Doomsday Rider

Ten

Fletcher and Charlie searched the trail ahead, but of the wagon and Scarlet Hays there was no sign. It was as though they’d vanished off the face of the earth.

Charlie had been kneeling, studying the tracks, and now he rose to his feet and stepped beside Fletcher. “They swung the wagon off the road here,” he said. “By this time they could be anywhere among these hills. It would take a dozen Apache scouts a week to find them.”

“Them? Who’s with him?” Fletcher asked, not really expecting an answer.

But he got an answer of a sort.

“Don’t know,” Charlie said, shrugging. “But the man with Hays wears cavalry boots and rides an army hoss.”

“How do you know? About the horse, I mean.”

“Big, heavy animal with a long stride. I’d say he goes maybe seventeen hands and weighs almost twelve hundred pounds. Not too many of those around here except for army horses and that American stud you’re forking.”

“Maybe Hays stole the animal and he’s got a new boy riding it.”

“Maybe. But maybe there’s a sodjer riding that horse and he tipped Scar off about the paymaster’s wagon. Could be he was one of the escort.”

Fletcher thought this through for a while, then said, “That would make more sense than Crook allowing a lowlife like Hays to drive a pay wagon. The general didn’t strike me as being stupid, and, believe me, that’s a rare commodity among generals.”

With a groan, Charlie climbed stiffly into the saddle, and Fletcher realized the old man was growing bone-tired.

“What do we do now, Buck?” Charlie asked.

Fletcher jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I saw some deer tracks back there. I think maybe it’s time we did some hunting now we can’t depend on getting grub from the army.”

“Deer hunting.” Charlie smiled. “Now, that’s something I can teach you young ‘uns.”

“Teach away, Charlie.” Fletcher grinned. “I sure am hungry.”

An hour later a fat whitetail buck went down to their guns.

But it was Fletcher who made the killing shot.

* * *

They camped for the night in a stand of manzanitas beside a shallow creek with water running clear under a paper-thin sheet of pane ice.

The horses were staked nearby, and Fletcher and Charlie cleared away snow and gathered as much grass as they could, tearing it from the frozen earth by the roots.

It was hard, exhausting work, but Charlie, insisting that he make himself useful after having failed in the hunt, afterward skinned out the buck and cut some thick steaks. These they broiled over a small fire, both men wishful for coffee and salt, but having neither.

The old mountain man ate his steaks Indian style, holding the meat between his teeth, cutting a chunk off with a knife. It was a good way—if a man was careful of his nose, and Fletcher, the owner of a large, predatory beak, decided against trying it.

Some things were simply not worth the risk.

Earlier Fletcher had scouted a wide area around their camp, but the Apaches had gone. Crook’s flying columns of cavalry had taught them the dangers of sticking around any one place for too long. It had been a bitter lesson and the Apache had begun to heed it well.

After they’d eaten and the day shaded into night, Fletcher lay in his blankets beside the fire, his rifle close to hand, and built a smoke. “Tomorrow at first light we’ll head out for the old Indian ruins,” he said, lighting his cigarette. “If I can get to Estelle Stark then I reckon the first half of my task is done.”

“You think if Scar has been paid to kill the girl, he’ll come after her?” Charlie asked.

Fletcher nodded. “I do, and that will make the rest so much easier.”

“Not so easy, Buck,” Charlie said, frowning. “Getting Hays to talk in front of witnesses will be no Sunday-school picnic. He’ll come at you shooting.”

“That,” Fletcher said, “is a bridge I’ll have to cross when I reach it.”

Later Fletcher and Charlie talked of other things as men do while the long night swells around them, of guns and horses and of men and manners and places they’d seen and places they had not and of mountains and valleys they’d touched and of tall, white ships and the wild green seas that began where the land ended.

Slowly, as the campfire guttered and a coyote howled in the far distance, their talk slowed, then ended, sleep at last taking them.

Beyond the manzanitas, hidden by a stand of pine, a man sat his horse and studied the camp. After half an hour he swung his gray horse south, moving carefully among the pines, keeping to the base of the hills, silent and stealthy as a ghost.

* * *

Fletcher and Charlie ate a quick breakfast of venison steak, then saddled up and rode south, taking almost the same route as the man on the gray horse.

To the west, the towering spire of Mazatzal Peak touched low clouds heavy with snow, and the air was crisp and cold, like cracked ice on the tongue.

Shadows still lay dark in the ravines and canyons, and the game trail the two men followed wandered among low hills and thick stands of pine, always hiding what lay beyond.

At noon a light snow began to fall, dusting Fletcher’s and Charlie’s shoulders with white, and a rising wind stirred in the trees and set the pine needles to whispering.

They topped a rise and reined up in the shelter of some silver spruce. Charlie nodded to the south. “We should reach the ruins in an hour, maybe less.” He looked at Fletcher. “Reckon she’ll still be there?”

Fletcher rose in the stirrups, easing himself in the saddle as his stud tossed its head, the bit jangling. “I don’t know, Charlie. I sure hope so. It will make what I have to do so much easier.”

“Well, Indian Jake told me she’s there,” Charlie said, repeating what Fletcher already knew but seeking some reassurance.

Fletcher nodded, knowing how the old mountain man felt. “I reckon he did, Charlie.”

“Jake, now, he ain’t a man to make up stories,” Charlie said, his eyes searching Fletcher’s face, trying to read the other man’s expression.

Again Fletcher nodded. “I don’t suppose he is, but there’s one way to find out. Let’s ride on down there and see for ourselves.”

