Flintlock (16 page)

“Three days. Three lousy, stinking days and we ain't seen hide nor hair of the damned cave,” Abe Roper said. “Coffin, you ain't much of an Injun.”

“I'll find it,” Coffin said. “I don't have the map.”

“I know you don't have the map. Charlie Fong took it and damn him fer a Chinaman. So when will we find the cave?”

“When the time is right.”

“Hell, that ain't an answer,” Roper said. “That's an excuse. Now give a real answer and tell me when.”

Sam Flintlock tuned out the argument between the two men and carried his morning coffee into a stand of juniper and piñon and fetched his back against a gnarled trunk.

As he built a cigarette he wondered at the dream that had wakened him from sleep in the darkest hour of the night.

He saw Charlie Fong sitting by a campfire, singing, and opposite him an old man in a top hat played “Skip to My Lou” on a twanging mouth harp.

But what made it stranger was that old Barnabas hovered in the shadows, doing some kind of mountain man jig to the music.

Then an owl swooped out of the sky and a great wind rose and swept everyone away.

Flintlock lit his cigarette. What did the dream mean? Or did it mean anything?

When old Barnabas invaded his dreams it usually meant there was mischief afoot. Something to do with Charlie, maybe?

Flintlock watched the blue smoke curl from his cigarette and decided he was asking himself questions that had no answers.

But for some reason, the dream still troubled him.

Roper's angry voice cut Flintlock's reverie short. “We'd better find the cave and damned soon, Coffin,” he said. “And, hell, look at the sky. It's gonna rain soon and we'll be searching in a damned storm.” Roper shook his head. “I declare, around here things are goin' from bad to worse.”

But things were about to get even worse than Roper feared....

 

 

Eight riders came on at a canter through a misting rain.

Flintlock rose to his feet as soon as he saw them, especially the man in front, tall, big gutted, dressed in the embroidered finery of a prosperous hacienda owner.

But the only time Carlos Hernandez had set foot in a hacienda was as a raider, rapist and murderer.

The Mexican bandit rode up to the smoking campfire that was fighting a losing battle against the fine but persistent rain.

Hernandez's quick, black eyes swept the camp and registered what he saw.

Abe Roper was on his feet, his thumb hooked onto his gun belt near his Colt. Jack Coffin, slender and dangerous, was five paces to Roper's left and Flintlock stood near the trees, the big revolver in his waistband in sight and significant.

After Hernandez's men fanned out behind him, the big man tipped back his white sombrero and grinned, revealing a mouthful of dazzling white teeth, a diamond set into each of the two front ones.

“Abe Roper, my friend, it's been a long time. Too long, I think,” the Mexican said. “How many years?”

Roper nodded. “Howdy, Carlos. Too many years, I reckon. How are things?”

“Oh, very bad, my friend,” Hernandez said. “Very, very bad. As a great patron, I exact tribute from my peons, but they grow poorer every year and as they grow poor, so do I.” He raised a meaty left hand and pinched the skin on the back with the forefinger and thumb of his right. “Look, my good friend, look at the slack. Carlos is wasting away from hunger.”

“If bacon and beans are to your taste, you can share what we have,” Roper said.

Hernandez shook his great anvil of a head. “No, my friend, such a peon's meal is not to my taste. But you know what is?”

“Tell me,” Roper said.

“Gold. Much gold is to my taste.”

“You came to the wrong camp, Carlos,” Roper said. “If I found a ten dollar bill in my pocket, I'd be wearing somebody else's pants.”

“Hah! You made a good joke, Abe, my friend,” Hernandez said. He turned to his silent, hard-faced riders. “He made a good joke, compadres. Say ha-has.”

The men did as they were told, then Hernandez cut off the laughter with a chop of his hand.

“So, I was riding past, deep in devout prayer, when I saw my friend Abe Roper and my friend Sam Flintlock and I said to the Good Lord above, ‘Now why would those two fine gentlemen be here where there are no banks to rob or trains to plunder?' And the Good Lord said, ‘I dunno, Carlos. Why don't you ask them?'”

