Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

Estelle took it without even blinking. “That won’t happen to me, Buck. I am doing God’s work and He will keep the dream alive in me. This the Chosen One told me, and this I believe.”

“The Chosen One’s dream ended with the Apaches,” Fletcher said, trying to slap this girl across the face with his words and bring her back to reality. “About the same time they ended his life in the worst way they could.”

If Estelle felt any hurt, she didn’t let it show. “Yes, Buck, the Chosen One is dead, but his spirit dwells in me. I can feel it. He knows I will preserve and in time fulfill his dream. I speak with his voice and I am his prophet.” She joined her hands together and raised her eyes heavenward. “Amen and amen.”

Fletcher let it go. Despite her youth and vulnerability, Estelle Stark was a fanatic, and there is no reasoning with a zealot. For her, his words were empty of meaning, just noise, like so many rocks falling on a tin roof.

“Better get some sleep,” Fletcher said, his voice gentle, not allowing himself to blame this misguided young woman for anything. “We’ve got a long day on the trail tomorrow.”

* * *

Fletcher and Estelle rode out at first light.

They crossed Pawnee Creek at the rocky shallows fifty miles due west of Fort Larned and headed southwest, following the trail of the wagons. Stark’s party had swung well wide of the fort, built on the upper reaches of the Pawnee close to the Arkansas to protect travelers on the Santa Fe Trail.

Confident of his heavily armed hunting expedition’s ability to defend itself against any Indian attack, Stark had obviously ordered Wild Bill Hickok to lead them directly to the buffalo herds before the threatening weather worsened.

Fletcher and Estelle rode all of that day and camped by a wide, frozen creek where there was evidence that Stark’s wagons had also stopped for the night.

The wagons had been pulled into a defensive circle, no doubt Hickok’s idea, and several large fires had been lit.

Fletcher knew that the always cautious Bill would not have approved of the blazing fires so deep in Indian country. But scattered, empty champagne bottles, littered cigar butts, and gnawed steak bones revealed Stark’s intention that his influential guests have a good time.

If Bill had made an objection, he had been ignored.

The creek had a steep-cut bank as tall as a man that curved away a good hundred yards to the south, most of its length lined with cottonwoods. The creek bottom was sandy, and only a narrow ribbon of water, covered in pane ice, ran through it. Fletcher brought the horses down to the creek and staked them on the sand. He gathered up armfuls of buffalo grass and threw it down for the horses; then he had Estelle huddle in the hollow of the cutbank out of the wind.

There were enough twigs and branches lying around among the roots of the cottonwoods to start a small fire. There would be little smoke, and the fire itself would be hidden from any passing Sioux by the creekbank.

Over this hatful of fire Fletcher boiled a pot of coffee and broiled a few strips of bacon. After he and Estelle had eaten and finished the coffee between them, he scattered the fire and stomped out any remaining embers.

The fire may have been hidden, but it was better to take no chances. Even a pinpoint of light could be seen for miles across the plains in the darkness.

As the night gathered around them and the temperature dropped, Fletcher and Estelle huddled together, taking what comfort they could in their closeness and body heat.

The prairie wind sighed among the branches of the gaunt cottonwoods and set the buffalo grass to rustling . . . promising that it was going to be a long, cold night.

* * *

Shortly before midnight Fletcher woke after a few hours of restless sleep and gathered more grass for the horses.

He scrambled back down the bank and scattered the grass at the horses’ feet, then sat close to Estelle and built a smoke.

He had made up his mind.

The weather was getting more threatening by the hour and the smell of snow was in the air. If they did not overtake Stark’s wagons by sundown tomorrow, they would give up the chase and head for the safety of Fort Larned. He did not want to get caught out here on the plains in a blizzard. As it was, they might already have cut it too fine. The fort was maybe seventy, eighty miles away across wide-open country with little shelter, and their supply of food was rapidly dwindling.

Fletcher nodded, agreeing with himself. It would have to be tomorrow. He would tell Estelle that when the time came.

Just before daybreak he lit another fire and put the coffeepot in the middle of the coals. When the coffee boiled he shook Estelle awake and the girl shivered, blinking her eyes against the light of the gray dawn.

“How did you sleep?” Fletcher asked, knowing it was a ridiculous question, but hard-pressed to say anything.

“I was cold,” Estelle said. “You?”

Fletcher nodded. “Cold.” He poured steaming coffee into a cup and handed it to the girl. “Here, drink this while I saddle the horses.”

He did not mention his decision. That would come later.

The sun was yet to appear above the horizon when Fletcher and Estelle took to the trail again. The icy wind had risen, slapping at their faces with wintry fingers, and snowflakes tumbled, many more of them than before.

Ahead of them the tracks pointed across the endless grass, beckoning them onward . . . yet mocking them for their foolishness.

Two hours later they found the wagon.

It was Estelle who saw it first. She reined up and pointed directly ahead of her. “Buck, is that one of the wagons?”

Fletcher squinted his eyes against the wind and falling snow. There was something there and it was a wagon. It was tipped over on its side and there was no sign of the team or the driver.

Sliding his Winchester from the boot, Fletcher ordered Estelle to stay back. He rode forward at a walk, the rifle in his right hand, the butt resting on his thigh.

Tense and wary, he swung wide to the east and circled the wagon at a distance. There was no sign of life.

He rode closer and listened, hearing no sound but the wind and the rustle of the grass.

What had happened here?

Fletcher, the Winchester now ready across his saddle horn, cut across the grass directly for the wagon. He stopped when he was about thirty yards away. Just in front of his horse there was a wide splash of scarlet blood, another to the right of the first. Someone had been hit by a heavy-caliber bullet here and had staggered to his right, only to be shot a second time.

And the man could only be an Indian.

Riding closer Fletcher saw that the wagon had been looted, then overturned. Around it lay the mutilated bodies of four men, three of them bearded and dressed in buckskin shirts, low-heeled boots, and heavy wool pants.

These had been Falcon Stark’s skinners. They had made a fight of it, judging by the brass shell casings lying around them.

One man, younger than the others, smooth-faced and looking to be no more than seventeen, had been pinned to the wagon by a war lance, the blade driven into the wood too deeply to be removed. The shaft of the lance stuck out from the boy’s chest, and he hung there, scalped, dead eyes still wide with his terror at the manner of his death.

The other three bristled with arrows, most of them fired into their bodies when they were dying or already dead, and two of them had been scalped. The right cheek of one skinner, who had sported a magnificent pair of bushy red side-whiskers, had been cut away, the only trophy available since the man was completely bald.

Estelle rode up beside Fletcher, her face chalk white from shock.

“What . . . what happened, Buck?” she whispered, knowing what she was seeing, but wanting Fletcher to tell it and perhaps find a way to somehow quell the horror of it.