Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

The Chosen One, perhaps inspired by the singing of his followers, made a fatal mistake. He reached out and grabbed the bridle of the older warrior, loudly urging him to be baptized and accept Christ as his savior. For several moments the Apache looked down at the man with cold glittering eyes; then he raised his rifle and chopped a short, vicious blow with the butt to the Chosen One’s head. The man groaned and crumpled to the ground.

“I’d say,” Fletcher said, his voice even and conversational, “that pretty much tears it.”

The disciples were stunned, and the hymn they’d been singing staggered to a ragged halt, the last voice to fall silent that of a small child who had no real idea of what was happening. One by one the disciples drew back from the Apaches, their eyes wide, scared now that their leader had so mercilessly been cut down, stepping slowly and warily toward the pueblo.

But Emmanuel, the wattles under his turkey neck bobbing, ran toward the fallen man, calling out the Chosen One’s name.

A bullet from one of the Apache rifles slammed into Emmanuel’s chest, and the man rose up on his toes, then crashed his full length into the snow.

Wild war cries rose from the warriors’ throats and they began shooting. Another man went down, then another. A woman was hit hard. She spun toward the pueblo, then fell, her face a sudden scarlet mask of blood.

The disciples turned and ran and the Apaches followed. The recent massacre of their own kinfolk by the army at Skull Cave fresh in their memories, the warriors shot down men, women, and children, whoever got in their sights.

A small white-haired man with round glasses balancing on the end of his nose was skewered through the chest by a war lance. He staggered to the pueblo, the forged iron point of the lance sticking a foot out of his back, and fell under the window where Fletcher stood.

Fletcher and Charlie had been unable to get a clear shot at the Apaches, but now, as the disciples scattered, some of them falling, never to rise again, the warriors were drawing closer to the pueblo.

Fletcher fired, saw an Apache tumble backward over his horse, then fired again. He cranked another round into the chamber and watched as another warrior fell to Charlie’s rifle.

A young Indian in a blue headband galloped his pony directly at the pueblo, his rifle spurting orange flame. His bullet chipped stone from the edge of the window close to Fletcher’s head, and the gunfighter fired at the oncoming rider. The Indian screamed and threw up his arms, his rifle spinning away from him as Fletcher’s shot slammed into his chest. Then Charlie fired and the warrior went down with his kicking pony, a grotesque sight as his entire lower jaw was blasted away.

The Apaches, badly burned, drew off, milling around at the base of the hill, steeling themselves for another charge.

The Chosen One rose groggily to his feet. He looked around for his staff, found it, and then staggered toward the warriors.

“Hey, Chosen, get back here!” Charlie yelled.

But the Chosen One didn’t hear him, or if he did, ignored him.

The man walked unsteadily on his reeling path to the Indians, calling out again and again that he was the bearer of the message of Christ crucified.

A couple of young braves galloped to the Chosen One, hemming him in on both sides with their ponies. They leaned down and each grabbed the man by an arm and lifted him clear off the ground, riding back the way they had come.

“Yes, my children!” the Chosen One yelled, so loud that his voice carried all the way to the pueblo. “Carry me among you so that I may preach unto you the blessed message of the Lord.”

The two Apaches carried the Chosen One toward their camp in the valley at a fast lope, and the man, still raving, was soon lost from sight.

A bullet buzzed through the window where Fletcher stood and thudded venomously into the wall opposite.

“Here they come again!” Charlie shouted, and his rifle was already firing.

Fourteen

When night fell, the people of the pueblo wandered outside and collected their dead.

The Chosen One had been screaming for a long time now. The Apaches were making his death a slow and long-drawn-out thing.

The Indians had attacked seven times throughout the day, but these had been long-range skirmishes and had not been pressed home. The Apaches had galloped back and forth across the open ground in front of the pueblo, firing their rifles at anyone who showed at a window or door, content to let Fletcher and Charlie expend their ammunition.

The warriors on their swift ponies had been fast, fleeting targets and had suffered no casualties except for a pony downed by Charlie and a man burned across the neck by Fletcher’s Winchester.

At the pueblo a man named McKenzie had been hit as he glanced out of a window and had died an hour before, just as the sun was disappearing behind the Mazatzals. His wife was taking his death hard and her wails echoed eerily around the cliff above the pueblo. Another woman had been wounded, and so had a three-year-old girl, though the child had only been grazed by an arrow and seemed more frightened than hurt.

Inside one of the rooms, the disciples laid out the bodies of five men, three women, and two children, and Fletcher told Charlie, his voice edged by a vague, directionless anger, that many more would sure as hell follow.

One by one the disciples gathered in the room next to the one Fletcher and Charlie occupied, and furious voices were raised, more than a few of them cursing Estelle and the Chosen One.

“You both lied to us,” a man’s voice yelled, harsh and accusing. “He called himself the Chosen One, yet he was taken by the Apaches and God did nothing to save him.”

The woman whose husband had been shot at the window screamed, “My man is dead, and all because we listened to you. The Chosen One was a false prophet. He led us into the fire.”

Estelle’s voice rose. “Listen to me! He will survive! The Chosen One will return to us. He cannot die until the hour of doomsday is upon us. This he was promised by the lord God.”

“False prophet!” another woman yelled. “We should stone you for being the devil’s harlot.”

“Them folks is sure getting all riled up,” Charlie said, feeding tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “And I can’t say as I blame them.”

He looked to Fletcher for comment, but right then the gunfighter had other, more pressing concerns.

He was down to three shells for his rifle and a dozen cartridges in the loops of his gun belt for his Colts. Charlie wasn’t in much better shape.

“I got five in the rifle and that’s it,” he said, his face gloomy.

“The Apaches tested us today,” Fletcher said, “making us use up our ammunition. By this time they must know we don’t have many shells left.”

The Chosen One’s piercing screams rang out again across the night.

Charlie swallowed hard. “Just make sure you save one for yourself, Buck. Them’s words of wisdom.”

Both their horses were in the room with them, standing heads down and miserable, Charlie’s mustang bleeding from a stray round that had burned its shoulder.

Now Fletcher led the horses outside and staked them on a patch of grass at the bottom of the cliff that was relatively clear of snow. There was a small lean-to room at the northern end of the pueblo that had a good solid roof, and he laid both saddles in there.

When he came back inside, Charlie peered out at the gathering darkness and asked, “How long can he keep that up?”

The Chosen One’s shrill shrieks had been shredding the fabric of the day since late afternoon. He had earlier interspersed his screams with pleas to the Apaches to repent and accept Christ. But his words were now an incoherent babble as pain that was beyond pain seared into his brain and set aflame every tormented nerve in his body.