Flintlock (18 page)

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Authors: William W. Johnstone

BOOK: Flintlock

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“You scared the hell out of me, Jack,” Charlie Fong said. “I took you for an Apache.”

“Well, you were half right,” Jack Coffin said. His eyes flicked to the girls. “Where have you been? China?”

“It's a long story,” Fong said, “and I only want to tell it once. Where are Sam Flintlock and Abe Roper?”

Coffin turned in the saddle and pointed toward the Carrizo foothills. “Close. That's their smoke,” he said. “Only a bank robber and a gunfighter would make smoke like that in Apache country.”

Fong scanned the distance and said, “I see it, south of the big mesa.”

“Yes. But tomorrow I'll lead them north to Pastora Peak and we'll search there. It's high, timbered country that could easily hide a cave.”

“So you haven't found the bell yet?”

“No, not yet, but I will.” He stared closely at the girls, then said, “We already have a woman in camp. Now we'll have three, and Roper isn't going to like it much.”

“Who's the woman?” Fong said. “Anybody I know?”

“A white woman who is not right in her mind. Sam Flintlock calls her Ayasha.”

“How didâ”

“It's a long story, Charlie,” Coffin said. “I'll let Samuel tell it.” He glanced at the sky. “The rain is following you.”

“Jack, I reckon I've got grief following me,” Fong said. “What am I going to do with two young Chinese girls?”

“When you sell the gold from the bell, send them back to China,” Coffin said.

“Well, it's a thought,” Fong said. “But China is a big place. Where would I send them and to who?”

“Well, you could raise them like your own.”

“Do I look like a pa to you?”

“Yes. I think you'd do just fine as a pa.”

Charlie Fong smiled. “Jack, that just ain't going to happen.”

“Then ask Sam Flintlock for advice.”

“Hell, Sammy never had a pa except for old Barnabas and he was part grizzly. What does he know about raising two young girls?”

“That's why he will give you good advice,” Coffin said. “Because he knows nothing about raising children.”

Charlie Fong couldn't figure that one and didn't try.

And then the rain started.

“I rescued them, Abe, like I told you,” Charlie Fong said. “What do you want me to do? Chase them away and let them get eaten by bears?”

Abe Roper scowled. “Get this, Charlie, them gals don't get a share of the golden bell. Same thing I told Sam'l when he rescued the crazy white woman. She don't get a share either.” He spat into the fire. “And another thing, we don't collect any more females on this trip. We're overrun with them as it is.”

“I got to agree with you there, Abe,” Flintlock said.

“Well, I'm glad you do, Sammy, since you're one o' the collectors,” Roper said.

Flintlock smiled at that, then said, “This Pleasant Tyrell feller, Charlie, he a tall, skinny old man who wears a top hat and carries two guns? Kinda looks like the pictures of Wild Bill in the dime novels, except older, huh?”

“That's him, all right. Killed that Garrard feller like I told you, which was probably just as well since he'd no pecker left. Why do you ask?”

Flintlock and the others sat under a canopy of stretched-out slickers and pine branches that ticked rainwater into the hissing fire. Ayasha, still silent, sat between the Chinese girls who fussed with her hair, spoke to her in a language she couldn't understand and made her smile.

“Why do you ask, Sam?” Fong repeated.

“Oh, three years ago, maybe four, I was in the Nations hunting a black farmhand who'd taken up an ax and chopped his employer, his wife and a visiting neighbor into a hundred little pieces.”

“Did the farmhand count them?” Roper said.

“Hell, yeah, he sure did. And I meant the old man and the two women were each chopped into a hundred pieces.”

“Making three hundred pieces in total, like,” Roper said.

Flintlock nodded and Roper said, “I just want to get the story straight.”

“Well, anyway, I tracked the feller, as I recollect his name was Hamp Wade, to a sod cabin on the bank of a place called Dead Beaver Creek, on account of how he now had a thousand-dollar bounty on his head, dead or alive. Besides hisself, he had a kept woman in there, a Choctaw, who had an ass so big she couldn't have sat down in a number three washtub.”

