Stryker's Woman

by Chuck Tyrell

  Cat stepped to the entrance of the cavern, which was well concealed by scrub oak. Sam came around in front of her and tried to push her back into the cave. She knelt and put her mouth to Sam’s ear. “What is it, my friend? What comes?”

  Sam straightened and stood stiff, his muzzle pointed toward the entrance to Cat’s hidden glen. A very light powdering of snow had fallen in the night, so fresh tracks did not lead in or out. Still, a good man on the trail would be able to see that horses went in and out of the glen.

  “Hey. Parker!”

  The shout barely reached Cat’s ears.

  The shout came again. “Hey! Parker!”

  “What?” The answer was hardly audible.

  “I got horse tracks what make a path.”

  “So what? See any woman sign?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “No woman, no gold, I’d say.”

  Involuntarily, Cat’s hand went to her mouth. Men. Men who knew of Mr. John’s gold. She crept back into the cavern to get Swayback’s Winchester and the bag of bullets she’d found in his saddlebags. The rifle was loaded, as always. Fourteen bullets in the magazine. She jacked one into the chamber and fed another through the loading gate into the magazine. There. Fifteen shots. Swayback had no fancy gun rig for his Colt. Just a soft leather holster and a wide leather belt. Cat cinched the belt around her hips and set the holster where it put the six-shooter’s grips within quick and easy reach of her right hand. She took the six-gun from its holster, added a bullet from the belt to the empty place in the cylinder. Six shots. With the rifle, twenty-one bullets without having to reload. Ready.

  Sam guarded the entrance. A warning growl rumbled deep in his chest. Cat joined him. No shouts now, but she could tell by Sam’s posture that whoever was out there had not left. Cat crept out of the cavern with Sam at her side.

  She slipped from the entrance through the scrub oaks to a line of basalt that jutted from the floor of the glen, making a breastwork of sorts from which Cat could cover most of the approach to her cavern. She settled down behind the rocks to wait. If the curious men found nothing and went on, fine. If they failed to give up and leave, they would have to deal with Cat’s rifle fire. And when Catherine de Merode pulled a trigger, the bullet went precisely where she aimed it. Perhaps. It had been some days ... weeks, actually ... since last she’d practiced with a rifle. Matt Stryker said skills with weapons took constant practice.

  They came in a line, following the path beaten by the hooves of Little Red, John’s gray, and Mule. Cat thought for a fleeting moment of laying a warning shot at their feet, but decided that was not wise.

  She let them come a little closer. Then she carefully slid the Winchester out until she could aim at the dark complexioned man in the lead. Slowly, keeping the man in the rifle’s sights, she squeezed the trigger.

  ~*~

  The second morning out of Fort Hall, Stryker sent up another smoke. He let Walker graze while he used the smoke fire to broil some bacon. There was no time to make biscuits. Walker had bottom, but this was no time to make him give all he had. The mule seemed unconcerned.

  Stryker chewed on the bacon he’d broiled and wondered how long it would take Gewagan to catch up with him. The Tennessee Walker horse kept a steady pace through the night and the day after Fort Hall. Snowfall was light and it didn’t seem to slow the Walker horse at all. As the crow flies, Stryker made his second smoke some fifty miles from Fort Hall. He gave both Walker and the mule a quart of oats as he didn’t want to take the time to let them browse.

  Less than an hour after he sent up the smoke, Stryker and Walker and the mule went on west at a fast Walker pace. The country itself was unusually level, a flat steppe with stands of greasewood and saltbush along with ever-present sagebrush.

  The entire Snake River Basin north of the river itself spread out like a blanket with a wrinkle here and there. Stryker stayed away from the Oregon Trail, which also followed the Snake. People going to the Pacific Coast these days tended to take the Union Pacific Railroad so the Trail didn’t have the traffic it once supported. Still, some traveled the old trail and Stryker stayed a couple of miles north of the wagon road.

  The third morning saw a third smoke signal climb skyward. Stryker ate an airtight of peaches for breakfast. Gewagan still had not arrived. Stryker took the time to brew a little pot of Arbuckles. A man could get along fine without whiskey, but going without coffee on a cold morning that tasted of winter was asking for more sacrifice than a man ought to have to make.

  Walker and the mule crunched oats as Stryker sipped at his Arbuckles. Then the mule stopped chewing and pricked his big ears toward a gully some fifty yards away. A line of saltbush marked the edge of the incline and the mule seemed to hear something in the gully.

  Stryker drew his Remington and held it in his right hand as he sipped coffee from a tin cup in his left.

  “Brother.”

  The voice came from the ravine.

  “I hear you,” Stryker said.

  “Do not shoot me, brother.” Gewagan’s head and face appeared among the saltbushes.

  “Come. I have coffee.”

  “I come,” Gegawan said. He stood and walked to the tiny fire where Stryker’s little coffee pot steamed.

  “Thank you for answering my call,” Stryker said.

  Gewagan shrugged. “Brothers come when brothers call.”

