Flintlock (17 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: Flintlock
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Unless I'm much mistaken, that there's the Hogback,” Marshal Pleasant Tyrell said. “Ain't it a wonder to behold, Charlie?”
Charlie Fong nodded. “Rises out of nothing, like God set it down there for a spell and then forgot about it.”
“He works in mysterious ways, kind o' like your kinfolk,” Tyrell said. “You see the cabin? My far seeing ain't so good anymore.”
“Damn rain is like a mist,” Fong said. “I guess we'll have to ride closer.”
A cloud of doubt passed across Tyrell's eyes.
“You reckon this feller Garrard could be a-settin' at a window with a Sharps big fifty sighted in at a hundred yards?” the marshal said. “I mean with the Apaches out an' all.”
“Maybe so. But I take consolation in the fact that you're a bigger target than me,” Fong said.
“Boy, you jes' went down a couple o' pegs in my estimation,” Tyrell said. “An' me havin' just took to liking Chinee fellers.”
They rode off a shallow rise onto the sandy flat that gave way to a wide depression thick with brush, cactus and bulging sandstone boulders. The rain didn't quit, still falling steadily from a bruised sky.
When they rode out of the hollow, about half a mile of flat brush country stretched ahead of them.
For a moment the rain parted like a ragged gray curtain and Charlie Fong caught a glimpse of a log cabin huddled close to the foot of the Hogback. Smoke from its chimney rose into the air straight as a string, but there was no sign of the occupants.
“See something?” Tyrell said.
“Yeah, there's a cabin right ahead of us,” Fong said. “Now we'll find out if that big fifty notion of yours has any merit.”
“Hell of a way to find out, Charlie. Ride into a damned bullet.”
Marshal Tyrell glanced at the black and mustard sky and scowled. “Be good to set in a cabin out of this rain and drink coffee.” He turned his head and a question framed in his eyes. “How do you want to play it, Charlie?”
“We just ride up, friendly as you please, and let Garrard invite us inside. If the Chinese women are being abused, we'll know it.”
“Stick this in your head, Charlie,” Tyrell said. “Like I already told you, if there's killin' to be done, I'll do it. I'm the law.”
“Sets fine by me, Marshal. But if Garrard draws down on me, all bets are off. You
comprende
?”
“All right, you can't say fairer than that. But there's one more thing, Charlie, I'm the white man here, so I'll make the call on whether or not the women are being abused.”
“Call it as you see it, Marshal.”
“Then let's go get it done.”
 
 
Silas Garrard's welcome was a few degrees less than warm.
As Charlie Fong and Pleasant Tyrell rode up to the cabin, Garrard opened the door, a Sharps fifty in his hands and a scowl on his bearded face.
“Big fifty. I told ya, Charlie,” Tyrell whispered.
“What the hell do you want?” Garrard said.
He was a short, stocky man with quick, mean eyes and muttonchop sideburns that, untrimmed, grew down to his shoulders and were braided with red ribbon. He wore a sailor's peaked cap with an anchor on the front, a seaman's short jacket and baggy gray pants.
Tyrell answered before Fong could get a word out. “We were passin' by, seen your smoke and figured we'd stop for a cup of coffee an' a friendly chinwag.”
“You figgered wrong,” Garrard said. “Now be off with you. I don't want you here.”
“I'm an officer of the law,” Tyrell said. “I got a right to be here, or any place else in this here territory.”
“I don't give a damn who you are, mister. And this here cannon I'm holding feels the same way.”
“That's a mite unfriendly, Garrard,” Charlie Fong said. “You maybe got something to hide?”
“How the hell do you know my name?”
Fong caught a brief glimpse of a small, pale face at the window and then it was gone. “The army told me who you was and where you was,” he said. “They don't think very highly of you.”
“Well, there's nothing here for you, Chinaman, so light a shuck,” Garrard said. “I got faith in this here rifle.”
Then Tyrell exerted himself. “We have reason to believe a couple of Chinese gals are being abused at this residence. Before we ride on, we want to check on their welfare.”
“Lawman or no, you won't enter this cabin, and be damned to ye,” Garrard said. “By God, make a trial of it and I'll kill you both. You can lay to that.”
There was no step-back in Pleasant Tyrell that day. He'd been through it before and he didn't like to be pushed. He swept back his slicker and cleared his guns.
“Mister, make a move to swing that Sharps in my direction and I'll drop you right where you stand,” he said. His voice was low, flat, like an undertaker at a wake.
Garrard's face worked as he considered those tough, matter-of-fact words from a strange old man wearing a top hat, rain falling around him, a hundred different kinds of hell in his eyes.
The sailor had been around hardcases before, but now he decided that he wanted no part of the lawman astride the seedy, eight-hundred-pound mustang.
Garrard let the muzzle of the Sharps lower until it was pointed at the ground. “Come in and make your inspection of my women, damn ye,” he said. “And don't ask for a taste, for they'll be none forthcoming, lay to that.”
“That's very civil of you, Garrard,” Charlie Fong said. “Ain't that civil of him, Marshal Tyrell?”
