Doomsday Rider

Seventeen

Wilson’s tracks led due south, toward the Gila River.

Fletcher calculated the man had maybe a four-hour start on him, but he was riding a stud with a distance-eating stride and that was no small thing.

Fletcher rode alert and ready in the saddle, his rifle across the horn, wary of an ambush.

This was mostly rolling hill country coming off the southern reaches of the Mazatzals, but beyond the Gila lay the Pinaleno, Santa Catarina, Santa Rita, Huachuca, and Chiricahua ranges, their rugged slopes thickly covered in pine, cedar, and juniper, and once among those peaks a man could lose himself forever if need be.

Fletcher put himself in Wilson’s position, trying to guess the moves he’d make. He came to the conclusion the man would not veer from his set trail and continue to head due south, hoping to make Nogales and beyond that Mexico.

He rode on, the rage inside him replaced by a grim determination to stick to Wilson’s trail no matter what happened.

For several miles there was no sound but the footfalls of Fletcher’s mustang and the creak of saddle leather. Around him were the pine-covered hills, here and there vast outcroppings of ancient volcanic rock showing red or gray against the green.

Within view of Iron Mountain, Fletcher splashed into a shallow creek and let his horse drink, then urged the little mustang forward again.

Toward noon, as he topped a steep rise, the sun felt warm on his back, melting the frost from his bones. Above his head a buzzard turned lazy circles in the air, its wings hardly beating, and once a brown bear, wakened from hibernation, glared at him, sending him on his way with a surly growl as he rode by.

The mustang was tough and enduring and showed no sign of slacking his pace as the day wore on and the sun dropped lower in the sky.

Wilson’s tracks in the snow were easy to follow, since nothing else was moving across that vast land. The coyotes, wolves, and deer and elk that were their prey had moved higher into the mountains with the coming of the first snows and would not be seen again until spring.

But once as the day was fading, Fletcher glanced at his back trail and thought he saw a flicker of gray vanish among the pines at the base of a saddleback rise.

Had an elk come down to graze lower on the slopes? Or was it a hunting wolf?

Fletcher rode on, dismissing the incident from his mind.

It had been an elk, nothing more.

The day shaded into night and Wilson’s tracks became harder to follow. But Fletcher rode south, reading the man’s mind.

Wilson would keep on riding through the night, not daring to stop, and Fletcher would follow.

The sky was clear but for a band of black cloud, and around it the night birds were pecking at the first stars. It had grown colder and Fletcher huddled in his mackinaw, thinking of hot coffee and blankets by the fire, both of them as out of reach as the stars above him.

A long wind, blowing chill from the north, teased the surrounding pines, bringing with it a few scattered flakes of snow.

Reluctantly, knowing it was his last, Fletcher stopped in the shelter of some trailside spruce and built a thin cigarette with the remaining few shreds of his tobacco.

He smoked gratefully until the cigarette burned to his fingers, then, with a pang of regret, dropped the butt into the snow.

Fletcher swung the mustang again to the south, his breath steaming around his mouth in the cold air, and rode deeper into the night.

At one point he lost his way and had to backtrack for an hour after he found that he’d ridden into a wide box canyon. He rode out of the canyon, then swung south again, and after a couple of miles he caught a glimpse of Wilson’s tracks. They led down a shallow rise and onto a wide, tree-rimmed, and snow-covered valley that was probably carpeted thick with sage and black grama grass in the spring.

Fletcher rode down the rise and reached the valley floor. He swung out of the saddle and cast around looking for tracks. After a few minutes he found them, angling across the valley toward a long line of spruce and cedar.

Was that a lantern bobbing among the trees?

Fletcher wiped the back of his hand across tired eyes and looked again. What he saw was just a pinpoint of light against the surrounding darkness, a light that flickered among the pines.

It was a campfire!

Fletcher shook his head. It couldn’t be Wilson. The man didn’t shape up to be that stupid . . . or confident.

Or did he?

Fletcher recalled Wilson’s arrogance when he first arrived at the pueblo. Did he think that no one would dare follow him into this wilderness?

It was possible, Fletcher decided. Unlikely, perhaps, but possible.

There was also the chance that he was seeing an Apache fire, and if that was the case, he’d be in a world of trouble if he rode closer.

Fletcher sat his horse, turning the probabilities over in his mind, then came to a decision.

Maybe it was Wilson and maybe it was not. He had to find out for sure.

Fletcher urged his horse forward, trusting to the dark to keep him hidden, angling across the valley to a point among the trees just to the north of the fire. When he reached the pines he swung out of the saddle and led the horse among the close-growing trunks. Thick brush lay underfoot, some of it covered by areas of snow, and here and there tufts of coarse, yellowish grass stubbornly shoved up from the ground.

Fletcher left the mustang—far from a picky eater—near a patch of this grass and slid his rifle out of the boot. He unbuckled his spurs and hung them on the saddle horn and on silent feet made his way through the trees toward the fire. It was rough going in the darkness, and thorns and brush tugged at him, slowing him down.

He crept closer to the campfire, now dying to an orange glow in the darkness.