Hernandez made a show of moving his pearl-handed Colt into a more accessible position and said, “Now I am asking. Why are you here and with a woman?”

“Hunting,” Roper said. “As for the woman, we found her, but she's tetched in the head.”

“Ah . . . then that's the explanation,” Hernandez said. His face was suddenly shrewd. “What are you hunting?”

“Deer,” Roper said. “Bear, maybe, if we can find one.”

“There's good hunting around here, my friend. Yet you eat only bacon and beans. No deer steak?”

“We haven't seen a deer yet,” Roper said.

“You could hunt deer where you came from, Abe.” Hernandez waggled a forefinger. “I think you are here for something else.”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Like a golden bell, my friend. If you have come all this way north, with the Apaches out, you must have a pretty good notion where the bell is. No?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Roper said. “This is only a hunting trip, Carlos.”

The Mexican sighed. “Ah, dear me, to show you how serious I am, perhaps I must make an example. The Indian maybe? Or my good friend Sam Flintlock.”

“Don't even think about it, Carlos,” Flintlock said. He moved away from the trees, stopped, then said, “You couldn't shade me on your best day.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But now I must have you meet a very, very good friend.” Hernandez called out, “Johnny, come and introduce yourself.”

A man rode forward and Hernandez said, “This is my good friend Johnny Joslin. Look how eager he is to meet you, Sam.”

The man called Joslin swung out of the saddle and Flintlock pegged him for a gun with some killings along his back trail. He wore a Stetson with a curled-up brim, a bolero jacket and the pants stretched across his narrow hips were embroidered at the top of the thighs. He was young, in his early twenties, and wore his twin Colts as confidently as the sneer on his razor-gash of a mouth.

Johnny Joslin seemed slightly bemused, as though this whole thing was beneath his dignity.

“Abe, do you want to say something?” Hernandez said.

The morning was dull, rainy and gray, but nevertheless the diamonds in the bandit's teeth gathered enough light to glitter.

“I never heard of a damned golden bell, and if it's around here, we sure as hell haven't found it,” Roper said. “Do we look like we're prospering?”

“But you know where the bell is, my friend,” Hernandez said. “That is why the Indian is here, to lead you to it. I have just figured that out.”

“Go to hell,” Roper said. “I done told you what we're doing here.”

Roper looked slightly worried. He knew the odds he and the others faced and they were not in his favor, to say the least.

“Then if you won't tell me, Mr. Joslin will kill Sam. Do you really want your friend's death on your conscience?”

“Flintlock ain't my friend.”

“Thanks, Abe,” Flintlock said.

“Well, I always tell the truth,” Roper said.

“Not this time, I think,” Hernandez said. “Ah well, so it has come to this. My heart is so sad I fear it may break. Johnny, kill Mr. Flintlock.”

 

 

Johnny Joslin couldn't believe he was the one doing the dying.

Even when Flintlock's second bullet crashed into his chest and his own, unfired guns fell from his hands, he still couldn't believe it.

He rode those two bullets into hell with a look of horror and disbelief on his face, unwilling to believe that for the first time since he'd buckled on his guns and became a somebody, he'd met a real gunfighter.

Sam Flintlock had no time for such thoughts.

Hernandez was drawing.

Flintlock fired. Too fast. The bullet, intended for the Mexican's chest, tracked left and smashed into the man's right wrist as he brought up his Colt.

But in that instant of bone-shattered pain, Hernandez knew he was done.

“My God, don't shoot anymore!” he yelled.

His men, looking to their leader for guidance, sat their saddles, uncertain about what to do next. But they did know that if they ignored Hernandez and pulled guns, half of them would die right there.

They'd heard about Abe Roper, a fast man with the Colt, but Flintlock's speed with the iron was beyond anything they'd ever seen or imagined and they'd no desire to push their luck.

