Ralph Compton Doomsday Rider Page 12

  The old mountain man eased his back against the unyielding trunk of a juniper and brought out his pipe. “Only this, Buck—if Estelle Stark is killed by the Apaches come sunup, then her pa’s work is done for him. Who’s to know she was pregnant? It’s no disgrace to have a dutiful daughter murdered by Indians while she was innocently studying plants and flowers and sich. In fact, it might help his campaign, get him the sympathy vote, if you know what I mean.”

  Fletcher nodded. “Then he only has to get rid of me.”

  “That’s a natural fact,” Charlie agreed.

  Without looking up, Fletcher said, “Only it isn’t going to happen that way, Charlie.”

  “What do you mean, it ain’t gonna happen that way?”

  “I mean, we’re heading back to the pueblos before sunup.”

  “What fer?”

  “To save Estelle Stark, if I can. She’s not too smart, but I need her if I ever hope to clear my name.”

  “Buck, maybe you haven’t noticed afore, but there’s only two of us.”

  “I know, but it seems to me that’s an army.” Now Fletcher raised his head and he was grinning. “Or haven’t you ever noticed that afore?”

  The old man shook his head, his grin matching Fletcher’s. “Well, when I rode along with you I sure figured life would never be dull. I guess I was right.”

  “We’ll make it, Charlie. Don’t ask me how, but we’ll make it.” Fletcher tipped his hat over his eyes again. “Now let’s get some shut-eye. We got a full morning ahead of us.”

  Charlie was silent for a few moments, then said, “Only one thing, Buck: Promise me you ain’t forgot about burying me in a tree. Damn it, boy, I want to lie there all peaceful and quiet-like, with my face to the stars so they can shine down on me.”

  “I promise, Charlie,” Fletcher said. He said the words low and flat, and this time he did not look up.

  Despite the cold, within moments both men were asleep. Fletcher’s fight with the Apache had exhausted him, and his slumber was deep and dreamless. The snow continued to fall, rambling through the branches of the juniper, and the white wilderness was silent, waiting with a patience that stretched back millions of years for whatever was to come. Once, around three in the morning, the clouds parted and the moon touched the snow with silver, and a hunting wolf stopped in his tracks, looking around him, wondering at the enchanted beauty of it all, but aware with honed instincts that behind the loveliness lay the land’s coldness and merciless cruelty.

  Within the shelter of the trees Fletcher and Charlie slept on. Half an hour before the sun rose, Charlie stirred in his sleep and muttered the name of a woman who had drifted like smoke into his dream, then fell silent again and slept soundly.

  The night shaded into day, the heavy clouds gathered, blotting out the sun that climbed over the White Mountains, but the weak morning light found its way into Fletcher’s eyes and woke him with a start.

  He shook Charlie awake and ran for his horse, calling out over his shoulder, “We overslept! It’s after dawn.”

  Sensing the urgency, Charlie rose stiff and creaky but sprinted for his own mount. The two men trotted out of the juniper and back onto the flat, their struggling horses kicking up high, scattering fans of snow from their hooves.

  Fletcher’s face was grim as he rode, a knot in his belly telling him that all he’d find at the pueblo would be ashes, blood, and the sprawled, gray dead.

  But when the two riders finally crested a gradual rise and had the pueblo canyon in sight, everything seemed normal.

  Smoke rose from holes in the roofs of the pueblos, tying lazy bows in the still air, and children played in the snow, calling out to each other, red-cheeked from the cold.

  Fletcher reined up his horse and Charlie eased alongside him. “Well, Buck, now what do we do? We ain’t exactly welcome down there.”

  “Maybe the Apaches have moved on,” Fletcher suggested.

  “Could be.” Charlie nodded. “Maybe there’s sodjers in the area.”

  Fletcher sat slumped in the saddle, his chin on his chest, thinking the thing through. Finally he lifted his head and said, “That’s way too many maybes. Let’s go see for ourselves if the Apaches have left.”

  Charlie opened his mouth to object, but Fletcher had already swung his horse to the west and was riding toward the slope opposite the pueblos.