Closer still.

Wilson sat with his back against a tree in a small clearing among the trees and he did not look up when Fletcher stepped into the circle of the firelight, his rifle pointing at the man’s chest.

“Get on your feet, Wilson,” he said, his anger flaring. “I intend to beat you to within an inch of your life, then turn you over to the army. That is, if you’re lucky.”

The man didn’t answer, but kept his stony gaze on the guttering fire.

Fletcher stepped closer and kicked the man’s feet and Wilson slid to his left, his head hitting the ground with a thud. Something small and white slid off his chest and landed beside him.

Wilson’s eyes were wide open, shocked and unbelieving, and he was dead.

The handle of a bowie knife stuck out from his back, its eight-inch blade buried deep between his shoulder blades.

Fletcher bent and picked up the white object that had fallen from Wilson’s chest. It was a sack of Bull Durham tobacco rolled up in a piece of paper, and on the paper Fletcher read the hastily scrawled, penciled words: I knowed you was out of tabbaka.

Fletcher looked around at the surrounding trees, his knuckles whitening on his Winchester. But there was only silence and the mocking rustle of the wind among the pine branches.

Someone had beaten him to Wilson. But how?

Then he recalled the box canyon that had cost him an hour. Whoever had killed Wilson had taken advantage of that lost time to get to the man first.

The other question running through Fletcher’s mind was, Who?

Old Charlie had told him maybe he had a guardian angel, but angels didn’t go around sticking bowie knives into people’s backs, even into the back of a lowlife like Andy Wilson.

Fletcher felt his skin crawl. This was not the work of an angel. Wilson had been murdered quietly and efficiently by someone who knew his business.

This was more the work of a devil, and Fletcher had a feeling that down the line the man would exact his price—and then there would be hell to pay.

Fletcher was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when it came to tobacco. He rolled a smoke, then lit his cigarette with a brand from the fire.

Wilson’s battered coffeepot had been neatly pushed to the side of the flames, where it would stay warm without boiling further, and the same thing had been done with several strips of thick bacon, each cooked and skewered on its own stick.

After he’d finished his cigarette, Fletcher poured coffee into a cup that was lying nearby and ate the bacon.

After he finished eating he looked around Wilson’s camp. The money sacks were gone but Fletcher’s stud was tethered back in the trees and seemed to be in good shape for the trail.

There were tracks in the patches of snow surrounding the camp, mostly of Wilson’s cavalry boots, but here and there were the smaller, neater footprints of a man wearing high-heeled boots, the heel underslung and the toe squared off in the current Texas fashion.

Fletcher poured himself another cup of coffee, smoked a cigarette, then, after a last, cold look at Wilson’s body, led his stud out of the trees, swung into the saddle, and rode back for the mustang.

He had to get back to the pueblo.

There was a burying to do.

* * *

As the night brightened into morning and even before the pueblo came in sight, Fletcher knew something was wrong.

Like a man can tell by a sudden shift in the atmosphere that a thunderstorm is due, he sensed the taut, strung-out tension in the air.

Fletcher spurred his stud, trailing Charlie’s mustang after him, and worked his way around the southern rim of the hill and rode out into the flat in front of the cliff.

He swung the stud toward the pueblo just as several people left the building and came toward him.

As he reined up the woman who wore her hair in a long braid stepped close to him, a fluttering piece of paper in her hand.

“Estelle is gone,” the woman said. “Two men came here just before sunup and took her. One of them left you this.”

She handed the paper to Fletcher. It was written in the same hand as the one left on Wilson’s body, and the spelling was just as bad.

Fletcher—We have the girl.

Kum and get hur

If you want hur

Fletcher read the note, then looked down at the woman. “What did these men look like?”

The woman shrugged. “What does any man look like? One was big and bearded, the other smaller and meaner and he did all the talking. They both wore big Texas sombreros like yours . . . and had guns like yours.” The woman hesitated, then said, “The men said you should head northwest toward Mazatzal Peak.”

Fletcher sat his saddle and thought this through.

The men who had taken Estelle badly wanted him to go after her. The question was why?

There was only one possible answer: Falcon Stark had sent these men to the basin to kill his daughter, and they wanted to draw Fletcher to them when the deed was done.

A quick bullet in the back; then they could tell General Crook that Buck Fletcher had murdered Estelle, that they’d caught him in the act and killed him after a desperate gun battle.

It was neat, efficient, and well planned. And it was typical of Senator Falcon Stark’s warped thinking.

Any man who would sacrifice his own daughter to preserve his reputation and keep alive his hopes for the presidency had to be insane.

It wasn’t power that had corrupted Stark—it was the wielding of that power, and with it the knowledge that he could crush anyone who stood in his way and if necessary move mountains to achieve his aims.

He had patiently set up Fletcher for the murder of a sheriff, worked behind the scenes to make sure he was convicted and sent to prison, then had him quickly released so Estelle’s murder could be blamed on a notorious gunfighter out for revenge.

There were loose ends to be tied up for sure, like taking care of the soldiers who had escorted Fletcher to Lexington. But those men were only pawns to be moved across Stark’s chessboard and sacrificed when the time came.