Hernandez settled it.

“No shooting! He'll kill me!” the bandit yelled, his voice ragged with pain.

“Don't call it different or you're a dead man, Carlos,” Flintlock said, a haze of gray gunsmoke drifting around him.

Hernandez grabbed his gun arm with his left and stared at the stark red mouth that pulsed blood in the center of his wrist.

“Damn you, Sam Flintlock, you've done for me,” Hernandez said. “I'll never be able to use this hand again.”

“Too bad, Carlos,” Abe Roper said. “Now you and your boys get the hell out of here afore Sam'l gets real mad and reads to you from the book.”

“This was ill done,” Hernandez said. “I will not forget it.”

“I could kill you right now, Carlos,” Flintlock said. He was standing very still and tense. Then the moment went out of his eyes and he said, “Go away, and take your dead man with you. Whatever you were paying him, it was too much.”

The Mexican spat into the dirt. “You killed him, Sam Flintlock. You bury him.”

Hernandez swung his horse away and his men followed.

Flintlock waited until they disappeared into rain and distance and then stepped to Roper.

He took three cartridges from the man's gun belt and as he punched out the empties from his Colt and fed the fresh rounds into the cylinder, he said, “So I'm not your friend, huh?”

“Sam, Sam, I was joshing,” Roper said. “I mean, I figured if I said you weren't my friend, the gunfighter wouldn't kill you.” He smiled. “You see how it was with me, huh? I had your own good at heart.”

Flintlock nodded. “And I sure believe you, Abe.”

He shoved the muzzle of his revolver into Roper's belly and at the same time jerked the man's Colt from the holster.

Roper's eyes got big. Scared big. “Sam . . . what the hell?”

“Bury him, Abe,” Flintlock said.

“I ain't—”

Flintlock pushed the gun harder. “Bury him.”

Roper looked into Flintlock's eyes and what he saw unnerved him.

“All right, all right, Sam. I'll bury him, but I don't have a shovel.”

“Then do the best you can, Abe. And get his guns. He was wearing them under false pretenses.”

Roper took a couple of steps in the dead man's direction, then turned and said, “You killed a man and now you're beating yourself up, ain't you?”

“Yes,” Flintlock said. “I'm beating myself up.”

“Sammy, you got to get over that,” Roper said. “It's a fault with you I seen before.”

“I know, Abe, but I never will,” Flintlock said. “Now get him the hell out of here.”

 

 

After Roper dragged the body into the trees, Jack Coffin stepped beside Flintlock. “I saw it and he didn't come close, Samuel.”

“I reckon not,” Flintlock said.

“Only one man is faster than you. The one who calls himself Asa Pagg.”

“Pagg is good with a gun,” Flintlock said. “Real fast on the draw and shoot.”

“Better than good,” Coffin said. “If you meet him, walk softly around him.”

“I don't think I can do that, Jack.”

“Then he'll kill you, as surely as he will kill me,” Coffin said.

“Mr. Pagg, I would consider it a most singular favor if you would walk me around the perimeter of the fort,” Winnifred Grove said.

Asa Pagg, who'd been smoking a cigar at the far corner of the porch outside the headquarters building, smiled and said, “Surely a task, and a pleasant one, for your husband, ma'am.”

“Alas, the colonel is busy inside with army affairs,” Winnifred said. “And I fear he can't be disturbed.” She flounced off the wicker chair and pouted. “Oh dear, what a pity to waste such an exquisite moon.”

Pagg glanced at the night sky where the waxing moon haloed a few clouds with pink and white light. “It is indeed,” he said. He flicked his cigar away and watched it land on the parade ground, showering sparks.

“I'd be delighted to take a promenade with you, dear lady,” Pagg said. He stepped beside the woman and crooked his arm for her to take. “Shall we be on our way?”

