Ralph Compton Doomsday Rider Page 8

  Fletcher laughed. It was from genuine amusement and it made him feel good. “Charlie, it seems I’ve caused you nothing but trouble and now you’re in it as deep as I am.”

  The old mountain man nodded. “That’s my whole point. Like you said already, trouble just naturally follows you, Buck, and I want to be in on it. Hell, man, I don’t want to stiffen up and grow old and someday crawl into a cave like this one and just die.” Charlie’s eyes were faded in the firelight and the shadows crawled into the wrinkles around his eyes. “You saw that old mountain lion down there on the trail. I don’t want to end up like him. When death comes for me, I want it to be mighty sudden and with a rifle in my hands and my belly full of fire and the sheer joy of having lived.”

  Charlie lay back on his blankets. “Maybe you don’t understand and maybe I’m just an old man who talks too much.”

  Fletcher smiled. “Charlie I’d be right proud to have you ride with me, and I couldn’t think of a better man to have at my side in a fight.” He stretched out his arm toward the old man. “Will you give me your hand on it?”

  Charlie took Fletcher’s hand and shook it. “We’re going to have some fun, ain’t we, Buck?”

  Knowing what the old man wanted to hear, Fletcher nodded. “I’d say we are.”

  “Only one thing,” Charlie said, lying back on his blankets, staring at the roof of the cave. “If I fall, don’t bury me in the ground.”

  “You aren’t going to fall, Charlie. You’re too mean an old coot for that.”

  “But still, Buck, if I do, promise you’ll haul my carcass up a tree or some other high place and leave me there. That’s the Indian way and it’s a good way. I don’t want to be buried under dirt. It will lay heavy on me.” He raised up on an elbow again. “Promise me that, Buck.”

  Fletcher realized there was no room for or point in further argument. “I’ll do that for you, Charlie; I promise.”

  “You’d better; otherwise I’ll come back and haunt you.” Charlie sighed deep and long. “Yup, it’s the Indian way, and it’s a good way because a man can lie quiet with the sun on his face and at night see the stars. Now get some shut-eye. Damn it, boy, I’m all talked out.”

  Fletcher closed his eyes and, the long day catching up to him, was asleep within moments.

  The fire burned lower, shading the glow in the cave from yellow to a pale orange.

  Outside, the snow continued to fall, covering the entire basin, the grassy flats, the red, saw-toothed ridges, the rocky slopes, and the deep, shadowed canyons. The spruce on the rim escarpment turned to silver, and around them the snow hushed the land into silence, and even the owls standing midnight sentinel in the scrub oak and sycamore around the cave ceased questioning the night, as though unwilling to draw a screeching chalk line of sound across the sweet face of the darkness.

  A coyote, hungry, slat-sided, and miserable, walked on cat feet through the snow and stopped near the cave, nose tilted, reading the wind. Not liking the man smell, he trotted away, head bent against the night, snow frosting his muzzle with white.

  Fletcher and Charlie Moore slept on until the long dark slowly shaded into day and fingers of gray light explored the roof of the cave.

  Fletcher woke, put on his hat, and pulled on his boots, then added sticks to the weak fire. After satisfying himself that the fire would blaze for a while, he stood, buckled on his guns, and shrugged into his mackinaw.

  He stepped out of the cave, shivering in the morning cold, and checked on the horses. They’d fared well in the night, sheltered as they were by the surrounding trees, and even Fletcher’s grain-fed stud had managed to forage under the snow for grass.

  Fletcher did what he could to clear away more snow with his boots, then walked back to the cave. He got the coffeepot and filled it with snow and placed it on the fire and began to slice up the dwindling slab of salt pork.

  Charlie woke and rose stiffly to his feet. He coughed, then stepped to the mouth of the cave and glanced up at the gray sky.

  “Snow’s still coming down,” he said. “I’d say it’s getting heavier.”

  Fletcher looked past Charlie and out into the gathering day. The snowflakes were falling thick, driven by an unceasing wind off the rim, and the bare limbs of the sycamores looked like they were made of frosted glass.

