Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

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.”