A Time for Vultures

by William W. Johnstone

  O’Hara turned in the saddle. “Why did the Comancheros attack us, Sam?”

  “The usual reasons, horses and women.”

  “There were only a few horses and apart from Sarah Castle, the women were in the wagon.”

  “Helrun? Did they want the land locomotive?”

  “Hardly. Bandits travel fast, hit fast, and then light a shuck. A thing like the Helrun would only slow them down. That is, if they could even get it to run. Close to thirty bandits, Sam. That many men were after something worth taking.”

  “What?” Flintlock said.

  O’Hara shrugged. “Hell if I know, but the Comancheros reckoned it was worth fighting for.”

  “Money. Money is a thing they’d fight for, if there was a lot of it.” Flintlock shook his head. “Beats the hell out of me. Maybe King Fisher is a secret millionaire and he carries his treasure with him.”

  “Could be,” O’Hara said.

  “But don’t count on it,” Flintlock said. “When I knew him, King never had two pennies to rub together. I doubt that he’s rich. Let’s ride. I’m sure the ladies will welcome us back with open arms.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that either.”

  * * *

  Biddy Sales said, “Hell, Flintlock, did you expect us to welcome you back with open arms?”

  “Or open legs, maybe,” Margie Tott said.

  “Men always expect that,” Jane Feehan said, giggling.

  Biddy and Margie laughed, but Lizzie Doulan had closed down. She said nothing.

  Flintlock stepped behind the bar and placed a bottle of rye and two glasses in front of O’Hara.

  The breed poured for both of them and then said, “The stink of this town is even worse than I remembered.”

  “The dead still lie unburied,” Lizzie Doulan said, breaking her silence. “Disease remains in the air like a yellow fog.”

  Flintlock retrieved his Hawken from behind the bar where he’d left it. He carried the rifle to the door and looked outside. “Well, there’s still an hour of daylight left. Biddy, we’ll set your wagon on its wheels now and ride out at first light tomorrow.”

  “We got visitors, Flintlock,” Lizzie said. “At the livery.”

  Flintlock felt a pang of alarm. “What kind of visitors?”

  “Former residents of Happyville,” Biddy said. “A man named Adam Flood and his pregnant wife.”

  “Why did they come back?” Flintlock said. “Why would any man bring his pregnant wife to this hellhole?”

  “Pregnant women have strange notions sometimes. She wanted her child to be born under a roof. She said the other townsfolk are camped all over and living mighty rough.” Biddy saw something in Flintlock’s eyes and said, “The rest won’t come back until they’re sure the smallpox is gone.”

  “How many and how are they surviving?” Flintlock said.

  “Probably a couple hundred are camped out. Flood says they’re eating roots and jackrabbits when they can find them.”

  “A man can starve to death eating roots and rabbits,” Flintlock said.

  Lizzie nodded. “That’s what Flood said. He says a lot of people are mighty sick, but they won’t come back until they know the danger is gone.”

  “I want to get the wagon ready to roll,” Flintlock said. “Then I’ll go talk to this Flood ranny.”

  “What about?” Lizzie said. “His wife wants to give birth in the barn and he’s got nothing else to say.”

  Flintlock frowned. “Yeah, well I’ll talk to him anyhow. I think he’s a damn fool.”

  * * *

  Dusk deepened the shadows and ribboned the sky with red by the time Flintlock and O’Hara got the wagon back on its wheels. The oil lamps were lit in the saloon when he stepped inside and told Biddy that she and the other women should get ready to pull out at first light.

  “Did you speak to Flood?” Biddy said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Be careful, Flintlock. He’s not a trusting man.” She stared in the direction of the livery as though she could look through walls. “Rose Flood is hurting real bad. Don’t tell her I said this, but I think she may not live.”

  “She’s had a difficult pregnancy,” Margie Tott said, her pretty face troubled. “She’s very weak.”

  “I’m not much of a hand at birthing babies,” Flintlock said. “But I’ll talk to her.”

  Biddy nodded at the Hawken. “Then you’d better leave the cannon here. There’s no point in scaring the poor woman to death.”

