The three men stood and watched the wickiups burn. Smiling slightly Spunner waited until Flintlock and O’Hara cut the colored ribbons from their bodies before he said, “There was once an unfrocked Russian Orthodox priest by the name of Jasper Orlov, but he died a year ago.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Flintlock said. He ground fragments of a red ribbon under his boot heel. “I wanted to kill him real bad.”
“Who were all those people?” O’Hara said.
“His followers. I guess you could call them his disciples. He set himself up as a holy man and led them here, told them it was a promised land, flowing with milk and honey, the gateway to Heaven. But all the pilgrims found were hostile Apaches and starvation. The only way they could survive that first winter was to eat the flesh off the bodies of the Chiricahua they’d killed or captured. They starved again the second winter and the third, but when good times came again and there was fine weather and plenty of game, they continued to eat human flesh. The people had acquired a taste for it, you see, preferred it, and Orlov preached that eating human meat would give them great strength and endurance. It didn’t. The cannibals are very aggressive, as you know, but timid. They won’t stand and fight if they think there’s a chance they can’t win. The Chiricahua taught them that, to never buck the odds, and along with that lesson the Apache defeated them many times. Over a period of four years scores of pilgrims were killed. Of the three hundred men, women and children that Orlov led into the Territory the ones you saw today are all that are left.”
Flintlock was unyielding. “They’re lawless trash,” he said. “A bunch of low-life scum that needs to be wiped off the face of the earth. I can’t blame the children, they’re too young to know any better. Maybe they can be saved.”
Spunner said, “For a few years the cannibals who lived in this hidden village were feared by white men and even the army avoided the place, but since Jasper Orlov died they’ve become leaderless and weak. I think that after today they’ll scatter and move on or they won’t survive.”
* * *
After the village had burned to embers, Jeptha Spunner said, “You boys look as though you could use a drink. My cabin is still within walking distance.”
“Best offer I’ve had today,” Flintlock said. “You saved our lives, Spunner. I won’t forget that.”
“Glad I was passing by,” the albino said.
“How come you were? Passing by, I mean?” the always suspicious O’Hara said.
Spunner smiled. “First I heard all the shooting yesterday and that made me curious. I rode to the Cully house this morning and found nothing to see, so I scouted around and then I heard the fiddle music in the distance.”
“You knew the cannibals were here?” Flintlock said.
“I visited Jasper Orlov here once, a few weeks before he died. I vowed I’d never go back or tell anyone else where to find the village. But then I saw you two trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys and changed my mind.”
“How come Orlov didn’t eat you like a Thanksgiving turkey?” Flintlock said.
“My flying machine fascinated him and he let me live, at least for a while.”
“And then he died,” O’Hara said.
“Yes, he did and after that I stayed away from the place. That is until this morning.”
“Glad you stopped by, Spunner. Ain’t we, O’Hara?” Flintlock said.
“We are that. And I could use a drink and some breakfast,” O’Hara said. “Almost getting chopped up for a cannibal stew gives a man an appetite.”
“Spoken like a true Irish Injun,” Flintlock said. “Lead the way, Spunner. You got two hungry and thirsty men here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The newly minted marshal of Mansion Creek knew a hired gun when he saw one. The fellow at the restaurant table eating breakfast could have been a prosperous businessman in his expensive broadcloth and snowy white linen, but the ivory-handled Colt on his hip and the self-assured way he wore it gave the game away. He was a gun, and by the look of him his services would not come cheap.
Slim Hart spooned sugar into his coffee and then looked down at the silver and gold star on his vest. Yup, he looked like a bona fide law dog, all right. Time to act like one. He rose to his feet and crossed the restaurant floor. The gunman looked up at him with cold eyes and said, “What can I do for you, Marshal?”
“Mind if I sit?” Hart said. He lowered himself into a chair before the shootist could answer. “Nice morning, huh?” he said. “But it’s a little nippy, the first hint of fall in the air, I suppose.”