Such a man should never become president of the United States, and Fletcher, though he realized he was just another pawn, vowed he would do everything he could to stop Stark—even at the cost of his own life.

A man was talking to him, and Fletcher swung his mind back to the here and now.

“. . . so what do you want to do? Do you want us to help you bury the old man?”

Fletcher looked down at the man from the saddle. “No,” he said, “I’ll lay him to rest.” He nodded toward the highest pueblo. “Up there.”

“What? Are you crazy?” the man asked, his face shocked. “Man, that’s six hundred and fifty feet, and it’s almost straight up.”

“Charlie didn’t want to be buried in the ground,” Fletcher said, his voice even. “He wanted to lie where he could see the stars. Well, he can see the stars from up there.”

The man shook his head. “Mister, we’re all pulling out of here in an hour. There’s nothing to hold us here now except memories of death and lies.” He shrugged. “You’re on your own.”

Fletcher smiled, bringing a fleeting softness to his hard, tough, and unhandsome features. “Charlie would have it no other way.”

Fletcher unsaddled the horses and staked them out on the grass. He was kicking aside as much of the snow as he could when the man he’d spoken to earlier brought a bucket of grain, saying that was the last of it, and Fletcher divided it between the horses.

He had to go after Estelle, no matter what the risk. But that would have to wait. He would take care of Charlie first.

The old mountain man lay wrapped in a blanket in one of the empty rooms in the pueblo.

Fletcher lifted the blanket from Charlie’s face. The aging of death was on him, and its quiet. A strand of gray hair had fallen over Charlie’s forehead, and Fletcher gently pushed it back into place.

“Old-timer,” he whispered, “you and me have a journey to take.”

Fletcher was a big man, and strong, but even so Charlie Moore was a heavy burden.

The path to the uppermost pueblo, once climbed by the Salado Indians who had lived here hundreds of years in the past, wound up the steep canyon hillside through a thick forest of saguaro, cholla, palo verde, and ocotillo cactus.

Charlie lay across Fletcher’s shoulder, but the climb was long and hard, and Fletcher’s legs were soon scraped by hundreds of thorns. Despite the cold of the morning, sweat trickled down his back and stung his eyes.

Fletcher stopped and gently laid Charlie on a patch of brush clear of cactus and shrugged out of his mackinaw. He laid the coat on the path where he would find it on the way down and wiped sweat from his forehead.

“Old-timer,” he said, breathing heavily, “you really set me a task.”

He picked up Charlie again and climbed higher.

Three hundred and fifty feet above the canyon floor, Fletcher reached ruins set into an alcove in the cliff. He counted sixteen ground-floor rooms and three on a second story.

Fletcher carried Charlie into one of the rooms and set him on hard mud floor. He stepped to the doorway and saw the canyon spread out below him, the hill opposite covered in pine, snow whitening their branches.

He rolled a smoke and stood in the doorway, enjoying the stillness and rugged beauty of the morning. Out there somewhere was Estelle Stark, and the girl was in deadly danger. He would have to go after her and face the two men who had taken her.

It would not be easy, and before it was over he might be as dead as old Charlie lying cold and quiet behind him.

Fletcher finished his cigarette and ground out the butt under his heel.

“Hell,” he said aloud, “it’s just another hill to climb.”

He went back into the room and picked up Charlie again.

Now the slope rose steeper and the way harder.

Fletcher slipped and fell heavily, and Charlie’s body rolled away from him, tumbled among the cholla cactus, and came to rest at the base of a giant saguaro.

He walked back down the slope and sat beside Charlie, his breath coming in great, gulping gasps as the air around him thinned.

But there could be no stopping. Not yet.

Wearily, Fletcher again hoisted his burden onto his shoulder. He glanced up at the ruins two hundred feet above him, set into a shallow cavelike depression in the cliff.

The distance seemed impossible, but he set his chin and climbed, placing one foot in front of the other like a mechanical man, climbing . . . climbing higher . . . and higher . . .

His legs shaking from the ascent and the strain of Charlie’s great weight, Fletcher reached the upper ruins, a complex of thirty-two rectangular rooms, eight of them with a second story.

It was there Charlie would rest.

An ancient ladder still stood against the front wall of the pueblo, leading to one of the higher rooms. Fletcher put his foot on the first rung, testing its strength with his weight.

Old and dried-out though it was, the ladder held.

Fletcher shifted Charlie on his shoulder, holding the old man’s body with his left arm, and climbed, taking it slowly, one rung at a time.

When he reached the roof he laid Charlie down as gently as he could and covered the old man with the blanket. The rocky overhang above the pueblo cut off the view of the sky, but Fletcher moved the blanket away from Charlie’s face and turned the old man’s head to the north.

“The stars are that way, Charlie,” he said.

Fletcher was not a praying man, nor did he know any words to say. But he took off his hat and stood in silence with his head bowed.

After a while he replaced his hat, took one last look at Charlie, and said, “Hasta luego, old-timer.”

Then he went down the ladder and down the slope and back to the flat.