Doomsday Rider

Two

Stark’s house lay on the outskirts of Lexington and the carriage clattered through streets almost empty of people, the cold and sleet driving everyone indoors.

Through a gap in the carriage curtains, Fletcher caught fleeting glimpses of candlelit, stately antebellum mansions that had somehow survived the ravages of war, including the battle that had been fought here in 1861.

The senator’s home was a sprawling, redbrick building with a wood front porch, and when Stark entered, a high-nosed butler in a liveried uniform helped him remove his coat and hat. The man took in Fletcher’s prison garb at a glance and sniffed disdainfully as he ushered him and Stark into a cozy drawing room where a log burned cheerfully in the fireplace.

Slaughter followed close behind Fletcher. The gunman had removed his mackinaw, and his Colt in its well-worn cross-draw holster was now in full view. Despite his reputation as a sure-thing hired gun who preferred to do his killing at a distance, Fletcher knew Slaughter was no bargain. The Texas gunman had faced his share of belted men in straight-up shooting scrapes, most recently in Wyoming, where he’d outdrawn and killed Noble Fagan, a gunfighter of reputation with six notches on the handle of his Colt.

That Slaughter had backed down from Fletcher in Cheyenne proved only that the man was a careful, hard-nosed professional. He would walk away from a fight if he didn’t like the odds, knowing that there would be other, more favorable days when he could even the score, preferably with a rifle shot in the back from ambush.

Slaughter was a skinny, lantern-jawed man, his full yellow mustache sweeping over a thin, hard mouth. His eyes were gray and ice cold and they spiked into Fletcher with hostility and malice as Stark waved the gunfighter into a leather wing chair by the fire.

“Are you hungry, Fletcher?” Stark asked. There was no kindliness or concern in the man’s voice. He asked that question as he would of a stray dog.

“I’m missing my last three meals, and the three before that were army biscuit and jerky and before that prison slop,” Fletcher replied. “You could say I’m hungry.”

Stark tugged on a sash beside the fireplace, and while the three men waited in silence, Fletcher had a chance to study the senator.

He looked to be about fifty years old and stood a good four inches over Fletcher’s own six feet, but he probably weighed about the same, no more than one hundred and eighty pounds.

His predatory, aristocratic face revealed a careless, self-centered arrogance that could easily harden into cruelty, and his blue eyes were harsh, judgmental, and intolerant. He was clean shaven at a time when most men went bearded or sported the dragoon mustache then in fashion, and his iron-gray hair was cropped close to his head.

Stark stood upright, his back straight, and he looked like a soldier, though Fletcher guessed that he’d never served in uniform. His kind of stiff-necked, imperious pride was not the sort to bow to authority, especially the mindless, military kind.

There was a moneyed air about Falcon Stark, and it was not new money. The man looked like he’d been born to a life of wealth, privilege, and power and had greatly increased all three since.

He was a respected United States senator, a close confidant of President Grant and influential enough to get Fletcher sprung from the Wyoming Territorial Prison, a place where only the dead left before their sentence was complete. But what could such a man want in return?

The question perplexed Fletcher and he had no answer for it, not even an educated guess.

The butler bowed his way into the room and Stark waved a careless hand toward Fletcher. “Tell Cook to bring this man something. She needn’t make a special effort; anything will do. Perhaps some cold beef.”

The butler nodded again. “Yes, sir.”

He gave Fletcher another of his disdainful looks and left, closing the door with practiced quietness behind him.

Stark sat in a chair opposite Fletcher and opened a silver box on the small table beside him. He selected a cigar, bit off the end, and spat it into the fire. Carefully, taking his time, he lit the cigar from the match Slaughter had hurried to hold for him.

The senator eased back in his chair and looked at Fletcher through a cloud of fragrant blue smoke. After a few moments he held up the cigar and studied it closely, not looking at Fletcher as he spoke.

“Mr. Fletcher,” he said, “you are scum.”

Slaughter giggled, and Fletcher, who’d been trying to ride out the tobacco hunger in him as Stark smoked, felt anger flare in him as the senator continued: “Oh, I’m not singling you out for that criticism. I’m talking about you and all your kind, hired gunfighters, men who will sell their services to the highest bidder.”

