Fletcher gathered the twigs and pine needles together and thumbed a match to life. He cupped a shivering hand around the match, coaxing the needles into flame.
His first attempt produced nothing but a thin curl of smoke that died almost as soon as it was born.
He tried again.
This time the pine needles caught, and he quickly fed them tiny pieces of branch. Flames rose from the fire, and Fletcher laid on some more twigs and, when it seemed the fire was strong enough, some thicker branches.
He could have covered his campfire with his hat. Small as it was, it produced little heat, but it was enough to ward off at least some of the bone-numbing chill. But he would need more wood to keep the fire going—something that might prove an impossible task.
Gingerly, as he grew a little warmer, Fletcher shrugged out of his mackinaw. His side immediately began to bleed profusely as the coat pulled the blood-crusted shirt with it, tearing open the wound again.
Fletcher unbuttoned his shirt and looked down at the wound on his chest. He was puzzled for a few moments. Then it dawned on him what had happened.
The rifleman’s bullet had hit the quartz in his shirt pocket, driving sharp fragments into his chest. But the gold-laden quartz had been tough and resilient enough to deflect the bullet. The heavy round had then ranged downward and torn his left side wide open, a deep gash that reached from just under his ribs to his belt.
The tremendous impact of the high-powered bullet hitting the quartz had knocked Fletcher from his horse and fooled the rifleman into thinking he was dead when he hit the ground.
It had been close, and he’d been incredibly lucky. But Fletcher knew that, weak as he was, there were still no guarantees. The bushwhacker’s bullet could yet do its work—only more slowly.
He pulled on his mackinaw and fed more twigs to the fire, a small spark of comfort insignificant against a vast night of darkness and bitter cold.
Loss of blood made Fletcher drowsy. He dozed on and off, feeding the fire from his meager stock of twigs on the few occasions when he was awake.
Finally he fell into a deep sleep. He woke to a gray dawn, his fire burned down to a dismal circle of ash.
Fletcher was chilled and stiff, and the pain in his side had not lessened. He rose awkwardly to his feet and looked around. It had snowed a little during the night, adding maybe an inch to the white covering that stretched endlessly in all directions.
Tracks on the edge of the tree line showed where wolves had come close in the night then turned away, the fire and the man smell making them uneasy.
It didn’t take much logic to convince Fletcher that he could not stay where he was. To do so was to die of cold and exposure. He would have to make it to the Lazy R on foot—if his fading strength could hold out that long.
He looked over the fallen pine and saw what he was looking for, a thick branch that had been one of the lower limbs of the tree. The branch was dry, but even so, it used up about all of his remaining strength to break it free of the trunk, the wood Wintering as he worked it loose. He stripped off most of the smaller branches and ended up with a staff about six feet long and a couple of inches around. It would give him some support during his long walk.
Leaning heavily on the stick, Fletcher made it out of the trees and back onto the flat grassland. The snow was several inches thick underfoot. It was deep enough to slow him some, but not enough to cause a real problem.
Buttoning the mackinaw tight around his neck, Fletcher started out across the snow-covered buffalo grass, a tall man who many times stumbled and fell and was all but lost against the magnificent backdrop of mountains and sky. He knew very well that the glorious beauty of the land disguised its indifferent cruelty and unforgiving nature, and tl e things he accepted. He was the intruder here. Why should the land care if he lived or died?
Fletcher struggled on through most of the morning. He was fast reaching the limits of even his great endurance and calculated he had maybe a dozen miles yet to walk before he reached the Lazy R.
If the snow held off, he might make it. If he was lucky. Very lucky.
He walked on, staggering now with exhaustion, the blood from his side trickling down his leg all the way into his boot. Now and then he stopped and leaned on his staff to rest, and once he dozed off, wakening with a sudden jolt of pain when he crashed to the ground.
Above his head, the clouds had parted. The sun glared on the snow, burning into his eyes so that he could hardly open them wide enough to see where he was going.
Fletcher had no idea how far he’d come. The land stretched endlessly before him as if it had no beginning and no end.
He walked on.