“Interesting that, about the ass I mean,” Roper said as he poured coffee into his cup.

“Yeah, I guess it is at that,” Flintlock said.

“Where does Marshal Tyrell come in?” Charlie Fong said.

“I'm getting to that,” Flintlock said. “How it come up, I saw smoke rising from the cabin chimney and there was a sow and a litter of piglets rooting around out front. So I reckoned ol' Hamp was to home.”

“Them pigs was a dead giveaway, rootin' around like that,” Roper said. “And the smoke.”

“Yeah, Abe, that's exactly how I had it figured,” Flintlock said.

“Then what happened?” Roper said.

“What happened was, I left my horse in some wild oaks and cat-footed it toward the cabin.”

“Your gun was drawed, I hope,” Roper said.

“It most certainly was, Abe.”

“Just makin' sure.”

“Well, I figured to kick in the door of the cabin andâ”

“What kind of door?” Roper said.

“Just an ordinary planed timber door on leather hinges, Abe.”

“Gettin' things straight in my mind, Sammy,” Roper said, his gaze concentrating on the cigarette he was building.

“Anyhoo”âFlintlock shook his headâ“wait a minute, why the hell did I decide to tell this story? It's like it goes on forever.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance and lightning briefly turned the pines into slender columns of steel. Rain hissed around them and rattled on the slickers like a snare drum.

“You're tellin' it good, Sammy,” Roper said. “And now I guess we're gettin' to the exciting part, the killin' an' the cuttin'. Though I did cotton to the bit about the pigs. I've took to likin' pigs real recent.”

“To make a long story short,” Flintlock said, with a sidelong glance at Roper, “I was about to step in front of the doorâ”

“To kick it in, like,” Roper said.

“Yes, indeed, Abe,” Flintlock said. “To kick it in.”

He sighed and said, “Just as I stepped in front of the door a voice behind me yelled, âShotgun!' I dived for the dirt and a moment later a scattergun blast blasted a hole in the door that you could've driven a team of mules and a Studebaker wagon through.”

“To make a hole that big, it was a ten gauge,” Roper said. “Had to be.”

“That's what it turned out to be, Abe,” Flintlock said. “Well, a minute later out comes ol' Hamp with the Greener in his hands and a killin' light in his eyes.”

“An' you plugged him square, huh, Sammy?”

“Nope. This old feller comes up and cuts loose with two .44-40 Russians. Hamp drops, dead when he hits the ground. Then the Choctaw comes out with a knife in her hand and the old coot shoots her down. Time passes, about as long as a slow-talking man would take to count to fiveâ”

“How slow would he talk, Sammy?” Roper said.

“And then”âignoring Roperâ“this towheaded kid charges through the door, blasting away with a Colt's self-cocker, screaming like a wild Comanche.”

“An' then what happened?” Roper said. “This is gettin' real good.”

“The old man gunned him. Three dead on the ground in less than a minute.”

“And the old feller was Pleasant Tyrell?” Charlie Fong said.

“As ever was, I reckon. Seemed he had a warrant for Hamp Wade for murder, and me and him happened to arrive at the cabin at the same time.”

“And then what?” Roper said.

“Well, I'd taken some buckshot in my right shoulder and ol' Tyrell patched me up and later we split the thousand-dollar bounty on Hamp. I always reckoned that was real white of him, seeing as how I almost got my head blowed off and never fired a shot.”

Flintlock poured himself coffee and said, “After that I never seen or heard from him again until you mentioned his name, Charlie. He's a tough, hard old man is Pleasant Tyrell. And mighty fast on the draw and shoot.”

“He won't take any sass,” Fong said. “I can tell you that.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“We're getting close,” Jack Coffin said.

“How close?” Abe Roper said.

“Close enough that I can sense a presence . . . something young and something very ancient, the one the Mexican peons call the
Angel de la Muerte
.”