  “This ain’t a day to be riding out,” Charlie said. “I reckon we’d better stay right here until it clears.”

  Fletcher added a handful of coffee to the pot. “We don’t have time to waste, Charlie. I’ve got to get to Estelle Stark before someone else does.”

  Charlie turned and nodded. “There’s truth in what you say, Buck, but a couple of men frozen to death on the trail ain’t gonna be of much use to anybody. Besides, if we can’t move, nobody else can either. This whole country is locked in tight as Dick’s hatband.”

  Fletcher looked at that statement every way he could and reluctantly came up with the conclusion that Charlie was correct. The old mountain man was weather wise, and if he said they could freeze to death out there in the blizzard, then he was right and there was no questioning him.

  “When do you think it will blow over?” Fletcher asked, seeking even a slight gleam of hope.

  “Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after,” Charlie said. “That is, if the horses can last that long out there.”

  Fletcher shook his head, saying nothing. If the blizzard lasted longer than Charlie predicted, they were in a heap of trouble—and so was Estelle Stark.

  * * *

  Two days later the snow stopped.

  As the night died around them, making way for a bright morning, Fletcher and Charlie Moore breakfasted on a single strip of salt pork and a cup of twice-boiled coffee, then left the cave and saddled their horses.

  The animals were lean and had begun to grow a ragged, shaggy winter coat, but they stepped out willingly enough and seemed anxious to be back on the trail and away from the thin graze of the forest clearing.

  The two riders once again descended into the basin, making their way down the slope and then across benched ridges made treacherous by deep snowdrifts. They left behind the stands of cedar and juniper on the heights and rode onto flat grass country surrounded by tall, rugged hills crowned by pine. Behind them, the Mogollon Rim showed as a vast, snow-plastered wall, traces of red rock showing here and there across its width.

  Here the land was not completely flat but rose now and then into rolling, undulating hills, most of them shallow and thick with manzanita and cactus, scrub live oak growing on their southern slopes.

  The two men got their first glimpse of the sun rising over the Mazatzals near Fortunate Creek, and Fletcher saw the tracks of deer on the frosted crust of the snow and once the narrow, short-coupled prints of a hunting coyote. But nothing moved across the entire breadth of that seemingly limitless wilderness. It was as though the land was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

  Fletcher and Charlie reined up in a stand of manzanita to rest the horses for a few minutes and let them nose under the snow for whatever sparse grass was growing there.

  With numb fingers, Fletcher built a smoke and Charlie fumbled to get his pipe lit.

  “We’ll reach Costello’s store, or what’s left of it, and cross the Salt at the shallows,” Charlie said, drawing hard on the pipe to get the fire going.

  “Mighty close to the fort,” Fletcher pointed out.

  Charlie nodded. “I know, but it can’t be helped. There isn’t another decent place to cross this side of the Mazatzals, unless these horses can climb down gorge walls.” The mountain man got the pipe going to his satisfaction and puffed contentedly, his face and beard wreathed in blue smoke. “Besides, we can see sodjers coming from a long ways off from the Costello crossing, and Apaches too, come to that.”

  Fletcher finished his cigarette and threw the butt into the snow. He kneed his horse out of the manzanitas and Charlie followed.

  Now that he was seeing it in the daylight, Fletcher realized Costello
’s store had burned down very recently, charred straight and angular wooden beams sticking out of the ash at odd angles.

  Following Fletcher’s eyes, Charlie said, “Sean Costello wasn’t much. He was a fat man but not one of them jolly kind. A while back, when some starving Apache women came begging to him for food for their children, he laughed and told them to feed them their own dung.”

  Fletcher’s smile was thin. “Nice feller.”

  Charlie nodded. “He were that. Anyhoo, when the Apaches under ol’ Delshay raided this place, they crucified Costello to his own door with iron nails, then burned the store around him. From what I was told by Indian Jake, Costello did his share of screaming, even though they’d filled his mouth with horse dung.”

  The old man nodded, as though to himself. “Like I said, Sean Costello wasn’t much, and after all was said and done he died like a dog.”