  * * *

  Flintlock carried a lantern and a pint of rye as he walked to the livery, the lamp to make himself visible and thus seem harmless to the distrusting Flood. A few yards from the door he stopped and called, “Hello inside.”

  A man’s voice answered, “Who are you?”

  “Name’s Sam Flintlock. I’m not from around these parts.”

  “What do you want? State your intentions and be warned. I’m armed.”

  “Came to ask how your wife is doing. I mean, with the baby coming an’ all. Oh, and I got a pint of good rye with me.”

  After a long silence Flood said, “I could use a drink. My given name’s Adam. Please come on in, but keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “I’ll keep them on the bottle, huh? That set all right with you?”

  Inside, a lamp glowed into life and Flintlock stepped into the flickering orange light. A tall, slender young man stepped out of the shadows, the Winchester in his right hand hanging at his side. Seeing Flintlock for the first time often unsettled folks. He looked like a buckskinned, frontier ruffian and the thunderbird tattoo on his throat did nothing to reassure the timid.

  For a moment, Flood seemed taken aback, but then he smiled and said, “Are you really interested in my wife’s welfare or are you here for some other reason?”

  “Yeah, to share a pint of whiskey.” Flintlock took a knee beside Mrs. Flood. She was lying on a blanket in a stall that her husband had swept clean. “How are you feeling, ma’am?”

  The woman looked at him with pained brown eyes. “The baby isn’t right. I think she should be turned by now.”

  He smiled. “You’re mighty sure it’s a girl, huh?”

  “Yes. I want a little girl.” Rose Flood managed a slight smile. “I can dress up a little girl, put bows in her hair.”

  “You can at that, ma’am.” After a few moments to sort out his thoughts, he said, “There’s a doctor headed this way. Her name is Sarah Castle. She’s with . . . other people.”

  Adam said, “Is she capable?”

  “I reckon so. Capable enough that old Queen Vic set store by her.” To add to the doctor’s bona fides, Flintlock thought about saying, And she was Jack the Ripper’s lady friend. But he decided against it. He raised the bottle. “May I beg your indulgence, ma’am?”

  “Please do, Mr. Flintlock. I don’t imbibe, but I’m sure Adam will appreciate a drink.” The woman winced as a spike of pain hit her. “He’s been through a lot, poor man.”

  “And so have you, Mrs. Flood.” Flintlock used his big, scarred thumb to wipe sweat from the woman’s temples. “But your pain will soon pass and when you see your baby girl for the first time, you’ll forget all this ever happened. Pain has no memory, ma’am.”

  “You are very gallant, Mr. Flintlock.” Rose held a rosary of pink coral in her hand, and the beads silently slipped through her fingers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Well, we sure as hell won’t let them slip through our fingers,” Luke Gamble said. “On account of how they ain’t running.”

  Captain Gregory Usher looked around him at the evidence of slaughter. Hunch-shouldered buzzards squatted on the ground beyond the piled arcs of the dead, patiently awaiting their feast. “How in God’s name did this happen?”

  “Fisher’s got himself a big gun,” Gamble said. “Seems like these rannies came looking for the stolen gold and ran into a Gatling instead.”

  “I thought the missing payroll was a secret,” Usher said.r />
  “There are no secrets on the frontier, and especially in Texas where folks keep a close eye on the doings of Yankee soldiers.”

  Sergeant Rollo Martin stepped beside his officer. “Burial detail?”

  “Hell, no,” Usher said. “We’d be here planting stiffs for a week. Let them lie. They’re not our dead.”

  “The men want to know if they can search the corpses,” Martin said.

  “Yeah, sure,” Usher said, “but only to take what they can comfortably carry—watches and money and the like. A pistol, if there’s one that takes their fancy.”

  After Martin saluted and stepped away, Usher glanced at the sky, where the sun burned like a white-hot coin. More buzzards had gathered, gliding gracefully in circles like skaters on a frozen blue lake. As squabbles broke out over the plunder, Usher stepped to his horse and untied his bandana. He soaked it in water from his canteen and retied it around his neck. “Does the Gatling gun spell trouble for us, Mr. Gamble?”

  “Only if we charge them robbers a whoopin’ and a hollerin’ on horseback,” the scout said. “We stay away from the kill-heaps gun and plug ’em any way we can. And call me Luke for chrissake.”

