Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“Moore, I’m real sorry I got you into this,” Fletcher said, meaning it sincerely.

“You didn’t get me into anything. I done it my ownself and I’d do it again.”

The old mountain man pulled on his glove and inclined his head to the north. “We come down off this hill and head thataway for maybe three miles. We’ll reach another hill, kinda like this one, but there’s a cave among a stand of sycamore and ash where we can shelter and build a fire.”

Moore kneed his horse forward, then turned his head in Fletcher’s direction. “I told you wrong. It ain’t exactly a cave, but I reckon it will have to do.”

They rode off the hill and back onto the flat, their horses’ hooves crunching on snow covered by a brittle frosting of ice. Above them the crescent moon horned the clouds aside for a few moments, revealing a patch of purple sky. But this was soon lost as darkness again covered the moon and the sky was as black as before. Falling snow was slanting into Fletcher and Moore, whitening the mountain man’s beard and eyebrows, adding winter’s aging to Fletcher’s mustache.

Moore reined up his horse. “Not far,” he said, his breath forming a drifting gray haze around his face. “The hill is right ahead.”

Fletcher peered into the gloom and made out a steep-sided butte. Trees covered its slope, and shadows rising from the plain shaded the narrow arroyo on its southern flank into an inverted vee of blackness. The rise looked cold, stark, and unwelcoming in the distance, just another hill to climb in a harsh and unforgiving land where there were many such.

Moore led the way and Fletcher followed, the collar of his sheepskin pulled up around his frozen face. His horse was tired, drained by cold and distance and badly in need of rest. Yet when he and Moore reached the base of the hill and began to climb, the big stud suddenly found the energy to rear, head twisting violently this way and that as he fought the jangling bit.

Taken by surprise and only half-awake, Fletcher tumbled backward out of the saddle and landed in the snow on his back, the reins still in his hand.

He lay stunned for a few moments, then jumped to his feet and fought the frightened horse as it tried to turn and run. Finally the stud quietened down, though it was trembling hard, its eyes rolling white, and Fletcher looked up to see Moore, still mounted, looming above him.

“Cougar,” the old mountain man whispered. He put a gloved finger to his lips, hushing Fletcher into silence. “Just up ahead.”

Moore rode a mustang, mountain bred and well used to the smell of cougar, and its calm presence seemed to steady Fletcher’s stud.

The mountain man nodded in the direction of their back trail, silently indicating that they should go back the way they’d come.

Fletcher led his horse to an outcropping of granite about a hundred yards from the base of the hill and looped the reins around a dead, stunted spruce gnarling out of a cleft in the rock.

Moore swung out of the saddle and left his mustang, reins trailing, close to the stud. He pulled his Winchester from the boot, and Fletcher did the same.

“We don’t have time to ride around that cat if he’s got a mind to stay on the hill,” he said. “Let’s go see if we can scare him off.”

The two men walked across the flat, rifles at a high port and ready, and again found themselves at the base of the hill.

“Damn, it’s as dark as the inside of a buffalo,” Moore said into Fletcher’s ear as they slowly climbed the slope. “Step easy. I’ve never known a cougar to attack a human afore, but there’s always a first time.” The old man pointed to the distant Mogollon Rim with the muzzle of his rifle. “The deer are climbing higher on account of the snow and too many sodjers and Apaches down here shooting at them. That cat could be almighty hungry, an’ if he’s hungry he’ll be testy.”

The men climbed, doing their best to keep their footfalls quiet, red-rimmed eyes trying to penetrate the snow-flecked gloom around them. Above lay the stand of sycamores, dark spruce growing among them, and a few scant and scraggy cedars struggling to live on the thin soil.

Fletcher misjudged his step over a fallen tree limb, slipped on a patch of ice, and fell flat on his face. He lay there still, the breath knocked out of him, the rowel of his right spur spinning and squeaking.

Stepping beside him, Moore extended a hand and Fletcher took it, and the big mountain man hauled him effortlessly to his feet. Fletcher, breathing hard and cussing a blue streak, rubbed snow from his mustache as Moore raised a disapproving eyebrow.

“Them Texas boots and jinglebobs ain’t exactly what a man should be wearing when he’s hunting lion,” he said. “No offense, mind, but I just thought you should know.”

A sharp reply didn’t immediately spring into Fletcher’s head, and he contented himself with picking up his rifle and cussing some more, especially at the snow that had somehow worked its way deep inside the waistband of his pants.

“Well,” Moore said, “if that cat was hanging around, he’s sure enough to hell and gone by this time. Fletcher, you made more noise than a Missouri mule in a tin barn.”

“Sorry,” Fletcher said, knowing how inadequate it sounded, but, annoyed with himself as he was, deciding to try no better.

Moore shrugged, his long hair blowing in the wind. “No harm done. But let’s just go make sure all that cussin’ and fussin’ really did drive the lion away.”

They found the cat higher up the hill, lying beside a deer trail. He’d been dead for hours.

The cougar’s jaws were drawn back in a defiant snarl as he’d fought the inevitable destiny of his dying to the bitter end. He’d been very old and his teeth were worn almost to the gum and he’d starved to death. But his eyes still blazed with fire, and soon he’d fade away and become one with the land and give it strength.

Fletcher and Moore stood for a few moments, looking down at the cat, wondering at his great size and his determination to live. Then they dragged him away from the trail into a clump of mescal, and there they left him, returning a few minutes later for their horses.

The cave Moore had talked about was just a shallow depression at the base of a rocky outcropping jutting like the prow of a ship from the side of the hill. No more than six feet deep and twice that wide, the cave nevertheless provided shelter from the snow and the worst of the wind, and with a fire it could become fairly snug.

After Moore stripped the saddles and blanket rolls from the horses, Fletcher staked them out on a patch of grass that grew in a small clearing among the trees and was relatively free of snow.

By the time he returned, Moore, with a mountain man’s expertise, had coaxed a small pile of dead leaves and twigs into flame and was already cramming snow into a battered pot for coffee.

The old man, who seemed to be prepared for any eventuality, produced a small slab of salt pork and cut some thick slices, ready for broiling.

After they’d eaten and passed their only coffee cup back and forth, Fletcher built a smoke, enjoying his blankets, the taste of tobacco, and the closeness and warmth of the guttering fire.

It was still snowing, wide flakes swirling in the wind, and the air smelled of sage and pine and of the thin pane ice along the creekbanks. And it smelled of winter and of mountains and of high, secret places and of bears and wolves and the cry of the hawk.

Moore lit his pipe and studied Fletcher in silence for a few moments, then he said, “Man feels like talking, he should talk. Good for a man to tell his story, get things off his chest.” He shrugged, giving Fletcher a way out. “Maybe it is.”

It was a way of asking without asking, and Fletcher recognized it as such.