  When he reached the base of the hill, he tied up his horse, and Charlie, muttering under his breath, did the same thing.

  The two men climbed the rise, crouching low, and entered the cover of the pines along its summit. They slid through the trees like silent ghosts and reached the western slope of the hill.

  Below them, the rise fell away to a narrow valley, a shallow creek running its full length without a single bend. Cottonwoods grew along both banks, and a single willow hung its branches over the creek where the Apaches were camped.

  The Indians had no fire, knowing from hard-won experience that smoke in the Tonto Basin attracted soldiers, and each man was standing by his horse, listening to a warrior with gray in his hair who every now and then pointed in the direction of the pueblos.

  The rest of the warriors were young, perhaps out on their first raiding party, but they were just as dangerous, and maybe more so, than older men.

  Fletcher had seen enough. He eased back off the hill, then ran down the slope to his waiting horse.

  “Now what?” Charlie asked as they swung into the saddle.

  “Now we try again to talk some sense into those pilgrims.”

  The old man shook his head. “It won’t work, Buck. They didn’t listen to you the first time and I don’t reckon they will now.”

  “Maybe so, but I want to be there when the Apaches attack.” He looked at Charlie with bleak eyes. “Old-timer, them young bucks are going to be seven different kinds of hell.”

  The two men rode to the pueblos at a gallop, attracting the usual interest as the Chosen One’s people poured out of their blanket-covered doorways.

  “Why did you come back? You aren’t welcome here,” the man called Emmanuel yelled, his face flushed with anger.

  “Go away!” a woman called out. “Leave us.”

  She looked around at her feet, found a broken pottery shard, and heaved it at Fletcher. Now others joined in, pelting him and Charlie with bits of pottery and rocks.

  A flying pottery shard opened up a cut on Charlie’s forehead, and the old mountain man roared in anger, his rifle snaking out from the boot under his knee.

  “No, Charlie!” Fletcher yelled. “Let them be.”

  “Damn these people, Buck!” Charlie said, a trickle of blood streaming down his face. “I don’t give a damn if the Apaches kill ’em all.”

  More rocks were flying, but the Chosen One ran from the pueblo and stepped between his disciples and the riders. He raised his staff and yelled, “No! Stop this at once.”

  One by one the crowd let the rocks drop from their hands, though the eyes that were turned on Fletcher and Charlie were bright with anger and bitter resentment.

  The Chosen One looked up at Fletcher. “You were told to leave us. Why did you come back?”

  “To give you once last chance to listen,” Fletcher said, his own anger flaring. “The Apaches were standing by their horses when we saw them just a couple of minutes ago. They’ll be here soon, so get your people inside the pueblo and do it now. Me and Charlie can hold them off for a while with our rifles.”

  Fletcher looked around at the crowd of people, especially the dozen or so men. “If any of you men have weapons, arm yourselves. There isn’t much time.”

  “Shame!” a man shouted. “You’re bringing shame to all of us.”

  “Ride away,” a woman said. “Leave us alone. You two are the very spawn of Satan.”

  “Listen to me!” Fletcher yelled. “You must listen.”

  “We listen only to the Chosen One,” Emmanuel hollered. “He is our leader, not you.”

  Fletcher turned helplessly to Charli
e, but the older man laid his rifle on the saddle horn and spread his hands wide. “Boy, I tole you it was a damn waste of time.”

  “You must leave us now,” the Chosen One said. “And you must never come back here again. I am anointed by the Lord and so protected by his sword and shield, and I will deal with the Apaches.”

  Fletcher opened his mouth to speak but never said the words.

  The Apaches came then. They trotted out of the valley and fanned across the flat, snow-covered ground in front of the pueblo cliff. Once in a long skirmish line, they slowed their ponies to a walk, rifles held ready across their chests.

  There were thirty of them, lean as famine wolves, hard-eyed and merciless, all of them trained to be fighting men from birth, and they knew no fear, nor did they accept, or even understand, the concept of mercy.

  The Apaches had been observing the pueblo for days and knew what they were facing: a ragtag, shirttail bunch of unarmed settlers.

