Doomsday Rider

Twenty-six

The way across the grass was still clearly marked by the remaining wagons.

It was snowing, but not yet hard enough to cover the tracks, though white showed on the blades of the buffalo grass, and a shifting haze that looked like a tattered lace curtain blowing in the wind shrouded the distance.

It was an hour before noon, but the moody day had gathered a depressing gloom around itself, made gloomier still by heavy, lowering clouds, their black billows touched here and there with streaks of rust. The flat, featureless land seemed empty of life, and there was no clear dividing line between earth and sky, both merging into a single, drab backdrop of gray and white.

A man could lose himself in this land. He would no longer believe that he knew north from south, east from west, and here he would die, to be buried by the wind and snow, uncaring undertakers for a passing that would go unmourned and unnoticed but for the ravenous coyotes, unwelcome guests at his funeral feast.

But somewhere ahead were the wagons, and Buck Fletcher knew his showdown with Falcon Stark was very close.

Would Grant listen to Estelle? Would he care? It was an uncertain thing. Falcon Stark was a smooth, polished, and practiced talker, and his honeyed words could prevail over any accusation his daughter made.

And what of himself? What of Buck Fletcher? If Estelle failed to convince the president, all that might be left to him would be to shoot his way out of there and spend what little remained of his life as a hunted fugitive.

And, inevitably, that thought brought Fletcher to Wild Bill Hickok.

In this situation Bill was an unknown quantity. High-strung, unpredictable, and lightning-fast on the draw, he might be the deciding vote. And, like he always did, Hickok would make his mark on the ballot paper with his guns.

Fletcher told himself he was riding with Estelle Stark into more trouble than a man could reasonably be expected to handle. The outcome was uncertain, and perhaps even now his life was measured, not in years or months or days, but in hours.

Beside him Estelle rode with her head high, eager for what was to come, her need for vengeance driving her.

Fletcher smiled at the girl. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I’ll make it,” Estelle said. “He’s very close now, isn’t he, Buck?”

The big man nodded. “Those wagon tracks are fresh and so are the horse droppings. I’d say we’re real close.”

They were—close enough to hear a sudden burst of gunfire.

From where Fletcher and Estelle sat their horses, the plain rose away from them in a gentle rise for about two hundred yards. Too shallow to be called a hill, the slope was yet high enough to conceal what lay beyond—and the gunfire was coming from that direction.

Fletcher swung out of the saddle and silently indicated to Estelle that she should stay where she was.

He slid his Winchester from the boot and, crouching low, made his way up the slope. Before he reached the crest, he dropped to all fours and crawled to where he could look over the rise at what lay below.

As it did on Fletcher’s side, the slope fell away gradually for several hundred yards, but here it ended at the bend of a creek, where there was a thick stand of willow and cottonwood.

Stark’s wagons, five of them, had been drawn into a rough semicircle around the trees, the rear wheels of each of the outer wagons resting on the creekbank.

Fletcher saw at once that the site had been well chosen for its defensibility, perhaps by Grant himself. The trees gave cover from anyone attempting to attack from the other side of the creek, and the wagon mule teams and riding horses had been taken inside the wagon circle.

Mounted Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, about thirty of them, had drawn out of rifle range and were milling around, brandishing their guns, yelling at the men behind the wagons as they worked themselves up to launch another attack.

If no one had yet been hit, Fletcher calculated there were at least four fighting men holding the wagon circle, Hickok, Stark, Grant, and presumably the Russian count, who would have had military training. There were servants with them, and muleskinners, but he had no way of knowing how many of them could use a gun.

When the attack came, Fletcher could add his fire from the crest of the rise, but up here, out in the open with no cover, he’d quickly be ridden down and killed.

He brushed snow from his mustache, thinking it through, then made up his mind. He would have to get inside the wagon circle and add his guns to the defense.

A dead Falcon Stark would be of no use to him or Estelle.

Fletcher backed down the slope, then rose to his feet and caught the reins of his horse. “Get ready,” he told the girl, his voice brusque. “The wagons are under attack and we’re going to join them.”

