Behind them Felipe stood at the door of the cantina and aired out his lungs, throwing curses at them in Spanish and English.
“I think you upset that little feller, Cap’n,” Trimble said.
“Serves him right,” Stryker said.
Chapter 35
For the remainder of the day they rode through the foothills of the Madres, avoiding the high desert country that stretched almost three hundred miles to the east. That night they camped in an arroyo and made a meager supper of the last of their bacon and some stale biscuits.
The next morning Trimble picked up sign—the tracks of shod horses—but lost them again in the canyons and the oak, juniper and pinon forests that covered much of the mountain country.
“I reckon we’re two hundred and fifty miles north of Chihuahua, give or take,” Trimble said. “It’s a lot of country to cover, Cap’n.”
“We’ll catch up to them sooner than that,” Stryker said. “They’re close; maybe only a few miles ahead of us.”
“And Geronimo is right behind us,” Birchwood said. “Sir, do you think he’ll be looking over our shoulders to see that we do what we promised?”
Stryker shook his head. “I doubt it. My guess is that he’s already shaken off General Crook, crossed the border and is heading for his old stomping grounds in the eastern Madres. From there he can strike deep into central Mexico and raid into Texas and New Mexico.”
Trimble nodded. “The Apaches have their women and young ’uns stashed in the mountains. Nothing an Indian does makes sense and he’ll fool you every time, but I think you got it right, Cap’n.”
“I sure hope so, Clem,” Stryker said. “I don’t want to meet up with Geronimo again, unless it’s to take his surrender.”
“An’ that’s the day pigs will fly, Cap’n,” the old man grinned.
At noon they rode into another village and managed to barter one of their spare Colts for tortillas, beans, bacon and a small sack of coffee.
The village mayor said that he had not seen the two
He also asked if the United States was at war with Mexico to bring Army officers so far south.
Stryker realized that the blue blouses and officer’s shoulder straps worn by him and Birchwood were too conspicuous. Further bartering obtained them a couple of baggy cotton shirts. After they left the village, he and Birchwood changed, stashing the uniform blouses in their blanket rolls.
Trimble, who’d been watching closely, could not let that go without comment. “Well, Cap’n,” he said, “you two look like a couple of Messkin peasants an’ no mistake. Now you don’t have all that gold braid on your shoulders, maybe I should start callin’ you Pancho instead of Cap’n, huh?”
Stryker turned to the old man. “See that rifle under your knee, Clem?”
“I see it.”
“Call me Pancho just once and I’ll shove it right up your ass.”
Trimble cackled and slapped his thigh, as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
A horseman traveling from here to there leaves a scar on the country, even in the mountains. The mark made by Pierce and Dugan was the death they left in their wake.
The day was fading into dusk when Stryker and the others rode up on the abandoned coach. They had been following a well maintained wagon road that curved around an outcropping of rock and had hidden the coach until they were almost on top of it.
Its four horses were still in the traces and had pulled the coach toward a patch of grama grass growing beside the road. But one of the rear wheels had wedged between rocks and the horses had been brought to a halt. They stood with their heads low, too tired to kick at the flies that clouded around their legs.
Stryker swung out of the saddle and stepped closer to the coach. There was a dead man slumped in the driver’s seat. He wore the fancy trappings of a vaquero, embroidered short jacket and silver-studded pants. His ivory handled Colt was still in the holster.
An older man was sprawled inside the coach, gray-haired and distinguished looking. He’d been shot several times. The man was impeccably dressed in the highest fashion, but by the disarray of his clothing it looked as though he’d been robbed of his jewelry and watch and chain.
“Over here, Cap’n!”
Stryker answered Trimble’s beckoning arm and walked to the side of the road where he was standing. “Take a look,” he said. “She says it all.”
The woman had been young, dark and exceedingly beautiful. She lay on her back, stripped half naked, her legs forced open. She’d been raped, and then her throat had been cut. The middle finger of her left hand had been cut off, probably to get at a ring she’d worn.
Stryker looked at Trimble. “Pierce and Dugan?”
“Who else, Cap’n?”
“This is a private coach,” Birchwood said. “It’s got a fancy coat of arms on the door and the words ‘Hacienda Cantrell.’”
“Some rich rancher’s rig,” Trimble said. “Probably belongs to the man inside. I reckon this was his wife or daughter.”
The vaqueros came from the south, eight men riding hard in a cloud of dust. Before Stryker could react, he and the others were surrounded, steady guns pointed at them.
One of the vaqueros looked down at the dead woman and said something in Spanish to Stryker. He shook his head. “
An emotion that could have been pity crossed the vaquero’s hard, lined face. “This is very bad for you,” he said.
“We found the coach and the bodies,” Stryker said. “These people have been dead for hours.”
The vaquero made no answer. He turned his head and looked as a handsome young man riding a magnificent palomino stallion galloped beside them. The man savagely drew rein, the horse’s haunches slamming into the ground.
He leaped from the saddle and ran to the dead woman. He kneeled, cradled her in his arms and raised his face to the sky, letting out a scream of loss, grief and despair that splintered apart the hush of the evening and sounded barely human.
The vaquero who had first spoken to Stryker had dismounted. He stuck his gun into the lieutenant’s ribs and whispered, “I think, very bad for you now.”
Stryker knew it was useless to protest his innocence again, and he held his silence.
After that one primitive scream, the young man held the woman in his arms, sobbing, his head bent over her. Minutes passed; then one of the vaqueros, older than the others, stepped beside him.
He quietly said something in Spanish to the man, then nodded toward Stryker.
Their eyes met; the young man’s were full of death.
He rose to his feet and looked into the coach, standing motionless for several long moments. Now he turned again to Stryker. After the initial shock of seeing the lieutenant’s crushed face, he said quietly, evenly, almost without anger, “It will take you a long, long time to die, my friend.”
Stryker had feared Geronimo, and now he feared this man. But he came quickly to anger, figuring he had been pushed around enough and had nothing to lose.
“I’m an officer of the United States Army, and I did not kill these people,” he said. “We found them just before your men arrived.”
“That’s the God’s honest truth, your worship,” Trimble said. “But we’ve been hunting the men who did this.”
The young man’s eyes ranged over Stryker, taking in his sky blue breeches with their yellow stripes and the
