“He’ll never go for it, Asa. We’ll end up hanging upside down over a slow fire, dying by inches.”
“He’ll go for it. Hell, look what’s in it for him . . . horses, guns, ammunition and the end of a fort that’s been a pain in the Apache butt for years.”
“He could be anywhere. We’ll never find him.”
“Yeah, you’re right. He’ll find us.”
Shaw was silent for a few moments, then said, “It’s thin, Asa. I think it’s way too thin to work.”
“Well, it’s all we got.”
“You don’t even speak Apache.”
“You soldier boys taught the Apaches to speak American pretty damn quick. We can get along.”
Shaw said nothing, his head bent, a man being torn apart.
“Well?” Pagg said. “Is it a go?”
The captain nodded slowly and sighed, like a Judas in blue agreeing to the thirty pieces of silver.
“It’s a go,” he said finally.
“Hard times comin’ down, Owen,” Pagg said. “Just be ready.”
Without looking up, Shaw nodded again.
Outside, brassy in the afternoon, the bugler sounded mess call.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jack Coffin led the way across Buffalo Pass and then dropped down into the sandstone butte country at the southern end of the Red Rock Valley.
He turned in the saddle and said to Flintlock, “There is a trading post a mile ahead. We can get grub there and a place to sleep. And we need to rest the pack mules.”
“Hell, Jack, there’s a couple of hours of daylight left,” Abe Roper said. “I say we press on. The mules are only carrying sledgehammers and pickaxes. It ain’t a heavy load.”
Coffin lifted his nose to the high mountain wind. “More rain coming. Best we take shelter soon.”
“There ain’t a cloud in the sky,” Roper said. “It ain’t gonna rain, trust me.”
The breed ignored that and said, “We will find shelter at Gauley’s trading post, and food.”
“Sam’l, what do you reckon?” Roper said.
Flintlock answered that with a question of his own. “Jack, how far are we from the cave?”
“I don’t know. Not far if the map is right. If the map is wrong, then who knows?”
“It’s right,” Roper said. “I’d stake my life on the map being right.”
“Tomorrow, then,” Coffin said. “We’ll find the cave tomorrow.”
Flintlock calmed his restive horse, then said to Roper, “Makes sense to hole up for the night, Abe. And the mules are getting tired.”
“How’s the whiskey an’ the grub at . . . what the hell’s her name?” Roper said.
“Chastity Gauley. The grub is good but I don’t know about the whiskey.”
“Girls?” Roper said.
“Sometimes.”
“What about Chastity herself?” Roper said. “I’ve always liked that name for a woman, even though I never believed it.”
“Chastity must dress out at around four hundred pounds,” Coffin said. “He’s a sight to see, even for an Indian.”
“He? You mean a man who calls himself Chastity?”
“You’ll find out, Roper,” Coffin said.
“Ah well, if the grub’s good, let’s take Sammy’s advice an’ give her . . . damnit . . . his place a whirl,” Roper said.
“Just don’t order the rabbit stew,” Coffin said.
“How come?” Roper said.
“It ain’t rabbit.”
Coffin smiled and kneed his horse forward, and behind him, Roper said, “Anything else you feel the need to tell me?”
The trading post was an adobe building with a sod roof and a ramshackle porch out front with a painted, weathered sign that read:
BUFFALO PASS TRADING POST
~ CHAS. GAULEY, PROP.
The cabin was built like a fortress, with firing slits cut into its four walls, and the adobe was pockmarked with bullet holes, the calling cards of many Apache attacks. Behind the cabin was a smokehouse, chicken coop and what looked to be a two-holer outhouse, unheard of luxury on the frontier. There was also a pole corral with a lean-to shelter, a well, and a hundred yards farther back a small graveyard with a dozen crosses tilted over at all angles.
Roper drew rein, stared at the place for a few moments, then said, “Well, it’s homey, I guess.”
“The coffee smells good,” Charlie Fong said.
“Coffee always smells good, it’s how it tastes that counts,” Roper said.