Roper turned in the saddle. “Sam'l, have you any idea what the hell he's talkin' about?”

Sam Flintlock shook his head. “We're not catching your drift, Jack.”

The breed stared ahead of him at the gently rising ridge of Pastora Peak and its mantle of pine, juniper and winter oak.

“I don't know the reason for my feelings or what they mean,” Coffin said. “But by and by, we will all find out.” He looked at Roper. “The golden bell is guarded by the Angel of Death. To see and touch the bell is to die.”

“And you'll lead us right to it, huh?” Roper said. His eyes were greedy.

“Yes. I'll lead you to the bell, and to the one who protects it.”

“Don't bother yourself about no damned angel of death,” Roper said. “He gives us any trouble an' I'll gun him.”

Flintlock's attention was caught by the Chinese girls. Usually they chattered to each other in their own tongue, but now they were strangely quiet and had been since the peak came into view.

The older girl felt Flintlock's eyes on her and she stared at him with frightened black eyes. Then she said, “
Si shen
.”

“What does that mean?” Flintlock asked her.

The girl answered in her own tongue, and Charlie Fong, his face troubled, translated. “I don't speak much Chinese, but the gist of what she said is that we are entering the realm of
Si shen
, the Grim Reaper.”

Abe Roper overheard and he said to the girl, smiling, “Don't you worry your pretty little head about that, honey. I'll gun that
Si shen
sumbitch as well.”

Then the Mexican woman stepped into their path. She held a gray horse by a lead-rope.

Abe Roper drew rein and looked around him, his head moving fast from side to side. He slid his Winchester from the boot and said, “Look sharp, boys. This could be an ambush.”

The peasant woman was very old, her face wrinkled, eyes milky white.

She held the horse by a halter and said nothing.

Flintlock helped Ayasha to the ground and propped the Hawken upright on his thigh. He rode beside Roper and said, “You're thinking Carlos Hernandez, huh?”

“Damn right I am,” Roper said. “Just like that Mex to use an old woman as bait and then bushwhack us. He's a sneaky one, is Carlos.”

“I don't think so, Abe,” Flintlock said. “The Mexican would bushwhack us all right, but sending an old woman as bait isn't his style.”

Coffin rode up and said, “There is only the old woman and the horse.”

“You sure?” Roper said.

But then the woman spoke and expelled all doubt.

In passable English, she said, “You will take the
caballo
as a gift and go away from here.”

Roper sat erect in the saddle, and said, “Who are you, old woman? Speak now. Be up-front, mind. We're white men here.”

“I am nobody,” the woman said. “The gray horse is for you.”

“Woman, who gives us this fine horse?” Coffin said.

The younger Chinese girl gave a little yelp of fear and Flintlock turned and looked at her.

“A great lord,” the woman said. “You must take his gift and go back from whence you came. Go home and never return here again.”

“Woman, who is this feller?” Roper said. “This great lord ranny?”

The old peasant's face showed no emotion.

“He is the one all of us fear,” the woman said. “He is a great lord, but his heart is as cold as ice and there is no pity in him.”

“Si shen!”
the older Chinese girl called out.

Suddenly Roper was angry. “Well, lady, you go back and tell Carlos Hernandez that the first time I see him I'll put a bullet into him. Great lord my ass. He's a damned, low-down, thieving outlaw.”

“Pot calling the kettle black, huh, Abe?” Flintlock said, grinning.

“I'm a professional, Sammy, a gentleman highwayman who robs banks and trains. I don't steal frijoles out of the mouths of Mexican children.”

Without waiting to hear what Flintlock had to say, Roper said, “Charlie, grab the gray. That's one good-lookin' hoss.”

“No, Charlie, leave it be,” Flintlock said.

“What the hell, Sam'l?” Roper said.

“Look on the left shoulder, Abe. See the red handprint?”

“Yeah, I see it. So what?”

“It's the mark of death, made in blood. Let the horse go back.”