Fletcher jerked his chin toward the grinning Slaughter. “What about him, your associate? Last I heard, he advertised that he’d shoot any man in the back or cut him in half with a shotgun for a hundred dollars.”

Stark puffed on his cigar. He was relaxed, his voice unchanging. “Mr. Slaughter has reformed. He now works only for me, and I do assure you, I don’t want him to shoot anyone in the back.”

“Stark,” Fletcher said, “what do you want from me?”

“Senator. I told you that already.”

Stark waited for a few moments, then said, “Many of my business interests lie along the Missouri and Mississippi. That is why I maintain this house here in Lexington. The paddle steamer that brought you here is mine, and several others just like her. I also like to come here now and again to get away from the cares of Washington.”

“What do you want from me?” Fletcher asked again, his dislike for this man making it hard for him to be civil.

If Stark noticed he didn’t let it show. “President Grant has just begun his second term, which will be completed in 1877. I plan to step into his shoes and become the next president of the United States. I’ve been assured I will have the backing of both Grant and the Republican party.”

Stark waved his cigar, tracing a circle of blue smoke. “I plan to run on a law and order platform, pledging to rid the nation, especially the West, of both Indian savages and the lawless element.” He paused and smiled, a strained grimace that never reached his eyes. “Take men like you, Fletcher. I plan to hang your kind when I can, imprison them for life in the deepest, darkest dungeons when I can’t.”

“Is that why you brought me here, to tell me this?” Fletcher asked.

The senator shook his head. “No, that’s not the reason. Let’s just say, strange as it may seem, I suddenly find myself in need a man of your particular talents, a tough man who steps lightly and often over the line separating the lawful from the lawless.

“I’m told you’re a man who won’t back up for anybody, that fear doesn’t even enter your thinking. You are also said to be the best with a gun west of the Mississippi.”

“After me.” Slaughter grinned.

“Perhaps so, Mr. Slaughter, but I wouldn’t want to put the matter to the test,” Stark said. “Besides, you are now a respectable businessman, remember?” He looked up as someone knocked on the door. “Ah, here is Mattie with your food.” Then louder: “Enter!”

A plump, round-faced black woman stepped into the room, bearing a loaded tray.

She smiled at Fletcher and laid the tray on his lap. “You don’t look like you’ve been eating too reg’lar,” she said. “I declare, you’re as skinny as a bed slat.”

“Prison food doesn’t put fat on a man.” Fletcher smiled.

“Well,” Mattie said, “this here will put meat on them poor bones. I brung you a thick roast beef sandwich, coffee, and a big wedge of my apple and raisin pie. You eat hearty now, you hear?”

“I surely plan to.” Fletcher grinned. “And a special thanks for the pie.”

“That will do now, Mattie,” Stark said. “Leave us.”

The woman gave Fletcher a last, warm smile and left the room.

Fletcher ate slowly, enjoying the taste of his food, as only a very hungry man will do.

Stark watched him eat for a while, then asked, “Ah, where were we?”

Fletcher swallowed and replied: “You were telling me why you want the help of the very kind of man you plan to hang.”

“Ah, yes, that.” Stark nodded. He sighed deep and long, then said, “As I told you, I plan to run for president, and for that reason I can’t let the slightest breath of scandal taint my reputation. In fact, that’s why I had you brought here and not to Washington.” He hesitated, then said, “And that brings me to my daughter.”

Fletcher finished his sandwich, which was good, and started in on the pie. He swallowed, laid his fork on the plate, and asked, “Your daughter?”

Stark crushed the stub of his cigar into the ashtray beside him. “I’m a widower, Fletcher. My dear wife died five years ago and I have but one child, my daughter, Estelle. She’s almost eighteen and I plan to marry her well.”

“Oh, I get it now. You want me to marry her,” Fletcher said, smiling.

“Yes, very amusing, I’m sure,” Stark returned. “No, I want you to go to the Arizona Territory, the Tonto Basin country to be exact, and bring her home to me. Here, to Lexington.”

That made Fletcher sit up. “The Tonto Basin? Isn’t George Crook fighting a full-scale Apache war down there?”

