Ralph Compton Doomsday Rider

by Ralph Compton

  Fletcher nodded. “Riding out this morning.”

  The waitress’s face changed. “Didn’t you hear? There’s been a lot of trouble with the Indians.”

  “Lately I’ve had all the Indian trouble I can stand,” Fletcher said. “We’ll ride careful.”

  As the girl poured coffee she told them cavalry patrols had been sent out into the plains from Fort Hays. “They’ve been told to find the president and his hunting party and bring them back to the fort,” she said.

  “From what I hear, the president has more than enough fighting men with him to take care of any war party,” Fletcher said. He smiled. “And he was a general.”

  The waitress nodded. “Oh, I know. But still, don’t you think it’s a very worrisome thing?”

  “From where I sit it is,” Fletcher said. “But I don’t know how Grant feels about it.”

  What was more worrisome to Fletcher was the possibility that, once on the plains, he and Estelle could miss Falcon Stark entirely. If one of the patrols escorted his hunting party back to Fort Hays they might have to follow the man all the way to Lexington again, or even Washington.

  Fletcher and Estelle ordered bacon and eggs, and while they waited for the food the gunfighter built himself his first cigarette of the day and smoked it with his coffee.

  He was about to crush the butt into an ashtray brought to him by the waitress when the door swung open and a man bundled up in a sheepskin mackinaw stepped inside. He was tall and thin-faced, his sweeping cavalry mustache gray against the sunburned, mahogany brown of his skin. When his eyes went to Fletcher and Estelle they were green, shot through with golden brown, the eyes of a hawk.

  The man wore a deputy marshal’s badge pinned to his coat, and he carried a rolled-up poster under his arm.

  “’Morning, ma’am,” the lawman said to Estelle. Then, several degrees colder, “How are you, Buck?”

  “I’m fair to middling, Dan,” Fletcher replied, his eyes wary.

  “Mind if I sit?” the deputy asked. Without waiting for a reply he dropped into a chair opposite Fletcher, laying the now-open poster printed side down on the table.

  Fletcher turned to Estelle. “Estelle Stark, this is Dan Cain.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Cain said, smiling faintly.

  “Never expected to see you wearing a tin star, Dan,” Fletcher said. “Last I heard, you were riding with Jesse and Frank and the Younger boys over to Missouri way.”

  “Times change, Buck,” Cain said. “And sometimes change is forced on a man.” He hesitated then said: “After Jesse shot that bank president in Russellville four years back, I felt a noose tightening around my neck and figured it was time I left the James boys and found me a new line of work.”

  The lawman shook his head. “The way things are, there just ain’t no future in bank robbing anymore, Buck, and that’s a natural fact.”

  Fletcher’s eyes went to the poster, and Cain, seeing this, covered it with a gloved hand, his fingers spread wide. The waitress poured the lawman coffee and said to Fletcher, “Your breakfast will be ready in a few minutes. The cook had trouble getting the fire started in the stove.”

  Cain tested his coffee, said, “Hot,” then leaned back in his chair, stretching. “Got to bury a man today.” He yawned, looking hard at Fletcher, his arms above his head. Finally Cain let his hands drop to the table. “Of course, I’m not telling you something you don’t already know.”

  “It was a fair fight, Dan,” Fletcher said, his voice even. “Jack Dunn drew down on me.”

  Cain nodded. “That’s the way I heard it. Heard too that you was standing up for some sodbuster.”

  “He was just a kid. He was scared of that tinhorn.”

  Estelle turned to Fletcher, her eyes wide. “Buck, you never told me this.”

  “I know,” Fletcher said. “But I was meaning to tell you over breakfast.” He looked back toward the kitchen. “If we ever get it.”

  “Buck here did the city of Hays a favor, Miss Stark,” Cain said. “Jack Dunn was a lowlife, and so was his sidekick, Will French. Frenchy pulled his freight for parts unknown last night, by the way.”

  Cain suddenly sat upright in his chair. “Wait a minute. Estelle Stark! I knew I’d heard that name before, or part of it, at least. Are you any kin to—”

  “Senator Stark is my father,” Estelle said quickly.

