The valley awed a man and made him lower his voice to a whisper, as though he was talking in a cathedral.
“Where did the map say the cave was, Abe?” Flintlock said.
The girl, as silent as the valley, rode behind him, and the Hawken rifle, as had become his custom, lay across the saddle horn.
A black sweat stain banded Roper’s hat and dark arcs showed under his armpits.
“Damnit, we should’ve seen it by now,” Roper said.
“We’ll find it,” Coffin said. “If not today, tomorrow. If not then, the next day, but we’ll find it.”
Roper removed his hat and rubbed his sweat-beaded forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “Hell, a man could die of thirst out here first,” he said.
“There is water,” Coffin said.
“Well, thank God fer that,” Roper said. “Lead us to it.”
“Later,” Coffin said. “Once the danger passes.”
Suddenly both Roper and Flintlock were alert.
“What danger, Jack?” Flintlock said. “Speak up, man.”
“I don’t know,” Coffin said. “But I sense it. It is all around us.”
Roper’s reaction was to slide his Winchester out of the boot under his knee and lever a round into the chamber. He warily looked about him at the rough-hewn rock pillars and smooth-topped mesas and said, “I don’t see nothing.”
“Me neither,” Flintlock said. “And I don’t feel any danger.”
“It comes, soon,” Coffin said. “Best you be prepared.”
Behind Flintlock the girl stirred. She turned her face to the blue-denim sky and frowned, fine lines rippling between her eyes.
“Something worrying her?” Roper said. “She’s all atremble.”
“Maybe,” Flintlock said. “I can’t figure it.”
“Women feel things that men don’t,” Coffin said. “She senses the danger.”
“Then what the hell is the danger?” Roper said. “I hired you to scout for trouble, Coffin. Now, if you’ve found some, tell us what it is and be done. And be damned to ye fer a conundrum-talking breed.”
“I can’t stop what’s to come.” Coffin stared at the sky that had now turned the color of sulfur. A new urgency in his voice, he yelled, “Over there into the arroyo. Now!”
Roper followed the breed’s eyes. “Hell, I don’t see no arroyo.”
“Follow me!” Coffin said.
He swung his horse around and galloped toward the foothills, dust spurting from the hooves of his running horse.
Then Flintlock scanned the distance with farseeing eyes and saw it.
Less an arroyo and more a slot canyon, it was a narrow V between two rocky hills that looked wide enough to barely allow the passage of a man and his mount.
A breeze fanned Flintlock’s cheeks . . . then slapped him hard.
Abe Roper, who’d been sitting his horse watching Coffin’s dash for the arroyo, now got the word as the rising wind read to him from the book.
“Sandstorm!” he yelled. “Get the hell out of here, Sammy!”
He followed after Coffin at a gallop.
“Hold on, Ayasha!” Flintlock yelled.
The girl seemed to understand because she threw her arms around his waist and clung tight, her face buried in his back.
The roar of the storm sounded like surf crashing onto a shingle beach and the hornet sting of the sand mercilessly tormented the terrified horses.
The humans, huddled at the bottom of the arroyo amid brush, agave and cat claw cactus, were no better off. Normal speech was impossible because of the deafening din of the wind and the venomous snake hiss of hurtling sand.
Flintlock held his slicker above his head and Ayasha huddled close to him. Her eyes were tight shut and sand powdered her face.
Roper put his mouth against Flintlock’s ear and yelled, “Damned wind is as vicious as mortal sin!”
Flintlock nodded; the effort of shouting above the bellow of the storm not worth the effort.
But now and then between gusts he heard a small sound . . . Jack Coffin chanting what he took to be some kind of Apache prayer.
Flintlock fervently hoped the breed was in real good with the Great Spirit.
After fifteen minutes of howling, screeching, hissing violence the storm stopped as suddenly as it had begun and once again the sun shone brightly in a cloudless sky.
Like people rising from bed and throwing off the sheets, sand cascaded from their pummeled bodies as Flintlock and the others rose slowly to their feet.
