Doomsday Rider

Nineteen

Three days later, without incident, Fletcher and Estelle crossed the Salt and as night was falling caught sight of the distant outline of Fort Apache.

Estelle rode slumped and weary in the saddle, her huge belly pressed against the horn.

Throughout the trip, the girl had been uncomplaining and undemanding, enduring much.

Born to great wealth and privilege, she had nonetheless shared Fletcher’s overcooked bacon and muddy coffee without comment and had quietly tolerated his cigarette smoke, a small thing that had enormously raised her esteem in his eyes.

Now, as they made out the yellow glitter of the fort’s oil lamps, Estelle swayed, her hand straying to her head, and Fletcher heard her whisper, “Buck . . . I . . . I don’t feel very well.”

Alarmed, Fletcher kneed his horse next to the girl’s roan and she almost fell into his arms. Fletcher lifted her onto his own saddle, and when he glanced at her horse he saw blood trickling down the stirrup leathers.

Estelle’s saddle was slick with blood, and when he touched the back of her dress his hand came away wet and red.

Fear spiking at him, not for himself but for the girl, he spurred his stud toward the fort. Soldiers were running toward him and he yelled, “Get the post doctor!”

Fletcher reined up near Crook’s headquarters as a man with gray hair walked quickly in his direction, pulling his suspenders up over his shoulders. The man had yellow cavalry stripes on his pants and carried a small black bag.

“Doctor?” Fletcher asked.

The man nodded. “Captain Milton, at your service.”

Fletcher slid Estelle from the saddle into the doctor’s arms. “This woman is very sick,” he said.

Captain Milton, helped by a couple of soldiers, carried Estelle toward a cabin across the parade ground. Soon they were joined by several women who crowded around the girl, one plump, motherly-looking woman holding Estelle’s hand as she walked beside her.

Fletcher sat his horse, watching them go, then reached into his shirt for the makings.

A door banged open to his left and Fletcher turned and saw Crook stomping toward him, his shirttails flying. “What in tarnation is all the fuss about?” he yelled.

The general stopped and looked up belligerently at Fletcher. Then a dawning recognition flared in his eyes.

“Officer of the guard!” Crook bellowed without turning his head. “Arrest that man!”

* * *

The hours hung heavy on Buck Fletcher.

He sat on the cot in the same cabin where he’d been held before. Only this time the guard was doubled and there would be no Charlie Moore at the window.

He’d been here for three days and already it felt like a lifetime.

Fletcher rose and looked up at the sky though the barred window. It had snowed earlier, but now the clouds had cleared and he could tell by the light that somewhere the sun was shining.

His only contact with the outside world was with the corporal who brought him his meals. But the man was sullen and uncommunicative and handed Fletcher his tin plate and cup without comment, taking them away later in the same silent manner.

Fletcher had asked the corporal for news of Estelle, but the soldier had ignored him.

Earlier that morning he’d bribed one of the privates who stood guard at the door to bring him tobacco from the sutler, and now he sat back on the cot again and began to build a smoke.

He rolled the cigarette slowly and carefully, the way of a man who knows he has all the time in the world.

Fletcher had smoked one cigarette and was considering building another, when the door slammed open and two soldiers, bayonets fixed, stepped inside and then made way for a young lieutenant.

“General Crook’s compliments, and could he please see you in his office,” the officer said.

Fletcher smiled at the hidebound military mentality. He’d once been a major in the United States Army, and because of that, despite being a prisoner, he was entitled to at least this much courtesy.

“I would be honored to see the general,” Fletcher said, rising to his feet.

The lieutenant led the way across the parade ground, Fletcher boxed in by the four-man guard detail.

Crook sat behind his desk, wearing his canvas suit, and he waved Fletcher into a chair. This time there was no gun in evidence.

“How is Estelle?” Fletcher asked, the question that was uppermost in his mind.

The general shook his head. “Bad news, I’m afraid. She lost the baby. It would have been a boy, I’m told.”

“And Estelle?”

“She’s recovering. At least her body is. I’m not so sure about her mind.”

Crook sat in silence for a few moments, studying Fletcher, his fingernails tapping a drumbeat on the desk. He seemed to make up his mind about something and said, “She’s been making some very serious accusations, very serious accusations indeed.”

Fletcher nodded. “About Falcon Stark, you mean?”

“Yes, about her father, a highly respected senator.”

“What she told you is true. I know, because I was a part of it.”

“The whole story seems highly unlikely. Why would a man go to all that trouble to kill his errant daughter?”

“Because he’s Falcon Stark. He doesn’t think like normal people, at least not like you, General, or me.”

“Where’s your proof, Fletcher?”

“What proof I had, a man named Wes Slaughter, is lying out there dead in the snow.”

“Ah, yes, I know; Estelle told me that also.”

Crook glanced out the window where a cavalry troop was trotting past, Indian scouts to the fore, then the fluttering red and white guidons.

He turned to Fletcher again and said, “She plans to travel to Lexington, you know. She says she wants to confront her father in front of witnesses and expose him.” Crook shrugged. “A wild enough scheme, but, wilder still, she wants you to go with her.”

