A Time for Vultures

by William W. Johnstone

  Outraged, Flintlock yelled, “Hey! What the hell are you doing?”

  “I will carry you,” the little man said.

  “The hell you will.” Flintlock’s head dangled over the dwarf’s shoulder and he’d lost his hat. “Let me down, you little runt.”

  “Will you walk?”

  “I’ll walk.”

  The dwarf threw off Flintlock, who landed heavily flat on his back. Infuriated, he said, “Damn you. I ought to put a bullet in you.”

  “If you do, a second later the wolf will tear you apart.” The little man bent from the waist until his face with glittering black eyes was close to Flintlock’s and he whispered, “In the fairy stories, there is always an evil dwarf, is there not? Well, I am he.”

  Flintlock nodded. “I’ve been inclining to that way of thinking.” He drew from the waistband and shoved the muzzle of his Colt into the little man’s face. “I also have a notion to blow your head off and take my chances with the lobo.”

  “It’s best you keep me alive,” the dwarf said. “A time is coming when you may need a friend.”

  “You’re not my friend,” Flintlock said. “Now where are we going? No, don’t move. Stay right where you are with my gun barrel up your nostril.”

  “To the camp of the king,” the dwarf said.

  “King? What king?”

  “King Fisher,” the little man said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “We are very close now,” the dwarf said.

  “The noise has stopped,” Flintlock said. They’d walked for another half hour and his feet ached.

  “Yes, and the camp lies in darkness. But our coming will wake everyone.”

  Flintlock grinned. “Including the king?”

  “Most especially King Fisher.”

  “Well, lead on, runt,” Flintlock said. “I could sure use a cup of coffee.”

  “Before we go farther, my name is not runt,” the dwarf said. “I am called Grofrec Horntoe. To call me anything else in the presence of King Fisher could result in your immediate execution.”

  “Gro . . . Gro . . . what the hell?” Flintlock said.

  “Grofrec Horntoe.”

  “Did your mama name you that?”

  “Did yours name you Sam Flintlock?”

  Flintlock remained silent.

  “King Fisher named me and if you are lucky, he will welcome you and give you a new name. If he chooses to do otherwise, he will kill you.” The little man glanced at the sky. “The moon still rides high and will light our path as we traverse the grove of skulls.” He saw the baffled look on Flintlock’s face and said, “Anyone who wishes to visit the camp of King Fisher must enter by the grove of skulls.”

  “Hey, hold on a minute,” Flintlock said. “I wondered where I’d heard the name before. Are you talking about King Fisher out of Collin County, Texas, built himself a gun rep down in the border country and then ran with Ben Thompson and that hard crowd?”

  “No, the man you speak of is not he,” Horntoe said.

  “You sure, Hornytoad?”

  “The King Fisher you knew is dead. And my name is Horntoe.”

  “I didn’t hear that King was dead,” Flintlock said.

  “He and Ben Thompson were shot to death three years ago in the Vaudeville Variety Theater in San Antonio. The King Fisher you speak of was shot thirteen times and is dead, dead, dead. This is the new King Fisher.”

  Flintlock rubbed his stubbly chin. “Well, if that don’t beat all. I met King a time or two and he was all right when he was sober. He was mighty fast with the iron and that’s a natural fact.”

  “Now we must go,” the dwarf said.

  “I hope it ain’t far. My boots are punishing me.”

  “The grove is very near.” He glanced at the wolf next to him—gray as a ghost in the pale moonlight, its eyes glowing with green fire—and grabbed the lobo’s chain. “Follow me, Flintlock . . . and be brave.”

  * * *

  There was no grove of trees leading to King Fisher’s encampment. Rather a shallow dry wash was lined by two parallel rows of three stakes, each about five feet high. The objects spiked on the stakes startled Flintlock and chilled him to the bone.

  Each bore a grinning skull painted in the Mexican Day of the Dead style with red, white, and black flowers intertwined with green plant tendrils. The resemblance ended there. Each eye socket was filled with a rusty gearwheel, and large springs held the jawbones in place. The crowns were made of thin brass, plated by a skin of gold leaf and adorned with bits and pieces of machinery and small gauges from steam engines so that the skulls looked inhuman.The gearwheel eyes, their centers complete with irises of colored glass, gave the skulls the appearance of life. It was as though each stared at Sam Flintlock and wondered at his identity.

