. We act like it is smoke, and we act like it’s made by hostiles. Come!”

  “Sergeant! Look!” Cat’s forefinger pointed to the northwest, where four Indian men on small wiry ponies came from the shelter of a small copse of single-leaf ash.

  “Jayzus! Ride, Miss. Ride like you never rode before!”

  But Cat didn’t spur the buckskin. Instead, she snicked at the horse and walked him straight at the Indian braves. They pulled up and waited.

  Cat reined up a dozen feet short of the warriors. “Who are you?”

  One thumped his chest. “Avonaco. White man say, Lean Bear. You?”

  “Cat.”

  “Cat?”

  “Oui. Yes. I am Cat.”

  “You bring many soldiers, white men.”

  “Hunters.”

  “Maybe they hunt Cheyenne.” Maybe we take Cat woman, go. Soldiers no come.”

  Cat smiled. “You are not strong enough to take me unless I decide to go.”

  Leaning Bear snorted. “You say.”

  Cat nodded. “I say. Who among you is strong enough.” She stepped down from the buckskin, unbuckled the Colt Lightning’s rig from her waist, and hung it from the saddle. “I am Cat. I say not one of you is strong enough to take me.” She stared at Leaning Bear. “You?” She focused on each of the other three men in turn, asking each of them, “You?”

  None moved. None answered her question. Then, without another word, the Indians peeled off and rode away, disappearing among the ash trees in minutes.

  O’Malley came up. “Miss, you’re plumb crazy.”

  “Does not appear to be the case,” Cat said. “The Indians are gone. None would try to take me by force.”

  “We’d better head back.”

  Cat buckled on the Colt and mounted. “You don’t need to tell the Baron of this, nor the Captain.”

  “Can’t promise that, ma’am. What you did was downright dangerous.”

  “The red men are gone,” Cat said.

  “No way of telling for sure, ma’am. They could be waiting just around the next stand of brush.”

  “I would like to follow, to see where they went.”

  “No ma’am, that’s crazy.”

  Cat jabbed the knobs of her spurs into the buckskin’s belly and he leaped ahead, running straight for the trees where the Indians had disappeared. O’Malley had no choice but to follow as fast as his bay cavalry mount could go.

  The cavalry hat slipped from Cat’s head to hang by its chinstrap over her streaming hair. She laughed out loud. Oh how she loved to make asses of men who thought they knew everything and paraded about as if they were members of the Spartan Three Hundred at Thermopylae.

  She angled past the copse where the Indians disappeared, keeping to the grassy open ground. The buckskin loved to run, and he left O’Malley’s cavalry mount laboring far behind.

  As Cat thundered over a low saddleback, she heard a hoarse scream. She threw a glance over her shoulder in time to see O’Malley fall from his horse, an arrow protruding from his back. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she should turn back to help the sergeant, but Indian ponies dashing from the screen of ash trees she’d just passed told her to push ahead. Cat put spurs to Cheval’s ribs again, and he responded with a burst of speed. As the buckskin sped onward, Cat fought against panic that tried to force its way into her mind. O’Malley was gone. And it was her fault. She gritted her teeth, trying to force the guilt away. The hunting party was far behind, and who know what lay ahead?

  Upcropping granite stood like a sheltering castle wall ahead.

  Shelter!

  She hauled back on the reins, bringing the buckskin to a stiff-legged, hopping stop near the granite wall.

  The Winchester saddle gun came to her hand naturally as she swung her leg over the cantle to dismount. In seconds, she was against the granite upcropping with the Winchester over the top, searching for a target.

  Two warriors were off their horses, hacking at O’Malley’s body with hatchet and knife. Cat couldn’t help him, but she could exact a bit of revenge. A calm settled over her as she made her decision. Stryker had told her of the awful things, awful from a civilized European point of view, that Indians did to their enemies, to keep them from becoming ghosts that could come back to take revenge. She had fifteen rounds in her Winchester and six in the Colt Lightning. She would save the final bullet for herself.

