Ralph Compton Doomsday Rider

by Ralph Compton

  Sieber was silent for a few moments, then said, “Course, all that depends on us getting out of here alive, and right now I’d say that ain’t looking too likely.”

  Down by the wagon, where one mule lay dead in its traces, the other stood patiently, waiting for whatever was to come. The Apache valued mule meat above all others, and, hungry as they were, would hope to fill their empty bellies after this fight was over.

  Sergeant McDermott screamed, screamed a second time, and then fell silent, but his cries still echoed for long moments within the narrow canyon walls.

  When McDermott shrieked again, Sieber, stone-faced, sang a ballad under his breath that was then highly popular in the barracks of the enlisted men.

  I’d like to be a packer,

  And pack with George F. Crook,

  And dressed up in my canvas suit,

  To be for him mistook.

  I’d braid my beard in two forked tails,

  And idle all the day

  In whittling sticks and wondering

  What the New York papers say.

  Behind him, Fletcher heard the young trooper stifle a groan. Crouching, he stepped to the soldier’s side. “Is it bad?” he asked.

  The boy nodded, and said through clenched teeth, “It’s real bad. I don’t think I can bear it much longer. I want to go now.” Trooper McKinnon, small and wiry like most of Crook’s cavalrymen, looked down at the arrow, bright with colored turkey feathers, sticking out of his belly.

  “Can you pull it free?” he asked. “I don’t want to die with this inside me.”

  Fletcher shook his head. “All I’d do is cause you more pain. Best you lie real still and make your peace with God.”

  “I done that already,” McKinnon said. “I figure I’m right with my creator.” A slight smile touched the boy’s white lips. “Know something? I ain’t never sparked a girl. Not even once. Now that it’s all up with me, I guess I never will.”

  “Aw, sparking a girl isn’t what it’s cracked up to be,” Fletcher said, unable to relieve one kind of pain, trying to relieve another. “Why, I recall one time down El Paso way when I . . .”

  His voice trailed off into silence. He was talking to a dead man.

  Fletcher closed the boy’s eyes, pulled the arrow from his body, and stepped back to his position behind the rock.

  “Is he dead?” Sieber asked.

  Fletcher nodded, suddenly feeling empty and old.

  “He was a good soldier,” Sieber said. “Done his duty.” The scout nodded. “He’ll make his ma proud.”

  “Well, he’s no kind of soldier now,” Fletcher said. “And I reckon I’ve already seen proud ma’s enough that I don’t ever care to see another.”

  Sieber opened his mouth to speak, but what he said was drowned out by another shrieking cry of pain from the sergeant.

  “McDermott is a big, strong man and he’s dying mighty hard,” Sieber said. “He’ll last a long time.”

  “Why do they do that?” Fletcher asked. “You know Apaches; why torture a man that way?”

  The scout shrugged. “An Apache measures his own bravery against that of his enemy. The Apache believe a captive who lasts a long time under torture must be very brave, and that reflects much credit on the man who captured him. Better to conquer a mountain lion than a jackrabbit.”

  Fletcher glanced up at the sky and the yellow ball of the sun. “Pretty soon we’re going to get mighty thirsty,” he said. “Then we’ll face our own torture.”

  Sieber nodded. “There’s a canteen in the wagon. Maybe after dark I’ll mosey on down there and see if I can grab it.” He shook his head, his face grim. “That is, if we’re still around.”

  “You won’t make it,” Fletcher said. “They’ll be expecting us to try something like that.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Maybe I have. At least, I’ve been studying on it some, though it’s mighty thin.”

  “Well, thin or not, let’s hear it, man,” Sieber urged. “Seems to me the way our time is running out, beggars can’t be choosers.”

  Quickly Fletcher outlined his plan, and Sieber’s grin grew wider with each word. When Fletcher finished the scout slapped his thigh and said, “Hot damn, Buck, it might just work.”

  “It better work,” the gunfighter said. “If the Apaches wait until almost dark and all rush us at once, we’re dead.”

  Doubt clouded Sieber’s eyes. “I ain’t much good with a Colt’s gun.” He slapped the brass receiver of his Henry. “But I can use this here rifle pretty well.”