“Marshal, I doubt that you came over here to talk about the weather. Name’s Hogan Lord, originally out of Brazos River country, and you’re Slim Hart out of Hawk Collins’s bunkhouse.”
It was a slight, and Hart knew it, but he didn’t let his annoyance show. “Passing through, Mr. Lord?” he said.
“You could say that, but I’ve lingered around here for a while.”
“Don’t let me interrupt your breakfast,” Hart said. “Your eggs will get cold. We can talk while you eat.”
“Marshal, we have nothing to talk about,” Lord said. He forked some scrambled egg into his mouth and chewed, his ice blue eyes locked on Hart’s.
The marshal didn’t wilt. “Hard times coming down for some folks,” he said. “And I think if you’re not very careful you might be one of them, Mr. Lord.”
“There’s men lying in bone orchards across the country who told me that,” Lord said. “Take my advice, Marshal Hart, from now on step around me.”
“I can’t do that,” the lawman said. “I’ve got a job to do. What’s your relationship with Tobias Fynes?”
“I’m his business advisor.”
“What kind of business?”
“The banking business.”
“And maybe some gun business?”
“If it’s needed.”
“There won’t be any call for that kind of business while I’m marshal of Mansion Creek. If there’s any shooting to be done, I’ll do it.” Lord didn’t answer and Hart stepped into the silence. “Hawk Collins wants to hang Fynes, says he’s rode roughshod over Apache County long enough. He says Fynes has robbed more people of their farms, homes or their life savings than any outlaw.”
“And he abuses women and kicks dogs,” Lord said.
Hart was surprised. “And yet you work for him.”
Lord rang some coins onto the table and rose to his feet. “I ride for the brand, Hart. You should know all about that.”
“Some brands just ain’t worth riding for. I quit a laboring job one time, good job paying fifty cents a day, because the foreman beat his Chinese woman. A few days later I shot and killed him, but that’s a different story.”
“You must tell me about it sometime when I’ve got nothing better to do,” Lord said.
Hart stood and before Lord opened the door he said, “I don’t want to hang you, Mr. Lord, but if Hawk Collins gives me the word, I will.” As hushed diners stared at the two men, the marshal said, “You’ve been notified.”
Without another glance at Hart, Hogan Lord nodded, stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
* * *
Hogan Lord rapped on the door of Estelle Redway’s cabin. As cabins went in Mansion Creek it was small, smaller than Kate Coldwell’s place, and not as well built. Tobias Fynes kept his mistresses on the cheap. There was no answer to Lord’s knock so he tried again, this time harder.
A long minute passed and then a woman’s tear-stained voice said, “Who is it?”
“Estelle, this is Hogan Lord. We need to talk.”
“I don’t want to see anyone right now,” the woman said.
“You’ll want to see me,” Lord said. “I’m taking you away from this place.”
“Hold on. I’m not decent.”
After a few moments the door opened a crack and Estelle said, “Come in.”
Lord stepped inside and looked around. The main item of furniture in the one-room cabin
and its focal point was a large brass bed. Lord smelled the warm, musky scent of a woman just risen from sleep and the faint but unmistakable odor of Tobias Fynes’s sweat.
“Did he do that to you?” Lord said.
Estelle’s fingers strayed to the purple bruise on her cheekbone. “Tobias was angry that Lucy Cully wouldn’t marry her intended. He took it out on me”
Lord’s anger flared. “He won’t strike you again, Estelle. You’re coming with me. Get your things together.”
The girl was shocked. “Are you a crazy man? I can’t leave Tobias. He needs me and I need him. I won’t leave him, now or ever.”
Lord found himself in uncharted waters as he tried to understand the mental state of this young, pretty woman who steadfastly refused to leave her abuser. He decided to be brutally honest. “Fynes doesn’t want you anymore, Estelle. He said you bored him and he gave you to me. Well, he can’t trade away a human being as though she was a slave girl, so I’m asking you to come with me. I’ll try my best to do right by you.”
