Stryker closed eyes that felt as though they were heavy with sand. He leaned his head against the rock and breathed through his mouth, grabbing at the thin air. Gradually he let not sleep, but a deep unconsciousness take him.
As the day shadowed into the lilac tint of evening and the stars set sentinels in the sky, an antelope trotted past the split rock, only to bound away when it caught sight of the sprawled human. A pair of hunting coyotes winded Stryker but quickly lost interest when they scented richer, closer and deader meat. . . .
His uneasy, restless slumber dragged on.
“Lieutenant! Lieutenant Stryker!”
Stryker’s eyes flew open. Mrs. McCabe was calling into the darkness for him. He struggled to his feet just as the woman emerged from the gloom—leading a horse.
“When it got dark I grew worried,” she said. “I thought . . . I thought maybe you were—”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“Where is Kelly?”
“Asleep.”
Stryker felt like he was a hundred years old. He stepped wearily toward Mary McCabe and studied the horse. “He’s a criollo,” he said. “I once saw a regiment of Mexican lancers mounted on them. How did you come by him?”
“One of the dead Apaches was riding him. I found him wandering under the cottonwood beside the cabin. I bridled him,” the woman said. “He’s not a tall horse. Can you get on his back?”
Stryker managed a smile. “Seems like I’ll have to. I can’t make it back to the cabin on foot.”
It took him several attempts, but finally he managed to climb onto the little horse’s back. The criollo was well-trained and had stood quietly while Stryker mounted him. Now Mary gathered up the reins and led the horse back toward the game trail.
On the way, Stryker told her about finding Sergeant Hooper. He did not tell her the man had still been alive and that he’d fired a mercy shot into his brain.
“The Apaches are heading north to join Geronimo,” he said. “So is Rake Pierce, the man who beat me with a shackle chain.”
When she turned, Mary’s face was a pale blur in the gathering darkness. “You want to kill him, this man?”
“Yes, I do, Mrs. McCabe. I want to kill him real bad.”
“I understand.”
“You do?”
“I wanted to kill the man who abused me and cut me with a knife. I’m a coward who just never found the courage.”
“You have courage, Mrs. McCabe. It’s a quiet, womanly sort of courage that doesn’t shout its name, but it’s courage nevertheless. If you’re a coward, I haven’t seen it in you yet.”
“No one has ever said anything like that to me, Lieutenant.”
“A woman needs a man to say things to her, Mrs. McCabe. He should tell her about the way her hair catches the sunlight, the blue sky that lives in her eyes. True things.”
“West Point taught you well, Lieutenant Stryker.”
“No, life taught me well, or it’s trying to.”
“Hold on tight,” Mary said. “We’ve reached the hogback.”
Chapter 15
The McClellan saddle was designed to favor the horse, not the rider, and Stryker felt stiff and uncomfortable as he headed the criollo south across an endless brush desert cut through by dry creeks and wide, dusty washes.
He felt uncomfortable for another reason.
Mrs. McCabe and Kelly walked beside the horse, their only protection from the blazing sun a tiny white parasol that the woman had preserved from the time before her marriage. Stryker knew they were suffering, but neither uttered a word of complaint, a fact that did nothing to ease his conscience.
Mary knew that the lieutenant wasn’t fit to walk a long distance and she’d accepted it. But again, that didn’t make it any easier.
They’d left the cabin at first light that morning, planning to meet up with Birchwood and his infantry on the trail south. Stryker would then abandon Yanisin and his people to their own devices and use a series of forced marches to reach Fort Merit, hopefully before the Apaches attacked.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, not even a good one, but it was all Stryker had, and at least he felt he was taking the initiative again.
He looked down at the woman. “How are you holding up, Mrs. McCabe?”
“It’s hot.”
Kelly’s head was bent and her feet were dragging. She had earlier refused to sit on the horse in front of Stryker, but now he asked her again. This time the girl eagerly agreed, and he lifted her in front of him.
They had been walking for three hours and a look at Mrs. McCabe’s face told Stryker that she too was growing exhausted. He drew rein, freed a stirrup and said, “Get up behind me, Mrs. McCabe.”
The woman shook her head. “That’s too much for the horse.”
“He’s a tough little bronc,” Stryker smiled. “He can carry all three of us.”
The woman had no argument left in her. She climbed up behind Stryker who kneed the criollo into motion. The horse’s gait did not change and it seemed to handle the additional weight with ease.
Kelly leaned her head on Stryker’s chest, lightly and tentatively at first, but then it grew heavier as the child slept.
The sky islands of the Chiricahuas soared above the three people on the little horse, dwarfing them into insignificance. Here and there eroded stone spires and columns rose out of thick tree canopies like the pillars of a ruined cathedral, ancient incense that smelled of pine still fragrant in the air. The sun had impaled itself on a peak and was motionless in the sky, unable to shake itself free. The entire vast land shimmered in the heat, distorting the way ahead, hard on the eyes, harder still on Stryker’s stretched-taut nerves.
This was Apache country and no man who entered it, unless he was a fool, ever rode at ease.
And that was proved just thirty minutes later when three mounted Indians emerged from the shimmering landscape as though they were riding through a curtain of lace.
Over Stryker’s shoulder Mary McCabe saw what he was seeing. She immediately slid off the criollo and lifted Kelly from the saddle. The girl was still asleep and her head rested on her mother’s shoulder.
There was nowhere to hide, no time to run, but Stryker was a horse soldier and the woman knew that if it came to a fight she and Kelly would be an encumbrance.
Stryker racked the Henry and sat his saddle, waiting, his eyes fixed on the oncoming Apaches. He was still very weak, in no shape for a battle, but, as they had been for Mary, his options were limited.
All three of the Indians carried new Winchesters and they came on at a walk, unhurried, their flat, black eyes weighing Stryker, evaluating him as a fighting man.
Stryker quickly glanced around him. He saw nothing in the terrain that would give him an advantage. Now that he’d looked at his hole card and didn’t like what he’d seen, he gripped his rifle tighter and waited for the inevitable. No matter what, he would take his hits and survive long enough to fire two shots. Remembering what had befallen Hooper, he wouldn’t abandon Mrs. McCabe and her daughter to the same fate.
The Apaches stopped ten yards away, and then one of them rode forward. He was young, stocky, bands of red and yellow paint across his nose and cheeks. At one time or another in his wild life, this warrior had been an Army scout.
Reining his pony alongside the criollo, the Apache stared hard into Stryker’s face. Astonishment gave way to puzzlement and then to a wide grin. The warrior turned and enthusiastically beckoned the other two closer.
Stryker lifted the muzzle of the Henry an inch until it was pointed at the belly of the Indian closest to him. The man, still intent on studying the soldier’s shattered features, didn’t seem to notice. His head was inclined at an angle as he tried to imagine how the big officer had gotten that way.