  Fletcher smiled. “You’ll do, Al.”

  The two men waited. They needed Sergeant McDermott to scream again.

  Four

  The scream when it came was loud and piercing, a primitive cry of agony torn from the throat of a man who had long passed the limits of his endurance and was now bordering on madness.

  Yet somehow, from somewhere deep inside him, McDermott found the strength to roar a string of Irish curses, each edged with the disbelief and outrage that what was unthinkable was actually happening and was happening to him.

  The man finally fell silent again and the canyon walls no longer echoed to his raving, pain-driven shrieks.

  “Right, Al,” Fletcher said, his face set and grim. “Let’s do it.”

  He set down his rifle and drew his Colt, and Sieber did the same.

  Both men knelt and pointed their guns at the sand beneath them, and at Fletcher’s nod each pulled the trigger. The guns went off simultaneously, bullets kicking up startled exclamation points of sand a few inches from their knees.

  Quickly Fletcher shucked the empty shell from his Colt and reloaded the chamber.

  He and Sieber scrambled back to the shelter of the rocks and waited.

  The scout put his mouth close to Fletcher’s ear and whispered, “Think it worked?”

  Fletcher put his forefinger to his lips, signaling Sieber into silence. They waited.

  Beside him, Fletcher saw Sieber run a nervous tongue over his top lip, and the man’s knuckles were white on the stock of his Henry.

  Was it going to work? They’d know soon enough.

  Voices rose from the boulders where the Apaches were hidden, and Fletcher heard the slight scrape of a rifle butt against rock.

  Another voice now, younger and louder than the rest, was saying something in a language Fletcher did not understand. He gave Sieber a sidelong glance, his eyes holding a question, and the scout moved closer.

  “He says we’re women, that we killed ourselves,” Sieber whispered. “But some of the older bucks ain’t so sure. They think maybe it’s a trap.”

  “Damn,” Fletcher swore, gritting out the word under his breath. “They’re not falling for it.”

  The young man’s voice was closer now, calling out to his companions.

  Sieber replied to Fletcher’s unspoken question: “He’s saying the same thing again,” he whispered, his voice hoarse and tense. “That we killed ourselves rather than risk being taken alive by the Apache.”

  More voices now and the slow, careful scuff of moccasined feet on sand.

  The Apaches were getting closer. But how many?

  Fletcher felt uncertainty spike at him. When he and Sieber rose up from behind the shelter of the rocks there had to be more than one Apache standing out there. If there wasn’t, he and the big army scout would be quickly cut down by the others.

  Sweat tricked into Fletcher’s eyes, stinging, and his mouth was bone dry. Above him the sun hung in the sky like a gold coin, and a few puffy white clouds drifted in winds too high to be felt in the arroyo. Under the overhang a horse snorted, bit jangling, and stamped a hoof.

  An Apache war whoop rang out, echoing within the canyon walls, then another, and another.

  It was now or never.

  Fletcher gave Sieber a quick glance of warning and rose to his feet. There were seven Apaches in the clearing, moving warily, rifles at the port. It wasn’t all of them. But it was enough.
r />   The ability to draw a gun fast and the eye-to-hand coordination to hit a moving target are gifts given to very few men. One in a thousand, perhaps. Maybe one in ten thousand.

  Buck Fletcher was one of those men.

  He drew his Colt from its cross-draw holster, did a border shift, spinning the revolver to his left hand, and cleared the gun from his hip holster before the other Colt thudded into his palm.

  Sieber saw all this out of the corner of his eye, and even as he fired and cranked his rifle he wondered at it.

  Both Fletcher’s guns were hammering now, the shots so close they sounded like a lethal drumroll.

  The silver-plated railroad watch in Sieber’s pocket ticked twice, and ere it ticked a third time the fight was over.

  Seven Apaches lay on the ground, six of them dead and one dying, the warrior moaning softly, his collarless whiteman’s shirt stained scarlet with blood. There was no answering fire from the rocks.

