untied the sack from the saddle, took out the coffeepot and filled it with water from the creek. He stood in front of the sleeping lieutenant and threw the water into his face.
“Wake up you drunken officer and gentleman,” he said. “Nap time is over.”
Chapter 26
Birchwood spluttered and tossed his head, an action he obviously instantly regretted because he groaned from deep in his belly and kneaded his temples.
His eyes lifted to Stryker. “Why did you do that, damn you?”
“We’ve got work to do.”
“Get away from me, Stryker. You’re the devil.” Stryker smiled. “All right, that’s it.” He grabbed Birchwood by his shirtfront, hauled him to his feet and stuck his face close to his.
“I’m not a forgiving man, Lieutenant, but I’ve been willing to let things slide because you were drunk. From now on, you address me as sir, or Lieutenant Stryker, whatever you please. But if you ever call me only by my last name again, I’ll beat the shit out of you. Do you understand me?”
Birchwood nodded, his mouth hanging slack.
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
Stryker’s eyes were merciless. “You’re full of self-pity because you had to kill a dying man. Well, we’ve both had to kill dying men. You get over it, Mister. You don’t crawl into a whiskey bottle and try to forget that it ever happened. Once you do that, you’ll have to stay inside the bottle for the rest of your miserable life, looking out from behind the glass.”
Birchwood was sobering fast. He tried to grab Stryker’s wrist and push it away from him, but the lieutenant was too big, too strong and too angry to be moved.
The young officer gave up the struggle and said, “Sir, don’t talk to me of self-pity. You wrote the damned book on that, sir. Your face was smashed up and you’ve been grieving for yourself ever since, sir.”
Stryker expected his gorge to rise, but it did not. “Mr. Birchwood, you’re correct. I did write the book on self- pity, but I crawled into myself, not the bottle. And I admit, one is just as bad as the other. But I’m trying to break out of me because I don’t like what I see in there. It’s a dark place where slimy things crawl. If you don’t do the same, your military career is over and so are you. And, like me, you’ll lose the woman you loved and you’ll never find another.”
“I . . . I told her my lips would ne’er touch whiskey,” Birchwood whispered, half sober, but still drunk enough to be maudlin.
“She doesn’t have to know.”
Stryker’s big hand had the young man pinned to a tree like a butterfly in a case. But he managed to struggle erect. “You have orders for me, sir?”
Stryker let him go, his arm falling by his side. Suddenly he was very tired, his wounds catching up to him like phantoms in the darkness. “I thought I heard a man cry out,” he said.
“A bird?”
“Maybe. We’re going to find out.”
As he was about to turn away, Birchwood’s voice stopped him. “When I shot that soldier, his brains flew out the other side of his head. They . . . they looked like the oatmeal a little child eats. Gray, like that, but mixed with blood and bone.”
“That’s what happens when you shoot a man up close, Lieutenant. Mr. Colt designed his revolver with that very thing in mind, to scatter a man’s brains. But the Apaches would have killed Private Carter just as surely, only much more slowly.”
“Sir, I don’t think they came back.”
“Then death would have taken Carter in its own good time, and it can be crueler than any Apache.”
“Sir, was I right?”
Stryker nodded. “You did what had to be done, Mr. Birchwood. I regard your action at Fort Merit justified and even commendable.”
The young man was silent for a moment, and then said, “I’m sorry, sir. I mean about the drinking and —”
Weary, aware that Birchwood was anxious to worry his guilt like a hound dog that had just caught a jackrabbit, Stryker said, “Let it go, Lieutenant. Just . . . let it go.”
The young officer heard the finality in Stryker’s voice and wisely didn’t push it. “One more question, sir: Why the hell are we here?”
Stryker’s eyes ranged over the canyon, resting on the spot among the trees where he had heard the man’s voice—if that’s what it had been.
He turned his attention to Birchwood again. “Captain Forrest ordered us to scout the mountains to the south. He wishes to ascertain if Geronimo poses any threat to Fort Bowie.”
Birchwood was trying to think in a whiskey fog and it took him a while. “Sir, I don’t see any logic in that order. We can’t scout the whole Chiricahua mountain range.”
“Then try this logic, Lieutenant: The captain wanted us the hell off the post.”
Birchwood smiled. “Bad apples.”
“Correct. The baddest in the barrel.”
To the east, the canyon rose gradually, passing through thick groves of hackberry and yucca, then into stands of mesquite and juniper. Here the rock walls directed heat into the bottom of the canyon like molten bronze pouring into a mold. The sunlight broke apart as it filtered through the trees and splashed like white paint on the underbrush. There was no wind.
Stryker sweated as he made his way through the trees, his Colt in his hand. Beside him Birchwood was laboring, his breath coming in groaning gasps, a hangover punishing him.
Lifting his hand, Stryker signaled a halt. He listened. Higher, above the canyon where the tall pines grew, a breeze rustled, but there was no other sound. The heavy air smelled of decaying vegetation, pine resin and the heady scent of wildflowers that grew in profusion everywhere. A dragonfly, as iridescent blue as a gas flame, hovered in front of Stryker for a few moments, then darted away into the trees.
He motioned Birchwood forward. Then he stopped as a shower of gravel rattled from the canyon wall.
Birchwood’s gun came up and he fired twice, the echoes of the shots racketing around the canyon like a granite ball rolling down a marble corridor.
“Goddamn you, boy! You tryin’ to kill me?”
A man’s voice, creaky with age and orneriness.
“You up there, come down here, real slow!” Stryker yelled.
“Cain’t do that, soldier boy. Got me leg stuck in a damn hole.”
“We’ll come up there.”
“Yeah, you do that. Seen you comin’ for a ways, crashing through the trees like a herd o’ damn buffalo. If’n I’d been an Apache, I’d have both your scalps by now.”
Stryker holstered his gun and after a search found a place where he could climb the canyon wall. Birchwood following behind him, he scrambled onto a scrub-covered mesa.
The old man was sitting on a rock, his left leg buried to the knee in a hole, part of a narrow fissure that cracked across the limestone rock. A canteen and a seven-shot, .52 caliber Spencer carbine lay beside him.
“Didn’t see the damn thing,” he said, his eyes lifting to Stryker. “Stepped right into it an’ got caught somehow. I don’t know if my leg is broke or not.”
Stryker kneeled beside the rift. “What the hell were you doing here?”
“What I always do. Followin’ my nose.” He shook his head. “Been prospecting these hills for nigh on twenty year and the Apaches always left me alone. Then, ’bout a week back, five young bucks holed me up in a cave down to Black Mountain way. Finally they got bored an’ left, but they kilt my burro.” The old man turned quizzical eyes on