Estelle did not question Fletcher’s decision. The gunsmoke-streaked air was full of trouble, and her father must remain alive, at least long enough for her to confront him. Wordlessly she swung her horse around, obediently following Fletcher’s beckoning hand, and reined up on his right.

The snow had stopped, at least for now, but the temperature had dropped, and Fletcher’s breath hung in the air like mist as he talked.

“When we go charging down that slope, stay here, on my right side,” he said. “That way I’ll be between you and the fire from the Indians.” He studied the girl’s face closely for a couple of moments. “Think you can do this?”

Estelle nodded. “The Lord is my buckler: He will protect me.”

Fletcher nodded. “Maybe so, but He’s not the one getting shot at.” He grinned. “Let’s do it.”

He spurred his horse and, startled, the big stud galloped up the rise, Estelle’s mount keeping pace. They crested the slope and charged toward the wagons. Fletcher threw his Winchester to his shoulder, cranked the lever, and fired into the Indians, who were still crowded close together. He saw a warrior fall, then fired again and again.

The Indians had been taken by surprise. But now they yelled their war whoops and came on Fletcher at a run. He and Estelle were still a hundred yards from the wagons.

Fletcher slowed his pace, trying to match the speed of the girl’s horse, keeping his body between her and the Indians. He fired at a warrior in a red blanket coat riding a spotted pony and the man threw up his arms and toppled backward off his mount. A bullet tugged at Fletcher’s sleeve and he heard another split the air just inches above his head.

Fifty yards to the wagons . . .

The warriors, all of them by their braids Sioux and Cheyenne, were closing the distance, coming at Fletcher and Estelle hard.

Ahead Fletcher saw two men step out from the wagon circle. One, judging by his long hair and buckskins, was Wild Bill, the other a bearded teamster who dragged a wounded leg behind him.

Both men opened up with rifles and an Indian fell, then another. The teamster took a bullet in the chest and dropped and Hickok moved to cover him, standing straddle-legged over the man’s prostrate form as he calmly cranked and fired his Winchester.

Twenty-five yards . . .

Puffs of powder smoke showed between the wagons as the defenders laid down a supporting fire.

A warrior, two eagle feathers slanting behind his head, charged directly at Fletcher, his rifle hammering. Fletcher cranked his Winchester and fired directly at the man’s chest, holding the rifle in one hand like a pistol.

Hit hard, the Indian bent over, his pony slowing to a walk, and then Fletcher was beyond him.

A few yards more . . .

Someone, stocky and bearded, a cigar clenched in his teeth, opened a space in the defensive circle, moving boxes off a wagon tree. Fletcher reined up and motioned Estelle forward. The girl jumped her horse into the space and Fletcher followed. He winced as a bullet burned across the thick muscles of his right shoulder as he jumped off his horse. A quick glance told him it was not a serious wound, and he ran to help the bearded man replace the boxes.

“Need some help, General?” Fletcher asked.

Grant nodded, smiling around his cigar. “I guess I do, but there’s no need to call me General. I’m just plain Mr. President now, Major Fletcher.”

That last surprised Fletcher. Grant remembered him!

The president, a perceptive man, read the astonishment on Fletcher’s face and said, “When I pin a medal on a man, especially one of my most daring officers of horse artillery, I remember his name.”

Grant’s brow wrinkled as he started to form a question, but as it was smashed by a bullet, wood splintered from the rim of the wagon near the president’s face and all conversation ceased.

The Indians were attacking again.

Their charge was not pressed with determination, and the Sioux and Cheyenne drew off and began to argue loudly among themselves. This attack was proving costly and they’d already lost almost a third of their strength. Yet the prize was great: horses, mules, guns, and supplies, to say nothing of the young women within the wagon circle.

Fletcher was in no doubt they’d charge again.

The snow that had slacked off for the past half hour was back again, the white flakes tossing around in a rising wind. As he stood at the wagon, Fletcher got a chance to look around him.

