Ralph Compton Doomsday Rider Page 21

  “Buck Fletcher, you’re quite a remarkable man. I think you—Look out!”

  Fletcher turned quickly as the girl screamed her warning. Jones was right on top of him, the man’s eyes blazing, a wicked-looking hickory club in his upraised fist.

  Fletcher tried to step to his right, his hands flashing to his guns as he moved.

  He was too late.

  The club crashed onto the top of his head, and the last thing he remembered before darkness took him was blinding pain and the brown torrent of the river rushing up to meet him.

  * * *

  Buck Fletcher woke to cold.

  He lay among ice-covered rocks along the bank of the river, his booted feet still in the water.

  Shallow pools among the rocks, driven by the current, lapped around his chest, and when he raised his head the water under him was stained red.

  Fletcher tried to rise to his feet but couldn’t muster the strength to make it. He sank back to the rocks and lay there for several minutes, his head spinning, waiting for the world around him to right itself.

  Having learned from his mistake, he made no attempt to get up again. Instead he crawled toward the grassy bank, dragging himself over rocks that gouged cruelly into his chest and belly.

  It took Fletcher the best part of fifteen minutes to clear the rocks and scramble higher onto the bank, where tufts of buffalo grass spiked among thick, tangled brush surrounding the trunks of the cotton woods.

  He was soaked to the skin and freezing cold. Shivering uncontrollably, Fletcher burrowed into the brush like a wounded and hurting animal, trying to find shelter away from the worst of the wind.

  Covered by brush and feeling a little warmer, he lay flat on his belly and pillowed his head on his forearm. It was time to sleep, and he told himself that when he woke up he’d be sure to feel better.

  Fletcher closed his eyes. He had no idea where he was or how he had gotten here. Nor did he care. He knew only that if he could sleep, the terrible, jarring pounding in his head would go away. . . .

  Above him the sky was a pale blue dome stretching from horizon to horizon, streaked with narrow bands of hazy white cloud. A bluegill splashed in a shallow pool near the bank, sending out a widening circle of ripples. A single, shriveled leaf drifted from a branch of the cottonwood above where Fletcher lay, its fall making a tiny sound that passed unheard and unnoticed in that vast wilderness.

  Fletcher slept. . . .

  The copper sun slid lower in the sky as the day wore on and touched the gathering clouds with scarlet. A few flakes of snow spiraled in the restless prairie wind, and the hushed, shadowless land braced itself for the long, cold night to come.

  Fletcher woke with a start. He lay still for a few moments, his eyes open, trying to remember. . . .

  He forced himself to think. Then it came to him.

  Estelle!

  Ignoring the pounding in his head, he backed out of the brush and used the trunk of a cottonwood to help him struggle to his feet. He was cold and wet, his body stiff, and when he attempted to walk, his knees gave way and he fell flat on his face.

  Fletcher lay still until the hammering in his head subsided; then, more slowly this time, he rose and walked to the riverbank. Kneeling, he splashed icy water on his face, the sudden jolt of coldness helping to revive him.

  Fletcher got stiffly to his feet, his hands searching for his guns. They were both in place, secured by the rawhide thongs over the hammers.

  Shivering, he looked up and down the riverbank. Something black was wedged among the rocks about twenty yards away, and when Fletcher reached it he saw it was his hat.

  Like the hat, he must have been pushed to the bank by the current. Swollen by melted snow, the river was running fast enough that it had shoved him along, refusing to let him sink and drown.

  Fletcher knew he had been lucky. Very lucky.

  His hand strayed to the top of his head and found a deep gash crusted with hard blood. Fletcher cursed softly and bitterly, remembering Red Jones and his hickory club. He had turned his back on the man like a green pilgrim, and he had paid the price.

  Absently he reached for his tobacco. The sack was soaked and shredded, the makings useless, a gloomy fact that immediately filled Fletcher with a dull rage. It had been personal before between him and Jones; now it was even more so. The ferryman had denied him even the small consolation of a smoke—and that was something he could not forgive.

