The scout swung out of the saddle as the infantrymen sought whatever shade they could find and lit their pipes. Hogg stepped to the criollo and helped Kelly down from the saddle, then Mrs. McCabe.
To Stryker’s surprise, Hogg and the woman kissed tenderly, then clung to each other for a long while before parting. Finally the scout picked up Kelly in his arms and he and Mary held hands as he led them into the shade of some scattered junipers.
Stryker shook his head. He had always prided himself on being a perceptive man, but he had totally missed the budding relationship between Hogg and the woman. He smiled to himself. Joe Hogg was a good man, and Mary was a fine woman. They would be an excellent match for each other.
He swung stiffly out of the saddle and walked into the junipers, where Birchwood joined them. Hogg glanced back at the resting soldiers, and the young lieutenant smiled. “Don’t worry, Mr. Hogg. Dugan is well guarded.”
The scout nodded. “He’s as slippery as a snake, Lieutenant. Don’t trust him.”
Stryker built a cigarette from his dwindling supply of tobacco and inhaled the smoke gratefully. Both Birchwood and Hogg were watching him, waiting for what he had to say.
What he really wanted to do was to interrogate Dugan and force him to tell where he could find Rake Pierce, but more urgent Army business had to come first.
“Lieutenant Birchwood,” he said behind a cloud of blue smoke, “the reason Yanisin’s rancheria was abandoned is because the Apaches are moving north. That is why you didn’t encounter any hostiles.”
“Sir, you still expect an attack on Fort Merit?”
“Yes, if it hasn’t already happened. Let the men have their rest now, because we are going to reach the post by a forced march. Your infantry will have to march day and night, rest little and live on water, cold bacon and biscuit. I want to be at the post within forty-eight hours, Lieutenant.”
“My men can do it, sir.”
“By God, sir, they’ll have to do it.”
Stryker looked at the soldiers who were sprawled in whatever shade they could find, talking quietly among themselves. Like all frontier Indian fighters, they were a ragtag bunch, but they looked bronzed and fit and their weapons were clean.
“Tell the men they have an hour to cook whatever salt pork they have left and soak their biscuit in the grease,” he said. “It will serve as iron rations on the march.”
Birchwood sprang to his feet and hurried away to carry out his orders, but Stryker’s voice stopped him. “Oh, and Lieutenant, now would be a good time to boil up coffee. We won’t have another opportunity to drink any for a while.”
After Birchwood left, Stryker turned to Hogg. “Joe, bring Dugan over here. I want to talk to him.”
The scout nodded, then said, “Here’s what he won’t tell you, but it’s what I think, Lieutenant. I reckon Rake Pierce has no more guns to sell, but now he’s trying to pick up the crumbs left on the plate. He and Silas are following the Apaches, preying on the women and children the warriors have stashed in canyons all over the Chiricahuas. An Apache scalp brings a hundred dollars in gold in Mexico and they ain’t too picky about who once wore it, man, woman or child.”
“You found Indian scalps on Dugan?”
“Eighteen, on his saddle and the saddles of the other two we kilt. A couple of the scalps could have been Mexican, but the rest were the genuine article.”
“Do you think Dugan can lead us to Pierce?”
“Maybe. Ol’ Silas will do anything to save his own skin, and he knows he’s lookin’ at twenty years in Yuma or worse.”
“Joe, I’m not inclined to make a deal with the devil.”
“Suit yourself, Lieutenant. But I’m just tellin’ you how ol’ Silas thinks.” He smiled. “And you’re right, he is the devil and he brings ten different kinds of hell with him.”
Kelly was chasing a butterfly, wandering away too far, and her mother called her back. Hogg had been watching the child, and now he turned to Stryker again.
His voice was even, but gently chiding. “We have Fort Merit to consider, Lieutenant.”
There was a time, very recently, when Stryker would have snapped that he did not need to be reminded of his duty by a scout. But the people around him, the Apaches and the hard beauty and fierce dangers of the land itself were working small changes in him.
“You’re right, I don’t have time to chase after Pierce,” he said. His fingers unconsciously strayed to the network of scars on his face. “Damn the man, damn him to hell.”
“There might be a way, Lieutenant,” Hogg said. “We can use Silas for bait, draw Rake Pierce in like a fly to shit.”
Stryker’s eyes held a question, and Hogg answered it.
“They got a partnership forged in hell and signed in blood and they need each other. Pierce is as mean and deadly as a rattlesnake, but he’s not a patch on Silas. You take ol’ Silas now—he says he’ll cut any man, woman or child in half with a shotgun for forty dollars, and he’s proved that plenty of times in the past. Killers like him are hard to find and Pierce won’t let him go without a fight. That’s just good business.” Hogg shrugged. “Anyhoo, that’s what I think.”
“Joe, I know what Pierce thinks of his friends. He threw Hooper to the Apaches to play with.” He shook his head. “Pierce won’t risk his life to save Dugan.”
“Lieutenant, Hooper didn’t mean a thing to Rake. Back at Fort Merit they were drinkin’ and whorin’ buddies, but that don’t go far once a man walks off the post. Pierce couldn’t have cared less about the Englishman, but I reckon he worries a heap about Silas.”
“How do we play it, Joe?”
“As much as I’d like Silas to hoof it, have him ride with you and Lieutenant Birchwood at the head of the column. That red beard of his is easy to spot, even at a distance.”
“How many men do you reckon Pierce has with him?”
Hogg shrugged. “Scalp hunting is a dirty business and it can be dangerous, especially if the scalps you’re hunting are Apache. He’ll have gathered a bunch of renegades around him, all of them just as bad as he is.”
“How many?”
“Enough to make a fight, Lieutenant, depend on it.” Hogg got to his feet. “I’m going to see if the coffee’s on the bile yet.” His eyes shifted to where the criollo was grazing. “You found the Apache pony, huh?”
“Mrs. McCabe did.” Stryker looked at the scout. “She’s a fine woman, Joe.”
“I know it.” Hogg smiled. “Hell, for a spell there, I thought you was sweet on her your ownself. I was gettin’ mighty jealous.”
Stryker shook his head. “I had a woman. I don’t want any other.”
“You may change your mind one day, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, the day my face goes back to the way it was. Maybe then.”
Chapter 17
The column used up the rest of the daylight to cover eighteen miles, the men slogging through intense heat and clouds of biting black flies.
Already the sycamores, cottonwoods and flat-topped mesas of Turkey Creek were in sight. Mary McCabe rode behind Joe Hogg and Kelly was up on Stryker’s saddle. The lieutenant had half-dozed for the past hour, exhaustion and the pain of his wounds sapping him.
Dugan, sullen and silent, rode between Stryker and Birchwood, his hands roped to the saddle horn, a noose around his neck. There was no one taking the point, adding honey to the trap Stryker hoped would lure Pierce.
Thirty minutes later, just as the light began to wane and the lengthening desert shadows crawled across the sand, the sky to the north turned a deep purple, a narrow band of burnished gold showing just above the horizon.
Thunder rumbled and ahead of the column lightning spiked. Searing bands of brilliant white bladed into the desert, throwing off forked tendrils that flashed across the looming cloud mass. Soon the whole sky, from horizon to horizon, seemed as though it were covered by the scrawled signatures of a demented god.