Wild Bill stood to his right and beyond him a slender young man who would be Count Vorishilov. The Russian was dressed in a blue uniform, red at his cuffs and collar tabs, and he held a large-caliber hunting rifle, the stock heavily inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver.

To Fletcher’s left a teamster stood, a Sharps at the ready, looking intently at the milling Indians, and beyond him Grant and a man Fletcher didn’t know, probably the other senator, judging by his gray hair and the way he and the president talked with easy informality.

At the other end of the circle was Falcon Stark. The man was looking hard at Fletcher, his cold eyes bright with a strange mix of anger, hate, and malice. And something else—something Fletcher recognized as the first hatching of madness.

There was no doubt Stark knew why he and Estelle were there, and the man was ready for them, obviously eager to finally bring it all to an end.

Estelle stood with an elegant woman in a blue velvet riding habit who could only be the countess, and with them were a couple of young blond girls with high Slavic cheekbones, dressed in the black and white of maids.

A flunky in a butler’s suit was propped against a wagon wheel, his face ashen, an arrow sticking out of his left shoulder. Several other men, cooks and servants, stiffened by a single bearded teamster who abused them with profane relish, were on uneasy guard among the trees, looking scared and awkward as they clutched unfamiliar rifles to their chests.

After a measuring glance at the Indians, Hickok left his position and strolled over to Fletcher, moving relaxed, easy, and loose-limbed the way he always did. The gunfighter wore two Navy Colts, butt forward in carved black holsters, and his eyes were guarded and wary.

“A fair piece off your home ground, ain’t you, Buck?” Hickok asked. “Last I heard you was riding with John Wesley and them wild ones down in Texas a ways.”

“That was a spell back, Bill,” Fletcher said, keeping his voice even, sensing the danger in Hickok. There was no telling how this man would react in any given situation. But if he did decide to act, he was almighty sudden, certain, and deadly.

“All right,” Bill said, “enough of being sociable. I’ll put it to you as a direct question—What are you doing here?”

A sudden anger flared in Fletcher, and for a moment he thought about telling Hickok to go to hell. But that would have only created another problem and solved none of the others.

Taking a deep breath, calming himself down, Fletcher nodded in the direction of Estelle. “That’s Senator Stark’s daughter. I brought her here”—he hesitated, groping for the right words, then managed only—“to meet her father.”

Hickok wasn’t buying it.

“Buck,” he said, “me and you go way back, a lot of years, too many maybe. A man trained to the gun like you doesn’t track across a wilderness, then ride into a wagon circle under Indian attack, unless he’s on the prod and there’s something he means to do.”

Fletcher opened his mouth to speak, but Hickok’s raised hand silenced him.

“I don’t want to hear it, Buck. Know only this: I’m responsible for the president and the others on this expedition, and if something were to happen to any of them, I’d take it mighty hard and downright personal.”

Fletcher nodded. “You’ve said your piece, Bill, and I don’t hold anything against you for that. But there’s a reckoning coming and I guess we’ll all have to choose sides.”

“I just told you the side I’ll be on,” Hickok said. “It pains me considerable to say this because I like you, Buck. But if I have to, I swear to God, I’ll gun you like I’d gun any other man.”

“So be it, Bill. A man should do what he thinks is right.”

“Just so you know.”

Hickok, wide-shouldered and narrow in the hips, turned on his heel and strolled back to his position behind the wagons, and Fletcher watched him go.

If it came right down to it, was he faster than Hickok? It was not something he cared to prove, but it might happen in the very near future, and right now it was a worrisome thing.

Fletcher turned and saw Falcon Stark staring at him. The man had heard every word that had passed between him and Wild Bill, and there was a look of sneering triumph on his face.

Stark had seen his daughter ride in, and he must be aware that the showdown was coming. He would also know that when it happened he could appeal to Hickok for protection against Buck Fletcher, a wanted murderer and dangerous gunman. Wild Bill’s lightning-fast Navy Colts stood ready to tilt the scales in his favor.

But Fletcher wouldn’t let it go, the man’s smug grin making sudden anger boil up in him as it had with Hickok.