As Lord spoke, Estelle’s expression had grown more and more horrified with every word. Now she said, “You’re lying. You want me for yourself and that’s why you’re making up these terrible things about Tobias.” Her eyes flashed. “Get out! Get out, Hogan Lord, and never come back here again.”
“Estelle, listen to me—”
“Tobias loves me and he takes care of me,” the woman said. “He will never leave me. He’s told me that many times.”
“Fynes is a liar,” Lord said. “He uses people and when he’s finished with them he just wrinkles his nose and throws them away like yesterday’s trash. Now he’s doing that to you.”
“Damn you!” Estelle said. She ran to the dresser, opened a drawer and came up with a nickel-plated. 32 caliber Forehand & Wadsworth revolver, a cheap suicide special that was probably a gift from Fynes. She pointed the gun at Lord and yelled, “Get out or I’ll shoot you in the belly, you damned liar.”
Lord would rather have faced a Texas gunslinger, all horns and rattles, than an armed, angry woman. He turned around and stepped outside. The door slammed shut behind him.
* * *
“I thought maybe you could talk to her,” Hogan Lord said.
“Why me? There are other women in town,” Dr. Theodora Weller said.
“I know, but there are none as smart as you,” Lord said.
Dr. Weller smiled. “Thank you for the compliment, sincere or not.” She sat down and bade Lord to do the same. “And what about you, Mr. Lord? Are your intentions toward the fair Estelle honorable, or does your hypocrisy only go as far as her brass bed?”
Lord took no offense and smiled. “She’s an attractive woman, but not one I’d care to spend time with.” He smiled. “Estelle doesn’t need me, she’s suffered enough.”
“How honorable of you, Mr. Lord.”
“Not really. I take my women only when I need one, and that’s not often.”
“Thank heaven for whores, huh?”
“It’s a business transaction and never pretends to be anything else. Love and marriage don’t come into it.”
Lord looked at the pictures around the walls of Dr. Weller’s cramped parlor. “Joan of Arc, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe . . . it seems you admire warrior women and women who are fighting for the vote.”
“I’m surprised you recognize them, Mr. Lord,” Dr. Weller said. “Indeed, I am more than surprised, I’m astonished.”
“You shouldn’t be,” Lord said. “I’ve always read history books and I try to keep up with what’s happening in the newspapers.” He thought Theodora Weller an attractive woman but her mode of dress, a black velvet hip-length jacket cut in the military style, white open-necked shirt with a high collar, narrow skirt and ankle boots was mannish, as was her habit of ceaselessly smoking the cigarettes she built, as well, if not better, than any Texas waddie.
The woman used her thumb and middle finger to delicately pick a shred of tobacco from her tongue and then said, “Some women refuse to leave the man who beats them for many reasons but some of the more common I’ve heard are, I’m nothing and I don’t deserve any better or I’m used to my life being this way. At one time or another, Estelle Redway has told me both.”
“Tobias Fynes will throw her out of the cabin to make room for another woman,” Lord said. “When that time comes can she stay here?” He saw the hesitancy in Theodora Weller and said, “Only for a spell until she can catch the next stage out of town.”
“Fynes would throw his dying wife out of the house if he could,” the doctor said. “But he’s afraid of what a public outcry could do to his bank business.” Theodora’s beautiful black eyes stared at Lord. “Yes, Estelle can come here for, as you say, a spell.”
“Until the next stage,” Lord said.
“Yes, but only until then, and that is if she wants to.”
“When Tobias throws her out into the street she’ll want to, I’m sure,” Lord said.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Dr. Weller said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You’ve made progress on your flying machine, Spunner,” Sam Flintlock said. “At least you got it out of the arroyo.”
Jeptha Spunner handed Flintlock a cup of coffee and said, “My mule dragged it out of there. I’ve installed the steam engine and the envelope is over there between the junipers.”
“Will it fly?” O’Hara said, looking out the window at the huge swath of bright yellow silk among the trees.
