Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“A long time, Charlie,” Fletcher said, looking down at the smoke he was rolling. He lit the cigarette and added, “I reckon he’ll scream like that all night. I’d say them young bucks are having themselves a good ol’ time.”

Charlie spat. “Damned Apaches. They got no consideration for a man’s sleep.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Fletcher saw a flicker of movement. He turned, glanced out the window, and saw Estelle run across the snow toward the valley and the Apache camp.

Without a word he pushed aside the blanket hanging on the doorway and ran outside, ignoring Charlie’s startled cry of protest.

Awkward and heavy in her pregnancy, Estelle was stumbling across the snow, her skirt held high as she did her best to run.

“Wait!” Fletcher yelled.

The girl quickly glanced over her shoulder, her face pale and frightened, but she did not slow down.

Fletcher pounded after her, his long legs closing the distance fast. He caught up with Estelle and grabbed her by the shoulders, bringing her to a halt.

“Let me alone!” the girl yelled, struggling to get out of his grip. “I must go to him. The Chosen One needs me.”

Fletcher spun the girl around and brought her face close to his own.

“They’ll kill you too,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “There’s nothing you can do to help him now.”

Estelle tried desperately to twist out of Fletcher’s grasp on her shoulders, her eyes wild, but he held her all the more tightly, her huge belly pressing against him.

“Estelle,” Fletcher said, “you heard those screams. You don’t want to see him, not the way he is now.”

“Let me go!” the girl shrieked. She opened her mouth, showing small white teeth, lowered her head, and clamped down hard on Fletcher’s wrist.

The girl’s teeth were sharp and they bit deep, and Fletcher let out an agonized “Ow!”

“Let me go!” Estelle yelled. And again her open mouth hungrily sought his wrist.

Fletcher shook his head and muttered under his breath, “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

He let go of the girl’s shoulder, drew back his right fist a couple of inches, and clipped her on the chin. Estelle’s blue eyes flared wide in shocked surprise; then she went limp and Fletcher caught her in his left arm before she fell.

Fletcher glanced down at the girl’s face and felt an instant pang of guilt. “Now you’re beating up on pregnant ladies, Fletcher,” he whispered to himself. “Maybe next you’ll start kicking newborn puppy dogs.”

But Fletcher had no time to explore those melancholy thoughts further, because there was a sudden scuffle of moccasined feet near the base of the hill, and a piece of the darkness moved.

His gun flashed into his hand and Fletcher stepped backward in the direction of the pueblo, never taking his eyes off the now-shifting curtain of the dark.

Unlike many plains tribes, notably the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Comanche, the Apache were not keen on fighting at night, believing a warrior killed in the darkness was doomed to wander eternity in an endless gray mist.

But if put to it, they would. And did.

Here were a man and woman alone and isolated on the flat before the pueblo, and that was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The blackness moved again and Fletcher made out the shape of an Apache stepping warily toward them, his sturdy bowed legs testing the ground in front of him with each step.

Estelle lying limp and unconscious in his arm, Fletcher raised his Colt and fired, the snow around him flashing orange.

The Apache melted back into the darkness, and Fletcher did not know if he’d hit the man or not. A rifle crashed off to his left and he fired at the muzzle glare, then fired a second time. Once again he did not know if he’d scored a hit.

Feet pounded behind him and Fletcher spun, his gun coming up fast. It was Charlie.

The old man took in the situation in an instant and asked, “What happened to her?”

“I socked her,” Fletcher said.

“Oh,” Charlie said, “for a minute there I thought something bad had happened to her.”

Covered by Charlie’s rifle, Fletcher carried the unconscious girl back to their room in the pueblo. A few discipies started to crowd around, but Charlie shooed them away. “There are Apaches out there,” he said.

The Chosen One’s people had learned the terror of the Apache and it had been a hard, bitter lesson. Now they ran back into their rooms, a few of the men wielding hoes and shovels as weapons.

But the Apaches had returned to the night and none came near the pueblo.

As gently as he could Fletcher laid Estelle on a mat in the corner of the room. The girl’s eyes flew open and she said groggily, “Wha . . . what happened?”

“You fell,” Fletcher said, his voice even, “and hit your chin on a rock buried in the snow.”

The girl tried to rise to her feet. “I must go to him,” she gasped.

Fletcher gently but firmly pushed her back onto the rug. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “There are Apaches out there and they just did their level best to kill both of us.”

Out in the darkness where the valley lay, the Chosen One screamed again, and he kept on screaming until he could scream no longer and his terrible shrieks finally gurgled into silence.

Estelle covered her ears with her hands and sat rocking back and forth, moaning wordless sounds, a primitive ritual for the dead as ancient as woman’s grief.

Fifteen

Before first light the two dozen surviving disciples buried their dead at a distance from the pueblo in a patch of open ground. The earth was winter-hard and difficult to dig, and of necessity the corpses were buried shallow, but hopefully, the people told each other, deep enough to deter scavengers.

Fletcher and Charlie stood guard with their rifles as men, women, and children lingered at the gravesides and did their best to pray, the light from a dozen lanterns casting pools of yellow and orange around their feet as falling snow, driven by an awakening wind, frosted their bent heads.

When the prayers were done and the burying over, one of the men turned to the others and said, “We must leave this place as soon as we can, because there is only death here and the honeyed words of the false prophet.”

A ripple of agreement went through the mourners, and another heavily bearded man said, “Listen, all of you: Gather up what food you can and be ready to move out at daybreak.”

“Where will we go?” a woman asked, a couple of youngsters clinging to her skirt, wide-eyed and scared since they had been unable to sleep away their fears.

“North,” the bearded man said. “We will walk toward the soldiers.”

Charlie took a step toward the crowd, his rifle in the crook of his buckskinned arm. “You won’t make it,” he said. “If a big snow doesn’t get you, the Apaches will.”

“The Apaches will get us if we stay here,” the bearded man said, and again the rest of them voiced their agreement.

“Well, I can’t argue with that,” Charlie said. “But even if’n it’s a slim one, which it is, you’ve got a better chance of getting out of this alive if you stay right here.”

“You brought this misfortune down on us,” a woman with a thick blond braid hanging to her hips said. “Why should we listen to you?”

“Because,” said Fletcher, “we’re the only men here with rifles.”

The bearded man stepped belligerently toward Fletcher. “Maybe we’ll just take those guns from you,” he said, his fists clenching.

“Mister, try that and I swear to God you’ll be digging more holes for dead men,” Fletcher said, his voice flat and cold.

Estelle walked in front of Fletcher. She was wearing a pale blue dress embroidered with small white flowers, and she’d thrown a shawl around her shoulders. Her thick hair was pulled back in a bun, and in the lantern light a bruise showed black on her chin.