He was dependent on the staff more and more, leaning most of his weight on the pine branch as his strength gave out. The sun was still far from its noon point in the sky when he stumbled into the shallow depression of an old buffalo wallow. He leaned even more heavily on the stick to climb up the other side, and suddenly the dry branch snapped in half with a loud crack, pitching him violently to the ground.
Fletcher lay there stunned for a few moments, unwilling to get to his feet again.
The pine branch had served him well, but now it was useless.
He wasn’t going to make it.
When nightfall came, it would get much colder, and he’d be forced back into the trees. Did he have the strength to find wood and build another fire?
Fletcher shook his head. He knew he couldn’t survive another night out here, not as weak as he was. He lay on his back in the buffalo wallow as long minutes passed. He felt a drowsiness come over him, and with it a pleasant warmth. There was no longer pain. He was slipping away, easing gently into a welcoming slumber, drifting... drifting... drifting...
No!
Fletcher struggled to a sitting position, and immediately the pain in his chest and side hammered viciously at him again.
He would not allow himself to just give up and die on the prairie. That was a dog’s death. If death came for him, he’d face it standing on his own two feet, fighting with every last ounce of his strength.
Groaning, Fletcher rose and stumbled forward. He climbed out of the wallow on his belly, then got to his feet again. Behind him, the snow was marked red with his blood, but he didn’t notice, and he didn’t care.
He walked on.
Noon came and went, and the morning slowly brightened into afternoon. Fletcher’s eyes were red-rimmed from the glare of the sun on the snow. When he blinked, it felt like the lids were grinding on broken glass.
Walking, stumbling, falling, rising again. That became his pattern, and with it the pain gnawed constantly at him, devouring him from the inside, sapping his strength more and more.
He was not covering much ground because his pace was slow, and he dreaded the approaching night, knowing it would come all too soon, and with it the cold and the darkness.
Once again he stumbled, falling flat on his face. When he looked up, blinking against the sun, Colonel Jonathan Ward stood there, hands on his hips, glaring down at him angrily.
Fletcher’s hand went to his hat in a salute. “My guns are ready, sir,” he said.
“Damn it all, Major Fletcher,” Ward said, “I must admit I’m distressed and surprised to see you in this condition. The Rebs are pressing hard on my left flank, and I fear it will be turned unless you carry out my orders and get your horse battery to the heights. You must give the 83rd Pennsylvania some artillery support.”
“I’m limbered up and ready to move out, Colonel,” Fletcher said. “I’ve... I’ve been shot through and through, and I’m sore wounded, you see.”
“No excuses, Major, please. Now get on your feet at once and see to your battery.”
Fletcher struggled to his feet, his hand once again coming to his hat in a salute.
But this couldn’t be happening. Colonel Ward was mortally wounded at Chickamauga. He’d been with him when he died. The colonel’s arm and leg had been amputated, and he’d passed away in a fi
eld hospital an hour after the surgery.
Fletcher blinked again. There was no one there, just the prairie grass and the pine-covered hills. A few fat flakes of snow fell lazily from the sky, mocking his weakness and the unraveling of his mind.
His hand dropped from his hat brim. He pulled the collar of his mackinaw closer around his neck, holding it in place with his right hand. Snow rimmed his eyebrows and lay white and thick on his mustache so that he looked like a man made of frost.
His short, gasping breaths smoking in the air, he walked on.
An hour later, riders appeared in the distance. Fletcher’s eyes were so sore and inflamed he almost didn’t see them, and for a moment he believed they might be another hallucination. But then the riders stopped, standing on their stirrups, looking at him. The three men swung their horses around and rode toward him at a fast gallop.
As the men reined up, Fletcher lifted a hand in greeting, then dropped it again. One of the riders was the gunfighter Tex Lando, and the other was a Lazy R hand Fletcher didn’t know. But there was no mistaking the man who led them.
It was Higgy Conroy.
Chapter 18
“Well, well, well, lookee here.” Conroy smiled, his snake eyes ugly. “Boys, we caught ourselves a real prize. Mr. high-and-mighty Buck Fletcher his ownself.”
