Kill or Die (12 page)

In a tent lit by a lantern hanging above the flap, Sebastian Lilly was drinking dangerous amounts of whiskey and even Bonifaunt Toohy became alarmed. Alcohol and guns are a bad combination. Sober, Lilly was a handful. Drunk, he became uncontrollable.

“She set alligators on me,” he said. “And me busy talking pretties to her.”

Toohy knew he was stepping on eggshells. “Maybe it was a coincidence, Seb. The gators just happened to show up at the wrong time.”

“You calling me a liar, Toohy?” Lilly said. “I don't like to be called a liar.”

Toohy was good with a gun and he backed up for no man, but in the confines of the tent, shooting at spitting distance, he and Lilly would kill each other and the man was too drunk to realize that.

“I'm not calling you a liar, Seb,” he said. “Just putting out an explanation for them alligators.”

“There's only one explanation. The big alligator was on the prod and the woman made him that way. If I had to do it over again, I'd put a bullet in her.” Tears sprang into Lilly's eyes. “Damn, Bon, she was purty. I can't tell you how purty she was.”

Lilly maudlin was better than Lilly mean and Toohy encouraged him. “You plan on seeing her again?”

“Damn right I do. And next time I'll show her what a real man can do for her.”

Toohy grinned. “Now you're talking, Seb. Why, I reckon—”

From outside the tent came a guard's voice. “Engineer's coming in.”

“Go tell Mr. Ritter,” Toohy said. “I'll be right out.”

“Sure thing,” the guard said.

Toohy shrugged into his slicker, then said to Lilly, “Better stay here and rest, Seb. You've had a trying day.”

“I'm coming out,” Lilly said, his voice thick. “Maybe the engineer saw that bank robber with the tattoo on his throat.”

 

 

Leonard Byng was soaked to the skin and his boots were covered in mud. “I've been walking for hours,” he said, feeling the need to explain his appearance.

“You look like it,” Brewster Ritter said. “We'll go into the mess tent and talk. I don't want to stand out here in the rain.”

The mess tent was large, lit by hanging oil lamps, and it had two long rows of table and benches. But it was not large enough to accommodate all two hundred of Ritter's men at a time and the loggers ate in shifts.

The hour was late and when Ritter stepped inside with the engineer, Toohy and Lilly, there were only four loggers inside, rugged, bearded men who wore flannel shirts and heavy, lace-up boots. They sat at a table playing poker, but when Ritter came in one of them picked up the deck and the four stepped outside.

Ritter and the others sat, and then he said, “What happened, Byng?”

The young engineer told them about the crash of the
Star Scraper,
the deaths of Professor Mealy and Travis Kershaw and his subsequent rescue.

“The two men wanted to kill me, but the woman at the cabin wouldn't have it,” Byng said. “So they took me out of the swamp in a pirogue and left me on the trail. I walked for hours.”

“Yeah, you said that already,” Lilly said. “Describe this woman.”

“She was tall and very beautiful. The most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life,” Byng said. “The two men called her Evangeline.”

“And the men?” Ritter said. “What did they look like?”

“One looked like an Indian and the man with the tattoo on his throat called him O'Hara.”

“What kind of tattoo was it?” Lilly said. He was still stinking drunk and slurred his words.

“A big bird with its wings outstretched,” Byng said. “It looked Indian to me.”

“Did you catch this man's name?” Ritter said.

“They called him Sam. I didn't really catch his last name but I think it was Flintlock. Strange kind of name.”

“Then the woman lied to me,” Lilly said. “She told me she'd hadn't seen anyone like that.”

“Maybe there are two beautiful women in the swamp,” Byng said.

“I doubt it,” Ritter said. “She knows where this Sam ranny is and we need to make her tell us.”

“I'll get it out of her,” Lilly said. “When I get done with her she'll be glad to tell me where he is.”

“Then it's settled,” Ritter said, rising to his feet. “Byng, get to work on the steam saws. Come morning we start cutting trees.”

Sam Flintlock rose from his cot and as usual there was no sign of Evangeline. Just before sleep had taken him he'd seen her come inside and heard her sit in her chair by the stone fireplace. Now, as the first light of dawn grayed the windows, she was gone.

Flintlock put on his hat then stretched, scratched his belly and padded outside in his long johns. No matter the weather O'Hara spread his blankets outside on the deck and he was already awake, staring into the swamp.

He turned when he heard Flintlock open the door. “Coffee's on the bile,” he said. “Didn't you smell it?”

“I got to be awake for an hour before I smell anything,” Flintlock said. “Where is Evangeline?”

“She left just before sunup. Says she visits Lady Esther once a week to treat her rheumatisms.”

Flintlock nodded and his fingers strayed in the direction of his left shoulder. O'Hara said, “The makings are over there by the rocker.”

Flintlock grunted, stepped back inside and returned with a cup of coffee in his hand. He sat and built himself a cigarette. O'Hara watched the level of the coffee in Flintlock's cup drop by half before he said, “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The buzzing sound.”