“I’m a prisoner here,” Fletcher said. “And that’s surely stating the obvious.”

Crook leaned over and reached inside a drawer on his desk.

“General,” Fletcher said, his voice low and hard, “I’d take it kindly if you don’t come up with a gun. You did that before and I didn’t care for it then. I’d care for it even less now.”

But Crook ignored Fletcher, and when his hand reappeared it was holding a small scrap of paper. “This arrived in a bunch of dispatches from Washington this morning. Most of them I ignore, since they’re from deskbound warriors who know nothing about fighting Apaches. However, this one caught my eye. It’s a routine message, sent out to army posts all over the country, and the only reason I read it was that the name Lt. Elisha Simpson jumped out at me.”

“That’s the young officer who escorted me to Lexington,” Fletcher said.

“You’d better read it,” Crook said.

Fletcher took the paper and read. It was short and couched in cold, formal military language.

On December 31, a six-man woodcutting detail of the Fourteenth Infantry was engaged by a renegade band of Sioux north of Fort Lyon in the Wyoming territory. The action occurred on the southern bend of Bear Trap Creek. Killed were Lt. Elisha Simpson, son of Col. William Simpson, Corp. James Pearson, and Privates John Gallagher, Jacob Hayden, Noble Engel, and Richard Cribbs.

Fletcher read the dispatch, read it again, then dropped it on the desk.

“I hardly think you can blame Senator Stark for that,” Crook said, his right eyebrow crawling up his forehead.

“Perhaps not,” Fletcher said. “But it makes me wonder if Lieutenant Simpson volunteered for the woodcutting detail. Or was he ordered out there on that creek with just five men? Stark’s tentacles spread wide.”

Crook shrugged. “I do not care to comment on that hypothesis. Fletcher, I have nine columns of cavalry in the field, and my business is fighting Apaches. I can’t devote time to this matter, nor can I bring myself to fully believe what Estelle Stark has told me. Yet I must admit her words have the ring of sincerity about them and they’ve sown a seed of doubt about Senator Stark in my mind.”

The general steepled his fingers. “I have given this some thought and I’ve prayed for guidance. As a result, I’ve decided to release you as of this moment. I just hope to God I’m doing the right thing.”

“You won’t regret it, General,” Fletcher said. “An old Apache told me I’d face evil in the Tonto Basin, and I did. But I think the greater evil is not here—it’s in Lexington.”

“Then I hope to God you’re right too,” Crook said.

* * *

Fletcher asked a soldier the way to Estelle’s cabin, and the man pointed out a low log building to the west of the parade ground.

“She’s been living with the doc’s wife,” he said.

Fletcher crossed to the cabin and rapped on the door. The woman he’d seen take Estelle’s hand opened the door and smiled. “Recognized you right off. You must be Buck Fletcher. Estelle’s been asking for you.”

The woman looked past Fletcher’s shoulder, as though expecting to see something, and he smiled. “There’s no guard. I’ve been released.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that for your sake,” the woman said.

She led Fletcher into a bedroom off the parlor, and to his surprise Estelle herself answered his tap on the door. She was fully dressed in borrowed gingham a size too small for her, but she seemed rested and pretty, and her figure seemed almost back to normal.

Fletcher stood with his hat in his hands, curling the brim, a habit of his. Finally the words came to him. “I’m sorry about the baby,” he said. “I took it hard.”

Estelle raised her chin, her eyes angry. “My father killed my son, just as surely as though he’d taken a knife and plunged it into my belly.”

“Slaughter pushed you mighty fast and far,” Fletcher said. “That was no ride for a pregnant lady.”

“I want you to go to Lexington with me, Buck. I want to confront my father in front of witnesses and get him to confess what he’s done.”

“From what I’ve seen of the senator, that’s a tall order,” Fletcher said. “He doesn’t seem the type to break down and ‘fess up to his crimes.”

“Then if that fails, I’ll go to the newspapers. He told you he wanted no scandals; well, he’s going to get plenty. When I’m finished with him and I’m through muddying the waters, he’ll never be nominated for president.”

Fletcher was silent for a few moments, then said, “General Crook told me you want me to go to Lexington with you.”

“I’d like that, Buck. I’d like that very much. I want to clear your name too, you know.”

“It’s a long trip, Estelle. Are you sure you’re up to it?”

“I have to be,” the girl said. “For my murdered son’s sake.” She hesitated and rubbed away a tear falling on her cheek. “And for the sake of the Chosen One, his father.”

Fletcher wanted to tell her that the Chosen One was at best delusional and at worst completely insane and that he’d caused the deaths of a lot of equally deluded people.

But he said none of these things.

“I have money,” he said, biting back the bitter comments he so badly wanted to make, “enough to get us and our horses to Lexington and enough”—he smiled—“to buy you some clothes at the sutler’s store.”

Estelle nodded. “Thank you. But after I buy the things I need I want to leave here. I mean today.”

Fletcher nodded. “So do I.”

An hour later, his guns belatedly and reluctantly returned to him by Crook’s adjutant, Fletcher rode out of Fort Apache, Estelle next to him wearing a new split riding skirt of canvas and a wool mackinaw.

It was snowing.