Stryker's Misfits (A Stryker's Misfits Western Book 1) by Chuck Tyrell

Author:Chuck Tyrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: chuck tyrell, apache indians, southwest america, westerns ebook, the us cavalry, us frontier violence, western stories online
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing

Chapter Nine – Sometimes It Takes A Woman

Lion came. Ponies came. The Top Soldier came. But no Bly, and no Dahtegte.

“This looks like it, Cap,” Samson Kearns said.

“Where are the Apaches?”

“God only knows. A man only sees an Apache that wants to be seen.”

“Be good to have horses,” Lion said.

“Easier,” Stryker said, “easier, but Apaches will figure anyone after them will ride horses. That, and we don’t plan to chase the renegade, we want him and his bunch to run into our ambush.”

“Easy to say.”

“I’m aware of that. And I’m wondering where our Apache scouts’ve gone.”

“I am here.” Dahtegte stepped into the circle and hunkered down beside Stryker.

“Where’s Bly?”

“Scouting.”

“Do you have any idea where the renegades are? And where they’re going?”

“Yuyutsu’s main camp is near the Sacred Mountain, the one White Eyes call Graham. But he is not there. Only mothers and children.”

“I’m not interested in women and children. Where’s Yuyutsu?”

Dahtegte stood. She looked down on Stryker. “Do not think that Apache women are weak and obedient. Hear this. When Apache woman becomes Apache man’s wife, he becomes her family, he moves to her wickiup. Women work and hold tribes together. Men hunt, raid, get revenge, act like man. Woman allows it.”

She began a chant, almost under her breath. She closed her eyes. She spread her arms with hands open and palms to the sky. Her chant came softly but with incredible strength.

Gooseflesh spread up Stryker’s arms and across his shoulders.

Slowly, Dahtegte turned, her body the axis and her arms, straight out from her shoulders, forming the needle of a human compass. Her right arm passed a point that would be south southwest on a compass rose. Dahtegte paused. Then began her chant again, this time turning in the opposite direction.

She stopped.

“Apaches in that direction,” she said, pointing a few degrees south of south southwest. “They are nearly fifty miles away.”

“How do you know?”

“Power.”

“Power?”

Dahtegte nodded. “Every Apache warrior has a Power. For me and for Lozen, the Power shows us where enemies are. For you here, Yuyutsu is enemy.”

Stryker didn’t know whether to believe her or not.

“Cap? I reckon that gal’s right. They’s voodoo people amongst we’uns what know impossible things. No way they could know, but they does. I say we listen to the Apach’.”

“It’s daytime. They’ll be moving.”

“Resting,” Dahtegte said. “Perhaps talking to Bly.”

Stryker could not believe what she said. “What did you say! Bly’s with the renegade?”

The woman warrior nodded. “He must find out what Yuyutsu is thinking, without letting our enemy know what we are thinking.”

“They’ll kill him.”

Dahtegte shook her head. “Bly is wild ... no, what do you say ... like a coyote, very hard to catch.”

“Sun’s going down. We’ve got to move. I figure we can make fifty miles by morning. But without Bly, I don’t know where to go.” Stryker rubbed a hand over the bristle on his face and took a step away from the Apache woman.

“You don’t trust Dahtegte?”

“For what? Of course I trust you.”

“Then listen.”

Stryker folded his arms across his chest and nodded to Dahtegte.

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