Fletcher looked up at the man sitting the paint horse and tried to focus his thoughts.
Why was Conroy riding with the Lazy R? It didn’t make sense. Unless Conroy was playing both sides. Or had he already moved in and taken over Judith’s ranch and the PP Connected?
Had he been the mystery man behind the range war the whole time?
Fletcher didn’t know, and he was too weak and hurting to think the thing through.
He shook his head. He’d study on it some other time. Maybe tomorrow, when he felt better.
Vaguely, he became aware of Conroy’s voice.
“Now you don’t have a woman’s skirts to hide behind, Fletcher,” he was saying. “But it don’t hardly seem fair to draw down on you, seein’ as how you’re half-dead already.”
Blinking, desperate to get a clear picture of the gunman, Fletcher whispered weakly, the words coming slow, “Don’t let that stop you, Conroy.”
Fletcher rubbed his eyes with the back of his gloved hand, trying to focus. But in that instant, Conroy pulled his gun, and Fletcher found himself looking into the muzzle of the gunman’s Colt.
“Now, it don’t seem hardly fair to kill a dead man,” Conroy mused as though to himself, but Tex Lando laughed, and the other hand was grinning. “But then, I dearly want to be known as the man who put a bullet into the great gunfighting legend, Buck Fletcher.”
Conroy rubbed his chin with the fingers of his left hand. “Mmm, what to do? What to do?”
Fletcher’s mackinaw was buttoned shut, and he realized it would slow him if he went for his gun ... as if he weren’t slowed enough already from weakness and loss of blood. He was bucking a stacked deck, and he knew it.
Playing for time, he said, “Conroy, what have you done with Judith Tyrone?”
The gunman shrugged. “Me? Why, nothing. She was hale and hearty and happy as a pup with two tails when I saw her just this morning.”
“You’re a liar, Conroy,” Fletcher snapped, swaying on his feet. The gunman, warm in a sheepskin coat and wool scarf, was an indistinct blur above him. “What did you do to her?”
Conroy shook his head. “There you go, calling me a liar—and in front of my friends an’ all.” The gunman, his snake eyes cold, sighed and said, “Well, Fletcher, I don’t want to kill you right now. That would be way too quick. But I do want to put a bullet into you, so—”
Conroy fired, and Fletcher hit the ground as the gunman’s bullet smashed into his right shoulder. Desperation growing in him, Fletcher sat up and clawed for his gun, but a loop snaked through the air and settled around his chest, pinioning his arms to his sides as it was drawn tight.
“Here, Hig!” Lando yelled, tossing the grinning gunman the end of the rope. “Why don’t you take this feller for an El Paso sleigh ride!”
Conroy yelled “Heeehaw!” and wrapped the rope around his saddle horn. He kicked his paint into a run, and Fletcher was dragged behind, bouncing over the uneven ground just a few feet from the pony’s flashing, steel-shod hooves.
The gunman unmercifully rowelled his horse into a fast gallop, and Fletcher skidded, spinning wildly, across the snow-slicked grass. The ground was not as smooth as it appeared. Despite its covering of snow, there were plenty of ridges and furrows, and here and there sharp rocks tore viciously into Fletcher’s sides and back as he was dragged, tumbling and bouncing, over them.
The mackinaw offered him some protection, but when Conroy galloped back to his grinning companions, it seemed he too had noticed that fact.
“Take that coat off him,” he yelled. “And his boots and guns.”
Lando dismounted and roughly tore off Fletcher’s mackinaw and unbuckled his guns while the other Lazy R hand yanked off his boots.
“Yeeehaw!” Conroy yelled. He spurred his horse again, dragging Fletcher at the end of a tightly vibrating rope. This time, without the protection of the wool coat, Fletcher began to get torn up badly as he jerked and spun behind Conroy’s galloping horse. His arms and hands were scraped raw and bloody, as were his back and chest, and the wound in his side had opened up, staining his entire shirt bright scarlet.
Conroy dragged Fletcher this way and that across the ground until he tired of the game. He rode back to the other two men and dropped the end of the rope onto Fletcher’s torn body.