“Then let’s go make a trial of it,” Flintlock said.
He held the Hawken high, swung out of the saddle and led his horse toward the hitching rail. The others followed him.
To the north the sky was gray with rain clouds and leaves blew out of the aspen groves and tossed like scraps of paper in the wind.
Flintlock opened the door of the post and stepped inside from light to the gloom of oil lamp and tobacco smoke.
But even in the semidarkness he knew he was in a heap of trouble.
A man often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it, and Sam Flintlock should never have run into Hiram Elliot . . . not then, not there, not ever.
Committed to stepping inside, getting pushed from behind by the impatient Roper, Flintlock walked into the cabin.
A gunfighter takes in a room at a glance and any potential dangers stand out like diamonds in a coal scuttle.
That day Hiram Elliot, small, thin and fast with the iron, was the brightest diamond of all.
The man sitting at a table with him was a weasel by the name of Dark Alley Jim Cole, a blade artist who’d cut more throats than an abattoir slaughterer.
Elliot once had a brother, now greatly missed. Josh was his name, a killer and rapist, and Flintlock had put him six feet under after he’d tried to skip town to avoid arrest.
That Josh had made the serious mistake of skinning iron on Flintlock was neither here nor there to Hiram Elliot. A native of the Ozarks, he lived by the feud and the code of an eye for an eye.
There would be no back-up in him. Not that day or any other.
Flintlock knew a killing was on the cards and he’d no way of avoiding it.
Roper bellied up to the rough pine bar with Charlie Fong, and Flintlock joined them. He realized full well that the trouble wouldn’t go away, but for now he chose to ignore it. The Colt in his waistband was tight and snug, its cold cheek pressed reassuringly against his skin, and he propped up the Hawken where it would be handy.
“Can we get service here?” Roper said, thumping on the bar.
Out of the corner of his eye Flintlock saw that Cole’s hand was on Elliot’s forearm and he was talking earnestly to him, his mouth close to the other man’s ear. Elliot’s eyes were fixed on Flintlock’s back, his mouth a tight, scissored gash.
Flintlock knew it was coming down. The only question was when.
A curtain rattled open on its rings and a . . . vision of ugliness . . . stepped behind the bar.
“What’ll it be, gents?” Chastity Gauley said.
Flintlock, Roper and Charlie Fong didn’t answer, but their jaws dropped to their belt buckles.
How else to react to a man who stood eight inches over six feet, sported a huge, black dragoon mustache and had eyebrows like hairbrushes . . . yet wore a woman’s pink afternoon dress in the latest fashion, complete with bustle and heavily boned waist. A tiny hat, decorated with a faux millinery bird, perched on a scraggly blond wig and Gauley’s thick lips were painted bright carmine, his cheeks rouged the same color.
Piling horror on top of horror, Gauley was enormously fat and he was sweating like a hog butcher after a frost.
Roper, more used to the vagaries of brothels and their denizens, was the first to recover.
“Three whiskeys,” he said. Then, “You must be Chastity.”
“Yes, indeed,” Gauley said, his hairy fingers clenched around a whiskey bottle. “Chastity by name but not by nature. Afore I became a lady, my name w
as Charles.”
“Hey, that’s my name,” Fong said. “I’m called Charlie.”
“How wonderful for you,” Gauley said, dry as dust.
He stared at Flintlock. “You have a bird on your throat.”
“I know.”
“It’s . . . how should I say? Becoming?”
“Thank you.”
“Spoils your looks though. It’s just as well you weren’t very handsome to begin with.”
“Thank you,” Flintlock said.
After Gauley poured the drinks and picked up Roper’s silver dollar from the bar, he said, “When you feel like it, go through the curtain to the dry goods department. I have a wide selection of clothing and footwear for sale, including a consignment of gents’ button-up ankle boots to be sold at cost. They were shipped to me from Denver and when they’re gone, they’re gone.”