Stark nodded. “He is, and that’s why I need a man with your gunfighting and tracking skills. Finding Estelle and getting her out of Arizona won’t be easy. I first engaged the Pinkertons, but, efficient as they were, I came to believe that this was more in your line of work.”

“Why is she in Arizona?” Fletcher asked, interested despite the alarm bells ringing in his head.

Stark exchanged a quick glance with Slaughter, then replied, “About a year ago, Estelle met a man in Washington. I never knew real his name, but he called himself the Chosen One.”

“Looks like Jesus in one of them pictures you see in the Bible.” Slaughter grinned.

“That will do, Mr. Slaughter,” Stark chided. He turned to Fletcher. “Estelle is a child, an impressionable child. She’s had a sheltered life and maybe that’s why she fell for this man’s story hook, line, and sinker. She up and ran away with him and, from what I was told by the Pinkertons, is now with him in the Tonto Basin.” He sighed. “She’s said to be helping that lunatic and his followers convert the Apaches. Estelle calls it fulfilling her mission from God or some such nonsense.”

Fletcher tried something then.

He moved in his chair, just a quick turn of the shoulders. But Slaughter caught it instantly and his Colt, which he’d held seemingly carelessly across his knees, came up fast, the muzzle pointing directly at Fletcher’s head.

Fletcher eased back in the chair, smiling slightly. There could be no escape from this house, at least not at the moment, with Slaughter watching him like a hungry hawk. If he tried to rise, the gunman would put three or four bullets into him before he could even get to his feet.

“What is the Chosen One’s story?” Fletcher asked Stark, accepting that he was pinned to his chair like a butterfly pinned to a card.

The senator had seen Fletcher’s movement, recognized it for what it was, but seemed to dismiss it as a thing of no consequence, at least for the moment.

“The Chosen One, as only he calls himself, is the leader of a doomsday cult,” Stark replied, his voice even. “He believes the world will end in a fiery holocaust nineteen hundred years after the death of the Savior, on March twenty-three, 1900, to be exact.”

Stark leaned forward in his chair. “The Chosen One believes, or says he believes, that he was appointed by God to convert the Apache savages to Christianity before the world ends.”

Fletcher smiled, his fingers straying from force of habit to the pocket of his rough canvas shirt. Disappointed, he dropped his hand and said, “I’d say he’s got his work cut out for him. The Apaches don’t take kindly to preachers, at least the ones I’ve known.”

Slaughter, a perceptive man, had seen Fletcher’s hand move to his shirt pocket. Like many Texans, Slaughter had picked up the cigarette smoking habit from Mexican vaqueros and, despite his intense dislike of Fletcher, he had the smoker’s natural empathy for another in dire need of tobacco.

“Here,” he said, tossing paper and tobacco sack to Fletcher.

Fletcher built a smoke and Slaughter threw him matches. The gunfighter drew deeply and gratefully, and said, “First one in many a week.”

“Man shouldn’t be without tobacco,” Slaughter said. “Might put him on edge and maybe make him try something he could regret.”

“A man might at that,” Fletcher agreed. He turned to Stark. “If I find your daughter and get her out of Arizona, and that’s a big if, what’s in it for me?”

“For you?” Stark asked, his right eyebrow rising in surprise. “Why, nothing except a few more weeks of freedom before you continue your sentence.”

Fletcher smoked in silence for a while, studying Stark, trying to determine whether the man really meant what he’d just said. He apparently did, because his face was set and determined and there was no give in his expression.

“That’s way too thin,” Fletcher said finally, stubbing out his cigarette butt in Stark’s ashtray, immediately beginning to build another. “I might just head for Arizona and keep on riding, maybe all the way to Mexico.”

“Try that, Fletcher, and I will do everything in my power to hunt you down wherever you are and see you hanged,” Stark said, his voice level. “A man with your reputation and penchant for violence doesn’t disappear easily, even in Mexico.”

The senator thought for a few moments, then said, “Still, you make a valid point, and perhaps I should up the ante. I will concede this much: Bring my daughter home and then prove to my satisfaction that you’ve forsaken the gun to take up the plow and I’ll see what I can do to have your sentence reduced.” He hesitated. “Perhaps five years in the territorial prison. No more than that.”

