Stryker's Revenge

Chapter 4

Two mounted troopers behind him, Stryker rode at a walk toward the hills.

The day was shading into night and the air had grown cooler. Like his men, the lieutenant was once again wearing his riding breeches, the wide canvas suspenders slung over a sun-faded blue blouse with its officer’s shoulder straps.

The brush-covered hills gradually gave way to more level ground, but the going was made difficult by thickets of juniper, mesquite and unexpected parapets of white and tan rock.

Warily, Stryker rode west along the foothills, his eyes searching the shadowing country. Once a rustling in the brush sent his hand streaking for his gun. But he felt foolish when he saw that it was only a Gila monster seeking its burrow, a shy animal that spends only three or four minutes a year above ground.

Behind him, one of his men sniggered. It sounded like Trooper Rogers, a name Stryker mentally filed away for future reference.

For several minutes, he led his men northwest, following the gentle curve of the mountain range.

Apaches claimed they could smell white people, and the lieutenant figured that by now he must be within sniffing distance.

Ahead of him, the gathering darkness suddenly parted, and Joe Hogg, his Henry across the saddle horn, emerged from the gloom like a gray ghost.

When the scout rode closer he pointed over Stryker’s shoulder, wordlessly indicating that he should go back the way he’d come.

Hogg rode on and the lieutenant and his men followed. After a hundred yards, the scout swung into the lee side of a rock and drew rein.

He got right to the point. “Lieutenant, the Apaches are holed up back yonder, maybe half a mile, in an arroyo that opens into a small hanging meadow. They got mule meat cooking on sticks, and—this is where it gets mighty interesting—they’re passing around jugs. I reckon the rancher they killed must have been a whiskey-drinking man, because them bucks are well supplied and half of them are drunk already.”

He paused. “Got a white woman with them. Red-haired gal, seems young.”

“How many Apaches?”

“Pretty much as I guessed. Twenty young bucks, give or take a couple.”

“No women or children with them?”

“Only the redheaded gal.”

Stryker nodded. “She doesn’t count.”

He called over Trooper Rogers. “Head back to the camp and tell Sergeant Hooper I said to bring on the rest of the detail. Tell him to come at a walk, no talking and no noise.”

Rogers, a young man with freckles across his nose and a wisp of downy mustache on his lip, looked warily around him. “It’s getting dark, sir.”

Irritated, Stryker snapped. “What about it?”

“Well, sir, I mean . . . there are Apaches about, sir.”

Hogg’s teeth gleamed in the gloom. “Don’t you worry about it, sonny. If the Apaches decide to git you, your hair will be gone an’ your throat cut afore you even know it. You won’t feel a thing.”

Rogers swallowed hard, tried to talk and decided not to trust his voice, especially since his fellow trooper was sitting his horse, grinning at him.

“Carry out your orders, Trooper Rogers,” Stryker said.

The man swallowed again, saluted and rode away.

“There goes a scared young man,” Hogg smiled. “An’ I can’t say as I blame him. Apaches are nobody to mess with.” He looked at Stryker. “Now we wait, huh?”

“Yes, for Hooper.” The lieutenant found the makings and motioned toward Hogg. “Will they smell this?”

There was a smile in the scout’s voice. “Lieutenant, if them drunken bucks are out on the prod, they already know we’re here, so smoke away if it pleases you.”

Stryker smoked his cigarette and then another. The night air grew cool and a horned moon rose in the sky. Close by, among the shadowed arroyos, a pair of hunting coyotes called out to each other, and prowling critters made their small sound in the underbrush.

Leather creaked as Hogg shifted in the saddle, his eyes restlessly searching into the darkness. He looked at Stryker. “Hooper’s close.”

After years of Indian fighting, the scout’s senses were honed as sharp as those of any Apache. If he said Hooper was close, then he was.

Stryker loosed the flap of his holster, thumbed a sixth cartridge into his Colt and replaced the weapon. He waited.

Sergeant Hooper led his men forward in an untidy column, riding over broken ground. He saluted the lieutenant and said, “Detail all present and accounted for, sir.”

Stryker nodded, then glanced at Hogg. The scout read the question in his eyes and said, “Maybe another thirty minutes. Let them bucks get good an’ drunk.”

“Sergeant Hooper, we’ll fight dismounted,” the lieutenant said. He disliked the thought of weakening his command, but there was no alternative. “Leave Trooper Kramer and one other man with the horses.”