“Bees,” Flintlock said. “Or maybe hornets.”

“It's tree saws, Sammy.”

That took a while to register in Flintlock's sleep-fogged brain. “Tree saws?”

“Sounds like it's coming from the edge of the swamp,” O'Hara said. “I reckon Brewster Ritter is cutting.”

Suddenly Flintlock was wide-awake. “Can anything else make that sound?” he said.

“Damn it, Sam, it's tree saws. And no, nothing else makes that sound.”

Flintlock drained his cup, stepped inside and when he came out a few minutes later he was fully dressed, his Colt in his waistband. “I'm going to take a look-see, O'Hara,” he said. “You wait here until Evangeline gets back.” He stepped toward the canoe O'Hara had appropriated, then stopped and said, “Did you think Evangeline seemed a little strange last night?”

“Yeah, now you come to mention it she was real quiet, as though something troubled her.”

“Any idea what it could be?”

“No, I don't.”

“I'll ask her when I see her again,” Flintlock said.

He stepped into the canoe and paddled away from the deck. It seemed to him that the sawing noise was getting louder.

But what Sam Flintlock didn't know was that fate had dealt him a hand from the bottom of the deck. He was on a collision course with Sebastian Lilly, a gunman who could outdraw and outshoot him any day of the week . . . without half trying.

 

 

A cypress that had stood for three hundred years fell and splashed into the bayou. A cheer went up from the onlookers on shore, especially the beaming Brewster Ritter, who turned to Bonifaunt Toohy and said, “There she goes, Mr. Toohy, the first of thousands.”

“Congratulations, boss,” Toohy said, grinning. But he felt an odd little pang. What had been a magnificent tree, cared for by God, was now just a log to be dragged out of the water with chains and sawn into boards. Somehow it just didn't seem right.

Another cypress fell, more cheers, and Ritter did a little jig, clapped his hands and said, “Hot damn, this is going to be a good day.”

 

 

Sebastian Lilly had no interest in the trees. He had a woman on his mind. But his thoughts about Evangeline were savage, not tender, lustful, not loving, and above all violent in the extreme.

Like an ardent suitor, the gunman paddled with purpose in a direct line for the cabin, wasting no time. Imagine his distress therefore when he saw another canoe heading toward him . . . and the man in the stern wore a buckskin shirt.

As the two pirogues closed the distance Lilly could make out the tattoo on the man's throat. It had to be Sam, the bank robber, the man he'd sworn to kill. Now the damned wretch stood between him and his woman and that was unforgivable.

Lilly raised his Winchester and fired. The man called Sam jerked, the paddle flew out of his hands and he tumbled into the bottom of his canoe.

It had been a good shot, a killing shot, and Lilly grinned. He paddled toward the dead man's canoe, determined to gloat over his fallen enemy. Mr. Cobb would be pleased.

 

 

Sam Flintlock had raised the paddle for the down stroke when the bullet hit. The lead chunked into the paddle's ash handle and caromed inches past Flintlock's head. He threw the splintered paddle away from him, played dead man and dived for the bottom of the canoe. He heard the steady plop . . . plop . . . plop of a paddle stroking water and he eased over on his right side, groaning horribly like a badly wounded man. Flintlock eased his Colt from the waistband and silently thanked President Grant for commissioning a revolver so finely made that the triple click of the cocking hammer was almost as quiet as the tick of a Waltham watch.

His assailant's canoe came closer. The paddling stopped and then there was silence as the canoe glided for a few feet before it bumped into Flintlock's bow. Lilly's hand held on to the gunwale as he drew the canoes closer . . . and then he peered over the side of his victim's craft.

Flintlock fired. His bullet hit Lilly's forehead a fraction of an inch under his hat, plowed through his brain and blew out the back of his skull. Lilly was dead before his canoe tipped and tumbled him into the water. But Flintlock had no time for the gunman. His own paddle was shattered and the dead man's had fallen out of his canoe and was drifting away.

His Colt still in his hand, and being a poor swimmer, Flintlock floundered after it. Only then did he realize that the water was only about four feet deep at that point and he could walk. He grabbed the paddle and tossed it into his canoe before he scrambled aboard, almost capsizing the narrow pirogue in the process.

The man's body floated facedown in the water and Flintlock turned him over with the paddle. He'd never seen the man before but he was no doubt one of Ritter's guns hunting for swamp people.

“Nearly got yourself killed there, Sam. You was mighty lucky.”

Old Barnabas made room for himself on a dead tree trunk by pushing aside a couple of turtles. “What the hell are you doing out here in this swamp paddling a canoe like a damned wild Indian?”

“You know why I'm here, Barnabas,” Flintlock said. “I'm trying to save this swamp and the people who live in it.”

“What did that feller try to kill you fer?”

“I don't know.”

“Probably because I didn't raise you up right and you're an idiot. Where's the Injun?”