“What the hell?” Abe Roper said. He looked as though he was wearing a yellow mask. “I never want to go through something like that again.”
“Me neither,” Flintlock said. “Somebody trying to tell us something?”
He meant it as a joke, but Jack Coffin took him seriously.
“The guardian of the bell sent the storm as a warning,” he said.
Roper, who didn’t scare worth a damn even in the worst of times, grinned and said, “Did he now? Well, me and him are gonna have a discussion, but my gun will do the talking for me.”
Coffin shook his head. “He cannot be killed. He is the guardian. He dwells in death.”
“I ain’t seen a man yet who can take a bullet in the belly and not be killed,” Roper said. “Did you, Sam’l?”
“Can’t say as I have,” Flintlock said. He brushed off sand with both hands then palmed Ayasha’s gritty hair. Over his shoulder, he said, “Unless you count Lonesome Lon Sanford.”
“That story is crap,” Roper said. “I was there when Lon got his. In fact I kilt the man who kilt him. But Lon didn’t get it in the belly. He got it lower down, blew a chunk out of his thigh an’ he bled to death a day later.”
Flintlock nodded. “Well, folks tell the stories they want to tell.”
“Lonesome Lon wasn’t much,” Roper said. “He was a miserable sumbitch an’ I always figured I’d kill him myself one day.” He nodded to the Hawken rifle that had fallen to the ground during the storm. “See to your guns, Sammy. Sand will foul ’em worse than anything else you can name.”
“I was planning on that very thing, Abe,” Flintlock said. “But thanks for your concern.”
“You will fight the wind with guns?” Coffin said. “You will fight Death itself with Colts and Winchesters?”
“Yup, that’s the plan,” Roper said. “For two thousand pounds of gold I’d follow Death into hell and gun him at the devil’s feet.”
Ayasha gave a sudden and sharp little intake of breath.
And Flintlock wondered at that.
“Did you send the storm, Grandfather?” the boy asked.
“To do what, little one?” the old man said.
“Why, to kill the men who come for the bell, of course.”
“I don’t wish to kill them. I only want them to go away.”
“Will they go away now, Grandfather?”
“No. I don’t think they will.”
“Why?”
“Because their hearts are hard, made of gold.”
“Why do you seem so tired, Grandfather?”
“Because you weary me with your questions, little one.”
The boy poured some rough red wine into a clay cup and handed it to his grandfather. The Mexican peasants brought the wine as a gift, as their ancestors had once brought gold, and the old man enjoyed it immensely.
“What will you do if the robbers come into the cave?” the boy asked.
The old man took the cup from his lips. “I don’t know.”
“Will you smite them dead and drag away their souls?”
“No.”
“Then what will you do?”
“I don’t know.”
The old man took another sip from the cup and said, “Men who hunt gold are greedy, and oftentimes they kill each other. Perhaps I will have to do nothing at all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Charlie Fong had no doubt about the right of the thing.
No matter how crazy it seemed, he
had it to do.
He was not normally a man who tilted at windmills, but a respect for his own kind drove him on and he didn’t question himself.
His fire was small, built with dry sticks to cut down on smoke, and what little there was rose upward into the soaring cottonwood he sat under, one of many that stood beside the Chaco River.
Fong studied the shard of pottery he’d found close to the tree. He figured it was ancient, made by the Old Ones who’d lived here long before the Spanish men arrived.
This was a harsh, heat-blasted place, the air gasping dry, but pottery suggested a settled way of life. How the Old Ones survived this harsh country was a mystery he could not fathom. Unless the land itself had changed over the centuries, but he didn’t know about that either.
He shoved the pot shard in his shirt pocket and chewed on a strip of beef jerky that smelled bad. But he’d left the trading post in such a hurry it was all he’d brought with him.
Months after the spring melt, the Chaco was more dry wash than river, but he’d been able to fill his canteen with the trickle that still survived, and though the water was brackish, it was wet.
