Pitchfork Pass

by William W. Johnstone

  “What kind of woman?” Bridie said, frowning her anticipated disapproval.

  “A fancy woman.”

  “A whore?”

  “Yeah, that kind of woman.”

  “Well, Donny just went down in my estimation. Every time a man lies with a loose woman Our Lady sheds a tear. The nuns taught me that.”

  “Are you trying to spoil my story on purpose?”

  “No, I’m not. So, Donny rode into town . . . and then what happened?”

  “He had a few drinks, but the saloon was dead so he decided to head back to the ranch.”

  “I should hope so,” Bridie said.

  “The trouble was, he’d only been on the trail for an hour or so, when a thunderstorm blew up, a ripsnorter and a humdinger as the JW punchers described it later.”

  “Poor Donny,” Bridie said.

  “Yeah, poor Donny, because he got struck by a lightning bolt that killed both him and his hoss, a bay mare that was reckoned to be the best cutting pony on the JW. Old Joe Wilson, the owner of the ranch, sure mourned the loss of that mare.”

  “Is that it?” Bridie said. “Is that the story?”

  “No, that’s not it. I’m closing in on the rest of the yarn now, what you might call coming up on the crux of the matter. By the way, this is good coffee you made, Bridie.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “My ma makes lousy coffee.”

  “Go on with the story, Sam,” Bridie said.

  “Where was I? Oh yeah, well, next morning after the storm cleared, they came and took away Donny’s body and the dead mare. But here’s the thing, when the lightning hit him, Donny’s hat was blown off and it lay there on the trail and nobody touched it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll tell you why not, because Texas punchers are the most superstitious critters God ever put on earth and they figured Donny’s Stetson was a bad-luck hat and they wouldn’t go near it. For years that old hat lay on the trail and for years the JW hands would ride a mile around it, wouldn’t even look at it.” Flintlock tossed out the dregs of his coffee. “As far as I know, Donny’s bad-luck hat is there still and likely it will always be, unless one day a big wind comes up and blows it away.”

  Bridie nodded and said, “I wouldn’t pick that hat up, would you?”

  “Hell, no. I want no truck with bad-luck hats. Did I spook you?”

  “No. When you study on it, it’s a kind of sad story,” Bridie said.

  “I guess so, sad for Donny Coombs and sad for the bay mare. Now I’ll go find my blankets.”

  “Sleep well, Sam.”

  “I sure will,” Flintlock said. “Telling that spooky hat story has plumb wore me out.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Bridie O’Toole put the Waltham back in the pocket of her skirt. It had just informed her that it was three o’clock, the darkest hour of the night. On all sides of her stretched the silent land, bathed in wan moonlight. To the north flashes of heat lightning throbbed in the sky, obliterating the stars, and now a rising wind guttered the flames of the campfire and raised sparks around the sooty sides of the coffeepot. Jane and Flintlock seemed to be sound asleep, cocooned in their blankets.

  Bridie yawned, stood and held her rifle loosely in her left hand. She looked around her but saw only the gleam of moonlight on rock and black pools of mysterious shadow. The silence was so profound, so vaguely disturbing, that she sang the old Irish tune of “The Female Highwayman” under her breath.

  Silvy, Silvy, all in one day,

  She dressed herself in man’s array,

  A sword and pistol by her side,

  To meet her true love she did ride.

  There was a sound below her, Bridie was sure of it . . . the clink of a steel horseshoe on rock. Or was she hearing things? She stepped closer to the edge of the rise, softly singing her song, her rifle at the ready.

  She met her true love all on the plain,

  “Stand and deliver, kind sir,” she said,

  “Stand and deliver, kind sir,” said she,

  “Or else this moment you shall die.”

  The song faded on Bridie’s lips. Was that a groan? A man in pain? Or was it the whimper of a horse wounded in the battle at the mesa?

  She looked over at the sleeping Jane and Flintlock, wondering if she should raise the alarm and wake them. No, she wouldn’t do that. Suppose it turned out to be nothing, just the sound of a coyote or something? Sam Flintlock would tease her, tell her that she’d been spooked by his stupid hat story. That was unacceptable and Bridie made a decision . . . she was a Pinkerton and Pinkertons don’t run for help at every turn. There was something down there in the darkness and she must find out what it was. She had it to do.

