Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“Yes, but I was set up. I didn’t kill that man.”

“Did you kill a prison guard during your escape?”

“General, I didn’t escape. Believe me, nobody escapes from the Wyoming Territorial Prison. I was taken to Lexington by the army, an escort of an infantry lieutenant and eight men. Find that young officer—his name was Simpson—or any of his men and they’ll confirm that I didn’t escape. Hell, General, get in touch with the warden.”

Crook shook his head. “Fletcher, I’m in the middle of a campaign here. I have no time to carry out a murder investigation.”

The general held the Colt less negligently now, and it was clear by the way he handled the gun that he knew how to use it. “I’ll keep you here until your escort arrives to take you back to Wyoming.” Crook made a weak attempt at a smile. “Chin up, Fletcher; I’m sure Senator Stark will seek out the testimony of the warden and your alleged soldiers and see you get a fair trial.”

“That’s not going to happen, General. For some reason that I can’t even guess at, Falcon Stark will never let me reach Wyoming alive.” Fletcher’s face was bleak and drawn as he struggled to make some sense of what was happening to him.

Why had the senator asked him to urgently find his daughter—only to stab him in the back before the job was done?

Fletcher desperately turned the thing over in his mind, trying to find the handle to the mystery. But there was none to be found, and his shoulders slumped, defeat tasting bitter in his mouth.

“Corporal!” Crook yelled, no longer quiet-spoken, using the authoritative bellow of the parade ground.

The door crashed open and the corporal, a grizzled sergeant, and six troopers in tow barged inside, rifles hammer-back and ready.

Fletcher stood slowly, warily moving his hands away from his guns so there would be no misunderstandings.

The sergeant removed the Colts from their holsters and said, “Buck Fletcher, you are under arrest for murder.”

Fletcher felt a rifle muzzle in his back, and when he looked at General Crook the soldier’s eyes held only contempt and anger.

“Fletcher,” he said, “I don’t hold with killing women. In my opinion, any man who would plan such a thing as an act of revenge is low-down, lower than a snake’s belly in an army wagon track.” He turned to the sergeant. “Take this man out of my sight.”

Seven

The log cabin was about twelve feet long by six wide, lit by a single oil lamp that hung from a hook on a beam supporting the shingle roof. There was an iron army cot with a thin mattress and a folded blanket pushed against the wall and nothing else.

The door was of heavy oak and barred from the outside, and set high on the wall opposite was a tiny window with thick wooden bars. The floor was tamped-down earth, frozen hard as iron, so hard only a powder charge could blast a hole in it.

Inside the cabin it was insufferably cold, and Fletcher sat on the edge of the cot and pulled his mackinaw close around his ears, his breath smoking in the damp chill.

A few flakes of snow drifted through the unglazed window and fell, unmelted, on his shoulders, and Fletcher let them stay.

Outside he heard one of the two soldiers who guarded the cabin cough, and the other trooper stamped his feet and cursed softly and with great dedication. “Hey, Bill, why didn’t ol’ George string this killer up instead of holding him here?” this soldier asked of his companion after a while.

After a fit of coughing, the other man replied, “Hell if I know. But I do know this: If officers had to stand guard duty he’d have been hung right quick.”

“Damn right,” the first soldier agreed. “Damn officers.”

The oil lamp, flickering in a draft from a chink between the logs, cast a dancing circle of yellow light around the cabin, and Fletcher smelled the smoke of burning cedar in the cold air that blew through the tiny window.

Fletcher’s numb fingers fumbled in his shirt pocket and found tobacco and papers. He tried to roll a cigarette, failed, spilled tobacco over his coat, and tried again. This time he managed to build a crooked approximation of a cigarette and he thumbed a match into flame and lit it gratefully.

“Fletcher, that smoking habit of yours is going to stunt your growth, you know.”

It was Charlie Moore’s voice, just a low whisper, and it came from the window.

Fletcher stepped away from the cot, back toward the front wall of the cabin, where he could look up and see the window.

Because of his great height, the top of Moore’s hat was just visible, and Fletcher stepped closer again.

“Nice of you to visit, Charlie,” he said.

“Visit, hell, I’m getting you out of here.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Fletcher said. “There’s no need to stick your neck out like this.”

“You’re a friend of Al Sieber’s, and any friend of Al’s is a friend of mine,” Charlie said. He chuckled softly. “Besides, it would be mighty quiet around here with you locked up . . . and there’s one thing else.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t like to see any man railroaded and, gunfighter, I think you was railroaded.”

“Charlie, don’t—” Fletcher began, but the big mountain man was gone.

A few moments later Fletcher heard a dull thud, then very quickly another, and then the bar slid open on the door. Moore pushed his way inside and said urgently, “Let’s go. I got your hoss outside.”

“The soldiers?”

“Sleeping like two little babies.” Moore read Fletcher’s face and added, “Aw, don’t worry; they’ll be all right. I just banged their heads together a couple of times, and not too hard at that.”

Fletcher quickly walked outside, stepped over the recumbent form of one of the soldiers, and swung into the saddle, Moore doing the same thing beside him.

“They overlooked your Winchester on account of how it was still in your saddle boot,” Moore said, his breath steaming, eyes tearing from the cold as the snow stung his face. He handed Fletcher two Colts. “And I brung you these. Got them off them two soldier boys.”

Fletcher shoved a gun into both pockets of his mackinaw and Moore nodded his approval. “Now we just ease on out of here real slow and easy, like we owned the place. If we ride out fast we’ll attract the attention of the pickets, at least them who haven’t as yet froze to death.”

Fletcher and Moore rode out of Fort Apache without a single head turning in their direction.

An hour later they were riding among the hills and canyons along the northern bank of the Salt River, the craggy slopes of the Mogollon Rim to their right lost in darkness and swirling snow.

The riders crossed the partially frozen Dead Coyote Creek, then climbed a low hill crested by manzanita, mesquite and scrub oak, some of the mesquite topping thirty feet in height.

Moore reined up among the trees and tilted his head toward a sky he could not see, the low, black clouds lost in the darkness.

“Fletcher, we got to take shelter,” he said, taking off the fur glove on his right hand, blowing into numb, curved fingers. “It’s getting colder, and a man could freeze out here afore morning.”

Fletcher nodded, his face troubled. “What about Crook? Won’t he have discovered we’re gone by now?”

Moore peered at Fletcher through the gloom and fluttering snow and shook his head. “Fletcher, I never took ye for a pilgrim. Listen, Crook’s here to fight Apaches, and about now he’s saying to himself, ‘Well, the hell with him.’ Trust me: He don’t care a hill of beans about recapturing you so long as he’s got a war on his hands. And secondly, ain’t nobody in their right minds will be riding out on a night like this except poor, fugitive creatures like us.”