“The alternative?” Fletcher asked, lighting his cigarette.

“The alternative is that I send for the keen young Lieutenant Simpson right now and have you returned to Wyoming and your cell.”

“Stark,” Fletcher said, ignoring the man’s sudden flush of anger, “I was railroaded into that murder charge. I never shot a man in the back in my life.”

The senator shrugged. “A hick sheriff orders you out of his tumbledown Wyoming cow town. Later he’s found dead in the livery stable, a bullet in his back, and you’re standing over him, holding his own still-smoking gun in your hand.” Stark’s smile was cold. “I’d say it was an open-and-shut case, and so apparently did the jury.”

“The sheriff was dead when I got there. Someone else killed him, knowing I was on my way to the livery stable and was sure to investigate the shot. That’s why I picked up the gun.”

Fletcher saw Slaughter’s eyes flicker to Stark. The look was gone in an instant, but it spoke volumes. Did Slaughter know who the real killer was? And did Stark himself know?

At that moment Fletcher had no answers to those questions, and the very notion seemed wildly far-fetched, but it was something for a man to think about.

Stark was speaking again. “Whether you’re guilty or not isn’t my concern at the moment. Right now I need an answer, Fletcher. Will you bring back my daughter and give me your word that you’ll return here to Lexington with her?”

Fletcher smiled. “You’d take the word of a hired gun and plunderer?”

“I’m told that, despite your profession, you’re said to be a man of your word. Come now,” Stark insisted, the man’s patience obviously wearing thin, “what’s your answer?”

This time Fletcher did not hesitate. “I’ll bring her back,” he said. “After that, well, we’ll have to see how the cards fall. I reckon even five years in prison can feel like a lifetime.”

Fletcher had expected Stark to raise some kind of objection, but to his surprise the senator nodded his acceptance. “Just get Estelle back here and then we’ll talk. The clothes you wore when you were arrested are here, and so are your guns. I had them sent from the prison a few weeks ago.”

“A few weeks ago? You’ve been planning this meeting for that long?”

“I’m a methodical man, Fletcher,” the senator said. “And the cost was not much.”

* * *

Later, standing in Stark’s bedroom, dressed in his own hat, blue shirt, black pants and run-down boots, a red bandanna tied loosely around his neck, Fletcher began to feel human again. Stark had provided him with a sheepskin mackinaw and had replaced his Henry rifle with a new Model of 1873 .44.40 Winchester.

Fletcher strapped on his gun belts, a short-barreled Colt in a cross-draw holster, a second revolver with a seven-and-a-half-inch barrel at his hip. He opened the loading gate of this revolver and spun the cylinder. It was empty.

Stark smiled. “There will be plenty of time to load that when you and your horse are on the Katy heading south.”

“We ain’t so stupid, Fletcher,” Slaughter added, his gun leveled and unwavering.

“You have my horse?” Fletcher asked, surprised, ignoring the sneering gunman.

The senator shook his head. “No, not your horse, but one just as good. I have a big American stud in the stable out back. He’ll serve you well.”

The senator stepped to a dresser near his four-poster bed and reached into a drawer. He came up with a small canvas sack, pulled shut with a drawstring. “There’s two hundred dollars in traveling expenses in this bag,” he said, hefting the sack, letting the gold coins clink. “Use it wisely.”

Stark laid the sack in Fletcher’s palm and added, his cold, flat eyes suddenly animated, “Go to Arizona and bring back my daughter to me, Fletcher. She’s all I’ve got in this world and I love her very much.”

Fletcher stood and curled the brim of his hat, as was his habit when he had the Stetson in his hands and not on his head. “You sure believe in taking chances, Stark. I could take your money and your horse and just skedaddle.”

“You could,” the senator conceded. “But I don’t believe you will. I was told by a very highly placed person that despite the wild, lawless life you’ve led since the end of the War Between the States, he still considers you as he did when you were an officer of horse artillery under his command. He calls you a man of great personal courage, integrity, and honor.”

“Who told you that?” Fletcher asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Gen. Ulysses S. Grant,” Stark replied.