Pitchfork Pass

by William W. Johnstone

“Help me, Jacob,” the physician yelled. “I don’t want to burn to death.”

  Hammer, his face contorted in fury, gritted between clenched teeth, “You lied to me. You told me all would be well.” A shell detonated close and the building shuddered, lifting off its foundations. “Is this what you promised, soothsayer?”

  “No, Jacob, all will be well,” Chiang said. A pool of urine formed around his feet. “We can escape, you and me. There is a way.”

  “Here is your escape, traitor,” Hammer snarled. He shot the little physician between the eyes and didn’t wait to see him fall.

  His blazing house tumbling around him, Hammer ran outside and into a scene of horror. The whole compound was on fire, flames leaping between the tinder-dry buildings. Heedless of nothing but their own safety, men and women ran headlong for the pass. Hammer saw a young woman with brunette hair clutch at a gunman’s ankles, begging him for help. The man kicked her aside and yelled, “I can do nothing for you.”

  Bodies sprawled everywhere, some of them burned to a crisp, others horribly mutilated by shellfire, and panic-stricken horses, the white arcs of their eyes showing, galloped wildly around the blazing compound and added to the bedlam.

  Filled with anger and vindictive hatred, Hammer pushed his way through the fleeing, frightened crowd toward the dungeon. He’d have to escape with the rest . . . but first he’d carry out the executions he’d planned.

  The shelling had stopped, but the heat from the fires was intense and clouds of thick smoke broke across the compound like the cresting waves of a nightmare sea. Hammer, both guns in his sweating fists, coughed, choked, gagged, as he staggered toward the cell. So intent was he on his revenge that the tumult around him ceased to register. Now his only desire was to kill . . . destroy the Pinkerton bitches and his unfaithful bride, the authors of his downfall.

  Hammer struggled closer to his goal . . . but then a shock.

  The iron gate to the dungeon had been blown off its hinges and rubble blocked the entrance. Hammer managed a smile. The sluts had been buried alive. He would have preferred to shoot them, but their crushing deaths under tons of rock was still as sweet as honeyed wine.

  But Jacob Hammer did not have time to rejoice . . . as horror descended on him.

  * * *

  Out of smoke and fire, Viktor lurched toward Hammer, his face contorted in rage and hatred. The Russian giant’s bloody shirt hung in tatters over his hips, revealing his massive chest and shoulders and muscular arms.

  Hammer was aware of the steady rattle of rifle fire from the pass. His men had obviously gotten over their panic and were fighting back. Now was not the time to contend with this mindless monster.

  “Viktor, follow me,” Hammer said. “We’re needed at the pass.”

  The giant ignored that and kept coming, the fingers of his enormous hands spread, ready to grasp . . . ready to kill.

  “Viktor, I gave you an order,” Hammer said, a spike of alarm in his voice. “Obey me, you dog.”

  Silently, Viktor advanced, his small, gray eyes glowing, a gargantuan, relentless force of nature burning with the desire to kill the hated man who had so many times abused and humiliated him.

  “Another step and I’ll kill you,” Hammer said.

  Viktor ignored him, his shuffling feet closing the distance.

  Hammer took a step back and fired.

  Viktor took the hit and kept coming.

  “Damn you!” Hammer yelled.

  He fired both revolvers rapidly and saw his bullets punch great holes in Viktor’s chest. Hammer knew he’d scored fatal hits, but the giant didn’t flinch. Hammer triggered more shots without effect . . . and then screamed as Viktor’s hands found his throat, digging deep into his windpipe as though he wore iron gauntlets.

  Jacob Hammer could no longer scream. His eyes popped and his lips drew back in a grotesque parody of a grin. He couldn’t breathe. His head felt as though it were about to explode and he knew death was close . . .

  Then, the pressure on his throat lessened. He saw the change in Viktor’s slackening face, the man’s dawning realization that the bullets had taken their toll and his great strength was failing.

  Hammer reached up, grabbed Viktor’s wrists and pulled them from his throat. He broke free, raised his Colt, shoved the muzzle between the Russian’s eyes and pulled the trigger. Click! He’d run the revolver dry. But the bullet wasn’t necessary. Viktor staggered, said, “Bad man.” And collapsed to the ground.

