Yuyutsu’s rancheria lay deep in the rugged Sierra Madre mountains, from which he raided south to punish the Nakaye as Apaches had for more than a century. The Nakaye paid for Apache scalps, man, woman, or child, and that meant a different kind of hunter now dogged Yuyutsu’s trail and sometimes came across his mountain hideaways.
War was a way of life for an Apache man, and revenge is the sweetest of successes. Nakaye and White Eyes cared not if the Indeh they murdered belonged to the band that may have taken a wagon train on the road called Cooke’s. So it mattered not to Yuyutsu. A white man was a white man and the only good white man was a dead one.
A village fell to Yuyutsu’s warriors. A village that raised corn and beans and prayed to a woman for protection. Yuyutsu grimaced a smile. Whoever would expect a woman to protect them? How easy it was to smash the skulls of those who knelt in supplication to that woman called blessed mother. All Indeh knew the mother of all men was Mother Earth, not some carved statue adorned in blue and white paint and a little gold leaf.
But it was a poor village with no horses to take, only burros. Useless burros. Even the women looked weak. Most Yuyutsu left behind, their skulls crushed, their scalps taken ... and left lying on their own faces. Three he took. Too few Apache women in the Sierra Madres, and the years had already proved that sons begat with Mexican women were good warriors, every bit as good as those with Apaches on both sides of the family tree. No guns worth taking. An old flintlock without powder. Two ancient Patterson Colts, also without powder. Yuyutsu took the knives. Knives could always be sharpened to blood-letting edges, and he took the axes. There could be some use for them, sometime.
“Nakaye soldiers come.” The warning was spoken close to Yuyutsu’s ears. No Apache lookout in his band would ever shout. Besides, it was beyond time to leave this poor town with its carpet of dead Nakaye bodies.
“You know what to do,” Yuyutsu said.
The lookout said nothing. He merely ran for his pony. His path away from the poor village was predetermined, as it was for every warrior, and each warrior rode in a different direction. All the Nakaye soldiers would find was a confusion of pony tracks that seemed to go nowhere.
Yuyutsu’s warriors would be in place just south of a gully that slashed into the Sonora Desert from the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountain range. The Nakaye never learned that Apaches struck when least expected.
He chose the gully because it was an unusual and quite difficult way into the Sierra Madres, a path the Nakaya officer would think likely because just enough pony tracks led in that direction from the village.
Just twenty-eight warriors rode in the band, including Yuyutsu himself, and the Nakaye soldiers numbered nearly one hundred, separated into two companies.
Nakaye horses snorted as they passed the Apaches hidden in plain sight less than half a mile from the gully’s eastern bank, but the Nakaye soldiers did not know how to read their horses’ fear.
First, arrows sprouted from the backs of the thirteen men bringing up the rear of the Mexican column. All fell from their horses, some living, some dead. Lithe brown forms leapt from the desert floor to positions behind mounted soldiers. Almost without exception, those soldiers fell with their throats sliced wide open. Their frightened hearts pumped sprays of blood in wild attempts to reach the now senseless brains.
Within minutes of Yuyutsu’s men starting the attack, ninety-seven Mexican soldiers lay dead on the desert floor, a small patch of scalp cut from their heads and left on their foreheads in distain for the practice of scalping, for which Mexicans paid bounty if the scalps were Indeh. Yuyutsu took their guns and ammunition, their blankets, and their sombreros ... and, of course, their horses. He left the officers’ kepis, as Apaches had no use for them.
~*~
Stryker did not return to Fort Bliss for twelve more days. Even then, he didn’t enter the fort compound but stayed at Bly’s camp until Samson Kearns came.
“Here, sir.” Samson’s voice came from outside Bly’s wickiup.
Stryker ducked through the opening.
“By the good Lord, sir. Y’all look like a Apache yourself.” Samson stood there in soldier blue, sharp creases in the legs and every polished brass button shining like gold. His kepi tilted at just the right angle to bring the bill down over his eyes. Reginald Kearns was every inch the top soldier.
“You look like those pants just came off McCabe’s shelf, Top.”