  Fletcher rubbed his temples, his head throbbing. There was something else . . . something he had forgotten. . . .

  Jones must have taken Estelle!

  He recalled the bruises on the face of the Cheyenne woman and how the man had looked at Estelle, the lust in his eyes naked and cruel. Jones’s intentions had been clear from the start, and Fletcher cursed himself for not recognizing that the man would act on them. He had taken Jones too lightly, dismissing the ferryman as just a dirty, unkempt woman beater. It was a mistake—and one he vowed he’d never in his life make again.

  Now Estelle was in terrible danger . . . and he was just standing there, mourning his tobacco.

  Wincing, Fletcher settled his hat on his head. How far downstream had the current taken him? He had no way of knowing. The ferry might be just around the next bend of the river—or a hundred miles away.

  The day was slowly dying, shading into night, and a few flakes of snow tumbled in the air. Fletcher shivered. He had to make it to some kind of shelter before the temperature dropped much further or he could freeze to death in these wet clothes.

  How far away was that damned ferry?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Fletcher glanced toward the last dim glow of the setting sun, gauging the time, then turned to the east and, unsteady on his feet, his head spinning, began to walk upstream.

  The riverbank was lined with cottonwood and willow and was mostly flat, though in many places the underbrush grew thick, slowing Fletcher’s progress.

  Here and there where the bank had crumbled under the relentless pressure of the current, the rushing waters had gouged great semicircles out of the land, the bottoms covered in rock-strewn sand and massive boulders, and these obstacles also took time to cross.

  The rising temperature of his own body as he struggled forward was rapidly drying Fletcher’s clothes, at least those nearest his skin, but amid the gathering darkness the night was getting colder, and very soon he would be unable to see where he was going.

  Up ahead there was a bend in the river where a spit of land jutted into the water. It looked to be mostly hard-packed sand, but there were cottonwoods growing among scattered boulders at the point nearest the bank.

  Fletcher stumbled forward and rounded the spit, taking the easiest route across the sand. When he cleared the promontory he saw what he’d been hoping to see. About two hundred yards away was the ferry, smoke still belching from the chimney of the shack.

  There was only one problem.

  It was on the other side of the river.

  Twenty-four

  Fletcher stood on the bank, stunned by this melancholy development. In his befuddled state he had never even considered the possibility that he might have been washed up on the bank opposite the ferry.

  He sat on the grass under a cottonwood, trying to get his brain to work. He had to think this thing through.

  After a few minutes he realized there was only one solution to the problem—he’d have to swim for it.

  But that solved one problem and created another. He was a poor swimmer, and the river at this point was wide.

  Fletcher’s hand strayed to his shirt pocket and it took him several moments before he remembered his makings were ruined. Again he directed his growing rage at Red Jones, angrily cursing the man under his breath.

  He had to get across the river and soon—but how?

  The answer finally came to him.

  Back at the spit he’d seen the skeletal trunk of a dead cottonwood lying half-buried in the sand. If he could get the t
runk into the water, he could float across.

  It wasn’t going to be easy, but Fletcher knew he had no alternative. He had to save Estelle, and that dead tree could be her salvation—and his.

  Wearily he rose to his feet and retraced his steps to the sandbar.

  The cottonwood was easier to move than he had feared, mainly because it had been stripped of its branches in some ancient tumble down the river when it was in flood and there was nothing left to dig deep into the sand.

  Fletcher lifted one end of the log free, then the other. The trunk was heavy and awkward to handle, but after several attempts he managed to pry it loose from the sand and drag it to the water’s edge. He stripped off his mackinaw, then his boots and gun belts, and bundled them up inside the coat, using the arms to tie it all together.

  Fletcher placed his wet package on top of the trunk and pushed it into the river, holding on with his right arm. He kicked out with his feet, and the log floated slowly into the current.

  The water was cold and its icy slap made Fletcher gasp. He kicked out harder and the trunk, with agonizing slowness, nosed further into the wide Smoky.

  The current was strong and he was slowly being swept downstream of the sandbar, but his steadily churning feet kept the trunk on a steady, if slanting, course for the opposite bank.

