Stryker's Revenge

Chapter 12

Lieutenant Steve Stryker woke to lamplight and a pounding headache.

He tried to sit up in the bed, but he was defeated by pains in his side and back that were living entities, clawing at him, warning that they would give him no rest.

He laid his head back on the pillow and a groan escaped his lips.

Suddenly Mary McCabe was at his side. She placed a small, cool hand on his forehead. “How are you feeling, Lieutenant?”

Stryker groaned again. “What did Joe Hogg hit me with? A rifle butt?”

Mary smiled. “No, just a jug of genuine Arizona busthead. Then he cut the bullet out of your back.”

“Good. If Hogg’s whiskey doesn’t kill me, I can ride tomorrow.”

Mary let that slide. “Hungry?”

“You know, I could eat something, hardtack and salt pork maybe.”

Mary stepped to the stove where a fire burned. She returned with a bowl and a spoon. “Beef broth,” she said. “It will give you strength.”

Stryker tried to take the bowl, but the woman moved it away. “You can’t feed yourself. Let me do it.”

Rather than argue, which in any case he did not have the energy to do, Stryker opened his mouth submissively and let the woman feed him. The soup was good, rich and hot, and Stryker ate the bowl empty and was wishful for more.

From outside drifted snatches of talk from the soldiers, and the scrape and clatter of tin forks. “Lieutenant Birchwood camped here,” he said. “That makes sense. We’ll move out at first light tomorrow.” He looked at the woman. “You and your daughter will have to come with us, ma’am. The savages will be back.”

“It’s Mary McCabe.”

“Yes, I vaguely remember. Then Mary McCabe it is.”

The door opened and Hogg stepped inside, letting in the night that loomed dark and vast behind him. He smiled. “Still alive, I see, Lieutenant.”

“No thanks to your whiskey.”

“Numbed the pain though, huh?”

“That’s what happens when busthead makes a man’s heart stop.”

“He has no fever, Mr. Hogg, and his wounds are clean,” Mary said.

The scout turned to the woman. He seemed very big and shaggy in the lamp-shadowed gloom of the cabin. “Don’t pay no heed to Lieutenant Birchwood, ma’am. Right now he’s a mighty worried young man.”

“I told him the truth, Mr. Hogg. My husband didn’t tell me what he was doing and I never asked.”

“But you saw the wagons.”

“Yes, I did. I was ordered to stay in the house, but I could see from the window. There were six or seven men with the wagons, including an Apache. One of the men was called Williams, another, who seemed to be in charge, went by the name of Rake, or maybe it was Jake, I can’t remember.”

Despite his pain, Stryker struggled erect in the bed, his face intent. “Ma’am, Mrs. McCabe, was the boss’s name Rake Pierce?”

“I didn’t hear his last name, but, yes, he could have been called Rake.”

Hogg looked at Stryker. “The dead man we found was the lady’s husband. She identified him from the watch he was wearing.”

“I’m sorry,” Stryker said absently, his mind working, trying to drag his body with it.

“Don’t be,” Mary said. “He was a drunken, vicious brute who deserved to die.” Her fingertips strayed to the savage scar on her cheek. “This is a lasting memento of my marriage to Tom McCabe.”

“Ma’am,” Hogg said, “you should have left him.”

“And go where, Mr. Hogg? I didn’t even have a horse. Maybe Kelly and I could have walked to a settlement, but he would have found us and brought us back.” She smiled slightly. “And how could I make a living? Scarred as I am, I couldn’t even become a whore.”

“How did Rake Pierce meet your husband?” Stryker asked.

“Tom often visited the Army posts for whiskey and whores. He could have met Pierce, if that’s who he was, at Fort Merit or Fort Bowie.”

“Why would Pierce want him?”

“My husband knew this country like the back of his hand, Lieutenant. After he got sick of farming, which didn’t take long, he hunted and prospected all over the Chiricahuas and as far south as the Perilla Mountains.”

Hogg nodded. “Ol’ Rake needed a scout, and good ones are mighty hard to find.”

“Mrs. McCabe, when were the wagons here?” Stryker asked.

“Three days ago, I think. When a woman sees only cabin walls she loses track of time.”

“Joe, we didn’t see wagon tracks on the hogback.”

“There’s another way in and out of the basin, Lieutenant. It’s a narrow, rocky canyon to the east of the cabin, but it’s passable, even for freight wagons. I scouted over that way and found wheel tracks. That’s how the wagons came and went, all right.”

“Why didn’t your husband go with them, Mrs. McCabe?”

“Lieutenant, it pleased him to beat me or rape me, depending on his mood. He didn’t take me into his confidence when he was enjoying either activity.”

Hogg’s boots thudded on the hard packed dirt floor. He laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “We buried him deep, Mrs. McCabe. He isn’t coming back.”

Mary nodded, looking up at him, but said nothing.

Stryker’s mind was still racing. “Joe, why did McCabe split up from the rest of them?”

“Dunno, Lieutenant. Maybe McCabe left on a scout, agreeing to join up with Rake and the others at a certain place. Trouble is, he ran into traveling Apaches who shot first and asked questions later.”

“Can we track those wagons?”

“We can track them.”

Stryker swung his legs out of the bed and discovered that he was naked except for the bandage that circled his waist and looped over his shoulder. “Mrs. McCabe, could you avert your eyes?” He looked at the little girl who was standing close to her sitting mother’s knee, regarding him with wide, solemn eyes. “And the child, if you please.”

The woman smiled, but she and her daughter suddenly found something to do at the stove.

Stryker got to his feet, calling to Hogg to get his clothes.

Then a wave of pain and weakness hit him and he was falling headlong into a bottomless pit of darkness.