Doomsday Rider

Seven

The log cabin was about twelve feet long by six wide, lit by a single oil lamp that hung from a hook on a beam supporting the shingle roof. There was an iron army cot with a thin mattress and a folded blanket pushed against the wall and nothing else.

The door was of heavy oak and barred from the outside, and set high on the wall opposite was a tiny window with thick wooden bars. The floor was tamped-down earth, frozen hard as iron, so hard only a powder charge could blast a hole in it.

Inside the cabin it was insufferably cold, and Fletcher sat on the edge of the cot and pulled his mackinaw close around his ears, his breath smoking in the damp chill.

A few flakes of snow drifted through the unglazed window and fell, unmelted, on his shoulders, and Fletcher let them stay.

Outside he heard one of the two soldiers who guarded the cabin cough, and the other trooper stamped his feet and cursed softly and with great dedication. “Hey, Bill, why didn’t ol’ George string this killer up instead of holding him here?” this soldier asked of his companion after a while.

After a fit of coughing, the other man replied, “Hell if I know. But I do know this: If officers had to stand guard duty he’d have been hung right quick.”

“Damn right,” the first soldier agreed. “Damn officers.”

The oil lamp, flickering in a draft from a chink between the logs, cast a dancing circle of yellow light around the cabin, and Fletcher smelled the smoke of burning cedar in the cold air that blew through the tiny window.

Fletcher’s numb fingers fumbled in his shirt pocket and found tobacco and papers. He tried to roll a cigarette, failed, spilled tobacco over his coat, and tried again. This time he managed to build a crooked approximation of a cigarette and he thumbed a match into flame and lit it gratefully.

“Fletcher, that smoking habit of yours is going to stunt your growth, you know.”

It was Charlie Moore’s voice, just a low whisper, and it came from the window.

Fletcher stepped away from the cot, back toward the front wall of the cabin, where he could look up and see the window.

Because of his great height, the top of Moore’s hat was just visible, and Fletcher stepped closer again.

“Nice of you to visit, Charlie,” he said.

“Visit, hell, I’m getting you out of here.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Fletcher said. “There’s no need to stick your neck out like this.”

“You’re a friend of Al Sieber’s, and any friend of Al’s is a friend of mine,” Charlie said. He chuckled softly. “Besides, it would be mighty quiet around here with you locked up . . . and there’s one thing else.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t like to see any man railroaded and, gunfighter, I think you was railroaded.”

“Charlie, don’t—” Fletcher began, but the big mountain man was gone.

A few moments later Fletcher heard a dull thud, then very quickly another, and then the bar slid open on the door. Moore pushed his way inside and said urgently, “Let’s go. I got your hoss outside.”

“The soldiers?”

“Sleeping like two little babies.” Moore read Fletcher’s face and added, “Aw, don’t worry; they’ll be all right. I just banged their heads together a couple of times, and not too hard at that.”

Fletcher quickly walked outside, stepped over the recumbent form of one of the soldiers, and swung into the saddle, Moore doing the same thing beside him.

“They overlooked your Winchester on account of how it was still in your saddle boot,” Moore said, his breath steaming, eyes tearing from the cold as the snow stung his face. He handed Fletcher two Colts. “And I brung you these. Got them off them two soldier boys.”

Fletcher shoved a gun into both pockets of his mackinaw and Moore nodded his approval. “Now we just ease on out of here real slow and easy, like we owned the place. If we ride out fast we’ll attract the attention of the pickets, at least them who haven’t as yet froze to death.”

Fletcher and Moore rode out of Fort Apache without a single head turning in their direction.

An hour later they were riding among the hills and canyons along the northern bank of the Salt River, the craggy slopes of the Mogollon Rim to their right lost in darkness and swirling snow.

The riders crossed the partially frozen Dead Coyote Creek, then climbed a low hill crested by manzanita, mesquite and scrub oak, some of the mesquite topping thirty feet in height.

Moore reined up among the trees and tilted his head toward a sky he could not see, the low, black clouds lost in the darkness.

“Fletcher, we got to take shelter,” he said, taking off the fur glove on his right hand, blowing into numb, curved fingers. “It’s getting colder, and a man could freeze out here afore morning.”

Fletcher nodded, his face troubled. “What about Crook? Won’t he have discovered we’re gone by now?”