  It took the best part of fifteen minutes before Fletcher felt the trunk grind across rock and come to a sudden halt. He was still about ten yards from the bank, but here the water was shallow, and he managed to splash his way to shore, holding his precious bundle above his head.

  Fletcher clambered up the steep side of the bank and fell on the grass, numb from cold and teetering on the edge of exhaustion. After a few moments he climbed slowly to his feet and pulled on his boots, then buckled on his gun belts.

  He shrugged into his wet mackinaw, then checked his Colts, punching out each round and drying them one by one, or as much as he was able to get them dry, on his damp shirt.

  Reholstering his guns, Fletcher removed his spurs, shoving them into the pockets of his mackinaw where their jingle would not betray him, and walked toward the ferry and Red Jones’s shack.

  The reckoning was coming, and the anger in Fletcher was a growing thing, building inexorably with each stiff, painful step he took. Jones had played his hand well and thought he had the game won.

  But very soon now Fletcher would up the ante—betting all he had on a pair of Mr. Sam Colt’s sixes.

  When Fletcher got close to the shack, he drew the gun from his cross-draw holster. There was no one around, and, luckily, Jones did not seem to own a dog that would bark an alarm.

  The shack had one small, uncurtained window to the front. On cat feet, Fletcher stepped quietly to the window, dropped to one knee, and looked inside.

  Estelle was sitting on a cot opposite Jones. Her shirt was unbuttoned and hung over her waist, exposing creamy, pink-tipped breasts that were still full and swollen from her pregnancy.

  The ferryman sat at a table, a whiskey jug to his lips, never, for a single moment, taking his eyes off the half-naked girl as he drank.

  It seemed that eager anticipation played a major role in Jones’s perverse sexual appetite, and he appeared to be in no hurry to throw his unwashed body on Estelle.

  Fletcher shook his head. There was just no accounting for people.

  A sudden shuffling noise to his right made him duck back from the window, his gun coming up fast.

  The Cheyenne woman, her arms loaded with firewood, had walked around the corner of the shack. Now she stopped in her tracks, her only reaction to Fletcher’s presence a slight widening of her dark eyes.

  Fletcher put a finger to his lips and whispered: “Sssh . . .” The woman stood where she was, saying nothing.

  It was now or never, Fletcher decided. The Cheyenne might open her mouth and scream at any moment.

  He stepped quickly to the door of the shack, judged its strength, then kicked it in with his right boot, following through when timbers splintered and the door crashed open.

  Jones, his face all at once managing to register fear, surprise, and shock, let the jug slip from his hand. It crashed onto the table, spilling whiskey across the rough pine boards. The man roared a vile oath and dived for Fletcher’s rifle standing near the stove.

  He never made it.

  Fletcher’s Colt barked once, twice, three times, and Jones slammed heavily into the wall, rocking the flimsy shack to its foundations. He sank to the floor, three bullet holes forming a perfect ace of clubs dead center in his chest.

  “I finally played my hand, Jones,” Fletcher said, talking to a dead man. “And I reckon you’ve cashed in your chips.”

  “Help me,” Estelle said, without a glance at Jones’s body. She pulled up her shirt and turned her back to Fletcher.

  “What do you want me to do?” Fletcher asked, smoke drifting around him. He punched out the spent shells from the cylinder of his Colt, reloaded, then holstered his gun.

  “Button my dress, unless that filthy animal ripped them all off. I’m too shaken to do it myself.”

  “They’re all there,” Fletcher said, his face troubled. He could handle a gun or a rope and in a pinch a blacksmith’s hammer, but women’s fixings were usually beyond him.

  The buttons were small and round, covered in the same fabric of the shirt, and there seemed to be a hundred of them. It took Fletcher’s big, fumbling fingers a long time to get them all fastened.

  When he finished, Estelle turned to face him. “I knew you’d come for me, Buck,” she whispered. “With all my heart and soul, I knew it.”

  “Did he . . .” Fletcher stopped, trying to find the right words.