  Usher shook his head. “Damn it. I don’t like this, Luke. The robbers have a Gatling gun. What else do they have?”

  “We’ll find out pretty damned soon and then we deal with it. The thing to do is to keep our heads.” Gamble winked. “Greg.”

  Usher had no time to comment on that last. Behind him, angry yells led to a curse and then a revolver shot. As he turned, he was already undoing the flap of his holster.

  Private Harvey Booker lay on the ground, blood already pooling under his gray head. Standing over him, smoking Colt in hand, was Private Clint Vesey.

  Sergeant Martin grabbed the gun out of Vesey’s fist and then backhanded the soldier across the face. “You had no cause to do that.”

  Blood trickling from a cut on his lip, Vesey got up off the ground and said, “He grabbed a wallet right out of my hand. Damned piece of white trash said it was his.”

  “Where is this wallet?” Usher said.

  Martin picked up the wallet from the ground and silently handed it to the captain. Usher quickly checked the contents and brought out two crumpled dollar bills. He glared at Vesey and said, “You killed a man for two dollars.”

  Vesey’s muddy brown eyes glinted with defiance. “The wallet was mine by rights. I found it.”

  Usher looked around him. “Did you all see this?”

  Booker had not been particularly liked, but the troopers nodded.

  “It was murder all right, Captain,” Martin said. “Private Booker didn’t even reach for his weapon.”

  “Private Vesey, I will hand you over to the nearest civilian authority,” Usher said. “Later you’ll be transferred to Fort Concho to stand court-martial for murder.”

  Vesey’s face was ugly. “Yeah? Well maybe I got some stories to tell to them court-martial fellers. Maybe I got stories about the stolen payroll and them among us who want it for themselves. Maybe the real thieves are right here among us. Maybe—”

  A neat bullet hole appeared where Clint Vesey’s eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose, and he dropped like a rock. Every head turned to the man who’d fired the shot.

  Luke Gamble sat his horse, a smile on his face and a thread of smoke curling from his gun. “Since I was once deputized by Judge Parker’s court, I’m the nearest civilian authority and I judged this man guilty of murder. I therefore executed him.”

  The eyes of the surviving troopers turned to Usher. The flap of Martin’s holster was open, but his hand stayed clear of his gun. Gamble had a reputation as a shootist and he was a man to step around.

  Caught flat-footed, Usher said, “Mr. Gamble, we’ll discuss this later, sir.”

  The scout gave a brief nod. “Suits me, Captain.”

  * * *

  “‘We’ll discuss this later.’ Is that it? Nothing more?” Private Seth Proud kicked a rock that bounced across the ground before losing itself in the grass. “It don’t hardly seem fair.”

  “Fair?” Sergeant Martin said, keeping his voice low, out of earshot of Usher. “Life ain’t fair, boy. Them as have, get. Them like us who don’t have, get the end of the stick with the crap on it.”

  “Tell us what to do, Rollo,” Corporal Ethan Stagg said.

  “We stand pat. The bandits have a Gatling gun so for now we need Usher and Gamble. When the money is ours, if them two are still alive, we get rid of them.”

  Proud spat. “That damned Gamble. Killing Clint was a rotten trick.”

  “Clint was a piece of garbage and so was Booker.” Martin grinned. “But I’ll lift a glass to them when I’m spending their share of the payroll money.”

  Usher stalked toward Martin and the others and said, “You men quit gabbing and bury our dead.”

  “What about Gamble, Captain? He should help with the digging,” Stagg said, his bitter eyes on the scout.

  Usher said, “Corporal, the duties of an army scout are to discover and follow the enemy’s trail, locate the enemy, and discover his strength. When required, discover the tribal affiliation of unknown Indians and to faithfully perform all other duties connected to military intelligence. If you don’t already know that, you should. I cannot ask a scout to join a burial detail unless he expresses a wish to do so.”

  “And I don’t wish worth a damn to do so,” Gamble said.

  “You heard the captain’s orders,” Martin said. “We’ll cover them up any way we can.” He stared at Gamble and their eyes met without hostility.

