Ralph Compton - Doomsday Rider

“Aw, sparking a girl isn’t what it’s cracked up to be,” Fletcher said, unable to relieve one kind of pain, trying to relieve another. “Why, I recall one time down El Paso way when I . . .”

His voice trailed off into silence. He was talking to a dead man.

Fletcher closed the boy’s eyes, pulled the arrow from his body, and stepped back to his position behind the rock.

“Is he dead?” Sieber asked.

Fletcher nodded, suddenly feeling empty and old.

“He was a good soldier,” Sieber said. “Done his duty.” The scout nodded. “He’ll make his ma proud.”

“Well, he’s no kind of soldier now,” Fletcher said. “And I reckon I’ve already seen proud ma’s enough that I don’t ever care to see another.”

Sieber opened his mouth to speak, but what he said was drowned out by another shrieking cry of pain from the sergeant.

“McDermott is a big, strong man and he’s dying mighty hard,” Sieber said. “He’ll last a long time.”

“Why do they do that?” Fletcher asked. “You know Apaches; why torture a man that way?”

The scout shrugged. “An Apache measures his own bravery against that of his enemy. The Apache believe a captive who lasts a long time under torture must be very brave, and that reflects much credit on the man who captured him. Better to conquer a mountain lion than a jackrabbit.”

Fletcher glanced up at the sky and the yellow ball of the sun. “Pretty soon we’re going to get mighty thirsty,” he said. “Then we’ll face our own torture.”

Sieber nodded. “There’s a canteen in the wagon. Maybe after dark I’ll mosey on down there and see if I can grab it.” He shook his head, his face grim. “That is, if we’re still around.”

“You won’t make it,” Fletcher said. “They’ll be expecting us to try something like that.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Maybe I have. At least, I’ve been studying on it some, though it’s mighty thin.”

“Well, thin or not, let’s hear it, man,” Sieber urged. “Seems to me the way our time is running out, beggars can’t be choosers.”

Quickly Fletcher outlined his plan, and Sieber’s grin grew wider with each word. When Fletcher finished the scout slapped his thigh and said, “Hot damn, Buck, it might just work.”

“It better work,” the gunfighter said. “If the Apaches wait until almost dark and all rush us at once, we’re dead.”

Doubt clouded Sieber’s eyes. “I ain’t much good with a Colt’s gun.” He slapped the brass receiver of his Henry. “But I can use this here rifle pretty well.”

Fletcher smiled. “You’ll do, Al.”

The two men waited. They needed Sergeant McDermott to scream again.

Four

The scream when it came was loud and piercing, a primitive cry of agony torn from the throat of a man who had long passed the limits of his endurance and was now bordering on madness.

Yet somehow, from somewhere deep inside him, McDermott found the strength to roar a string of Irish curses, each edged with the disbelief and outrage that what was unthinkable was actually happening and was happening to him.

The man finally fell silent again and the canyon walls no longer echoed to his raving, pain-driven shrieks.

“Right, Al,” Fletcher said, his face set and grim. “Let’s do it.”

He set down his rifle and drew his Colt, and Sieber did the same.

Both men knelt and pointed their guns at the sand beneath them, and at Fletcher’s nod each pulled the trigger. The guns went off simultaneously, bullets kicking up startled exclamation points of sand a few inches from their knees.

Quickly Fletcher shucked the empty shell from his Colt and reloaded the chamber.

He and Sieber scrambled back to the shelter of the rocks and waited.

The scout put his mouth close to Fletcher’s ear and whispered, “Think it worked?”

Fletcher put his forefinger to his lips, signaling Sieber into silence. They waited.

Beside him, Fletcher saw Sieber run a nervous tongue over his top lip, and the man’s knuckles were white on the stock of his Henry.

Was it going to work? They’d know soon enough.

Voices rose from the boulders where the Apaches were hidden, and Fletcher heard the slight scrape of a rifle butt against rock.

Another voice now, younger and louder than the rest, was saying something in a language Fletcher did not understand. He gave Sieber a sidelong glance, his eyes holding a question, and the scout moved closer.

“He says we’re women, that we killed ourselves,” Sieber whispered. “But some of the older bucks ain’t so sure. They think maybe it’s a trap.”

“Damn,” Fletcher swore, gritting out the word under his breath. “They’re not falling for it.”

The young man’s voice was closer now, calling out to his companions.

Sieber replied to Fletcher’s unspoken question: “He’s saying the same thing again,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and tense. “That we killed ourselves rather than risk being taken alive by the Apache.”

More voices now and the slow, careful scuff of moccasined feet on sand.

The Apaches were getting closer. But how many?

Fletcher felt uncertainty spike at him. When he and Sieber rose up from behind the shelter of the rocks there had to be more than one Apache standing out there. If there wasn’t, he and the big army scout would be quickly cut down by the others.

Sweat tricked into Fletcher’s eyes, stinging, and his mouth was bone dry. Above him the sun hung in the sky like a gold coin, and a few puffy white clouds drifted in winds too high to be felt in the arroyo. Under the overhang a horse snorted, bit jangling, and stamped a hoof.

An Apache war whoop rang out, echoing within the canyon walls, then another, and another.

It was now or never.

Fletcher gave Sieber a quick glance of warning and rose to his feet. There were seven Apaches in the clearing, moving warily, rifles at the port. It wasn’t all of them. But it was enough.

The ability to draw a gun fast and the eye-to-hand coordination to hit a moving target are gifts given to very few men. One in a thousand, perhaps. Maybe one in ten thousand.

Buck Fletcher was one of those men.

He drew his Colt from its cross-draw holster, did a border shift, spinning the revolver to his left hand, and cleared the gun from his hip holster before the other Colt thudded into his palm.

Sieber saw all this out of the corner of his eye, and even as he fired and cranked his rifle he wondered at it.

Both Fletcher’s guns were hammering now, the shots so close they sounded like a lethal drumroll.

The silver-plated railroad watch in Sieber’s pocket ticked twice, and ere it ticked a third time the fight was over.

Seven Apaches lay on the ground, six of them dead and one dying, the warrior moaning softly, his collarless whiteman’s shirt stained scarlet with blood. There was no answering fire from the rocks.

The surviving Apaches, mindful of the women with them, had gone. It was not fear that made them withdraw. The Apache had lost too many warriors in this fight and they didn’t like how the odds were stacking up. Better to retreat now and fight another day, when the advantage would be on their side.

Brave and daring the Indian might be, but he was always a pragmatist, and there was no disgrace in running away when the battle turned against him.

Sieber looked around at the fallen Apaches and let his breath whistle slowly between his teeth.

“You did it all, Buck,” he said, shaking his head in wonderment. “I never hit a single brave.”

His face stiff, Fletcher was reloading his Colts, the acrid smell of burned black powder in his nostrils as thick gray smoke curled around his head. “You did your share, Al,” he said. “I heard your rifle.”