  Now the compound was a roaring inferno and its only occupants were the dead and dying. Hammer took time to load both his Colts and then sprinted for the pass, red-hot embers tumbling around him like the snows of hell.

  * * *

  When Jacob Hammer ran into the pass, about thirty men and a few women were crowded together, trapped, unwilling to leave in the teeth of rifle fire and unable to retreat back to the blazing compound. Bullets zipped through the narrow arroyo, ricocheted off the walls and already three dead men had been hit and lay sprawled on the ground.

  Hammer’s face was grim. They couldn’t stay in a pass that was rapidly becoming a charnel house. Every eye turned to him, looking for guidance, and a man said, “The guards had their throats cut. We tried to leave and lost six, seven men in the first volley.”

  “Who are they?” Hammer said.

  “Don’t know, boss,” the gunman said. “But it could be an infantry regiment out there. We can’t show our faces at the entrance to the pass without being shot down.” Then, hope in his eyes, “Is there another way out of here?”

  “No. No, there’s not,” Hammer said. A bullet whined off a wall and he instinctively ducked. “Damn it, we can’t stay here.”

  “Then surrender,” another, older man said. “The army will treat us decent.”

  “No surrender,” Hammer said. “We’ll shoot our way out.”

  “We’ve already tried that and all we have to show for it is dead men,” the man said.

  Hammer looked around and said, “You men there, bring those white women forward, not the Chinese girls. We’ll use them as a shield.”

  The gunmen hesitated and the five women shrank back, fear in their faces.

  “Damn it, there are army officers out there,” Hammer said. “They won’t give the order to shoot white women and it will give us the time we need to launch a counterattack.”

  The men were still undecided, giving one another worried, sidelong looks and Hammer yelled, “Do you all want to be shot down or burned alive in this death trap? The women are our only hope of getting out of here in one piece.”

  “Not me,” the older man said. “I’m surrendering.”

  “Then go, damn you,” Hammer said. “Put your hands in the air and surrender. Get out! Get out while you still can.”

  “I’m with you, Dan,” another man said. Then, “Let’s go.”

  The two gunmen raised their arms and walked through the smoky pass to the entrance. “We surrend—”

  Those were the last words the older man ever spoke as he and his companion were shot down by a fusillade of rifle fire.

  “Fools! Damn fools!” Hammer said. “Now bring those women forward.”

  Shaken by the deaths of their confederates, men rushed to drag the shrieking, protesting women to the front. “Now, listen up,” Hammer said. “We men will crouch behind the women until we’re close enough to rush the enemy positions. At that point, the women will drop to the ground out of harm’s way and crawl out of the line of fire.” He looked into the terrified female faces and said, “You’ve trusted me before and you can trust me now. None of you will be harmed.”

  But the women wanted no part of Hammer’s plan. They struggled to break free even as tongues of fire from the blazing compound licked into the pass and scorching cinders, driven by the firestorm, cartwheeled to the ground.

  Hammer glanced over his shoulder at the looming conflagration, and his voice took on a tone of urgency as he yelled, “Now, men! Get behind the women and push them forward. I
will lead the counterattack.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Sam Flintlock heard someone to his right yell a one-word question filled with uncertainty, “Captain?”

  “They’re using their women as a shield,” Flintlock said. His mother wasn’t among them.

  “I see it,” Von Essen said, his face as grim as a hanging judge passing a death sentence. Then, his one-word answer to the one-word question . . . “Fire!”

  Twenty riflemen, conditioned since their youth to obey an order without question, cut loose with a withering volley. All five women were cut down and behind them several men were hit and fell. Then Flintlock heard a man yell, “Attack!”

  The Hammer gunmen, their morale shaken, were now a frightened mob. Firing as they came, they made a halfhearted advance on Von Essen’s position, but as volley after well-aimed volley crashed into their ranks, they faltered, then broke and fled, leaving half their number dead on the ground.