  The surviving Apaches, mindful of the women with them, had gone. It was not fear that made them withdraw. The Apache had lost too many warriors in this fight and they didn’t like how the odds were stacking up. Better to retreat now and fight another day, when the advantage would be on their side.

  Brave and daring the Indian might be, but he was always a pragmatist, and there was no disgrace in running away when the battle turned against him.

  Sieber looked around at the fallen Apaches and let his breath whistle slowly between his teeth.

  “You did it all, Buck,” he said, shaking his head in wonderment. “I never hit a single brave.”

  His face stiff, Fletcher was reloading his Colts, the acrid smell of burned black powder in his nostrils as thick gray smoke curled around his head. “You did your share, Al,” he said. “I heard your rifle.”

  “But I didn’t hit anybody,” Sieber said again. “Every time I fired the man was already going down under your guns. Hell, man, you did it all.” He nodded toward the Colts that Fletcher had just holstered. “You did it all with them. I ain’t never seen the like in all my born days. A couple of years back, in Abilene it was, I saw Wild Bill Hickok shoot Colts, and I tell you right now, he ain’t near a patch on you.”

  Wanting it over with, killing as it always did saddening and draining him, Fletcher said, “We were lucky, was all.” He took off his hat and wiped sweat from the band with steady fingers. “Let’s go see if there’s anything left of Sergeant McDermott.”

  There wasn’t much.

  That the man had suffered a great deal was obvious, and before the Apaches left they’d cut his throat.

  “I’ve seen that before,” Sieber said, pointing with his rifle to the dead man. “It’s always the young squaws who do that. Makes a man think about womenfolk in general and how they feel about things.”

  McDermott’s entire scrotum, hacked and bloody, had been stuffed into his mouth, and it was this that had finally stifled his screams.

  “I guess it all depends on the woman,” Fletcher said.

  An eight-man cavalry patrol, attracted by the sound of gunfire, entered the arroyo an hour later. In time to bury the dead.

  * * *

  “You boys did well,” Lt. Frank Michler told Fletcher and Sieber. “We counted nine dead Apaches.” The officer pointed to an old man with thin, gray braids sitting with his back to a rock. “And my troopers rounded up another one.” Michler called out over his shoulder. “Sergeant Wilson!”

  The noncom, a huge man with a shaved bullet head and thick neck, stepped to the lieutenant’s side and snapped to attention. “Bring that Indian over here. I want to talk to him,” Michler said.

  Since the start of the wars against the whites, old men were a rarity among the Apache, most warriors dying long before their thirtieth birthday. But this man looked to be around seventy years old, his black eyes filmed white by cataracts.

  “Where are your people?” Michler asked.

  The old man was silent.

  “Maybe he doesn’t speak English, Lieutenant,” Fletcher said.

  “You are the one with the barking Colt’s guns,” the old Apache said suddenly, his hazy eyes trying to focus on Fletcher. “Your medicine is strong.” The Apache was silent for a few moments, then said, “But I see one whose medicine is also strong, and by and by you two will meet.” The old man stretched out a skinny hand and laid it on Fletcher’s arm. “Whose guns will bark loudest then? The answer to that is unknown to me.”

  “Where are your people, old man?” Michler asked, impatience edging his voice. “Will you lead us to them so we can talk and make peace?”

  The old man shook his head, his lined face crumpling.

  “How can there be peace when General Crook has too many demasiadas cartuchos del cobre and wishes to shoot all of them?” he asked.

  Michler looked quizzically at Sieber and the scout said, “He means cartridges of copper.”

  The Apache nodded. “Too many cartridges of copper. My people were never afraid of fighting the Americans alone, but now our own people act as scouts and fight against us and we do not know what to do. We dare not go to sleep at night because we fear to be surrounded before daybreak. We dare not hunt because the noise of our guns brings the soldiers. We dare not cook mescal or anything else because flame and smoke will draw down soldiers. We dare not live in the valleys because of the soldiers, so we retreat to the mountaintops, thinking to hide in the snow until the soldiers go home. But the scouts find us and the soldiers follow. This is our land, but we have nowhere to go.”

  The old man’s eyes sought Michler’s face. “The young warriors are here. They are all dead. I do not know where the rest of my people have gone.”

