Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

The Indians had been taken by surprise. But now they yelled their war whoops and came on Fletcher at a run. He and Estelle were still a hundred yards from the wagons.

Fletcher slowed his pace, trying to match the speed of the girl’s horse, keeping his body between her and the Indians. He fired at a warrior in a red blanket coat riding a spotted pony and the man threw up his arms and toppled backward off his mount. A bullet tugged at Fletcher’s sleeve and he heard another split the air just inches above his head.

Fifty yards to the wagons . . .

The warriors, all of them by their braids Sioux and Cheyenne, were closing the distance, coming at Fletcher and Estelle hard.

Ahead Fletcher saw two men step out from the wagon circle. One, judging by his long hair and buckskins, was Wild Bill, the other a bearded teamster who dragged a wounded leg behind him.

Both men opened up with rifles and an Indian fell, then another. The teamster took a bullet in the chest and dropped and Hickok moved to cover him, standing straddle-legged over the man’s prostrate form as he calmly cranked and fired his Winchester.

Twenty-five yards . . .

Puffs of powder smoke showed between the wagons as the defenders laid down a supporting fire.

A warrior, two eagle feathers slanting behind his head, charged directly at Fletcher, his rifle hammering. Fletcher cranked his Winchester and fired directly at the man’s chest, holding the rifle in one hand like a pistol.

Hit hard, the Indian bent over, his pony slowing to a walk, and then Fletcher was beyond him.

A few yards more . . .

Someone, stocky and bearded, a cigar clenched in his teeth, opened a space in the defensive circle, moving boxes off a wagon tree. Fletcher reined up and motioned Estelle forward. The girl jumped her horse into the space and Fletcher followed. He winced as a bullet burned across the thick muscles of his right shoulder as he jumped off his horse. A quick glance told him it was not a serious wound, and he ran to help the bearded man replace the boxes.

“Need some help, General?” Fletcher asked.

Grant nodded, smiling around his cigar. “I guess I do, but there’s no need to call me General. I’m just plain Mr. President now, Major Fletcher.”

That last surprised Fletcher. Grant remembered him!

The president, a perceptive man, read the astonishment on Fletcher’s face and said, “When I pin a medal on a man, especially one of my most daring officers of horse artillery, I remember his name.”

Grant’s brow wrinkled as he started to form a question, but as it was smashed by a bullet, wood splintered from the rim of the wagon near the president’s face and all conversation ceased.

The Indians were attacking again.

Their charge was not pressed with determination, and the Sioux and Cheyenne drew off and began to argue loudly among themselves. This attack was proving costly and they’d already lost almost a third of their strength. Yet the prize was great: horses, mules, guns, and supplies, to say nothing of the young women within the wagon circle.

Fletcher was in no doubt they’d charge again.

The snow that had slacked off for the past half hour was back again, the white flakes tossing around in a rising wind. As he stood at the wagon, Fletcher got a chance to look around him.

Wild Bill stood to his right and beyond him a slender young man who would be Count Vorishilov. The Russian was dressed in a blue uniform, red at his cuffs and collar tabs, and he held a large-caliber hunting rifle, the stock heavily inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver.

To Fletcher’s left a teamster stood, a Sharps at the ready, looking intently at the milling Indians, and beyond him Grant and a man Fletcher didn’t know, probably the other senator, judging by his gray hair and the way he and the president talked with easy informality.

At the other end of the circle was Falcon Stark. The man was looking hard at Fletcher, his cold eyes bright with a strange mix of anger, hate, and malice. And something else—something Fletcher recognized as the first hatching of madness.

There was no doubt Stark knew why he and Estelle were there, and the man was ready for them, obviously eager to finally bring it all to an end.

Estelle stood with an elegant woman in a blue velvet riding habit who could only be the countess, and with them were a couple of young blond girls with high Slavic cheekbones, dressed in the black and white of maids.

A flunky in a butler’s suit was propped against a wagon wheel, his face ashen, an arrow sticking out of his left shoulder. Several other men, cooks and servants, stiffened by a single bearded teamster who abused them with profane relish, were on uneasy guard among the trees, looking scared and awkward as they clutched unfamiliar rifles to their chests.

After a measuring glance at the Indians, Hickok left his position and strolled over to Fletcher, moving relaxed, easy, and loose-limbed the way he always did. The gunfighter wore two Navy Colts, butt forward in carved black holsters, and his eyes were guarded and wary.

“A fair piece off your home ground, ain’t you, Buck?” Hickok asked. “Last I heard you was riding with John Wesley and them wild ones down in Texas a ways.”

“That was a spell back, Bill,” Fletcher said, keeping his voice even, sensing the danger in Hickok. There was no telling how this man would react in any given situation. But if he did decide to act, he was almighty sudden, certain, and deadly.

“All right,” Bill said, “enough of being sociable. I’ll put it to you as a direct question—What are you doing here?”

A sudden anger flared in Fletcher, and for a moment he thought about telling Hickok to go to hell. But that would have only created another problem and solved none of the others.

Taking a deep breath, calming himself down, Fletcher nodded in the direction of Estelle. “That’s Senator Stark’s daughter. I brought her here”—he hesitated, groping for the right words, then managed only—“to meet her father.”

Hickok wasn’t buying it.

“Buck,” he said, “me and you go way back, a lot of years, too many maybe. A man trained to the gun like you doesn’t track across a wilderness, then ride into a wagon circle under Indian attack, unless he’s on the prod and there’s something he means to do.”

Fletcher opened his mouth to speak, but Hickok’s raised hand silenced him.

“I don’t want to hear it, Buck. Know only this: I’m responsible for the president and the others on this expedition, and if something were to happen to any of them, I’d take it mighty hard and downright personal.”

Fletcher nodded. “You’ve said your piece, Bill, and I don’t hold anything against you for that. But there’s a reckoning coming and I guess we’ll all have to choose sides.”

“I just told you the side I’ll be on,” Hickok said. “It pains me considerable to say this because I like you, Buck. But if I have to, I swear to God, I’ll gun you like I’d gun any other man.”

“So be it, Bill. A man should do what he thinks is right.”

“Just so you know.”

Hickok, wide-shouldered and narrow in the hips, turned on his heel and strolled back to his position behind the wagons, and Fletcher watched him go.

If it came right down to it, was he faster than Hickok? It was not something he cared to prove, but it might happen in the very near future, and right now it was a worrisome thing.

Fletcher turned and saw Falcon Stark staring at him. The man had heard every word that had passed between him and Wild Bill, and there was a look of sneering triumph on his face.

Stark had seen his daughter ride in, and he must be aware that the showdown was coming. He would also know that when it happened he could appeal to Hickok for protection against Buck Fletcher, a wanted murderer and dangerous gunman. Wild Bill’s lightning-fast Navy Colts stood ready to tilt the scales in his favor.