  By inclination, Flintlock was not a religious man, but he immediately invoked the deity with considerable passion. “My God in heaven!” he yelled. “What abomination is this?”

  Grofrec Horntoe said, “There is no abomination here. These are the skulls of the first men King Fisher killed in fair fight after his transformation. He has killed many men since, but to these six he does great honor.”

  It had taken a while, but it finally dawned on Flintlock that he’d made a great mistake going there to identify the sound. The skulls grinned at him, warning him that he would be lucky to get out alive.

  As though reading his mind, Horntoe said, “Unless you adjust your thinking, Flintlock, you won’t be alive come sunup. It’s too late to consider and escape on a lame horse. King Fisher would soon hunt you down and kill you.”

  “Yeah, if he can get past my Colt,” Flintlock said, testy as he realized that he’d run out of room on the dance floor and had nothing to offer but idle boast.

  Horntoe shook his head. “Don’t be so damned foolish, Flintlock. No man on earth can shade King Fisher, though many have tried. Part of his gun arm was forged in iron and bronze. He is the wonder of our modern age and invincible.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The dwarf and his wolf abruptly walked into the surrounding darkness and Sam Flintlock found himself left alone on the middle of a tent encampment where several fires burned. A few women moved around like shadows in the gloom and paid no heed to him or his horse.

  Deciding that it was not a time for shyness, he led his mount to a horse line that was situated back a ways near a stand of pine. He unsaddled the bay, tethered him to the rope, and then tossed him an armful of hay from a nearby stack. No one questioned his actions or even glanced in his direction.

  Following his nose, he stepped to a fire where coffee simmered on the coals. A stack of tin cups stood nearby and he poured himself a cup. The coffee was black and bitter the way he liked it and after the first few sips he felt his weariness begin to slide off his shoulders like a damp cloak. Squatting by the fire, he built and lit a cigarette and looked around. For a moment, he was distracted by a pretty young woman who threw a few sticks onto the fire then stepped away without even a glance in his direction.

  The girl’s mode of dress intrigued him almost as much as her slim, shapely body. She wore a dark brown skirt with a buckled corset and blouse of the same color. Her skirt was short, reaching to the middle of her thighs, and her calf-length boots were laced up the front. A pair of goggles was pushed high on her forehead and her right cheek was smudged with what could have been soot.

  Flintlock thought the girl looked like a locomotive engineer, but she was a fair piece away from any railroad. He followed her with his eyes until she faded into darkness at the far southern edge of the encampment. A couple minutes passed, then a strange green light glowed where he’d last seen the girl. This was followed by a low hum, like the buzz of a score of beehives.

  He drained his cup, tossed the butt of his cigarette into the fire, and rose to his feet. Ignored as he was and having nothing better to do, he thought it was a mystery worth investigating.

  Flintlock strolled to where he’d seen the light. As his ey
es became accustomed to the darkness, a massive black shape emerged from the gloom. The coach, for that’s what he initially took it to be, was shaped like a gigantic egg, looking as though it had been laid on the prairie by a roc, the legendary bird of prey the Sioux and Cheyenne believed was capable of seizing and devouring a full-grown bull buffalo.

  But no egg was made out of riveted boilerplate with a row of round windows like a ship’s portholes. Where the coach driver would sit was a glass-enclosed cabin, the likes of which Flintlock had never seen before. The girl who dressed like an engineer sat inside. Her goggles were over her eyes, the lenses tinted green as though a shaded lantern shone on them.

  Moving closer, he saw that the coach had six immense wheels, four at the rear and two at the front. As tall as a man, their steel rims were spiked with sharp, piercing skewers set a few inches apart. A brass Gatling gun was mounted in an open turret on top of the iron egg, its action covered by an oilskin tarp.

