Flint (1960) (10 page)

He was in bad shape, but how bad? Had they taken his gun? If he moved now, would he be killed?

Through the fog in his brain, he fought to work out a plan. His head throbbed and his stomach was hot with agony. He worked the fingers in his right hand some more, and opened his eyes to the merest slits.

He was lying just off the walk and because of it he could not see the watcher, although he could hear the creak of the boards when he moved, and the rustle of his clothing. Then Flint remembered the gun in his waistband. Out of sight beneath his coat, they might not have seen it. He worked his hand over to it and grasped the butt.

He did not know whether he could rise or not, but he was going to try. Fury was beginning to build within him. He had always been slow to anger, yet terrible in his rages, for he never ceased to think when angry. He was going to make them pay.

A few faces he remembered, a few hands. Those he wanted. As for Baldwin, there was a better way for him. To such a man defeat is worse than death.

As he was gathering his muscles, a buckboard rounded into the street. He heard the rattle of trace chains, the wheels on the gravel, and then the team drew up.

"What is wrong with that man?" It was Nancy Kerrigan's voice. "Why doesn't somebody do something?"

The watcher replied lazily. "Because he's a man tried to buck Port Baldwin, ma'am. This is the least that happens."

Flint heard the buckboard creak. Then the watcher said, "I wouldn't try that, ma'am. You touch him and I'll have to be rough."

"You are fighting women now?" There was a chill in her voice. "How very brave you must be!"

"We ain't playin' favorites." The man's voice was uneasy. "When he comes out of it, we give it to him again. We keep on doin' that until train time, and then we put the rest of him on the train -- if anything is left to put on."

"If you put a hand on me," Nancy Kerrigan said sharply, "I will see you hanged before sundown."

Knowing the watcher's eyes would be on Nancy, Flint rolled swiftly to his knees, gun in hand.

The guard turned swiftly, drawing. Flint fired.

He shot to kill, but his hand was unsteady, his gaze blurred. The bullet struck the man on the hip, ripping his empty holster loose and knocking him sidewise.

Flint lunged to his feet, swayed dizzily, and caught himself on the hitching rail to prevent a fall.

Another Baldwin man sprang into the street and Flint fired. The bullet ripped splinters from the walk at the man's feet, and another struck the door jamb as he dove for shelter.

The guard was getting up and Flint, swaying drunkenly, cut down with a sweeping blow of his gun barrel that flattened him into the dust. Flint's other pistol was in the gunman's belt. He retrieved it, and took the guard's pistol.

Nancy Kerrigan ran to him. "Oh, please! You're hurt! Get into the buckboard!"

"There isn't time," he said.

He blinked slowly against the pain in his skull, and he swung his head like a huge bear.

The street was emptied of people. Yet they were there, all those who had beaten him. He shifted guns and thumbed shells into the Smith & Wesson.

With a queer, weaving, drunken gait he started up the street. Every breath he took brought a twinge of pain in his side. His head felt like a huge drum in which pain sloshed like water as he moved. He was going to die, and he no longer cared. What he wanted now was to find them. And he knew their faces.

He swayed, half-falling, then pushed himself erect and staggered through the swinging doors of a saloon. The Baldwin riders, some of them at least, were there.

Their laughter died, their half-lifted drinks stopped in mid-air, and Flint fired. He opened up in a blinding roar of gunfire, fanning his gun, for the range was close and there were a number of them.

One man grabbed for a gun and was caught by a bullet that knocked him sprawling. Panic-stricken, another man leaped through a window carrying the glass, frame, and all with him. Another bullet smashed a bottle from a man's hand, and another -- it was a face he remembered -- struck a man in the spine as he dove for the back door.

Flint staggered to the bar, catching a glimpse of a bloody and broken face in the mirror. He picked up a bottle, took a short drink, and started for the door.

Out on the street he peered right and left. He realized his gun must be empty and holstered it for the guard's pistol.

A window glass broke and a rifle barrel came through. Flint flipped the six-shooter up and snapped a shot through that window. A man sprang from a doorway and fired a quick shot that struck an awning post near Flint.

Flint fired, missed and fired again. The man's knee buckled under him and he scrambled for the door, but Flint fired again and the man cried out sharply and fell forward.

From door to door he went, half-blind with pain and his own blood, dribbling from a lacerated scalp. Twice he almost fell. The men he faced seemed panic-stricken at the sight of him, and they shot too fast or simply ducked out and ran.

Somehow he was back in front of the stage station and his own horse was there. So was Nancy Kerrigan. He had to try twice before he could get a foot in the stirrup and pull himself into the saddle. He swung the mare and started up the street. He began to feed shells into the guard's gun, but it slipped from his fingers and fell into the dust.

He slid forward on the mare's neck, the horizon seemed to bob and vanish into wavering mist, and he felt himself falling. Nancy was beside him. He fell half into the buckboard, and she got down quickly and tipped him over into the back. Tying the mare on behind, she started for the ranch, driving at a rapid clip.

When Flint opened his eyes he was lying in bed between white sheets and staring up at a sunlit ceiling. Slowly, because his neck was stiff, he turned his head.

The room was large, square, and neat. The bed was a huge, old-fashioned fourposter, and there was a dresser and a mirror. The floor was almost painfully clean, polished, and there were several rag rugs. He started to move and felt a twinge of pain in his side that left him gasping. His body felt stiff and when he ran his fingers down his side he found he was taped tightly from armpits to hips.

On a chair back hung his gun belt with a Smith & Wesson in its holster. The other gun lay atop his freshly washed and neatly pressed jeans. His coat hung over the back of the chair also, and in the pocket were the letters.