Winnifred frowned. “You must forgive me, Mr. Pagg, but I find the touch of animal fur most distressing,” she said. “Perhaps you could leave your coat on the porch and reclaim it when we return.”

“Certainly,” Pagg said. “If it distresses you so.”

He shed his coat, revealing the big revolvers on each side of his chest.

Winnifred smiled. “I know I'll be safe in your strong hands, Mr. Pagg.”

Again Pagg offered the woman his arm. “Then shall we?”

The night air was soft and cool and a gentle breeze from the south carried the scent of sage and pine. The moon bathed the fort and the outlying brush and piñon country with fragile light and gleamed on Winnifred's severely scraped-back hair.

The woman lifted her face to Pagg and said, with an obviously mirror-practiced, coquettish smile, “I would not have wished to ask any other gentlemen to walk with me, Mr. Pagg, because I know that you're the very soul of propriety.”

“Indeed I am, ma'am,” Pagg said. “You're safe with me.”

“But not too safe, I trust,” Winnifred said, smiling again.

She'd laid it on the line and Pagg wondered if he should do her. She was scrawny and didn't get her full helping of looks, but what was it the sailors said? Yeah, any port in a storm.

“Have you enjoyed many women in your life, Mr. Pagg?”

“Hundreds . . . white, black, yellow and red and I liked 'em all.”

“And who were the ones that pleased you most, may I enquire?”

“They all pleased me, dear lady.”

“Then I must be careful ere that sweet treasure that women guard most diligently might be in danger of a determined assault.”

Winnifred smiled again and Pagg thought that a plain-faced woman with horsey teeth doesn't do the hussy well. “Are my fears unfounded?”

“Quite unfounded, ma'am,” Pagg said. “I am a gentleman to the core and I will ne'er scale the ramparts of your virtue.”

Winnifred looked disappointed.

Their walk had taken them past the parade ground and into a wooded area that was mostly scrub juniper and wild oak.

Pagg grabbed the woman and pushed her against a tree.

“Yes, you know what I want,” Winnifred said. “You're an animal, Asa Pagg, and I want you so badly.”

Pagg grinned. “My, my, Mrs. Grove, what will the colonel say?”

“Nothing, because he won't find out.” Winnifred's hands became busy. “Quickly,” she said.

Looking back, Pagg decided that he'd no way of knowing that Mrs. Grove was a screamer. But indeed she was. Her ecstatic shrieks and squeals carried far in the darkness . . . and alerted the pickets her husband had posted around the perimeter.

Over Pagg's heaving shoulder, Winnifred saw two troopers run toward them, rifles across their chests.

She sidestepped away from Pagg and screamed, “Help! Help! Rape!”

Stunned, it took some time for Pagg to react. He pulled up his pants and turned and then froze when a bayonet pushed against his belly, a hard-eyed cavalryman on the other end of it.

Winnifred pointed at Pagg, her face a mask of terror. “He . . . he dragged me from the porch and tried . . . he tried . . .”

“Calm yourself, Mrs. Grove,” a soldier said. “The rogue can't harm you now.”

Pagg thought about drawing and shooting it out. But other soldiers were running toward him and he caught a glimpse of an officer's shoulder straps. He was a long way from his horse and the gray-haired trooper with the bayonet would surely stick him before he could clear his guns.

Then things happened fast.

Captain Owen Shaw's baffled face swam into his line of vision. Then the half-drunk First Lieutenant Frank Hedley pushed the trooper's bayonet aside and stuck the muzzle of his revolver under Pagg's chin.

“Damn you, I'll blow your filthy head right off your shoulders.”

“No, Lieutenant,” Shaw said. “Let the colonel decide this man's fate.”

Colonel Grove arrived with a dozen men, and his wife screamed even louder and more urgently than she had as Pagg pleasured her.

“Andrew,” she called out, her arms reaching to him, “hold me, for I am undone.”

Shaw reckoned only Mrs. Grove's buttons were undone, but he glared at Pagg and said nothing.