  Flintlock had seen enough to convince him that it was not a coach designed for comfortable travel over rough terrain, but a dreadful weapon of war. His opinion was reinforced when he stepped to the rear of the vehicle and discovered it was powered by a mighty steam engine that looked as though it had been taken from a naval ironclad. The boiler was lit and the engine emitted a steady thrum . . . thrum . . . thrum . . . as it turned over. Steam escaped, hissing like angry baby dragons from the joints of its brass and bronze pipes.

  “Hey, you. Git the hell away from there!”

  Flintlock turned and saw the outline of a man standing in the shadow of a tall tent, a rifle cradled across his chest. He also wore a belt gun.

  “What is this thing?” Flintlock said.

  “None of your business, that’s what it is.” The man stepped out of darkness into moonlight and the eerie light from the machine’s cabin. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  The man who talked with his dead grandfather was not much given to surprises, but the sentry’s appearance made Flintlock’s words jam tight in his throat.

  The rifleman wore black pants and boots, a dark shirt with full sleeves, and an old, battered, black plug hat. His bright scarlet vest added drama to his getup, as did the polished brass studs that decorated his gun belt and holster, but what caught and held Flintlock’s attention was the finely wrought bronze plate that emerged from the collar of the man’s shirt and was shaped to cover the entire right side of his face like a mask. The plate was beautifully engraved around its border in what was known as the Celtic style and its gold inlays of strange beasts suggested long man-hours and considerable skill. Where his right eye should have been was a large, round lens that looked as though it had been taken from a pair of army field glasses. Stranger still, the man’s right leg was encased in what at first glance appeared to be medieval armor, except that the cuisse, poleyn, and greave were made of brass, covered in a tangled network of pipes, valves, and exquisitely designed cogwheels. Flintlock watched the man walk a short distance. The artificial leg—swung forward by a motion of his hip when he wished to take a step—seemed efficient, an engineering masterpiece of the new Steam Age.

  “I thought I recognized you,” the man said suddenly. “There ain’t two men in the west with thunderbirds on their throats. You’re Sam Flintlock. Am I right or am I wrong?”

  “You called it.”

  “Last I heard, you were running with Jesse James and them in the train robbing line of work.”

  “I did for a spell, but I never did take to it. Me and Frank couldn’t get along, so Jesse wasn’t real broken up when I left.”

  “And then?”

  “I took up the bounty-hunting profession,” Flintlock said. “It’s good work if a man’s got a flair for it and can keep his nerve.”

  “Still got the old Hawken?”

  Flintlock was surprised. “How did you know about the Hawken?”

  “I’m Clem Jardine. Remember me? Our paths crossed a time or two up in the Red River country that time. The newspapers called it the Harper-Mclean range war. I called it a waste of time.”

  “I recollect,” Flintlock said. “I never drew a day’s gun wage after Mose Harper and Drew Mclean patched up their differences.”

  “A pair of no-good lowlifes. Took the bread right out of our mouths with all that damned peace talk.”

  A night bird raised a ruckus in a nearby piñon and then fell silent.

  Flintlock said, “Clem, I heard you was dead. Got all shot to pieces by a bunch of bronco Apaches down Eagle Pass way.”

  “You heard right about me getting all shot to pieces, but some newspaper reporter from back east made up that story about Apaches,” Jardine said. “The truth is I got shot up by a posse of sodbusters and storekeepers after me and some others who robbed their town bank. Loco Lawson—remember him? He got shot in the mouth, blew the back of his head clean off. Snake River Bob Styles was killed by the first volley.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Flintlock said. “He was a rum one was ol’ Bob, but he could sing them Irish songs.”

  “He could that,” Jardine said. “Uriah Hanbury got cut in half by a scattergun, Broady Wells was wounded and then got beaten to death by rifle butts, and Hiram Anstruther—”

  “The older feller. Was a monk at one time,” Flintlock said.

  “Yeah, that was him. Hiram got scared, fell off his horse, and died after his ticker suddenly gave out on him.” The metal half of Jardine’s face glinted as he shook his head. “We were bushwhacked at a place south of the pass called Dead Horse Creek. It wasn’t a creek, not that day. It was a dry wash and hot and dusty as hell. We had eight men dead on the ground and me all shot to pieces and left for the buzzards. Then Doctor Obadiah le Strange happened by.”