  “A fine man,” Cain said. “Told me he plans to bring law and order to the West, and now I’ve changed my ways, I sure can’t fault him for that.”

  Estelle was spared the need to reply because the waitress suddenly showed up with their food, apologizing for the delay.

  The bacon was good and the eggs were fresh, and, despite the disturbing presence of Cain, Fletcher and Estelle found they each had a ravenous appetite. As they ate, the lawman spoke to them of other things, how high the prices were in Dodge for everything and how ridiculous were the size of women’s bustles in the town, even those of the respectable sort.

  “Saw one gal, and I swear she was carrying around six inches of snow, just a-setting there on top of a bustle as big as a shed roof,” Cain said. “It’s a wonder she didn’t freeze to death.”

  When Fletcher finished, he pushed away his plate and began to build a smoke.

  “Dan,” he said, “you didn’t come here to talk about bustles.” He looked at the lawman, his eyes hard and cold. “Get it over with. Say your piece.”

  Cain nodded. “Buck, you and me go way back. We rode the same trails, knew the same men, stepped from one side of the law to the other when times were hard. You even saved my hide a time or two.”

  “Never made any complaint about you, Dan,” Fletcher said. “When the shooting started you always stood up and did your share.”

  Fletcher knew Dan Cain to be fast and deadly with a gun. A man who rode with Jesse and Frank could be no other way.

  “That’s good to hear, coming from you, Buck,” Cain said. “And I surely do appreciate it.” He gave an apologetic shrug of his shoulders. “You told me to speak my piece. Well . . . there’s this. It’s part of it.”

  Cain turned the poster over and handed it to Fletcher. “The drawing is from the picture they made of you in prison. It’s a good likeness, though it ain’t real pretty.” Cain smiled. “But then, neither are you.”

  “Thanks,” Fletcher said, taking no offense.

  He glanced down at the poster, a reward dodger routinely sent out to lawmen throughout the West at that time.

  Fletcher, his face bleak, read it aloud: “‘Buck Fletcher. Wanted dead or alive. For the murder of a sheriff and a prison guard.’” Fletcher looked at Cain. “This dodger is offering a reward of a thousand dollars—in gold.”

  Cain nodded. “That about says it all.”

  “Would it make any difference if I told you I was set up, that I didn’t commit these murders?” Fletcher asked.

  “It might. But then, that’s for a judge to decide.”

  “You planning to arrest me, Dan?”

  Fletcher opened his coat, clearing his guns, a motion Cain noticed, recognizing its significance.

  “Buck,” the lawman said, his voice steady, “in my time I’ve known a lot of men, some of them I called friends, who were killed so some bounty hunter could collect his blood money. That’s not my style, and it surely discourages me that you would think otherwise.”

  “I know you’re no bounty hunter, Dan. But you’re a lawman. You have a duty to perform.”

  “You don’t have to preach to me about my duty. I know my duty.”

  Cain looked from Fletcher to Estelle and seemed to make his mind up about something. “Buck, you rid Hays of Jack Dunn, and I’m beholden to you for that, and once, maybe twice, I’m beholden to you for my life.”

  He took the poster from Fletcher hands. “This dodger arrived yesterday and it isn’t common knowledge in town yet. Now, it’s not for me to figure the right or the wrong of these murders. Like I told you, that’s up to a judge.
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br />   “But I’ve thought this thing through, rassled with my conscience, you might say, and I’ve decided to let you ride on out of here. I don’t want to see you get shot in the back so somebody can collect this reward, and I don’t want you to dangle at the end of a rope. Let’s just call it professional courtesy, or something I’m doing for old times’ sake. Take it any damn way you want.”

  Fletcher felt relief flood over him. “Dan, I appreciate it. The only way I can clear my name is to get the man who set all this up to confess. I know that sounds thin, but it’s a chance and I’ve got to take it.”

  Cain rose to his feet. “Buck, you do whatever you have to do. All I know is I owe you a favor from the old days and now I’m repaying it. I’m going to have to square this with the marshal when he gets back, an’ that won’t be easy, but whatever lay between us is now over. There won’t be a second time.”