“Andrew, he tried to . . . to . . . ravish me,” Winnifred shrieked as she fell into her husband's arms.

The colonel's face was black with rage. “Take that foul beast to the guardhouse,” he said. “I'll deal with him later.”

Pagg knew resistance was futile. He moved to surrender his guns to Shaw, but the gray-haired trooper saw the movement and he slammed his rifle butt into the side of Pagg's head. The outlaw dropped like a sack of rocks.

Captain Shaw stared down at the unconscious Pagg and he badly wanted to kill him, kick his face in for being so stupid—and with Winnifred Grove of all people.

Damn Pagg's eyes. Now the plan to steal the payroll was well and truly scuppered.

 

 

Asa Pagg woke to a pounding headache and the taste of blood in his mouth. He tried to move but his entire body hurt and he sank back onto the prickly discomfort of the filthy straw mattress and groaned.

The damned blue bellies had pounded on him with fists, boots and rifle butts all the way to the guardhouse. To the soldiers, a rapist, even an unsuccessful one, as Mrs. Grove claimed, was the lowest form of life on the frontier.

The thought of what had transpired last night and the treachery of Mrs. Grove made Pagg's anger flare and he forced himself to rise from the bunk and stretch the kinks out of his aching body.

The guardhouse was a low, narrow log cabin, the rusty iron cot its only furnishing. A single barred window, about the size of an unopened book, looked out onto a stretch of sandy ground dominated by an X-shaped wooden frame where soldiers guilty of desertion or insubordination were strung up by their thumbs.

Pagg was staring out at this melancholy scene when Captain Shaw's face filled the window and blocked his view.

“Damnit, Pagg, why did you do it?” Shaw said. “And the colonel's wife of all people?”

“I didn't rape her,” Pagg said. “She was willing. She asked me to do her.”

“That's not what Mrs. Grove says. She's taken to her bed in a faint and the colonel vows he'll punish you like he's never punished a man before.”

“I told you, Shaw, she was more than willing. But now I'm trapped like a rat in a trap for trying to rape an ugly woman an' all I wanted was to do her a favor. I gave her what she wants but never gets.”

“Hell, Pagg, she's a horse. She's even got the whinny.”

“I know. A loud whinny. That's the reason I'm here.”

“Geronimo attacks in three days, Pagg,” Shaw said. “Our time is running out.”

“Don't you think I'm well aware o' that?”

“When he finds out you can't help him like you promised he'll skin you alive like he did Lieutenant Howard.”

“Geronimo didn't do the skinnin'.”

“His Apaches did.”

Pagg thought about that, then said, “Tell Joe and Logan I want to talk to them. They'll bust me out of here.”

“The guardhouse is surrounded by a dozen sentries with orders to shoot to kill. That's how mad at you Colonel Grove is. Your boys won't get near the place.”

“Then you'll have to do it, Shaw. You're an officer. You must be able to get the key to the door.”

“Maybe, once Geronimo starts his attack. But it won't be easy. Now I'm not even sure I want to go through with this thing. I mean with you locked up and facing a possible firing squad.”

“Nothing is easy, Shaw. Stealing the money won't be easy. Getting out of this fort with our hair intact after Geronimo attacks won't be easy. Getting the wagon to Mexico won't be easy. The only thing that's gonna be easy is spending it.”

Shaw said, “All right, Pagg, you sit tight and I'll see what I can do.”

“Captain, don't count on the letter you sent to your kinfolk in Boston,” Pagg said.

“What do you mean by that?” Shaw said.

“Just what I say. Don't count on it.”

“You mean if I back out, you'll kill me anyway?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“I told you I'll see what I can do. You can trust me, Asa.”

Pagg ignored that and said, “What does the colonel have in mind for me? You said something about a firing squad.”

“I don't know,” Shaw said. “The firing squad is a real possibility, but I can assure you, whatever your punishment is, it won't be pleasant.”