“He ain’t going to bother anybody ever again,” he grinned. “I’d say he’s through.”
“Want me to finish him off, Hig?” the Lazy R hand asked eagerly. “Should I put a bullet into him?”
“No, leave him, Eddie,” the gunman replied. “Let him crawl off somewhere and find a hole where he can die like a dog.”
Through swollen eyes, Fletcher saw them leave, Conroy whooping as he swung the bloody, tattered mackinaw around his head.
“You made a mistake, Conroy,” he whispered, his breath coming in short, agonized gasps. “You should have killed me.”
There was no question of walking now.
When Conroy and his gunmen were out of sight, Fletcher crawled forward on his belly. The Lazy R could not be that far away.
The shoulder wound made his right arm useless, and he used his left elbow to pull himself along, ignoring the savage pain in his side.
The snow where he crawled was stained by long rusty streaks of blood, a narrow, furrowed road leading to nowhere.
A hunting coyote trotted out of the trees, then stood stock still watching Fletcher. He tilted his nose, nostrils flaring, scenting blood in the wind. The little predator trotted closer, its normal fear of humans all but forgotten, instinctively recognizing this one as badly hurt and probably defenseless.
Fletcher lay on his right side and saw only a blurred shape carefully stalking him. Only when the animal got closer did he recognize it as a coyote. Was he hallucinating again? He’d heard of people being attacked by coyotes, but such attacks were very rare, if they ever really happened.
The coyote stopped, sniffed the air again, then ran forward quickly. The animal sank its teeth into Fletcher’s left leg, then just as quickly sprang back again. Fletcher yelled and kicked out with his foot, but the coyote was fast and crow-hopped out of reach.
The animal darted in to attack again, snapping at Fletcher’s face. He swung at the animal and missed, and again it trotted out of reach.
“Get away from me, you stupid varmint!” he yelled.
This time, alarmed by the man’s voice, the animal backed off a dozen yards, watching intently, head cocked, as Fletcher began to pull himself forward again. The coyote kept pace with him, biding his time, attacking, teeth bared, only when he saw an opening, then scampering quickly away.
The animal’s hit-and-run tactics began to tell on F
letcher. His arms and legs, already torn up from being dragged behind Conroy’s horse, were bleeding here and there from bite wounds.
There had been plenty of rocks around when he was being dragged, but now his hands frantically probed the snow around him and found nothing.
Again and again the coyote attacked, snarling in frustration, wanting to end this quickly. Unable to rip at Fletcher’s belly as it did its natural prey, the animal bit whatever part of the man was closest to him: his arm, leg, back.
It began to snow harder, flakes falling from a sky that was rapidly darkening into night.
The coyote, anxious now to immobilize this human, attacked more frequently over the next two hours, hunger driving him to take greater and greater risks.
Dragging himself along painfully, bleeding from a dozen bites, Fletcher made for the trees.
Snarling and angry, the coyote followed, trotting alongside him, darting in to attack whenever he saw an opening.
Now that the sun had dropped, the night had turned cold. Fletcher shivered uncontrollably. His feet were numb in their wet socks, and his shirt and pants were sodden from the snow.
He had lost a lot of blood, and he was weakening fast.
Fletcher had always thought he’d die on a saloon floor, gun in hand following one hell-blazing moment of violence. But he’d been wrong. All along, he’d been destined to provide supper for a hungry coyote.
The irony of it all made him laugh out loud. He tilted his head back and roared, crazed peal after peal echoing among the silent hills.
Suddenly made wary by this new and unexpected development, the coyote drew off a few yards to consider its implications.
But, sensing that the man’s strength was rapidly failing, it decided to grow bolder, attacking more and more often, its bites no longer mere nips but savage attacks by fangs that bit and held, trying to tear this obstinate victim apart.
Fletcher kept yelling at the animal, kicking out whenever he could, but his attempts were feeble, and the coyote instinctively knew that the time of the kill was close.
Ralph Compton Showdown At Two-Bit Creek Page 16