Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

The Topeka Kid was not much above medium height, but muscular and wiry. His eyes were an icy blue, and a fine, incipient mustache smeared his top lip, a vanity that every Western man with even the slightest claim to manhood sported in those days.

He wore dust-colored range clothes and a canvas mackinaw, but the guns in his belts were expensive and flashy, nickel-plated with grips of yellow ivory.

The Topeka Kid was said to have killed more than his share of men, and looking at him now, that arrogant, insolent grin on his face, Fletcher was willing to believe it.

He’d seen youngsters like this one before, back along a thousand half-forgotten trails. Young as he was, the Kid would be as dangerous as a striking rattler, and he’d be almighty sudden, deadly, and certain.

“Buck,” Charlie said, the anger in him subsiding, “seems to me ol’ Scar can’t be too far ahead if’n he left these boys to finish us and then catch up with him.”

Fletcher nodded. “Let’s mount up and ride.”

He turned to clamber back down the boulder-strewn slope, but the Kid’s voice, icy cold and slightly mocking, stopped him.

“Hey, Fletcher,” he said, “Scar told me he seen you draw one time and he says I’m beaucoup faster than you.”

Fletcher turned, his eyes shading from blue to gunmetal gray. “He lied to you, Kid.”

The Topeka Kid shook his head. “Nah, it don’t work that way. See, ol’ Scar, he never lied to me before.”

“Well, he lied to you this time.”

“I surely don’t think so. I reckon maybe you’re the damn liar.”

At that moment, Fletcher knew the Kid was going to try it. The youngster wanted to go back to Scarlet Hays and tell him he’d outdrawn and killed the great Buck Fletcher. And after that he’d recount the same thing to every two-bit gunman he met, increasing his reputation so that armed and belted men would step wide around him, and talk soft and low in his presence.

Charlie, a perceptive man, knew it too. Now he tried to step in and make the whole thing go away.

“Kid,” he said, “maybe you best mount up and ride on out of this territory. We saved your hide today; be content with that.”

“You shut your trap, you old goat,” the Kid said, never taking his cold snake eyes off Fletcher. “Well, Fletcher,” he said, “I called you a damn liar. Are you going to take it and back down?”

Smiling slightly, Fletcher shook his head. “Boy, I’ve been doing this kind of thing for longer than you. Your gun won’t even clear the leather. Now do as Charlie says and ride on out of here and no hard feelings.”

The Kid thought that through, and Fletcher saw a slight doubt creep into his eyes. But there was no turning back from this and the Kid knew it, and so did Fletcher.

“Fletcher,” the youngster said, “do I have to slap you into drawing?”

And the Topeka Kid drew.

He was fast, very fast.

But his fancy Colt was still clearing leather when Fletcher’s bullet took him in the middle of the chest.

The Kid staggered back a step, his Colt coming up fast, and Fletcher fired again and again. Three bullet holes appeared in the center of the Kid’s mackinaw, so close together they could have been covered by the palm of a woman’s hand.

Slowly the Topeka Kid sank to his knees, his gun falling from his suddenly unfeeling fingers.

Fletcher stepped up to the boy, looking down at him.

“Hell, you ain’t that fast,” the Kid said, blood staining his lips. “I just seen you, and you ain’t near as fast as Scar.”

There was a well of kindliness in Buck Fletcher, buried deep but nonetheless there, that sometimes manifested itself at times like these. But this wasn’t one of them.

“Kid,” he said, “you weren’t much.”

The Topeka Kid, who would have been nineteen years old that spring, died with that realization, Fletcher’s harsh words branding themselves into his brain before his eyes closed and he looked only into infinite darkness.

Charlie Moore stepped beside Fletcher, glanced down at the dead youth, and shook his head. “You didn’t kill him, Buck. Scarlet Hays did.”

“Maybe so, Charlie,” Fletcher said, a cold emptiness in him, “but it sure don’t make it any easier.”

Ten

Fletcher and Charlie searched the trail ahead, but of the wagon and Scarlet Hays there was no sign. It was as though they’d vanished off the face of the earth.

Charlie had been kneeling, studying the tracks, and now he rose to his feet and stepped beside Fletcher. “They swung the wagon off the road here,” he said. “By this time they could be anywhere among these hills. It would take a dozen Apache scouts a week to find them.”

“Them? Who’s with him?” Fletcher asked, not really expecting an answer.

But he got an answer of a sort.

“Don’t know,” Charlie said, shrugging. “But the man with Hays wears cavalry boots and rides an army hoss.”

“How do you know? About the horse, I mean.”

“Big, heavy animal with a long stride. I’d say he goes maybe seventeen hands and weighs almost twelve hundred pounds. Not too many of those around here except for army horses and that American stud you’re forking.”

“Maybe Hays stole the animal and he’s got a new boy riding it.”

“Maybe. But maybe there’s a sodjer riding that horse and he tipped Scar off about the paymaster’s wagon. Could be he was one of the escort.”

Fletcher thought this through for a while, then said, “That would make more sense than Crook allowing a lowlife like Hays to drive a pay wagon. The general didn’t strike me as being stupid, and, believe me, that’s a rare commodity among generals.”

With a groan, Charlie climbed stiffly into the saddle, and Fletcher realized the old man was growing bone-tired.

“What do we do now, Buck?” Charlie asked.

Fletcher jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I saw some deer tracks back there. I think maybe it’s time we did some hunting now we can’t depend on getting grub from the army.”

“Deer hunting.” Charlie smiled. “Now, that’s something I can teach you young ‘uns.”

“Teach away, Charlie.” Fletcher grinned. “I sure am hungry.”

An hour later a fat whitetail buck went down to their guns.

But it was Fletcher who made the killing shot.

* * *

They camped for the night in a stand of manzanitas beside a shallow creek with water running clear under a paper-thin sheet of pane ice.

The horses were staked nearby, and Fletcher and Charlie cleared away snow and gathered as much grass as they could, tearing it from the frozen earth by the roots.

It was hard, exhausting work, but Charlie, insisting that he make himself useful after having failed in the hunt, afterward skinned out the buck and cut some thick steaks. These they broiled over a small fire, both men wishful for coffee and salt, but having neither.

The old mountain man ate his steaks Indian style, holding the meat between his teeth, cutting a chunk off with a knife. It was a good way—if a man was careful of his nose, and Fletcher, the owner of a large, predatory beak, decided against trying it.

Some things were simply not worth the risk.

Earlier Fletcher had scouted a wide area around their camp, but the Apaches had gone. Crook’s flying columns of cavalry had taught them the dangers of sticking around any one place for too long. It had been a bitter lesson and the Apache had begun to heed it well.

After they’d eaten and the day shaded into night, Fletcher lay in his blankets beside the fire, his rifle close to hand, and built a smoke. “Tomorrow at first light we’ll head out for the old Indian ruins,” he said, lighting his cigarette. “If I can get to Estelle Stark then I reckon the first half of my task is done.”