Moore peered at Fletcher through the gloom and fluttering snow and shook his head. “Fletcher, I never took ye for a pilgrim. Listen, Crook’s here to fight Apaches, and about now he’s saying to himself, ‘Well, the hell with him.’ Trust me: He don’t care a hill of beans about recapturing you so long as he’s got a war on his hands. And secondly, ain’t nobody in their right minds will be riding out on a night like this except poor, fugitive creatures like us.”

“Moore, I’m real sorry I got you into this,” Fletcher said, meaning it sincerely.

“You didn’t get me into anything. I done it my ownself and I’d do it again.”

The old mountain man pulled on his glove and inclined his head to the north. “We come down off this hill and head thataway for maybe three miles. We’ll reach another hill, kinda like this one, but there’s a cave among a stand of sycamore and ash where we can shelter and build a fire.”

Moore kneed his horse forward, then turned his head in Fletcher’s direction. “I told you wrong. It ain’t exactly a cave, but I reckon it will have to do.”

They rode off the hill and back onto the flat, their horses’ hooves crunching on snow covered by a brittle frosting of ice. Above them the crescent moon horned the clouds aside for a few moments, revealing a patch of purple sky. But this was soon lost as darkness again covered the moon and the sky was as black as before. Falling snow was slanting into Fletcher and Moore, whitening the mountain man’s beard and eyebrows, adding winter’s aging to Fletcher’s mustache.

Moore reined up his horse. “Not far,” he said, his breath forming a drifting gray haze around his face. “The hill is right ahead.”

Fletcher peered into the gloom and made out a steep-sided butte. Trees covered its slope, and shadows rising from the plain shaded the narrow arroyo on its southern flank into an inverted vee of blackness. The rise looked cold, stark, and unwelcoming in the distance, just another hill to climb in a harsh and unforgiving land where there were many such.

Moore led the way and Fletcher followed, the collar of his sheepskin pulled up around his frozen face. His horse was tired, drained by cold and distance and badly in need of rest. Yet when he and Moore reached the base of the hill and began to climb, the big stud suddenly found the energy to rear, head twisting violently this way and that as he fought the jangling bit.

Taken by surprise and only half-awake, Fletcher tumbled backward out of the saddle and landed in the snow on his back, the reins still in his hand.

He lay stunned for a few moments, then jumped to his feet and fought the frightened horse as it tried to turn and run. Finally the stud quietened down, though it was trembling hard, its eyes rolling white, and Fletcher looked up to see Moore, still mounted, looming above him.

“Cougar,” the old mountain man whispered. He put a gloved finger to his lips, hushing Fletcher into silence. “Just up ahead.”

Moore rode a mustang, mountain bred and well used to the smell of cougar, and its calm presence seemed to steady Fletcher’s stud.

The mountain man nodded in the direction of their back trail, silently indicating that they should go back the way they’d come.

Fletcher led his horse to an outcropping of granite about a hundred yards from the base of the hill and looped the reins around a dead, stunted spruce gnarling out of a cleft in the rock.

Moore swung out of the saddle and left his mustang, reins trailing, close to the stud. He pulled his Winchester from the boot, and Fletcher did the same.

“We don’t have time to ride around that cat if he’s got a mind to stay on the hill,” he said. “Let’s go see if we can scare him off.”

The two men walked across the flat, rifles at a high port and ready, and again found themselves at the base of the hill.

“Damn, it’s as dark as the inside of a buffalo,” Moore said into Fletcher’s ear as they slowly climbed the slope. “Step easy. I’ve never known a cougar to attack a human afore, but there’s always a first time.” The old man pointed to the distant Mogollon Rim with the muzzle of his rifle. “The deer are climbing higher on account of the snow and too many sodjers and Apaches down here shooting at them. That cat could be almighty hungry, an’ if he’s hungry he’ll be testy.”

The men climbed, doing their best to keep their footfalls quiet, red-rimmed eyes trying to penetrate the snow-flecked gloom around them. Above lay the stand of sycamores, dark spruce growing among them, and a few scant and scraggy cedars struggling to live on the thin soil.

Fletcher misjudged his step over a fallen tree limb, slipped on a patch of ice, and fell flat on his face. He lay there still, the breath knocked out of him, the rowel of his right spur spinning and squeaking.