“You know where he is, Barnabas.”

The old man cackled. “I sure do. He's waiting for the purty lady while you ponce around in a canoe like a great fairy and get your head blowed off.”

“If you'll notice, it was the other feller who got his head blowed off. And what does
ponce
mean? I never heard that word before.”

“English feller teached it to me. Nice enough chap apart from the fact that he murdered five wives in a row and dissolved their bodies in vats of acid and got hung for it. But he's a fine steam engineer so he's got a big in with you-know-who.”

“Barnabas, I just killed a man and I don't feel like talking,” Flintlock said. “Go away and leave me alone.”

“Whatever you say, Sam. I know when I'm not wanted. When are you headed for the Arizona Territory?”

“When I'm done here.”

“You'll like Arizona. It's hot and dry,” Barnabas said. “Like where I come from.”

Then he was gone and only the turtles remained.

And the hungry alligators . . .

Despite the dead man floating in the water, Sam Flintlock still had a job to do—find the source of rasping tree saws.

The morning mist still clung to the cypress as he paddled toward what had become known to the swamp dwellers as Ritter's Landing, an innocuous name for a living symbol of greed, callousness and Ritter's lack of respect for any living thing, human or otherwise. The man needed killing and Flintlock kept that fact at the back of his mind, to be taken out and dusted off when the opportunity arose.

For once Flintlock was thankful for the mist, a nuisance that made navigation around the swamp and the land islands well nigh impossible. But as the sun rose the mist thinned, providing him with just enough cover without reducing visibility too much.

As it was Flintlock rounded the spit of a tree island and almost ran into a three-man logging crew, one of them carrying steel wedges in his belt and a light sledgehammer. But the loggers, muscular fellows standing in thigh-high water, were intent on their task and didn't notice him.

Flintlock back-paddled around the spit to the shelter of the tree island. He needed to get a better view of Ritter's Landing and the sawing operation. He found a place to moor the canoe and then waded through shallow water to reach dry land. Crouching low, he made his way through willow and gum trees to the opposite side of the island . . . and saw a scene of devastation. At least a dozen cypress had been cut, dragged onto land by the armored steam launch that now revealed six iron tractor wheels, two pairs to the rear, a single axle at the front. Teams of loggers busily limbed the trees but they wouldn't be bucked into manageable length until engineer Byng's steam saws were up and running.

So far only a dozen trees had been felled but it was enough for Flintlock to imagine the blighted wasteland that would be left after all the cypress were gone.

He spotted Brewster Ritter overseeing the operation, standing close to the edge of the swamp. The stocky little man was scowling and he continually yelled orders as though unhappy with the loggers' progress. As far as Flintlock was concerned they had already done enough damage that would take nature hundreds of years to put right, if ever.

Ritter was within rifle range but Flintlock had not brought along his Winchester and the one his assailant had used was at the bottom of the swamp. “Another time, Ritter,” he whispered. “Another time.”

“Have you any idea who he was, Sam?” Evangeline said.

“No. But I guess he didn't like me much,” Sam Flintlock said.

“I agree with that,” O'Hara said. “Since he took a pot at you.”

“He may have been the man who came here asking about you, Sam,” Evangeline said. “He was headed in the direction of my cabin.”

“He probably was,” Flintlock said.

“He had your description, talked about the thunderbird on your throat. He must have recognized you.”

“And cut loose,” O'Hara said. “And damn near killed you.”

“Yeah, I'm aware of that,” Flintlock said. Sometimes the breed irritated the hell out of him for his uncanny grasp of the obvious.

“I visited Cornelius this morning, but I didn't know then that the cypress was already being cut,” Evangeline said. “I'll ask him to call a meeting of the swamp dwellers. They respect Cornelius and they'll come.”

“And decide what?” Flintlock said. “The only thing Ritter understands is violence.”

“Then it may come to that,” Evangeline said. “We may have to come together and fight.”

“And that gives me an idea,” Flintlock said. “Mathias Cobb is behind all this and I think I'll give him an invitation to the meeting.”

“Sam, you stole the fat man's money and that didn't work,” O'Hara said. “But I reckon an invitation to the meeting will.”

Flintlock grinned. “Want to do it, O'Hara?”

“Damn right I do. It's been too quiet around here.”

“Hell, I nearly got killed today,” Flintlock said.

“Yes, nearly. But nearly don't cut it when things are too quiet.”

“Evangeline,” Flintlock said, “did you make a lick of sense out of that?”

“More or less,” the woman said. She wore her boned red leather corset, black tights and black boots and looked divine. She slid her derringer into the garter holster on her thigh and said, “We'll leave right now and talk with Cornelius, tell him about the trees and set a date for the meeting.”

Flintlock made a long-suffering face. “I'm getting mighty sick of paddling though this damned swamp.”

“I'll do the paddling, Sammy,” O'Hara said. “But this time remember to bring your rifle.”