Ralph Compton Doomsday Rider

by Ralph Compton

  Finally, her straining hull plates groaning, threatening any minute to tear away from their rivets, the boat rammed through the bar. Rajah brushed aside the white trunk of a dead dogwood tree that angled up from the sand, its branches spread wide like thin, surrendering arms, and, as she cleared the bar, fussily straightened her bow like an old dowager straightening her bonnet. Then, gathering around her what was left of her shabby, rickety dignity, she floated into calmer water.

  Buell nosed his battered craft into a Lexington wharf, vented Rajah’s steam, and tied her up. As Buell ran out the gangplank for the passengers, mulatto dockworkers were already scrambling on board to unload her cargo, and the captain, somber, thin, and bearded, left the wheelhouse to oversee the operation.

  Lieutenant Simpson turned to Fletcher, his eyes miserable. “Major, I must . . .” The young officer stumbled, trying to find the words, and Fletcher smiled. “You have a duty to do, Lieutenant. Best you do it.”

  Relieved, Simpson nodded and turned to Corporal Burke. “The shackles, Corporal.”

  “There’s no need for that.”

  Every head swiveled toward the tall man who had just stepped onto the hurricane deck. He wore a black overcoat with an astrakhan collar, his eyes shaded by the brim of his top hat. The man took a step toward Simpson. “We must be discreet, Lieutenant,” he said. “I don’t want this man brought to my home in chains.”

  “I have my orders, sir,” the young officer said, his face stiff. “I was instructed to conduct Major . . . uh . . . this prisoner by train and stage to Missouri, join the steamship Rajah in Jefferson City, and when we disembarked in Lexington remove him in chains to the home of Senator Falcon Stark.”

  “You’ve done well, Lieutenant,” the man said. “I am Senator Stark, and I will take custody of the prisoner.”

  “Sir, I think I should provide an escort and remain with you until your business with the prisoner is concluded.”

  “I’ll be quite safe, I assure you, Lieutenant,” Stark said. His voice was as smooth as watered silk but it was edged by impatience and not a little anger.

  This, Fletcher thought, is a man grown well used to the arrogance of power, a man who cuts a wide path and expects lesser men to scramble out of his way.

  A sleet flurry scattered wet drops between Stark and Fletcher and the others. Through this shifting gray curtain a man as tall as Stark but dressed in a wide-brimmed hat and sheepskin mackinaw, a red woolen scarf wrapped around his neck, stepped to the senator’s side.

  The man’s cold eyes swept the green young soldiers, dismissed them as unimportant and irrelevant, then came to rest on Fletcher.

  “Been a long time, Buck,” he said, without friendliness.

  Fletcher nodded. “Wes Slaughter. You’re a long way from El Paso.”

  The gunman shrugged. “You know how it is; in our line of work we go where somebody’s doing the hiring.”

  “I don’t know how it is,” Fletcher said, his eyes changing from blue to a hard gunmetal gray. “In my line of work I meet my enemies face-to-face. What’s your line of work, Wes?”

  The gunman was stung and he let it show. “Damn you, Fletcher. Someday I’m going to take great pleasure in killing you.”

  Fletcher nodded, his smile thin and humorless. “You told me that same thing in the Sideboard Saloon in Cheyenne not two months ago. But when we came right down to it and the talking was done, you wouldn’t draw. I guess it will have to be in the back, a specialty of yours, I believe.”

  “Cheyenne wasn’t the right time or the right place is all, Fletcher,” Slaughter said, refusing to be baited further. “If we ever meet again when the talking is done and it’s the Colts’ turn to speak, it will be face-to-face, all right. I’ve seen you draw, Fletcher, and on your best day you couldn’t come close to shading me.”

  “The day I can’t shade a back-shooting polecat like you, Wes, is the day I hang up my guns for good,” Fletcher said, his eyes holding a challenge he knew the other man could not ignore.

  Angry, Slaughter opened his mouth to speak again, but Stark waved an irritable hand. “Mr. Slaughter, if you wish to remain an associate of mine, don’t bandy words with a convicted criminal.”