  There was no need. “No, he didn’t. Buck, I am protected by the shield of the Lord, and had that animal tried to force himself on me, I would have called down the terrible thunder of His wrath.”

  Fletcher nodded. “Well, I guess there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” He glanced at Jones’s body without sympathy. “Or in his case a skunk.”

  Estelle looked at Fletcher as if seeing him for the first time. “Buck,” she said, “you’re soaking wet!”

  “Some,” Fletcher admitted.

  “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes before you catch your death of cold.”

  Fletcher nodded toward the dead man. “I’ll get rid of that first.”

  He grabbed Jones by the feet and dragged the body outside. There was no sign of the Cheyenne woman, the wood for the stove lying where she’d dropped it.

  Fletcher dragged Jones’s body into some deep brush on the riverbank, then returned to the shack.

  Tired, wet, and irritable, he insisted Estelle turn her back while he stripped off his wet clothes. These he spread in front of the stove, then wrapped himself in a blanket from the cot.

  “Can I look now?” Estelle asked, a barely suppressed laugh in her voice.

  “Yeah,” Fletcher answered gruffly, annoyed at the girl and the way all women seemed to have of making a naked man feel foolish about his modesty.

  Estelle looked around the shack and found the coffeepot and a sack of Arbuckle. There was water in a jug, no doubt brought in by the Cheyenne woman, and she filled the pot and placed it on top of the stove.

  Sitting back on the bed, Estelle leaned over and moved Fletcher’s shirt and mackinaw closer to the fire. “Where is the Indian woman?” she asked.

  Fletcher shrugged. “Gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know, back to her people maybe. I guess living with Red Jones was no picnic and she was glad to get rid of him.”

  The girl reached down and pulled a sodden wad of sack, paper, and tobacco from the pocket of Fletcher’s shirt and threw it into the fire.

  Fletcher followed her movements with unhappy eyes. “I wasn’t killing mad at Jones until I discovered that,” he said. “Then it became real personal between him and me.”

  Estelle smiled. She rose and picked up her coat that Jones had thro
wn on the floor in his haste to strip her. She held up the mackinaw and reached into a pocket, coming up with a tobacco sack and papers.

  “How the hell—” Fletcher began.

  “You know, Buck,” the girl said, interrupting him, “sometimes the way you talk to me, explaining every little thing, I get the impression you don’t think I’m very intelligent.”

  Stung and embarrassed, Fletcher fumbled for words. “I don’t think that. I mean—”

  Estelle shook her head. “It doesn’t matter; really it doesn’t. But early on I was clever enough to figure out that a smoking man without tobacco would be like a grizzly bear with a toothache.” She smiled and handed sack and papers to Fletcher. “That’s why I bought these back at the sutler’s store at Fort Apache. I thought it might be real prudent to have some spare.”

  “Estelle,” Fletcher said, grinning, meaning every word, “you are an angel.”

  The girl rose and found matches and scratched one alight, holding it up to Fletcher’s cigarette. He drew deep and long, then, smoke trickling slowly from his nose, sighed. “Ahh . . . that was good.”

  “Nasty habit,” Estelle said, her nose tilting. “I don’t approve of it.”

  * * *

  Fletcher and Estelle both decided to forgo the dubious cleanliness and comfort of Red Jones’s cot, preferring to sleep on their own bedrolls. Fletcher, shivering in his blanket, found them stashed with their horses and saddles in the dead man’s small barn behind the shack.

  Fletcher hotfooted it back to the shack, threw the bedrolls on the floor, and was glad to return to his coffee and the welcoming warmth of the stove.

  In the early hours of the morning, he rose and brought in the wood the Cheyenne woman had dropped, and fed the fire.

  Outside the night was bitter cold and a frosty moon rode high. There were a few stars scattered across the sky, but the horizon toward the north was black with building clouds. The coyotes had begun calling, and down by the riverbank a large animal crashed through the brush.

  Fletcher lay on his blankets again, listening to Estelle’s soft breathing, wondering at the girl’s dry-eyed grief for her dead husband and baby and her determination to even the score with her father.