Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

Estelle returned with wooden cups, and into these she poured Fletcher and Charlie a clear liquid from the jar.

Fletcher tasted the drink hesitantly, while Charlie sat with the cup in his hand, waiting expectantly for his reaction. The drink had the strong, smoky taste of Irish whiskey and would probably get a man drunk just as fast, Fletcher decided.

“It’s whiskey, Charlie,” he said.

The old man’s face lit up and he gulped from his cup. “Whiskey, hell, this is mescal.”

The Chosen One shrugged. “It is a little luxury we allow ourselves, mescal and sometimes Apache tizwin, but only in the strictest moderation.”

“I got to say, Buck,” Charlie said, draining his cup, “things is sure starting to look up around here.”

Estelle served them beans and roasted flat cakes made from the nutritious head of the mescal plant. The food was good, and Fletcher, being hungry, ate heartily.

Charlie wolfed down his food and then extended his cup to Estelle.

“It seems, wife, that our giant friend is in need of more drink,” the Chosen One said, his voice tinged with faint disapproval.

If Charlie noticed, he ignored the man’s comment, saying only that this was without doubt the best mescal he’d ever tasted, except maybe one time down Mexico way, but that was so long ago he could scarcely remember, so maybe he was wrong about that.

After Charlie had finished speaking, the Chosen One patted the mat beside him, indicating that Estelle should sit beside him.

When the girl did, he said, “Wife, Mr. Fletcher has something to say to you.”

The girl was not particularly pretty, but she had a full, well-shaped mouth, and her eyes were very blue and full of vitality. It was hard to guess at her figure because of her pregnancy, but Fletcher decided she’d been slender and shapely and would be so again.

“What do you wish to say to me?” she asked.

Fletcher thought that through, forming in his mind how best to express it, but the girl stopped him cold.

“Is it about my father?”

“How did you know that?” Fletcher asked, surprised.

“A man travels this dangerous wilderness just to talk to me, so I can only assume he was sent here by my father.”

Fletcher hesitated, deciding to take this one step at a time. “He wants me to bring you home.”

The girl shook her head, a slight smile touching her lips. “My father hates me, and now”—she touched the back of the Chosen One’s hand with her fingers—“more so than ever.”

“Why would he hate you? Because you defied him and ran away from home with a man and got pregnant?” Fletcher shrugged, realization dawning on him. “I guess, now I’ve heard myself say it, for some men that’s reason enough.”

“It’s more than that,” Estelle said, her face suddenly pained. “When I was almost thirteen I caught scarlet fever. I almost died, but my mother nursed me through it and she made me well again. Maybe it was because she loved me so much and stayed so close to me that she caught the disease herself, and she wasn’t so lucky. Despite the attentions of the best doctors my father’s money could buy, she died. She was just thirty-three years old, and my father adored her.”

Estelle leaned her head on the Chosen One’s shoulder, an easy, intimate familiarity that surprised Fletcher.

“My father blamed me for my mother’s death. He got so that he couldn’t even bear to look at me any longer, and he packed me off to a boarding school in New York, as far away from him as possible. Then, when I was seventeen, he sent for me, intending to marry me off to the son of one of his political friends. But in Washington I met this one here, the one who has been chosen by God, and agreed to become his wife and share his ministry.”

The girl smiled at Fletcher. “Doomsday will arrive in just twenty-seven short years. By that time my husband will be an old man, but I will be standing beside him when the trumpets of the Lord sound. And, Mr. Fletcher, we will be surrounded by Apache men, women, and children, all those we have guided onto the path to righteousness. Our work has just begun, and the journey will be long and difficult, but, oh, the harvest will be bountiful.”

“Praise the Lord!” cried the Chosen One.

Charlie, caught up in the moment and more than a little drunk, yelled, “Hallelujah!”

Fletcher gave the old mountain man a hard look, then said, “Estelle, I believe your father has hired a gunman to kill you and plans to blame me for your murder. Senator Stark harbors dreams of the presidency, and right now you and your unborn child stand in his way. He can’t let a breath of scandal affect his campaign, so he figures it’s better if he can say you were murdered in the Arizona Territory as an act of mindless vengeance by the notorious gunfighter Buck Fletcher.”

Estelle looked puzzled. “But why you?”

“Because I was accused of a murder I didn’t commit, and I believe your father—don’t ask me how—set up the whole thing, and all to get me down here to the Tonto Basin.”

The girl shook her head vigorously to signal her lack of understanding, and it dawned on Fletcher that she was not too intelligent. His life hung by a thread and he’d hoped this dim girl could help clear his name. Now that hope looked more and more unlikely to happen, and Fletcher felt his spirits sink.

Charlie may have been half-drunk after liberally helping himself from the mescal jug, but he was shrewd and perceptive, and now he stepped into the conversation. “Tell her the whole story, Buck,” he said. “From the beginning, and take it real slow and easy, just like you tole it to me.”

Fletcher took a deep breath and told Estelle the story as he’d recounted it to Charlie back in the cave, beginning with his arrest for murder in Wyoming and ending with his run-in with Scarlet Hays and his disastrous interview with General Crook.

When Fletcher stopped talking, a slow dawning of comprehension lit Estelle’s face. “Yes, all that sounds like my father,” she said. “He’s not the kind of man who would leave anything to chance.”

Fletcher nodded. “If your father’s hired killer is Scarlet Hays, as I suspect, I’d thought to draw him here and get him to confess in front of you and other witnesses. But now there’s an Apache war party out there and everything’s changed.”

“We have nothing to fear from the Apache,” Estelle said, parroting the Chosen One’s words.

“Right at this moment we have everything to fear from the Apaches,” Fletcher said. He leaned toward the girl. “Estelle, come with me. We can leave here now and you’ll be safe.”

“But I am safe. I’m here with my husband.”

The time for talking was over, and Fletcher knew it.

“Then me and Charlie are going to stick around here,” he said. “You’re the bait in my trap, Estelle, and I don’t aim to lose you.”

* * *

Fletcher and Charlie stood guard at the base of the hill as the day died around them. A light snow was falling again, and behind them the pueblo ruins in the higher reaches of the cliff stood stark and silent, their square windows blank eyes looking out on nothing.

Charlie was nursing a mescal hangover, surely the worst of all of them, and he was surly and uncommunicative, and Fletcher let him be.

Finally the old man said, “You know, Buck, there’s maybe a dozen grown men back there and they don’t have a single gun between them. They got hoes and spades and rakes, but not even a damn shotgun.”

“Do you think the Apaches will come?” Fletcher asked.

Charlie nodded, an action he appeared to instantly regret. “They’ll come, all right,” he said, wincing. “I think they’ll hit us at daybreak tomorrow.”

“You’re pretty sure, Charlie?”