He rode on, his eyes scanning the way ahead.
Pierce was out there, maybe waiting, and the man was better with the rifle and revolver than he could ever be.
Thus Stryker faced the reality of his situation. It was a truth not calculated to build a man’s confidence.
Chapter 41
Despite the torrential downpour, Pierce had left signs of his passing: a broken branch here, a scuffed rock there, a hoofprint left in deep mud.
Stryker wondered at the man’s clumsiness; then it dawned on him: Pierce was not being careless; he was leading him on . . . to a place of the renegade’s choosing.
Drawing rein, Stryker scanned the terrain ahead of him. Visibility was down to fifty yards or less, and that deeply shadowed. The wind somersaulted through the trees, stripping branches of needles, and the thunder and lightning raged, as dangerous and threatening as a rabid wolf.
Through the steel veil of the rain, Stryker made out a towering parapet of rock cut through by a notch about sixty feet wide, created during some ancient earthshake. The bottom of the cleft was thick with lodgepole pine and tumbled boulders, one of the larger rocks carved into the shape of a skull by centuries of wind and rain.
Stryker’s newfound superstition made him look on the rock as an omen—it was where Pierce could be waiting to bushwhack him.
He pulled his Colt, dismounted, and led his horse into the shelter of some oaks. Keeping to as much cover as he could, he moved carefully toward the notch, pausing now and then to wipe rain from his eyes.
The notch was thirty yards away and there was no sign of Pierce.
Thunder blasted. But this was the thunder of a rifle. Stryker felt a powerful blow slam into his left shoulder. He spun around and dropped, a movement that saved his life. Pierce’s second bullet split the air inches above his head.
Like a wounded animal, Stryker sought the shelter of the trees, burrowing into the wet, mossy earth behind an oak. He lay on his back and touched fingers to his wound. They came away red. He’d been hit hard, maybe so hard he might never be able to get to his feet again.
The thought panicked Stryker. He could not lie there and let Pierce slaughter him.
Struggling against waves of nausea, his head spinning, he rose on one knee and stole a look around the tree trunk. Pierce’s bullet chipped bark an inch from his face, driving wood splinters into his forehead.
Stryker ducked back, breathing hard, and laid the back of his head against the tree. Rain ticked through the branches and the oak talked to the wind in a rustling whisper. The land around him flickered from dark to sizzling white as lightning flashed and made the air smell of a distant sea.
His back against the trunk, Stryker painfully pushed himself to his feet. He turned his face to the rain, mouth open, glorying in its coolness. The oak leaves traced shifting, lacy patterns against the angry sky and he studied them for long moments, wondering at their fragile beauty.
Consciousness was ebbing from Stryker with his blood. Now was the time. But if he was to die, he’d meet his God on his own terms: standing on his feet.
He raised his Colt to shoulder level and stepped from behind the tree and walked into the open.
Rake Pierce stood six feet away, straddle-legged, his gun in his hand, his thick body haloed by rain.
“Stryker, you damned freak,” he said, “now I’ll finish what I started.”
His gun came up, very fast.
Stryker heard a strange, flat click!, the sound that always precedes a close lightning strike. A split-second later, even as Pierce’s gun roared, the oak behind Stryker was hit. The bolt stabbed out of the sky like a column of living fire, briefly enveloping both men. They stood like statues bathed in terrible light for an instant, then were blasted to the ground.
The lightning split the oak in half, entirely stripping it of bark and leaves, and a few scarlet roses of flame bloomed briefly before they were pounded into darkness by the rain.
Stryker lay stunned, his face in the mud. He turned and saw the death throes of the oak and realized what had happened. But he had escaped one death, only to face another. Just two yards away, Pierce was on his hands and knees, struggling to get to his feet.
Stryker pushed his Colt in front him, grasping the butt in both hands. He had no hope of rising before Pierce did. Rain battered into his face, ribbons of yellow and scarlet from the searing lightning flash danced in his eyes and the day had darkened into a grim, gray gloom.
He rested the butt of the gun on the muddy ground, pointed it at Pierce and fired.
His bullet crashed into the man’s ribs and Pierce screamed and toppled over onto his right side.
Rake Pierce was not a brave man. His only strength was an ability to put the fear of God in others, women, children and men who knew they could not match his gun skill.
But now hate drove him, not courage.
And it was also hatred that motivated Stryker, binding him to Pierce, as firmly as if they’d come out of the same womb and as unbreakable as the steel shackles the man had used to destroy his face.
Drawing on their last reserves of strength, both men climbed to their feet. They staggered toward each other, shooting as they came. Stryker took another hit, but kept upright. His bullets found Pierce twice, but the man would not die.
Snarling like wolves, they closed on each other. Stryker grabbed Pierce’s gun hand, and found the man had little strength left. He viciously rammed the muzzle of his Colt into Pierce’s right eye and pulled the trigger.
Pierce let out another shriek, then fell on his back, pulling Stryker with him.
That was how Clem Trimble found them at first light the next morning, locked in an unholy embrace, snarls of hatred still on their faces.
Trimble pulled Stryker off Pierce and clucked like a mother hen over his wounds.
“Cap’n,” he said aloud, with only himself to hear,
“I reckon if you survive, you’ll have used up all nine of them cat lives o’ your’n.”
Chapter 42
The officer’s mess at Fort Apache was decorated with swaths of red, white and blue bunting to honor the visit of Senator Otis Henry Nelson and his lady. The distinguished legislator was on an inspection tour of the Southwest, “to show,” he was fond of saying, “that Washington cares about our boys who wear the blue.”
Above the rock fireplace, beside a black-draped portrait of the gallant Custer, but at a respectful distance, the calendar tacked to the wall proclaimed that the date was February 16, 1899.
“So, Lieutenant Colonel Stryker, I hear you’re shipping out for the Philippines tomorrow with the valiant Seventh.”
“Not the entire regiment, sir, only a company. The rest of the Seventh will follow later.”
“Give them hell, Colonel,” Nelson said. He was a small, thin man with a few wisps of dry, mousy hair combed across a bald pate. A pair of pince-nez glasses, attached to a cord, were perched at the end of a pointed and permanently red and sniffling nose. “Keep the saber sharp, I say, and give those savages the keen edge of it, like we did the Apaches. Huh, Colonel Stryker, is that not the way?”
“Apache warriors never let a soldier close enough to hit them with a saber, Senator,” Stryker said. “As for the Filipino rebels being savages, I don’t think—”
His voice trailed away. Nelson was no longer listening. The man was staring over Stryker’s shoulder, his eyes searching for the really important people.
“Yes, yes, Colonel, very interesting,” Nelson said absently. “If you will excuse me . . .” He stepped around Stryker and raised a hand. “Ah, General Funston, a word with you . . .”