“It’s never easy, Millie, saying good-bye.”
The two officers had moved to the window where they were apparently studying something of great interest in the deserted, dusty parade ground.
“I’m sorry, Steve, so sorry. My father has political ambitions and he has plans, great plans, and I am part of them. They involve a deal of socializing, meeting influential people . . .” her voice trailed away lamely. Then, “Beaucoup of that, I’m afraid.”
Stryker nodded. “I understand.”
But I don’t understand, Millie. My face is ruined but inside I haven’t changed. I’m still me, the man you wanted to marry. Did you fall in love with handsome features and a dashing mustache you once told me made your female heart go all a-flutter? Are you that shallow?
“You must think me very shallow, Steve, but I must do what I think is best for Papa and my country. I am not a stalwart soldier like you; I am but a weak woman and I must go where the winds of family blow me. You will go on living, Steve, and make a fine career for yourself as a cavalry officer. I just know you will.”
“Yes, you must do what is best for your family.”
Just tell me how I go on living when everything inside me is dead.
From the window, young Second Lieutenant McIntyre prodded gently, “Steve, the colonel said no more than five minutes.” He looked embarrassed but attempted a smile. “Tempus fugit and all that.”
“I must be going,” Millie said. Without looking at his face, she gave Stryker a brief, cool hug, then stood back from him. Her eyes misted. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry for everything.”
Then she was gone in a rustling flurry of green silk and snowy petticoats and only her perfume lingered, the desert bluebell fragrance of her hair. . . .
“Hey, Lieutenant, your coffee is bilin’ over.”
Stryker looked up at Joe Hogg. “Huh?”
“Your coffee, on the fire.”
Stryker saw his sizzling cup and grabbed the handle, dragging it from the coals. It was hot and he let it go quickly, shaking his scorched fingers.
Then he noticed that Hogg was holding a wincing Trooper Kramer by the ear.
“What are you doing with my soldier, Joe?” Stryker asked.
“Lieutenant, I’ve grown mighty tired of hearing this boy wheezing like an old steam engine. Me an’ him is going to search the creek for a frog an’ then I’ll cure him of his misery.” Hogg tugged the young man’s ear. “Ain’t that right, boy?”
Kramer, a towheaded youth of about twenty, did a little jig, his face screwed up against the pain in his tortured ear. “Mr. Hogg, I ain’t eating no damned horny toad, an’ you can take that to the bank.”
The scout squeezed Kramer’s ear harder. “You don’t eat it, boy. I done tol’ you that already.” Hogg looked at Stryker. “Lieutenant, do I have your permission to take Julius Wheezer here on a frog hunt?”
“Did you check on Hooper and Ruxton?”
“Yeah, they’re under guard and when I last looked Hooper was sleeping, or pretending to be.”
Stryker smiled. “Then good hunting, Mr. Hogg.” The scout dragged away the protesting Kramer, the scout assuring him that a cure for his asthma was imminent, and Stryker tried his coffee again.
He was impossibly tired. Around him firelight touched the crouching shadows with dull crimson and the troopers were noisily horsing around, working off the tensions of the day. Soon he would order them to their blankets. The detail would ride out at first light.
A soldier brought him a plate, fat bacon and pounded up hardtack fried in the grease. The man offered some to the girl, but she did not change position or even lift her head.
Surprised at how hungry he was, Stryker wolfed down the meal and was chewing on the last of the hardtack when Hogg reappeared with the suffering Kramer.
“Sit by the fire, boy, an’ do what I tell you,” the scout ordered.
He waited until Kramer squatted, the young trooper tense and uneasy about being this close to his officer, then handed him a small, lime green frog.
“Now pry the critter’s jaws open and breathe into its mouth,” Hogg said.
The frog croaked and Kramer wheezed, staring at the creature in his hand.
“Do as I tell you, boy,” the scout ordered. “Or I’ll kick your ass all over this clearing.”
Reluctantly, Kramer forced the amphibian’s jaws open and wheezed into its open mouth.
“Get closer, boy, damn it,” Hogg said. “A few good breaths.”
Stryker smiled. “I don’t think Trooper Kramer has a good breath, Joe.”
“He does, Lieutenant. He only thinks he doesn’t.” Hogg stared down at the unhappy soldier. “Now get close, and give ’er a few good breaths.” He glared at the young man. “Unless you want me to pull that ear right off’n your head.”
This time Kramer did as he was told.
“Good,” Hogg said. “Now that asthma misery of your’n has gone into the frog.”
“What do I do with it, Mr. Hogg?” Kramer asked. The freckles across his nose stood out like ink spots in the firelight.
“You keep an eye on that critter, an’ if it dies afore sundown tomorrow, you’re cured fer sure.”
“Keep an eye on it? Keep an eye on it where, Mr. Hogg?”
The scout sighed. “Do I have to tell you every little thing, boy? Stick him in your pocket an’ check on him every now an’ then. But don’t sit on him an’ squash him. The critter has to die by its ownself.”
Kramer rose and shoved the frog into the pocket of his breeches. “Thank you, Mr. Hogg,” he said. “I feel better already.”
“You won’t be better unless the frog dies,” the scout said. “Now, you keep an eye on him until sundown tomorrow.”
After the young soldier left, Stryker stretched out by the fire and looked up at Hogg. “Do you really think the frog will cure him?”
The scout nodded. “If he thinks it will, Lieutenant, then it will.”
“While Kramer is watching his frog, you watch Hooper, huh?”
“Depend on it, Lieutenant.”
A few minutes later, the last thing Stryker saw before he drifted into sleep was the redheaded girl. She still had not moved.
Chapter 7
By Joe Hogg’s watch, it was 2:12 in the morning when rifle shots heralded the escape of Sergeant Miles Hooper.
Trooper Lou Ruxton he threw to the dogs.
The racketing echoes of the rifle were still tying tangled knots around the clearing as Stryker jumped to his feet and ran for the arroyo, gun in hand.
Ruxton lay barely conscious and groaning in a stand of prickly pear and a trooper was dragging him out of the thorns by his boots.
“Where’s Hooper?” Stryker snapped.
“He ran for it, Lieutenant,” the man said. “Ruxton made a break with him, but then the sarge turned and dropped him with a punch.”
That made sense. Hooper knew one of his guards would stay behind to secure Ruxton, leaving him with only one rifle to deal with.
“If Ruxton tries to run, kill him,” Stryker told the trooper, who had succeeded in pulling the man free of the cactus. “Got that?”
Without waiting to hear a reply, the lieutenant made his way to the mouth of the arroyo and his eyes searched into darkness.
He turned south, stepping warily, his gun up and ready, letting his vision adjust to the gloom.
There was no sound but the soft sigh of the wind and the rustle of junipers and mesquite. The moon had slid lower in the sky and the stars had reappeared, scattering a pale, opalescent light. Shadows hunched among the foothills and the mountains soared in stark outline, like black, impossibly ancient pyramids.
Stryker found the trooper’s body in a narrow dry wash. The young soldier had a round, pleasant face, now composed in death. His neck had been broken and his carbine and gun belt were missing.