Kill or Die (25 page)

“Well, that's a sight to see,” Dr. Oliver D. Toler said. “Mr. O'Hara, you're lucky you still have your arm.”

“Will you look at my ankle, Doc?” Flintlock said.

“I can stitch it up, but there is some tissue loss and you may never have your full strength in this arm again,” Dr. Toler said. “And I'm afraid there will be scarring. It's a large wound.”

“It was a large alligator,” O'Hara said.

“What about my ankle, Doc?” Flintlock said.

“Nurse Meadows, clean up Mr. O'Hara's arm, please. I want to get started on it right away.”

“Anybody going to look at my ankle, Doc?” Flintlock said.

“Mr. Flintlock, it's a bad sprain,” the doctor said. “I'll bind it up for you later. Now tell me, in the name of God, how can someone escape the jaws of an alligator and suffer only a sprain?”

“I'd already shot it, Doc,” Flintlock said. “Maybe it wasn't feeling too good.”

“I don't agree with killing animals,” Nurse Millie Meadows said. She was a tall thin woman, with a little steel purse of a mouth that snapped open and shut and slightly protruding blue eyes. She carried a brown bottle and a swab.

“You would have agreed with killing Basilisk,” Flintlock said. “He'd been a man-eater for two hundred years and maybe longer.”

“We're all God's creatures, Mr. Flintlock.” Then to O'Hara, “This stuff stings like crazy, so you must be a brave little soldier.”

Flintlock watched the nurse start to clean up O'Hara's arm. “Does it sting?” he said.

“Like crazy,” O'Hara said, his mouth tight.

“You're next, Mr. Flintlock,” Nurse Meadows said. “Let's hope you're as brave a little soldier as your friend.”

 

 

“Tough to be brave when the nurse from Hell is bandaging up a broken ankle,” Flintlock said.

“It's only sprained,” O'Hara said.

“It felt like it was broke.”

“Yeah, well my arm felt as though he was sawing it off at the elbow,” O'Hara said. “Ah, here's the restaurant, Ma's Kitchen. And Doc Toler was right. They are looking for a dishwasher.”

Flintlock glanced at the sign in the window and said, “I say we ride on out of here. Look at this town, there's hardly enough people left to dirty dishes.”

“Sam, you heard what the doc said—we need to stay in town for a few weeks to make sure my arm doesn't get infected,” O'Hara said. “Besides, we're broke. How are we going to reach the Arizona Territory without a grubstake?”

Flintlock had a borrowed crutch under his arm, a fat bandage on his foot, and O'Hara's arm was in a sling.

“And you need boots,” O'Hara said.

“I can't stand on a bad ankle and wash dishes,” Flintlock said.

“I reckon they'll give you a chair, Sammy. And Doc says Ma is paying fifty cents a day. That's good money around these parts.”

“O'Hara, maybe I could gun an outlaw along the trail and claim the reward,” Flintlock said. “It's time I went back to practicing my old profession anyhow. I'd say it's a plan that beats dishwashing.”

“Too thin, Sam. We need fifty cents a day to survive while my wounds heal. You heard what Dr. Toler said about gangrene. I could lose my arm.”

Flintlock's shoulders slumped. “All right,” he said, “I got no other choice but to put my head in the noose.”

 

 

A couple of men were eating a late lunch when Flintlock stepped into the restaurant. “Take a seat,” a large woman said. “God knows there's enough of them.” Then, after looking Flintlock up and down from the tattoo on his throat to his bandaged ankle, she said, “What the hell are you?”

“I'm a dishwasher,” Flintlock said.

“No, he ain't, Ma.” One of the diners stood. “He's the ranny that robbed the bank.”

“I gave the money back,” Flintlock said.

“It was Mathias Cobb who was the real robber, Elmer,” Ma said. “He's the one who destroyed this town.”

“You can't trust that outlaw, Ma,” the man called Elmer said. “He'll rob you blind.”

“Hell, I got nothing much left to rob,” Ma said. “And I need a dishwasher. Kitchen's that way, mister, and the wage is fifty cents a day and grub. You can bed down in the kitchen if you got nowhere else to live and by the look of you, you don't.”

Flintlock touched his hat. “I'm much obliged, ma'am. Name's—”

“I don't care what your name is. You can call me Ma. I'll get you a chair so you can sit at the sink. Well? Get started.”

When Flintlock stepped into the kitchen he was appalled. His predecessor must have quit a while back because there were teetering pillars of dirty plates, mountains of pots and pans and tangled masses of silverware.

Flintlock found an apron and started in to earn his fifty cents.

 

 

Six weeks later Ma closed her kitchen for lack of customers. She said she was moving to Philadelphia to live with her widowed sister. By then O'Hara's arm was healing nicely and Sam Flintlock's ankle was back to normal. Ma, impressed by Flintlock's efforts, told him he was a credit to the dishwashing profession and she filled a couple of sacks with leftover grub for the trail. “I hope you find your ma, Sam,” she said as she closed the restaurant door for the last time.

Three days later Dr. Toler took down his shingle and moved on with Nurse Meadows, who was now his bride, and the saloon closed the very same day. Flintlock and O'Hara had kept their horses at the abandoned livery and the animals had gone through all the hay and oats that had been left behind and were in fine shape for the trail.