  Her first shot took an Indian beneath his raised arm. The brave toppled as the bullet ripped through his heart. Cat instantly jacked another cartridge into the Winchester’s breech and looked for another target, but there were no Indians ... only foot-high wheatgrass. A breeze ruffled the grass, so Cat could not tell where or when Indians moved.

  A feather appeared. Just a black spot amidst the green of the grass. Cat took a chance, aiming for a spot a handspan below the feather. She squeezed off a shot and followed it with another a few seconds later. A bare back humped out of the grass, then relaxed, but stayed in sight. It didn’t move, but Cat searched for other signs of human movement. Where had the horsemen gone? Why could she see no Indians on ponies?

  Some of the wheatgrass seemed to move against the breeze. Cat put two shots into the offending grass. She saw no Indian in death throes. Where were the horsemen?

  Nothing moved.

  Cat held her position. O’Malley lay face to the sky, his skin showing red and black where the Indians had slashed him. The two Cat had shot lay motionless, and no one came to pick them up. Stryker said Indians did not leave their dead behind.

  Then Cat learned why no Indians appeared. Captain Baldwin came at a trot with his troopers following by twos. Each carried his trapdoor Springfield butt to thigh, muzzle pointing skyward.

  Baldwin stopped his troop at O’Malley’s body. He barked an order and a trooper broke off to fetch O’Malley’s horse, which cropped at wheatgrass no more than thirty yards away.

  Baldwin and his troop moved to the first Indian, then the second. His eyes traced a line from the dead Indian to Catherine de Merode’s granite wall. “You can come out, Miss. The Indians have gone.” He licked his lips and stared at her with granite-hard eyes. “You got my trooper killed, miss. I hope you’re satisfied.”

  Cat stood, the Winchester ready in her hands. She didn’t look at the captain at all. Instead, her eyes searched the waving wheatgrass between him and the upcrop of granite. She could see no unnatural movement. What was it Stryker had said? It’s when ya can’t see Injuns that you gotta worry most.

  “I don’t think the red men have gone, Captain.” She tried to sound brave, but her voice quivered.

  “They have. Come on. Best we can do right now is get back to the main party.”

  Cat stared at the captain for a long moment. “The Indians have not left, Captain. I killed two of their number. They will surely seek to kill me. Or maybe any white person, as Stryker told me of the ‘balance’ red folk expect. Eye for an eye, so to speak.”

  “Come, Miss. We need to get back. We’ve got O’Malley’s horse, so we can pack him back for burial, but where is your horse?” The captain’s words contained a sneer.

  Cat whistled, and Chavel the buckskin came.

  They left the dead Indians lying in the wheatgrass of the Wyoming big sagebrush steppe. Cat rode at the head of the column besid
e Captain Baldwin. Behind them came a corporal, leading O’Malley’s bay cavalry horse with his body tied face down over the McClellan saddle all cavalrymen used. Baldwin didn’t speak. Neither did Cat.

  The hunting party’s camp lay a good five miles from where the Cheyenne warriors killed Sergeant O’Malley. Four large wall-sided tents provided shelter for Ulrich von Waldsberg’s people. Captain Baldwin’s Sibley tent stood off to one side. The cavalrymen went without tents, as the army did not provide them. Smoke issued from the cook tent as Ulrich’s chefs prepared the evening meal. Tables were already set with pewter dishes on cream-colored tablecloths adorned with the Waldsberg coat of arms.

  At the sight of O’Malley’s body draped over his saddle, everyone in camp gathered to find out why and how one of their party got killed. Ulrich stood directly in the path of the cavalrymen. He stepped away when he saw that the soldiers were not going to turn aside.

  “What has happened, Kapitän?” Ulrich said.

  “I’ll explain after my sergeant is properly cared for,” Baldwin said as he passed.

  At the center of the hunting party’s compound, Captain Baldwin raised his hand to halt the troopers. “A Troop,” he called. The A Troop men gathered around. “Dismount,” he ordered.

  “Corporal Delaney, to me,” Baldwin said.

  “Yo.” The man who had tied O’Malley to his horse stepped forward.

  “Take your people and dig a grave for the sergeant, Delaney. Put it on high ground and make sure it’s not where it’ll get washed out when a rain comes.”