  The lawman walked toward the door, then stopped. “There’s one more thing,” he said, turning to Fletcher. “Like I told you, this dodger isn’t common knowledge, but the word is getting around that it was Buck Fletcher who killed Jack Dunn over to Riley’s last night.”

  “What are you telling me, Dan?”

  “Only this—Hank Crane is in town.”

  “Do you think he knows?”

  Cain nodded. “It’s his business to know.”

  After Cain left, Estelle said, “Buck, who is this Hank Crane?”

  “Bounty hunter, maybe the best there is. He’s good with a gun but usually shoots from ambush and he doesn’t believe in bringing his captives in alive. He says there’s more profit in killing a man—he doesn’t have to feed him.”

  “Will he come after us, Buck?”

  “Estelle, I think we can bet the farm on it.”

  * * *

  Fletcher and the girl left the restaurant and walked to the general store near the stockyards. The night was shading into a gray dawn and there were more people in the street, respectable citizens mostly, the shadier element seldom rising before noon.

  The day was starting out bitter cold, the wind biting, and the smell of snow was in the air. People walked bundled up in coats and mufflers, their breath smoking, telling each other that surely a blizzard was on the way.

  The store, when Fletcher and Estelle walked inside, was warm and welcoming, a potbellied stove in the middle of the floor glowing cherry red.

  A burlap bag of green coffee stood by the door and near it a barrel of sorghum, leaking, as they always did, black drops onto the floor. Bright candy canes stood on end in jars along the front counter next to rounds of yellow cheese, some of them cut into thick, vee-shaped slices A barrel of crackers, the lid off, shouldered against a hogshead of sugar, and on its other side a barrel of pungent sauerkraut was surrounded by open boxes of gingersnap cookies.

  Slabs of smoked bacon on iron hooks hung from the ceiling, and beneath them were piles of hickory shirting in stripes and plaid and bolts of calico and gingham cloth.

  On the back shelves were rows of shoes, coffeepots, bags of gunpowder, canned goods, and boxes of rifle and pistol ammunition.

  Fletcher made his purchases—bacon, coffee, salt, flour, and shells for his rifle and Colts—from the rapidly dwindling money he’d been given by Falcon Stark. A generous man by nature, Fletcher was unusually careful with money, knowing it was hard to come by and harder to keep. Somehow, as he counted the coins in his money belt, he was missing twenty dollars that he could not account for and did not recall spending.

  In the scheme of things, it was a small loss, and Fletcher shrugged it off, thinking that he must have lost the double eagle, probably at the pueblos.

  He had no way of knowing it then, but that missing twenty dollars would play a significant role in what was to come—not for its own sake, but for what it was used to buy.

  With a word of thanks and the gift of a free sample of cheese, small enough but nonetheless welcome, the storekeeper sacked up the supplies and Fletcher and Estelle walked back to their hotel.

  Thirty minutes later they rode out of Hays, heading south into the Kansas plains.

  Twenty-three

  Keeping Big Creek to his east, Fletcher planned to ride to the Arkansas River, a distance of about seventy-five miles, and then swing west.

  Hickok would be slowed by the wagons, and Fletcher doubted he’d push all the way to the Cimarron before making his own westward turn to reach the migrating herds in the sheltered, shallow canyons near the Colorado border.

  If they had any chance of catching up to Falcon Stark, it would have to be west of the Arkansas, in that flat, open country where a man on a tall horse could see for miles.

  The gently rolling land around them was covered in buffalo and blue grama grass, and here and there Fletcher and Estelle rode past bright green bushes of tumbleweed with its purple-and-red-striped leaves. Come summer, sunflowers would bloom on these plains, and colorful masses of columbines, daisies, goldenrod, and wild morning glory would stretch to the horizon.

  But now, in the depths of winter, the landscape was bleak, the grass scorched by snow and frost to a dull brown, and willows and leafless cottonwoods clung to the banks of the partially frozen creeks. The cold was icy and penetrating, the kind of cold that made a man huddle into his mackinaw and think the fires of hell would be a welcome relief.

  To the southwest lay the 2,400-foot peak of Round House Rock, and just ahead was the south fork of the Smoky Hill River, a barrier Fletcher and Estelle would soon have to cross.

