office felt and tasted like long-baled cotton.
Finally, Forrest lifted his eyes. “I have another detail for you, Lieutenant. You and . . . damn, I’ve forgotten his name. Ah yes, Second Lieutenant Birchwood.”
The captain saw Stryker lift an eyebrow in surprise. He said, “He’s a troublemaker, hitting the bottle too much and threatening others. I should have him court-martialed, but he comes of a good Boston family and I’ll give him this one last chance to redeem himself.”
“Sir, Mr. Birchwood promised his betrothed that his lips would ne’er touch whiskey. I very much doubt —”
“I don’t give a damn what he promised his betrothed. He’s drinking whiskey now, and I want him off the post and away from the sutler’s store.”
Stryker’s heart sank. That could only mean guarding the spring, Forrest’s way of getting rid of both troublemakers at once.
The captain’s eyes were filled with acid. “You will help Second Lieutenant Birchwood onto his horse. Then you will scout to the south. I want to know if there are any hostiles within striking distance of the fort. Understand?”
Stryker’s heart leaped. “How far south, sir?”
“Damn it, use your initiative, Mr. Stryker. As far south as you deem is necessary to ensure the safety and well-being of Fort Bowie.”
Forrest waved a hand, signaling his boredom. “Pick up whatever supplies you need; then roust Mr. Birchwood from the sutler’s.”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain bent his head to the papers on his desk again, perhaps convincing himself that First Lieutenant Stryker no longer existed.
Stryker got his supplies from the cookhouse. The sergeant cook was overjoyed that the horribly disfigured officer who had stood over him and watched his every move was leaving. The man was so relieved that he sacked up enough bacon, biscuits and hardtack for a regiment.
After saddling Birchwood’s bay and the criollo, Stryker tied the sack to the saddle horn and led the horses to the sutler’s store.
Second Lieutenant Dale Birchwood was stinking drunk.
He was draped over the bar, a bottle and glass beside him. Stryker stepped over to him and shook his shoulder. “Mr. Birchwood, I need you for a detail.”
The young officer turned and considered Stryker with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Go to hell, Stryker,” he said, and turned away. His trembling hand reached for the whiskey, but Stryker snatched it away and smashed it on the floor.
“How long has he been like this?”
The sutler was a big man with the arms and shoulders of a blacksmith. “Days. Since he rode in with the drovers.”
“You always let your customers get drunk like this?”
“Mister, when a man’s got a gun on his hip, threatens to draw down on you and don’t much care if he lives or dies, you serve him as much whiskey as he wants.”
“Help me get him on his horse.”
“Hell, in that condition, he ain’t going anywhere on a hoss.”
“He’ll have to, won’t he? Now give me a hand here.”
“Suit yourself, but he’s gonna go ass-over-rain-barrel first chance he gets.”
The sutler was a strong man and he easily manhandled Birchwood into the saddle. The young officer lay on the horse’s neck, then threw up a vile-smelling stream of stale whiskey. Strings of saliva hung from his mouth and his cherry-red eyes popped out of his head like a pair of rotten eggs.
“Stryker, you dirty son of a bitch!” Birchwood yelled. He made to swing out of the saddle, but the sutler grabbed his leg and stopped him. “Let me down from here, you goddamned—” The Lieutenant launched into a stream of curses that a boy from a good Boston family should never have known.
As Birchwood’s curses grew louder, Stryker glanced hurriedly around him, saw no one in sight, and grabbed Birchwood by the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. He drew back his fist and hit the foaming, raving lieutenant a hard, sharp rap on the jaw.
Birchwood’s body went slack and Stryker draped him over his horse again. He turned to the sutler. “What did you see?”
The man smiled. “I seen you punch him.”
A note of irritation in his voice, Stryker repeated his question. “What did you see?”
“The officer fell asleep on his hoss.”
Stryker nodded. He swung into the saddle, grabbed the reins of the bay and turned south. Ahead of him lay a thousand square miles of towering sky islands cut through with deep, shady canyons, thick with cottonwoods, mesquite, willow and wild oak. The lower slopes of the mountains were shaggy with walnut, alder, sycamore, maple and juniper. Higher, there grew ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, their lofty canopies silhouetted like arrowheads against the hard blue sky.
Somewhere in this wilderness lurked Rake Pierce, a needle in a vast haystack. Stryker had no real reason to believe he could find him, but at least he was trying, better than sitting on his ass in the officer’s mess in Fort Bowie or carrying out Forrest’s petty and vindictive orders.
Stryker followed a winding game and Indian trail through Bear Spring Pass. At nearly six thousand feet above the flat the air thinned and he rode through thick forests of walnut, sycamore and pine.
Riding due south he dropped down to a timbered plateau and passed between a couple of craggy mountain escarpments before coming up on Pinery Canyon. He took a switchback route to the canyon floor, and stopped once to allow a black bear to amble through a thicket of ponderosa and Apache pine just ahead of him.
Only then, perhaps wakened by the sudden start of his horse when it scented the bear, did Birchwood wake up.
He lifted himself upright in the saddle and looked around, blinking like a puzzled owl. “Wha . . . wha the hell?”
Stryker smiled. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Birchwood.”
“Where . . . where the hell are we?”
“In the mountains, hunting Apaches.”
The young officer glanced behind him, then at Stryker. “Where’s the company?”
“There is no company. Just you and me.”
Birchwood worked his jaw, then felt the bruise on his chin. “Did somebody sock me?”
“No, you fell down.”
“I need a drink.”
“Like hell you do.”
“Damn you, Stryker—” He got no further than that. Suddenly his eyes rolled in his head and he toppled sideways off his bay.
Stryker shook his head. There were still hours of daylight left, but Birchwood was in no shape to travel. He swung off his horse, grabbed the young lieutenant by the shoulders and dragged him into the shade of the trees.
They would camp where they were and move out at first light in the morning.
Stryker was loosening his saddle girth when he heard a noise. He stood perfectly still, listening into the silence. Nothing.
“I’m imagining things,” he said aloud.
But suddenly he felt as though he was under a glass dome and somebody was studying him. That noise he’d heard had sounded like a man in pain.
He looked around him, at the sunlight splintering through the trees, the shimmer of the deep creek that ran through the canyon, even this long after the snow-melt.
All right, now he needed Birchwood; if for nothing else, he wanted Birchwood to share his anxiety. Stryker