  The two riders crossed the Salt, then swung south, toward the black basin country and the ancient Indian cliff ruins.

  After an hour’s riding across a rough and broken landscape, they reached a place where a gradual slope merged onto a sunken road that showed signs of recent travel.

  At least one wagon had passed this way, and several riders, and quite recently, since their tracks had not been filled in by snow.

  The road led down a slight grade and was bordered for a stretch by jackpine, manzanita, and mescal. The track angled in the direction of the Mazatzals and Fort McDowell and once beyond the surrounding trees crossed a rolling area of wide meadows fringed by dark green forest, all of it covered in several feet of snow.

  “This is an army road cleared by Col. Kit Carson back in ‘sixty-three,” Charlie said. “Now it’s Crook’s main supply route to Fort McDowell, an’ then there’s another hundred miles of it all the way to Fort Whipple.”

  Charlie swung out of the saddle and searched the road along the wagon tracks. He found what he was looking for, a pile of horse droppings. The old man looked up at Fletcher and said, “These are pretty fresh. I’d say no more than an hour old.”

  “You thinking what I’m thinking, Charlie?” Fletcher grinned. “Maybe we could convince those soldiers to part with some of their supplies.”

  “At gunpoint, you mean?” Charlie asked, grinning, one shaggy eyebrow rising.

  Fletcher shrugged. “I’m not too popular with the army right now, so I don’t really suppose there’s any other way.”

  Charlie slapped his thigh and roared. “Damn it all, boy, I knowed I was gonna have some fun riding along with you.”

  The old man swung into the saddle, and he and Fletcher followed the tracks into the rolling meadow country.

  They’d been riding for ten minutes when they found the dead soldiers.

  The men lay close to the road, their blood spreading in a wide circle of scarlet around them.

  Fletcher and Charlie dismounted and walked to the fallen men. One was a young cavalry trooper, the other an older, white-haired man, a major’s shoulder straps showing where his bearskin coat had pulled away from his upper body.

  The trooper had been shot in the back, the officer neatly between the eyes.

  “I know this man,” Charlie said. “That’s Major Kenniston. He acted as General Crook’s paymaster on account of how he was nearing retirement and too old for a fighting command.”

  “Apaches?” Fletcher asked.

  Charlie shook his head. “Apaches would have cut them up some.” He pointed at a scattering of footprints around the bodies. “Those were made by boots, Buck, the kind you wear. No Apache wears high-heeled, cattle-country boots.” The old man frowned and pointed at a set of prints with his rifle. “All except these. They lead from here back to the wagon tracks.”

  “What makes them different?” Fletcher asked.

  “The man who made those prints wore regulation cavalry boots. That’s pretty strange. Why wasn’t he killed with the others?”

  “A hostage, maybe?” Fletcher suggested.

  “Maybe. But his prints are alone. I mean there are no others around them. A prisoner would have men on either side of him, or at least following him close with a gun in his back. This man walked away from here and back to the wagon by his ownself.”

  The mystery of the army boot prints only added to a disturbing thought beginning to form in Fletcher’s head.

  “Does Crook send out a pay wagon regularly, Charlie?” he asked, frowning.

  “He tries to,” Charlie replied. “The men don’t have much to spend their money on, except at the sutler’s store, but the general says it improves morale to pay the troops reg’lar.”

  Deep in thought, Fletcher built a smoke, thumbed a match, and lit the cigarette before he spoke again, and when he did it was a question. “Does a civilian muleskinner ever drive the pay wagon?”

  Charlie opened his mouth to reply, then, as a thought struck him fast, changed his mind about what he was going to say. Finally he asked a question of his own. “You’re thinking about Scarlet Hays, ain’t you?”

  Fletcher nodded at the dead soldiers. “This sure is Scar’s style.”

  “Civilians usually don’t drive pay wagons, but right now Crook needs every man he can get. It’s possible he ordered Hays to drive to free up a trooper.”

  “Or Scar talked him into it,” Fletcher said.

  Charlie nodded. “Crook knows how good Hays is with a gun. He maybe figured the wagon was a heap safer from the Apaches with ol’ Scar’s Colts around.”