  * * *

  Stepping carefully, Bridie O’Toole took the gradual slope from the ridge, stopping often to listen into the night. She heard nothing. Now convinced that her mind had been playing tricks on her, she reached the flat and whispered, “Who’s there?”

  No answer.

  She walked forward a couple of steps and then, scanning the darkness in front of her, her eyes put form to the sounds she’d heard . . . a man wearing a bloodstained shirt lying over the neck of a horse . . . no, a mule.

  “Are you wounded?” Bridie said, stepping closer.

  Then two events happened very fast . . .

  Bridie made out riding breeches, English boots and hair seamed with gray and in a moment of horrified realization she saw that the man was Jacob Hammer. A split second later, Hammer’s left arm shot out in a sweeping motion and backhanded her viciously across the face. Stunned, the woman staggered and triggered off a round that went skyward. Her head spinning, she fell on her back and Hammer threw himself on top of her.

  Bridie was dimly aware that Hammer had screamed horribly when he hit the ground, but from pain or rage she did not know. But now the man grabbed her by her hair and she felt the cold muzzle of a gun shove against her temple.

  “Help me, bitch, or I’ll kill you,” he said, a gasping, primitive snarl shot through with pain. Bridie, wincing as Hammer clawed his strong fingers deeper into her hair, said nothing. “Help me to my feet or I’ll blow your damned brains out,” the man said.

  “Let me go,” Bridie said. “I’ll make sure that you’re given a fair trial.”

  “Don’t talk to me of trials,” Hammer said. “You and Flintlock and his mother are the ones on trial . . . and you’ve been found guilty and sentenced to death. Now get me to my feet or I kill you right now.”

  “Bridie!”

  Flintlock’s voice.

  But Bridie’s head had cleared and she was standing, Hammer leaning heavily on her, his left arm wrapped around her shoulders. The man’s breath was hissing through his teeth and he was obviously in agony, but the muzzle of his revolver never left the side of Bridie’s head.

  “Stay back, Flintlock, or I’ll scatter this sow’s brains,” Hammer said.

  “Let the girl go, Hammer,” Flintlock said. “You’re finished. It’s over.”

  “If I’m finished, then so is she. Now drop that rifle.”

  “Sam, shoot him!” Bridie yelled.

  “No! Don’t shoot, Samuel,” Jane said. She stood beside Flintlock. “He’s insane and he’ll kill her.”

  “I deserve to die,” Bridie said, tears staining her cheeks. “I’m supposed to be a Pinkerton but I let him take me. It was easy for him.”

  “You are a Pinkerton, Bridie,” Jane said. “Now you must be brave.”

  “Shut the hell up, all of you!” Hammer yelled. “Flintlock, drop the rifle or the slut dies. Make up your mind because you’re fast running out of time.”

  “Seems to me that you’re the one running out of time, Hammer,” Flintlock said. He hesitated a moment and then dropped his Winchester.

  “Now, you and the other whore slowly back up the slope,” Hammer said.

  He tightened his muscular arm around Bridie’s neck and the woman cried out in pain. “Help me follow them.”

  “Damn yo
u, Hammer, you’re dying on your feet,” Flintlock said. “Best you make your peace with God.”

  “The hell with God and the hell with you. Now back up, all the way to the top.”

  Bridie tried to wrench herself free, but again Hammer’s arm tightened on her neck and she sobbed in sudden pain. “Support my weight or I’ll tear your damned head right off your shoulders.”

  “Bridie, do as he says,” Jane said.

  It took several minutes for Hammer to reach the top of the rise and by the time he got there, Bridie O’Toole’s head was bent over at an odd angle, her face a mask of suffering. Hammer backed his way past the campfire and then stopped. “Flintlock, bank up the fire. I want to see your face when I shoot your mother.”

  “Do it, Samuel,” Jane said. “Don’t argue with a madman.”

  Flintlock stared hard at Hammer and said, “Mister, you better hit with all six cartridges in that Colt because I’m going to walk through all of them to get to you and wring your neck.”