  About a dozen gunmen retreated eastward, only to run into Colonel Janowski’s men who’d come to the aid of the detachment at the pass now that the shelling had ceased. The demoralized gunmen raised their hands and tried to surrender but were quickly shot down. Back in Washington, Senator Flood had made it clear that surrender was not an option, and, like Von Essen, Alfons Janowski followed orders.

  Sam Flintlock followed his heart.

  A column of scarlet-tinted smoke rose from the hole in the mesa caprock like an erupting volcano, and somewhere in that inferno was his mother. Flintlock didn’t know if she was alive or dead, but he intended to find out. Janowski was sitting with his back against a rock, and he and Von Essen were deep in conversation.

  As an occasional shot rang out and dispatched a wounded gunman, unnoticed, Flintlock rose from his position and walked to the entrance of Pitchfork Pass. He levered a round into his Henry and stepped into the heat and smoke of the arroyo. He walked past the grinning skulls that decorated the walls, and ahead of him the opening that led to the compound was framed by fire, like a side entrance to Hades. Flintlock tied his bandanna around his mouth and nose and plunged into the inferno.

  * * *

  Sam Flintlock walked into a horseshoe of flame.

  Directly ahead of him a house burned and on either side of him rows of low, wooden buildings were ablaze. Smoke hung over the compound and he had to step around the blackened bodies of men, a few women and several horses. The women’s bodies were scorched beyond recognition and Flintlock, his heart sinking, realized he’d need to search further, perhaps in the buildings once the fires had died. His eyes were red-rimmed from smoke, glowing sparks blistered his face and hands and even with the protection of the bandanna the stench of burning flesh was unbearable. He ordered himself to give up the search and return later . . . before he, too, ended up a blackened cinder.

  Flintlock took one last look at the fiery buildings and turned to leave. But then he stopped in his tracks as he heard a groan coming from somewhere to his left where the smoke hung thickest.

  “Who’s there?” he yelled.

  No answer.

  “I can’t see you, partner. Can you speak?” Flintlock yelled.

  The fires were dying down now, having destroyed all they could destroy, but flames still roared and flaming wooden beams crackled and showered sparks into the air.

  “Here . . .”

  A man’s voice, somewhere in the smoke.

  “Keep talking, feller, I’m coming.”

  It dawned on Flintlock that the man was one of Jacob Hammer’s gunmen and he’d have to shoot him. He didn’t want to think about that. Not now.

  “Over here . . .”

  The man’s voice sounded weak, probably from smoke, and Flintlock headed in that direction. He found a stricken giant. The man lay on his back, his massive chest covered in blood. He’d been shot many times at close range, powder burns visible under the gore. The colossus was in pain, his thick lips peeled back from his teeth, breath coming in short, quick gasps, yet he clung to life, tenaciously surviving by the sheer force of his will.

  The man raised an arm and pointed. “There . . . womens . . . you go . . . Louise . . .”

  He reached up and with the last of his strength he grabbed Flintlock by the nape of his neck and pulled him close. “Go . . .”

  A moment, and then the giant’s eyes fluttered closed and with a great, rasping sigh he died.

  Flintlock disentangled himself from the man’s hand, stood and his gaze followed the direction of the pointing finger. The direction was to the left of the burning house, an area of the compound invisible in the smoke. But the women were over there and Flintlock’s mother was one of them. Heedless of the danger from the still-ravenous fire, he sprinted in that direction, his heart hammering in his chest. Could anyone have survived the shelling and the blaze? Sam Flintlock was not a praying man, but he asked for God’s help as he ran . . .

  Let me find them still alive.

  Flintlock almost tripped over a heavy steel gate that lay in front of an arch-shaped depression in the rock face. It looked like a cave of some kind, but if it was, the entrance was blocked by tons of rubble that had fallen from higher up the wall. A sick feeling in his belly, he laid his rifle on the ground and stood close to the tumbled rocks, some of them as large as a beer barrel, and yelled, “Ma! Can you hear me?”

  Flintlock realized the desperate futility of that shout as soon as he uttered the words. But there was something he could do. He grabbed a rock, threw it aside, and then laid hands on another.

  The pitiless fire mocked him, the smoke did its best to choke him and his hands soon blistered and then bled from the hot sandstone.

