Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“Sure as I’m standing here. Those tracks were made by a war party, and the only whites to make war on for maybe fifty miles around are right here.”

Charlie rubbed the back of his neck. “Damn itch is still bothering me.”

Fletcher saw that same strange look in the old mountain man’s eyes and it troubled him enough that he had to say what he was thinking straight out. “Charlie, are you scared?”

The old man drew himself up to his full seven feet, his face stiff. “Buck, I ain’t scared of anything I can see and I ain’t scared of any living man. But when this itch starts on me, it’s the not knowing that scares me.”

“Is it the Apaches, maybe?” Fletcher asked, relieved that his worst suspicions were unfounded.

“Could be,” Charlie said, “but I don’t think so. Something or somebody is watching us, Buck, and I have no idea who or what it is.”

“Keep your eyes skinned, Charlie,” Fletcher said. “I reckon I got my own itch, and it’s telling me we could soon be in a world of trouble.”

By full dark, the Chosen One’s disciples sought their mats in the pueblo as though they did not have a care in the world.

Fletcher and Charlie decided to stand watch in turns, and he let the older man sleep first, since his hangover took top priority.

A gentle snow was falling as Fletcher stepped out of the room assigned to him and Charlie in the pueblo, his Winchester cradled in his arm.

He walked toward the slope, his eyes scanning the rise of the hill ahead of him. The breeze had dropped and the broad snowflakes fluttered slowly to earth, coating the branches of the pines with white. An owl glided past him on silent wings, a ghostly gray phantom that quickly faded from sight to become one with the darkness.

If the Apaches came this could be one avenue of attack, unless they skirted the hill and approached the pueblos from the narrow valley beyond.

The night had turned cold and frost hung in the air, and Fletcher’s breath smoked as he walked along the base of the hill toward the valley.

On the western slope grew scattered spruce and cedar, and at its base rose an upthrust pinnacle of red, flat-topped rock about twice the height of a man, smaller boulders of the same color surrounding it on all sides.

Fletcher walked to the rock, stood in its meager shelter, and built a smoke. He thumbed a match into flame, trusting to the rock to shield him from the view of any sleepless Apaches who might be wandering around in the night.

In this, Fletcher’s trust was badly misplaced.

Using cupped hands he raised the light to his cigarette—and the sky fell on him.

Twelve

The Apache jumped from the top of the rock and his moccasined feet slammed into Fletcher’s shoulders.

Fletcher crumpled under the warrior’s weight and went to his knees. He saw a sudden gleam of steel and parried with his left arm. Too late. The knife raked across his ribs and Fletcher felt his side burn like fire.

The Apache closed on him quickly, holding his knife blade up for a fast, gutting slash. Still stunned by his fall, Fletcher grabbed the warrior’s wrist and held on, twisting the Apache’s arm hard to his left. The man yelped in pain, broke free, and sprang back, teeth bared, circling Fletcher warily.

Fletcher knew, isolated out here as he was, that he could not use his guns. A shot might bring a dozen warriors in this direction, and there would be no help from the pueblo except Charlie, and by the time he got here it would be too late. Like most men who lived by the gun, Fletcher carried no blade except for a sharp pocket folder, and that was little use against the Apache’s broad-bladed fighting knife.

The warrior dived at Fletcher again, his muscular, wiry body taut as he sought to drive the knife home into Fletcher’s belly. Fletcher turned at the last moment, drew his long-barreled Colt, and aimed a blow at the Apache’s head. But the warrior was fast and saw the gun coming. He jerked his head away at the last moment and the barrel lost power as it slammed into the side of the Apache’s cheek, staggering him but not knocking him down.

Fletcher stepped forward and the Indian jumped at him, his knife held high over his head. Fletcher let him come, then rolled onto his back, his booted feet coming up, catching the Apache in the belly. Fletcher’s legs straightened, throwing the warrior up and over him, and the man somersaulted through the air.

The Apache let out a sudden, quick gasp of pain as his back crashed against the rock.

Fletcher scrambled quickly to his feet. The Apache, stunned, took a split second longer. He was on all fours beside the rock, and as he rose to his feet Fletcher kicked him hard in the face with the toe of his right boot. The warrior’s nose was smashed by the impact and blood fountained around his head. But the man hardly slowed.

He sprang at Fletcher, a low growl escaping his throat. The Apache feinted to his left; then the bright steel blurred as he swung the blade blindingly fast to the right, leading with the razor-sharp edge, a cut designed to disembowel.

Fletcher was unable to block the blow, but he stepped back and knocked the Indian’s arm down, and the knife flashed past his belly, opening up a six-inch slash in the thick sheepskin of Fletcher’s mackinaw but failing to reach the skin.

The two men circled each other warily, Fletcher holding his Colt up and ready. With the forearm of his knife hand, the Apache wiped away from his mouth blood that ran in a scarlet stream from his smashed nose. But his black eyes glittered with hate and he showed no fear of the gun. Fletcher realized the warrior understood that he dare not shoot, so he was right in assuming there were others close by.

Around the men the land lay silent and snow drifted softly between them from the black canopy of the sky. The rock towered above their heads, a stony, unfeeling witness to a desperate fight that must soon end in death for one man and perhaps two.

Fletcher’s mouth was dry and he watched the Apache’s every move. He was not skilled at knife fighting like this warrior undoubtedly was, and he decided that if put to it, he’d use the Colt and to hell with the consequences.

But then he must turn the gun on himself. And quickly. Such a death would be quick and infinitely preferable to the one the Apaches would visit on him, full of pain and long drawn out. That was the Apache way, and there would be no mercy and no escaping it.

The warrior lunged again, a straight thrust to the belly. Fletcher danced aside, willing to take the cut that burned across his left hip just under his gun belt. He felt a hot gush of blood over his thigh as he hooked a vicious, short left to the Apache’s chin. As the warrior’s head snapped around under the impact of the blow, Fletcher slammed the barrel of his gun hard across the shattered bridge of the man’s nose.

A shriek, quickly stifled, rose in the Apache’s throat as he fell back against the side of the rock. But only for an instant. The warrior bounced off the rock and came at him again, his lips drawn back in a silent snarl.

Fletcher shook his head, not believing what he was seeing. God, this man was strong! And he was enduring, like all Apaches born to this harsh and relentlessly unforgiving land.

The warrior stood, watching Fletcher, eyes glittering and unblinking like those of a stalking cougar. He was taller than most Apaches, young, and thick with muscle in the chest and shoulders where it mattered. His shirt, woven by his womenfolk, and his buckskin breeches had been faded by many suns to the shade of dust, his only color the red band around his head and the gleam of copper cartridges in the belt across his chest.

Blood from his shattered nose stained the Apache’s broad, flat face. But, trained from boyhood in the hard school of desert and mountains, where death beckoned daily and only the quick and the strong survived, this he ignored.