Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

The boy’s hand moved slowly toward the gun and, silently cursing himself for being a meddling fool, Fletcher dealt himself a hand in the game.

He walked quickly to the middle of the floor, past the gawping crowd of onlookers, and said, “Hey, Dunn.”

Surprised, the gunman’s head turned in Fletcher’s direction, his eyes snake cold. “Who the hell are you?”

Fletcher shrugged. “Just a man who wants to buy you a drink.”

“I buy my own drinks,” Dunn said. “Now get the hell away from me.”

Trying a different tack, Fletcher said, “The boy didn’t mean anything. He was just having a good time like the rest of us. Take that drink, Dunn, and let him be.”

“Well spoken, stranger.” Riley beamed. “We’re all friends here.”

Fletcher stepped closer to the bar and laid down his empty glass. He turned to Dunn. “Care to join me, friend? I can recommend the rye.”

At first the gunman was taken aback, but he very quickly recovered his composure. “Step away from the bar, mister,” he said, his eyes ugly. “Unless you want to die alongside the sodbuster there.”

Fletcher shook his head. “It makes me downright sad that there’s so much incivility in this world. Dunn, let’s you and me be friends.”

Two things happened very fast.

The first was that French, smiling thinly, rose from his chair and stepped beside Dunn. French saw what Dunn saw. Facing him was a big, homely man with a wide grin under a straggling mustache, his clothes shabby, boots down at heel, his entire, slightly stooped posture seemingly awkward and unhandy. What he didn’t see, but should have, was that the man’s eyes had changed from blue to a cold gunmetal gray, and that he showed no trace of fear.

The second was that the kid tried to pick up the gun.

Fletcher could do little about the first, but he took care of the second, stiff-arming the youngster away from the Colt, hurling him backward into the onlookers.

“Keep him there!” Fletcher yelled.

Dunn’s face was livid. “I’m going to kill you for that,” he said.

Fletcher sighed and picked up the trooper’s Colt in his right hand. He did a fast border shift and drew his own gun from his waistband, the trooper’s long-barreled Colt thudding into his left hand.

Dunn, stunned at Fletcher’s speed, quicker than the eye could follow, was momentarily frozen into immobility.

Fletcher smiled pleasantly, letting the Colts hang loose at his sides. “Right, Mr. Dunn, you’ve insulted me by refusing my offer of a drink, and for that I’m calling you a low-down, dirty, no-good, lying skunk. You’ve proved yourself real good at frightening farm boys, so now why don’t you try to scare me.”

“What name do you want on your tombstone?” Dunn asked, smirking even as he tensed for his draw.

“Most folks call me Buck Fletcher.”

A ripple of surprise went through the crowd. This was a known name and one to be reckoned with, and Dunn had heard it before.

The gunman hesitated, and French, suddenly looking a little green around the gills, stepped back and moved quickly away from him.

“This isn’t my play,” he told Fletcher, his hands wide, away from his guns. “I don’t want any part of this.”

“Stay in or sit this one out,” Fletcher said. “It’s all the same to me.”

French slumped into his chair on unsteady legs, poured himself a drink, gulped it down, and poured himself another, his hands trembling.

“What about you, Dunn?” Fletcher asked. “Ready for that glass of rye now?”

“Damn you!” Dunn screamed. And he went for his guns.

The trooper had been right—his army Colt shot to the point of aim, and Fletcher’s aim was the middle of Dunn’s chest.

His bullet crashed into Dunn, staggering him. The gunman tried to bring his Colts up and Fletcher fired again, this time with his own revolver. The second bullet took Dunn a few inches lower, another flower of red suddenly blossoming below the first, and the man cartwheeled backward and crashed against the wall. Dunn straightened, fired once, twice, his bullets wild, slamming into the front of the bar, scattering tiny chips of wood. Then, approaching death robbing him of strength, his Colts slipped from his hands and thudded one by one onto the floor.

The gunman went to his knees, his face shocked, unable to believe that it was he who was dying, then sprawled his length on the pine boards, his eyes staring into darkness.

Fletcher stepped out of a gray cloud of gunsmoke, looking for French. The man hadn’t moved. He kept his hands on the table in front of him and said again, his voice cracked and urgent, “For God’s sake, Fletcher! I’m not in this play.”

The farm boy moved up beside Fletcher and looked down at Dunn’s blood-splashed body. He opened his mouth, eyes wide with horror, and tried to say something. The words wouldn’t come and he turned quickly away, retching uncontrollably, all the beer he’d drunk suddenly leaving him in a heaving gush.

Fletcher strolled over to the cavalry troopers and gave the gun back to the man who had loaned it to the kid.

The soldier grinned and slid the Colt into his holster.

“Mister,” he said, “Jack Dunn killed eight men, but he only picked on them he figured were a lot slower than himself, or scared stiff maybe. He made a mistake this time, was all.”

Fletcher nodded. “All I wanted was a rye whiskey and a quiet corner to drink it in. It wasn’t any of my business.”

Another trooper smiled, his teeth very white against the dark brown of his skin. “Mister, my name is Johnson, and the next time you decide something ain’t your business, I sure hope you tell me. I want to be around when the lead starts flying.”

Twenty-two

Fletcher woke before daybreak. He rose and gave himself a hurried sponge bath, then shaved as best he could with cold water from the cracked pitcher in his room.

He dressed, then stepped into the corridor and rapped on Estelle’s door. The girl was already awake and she opened the door almost immediately.

She looked pretty and fresh this morning in her canvas riding skirt and pale yellow shirt, and Fletcher’s breath caught in his throat.

“Are you here to take me to breakfast?” Estelle asked, smiling, sparing Fletcher the need for speech.

Fletcher nodded. Then, at last finding his voice, he added, “After we eat we’ll buy some supplies and ride on out. Estelle, Kansas is a big place. Finding your father might not be so easy.”

“We’ll find him, Buck,” the girl said, her face set and determined. “If I have to, I’ll search hell itself for him.”

“That’s a big place too, I guess,” Fletcher said.

A few moments later he and Estelle stepped onto the boardwalk after asking the desk clerk directions to the nearest restaurant, preferring to forgo the buffalo steak of Ma’s Sideboard.

It was still full dark, and the lamps, running low on oil, guttered in a strong, cold wind blowing off the plains that smelled of buffalo grass and the tall pines growing among the foothills of the Rockies three hundred miles to the west.

Hays was quiet, most of the population sleeping off hangovers. A freight wagon trundled past, drawn by a mule team, then turned toward the cattle pens by the railroad and faded into the darkness.

The restaurant cast a welcoming rectangle of yellow light onto the boardwalk, and with every step Fletcher’s spurs rang loud in the morning quiet as he and Estelle walked to the door and stepped inside.

There were a dozen tables, none of them occupied at this early hour, and Fletcher and Estelle took seats by the window.

A young girl, a pretty redhead in a blue gingham dress, stepped out of the kitchen, a coffeepot in hand. “You two are early risers,” she said, her smile bright and practiced.