“Civil as ever was,” Tyrell said. “And, Garrard, you have coffee in the pot, I hope.”
The man's only answer was a sullen silence as he opened the door and held it for Tyrell and Fong to step inside.
The interior of the cabin was as neat and clean as two women could make it. As the soldier had described to Charlie Fong, the walls were covered in prints and artifacts, most of them related to the African slave trade.
But what troubled Fong and then Tyrell when he drew his attention to it, was a cat-o'-nine-tails hanging from a hook on the wall.
Garrard followed Fong's stare and said, “Women are like dogs and horses, they need discipline from time to time.” He clapped his hands and the door to the adjoining bedroom opened and the two Chinese girls stepped inside.
They were dressed in calico dresses and both were small, slender and quite pretty. They kept their eyes downcast.
Tyrell couldn't tell one from the other, but Charlie Fong pegged the slightly taller of the two as the older. He guessed she was about seventeen, the other maybe three years younger.
“There, nothing wrong with them gals,” Garrard said. “That's where discipline comes in.” He grinned, showing bad teeth. “Listen to this.” He roughly grabbed the older girl by the arm—too roughly Fong thought—and said, “Who lives here?”
The girl's brown, almond-shaped eyes lifted for a moment. “Only you, master,” she said.
“See what I mean?” Garrard said. “Hell, they consider themselves worthless, not even human beings.”
“You did that to them with the whip?” Fong said.
“Sure I did. That's the way I enforced discipline at sea, and, by God, it's the way I enforce it in my own home, lay to that.” He pushed the girl away from him and held her out at arm's length. “Not a mark on her, and not a mark on t'other one either. These gals ain't bein' abused. They like the discipline o' the cat, keeps them on an even keel, like.”
Fong stepped to the older girl. “Show me your back,” he said.
Garrard roared, “I'm damned if she will!”
“She will,” Tyrell said quietly, relaxed, but with his hands close to his guns.
Garrard had propped his rifle in a corner but didn't seem inclined to go for it and confront the grim old marshal in a close-up gunfight.
Her eyes averted from Fong's gaze, the girl unbuttoned the back of her dress while Garrard stood by and fumed.
“Not a mark, huh?” Charlie Fong said.
The girl's slender back was crisscrossed with whip scars, some red, raw and recent, others stark white and older.
Then the girl surprised him. She pointed at the younger girl and said, “My sister the same. Worse I think.”
“So they're marked up a little,” Garrard said. “It's none of your damned business. They're mine and I can do what I want with them.”
“Charlie, did I see a barn behind the house when we rode in?” Tyrell said.
“Yeah, you did.”
“Go see if Garrard has horses. If he has, saddle them up and bring 'em here.”
“You leave my damned horses alone or I'll take the whip to you, Chinaman,” Garrard said.
He made a move toward the cat, but stopped when he found himself looking into the muzzle of Charlie Fong's .38.
“Give me an excuse to kill you, Garrard,” Fong said. “Say something or make a fancy move.”
“Charlie, remember what I told you about the killin',” Tyrell said. “That's my bailiwick.”
“I remember.” Fong glared at Garrard, then pushed his revolver back in his pocket and stepped out the door into the rain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“What the hell are you doing?” Silas Garrard said.
Pleasant Tyrell smiled without humor. “I'm confiscating your women.”
“And my horses.” Garrard's voice pitched into a whine. “You can't leave me afoot in this wilderness.”
“I can and I will,” Tyrell said. “It's the luck of the draw, my man.”
The older Chinese girl wore a slicker that Charlie Fong had found in the barn. The younger was lost inside a seaman's oilskin coat and the sleeves drooped over her hands.
Despite their limited English, both girls realized what was happening and Fong decided they seemed more than eager to leave.
He didn't yet know just how eager.
“I paid for those women and I have a bill of sale to prove it,” Garrard said to Tyrell. “I'll see you lose your star over this, you damned old fool.”
The marshal smiled. “Garrard, this may come as a surprise to you, but it shouldn't—I'm looking for an excuse to gun you myself. So I advise you to back off, stay quiet and lay low.”
Frightened now, Garrard let it go like a man dropping a hot brick. “I can die out here without a horse,” he said.
“Hell, you're within walking distance of a dozen settlements,” Charlie Fong said.
“The Apaches are out, damn you,” Garrard said.
“Yeah, so they are,” Fong said. “That's bad luck for you.”
“Maybe you should try using your whip on ol' Geronimo,” Tyrell said. “It worked with . . .” Tyrell sought the right word, then settled for “children.”
During this exchange, no one noticed that the older girl had disappeared.
But when she stepped out of the cabin door, everybody took notice, especially Silas Garrard. His eyes as round as coins, he said, “What the hell are you going to do with that?”
The Sharps rifle's twelve-pound weight was a load for a small, slender girl, but somehow she wrestled the gun to waist level.
And fired.
Up close, the roar of a Sharps fifty was thunderous, loud enough to cover Garrard's agonized scream.