  Stryker gulped the remaining Arbuckles in his cup, refilled it, and started to hand it to Gewagan. “Wait. You’re a Mormon. No coffee.” He poured the coffee on the remains of the little fire, then stamped all the coals flat. Not a single spark remained.

  Disappointment showed on Gewagan’s face. “Thank you, brother. First you give me, whatchu say, temptness. Then you take it away. Good.”

  “Welcome,” Stryker said, a grin playing around the corners of his mouth.

  “So. For why have I run to your little fire?”

  “Cat woman is near, I hear.”

  “How near?”

  “Don’t know. Swayback John bought Cat woman from Black Eagle of the Crow Nation. He brought her to Fort Hall. They left Fort Hall. Some men found Swayback John dead.”

  “Cat woman kill?”

  “No.”

  “Who?”

  “Maybe bees.”

  “Honey bees?”

  “Yes.”

  Gewagan nodded. “Sometimes the honey of bees is good. Sometimes it kills. I hear so.”

  “But men found only Swayback John. No woman. No horses. No pack mule.”

  “Where?”

  “Near Goose Creek.”

  “Then we go by the river white men call Malad.”

  Stryker emptied the coffee pot and tossed out the grounds. “You lead. I follow.”

  Gewagan’s black-and-white pinto waited at the bottom of the gully. He mounted and led out. The pace was steady, the clear sky let the sun warm the riders somewhat, but the direction Gewagan took angled more northerly away from the Snake. Stryker came along behind without question.

  An hour took them to the edge of Malad Gorge, a chasm scooped by the finger of the gods, with rock walls up to 250 feet above the river. No way across the gorge, they said, except at the Kelton Ramp, where wagons could get to the bottom and cross the river, then climb up the opposite ramp to the rim. Gewagan moved slowly northward along the rim of the gorge. Stryker followed. Then the Shoshone reined his pinto to a halt.

  “Brother.”

  Stryker brought Walker up alongside the pinto.

  “I have heard,” Gewagan said. “First the Cheyenne. Then the Absaroka. There is a white eye woman. A fierce one. She challenged every warrior, any warrior. Finally, she became a dog. Wore no clothes. Ate no food. Yet lived. Perhaps the woman called “dog” is the one you seek.”

  “Yes.”

  “I have heard. The woman called “dog” lives with wolves.”

  “Where?”

  Gewagan pointed into the gorge.

  Without a word, Stryker reined Walk
er south along the rim. The Kelton Ramp was the only way down into Malad Gorge.

  “Brother.”

  Stryker hauled Walker in and looked back. “What?”

  “Not that way.”

  “Why not? Kelton Ramp’s this way.”

  “Come. We go Shoshone way.”

  Stryker trusted Gewagan. Blood bonds had to have meaning if they were to be true.

  The Shoshone rode along Malad Gorge away from its confluence with the Snake. He did not look back to see if Stryker followed, which he did.

  An hour later, maybe less, Stryker could hear the roar of the falls that marked the place where the Malad River fell over a stairway of stone into a pool as round as a volcano cone. Was there a way down the stair steps of the falls? Stryker wondered but didn’t ask. Gewagan spoke to his pinto in Shoshone and urged him toward the rim. The horse stepped off the edge without hesitation. Gewagan was soon out of sight. “Come,” he called.

  Stryker reined Walker toward the drop off. Only it was not a drop off. Instead, a ledge wide enough for horse and rider with some left over slanted down the gorge wall at a steep angle. Not impassibly steep, but enough to cause Stryker’s weight to shift forward and press him against the swell of the saddle fork.

  The first shot came as they were about to ride out onto the bottom of the gorge, which was covered with boulders that had split off the walls. A second shot sounded in unison with a man’s scream.

  Gewagan signed Stryker to dismount and leave his horse and the mule.

  Stryker pulled his Winchester from its saddle scabbard and ground-tied Walker. He jacked a round into the rifle, thumbed another bullet from his gun belt and fed it through the loading gate.

  No more shots.

  He added a sixth bullet to the cylinder of his Remington. Gewagan waited with impatience written on his face.

  “Where?” Stryker said.

  Gewagan pointed at a crack in the wall across the way. The lower part of the crack was hidden by a stand of box elders and two cottonwood trees.

  “Lead on.”

  The Shoshone trotted to the river and leaped from stone to fallen stone to make his way across. Stryker joined him, though his crossing on the stones was not as graceful.

  Three shots rang out and one bullet sang away as a ricochet.

  “Woman,” someone called. “Shootin’ won’t do ya no good. They’s six of us and one of you. No matter how ya look at it, you can’t get us all.”

  Silence.

  Stryker signed Gewagan and pointed at the horses standing along the wall inside the trees. Gewagan nodded and slipped toward the mounts. Stryker went through the gap into Cat’s glen.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cat sidled toward the far end of the up-cropping basalt she used as a breastwork. Six, the man said. Still Cat did not worry about their numbers. To get her, they would have to cross the snow-blanketed meadow, which would give them no cover. When she reached a viable position, she found a crack in the up-cropping that allowed her to see a goodly stretch of the woods across the way. She worked the Winchester into the crack to a point at which it covered a broad swath of the area where the six men undoubtedly lurked.