  He stepped forward and then halted in surprise as Hammer screamed, high-pitched shrills that shattered the quiet of the night.

  “No!” the man shrieked. “Not now!”

  He staggered back, his face ashen as the gangrene infection finally affected the tissues of his brain. His enormously swollen leg collapsing under him, he clung desperately to Bridie.

  “Noooo . . . not now,” he screeched. “I must live . . . I must . . .”

  He triggered a shot, aiming at Jane, but the bullet went yards wide. He fired again and again, missing with each shot. Flintlock advanced on him, his face a mask of fury.

  Hammer fired at Flintlock then stumbled backward, Bridie still in the viselike grip of his arm. Yet another step back . . . and then a frenzied wail as the man reached the edge of the rise, lost his footing and toppled over the edge screaming, dragging Bridie with him.

  * * *

  Flintlock grabbed a flaming brand from the fire and he and Jane hurried from the ridge to the U-shaped rock at the bottom of the drop.

  Hammer lay on his back, his face contorted with pain, and Bridie lay a couple of yards away, unconscious but alive. Jane kneeled beside the woman as Flintlock held his makeshift torch high and stared down at Hammer.

  “Kill me . . . kill me . . .” Hammer said.

  Flintlock shook his head, his merciless face like stone. “I’ll do nothing to ease your pain, you dirty son of a bitch.” He turned to Jane. “How is she, Ma?”

  “She’s got a pretty good bump on her head, but she’ll be fine.”

  Jane looked at Hammer. “In the end, you acted like the two-bit crook you always were.”

  “I should’ve killed you”—Hammer grimaced as he was hit by a spasm of pain—“when I had the chance.”

  “And now you never will,” Jane said. “Ain’t that a shame.”

  Flintlock picked up Bridie in his arms and carried her back to the rise. Neither he nor Jane looked back at Jacob Hammer.

  * * *

  Hammer was still alive, but barely, when Flintlock and the two women rode down from the rise. His back was broken and he hadn’t moved. Jane had filled a spare canteen at the seep and now she dismounted and walked to the dying man. She dropped the canteen beside him and said, “Take a drink now and then, ease your road to death.”

  Hammer’s eyes were glazed, his face unnaturally white. His ravaged body stank. “Woman,” he said, “am I in Shanghai?”

  Jane shook her head. “No, you’re in hell.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  A relic of the recent Apache wars, the orderly buildings of Fort Defiance were surrounded by a sprawling village of adobe dwellings and thatched, wattle-and-daub jacales. The headquarters building was flanked on two sides by the enlisted men’s quarters, a sutler’s store, adjoining that the quartermaster’s store, a blacksmith’s shop and stables. A flagpole stood in the center of the parade ground, the Stars and Stripes hanging limp in the still morning air. Fort Defiance would win no prizes for beauty. It was hot, dusty, neglected and run-down.

  A cavalry corporal left the headquarters building, crossed the parade ground and stepped into the sutler’s store, a dark, dingy establishment owned by Reuben Horn, its equally dark and dingy proprietor.

  The corporal’s boots thudded on the wood floor as he walked to the counter where the two Pinkerton women and the man with the big bird on his throat stood, eating cheese and crackers.

  “Your answer just came in from the Pinkerton Agency, ma’am,” the soldier said, handing a slip of paper to Jane. “And I hope it’s the news you’ve been waiting for.”

  “Thank you, Corporal,” Jane said.

  “Your obedient servant, ma’am.” The corporal gave a snappy salute and left.

  Jane read the wire, read it again and Bridie O’Toole said, “Well, what is it?”

  “We’ve got our orders,” Jane said.

  “Don’t keep us in suspense, Ma,” Sam Flintlock said. “What does it say.”

  “I am ordered to New Orleans to investigate a man named Giuseppe Morello and his criminal organization. I have to wire for further instructions when I arrive.”

  “And what about me?” Bridie said.

  “You’re ordered back to Chicago. That’s all it says,” Jane said.

  “I won’t do office work,” Bridie said, looking crestfallen. “I’m a detective, not a filing clerk.”

  Jane smiled. “I’m sure the agency has something else in mind, Bridie. By now they know the valuable role you played in bringing down Jacob Hammer, and if they don’t they soon will because I will tell them.”