The recoil knocked the Chinese girl on her back—but the bullet in his groin slammed Garrard to his knees, then his butt.
He looked at the scarlet stain that covered his crotch and he screamed, “She shot it off!”
“My God,” Charlie Fong whispered. “Is it true?”
Garrard screeched the words, “Yes, it's true! Look at me! The bitch shot off everything I got!”
Marshal Pleasant Tyrell helped the girl to her feet and said, “Young lady, you sure got a direct way of making a statement.”
“Kill her!” Garrard screamed. “Shoot her, you damned idiot!”
Charlie Fong looked at the girl. It looked like the enormity of what she'd done had finally sunk in. Tears ran down her cheeks as her sister put her arms around her and whispered words in Chinese that Fong, an orphan raised by whites, didn't understand.
Garrard rocked back and forth and moaned, his eyes fixed on his ruined groin. Then he glared at Tyrell again and squealed, “She shot a white man. Kill her. Hang her right now.”
“Well, I'll need to investigate this and make a report,” Tyrell said. “That takes time. By the way, seein' what's happened an' all, can I still call you
Mister
Garrard?”
“Give me a gun!” Garrard pleaded. “Let me kill the bitch. She's ruined me.”
Charlie Fong bent from the waist and stared at the man's crotch. “She's done for you, all right,” he said. He straightened. “It's a sad thing to say, Cap'n, but your screwin' days are over.”
This brought another wail from Garrard, and Fong said to the marshal, “Do you plan to arrest her?”
“Yeah, he's gonna arrest and then hang her, lay to that,” Garrard shrilled.
“I reckon not,” Tyrell said. “It was an unfortunate accident. Damned gun went off by itself, anybody could see that.”
“You crazy old coot, she tried to kill me,” Garrard said.
“I don't see it that way . . . ah . . . Mr. Garrard.” Charlie Fong told the girls to mount up, then said to Tyrell, “They'd better come with me.”
“Where are you taking them, Charlie?” Tyrell said.
“I'd rather not answer that, Marshal,” Fong said.
“You're going to meet up with Abe Roper and Sam Flintlock. Ain't you?”
“Like I said, Marshal, I'd—”
“Rather not talk about it, I know. Well, I reckon them two little gals will eat their weight in groceries on the trail to wherever the hell you're headed. I suggest you go into the cabin and sack up some supplies.”
Garrard rocked back and forth and groaned. Bound up in a tight cocoon of pain, he said nothing.
After Fong left, Tyrell said, “Garrard, seein' as how you got a real bad misery an' all, if you want I can scatter your brains, and you won't hurt no more. It's a tough thing, expecting a man to live without a pecker.”
Garrard, his mouth all screwed up in a snarl, said, “I hope you die of cancer, old man. You've lived too long.”
Tyrell shook his head. “That's the last time I try to do you a favor. You're just not an appreciating man.” He smiled. “How you gonna piss? You thought about that?”
“Leave me the hell alone.”
Tyrell's eyes hardened until they were steel blue. “Like you left the two little Chinee girls alone? Their lives must have been a hell.”
The older girl spat, then said, “He is . . .” to Tyrell. The next word was Chinese and sounded like
mawguay
.
“What does that mean, little gal?” the marshal said.
“Devil,” the girl said. “He is a devil.”
Garrard stared at the girl with such a look of demonic hatred that even Tyrell felt its venom.
“He's the devil, all right,” he said. He made a tut-tut sound with his tongue and shook his head. “And him without a pecker. Don't that beat all.”
“I got the groceries,” Charlie Fong said. He smiled at Garrard. “Just about cleaned you out, Silas, but I'm sure you don't mind.”
“Let's get out of here,” Tyrell said. “I want to feel clean again.”
“You're leaving me alone here to die?” Garrard said as the marshal swung into the saddle.
“Seems like,” Tyrell said. “And I can't say it was real nice meeting you.”
Garrard had lost a lot of blood and he looked as though he was barely holding on to consciousness. But he gritted his teeth, then rolled up his left sleeve and revealed a grinning skull branded with a red-hot iron into the inside of his forearm.
“Gaze on that, old man? It was burned there in Haiti by hellfire. A witch done that, a hag who'd been dead for years and then came back to life. She was what the natives call a zombie woman. Understand?”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” Tyrell said.
Garrard's eyes were wild, and as though he hadn't heard, he said, “The skull gives me the power to know if a person will die soon, and God curse you, you'll be dead and rotten before this week is out.”
Garrard raised his arm. Blood from his hand ran down his wrist and it looked as though the skull was shedding scarlet tears.
“God curse you,” he said again. “God curse you to damnation.”
Silas Garrard died with that last, vile blasphemy on his lips.
Pushed to his limit and then beyond, Tyrell drew both his guns and pumped ten bullets into the man, the last eight jerking his already dead body like a rag doll.
Through a drift of smoke, he looked at Charlie Fong and said, “I told him I was looking for an excuse to plug him. He gave me one.”
Marshal Pleasant Tyrell tried valiantly to smile, but his lips were bloodless and all at once he looked old . . . and very, very tired.

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