Matthew Garry, the general store owner, sold his entire stock “at below cost,” and Flintlock and O'Hara were able to outfit themselves for the coming winter cheaply.

As they rode out of Budville under a clear fall sky, O'Hara said, “I'm looking forward to a peaceful trail, Sammy, shooting my own grub along the way and sleeping on dry land under the stars.”

“That makes two of us,” Flintlock said. “You know, I've been thinking. I believe I could prosper in the restaurant business.”

“Why not? Ma gave you some good dishwashing experience and that's all it takes, experience.”

“Well, I'll find my ma and then decide,” Flintlock said. “Just plain home cooking, mind, steaks and eggs and pork chops. Nothing fancy.”

“Why, the more I think on it, the more I feel it's a crackerjack idea, Sammy,” O'Hara said. “I'd like to throw in with you.”

“Sure,” Flintlock said. He extended his hand. “It's a deal.”

“What are we going to call our place?”

“The Evangeline,” Flintlock said.

And O'Hara said, “Crackerjack!”

Sam Flintlock and his half-breed sidekick O'Hara found the town of Bearsden by accident. It was an ill-starred discovery that they very soon would have cause to regret.

They were twenty miles south of the New Mexico Territory and a few miles east of the southernmost ridges of the Guadalupe Mountains in the rugged Delaware Basin country when Flintlock said he smelled a pig on a spit.

“Wind's blowing from the north, so it's got to be just ahead of us,” he said. “Man, I could eat some of that.”

“I smell it too, but I never heard tell of any settlement around this part of the country,” O'Hara said.

“Well, maybe it's a ranch cookout or even a hunting party,” Flintlock said. “I sure aim to find out.”

The vast bulk of the Guadalupe looked like a great monolithic wall through the desert erected by a giant race of men in times past. But that was deceptive. Within the wall lay dramatic canyons, hanging valleys and shady glades surrounded by desert scrub and a profusion of wildlife.

Flintlock said, “Why not build a town around here? It's as good a place as any.”

O'Hara nodded. “There's something not setting right with me, Sam. I have the feeling we're riding into—”

“Danger?”

“I don't know. Something . . . bad.”

“That's the Injun in you talking, O'Hara. Injuns reckon there's evil spirits and such just around every bend of the trail.”

O'Hara shook his head, his long black hair moving across his shoulders. “I can't shake it, Sam. I say we ride on.”

“Look!” Flintlock said, pointing. “See how wrong you are? It's a town all right and I bet they're roasting a pig.”

Ahead of them lay a one-street town like thousands of others in the West, dusty, dry and barely clinging to life. But for two hungry and thirsty men it was an oasis in the desert, as bright and beckoning as any big city back east.

“Grin, O'Hara. Look, stretch your mouth wide like me.”

“Why?” O'Hara was always inclined to surliness when something troubled him.

“Because we're flat broke and we're depending on the generosity of others. Now grin, like we're visiting kinfolk.”

O'Hara tried, but his grin came off as a grimace. It didn't really matter because when they rode into the street Flintlock's own grin vanished like frost in sunlight. A gallows, hung with red, white and blue bunting, had been erected at the entrance to the town and a booted man hung from a hemp noose. His neck was twisted to one side, his tongue lolled out of his mouth and his eyes, bulging out of his head, were wide open. But he'd ceased to see anything hours before when his neck broke.

A sign on the gallows said, WELCOME TO BEARSDEN.

But there was no one around to form a welcoming committee. The street was deserted.

Tables laden with food, fried chicken, great haunches of beef, cakes, pies and even a melting tub of ice cream lined the boardwalk. The pig Flintlock had smelled was spiked on a spit but since there was no one to turn the handle the huge hog had begun to char and dripped fat into the flames of the fire. All the stores were bright with bunting, their doors wide open, and inside the empty saloon a player piano tinkled the tune, “'Tis the Last Rose of Summer.”

Flintlock drew rein and said to O'Hara, “Where the hell is everybody? Hell, I don't even see a horse around or a even a dog.”

“Sammy, I don't like this,” O'Hara said. “Let's get out of here.”

“With all this grub around and a wide-open saloon? Are you nuts?”

The crash of a rifle shot shattered the quiet, followed by a scream. “It came from the livery stable,” Flintlock said. He kicked his horse into motion, O'Hara, his Winchester in his hands, close behind him.

Flintlock reined in his horse, pulled his Colt from his waistband and warily stepped from bright sun into the gloom of the stable. Gun smoke hung in the air . . . but the place was deserted.

O'Hara stepped beside Flintlock and said, “Sam, this is a bad luck town and there's evil around. We got to get out of here now.”

“I think we're already way too late,” Sam Flintlock said.

 

 

Kate Kerrigan has seen the blood-soaked face of
war. But nothing has prepared her for the assault
on her land that begins with an eviction order
hammered onto the door of her family's cabin.
Beautiful, cold-blooded Savannah Saint James
has her sights set on the Kerrigan property—
and twelve of the deadliest hired guns in Texas
are ready to back her play. Kate has her sons by
her side, a ragtag group of ranchers who don't like
outsiders messing with their cattle, and a fighting
spirit passed down from her Irish ancestors.
One thing's for sure: the Kerrigans aren't giving up
what's theirs without a scrap. When the battle
is joined, only one side will prevail—
and the end will be written in gun smoke.

 

 

 

 

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