  Bridie hugged Jane and said, “I knew I could depend on you.”

  Reuben Horn, a man with black hair, black eyes and, if the talk around the fort was correct, a black heart, stepped behind the counter. He stared at Flintlock for a few moments and then said, “You’re Sam Flintlock, ain’t you?”

  “That’s the name,” Flintlock said.

  “Heard you’re doing a job fer the army, riding out this morning.”

  “Word gets around,” Flintlock said.

  “It’s a small fort,” Horn said. “What are they paying you to go out on the scout?”

  “Enough.”

  Horn waved a hand, dismissing that last. “Two dollars a day and your grub ain’t enough.”

  “Maybe so, but I’ve nothing better to do.”

  “Man you’re being paid to find is a friend of mine, goes by the name of Jasper Davies. Ain’t that so?”

  “That would be the man. Stole a pair of army mules.”

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Horn said. “I’ll pay you ten dollars not to find him.”

  “Ten dollars. Sounds like Davies is kin.”

  “He’s kin to a skunk,” Horn said. “But now and again he does work for me. I set store by him and I don’t want him to spend the next year or two scratching his name on a cell wall. I need him here.”

  Flintlock shook his head. “Sorry, mister, I’m being paid by the army to do a job and I’ll do it. First come, first served.”

  Horn’s face turned ugly. “Tattooed man, if you catch up with Jasper, it will be better for you if you don’t bring him in . . . if you get my drift.”

  “You threatening me?” Flintlock said.

  “Maybe I am, maybe I ain’t. Let’s just say that this here cannon on my hip ain’t for show.”

  “Samuel, let it go,” Jane said. And then to Horn, “If you make any more threats against my son, I’ll report you to Lieutenant Colonel Brand. Now, what do we owe you for the stale crackers and dried-up cheese?”

  “I reckon you all ate a dollar’s worth,” Horn said. He smiled. “Brand is an idiot and an Indian lover. He don’t scare me none.”

  As Jane and Bridie hustled Flintlock out of the door, Horn called out after him, “Remember what I told you, tattooed man.”

  * * *

  Sam Flintlock rode out of Fort Defiance two hours before noon with Sergeant Clive Britton and two troopers. Britton, a griz
zled veteran of the Apache wars, was a talking man.

  “Sam, afore we left the word around the fort was that Reuben Horn put the crawl on you.”

  Flintlock’s eyes were fixed on the sandy trail ahead of him. “Who told you that?”

  “Horn put it out, said your ma saved you from a whipping.”

  Flintlock shook his head. “The man is a liar.”

  “He’s all of that,” Britton said. “But Horn is a dangerous man to cross. He’s mighty slick with the iron. If I was you, I’d be careful around him.”

  “Let’s catch Jasper Davies first, and then I’ll study on it.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “About what?”

  “About Davies. Jasper is a friend of his.”

  “He offered me ten dollars not to find him.”

  “And will you take it?”

  “I reckon not. I’ve picked up Davies’s tracks already. He’s heading south.”

  “Jasper isn’t too smart, but he’s a sure-thing killer,” the sergeant said. “He’s a dark-alley man and him and Horn go way back. About ten years ago, they beat it out of Fort Worth ahead of a hanging posse and then, don’t ask me how, Horn got himself a job here in the Territory as an Indian agent with Davies as his assistant. With their dirty thumbs on the beef and flour scales, they starved the Apaches for years and when Geronimo and the rest of them were packed off to Florida, Horn opened his sutler’s store using the profits he made from dead Mescaleros.”

  “Sounds like a real nice feller,” Flintlock said.

  “He’s poison and so is Davies,” Britton said. “He may put up a fight.”

  “I doubt it,” Flintlock said. “His kind never do, Clive.”

  For a while the four men rode in silence, the rocky landscape around them shimmering in the heat. After a while Flintlock drew rein. He dismounted and scouted the ground around a stand of juniper and New Mexican pine and said, “Davies sure isn’t in a hurry. He dawdled here, smoked a few cigarettes and then went on his way again. Judging by the mule dung, he’s no more than an hour ahead of us.”