  How did the doctor save you? Why did he spare your lives? Did he turn you and King Fisher into clockwork men? What the hell is going on here? Those questions sprang into Flintlock’s mind but went unasked.

  A tent flap opened and a tall, slender woman stepped outside. “Clem, come to bed. It’s very late.”

  “Blanche, first come over here and meet a friend of mine,” Jardine said. “Sam Flintlock, meet my wife Blanche.”

  The woman extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”

  Flintlock gaped at the woman and stuttered some kind of reply. His gaze was fixed on Blanche’s face. It was not a human face. It was the still, expressionless face of a porcelain doll.

  A cream-colored ceramic mask covered her features and extended lower, molded over her breasts. Her face mask was decorated with elaborate and vivid paintings of rolling dice and the clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades of a deck of playing cards. The arcs of the areolae that showed above the woman’s tightly laced corset were tinted a delicate pink in contrast to the bright colors of the porcelain mask.

  “Before I met her, Blanche was a faro dealer in Denver.” Jardine slipped his arm around the woman’s slim waist and held her close. “As you can see, Doctor le Strange also helped her.” He saw the question on Flintlock’s face and said only one word. “Acid.”

  “I hope the morning brings you life and not death, Mr. Flintlock,” Blanche said. “We will see.”

  Jardine touched his hat. “Good seeing you again, Sam.” He and Blanche turned to walk back to the tent, his artificial leg making slight clanking sounds.

  Flintlock still had a question, something that had been puzzling him since he’d met Grofrec Horntoe. Talking to the man’s retreating back, he said, “Clem, you know I’m fast with the iron. Why did no one take my gun?”

  Jardine’s answer was to turn with blinding speed, throw his Winchester to his shoulder, and lever off six shots in the space of a single heartbeat. The bullets sang and whined on each side of Flintlock’s head, missing his ears by fractions of an inch.

  “That’s why, Sam.” Jardine held up his right arm. “Dr. le Strange did some work on my gun hand, too.”

  Blanche laughed, a sound so melodious and delicate it could have come, not from her vo
cal cords, but from the strings of a Stradivarius violin.

  Flintlock stood rooted to the spot for long moments. He’d never seen gun-handling so fast, and he’d been around some of the best. If he’d braced Clem Jardine and gone for the Colt in his waistband, the man would have killed him before his fingers touched the handle. No human being could lever off six shots at that speed, taking only a split second to get his work in.

  But someone with a repaired and surgically improved gun hand could.

  Suddenly Flintlock felt emotions strange to him and he put a name to each of them . . . fear, dread, and terror of the unknown.

  Something was at play here, something appalling that he could not understand. He recalled Clem Jardine’s words. We had eight men dead on the ground and me all shot to pieces and left for the buzzards . . .

  Flintlock shivered.

  Did the dead walk again in this place?

  He looked around him. No one had come to investigate the rifle fire shooting . . . yet another mystery.

  * * *

  Sam Flintlock lay beside the fire and dreamed of dead men who rose from their graves and danced in the cobwebbed moonlight with painted porcelain dolls who smiled painted smiles.

  * * *

  He woke to someone calling his name.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Flintlock! Sam Flintlock! Get the hell up. Somebody wants to meet you.”

  Groggily, Flintlock rose to a sitting position. “King Fisher?”

  “Maybe,” Clem Jardine said. In the dawn light the uncovered half of his face was ashen, his pale lips bloodless. “Get yourself some coffee. You got time yet. You look like hell.”

  “When bullets have made a man’s hat look like a colander, he tends to look a tad peaked.”

  “Hat? Hell, I was aiming for your ears.”

  “You’re a funny man, Clem,” Flintlock said, rising to his feet. “That was a real knee-slapper.”

  “Coffee’s on the coals and there’s biscuits and bacon in the pan.” Jardine’s voice was weak, as though the man was all used up. “I’ll come back for you.”