Doomsday Rider

Fourteen

When night fell, the people of the pueblo wandered outside and collected their dead.

The Chosen One had been screaming for a long time now. The Apaches were making his death a slow and long-drawn-out thing.

The Indians had attacked seven times throughout the day, but these had been long-range skirmishes and had not been pressed home. The Apaches had galloped back and forth across the open ground in front of the pueblo, firing their rifles at anyone who showed at a window or door, content to let Fletcher and Charlie expend their ammunition.

The warriors on their swift ponies had been fast, fleeting targets and had suffered no casualties except for a pony downed by Charlie and a man burned across the neck by Fletcher’s Winchester.

At the pueblo a man named McKenzie had been hit as he glanced out of a window and had died an hour before, just as the sun was disappearing behind the Mazatzals. His wife was taking his death hard and her wails echoed eerily around the cliff above the pueblo. Another woman had been wounded, and so had a three-year-old girl, though the child had only been grazed by an arrow and seemed more frightened than hurt.

Inside one of the rooms, the disciples laid out the bodies of five men, three women, and two children, and Fletcher told Charlie, his voice edged by a vague, directionless anger, that many more would sure as hell follow.

One by one the disciples gathered in the room next to the one Fletcher and Charlie occupied, and furious voices were raised, more than a few of them cursing Estelle and the Chosen One.

“You both lied to us,” a man’s voice yelled, harsh and accusing. “He called himself the Chosen One, yet he was taken by the Apaches and God did nothing to save him.”

The woman whose husband had been shot at the window screamed, “My man is dead, and all because we listened to you. The Chosen One was a false prophet. He led us into the fire.”

Estelle’s voice rose. “Listen to me! He will survive! The Chosen One will return to us. He cannot die until the hour of doomsday is upon us. This he was promised by the lord God.”

“False prophet!” another woman yelled. “We should stone you for being the devil’s harlot.”

“Them folks is sure getting all riled up,” Charlie said, feeding tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “And I can’t say as I blame them.”

He looked to Fletcher for comment, but right then the gunfighter had other, more pressing concerns.

He was down to three shells for his rifle and a dozen cartridges in the loops of his gun belt for his Colts. Charlie wasn’t in much better shape.

“I got five in the rifle and that’s it,” he said, his face gloomy.

“The Apaches tested us today,” Fletcher said, “making us use up our ammunition. By this time they must know we don’t have many shells left.”

The Chosen One’s piercing screams rang out again across the night.

Charlie swallowed hard. “Just make sure you save one for yourself, Buck. Them’s words of wisdom.”

Both their horses were in the room with them, standing heads down and miserable, Charlie’s mustang bleeding from a stray round that had burned its shoulder.

Now Fletcher led the horses outside and staked them on a patch of grass at the bottom of the cliff that was relatively clear of snow. There was a small lean-to room at the northern end of the pueblo that had a good solid roof, and he laid both saddles in there.

When he came back inside, Charlie peered out at the gathering darkness and asked, “How long can he keep that up?”

The Chosen One’s shrill shrieks had been shredding the fabric of the day since late afternoon. He had earlier interspersed his screams with pleas to the Apaches to repent and accept Christ. But his words were now an incoherent babble as pain that was beyond pain seared into his brain and set aflame every tormented nerve in his body.

“A long time, Charlie,” Fletcher said, looking down at the smoke he was rolling. He lit the cigarette and added, “I reckon he’ll scream like that all night. I’d say them young bucks are having themselves a good ol’ time.”

Charlie spat. “Damned Apaches. They got no consideration for a man’s sleep.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Fletcher saw a flicker of movement. He turned, glanced out the window, and saw Estelle run across the snow toward the valley and the Apache camp.

Without a word he pushed aside the blanket hanging on the doorway and ran outside, ignoring Charlie’s startled cry of protest.

Awkward and heavy in her pregnancy, Estelle was stumbling across the snow, her skirt held high as she did her best to run.

“Wait!” Fletcher yelled.