“Best to look sharp, sir, ‘specially when they’s white boys around with bullets in they guns.”
“And what are the Misfits like these days?”
“They knows you, sir, so they gives me no guff. And I don’t order no one but Ben Stroud an’ Boogie Hill around.” Samson paused, but his face said he had something else on his mind.
“Spit it out, Top.”
“Ben Stroud ain’t worth the bother, sir. My opinion, sir, you should toss ’im out. He ain’t a’tall fit to be a Misfit.”
Stryker chewed his lip. “Damn. He was a good scout, I heard.”
“Cain’t control his drinking, sir. Not a’tall. I say cut ’im, but all us Misfits is yours, sir. All yours.”
“Do me a favor, Top. Bring me a good uniform and a kepi. Should be one in my trunk.”
“Done, sir.”
“Done?”
“Yes, sir. I reckoned you’d be needing to dress up, so I brung your duds with me.” Samson handed over the haversack he’d held in his left hand.
Stryker couldn’t keep the surprise from his face. “I made no mistake when I made you the Misfits’ top soldier.”
Samson shrugged. “Part of the job, sir. Top sojer’s gotta know how his bossman thinks. We’uns learned how to do that before the late unpleasantness ever started ... sir.”
“Men shoot good?”
“I went’n got Sharpy Bailor a gun to match his name. A good Sharps .50.
“Can he hit what he aims at?”
“Yeah, man. Sharpy Bailor ain’t called Sharpy fer nothin’. He can hit anything the size of a bucket up to a thousand yards.”
“How ‘bout the men?”
Samson dug a toe into the dust in front of the wickiup. “Some can, some can’t.”
“Who?”
“The Greer brothers is okay. Paddy can’t hit a bull in the butt with a bucket a wheat, pardon my words. Fergie’s good. Willem’s gettin’ better, but he sure knows his powders and a keg of giant powder puts him on the same side as God—ready to send them what’s on the other side straight to Hell. Mick Finney’s better with a Bowie than with a rifle, and he’s downright good with that Yeller Boy a his. Buck ’n’ Edwardo ’n’ Boogie know which way to shoot, but that’s about all.”
“Lion? Ponies? What about them?”
“They been teachin’ whites ’n’ blacks ta run like reds,” Samson said. He cracked a smile. “Ten miles a day. and that goes up to fifteen day after tomorrow.”
“Good. Well done, Top. Men have any problem following a black top soldier?”
“None to speak of, sir.”
Stryker shot a hard look at Samson. “And none to speak of?”
“Like I said.”
“Oh-kay. Who’s doing troop laundry?”
“A Chinaman called Hung Cho.”
“Stand for a minute while I change.”
“Take all the time you need, sir. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. Besides, Major Adams says you’re to report to the General soon as you get back.”
Stryker sighed. A summons from General Hunter wouldn’t be good news, probably. He took a spit bath with a bandana and a bit of water from Bly’s olla. Over a breechclout, he donned the uniform Samson brought over in the haversack, including soft but highly polished boots, and a black gunbelt with his converted Remington Army six-shooter in its holster.
Dahtegte spoke from the shadows in the rear of the wickiup. “Now you look a White Eye soldier.”
“I am a soldier.”
She made no reply.
Stryker handed his Apache clothes to Samson. “Laundered, if you please, Top.”
“Yes, sir.” He paused. “Lieutenant?”
“What is it?”
“Mind if I kinda tag along to Major Adams’s?”
“Of course not. Why?”
“They’s some backyard fence talk ‘bout A Squad having no color line. I’d like it if we could make our way to the General’s office side by side.”
“I told you no color lines, Top. And I mean it. Make sure you wear your Remington, too. Hear?”
“Yes, sir. It’s cleaned and ready, sir.” Samson’s white teeth showed through the wide smile on his face. “If we could go by the Misfit Squad on the way, that’s be good, too. Just to show them misfits we got us a real by-the-good-Lord lieutenant running things.”
“Can do,” Stryker said. His face showed two weeks of beard, but he decided to leave it be. He set his kepi at the proper angle and set off toward the double role of tents that housed the troop known as Stryker’s Misfits.