Flintlock heard a chair scrape behind him and he locked eyes with Hiram Elliot in the mirror behind the bar. The gunfighter hadn’t moved but his stare met Flintlock’s and promised hell.
Above the mirror hung a sign that read:
HAVE YOU WRITTEN TO
MOTHER?
And to the right of that a railroad clock with a yellowed face ticked slow seconds into the room.
Gauley had a big, booming voice, like a blacksmith talking over the din of his forge, and he said, “You boys passing through?”
“Headin’ north,” Roper said. “We got a lot of country to see.”
“Well, if you’re passing this way again, I have a couple of young ladies come in on Thursday nights.” He hesitated, then made a face as he said, “If you’re interested in that kind of thing.”
“Oh yes, we are, very much so,” Charlie Fong said, the words tumbling out quickly.
“Pity,” Gauley said. He winked at Fong, who suddenly found something of great interest at the bottom of his glass.
“Where’s Coffin?” Flintlock said, raising his voice for the first time since he’d entered the post.
“Don’t know,” Roper said. “Probably outside scalping some poor sumbitch.” He held up his glass. “Same again, Chas.”
The sound of Flintlock’s voice provided the catalyst that fanned the flames of Hiram Elliot’s hatred and set him in motion.
He scraped back his chair, deliberately noisy, and got to his feet. Cole, a careful man, remained sitting, but he grinned like an ape.
Flintlock, knowing the time had come, set down his untouched whiskey and turned, his back against the bar.
Elliot wore his Colt high on his right side, in the horseman’s fashion, its seven-and-a-half-inch barrel a potent reminder of his origins in the Ozarks.
“You be Sam Flintlock,” Elliot said.
“You know it,” Flintlock said.
“I been hunting you, Flintlock. A man with a bird on his throat who carries an old Hawken ain’t too hard to track down.”
“I got no beef agin you, Elliot.”
“No dodger on me, you mean.”
“I seen one. Had a good likeness of you on it. Said you was wanted for murder and rape, dead or alive.”
“So you plan to kill me just like you did Josh. Only you ain’t shooting me in the back like you done him.”
“He’d been notified but he still drew down on me. It was his mistake.”
Elliot’s hand moved closer to his gun. “No, it was your mistake.”
The door swung open, letting in a blast of scorching air, and two dusty, bearded miners stepped into the room. Gauley, dropping all pretense to manhood, screeched, “Oh, Luke and Baldy, just in time. Please, take my mirror down.” He pulled a scrap of lacy handkerchief from the pocket of his dress and fanned his face. “Ooh, this is terrible. There’s going to be a gunfight.”
The miners sized up the situation and one of them said, “That would kinda put us in the line of fire, Chastity.”
“Ooh, men! I’ll do it myself.”
Gauley flounced to the mirror, which was large and heavy, and unhooked it from the wall as easily as a woman would take down a tintype of Mother. He hurried through the curtain again and before it swung back in place he started to sob.
Roper said, “Want me to take a hand, Sam’l? Hell, I’ll gun him for you if’n you want.”
“No. I guess I’ll call my own play when I see how the cards fall.”
“When you feel my bullet hit, remember that it’s for Josh,” Elliot said.
“Are you trying to talk me to death, Elliot?” Flintlock said. “Make your play and get your work in.”
“Josh got it in the belly,” Elliot said. “And so will you, Flintlock.” His eyes glittered. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
He made his move. Smooth. Practiced. Fast.
But not fast enough. Not even close.
Only one man in a thousand, perhaps in ten thousand, has the genetic potential and coordination between brain and hand to be lightning quick and deadly accurate on the draw and shoot.
Sam Flintlock was of that rare breed.
Elliot’s long-barreled Colt was leveling when Flintlock’s first bullet hit him.
The shot took the little gunman high in the chest, a severe wound that was enough to make him take a step back before he gritted his teeth and again got his revolver in play.
Elliot fired, but his bullet went wild as strength sapped out of him.
Flintlock, his Colt now held at arm’s length, used the front sight and fired again. And again. Two hits, one to the center of Elliot’s chest, the second, lower and to the right, plowed a furrow across the gunman’s ribs, smashing bone.