  A movement caught the corner of her eye. She shifted her focus to that point, which was on her side of the entrance to the glen. At first, she saw nothing, and then she caught another movement. She narrowed her eyes to sharpen her distance vision. The man—she could tell it was a man—moved again, and Cat caught her breath. Matt Stryker? Could it be?

  A bullet spanged off her rock and sang away into the distance. Smoke rose from where the rifle fired, but Cat could see no target. No need to waste bullets on something she could not see. A growl sounded at her feet. Sam and two of the wolf cubs crouched at her side. She ignored them.

  Cat watched, looking for a target. A head. Or at least a hat. Cat shifted her aim to the circle of gray she took to be a four-by-four hat. But before she could pull the trigger, a shot rang out from somewhere near where she’d glimpsed a form that looked like Matt Stryker.

  The hat she watched jumped as if alive. A red mist arose as a bullet plowed into the rannie’s head just beneath the rim of the hat. Involuntary reaction shoved the man to his feet, then he crumpled, lifeless.

  “Only five, how, Catherine de Merode. Five of them and you and me, Matthew Stryker.”

  “I see you, Matt Stryker,” Cat called. “Welcome.”

  Instead of an answer, Stryker’s rifle spoke again, and another would-be robber did a death-dance among the pines.

  “Take the count down to four, Cat.”

  She could see an unnatural bulge in a tree trunk. She took careful aim and squeezed off a shot. It plowed through an inch of pine bark before hitting the man. Not a killing shot, but enough to put the man out of action.

  “Three,” Cat shouted.

  A slug slapped into her rock shelter, not even close. The smoke from the rifle showed her where the shooter hit. Neither Cat nor Stryker fired back.

  “You can’t get out alive unless you give up,” Stryker said. He didn’t shout, but his voice carried in the cool, clear air of Cat’s glen.

  “Step out, gunnie. Step out and face me. I’m Shank Siddith, and they ain’t no one west of Saint Looie what can best me head on. Just you and me, Matt Stryker or whoever you are.”

  “Ha!” Cat barked a laugh. “You who call yourself Shank Siddith. Have you enough of—what do you say—intestines, to stand up against me? A woman? Guns or bare hands, I will gladly meet you face to face.”

  “Cat!” You stay out of this. A gunfight ain’t no place for a woman.” In his concern for Cat, Stryker showed a bit too much of himself, and a bullet took him in the side, knocking him flat.

  “Ha! Great gunman you ain’t, Matt Stryker.”

  “Matt? Matt?” Anxiety pushed Cat’s voice up an octave.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  A shadow moved, but Cat was ready. Her shot hit the outlaw just back of the shoulder, bounced off his backbone and shredded his lung as it tumbled across and out beneath the man’s nipple. “Ungh,” he said, and dropped, dead when he hit the ground.

  “Now what say?” Cat called.

  “Damned woman. Damn your eyes.”

  “Afraid? Not want to fight me man to woman? Ha. I beat you even in my sleep. Crazy man.”

  “I’m putting my gun away, woman. You do the same. One pistol. That is all.”

  “Cat. Don’t do it.”

  “Ha.” Cat stepped out from behind the up-cropping basalt rock. She’d left the Winchester and had only the Colt SAA in the too-big gun rig strapped around her hips.

  Siddith stood, rifle carried in the crook of his arm like an Indian. “Ya can’t win, woman. He started to throw the rifle to his shoulder, but before he could get the weapon ready to shoot, Sam and the two young wolves leapt from their cover and attacked him, driving him off his feet. The rifle flew from his grasp as he fell, and he tried to use his forearms to protect himself from the fangs of Sam and the young wolves.

  As if they had discussed their strategy beforehand, each of the wolves took an arm in its mouth and pulled away from the would-be robber’s body, stretching him out. As the man’s throat was exposed, Sam leaped and clamped his massive jaws on Siddith’s neck.

  Stryker could see the remaining hard case drawing bead on the dog. He shot his Winchester from where he lay on the ground, and his bullet plowed into the last of the men who would rob Catherine and extinguished his soul’s flame.

  The only noise in the glen was Sam’s growl. Siddith lay motionless. Sam gave him a final shake. When the boss dog released his hold, the young wolves did, too.

  “Cat?”

  “Yes, Matthew.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Matthew.”

  “Good.”

  “Matthew?”

  “What?”

  “I dreamed you would come. I dreamed you would not mind that I was a dog. I dreamed ... but it took you a very long time to find
me.”

  “But I did find you, Cat.”

  “Yes, you did.” Cat walked to where Stryker had finally managed to stand, using his Winchester as a crutch. She held her arms out and Matt Stryker enveloped her in a bear hug.

  Sam sat on his haunches with tongue lolling and a smile on his face.

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