Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

Fletcher read the dispatch, read it again, then dropped it on the desk.

“I hardly think you can blame Senator Stark for that,” Crook said, his right eyebrow crawling up his forehead.

“Perhaps not,” Fletcher said. “But it makes me wonder if Lieutenant Simpson volunteered for the woodcutting detail. Or was he ordered out there on that creek with just five men? Stark’s tentacles spread wide.”

Crook shrugged. “I do not care to comment on that hypothesis. Fletcher, I have nine columns of cavalry in the field, and my business is fighting Apaches. I can’t devote time to this matter, nor can I bring myself to fully believe what Estelle Stark has told me. Yet I must admit her words have the ring of sincerity about them and they’ve sown a seed of doubt about Senator Stark in my mind.”

The general steepled his fingers. “I have given this some thought and I’ve prayed for guidance. As a result, I’ve decided to release you as of this moment. I just hope to God I’m doing the right thing.”

“You won’t regret it, General,” Fletcher said. “An old Apache told me I’d face evil in the Tonto Basin, and I did. But I think the greater evil is not here—it’s in Lexington.”

“Then I hope to God you’re right too,” Crook said.

* * *

Fletcher asked a soldier the way to Estelle’s cabin, and the man pointed out a low log building to the west of the parade ground.

“She’s been living with the doc’s wife,” he said.

Fletcher crossed to the cabin and rapped on the door. The woman he’d seen take Estelle’s hand opened the door and smiled. “Recognized you right off. You must be Buck Fletcher. Estelle’s been asking for you.”

The woman looked past Fletcher’s shoulder, as though expecting to see something, and he smiled. “There’s no guard. I’ve been released.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that for your sake,” the woman said.

She led Fletcher into a bedroom off the parlor, and to his surprise Estelle herself answered his tap on the door. She was fully dressed in borrowed gingham a size too small for her, but she seemed rested and pretty, and her figure seemed almost back to normal.

Fletcher stood with his hat in his hands, curling the brim, a habit of his. Finally the words came to him. “I’m sorry about the baby,” he said. “I took it hard.”

Estelle raised her chin, her eyes angry. “My father killed my son, just as surely as though he’d taken a knife and plunged it into my belly.”

“Slaughter pushed you mighty fast and far,” Fletcher said. “That was no ride for a pregnant lady.”

“I want you to go to Lexington with me, Buck. I want to confront my father in front of witnesses and get him to confess what he’s done.”

“From what I’ve seen of the senator, that’s a tall order,” Fletcher said. “He doesn’t seem the type to break down and ‘fess up to his crimes.”

“Then if that fails, I’ll go to the newspapers. He told you he wanted no scandals; well, he’s going to get plenty. When I’m finished with him and I’m through muddying the waters, he’ll never be nominated for president.”

Fletcher was silent for a few moments, then said, “General Crook told me you want me to go to Lexington with you.”

“I’d like that, Buck. I’d like that very much. I want to clear your name too, you know.”

“It’s a long trip, Estelle. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“I have to be,” the girl said. “For my murdered son’s sake.” She hesitated and rubbed away a tear falling on her cheek. “And for the sake of the Chosen One, his father.”

Fletcher wanted to tell her that the Chosen One was at best delusional and at worst completely insane and that he’d caused the deaths of a lot of equally deluded people.

But he said none of these things.

“I have money,” he said, biting back the bitter comments he so badly wanted to make, “enough to get us and our horses to Lexington and enough”—he smiled—“to buy you some clothes at the sutler’s store.”

Estelle nodded. “Thank you. But after I buy the things I need I want to leave here. I mean today.”

Fletcher nodded. “So do I.”

An hour later, his guns belatedly and reluctantly returned to him by Crook’s adjutant, Fletcher rode out of Fort Apache, Estelle next to him wearing a new split riding skirt of canvas and a wool mackinaw.

It was snowing.

Twenty

A thick fog curled over Lexington, drifting off the Missouri, pooling yellow around the guttering gas lamps that lit the main streets of the city.

Carriages clattered along cobbled roads, the hooves of the horses clanging loud, and people on the sidewalks stepped hurriedly, coat collars pulled up against the clammy evening chill so only their eyes showed above red, pinched noses.

None spared a glance for the train that had brought Fletcher and Estelle on the last leg of their journey to Lexington.

The iron monster hissed and steamed, billowing white clouds escaping from under its wheels, competing with the fog.

Fletcher and Estelle coaxed their horses down the ramp from the boxcar and led them around the station and Main Street, the cold nipping at their faces and hands.

The horses had been a trial and a tribulation on a journey of close to a thousand miles that began on the northern side of the Mogollon Rim and had taken them across parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

Horses were difficult to transport and expensive to feed, and in the past nineteen days much more money had been spent on their grain than on food for Fletcher and Estelle.

But a man without a horse could not travel fast and far if the need arose, and Fletcher had not sufficient money to buy another.

They’d traveled by train where they found a railhead, by stage where such was available, and by horseback where there was neither.

For hours they’d kicked their heels waiting at railroad stations that were sometimes no more than an old boxcar and water tank set at the end of a lonely spur, and all too often a stage ride represented cramped hours of jolting misery, choked by dust or frozen by cold winds, their horses trailing behind.

Through it all, Estelle had held up well, a sense of grim determination driving her.

Now she mounted her horse and gathered the reins. “I can sense him,” she said to Fletcher. “I can feel his presence.”

As for Fletcher, he felt only the chill that bit at him and the depressing lightness of the money belt around his waist.

In a few minutes he and Estelle would confront Falcon Stark. How would the man react? That he would break down and confess his transgressions in front of others, Fletcher doubted. More than likely he’d fight. But how?

Fletcher eased the guns in his holsters and decided to cross that particular bridge when he came to it.

Estelle led off, her big roan up on his toes, tossing his head, eager for the trail after being confined for four days in the boxcar. Fletcher trotted after her and together they made their way along Lexington’s busy main thoroughfare, two riders lost amid the swirling fog and a churning, bobbing sea of carriages, wagons, other horsemen, darting pedestrians, and swaggering, half-drunk riverboat men, painted, hard-eyed women with scarlet mouths hanging on their arms.

Stark’s house was as Fletcher remembered it, a sprawling white mansion fronting the street, every room aglow with lamps and candles.

He and Estelle tied their horses to the hitching posts, small black boys made of cast iron, resplendent in a livery of blue and yellow.

Fletcher followed Estelle to the door, recalling the last time he’d been here, a time that already seemed an eternity ago.

Estelle rapped on the door and a few moments later it was opened by the same high-nosed butler. The man stood there for a few moments, disdainfully looking them over, apparently not liking what he saw.