He swung his horse away and once again cantered into the shimmering heat of the afternoon.
Stryker waved the detail forward, and they headed due north for the next hour.
Directly ahead of the lieutenant, beyond the foothills, soared the domed peak of Government Mountain, where in ancient times mysterious peoples from farther south had once mined obsidian. Juniper and mesquite grew at the base of its slopes, giving way to brush as the mountain climbed to its full height of almost eight thousand feet. The peak’s shadowed foothills spread away in all directions, like the knotted roots of a gigantic oak.
Somewhere in that tangle of arroyos, trees and hills were the Apaches.
Stryker took off his battered campaign hat and wiped sweat from the leather band. Were the savages watching them even now, waiting until they came into rifle range? And where the hell was Joe Hogg?
It was very hot. Dust drifted in thick veils around the column, and the men riding at the rear were suffering. The stale smell of horse and man sweat hung in the air and the red and white guidon drooped listlessly in the stillness. From somewhere close by a rattlesnake made its presence known, an angry buzzing that almost immediately lapsed into silence as the snake sought protection under a mesquite bush. The sun was the color of white-hot iron, branding the suffering sky, and in all the vast, naked land nothing moved and there was no sound.
Now the foothills of the Cabezas were drawing close and Stryker halted the column. He called Sergeant Hooper forward.
“Rest the men, Sergeant. No fires. We’ll wait here for Mr. Hogg’s report.”
“Yes, sir,” Hooper said. He snapped off a smart salute as though he were still on parade at Aldershot with the Queen’s Own Rifles.
Stryker watched the man leave. Hooper was a good soldier, steady, but he had a fatal weakness for women. According to his record, it had been the rape of a fellow sergeant’s sixteen-year-old daughter that had forced him to desert and flee England ahead of a rope.
Desperate for experienced soldiers, the United States Army had weighed Hooper in the balance, decided that he had value as an Apache killer, and had posted him to the Southwest. As far as Stryker knew, the Army had never regretted that decision.
As for himself, he had never liked the man. Hooper was a good soldier, but he was an overbearing bully and Stryker read something in his eyes that he did not like, something that crawled. . . .
Grateful to get out of the saddle, the troopers sprawled in whatever thin shade they could find. They could not boil coffee, but pipes were lit and a few of them chewed on evil-smelling jerky.
Hooper had pickets out, and the horses, used to making do or doing without, grazed on scattered clumps of bunch grass and mesquite beans.
Stryker eased the girth of the bay’s saddle, then took his canteen from the horn. The water was brackish and warm, but it cut the dust in his throat, settled his burning thirst a little, and for that he was grateful. He watched his horse wander off in search of graze, then settled his back against a rock and waited.
Where was Joe Hogg? And where were the Apaches?
The lieutenant’s sweat-stained long johns smelled stale and old, tinged with the odors of tobacco, horse and greasewood smoke. His canvas cartridge belt with its holstered, heavy Colt was digging into his waist, chafing the skin. He thought about pulling off his boots for comfort’s sake, but decided against it. Just too much of a chore to drag them on again over his swollen feet.
A fly buzzed around his head and he waved it away, but it persisted, attracted by the salty sweat on his skin. Stryker grabbed at the fly, missed, grabbed again. This time he caught it. He leaned over, rubbed the fly into a smeared mess between his palm and a rock, then wiped his hand clean on the sand.
He closed his eyes. Trooper Kramer was wheezing like a pipe organ as Hooper berated him at length for gasping on sentry duty like a two-dollar whore.
Stryker grimaced. Shut the hell up, Hooper.
Slow hours dragged past and shadows lengthened as the sun dropped lower in the sky. Soon the evening light would drift across the desert like gray smoke and add its more profound hush to the silence.
Where the hell was Hogg?
Rising wearily to his feet, the lieutenant looked toward the Cabezas foothills. He stepped to his horse, removed his field glasses from the saddlebags, and scanned the hills again.
Nothing moved and even the heat had ceased to shimmer.
Stryker lowered the glasses. All right, if Hogg wouldn’t come to him, he’d go to Hogg.
“Sergeant Hooper!” he yelled.
Chapter 4
Two mounted troopers behind him, Stryker rode at a walk toward the hills.
The day was shading into night and the air had grown cooler. Like his men, the lieutenant was once again wearing his riding breeches, the wide canvas suspenders slung over a sun-faded blue blouse with its officer’s shoulder straps.
The brush-covered hills gradually gave way to more level ground, but the going was made difficult by thickets of juniper, mesquite and unexpected parapets of white and tan rock.
Warily, Stryker rode west along the foothills, his eyes searching the shadowing country. Once a rustling in the brush sent his hand streaking for his gun. But he felt foolish when he saw that it was only a Gila monster seeking its burrow, a shy animal that spends only three or four minutes a year above ground.
Behind him, one of his men sniggered. It sounded like Trooper Rogers, a name Stryker mentally filed away for future reference.
For several minutes, he led his men northwest, following the gentle curve of the mountain range.
Apaches claimed they could smell white people, and the lieutenant figured that by now he must be within sniffing distance.
Ahead of him, the gathering darkness suddenly parted, and Joe Hogg, his Henry across the saddle horn, emerged from the gloom like a gray ghost.
When the scout rode closer he pointed over Stryker’s shoulder, wordlessly indicating that he should go back the way he’d come.
Hogg rode on and the lieutenant and his men followed. After a hundred yards, the scout swung into the lee side of a rock and drew rein.
He got right to the point. “Lieutenant, the Apaches are holed up back yonder, maybe half a mile, in an arroyo that opens into a small hanging meadow. They got mule meat cooking on sticks, and—this is where it gets mighty interesting—they’re passing around jugs. I reckon the rancher they killed must have been a whiskey-drinking man, because them bucks are well supplied and half of them are drunk already.”
He paused. “Got a white woman with them. Red-haired gal, seems young.”
“How many Apaches?”
“Pretty much as I guessed. Twenty young bucks, give or take a couple.”
“No women or children with them?”
“Only the redheaded gal.”
Stryker nodded. “She doesn’t count.”
He called over Trooper Rogers. “Head back to the camp and tell Sergeant Hooper I said to bring on the rest of the detail. Tell him to come at a walk, no talking and no noise.”
Rogers, a young man with freckles across his nose and a wisp of downy mustache on his lip, looked warily around him. “It’s getting dark, sir.”
Irritated, Stryker snapped. “What about it?”
“Well, sir, I mean . . . there are Apaches about, sir.”
Hogg’s teeth gleamed in the gloom. “Don’t you worry about it, sonny. If the Apaches decide to git you, your hair will be gone an’ your throat cut afore you even know it. You won’t feel a thing.”
Rogers swallowed hard, tried to talk and decided not to trust his voice, especially since his fellow trooper was sitting his horse, grinning at him.
“Carry out your orders, Trooper Rogers,” Stryker said.
