“You’re right; we can’t. Stealth will be our ally, Mr. Birchwood. We’ll pick off his men at a distance, then fade back into the hills. Under no circumstances will we stand and fight.” Stryker grinned at the young officer. “In other words, Mr. Birchwood, we will become Apaches.”
Stryker saw the puzzled expression on the lieutenant’s face as conflicting thoughts worked through his brain. He smiled, sure he was reading Birchwood right. The young man’s superior officer had just advocated they become like the very enemy he despised. That had knocked him for a loop.
“People change, Lieutenant,” Stryker explained. “A man’s attitude shifts slowly, until one morning he wakes up and sees the world differently.”
“I see, sir. So you have grown to like the Apaches, as General Crook does.”
Stryker shook his head. “Mr. Birchwood, General Crook doesn’t like Apaches, but he respects them as fighting men. I don’t like them either, but I’ve also come to respect them. They fight well, and they die well. I think that’s a fine epitaph for a people that will all be gone in a few short years.”
Birchwood nodded. “The world is changing, sir, and the Apaches can’t change with it. If they can’t, then they must be swept aside.”
“Indeed, Lieutenant. But our little corner of the world hasn’t changed, and it won’t until barbarians like Pierce and Dugan no longer cast their shadows on it.”
At first light, Stryker and the others made a hasty breakfast of bacon and coffee, then saddled their horses, Trimble choosing the buckskin pony that Billy Lee had been riding.
The old man had bound up his left hand in a bandage torn from his shirt, giving himself an even more ragged appearance. He picked up a new Winchester and a belt of ammunition and assured Stryker that he could still shoot as good as ever.
Birchwood took the Winchester that had been carried by Diamond and he tucked the man’s Remingtons in his belt.
“You any good with a rifle, Mr. Birchwood?” Stryker asked.
The officer nodded. “I came first in my class in rifle shooting at the Point, sir.”
Stryker felt a little niggle of jealousy. “I finished dead last.”
There was no diplomatic way to comment on that, so Birchwood settled for, “Is that so, sir?”
“Yes, Mr. Birchwood,” Stryker snapped, irritated, “that is so.”
The young lieutenant suddenly found that he had urgent business elsewhere. Stryker shoved the spare Colt into his waistband and shook his head.
What was it about rifle shooters that made them so damned . . . uppity?
Despite his wound, Trimble insisted on riding point as they headed due west. The old man had spent hard years in the mountains and he was enduring, as tough as a knot in a pine board.
Stryker and Birchwood followed a trail that rose gradually, passing through forests of pine, juniper and mountain mahogany. The sky was a clear blue, not yet scorched colorless by the sun, and a few bands of gossamer cloud rode so high a close-sighted man could not have seen them.
The silence and emptiness of the land grated on Stryker’s nerves. He was suspicious of the morning, his eyes scanning the terrain around him. This was bushwhacker country, a wilderness of trees and rock where a man could shoot, shoot again, and then vanish completely, as though he had never been.
Beside Stryker, Birchwood rode with the Winchester across his saddle horn, his face calm. But there was tension in the way he held his head and shoulders, as though the country they were riding through were whispering warnings.
The tobacco hunger in him, Stryker led the way into a stand of trees, the forest floor carpeted thick with pine needles. He built, then lit, a cigarette while Birchwood dismounted and stretched his legs.
Finally Birchwood looked up at Stryker and said, “Clem’s long in coming back, sir.”
“Uh-huh,” Stryker said. “I believe he may have crossed some sign.”
“Well, we know he’s not been ambushed. The sound of rifle shot would travel for miles through these rocks,” Birchwood said, looking around.
Whether he was attempting to reassure himself or both of them, Stryker could not tell. He nodded to the trail. “See the bald ridge up there? We’ll cross that, rest up in whatever shade we can find on the other side and wait for Trimble.”
Birchwood swung into the saddle and gathered up the reins. “If I live through this, sir, which I’m beginning to doubt, I’m going to ask for a transfer to Kansas where there’s nothing but flat, long-riding country for as far as a man can see.”
Stryker stubbed out his cigarette butt and nodded. “You’ll do all right in Kansas, Mr. Birchwood. That is, if you can stay away from whorehouses and whiskey.”
An hour later, as Stryker and Birchwood waited in a copse of pines, Trimble showed up, sitting his horse at a walk.
Stryker waved the old man over and then waited for him to speak.
“I found ’em, Cap’n,” Trimble said. “An’ they’re real close.” He nodded. “Camped in a valley over yonder.”
“How many, Clem?”
“Speakin’ for myself, Cap’n, I’d say too many.”
Chapter 32
They rode west, away from the bald ridge, with Trimble leading the way. After ten minutes the old man drew rein. “I reckon we best walk from here, Cap’n,” he said.
They had entered a round, shallow basin about ten acres in extent, thick with good grass, especially among the cottonwoods that fronted a stream bed. The water had all but dried up, reduced to a series of unconnected puddles only a few inches deep.
Around them rose rugged mountain slopes, and to Stryker’s surprise, a narrow ledge of snow still clung to one of the peaks.
They led the horses into the cottonwoods, and Trimble slid his rifle from the boot. “Ready, Cap’n?”
“Lead on, Clem,” Stryker said. Butterflies were dancing in his stomach.
Trimble led Stryker and Birchwood out of the basin; then he swung south along the lee of a low ridge. They were making their way through country made rough by close-growing juniper, mesquite and jumbled rocks when, after fifteen minutes, Trimble stopped. He motioned Stryker into a narrow arroyo, choked with brush and stands of low-growing prickly pear.
The old man’s voice dropped to a gravelly whisper. “Up there, on the ridge, Cap’n, we can see Dugan’s camp. The arroyo goes back a ways, maybe half a mile, then curves around and heads back to the place where we left the horses. It’s hard going, but we’ll be well hid when Dugan’s men come lookin’ fer us.”
Stryker had an idea. “Clem, can we get through the arroyo in the dark?”
“Sure, Cap’n. We’ll get our asses tore up by cactus, but we can get through.”
“They’d have more trouble finding us in the dark,” Stryker said. “If they even try.”
Trimble glanced at the sky where the sun had not yet reached its highest point. “Then we got us a wait.”
“In the meantime, we’ll get onto the ridge and take a look.”
The climb was steep with few handholds and patches of loose gravel hiding among the brush and grass. Coming down would be a lot faster and Stryker consoled himself with that thought.
Lying on his belly between Trimble and Birchwood, Stryker made his way to the rim and looked down at the valley below. Its slopes were thickly covered in timber and a fair-running creek ran along its entire length.
Pierce and his men were camped near the tree line, behind an arc of yellow sand. A single tent stood near the creek and two wagons were parked close to the pines, beside them the horse line where eight mules and a dozen saddle horses were tethered.
