Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“You’re no gentleman, Wes. Or has nobody told you that before?”

Fletcher moved again. But this time there was no shot from Slaughter.

“Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“Know that sheriff you was blamed for shooting back to Wyoming?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that was me, Buck. I got to the livery stable just before you did and put a bullet into that rube. Then I ran back to the saloon and spread it around that you’d just killed the sheriff. They caught you red-handed, Buck.”

“How much did Stark pay you for that, Wes?”

“It were considerable. See, it wasn’t something I could set up real easy, though Stark wanted it done real fast. After our little disagreement in Cheyenne, I had to follow you around for quite a spell, waiting for the right moment. Who was to know it would come in a hick cow town that didn’t even have a name?”

“I got twenty years for that, Wes.”

“I know, and all on account of me.” There was a few moments’ pause; then Slaughter said, “Now, knowing all that, why don’t you come out and face me like a man instead of hiding in them trees like a damn lily-livered skunk?”

“How you want to play this, Wes?”

“Hell, man, the usual procedure. We meet face-to-face and make our play. Fastest man wins. Ain’t that always the way of it, Buck?”

“That’s always the way. At least it is with me.”

“Well, come on down and I’ll meet you out on the slope. Just you and me, Buck, the way it should be.”

“I’m coming down.”

Fletcher cleared his mackinaw from the holstered Colt on his hip, letting it show. He drew the gun from the cross-draw holster, held it behind his back, and made his way down the slope to the edge of the tree line.

Fletcher stepped out of the trees, just as Slaughter appeared about twenty feet away, his rifle coming up fast to his shoulder.

The gun streaked from behind Fletcher’s back and both men fired at the same time.

Slaughter’s bullet tugged at Fletcher’s mackinaw; then the gunman tried to work the lever again. He did not have the strength. Slowly he sank to his knees, his face chalk white and shocked, a scarlet stain widening on the front of his coat.

Fletcher stepped closer, his gun ready. Slaughter looked up at him, his mouth under his mustache twisting into a grim, agonized parody of a smile.

“Hell, Buck,” he said, “you’re just as downright low-down and sneaky as I am.”

“Not hardly,” Fletcher said.

Blood stained Slaughter’s lips and mustache, and his gray eyes were fading fast.

“You got the makings?” he whispered. “I reckon I left you some.”

Fletcher’s hand slipped under his mackinaw to his shirt pocket as Slaughter opened his mouth to speak again. But his words died with him and he pitched face-forward into the snow.

“Wes,” Fletcher said, “you’re right. I plumb forgot to thank you for the tobacco.”

He stepped down the rise, gathered the reins of his horse, and walked toward the canyon.

Was Estelle still alive?

Fletcher led his horse into the ravine. He cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted the girl’s name. There was no answer, just the bouncing echoes along the canyon walls repeating, “Estelle . . . Estelle . . . Estelle . . .”

Mocking him.

Rocks and thick brush carpeted the floor of the ravine. The horizontally growing Mexican mule clipper with its cruel thorns formed impassible barriers that Fletcher many times had to walk around. The going was slow, the footing treacherous, and his stud didn’t like it one bit, jerking at the reins, irritably tossing his head.

But in the end it was the horse that led him to Estelle.

The big stud lifted his head, read what was written in the breeze, and whinnied. An answering call came from the canyon wall to Fletcher’s right. He walked closer and discovered a shallow cave gouged out of the red rock, two horses standing close together, tethered to a fallen spruce.

Estelle was deeper in the cave, sitting with her back to the rock. She was bound hand and foot and her mouth was gagged by a filthy bandanna.

The girl’s eyes were huge and frightened as Fletcher stepped closer. He knelt beside Estelle, found his pocketknife, and cut the ropes around her feet and wrists, then gently untied the bandanna.

“Are you all right?” he asked when the girl was free, knowing how totally inadequate it sounded.

Estelle nodded, saying nothing.

There was a canteen looped to the saddle horn of one of the horses. Fletcher stood, brought it to Estelle, and let her drink.

The girl swallowed a few sips, then said, “Please help me up.”

Fletcher raised her to her feet and she clung to him desperately, despite her swelling belly that pressed awkward and hard against him.

“Those dreadful men . . .” she began.

“Dead,” Fletcher said. “They can’t hurt you anymore.”

The girl raised her tearstained face to Fletcher’s. “He must hate me very much. More than I ever knew.”

Fletcher cast around in his mind for the right words, then said, “Your father seems to have a tremendous capacity for hate. It eats at him like a cancer.”

Estelle’s eyes searched Fletcher’s face as though trying to find an answer to a question she had not yet asked. “But why all this? If he hates me so much why did he not just send someone to shoot me and get it over with? That man, that Woody, told me he’d have done it for fifty dollars.”

Fletcher shook his head. “Estelle, that’s not Falcon Stark’s way. I think this was all a game with him. He had the power and he wanted to see how far it could take him. He wanted it to be efficient, neat, without leaving any loose ends.”

Fletcher’s smile was thin. “If Slaughter had accomplished what he set out to do, Woody Barton would never have left this canyon alive. He would have been passed off as another victim of the murderous Buck Fletcher.”

“But why you, Buck?”

The girl’s eyes were puzzled, her limited intelligence groping to understand the complex motives of a man with an intellect far greater than her own.

“Hate. It’s not only that Falcon Stark hates me personally, though indeed he does; it’s that he hates everything I stand for, men who make their living with a gun. He told me when he becomes president he’ll rid the West of men like me, and the Indians too, and he meant every word of it.”

“He’ll never become president,” Estelle said, her eyes blazing. “I won’t let him.”

Fletcher nodded. “Maybe so,” he said, his voice totally lacking in conviction.

Estelle stepped back from him. “Where are my people?” she asked.

“There are no people, Estelle. They’ve all gone home. There’s only one old man there, looking at the stars.”

The girl stood in silence for a few moments, studying Fletcher, and with a rueful twinge he knew what she was seeing—a big, rawboned man, homely as a mud fence, his mustache holding up a great beak of a nose.

But to his surprise, Estelle leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for saving my life, Buck. And my baby’s life.”

Fletcher smiled. “Hell, I’d do it more often if that was my reward.”

He hesitated, then said, “Estelle, I want to take you to Fort Apache. Your baby is due soon and you should be around womenfolk.”

He’d expected Estelle to argue, to say she wanted to go back to the pueblo, but, like the others, it seemed her dream had died with the Chosen One.

“I’ll tell General Crook all I know,” she said. “Buck, I want justice for you—and for me.”

* * *

One of the horses ridden by Slaughter and Barton was a mustang, the other a Montana-bred roan that went over sixteen hands. Fletcher unsaddled the mustang and let him go. There were wild horse herds in the basin and he’d make out.