Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“You think if Scar has been paid to kill the girl, he’ll come after her?” Charlie asked.

Fletcher nodded. “I do, and that will make the rest so much easier.”

“Not so easy, Buck,” Charlie said, frowning. “Getting Hays to talk in front of witnesses will be no Sunday-school picnic. He’ll come at you shooting.”

“That,” Fletcher said, “is a bridge I’ll have to cross when I reach it.”

Later Fletcher and Charlie talked of other things as men do while the long night swells around them, of guns and horses and of men and manners and places they’d seen and places they had not and of mountains and valleys they’d touched and of tall, white ships and the wild green seas that began where the land ended.

Slowly, as the campfire guttered and a coyote howled in the far distance, their talk slowed, then ended, sleep at last taking them.

Beyond the manzanitas, hidden by a stand of pine, a man sat his horse and studied the camp. After half an hour he swung his gray horse south, moving carefully among the pines, keeping to the base of the hills, silent and stealthy as a ghost.

* * *

Fletcher and Charlie ate a quick breakfast of venison steak, then saddled up and rode south, taking almost the same route as the man on the gray horse.

To the west, the towering spire of Mazatzal Peak touched low clouds heavy with snow, and the air was crisp and cold, like cracked ice on the tongue.

Shadows still lay dark in the ravines and canyons, and the game trail the two men followed wandered among low hills and thick stands of pine, always hiding what lay beyond.

At noon a light snow began to fall, dusting Fletcher’s and Charlie’s shoulders with white, and a rising wind stirred in the trees and set the pine needles to whispering.

They topped a rise and reined up in the shelter of some silver spruce. Charlie nodded to the south. “We should reach the ruins in an hour, maybe less.” He looked at Fletcher. “Reckon she’ll still be there?”

Fletcher rose in the stirrups, easing himself in the saddle as his stud tossed its head, the bit jangling. “I don’t know, Charlie. I sure hope so. It will make what I have to do so much easier.”

“Well, Indian Jake told me she’s there,” Charlie said, repeating what Fletcher already knew but seeking some reassurance.

Fletcher nodded, knowing how the old mountain man felt. “I reckon he did, Charlie.”

“Jake, now, he ain’t a man to make up stories,” Charlie said, his eyes searching Fletcher’s face, trying to read the other man’s expression.

Again Fletcher nodded. “I don’t suppose he is, but there’s one way to find out. Let’s ride on down there and see for ourselves.”

As Fletcher and Charlie grew closer to the ruins, the land around them became wilder and more rugged. Brown hills, many of them sheared off into grooved, vertical cliffs, were covered in sagebrush, greasewood, and cholla. Cedar, pine, and spruce grew on their upper slopes, dark arrowheads of green against thick patches of snow.

The two men rode through a narrow valley hemmed in tight by the surrounding hills, then onto a flat open area, cut across by a creek with water that still ran fast and clear over a sandy bottom.

Fletcher and Charlie let their horses drink, then moved across the snow-covered flat. “Looks like another creek up ahead,” Fletcher said.

Charlie rose in the stirrups, stretching to his great height, his eyes following Fletcher’s nod. He shook his head. “Buck, that’s no creek. It’s tracks. A lot of tracks.”

Charlie in the lead, Fletcher followed, and when he got closer he saw that what he’d thought was a depression in the snow made by the runoff from a creek was horse tracks. And Charlie had been right—there were a lot of them.

“Unshod ponies,” Charlie said, leaning from the saddle as he studied the deep trail. “I’d say thirty riders, maybe more.”

“Apaches?” Fletcher asked, already knowing the answer.

Charlie nodded. “Uh-huh, and only warriors. Apache women and children walk, and there are no footprints down there.”

The pony tracks angled across the open ground and ended at the hills. Fletcher looked around him but saw no Indian sign.

“What you reckon they’re doing this far south?” he asked Charlie.

“Dunno. But I think we’d better get to your Estelle Stark gal right quick. This many warriors could sure play hell with her and the rest of them pilgrims at the ruins.”

Fletcher felt fear spike at him, not for himself but for Estelle and the others. “Charlie, do you think they’ll attack?”

“Apaches are mighty notional,” the old man answered. “But this is a war party, probably all young bucks, and if that Chosen One feller has women with him . . . well, sure, they’ll attack.”

Charlie rubbed the back of his neck. “Got me an itch back there, Buck,” he said. “Know what that means?”

Fletcher shook his head and grinned. “Way too late for mosquitoes.”

The old mountain man’s face was grim and unsmiling. “It ain’t a critter bite. I only get that itch when somebody’s watching me.” He looked around at the hills. “And right now somebody’s watching me.”

Fletcher saw only the silent hills and the wind stirring the trees. But he trusted Charlie’s instincts and he too felt something, something that made him feel exposed and extremely vulnerable.

“Let’s ride,” he said. “I don’t want to get caught out in the open by those Indians.”

“Amen to that, brother,” Charlie said, and Fletcher caught an odd glint in the old man’s eyes. It was just a flash that quickly came and went. But could it have been fear?

The two men crossed the flat and rode through a stand of pine just as the snow stopped and the parting clouds revealed a bright, cold sun. When they cleared the trees a wide basin hemmed in by hills opened up in front of them, sloping downward to end at an almost vertical cliff face.

In a shallow alcove in the cliff wall, about 350 feet above the floor of the basin, Fletcher made out the ruins of a sprawling pueblo, surrounded by a forest of giant saguaro cactus.

Higher than this by three hundred feet were more ruins, these with two stories, some of the ancient wooden ladders to reach the upper floor still in place.

Lower down the slope there was a smaller complex, a low, sprawling pueblo made up of a dozen rooms, and from several of these rose thin columns of smoke. A trail led up the slope to the higher pueblos, winding through a thick forest of saguaro, cholla, palo verde, ocotillo, and prickly pear.

Whoever had built these pueblos had chosen the site well. The spot was highly defensible with sweeping views of the entire basin and the hills beyond.

As Fletcher rode closer, he saw that the buildings on the lower slope ahead of him were made from quartzite blocks bound together by thick mud mortar, sturdy enough to turn aside any projectile except maybe a twelve-pound shell from a mountain howitzer.

Fletcher and Charlie rode toward the lower pueblo, and when they were a hundred yards away, a young woman stepped out of one of the rooms, shading her eyes against the sun as she watched them come. Another woman joined the first, then another, and several children appeared, shyly holding on to the women’s skirts.

Was one of the women Estelle Stark?

Fletcher couldn’t tell, but a couple of them appeared to be pregnant. But Estelle had just recently turned eighteen, and these women looked older.

As Fletcher and Charlie rode up to the women, a couple of men appeared from the ruins. They were young, with long hair and beards, and carried no weapons.

Fletcher touched his hat brim to the woman. “Howdy,” he said, then introduced himself and Charlie.