  But Flintlock worked on, heedless of pain, the mass of rock in front of him now his most hated enemy.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  After an hour of removing rock by blistering rock, burned by flying embers, choking, coughing in the smoke, Sam Flintlock had made little impression on the pile of rubble that blocked the cave entrance. Around him the fire was burning itself out, but slowly, like a destructive demon prolonging its own evil existence.

  Flintlock had called to his mother many times as he worked, but each time he was greeted by silence. Doggedly, he went back to removing rocks, a relentlessly unending task that was gradually exhausting him.

  “Hände hoch!”

  Flintlock turned to the harsh Prussian voice. Captain Dieter Von Essen, a revolver in his hand, eyed him through the misting smoke. Behind him eight mercenaries had rifles in their hands and ice in their stare. Von Essen screwed a monocle in his right eye and peered, his thin body bent forward from the waist.

  “Herr Flintlock?” he said. “Sind Sie das?” Then, in English, “Is that you?”

  Flintlock realized he was covered from head to toe in soot. He wiped his throat with his hand, revealing some of the thunderbird tattoo.

  “Ach, I thought you’d been killed,” the captain said. He holstered his gun. “What are you doing here?”

  Flintlock motioned to the rubble. “Captain, I think my mother and two other women are buried behind these rocks.”

  “Then we must free them, instanter!” Von Essen turned to his men. “Meine herren, remove this barrier.” He stepped to Flintlock, grabbed his wrists and stared at his bloody, torn hands. “But not you, Herr Flintlock. You have already done enough.”

  The eight mercenaries stacked their rifles and then worked on the rockfall. As he watched his men work, Von Essen said, “The butcher’s bill was low in this battle, Herr Flintlock. We suffered two dead and three wounded.”

  “And Hammer’s people?” Flintlock said. His eyes were glued to the cave entrance.

  “Fifty-seven dead, including eight women, two of them Orientals.” Von Essen shrugged. “But there may be more bodies in the burned buildings.”

  “Pity about the women,” Flintlock said.

  “Ancillary damage is to be expected in war,” Von Essen said.

  “Any sign of Jacob Hammer?”

&n
bsp; “I don’t know. I never met the gentleman, but later perhaps you can inspect the bodies.”

  “If he’s among the dead, my mother will be able to identify him. She’s a Pinkerton.”

  The Prussian was puzzled. “What is this . . . Pinkerton?”

  “A detective,” Flintlock said.

  “Ah, that is good, very good,” Von Essen said. “There are no female detectives in Prussia.”

  “Or anywhere else,” Flintlock said.

  “One more thing, we must add Colonel Janowski to the casualty list,” Von Essen said. “He is very ill. His left side is paralyzed and he has trouble speaking. I think this will be his last campaign.” The captain smiled. “It is just as well that it ended in a splendid victory. Just between you and me, Herr Flintlock, I do not approve of elderly officers going up in balloons.”

  “Captain! Over here.”

  This from a man at the rockfall.

  “What is it?” Von Essen said.

  “We think we hear something.”

  Flintlock rushed to the rubble, a question on his face, but a man held a forefinger to his lips and said, “Hush.”

  Flintlock cocked his head and listened. There it was! A soft scraping sound that came and went. It could mean only that the women were removing rubble from the other side. Forgetful of his tattered hands, Flintlock grabbed a rock and tossed it aside. The other men joined in and after fifteen minutes they’d cleared a small space, enough that Flintlock could put his mouth to the opening and say, “Ma!”

  A moment passed and then, “Is that you, Samuel?”

  “Yeah, Ma, it’s me. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine and so are the others. But did you see Viktor? Just before the cave-in he left to find Jacob Hammer.”

  “Viktor? Is he a big feller?”

  “Yes. He’s a giant of a man.”

  “Ma, he’s dead, all shot to pieces.”

  A long silence, then, “Jacob Hammer killed him.”

  “He lived long enough to tell me where I could find you. Now we’ve got to get you out of there.”

  Fifteen minutes later the women were freed. Like the other two, Jane was soot stained but otherwise seemed in good health. Louise Smith and Bridie O’Toole hugged Flintlock and thanked him profusely, tears of relief and gratitude in their eyes.