For several minutes he lay still, luxuriating in the clean sheets. After a while he closed his eyes and slept. When he opened them again he lay looking at his coat and wondering whether the letters were worth the pain of getting them.

He heard footsteps. The door opened and Nancy came in, looking bright and pretty in a cotton dress of blue and white, carrying herself like a young queen.

"You should see yourself," she said cheerfully. "You're a sight."

"If I look like I feel," Flint said, "I can believe it."

"You're luckier than you have any right to be. The doctor doesn't think there are any broken bones, but he is worried about you. He is afraid you may have internal injuries."

Flint shot her a sharp glance. "Did he give me a thorough check?"

"There wasn't time. He intends to do that when he comes back."

Like hell he will, Flint told himself. "I've got to get out of here," he said. "If Baldwin finds I'm here, you'll be in trouble."

She held the door for a Mexican girl, who brought in a tray of food.

One hand was bandaged, and he decided it must have been the hand that was stamped on. The other hand was bruised and somewhat swollen. When he sat up to eat he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, but there was little he recognized.

There was a great welt above one eye and his nose was swollen to almost twice its normal size. His lip and cheek were puffed out in a knot as big as his fist, and there was a cut on his chin. There was a bandage on his skull, and his eyes were scarcely more than slits, but he had expected worse.

"We brought your mare in," Nancy said. "She's out in the stable eating corn like she had forgotten how it tasted." She straightened the bedcovers. "And don't worry about us. If Port Baldwin had not moved in on Tom Nugent he would be here now. We're expecting him."

When she had gone, Flint lay back on the bed. His head was throbbing and he felt very tired.

He had come to New Mexico wanting no trouble. He had wanted no trouble at Horse Springs, and wanted none on North Plain, but long ago he had discovered that one has to make a stand. If a man starts to run, there is nothing to do but keep running. And if a man must die, he could at least die proud of his manhood. It was better to live one day as a lion, than a dozen years as a sheep.

Rolling to his elbow, he got the letters from his pocket. One was from the Baltimore attorney, forwarding papers that indicated his plans in some respects were complete, and some investments had been concluded. The other letter was the final report from the detectives.

Port Baldwin had been the man who arranged for Lottie and her father to secure the services of the gambler who tried to kill him.

And her father had been associated in some of Baldwin's financial schemes.

With difficulty he brought his mind to consideration of the problem. Long ago he had heard of an old Chinese saying to the effect that any man who could concentrate for as much as three minutes on any given problem could rule the world. The thought had remained in his mind, and he had cultivated the ability to apply all his intelligence to any given situation. To close out everything from his mind but the one idea to be considered had taken long practice, but much of his success had been due to that ability to concentrate, to formulate the problem, to bring to it all the information and knowledge he had, and to reach a decision. Only now he was too tired, his head throbbed too much, and he wanted only to rest However, and he realized it with surprise, for the first time he was thinking of doing something for someone else.

True, Baldwin had ordered him beaten, but in a measure he had paid him for that. What he wanted to do had no concern with his own feelings. He wanted to help Nancy Kerrigan.

He closed his eyes against the ache in his head, but her image remained with him. How different it might have been had he met such a girl instead of Lottie! But would it? For he was dying now, bit by bit, day by day.

Yet time remained, and he had always loved a good fight. He would help Nancy, he would whip Baldwin, and he would go out with that, at least, completed.

For a man who had fought all his life, it would be best to go out fighting. Too often men were concerned merely with living, even if they must crawl to survive. He would fight Port Baldwin, he would beat him. Nancy would have her ranch, she would...

At some point he went to sleep.

Chapter
7

When he awoke it was dark. He could hear the stirrings and the sound of dishes that meant suppertime. Flint sat up and put his feet to the floor.

When Nancy came in he was strapping on his gun belt.

"You're being very foolish," she said severely. "You need rest."

"I'll get all the rest I need soon enough." He paused, looking at her in the half-light. "Right now I'm hungry. Anyway," he added brusquely, "I'm not a man who could ever lie abed when there are things to be done."

He tucked the other pistol into his waistband and donned his coat, following Nancy into the main room. She had lovely shoulders, and when she turned to look at him, it was with a quick, direct gaze.

The ranch house was spacious and comfortable. There were books in some shelves across the room, and he went to look at them. Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving, Shakespeare, Hume's History of England.

He was not surprised by the quality of the authors, for he had read the journals of the trappers who came West, and he had known many Western men, and knew of the books they read. They could carry few so they carried the best.

Nancy returned to his side. "You are interested in books?" she asked.

"As you've noticed, Miss Kerrigan, I am a lonely man, and such men are inclined to read. Luckily, one of my teachers got me started on Plutarch and Montaigne."

"You're a puzzling man. You give the impression of being educated, and yet --"

"My reactions yesterday disturbed you, is that it? Why do people so readily assume that a man of education cannot also be a man of violence -- when violence is called for?"

"Christopher Marlowe was put under bond to keep him from beating up the constable on his way home, and Socrates was a soldier as well as a good wrestler. Remember how he threw Alcibiades, who was interrupting his conversations? Threw him and held himdown, and Alcibiades was noted for his strength."

"And Ben Jonson. He once met in single combat in the open field between the assembled armies the best fighter in the French forces, and defeated him."

"Believe me, the list is a long one, and many men of education have on occasion been men of violence. An educated man demands his right to information, for example. Take it from him or censor it and he is apt to become violent."

"Are you a Western man, Mr. Flint?"