As Fletcher and Charlie grew closer to the ruins, the land around them became wilder and more rugged. Brown hills, many of them sheared off into grooved, vertical cliffs, were covered in sagebrush, greasewood, and cholla. Cedar, pine, and spruce grew on their upper slopes, dark arrowheads of green against thick patches of snow.

The two men rode through a narrow valley hemmed in tight by the surrounding hills, then onto a flat open area, cut across by a creek with water that still ran fast and clear over a sandy bottom.

Fletcher and Charlie let their horses drink, then moved across the snow-covered flat. “Looks like another creek up ahead,” Fletcher said.

Charlie rose in the stirrups, stretching to his great height, his eyes following Fletcher’s nod. He shook his head. “Buck, that’s no creek. It’s tracks. A lot of tracks.”

Charlie in the lead, Fletcher followed, and when he got closer he saw that what he’d thought was a depression in the snow made by the runoff from a creek was horse tracks. And Charlie had been right—there were a lot of them.

“Unshod ponies,” Charlie said, leaning from the saddle as he studied the deep trail. “I’d say thirty riders, maybe more.”

“Apaches?” Fletcher asked, already knowing the answer.

Charlie nodded. “Uh-huh, and only warriors. Apache women and children walk, and there are no footprints down there.”

The pony tracks angled across the open ground and ended at the hills. Fletcher looked around him but saw no Indian sign.

“What you reckon they’re doing this far south?” he asked Charlie.

“Dunno. But I think we’d better get to your Estelle Stark gal right quick. This many warriors could sure play hell with her and the rest of them pilgrims at the ruins.”

Fletcher felt fear spike at him, not for himself but for Estelle and the others. “Charlie, do you think they’ll attack?”

“Apaches are mighty notional,” the old man answered. “But this is a war party, probably all young bucks, and if that Chosen One feller has women with him . . . well, sure, they’ll attack.”

Charlie rubbed the back of his neck. “Got me an itch back there, Buck,” he said. “Know what that means?”

Fletcher shook his head and grinned. “Way too late for mosquitoes.”

The old mountain man’s face was grim and unsmiling. “It ain’t a critter bite. I only get that itch when somebody’s watching me.” He looked around at the hills. “And right now somebody’s watching me.”

Fletcher saw only the silent hills and the wind stirring the trees. But he trusted Charlie’s instincts and he too felt something, something that made him feel exposed and extremely vulnerable.

“Let’s ride,” he said. “I don’t want to get caught out in the open by those Indians.”

“Amen to that, brother,” Charlie said, and Fletcher caught an odd glint in the old man’s eyes. It was just a flash that quickly came and went. But could it have been fear?

The two men crossed the flat and rode through a stand of pine just as the snow stopped and the parting clouds revealed a bright, cold sun. When they cleared the trees a wide basin hemmed in by hills opened up in front of them, sloping downward to end at an almost vertical cliff face.

In a shallow alcove in the cliff wall, about 350 feet above the floor of the basin, Fletcher made out the ruins of a sprawling pueblo, surrounded by a forest of giant saguaro cactus.

Higher than this by three hundred feet were more ruins, these with two stories, some of the ancient wooden ladders to reach the upper floor still in place.

Lower down the slope there was a smaller complex, a low, sprawling pueblo made up of a dozen rooms, and from several of these rose thin columns of smoke. A trail led up the slope to the higher pueblos, winding through a thick forest of saguaro, cholla, palo verde, ocotillo, and prickly pear.

Whoever had built these pueblos had chosen the site well. The spot was highly defensible with sweeping views of the entire basin and the hills beyond.

As Fletcher rode closer, he saw that the buildings on the lower slope ahead of him were made from quartzite blocks bound together by thick mud mortar, sturdy enough to turn aside any projectile except maybe a twelve-pound shell from a mountain howitzer.

Fletcher and Charlie rode toward the lower pueblo, and when they were a hundred yards away, a young woman stepped out of one of the rooms, shading her eyes against the sun as she watched them come. Another woman joined the first, then another, and several children appeared, shyly holding on to the women’s skirts.

Was one of the women Estelle Stark?

Fletcher couldn’t tell, but a couple of them appeared to be pregnant. But Estelle had just recently turned eighteen, and these women looked older.

As Fletcher and Charlie rode up to the women, a couple of men appeared from the ruins. They were young, with long hair and beards, and carried no weapons.

Fletcher touched his hat brim to the woman. “Howdy,” he said, then introduced himself and Charlie.

One of the women, a pretty brunette with dark brown eyes, smiled up at him. “Brothers, have you come to join us?” she asked.

And from behind her the youngest of the men, his face eager, said, “Are you to help us in our great task?”

“Damn pilgrims,” Charlie said under his breath.

Fletcher shot Charlie a look. “No,” he said, “I’m looking for someone; her name is Estelle Stark.” The women and the two men gazed at him blankly and Fletcher added, “I think she’s in great danger.”

“There’s no danger here,” another woman said. She was pregnant, her belly swelling big against her gray homespun dress. “Here we do the Lord’s work as we await the day of doom that is soon to come.”

“The hour of doomsday is close at hand,” one of the men said, as though it were something he had learned by rote, and the other nodded and muttered agreement into his beard.

Fletcher tried another tack, fighting down his impatience. “If Estelle is here, please let me talk to her.”

“Who wishes to talk with my wife?”

Fletcher turned and saw a man walking toward him. He was in his early fifties, very tall, almost as tall as Charlie, with a long beard to his waist, his hair falling in waves over his shoulders. The man wore a white robe to his ankles, tied with a piece of rope, and he had open-toed leather sandals on his feet. He carried a wooden staff surmounted by a large silver cross, and a similar cross hung around his neck, suspended from a rawhide string.

“Jesus,” Charlie whispered.