“I don’t see why not,” Spunner said. “I’ll take it for a test flight soon and then make preparations for a trip around the world.” He smiled. “You want to come with me, O’Hara?”
“Not a chance,” O’Hara said. “I like my two feet on the ground or my ass on a paint horse.”
“Same with me,” Flintlock said. “Spunner, trust me, you’ll break your neck in that thing.”
“All things considered, a broken neck is not such a bad way to go,” Spunner said. “But there’s no danger. Unlike Icarus, I won’t fly too close to the sun.”
“Icarus. Here, O’Hara, didn’t we watch a feller by the name of Icarus get hung down Laredo way that time?”
“No, you’re thinking of the Dutch blacksmith, went by the name Ignatius van Somebody-or-other. Caught his wife in bed with the mayor and the town marshal at the same time and gunned all three of them.”
Flintlock nodded. “Yeah, I remember now. I recollect there were some who said he should’ve got a medal instead of a noose.”
“Including you, Sam, as I recall.” O’Hara turned his attention to Spunner. “Let us know when you take up the flying machine,” O’Hara said. “I’d like to see that.”
“If you’re still around, it will be my pleasure,” Spunner said. He picked up the fry pan from the stove and said, “Anyone for more salt pork?”
* * *
The morning had brightened into afternoon when Sam Flintlock and O’Hara left the Spunner cabin.
“Real nice feller,” O’Hara said. “Cooks good too.”
“You know who he is, don’t you?” Flintlock said. Without waiting for an answer he said, “He’s Whitey Carson.”
O’Hara stopped in his tracks, absorbed that statement, and then his black eyes lit up. “Damn, I thought he looked familiar. Whitey Carson, the albino draw fighter, of course. I saw him one time when he was riding shotgun for the Butterfield stage and Jim Davis was the whip. I thought I’d never forget the man with the pink eyes, but I guess after a while I did.”
“Well, Spunner is Carson, all right,” Flintlock said. “I’d say he’s killed more than his fair share.”
“Seems like,” O’Hara said. “And he added four today. I reckon—”
But Flintlock never heard what O’Hara reckoned because a rattle of gunfire shattered the afternoon quiet . . . and it came from the direction of the Spunner cabin.
* * *
Keeping low, using every scrap of cover they could find, Sam Flintloc
k and O’Hara made their careful way toward Jeptha Spunner’s cabin and then stopped in the shadow of some juniper. Ahead of them at least a half a dozen shooters kept up a steady barrage of gunfire.
O’Hara leaned close to Flintlock and whispered, “I thought the cannibals were done.”
“So did I,” Flintlock said. Then, stating the obvious, “I reckon they’re not. Seems like we’re in a war with those people.”
“I have them spotted,” O’Hara said. “Over there by the wild oaks among the pile of rocks, six, maybe seven rifles.”
“There’s a stream running over there,” Flintlock said. “It will slow down anybody coming at them from the front.” He heard a tinkle of broken glass as a bullet smashed through a cabin window. “Best thing we can do is wait.”
“Wait?” O’Hara said.
“Yeah, wait right here. If the cannibals don’t take a hit and run away, they’ll charge the cabin. I don’t think they’re the patient kind, so they won’t hold off until sundown and risk Spunner making a break for it in the dark. Now down on your belly and keep out of sight.”
Flintlock did the same and then his eyes moved between the shot-up cabin and the rocks. A lot of fire was being exchanged but as far as he could tell there had been no execution on either side. The sun still splashed bright yellow paint on the rock walls on either side of the arroyo and the sky was blue and cloudless. Flintlock calculated another five hours of daylight. He and O’Hara were in for a long, hot and uncomfortable wait . . .
However, Flintlock had badly underestimated, not Jeptha Spunner, the maker of magic flying machines, but Whitey Carson, the famed Texas draw fighter and man-killer.
After fifteen minutes, as the firing died away to a few desultory shots from the rocks, the cabin door swung open and Carson, wearing dark eyeglasses, stepped outside, a Colt revolver in each hand.
Hell's Gate Page 19