As he saw the woman reach the adobe and a soldier unbolted the door for her, Stryker felt a vague pang of disappointment. After Joe Hogg had found female tracks on the bluff, Stryker had harbored a flicker of hope that somehow Millie had come back, looking for him. He had not fanned the flames of that hope, knowing how foolish it was, yet now he realized that a feeble, dying spark had still lingered in him.
The woman stepped inside, looking around her. Her eyes showed no recognition of the soldiers, or any interest in where she was. But she did see Kelly. Without a word she crossed the room, her battered shoes clinking through the empty brass shells littering the floor, and sat beside the girl. Kelly looked at her warily, but the woman reached out and took her in her arms, laying her head on her breast.
“Sleep now, child,” she whispered.
Those were the first words Stryker had ever heard her say.
Apaches didn’t scare worth a damn and although the crazy woman had unnerved them, they soon resumed firing on the adobe.
“Mr. Birchwood,” Stryker said. “A word, if you please.”
The young lieutenant stepped beside him and, his breeding coming to the fore, tried to say all the right things. “Don’t blame yourself, sir,” he said. “No one could have done better.” He looked at the blanketed body. “Private Stearns must have had a weak heart.”
“There was nothing wrong with his heart, Lieutenant. Without ether or even whiskey, the pain was just too much for him to bear. I’m to blame. I’m a damned butcher, not a surgeon.”
Birchwood would not be moved. “It had to be done, sir. It fell to you and you did your best.”
Bullets thudded into the adobe. Stryker glanced out of a window and saw the Apaches massing for another mounted attack.
Stryker had intended to tell Birchwood about his plan to reach one of the saloons and catch the Indians in crossfire. He pushed that aside for now and stepped to the window. One of the soldiers moved back and Stryker took his place. He was aware of his limitations. A fair hand with the revolver, he barely passed muster at the Point in rifle shooting, coming in dead last out of a class of thirty-eight.
Now he steeled himself. The Henry wasn’t a cumbersome model 1869 Cadet Rifle and maybe he could do better. He had to do better. He racked a round into the chamber and waited for the attack.
It never came.
The Apaches suddenly faded back into the hills, leaving behind them only emptiness and silence. As Stryker watched, a dust devil spun across the parade ground and abruptly collapsed into a puff of sand. A piece of yellow paper, tossed by the breeze, fluttered around the adobe like a moth before rising higher into the air and vanishing from sight.
From behind Stryker, a man asked, “Why the hell did they pull back like that?”
No one answered him because no one knew.
Stryker walked to the door, stepped outside and looked around him. The peaks of the Chiricahuas were bathed in afternoon light, their lower slopes green. A bird called. The scent of cedar and sage hung in the air like a thin mist, as subtle and understated as the French perfume of a beautiful Washington belle. Deep in the bunch grass, crickets sawed tunes on their serrated legs, filling the morning with scratchy sound.
The riders came from the west—dirty, shaggy men mounted on small, wiry ponies.
Stryker had left his field glasses in the adobe. He took off his slouch hat and held it high against the sun, his eyes squinting in the glare, trying to make out the manner of these men.
He reached down and unbuttoned his holster flap.
If this was Rake Pierce and his renegades, he would do no talking. He would draw his gun and shoot the man dead. The chances were that he’d die right after, but it would be worth it if he could drag Pierce down into hell with him.
The men rode closer and Stryker was aware of Birchwood’s dozen soldiers shaking out into a line behind him. If a fight came, it would be up close and personal, and even green troops would not miss at that range.
And neither will I, Stryker promised himself. Neither will I.
Chapter 23
The three riders taking the point were all big men wearing dusty range clothes, pants tucked into scuffed boots that sported spurs as big and round as tea-cups. Each wore a Colt on his hip and had a Winchester booted under his left knee.
They drew rein when they were five feet from Stryker.
“Howdy,” the older man said, “name’s Abel Warden from over to Tucson way. I’ve got three hundred head of beeves for Fort Bowie coming up about half an hour behind me.” He waved a hand to the man on his right. “This is my foreman, Arkansas Charlie Mullins, and this young feller here”—he nodded toward the man on his left—“is John Warden, my oldest son and segundo.”
Abel Warden laid his hands on the saddle horn, his eyes ranging over the battle-scarred adobe and the dead soldier still lying in the dust in front of the building.
“You’ve been through it,” he said.
Stryker nodded. “Apaches. They quit when they saw you coming.” He smiled. “I don’t think that’s going to be a permanent arrangement.”
He introduced himself and Birchwood, then said, “You know Nana is out and joined up with Geronimo?”
“Heard that. Figgered they’d head south into Old Mexico, though. Back in Tucson, they say General Crook is headed for the Territory to lead another expedition against the Apaches.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“Well, it’s what they say. ‘Lead another expedition, ’ was how it was put to me.”
Arkansas Charlie and the younger Warden were staring at Stryker with that slack-jawed, rube-at-a-carnival-freak-show look he’d come to know so well. Abel, older and maybe wiser, didn’t let it show.
The man’s eyes ranged across around the post again, then to the dozen soldiers, then back to Stryker. “This all you got, Lieutenant?”
“This is it. Everybody else is at Fort Bowie.” Warden nodded. “Maybe you should come with us.”
“How many drovers with you, Mr. Warden?”
“Us three and three others.” He saw a flicker of doubt fleet across Stryker’s face. “They’re all good men, Lieutenant, and they’ve fit Indians before. Comanche mostly, and Kiowa. They’ll stand.”
Warden nodded in the direction of the cottonwoods. “The creek over there still got water?”
“Some. But three hundred head of cattle will drink it dry.”
“Good. Then there’ll be none left for the Apaches.”
“One thing, Mr. Warden: I have womenfolk with me, a young girl and a crazy lady. And two wounded soldiers, one of them real bad.”
“Can they walk? I got no wagon, only a pack mule.”
“They can walk. The badly wounded man will die real soon.”
Warden nodded. He turned to his foreman. “Charlie, you and John bring up the herd.”
When the men had left, Warden followed Stryker to the adobe. He swung out of the saddle and set a foot inside, but quickly stepped back again, gulping air.
“Whoa, Lieutenant, no disrespect,” he said, “but I can’t stomach that stink. It could turn a man for sure.”
“I have two dead men inside,” Stryker said. He did not elaborate. “And it’s hot.”
“Kill any Apaches?”
“Maybe two. I don’t know. The Apaches dragged them away.”
“They’ll do that. They always try to recover their dead.”
Warden’s gaze scanned the mountains around him. “Which way did they go?”
“North, back into the hills.”
“How many?”