Stryker had an idea. “Clem, can we get through the arroyo in the dark?”
“Sure, Cap’n. We’ll get our asses tore up by cactus, but we can get through.”
“They’d have more trouble finding us in the dark,” Stryker said. “If they even try.”
Trimble glanced at the sky where the sun had not yet reached its highest point. “Then we got us a wait.”
“In the meantime, we’ll get onto the ridge and take a look.”
The climb was steep with few handholds and patches of loose gravel hiding among the brush and grass. Coming down would be a lot faster and Stryker consoled himself with that thought.
Lying on his belly between Trimble and Birchwood, Stryker made his way to the rim and looked down at the valley below. Its slopes were thickly covered in timber and a fair-running creek ran along its entire length.
Pierce and his men were camped near the tree line, behind an arc of yellow sand. A single tent stood near the creek and two wagons were parked close to the pines, beside them the horse line where eight mules and a dozen saddle horses were tethered.
Stryker glanced at the sun. It was still behind him and he raised his field glasses, sure that there would be no flash of sunlight on the lenses.
He swept the camp, counting nine armed men coming and going near the fire and its smoking coffeepot. He saw no sign of Pierce or Dugan.
Then something happened that started his heart hammering in his chest and made a desert of his mouth.
Rake Pierce, big and hairy, wearing only the bottom part of his long johns stepped out of the tent. Dugan, bigger and even more hairy, came out behind him.
Pierce held a naked Apache girl by her upper arm. He looked around, scratched his belly, then raised a leg and broke wind, the fart so loud it sounded like a rifle shot. Beside him now, Dugan slapped his back and laughed.
The girl was struggling to get away, but Pierce held her in a vice grip. He looked around again and beckoned to a man to come closer. The man, tall and lanky, wearing greasy buckskins, stepped in front of him and Pierce threw the girl to him. He said something to the lanky man that made Dugan guffaw and slap his thigh again, and the man grabbed the girl, laid back his head and howled like an animal.
As Stryker watched, the man in buckskins dragged the naked girl under the wagon, pulled down his pants and rolled on top of her. Pierce watched for a while; then he and Dugan stepped back into the tent.
But it wasn’t over. Horror was about to pile atop horror. Stryker’s glasses filled with the image of the buckskinned man reaching his climax, then collapsing his whole weight on top of the girl. Finally he rolled out from under the wagon, pulled up his pants and dragged out the Apache. He looked around the camp and hollered, “Anybody else want a taste?”
Getting no takers, he casually took out his knife and cut the girl’s throat. Then he put his knee on the small of her back and scalped her. Brandishing the bloody scalp above his head, the lanky man ran around the camp, whooping like an Indian. His compadres stopped what they were doing and looked and laughed. A couple of them even joined in the demented cavort, jumping over the dead girl’s bloody body.
Sickened, numbed by what he had just witnessed, Stryker edged down from the ridge. He lay on his back and rested his head on the slope, breathing hard.
He looked at the red-hot coin of the sun, at its molten light that spread from horizon to horizon and burned out every trace of color from the sky, reducing it to pale white ashes.
Stryker closed his eyes, red flashes dancing in their lidded darkness. Something akin to guilt, and to grief, its bastard child, curled in his belly.
He could have killed Rake Pierce but didn’t.
All he had to do was tell Clem Trimble to shoot him. Bad hand or no, the old man could have put a bullet in Pierce’s brain pan and it would have been all over.
It would have been easy . . . too easy.
Death would have come clean and fast to Pierce. He wouldn’t even have felt the bullet he straddled into hell or known who was killing him.
He needed to know. Stryker wanted the man to despair at the manner and timing of his death. He had to look into Stryker’s eyes, burning in their crushed sockets, and know he was in the presence of his judge, jury and executioner and that there was no mercy in him. Only then would Rake Pierce’s debt be paid in full and the reckoning be over and done.
Trimble slid down the slope on his back and came to a halt beside Stryker. “Cap’n, if we’re waitin’ until sundown, we’d best get off this ridge.”
Stryker looked at him and blinked, like a man waking from sleep. He held fast on the old man’s eyes, thinking about the Apache girl and the terror she must have felt in her last moments. And he recalled the lanky man who murdered as casually as he’d kill a rabbit, without thought or a pang of conscience.
A crazed recklessness rose in Stryker. He was damned if he’d scuttle into the brush and cower like a frightened animal, hiding until dark. He would not give Pierce that satisfaction.
“Clem,” he said, “let’s dust the bastards.”
The old man smiled. “Cap’n, that don’t sound like soldier talk.”
“No, it’s war talk.” Stryker smiled without humor.
“Then you’re speakin’ my language, Cap’n.” Trimble looked over at Birchwood, who still seemed to be in shock over the murder of the Apache. “You game for it, sonny?”
Shaken as he was, the young officer stood on his dignity. “Please address me as Lieutenant, Mr. Trimble.”
“Sure thing, Lieutenant. Well, sonny, are you game for it?”
Birchwood sighed, then smiled. “Damn right I am.”
Stryker looked from Birchwood to Trimble and grinned. “Then let’s open the ball, gentlemen.”
Chapter 33
Pierce’s camp seemed unchanged, until Stryker scanned the horse lines. Two ponies and a mule were missing. He felt concern ball up inside him. Had Pierce and Dugan ridden away for some reason?
No, it could be any two of the renegades. Maybe a couple of men who had left to hunt or were off scouting somewhere.
But Stryker felt uneasy. Pierce and Dugan had the instincts and inclinations of wolves. Had they sensed danger of some kind and fled?
Edging close to Trimble, Stryker told him what he’d seen. The old man nodded, then turned. “See them two teeth I got there on the bottom, Cap’n?” He opened his mouth.
“I see them,” Stryker whispered. “They’re the only two you have.”
“Uh-huh, an’ they’re what I call ‘Indian teeth.’ They start to punish me when Apaches are close.”
“They punishing you now?”
“You bet, Cap’n. An’ hear that? All the birds have gone quiet.”
Stryker listened into the afternoon. There was no sound, not even the scratching of insects in the brush. The men in camp seemed not to have noticed. Ten of them had gathered around the fire to eat and a few had lit pipes. No one had bothered to cover the body of the Apache girl and she still lay where she’d fallen. The sunlight gleamed on the polished dark skin of her arms and legs, as if she were still alive and full of health.
Another whisper from Trimble. “I don’t see ol’ Silas, nor that feller Pierce either.”
Stryker bit his lip, his mind working. Finally he said, “Shoot up the tent, Clem. Force them out. Mr. Birchwood and I will concentrate our fire on the men by the fire.”
The old man nodded and Stryker turned to Birchwood. “Ready?” The young man raised his hand, his rifle against his shoulder.
“Let’s get it done,” Stryker said.
He pushed out his Colt and opened up on the men around the campfire, Birchwood’s rifle blasting next to him. The renegades jumped up and scattered, all but one who lay stretched out on the ground.