“A Squad. Fall. In!!”
The misfits poured from their tents dressed in soldier blue with polished boots and buttons, boot-blacked gunbelts, and kepis at regulation angle. Even the scouts had regulation shirts with sergeant’s stripes.
“Line up in twos on me,” Samson ordered.
The men fell in, six to a row, with Lion and Many Ponies to one side, in line with the front row. Samson gave them a hard eye, then turned to Stryker. “A Squad, present and accounted for, sir.” A moment later, “Except for trooper Stroud, sir, who is inclement due to too much consumption of homemade likker, sir.”
“Leave him be, Top.”
“Sir.”
Stryker turned to his men. “A Squad. At ease. Now. You all have been wondering what’s going on. Well, in a way, you know as much as I do. Except that General Hunter is going to use us to hit renegade Apaches hard and fast. To do that, you’ll need to run as good as any Apache buck. That could mean a hundred miles a day. Maybe more. Top, here,” Stryker waved a hand at Samson, “tells me you can do ten miles easy. But if the time comes, we’ll make a hundred or bust. Now. The general wants to see me. Top and I will be going over to HQ now, and I don’t want any wild and wooly rumors started before we even put moccasins to desert dust. Fall out and give your rifles a cleaning. That’s all.”
“Ten ... hut!,” Samson barked. “Fall out!”
The Misfits relaxed, but didn’t move away. They seemed to be waiting for instructions. “Alright, featherheads,” Samson hollered. “If’n you got nothing better to do, take a run. Here to Bailey’s ferry and back. Make it back by chowtime. Charlie Greer, you lead out.”
“Yo,” Greer said. “Follow me, Misfits.” He struck out at a loose-jointed trot. The Misfits followed, except for Ben Stroud.
Stryker and First Sergeant Kearns headed for HQ to report to General Hunter. Faces at HQ said something unacceptable had happened.
Stryker came to attention in front of the General’s desk, kepi under his left arm. “Lieutenant Matthew Stryker, sir. Reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Yes. Yes. Humph. Well, lieutenant. Do you have a strike force ready?”
“As yet untried, sir. We must let one man go, however, because there seems to be no way to keep him sober, and we don’t have time to nursemaid him. Also, I wish to add two Apaches to the rolls, sir. One named Bly and the other Dahtegte.
“Yes. Yes. Leave their names with Major Adams.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lieutenant, a renegade called Yuyutsu recently decimated an entire village and a company of Mexican cavalry. Mexico says we can cross the border, just not be obvious about it. I want that savage hit, and hit hard. You take your A Squad ... I hear they call themselves misfits ... take your squad, find that Apache guerrilla, and hit him. No peace talks. No nothing. Damage him. Show him the U.S. Army is nothing to fool with.
“Yes, sir. Any specific instructions?”
“That unholy savage killed man, woman, and child. If possible, Stryker, leave women and children out of it.”
“Like Chivington at Sand Creek, sir?”
“Don’t get smart with me, young man.”
“No, sir.”
“Besides, John Chivington was not regular army. He led a ragtag militia that outnumbered the red men at least three times, and he still lost twenty-four men ... more, if the fifty-two wounded are included.”
Stryker said nothing. Sand Creek casualties faded to insignificance compared to New Market, the only battle VMI Cadet Matthew Stryker fought in, where more than a thousand men-at-arms perished, ten of which were VMI cadets.
“Do you hear me, lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want that savage hit hard and fast. And I want your so-called misfits to do it.”
Stryker clicked his heels. “Sir!”
“Don’t act like a martinet, lieutenant.”
“Sir.” Stryker did an about face and strode from General Hunter’s office.
“Two names to add to the A Squad list,” Stryker said.
“In writing, lieutenant.” Major Adams seemed out of sorts.
“Yes, sir.”
The sergeant major held out a pen and slid some foolscap across his desk.
“Thank you, Sar’nt Major.” Stryker dipped the pen in the ink well and wrote:
Two White Mountain Apache Scouts for A Squad, HQ Division
Bly
Dahtegte
(signed) Matthew L. Stryker
Lieutenant
A Squad, HQ Division