  But what they hadn’t counted on was the presence of the two men they saw lead their horses toward the front of the lowest pueblo. Shrewd in the ways of enemies, the Apaches recognized Fletcher and Charlie for what they were: fighting men like themselves and that gave them pause.

  An Indian doesn’t like to be surprised, and the sudden appearance of the two riders with their Winchesters surprised them. They slowed to a halt and began to talk excitedly among themselves, forming a rough circle around their gray-haired leader.

  For his part, Fletcher watched the Apaches come, swallowing his fear like a dry bone in his throat. “How many cartridges you got, Charlie?” he asked, surprised that his voice was reasonably steady.

  “What I got in the rifle and maybe another six, seven in my pocket. How many you got?”

  “Not near enough,” Fletcher said.

  The Apaches spread out, wary now, but coming on at a trot.

  “They’ll attack all at once in a rush,” Charlie said. “I don’t think we’re gonna stop them, Buck.”

  “Not out here we won’t,” Fletcher said. “Get into the pueblo.”

  He and Charlie left their horses and ducked into the room behind them. It was small, like all the rooms, with two tiny windows to the front and a smoke hole in the ceiling.

  The walls would turn a bullet, but if the Apaches rushed the door, protected by nothing more than a Navaho blanket hung on a string, there would be no stopping them. Fletcher knew that in their last few hell-firing moments, he and Charlie could kill a dozen warriors, maybe several more, but that still left plenty to even the score.

  That thought was confirmed when Charlie extended his hand. “Been real nice knowing you, Buck Fletcher,” he said. “I got to say, you’re one hell of a man.”

  “You too, Charlie,” Fletcher said, smiling, taking the old man’s hand. “If it comes right down to it, I’ll be right proud to die at your side.”

  But there would be no death that morning for Charlie and Fletcher. Dying aplenty there would be, but for others.

  It was the Chosen One who saved them.

  As Fletcher watched in horror, the man ran toward the Apaches, his staff upraised, the cross glittering in the cold morning light.

  “My children,” he yelled, “I come to preach Christ crucified. Prepare ye the way of the Lord.”

  Even as the Apaches circled him, the Chosen One seemed blissfully unaware of his danger. His face shone with that unholy light Fletcher had noted earlier, and the man’s voice rose in what came close to a scream of passion.

  “Doomsday is coming, my little ones, and you have been chosen by God to lead the people out of the valley of death and into light eternal.”

  The disciples, Estelle in the lead, were walking toward the warriors, their heads tilted back, eyes raised to the uncaring gray sky, singing a hymn Fletcher had never heard before.

  Lead your people to glory,

  The time of the end draws nigh.

  Chant the song of doom,

  Chant the song of doom.

  The Chosen One leads us to heaven,

  He shows us the righteous path.

  Charlie spat through the pueblo window. “That ain’t no kind of damn hymn a good Protestant should be a-singing. Hell, it don’t even rhyme.”

  The Chosen One, perhaps inspired by the singing of his followers, made a fatal mistake. He reached out and grabbed the bridle of the older warrior, loudly urging him to be baptized and accept Christ as his savior. For several moments the Apache looked down at the man with cold glittering eyes; then he raised his rifle and chopped a short, vicious blow with the butt to the Chosen One’s head. The man groaned and crumpled to the ground.

  “I’d say,” Fletcher said, his voice even and conversational, “that pretty much tears it.”

  The disciples were stunned, and the hymn they’d been singing staggered to a ragged halt, the last voice to fall silent that of a small child who had no real idea of what was happening. One by one the disciples drew back from the Apaches, their eyes wide, scared now that their leader had so mercilessly been cut down, stepping slowly and warily toward the pueblo.

  But Emmanuel, the wattles under his turkey neck bobbing, ran toward the fallen man, calling out the Chosen One’s name.

  A bullet from one of the Apache rifles slammed into Emmanuel’s chest, and the man rose up on his toes, then crashed his full length into the snow.

  Wild war cries rose from the warriors’ throats and they began shooting. Another man went down, then another. A woman was hit hard. She spun toward the pueblo, then fell, her face a sudden scarlet mask of blood.