Elliot went down on his knees, coughing blood. He stared hard at Flintlock and tried to lift his Colt. But he was done.
Dark Alley Jim Cole then made the last and worst mistake of his miserable existence.
He drew a .32 Smith & Wesson and two-handed it straight out in front of him, aiming at Flintlock.
Abe Roper drew, fired and blew the top of Cole’s head clean off.
The man fell, perhaps wishing at the moment of death that he’d stuck to blades.
As Charlie Fong said later, “Jim Cole got his work in like a girl.”
A gunfight is long in the telling but short in the doing.
The railroad clock on the wall tick-tocked only three times from the moment Elliot made his gun move to the death of Jim Cole.
But to Flintlock it seemed like an eternity.
He turned his head and his eyes met Roper’s through a drift of gray gunsmoke.
Roper shrugged. “I thought I’d help out.”
“You did,” Flintlock said. “Thanks.”
Chastity emerged through the curtain again, took one look at the dead men and promptly fainted.
When he hit the ground the trading post shook.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The buffalo soldiers of C Troop, 10th Cavalry, had been on campaign against Apaches for two months and exhaustion showed on their faces as they prodded their equally weary captives south toward Fort Defiance under an iron-gray sky that blustered the threat of rain.
Once at full strength, ninety-five men, four civilian teamsters and two Piute scouts, detached duties and casualties had reduced the troop to just fifty-eight, half of them raw recruits.
Captain Robert Gibbs rode at the head of the column with Sergeants Fogarty and Ryan and the guidon corporal. Second Lieutenant Wilfred Mansfield rode drag, in command of herding the hostiles.
Captain Gibbs, a fine-looking soldier with a set of vast muttonchop whiskers, was distantly related to Ambrose E. Burnside and he’d adopted the general’s style of facial hair as homage to the great man.
“Keeping Uncle Ambrose’s whiskers in the family, don’t ye know,” he was wont to say. “I’ve recently heard men refer to them as sideburns, and I must say that it makes me quite proud.”
But Gibbs was not a mere frontier dandy, he was a competent, brave officer and right now he was worried.
The black troopers, normally sympathetic toward th
e Apaches, were in a bitter mood. Earlier that morning, the discovery of the bodies of six miners and their womenfolk, and the killing of one of their own, had made them as hostile toward Apaches as any of their white comrades.
The screaming madwoman now riding in the supply wagon was a constant reminder of what they’d found, and with every hysterical shriek angry whispers were exchanged between the grim-faced troopers.
Gibbs decided his first order of business was to get rid of the woman and then hopefully the troop’s anger would cool and with it the very real threat of massacred captives.
The troop had pushed forward ten miles since daybreak and then as the sun began its slow descent to the horizon they’d come on the dead miners.
Three wagons were scattered across a grassy meadow that was thick with blue wildflowers, bordered by stands of pine and aspen. It was a pretty spot to be the scene of such a horrific catastrophe.
The Apaches had come out of the trees fast and struck hard.
According to the Piute scouts who read the signs, the miners had no time to mount a coordinated defense and most had been killed within minutes, right where they stood.
An older, gray-haired woman, perhaps the mother of one of the men, had been shot and had died quickly. The two other women, younger, had not been so lucky. Both had been raped and one of them, with bright red hair, was dead. The other wandered naked among the wildflowers and alternately screamed and muttered nonsense to herself.
Gibbs ascribed the death of the redhead as one of God’s tender mercies. As for the other, she’d have to travel in the wagon all the way to Fort Defiance where the females at the post, who would understand the dreadful implications of what the girl had suffered, could care for her.
But then, disaster piled on disaster . . .
One of the young troopers, a raw recruit from the Boston slums, was detailed to help collect the naked bodies for burial, and along with five others he rode into the meadow.
The woman’s screams were constant now, shrill and agonizing, and the trooper opened his mouth in horror and put his hands over his ears.
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