Charlie Fong idly watched a cougar prowl the opposite bank. The big cat stopped and stared at him with golden eyes before moving on....
“Couldn’t believe it with my own eyes, ’cause I’d never seen the like,” the cavalry trooper had told him back at the trading post. “There he was, bold as brass, with them two Chink girls doing his every bidding. Like slaves they was, and maybe a sight worse if the truth be known. He says he bought them girls in Frisco for good American money and they didn’t come cheap.”
“Pretty?” Fong had said.
“You could say that, if slanty-eyes Celestials are to your taste.”
Charlie Fong let that go. The man was talkative, and one thing Charlie Fong had learned in the Tong was that if you let a talking man speak there was no telling what you could learn.
“Feller’s name is Silas Garrard and he says he’s a retired sea captain,” the soldier said. “But I thought to meself, Aye, slave cap’n is more like. He’s got all kinds of African and Chinese stuff in his cabin, and more’n one picture of black men in chains getting whipped along by fellers wearing long robes and turbans on their heads while a white man watches it all from horseback. You ask me, them little gals ain’t long for this world, if that’s the way Garrard treated his slaves afore he got them to market.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Charlie Fong said.
“Well, beggin’ your pardon, you’re a Chinaman yourself,” the soldier said. “Or haven’t you noticed?”
“And you think because I’m a Chinaman I should rescue the girls?”
“If’n they was white women, that’s what I’d do.”
“They mean nothing to me.”
“Suit yourself. But, hell, they might be kin o’ yourn.”
The soldier, short and thin like most cavalry troopers, leaned forward in his mess hall chair and whispered, “Here’s a puzzler, a real humdinger. He said a real strange thing, that Garrard feller. Asked me if I’d heard anything about a golden bell hidden somewhere in the Carrizo Mountains. I said that I hadn’t, and he said, ‘Well, I might get rid of the two women and go look for it.’ I swear that’s what he said, so you can make of that what you will.”
“A most singular statement,” Fong said, pretending to have only a passing interest.
“As to what the cap’n meant about getting rid of the women, well, your guess is as good as mine,” the trooper said. “But by the look of that feller, I’d say throat cuttin’ is what he had in mind, unless he can find a buyer for them gals.”
The soldier rose, adjusted his canvas gun belt and butt-forward Colt, and said, “As to them women, Chinaman, if you’re going to do something, better do it quick. I’d say time is running out on them.”
Charlie Fong told himself that it was Garrard talking about the golden bell that tipped the scales, but he knew in his heart he’d have gone after the Chinese girls no matter what.
When he came right down to it, blood is thicker than water, and more than that, it was the way of the Tong to help others of their race.
The cavalry trooper told him where the Garrard cabin was situated. He said it lay on the eastern base of the Hogback, a sharply pointed ridge of raw sandstone and shale that looked like the dorsal fin of a submerged sea monster.
“It’s the only cabin along that stretch of the Chaco, so just follow the river north and you’ll find it,” the man said. “An’ if you do venture thataway, then good luck to you.”
Charlie Fong added a few sticks to his fire. He calculated that he was about five miles from the Garrard cabin and from there it would be a two-day ride back to the Red Rock Valley. With the women in tow, probably three.
He’d left without telling Roper and Flintlock, because he knew they’d try to talk him out of it. By now they must be wondering where he was, and Abe, by his very nature, would suspect treachery.
Fong smiled to himself. That was the trouble with outlaws like Abe Roper. They figured everybody was as crooked as themselves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It was in Charlie Fong’s mind to bed down early under the cottonwoods and strike out at first light for the Garrard cabin.
But the arrival of Pleasant Tyrell riding through the pale twilight put that plan on hold.
The old man, riding a mouse-colored mustang, leading another with a pack on its back, drew rein a ways off and hollered, “Hello, the camp.”
Fong rose to his feet. His hand went to the leather-lined front pocket of his pants where he carried his .38 and he yelled, “Come on in.”