  “Yo.” Delany went to his job.

  Captain Baldwin paid no attention to Cat, so she took Cheval the buckskin to the rope corral the soldiers had rigged to keep the horses and mules from drifting away. She unsaddled him and took off his bridle. The buckskin found an open spot and rolled in the wheatgrass. For a moment, Cat felt bad because she’d not curried him, but the horse’s obvious enjoyment at rolling assuaged her guilt. Burdened with saddle, blanket, and bridle, along with the Winchester saddle gun, Cat went to her tent. Her Colt Lightning was still strapped to her waist. She’d just gotten a man killed and it was something she needed to think about.

  The men dug O’Malley’s grave in less than an hour, and the cavalrymen gathered in the late afternoon sun. In Cat’s mind, she was to blame for O’Malley’s death. She went to honor him. The soldiers lowered his blanket-wrapped body into the hole in the ground that was his final resting place.

  “God,” said Captain Baldwin. “O’Malley was a good soldier and a good man. Please take care of him. Amen.”

  “Amen,” echoed the men, and began filling in the grave. Hardly had the last shovelful of dirt been placed than a sentry hollered, “Injuns. I seen Injuns”

  Chapter Four

  Stryker left Fort Fetterman at dawn. Word at the fort was that Iron Heart had moved his warriors east toward the Dakotas. Still, Stryker didn’t hurry. It was a lot easier to spot a fast-moving horse than one that went on his way at a natural walk. He used a western saddle like the cowboys of Texas had picked up from the Mexicans. A new Winchester ’76 one-in-a-thousand fit in the saddle scabbard. He carried a Sharps .50 buffalo gun in a beaded buckskin sheath. The gun belt around his waist held a double row of 44-40 cartridges that fit either the Winchester or the Remington Army .44 he jammed in a Mexican-style holster at his right hip.

  Even moving at a walk, Stryker’s Tennessee Walker could make twenty or thirty miles in a day, especially traveling a road like the north one to Fort Laramie. With the von Waldsberg party doing five miles or so a day, Stryker figured to meet them forty to forty-five miles along the 85-mile wagon road.

  But he didn’t.

  And on the first morning, he saw smoke. Too much smoke for cook fires. Too little for any kind of a burning cabin. Too little, in fact, for any kind of a raging fire. Stryker pulled the buckskin sheath from the Sharps. If he had a long shot to take, the Sharps would serve him better than the new Winchester that he’d only shot one box of cartridges through.

  No rush. No putting out the fires now. No sound of gunfire, so whatever had happened was over and done. Stryker let the Tennessee horse choose his own way down the wagon road toward Fort Laramie.

  Ordinarily, Stryker rode half a mile or so east of what folks called the “north” road between Fort Laramie and Fort Fetterman, but the smoke ahead told him it was too late to be overly wary. Still, out of habit, his eyes sought likely hidey spots in the landscape where someone who meant him harm might lurk.

  The sun was high when Stryker topped a rise and looked down upon smoking remains of wagons and tents and bivouacked troopers. He urged the Tennessee horse down the slope, steeling himself for the scene ahead.

  Bodies lay helter-skelter, showing that neither the cavalry nor the Europeans had effectively forted up against the invading Indians. No doubt it was Indians, and no doubt the hunting party had been badly outnumbered.

  Captain Baldwin lay naked, his body at the center of a circle of dead troopers. His hair was gone. His arm and leg muscles slashed. His genitalia cut from his body and stuffed in his mouth. A bullet hole in his sternum said he died before the Indians started cutting on him. Five troopers surrounded the captain. Shell cases on the ground said they’d put their backs together and faced outward to fight the Indians. Most had arrows or stubs of arrows protruding. All were disfigured, slashed and chopped.

  Ulrich von Waldsberg’s body lay across another European. They too were naked, but not as badly disfigured as the soldiers. Perhaps the Indians thought blue-coat soldiers caused their current situation.

  Stryker looked for Cat’s body as he counted the dead and cataloged them in his mind. But she wasn’t there. All the men, soldiers, hunters, and servants, were there, dead and mutilated, but the three women, Cat and two enlisted men’s wives who did laundry and other womanly chores, were not among the dead.