  He turned to Simpson, who seemed baffled by this exchange. “Lieutenant, surely you understand that I don’t want to attract the unwanted attention you and your men would cause by leading this prisoner to my home in chains. I have a carriage waiting, and I assure you Fletcher will be quite secure with me and Mr. Slaughter.”

  “I have my orders, sir,” Simpson said, but this time he sounded uncertain.

  “I’m countermanding them, Lieutenant,” Stark snapped. “Or do I have to go over your head to your commanding officer?”

  Fletcher smiled. “His commanding officer is in Wyoming, Stark. I’d say that’s a fair piece from here.”

  Stark turned on Fletcher, his face black with anger. “You will address me as senator or not at all.” Then to Simpson: “Captain Buell sails at first light tomorrow morning for Jefferson City. Make sure you and your men are on board.” His voice softened a little. “I will personally inform President Grant how well you performed your duty. Ah, what is your name, Lieutenant?”

  Defeated by this man’s air of command, backed up by the real power and influence he wielded, the officer let his shoulders slump. “Well,” he said, “my orders were to deliver the prisoner to you, Senator. I guess I’ve done that. And my name is Simpson.”

  “You’ve carried out your duty, Lieutenant Simpson, and again let me say most excellently.”

  The young officer turned to Fletcher. “Major,” he said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you this before, but somehow I never quite got around to it. It was a long war and I guess you’ve no call to remember, but at Antietam your guns covered the retreat of a surrounded infantry brigade from the West Woods, despite the fact that you were under heavy fire yourself. You saved not only the brigade but also the reputation of the colonel in command.” He stuck out his hand. “That colonel was my father. It’s many years after the event, but on his behalf I wish to thank you.”

  Fletcher took Simpson’s hand. “Lieutenant, there were a lot of woods and a lot of brigades in that war.” He smiled, a wide, warm smile that relieved the hard severity of his features. “But now I study on it some, I do recollect supporting a retreating brigade at Antietam. I was going backward myself that day, in what’s called a recoil retreat. I bet they didn’t teach you that at the Point.”

  Simpson shook his head, and Fletcher continued: “You let your guns recoil and you reload and fire them from their new position. Then you do the same thing over and over again as long as you’re able. The cannons dictate the pace of the retreat, but the main thing is you keep your face to the enemy and continue firing.” Fletcher’s smile grew wider. “When you come right down to it, I guess we’ve all had our duty to do at one time or another.”

  “This is all very interesting, I’m sure,” Stark said, in fact shrugging a complete lack of interest. “But we have to be going.”

  The lieutenant ignored Stark. “Good luck, Major.” He was silent for a few moments, then added, “It’s been an honor.”

  Fletcher stood with Stark and Slaughter, watching Simpson and his detail walk down the gangplank to disappear into the sleet-lashed gloom.

  “Mr. Slaughter,” Stark said, nodding in Fletcher’s direction.

  The gunman’s smile never reached his eyes as he opened his coat and drew a long-barreled .45 Colt from a cross-draw holster. He pointed the gun at Fletcher’s belly. “You,” he said, “git going.”

  “Remember, Mr. Slaughter,” Stark said, “always discretion. Keep that weapon under cover until we get into the carriage.”

  Stark at his side, Slaughter following a few steps behind, his gun concealed under his mackinaw, Fletcher left the Rajah and walked onto the dock, where a closed carriage stood waiting, its twin lanterns glowing orange in the darkness. A coughing, red-nosed driver was up on the seat, his breath smo
king in the cold air, and the horse stamped, its iron shoes clanking loud on wet cobblestones.

  “Just a word of warning, Fletcher,” Stark said as he ushered the gunfighter into the carriage. “One wrong move, even blink in a way I don’t like, and I’ll order Mr. Slaughter to shoot you.” He climbed into the carriage and sat beside Fletcher. “Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” Fletcher said.

  Wes Slaughter, his narrow, rodent face eager, sat opposite Fletcher, his Colt across his knees. “Do something the senator don’t like, Fletcher,” he said. “Give me the chance to kill you.”

  After the cold of the boat deck, the carriage was reasonably warm. Fletcher settled back against the leather cushions and smiled.

  “Go to hell,” he said to Slaughter.

  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.

  S
he 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.”