  When they were an hour out of Hays, Fletcher picked up the wheel ruts of heavily loaded wagons heading due south toward the Arkansas.

  “I’d say that’s our buffalo hunters,” he told Estelle. “The ground was still fairly soft when they rolled across here and they’ve left a pretty obvious trail. I’d say they’re maybe three days ahead of us.”

  The trail led to the Smoky, then swung east toward its junction with the north fork.

  Fletcher dismounted and studied the tracks. Hickok had been looking for a place to cross, either a shallow ford or a ferry, of which there were several scattered up and down both banks of the river.

  He stepped into the saddle and again followed the wheel ruts. The Smoky had not yet frozen, though patches of ice clung to the rocks along its banks and there was a thick hoarfrost on the trunks and branches of the cotton woods.

  It was getting colder, and Estelle shivered and pulled her mackinaw closer around her, only her eyes showing above the sheepskin collar.

  “As soon as we’re across the river, we can stop and boil some coffee,” Fletcher told the girl, trying to bolster her sagging spirits. “Heat you up some.”

  Estelle lowered the collar of her coat and gave Fletcher a grateful smile, immediately covering her mouth again.

  Fletcher noticed scattered buffalo tracks along the bank, and he recalled hearing that in the summer drought of 1868 a vast herd of a million animals, stretching thirty-five miles from point to drag, had drunk this river dry.

  The wagon ruts led through a shallow valley between two saddleback hills, then, as the valley opened out, headed back to the river again. Ahead Fletcher saw a small shack, an iron pipe belching black smoke sticking out of its roof, and a ferry tied up to a ramshackle wood dock.

  He and Estelle rode to the shack, and Fletcher yelled, “Ho, the house!”

  After a few moments a man stepped outside. He was big and burly, dressed in greasy buckskins decorated with ornate beadwork, and a matted red beard spread thick to his belt buckle. A young Indian woman hung shyly in the background, her braids plaited in the northern Cheyenne style with blue trade ribbon, her face revealing bruises from blows old and recent.

  “We want to cross,” Fletcher said. Now that he’d seen the woman he was unwilling to be civil. “Right now.”

  The man stood scratching under his beard, studying Fletcher closely as he tried to figure how much the traffic would bear. “Two bits for man and horse,” he said finally. “Each.”

 
Fletcher nodded his agreement. “Anybody else cross recently?”

  The ferryman smiled, his teeth showing yellow and broken under his beard. “I guess you mean the president and the senators and them foreign fancies.”

  “How long ago?”

  The man’s face screwed up in thought. “Three, four days. Four maybe.”

  “Did they say which way they were headed?”

  “South, then west. That’s all they tole me.”

  Fletcher swung out of the saddle, and Estelle did the same.

  The ferryman looked at the girl, his tongue running over his top lip, eyes suddenly hot. “Been a long time since I saw a yeller-haired woman,” he said. “Been a long time since I had me any white woman.”

  “Yeah, times are tough all over,” Fletcher said. “Now let’s get going.”

  “Name’s Jones, little lady, Red Jones,” the ferryman said, his grin sly. “A name you mought care to know real well.”

  Estelle ignored the man and led her horse onto the ferry, following Fletcher up the ramp. The ferry itself was a roughly made raft of pine logs, a low plank rail running along each side.

  Jones, the huge muscles of his arms bunching under his buckskins, grabbed the rope that looped around a pulley on the other bank about ninety feet away and began to pull. He gave Fletcher a single, surly glance, then went back to his task. Slowly the ferry inched away from the bank and headed out to midstream.

  Fletcher stood with Estelle at the rail, looking at the river as it wound away to the east, toward its junction with the north fork.

  “See those cottonwoods lining the banks?” Fletcher asked the girl. Estelle nodded and he continued: “The Indians say that in summer the gray-green leaves of the trees look like smoke, and that’s how the Smoky Hill River got its name.” He smiled. “Well, that’s one story anyway.”

  “How did you know that, Buck?” Estelle asked.

  Fletcher shrugged. “I read a lot. Newspapers, local histories, Dickens, Scott, Cervantes, Shakespeare, the labels on peach cans.” He smiled. “I guess any reading material I can lay my hands on.”