Roper shook his head. “Damnit, Sam'l, you're as bad as the Chinese gals. Charlie, go grab the horse.”

“After what Sam just said, not me, Abe.”

“The horse has been ridden by demons,” Jack Coffin said. “That is why it bears the mark of death.”

Roper cursed loud and long, then said, “What a bunch of women! I'll get the damned hoss my ownself.”

He kneed his own mount forward....

And then the wind came.

And the rain.

As Sam Flintlock would recall later, the tempest originated at the top of Pastora Peak and drove downward. Shrieking its fury, the wind shredded leaves and branches from the pines and oaks and drove a hammering rain before it.

Abe Roper's horse reared, frightened arcs of white showing in its eyes, and the outlaw was thrown. He hit the ground with a thud and lay there stunned as his mount galloped past him.

The rain was torrential, coming off the mountain in raking sheets, and the noise of the storm was tremendous, like the rumbling roar inside a railroad tunnel as a deadheading express rackets past.

“Into the trees!” Flintlock yelled. The wind snatched the words from his mouth and tossed them away with the blowing leaves.

Charlie Fong herded the Chinese girls deeper into a pine thicket and Flintlock jumped out of the saddle, grabbed Ayasha around the waist and followed.

A series of splintering crashes sounded from higher up the mountainside as the wind freed a rain-loosened boulder and set it rolling down the slope. Above the peak, lightning scrawled across the tumbling sky.

Flintlock heard a woman scream, then realized it was Ayasha. He pulled her close to him and she buried her face in his chest, tree branches and fluttering leaves cartwheeling around them. A few feet away the Chinese sisters huddled against the base of a pine, Charlie Fong, with outstretched arms, doing his best to protect them.

The storm climaxed in a bellowing, clashing uproar that Fong would later describe as sounding like the finale of a Russian overture he'd once heard in a San Francisco concert hall.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

The clouds parted, the sun came out and a few random raindrops ticked from the trees.

There was no sign of the old woman or the gray horse.

Abe Roper groaned and got to his feet slowly and painfully.

He saw Sam Flintlock step toward him and said, “What the hell happened?”

“Storm,” Flintlock said.

Roper put his hands on his hips and arched his back, working out the kinks. “Where's my damned hoss?” he said.

“He's around somewhere,” Flintlock said. “He won't have gone far in all that wind and rain.”

“Just sprung up, didn't it?” Roper said. “It just came out of nowhere.”

“Yeah,” Flintlock said. “Strange, that.”

“Big storms happen all the time in the mountains,” Roper said. “Squalls hit out of the blue. Damn, I'm soaked to the skin.”

“Me too,” Flintlock said. “And I guess everybody else. I'll get a fire started and we can dry out our duds.”

“And keep a watch for Hernandez. He didn't fool us this time, but he'll try again.”

“Don't you think that storm was a little odd, Abe?” Flintlock said.

“In what way?” Roper had taken off his shirt and was wringing water out of it.

“I mean, just blowing up like that.”

“I told you, Sammy, sudden storms happen in the high country all the time.” Roper flapped his shirt, trying to get it dry. It made a slapping noise. “They last for a few minutes then move on.”

He looked over to where Charlie Fong stood with the women. “Everybody all right, Charlie?”

“Seems like,” Fong said. “But we're soaked.”

“Yeah, we're all soaked. Where is the Injun?”

“Right here, Abe.” Jack Coffin stepped out of the trees, his wet hair hanging lank over his shoulders.

“The squall's got Sammy spooked,” Roper said. “Thinks maybe it was sent by boogermen, I reckon.”

“You should have taken the horse,” Coffin said. “You should've gone home.”

“Hell, now don't you start,” Roper said. “Listening to Sammy is bad enough.”

“You should have taken the old man's gift.”

“I tried to take it, but then the storm came down.”

“The storm was sent by the old man who guards the bell,” Coffin said.

Roper's face lit up. “Then we're close, huh?”

“Too close,” Coffin said.