Ike held out the reins to the warrior’s horse and said, “You deserve the spoils.”
“I saw him dead on the ground. The brave bedeviling me. You shot him?”
“Before he had a chance to skewer you with his lance.”
“You deserve to take his scalp. If you want to, go ahead,” the officer said.
Ike shook his head and said, “I don’t cotton to such barbarity.” He reflected on the past week. Before fleeing from Houston, he had never so much as pointed a gun at another man with the intent to shoot. Now he left behind a trail of corpses and hardly thought about it. He touched the wallet with the brass badge in his inner pocket. Did that symbol make him that way or did the circumstance? The letter of authorization written by Judge Parker gave him a free hand to shoot anyone in his way, as long as he claimed to be Augustus Yarrow. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t even sick to his stomach now.
Did being a lawman shrivel any feelings of taking another’s life? Or was it part of the job? Everyone he had shot would have killed him first. A new worry came to him. How far would he go to keep Lily from harm? He hardly knew her or her mother, yet he felt responsibility for their safety—just as he had the unknown woman whose ruby necklace had been stolen during the train robbery.
If Kinchloe ever walked in front of his sights, Ike would pull the trigger. And Martin Schofield? Him, too.
“I’m not inclined to take a scalp, either,” the lieutenant said between clenched teeth. “My men have a standing order to leave bodies unmolested, but not all of them obey. Too many have lost brothers or even wives and children.”
Ike refrained from making any comment about the soldiers fleeing and leaving their commander to his own devices. The officer hadn’t made a good impression, and Ike knew the man would care not a whit if the Apaches had killed him. The lieutenant wasn’t even much liked by his own patrol, from the way their tone carried disdain anytime they mentioned him. But whatever opinion he held personally about the officer, he wasn’t going to leave him to die.
He bent and picked up the fallen lance. He handed it to the officer.
“This is about all the weapon I see.” Ike hadn’t any stomach to search the fallen Apache, but the dead man had held only the lance. No pistol or rifle lay on the ground nearby.
“He’s got a knife.” The lieutenant plucked the blade from a sheath, held it up and then thrust it into the scabbard intended for his useless saber. Then he used the lance more as a crutch than a weapon. With obvious pain, he mounted and settled down. Only when he was secure did he lift the lance and lay it in front of him across the horse.
Ike decided the spear was better than nothing if they had to fight again. That and the knife in the officer’s sword scabbard. He hopped onto what he now considered his pony and looked around.
“That way,” he said, starting toward the tracks. To his surprise, the officer didn’t argue and silently trailed him.
When they reached a flat area away from the dunes, the lieutenant rode alongside.
“I haven’t thanked you for pulling my fat out of the fire back there. That was the war party chief who came after me. Got the better of me, too.”
“That was Victorio?” Ike’s eyebrows shot up. “I killed Victorio?”
The officer laughed and shook his head. “That’s not the way they fight. Whoever’s dead back there was chosen to lead this raiding party. The main band is somewhere else, maybe down in Mexico by now. There’ve been rumors Victorio has a stronghold in Tres Castillos, but I doubt that. He’s able to keep moving, him and his war chief, Nana, and his sister.” The officer spat. “Lozen might be the worst of the lot.”
“His sister? This is a family affair?”
“Strong tribal bonds, and Lozen’s looked up to as a warrior by every last one of the two hundred riding with Victorio. They think she’s a shaman, that she’s got . . . the power.”
Ike wasn’t sure how to reply. The officer rambled on.
“They claim she can predict where we’ll patrol. That makes her one of her brother’s most important tacticians. And Nana? His hands burn hot when he holds them out in the direction of rifles.”
“A compass for weapons to steal?”
“Something like that.”
Ike considered the three freight cars weighed down with rifles and ammunition. Nana’s hands must be ablaze from Schofield’s rifles. If Victorio got those rifles and ammunition, all of West Texas would become an even worse bloody battlefield.
“Sir, I was thrown off a train moving hundreds of rifles.”
“Thrown off? What? You didn’t pay your fare?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Not for the first time, Ike wrestled with lying about being Augustus Yarrow to give himself some credibility. “I saw the rifles loaded onto three freight cars back in San Antonio. The train with them’s heading north.”
“North?” The lieutenant wobbled a bit and started to slip from horseback. Ike reached over and shook his shoulder. The man snapped upright. “Prepare for battle, Sergeant.”
“I’m not your sergeant,” Ike said.
“The war party is nearby. I feel it in my bones. Ambush. Watch for an ambush.”
“What do we do when we reach the tracks?” Ike knew they had only one choice. Follow the route until they reached Marfa and hope the Apaches had ridden on. He wanted to engage the officer and keep him from passing out. Appealing to his role of being in charge and making decisions seemed the easiest way of doing that.
The only problem Ike saw was that the officer had made so many bad decisions. Whether a more experienced officer would have led his patrol into an ambush hardly mattered now. It had happened.
“Tracks? Can’t read ’em in the dark. Damned rain washed out the tracks.” The officer leaned over as if trying to see hoofprints in the sand. Again, Ike had to shake him, otherwise he would have toppled to the ground.
Ike considered stopping and lashing the lieutenant belly down over the horse, but as long he remained upright, riding was better for the man. His wounds no longer leaked blood, but that might change if he were tied to the horse. Ike wished he had encountered a situation like this before so he’d know what to do.
Then he laughed bitterly. If he knew what to do, that’d mean lots of others already would have been cut down. Surviving was the only thing to occupy him now. He’d always gotten by, sometimes by the skin of his teeth, but it had never been so obvious what he had to do. Ike touched the gun riding in his holster. Not only did he have to fight the Apaches, he had to keep the lieutenant alive, too.
He turned into the cold wind, relishing the way it caressed his face and brought him fully alert. A quick glance at the lieutenant showed that stimulation wasn’t working for him. The officer slumped, and only at the last instant grabbed his horse’s neck to keep from falling off.
“You want to take a rest?” When the lieutenant failed to give a coherent reply, Ike rode closer and grabbed the man’s arm. “Let’s see to your wounds. Some of them look to have popped open again.”
Ike froze when he heard horses whinnying off to his left. He grabbed the reins of the lieutenant’s horse and yanked it to a halt. Ears straining, Ike heard low voices, indistinct but urgent. He and the officer had been spotted.
“Get down, come on, help me.” Ike hit the ground and tugged at the lieutenant’s arm. The man resisted, then collapsed and fell onto Ike. Staggering under the unexpected weight, Ike felt as if he were dancing with a partner at a barn dance, one who didn’t keep time to the music.
He clung to the officer and swung him around to keep his balance. The dead weight forced him to his knees. With a heave, he wrestled his burden to the ground and rolled him into a shallow gully. Ike looked up to see dark riders approaching from the direction of the muffled voices.