Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“It’s thin, Buck,” Charlie said. “Mighty thin.”

“I know it’s thin, but right now it’s all I got.”

Charlie lay back on his blankets, his head on his saddle. “Well, it’s time for this old man to get some shut-eye, an’ I suggest you do the same, Buck. We got a long ride ahead of us tomorrow.”

“We?”

“Sure, if you don’t mind me tagging along.” Charlie rose on one elbow, studying Fletcher in the weak glow of the firelight. “Buck, I’m a man who pretty much has lived his life alone. Oh, I’ve spent some time with Indians, and like I told you, I settled down to married life for a spell at various times, but mostly I lived my years in the high country, up in the mountains among the beaver and the tall pines.” He smiled. “I’m getting stiff, Buck, and old, and recently I’ve begun to figure all my adventures were behind me. Then I ran into you.”

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.