  “Only he didn’t know he was setting a wolf to guard the chickens,” Fletcher said, his mouth a hard, bitter line under his mustache. “Scarlet Hays is an opportunist, Charlie. He saw his chance with the pay wagon and he damn sure took it.”

  The old man shrugged. “Well, it ain’t any of our concern. It’s the army’s money and their dead. Let ol’ Georgie Crook settle with Hays.”

  “But what if I’m right and Hays was sent here to murder Estelle Stark?” Fletcher asked. “If I can get the wagon back and get Scar to confess, Crook’s got to listen to me.”

  “Too many ifs there, boy. You know Hays, and he ain’t the kind to fess up real easy. You’ll have to take him alive, and that won’t be easy either. Scarlet is hell on wheels with a gun, maybe the fastest there’s ever been. He’s no bargain, boy, even for you.”

  Fletcher’s face looked like it was carved out of stone. “Charlie, I’ve got to save Estelle Stark and clear my name. If we ride to the cliff ruins, maybe we can save Estelle’s life, maybe not. But if we go after Scarlet Hays right now we can head him off and he’ll miss his chance to murder the girl. With Hays and the pay wagon in tow it could be General Crook will be more willing to listen to me.”

  “Yeah, but suppose ol’ Georgie is in on it?” Charlie said. “What then?”

  Fletcher shook his head. “I don’t know, Charlie. But that’s a chance I’m going to have to take.” He looked at the old man, his eyes softening. “Charlie, you don’t have to—”

  “Don’t say that to me, boy,” Charlie interrupted quickly. “I’m with you to the end, no matter what happens.” He smiled slightly. “Just remember what I tole you. If the time comes, bury this old man in a tree.”

  Despite the worry gnawing at him, Fletcher laughed. “Charlie, you’ll outlive us all. You’re just too plumb ornery to die.” He swung his horse around in the direction taken by the wagon. “Now let’s find Scar Hays and make some war talk.”

  Nine

  Fletcher and Charlie Moore rode side by side along the road, following the wagon tracks.

  Around them, sweeping gracefully up from the flat, snow-covered foothills sparkled in the morning sunlight and rose up to meet craggy red rock peaks, most of them showing their own white crest. The land was quiet, serene, hushed, long miles stretching to the distant mountains.

  Fletcher loved the mountains and the way they called out to him, the language they used written in the wind, telling him of silent places among the pines and rocky gorges deep with darkness and mystery, urging
him to seek, explore, and find.

  In his wild days, not long past, in the empty aftermath of hell-firing gun battles when men died, Colts roaring, on the filthy sawdust floor of saloons or in the dust of cow-town streets, he had many times sought out the mountains to restore his troubled soul.

  The mountains did not judge, nor did they console; they were just there, unmovable, unchanging, defying the rains and the snows that would take a million times a million years to erode their hard blue rock to the depth of a man’s fingernail.

  Fletcher would spend a month, two months, riding among the pine-covered peaks, then, shaggy and uncurried, more wolf than man, descend once more to the flat to pick up his life and again become the person he had been, a man born to the gun with no other way to make a living than from his practiced skills, trusting to nothing but the Colt and the Winchester rifle.

  It was a hard, unbending life, long on pain and fear and short on joy, but it was the life he had chosen for himself and there was no going back from it. Not now. Not ever.

  As he looked at the mountains rising from the silent land far ahead of him, these thoughts filled Buck Fletcher’s mind, and he found no comfort in them.

  He rode on with a caution born of the years, his blue eyes never still, searching the land around him.

  The shots racketed through the morning quiet, shattering the stillness into a thousand separate shards of sound.

  More shots rang out, then more.

  “What the hell!” Charlie yelled.

  “Sounds like a battle up ahead,” Fletcher said. He leaned down and pulled his Winchester from the boot under his left knee. “Let’s go take a look-see.”

  A man doesn’t ride headlong into gun trouble. Fletcher and Charlie walked their horses toward the noise of the shooting, their eyes constantly scanning the land around and ahead of them.