Stepping beside him, Moore extended a hand and Fletcher took it, and the big mountain man hauled him effortlessly to his feet. Fletcher, breathing hard and cussing a blue streak, rubbed snow from his mustache as Moore raised a disapproving eyebrow.

“Them Texas boots and jinglebobs ain’t exactly what a man should be wearing when he’s hunting lion,” he said. “No offense, mind, but I just thought you should know.”

A sharp reply didn’t immediately spring into Fletcher’s head, and he contented himself with picking up his rifle and cussing some more, especially at the snow that had somehow worked its way deep inside the waistband of his pants.

“Well,” Moore said, “if that cat was hanging around, he’s sure enough to hell and gone by this time. Fletcher, you made more noise than a Missouri mule in a tin barn.”

“Sorry,” Fletcher said, knowing how inadequate it sounded, but, annoyed with himself as he was, deciding to try no better.

Moore shrugged, his long hair blowing in the wind. “No harm done. But let’s just go make sure all that cussin’ and fussin’ really did drive the lion away.”

They found the cat higher up the hill, lying beside a deer trail. He’d been dead for hours.

The cougar’s jaws were drawn back in a defiant snarl as he’d fought the inevitable destiny of his dying to the bitter end. He’d been very old and his teeth were worn almost to the gum and he’d starved to death. But his eyes still blazed with fire, and soon he’d fade away and become one with the land and give it strength.

Fletcher and Moore stood for a few moments, looking down at the cat, wondering at his great size and his determination to live. Then they dragged him away from the trail into a clump of mescal, and there they left him, returning a few minutes later for their horses.

The cave Moore had talked about was just a shallow depression at the base of a rocky outcropping jutting like the prow of a ship from the side of the hill. No more than six feet deep and twice that wide, the cave nevertheless provided shelter from the snow and the worst of the wind, and with a fire it could become fairly snug.

After Moore stripped the saddles and blanket rolls from the horses, Fletcher staked them out on a patch of grass that grew in a small clearing among the trees and was relatively free of snow.

By the time he returned, Moore, with a mountain man’s expertise, had coaxed a small pile of dead leaves and twigs into flame and was already cramming snow into a battered pot for coffee.

The old man, who seemed to be prepared for any eventuality, produced a small slab of salt pork and cut some thick slices, ready for broiling.

After they’d eaten and passed their only coffee cup back and forth, Fletcher built a smoke, enjoying his blankets, the taste of tobacco, and the closeness and warmth of the guttering fire.

It was still snowing, wide flakes swirling in the wind, and the air smelled of sage and pine and of the thin pane ice along the creekbanks. And it smelled of winter and of mountains and of high, secret places and of bears and wolves and the cry of the hawk.

Moore lit his pipe and studied Fletcher in silence for a few moments, then he said, “Man feels like talking, he should talk. Good for a man to tell his story, get things off his chest.” He shrugged, giving Fletcher a way out. “Maybe it is.”

It was a way of asking without asking, and Fletcher recognized it as such.

“How do I tell the story, Charlie?” Fletcher asked. “Some of it I understand; much of it I don’t.”

“Seems to me,” Moore said, his pipe clenched in teeth that were still white and strong despite his years, “a man starts at the beginning and takes it from there. That is, if he feels so inclined and ain’t being pushed to it none.”

“You’re not pushing me, Charlie,” Fletcher said, smiling. “Well, not hardly.”

And he told his story.

Fletcher began with his arrest for the murder of the Wyoming sheriff, his meeting with Falcon Stark, and the senator’s plea to find his daughter. He described his journey from Lexington to Arizona by steamship, train, and horse, his brush with Apaches, and finally his arrest by General Crook.

“And the rest you know,” Fletcher wound it up, “and I haven’t jawed so much since the time I talked the loincloth off a wooden Indian.”

“Like I said, sometimes it’s good for a man to talk,” Moore said, thumbing a match into flame, relighting the pipe that had gone cold during Fletcher’s story.

“Well, what do you think?” Fletcher asked after a few minutes of silence had passed and Moore showed no inclination to speak.

“About what?”

“Hell, Charlie, about what I just told you.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that.”

“Well, for one thing, I wish you’d spoke to me about Estelle Stark afore you went barging in to see ol’ Georgie Crook.”

“How come?”

“Because I know where she’s at.”