  At that moment, the soldier and the scout understood each other very well.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Old Barnabas, in life as wicked as they come, stood under a gas lamp in an alley and called out to Sam Flintlock as he passed. “No, not there, idiot, over here.”

  Flintlock shoved his Colt back in his waistband and stepped to the alley entrance. “I knew where you were, Barnabas, but I didn’t know who you were.”

  “Well, I’m me. Thanks to You-know-who, this here gas lamp comes all the way from London town. He says Jack the Ripper’s cur dog cocked his leg on this lamp, but you can’t believe a word he says.”

  There was no gas supply in Happyville, but the lamp glowed with a dim, greenish light as it had when it stood in Whitechapel Road. The light fell on Barnabas’s cloaked shoulders and on the crown of his top hat. The old mountain man held a long, slender cane in his right hand with an ornate golden handle in the shape of a snarling Chinese dragon. When he moved, he revealed that the cloak had a bloodred lining in contrast to the dazzling whiteness of his frilled shirt collar and tie.

  “Why the fancy duds?” Flintlock said.

  Barnabas’s face was tinted green from the lamplight, his shadowed eyes and cheeks inky black. “We’re all dressed up because there was a rumor that Jack the Jester was joining the fold, but You-know-who had it wrong as usual. Jack isn’t due for a few years yet.”

  Flintlock said, “Well, I guess that’s why God is in his heaven and Old Scratch isn’t. It must have been a sore disappointment to you, Barnabas. I mean Jack not showing.”

  “Of course is was, but that’s what hell is all about, Sammy. Disappointments . . . one after another. No dreams ever come true in hell, boy. Remember that.”

  A large white moth fluttered around the gas lamp and Flintlock said, “Is that a Happyville moth?”

  “Nah, it’s an East End of London, England, moth. Now listen up, Sammy. Do you want You-know-who’s advice on how to get rid of the pregnant lady and the rest of them? I should warn you, Sam, you being an idiot an’ all, that it involves a knife and some plucky work with a club.”

  “I’ll handle my problems in my own way,” Flintlock said. “Thanks all the same.”

  “Thought you’d say that, boy.” Barnabas shook his top-hatted head. “Son, you just ain’t too bright.” His cloak swirled around him, flashing red. “Well, I got to go. I’ll leave yo
u with this thought, Sam—go find your ma. That Kingfisher feller plans to write his name across this here town and he’ll dip his pen in blood. That’s what he’s all about, boy. B-l-u-d, blood.” Barnabas put a cupped hand to his ear. “Hear that? It’s the coppers. I got to light a shuck.”

  Flintlock stood to the side as Barnabas, his cape billowing, ran past him and became one with the night. The gas lamp glowed for a few moments longer . . . and then winked out and vanished.

  * * *

  “How is she?” Biddy said.

  “She’s holding up but feeling some pain,” Flintlock said. “Right now I can’t say the same about her husband.”

  “You got him drunk?” Biddy said, her eyes accusing.

  “Only half,” Flintlock said.

  “You and O’Hara are pulling out tomorrow?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “I got news for you, big man.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Indian doesn’t want to go.”

  Biddy saw the question on Flintlock’s face and said, “He had a bad dream.”

  “O’Hara gets all kind of crazy notions about dreams. He’s very high strung, you know. Is there coffee in the pot? I could sure use some.”

  “On the stove where it always is,” Biddy said.

  “Where is O’Hara anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Making big medicine somewhere, I guess.”

  * * *

  Flintlock took his coffee with him. He also carried his Hawken. Old Barnabas’s warning about King Fisher had troubled him and suddenly the night seemed full of hidden dangers.

  Walking clear of the stores and buildings where the smallpox dead lay unburied, Flintlock checked the alleys—anywhere O’Hara might go to commune with the Great Spirit or whoever the hell he’d decided to commune with. A sudden noise in the narrow alley between a boarded-up hardware store and the New York Hat Shop attracted his attention. His Hawken up and handy, Flintlock took a step into the darkness. Had Barnabas come back?

  “Bang, you’re dead.”

  Something cold and round pressed into Flintlock’s right temple just under the brim of his hat.

  “O’Hara, someday that’s going to get you killed.”