  Then, rather than spend a day burying the bodies himself, Stryker lifted the Tennessee horse to a lope and covered the forty miles to Fort Laramie before sunset.

  ~*~

  “Baldwin’s command is dead, you say?”

  “It is, colonel. Indians done away with all the men, and it looks like they took off with the women. No female bodies in that camp.”

  “Hmmm. Well. We must get those men buried post haste. I’ll send Captain Harvey with some troopers to do the job.”

  “’Scuse me, colonel, but ain’t you gonna go looking for those women?”

  The colonel snorted. “That woman with von Waldberg, she looked down her nose at us, at me. And those others were whores before they was soldier’s wives. Maybe they got their due, who knows.”

  Stryker gave the colonel an icy stare. “Then I’ll be riding out,” he said. “Maybe I can get them back. Cheyennes have been known to trade captive women.”

  “You’re a civilian, Stryker. I can’t tell you what to do.”

  “That’s right, colonel. I can do what I damn well please. It’s been nigh on to three days since von Waldberg’s party got killed. The women could be across the border by now. I reckon I’ll go see what I can do about getting them back.”

  The colonel nodded. “You’re free to do that, Stryker.”

  “I won’t be helping with the cleanup, and I’ll be leaving Fort Laramie at daybreak. Reckon you’ll take care of telling von Waldsberg’s relatives what happened then.”

  The colonel nodded. “I will.”

  “By your leave, Colonel.”

  “Take care, Stryker.”

  “I always do. That’s what keeps me alive.” Stryker put a finger to his hat brim in salute and left the colonel’s office. He was not completely unknown among the Cheyenne and he hoped to parlay that into a way of getting Cat and the two other women released. He rode out at dawn with a hundred rounds for his Sharps and two hundred to fit his .44 caliber guns. For food, he’d make do with a slab of bacon wrapped in muslin, a bag of flour already mixed with saleratus, and enough coffee for half of Useless S. Grant’s Potom
ac Army.

  Cheyenne and Arapaho often camped near Fort Ketterman, always ready for government beef handouts. Stryker started his search there.

  Stryker himself did not smoke tobacco as a habit, but always carried an ample supply so he could leave gifts of tobacco with Indians he visited. And he always kept his eyes open for game, as a deer or an antelope also made good gifts to the Indian camps he visited.

  The third day out of Fort Laramie found Stryker in the teepee of Raven-that-walks, smoking tobacco in a long-stemmed clay pipe and holding an innocuous conversation.

  “It seems the deer are not so plentiful,” Stryker said. He’d come into camp with a two-point whitetail buck over his saddlebows. The women were butchering the deer as Stryker and Raven-that-walks conversed over ritual pipes of tobacco.

  “White men come. Deer, buffalo, antelope leave.”

  “True,” Stryker said. “No deer, no babies. Is that not true, Raven-that-walks? The Cheyenne people grow thin like the deer and the elk. Is it not so?”

  Raven-that-walks wagged his head in agreement. “No babies, Stryker. Cheyenne die. Die at Washita. Die at Greasy Grass Creek. Cheyenne go to spirit world, maybe. Better place than here, maybe.”

  Stryker accepted the long pipe and drew a mouthful of acrid smoke, which he blew upward. He offered the pipe to the four cardinal directions and then drew another mouthful and blew it down toward Mother Earth. “I found a camp,” he said, “down on the Moon Shell river. Many white men and blue coats dead. Have you heard?” He passed the pipe to Raven-that-walks.

  “Dead whites? Dead blue coats? Hmmm. Perhaps I heard.” Raven-that-walks smoked the pipe with proper reverence. “What if I heard?”

  “I know the dead white men and the dead blue coats. I also know three women were with the dead men. But I didn’t find their dead bodies. I must think the Cheyenne who killed the white men and the blue coats now have new women in their camp. What say?”

  Raven-that-walks passed the pipe back to Stryker. “Women?” he said.

  “There were no dead women in the camp of dead white men and blue coats. I can only think they must be with Cheyenne.”