The scout stepped to the creek, but Hooper yelled, “Hogg, you leave that woman be.”
“Sergeant Hooper,” Stryker said sharply. “Do not ever again countermand my orders.”
“He’s a civilian,” Hooper snapped. “And I’m telling him to leave the woman be. I’m laying claim to the bitch.”
“Or what, Sergeant?” Hogg said, his voice low, quiet, significant.
The scout stood as still as death, his right hand close to his holstered Colt.
Hooper was reading something cold in the other man, something he had not seen before and did not like. Suddenly his voice wavered with uncertainty. “I said leave the woman be. She’s crazy, out of her bleedin’ mind.” He took on a wheedling tone. “Me an’ the lads only want to have a little fun, some quick in an’ out, you understand.”
Hogg’s smile was as dangerous as a flash of mountain lightning. “I said, ‘Or what, Sergeant?’ ”
Now Hooper was desperately seeking a way out. He glanced at Stryker, his eyes begging. Miles Hooper was not a coward and his army career had never been easy, but the old scout who had prodded him into a corner was a named revolver fighter and Hooper had never braced his like before.
The girl in the creek was still washing, but now she was singing in a high, reedy voice, a song without words or meaning.
It was in Stryker’s mind to let the scene play out and let Hogg settle it, but the habit of command overcame his dislike of Hooper. “Mr. Hogg, please do as I asked. Sergeant, we will take up this matter again when we return to Fort Merit.”
But to the lieutenant’s surprise, Hooper was not prepared to let it go.
“Damn you, Lieutenant, to the conqueror belong the spoils. The woman is mine by right of conquest and I want her,” he yelled. “Me and the other lads, we won the battle for you fair an’ square.”
“Battle? Is that what you call it?” Stryker said. “I would call it something else.”
Now it was Hogg’s turn to be surprised. He stared through the darkness at Stryker, again wondering at this strange, tormented man.
Then Hooper took a step too far, right into a hangman’s noose. “Stryker,” he said, “I want the woman. She’s nothing to you and you know a white man will never touch her now. But I will. Damn it, I can smell her from here and it’s driving me mad.” He looked over at the troopers who’d been watching him in amazement, their unshaven jaws hanging slack. “Bear me up in this, lads,” he yelled. “Is the woman mine by right?”
One man, Trooper Louis Ruxton, a hard-faced product of New York’s Five Points slums, said, “Aye, she’s yours right enough.” He looked across at Stryker, then at the men around him. “Hell, Lieutenant, after nearly two dozen Apaches that redheaded gal will be so stretched, she won’t even feel horny ol’ Miley slide in.”
If Ruxton expected laughter, he was disappointed. The soldiers stood silent, their faces grim. They were young and green, and although they feared their sergeant, they feared the lieutenant more. To the troopers his shoulder straps represented the awe-some authority of the United States Army and its government, a terrifying power they had no desire to cross. But if any had lingering doubts, Stryker now spelled out the consequences of Hooper’s action.
His tight voice revealing a barely suppressed anger, he said, “Sergeant Miles Hooper, this day of July seventeen, 1881, under Article 94 of the United States’ Uniform Code of Military Justice, you are charged with an intent to usurp or override lawful military authority, refusing, in concert with one other person, to obey orders or otherwise do your duty, creating violence and disturbance. The crime is mutiny and if you are found guilty you shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial shall direct.”
Stryker looked past Hooper. “Trooper Louis Ruxton, you are under arrest for inciting mutiny. You men, disarm him.”
Without waiting to see if his order was carried out, the lieutenant again directed his attention to Hooper. He held out his hand. “Your sidearm, Sergeant.”
Hooper, his face black with anger, took a step back, his hand going for the holstered revolver at his right side. “You go to hell, you goddamned scar-faced freak!”
Stryker, angry, was going for his gun, but Joe Hogg stopped it.
His voice like ice crystals in the breeze, he said quietly, “Hooper, surrender your gun or I’ll drop you right where you stand.”
For an instant the sergeant thought about it, backed off, and slowed his hand above his Colt.
“Use your left, Hooper,” the scout said. He had made no attempt to draw his gun. “You’re making me nervous and when I get nervous bad things happen.”
Hooper lifted the revolver with his fingertips and passed it to Stryker.
“If Mr. Hogg hadn’t killed you, I would have,” the lieutenant said slowly, taking his time. He called over a couple of men by name. “Take Sergeant Hooper into custody with Trooper Ruxton. Hold them in the arroyo and guard them well.”
The soldiers leveled their carbines and motioned to Hooper to move. The sergeant cast one look of burning hatred at Stryker, then walked into the darkness, his captors stepping warily at his heels.
Hogg came closer and smiled. “Don’t have much luck with sergeants, do you, Lieutenant?”
“Seems like.” He nodded toward the creek. “Get the woman and cover her with something. She can sit by the fire with me where I can keep an eye on her.”
A few minutes later, the scout returned, cradling the woman in his arms. She was young, pretty and silent.
“How is she?” Stryker asked as Hogg settled her beside him.
The scout shrugged, saying nothing.
“Did she give her name?”
“She doesn’t talk.”
“The women at the fort will help her.”
“No one can help her, Lieutenant. Not now. Somewhere in what’s left of her mind she’s following the buffalo and she’s never coming back.”
Stryker looked at the woman, at the mane of red hair hanging over her shoulders in damp ringlets. “Were those her folks at the ranch?” he asked.
“Maybe. Or she was just visiting.”
“Joe, keep an eye on the arroyo. I want those two to face a court-martial.”
The scout nodded. “I’ll drift by there now and again.” He smiled. “I’d like nothing better than to put a bullet into Sergeant Hooper. Hell, I never did cotton to Englishmen anyhow.”
After Hogg walked silently away, Stryker picked up his coffee. It was cold. He shoved the tin cup into the coals of the fire, then looked at the girl again. She had assumed her old position, legs drawn up, forehead on her knees. He could hear her breathe.
The troopers had built a second fire a safe distance away from their mercurial officer and were frying bacon. The coyotes were yipping and somewhere, higher up the mountain, an owl asked its question of the night.
Stryker lifted his head, testing the air. He smelled desert bluebells in the breeze. . . . Were they real? Or was it only a remembrance of a time past . . . ? The fragrance of Millie’s hair . . . ?
She was sitting close to him. So close he could smell the musky, womanly scent of her.
Colonel Abel Lawson had graciously allowed his daughter to use his office for her farewells. But, since she was no longer betrothed to First Lieutenant Stryker, the proprieties had to be observed. There were two officers present, shuffling, grinning, embarrassed to be there.
“Yes, Steve,” Millie was saying, “Papa and I leave on the morning stage tomorrow.” She smiled brightly. “Then it’s on to Washington.”
“Washington,” Stryker repeated. “Yes, on to there.” Millie’s beautiful brown eyes lifted to his, then, quickly, as though burned, slid away. “I came to say good-bye, but, oh dear, I’m making rather a mess of things, aren’t I?”