“One way or another, Stark,” he called out to the senator, “it will all end here, but you won’t walk away from it, damn you!”

Fletcher was aware that Grant and the senator with him were looking at him, puzzled and shocked by his outburst. Even Count Vorishilov snapped his head around, trying to figure out the significance of what he had just heard.

Grant opened his mouth to speak, but a bullet thudded into the wagon near Fletcher’s head. The Indians were attacking and the time for talk was over—at least for now.

The Sioux and Cheyenne warriors had learned from their mistake.

This was no reckless, mounted charge. The warriors were on foot, advancing in a loose skirmish line, disappearing every now and then as they took advantage of every scrap of cover they could find.

Fletcher heard the boom of the count’s heavy rifle and the sharper crack of Winchesters. He aimed at an Indian darting closer to the wagon circle and fired twice, missing each time, his aim thrown off by the gusting wind and swirling snow.

Count Vorishilov’s rifle boomed again, and the warrior threw up his arms and went down. Then Hickok’s rifle hammered, Wild Bill cranking and firing so fast his right hand working the lever was a blur of motion.

The attack was broken up and ended as quickly as it had begun, the Indians drawing off again out of range.

At least two warriors lay dead in the snow, this fight costing the Sioux and Cheyenne war party a higher price than they ever imagined.

Throughout the remainder of the gray afternoon, the Indians were content to snipe at the wagons from a distance.

For the most part, their fire was ineffective, but just before nightfall one of the cooks manning the defenses among the trees was burned across the neck by a stray bullet. The man slapped a hand to his wound and squealed like a piglet caught under a gate until the teamster beside him cursed him for being “a damned boogered pilgrim” and scowled him into a whimpering silence.

As day shaded into night, the immediate danger of an all-out attack seemed to be over. The Indians continued to fire into the wagon circle, but their shots were growing fewer and even more wildly inaccurate because of the darkness and thickening snow.

Hickok strolled around the wagons and ordered that no fires should be lit and that the defenders should stand by their arms at their positions.

One danger had lessened for now, but for Fletcher another had taken its place. He fixed Stark’s position. The man stood at his post between two wagons, kneeling behind a pile of boxes and flour sacks. He wasn’t looking in Fletcher’s direction, all his attention seemingly fixed on the surrounding darkness.

But Fletcher knew Stark was capable of putting a bullet into his back, and it could be explained away later as a lucky shot from an Indian marksman.

Earlier Stark had been shrewd enough to realize that they needed every rifle for the defense of the wagons, but now that threat had passed, Fletcher was fair game.

The gunfighter loosened his Colts in their holsters, his eyes on Stark. If the man made any sudden move with his rifle he’d be ready . . . and to hell with Hickok.

Shortly before midnight the women, including the countess and her maids, delivered food to the defenders. Estelle brought Fletcher a thick beef sandwich and a bottle of Bass Ale, Wild Bill Hickok’s favorite brew.

The girl looked pale and drawn, the strain of the past days beginning to tell on her.

“Stay close to the other women, Estelle,” Fletcher whispered, his gaze on Falcon Stark. “There are a lot of stray bullets flying around.”

The girl grabbed at his meaning and nodded. “I caught him looking at me, Buck. I saw only hate in his eyes. He looked like a . . . a . . . demon.”

Fletcher bit into his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, then said, “If you can’t convince Grant, I don’t think either of us will get out of here alive. I believe your father will manufacture an incident and Bill Hickok will make his play. Maybe the teamsters will join him, and that will make for some long odds.”

Fletcher’s face was bleak. “Estelle, I don’t know if I can shade Hickok, and I sure as hell don’t care to try unless I’m really put to it.”

Estelle’s face was stiff, her eyes accusing. “Do you want me to back off, forget the whole thing?”

“I don’t. We’ve come this far and we might as well let the cards fall where they may.” Fletcher forced a smile. “Hell, we’ve been in tighter spots than this and come through.”

“No, we haven’t,” Estelle said.

Head held high, she turned on her heel and walked back to the countess and her maids.