The girl quickly glanced over her shoulder, her face pale and frightened, but she did not slow down.

Fletcher pounded after her, his long legs closing the distance fast. He caught up with Estelle and grabbed her by the shoulders, bringing her to a halt.

“Let me alone!” the girl yelled, struggling to get out of his grip. “I must go to him. The Chosen One needs me.”

Fletcher spun the girl around and brought her face close to his own.

“They’ll kill you too,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “There’s nothing you can do to help him now.”

Estelle tried desperately to twist out of Fletcher’s grasp on her shoulders, her eyes wild, but he held her all the more tightly, her huge belly pressing against him.

“Estelle,” Fletcher said, “you heard those screams. You don’t want to see him, not the way he is now.”

“Let me go!” the girl shrieked. She opened her mouth, showing small white teeth, lowered her head, and clamped down hard on Fletcher’s wrist.

The girl’s teeth were sharp and they bit deep, and Fletcher let out an agonized “Ow!”

“Let me go!” Estelle yelled. And again her open mouth hungrily sought his wrist.

Fletcher shook his head and muttered under his breath, “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

He let go of the girl’s shoulder, drew back his right fist a couple of inches, and clipped her on the chin. Estelle’s blue eyes flared wide in shocked surprise; then she went limp and Fletcher caught her in his left arm before she fell.

Fletcher glanced down at the girl’s face and felt an instant pang of guilt. “Now you’re beating up on pregnant ladies, Fletcher,” he whispered to himself. “Maybe next you’ll start kicking newborn puppy dogs.”

But Fletcher had no time to explore those melancholy thoughts further, because there was a sudden scuffle of moccasined feet near the base of the hill, and a piece of the darkness moved.

His gun flashed into his hand and Fletcher stepped backward in the direction of the pueblo, never taking his eyes off the now-shifting curtain of the dark.

Unlike many plains tribes, notably the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Comanche, the Apache were not keen on fighting at night, believing a warrior killed in the darkness was doomed to wander eternity in an endless gray mist.

But if put to it, they would. And did.

Here were a man and woman alone and isolated on the flat before the pueblo, and that was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The blackness moved again and Fletcher made out the shape of an Apache stepping warily toward them, his sturdy bowed legs testing the ground in front of him with each step.

Estelle lying limp and unconscious in his arm, Fletcher raised his Colt and fired, the snow around him flashing orange.

The Apache melted back into the darkness, and Fletcher did not know if he’d hit the man or not. A rifle crashed off to his left and he fired at the muzzle glare, then fired a second time. Once again he did not know if he’d scored a hit.

Feet pounded behind him and Fletcher spun, his gun coming up fast. It was Charlie.

The old man took in the situation in an instant and asked, “What happened to her?”

“I socked her,” Fletcher said.

“Oh,” Charlie said, “for a minute there I thought something bad had happened to her.”

Covered by Charlie’s rifle, Fletcher carried the unconscious girl back to their room in the pueblo. A few discipies started to crowd around, but Charlie shooed them away. “There are Apaches out there,” he said.

The Chosen One’s people had learned the terror of the Apache and it had been a hard, bitter lesson. Now they ran back into their rooms, a few of the men wielding hoes and shovels as weapons.

But the Apaches had returned to the night and none came near the pueblo.

As gently as he could Fletcher laid Estelle on a mat in the corner of the room. The girl’s eyes flew open and she said groggily, “Wha . . . what happened?”

“You fell,” Fletcher said, his voice even, “and hit your chin on a rock buried in the snow.”

The girl tried to rise to her feet. “I must go to him,” she gasped.

Fletcher gently but firmly pushed her back onto the rug. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “There are Apaches out there and they just did their level best to kill both of us.”

Out in the darkness where the valley lay, the Chosen One screamed again, and he kept on screaming until he could scream no longer and his terrible shrieks finally gurgled into silence.

Estelle covered her ears with her hands and sat rocking back and forth, moaning wordless sounds, a primitive ritual for the dead as ancient as woman’s grief.