  The disciples turned and ran and the Apaches followed. The recent massacre of their own kinfolk by the army at Skull Cave fresh in their memories, the warriors shot down men, women, and children, whoever got in their sights.

  A small white-haired man with round glasses balancing on the end of his nose was skewered through the chest by a war lance. He staggered to the pueblo, the forged iron point of the lance sticking a foot out of his back, and fell under the window where Fletcher stood.

  Fletcher and Charlie had been unable to get a clear shot at the Apaches, but now, as the disciples scattered, some of them falling, never to rise again, the warriors were drawing closer to the pueblo.

  Fletcher fired, saw an Apache tumble backward over his horse, then fired again. He cranked another round into the chamber and watched as another warrior fell to Charlie’s rifle.

  A young Indian in a blue headband galloped his pony directly at the pueblo, his rifle spurting orange flame. His bullet chipped stone from the edge of the window close to Fletcher’s head, and the gunfighter fired at the oncoming rider. The Indian screamed and threw up his arms, his rifle spinning away from him as Fletcher’s shot slammed into his chest. Then Charlie fired and the warrior went down with his kicking pony, a grotesque sight as his entire lower jaw was blasted away.

  The Apaches, badly burned, drew off, milling around at the base of the hill, steeling themselves for another charge.

  The Chosen One rose groggily to his feet. He looked around for his staff, found it, and then staggered toward the warriors.

  “Hey, Chosen, get back here!” Charlie yelled.

  But the Chosen One didn’t hear him, or if he did, ignored him.

  The man walked unsteadily on his reeling path to the Indians, calling out again and again that he was the bearer of the message of Christ crucified.

  A couple of young braves galloped to the Chosen One, hemming him in on both sides with their ponies. They leaned down and each grabbed the man by an arm and lifted him clear off the ground, riding back the way they had come.

  “Yes, my children!” the Chosen One yelled, so loud that his voice carried all the way to the pueblo. “Carry me among you so that I may preach unto you the blessed message of the Lord.”

  The two Apaches carried the Chosen One toward their camp in the valley at a fast lope, and the man, still raving, was soon lost from sight.

  A bullet buzzed through the window where Fletcher stoo
d and thudded venomously into the wall opposite.

  “Here they come again!” Charlie shouted, and his rifle was already firing.

  Fourteen

  When night fell, the people of the pueblo wandered outside and collected their dead.

  The Chosen One had been screaming for a long time now. The Apaches were making his death a slow and long-drawn-out thing.

  The Indians had attacked seven times throughout the day, but these had been long-range skirmishes and had not been pressed home. The Apaches had galloped back and forth across the open ground in front of the pueblo, firing their rifles at anyone who showed at a window or door, content to let Fletcher and Charlie expend their ammunition.

  The warriors on their swift ponies had been fast, fleeting targets and had suffered no casualties except for a pony downed by Charlie and a man burned across the neck by Fletcher’s Winchester.

  At the pueblo a man named McKenzie had been hit as he glanced out of a window and had died an hour before, just as the sun was disappearing behind the Mazatzals. His wife was taking his death hard and her wails echoed eerily around the cliff above the pueblo. Another woman had been wounded, and so had a three-year-old girl, though the child had only been grazed by an arrow and seemed more frightened than hurt.

  Inside one of the rooms, the disciples laid out the bodies of five men, three women, and two children, and Fletcher told Charlie, his voice edged by a vague, directionless anger, that many more would sure as hell follow.

  One by one the disciples gathered in the room next to the one Fletcher and Charlie occupied, and furious voices were raised, more than a few of them cursing Estelle and the Chosen One.

  “You both lied to us,” a man’s voice yelled, harsh and accusing. “He called himself the Chosen One, yet he was taken by the Apaches and God did nothing to save him.”

  The woman whose husband had been shot at the window screamed, “My man is dead, and all because we listened to you. The Chosen One was a false prophet. He led us into the fire.”

  Estelle’s voice rose. “Listen to me! He will survive! The Chosen One will return to us. He cannot die until the hour of doomsday is upon us. This he was promised by the lord God.”