Later Fong would recount that Pleasant Tyrell was a sight to see.
He looked to be in his late seventies, maybe older. He wore buckskins that had fringes on the shirtsleeves at least two feet long, a yellow bandana sagging low on his chest and a beautiful silk top hat perched precariously on his completely bald head.
Pinned to the crown on the hat two inches above the brim was a deputy United States marshal’s star.
Tyrell, a man with humor in his faded blue eyes, wore two ivory-handled Smith & Wesson Russians, butt forward in fine black holsters.
He drew rein again but made no motion to dismount.
“I’d say I smelled your coffee, sonny,” he said. “But you ain’t got no coffee.”
Charlie Fong held up a chunk of the reeking jerky. “Have this, if you’ve got a taste for it.”
“Hell, no. Ate too much of that during the War for Southern Rights.”
Tyrell gave his name, then said, “What’s a Chinaman from China doing all the way out here in these United States?”
Fong smiled. “I could ask that same question about a lawman who seems to be a fer piece off his home range.”
“I never seen a Chinaman out here,” Tyrell said, leaning back in the saddle. “Seen plenty of Celestials afore, mind, but never out here.”
“There’s a first time for everything, Marshal,” Fong said.
“What you got in your pocket, sonny? You seem mighty interested in it.”
Fong decided to call it. “A Smith & Wesson sneaky gun.”
“You on the scout?”
“Not recent. I might be wanted in Texas, though.”
“Hell, boy, everybody’s wanted in Texas. What do they call you?”
“Charlie Fong.”
“Charlie ain’t much of a name for a Chinaman.”
“It serves.”
The old lawman nodded. “All right, Charlie, are you going to ask me to light an’ set?”
“Of course, Marshal, but it pains me to say that I’ve nothing to offer. My hospitality will be thin, to say the least.”
“Well, I got coffee an’ I got grub an’ I’m in a mind to share. That lay all right with you, Charlie?”
“Light and set,” Charlie Fong said.
“Man can’t find better camp grub than salt pork and pan bread,” Pleasant Tyrell sai
d, wiping off his mouth with his sleeve. “Greases his innards, like, an’ guards agin the rheumatisms.”
Charlie Fong was hungry and was in a mood to agree. “Yup, it’s a sandwich that settles in the belly like a snowflake, all right.”
Suddenly Tyrell looked shrewd, his eyes narrowing. “Who you runnin’ with, Charlie?”
Fong said, “Do I have to be running with anybody?”
“No, you could be on a high lonesome, I guess, but you don’t seem the type. Chinamen ain’t the kind to be lone riders, if you catch my drift. Usually when you see one, there’s a score of others close by.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m a lawman. Is that reason enough?”
“How fast are you with them pistols?”
“Fast enough on the shuck’n’shoot to drill you square afore you pull that belly gun outta your poke.”
Charlie Fong grinned. For a moment he listened to the wind talk in the cottonwoods and the coyotes yip in the bone-white hills under the waxing moon. Finally he said, “You’re a blunt-speaking man, Marshal.”
“And I’m a listening man, Charlie,” Tyrell said. “So talk to me.”
“Abe Roper and Sam Flintlock.”
If Tyrell was surprised he didn’t let it show. “A few years back, when he got out of Yuma, Roper took up the train-robbing profession,” he said. “I know fer a fact he robbed the Katy Flier not a twelvemonth gone and that Wells Fargo would dearly love to see him caught and hung.”
“And Sam Flintlock? Is he on your wanted list?” Fong said.
“He’s a bounty hunter, so you could say we’re in the same line o’ work. He still carry that ol’ Hawken everywhere he goes?”
“Seems like.”
“He’s fast with the iron, is Sam. Got that big bird tattooed acrost his throat, I recollect.”
“It brings him luck. Or so he says.”
“Lucky fer him, Charlie, maybe unlucky fer you. There ain’t no trains to rob around these parts, so what are you doin’ here?”
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