  Lieutenant Michler waved away the Apache with an impatient hand. “Ah, he’s hopeless. The old coot knows nothing. He’s nuts.”

  The soldier stalked away, calling out orders to his troopers, and Fletcher stood looking at the old man. He built a smoke and took the Apache’s hand, putting the cigarette between his fingers.

  The old man, long exposed to Mexicans, knew what it was, and he put the cigarette between his lips and Fletcher thumbed a match into flame and lit it for him.

  “You’re blind, old man,” Fletcher said, “but you see more than the rest of us, I think.”

  “No hard feelings Flet-cher,” the old Apache said, in a strange, high, singsong voice. “You are a mighty warrior, Flet-cher. No hard feelings from me. You have your eyes open, Flet-cher, but you don’t see. That is because nothing is as it seems. Everything is topsy-turvy, Flet-cher. There is evil for you here. It stalks you as the cougar stalks the deer. You don’t know this thing because you can’t see. But the evil is already here and it rides a gray horse. It is here, Flet-cher.”

  Sergeant Wilson stepped beside the old man and roughly grabbed his skinny arm. “Come on, you crazy old bastard,” he said. “You’re coming with us.”

  The Apache winced as Wilson’s fingers dug deep, and Fletcher grabbed the soldier’s wrist, his own strong fingers tightening like steel bands.

  “Let him go, Sergeant,” Fletcher said, voice soft as his eyes turned from blue to a cold gunmetal gray.

  Sergeant Wilson grimaced in pain and quickly released his fingers from the old man’s thin biceps. But Fletcher still held the soldier’s wrist in a grip like a vise.

  “It doesn’t cost anything to be sociable, Sergeant,” he whispered. “Now smile to the Indian and be downright sociable.”

  “Go to hell,” Wilson gritted.

  Fletcher’s fingers tightened and color drained from the sergeant’s face.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “I’ll be sociable.”

  “Smile to the nice Indian,” Fletcher said, a vague, undirected anger riding him.

  The soldier’s lips twisted into a grotesque approximation of a smile and Fletcher let his wrist go.

  Fletcher stepped closer to Wilson as the man stood, rubbing his wrist. “I’ve took a notion to like this old man,” he said. “If I hear that you’ve been
abusing him I’ll come looking for you.”

  Wilson glared at Fletcher, his eyes ugly. “You and me are going to meet again when there ain’t an officer around, Fletcher; depend on it,” he said. “And when we do I’ll kill you.”

  “That’s been tried before,” Fletcher said. “Now take your prisoner and get the hell out of here.”

  “You sure have a habit of making enemies, don’t you, Buck?”

  Fletcher turned and found Al Sieber at his elbow.

  “He didn’t have to hurt the old man. There was no cause to do that,” Fletcher said.

  Sieber nodded. “Maybe so, but you watch that Andy Wilson. He fancies himself a pugilist and they say he once beat a man to death with his fists in a prizefight over to Dodge City way. He’s four inches taller and maybe fifty pounds heavier than you, Buck, and that’s something to bear in mind.”

  Fletcher’s smile was thin. “I’m not hunting trouble. I’ll stay out of his way.”

  “Unless you gun him, of course,” Sieber said, grinning. “Then you don’t have a damn thing to worry about.”

  Lieutenant Michler stepped beside Sieber and with little ceremony told the scout that he’d been ordered to report to General Crook at Fort Apache.

  “That’s why I was patrolling out this way,” the soldier said. “I was instructed to relieve you of the wagon escort and give you your orders.”

  “Looks like we can ride up to the fort together, Buck,” Sieber said.

  Fletcher nodded. “Glad to have you along—and that Henry of yours.”

  Michler found them a battered coffeepot, salt pork, and flour and salt for pan bread and they rode out as the sun changed from yellow to bronze and the light of day began to die around them.

  But as they were leaving Sergeant Wilson stepped out from behind a rock and laid a hand on the bridle of Fletcher’s horse.

  “I ain’t forgetting what happened here,” he said, his voice low and ominous. “Just so you remember.”