Hooper saluted again. “Permission to picket the mounts, sir.”

After nodding his approval, Stryker again turned to Hogg. “Will they be guarding the arroyo, Joe?”

A white moth fluttered past the scout’s face. “Maybe, but I doubt it. The Apaches don’t know we’re here.”

“You sure about that?”

“Sure I’m sure. If they were around, they would have smelled your tobacco smoke, Lieutenant. You’d be dead by now.”

“Hell, Joe, you told me I could smoke.”

“I said, ‘If it pleases you.’ I didn’t say do it.”

Stryker glared hard at Hogg. But the scout only shrugged and turned away, his talking on the subject done.

After Stryker judged that the thirty minutes had passed, he swung out of the saddle and Hogg did the same.

“Sergeant Hooper, we’re moving out,” Stryker said. “Carbines, but leave the canteens behind and, like I did with Trooper Kramer, anything else that makes a damned racket.” He gave Hogg a sideways glance. “And no smoking.”

If the scout felt the slightest pang of guilt, he hid it well. He stepped to his horse, reached into the beaded possibles bag that always hung behind his saddle and took out a tally book. He tore out a page, folded it lengthwise and stuck it in the front of his hat.

He stepped closer to Hooper. “I’ll scout the arroyo again. When I come out o’ there, tell them alley rats of yours to look for the white paper in my hat. I don’t want them boys gettin’ scared, taking me fer an Apache, an’ cuttin’ loose.”

Hooper nodded and looked around him at the troopers. “You heard Mr. Hogg. Look for the white paper in his hat. Got that?”

There were a few scattered nods; then Stryker stepped forward as the scout mounted his pony and drifted into the gloom.

“Men,” he said, pitching his harsh voice low, “in a few minutes you will be fighting the tigers of the human species, an enemy cruel, crafty and quick to scent danger. The Apache is a treacherous animal, patient in defeat, merciless in victory. All you can do is kill him. And that’s what I expect of every one of you—kill . . . kill . . . kill again.”

Stryker’s voice stilled the troopers’ quiet cheers. “And here’s good news. Any man who falls in the engagement will be posthumously promoted to corporal.”

This time the only huzzah came from Hooper. He looked around at his men and said, “Now there’s generosity from the officer for you, lads. It’s not every day a dead man is promoted to full corporal.” He saluted Stryker. “You can depend on us to do our bit, sir.”

“Excellent,” Stryker said. God, he disliked Hooper intensely. “Move out the men, Sergeant, and from now on keep it quiet.”

The lieutenant in the lead, the detail moved into the gathering darkness. Above them, shedding a bladed light, the sickle moon silently reaped the stars. Stryker saw one fall to earth and he imagined that it thumped onto the desert sand and was now laying somewhere close, glowing red and smoking like a cinder.

He walked on across broken country, skirting the foothills. Behind him his troopers, cavalrymen who had an intense dislike of walking, stumbled and cursed softly, drawing muttered threats from Hooper.

Suddenly Hogg emerged from the gloom, leading his horse at a jog, the white paper in his hat bobbing.

“Hold your fire, it’s Hogg,” Stryker whispered, words repeated down the line.

The scout pulled up in front of his officer. “No guards at the arroyo. They’re drunk, Lieutenant, all of them.”

Stryker smiled. “Then we’ll go at once and kill every man jack of them.”

“The girl will be in the line of fire.”

“I’m afraid she must shift for herself, Mr. Hogg.” Stryker had no way of knowing, but right then the scout was wondering about him.

Had the shackle chain that destroyed his features also destroyed everything inside him that was once good and decent? Did his face now reflect the true nature of the man?

Joe Hogg was a traveled man, and Stryker’s face in the pallid moonlight stirred a memory. A mask, Chinese or Nipponese, he couldn’t recall. He’d seen it at a theater in Denver—or was it San Francisco?—a grotesque, twisted, furious thing worn by a dancer. Later, the dancer had removed the mask, revealing the face of a pretty, oriental girl. But if the lieutenant removed his mask, would the face underneath be the same . . . unchanged . . . a mask within a mask?

Hogg, who was afraid of no man or of anything that walked, crawled or flew, shuddered. A night breeze probed the skin of his face, reminding him that each one of us wears a mask.

But not like Stryker’s, he told himself. Never like that.

“Move out,” the lieutenant whispered. “The thoughtful Mr. Hogg will lead the way.”