Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“That’s not going to happen, Buck,” the girl said. “We’re going to find my father. I know we will. Believe me, Buck, the Lord is on our side.”

Fletcher nodded, smiling. “That’s good, because right about now we can sure use all the help we can get.”

After a breakfast of coffee and broiled bacon, Fletcher and Estelle saddled their horses and led them onto the ferry.

They walked past where Red Jones, unburied and unmourned, lay in the brush, his bearded face turned to the sky, unseeing eyes wide open.

Neither of them felt the slightest pang at leaving the man there. You don’t take time to bury a dead coyote.

Fletcher grabbed the rope, his strong arms nosing the ferry into the river. It took him ten minutes of steady hauling to cross to the opposite bank, and after they led their horses down the ramp, Fletcher tied the raft securely to a tree.

“The way the weather is, I doubt there will be other travelers in need of this ferry,” he said. “But we might want it in a real hurry on the way back.”

He and Estelle swung into the saddle and rode south, onto flat, rolling land cut through by innumerable shallow creeks. The tracks of Stark’s heavy supply wagons still scarred the grass, but even a few inches of snow could cover them completely, leaving Fletcher to find the trail like a blind man groping for the way.

He glanced at the sky. To the east, the sun was lifting itself above the horizon, painting the edges of gathering clouds a pale rose, and the air was crisp on the tongue, tasting of frost and early morning. A few snowflakes tumbled in a fretful prairie wind that set the buffalo grass to rippling, and ahead of him Fletcher saw the parallel ruts of the wagons stretch away into the distance like phantom railroad tracks laid to nowhere.

Estelle kneed her horse close to his and Fletcher turned to the girl and smiled. He lifted his hand and brought it down in a chopping motion, directing the girl’s attention to the wagon path.

“That’s where we’re going,” he said. “Wherever the tracks lead.”

“If those tracks marked the milestones along the turnpike to hell, I’d still take it,” Estelle said, her face set and defiant, no trace of surrender and less of forgiveness in her.

Fletcher nodded, his smile fading until his mouth became a grim, straight line. “Young lady, hell might be just where we’re headed,” he said.

Twenty-five

At noon, Estelle and Fletcher stopped in the shelter of cottonwoods along Sand Creek and ate some cold bacon washed down with creek water.

A buffalo cow, a yearling calf walking at her flank, came to the creek. The cow watched the two humans warily, white arcs showing in her eyes as she dipped her nose into the cold water and drank.

After a few minutes the huge buffalo, shaggy and ragged in her winter coat, scrambled back up the bank, the calf following, and, humpbacked and watchful, walked to the southwest.

The calf showed evidence of recent wounds on his legs and back, and Fletcher figured he and his mother had been involved in a scrape with wolves. Sometimes such an attack could last for several days, and that must be the reason why the cow had dropped so far behind the rest of the herd.

Nature in this harsh land had a cruel indifference to the fate of a single buffalo calf, but with perseverance and more than his share of luck he would make it.

Fletcher hoped he did, feeling the natural sympathy of one hunted creature for another.

He and Estelle swung into the saddle and followed the wagon’s tracks south. For now the snow was still holding off, though from horizon to horizon the sky was dark and ominous, the clouds curling like great sheets of gray lead.

They cleared Walnut Creek and rode into country even more cut through by narrow creeks and washes. Here and there buffalo wallows, ancient and used by countless generations, were gouged deep into the ground, some of them holding thin patches of snow at their lowest levels.

As the day wore on to late afternoon, Fletcher caught sight of a rectangular black rock rising above the plain like a block of basalt about a mile ahead of them. As he and Estelle rode closer they saw that this was no rock, but the blackened ruins of a settler cabin.

Three walls still stood, supporting part of the roof, and a creek ran close to the place, providing a ready supply of water.

There was no way to tell when the cabin had burned or who had burned it, but Fletcher suspected it had happened years before and was probably the result of an Indian attack.

His impression about the age of the place was confirmed when Estelle, staking out the horses close to the cabin, found a wooden grave marker half-buried in the grass. The wood had rotted considerably, but she and Fletcher made out the name, Annie, and the date, 1868. Under that was a single word: Cholera.

Death for cholera victims was so certain on the Kansas plains, their graves were dug while they yet breathed, and later they were laid to rest wrapped only in a blanket, wood being scarce and expensive in a treeless land.

Maybe the people who once lived here had burned the cabin themselves, then picked up and left to dream other, better dreams in a safer, less hostile place.

Fletcher had no idea of what had really happened. But whoever had built this cabin had done him and Estelle a favor, because here they would spend the night.

There was plenty of dry wood in the cabin, most of it already charred, and Fletcher built a small fire. The remaining walls sheltered him and Estelle from the worst of the wind, and as night fell they ate a supper of broiled bacon, pan bread, and coffee.

After he finished eating, Fletcher built a smoke and studied Estelle for a few minutes, framing in his mind what he was going to say. Firelight touched the girl’s face, adding color to her cheeks and a reddish tone to the blond hair that fell in shining waves over her shoulders.

Finally Fletcher said, “Estelle, you ever think about what you’re going to say to your father if we catch up to him?”

“Not if, Buck, when.” Estelle was silent for a moment or two, then added, “I’m going to tell him he tried to have me killed and failed, mostly because of you, someone else he wanted dead. But, more importantly, I’m going to tell him he murdered my son and that I’ll never forgive him for that. All this, and more, I’ll tell him in front of President Grant and those who are with him.”

“It might not wash, Estelle,” Fletcher said gently. “Grant and the other senators may not believe you. They know your father; they don’t know you.”

Estelle nodded. “I realize that. But at the very least some of the dirt will stick, enough perhaps to sow a seed of doubt in Grant’s mind. Enough to make sure my father never gets a chance to run for president.”

Fletcher sighed and shook his head. “It’s thin, Estelle, mighty thin.” He hesitated, about to say their chances of evening the score with Falcon Stark didn’t amount to a hill of beans and that they were both hopelessly clutching at straws. But he thought better of it and instead asked, “And after that, I mean when it’s all over, what will you do?”

“Do what my husband would want me to do, of course. I’ll go back to the Tonto Basin and continue the work of the Chosen One, bringing the Apaches the word of the Lord, preparing them for the terrible day of doomsday to come.”

The girl looked at Fletcher, her blue eyes shining and alive in the fire-streaked darkness. “This is my calling, Buck. I can no more turn my back on it than I could the good Lord Himself.”

Fletcher tossed his cigarette butt into the fire. “It’s fine to have a dream, Estelle, kind of like the people who once lived in this cabin. But look around you, when the dream is gone all that’s left is ashes and a grave out back where your hopes lie buried.”